Like so many do in the L.A. music scene, Emma Ruth Rundle and David Clifford of post-rock quintet Red Sparowes are working double time by starting up yet another band. (So, this makes it triple time.) Rundle and Clifford also have the Nocturnes, and on the new project Marriages they are joined by fellow Red […]
Hands’ shimmering synth-pop doesn’t play into anything pat – when we premiered “Warm Night Home” in October, we noted the L.A. quartet’s predisposition toward shifting tones and rhythms, and its layered complexities. Director Jack Price’s video for the song (which, the band announced today, will be on the “Massive Context” EP, out April 10) suggests […]
A year and a half after he escaped from Los Angeles, Steve Cooper and Spirit Animal are finishing up a follow-up album to 2010’s “The Cost of Living.” Thankfully, the testosterone-charged electro-funk outfit seems to have decided against the title “Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species Spirit Animal,” instead settling on “Spiritia Animalia.” Whatever […]
Too many caricatures in the cartoon strip? Too many cooks in the kitchen? Whatever. The new track from the seemingly all-star collaboration of Gorillaz, Andre 3000 and James Murphy is a mess, the kind of thing cooked up by some shoe company cross-marketer who probably wears a baseball cap sideways and has camouflage-painted Chuck Taylors. […]
Although many of us still miss the Unicorns, supporting Nicholas Thorburn in Islands isn’t such a bad thing. The Montreal-based band recently released “A Sleep & A Forgetting,” and the follow-up to 2009’s highly regarded “Vapors” has been worth the wait. Thorburn’s modern pop has always been a bit adventurous, but his new break-up record […]
Wildcat! Wildcat! has their name wrong. It should be Wildfire! Wildfire!, because that’s how quickly the Los Angeles trio’s first two singles have spread across the Internet. The pop concoctions of Jesse Taylor, Michael Wilson and Jesse Carmichael, friends since they were teenagers, fall squarely onto the plate of today’s now-fashionable indie R&B – lush […]
We give you a couple lovely acoustic videos to go with your Thursday show list: ‣ Good Times for a Good Cause Dept.: Wires in the Walls, Telstar and Little Red Lung team up for a benefit show at the Mint presented by Rock Is a Girl’s Best Friend and Buzz Bands LA (who will […]
L.A. band Spaceships claim they play bedroom-garage style rock and roll for the kids, and it’s hard to disagree. No matter one’s age, their fuzzed-out tunes have no place in the life of a real “grown-up.” Perhaps it’s because Jessie Waite and Kevin LaRose sing their melodies with a hint of twee. Perhaps it’s because […]
Portland, Ore.,-based band Unknown Mortal Orchestra have a knack for releasing odd music videos. The playfulness of it all can either come off arty or simply bizarre, but their visual accompaniments are nonetheless entertaining. In support of their self-titled album (out now on Fat Possum), their Sam Kristofski-directed clip for “Strangers Are Strange” is a […]
Josh Klinghoffer is an axeman extraordinaire – his latest gig, of course, is as John Frusciante’s successor in Red Hot Chili Peppers – but the album he made as Dot Hacker is not a guitarist’s album, at least not in the way the solo works of Frusciante or, say, Graham Coxon are. The music, made […]