No sooner had we digested all the dark matter on Chelsea Wolfe’s debut album “Apokalypsis” than the L.A. songstress unveils a new song. “Sunstorm” is a chilling, minimalist missive about death and its emotional entrails – no massive wall of sound here, just a repeating synth line and call-and-response vocals. The song doesn’t need […]
It’s been so long since we first heard from Spirit Vine – their debut EP “Golden” came out in the golden age of January, 2010 – we feel compelled to re-introduce them. Spirit Vine now rages with a lineup of singer-keyboardist Jaquelinne Cingolani, guitarist Gabe Pacheco, bassist Aaron Bustos and drummer Jalise Woodward. They are […]
Because continued power outages caused by the L.A. windstorms are affecting Moheak Radio’s neighborhood, the Buzz Bands LA show will have the week off. Join me next Friday for the first installment of Popular With Me 2011: The local song countdown. It was awfully fun last year.
Hope the movie isn’t that long. The soundtrack to “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” – created over the past 14 months by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – spans 3 hours and 39 songs. Among them: a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O, a cover of Bryan […]
Fantastic Friday things: ‣ Old-school R&B adventurer Nick Waterhouse, at work on a debut album coming out in the spring, brings his edgy, vintage sounds to the Bootleg Theater. [Refresher: See the video for “I Can Only Give You Everything.”] The Allah Las and Anna Egge support. ‣ At the Echo, it’s soul phenom Allen […]
By Amelia Earhart Why do musicians – particularly singer-songwriters – get termed “elusive” just because they don’t relish commenting on their already deeply wrought self-expression? Isn’t the act of putting the thoughts that keep you awake at night to song and then singing them in front of a large room full of people revealing enough? […]
Hurricane Bells, the indie-pop tangent of Longwave’s Steve Schiltz, got some attention in 2009 when a B-side, “Monsters,” made the soundtrack for “The Twilight Saga: The New Moon.” Last month, Schiltz released the second Hurricane Bells album, “Tides and Tales,” a collection of fuzzy, jangly and effects-dotted gems that, while not earning any points for […]
The moniker is Cillie, as in “silly,” and Barnes, from a family name. But Cillie Barnes is not a new, honey-voiced angel dropped from the heavens – it’s just the new musical incarnation of Vanessa Long, co-founder of the L.A. folk-pop outfit Family of the Year. The O.C.-bred songstress departed FOTY last year, deciding after […]
Rhymes with swoon, I guess. Jamie Woon’s debut album “Mirrorwriting” (out now digitally and in the U.K., Jan. 31 physically) announces the 28-year-old Londoner as the latest white-soul contender, and he’s got the falsetto for it. Most interesting, though, are the album’s electronic textures, and we will pass along the same tip we got about […]
Thursday things: ‣ My Morning Jacket swings back through L.A. behind its Grammy-nominated 2011 release “Circuital,” holding forth at the Gibson Amphitheatre with Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings opening. That’s Jim James, above, at MMJ’s show in August, 2010, at the Greek. ‣ Iggy and the Stooges play the Palladium in a show that was […]