If like me you’ve only watched the video for Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” two or three times since it landed Tuesday, we’ve got some work to do. It’s a 7-minute action movie-meets-morality tale with a cast of hundreds that must have cost a fortune to shoot (the L.A. portions caused quite a stir). It’s well worth […]
Has it really been 20 years since a then-teenaged Ben Lee released his first solo album? Seem like a long time — but it’s a drop in the bucket to the subjects of his new video for “Big Love.” They are John and Ann Betar, the longest-married couple in the U.S., celebrating their 82nd anniversary […]
Sonny Boy Thorn makes festival-ready classic rock with big grooves and modern influences — and just enough of the latter that the band doesn’t sound like it’s aping anybody from the ’90s or before. SBT is a newly uncloseted collaboration between guitarist-songwriter-producer Christopher Thorn (of Blind Melon) and singer-songwriter David “Davie” Dennis of the dearly […]
Like Southern California kindred spirits Olin and the Moon, L.A. quartet Boroughs embraces the finery of traditional Americana, rolling influences like Wilco, Ryan Adams and Tom Petty into an inviting ball of melody and sincerity. The band finds its origins in frontman Kyle Neal’s move from his native Bakersfield to L.A., where he met guitarist […]
Dutch multi-instrumentalist Jacco Gardner engages in some trippy psychedelia on his sophomore album “Hypnophobia,” released last month on Polyvinyl records. Once again, having recorded “Hypnophobia” in a village 30 miles north of Amsterdam, Gardner has created a lucid dream state for us to twirl around in together with his 1960s-infused baroque-pop. Album track “Find Yourself” […]
Five years ago, singer-songwriter Scott Bartenhagen announced his presence in Los Angeles by the incandescent single “Beacons.” Then, except for a trickle of DIY recordings, the Bartenhagen well seemed to dry up. For all his small, fervent cadre of appeciators knew, he’d packed up his guitar and sophisticated folk/pop/jazz stylings and moved back to his […]
In a world where Courtney Love doesn’t have that awful (yet warranted) reputation she’d likely sound a lot like Bully. Or rather, Bully is the clean-cut typically angsty version of one disoriented Love. We’re forced to reminisce about women in rock in the early ’90s, but the slight flicker of pop keeps everything civilized and […]
At one point on her debut album, singer-songwriter Lael Neale confesses, “I don’t know what I am.” At times over the 12 tracks of the deceptively titled “I’ll Be Your Man,” it’s stunning to hear her try to work it out. The first single from the L.A.-based artist, who was reared on a farm in […]
Transplanted Scotsman Charlie Clark is a man with many irons in the fire — he has at least three musical projects ongoing and books the live music at Harvard & Stone — and he has named his new band for the Majestic 12, the secret group formed in 1947 by President Harry S. Truman to […]
Looking up Sex Stains on the web leads to various gross things you will never be able to erase from your mind. That’s the only bad thing about this band, and perhaps it’s not so bad. Some folks might actually enjoy scrolling through photos of mattress stains that look like the Virgin Mary, among other […]
