Sometimes you just need to laugh. In two languages. Nous Non Plus makes highly irreverent (and just as catchy) French pop music, circa the 1960s, and their third album, “Freudian Slip,” released last fall, is a hoot. Very little gets lost in translation at the hands of the band who have fake French names to […]
Kicking off Grammy weekend … ‣ Dr. Dog plays the Orpheum behind its new album “Be the Void.” That’s the Philadelphia outfit’s video for “That Old Black Hole,” above. ‣ Spindrift brings its spaghetti Western psychedelia to the Satellite, celebrating 10-plus years, four albums, movies scores and more with a night full of special guests. […]
[Recent remixes that have come across our radar. They may help bring the weekend faster…] Active Child, “Johnny Belinda (White Arrows Remix)” – L.A. electro rockers White Arrows give the last track on Active Child’s “You Are All I See” a little boost by dropping a beat and adding shiny synth riffs, slightly changing it […]
For a large chunk of 2009, songwriter Jacob Summers, doing business as the Rhone Occupation, occupied a big chunk of my music memory I’ll call The Pop Place (to cop an old Trashcan Sinatras song title). It’s where the sounds of the ’60s and ’70s – shimmering and tremeloed guitars, vocal hooks and AM radio-ready […]
Besides its obvious charms – agile melodies, caffeinated percussion and twinkling keyboards – the debut album from Soft Swells feels like a pep talk from an old friend. It’s full of polite but candid imperatives. “Say It Like You Mean It.” “Put It on the Line.” “Shake It Off.” “Never Leave Home.” “Make It Go […]
Your jam-packed Thursday itinerary: ‣ Its new album “Blues Funeral” just out, the Mark Lanegan Band [praises sung earlier this week] headlines the Echoplex. ‣ Brooklyn electro-pop outfit Class Actress – the brainchild of producers Mark Richardson and Scott Rosenthal and singer Elizabeth Harper, headline the Echo behind their recent release “Rapprocher.” That’s Harper and […]
American Royalty have always been good at slamming rock and electronica together. “Lately” from their debut “El Ardemo” EP featured an interesting wrestling match between the blues and synth-pop, and their new “Matchstick” EP (out this week on vinyl, next week digitally via Guns in the Sun Records) doesn’t stray far from mashing the unlikely […]
Nobody told the Darkness the joke was over. The cartoonish Brits found more than 720,000 saps customers for their 2003 debut “Permission to Land” (it sold 1.3 million in the U.K.) before going quietly into the booze- and drug-filled night, its second album face-planting at 100,000 in sales and frontman Justin Hawkins ending up in […]
On her first couple of releases, Nite Jewel’s astral explorations in synth-pop imagined a space-age lounge, the kind of dive George Jetson might escape to in his flying car to drown his sorrows after a family squabble. Songstress Ramona Gonzalez’s forthcoming release for Secretly Canadian, “One Second of Love,” is not the stuff of gin […]
Tyler’s Lyle’s rhythmic folk music springs from the fertile loam of Americana, where broken hearts mend, indomitable spirits prevail and sad smiles tell a thousand tales. His voice carries the wizened optimism of a Ryan Adams, and his sharp lyrics, buoyant melodies and deft orchestration make the songs on his new album “The Golden Age […]