Editors' Tom Smith, somewhere between the start and the end

For a guy whose voice resounds as if he's issuing the Ten Commandments instead of singing in a post-punk band, Editors frontman Tom Smith admits to a bit of confusion over reaction to the Birmingham, England, quartet's sophomore album, "An End Has a Start."

"Of course, when you get out of bed in the morning and read something cynical about yourself, yes, it stings. But [the reviews] don't seem to be unified in the things that are wrong with it," he tells me before playing a show in Portland, Ore., part of a tour that brings the band to Los Angeles tonight. "I wouldn't change a single thing about [the album]. And no matter where we are or how small the venue, there is always someone who's been there since Day 1."

And heady days those were; Editors' first two singles -- "Bullets" and "Munich" -- propelled them into the limelight in England, where they were nominated for a Mercury Prize, and the U.S. release last year of "The Back Room" helped them land a spot at Coachella. To some, Editors were just another Joy Division/Echo & the Bunnymen acolyte; that Coachella set made me think they had out-Interpolled Interpol.

Nearly 12 years after their cheekily titled debut, “The Return of the Rentals” — and eight years after their follow-up album — the Rentals have truly returned. And, my, how things have changed. Right, Matt Sharp?

“Yeah,” the singer-guitarist deadpans, “when we started, we didn’t have a website address on our CDs.”

Now Sharp and gang resurface on a “massively changed” musical landscape with the Internet as marketer, distributor, biographer and critic. “It’s not all negative, it’s not all positive,” Sharp says, “but a lot more people have an equal chance to be heard; it’s a little bit more of a level platform.”

The Rentals become players again with “The Last Little Life” EP (out now on eMusic, with a physical release Aug. 14 on Canadian indie Boompa Records). Three new tracks offer the band’s signature sticky melodies, synthesizer-fueled bounce and boy-girl vocals, and there is a reworking of “Sweetness and Tenderness” off the first album.

It’s Tuesday, one of the biggest days in Cary Brothers’ life, the day his album “Who You Are” is released, and the singer-songwriter is talking about good fortune. “I hope my karma is saving itself for the record,” he jokes from his home in L.A., where he is laid up. “I cracked my ankle doing the video shoot, then I lost the hard drive on the laptop that does everything for me.”

By the time he hobbles into the Hotel Cafe tonight for his record-release show, Brothers figures to have some stories to tell, beyond those on his lushly orchestrated debut. There, amid ringing guitars, crashing cymbals and tinkling pianos, the Nashville native with the Britpop sensibilities tells his L.A. tales, touching on “a lot of things that have happened to me since I moved here, all the disastrous relationships, everything I’ve learned ... like not to date actresses,” he says.

In Brothers’ case, it’s been as much “where you are” as “Who You Are.”

There's a house in Silver Lake that holds a bit of history for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

It was home to the stealth antenna used by a certain Internet radio station back in the days it was broadcasting on a pirated FM frequency. It was the trio's de facto dressing room when BRMC headlined the Sunset Junction Street Fair one block away. And it was the scene of a couple crimes -- a car theft, and a burglary that hit singer/bassist/keyboardist Robert Levon Been right where it hurt.

"The place got broken into while we were in the middle of recording; they took my camera, computer, and worst of all my backpack with my lyric books," Been says. "We were supposed to record vocals on [the song] 'American X,' and I went in to sing it empty-handed, feeling like the song was stolen right out from under us.

"So I just turned out the lights and sang a bunch of stream-of-consciousness stuff. A lot of it was awful, but a lot of it was great. It somehow became more of a poem than when I wrote it."

"American X," which clocks in at longer than 9 minutes, represents the epic sprawl on the otherwise tightly wound "Baby 81," BRMC's new album. Released May 1, the album moves the trio back toward its darker, Jesus and Mary Chain-informed roots, this time more crackling and churning than droning. Gone are the strummy meditations and folky ministrations of 2005's "Howl," a detour into Americana that won the band some critical acclaim but prompted BRMC's early fans to wonder: Whatever happened to my rock 'n' roll? 

Ross Flournoy is nervous. The singer-guitarist of Los Angeles' the Broken West is facing the biggest month of his young band's life -- its debut album "I Can't Go On, I'll Go On" comes out Jan. 23 on Merge Records, and quintet is honing its chops for a hard year of touring by playing the Monday residency this month at Spaceland. It sounds like the first act of every indie rocker's dream, sure, but Flournoy seems to be floating in the same emotional space as the songs on the Byrds- and Teenage Fanclub-informed album: boxing with the uncertainty of future and humming a catchy tune with every punch. We got the rundown from Flournoy, 27, on the band's name change (they were formally the Brokedown), and did our best to make him laugh:

So what's with the name change? I have a feeling lawyers were involved ...

Flournoy: Someone threatened to sue us. There was a band in Illinois called the Brokedowns; we knew they existed, so in the summer of 2004 when we found out about them, we just lost the "s." We thought that was enough of a distinction, although our lawyer said it wasn't.

The Rentals' new lease on life

Nearly 12 years after their cheekily titled debut, “The Return of the Rentals” — and eight years after their follow-up album — the Rentals have truly returned. And, my, how things have changed. Right, Matt Sharp?

“Yeah,” the singer-guitarist deadpans, “when we started, we didn’t have a website address on our CDs.”

Now Sharp and gang resurface on a “massively changed” musical landscape with the Internet as marketer, distributor, biographer and critic. “It’s not all negative, it’s not all positive,” Sharp says, “but a lot more people have an equal chance to be heard; it’s a little bit more of a level platform.”

The Rentals become players again with “The Last Little Life” EP (out now on eMusic, with a physical release Aug. 14 on Canadian indie Boompa Records). Three new tracks offer the band’s signature sticky melodies, synthesizer-fueled bounce and boy-girl vocals, and there is a reworking of “Sweetness and Tenderness” off the first album.

It’s Tuesday, one of the biggest days in Cary Brothers’ life, the day his album “Who You Are” is released, and the singer-songwriter is talking about good fortune. “I hope my karma is saving itself for the record,” he jokes from his home in L.A., where he is laid up. “I cracked my ankle doing the video shoot, then I lost the hard drive on the laptop that does everything for me.”

By the time he hobbles into the Hotel Cafe tonight for his record-release show, Brothers figures to have some stories to tell, beyond those on his lushly orchestrated debut. There, amid ringing guitars, crashing cymbals and tinkling pianos, the Nashville native with the Britpop sensibilities tells his L.A. tales, touching on “a lot of things that have happened to me since I moved here, all the disastrous relationships, everything I’ve learned ... like not to date actresses,” he says.

In Brothers’ case, it’s been as much “where you are” as “Who You Are.”

There's a house in Silver Lake that holds a bit of history for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

It was home to the stealth antenna used by a certain Internet radio station back in the days it was broadcasting on a pirated FM frequency. It was the trio's de facto dressing room when BRMC headlined the Sunset Junction Street Fair one block away. And it was the scene of a couple crimes -- a car theft, and a burglary that hit singer/bassist/keyboardist Robert Levon Been right where it hurt.

"The place got broken into while we were in the middle of recording; they took my camera, computer, and worst of all my backpack with my lyric books," Been says. "We were supposed to record vocals on [the song] 'American X,' and I went in to sing it empty-handed, feeling like the song was stolen right out from under us.

"So I just turned out the lights and sang a bunch of stream-of-consciousness stuff. A lot of it was awful, but a lot of it was great. It somehow became more of a poem than when I wrote it."

"American X," which clocks in at longer than 9 minutes, represents the epic sprawl on the otherwise tightly wound "Baby 81," BRMC's new album. Released May 1, the album moves the trio back toward its darker, Jesus and Mary Chain-informed roots, this time more crackling and churning than droning. Gone are the strummy meditations and folky ministrations of 2005's "Howl," a detour into Americana that won the band some critical acclaim but prompted BRMC's early fans to wonder: Whatever happened to my rock 'n' roll? 

Ross Flournoy is nervous. The singer-guitarist of Los Angeles' the Broken West is facing the biggest month of his young band's life -- its debut album "I Can't Go On, I'll Go On" comes out Jan. 23 on Merge Records, and quintet is honing its chops for a hard year of touring by playing the Monday residency this month at Spaceland. It sounds like the first act of every indie rocker's dream, sure, but Flournoy seems to be floating in the same emotional space as the songs on the Byrds- and Teenage Fanclub-informed album: boxing with the uncertainty of future and humming a catchy tune with every punch. We got the rundown from Flournoy, 27, on the band's name change (they were formally the Brokedown), and did our best to make him laugh:

So what's with the name change? I have a feeling lawyers were involved ...

Flournoy: Someone threatened to sue us. There was a band in Illinois called the Brokedowns; we knew they existed, so in the summer of 2004 when we found out about them, we just lost the "s." We thought that was enough of a distinction, although our lawyer said it wasn't.

Cary Brothers: These are the breaks

It’s Tuesday, one of the biggest days in Cary Brothers’ life, the day his album “Who You Are” is released, and the singer-songwriter is talking about good fortune. “I hope my karma is saving itself for the record,” he jokes from his home in L.A., where he is laid up. “I cracked my ankle doing the video shoot, then I lost the hard drive on the laptop that does everything for me.”

By the time he hobbles into the Hotel Cafe tonight for his record-release show, Brothers figures to have some stories to tell, beyond those on his lushly orchestrated debut. There, amid ringing guitars, crashing cymbals and tinkling pianos, the Nashville native with the Britpop sensibilities tells his L.A. tales, touching on “a lot of things that have happened to me since I moved here, all the disastrous relationships, everything I’ve learned ... like not to date actresses,” he says.

In Brothers’ case, it’s been as much “where you are” as “Who You Are.”

There's a house in Silver Lake that holds a bit of history for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

It was home to the stealth antenna used by a certain Internet radio station back in the days it was broadcasting on a pirated FM frequency. It was the trio's de facto dressing room when BRMC headlined the Sunset Junction Street Fair one block away. And it was the scene of a couple crimes -- a car theft, and a burglary that hit singer/bassist/keyboardist Robert Levon Been right where it hurt.

"The place got broken into while we were in the middle of recording; they took my camera, computer, and worst of all my backpack with my lyric books," Been says. "We were supposed to record vocals on [the song] 'American X,' and I went in to sing it empty-handed, feeling like the song was stolen right out from under us.

"So I just turned out the lights and sang a bunch of stream-of-consciousness stuff. A lot of it was awful, but a lot of it was great. It somehow became more of a poem than when I wrote it."

"American X," which clocks in at longer than 9 minutes, represents the epic sprawl on the otherwise tightly wound "Baby 81," BRMC's new album. Released May 1, the album moves the trio back toward its darker, Jesus and Mary Chain-informed roots, this time more crackling and churning than droning. Gone are the strummy meditations and folky ministrations of 2005's "Howl," a detour into Americana that won the band some critical acclaim but prompted BRMC's early fans to wonder: Whatever happened to my rock 'n' roll? 

Ross Flournoy is nervous. The singer-guitarist of Los Angeles' the Broken West is facing the biggest month of his young band's life -- its debut album "I Can't Go On, I'll Go On" comes out Jan. 23 on Merge Records, and quintet is honing its chops for a hard year of touring by playing the Monday residency this month at Spaceland. It sounds like the first act of every indie rocker's dream, sure, but Flournoy seems to be floating in the same emotional space as the songs on the Byrds- and Teenage Fanclub-informed album: boxing with the uncertainty of future and humming a catchy tune with every punch. We got the rundown from Flournoy, 27, on the band's name change (they were formally the Brokedown), and did our best to make him laugh:

So what's with the name change? I have a feeling lawyers were involved ...

Flournoy: Someone threatened to sue us. There was a band in Illinois called the Brokedowns; we knew they existed, so in the summer of 2004 when we found out about them, we just lost the "s." We thought that was enough of a distinction, although our lawyer said it wasn't.

BRMC's Robert Levon Been on 'Baby 81'

There's a house in Silver Lake that holds a bit of history for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

It was home to the stealth antenna used by a certain Internet radio station back in the days it was broadcasting on a pirated FM frequency. It was the trio's de facto dressing room when BRMC headlined the Sunset Junction Street Fair one block away. And it was the scene of a couple crimes -- a car theft, and a burglary that hit singer/bassist/keyboardist Robert Levon Been right where it hurt.

"The place got broken into while we were in the middle of recording; they took my camera, computer, and worst of all my backpack with my lyric books," Been says. "We were supposed to record vocals on [the song] 'American X,' and I went in to sing it empty-handed, feeling like the song was stolen right out from under us.

"So I just turned out the lights and sang a bunch of stream-of-consciousness stuff. A lot of it was awful, but a lot of it was great. It somehow became more of a poem than when I wrote it."

"American X," which clocks in at longer than 9 minutes, represents the epic sprawl on the otherwise tightly wound "Baby 81," BRMC's new album. Released May 1, the album moves the trio back toward its darker, Jesus and Mary Chain-informed roots, this time more crackling and churning than droning. Gone are the strummy meditations and folky ministrations of 2005's "Howl," a detour into Americana that won the band some critical acclaim but prompted BRMC's early fans to wonder: Whatever happened to my rock 'n' roll? 

Ross Flournoy is nervous. The singer-guitarist of Los Angeles' the Broken West is facing the biggest month of his young band's life -- its debut album "I Can't Go On, I'll Go On" comes out Jan. 23 on Merge Records, and quintet is honing its chops for a hard year of touring by playing the Monday residency this month at Spaceland. It sounds like the first act of every indie rocker's dream, sure, but Flournoy seems to be floating in the same emotional space as the songs on the Byrds- and Teenage Fanclub-informed album: boxing with the uncertainty of future and humming a catchy tune with every punch. We got the rundown from Flournoy, 27, on the band's name change (they were formally the Brokedown), and did our best to make him laugh:

So what's with the name change? I have a feeling lawyers were involved ...

Flournoy: Someone threatened to sue us. There was a band in Illinois called the Brokedowns; we knew they existed, so in the summer of 2004 when we found out about them, we just lost the "s." We thought that was enough of a distinction, although our lawyer said it wasn't.

Now breaking . . . The Broken West

Ross Flournoy is nervous. The singer-guitarist of Los Angeles' the Broken West is facing the biggest month of his young band's life -- its debut album "I Can't Go On, I'll Go On" comes out Jan. 23 on Merge Records, and quintet is honing its chops for a hard year of touring by playing the Monday residency this month at Spaceland. It sounds like the first act of every indie rocker's dream, sure, but Flournoy seems to be floating in the same emotional space as the songs on the Byrds- and Teenage Fanclub-informed album: boxing with the uncertainty of future and humming a catchy tune with every punch. We got the rundown from Flournoy, 27, on the band's name change (they were formally the Brokedown), and did our best to make him laugh:

So what's with the name change? I have a feeling lawyers were involved ...

Flournoy: Someone threatened to sue us. There was a band in Illinois called the Brokedowns; we knew they existed, so in the summer of 2004 when we found out about them, we just lost the "s." We thought that was enough of a distinction, although our lawyer said it wasn't.