[Two things that made me smile today …] None of the people in the video for Richard Swift’s “Lady Luck” is Richard Swift, although all bear a resemblance to the frizzy-haired, fuzzy-cheeked, dark-suited pop maestro. The Swift imitators, in fact, are played my the significan women in his life, with the role of the singer-pianist […]
Jonneine Zapata casts herself as something of a mystery woman, and it’s not just the icy, inhabited-by-the-music glare she projects onstage. The L.A.-singer will have you believe that with little more music training than the exposure to Mom’s record collection (heavy on the Motown) and childhood sing-alongs she has arrived where she is today, fronting […]
[Birthday cheers to Steve Tyler, even if Blender magazine won’t be celebrating any more …] I’ll start with a couple of fun-sounding under-the-radar things: Canadian genre-hoppers Hot Panda [pictured] plays the early set at the Silverlake Lounge. Then there is the electro-cool Alaska in Winter at Bordello. [Sample both below]. … Rosemary’s Garden, the new […]
The music of Australian duo An Horse is made of the simplest ingredients: guitar, drums, vocals and honesty. None of the first three is going make any jaws drop – drummer Damon Cox is suitably thrashy and energetic, while his Brisbane cohort Kate Cooper sings plaintively, even flatly, over her scratchy chord progressions. So raw […]
Australian quartet the Temper Trap caused quite a stir last week at South by Southwest, attracting music industry scouts from far and wide to gigs that stamped them as, possibly, a Very Big Band – or at least one approaching their arena-sized sound.” Monday night’s show at Spaceland, then, was kind of a test to […]
South by Southwest is over? Say it ain’t so. I was impressed, and I didn’t even make it into the food line at Rachael Ray’s party [above]. By the numbers 1,000: Number of times, give or take, I heard the word “amazing.” 100: Number of times during the week I wished I had a bicycle. […]
[Utter exhaustion vs. Saturday night at SXSW: Which will prevail?] Telekinesis (at the Parish) – Merge Records newbies Telekinesis seem to abide every diagram in the indie rock manual – its pop practices the loud/soft dynamic, a reverence for melody and a reliance on caffeinated percussion for propulsion. And as un-revolutionary as that is, the […]
[Friday night at SXSW with bands that have really long names …] Thao With the Get Down Stay Down (at Momo’s) – Thao rhymes with wow, and maybe Thao Nguyen ought to think about working that into her unruly but perfectly appropriate band name. Appearing slightly rough round the edges from three SXSW shows on […]
[First installment of my venue-surfing at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin. The music doesn’t technically start until Wednesday, but I got a head start …] The Black and White Years (Monday at La Zona Rosa) – Easy to see why this guys are Austin favorites; a party seems to break out wherever […]
[One in a series highlighting new music from SoCal artists …] Eric Maroldo explains that his music moniker the One and the Other refers to the duality between love and fear. The former Viper Room DJ overcame a lot of latter when he recorded “Montreal MM:0110” with friends in that Canadian city. His electro-sprinkled indie […]
