[I go off the beaten path, maybe even off the rails. You decide …] Los Angeles is a city of vast distances, and differences. Of this I was reminded a couple nights ago when, standing in line for a random show, an acquaintance asked me what I thought about the Grammys (coming Sunday evening to […]
[Happy birthday to Duff McKagan, rock star, online columnist and … mountain climber.] My, what a diverse music menu you have tonight, Los Angeles. Let’s start with a couple intriguing small shows, like at the Silverlake Lounge, where Andy Friedman & the Other Failures are in from Brooklyn. Friedman is a New Yorker cartoonist-turned-poet-turned-folk singer […]
Los Angeles quartet Red Cortez has been selected as the sole supporting act for 12 U.S. dates on Morrissey’s tour. Moz, crisscrossing the country behind the Feb. 17 release of his new album “Years of Refusal,” will be joined by the L.A. rockers starting Feb. 28 in Florida and ending March 17 in Pittsburgh. Dates […]
Oliver Future frontman Noah Lit tries to hide the hurt in jokes and quips – he’s good at those, too – but it’s clear he’s still wounded over the decision last year by bandmates Jordan Richardson and Jesse Ingalls to join Ben Harper’s new rock quartet, Relentless 7. “I told myself all I was gonna […]
A funny thing happened to writer/theater director/songwriter Oren Lavie on his way to obscurity: KCRW-FM’s Chris Douridas exposed audiences to his music, and then Lavie got a song in a Chevrolet commercial (even though he’d never owned a car is his life and doesn’t watch TV). The tune, “Her Morning Elegance” (off his forthcoming album […]
Their name is barely known outside of a few small clubs, but already Local Natives are telling us all the places they’ve been – and, in doing so, all the places they intend to go. The L.A. quintet makes music that crackles with frenetic beats, agile melodies and cascading harmonies, tightly assembled in songs that […]
The Morning After Girls played the Viper Room on Thursday night as if they were hellbent on being the next psych-rock contenders, and they might be. The New York-based quintet fashioned a glowing wall of sound and decorated it with colorful licks and cool harmonies; think Primal Scream, or a harder-edged Verve, or the Dandy […]
At its recent performance at Check One Twosday at the Echoplex, L.A. six-piece Castledoor unveiled a raft of impressive new material – including the soaring ballad “Hush.” Spaceland Recordings is offering a free download of the live track. Here’s the video … you can do the download thing right here.
The latest album from Australian quartet Youth Group [pictured], “All This Will Pass,” will finally get a U.S. release on April 7, via World’s Fair and the Aussie imprint Ivy League. The band’s swoon-worthy Britpop made a mark here – at least with me – on “Skeleton Jar” (2004, Epitaph) and “Casino Twilight Dogs (2006, […]
Low Flying Owls are back – even if, in reality, only the name went away. As a Sacramento-based quartet, LFO emerged as a band to watch upon releasing the album “Elixir Vitae” on Stinky Records in 2003. Its dark, biting take on psychedelic rock bode greater things, but the follow-up album “was rejected for being […]
