Line and Circle makes music with the arena-sized vision of the Verve, Oasis, the Smiths and R.E.M. – sweeping orchestral rock drawn with broad melodic strokes and detailed with intricate string and guitar arrangements. It’s an aesthetic that may have sounded cool in 1996, but amid today’s lo-fi hipster flavors of the month, it’s a […]
The Heavy, the U.K. quartet whose gritty take on soul, funk, reggae and blues has captivated American audiences and earned them tour dates with Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, will be announced today as the special guests for the July 15 installment of the Hammer Museum’s Also I Like to Rock series. Saint Motel and […]
Jeff Morisano had an idea for a book, and it’s turned into an album. Morisano, a 25-year-old Connecticut native based in Santa Monica, originally wrote the music – that he’s now released as Kissed Her Little Sister – for a limited-edition volume distributed through NYC-based The Underground Library, a maker of handmade, hard-bound books. His […]
When I talked to Alex Ebert before Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros began their worldwide crusade, he allowed as how there were some Ima Robot songs in the archives, some material recorded while the dance-punks were in label limbo after 2006’s “Monuments to the Masses,” their sophomore album for Virgin Records. Now Ima Robot […]
The Good Listeners have made three albums of good listening, but the Los Angeles duo – Clark Stiles and Nathan Khyber – have always been as much about the process as the product. Their debut “Ojai” was written and recorded, one song per day, at a small house in that town; their second album “Crane […]
The five-year-old artistic affair between Jenny Lewis and Johnathon Rice has borne a child – “We’re Having Fun Now,” the forthcoming full-length from the duo going by Jenny and Johnny. They released a teaser track this afternoon, the undeniably catchy “Scissor Runner,” and you haven’t heard anything like it since … well, since Evan Dando […]
In April, we dutifully dispensed “In Ruins,” the teaser track from “Part II: The New December,” the forthcoming sophomore album by L.A. art-poppers Fol Chen. Cool, percussive stuff with vaguely melancholy overtones. Well, the song’s nothing compared to the video. Director Chris Wilcha (“This American Life”) ventured to Iceland to film near Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano […]
At first blush, the Smiles confirmed my worst fears: Vampire Weekend is contagious. But the L.A.-based quartet composed of four guys who met at USC aren’t quite the pop sophisticates of the East Coasters – the strain of indie on the Smiles’ debut EP falls has more in common with the bouncy, winsome pop of […]
The L.A. quartet Telegram might not be on your radar yet – they’ve played only one proper show – but fans of shimmering, anthemic rock will find them soon enough. They’re releasing three three-song EPs (recorded with Andrew Prickett and Barrett Slagle) with titles that sound like Dick and Jane primers but, the band explains, […]
For all the serendipity that ignited the flame that is Fitz & the Tantrums, it’s the years of dues-paying that put frontman Michael Sean Fitzpatrick in his enviable position as the next hot soul man. Fitzpatrick, who presides over the blue-eyed, skinny-tied retro-pop that’s tugged at the hips and the heartstrings of audiences everywhere, only […]
