Electro alchemists Superhumanoids, Newbury Park whiz kids the Neighbourhood and prolific Eastside rockers Light FM will be three of the bands playing this year’s edition of Bloomfest – the free street fair scheduled for Saturday, July 21, in the downtown L.A. arts district. The neighborhood music, art and food gathering this year also will expand […]
For seven albums, Eleni Mandell has been the best damned Los Angeles songwriter without a proper record contract, which boggles the mind when you consider her catalog and its graceful excursions into pop, rock, jazz and country. That distinction changes July 10, when her new collection “I Can See the Future” comes out on Yep […]
Words and photos by Matt Draper For fans of layered, wafting guitars and introspective yet noisy backdrops, the longtime Sunday night weekly Part Time Punks showered said devotees with the stacked 11-act Shoegaze Festival last Sunday at the Echoplex. Dubbed “the world’s first” (I wonder …), the event featured performances from contemporary ’gazers such as […]
The Sunset Strip Music Festival today announced a full slate for the three-day event that includes club shows featuring Peter Murphy (pictured), RZA, Hank III, James Ingram and Das Racist. SSMF, which kicks off Thursday, Aug. 16, with a salute to the Doors at the House of Blues, is highlighted by a Sunset Boulevard street […]
Here are your Thursday things: ‣ Indie hip-hop standout El-P visits Check Yo Ponytail at the Echoplex behind his first solo album in five years, “Cancer for Cure,” joined by Killer Mike and more. ‣ U.K. funk-soul outfit the Heavy, with its third album “The Glorious Dead” coming in August [here’s a sample], plays the […]
The tidal wave of artists returning with a new album this fall includes the Raveonettes, who recently announced that their sixth studio album is slated for a release on Sept. 11 on Vice Records. To start the buzz for the new record “Observator,” their first offering for fans is, appropriately, the track “Observations.” Produced by […]
David Shane Smith continues to be one of the most compelling pop explorers in the L.A. underground. Equally adept (and some would say, inscrutable) at glitchy, sample-based electro and only slightly off-kilter acoustic guitar compositions, the prolific songwriter never met a song he couldn’t tweak, and his subversive lyrics and titles are keen and biting. […]
Sure, U.K.’s Two Wounded Birds‘ debut album is out now on the Drums’ label, Holiday Friend Record Company (a newly minted subsidiary of Frenchkiss Records). But put that association aside, and this Margate, England-based quartet has come up with some beautiful dream-pop tunes on their self-titled record. Hazy bass-heavy lines alongside wistfully sung lyrics in […]
Shiny Toy Guns have come full circle. The synth-rock quartet, which took off after Oklahoma songwriters/producers Jeremy Dawson and Chad Petree recruited singer Carah Faye Charnow out of high school in Newbury Park, was one of the first big MySpace sensations, their single “Le Disko” eventually becoming omnipresent on rock radio after Indie 103.1 championed […]
Beat Club has the beats, by golly, and they don’t sound like they came from some computer application. The new indie-dance trio is a little bit punk, a little bit garage and a heftier amount of disco, with ’80s-vintage bass lines rolling under scratchy guitar riffs. Beat Club is the new collaboration from ex-Low Vs […]