[Happy 40th to Flaming Lips drummer Steven Drozd. Now keep the beat while I run through tonight’s exhausting list of shows:] Give the Church credit – most bands who are still going concerns at the end of their third decade are just playing greatest-hits sets. The Australian quartet, touring behind a new album, “Untitled #23,” […]
The La’s are making new music? At the risk of tainting, or at least de-mystifying, what I consider to be the finest pop song ever written, “There She Goes,” I say bring it on. The BBC reports that enigmatic frontman Lee Mavers has written a new album and joined up with Babyshambles bassist Drew McConnell. […]
Great Northern, “Remind Me Where the Light Is” (Eenie Meenie, today) – Solon Bixler and Rachel Stolte have bad dreams and big dreams, and both are embodied on their sophomore album. Their fears are framed meticulously – though more musically than lyrically – in their shimmering arrangements and soaring melodies, and just when you think […]
What do you get when you combine rock ‘n’ roll musicians, a love for trompe l’oeil and a fascination with 18th- and 19th-century portraiture? “Gooseberries,” apparently. Which is not the same as goosebumps, although L.A. photographer Sterling Andrews might have gotten some of those too in creating the images in her “album,” which will be […]
[Happy birthday to Nancy Wilson from Heart … Now, to a great slate of shows:] Bands, bands, from distant lands: The Soundtrack of Our Lives [pictured], those Swedish purveyors of psychedelic power-pop, are back with a new album, “Communion” (on Yep Roc), their first effort in four years. And quite an effort it is – […]
For all the serious tones, goosefleshy emotions and half-whispered meditations on Great Northern’s sophomore album, the title came to songwriters Solon Bixler and Rachel Stolte as they sat in a darkened room brainstorming on that very issue. “I went to find a pen to write some of them down,” Stolte says, “and couldn’t find the […]
L.A.’s Great Northern has announced a release date for its sophomore album, “Remind Me Where the Light Is.” The follow-up to 2007’s “Trading Twilight for Daylight” will be out April 28 on Eenie Meenie. And although I’ve had the album in my hands only 24 hours (play, repeat, play, repeat, and so on), I’m comfortable […]
