The Monolators, “Don’t Dance” (Monolator Music/Ninja Star) — It is with good reason that the Monolators, anchored by the husband-and-wife team of Eli and Mary Chartkoff, have become darlings of the Eastside scene: They’re honest and earnest, qualities displayed with sharp wit in the everyday anecdotes in their music, and they play every show with […]
There’s a point about halfway through the first batch of songs to emerge from the Long Beach quartet Two Guns when a certain optimism surfaces. Everything’s gonna be all right. It’s the same vague sentience that set in after I heard Wilco’s “Summerteeth,” or, more recently, “Ghost Stories” by L.A.’s Everest: Just because your relationships […]
It’s one thing to pay homage to Mike Watt. It’s another when the legendary punk rock bassist pays it back. That’s what happened when the young Long Beach-based band the Widow Babies unleashed “The Mike Watt E.P.” It kicks off with a tune that wins my award for Song Title of the Year, “Mike Watt […]
On the website of Softdrive Records, the imprint owned by Scott Weiland, the Stone Temple Pilots frontman professes to like “every kind of music,” even something he calls “dreamo.” I wondered, did Weiland have his young signees the Color Turning in mind when he coined that term? “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure,” […]
So Saturday afternoon at the Detour Festival was not enough. I had to take in English folk-rockers Noah and the Whale one more time — and not just because I have a thing for ukuleles. The occasion was the free show at Spaceland on Monday night that kicked off the Kenan Bell residency. (More on […]
As darkness fell (and, as you’ll see, my photographic capabilities diminished), I looked in on Shiny Toy Guns, the L.A.-based electro-rock act whose sophomore album, “Season of Poison,” is coming out in November. There’s a lot of smoke-and-mirrors in STG’s radio-friendly rock, and even more bluster. At times I’ve thought there isn’t a single song […]
Blake Hazard has a smile that could ward off a thunderstorm, and when the Submarines singer exhorted the crowd to imagine plants and animals springing up amid all of downtown’s ugly concrete, it didn’t even come off as sappy. The music she makes with husband Jack Dragonetti is like having a date night in the […]
“They’re like, euphoric.” So said one L.A. tastemaker during the Arcade Fire-meets-Polyphonic Spree delirium summoned by Silver Lake sextet the Afternoons. The ominous clouds even parted for this offshoot of local indie-pop favorites Irving, whose big anthems can alter the foulest of demeanors. Dual drummers, keys, horns and the Steve Scott-Brian Canning harmonies make for […]
What Saturday’s third LA Weekly Detour Festival lacked in wallop it made up for in sizzle. The 11-hour shindig covering four blocks surrounding City Hall in downtown L.A. lacked the big, unifying headliner such as 2006’s Beck, and at some junctures it almost felt like promoter Goldenvoice was running a tryout camp for its spring […]
Meet Morgan Kibby. She’s 24, makes her home in Los Angeles and fronts the chamber-pop ensemble the Romanovs. For most of 2008, Kibby has lent her ethereal voice to the French shoegaze-pop sensation M83, whose April release, “Saturdays = Youth,” is one of most critically lauded albums of the year. And over the next couple […]
