If the Binges had any more energy, they’d plug their amps into themselves. The Los Angeles quartet (pictured) could be champs at most time spent airborne during a club set, if they kept such records, but Mayuko Okai — one of two Tokyo-born sisters in the band — is content with her honorary title of happiest guitarist around.
“It took me six years of experience, with so many other bands ... and now, we have almost two years with this lineup,” she says. “This is the band I’ve put my heart into.”
Her sister/bassist Tsuzumi Okai, singer Dylan Squatcho and drummer Travis “Skanky” Smith seem to have bought in too; the foursome’s increasingly sharp, in-your-face punk rock (as much Stooges as Puffy AmiYumi) must be as fun to play as it is to witness.
“One of the biggest boosts has been the results — little by little, people seem to find us,” Mayuko Okai says, marveling at the locals who shout along to the Binges’ lyrics even though the band’s output so far remains only “Hear Me Out,” a single released by indie imprint Sympathy for the Record Industry (in limbo since label chief Long Gone John moved from Long Beach to Olympia, Wash.). “We’ve recorded 14 songs, but [releasing them] depends on Long Gone John,” who is divesting himself of the label, Okai says. “I can’t wait to put out the album.”
Coming off a raucous three-week residency at Spaceland, Friday’s show at the Roxy figures to be special — Mayuko and Tsuzumi’s mother, Takae Okai, will be visiting from Japan and seeing her daughters perform live for the first time.
In many ways, Rademacher could have only called its debut album "Stunts."
After all, the indie-rock quartet is all about maneuvers. Frontman Malcolm Sosa's real name is Mike Mancillas (he assumed the alter ego of his collegiate doppelganger, who had a defter touch with coeds). And the band lives in Fresno, "although we just thought we'd tell everyone we live in L.A.," considering how often Rademacher has gigged here, says Sosa, all too familiar with the three-hour-plus commute from the Central Valley.
Then there is the music -- wry, Pavement-inspired ditties that send Sosa's shout-sung vocals catapulting over barbed-wire guitar licks and acrobatic keyboard lines. The self-released album, which follows three uneven EPs, was produced by one of Fresno's finer exports, Earlimart's Aaron Espinoza, at the Ship studio in Eagle Rock.
If "Stunts' " razor-sharp attitude and jittery paranoia feel familiar, Sosa confesses his love for "the really early Earlimart sound, when they thought they were a punk band," as well as "Under the Western Freeway," the first album by Modesto's Grandaddy ("just the spookiness of it").
The track "If U Got Some Magic" embodies it best: "It doesn't matter whether it's concrete or abstract," Sosa says of his wordplay. "I just try to keep it passionate but surreal."
||| Live: Rademacher's record-release show is tonight at the Echo.
Their 15 minutes of fame on prime-time television ended in ignominy rather than glory, but the members of the L.A. quintet Rocket are neither broken nor bowed. In fact, they regard their short time on Fox TV’s “The Next Great American Band” — an “American Idol”-like show that mercifully ends Friday — as marketing they could not have bought.
“What better way to promote our band?” singer Lauren White says. “We have no regrets whatsoever.” Adds guitarist Lauren Clark: “For us to be onstage with the lights and all those screaming people — I couldn’t even believe it was happening to this little local band we put together before I could even play guitar.”
Indeed, Rocket began before its members were musicians, with White, Clark and another friend joking to Teenacide Records honcho Jim Freek in the Spaceland parking lot one night in 2005 that they were “in a band.”
Freek made it so. The women recorded a song for a compilation CD, with Freek playing most of the instruments. "We had so much fun, we said, 'Jim, why don't we do a covers record?'" White says. "We didn't know what we were doing, or what we were in for, and we certainly didn't know it would become so serious."
The covers EP sold out, and Rocket played its first proper gig at the Viper Room in 2005.
Just in time to service your holiday malaise, two of my favorite DJ collectives are conspiring to set sadness to music tonight at the downtown bar La Cita.
Give Up -- the seasonal club night initiated by the DJ collective Dublab and manned the past several years by Mark "Frosty" McNeill and Jimmy Tamborello -- gets back into its wintry spirit as DJs spin depressing songs on the bar's back patio. It's described as "a deeply depressing disc sob session." Inside the bar, Part Time Punks' Michael Stock and others will be hosting "A Sad, Slow Dance Party," promising "all slow dancing, all night long."
There's no cover. Tears start to flow at 9 p.m.
Photo of DJ Frosty (from 2005) by Kevin Bronson/LAT
The obituary this morning says Dan Fogelberg helped "define soft rock," but that sounds kind of flaccid compared to what the singer-songwriter, who died Sunday at age 56, meant to a bunch of kids in the working-class neighborhoods of Peoria, Ill., in the early 1970s.
Fogelberg graduated from Woodruff High School the year before I got there, leaving behind some stories of a rock band called the Coachmen (I actually owned the 45 at one point -- oh, where did it go?) and the occasional rumor he'd gone off to California, a place that seemed so distant from our Midwestern factory town as to be a mirage. Not many of us had California dreams then; we'd do well to graduate high school and get on at Caterpillar Tractor Co. (which accounted for something like 1 in 5 paychecks in our city in those days). If we were really lucky, we'd go to college.
In the fall of my junior year, "Home Free" arrived, and we were mesmerized. Fogelberg's debut album -- a beautifully orchestrated bouquet of ballads that veered toward what we now would call alt-country -- took his alma mater by storm. It christened the tape player in my first car; it was played endlessly at basement parties from Grand View Drive to the lower East Bluff. I'm pretty sure there isn't a song in my collection I've played over the years more than that second track, "Stars."
Fogelberg was our Jackson Browne, a romantic who shared our roots and who had the courage to strike out in service of his poetry. As I trudged through the snow delivering my Peoria Journal Stars every morning, that was a pretty important symbol.
I always blanched at, but ultimately forgave, the arch sentimentality that seemingly oppressive production brought to Fogelberg's later albums. He had earned the right to pursue whatever vision struck him. When my brother and I took in a Fogelberg show a few years ago in Anaheim, it wasn't so much for musical nostalgia as it was a thank-you.
In one subtle but important way, Dan Fogelberg was the leader of our band.
This blog has been under the weather most of this week, and it had nothing to do with either of the sets I caught on Monday night -- the Mezzanine Owls playing LA Weekly's Click Hear show with a bunch of other good bands at the El Rey [better photos here], and then the Movies finishing up Radio Free Silver Lake's benefit for Huntington's Disease at Safari Sam's.
Both bands played a lot of new material, strong stuff at that, off EPs they plan to release in the new year. C'mon down, 2008.
The rest of the week was full of cold remedies and regret:
-- I did not get a chance to say a proper goodbye to Kiss or Kill, the weekly club night that ended Wednesday after five years. The night called many venues home, and the small and vibrant scene created by its promoters was as unpretentious as straight ahead rock 'n' roll could be. I will point out that one of the stalwart Kiss or Kill bands, Bang Sugar Bang, released a new album this fall that didn't find its way to me until recently. "Victory Gin" is a healthy dose of sharp boy-girl pop-punk, maybe a bit more serious than their earlier efforts but still the kind of tunes than work its title beverage as a chaser.
-- I am trying to rally in time for Fold's Sweater Party tonight at the Crash Mansion. The Deadly Syndrome lead a parade of bands at the benefit (for Doctors Without Borders) that includes Eskimohunter, the Happy Hollows, the Mae Shi and the Pity Party.
-- Somebody emailed to tell me I really missed the boat by missing these guys. But isn't glam just the new slapstick? The band has one more L.A. date, Tuesday at the Key Club.
-- Pitchfork has heaped some praise on local underground favorites Health, tabbing its video for "Heaven" as one of the site's top 50 of the year. The song ought to be bumper music for a sports TV show, sure, but a great video? Somebody please explain. Here it is:
-- Speaking of videos, Liz McGrath -- the visual artist-turned-Miss Derringer frontwoman -- will debut a 3D video for the band's song "Black Tears" on Saturday night when her new installation, "The Incurable Disorder," opens at the Billy Shire Gallery in Culver City. The song is hauntingly good; here's a preview of the video (not in 3D -- has the Internet figured that out yet?).
Photo of Mezzanine Owls' Jack Burnside by Kevin Bronson / LAT.
More weekend music choices, and some fun end-of-the-year lists, here.
There’s a fine line between magic and mush when it comes to the brooding strain of dream pop that L.A. quartet the Black Kites makes. And the X factor is often chemistry.
“This is not a sound we were necessarily going for,” singer-guitarist Alan Petherick says of the project he started with bassist Nicki Nevlin. “It ended up being a natural evolution — when Evelyn [Reyes] came in, her voice changed a lot of things.”
Reyes’ willowy vocals, paired at times with Petherick’s and layered onto rhythms laid down by Nevlin and drummer Marcel Feldmar, gives the foursome’s “Paper Heart” EP a cinematic sheen, and it’s meditative without being mopey. “It’s meant to be uplifting,” Petherick says. “We went for a feeling that’s anthemic and spiritual but not in a cheesy way.”
The EP, along with 2006’s “All Wrong,” was released in England on indie label Filthy Little Angels, and the Black Kites are looking to digitally release their music in the U.S. “In this day and age, it’s all Internet and all do-it-yourself,” Petherick says.
||| Live: The Black Kites play tonight at the Viper Room on a strong bill that includes Eskimohunter and Riverside’s Silver Cities.
Tool plays the Nokia Theatre, and Deerhoof is at the Avalon, but myriad choices abound in the club world: the LA Weekly's Click Hear show (in cooperation with several L.A. music blogs) at the El Rey Theatre, where 10 bucks gets you a lot of up-and-coming bands, including the Mezzanine Owls, the Black Ghosts, the Valley Arena and Le Switch. ... Over at Safari Sam's, the blog Radio Free Silverlake has mounted a great lineup for Rock Against HD, a benefit for the Huntington's Disease Society of America. On the bill are the Movies, Thailand, the Western States Motel and the Spires, along with solo outings by Sarah Negahdari (the Happy Hollows) and James Patrick (Buffalo Roam). ... The Binges continue their residency at Spaceland, while charming folkies the Rosewood Thieves join Chris Garneau on the bill at the Echo and Goon Moon plays the Troubadour.
As scores of aspiring bands around Los Angeles find, life can get in the way of music. Take a year in the life of Radars to the Sky frontman Andrew Spitser: "You graduate from law school, you take the bar exam, you get a job, you're having a baby, and you think, 'When the hell am I going to get this done?' " he says of his quintet's "Big Bang" EP, its second release of 2007.
The singer-guitarist and his bandmates -- guitarist Seamus Simpson, bassist Martin Avelar, drummer Kenny Kupers and singer-keyboardist Kate Post Spitser, his wife -- got it done, all right, five intense volleys of indie rock with arcs back to a time when indie rock was less self-conscious. It's no surprise that Spitser's heroes are Built to Spill; the gnarly interplay between guitarists and the time signatures might bring Pavement or Sebadoh to mind. Even allowing for its self-production, "Big Bang" can be big and bold (and tender, when Kate Spitser's vocals enter the mix), rock whose working-class trappings disguise an essayist's soul.
Like his forebears, the songwriter tackles weighty topics -- Radars' EPs cover material such as abortion, marriage proposals, sleeping with one's ex-girlfriend and even suicide. "That's not exactly the warm-and-fuzzy I'm going to play for Maya [the Spitsers' daughter, who was born in June] when she gets older," Andrew says.
"It's always been sort of a struggle ... wondering where this stuff comes from, because generally I'm a very happy person," Andrew says. "But songwriting has always been a place I can address some of those things I don't walk around with every day."
||| Live: Radars to the Sky, supported by the Henry Clay People, among others, play tonight at Spaceland.
||| Stream "Victoria" and other songs from the new EP, or download songs from the band's previous EP at its MySpace page.
Other highights for Friday, Dec. 7
It's a busy night, but among the offerings: The Thermals play the Echo. ... Andrew Bird holds forth at the Orpheum Theatre downtown. ... And From First to Last rocks the Troubadour.
Bands from the Eastside know how hard it is to get their fans to go west for a show. Well, imagine if you were from as far east as Riverside.
That's the plight of Silver Cities, who are taking an imaginative approach to Monday's date at the Indie 103.1 show at the Viper Room -- they're bringing their fans with them. The band has chartered a bus, and for $10 apiece about 50 fans will get a free ride to and from the West Hollywood venue, along with entry to the show and a few libations on the way.
"The hurdles are a little bit higher for us out here," singer-guitarist Michael Silversmith says. "It's hard to get people to go an hour east."
The trio, with Gary Allen on bass and Daniel Zimmerman on drums, is supporting its September release on Orange County-based indie Velvet Blue Music, "Power and Strife." Its twitchy, catchy agit-rock is a far cry from Silversmith's former incarnation as a folkie. "It was a big change of direction for me, but I always loved the more upbeat pop and rock and dance," he says. "I'm having a lot of fun doing it."
[My day has included not being able to access most of my e-mail, so just this quick note:]
He cops to not being able to name one Spice Girls song (that makes two of us, dude), but Duke has a pretty good rundown of the evening's music here. I might add that the lineup at Club NME at Spaceland -- pairing garagey quintet Bloodcat Love and the Jam/Elvis Costello-influenced the Lieutenants -- sounds like fun, if you don't have tickets to the Indie 103.1 shindig at the Avalon. Or, if you're feeling a little country, Sally Jaye is playing an early set at the Cinema Bar in Culver City.
[I don't think I can hold a thought for longer than one sentence today:]
-- As strong as New York trio A Place to Bury Strangers finished its set Monday night (and as cool as the band's hand-manipulated visuals were), I think local three-piece In Waves upstaged them in what amounted to a battle of the shoegazers at the Viper Room. (APTBS is at the Silverlake Lounge tonight with Xu Xu Fang and Mere Mortals.)
-- Not sure there are many local albums I'm looking forward to in 2008 more than the Little Ones' debut, and the quintet just put one track from the album up on its MySpace page.
-- More on these guys later, but local trio Jr. Juggernaut (pictured), who remind me of a few of the bands I loved during the 1990s, have signed to Suburban Home Records, and after a nice set Friday night at the Scene in Glendale spent Saturday recording more songs for their full-length debut.
-- A press release tells me Citysearch has selected the Wiltern as the city's best live music venue, and while I can see plaudits based on the charm and the feel of the place, I wonder whether anybody besides me thinks the sound is often muddier than major-label economics there. (The Roxy won the readers' poll.)
-- This was inevitable at some point, but electro-guru Jimmy Tamborello has remixed his Silver Lake neighbors the Silversun Pickups -- the dreamy take on "Lazy Eye" will be released on iTunes on Tuesday as part of a six-song EP.
-- The heavenly voices of the Chapin Sisters have also found a label home -- the group's debut will be out in March on Plain Recordings.
-- During the been-there-done-that disco of Afrobots' set Sunday at the El Rey, you got the idea that frontman Rico Dolce Riot's microphone should hire a personal injury lawyer.
-- And this from Monday night's John C. Reilly-as-Dewey Cox gig at the Roxy: "The joke wore thin fast."
Highlights for Tuesday, Dec. 4
Sharon Jones' show at the El Rey is sold out, as it darn well ought to be. ... Wise guys-with-axes Oliver Future start a Tuesday night residency at the Viper Room. ... Speaking of wise guys, Glacier Hiking plays the Key Club. ... The Cave Singers and Port O'Brien play the Echo. ... Chris Stills plays the Hotel Cafe, and John Gold heads the bill at Bordello.
Bring earplugs: A Place to Bury Strangers plays L.A. for the first time this week, and if the trio’s name or its reputation as “the loudest band in New York” (and now their MySpace page has been changed to read "loudest band in the United States") doesn’t set off alarms, know this: Frontman Oliver Ackermann started a guitar-pedal effects company called Death by Audio six years ago when he came up with a device called Total Sonic Annihilation.
“That about says it all,” Ackermann says with a laugh, remembering how an idea to earn money for a vacation trip blossomed into a career making custom effects for guitars. In the ensuing years, he founded APTBS with bassist Jono Mofo and drummer Jay Space, wrapping his truculence in menacing sheets of distortion that color his songs like thunderheads and appeal to fans of shoegazer and experimental rock alike.
“We’re just writing pop songs, but what we do seems to fit the whole experimental music thing that’s going on,” Ackermann says, noting that the darkness in his music doesn’t necessarily reflect his anger as a person. “It’s just when a feeling brings you to that creative place, it adds fuel to the intensity of the song. I think it’s what keeps me happy, really — it’s my form of therapy.”
It struck a chord too with Boston blogger Jon Whitney (brainwashed.com), who talked the band into letting him release its album on his Killer Pimp imprint, although “I still felt like some of the songs were in the demo stages,” Ackermann says. “Thank goodness for Jon.”
||| Live: A Place to Bury Strangers plays tonight at the Viper Room with In Waves and Eulogies and Tuesday at the Silverlake Lounge with Xu Xu Fang and Mere Mortals.
Plenty to choose from: Carbon/Silicon -- the band that Mick Jones has been doing with Generation X's Tony James in recent years when not producing the Libertines or Babyshambles -- plays the Troubadour. Carbon/Silicon's recent Caroline Records release, "The Last Post," is as sharp and energetic as any teenage British band of the moment. ... Speaking of bands of the moment, Vampire Weekend brings its Afro pop-meets-indie rock to the Echo. The New York band's album is due out in February. ... Got soul? Sharon Jones plays a free in-store at Amoeba Music at 7 p.m. ... Venus Infers and the Henry Clay People start a co-residency at the Detroit Bar. ... And the Binges kick off their residency at Spaceland.
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.
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