Morgan Kibby rocketed onto the pop radar as the keyboardist/singer for M83 who co-wrote four of the songs on the French band’s 2008 album “Saturdays = Youth.” [She also very kindly contributed the first tour diary for this very blog.] With M83 on a break from touring and Anthony Gonzalez working on new music, Kibby […]
There’s a certain insouciance in “Helicopter,” the wry first single from the L.A. electro duo Essay. A bit too defiant of convention to be pop, and too silly lyrically to be punk, it’s the brainchild of Russian-born Renata Raksha and Belgium-bred Peter Moran (ex-Laco$te), who met at an Echo Park gallery and first collaborated on […]
I think this got buried in my e-mail because it was the same week Das Racist released their mixtape [which, scientists say, has been downloaded so many times that if you stretched the mp3s end to end they would encircle the earth 4 1/2 times], but local rapper Kenan Bell has released a free mixtape […]
Is there such a thing as progressive garage rock? Anything is possible when it comes to British Sea Power, and the eccentric U.K. quartet’s latest EP – seven songs clocking in at 43 minutes – is certainly musically expansive, if nothing else. Title track “Zeus” namechecks deceased Russian leaders, celebrity chef Rick Stein and ’80s […]
Just when we’d hoped the five minutes for boy-obsessed girl groups had passed, Wet & Reckless spring their first single on the world, and it’s “New Guy.” The L.A. quartet trades in wry, undercooked garage pop with some nifty lyrical subterfuge, but this first single – released as part of a 7-inch split single (b/w […]
It’s the glacial meltwater clarity of their harmonies that first strikes you. Stockholm sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg are tender in years but mature in outlook, as their songwriting prowess shows. First Aid Kit have transfixed audiences worldwide with their sparse otherworldly folk songs since the release of 2008’s “Drunken Trees” EP, mentored by Karin […]
I remember standing at the merch tent at the late, not-so-great Detour Festival in the fall of 2008 and looking longingly at the only item a band called Afternoons had for sale: a Shepard Fairey print for the song “Say Yes.” [That’s the updated-with-the-new-band-name poster, above.] At the time I’d just joined the ranks of […]
Pete Yorn’s new Frank Black-produced album is pretty sharp stuff – and certainly the most consistently rocking album the singer-songwriter has made since his debut. On Monday, Sept. 27, Yorn played most of it to a sold-out show at the Roxy. See my review of the show on SPIN.com. Photo by Jim Donnelly
When Chicago natives Empires made their debut album “Howl” available online in 2008, it was downloaded 15,000 times in its first week of release. Now, even allowing for the fact that they were giving it away, those are still impressive stats for an unsigned and relatively unknown band. Fast-forward a couple of years, and the […]
It’s hard to believe, given the tropical haze that permeates the early material from L.A.’s Lord Huron, that Ben Schneider wrote the first batch of his songs last spring on a getaway to shores of Lake Huron in his native Michigan. Lord Huron’s debut EP “Into the Sun” is meticulously layered pop excursion, shrouded in […]
