No Age is currently riding high as the darling of the L.A. underground, but it wasn't so many months ago that the noise-pop duo felt a sense of victory simply from being able to release music.
"Our scheme was to release five different EPs, on five different labels, in five different parts of the world -- vinyl-only, of course," singer-guitarist Randy Randall says. "Could we actually pull that off? We spent all this time designing record covers, getting things ready, and did it. We thought, 'This is it. We've infiltrated.' We go the feeling we slipped in through the back door."
Songs from those EPs were culled to make up No Age's debut album, "Weirdo Rippers," which set the blog world abuzz and earned plaudits from Pitchfork. Not long afterward, Randall and drummer Dean Spunt were signed to Sub Pop, for whom they already have five songs recorded for a follow-up album. "That was a complete surprise," Randall says. "Somebody told us they had heard our music and seen us live."
What they heard is spastic pop blasted by Randall's distortion-fed guitar and Spunt's punk rhythms and punctuated by fleeting bursts of beauty -- gorgeous chord progressions or melodies that are gone before they have the chance to get stuck in your head.
"Our goal is to write great pop songs like Squeeze or the Ramones, but do it in a way that makes sense to ourselves," Randall says. "We do have the avant-garde noise aggression of a Screeching Weasel ... but it's like we only want to write the good parts. If it goes on too long ..."
No Age's experimental approach, first heard when Randall and Spunt were members of the band Wives, earned them a faithful following among the sonically adventurous patrons of the downtown venue the Smell, an all-ages, volunteer-run room where the volume and -- thanks to bands such as Anavan, Health and Abe Vigoda -- the sense of daring are always high.
"It's a funny thing," Randall says of having graduated to larger venues, "no place feels too big. It's like we always have our friends with us. Wherever we go, we just bring the Smell with us."
||| No Age opens for Battles on Tuesday at the Music Box @ Fonda.
Tegan & Sara and Northern State play the Orpheum (it's sold out); Queens of the Stone Age play the Nokia (it isn't). ... Castledoor ends its residency at the Echo, with Frankel and a solo set from Aaron Espinoza (Earlimart) starting things off. ... Oliver Future's residency closes with warm-up from Steve Barton & the Oblivion Click. ... Aushua's ends its stand at the Silverlake Lounge with strong support from In Waves and We Barbarians. ... Pop Noir and Maxeen finish up their co-residency at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa. ... And Hazelden and Radars to the Sky highlight the Indie 103.1 night at the Viper Room.
Tuesday, Oct. 30
Heavy hitters everywhere: Thurston Moore at the Echo, Regina Spektor at the Wiltern, Broken Social Scene at the Orpheum, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists at the El Rey ... or, if you're in the mood for something mellow, Chris and Thomas at the Hotel Cafe.
Velvet Revolver's concert tonight with Alice in Chains, scheduled for the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre in Irvine, has been postponed because of the Southern California wildfires. With evacuations having taken place in Irvine and the local schools closed for the day due to poor air quality, promoters and the bands thought it best to reschedule. The show will take place Dec. 12 at the Gibson Amphitheatre.
Hearts of Palm UK, the duo who came on our radar earlier this year, won a $20,000 grant and a trip to perform in New York City when they were picked as the music winners of the Uncover/Discover emerging talent contest put on by the arts and entertainment foundation Gen Art and underwritten by Biore Skincare.
Erica Electra says she and partner-in-pop Ambi-D will use the money to finish up recording their full-length album.
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Something for Rockets debuted its new single, "Beautiful Life," today --in an episode of lonelygirl15. Hmm. This weekend, the band will make its sophomore album, "One Track Mind," available for free download through its MySpace site. Pretty nice of them. SFR plays with Low Vs Diamond on Nov. 2-3 at the Viper Room.
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The British trio called the Enemy has been forced to postpone its U.S. tour -- which included dates Monday at Spaceland and Tuesday at Cinespace -- "due to issues concerning the band's name in North America only," according to a release from Warner Bros. Records.
There are several U.S. bands using that name, including the Rhode Island quintet, the Enemy. Reached by phone, a band member in Rhode Island declined to say whether his band had any role in contesting the British act's use of the name: "It's been interesting, to say the least, and we plan on continuing to pursue things as the Enemy."
The British trio, teenagers from Coventry, signed to Warner this spring after some nice chart success in the U.K.
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Division Day continues to digitally release cover songs to celebrate the Oct. 2 release of their album "Beartrap Island" on Eeenie Meenie. Here's one of the latest, a cover of Roxy Music's "More Than This."
Speaking of Eenie Meenie, another of its L.A. acts, Great Northern (playing Nov. 8 at the Echoplex), will release a five-track EP described as the "prequel" to its album "Trading Twilight for Daylight." Titled "Sleepy Eepee," the batch of early recordings was previously available only at shows. Now they will be released on iTunes on Nov. 6 (with a disc due in February).
[Quick note about tonight, as my day job prevents me from prattling on too much about anything ...]
Light FM celebrates the release of its new EP, "Save the Drama," tonight at Boardner's. It's a nice slice of crunch, Weezer-ish pop that they oughta play as club music before every Rentals show. I scribbled a bit on Josiah Mazzaschi back in July; read it here. Also on the bill at the free Radio Free Silver Lake show are Nightfur and Lo-Fi Sugar.
Talk about Dad Rock: "One Track Mind," the forthcoming sophomore album from L.A. trio Something for Rockets, features a guest turn from frontman Rami Perlman's father -- violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman. "He's been our No. 1 fan from Day 1," Rami says. "When writing the record, I kinda knew I wanted him to be involved."
Enter the wistful song "Same Old Thing," which Rami describes as "like a Puccini aria, almost schmaltzy on some level. I knew I wanted that song to tug at the heartstrings."
In L.A. for a concert, the elder Perlman, 62, joined Rami, bandmates Josh Eichenbaum and Barry Davis and producer Mark Hoppus (the ex-Blink-182 bassist) in the studio for what Rami calls "probably the highlight of my music-making career." How did it go? "My dad cracked jokes the whole time," Rami says. "And he met [ex-Blink drummer] Travis Barker. That was quite a meeting."
The making of the record was being filmed too; at some point, fans might get a peek at the process. "As he was leaving, the filmmaker said, 'I want to make a documentary just on this session,' " Rami says.
That session and the others for "One Track Mind" -- on which Hoppus also guests -- yielded an album that is a monumental leap from the lightweight electro-pop on Something for Rockets' debut. "The first album was more laptoppy, more of a dance party," Perlman says, crediting input from touring player Jacques Brautbar (ex-Phantom Planet) for spurring SFR toward a harder edge. "But now we've gone in a rock direction. We got the live show to the point where we were kicking [butt], so it felt like the right thing."
||| See Something for Rockets on Monday at Spaceland (opening for residents Oliver Future) and Nov. 2 and 3 at the Viper Room with Low Vs Diamond.
[Colleague Liam Gowing reports from Saturday night's show at the Roxy:]
Packed to the proverbial gills with teensters, most of whom seemed to be hovering around the lower end of the 18-year-old age restriction, the Roxy was one big, sloppy, sweaty party Saturday night, with all possible credit going to A-Trak, the 25-year-old Montreal native who is Kanye West's DJ and the mastermind behind the Fool's Gold label.
His was a laptop-heavy DJ set, leaving one to wonder just how much of the music was automated. But that didn’t matter a whit to the kids, several of whom made the most of the critical mass by crowd-surfing.
The mixes were hard, hyper-kinetic amalgamations of everything from indie rock to hip-hop to electronica. Who would have thought that Gossip’s “Standing in the Way of Control” and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” could be sliced, diced and reconstituted one after the other so smoothly? Actually, I misspeak. The tunes were as bumpy as could be. You could just about feel the ones and zeros grinding against each other as A-Trak ran it through his secret cache of software.
The man born Alain Macklovitch was everything that Girl Talk was hyped up to be and then some. Call me a sucker, but I had a great time.
The Black Lips play the first of their three local shows tonight at the Troubadour. ... Spencer Krug-led Sunset Rubdown plays the El Rey.
On Saturday, the Warlocks celebrate the release of their latest, "Heavy Deavy Skull Lover," with a show at Safari Sam's, while West Indian Girl toasts the release of "4th & Wall" at Spaceland. ... Silversun Pickups play to a sold-out Wiltern. ... And for something completely different, try checking out Raspberry Cocaine at the Mountain Bar. File it under: damaged electro with boundary-bending visuals.
And on Sunday, Ken Andrews returns to the Troubadour, while the Go! Team cheers on the crowd at the Echoplex.
I have no idea whether the band will do well -- though knowing the sensibilities of the people who brought you "American Idol," I'd bet on them -- but the commercial that aired Thursday night promoting Fox's new talent show "The Next Great American Band" featured none other than Los Angeles quintet Rocket.
Haven't heard about "The Next Great American Band?" My colleague Robert Lloyd's story is here. And a detailed story from Associated Press is here.
Rocket apparently made it as far as Lake Las Vegas (see photo above), where the network invited 60 bands from the 6,000 entries it received to perform (in, as it turned out, temperatures exceeding 100 degrees). The show starts tonight with the sure-to-be-painful initial auditions.
Nobody in Rocket could be reached for an interview, but the act's back story can make your head spin. The "band" started in the Spaceland parking lot after a show when three blonde women -- all named Lauren -- struck up a conversation with Jim Freek, who runs a boutique label of mostly kitschy power-pop bands, Teenacide. Freek asked the young women what they did, and one replied, "We're in a band," although none was, or had been. Asked the name of the band, one of the Laurens quickly replied, "Rocket." And a band was born.
Rocket's first EP for Teenacide was largely covers and ghost-written (and -played), but the band changed some players, practiced like crazy, became a fivesome, started writing its own material and released a second EP that mixed covers with originals. The quintet's music mostly rehashes girl-group pop, but in a spunky and charming way; from its bubblegummy beginnings, Rocket has acquired a confident edge.
And its tireless touring has paid off. I remember attending their first show at Club Good Hurt in West L.A. and thinking Rocket would never last, but I sold them short. The band made the rounds on the Warped Tour, toured with the likes of Butch Walker and even did a residency at Spaceland.
They're kind of made for TV -- in fact, singer Lauren Rocket even appears on the new Junkie XL single "More" (off the Dutch musician's new album "Booming Back at You," due in February), and in the forthcoming video for the song.
On Tuesday night, the Subways marked the completion of studio sessions for their sophomore album rather ceremoniously -- the last note was played when drummer Josh Morgan banged a gong that was set afire.
On Wednesday, the British trio brought some heat of its own, delivering a blistering 10-song set to an appreciative Club NME crowd at Spaceland that included, among others, their producer for the yet-untitled album, Butch Vig. The night was capped by their memorable single "Rock and Roll Queen" and pretty much extinguished any doubts that the precocious punkers could be major players.
Singer-guitarist Billy Lunn -- the problems that required January surgery to remove vocal nodes now behind him -- confessed to the crowd that he, Morgan and bassist Charlotte Cooper were nervous, not having played live in months. But his manner, part cocksure smile and part sneer, indicated otherwise. New songs "Kalifornia," "Turnaround," "Girls and Boys" and "I Won't Let You Down" fit into the set seamlessly with six numbers from the band's 2006 debut, "Young for Eternity."
"There are times I look at Billy and think, 'What the [heck] are you doing to your voice?' " Cooper said afterward.
"My voice is as good as ever now," Lunn said. "There were some points when we were making the record when I wanted to get back in the vocal booth ... I told Butch, 'No, I do that better,' or 'I can scream louder there.' " As for the six weeks in L.A. working with Vig, Lunn said, "He was so much more than a producer. He's just the coolest [guy] on the planet -- I don't know if it's his temperament or what, but we were like sponges, always wanting to learn."
Tentative plans are for the album to be out in March on Warner.
I'm pretty sure that the exclusive agreement between the Spice Girls and Victoria's Secret -- the forthcoming "Spice Girls: Greatest Hits" will be available for two months only at the lingerie outlet -- was made simply to provide fodder for monologues on late-night talk shows.
"What's more embarrassing than going into Victoria's Secret to buy bras and knicker for the missus?" asks a bloke who was probably a fan way back in the '90s. "Going into a Victoria's Secret to buy a Spice Girls CD."
"What's the only thing skimpier than the lingerie in Victoria's Secret?" asks the fellow at the next desk. "The tracklist on 'Spice Girls: Greatest Hits.' "
Maybe it's because "The Green Fury" was one of the first albums I loaded into my then-brand new version of iTunes -- that was at a time when we were awaking every morning with a queasy churning in our stomachs over the events of 9/11 -- it seems as if Matt Pond PA has been around forever. With his sixth album, "The Last Light," just having landed, Pond's music is as much a retreat now from the digital cacophony as it was a safe harbor then from ugly world events.
"The Last Light" is less orchestral than much of Pond's catalog, but no less sylvan -- relocating to Brooklyn from his native Pennsylvania a couple years ago hasn't diminished the songwriter's fondness for solemn, woodsy reflection. It's as if every seminal moment or life-changing realization occurs after he's driven out to the lake and communed with nature. Which is OK, because they often do.
Pond documents these entanglements with a tenderness that's never overly fussy; in fact, on "The Last Light," his narratives seem infused with a new energy. Perhaps it's because Pond is taking his first turn as a producer, or perhaps it's the by-product of his having given up meat and smoking. No matter. "The Last Light," with its roster of guests, including the likes of Neko Case, Rob Schnapf, Taylor Locke (Rooney) and Isobel Sollenberger (Bardo Pond), shines brightly indeed.
||| See Matt Pond PA (with Jesca Hoop opening) perform tonight at the Troubadour.
||| Exclusive download, expires in 2 weeks: "Sunlight" (from "The Last Light")
Maybe it's her small-town upbringing in Sonoma County, or maybe it's her singing voice -- which sounds like a cherub caught in a light breeze -- but people want to know whether moving to Los Angeles somehow threatened Jesca Hoop. "They want to know if moving through the concrete jungle has affected my writing," the singer-songwriter says. "But if anything, it makes you talk louder, finish your sentences, speak eloquently."
It is the artistically amplified Hoop you find on "Kismet," the debut album she made with producers Damian Anthony and Tony Berg. Grounded in folk music but lovingly rumpled with off-kilter syncopation and jazzy instrumentation, the collection reflects Hoop's upbringing in a Mormon family that harmonized together.
"I love traditional music, because you know what the intent is with traditional music," she says. "With pop music, sometimes the heart of it gets crushed along the way."
She credits Anthony and Berg -- along with collaborators that included drummer Stewart Copeland -- for preserving "Kismet's" organic feel, especially on "Seed of Wonder." "That song would give us a little tantrum or a sulk every time we tried to add something to it," she says. "Seed" was the song that sprouted Hoop, who spent five years as the nanny for the children of Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan. Waits' publisher Lionel Conway gave the track to KCRW-FM's Nic Harcourt, who championed it on his show. "Kismet" indeed.
[More on these guys at a future date, but for now a quick heads-up:]
SoCal quintet Delta Spirit celebrates the release of its debut, "Ode to Sunshine," tonight at the Troubadour. The album is a soulful slice of Americana that, like the work of their cohorts the Cold War Kids, is more Deep South than West Coast sunshine -- yet Delta Spirit's songs possess a Britpop-like anthemic sensibility. Uplifting indeed. The band launches a 17-date tour supporting Dr. Dog later this month.
Underrated, unsigned L.A. quintet Oslo celebrates the release of its new album, "The Rise and Fall of Love and Hate," with a show tonight at the Roxy. The album (out now digitally, in stores Nov. 6) furthers the explorations by songwriting triad Mattia Borrani, Kerry Wayne James and Gabrial McNair into heady, anthemic rock that sounds more London than L.A. Yeah, you can hear some Radiohead in there.
Record release show at the Silverlake Lounge too, for both Kissing Cousins and Summer Darling. ... In the bigger rooms, it's Beirut at the Avalon and Jose Gonzales at the El Rey, while the Henry Clay People tackle Bordello (they oughta be too big for that room by now), the Microphones play the Troubadour, Anna Egge entertains at Tangier and Wounded Cougar joins the Willowz at Safari Sam's.
My headphones are on, and the final strains of "In Rainbows" are fading away. On first listen, Radiohead's new album is a magnificent head trip -- am I getting any work done today? -- with production so meticulous you're afraid to interrupt what's going in your ears by even breathing. "15 Step" and "Fishes/Arpeggi" are to die for, but I suspect that after spending more time with this I will be wishing that someone would introduce Thom Yorke to Red Bull and that Radiohead could write a full-on rocker or two.
Random other opinions:
Ann Powers, The Times' pop music critic, stayed up late last night and weighs in here.
Annie Zaleski in St. Louis didn't get much sleep either. She blogs here.
Young Irishman Fionn Regan is back in town. The singer-songwriter wriggled his way into our consciousness with a tour stop in L.A. earlier this year behind his album "The End of History" (Lost Highway), which ended up earning a nomination for the Nationwide Mercury Prize in the U.K. His oh-so-gentle folk music only serves to amplify the storytelling in his songs -- "Hey Rabbit," "Snowy Atlas Mountains" and "Hunter's Map" come off as the most evocative of his sketches.
Justice follows up its Detour Festival appearance with a show at the Music Box @ Fonda -- Tuesday's show is sold out, but as of this afternoon, tickets remained for tonight's gig. ... Good Indie 103.1 show tonight at the Viper Room, with the Oohlas and Radars to the Sky playing. ... Dual residents Pop Noir and Maxeen tonight are joined by Saint Motel at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa. ... Holly Golightly plays the Echo tonight at 9:15 -- fans there to catch the free residency by Castledoor will be admitted after the songstress' set. ... Bloodcat Love and OK Stranger head a nice lineup of local talent at Safari Sam's. ... Aushua continues its residency at the Silverlake Lounge with the support of Irish electro-pop duo Oppenheimer. Very catchy. ... And Oliver Future continues its residency at Spaceland -- last week's energetic set was capped when the quintet backed its recent tourmate, the Gray Kid, on a song. For those who've seen the Kid rap/croon/sing/vamp to only backing tracks, it was quite a revelation.
||| The Gray Kid, along with Sam Sparro, play the Echo on Thursday night.
And here's a little parody to kick off your week, the Gray Kid's take (starring Daniel Stessen) on "This Is Why I'm Hot":
Bat for Lashes is as much an art project as a band. Singer-songwriter Natasha Khan's sublime melancholy haunts with a cinematic quality that speaks not only to her background in film and music but to her ability to access imagery that seems to lie just behind consciousness.
"I'm managing to tap into that space between sleeping and awake," says Khan, who was reared in England, spent summers in Pakistan and identifies with forebears such as Kate Bush and Björk. "There are notepads under my pillow with all kinds of scribbling . . . sometimes words written on top of one another. I'm just going with my imagination."
In doing so she has captured the imagination of thousands. Her debut album "Fur and Gold" was nominated for England's Nationwide Mercury Prize, and her L.A. debut in July at Spaceland was played to an audience spellbound by the string-laden music and its face-painted players, Khan and cohorts Ginger Lee, Abi Fry and Lizzy Carey.
"The album was just something I made to lift me, to provide transportation for my heart," Khan says. "I didn't realize that other people might also get that out of it."
An earlier tour of the U.S., including a drive down the California coast, inspired some of the album. Andy Bruntel's rapturous video for "Prescilla" was shot, in part, at the "Bat Cave" in the Hollywood Hills.
It's a long way from the triptych projections with soundtracks Khan assembled early in her career at the University of Brighton. Or maybe not. "It's a two-way process," she says. "My songs and my visuals are happening at the same time."
||| See Bat for Lashes perform Tuesday at the Troubadour.
[Jeff Weiss boned up on his French and surveyed the scene at the South stage on Saturday night:]
Justice’s Coachella performance and subsequent Echoplex set have already passed into the stuff of legend. Those who were there described it with a level of hyperbole akin to a Moses parting the Red Sea armed with nothing but a pair of turntables and a crate full of old Daft Punk LPs. Truth be told, conventional logic suggested that by mid-May, at least four Silver Lake hipsters had perfected lustrous Gaspard Auge mustaches, purchased plane tickets to France and sought employment at various Parisian boulangeries to support their aspirations in the emerging Gallic techno scene.
So, perhaps it was these nearly insurmountable expectations that caused me to be unimpressed with the red-hot Parisian techno duo’s Detour Festival performance.
[Later this morning, I will have a guest post on the Justice set. For now, here's my final take ...]
Bloc Party made me wish I'd chosen the Turbonegro set to end my Detour.
Oh, the Englishmen were charming enough, and their dancier material fairly rattled the buildings at Main and Temple streets. But it ended up providing a little too pat a finish to the long day. You add this one up, and it equals a day's worth of small tent-caliber material at Coachella.
Do I wish I'd spent my Saturday on the couch watching college football? No.
Do I wish Detour had at least one band that was trying to save rock 'n' roll? Yes.
Photo: Bloc Party on the East state (by Kevin Bronson / LAT)
With a throng of very young fans ready to shake their bodies to every note, Moving Units nearly crashed and burned on the South stage. Blame the gremlins. "Sorry," front man Blake Miller told the crowd after having to restart a song not once but twice, "you're not supposed to see the smoke and mirrors."
Yes, for all the Units' swagger, much of the electronic underpinning of their new songs -- "Hexes for Exes" will be released on Tuesday -- comes courtesy of a laptop. And something was not in sync on this night, so the crowd that filled 1st Street was left with warts and frustration. It made you nostalgic for a three-piece dance-punk band that married in-your-face attitude with riffs so sharp you could shave with them.
There's little of that on the Units' new album. Maybe the band's swagger remains, but the danger is gone.
I will say one thing: "Kids From Orange County" could probably fill the dancefloor at Cinespace.
Photo: Blake Miller beckons as the Moving Units start their set (by Kevin Bronson / LAT).
As the sun set, things started to get topsy-turvy.
The Shout Out Louds channeled the Cure, and too well. They're nice, they're Swedish, they figure to gain ground now that they are no longer on a major label (Capitol) and are aligned with a hip indie (Merge). But some of the tasty stuff in their set Saturday, and on their album "Our Ill Wills," veers awfully close to the bittersweet flavors dispensed by Robert Smith (although I'm not sure I ever saw him in red horizontal stripes) back in The Decade That Nobody at the Detour Festival Was Old Enough to Remember.
And it occurred to me while Adan Olenius warbled through the band's nice set that this Detour -- lacking anything resembling a groundbreaking headliner -- represented little more than a window to what you can get away with calling hip, as long as it's danceable and illuminated by enough Glo Sticks and neon bracelets. At least the Shout Out Louds were playing; the myriad DJs dispensing their various strains of disco were just recycling. Whether they are collagists or mere selectors, their music acts as little more than an aural cattle prod, and possesses about as much longevity.
The Deadly Syndrome's music is sweet, then paranoid, then nervous, then chaotic. But there's something that holds it together, as the young quartet showed on the South stage. Overcoming a few first-festival hiccups, the Syndrome fared pretty well -- much better than the cardboard-cutout ghosts that the band stations onstage during their performances. Most of the ghosts succumbed to the breeze and blew over. The convulsive pop, with its tinkling keyboards and explosive guitars, held up.
Only when guitarist Will Etling tried to join the set-ending drum circle (the quartet huddles around Jesse Hoy's kit in kind of a percussive exclamation point on the song "Eucalyptus") did the Deadly Syndrome run into trouble. Etling unplugged himself -- his guitar cord was too short to reach over to the drum kit. They simply weren't used to playing on stages this big. Get used to it, guys.
Photo: Chris Richard of the Deadly Syndrome (by Kevin Bronson / LAT)
[Follow along as I meander through an autumn Saturday in a four-block region conveniently located just across the street from The Times' offices ...]
As festivals go, this promises to be a pretty good block party. And as Bloc Partys go ... well, we'll leave that for later.
The LA Weekly Detour Festival in downtown Los Angeles is a good idea -- a "mini-Coachella" in an area of the Southland whose renaissance cannot be understated. Four stages of music, exhibitors and vendors, wacky art installations, hipsters lounging on the resplendent lawn at City Hall: Detour seems to have it all. And you could even take the subway to get there. Try that in Indio in April.
We lurched off to a noisy start at 2 p.m. when L.A.'s the Pity Party (playing the first of its two gigs today; the two-piece were also scheduled to play in the evening at the Eagle Rock Music Festival) served up a mid-afternoon spazz attack on the East stage. Yelpy, hyperkinetic, dissonant: OK in small doses.
When the color-coordinated bands kicked in, though, it got fun. The crowd was colorful enough -- there were a lot of horizontal stripes, lively headbands, frilly dresses and glow-in-the-dark footwear. Then Scissors for Lefty came out on the South state wearing only shorts and gold body paint. Nico Vega went for all black, always safe, Aja Volkman in a leotard.
Then the Aggrolites, head-to-toe in red Dickies, riled up a West stage crowd with their relentlessly tight dirty reggae, delivering the best set I saw during the daylight. Jesse Wagner and crew are serious: Get with their program. Or they might send some workers over to your house.
Photos: Top, the Aggrolites' Wagner; left, Scissors for Lefty; right, Nico Vega (by Kevin Bronson / LAT)
Not into battling the crowd downtown? The Eagle Rock Music Festival offers a great neighborhoody vibe and a slew of music (and dance, and more) on 10 stages. It runs from 5 p.m. to midnight Saturday along Colorado Boulevard, and Dengue Fever (pictured) is among the 40-odd performers.
The consensus in my group of music mavens is that the lineup for the second annual LA Weekly Detour Festival on Saturday pales in comparison to last year's -- nothing against Bloc Party, Satellite Party, the Pity Party or any of the other parties involved. But they (we) might be underestimating the excitement the Banger crew will bring to the proceedings. Word-of-mouth is that the most anticipated set is Justice's.
Los Angeles' representation is strong -- in particular I'm eager to see Autolux (new music, please?) and Moving Units (whose new music, "Hexes for Exes," reflects a departure from the angular dance-punk on their first album and will be released Tuesday).
See you there. Here are the set times for this year's shindig, which surrounds City Hall in downtown L.A.:
City Hall East 10:00-11:30 Bloc Party 8:30-9:30 Teddybears 7:10-8:00 Satellite Party 6:00-6:45 Kinky 4:50-5:35 The Noisettes 3:40-4:20 The Cool Kids 2:50-3:20 Nico Vega 2:00-2:30 The Pity Party
City Hall South 10:10-11:45 Busy P, DJ Medhi, Sebastian, Kavinsky, So Me 9:10-10:10 Justice 7:55-8:40 Moving Units 6:40-7:25 Autolux 5:30-6:10 Shout Out Louds 4:30-5:05 Johnossi 3:40-4:10 The Deadly Syndrome 2:50-3:20 Scissors for Lefty 2:00-2:30 Mink
City Hall West 10:00-11:00 Turbonegro 8:50-9:30 Celebrity Skin 7:30-8:15 The Raveonettes 4:55-7:10 Comedians of Comedy 4:00-4:40 The Aliens 3:05-3:40 The Aggrolites 2:10-2:40 Augie March 1:00-2:00 DJ Darren Revell - Indie 103.1
City Hall Plaza 9:30-10:30 DJ Paul V. - Indie 103.1 8:00-9:30 Le Castle Vania 4:30-8:00 Busy P, DJ Medhi, Sebastian, Kavinsky, So Me 3:30-4:30 Franki Chan 1:30-3:00 Travis Keller Noon-1:30 Bruce Perdew
Flustered? Not the Pity Party's wisecracking female half, Heisenflei (born Julie Edwards). "We're going to have to figure out how to pace our drinking and when to take naps," she says.
But why worry about pacing now -- the duo's frenetically robotic, yelpy pop has quenched L.A. hipsters' thirst for something fresh since its January residency at the Silverlake Lounge, and Indie 103.1 (KDLD-FM) gave airplay to the single "Dronebots and Peons for Eons and Eons." The Raveonettes even chose the Pity Party for a summer tour; now the duo is finishing recording its album with Manny Nieto (Breeders, Circle Jerks).
Heisenflei teamed up with her old Buckley High classmate M (Marc Smollin) two years ago. She plays drums, sings and triggers the bass lines on a Yamaha keyboard; he provides looping guitar-scapes and vocals. The result is "angular, and a little bit weird," Heisenflei says. "People who like our music, there's something wrong with them."
The band's set-up initially drew comparisons to Quasi or the White Stripes -- "great, except they play stuff that's really catchy," she says -- but Heisenflei cites a litany of influences, including David Bowie, Brian Eno and her brother Greg's current and former bands, Autolux and Lusk.
The Pity Party's sonic anxiety seems to contradict Heisenflei's other endeavor -- she has a knitting shop in Atwater Village. "With knitting you have two needles and with drumming you have two sticks," she says. "You can hear a lot of knitting influences in our music."
They've changed their color, and maybe even their stripe. We Barbarians, a trio featuring former members of the classic rock-leaning quintet the Colour, played just their second show Monday night at the Silverlake Lounge (opening for this month's residents, Aushua). The Long Beach-based threesome of David Quon, Derek Huele and Nathan Warkentin laid out a half-hour set of tight, churning indie rock, impressing almost everybody in the room (including their buddies Cold War Kids). Next outing: Oct. 9 at the Derby.
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Silversun Pickups are using a break in their touring schedule to begin writing material for a follow-up to 2006's album "Carnavas." So far, only a couple songs have begun to take shape -- the titles, tentatively, are "The Royal We" (intended to have a heavy string presence) and "There's No Secrets This Year." SSPU, which plays a sold-out show at the Wiltern on Oct. 20, hopes to record the new album in the first quarter of 2008.
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And Division Day's record-release show for "Beartrap Island" on Tuesday at the Echo was a pretty joyous affair, and front man Rohner Stegnitz reacted in good humor to a website review that accused the quartet of nicking the chords from Bowie's "Space Oddity" for the DD song "Colorguard." He even slipped the lyric "Ground control to Major Tom" into the middle of "Colorguard."
Touts for Wednesday, Oct. 3
Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals) performs at the Jensen Rec Center in Echo Park, while down the street at the Echo, Datarock headlines and is supported by Honeycut and Foreign Born. ... Driveblind plays the Viper Room. ... Portishead's former DJ Andy Smith rocks the Roxy.
Photos: Top, We Barbarians at the Silverlake Lounge; inset, Division Day at the Echo (by Kevin Bronson / LAT)
Morrissey's shows tonight and Thursday at the Hollywood Palladium -- the second and third gigs in a 10-show stand before the venue closed for renovations -- have been canceled because of "a ruptured water pipe resulting in a safety issue," promoter Live Nation just announced.
Tickets for the canceled shows will be honored at either the Oct. 8 or 9 performances, the promoter said. If patrons are unable to attend Monday or next Tuesday, they should seek refunds at point of purchase.
"The Palladium apologizes to Morrissey and his fans for the inconvenience in disrupting these historical performances," the press release said.
Division Day, which plays at the Echo, is something of the Little Band That Could. The quartet initially self-released "Beartrap Island" last year, then hooked up with a start-up label that planned to re-release the album with wider distribution. That start-up never started up. Local imprint Eenie Meenie now has the album, remastered with a couple new songs.
Dusty Rhodes and the River Band, a folk-rock six-piece from Anaheim, released "Today You Live" (SideOneDummy Records), a collection of rootsy, harmony-laden numbers with accordion, banjo, mandolin, sitar and harmonica. The band plays the Key Club tonight, where We Are Lions kicks off an October residency. The Sunset Strip nightclub's Ruby Tuesdays are all-ages and free.
Other touts for Tuesday, Oct. 2
Nick Lowe plays Safari Sam's. ... The Weakerthans, behind their new "Reunion Tour" album, play the El Rey, which is sold out. ... Atmosphere tees it up at the Music Box @ Fonda [that's the new name for the Fonda Theatre, a press release tells me]. ... And Metric plays the Glass House.
Photos: Top, Division Day; above, Dusty Rhodes and the River Band
[A Buzz Bands correspondent describes the scene at the second annual Neighborhood Festival at Exposition Park on Saturday:]
It was as if I awoke from a coma to find that the style of Los Angeles hipsters had gone from tight jeans, hats, faded shirts and black-and-gray sneakers to, well, tight jeans, hats, faded shirts and sneakers -- but done in Day-Glo. Any doubts that "nu-rave" has arrived were erased at the Neighborhood Festival, Dim Mak's dance-music gathering that featured the likes of the Faint, Mickey Avalon, Chromeo and DJ sets from AM, Blake Miller of Moving Units and Dim Mak's founder, Steve Aoki.
But as with an event based in hipster culture, this one seemed high on style and short on actual content. The crowd seemed largely unmoved by the live sets, with the exception of the Faint, who seemed every bit the main attraction they deserved to be. The real stars were the DJs -- Aoki, with Har Mar Superstar acting as his "hype man," incited the crowd with a pumped-up version of of the Refused anthem "New Noise" and finished his set with a stage dive. AM mashed up Justice Vs Simian's "We Are Your Friends" with "Where's Your Head At" by Basement Jaxx, and Miller's set -- he's now DJing as Blake Is Ruthless -- featured three hot policewomen on the dancefloor.
One observer likened the scene to "a giant Cinespace," referring to Aoki's successful Tuesday night promotion at the Hollywood club that was built on high energy and seemingly hackneyed dance music spun with a liberating irony.
A lot it of sounds tired unless you're 20: Oldies with beats? Really? You don't remember electro-clash?
Maybe it's the advent of DJ programs like Serrato, but dancefloor hits are being put together in a genuinely fresh way. "New Noise" indeed.
You can spend a lot of money and see Morrissey tonight. Or you can forgo cover charges and see some up-and-coming Southland bands kick off their October residencies. All of this month's free Monday nights offer a peek at some rising stars.
At the top of the heap is Castledoor, a six-piece that has taken L.A. by storm this year with their earnest, feel-good pop. Castledoor kicks off a string on Mondays at the Echo, while Oliver Future holds forth at Spaceland, Aushua plays the Silverlake Lounge and Pop Noir and Maxeen double-team the residency at Costa Mesa's Detroit Bar.
Elsewhere, the Black Angels, who were great at Saturday's Swerve Festival, headline the Troubadour. ... Burning Brides and the Rolling Blackouts top the bill at Indie 103.1's "Check 1 ... 2" night at the Viper Room. ... And the Stiletto Formal headlines at Safari Sam's.
This just in: Moz's Palladium shows Tuesday, Thursday, next Monday and Oct. 9 are discounted ($25, plus charges) with the password: "chivas." Order here.
Photo: Nate Cole of Castledoor, performing last month at the Roxy (by Kevin Bronson / LAT)
The National makes music not for sold-out concert halls but for long walks back to your car down deserted streets, if you can remember where you parked. Somehow, the Brooklyn-via-Cincinnati quintet made it work Friday night at the Wiltern, punctuating its bookish musings with epic freakouts and exhilarating excursions by violin player Padma Newsome. Matt Berninger's soul-jarring baritone turned the Wiltern into a crowded confessional from the very start. "I had a secret meeting / in the basement of my brain," he sang, and despite the setting you felt like you were in on it.
That the music of the last two National albums -- 2005's stellar "Alligator" and this year's equally good "Boxer" -- has found an audience this big is nothing short of amazing. Was it poignant or laughable that the chorus to "Baby, We'll Be Fine," turned into a sing-along Friday night? I'm still trying to figure it out, but that's the one image I took home from the Wiltern: a theater full of people joining Berninger as he repeated "I'm so sorry for everything."
The modestly attended (at best) Swerve Festival on Saturday and Sunday afternoon provided the perfect counterpoint to the National's shadowy stylings. The inaugural event, held mostly at the hilltop Barnsdall Art Park in Los Feliz, offered film, music and art in ways that those keyed into what the festival described as "West Coast creative culture" could appreciate. Like listening stations hanging from pine trees. Or mobile skateboard-making stations.
Musically, it was sublime. A stage erected on the grassy knoll next to Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House hosted sets from the likes of Foreign Born (pictured above), the Black Angels, St. Vincent and DeVotchka. Foreign Born's exhilarating indie rock and DeVotchka's genre-mashing orchestrations were the highlights for me. This event must have cost a fortune for its sponsors, including Fuel TV, but we can we do this once a month or so?
Photos: Top, Matt Popieluch and Lewis Pesacov of Foreign Born; middle, pinwheel art at the Swerve Festival; above, Nick Urata of DeVotchka (by Kevin Bronson / LAT).
Radiohead will release its seventh album, "In Rainbows," next week via digital download, with a special-edition boxed set to follow in December. The band is taking orders for both on its website. Fans who order the boxed set (which includes double-vinyl and CD versions of the album and an enhanced CD with more songs, artwork and photographs) automatically get the DRM-free MP3 download. Or the digital bundle, available Oct. 10, can be purchased separately. The website says the boxed sets will be shipped by Dec. 3.
Most distinctive is that Radiohead is allowing fans to pay whatever they want for the digital download.
[Note: I tried to order the digital download last night and couldn't get the online shopping cart to work. So my excitement is a bit guarded, at least until they work these things out. Has anybody else tried to order?]
About the Blogger
Kevin Bronson Kevin Bronson has covered emerging and indie music since 2002 in his weekly Buzz Bands column in the Calendar Weekend section of the L.A. Times. He adores caffeine, judicious use of falsetto and the 6-4-3 double play. He abhors exclamation points, modern country and any notion that New York City is the center of the cultural universe. He's older than any music blogger he knows but has been known to pogo. He'll try not to pretend.
Bronson's Buzz Bands show can be heard Wednesdays from 6 to 8 p.m. Pacific time on the Internet radio station LittleRadio.com.
