The Neighbourhood tiptoed out of Newbury Park in late January when their first song “Female Robbery” premiered on Zane Lowe’s BBC show. A lot has happened since. The single “Sweater Weather” blew up on both sides of the pond; the quintet’s identities were revealed; they released their “I’m Sorry” EP; they scored a record deal; […]
Is everybody properly giddy over this new song from Mumford & Sons? The band last month announced its sophomore album “Babel” would arrive Sept. 24, and the brisk first single “You Will Wait” premiered on the BBC today. It sounds like what they do: gospel-inspired folk-meets-bluegrass. Sound the horns. ||| Stream: “I Will Wait” Photo […]
Sharing this song in the social media is going to feel like insider trading. “Equalizer” is new from the Blonde Names, the nom de tune of Tatiana Simonian, whose day job is director of music industry relations for Twitter. Long before that job (and gigs as a label marketing manager and music journo), Simonian was […]
Kisses continue to seduce with their embrace of 1980s-style synth-pop. Initially a surprising detour for Princeton’s Jesse Kivel (paired here with Zinzi Edmundson) when they surfaced in early 2010, Kisses displayed an uber-cool Euro sheen on its debut full-length “The Heart of the Nightlife.” There’s more where that came from. A sophomore album (promising “pulsing […]
By Pamela Wilson “Welcome to paradise!” screamed Billie Joe Armstrong as Green Day erupted on the Echoplex stage Monday night for a two-hour tour of their greatest hits mixed with some crowd-pleasers of the future. If there were a college course on the ’90s punk trio who morphed into rock gods in the 2000s, this […]
Justin Miner credits his new musical direction to a “creative nervous breakdown.” Oh, if cracking up always yielded such fruits. Miner previously toiled in L.A.’s Fight From Above, a solid rock band that failed to distinguish itself among other outfits doing similarly straight-ahead bombast. He took a break from music, traveled, bought a tambourine, learned […]
How big a success was “Who Shot Rock & Roll Live,” the KCRW-hosted series in the park next to the Annenberg Space for Photography in Century City? Huge. Long lines, capacity crowds, exhilarating performances – including Saturday’s from Raphael Saadiq and Band of Skulls. The live series was mounted in conjunction with the museum’s “Who […]
Think Dorian Wood is a rude boy or a punk rocker? Not quite. The soundscapes of this avant-garde L.A. artist find beauty in the delicate balance between dark and light, pain and joy. His eccentric synthesis of folk, soul and experimentalism is DIY enough to make him a rebel to anyone’s ears, all while recalling […]
Words and lyrics are nice, but sometimes a picture is worth a thousand ideas. If you’re surprised by the NSFW cover art for “The Haunted Man” (out Oct. 23 on Capitol), the forthcoming album from Natasha Khan – aka Bat For Lashes – you shouldn’t be. Khan has never been one to do anything dull […]