No sooner had I gotten my ears around “Early Birds,” the four-song tour EP that the Parson Red Heads are readying for their summer road trip, than the band announced today it is moving from L.A. to Portland. It’s been five years since the Red Heads moved from Oregon to L.A., winning friends and and […]
Last year Mississippi Man busted out of Fullerton with a truckload of sweet melodies, endearing harmonies and a twangy EP, “The Snake Oil Salesman” that earned them immediate comparisons to indie folk/blues merchants Delta Spirit and Cold War Kids. Since, they’ve had a flirtation with an indie record label, played a mess of shows and […]
Really wish I hadn’t thrown all my bell-bottoms away. It’d help to be in uniform for Dusty Rhodes & the River Band, the Orange County sextet who continue their winsome bear hug of classic rock on their third album. The self-titled, self-released collection is their first after parting ways with SideOneDummy Records, and although it’s […]
Everything about the two songs on Sweaters’ new 7-inch single is familiar – the chord progression that launches “Sky Mall, the piano-powered rock ’n’ soul of “Investigations.” But it’s the uninhibited manner in which the L.A. four-piece – Jordan Benik, Max Sokolinski, Jordan Harkins and Joel Isaac Black – inhabits its classic rock influences that […]
I’m not sure whether it’s more a 2003 dance-punk blowout, a tribute to influential 1990s artists or a nod to hipster flavors of the minute, but the lineup for this year’s FYF Fest was announced today. The one-day affair, Saturday, Sept. 4, at Los Angeles State Historic Park downtown, features dance-music faves the Rapture and […]
I’m caught in a Pitchforkian nightmare of indie band inbox inertia this week. In the mean time, while I get my retro-psych-rock reviewing chops honed to the standard you expect, let’s wave our glowsticks like wands of dream-energy and get loved up to Belgian indie electro-popster Styrofoam, aka Arne van Petegem. “Kids on Acid” is […]
More than the sonic similarity to British folk legends Pentangle and Fairport Convention, Elisa Randazzo’s debut album “Bruises & Butterflies” (out on Drag City) is remarkable for its sweet poetry. Randazzo, a fashion designer by day and the former singer/violinist for Red Krayola, teamed up with then-husband Josh Schwartz [who released new music as Painted […]
Rock fans know Luke Paquin as the left-handed riff-slinger in the band Hot Hot Heat, but the Street & Babe Shadow, his side project with girlfriend Paige Stark, displays the guitarist’s country side. The band’s self-titled, self-released album (a digital/vinyl release) – made in Dan Horne’s Lone Palm Studio – is a slice of slacker […]
The Outline are back to following their own diagram. It’s been four years to to the week since the L.A. rockers’ debut album came out and they headed out on the road, first on the Warped Tour and then as support for hardcore guys Saosin. Both tours seemed odd for the music on the aptly […]
At the risk of inducing blank stares from the hipsterati who are only occasionally hip enough to embrace their progenitors, I’ll take a moment this morning to tout the new album by Peter Case, “Wig!” (out last week on Yep Roc). Crate-diggers might know Case from early pop-punkers the Nerves (excellently re-issued, by the way), […]
