The Henry Clay People: Coming at you, quickly

The spasmodic sagacity of the Henry Clay People can be a little like watching somebody karaoke the encyclopedia, and the L.A. quartet's spate of shows in late 2007 seemed to augur their rise to bigger stages. The prolific foursome is getting ready for a February residency at the Echo (batten down the fixtures) by putting the finishing touches on a new EP.

With last year's album "Blacklist the Kid With the Red Moustache" just making it into many local music collections, TCHP will have the five-song "Working Part Time" EP ready for the residency. The title track ought to be the anthem for every indie rocker who juggles a day job with being in a band. And, front man Joey Siara says, the band is writing and recording more new material.

Here's something from the new EP -- "We just made up the song titles last night," Siara confessed on Tuesday -- featuring a rare lead vocal from Joey's brother, guitarist Andy:

||| Download: "Andy Sings!"

||| Live: The Henry Clay People play Jan. 24 at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa, and every Monday in February at the Echo.

Photo of Joey Siara getting in the spirit at the Little Radio holiday party by Timothy Norris.

Highlights for Wednesday, Jan. 16

Model K celebrates the release of its new EP with a show tonight at the Hotel Cafe (where Buddy is playing a string of Wednesdays, and Ian Ball [of Gomez] is also playing). ... Fans of good, solid prog and classic rock, take note: Anaheim six-piece Dusty Rhodes and the River Band headline the Echo tonight. ... Army Navy plays Club NME at Spaceland. ... Kim Kline plays the Viper Room (where Switchfoot's Jonathan Foreman was scheduled to play; he has postponed). ... And it's Hello Dragon and the High Wires among the bands rocking the Silverlake Lounge.

Matthew Kelly, Frankie Koroshec and their bandmates in L.A. rock quintet the Autumns have announced plans to release their long-awaited sixth album, "Fake Noise From a Box of Toys," on April 15 in the U.S. When the band played a run of dates last May at Spaceland, its new material proved very challenging -- having moved beyond by-the-playbook dreampop and shoegaze, the Autumns' furious rhythms and interwoven guitars demanded more than casual attention. I haven't heard the whole record, but here's a taste (no live dates scheduled as of now):

||| Download: "Boys."

Here's the video for that song:

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The Harry Nilsson Tribute goes off tonight at Bordello, with the likes of Frankel, Le Switch, Ferraby Lionheart and Sara Melson (new album coming Feb. 26) among the 15 artists slated to perform the late singer-songwriter's material. Dan Crane of Nous Non Plus will be there too, and word is that Crane's alter ego -- air guitarist supreme Bjorn Turoque -- will also make an appearance.

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Experiemental electro guru Daedelus has a new album, "Live at Low End Theory," coming on Jan. 22. (An he's playing Low End Theory on Wednesday night). Here's one track:

||| Download: "Now's the Time."

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With a new album, "Alopecia," on the way March 11, Bay Area indie-hoppers Why? play Tangier tonight. The trio throws a lot of sonic stuff against the wall, and what sticks is pretty fun.

||| Download: "The Hollows."

Other highlights for Tuesday, Jan. 15

Jesca Hoop has had to postpone her show at the Hotel Cafe tonight because of illness. ... Dan Deacon, Health and Abe Vigoda party at the El Rey Theatre, and as of early this afternoon the show was not sold out. ... Death to Anders' album-release show for "Fictitious Business" goes off tonight at Boardner's as part of Radio Free Silver Lake's shindig. ... Jupiter Rising brings the dance to the Viper Room. ... And Shiloe and Nightfur rock the Echo.

L.A.'s Dangerbird Records, its thumbs in its suspenders after being nominated for alternative label of the year by trade 'zine Radio and Records, is offering a slew of free downloads. Click here to download Darker My Love's 2006 debut album in its entirety, as well as four tracks from Dappled Cities (a three-song EP and a Loving Hands remix of "Fire Fire Fire.")

Speaking of Darker My Love, the psych-rock quartet is in the studio with producer Dave Cooley working on a follow-up (targeted for release next summer) to that 2006 disc. A tour with the Warlocks is planned -- and maybe a couple dates on a big tour. Stay tuned.

Foreign Born got a little tube time Tuesday night, and as television cameos go, this one, on the new NBC show "Chuck," was pretty killer. The L.A. quartet, whose album "On the Wing Now" just came out on Dim Mak, is giving away a free download (for today only) to celebrate. (If I'm reading the storyline correctly, the blonde is a CIA agent charged with protecting her nerdy date. Go nerds!)

||| See Foreign Born this weekend at the Swerve Festival.

||| Download: "Into Your Dream."

[One in a series designed to keep one finger on the pulse of the local music scene and the other on the "download" button:]

 

The Hectors have a sense of humor to go along with their pop chops, which is only natural when you consider the L.A. quartet has a boyfriend-girlfriend songwriting team, influences ranging from the syrupy to Fugazi and a drummer who wanted to name the band the Lollipop Guild.

They've done an interview (of sorts) to promote today's release of their second EP, "Sometimes They Collide." Watch it here and take notes.

"It's amazing what we don't have in common," singer-guitarist Corinne Dinner says of the foursome that began in songwriting and recording lessons with beau Jim Saunders (bass) and expanded to include Robert Bonilla (guitar) and Erik Greene (drums). "The EP has a little bit of everything, from hooks to sludge."

It has the poppy "Cold Star" (reminds me of Letters to Cleo), an anxious ditty called "Carol and Sanford" -- "about a really shy Bonnie and Clyde," Dinner says -- and the brooding "I Drove All the Way From Bridgeport to Make It With You," a line lifted from the Woody Allen movie "Stardust Memories." The latter song was also on the Hectors' first EP, which the band isn't sharing anymore, because, well, "none of us were very happy with it."

They're in a better mood now. They will celebrate "Sometimes They Collide" with a show tonight.

||| See the Hectors, along with Radars to the Sky and Tigers Can Bite You, as part of the "Let's Independent" one-year anniversary bill tonight at Boardners. It's a free show presented by local blog Radio Free Silver Lake.

||| Download: "Proof of Sale."

Division Day, the L.A. indie-rock quartet whose album "Beartrap Island" is being re-released (on iTunes today, and in stores on Oct. 2), is offering a free remix or cover song every Tuesday for eight weeks. It's nice of them, considering what they've been through with this album; after the foursome self-released it last year, they was signed to a start-up label that planned to issue "Beartrap" last spring. But the start-up label never quite started up.

Enter L.A. imprint Eenie Meenie, home to Great Northern, Irving and Goldenboy, among others. The label has signed Division Day, and now the remastered album -- with two new tracks -- is on the way.

||| Download the band's cover of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence." Then: the Tandemoro remix of the album track "Ricky." And then: the band's cover of Sunny Day Real Estate's "Every Shining Time You Arrive."

||| See Division Day perform at the Echo on Oct. 2.

Touts for Thursday, Sept. 20

Imagine Dylan having to fight his way out of an Irish bar: That's Ike Reilly's music. The Chicago-area troubadour hits town with his band the Ike Reilly Assassination for a gig at Spaceland tonight behind its new release, "We Belong to the Staggering Evening." Reilly played solo earlier this summer as support for Tom Morello on the latter's Nightwatchman tour. Recommended if you like barroom poets.

||| Download: "When Irish Eyes Are Burning."

Also: This little gig at the Hollywood Bowl tonight is apparently the show of the year.

And also: The New Pornographers, with Lavender Diamond opening, play the Fonda Theatre, and it's not sold out. ... The Airborne Toxic Event joins Maxeen for a show at Costa Mesa's Detroit Bar. ... Film School has a free show at Amoeba at 7. ... And Hello Stranger greets the crowd at Filter's Revenge of the Sunset Strip night at the Roxy.

[Another installment in our locally famous local-music awareness program:]

Don't be deceived by the religious connotations in their band name -- the Stevenson Ranch Davidians aren't cultists. "It's very tongue-in-cheek," singer-guitarist Dwayne Seagraves says, "but people don't always get it. Some people think we're a religious band."

The Davidians -- who are indeed from the Santa Clarita Valley development Stevenson Ranch -- do have their devotions, however. On "Psalms, Hymns & Spiritual Songs," their self-released album from last year, the quartet visits the altar of Britpop as rendered by the likes of Travis, the Verve and Blur, not to mention the pop-psych pioneers of the '60s. The Davidians nurture their version of that sound with songs that are patiently paced, gently couched in reverb and simple in lyrical approach.

Seagraves and band mates Jessica Latiolait, Bryan Showalter and Cary Chafin are already writing songs for a follow-up to "Psalms," which was recorded in Raymond Richards' Red Rockets Glare studio in Rancho Park. The album has been picked up by a European indie label for distribution, so the foursome hopes to tour there later this year.

||| Stevenson Ranch Davidians, with the Black Pine among the supporting acts, perform Wednesday night at the Echo.

||| Download: "Beginnings and Ends."

"Hideout," the new album by Film School, isn't out until Sept. 11, but it's already creating a buzz from those who've heard its buzzing guitars and reverb-heavy dynamics. Its the kind of album that dares you to roll up your car windows, crank it and be swallowed whole. If the band's debut album was a bit hit-and-miss, there  are precious few misfires on this one.

Greg Bertens (the artist formerly known as Krayg Burton, at least on the first album) and mates have relocated to Los Angeles from San Francisco. Let's see, that makes tonight's show at Spaceland a hometown gig, then. Brilliant.

||| Download "Lectric."

||| Brooklyn's Pela is an opening act for that show tonight. It will be drummer Tomislav Zovich's final tour with the band.

Touts for Tuesday, Aug. 14

Oh, what a night: The Magic Numbers and the Little Ones bring their feel-good pop to the El Rey. ... Dengue Fever rocks the Knitting Factory. ... The One AM Radio looses his gauzy bedroom pop on the Echo. ... Buckfast plies its Anglophile rock at the Mint. ... Eulogies, the new trio assembled by singer-songwriter Peter Walker, plays a set at the Troubadour opening for rockers the Wildbirds. ... The Finches and the Coral Sea entertain at Bordello. ... And Aushua plays the early set at the Silverlake Lounge.

Photo by Marla Aufmuth

[This installment of our local music series is brought to you by arts & crafts:]

An EP arrived this week in a colorful, hand-decorated cardboard sleeve (inscribed "#014"), a sure sign that either the music inside is really something special, or that somebody has too much time on her hands. I can't speak to the latter, but the five tunes on "EP 01" by Los Angeles quartet Hello Dragon are stickier than Velcro -- slightly spaced-out pop anthems that reflect the band's stated fascination with "animal rights, quantum mechanics, El Chupacabra, vacuum tubes and cheap-sounding synthesizers." There's even a tuneful nod to "Stephen Hawking."

Hello Dragon -- the music and DIY sleeves -- is the handiwork of Chris Zerby and Julie Chadwick, who were the principals in the edgy Boston power-pop band Helicopter Helicopter. They brought their crunchy guitars and boy-girl vocals to L.A. a couple years ago, but have now started over, having joined forces with fellow Beantown expats Josh Pickering (keyboards) and Sean Burgess (drums).

You can order an EP -- and download some songs -- here. Hello Dragon has only played three shows thus far; a recent one was postponed because Chadwick suffered a hand laceration in a kitchen mishap. But look for a gig in September, Zerby says, along with some more crafty packaging: "We haven't broken out the glitter glue yet, but you never know."

||| Get started right here by downloading "Birds of Prey."

Photo of Zerby and Chadwick by Josh Pickering.

[Another installment in our series highlighting local music:]

The Red Button presses all the right buttons for fans of pure pop. Its album, "She's About to Cross My Mind," sounds as if it should be crackling out of an AM radio, the tunes of some youngsters angling to be the next Fab Four. Yes, it's hopelessly retro, right down to its very mod sleeve, but the record's easy psychedelia and friendly Merseybeat go down easily. Even the Little Steven's Underground Garage radio show tabbed "Cruel Girl" as its No. 1 song last week.

It's no surprise that the duo pushing all the buttons here are veteran songwriters Seth Swirsky and Mike Ruekberg. Swirsky, a longtime songwriter-for-hire who made his first solo album a couple years ago, is also an artist and well-known collector of sports memorabilia. Ruekberg was the driving force behind the Minneapolis pop band Rex Daisy. Together they explore their love of all things jangly, harmonic and Beatles.

||| The Red Button perform as an acoustic duo tonight at Spaceland as part of the 10th annual International Pop Overthrow festival. Astra Heights and the Prix are among the other bands on the bill.

||| Download: "Cruel Girl."

Photo of Mike Ruekberg, left, and Seth Swirsky courtesy of Luck Media.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan with his dollop of pop:]

Dylan Hay Chapman, lead singer-songwriter for local popsters Service Group, tells me that the origin of the group's name lay in a high school student contingent assigned to work in the cafeteria ("the kids that weren't into athletics"). I wasn't far wrong in guessing that it sounded like a catering firm for high schools; either that or sex trade camp followers for the military (but, no, wait, that was Joy Division).

Chapman is a breezy fellow with a band that has patiently slogged it out in the rock 'n' roll toilets of Los Angeles for the past several years. Now, their brand of altered retro-pop may get a boost from their second album, "Principals of Electronic Circuitry," being released Sept. 25 on their own label, Squid vs. Whale.

"We're all happy with the album," says Chapman. "It's been kicking around for two years, so [we're well practiced]. We know we have a lot of playing and promoting to do. The second album is the same sensibility as the first, only the fast songs are faster, the slow songs are slower. It's a little more refined; the corners are sharpened."

[One in a series highlighting new music by Los Angeles bands:]

On its first album two years ago, the Prix gave us a collection of two-days-away-from-a-razor power pop that displayed quite a bit of muscle and maybe a little moxie, not to mention a kinship with decades of artists who honed their hooks in a garage. If "Frix the Prix" got only a modest reception, it might have been because the Prix never bothered to slather its retro feel in eight layers of irony.

"St. Domino," the new EP from the quartet, expands its palette considerably, with touches of glam and new wave seeping into six rollicking songs recorded at Red Rockets Glare studio with Raymond Richards and Dan Long. You might even hear a little Smiths along with the quartet's frenetic piano lines and harmonies. The Prix (Cashew Von Harding, Blake Jordan, Zach Ziegler and Stephen Mills) are the resident band this month at club Kiss or Kill (recently moved to Wednesday nights at El Cid). This week, they celebrate the release of "St. Domino" at Kiss or Kill with support from Star No Star, the Power Cords and Service Group.

||| Download "The Chevalier."

Photo of the Prix by Sterling Andrews. [Thanks to reader A. Martinez for the reminder.]

[This blog has been silent for a couple days, and one e-mailer even suggested I had run off and joined the Warped Tour. Hey, I didn't like Paramore that much. No, this little digital portal suffered because I was on jury duty, which pushed my day job into a night job and pushed the blogging into ... well, you get the idea. Silly me for thinking I'd have time to squeeze in a blog post, or even get away to see the Klaxons on Tuesday night. The judge was kind of a rock star, even if he threatened anybody who dared to use his iPod in the courtroom. So here's a little song I like, with some more to come:]

Mendocino-based singer-songwriter Chrisopher Blue has gotten his first name, which has no "t," misspelled all over the West Coast. I'm here to apologize for careless typists everywhere, and to tell you that his album "Room Tones" is perfect rainy-day listening. Well, if it ever rained here. Blue -- who used to play in a band with Duff McKagan and actually almost quit music if not for words of encouragement from Mark Lanegan -- is in town for a couple shows this weekend. Maybe it'll cloud up.

||| See Chrisopher Blue performs Saturday at Room 5 on Fairfax and Sunday at Tangier in Los Feliz.

||| Download: "Good Time Baby" as performed live on Seattle's KEXP-FM.

Thursday, July 12

What a night for shows: Patrick Park and Emma Burgess play Spaceland; Dr. Dog and the Delta Spirit hold forth at the Echo; the Little Ones play the Indie 103.1 bash at the Hammer Museum (last week's with Great Northern was pretty swell, I hear); Everest headlines the Silverlake Lounge; the Sharp Things bring their sharp orchestral pop to the Mint; and the Front and the Monolators are among the band's playing a Rock Insider event at the Scene in Glendale.

[Ears Wide Open is an occasional series highlighting L.A. bands and their music:]

Six guys, six sensibilties -- and "an anything-goes type of mentality," singer-instrumentalist Tommy Valencia says. You're not getting an album when you happen upon "TOCA," the debut from the L.A. band of that name. You're getting paraded through every department of your mental record store. It's not so much genre-bending as it is genre-hopping. The album quick-cuts between rock to jazz to reggae to pop to hip-hop to punk.

It might all seem a bit contrived, if the songs -- the work of musicians with impressive resumes as collaborators and session men -- didn't reflect such a passion for those excursions. Among the guests on the record (which was released in May) are the likes of Aceyalone, Pigeon John and Busdriver. What TOCA members Xinxo (Danny Rodriguez), Danny Levin, Max Heath, Valencia and brothers Ceschi and David Ramos have produced is a collection that's bound to land a track or two or your iPod. Maybe even this one:

Download: "Liar."  Photo courtesy of TOCA.

And here's the video (featuring Pigeon John) for that song:

I know, the headline sounds like some kind of Blue Light Special. But take it literally -- thanks to KCRW-FM, you can download the new single off the Greyboy Allstars' album "What Happened to Television?" Oh ... (inserting my best announcer's voice) ... if you act now.

The song is the killer cover of "How Glad I Am," which features vocals by the Living Sisters -- the trio of L.A. women who are estimable artists in their own right, Eleni Mandell, Inara George and Becky Stark.

Have at it: "How Glad I Am."

[Contributor Casey Dolan unearths a gem:]

Chicago singer-songwriter David Vandervelde was only 19 three years ago when he penned and recorded "Nothin' No," a slow-drag bang-your-header. It's only now being pushed as the second single from his debut album on Secretly Canadian, "The Moonstation House Band." Took a while. Ex-Wilco guitarist, Jay Bennett, co-wrote the tune and plays bass, but Vandervelde handles all the other chores, including production. There's a wonderful sense of crazy youthful abandon in the track, from Vandervelde's reedy whine to the hemorrhaging tubes in the amps (electric Neil Young fans, take note!). This is a song that demands to be played loud.

||| Download: "Nothin' No"

||| Vandervelde hits L.A. on July 13 for a show at Spaceland.

[Contributor Casey Dolan suffered an anxiety attack watching this video:]

The first video from Unkle's new album, "War Stories" (due July 24) is bound to get viewers feeling a bit constricted around the chest. Ian Astbury, on hiatus from resurrecting the ghost of Jim Morrison, sings the song "Burn My Shadow" as actor Goran Visjnic ("ER" and "Welcome to Sarajevo") wakes up in his boozy post-disaster flat to discover that he has a bit of a problem and not much time to solve it. Director Miguel Sapochnik, who previously worked as a storyboard artist for the films "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Winter Guest," guides us to an explosive climax in this compelling video. David Cronenberg would be proud.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]

Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.

||| Listen to "The Man."

Photo from Dr. Cornel West

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

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Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

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More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

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Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

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Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

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Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

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Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

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And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

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Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

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Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

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I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

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Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

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Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

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Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

The Autumns set to release new album April 15

Matthew Kelly, Frankie Koroshec and their bandmates in L.A. rock quintet the Autumns have announced plans to release their long-awaited sixth album, "Fake Noise From a Box of Toys," on April 15 in the U.S. When the band played a run of dates last May at Spaceland, its new material proved very challenging -- having moved beyond by-the-playbook dreampop and shoegaze, the Autumns' furious rhythms and interwoven guitars demanded more than casual attention. I haven't heard the whole record, but here's a taste (no live dates scheduled as of now):

||| Download: "Boys."

Here's the video for that song:

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The Harry Nilsson Tribute goes off tonight at Bordello, with the likes of Frankel, Le Switch, Ferraby Lionheart and Sara Melson (new album coming Feb. 26) among the 15 artists slated to perform the late singer-songwriter's material. Dan Crane of Nous Non Plus will be there too, and word is that Crane's alter ego -- air guitarist supreme Bjorn Turoque -- will also make an appearance.

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Experiemental electro guru Daedelus has a new album, "Live at Low End Theory," coming on Jan. 22. (An he's playing Low End Theory on Wednesday night). Here's one track:

||| Download: "Now's the Time."

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With a new album, "Alopecia," on the way March 11, Bay Area indie-hoppers Why? play Tangier tonight. The trio throws a lot of sonic stuff against the wall, and what sticks is pretty fun.

||| Download: "The Hollows."

Other highlights for Tuesday, Jan. 15

Jesca Hoop has had to postpone her show at the Hotel Cafe tonight because of illness. ... Dan Deacon, Health and Abe Vigoda party at the El Rey Theatre, and as of early this afternoon the show was not sold out. ... Death to Anders' album-release show for "Fictitious Business" goes off tonight at Boardner's as part of Radio Free Silver Lake's shindig. ... Jupiter Rising brings the dance to the Viper Room. ... And Shiloe and Nightfur rock the Echo.

L.A.'s Dangerbird Records, its thumbs in its suspenders after being nominated for alternative label of the year by trade 'zine Radio and Records, is offering a slew of free downloads. Click here to download Darker My Love's 2006 debut album in its entirety, as well as four tracks from Dappled Cities (a three-song EP and a Loving Hands remix of "Fire Fire Fire.")

Speaking of Darker My Love, the psych-rock quartet is in the studio with producer Dave Cooley working on a follow-up (targeted for release next summer) to that 2006 disc. A tour with the Warlocks is planned -- and maybe a couple dates on a big tour. Stay tuned.

Foreign Born got a little tube time Tuesday night, and as television cameos go, this one, on the new NBC show "Chuck," was pretty killer. The L.A. quartet, whose album "On the Wing Now" just came out on Dim Mak, is giving away a free download (for today only) to celebrate. (If I'm reading the storyline correctly, the blonde is a CIA agent charged with protecting her nerdy date. Go nerds!)

||| See Foreign Born this weekend at the Swerve Festival.

||| Download: "Into Your Dream."

[One in a series designed to keep one finger on the pulse of the local music scene and the other on the "download" button:]

 

The Hectors have a sense of humor to go along with their pop chops, which is only natural when you consider the L.A. quartet has a boyfriend-girlfriend songwriting team, influences ranging from the syrupy to Fugazi and a drummer who wanted to name the band the Lollipop Guild.

They've done an interview (of sorts) to promote today's release of their second EP, "Sometimes They Collide." Watch it here and take notes.

"It's amazing what we don't have in common," singer-guitarist Corinne Dinner says of the foursome that began in songwriting and recording lessons with beau Jim Saunders (bass) and expanded to include Robert Bonilla (guitar) and Erik Greene (drums). "The EP has a little bit of everything, from hooks to sludge."

It has the poppy "Cold Star" (reminds me of Letters to Cleo), an anxious ditty called "Carol and Sanford" -- "about a really shy Bonnie and Clyde," Dinner says -- and the brooding "I Drove All the Way From Bridgeport to Make It With You," a line lifted from the Woody Allen movie "Stardust Memories." The latter song was also on the Hectors' first EP, which the band isn't sharing anymore, because, well, "none of us were very happy with it."

They're in a better mood now. They will celebrate "Sometimes They Collide" with a show tonight.

||| See the Hectors, along with Radars to the Sky and Tigers Can Bite You, as part of the "Let's Independent" one-year anniversary bill tonight at Boardners. It's a free show presented by local blog Radio Free Silver Lake.

||| Download: "Proof of Sale."

Division Day, the L.A. indie-rock quartet whose album "Beartrap Island" is being re-released (on iTunes today, and in stores on Oct. 2), is offering a free remix or cover song every Tuesday for eight weeks. It's nice of them, considering what they've been through with this album; after the foursome self-released it last year, they was signed to a start-up label that planned to issue "Beartrap" last spring. But the start-up label never quite started up.

Enter L.A. imprint Eenie Meenie, home to Great Northern, Irving and Goldenboy, among others. The label has signed Division Day, and now the remastered album -- with two new tracks -- is on the way.

||| Download the band's cover of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence." Then: the Tandemoro remix of the album track "Ricky." And then: the band's cover of Sunny Day Real Estate's "Every Shining Time You Arrive."

||| See Division Day perform at the Echo on Oct. 2.

Touts for Thursday, Sept. 20

Imagine Dylan having to fight his way out of an Irish bar: That's Ike Reilly's music. The Chicago-area troubadour hits town with his band the Ike Reilly Assassination for a gig at Spaceland tonight behind its new release, "We Belong to the Staggering Evening." Reilly played solo earlier this summer as support for Tom Morello on the latter's Nightwatchman tour. Recommended if you like barroom poets.

||| Download: "When Irish Eyes Are Burning."

Also: This little gig at the Hollywood Bowl tonight is apparently the show of the year.

And also: The New Pornographers, with Lavender Diamond opening, play the Fonda Theatre, and it's not sold out. ... The Airborne Toxic Event joins Maxeen for a show at Costa Mesa's Detroit Bar. ... Film School has a free show at Amoeba at 7. ... And Hello Stranger greets the crowd at Filter's Revenge of the Sunset Strip night at the Roxy.

[Another installment in our locally famous local-music awareness program:]

Don't be deceived by the religious connotations in their band name -- the Stevenson Ranch Davidians aren't cultists. "It's very tongue-in-cheek," singer-guitarist Dwayne Seagraves says, "but people don't always get it. Some people think we're a religious band."

The Davidians -- who are indeed from the Santa Clarita Valley development Stevenson Ranch -- do have their devotions, however. On "Psalms, Hymns & Spiritual Songs," their self-released album from last year, the quartet visits the altar of Britpop as rendered by the likes of Travis, the Verve and Blur, not to mention the pop-psych pioneers of the '60s. The Davidians nurture their version of that sound with songs that are patiently paced, gently couched in reverb and simple in lyrical approach.

Seagraves and band mates Jessica Latiolait, Bryan Showalter and Cary Chafin are already writing songs for a follow-up to "Psalms," which was recorded in Raymond Richards' Red Rockets Glare studio in Rancho Park. The album has been picked up by a European indie label for distribution, so the foursome hopes to tour there later this year.

||| Stevenson Ranch Davidians, with the Black Pine among the supporting acts, perform Wednesday night at the Echo.

||| Download: "Beginnings and Ends."

"Hideout," the new album by Film School, isn't out until Sept. 11, but it's already creating a buzz from those who've heard its buzzing guitars and reverb-heavy dynamics. Its the kind of album that dares you to roll up your car windows, crank it and be swallowed whole. If the band's debut album was a bit hit-and-miss, there  are precious few misfires on this one.

Greg Bertens (the artist formerly known as Krayg Burton, at least on the first album) and mates have relocated to Los Angeles from San Francisco. Let's see, that makes tonight's show at Spaceland a hometown gig, then. Brilliant.

||| Download "Lectric."

||| Brooklyn's Pela is an opening act for that show tonight. It will be drummer Tomislav Zovich's final tour with the band.

Touts for Tuesday, Aug. 14

Oh, what a night: The Magic Numbers and the Little Ones bring their feel-good pop to the El Rey. ... Dengue Fever rocks the Knitting Factory. ... The One AM Radio looses his gauzy bedroom pop on the Echo. ... Buckfast plies its Anglophile rock at the Mint. ... Eulogies, the new trio assembled by singer-songwriter Peter Walker, plays a set at the Troubadour opening for rockers the Wildbirds. ... The Finches and the Coral Sea entertain at Bordello. ... And Aushua plays the early set at the Silverlake Lounge.

Photo by Marla Aufmuth

[This installment of our local music series is brought to you by arts & crafts:]

An EP arrived this week in a colorful, hand-decorated cardboard sleeve (inscribed "#014"), a sure sign that either the music inside is really something special, or that somebody has too much time on her hands. I can't speak to the latter, but the five tunes on "EP 01" by Los Angeles quartet Hello Dragon are stickier than Velcro -- slightly spaced-out pop anthems that reflect the band's stated fascination with "animal rights, quantum mechanics, El Chupacabra, vacuum tubes and cheap-sounding synthesizers." There's even a tuneful nod to "Stephen Hawking."

Hello Dragon -- the music and DIY sleeves -- is the handiwork of Chris Zerby and Julie Chadwick, who were the principals in the edgy Boston power-pop band Helicopter Helicopter. They brought their crunchy guitars and boy-girl vocals to L.A. a couple years ago, but have now started over, having joined forces with fellow Beantown expats Josh Pickering (keyboards) and Sean Burgess (drums).

You can order an EP -- and download some songs -- here. Hello Dragon has only played three shows thus far; a recent one was postponed because Chadwick suffered a hand laceration in a kitchen mishap. But look for a gig in September, Zerby says, along with some more crafty packaging: "We haven't broken out the glitter glue yet, but you never know."

||| Get started right here by downloading "Birds of Prey."

Photo of Zerby and Chadwick by Josh Pickering.

[Another installment in our series highlighting local music:]

The Red Button presses all the right buttons for fans of pure pop. Its album, "She's About to Cross My Mind," sounds as if it should be crackling out of an AM radio, the tunes of some youngsters angling to be the next Fab Four. Yes, it's hopelessly retro, right down to its very mod sleeve, but the record's easy psychedelia and friendly Merseybeat go down easily. Even the Little Steven's Underground Garage radio show tabbed "Cruel Girl" as its No. 1 song last week.

It's no surprise that the duo pushing all the buttons here are veteran songwriters Seth Swirsky and Mike Ruekberg. Swirsky, a longtime songwriter-for-hire who made his first solo album a couple years ago, is also an artist and well-known collector of sports memorabilia. Ruekberg was the driving force behind the Minneapolis pop band Rex Daisy. Together they explore their love of all things jangly, harmonic and Beatles.

||| The Red Button perform as an acoustic duo tonight at Spaceland as part of the 10th annual International Pop Overthrow festival. Astra Heights and the Prix are among the other bands on the bill.

||| Download: "Cruel Girl."

Photo of Mike Ruekberg, left, and Seth Swirsky courtesy of Luck Media.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan with his dollop of pop:]

Dylan Hay Chapman, lead singer-songwriter for local popsters Service Group, tells me that the origin of the group's name lay in a high school student contingent assigned to work in the cafeteria ("the kids that weren't into athletics"). I wasn't far wrong in guessing that it sounded like a catering firm for high schools; either that or sex trade camp followers for the military (but, no, wait, that was Joy Division).

Chapman is a breezy fellow with a band that has patiently slogged it out in the rock 'n' roll toilets of Los Angeles for the past several years. Now, their brand of altered retro-pop may get a boost from their second album, "Principals of Electronic Circuitry," being released Sept. 25 on their own label, Squid vs. Whale.

"We're all happy with the album," says Chapman. "It's been kicking around for two years, so [we're well practiced]. We know we have a lot of playing and promoting to do. The second album is the same sensibility as the first, only the fast songs are faster, the slow songs are slower. It's a little more refined; the corners are sharpened."

[One in a series highlighting new music by Los Angeles bands:]

On its first album two years ago, the Prix gave us a collection of two-days-away-from-a-razor power pop that displayed quite a bit of muscle and maybe a little moxie, not to mention a kinship with decades of artists who honed their hooks in a garage. If "Frix the Prix" got only a modest reception, it might have been because the Prix never bothered to slather its retro feel in eight layers of irony.

"St. Domino," the new EP from the quartet, expands its palette considerably, with touches of glam and new wave seeping into six rollicking songs recorded at Red Rockets Glare studio with Raymond Richards and Dan Long. You might even hear a little Smiths along with the quartet's frenetic piano lines and harmonies. The Prix (Cashew Von Harding, Blake Jordan, Zach Ziegler and Stephen Mills) are the resident band this month at club Kiss or Kill (recently moved to Wednesday nights at El Cid). This week, they celebrate the release of "St. Domino" at Kiss or Kill with support from Star No Star, the Power Cords and Service Group.

||| Download "The Chevalier."

Photo of the Prix by Sterling Andrews. [Thanks to reader A. Martinez for the reminder.]

[This blog has been silent for a couple days, and one e-mailer even suggested I had run off and joined the Warped Tour. Hey, I didn't like Paramore that much. No, this little digital portal suffered because I was on jury duty, which pushed my day job into a night job and pushed the blogging into ... well, you get the idea. Silly me for thinking I'd have time to squeeze in a blog post, or even get away to see the Klaxons on Tuesday night. The judge was kind of a rock star, even if he threatened anybody who dared to use his iPod in the courtroom. So here's a little song I like, with some more to come:]

Mendocino-based singer-songwriter Chrisopher Blue has gotten his first name, which has no "t," misspelled all over the West Coast. I'm here to apologize for careless typists everywhere, and to tell you that his album "Room Tones" is perfect rainy-day listening. Well, if it ever rained here. Blue -- who used to play in a band with Duff McKagan and actually almost quit music if not for words of encouragement from Mark Lanegan -- is in town for a couple shows this weekend. Maybe it'll cloud up.

||| See Chrisopher Blue performs Saturday at Room 5 on Fairfax and Sunday at Tangier in Los Feliz.

||| Download: "Good Time Baby" as performed live on Seattle's KEXP-FM.

Thursday, July 12

What a night for shows: Patrick Park and Emma Burgess play Spaceland; Dr. Dog and the Delta Spirit hold forth at the Echo; the Little Ones play the Indie 103.1 bash at the Hammer Museum (last week's with Great Northern was pretty swell, I hear); Everest headlines the Silverlake Lounge; the Sharp Things bring their sharp orchestral pop to the Mint; and the Front and the Monolators are among the band's playing a Rock Insider event at the Scene in Glendale.

[Ears Wide Open is an occasional series highlighting L.A. bands and their music:]

Six guys, six sensibilties -- and "an anything-goes type of mentality," singer-instrumentalist Tommy Valencia says. You're not getting an album when you happen upon "TOCA," the debut from the L.A. band of that name. You're getting paraded through every department of your mental record store. It's not so much genre-bending as it is genre-hopping. The album quick-cuts between rock to jazz to reggae to pop to hip-hop to punk.

It might all seem a bit contrived, if the songs -- the work of musicians with impressive resumes as collaborators and session men -- didn't reflect such a passion for those excursions. Among the guests on the record (which was released in May) are the likes of Aceyalone, Pigeon John and Busdriver. What TOCA members Xinxo (Danny Rodriguez), Danny Levin, Max Heath, Valencia and brothers Ceschi and David Ramos have produced is a collection that's bound to land a track or two or your iPod. Maybe even this one:

Download: "Liar."  Photo courtesy of TOCA.

And here's the video (featuring Pigeon John) for that song:

I know, the headline sounds like some kind of Blue Light Special. But take it literally -- thanks to KCRW-FM, you can download the new single off the Greyboy Allstars' album "What Happened to Television?" Oh ... (inserting my best announcer's voice) ... if you act now.

The song is the killer cover of "How Glad I Am," which features vocals by the Living Sisters -- the trio of L.A. women who are estimable artists in their own right, Eleni Mandell, Inara George and Becky Stark.

Have at it: "How Glad I Am."

[Contributor Casey Dolan unearths a gem:]

Chicago singer-songwriter David Vandervelde was only 19 three years ago when he penned and recorded "Nothin' No," a slow-drag bang-your-header. It's only now being pushed as the second single from his debut album on Secretly Canadian, "The Moonstation House Band." Took a while. Ex-Wilco guitarist, Jay Bennett, co-wrote the tune and plays bass, but Vandervelde handles all the other chores, including production. There's a wonderful sense of crazy youthful abandon in the track, from Vandervelde's reedy whine to the hemorrhaging tubes in the amps (electric Neil Young fans, take note!). This is a song that demands to be played loud.

||| Download: "Nothin' No"

||| Vandervelde hits L.A. on July 13 for a show at Spaceland.

[Contributor Casey Dolan suffered an anxiety attack watching this video:]

The first video from Unkle's new album, "War Stories" (due July 24) is bound to get viewers feeling a bit constricted around the chest. Ian Astbury, on hiatus from resurrecting the ghost of Jim Morrison, sings the song "Burn My Shadow" as actor Goran Visjnic ("ER" and "Welcome to Sarajevo") wakes up in his boozy post-disaster flat to discover that he has a bit of a problem and not much time to solve it. Director Miguel Sapochnik, who previously worked as a storyboard artist for the films "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Winter Guest," guides us to an explosive climax in this compelling video. David Cronenberg would be proud.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]

Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.

||| Listen to "The Man."

Photo from Dr. Cornel West

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

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Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

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More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

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Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

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Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

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Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

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Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

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And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

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Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

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Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

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I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

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Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

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Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

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Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Darker My Love album available for free download

L.A.'s Dangerbird Records, its thumbs in its suspenders after being nominated for alternative label of the year by trade 'zine Radio and Records, is offering a slew of free downloads. Click here to download Darker My Love's 2006 debut album in its entirety, as well as four tracks from Dappled Cities (a three-song EP and a Loving Hands remix of "Fire Fire Fire.")

Speaking of Darker My Love, the psych-rock quartet is in the studio with producer Dave Cooley working on a follow-up (targeted for release next summer) to that 2006 disc. A tour with the Warlocks is planned -- and maybe a couple dates on a big tour. Stay tuned.

Foreign Born got a little tube time Tuesday night, and as television cameos go, this one, on the new NBC show "Chuck," was pretty killer. The L.A. quartet, whose album "On the Wing Now" just came out on Dim Mak, is giving away a free download (for today only) to celebrate. (If I'm reading the storyline correctly, the blonde is a CIA agent charged with protecting her nerdy date. Go nerds!)

||| See Foreign Born this weekend at the Swerve Festival.

||| Download: "Into Your Dream."

[One in a series designed to keep one finger on the pulse of the local music scene and the other on the "download" button:]

 

The Hectors have a sense of humor to go along with their pop chops, which is only natural when you consider the L.A. quartet has a boyfriend-girlfriend songwriting team, influences ranging from the syrupy to Fugazi and a drummer who wanted to name the band the Lollipop Guild.

They've done an interview (of sorts) to promote today's release of their second EP, "Sometimes They Collide." Watch it here and take notes.

"It's amazing what we don't have in common," singer-guitarist Corinne Dinner says of the foursome that began in songwriting and recording lessons with beau Jim Saunders (bass) and expanded to include Robert Bonilla (guitar) and Erik Greene (drums). "The EP has a little bit of everything, from hooks to sludge."

It has the poppy "Cold Star" (reminds me of Letters to Cleo), an anxious ditty called "Carol and Sanford" -- "about a really shy Bonnie and Clyde," Dinner says -- and the brooding "I Drove All the Way From Bridgeport to Make It With You," a line lifted from the Woody Allen movie "Stardust Memories." The latter song was also on the Hectors' first EP, which the band isn't sharing anymore, because, well, "none of us were very happy with it."

They're in a better mood now. They will celebrate "Sometimes They Collide" with a show tonight.

||| See the Hectors, along with Radars to the Sky and Tigers Can Bite You, as part of the "Let's Independent" one-year anniversary bill tonight at Boardners. It's a free show presented by local blog Radio Free Silver Lake.

||| Download: "Proof of Sale."

Division Day, the L.A. indie-rock quartet whose album "Beartrap Island" is being re-released (on iTunes today, and in stores on Oct. 2), is offering a free remix or cover song every Tuesday for eight weeks. It's nice of them, considering what they've been through with this album; after the foursome self-released it last year, they was signed to a start-up label that planned to issue "Beartrap" last spring. But the start-up label never quite started up.

Enter L.A. imprint Eenie Meenie, home to Great Northern, Irving and Goldenboy, among others. The label has signed Division Day, and now the remastered album -- with two new tracks -- is on the way.

||| Download the band's cover of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence." Then: the Tandemoro remix of the album track "Ricky." And then: the band's cover of Sunny Day Real Estate's "Every Shining Time You Arrive."

||| See Division Day perform at the Echo on Oct. 2.

Touts for Thursday, Sept. 20

Imagine Dylan having to fight his way out of an Irish bar: That's Ike Reilly's music. The Chicago-area troubadour hits town with his band the Ike Reilly Assassination for a gig at Spaceland tonight behind its new release, "We Belong to the Staggering Evening." Reilly played solo earlier this summer as support for Tom Morello on the latter's Nightwatchman tour. Recommended if you like barroom poets.

||| Download: "When Irish Eyes Are Burning."

Also: This little gig at the Hollywood Bowl tonight is apparently the show of the year.

And also: The New Pornographers, with Lavender Diamond opening, play the Fonda Theatre, and it's not sold out. ... The Airborne Toxic Event joins Maxeen for a show at Costa Mesa's Detroit Bar. ... Film School has a free show at Amoeba at 7. ... And Hello Stranger greets the crowd at Filter's Revenge of the Sunset Strip night at the Roxy.

[Another installment in our locally famous local-music awareness program:]

Don't be deceived by the religious connotations in their band name -- the Stevenson Ranch Davidians aren't cultists. "It's very tongue-in-cheek," singer-guitarist Dwayne Seagraves says, "but people don't always get it. Some people think we're a religious band."

The Davidians -- who are indeed from the Santa Clarita Valley development Stevenson Ranch -- do have their devotions, however. On "Psalms, Hymns & Spiritual Songs," their self-released album from last year, the quartet visits the altar of Britpop as rendered by the likes of Travis, the Verve and Blur, not to mention the pop-psych pioneers of the '60s. The Davidians nurture their version of that sound with songs that are patiently paced, gently couched in reverb and simple in lyrical approach.

Seagraves and band mates Jessica Latiolait, Bryan Showalter and Cary Chafin are already writing songs for a follow-up to "Psalms," which was recorded in Raymond Richards' Red Rockets Glare studio in Rancho Park. The album has been picked up by a European indie label for distribution, so the foursome hopes to tour there later this year.

||| Stevenson Ranch Davidians, with the Black Pine among the supporting acts, perform Wednesday night at the Echo.

||| Download: "Beginnings and Ends."

"Hideout," the new album by Film School, isn't out until Sept. 11, but it's already creating a buzz from those who've heard its buzzing guitars and reverb-heavy dynamics. Its the kind of album that dares you to roll up your car windows, crank it and be swallowed whole. If the band's debut album was a bit hit-and-miss, there  are precious few misfires on this one.

Greg Bertens (the artist formerly known as Krayg Burton, at least on the first album) and mates have relocated to Los Angeles from San Francisco. Let's see, that makes tonight's show at Spaceland a hometown gig, then. Brilliant.

||| Download "Lectric."

||| Brooklyn's Pela is an opening act for that show tonight. It will be drummer Tomislav Zovich's final tour with the band.

Touts for Tuesday, Aug. 14

Oh, what a night: The Magic Numbers and the Little Ones bring their feel-good pop to the El Rey. ... Dengue Fever rocks the Knitting Factory. ... The One AM Radio looses his gauzy bedroom pop on the Echo. ... Buckfast plies its Anglophile rock at the Mint. ... Eulogies, the new trio assembled by singer-songwriter Peter Walker, plays a set at the Troubadour opening for rockers the Wildbirds. ... The Finches and the Coral Sea entertain at Bordello. ... And Aushua plays the early set at the Silverlake Lounge.

Photo by Marla Aufmuth

[This installment of our local music series is brought to you by arts & crafts:]

An EP arrived this week in a colorful, hand-decorated cardboard sleeve (inscribed "#014"), a sure sign that either the music inside is really something special, or that somebody has too much time on her hands. I can't speak to the latter, but the five tunes on "EP 01" by Los Angeles quartet Hello Dragon are stickier than Velcro -- slightly spaced-out pop anthems that reflect the band's stated fascination with "animal rights, quantum mechanics, El Chupacabra, vacuum tubes and cheap-sounding synthesizers." There's even a tuneful nod to "Stephen Hawking."

Hello Dragon -- the music and DIY sleeves -- is the handiwork of Chris Zerby and Julie Chadwick, who were the principals in the edgy Boston power-pop band Helicopter Helicopter. They brought their crunchy guitars and boy-girl vocals to L.A. a couple years ago, but have now started over, having joined forces with fellow Beantown expats Josh Pickering (keyboards) and Sean Burgess (drums).

You can order an EP -- and download some songs -- here. Hello Dragon has only played three shows thus far; a recent one was postponed because Chadwick suffered a hand laceration in a kitchen mishap. But look for a gig in September, Zerby says, along with some more crafty packaging: "We haven't broken out the glitter glue yet, but you never know."

||| Get started right here by downloading "Birds of Prey."

Photo of Zerby and Chadwick by Josh Pickering.

[Another installment in our series highlighting local music:]

The Red Button presses all the right buttons for fans of pure pop. Its album, "She's About to Cross My Mind," sounds as if it should be crackling out of an AM radio, the tunes of some youngsters angling to be the next Fab Four. Yes, it's hopelessly retro, right down to its very mod sleeve, but the record's easy psychedelia and friendly Merseybeat go down easily. Even the Little Steven's Underground Garage radio show tabbed "Cruel Girl" as its No. 1 song last week.

It's no surprise that the duo pushing all the buttons here are veteran songwriters Seth Swirsky and Mike Ruekberg. Swirsky, a longtime songwriter-for-hire who made his first solo album a couple years ago, is also an artist and well-known collector of sports memorabilia. Ruekberg was the driving force behind the Minneapolis pop band Rex Daisy. Together they explore their love of all things jangly, harmonic and Beatles.

||| The Red Button perform as an acoustic duo tonight at Spaceland as part of the 10th annual International Pop Overthrow festival. Astra Heights and the Prix are among the other bands on the bill.

||| Download: "Cruel Girl."

Photo of Mike Ruekberg, left, and Seth Swirsky courtesy of Luck Media.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan with his dollop of pop:]

Dylan Hay Chapman, lead singer-songwriter for local popsters Service Group, tells me that the origin of the group's name lay in a high school student contingent assigned to work in the cafeteria ("the kids that weren't into athletics"). I wasn't far wrong in guessing that it sounded like a catering firm for high schools; either that or sex trade camp followers for the military (but, no, wait, that was Joy Division).

Chapman is a breezy fellow with a band that has patiently slogged it out in the rock 'n' roll toilets of Los Angeles for the past several years. Now, their brand of altered retro-pop may get a boost from their second album, "Principals of Electronic Circuitry," being released Sept. 25 on their own label, Squid vs. Whale.

"We're all happy with the album," says Chapman. "It's been kicking around for two years, so [we're well practiced]. We know we have a lot of playing and promoting to do. The second album is the same sensibility as the first, only the fast songs are faster, the slow songs are slower. It's a little more refined; the corners are sharpened."

[One in a series highlighting new music by Los Angeles bands:]

On its first album two years ago, the Prix gave us a collection of two-days-away-from-a-razor power pop that displayed quite a bit of muscle and maybe a little moxie, not to mention a kinship with decades of artists who honed their hooks in a garage. If "Frix the Prix" got only a modest reception, it might have been because the Prix never bothered to slather its retro feel in eight layers of irony.

"St. Domino," the new EP from the quartet, expands its palette considerably, with touches of glam and new wave seeping into six rollicking songs recorded at Red Rockets Glare studio with Raymond Richards and Dan Long. You might even hear a little Smiths along with the quartet's frenetic piano lines and harmonies. The Prix (Cashew Von Harding, Blake Jordan, Zach Ziegler and Stephen Mills) are the resident band this month at club Kiss or Kill (recently moved to Wednesday nights at El Cid). This week, they celebrate the release of "St. Domino" at Kiss or Kill with support from Star No Star, the Power Cords and Service Group.

||| Download "The Chevalier."

Photo of the Prix by Sterling Andrews. [Thanks to reader A. Martinez for the reminder.]

[This blog has been silent for a couple days, and one e-mailer even suggested I had run off and joined the Warped Tour. Hey, I didn't like Paramore that much. No, this little digital portal suffered because I was on jury duty, which pushed my day job into a night job and pushed the blogging into ... well, you get the idea. Silly me for thinking I'd have time to squeeze in a blog post, or even get away to see the Klaxons on Tuesday night. The judge was kind of a rock star, even if he threatened anybody who dared to use his iPod in the courtroom. So here's a little song I like, with some more to come:]

Mendocino-based singer-songwriter Chrisopher Blue has gotten his first name, which has no "t," misspelled all over the West Coast. I'm here to apologize for careless typists everywhere, and to tell you that his album "Room Tones" is perfect rainy-day listening. Well, if it ever rained here. Blue -- who used to play in a band with Duff McKagan and actually almost quit music if not for words of encouragement from Mark Lanegan -- is in town for a couple shows this weekend. Maybe it'll cloud up.

||| See Chrisopher Blue performs Saturday at Room 5 on Fairfax and Sunday at Tangier in Los Feliz.

||| Download: "Good Time Baby" as performed live on Seattle's KEXP-FM.

Thursday, July 12

What a night for shows: Patrick Park and Emma Burgess play Spaceland; Dr. Dog and the Delta Spirit hold forth at the Echo; the Little Ones play the Indie 103.1 bash at the Hammer Museum (last week's with Great Northern was pretty swell, I hear); Everest headlines the Silverlake Lounge; the Sharp Things bring their sharp orchestral pop to the Mint; and the Front and the Monolators are among the band's playing a Rock Insider event at the Scene in Glendale.

[Ears Wide Open is an occasional series highlighting L.A. bands and their music:]

Six guys, six sensibilties -- and "an anything-goes type of mentality," singer-instrumentalist Tommy Valencia says. You're not getting an album when you happen upon "TOCA," the debut from the L.A. band of that name. You're getting paraded through every department of your mental record store. It's not so much genre-bending as it is genre-hopping. The album quick-cuts between rock to jazz to reggae to pop to hip-hop to punk.

It might all seem a bit contrived, if the songs -- the work of musicians with impressive resumes as collaborators and session men -- didn't reflect such a passion for those excursions. Among the guests on the record (which was released in May) are the likes of Aceyalone, Pigeon John and Busdriver. What TOCA members Xinxo (Danny Rodriguez), Danny Levin, Max Heath, Valencia and brothers Ceschi and David Ramos have produced is a collection that's bound to land a track or two or your iPod. Maybe even this one:

Download: "Liar."  Photo courtesy of TOCA.

And here's the video (featuring Pigeon John) for that song:

I know, the headline sounds like some kind of Blue Light Special. But take it literally -- thanks to KCRW-FM, you can download the new single off the Greyboy Allstars' album "What Happened to Television?" Oh ... (inserting my best announcer's voice) ... if you act now.

The song is the killer cover of "How Glad I Am," which features vocals by the Living Sisters -- the trio of L.A. women who are estimable artists in their own right, Eleni Mandell, Inara George and Becky Stark.

Have at it: "How Glad I Am."

[Contributor Casey Dolan unearths a gem:]

Chicago singer-songwriter David Vandervelde was only 19 three years ago when he penned and recorded "Nothin' No," a slow-drag bang-your-header. It's only now being pushed as the second single from his debut album on Secretly Canadian, "The Moonstation House Band." Took a while. Ex-Wilco guitarist, Jay Bennett, co-wrote the tune and plays bass, but Vandervelde handles all the other chores, including production. There's a wonderful sense of crazy youthful abandon in the track, from Vandervelde's reedy whine to the hemorrhaging tubes in the amps (electric Neil Young fans, take note!). This is a song that demands to be played loud.

||| Download: "Nothin' No"

||| Vandervelde hits L.A. on July 13 for a show at Spaceland.

[Contributor Casey Dolan suffered an anxiety attack watching this video:]

The first video from Unkle's new album, "War Stories" (due July 24) is bound to get viewers feeling a bit constricted around the chest. Ian Astbury, on hiatus from resurrecting the ghost of Jim Morrison, sings the song "Burn My Shadow" as actor Goran Visjnic ("ER" and "Welcome to Sarajevo") wakes up in his boozy post-disaster flat to discover that he has a bit of a problem and not much time to solve it. Director Miguel Sapochnik, who previously worked as a storyboard artist for the films "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Winter Guest," guides us to an explosive climax in this compelling video. David Cronenberg would be proud.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]

Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.

||| Listen to "The Man."

Photo from Dr. Cornel West

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

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Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

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More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

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Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

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Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

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Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

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Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

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And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

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Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

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Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

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I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

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Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

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Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

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Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Foreign Born offers up free download to mark TV debut

Foreign Born got a little tube time Tuesday night, and as television cameos go, this one, on the new NBC show "Chuck," was pretty killer. The L.A. quartet, whose album "On the Wing Now" just came out on Dim Mak, is giving away a free download (for today only) to celebrate. (If I'm reading the storyline correctly, the blonde is a CIA agent charged with protecting her nerdy date. Go nerds!)

||| See Foreign Born this weekend at the Swerve Festival.

||| Download: "Into Your Dream."

[One in a series designed to keep one finger on the pulse of the local music scene and the other on the "download" button:]

 

The Hectors have a sense of humor to go along with their pop chops, which is only natural when you consider the L.A. quartet has a boyfriend-girlfriend songwriting team, influences ranging from the syrupy to Fugazi and a drummer who wanted to name the band the Lollipop Guild.

They've done an interview (of sorts) to promote today's release of their second EP, "Sometimes They Collide." Watch it here and take notes.

"It's amazing what we don't have in common," singer-guitarist Corinne Dinner says of the foursome that began in songwriting and recording lessons with beau Jim Saunders (bass) and expanded to include Robert Bonilla (guitar) and Erik Greene (drums). "The EP has a little bit of everything, from hooks to sludge."

It has the poppy "Cold Star" (reminds me of Letters to Cleo), an anxious ditty called "Carol and Sanford" -- "about a really shy Bonnie and Clyde," Dinner says -- and the brooding "I Drove All the Way From Bridgeport to Make It With You," a line lifted from the Woody Allen movie "Stardust Memories." The latter song was also on the Hectors' first EP, which the band isn't sharing anymore, because, well, "none of us were very happy with it."

They're in a better mood now. They will celebrate "Sometimes They Collide" with a show tonight.

||| See the Hectors, along with Radars to the Sky and Tigers Can Bite You, as part of the "Let's Independent" one-year anniversary bill tonight at Boardners. It's a free show presented by local blog Radio Free Silver Lake.

||| Download: "Proof of Sale."

Division Day, the L.A. indie-rock quartet whose album "Beartrap Island" is being re-released (on iTunes today, and in stores on Oct. 2), is offering a free remix or cover song every Tuesday for eight weeks. It's nice of them, considering what they've been through with this album; after the foursome self-released it last year, they was signed to a start-up label that planned to issue "Beartrap" last spring. But the start-up label never quite started up.

Enter L.A. imprint Eenie Meenie, home to Great Northern, Irving and Goldenboy, among others. The label has signed Division Day, and now the remastered album -- with two new tracks -- is on the way.

||| Download the band's cover of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence." Then: the Tandemoro remix of the album track "Ricky." And then: the band's cover of Sunny Day Real Estate's "Every Shining Time You Arrive."

||| See Division Day perform at the Echo on Oct. 2.

Touts for Thursday, Sept. 20

Imagine Dylan having to fight his way out of an Irish bar: That's Ike Reilly's music. The Chicago-area troubadour hits town with his band the Ike Reilly Assassination for a gig at Spaceland tonight behind its new release, "We Belong to the Staggering Evening." Reilly played solo earlier this summer as support for Tom Morello on the latter's Nightwatchman tour. Recommended if you like barroom poets.

||| Download: "When Irish Eyes Are Burning."

Also: This little gig at the Hollywood Bowl tonight is apparently the show of the year.

And also: The New Pornographers, with Lavender Diamond opening, play the Fonda Theatre, and it's not sold out. ... The Airborne Toxic Event joins Maxeen for a show at Costa Mesa's Detroit Bar. ... Film School has a free show at Amoeba at 7. ... And Hello Stranger greets the crowd at Filter's Revenge of the Sunset Strip night at the Roxy.

[Another installment in our locally famous local-music awareness program:]

Don't be deceived by the religious connotations in their band name -- the Stevenson Ranch Davidians aren't cultists. "It's very tongue-in-cheek," singer-guitarist Dwayne Seagraves says, "but people don't always get it. Some people think we're a religious band."

The Davidians -- who are indeed from the Santa Clarita Valley development Stevenson Ranch -- do have their devotions, however. On "Psalms, Hymns & Spiritual Songs," their self-released album from last year, the quartet visits the altar of Britpop as rendered by the likes of Travis, the Verve and Blur, not to mention the pop-psych pioneers of the '60s. The Davidians nurture their version of that sound with songs that are patiently paced, gently couched in reverb and simple in lyrical approach.

Seagraves and band mates Jessica Latiolait, Bryan Showalter and Cary Chafin are already writing songs for a follow-up to "Psalms," which was recorded in Raymond Richards' Red Rockets Glare studio in Rancho Park. The album has been picked up by a European indie label for distribution, so the foursome hopes to tour there later this year.

||| Stevenson Ranch Davidians, with the Black Pine among the supporting acts, perform Wednesday night at the Echo.

||| Download: "Beginnings and Ends."

"Hideout," the new album by Film School, isn't out until Sept. 11, but it's already creating a buzz from those who've heard its buzzing guitars and reverb-heavy dynamics. Its the kind of album that dares you to roll up your car windows, crank it and be swallowed whole. If the band's debut album was a bit hit-and-miss, there  are precious few misfires on this one.

Greg Bertens (the artist formerly known as Krayg Burton, at least on the first album) and mates have relocated to Los Angeles from San Francisco. Let's see, that makes tonight's show at Spaceland a hometown gig, then. Brilliant.

||| Download "Lectric."

||| Brooklyn's Pela is an opening act for that show tonight. It will be drummer Tomislav Zovich's final tour with the band.

Touts for Tuesday, Aug. 14

Oh, what a night: The Magic Numbers and the Little Ones bring their feel-good pop to the El Rey. ... Dengue Fever rocks the Knitting Factory. ... The One AM Radio looses his gauzy bedroom pop on the Echo. ... Buckfast plies its Anglophile rock at the Mint. ... Eulogies, the new trio assembled by singer-songwriter Peter Walker, plays a set at the Troubadour opening for rockers the Wildbirds. ... The Finches and the Coral Sea entertain at Bordello. ... And Aushua plays the early set at the Silverlake Lounge.

Photo by Marla Aufmuth

[This installment of our local music series is brought to you by arts & crafts:]

An EP arrived this week in a colorful, hand-decorated cardboard sleeve (inscribed "#014"), a sure sign that either the music inside is really something special, or that somebody has too much time on her hands. I can't speak to the latter, but the five tunes on "EP 01" by Los Angeles quartet Hello Dragon are stickier than Velcro -- slightly spaced-out pop anthems that reflect the band's stated fascination with "animal rights, quantum mechanics, El Chupacabra, vacuum tubes and cheap-sounding synthesizers." There's even a tuneful nod to "Stephen Hawking."

Hello Dragon -- the music and DIY sleeves -- is the handiwork of Chris Zerby and Julie Chadwick, who were the principals in the edgy Boston power-pop band Helicopter Helicopter. They brought their crunchy guitars and boy-girl vocals to L.A. a couple years ago, but have now started over, having joined forces with fellow Beantown expats Josh Pickering (keyboards) and Sean Burgess (drums).

You can order an EP -- and download some songs -- here. Hello Dragon has only played three shows thus far; a recent one was postponed because Chadwick suffered a hand laceration in a kitchen mishap. But look for a gig in September, Zerby says, along with some more crafty packaging: "We haven't broken out the glitter glue yet, but you never know."

||| Get started right here by downloading "Birds of Prey."

Photo of Zerby and Chadwick by Josh Pickering.

[Another installment in our series highlighting local music:]

The Red Button presses all the right buttons for fans of pure pop. Its album, "She's About to Cross My Mind," sounds as if it should be crackling out of an AM radio, the tunes of some youngsters angling to be the next Fab Four. Yes, it's hopelessly retro, right down to its very mod sleeve, but the record's easy psychedelia and friendly Merseybeat go down easily. Even the Little Steven's Underground Garage radio show tabbed "Cruel Girl" as its No. 1 song last week.

It's no surprise that the duo pushing all the buttons here are veteran songwriters Seth Swirsky and Mike Ruekberg. Swirsky, a longtime songwriter-for-hire who made his first solo album a couple years ago, is also an artist and well-known collector of sports memorabilia. Ruekberg was the driving force behind the Minneapolis pop band Rex Daisy. Together they explore their love of all things jangly, harmonic and Beatles.

||| The Red Button perform as an acoustic duo tonight at Spaceland as part of the 10th annual International Pop Overthrow festival. Astra Heights and the Prix are among the other bands on the bill.

||| Download: "Cruel Girl."

Photo of Mike Ruekberg, left, and Seth Swirsky courtesy of Luck Media.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan with his dollop of pop:]

Dylan Hay Chapman, lead singer-songwriter for local popsters Service Group, tells me that the origin of the group's name lay in a high school student contingent assigned to work in the cafeteria ("the kids that weren't into athletics"). I wasn't far wrong in guessing that it sounded like a catering firm for high schools; either that or sex trade camp followers for the military (but, no, wait, that was Joy Division).

Chapman is a breezy fellow with a band that has patiently slogged it out in the rock 'n' roll toilets of Los Angeles for the past several years. Now, their brand of altered retro-pop may get a boost from their second album, "Principals of Electronic Circuitry," being released Sept. 25 on their own label, Squid vs. Whale.

"We're all happy with the album," says Chapman. "It's been kicking around for two years, so [we're well practiced]. We know we have a lot of playing and promoting to do. The second album is the same sensibility as the first, only the fast songs are faster, the slow songs are slower. It's a little more refined; the corners are sharpened."

[One in a series highlighting new music by Los Angeles bands:]

On its first album two years ago, the Prix gave us a collection of two-days-away-from-a-razor power pop that displayed quite a bit of muscle and maybe a little moxie, not to mention a kinship with decades of artists who honed their hooks in a garage. If "Frix the Prix" got only a modest reception, it might have been because the Prix never bothered to slather its retro feel in eight layers of irony.

"St. Domino," the new EP from the quartet, expands its palette considerably, with touches of glam and new wave seeping into six rollicking songs recorded at Red Rockets Glare studio with Raymond Richards and Dan Long. You might even hear a little Smiths along with the quartet's frenetic piano lines and harmonies. The Prix (Cashew Von Harding, Blake Jordan, Zach Ziegler and Stephen Mills) are the resident band this month at club Kiss or Kill (recently moved to Wednesday nights at El Cid). This week, they celebrate the release of "St. Domino" at Kiss or Kill with support from Star No Star, the Power Cords and Service Group.

||| Download "The Chevalier."

Photo of the Prix by Sterling Andrews. [Thanks to reader A. Martinez for the reminder.]

[This blog has been silent for a couple days, and one e-mailer even suggested I had run off and joined the Warped Tour. Hey, I didn't like Paramore that much. No, this little digital portal suffered because I was on jury duty, which pushed my day job into a night job and pushed the blogging into ... well, you get the idea. Silly me for thinking I'd have time to squeeze in a blog post, or even get away to see the Klaxons on Tuesday night. The judge was kind of a rock star, even if he threatened anybody who dared to use his iPod in the courtroom. So here's a little song I like, with some more to come:]

Mendocino-based singer-songwriter Chrisopher Blue has gotten his first name, which has no "t," misspelled all over the West Coast. I'm here to apologize for careless typists everywhere, and to tell you that his album "Room Tones" is perfect rainy-day listening. Well, if it ever rained here. Blue -- who used to play in a band with Duff McKagan and actually almost quit music if not for words of encouragement from Mark Lanegan -- is in town for a couple shows this weekend. Maybe it'll cloud up.

||| See Chrisopher Blue performs Saturday at Room 5 on Fairfax and Sunday at Tangier in Los Feliz.

||| Download: "Good Time Baby" as performed live on Seattle's KEXP-FM.

Thursday, July 12

What a night for shows: Patrick Park and Emma Burgess play Spaceland; Dr. Dog and the Delta Spirit hold forth at the Echo; the Little Ones play the Indie 103.1 bash at the Hammer Museum (last week's with Great Northern was pretty swell, I hear); Everest headlines the Silverlake Lounge; the Sharp Things bring their sharp orchestral pop to the Mint; and the Front and the Monolators are among the band's playing a Rock Insider event at the Scene in Glendale.

[Ears Wide Open is an occasional series highlighting L.A. bands and their music:]

Six guys, six sensibilties -- and "an anything-goes type of mentality," singer-instrumentalist Tommy Valencia says. You're not getting an album when you happen upon "TOCA," the debut from the L.A. band of that name. You're getting paraded through every department of your mental record store. It's not so much genre-bending as it is genre-hopping. The album quick-cuts between rock to jazz to reggae to pop to hip-hop to punk.

It might all seem a bit contrived, if the songs -- the work of musicians with impressive resumes as collaborators and session men -- didn't reflect such a passion for those excursions. Among the guests on the record (which was released in May) are the likes of Aceyalone, Pigeon John and Busdriver. What TOCA members Xinxo (Danny Rodriguez), Danny Levin, Max Heath, Valencia and brothers Ceschi and David Ramos have produced is a collection that's bound to land a track or two or your iPod. Maybe even this one:

Download: "Liar."  Photo courtesy of TOCA.

And here's the video (featuring Pigeon John) for that song:

I know, the headline sounds like some kind of Blue Light Special. But take it literally -- thanks to KCRW-FM, you can download the new single off the Greyboy Allstars' album "What Happened to Television?" Oh ... (inserting my best announcer's voice) ... if you act now.

The song is the killer cover of "How Glad I Am," which features vocals by the Living Sisters -- the trio of L.A. women who are estimable artists in their own right, Eleni Mandell, Inara George and Becky Stark.

Have at it: "How Glad I Am."

[Contributor Casey Dolan unearths a gem:]

Chicago singer-songwriter David Vandervelde was only 19 three years ago when he penned and recorded "Nothin' No," a slow-drag bang-your-header. It's only now being pushed as the second single from his debut album on Secretly Canadian, "The Moonstation House Band." Took a while. Ex-Wilco guitarist, Jay Bennett, co-wrote the tune and plays bass, but Vandervelde handles all the other chores, including production. There's a wonderful sense of crazy youthful abandon in the track, from Vandervelde's reedy whine to the hemorrhaging tubes in the amps (electric Neil Young fans, take note!). This is a song that demands to be played loud.

||| Download: "Nothin' No"

||| Vandervelde hits L.A. on July 13 for a show at Spaceland.

[Contributor Casey Dolan suffered an anxiety attack watching this video:]

The first video from Unkle's new album, "War Stories" (due July 24) is bound to get viewers feeling a bit constricted around the chest. Ian Astbury, on hiatus from resurrecting the ghost of Jim Morrison, sings the song "Burn My Shadow" as actor Goran Visjnic ("ER" and "Welcome to Sarajevo") wakes up in his boozy post-disaster flat to discover that he has a bit of a problem and not much time to solve it. Director Miguel Sapochnik, who previously worked as a storyboard artist for the films "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Winter Guest," guides us to an explosive climax in this compelling video. David Cronenberg would be proud.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]

Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.

||| Listen to "The Man."

Photo from Dr. Cornel West

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

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Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

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More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

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Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

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Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

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Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

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Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

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And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

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Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

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Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

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I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

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Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

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Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

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Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Ears Wide Open: The Hectors' smart, edgy pop

[One in a series designed to keep one finger on the pulse of the local music scene and the other on the "download" button:]

 

The Hectors have a sense of humor to go along with their pop chops, which is only natural when you consider the L.A. quartet has a boyfriend-girlfriend songwriting team, influences ranging from the syrupy to Fugazi and a drummer who wanted to name the band the Lollipop Guild.

They've done an interview (of sorts) to promote today's release of their second EP, "Sometimes They Collide." Watch it here and take notes.

"It's amazing what we don't have in common," singer-guitarist Corinne Dinner says of the foursome that began in songwriting and recording lessons with beau Jim Saunders (bass) and expanded to include Robert Bonilla (guitar) and Erik Greene (drums). "The EP has a little bit of everything, from hooks to sludge."

It has the poppy "Cold Star" (reminds me of Letters to Cleo), an anxious ditty called "Carol and Sanford" -- "about a really shy Bonnie and Clyde," Dinner says -- and the brooding "I Drove All the Way From Bridgeport to Make It With You," a line lifted from the Woody Allen movie "Stardust Memories." The latter song was also on the Hectors' first EP, which the band isn't sharing anymore, because, well, "none of us were very happy with it."

They're in a better mood now. They will celebrate "Sometimes They Collide" with a show tonight.

||| See the Hectors, along with Radars to the Sky and Tigers Can Bite You, as part of the "Let's Independent" one-year anniversary bill tonight at Boardners. It's a free show presented by local blog Radio Free Silver Lake.

||| Download: "Proof of Sale."

Division Day, the L.A. indie-rock quartet whose album "Beartrap Island" is being re-released (on iTunes today, and in stores on Oct. 2), is offering a free remix or cover song every Tuesday for eight weeks. It's nice of them, considering what they've been through with this album; after the foursome self-released it last year, they was signed to a start-up label that planned to issue "Beartrap" last spring. But the start-up label never quite started up.

Enter L.A. imprint Eenie Meenie, home to Great Northern, Irving and Goldenboy, among others. The label has signed Division Day, and now the remastered album -- with two new tracks -- is on the way.

||| Download the band's cover of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence." Then: the Tandemoro remix of the album track "Ricky." And then: the band's cover of Sunny Day Real Estate's "Every Shining Time You Arrive."

||| See Division Day perform at the Echo on Oct. 2.

Touts for Thursday, Sept. 20

Imagine Dylan having to fight his way out of an Irish bar: That's Ike Reilly's music. The Chicago-area troubadour hits town with his band the Ike Reilly Assassination for a gig at Spaceland tonight behind its new release, "We Belong to the Staggering Evening." Reilly played solo earlier this summer as support for Tom Morello on the latter's Nightwatchman tour. Recommended if you like barroom poets.

||| Download: "When Irish Eyes Are Burning."

Also: This little gig at the Hollywood Bowl tonight is apparently the show of the year.

And also: The New Pornographers, with Lavender Diamond opening, play the Fonda Theatre, and it's not sold out. ... The Airborne Toxic Event joins Maxeen for a show at Costa Mesa's Detroit Bar. ... Film School has a free show at Amoeba at 7. ... And Hello Stranger greets the crowd at Filter's Revenge of the Sunset Strip night at the Roxy.

[Another installment in our locally famous local-music awareness program:]

Don't be deceived by the religious connotations in their band name -- the Stevenson Ranch Davidians aren't cultists. "It's very tongue-in-cheek," singer-guitarist Dwayne Seagraves says, "but people don't always get it. Some people think we're a religious band."

The Davidians -- who are indeed from the Santa Clarita Valley development Stevenson Ranch -- do have their devotions, however. On "Psalms, Hymns & Spiritual Songs," their self-released album from last year, the quartet visits the altar of Britpop as rendered by the likes of Travis, the Verve and Blur, not to mention the pop-psych pioneers of the '60s. The Davidians nurture their version of that sound with songs that are patiently paced, gently couched in reverb and simple in lyrical approach.

Seagraves and band mates Jessica Latiolait, Bryan Showalter and Cary Chafin are already writing songs for a follow-up to "Psalms," which was recorded in Raymond Richards' Red Rockets Glare studio in Rancho Park. The album has been picked up by a European indie label for distribution, so the foursome hopes to tour there later this year.

||| Stevenson Ranch Davidians, with the Black Pine among the supporting acts, perform Wednesday night at the Echo.

||| Download: "Beginnings and Ends."

"Hideout," the new album by Film School, isn't out until Sept. 11, but it's already creating a buzz from those who've heard its buzzing guitars and reverb-heavy dynamics. Its the kind of album that dares you to roll up your car windows, crank it and be swallowed whole. If the band's debut album was a bit hit-and-miss, there  are precious few misfires on this one.

Greg Bertens (the artist formerly known as Krayg Burton, at least on the first album) and mates have relocated to Los Angeles from San Francisco. Let's see, that makes tonight's show at Spaceland a hometown gig, then. Brilliant.

||| Download "Lectric."

||| Brooklyn's Pela is an opening act for that show tonight. It will be drummer Tomislav Zovich's final tour with the band.

Touts for Tuesday, Aug. 14

Oh, what a night: The Magic Numbers and the Little Ones bring their feel-good pop to the El Rey. ... Dengue Fever rocks the Knitting Factory. ... The One AM Radio looses his gauzy bedroom pop on the Echo. ... Buckfast plies its Anglophile rock at the Mint. ... Eulogies, the new trio assembled by singer-songwriter Peter Walker, plays a set at the Troubadour opening for rockers the Wildbirds. ... The Finches and the Coral Sea entertain at Bordello. ... And Aushua plays the early set at the Silverlake Lounge.

Photo by Marla Aufmuth

[This installment of our local music series is brought to you by arts & crafts:]

An EP arrived this week in a colorful, hand-decorated cardboard sleeve (inscribed "#014"), a sure sign that either the music inside is really something special, or that somebody has too much time on her hands. I can't speak to the latter, but the five tunes on "EP 01" by Los Angeles quartet Hello Dragon are stickier than Velcro -- slightly spaced-out pop anthems that reflect the band's stated fascination with "animal rights, quantum mechanics, El Chupacabra, vacuum tubes and cheap-sounding synthesizers." There's even a tuneful nod to "Stephen Hawking."

Hello Dragon -- the music and DIY sleeves -- is the handiwork of Chris Zerby and Julie Chadwick, who were the principals in the edgy Boston power-pop band Helicopter Helicopter. They brought their crunchy guitars and boy-girl vocals to L.A. a couple years ago, but have now started over, having joined forces with fellow Beantown expats Josh Pickering (keyboards) and Sean Burgess (drums).

You can order an EP -- and download some songs -- here. Hello Dragon has only played three shows thus far; a recent one was postponed because Chadwick suffered a hand laceration in a kitchen mishap. But look for a gig in September, Zerby says, along with some more crafty packaging: "We haven't broken out the glitter glue yet, but you never know."

||| Get started right here by downloading "Birds of Prey."

Photo of Zerby and Chadwick by Josh Pickering.

[Another installment in our series highlighting local music:]

The Red Button presses all the right buttons for fans of pure pop. Its album, "She's About to Cross My Mind," sounds as if it should be crackling out of an AM radio, the tunes of some youngsters angling to be the next Fab Four. Yes, it's hopelessly retro, right down to its very mod sleeve, but the record's easy psychedelia and friendly Merseybeat go down easily. Even the Little Steven's Underground Garage radio show tabbed "Cruel Girl" as its No. 1 song last week.

It's no surprise that the duo pushing all the buttons here are veteran songwriters Seth Swirsky and Mike Ruekberg. Swirsky, a longtime songwriter-for-hire who made his first solo album a couple years ago, is also an artist and well-known collector of sports memorabilia. Ruekberg was the driving force behind the Minneapolis pop band Rex Daisy. Together they explore their love of all things jangly, harmonic and Beatles.

||| The Red Button perform as an acoustic duo tonight at Spaceland as part of the 10th annual International Pop Overthrow festival. Astra Heights and the Prix are among the other bands on the bill.

||| Download: "Cruel Girl."

Photo of Mike Ruekberg, left, and Seth Swirsky courtesy of Luck Media.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan with his dollop of pop:]

Dylan Hay Chapman, lead singer-songwriter for local popsters Service Group, tells me that the origin of the group's name lay in a high school student contingent assigned to work in the cafeteria ("the kids that weren't into athletics"). I wasn't far wrong in guessing that it sounded like a catering firm for high schools; either that or sex trade camp followers for the military (but, no, wait, that was Joy Division).

Chapman is a breezy fellow with a band that has patiently slogged it out in the rock 'n' roll toilets of Los Angeles for the past several years. Now, their brand of altered retro-pop may get a boost from their second album, "Principals of Electronic Circuitry," being released Sept. 25 on their own label, Squid vs. Whale.

"We're all happy with the album," says Chapman. "It's been kicking around for two years, so [we're well practiced]. We know we have a lot of playing and promoting to do. The second album is the same sensibility as the first, only the fast songs are faster, the slow songs are slower. It's a little more refined; the corners are sharpened."

[One in a series highlighting new music by Los Angeles bands:]

On its first album two years ago, the Prix gave us a collection of two-days-away-from-a-razor power pop that displayed quite a bit of muscle and maybe a little moxie, not to mention a kinship with decades of artists who honed their hooks in a garage. If "Frix the Prix" got only a modest reception, it might have been because the Prix never bothered to slather its retro feel in eight layers of irony.

"St. Domino," the new EP from the quartet, expands its palette considerably, with touches of glam and new wave seeping into six rollicking songs recorded at Red Rockets Glare studio with Raymond Richards and Dan Long. You might even hear a little Smiths along with the quartet's frenetic piano lines and harmonies. The Prix (Cashew Von Harding, Blake Jordan, Zach Ziegler and Stephen Mills) are the resident band this month at club Kiss or Kill (recently moved to Wednesday nights at El Cid). This week, they celebrate the release of "St. Domino" at Kiss or Kill with support from Star No Star, the Power Cords and Service Group.

||| Download "The Chevalier."

Photo of the Prix by Sterling Andrews. [Thanks to reader A. Martinez for the reminder.]

[This blog has been silent for a couple days, and one e-mailer even suggested I had run off and joined the Warped Tour. Hey, I didn't like Paramore that much. No, this little digital portal suffered because I was on jury duty, which pushed my day job into a night job and pushed the blogging into ... well, you get the idea. Silly me for thinking I'd have time to squeeze in a blog post, or even get away to see the Klaxons on Tuesday night. The judge was kind of a rock star, even if he threatened anybody who dared to use his iPod in the courtroom. So here's a little song I like, with some more to come:]

Mendocino-based singer-songwriter Chrisopher Blue has gotten his first name, which has no "t," misspelled all over the West Coast. I'm here to apologize for careless typists everywhere, and to tell you that his album "Room Tones" is perfect rainy-day listening. Well, if it ever rained here. Blue -- who used to play in a band with Duff McKagan and actually almost quit music if not for words of encouragement from Mark Lanegan -- is in town for a couple shows this weekend. Maybe it'll cloud up.

||| See Chrisopher Blue performs Saturday at Room 5 on Fairfax and Sunday at Tangier in Los Feliz.

||| Download: "Good Time Baby" as performed live on Seattle's KEXP-FM.

Thursday, July 12

What a night for shows: Patrick Park and Emma Burgess play Spaceland; Dr. Dog and the Delta Spirit hold forth at the Echo; the Little Ones play the Indie 103.1 bash at the Hammer Museum (last week's with Great Northern was pretty swell, I hear); Everest headlines the Silverlake Lounge; the Sharp Things bring their sharp orchestral pop to the Mint; and the Front and the Monolators are among the band's playing a Rock Insider event at the Scene in Glendale.

[Ears Wide Open is an occasional series highlighting L.A. bands and their music:]

Six guys, six sensibilties -- and "an anything-goes type of mentality," singer-instrumentalist Tommy Valencia says. You're not getting an album when you happen upon "TOCA," the debut from the L.A. band of that name. You're getting paraded through every department of your mental record store. It's not so much genre-bending as it is genre-hopping. The album quick-cuts between rock to jazz to reggae to pop to hip-hop to punk.

It might all seem a bit contrived, if the songs -- the work of musicians with impressive resumes as collaborators and session men -- didn't reflect such a passion for those excursions. Among the guests on the record (which was released in May) are the likes of Aceyalone, Pigeon John and Busdriver. What TOCA members Xinxo (Danny Rodriguez), Danny Levin, Max Heath, Valencia and brothers Ceschi and David Ramos have produced is a collection that's bound to land a track or two or your iPod. Maybe even this one:

Download: "Liar."  Photo courtesy of TOCA.

And here's the video (featuring Pigeon John) for that song:

I know, the headline sounds like some kind of Blue Light Special. But take it literally -- thanks to KCRW-FM, you can download the new single off the Greyboy Allstars' album "What Happened to Television?" Oh ... (inserting my best announcer's voice) ... if you act now.

The song is the killer cover of "How Glad I Am," which features vocals by the Living Sisters -- the trio of L.A. women who are estimable artists in their own right, Eleni Mandell, Inara George and Becky Stark.

Have at it: "How Glad I Am."

[Contributor Casey Dolan unearths a gem:]

Chicago singer-songwriter David Vandervelde was only 19 three years ago when he penned and recorded "Nothin' No," a slow-drag bang-your-header. It's only now being pushed as the second single from his debut album on Secretly Canadian, "The Moonstation House Band." Took a while. Ex-Wilco guitarist, Jay Bennett, co-wrote the tune and plays bass, but Vandervelde handles all the other chores, including production. There's a wonderful sense of crazy youthful abandon in the track, from Vandervelde's reedy whine to the hemorrhaging tubes in the amps (electric Neil Young fans, take note!). This is a song that demands to be played loud.

||| Download: "Nothin' No"

||| Vandervelde hits L.A. on July 13 for a show at Spaceland.

[Contributor Casey Dolan suffered an anxiety attack watching this video:]

The first video from Unkle's new album, "War Stories" (due July 24) is bound to get viewers feeling a bit constricted around the chest. Ian Astbury, on hiatus from resurrecting the ghost of Jim Morrison, sings the song "Burn My Shadow" as actor Goran Visjnic ("ER" and "Welcome to Sarajevo") wakes up in his boozy post-disaster flat to discover that he has a bit of a problem and not much time to solve it. Director Miguel Sapochnik, who previously worked as a storyboard artist for the films "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Winter Guest," guides us to an explosive climax in this compelling video. David Cronenberg would be proud.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]

Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.

||| Listen to "The Man."

Photo from Dr. Cornel West

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

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Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

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More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

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Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

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Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

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Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

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Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

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And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

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Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

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Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

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I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

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Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

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Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

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Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Digging the Division Day downloads

Division Day, the L.A. indie-rock quartet whose album "Beartrap Island" is being re-released (on iTunes today, and in stores on Oct. 2), is offering a free remix or cover song every Tuesday for eight weeks. It's nice of them, considering what they've been through with this album; after the foursome self-released it last year, they was signed to a start-up label that planned to issue "Beartrap" last spring. But the start-up label never quite started up.

Enter L.A. imprint Eenie Meenie, home to Great Northern, Irving and Goldenboy, among others. The label has signed Division Day, and now the remastered album -- with two new tracks -- is on the way.

||| Download the band's cover of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence." Then: the Tandemoro remix of the album track "Ricky." And then: the band's cover of Sunny Day Real Estate's "Every Shining Time You Arrive."

||| See Division Day perform at the Echo on Oct. 2.

Touts for Thursday, Sept. 20

Imagine Dylan having to fight his way out of an Irish bar: That's Ike Reilly's music. The Chicago-area troubadour hits town with his band the Ike Reilly Assassination for a gig at Spaceland tonight behind its new release, "We Belong to the Staggering Evening." Reilly played solo earlier this summer as support for Tom Morello on the latter's Nightwatchman tour. Recommended if you like barroom poets.

||| Download: "When Irish Eyes Are Burning."

Also: This little gig at the Hollywood Bowl tonight is apparently the show of the year.

And also: The New Pornographers, with Lavender Diamond opening, play the Fonda Theatre, and it's not sold out. ... The Airborne Toxic Event joins Maxeen for a show at Costa Mesa's Detroit Bar. ... Film School has a free show at Amoeba at 7. ... And Hello Stranger greets the crowd at Filter's Revenge of the Sunset Strip night at the Roxy.

[Another installment in our locally famous local-music awareness program:]

Don't be deceived by the religious connotations in their band name -- the Stevenson Ranch Davidians aren't cultists. "It's very tongue-in-cheek," singer-guitarist Dwayne Seagraves says, "but people don't always get it. Some people think we're a religious band."

The Davidians -- who are indeed from the Santa Clarita Valley development Stevenson Ranch -- do have their devotions, however. On "Psalms, Hymns & Spiritual Songs," their self-released album from last year, the quartet visits the altar of Britpop as rendered by the likes of Travis, the Verve and Blur, not to mention the pop-psych pioneers of the '60s. The Davidians nurture their version of that sound with songs that are patiently paced, gently couched in reverb and simple in lyrical approach.

Seagraves and band mates Jessica Latiolait, Bryan Showalter and Cary Chafin are already writing songs for a follow-up to "Psalms," which was recorded in Raymond Richards' Red Rockets Glare studio in Rancho Park. The album has been picked up by a European indie label for distribution, so the foursome hopes to tour there later this year.

||| Stevenson Ranch Davidians, with the Black Pine among the supporting acts, perform Wednesday night at the Echo.

||| Download: "Beginnings and Ends."

"Hideout," the new album by Film School, isn't out until Sept. 11, but it's already creating a buzz from those who've heard its buzzing guitars and reverb-heavy dynamics. Its the kind of album that dares you to roll up your car windows, crank it and be swallowed whole. If the band's debut album was a bit hit-and-miss, there  are precious few misfires on this one.

Greg Bertens (the artist formerly known as Krayg Burton, at least on the first album) and mates have relocated to Los Angeles from San Francisco. Let's see, that makes tonight's show at Spaceland a hometown gig, then. Brilliant.

||| Download "Lectric."

||| Brooklyn's Pela is an opening act for that show tonight. It will be drummer Tomislav Zovich's final tour with the band.

Touts for Tuesday, Aug. 14

Oh, what a night: The Magic Numbers and the Little Ones bring their feel-good pop to the El Rey. ... Dengue Fever rocks the Knitting Factory. ... The One AM Radio looses his gauzy bedroom pop on the Echo. ... Buckfast plies its Anglophile rock at the Mint. ... Eulogies, the new trio assembled by singer-songwriter Peter Walker, plays a set at the Troubadour opening for rockers the Wildbirds. ... The Finches and the Coral Sea entertain at Bordello. ... And Aushua plays the early set at the Silverlake Lounge.

Photo by Marla Aufmuth

[This installment of our local music series is brought to you by arts & crafts:]

An EP arrived this week in a colorful, hand-decorated cardboard sleeve (inscribed "#014"), a sure sign that either the music inside is really something special, or that somebody has too much time on her hands. I can't speak to the latter, but the five tunes on "EP 01" by Los Angeles quartet Hello Dragon are stickier than Velcro -- slightly spaced-out pop anthems that reflect the band's stated fascination with "animal rights, quantum mechanics, El Chupacabra, vacuum tubes and cheap-sounding synthesizers." There's even a tuneful nod to "Stephen Hawking."

Hello Dragon -- the music and DIY sleeves -- is the handiwork of Chris Zerby and Julie Chadwick, who were the principals in the edgy Boston power-pop band Helicopter Helicopter. They brought their crunchy guitars and boy-girl vocals to L.A. a couple years ago, but have now started over, having joined forces with fellow Beantown expats Josh Pickering (keyboards) and Sean Burgess (drums).

You can order an EP -- and download some songs -- here. Hello Dragon has only played three shows thus far; a recent one was postponed because Chadwick suffered a hand laceration in a kitchen mishap. But look for a gig in September, Zerby says, along with some more crafty packaging: "We haven't broken out the glitter glue yet, but you never know."

||| Get started right here by downloading "Birds of Prey."

Photo of Zerby and Chadwick by Josh Pickering.

[Another installment in our series highlighting local music:]

The Red Button presses all the right buttons for fans of pure pop. Its album, "She's About to Cross My Mind," sounds as if it should be crackling out of an AM radio, the tunes of some youngsters angling to be the next Fab Four. Yes, it's hopelessly retro, right down to its very mod sleeve, but the record's easy psychedelia and friendly Merseybeat go down easily. Even the Little Steven's Underground Garage radio show tabbed "Cruel Girl" as its No. 1 song last week.

It's no surprise that the duo pushing all the buttons here are veteran songwriters Seth Swirsky and Mike Ruekberg. Swirsky, a longtime songwriter-for-hire who made his first solo album a couple years ago, is also an artist and well-known collector of sports memorabilia. Ruekberg was the driving force behind the Minneapolis pop band Rex Daisy. Together they explore their love of all things jangly, harmonic and Beatles.

||| The Red Button perform as an acoustic duo tonight at Spaceland as part of the 10th annual International Pop Overthrow festival. Astra Heights and the Prix are among the other bands on the bill.

||| Download: "Cruel Girl."

Photo of Mike Ruekberg, left, and Seth Swirsky courtesy of Luck Media.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan with his dollop of pop:]

Dylan Hay Chapman, lead singer-songwriter for local popsters Service Group, tells me that the origin of the group's name lay in a high school student contingent assigned to work in the cafeteria ("the kids that weren't into athletics"). I wasn't far wrong in guessing that it sounded like a catering firm for high schools; either that or sex trade camp followers for the military (but, no, wait, that was Joy Division).

Chapman is a breezy fellow with a band that has patiently slogged it out in the rock 'n' roll toilets of Los Angeles for the past several years. Now, their brand of altered retro-pop may get a boost from their second album, "Principals of Electronic Circuitry," being released Sept. 25 on their own label, Squid vs. Whale.

"We're all happy with the album," says Chapman. "It's been kicking around for two years, so [we're well practiced]. We know we have a lot of playing and promoting to do. The second album is the same sensibility as the first, only the fast songs are faster, the slow songs are slower. It's a little more refined; the corners are sharpened."

[One in a series highlighting new music by Los Angeles bands:]

On its first album two years ago, the Prix gave us a collection of two-days-away-from-a-razor power pop that displayed quite a bit of muscle and maybe a little moxie, not to mention a kinship with decades of artists who honed their hooks in a garage. If "Frix the Prix" got only a modest reception, it might have been because the Prix never bothered to slather its retro feel in eight layers of irony.

"St. Domino," the new EP from the quartet, expands its palette considerably, with touches of glam and new wave seeping into six rollicking songs recorded at Red Rockets Glare studio with Raymond Richards and Dan Long. You might even hear a little Smiths along with the quartet's frenetic piano lines and harmonies. The Prix (Cashew Von Harding, Blake Jordan, Zach Ziegler and Stephen Mills) are the resident band this month at club Kiss or Kill (recently moved to Wednesday nights at El Cid). This week, they celebrate the release of "St. Domino" at Kiss or Kill with support from Star No Star, the Power Cords and Service Group.

||| Download "The Chevalier."

Photo of the Prix by Sterling Andrews. [Thanks to reader A. Martinez for the reminder.]

[This blog has been silent for a couple days, and one e-mailer even suggested I had run off and joined the Warped Tour. Hey, I didn't like Paramore that much. No, this little digital portal suffered because I was on jury duty, which pushed my day job into a night job and pushed the blogging into ... well, you get the idea. Silly me for thinking I'd have time to squeeze in a blog post, or even get away to see the Klaxons on Tuesday night. The judge was kind of a rock star, even if he threatened anybody who dared to use his iPod in the courtroom. So here's a little song I like, with some more to come:]

Mendocino-based singer-songwriter Chrisopher Blue has gotten his first name, which has no "t," misspelled all over the West Coast. I'm here to apologize for careless typists everywhere, and to tell you that his album "Room Tones" is perfect rainy-day listening. Well, if it ever rained here. Blue -- who used to play in a band with Duff McKagan and actually almost quit music if not for words of encouragement from Mark Lanegan -- is in town for a couple shows this weekend. Maybe it'll cloud up.

||| See Chrisopher Blue performs Saturday at Room 5 on Fairfax and Sunday at Tangier in Los Feliz.

||| Download: "Good Time Baby" as performed live on Seattle's KEXP-FM.

Thursday, July 12

What a night for shows: Patrick Park and Emma Burgess play Spaceland; Dr. Dog and the Delta Spirit hold forth at the Echo; the Little Ones play the Indie 103.1 bash at the Hammer Museum (last week's with Great Northern was pretty swell, I hear); Everest headlines the Silverlake Lounge; the Sharp Things bring their sharp orchestral pop to the Mint; and the Front and the Monolators are among the band's playing a Rock Insider event at the Scene in Glendale.

[Ears Wide Open is an occasional series highlighting L.A. bands and their music:]

Six guys, six sensibilties -- and "an anything-goes type of mentality," singer-instrumentalist Tommy Valencia says. You're not getting an album when you happen upon "TOCA," the debut from the L.A. band of that name. You're getting paraded through every department of your mental record store. It's not so much genre-bending as it is genre-hopping. The album quick-cuts between rock to jazz to reggae to pop to hip-hop to punk.

It might all seem a bit contrived, if the songs -- the work of musicians with impressive resumes as collaborators and session men -- didn't reflect such a passion for those excursions. Among the guests on the record (which was released in May) are the likes of Aceyalone, Pigeon John and Busdriver. What TOCA members Xinxo (Danny Rodriguez), Danny Levin, Max Heath, Valencia and brothers Ceschi and David Ramos have produced is a collection that's bound to land a track or two or your iPod. Maybe even this one:

Download: "Liar."  Photo courtesy of TOCA.

And here's the video (featuring Pigeon John) for that song:

I know, the headline sounds like some kind of Blue Light Special. But take it literally -- thanks to KCRW-FM, you can download the new single off the Greyboy Allstars' album "What Happened to Television?" Oh ... (inserting my best announcer's voice) ... if you act now.

The song is the killer cover of "How Glad I Am," which features vocals by the Living Sisters -- the trio of L.A. women who are estimable artists in their own right, Eleni Mandell, Inara George and Becky Stark.

Have at it: "How Glad I Am."

[Contributor Casey Dolan unearths a gem:]

Chicago singer-songwriter David Vandervelde was only 19 three years ago when he penned and recorded "Nothin' No," a slow-drag bang-your-header. It's only now being pushed as the second single from his debut album on Secretly Canadian, "The Moonstation House Band." Took a while. Ex-Wilco guitarist, Jay Bennett, co-wrote the tune and plays bass, but Vandervelde handles all the other chores, including production. There's a wonderful sense of crazy youthful abandon in the track, from Vandervelde's reedy whine to the hemorrhaging tubes in the amps (electric Neil Young fans, take note!). This is a song that demands to be played loud.

||| Download: "Nothin' No"

||| Vandervelde hits L.A. on July 13 for a show at Spaceland.

[Contributor Casey Dolan suffered an anxiety attack watching this video:]

The first video from Unkle's new album, "War Stories" (due July 24) is bound to get viewers feeling a bit constricted around the chest. Ian Astbury, on hiatus from resurrecting the ghost of Jim Morrison, sings the song "Burn My Shadow" as actor Goran Visjnic ("ER" and "Welcome to Sarajevo") wakes up in his boozy post-disaster flat to discover that he has a bit of a problem and not much time to solve it. Director Miguel Sapochnik, who previously worked as a storyboard artist for the films "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Winter Guest," guides us to an explosive climax in this compelling video. David Cronenberg would be proud.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]

Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.

||| Listen to "The Man."

Photo from Dr. Cornel West

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

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Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

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More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

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Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

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Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

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Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

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Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

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And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

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Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

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Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

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I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

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Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

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Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

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Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Ears Wide Open: Following the Stevenson Ranch Davidians

[Another installment in our locally famous local-music awareness program:]

Don't be deceived by the religious connotations in their band name -- the Stevenson Ranch Davidians aren't cultists. "It's very tongue-in-cheek," singer-guitarist Dwayne Seagraves says, "but people don't always get it. Some people think we're a religious band."

The Davidians -- who are indeed from the Santa Clarita Valley development Stevenson Ranch -- do have their devotions, however. On "Psalms, Hymns & Spiritual Songs," their self-released album from last year, the quartet visits the altar of Britpop as rendered by the likes of Travis, the Verve and Blur, not to mention the pop-psych pioneers of the '60s. The Davidians nurture their version of that sound with songs that are patiently paced, gently couched in reverb and simple in lyrical approach.

Seagraves and band mates Jessica Latiolait, Bryan Showalter and Cary Chafin are already writing songs for a follow-up to "Psalms," which was recorded in Raymond Richards' Red Rockets Glare studio in Rancho Park. The album has been picked up by a European indie label for distribution, so the foursome hopes to tour there later this year.

||| Stevenson Ranch Davidians, with the Black Pine among the supporting acts, perform Wednesday night at the Echo.

||| Download: "Beginnings and Ends."

"Hideout," the new album by Film School, isn't out until Sept. 11, but it's already creating a buzz from those who've heard its buzzing guitars and reverb-heavy dynamics. Its the kind of album that dares you to roll up your car windows, crank it and be swallowed whole. If the band's debut album was a bit hit-and-miss, there  are precious few misfires on this one.

Greg Bertens (the artist formerly known as Krayg Burton, at least on the first album) and mates have relocated to Los Angeles from San Francisco. Let's see, that makes tonight's show at Spaceland a hometown gig, then. Brilliant.

||| Download "Lectric."

||| Brooklyn's Pela is an opening act for that show tonight. It will be drummer Tomislav Zovich's final tour with the band.

Touts for Tuesday, Aug. 14

Oh, what a night: The Magic Numbers and the Little Ones bring their feel-good pop to the El Rey. ... Dengue Fever rocks the Knitting Factory. ... The One AM Radio looses his gauzy bedroom pop on the Echo. ... Buckfast plies its Anglophile rock at the Mint. ... Eulogies, the new trio assembled by singer-songwriter Peter Walker, plays a set at the Troubadour opening for rockers the Wildbirds. ... The Finches and the Coral Sea entertain at Bordello. ... And Aushua plays the early set at the Silverlake Lounge.

Photo by Marla Aufmuth

[This installment of our local music series is brought to you by arts & crafts:]

An EP arrived this week in a colorful, hand-decorated cardboard sleeve (inscribed "#014"), a sure sign that either the music inside is really something special, or that somebody has too much time on her hands. I can't speak to the latter, but the five tunes on "EP 01" by Los Angeles quartet Hello Dragon are stickier than Velcro -- slightly spaced-out pop anthems that reflect the band's stated fascination with "animal rights, quantum mechanics, El Chupacabra, vacuum tubes and cheap-sounding synthesizers." There's even a tuneful nod to "Stephen Hawking."

Hello Dragon -- the music and DIY sleeves -- is the handiwork of Chris Zerby and Julie Chadwick, who were the principals in the edgy Boston power-pop band Helicopter Helicopter. They brought their crunchy guitars and boy-girl vocals to L.A. a couple years ago, but have now started over, having joined forces with fellow Beantown expats Josh Pickering (keyboards) and Sean Burgess (drums).

You can order an EP -- and download some songs -- here. Hello Dragon has only played three shows thus far; a recent one was postponed because Chadwick suffered a hand laceration in a kitchen mishap. But look for a gig in September, Zerby says, along with some more crafty packaging: "We haven't broken out the glitter glue yet, but you never know."

||| Get started right here by downloading "Birds of Prey."

Photo of Zerby and Chadwick by Josh Pickering.

[Another installment in our series highlighting local music:]

The Red Button presses all the right buttons for fans of pure pop. Its album, "She's About to Cross My Mind," sounds as if it should be crackling out of an AM radio, the tunes of some youngsters angling to be the next Fab Four. Yes, it's hopelessly retro, right down to its very mod sleeve, but the record's easy psychedelia and friendly Merseybeat go down easily. Even the Little Steven's Underground Garage radio show tabbed "Cruel Girl" as its No. 1 song last week.

It's no surprise that the duo pushing all the buttons here are veteran songwriters Seth Swirsky and Mike Ruekberg. Swirsky, a longtime songwriter-for-hire who made his first solo album a couple years ago, is also an artist and well-known collector of sports memorabilia. Ruekberg was the driving force behind the Minneapolis pop band Rex Daisy. Together they explore their love of all things jangly, harmonic and Beatles.

||| The Red Button perform as an acoustic duo tonight at Spaceland as part of the 10th annual International Pop Overthrow festival. Astra Heights and the Prix are among the other bands on the bill.

||| Download: "Cruel Girl."

Photo of Mike Ruekberg, left, and Seth Swirsky courtesy of Luck Media.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan with his dollop of pop:]

Dylan Hay Chapman, lead singer-songwriter for local popsters Service Group, tells me that the origin of the group's name lay in a high school student contingent assigned to work in the cafeteria ("the kids that weren't into athletics"). I wasn't far wrong in guessing that it sounded like a catering firm for high schools; either that or sex trade camp followers for the military (but, no, wait, that was Joy Division).

Chapman is a breezy fellow with a band that has patiently slogged it out in the rock 'n' roll toilets of Los Angeles for the past several years. Now, their brand of altered retro-pop may get a boost from their second album, "Principals of Electronic Circuitry," being released Sept. 25 on their own label, Squid vs. Whale.

"We're all happy with the album," says Chapman. "It's been kicking around for two years, so [we're well practiced]. We know we have a lot of playing and promoting to do. The second album is the same sensibility as the first, only the fast songs are faster, the slow songs are slower. It's a little more refined; the corners are sharpened."

[One in a series highlighting new music by Los Angeles bands:]

On its first album two years ago, the Prix gave us a collection of two-days-away-from-a-razor power pop that displayed quite a bit of muscle and maybe a little moxie, not to mention a kinship with decades of artists who honed their hooks in a garage. If "Frix the Prix" got only a modest reception, it might have been because the Prix never bothered to slather its retro feel in eight layers of irony.

"St. Domino," the new EP from the quartet, expands its palette considerably, with touches of glam and new wave seeping into six rollicking songs recorded at Red Rockets Glare studio with Raymond Richards and Dan Long. You might even hear a little Smiths along with the quartet's frenetic piano lines and harmonies. The Prix (Cashew Von Harding, Blake Jordan, Zach Ziegler and Stephen Mills) are the resident band this month at club Kiss or Kill (recently moved to Wednesday nights at El Cid). This week, they celebrate the release of "St. Domino" at Kiss or Kill with support from Star No Star, the Power Cords and Service Group.

||| Download "The Chevalier."

Photo of the Prix by Sterling Andrews. [Thanks to reader A. Martinez for the reminder.]

[This blog has been silent for a couple days, and one e-mailer even suggested I had run off and joined the Warped Tour. Hey, I didn't like Paramore that much. No, this little digital portal suffered because I was on jury duty, which pushed my day job into a night job and pushed the blogging into ... well, you get the idea. Silly me for thinking I'd have time to squeeze in a blog post, or even get away to see the Klaxons on Tuesday night. The judge was kind of a rock star, even if he threatened anybody who dared to use his iPod in the courtroom. So here's a little song I like, with some more to come:]

Mendocino-based singer-songwriter Chrisopher Blue has gotten his first name, which has no "t," misspelled all over the West Coast. I'm here to apologize for careless typists everywhere, and to tell you that his album "Room Tones" is perfect rainy-day listening. Well, if it ever rained here. Blue -- who used to play in a band with Duff McKagan and actually almost quit music if not for words of encouragement from Mark Lanegan -- is in town for a couple shows this weekend. Maybe it'll cloud up.

||| See Chrisopher Blue performs Saturday at Room 5 on Fairfax and Sunday at Tangier in Los Feliz.

||| Download: "Good Time Baby" as performed live on Seattle's KEXP-FM.

Thursday, July 12

What a night for shows: Patrick Park and Emma Burgess play Spaceland; Dr. Dog and the Delta Spirit hold forth at the Echo; the Little Ones play the Indie 103.1 bash at the Hammer Museum (last week's with Great Northern was pretty swell, I hear); Everest headlines the Silverlake Lounge; the Sharp Things bring their sharp orchestral pop to the Mint; and the Front and the Monolators are among the band's playing a Rock Insider event at the Scene in Glendale.

[Ears Wide Open is an occasional series highlighting L.A. bands and their music:]

Six guys, six sensibilties -- and "an anything-goes type of mentality," singer-instrumentalist Tommy Valencia says. You're not getting an album when you happen upon "TOCA," the debut from the L.A. band of that name. You're getting paraded through every department of your mental record store. It's not so much genre-bending as it is genre-hopping. The album quick-cuts between rock to jazz to reggae to pop to hip-hop to punk.

It might all seem a bit contrived, if the songs -- the work of musicians with impressive resumes as collaborators and session men -- didn't reflect such a passion for those excursions. Among the guests on the record (which was released in May) are the likes of Aceyalone, Pigeon John and Busdriver. What TOCA members Xinxo (Danny Rodriguez), Danny Levin, Max Heath, Valencia and brothers Ceschi and David Ramos have produced is a collection that's bound to land a track or two or your iPod. Maybe even this one:

Download: "Liar."  Photo courtesy of TOCA.

And here's the video (featuring Pigeon John) for that song:

I know, the headline sounds like some kind of Blue Light Special. But take it literally -- thanks to KCRW-FM, you can download the new single off the Greyboy Allstars' album "What Happened to Television?" Oh ... (inserting my best announcer's voice) ... if you act now.

The song is the killer cover of "How Glad I Am," which features vocals by the Living Sisters -- the trio of L.A. women who are estimable artists in their own right, Eleni Mandell, Inara George and Becky Stark.

Have at it: "How Glad I Am."

[Contributor Casey Dolan unearths a gem:]

Chicago singer-songwriter David Vandervelde was only 19 three years ago when he penned and recorded "Nothin' No," a slow-drag bang-your-header. It's only now being pushed as the second single from his debut album on Secretly Canadian, "The Moonstation House Band." Took a while. Ex-Wilco guitarist, Jay Bennett, co-wrote the tune and plays bass, but Vandervelde handles all the other chores, including production. There's a wonderful sense of crazy youthful abandon in the track, from Vandervelde's reedy whine to the hemorrhaging tubes in the amps (electric Neil Young fans, take note!). This is a song that demands to be played loud.

||| Download: "Nothin' No"

||| Vandervelde hits L.A. on July 13 for a show at Spaceland.

[Contributor Casey Dolan suffered an anxiety attack watching this video:]

The first video from Unkle's new album, "War Stories" (due July 24) is bound to get viewers feeling a bit constricted around the chest. Ian Astbury, on hiatus from resurrecting the ghost of Jim Morrison, sings the song "Burn My Shadow" as actor Goran Visjnic ("ER" and "Welcome to Sarajevo") wakes up in his boozy post-disaster flat to discover that he has a bit of a problem and not much time to solve it. Director Miguel Sapochnik, who previously worked as a storyboard artist for the films "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Winter Guest," guides us to an explosive climax in this compelling video. David Cronenberg would be proud.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]

Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.

||| Listen to "The Man."

Photo from Dr. Cornel West

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

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Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

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More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

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Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

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Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

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Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

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Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

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And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

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Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

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Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

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I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

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Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

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Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

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Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Film School graduates to an even more dynamic sound

"Hideout," the new album by Film School, isn't out until Sept. 11, but it's already creating a buzz from those who've heard its buzzing guitars and reverb-heavy dynamics. Its the kind of album that dares you to roll up your car windows, crank it and be swallowed whole. If the band's debut album was a bit hit-and-miss, there  are precious few misfires on this one.

Greg Bertens (the artist formerly known as Krayg Burton, at least on the first album) and mates have relocated to Los Angeles from San Francisco. Let's see, that makes tonight's show at Spaceland a hometown gig, then. Brilliant.

||| Download "Lectric."

||| Brooklyn's Pela is an opening act for that show tonight. It will be drummer Tomislav Zovich's final tour with the band.

Touts for Tuesday, Aug. 14

Oh, what a night: The Magic Numbers and the Little Ones bring their feel-good pop to the El Rey. ... Dengue Fever rocks the Knitting Factory. ... The One AM Radio looses his gauzy bedroom pop on the Echo. ... Buckfast plies its Anglophile rock at the Mint. ... Eulogies, the new trio assembled by singer-songwriter Peter Walker, plays a set at the Troubadour opening for rockers the Wildbirds. ... The Finches and the Coral Sea entertain at Bordello. ... And Aushua plays the early set at the Silverlake Lounge.

Photo by Marla Aufmuth

[This installment of our local music series is brought to you by arts & crafts:]

An EP arrived this week in a colorful, hand-decorated cardboard sleeve (inscribed "#014"), a sure sign that either the music inside is really something special, or that somebody has too much time on her hands. I can't speak to the latter, but the five tunes on "EP 01" by Los Angeles quartet Hello Dragon are stickier than Velcro -- slightly spaced-out pop anthems that reflect the band's stated fascination with "animal rights, quantum mechanics, El Chupacabra, vacuum tubes and cheap-sounding synthesizers." There's even a tuneful nod to "Stephen Hawking."

Hello Dragon -- the music and DIY sleeves -- is the handiwork of Chris Zerby and Julie Chadwick, who were the principals in the edgy Boston power-pop band Helicopter Helicopter. They brought their crunchy guitars and boy-girl vocals to L.A. a couple years ago, but have now started over, having joined forces with fellow Beantown expats Josh Pickering (keyboards) and Sean Burgess (drums).

You can order an EP -- and download some songs -- here. Hello Dragon has only played three shows thus far; a recent one was postponed because Chadwick suffered a hand laceration in a kitchen mishap. But look for a gig in September, Zerby says, along with some more crafty packaging: "We haven't broken out the glitter glue yet, but you never know."

||| Get started right here by downloading "Birds of Prey."

Photo of Zerby and Chadwick by Josh Pickering.

[Another installment in our series highlighting local music:]

The Red Button presses all the right buttons for fans of pure pop. Its album, "She's About to Cross My Mind," sounds as if it should be crackling out of an AM radio, the tunes of some youngsters angling to be the next Fab Four. Yes, it's hopelessly retro, right down to its very mod sleeve, but the record's easy psychedelia and friendly Merseybeat go down easily. Even the Little Steven's Underground Garage radio show tabbed "Cruel Girl" as its No. 1 song last week.

It's no surprise that the duo pushing all the buttons here are veteran songwriters Seth Swirsky and Mike Ruekberg. Swirsky, a longtime songwriter-for-hire who made his first solo album a couple years ago, is also an artist and well-known collector of sports memorabilia. Ruekberg was the driving force behind the Minneapolis pop band Rex Daisy. Together they explore their love of all things jangly, harmonic and Beatles.

||| The Red Button perform as an acoustic duo tonight at Spaceland as part of the 10th annual International Pop Overthrow festival. Astra Heights and the Prix are among the other bands on the bill.

||| Download: "Cruel Girl."

Photo of Mike Ruekberg, left, and Seth Swirsky courtesy of Luck Media.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan with his dollop of pop:]

Dylan Hay Chapman, lead singer-songwriter for local popsters Service Group, tells me that the origin of the group's name lay in a high school student contingent assigned to work in the cafeteria ("the kids that weren't into athletics"). I wasn't far wrong in guessing that it sounded like a catering firm for high schools; either that or sex trade camp followers for the military (but, no, wait, that was Joy Division).

Chapman is a breezy fellow with a band that has patiently slogged it out in the rock 'n' roll toilets of Los Angeles for the past several years. Now, their brand of altered retro-pop may get a boost from their second album, "Principals of Electronic Circuitry," being released Sept. 25 on their own label, Squid vs. Whale.

"We're all happy with the album," says Chapman. "It's been kicking around for two years, so [we're well practiced]. We know we have a lot of playing and promoting to do. The second album is the same sensibility as the first, only the fast songs are faster, the slow songs are slower. It's a little more refined; the corners are sharpened."

[One in a series highlighting new music by Los Angeles bands:]

On its first album two years ago, the Prix gave us a collection of two-days-away-from-a-razor power pop that displayed quite a bit of muscle and maybe a little moxie, not to mention a kinship with decades of artists who honed their hooks in a garage. If "Frix the Prix" got only a modest reception, it might have been because the Prix never bothered to slather its retro feel in eight layers of irony.

"St. Domino," the new EP from the quartet, expands its palette considerably, with touches of glam and new wave seeping into six rollicking songs recorded at Red Rockets Glare studio with Raymond Richards and Dan Long. You might even hear a little Smiths along with the quartet's frenetic piano lines and harmonies. The Prix (Cashew Von Harding, Blake Jordan, Zach Ziegler and Stephen Mills) are the resident band this month at club Kiss or Kill (recently moved to Wednesday nights at El Cid). This week, they celebrate the release of "St. Domino" at Kiss or Kill with support from Star No Star, the Power Cords and Service Group.

||| Download "The Chevalier."

Photo of the Prix by Sterling Andrews. [Thanks to reader A. Martinez for the reminder.]

[This blog has been silent for a couple days, and one e-mailer even suggested I had run off and joined the Warped Tour. Hey, I didn't like Paramore that much. No, this little digital portal suffered because I was on jury duty, which pushed my day job into a night job and pushed the blogging into ... well, you get the idea. Silly me for thinking I'd have time to squeeze in a blog post, or even get away to see the Klaxons on Tuesday night. The judge was kind of a rock star, even if he threatened anybody who dared to use his iPod in the courtroom. So here's a little song I like, with some more to come:]

Mendocino-based singer-songwriter Chrisopher Blue has gotten his first name, which has no "t," misspelled all over the West Coast. I'm here to apologize for careless typists everywhere, and to tell you that his album "Room Tones" is perfect rainy-day listening. Well, if it ever rained here. Blue -- who used to play in a band with Duff McKagan and actually almost quit music if not for words of encouragement from Mark Lanegan -- is in town for a couple shows this weekend. Maybe it'll cloud up.

||| See Chrisopher Blue performs Saturday at Room 5 on Fairfax and Sunday at Tangier in Los Feliz.

||| Download: "Good Time Baby" as performed live on Seattle's KEXP-FM.

Thursday, July 12

What a night for shows: Patrick Park and Emma Burgess play Spaceland; Dr. Dog and the Delta Spirit hold forth at the Echo; the Little Ones play the Indie 103.1 bash at the Hammer Museum (last week's with Great Northern was pretty swell, I hear); Everest headlines the Silverlake Lounge; the Sharp Things bring their sharp orchestral pop to the Mint; and the Front and the Monolators are among the band's playing a Rock Insider event at the Scene in Glendale.

[Ears Wide Open is an occasional series highlighting L.A. bands and their music:]

Six guys, six sensibilties -- and "an anything-goes type of mentality," singer-instrumentalist Tommy Valencia says. You're not getting an album when you happen upon "TOCA," the debut from the L.A. band of that name. You're getting paraded through every department of your mental record store. It's not so much genre-bending as it is genre-hopping. The album quick-cuts between rock to jazz to reggae to pop to hip-hop to punk.

It might all seem a bit contrived, if the songs -- the work of musicians with impressive resumes as collaborators and session men -- didn't reflect such a passion for those excursions. Among the guests on the record (which was released in May) are the likes of Aceyalone, Pigeon John and Busdriver. What TOCA members Xinxo (Danny Rodriguez), Danny Levin, Max Heath, Valencia and brothers Ceschi and David Ramos have produced is a collection that's bound to land a track or two or your iPod. Maybe even this one:

Download: "Liar."  Photo courtesy of TOCA.

And here's the video (featuring Pigeon John) for that song:

I know, the headline sounds like some kind of Blue Light Special. But take it literally -- thanks to KCRW-FM, you can download the new single off the Greyboy Allstars' album "What Happened to Television?" Oh ... (inserting my best announcer's voice) ... if you act now.

The song is the killer cover of "How Glad I Am," which features vocals by the Living Sisters -- the trio of L.A. women who are estimable artists in their own right, Eleni Mandell, Inara George and Becky Stark.

Have at it: "How Glad I Am."

[Contributor Casey Dolan unearths a gem:]

Chicago singer-songwriter David Vandervelde was only 19 three years ago when he penned and recorded "Nothin' No," a slow-drag bang-your-header. It's only now being pushed as the second single from his debut album on Secretly Canadian, "The Moonstation House Band." Took a while. Ex-Wilco guitarist, Jay Bennett, co-wrote the tune and plays bass, but Vandervelde handles all the other chores, including production. There's a wonderful sense of crazy youthful abandon in the track, from Vandervelde's reedy whine to the hemorrhaging tubes in the amps (electric Neil Young fans, take note!). This is a song that demands to be played loud.

||| Download: "Nothin' No"

||| Vandervelde hits L.A. on July 13 for a show at Spaceland.

[Contributor Casey Dolan suffered an anxiety attack watching this video:]

The first video from Unkle's new album, "War Stories" (due July 24) is bound to get viewers feeling a bit constricted around the chest. Ian Astbury, on hiatus from resurrecting the ghost of Jim Morrison, sings the song "Burn My Shadow" as actor Goran Visjnic ("ER" and "Welcome to Sarajevo") wakes up in his boozy post-disaster flat to discover that he has a bit of a problem and not much time to solve it. Director Miguel Sapochnik, who previously worked as a storyboard artist for the films "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Winter Guest," guides us to an explosive climax in this compelling video. David Cronenberg would be proud.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]

Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.

||| Listen to "The Man."

Photo from Dr. Cornel West

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

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Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

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More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

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Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

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Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

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Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

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Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

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And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

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Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

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Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

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I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

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Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

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Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Ears Wide Open: Say hello to Hello Dragon

[This installment of our local music series is brought to you by arts & crafts:]

An EP arrived this week in a colorful, hand-decorated cardboard sleeve (inscribed "#014"), a sure sign that either the music inside is really something special, or that somebody has too much time on her hands. I can't speak to the latter, but the five tunes on "EP 01" by Los Angeles quartet Hello Dragon are stickier than Velcro -- slightly spaced-out pop anthems that reflect the band's stated fascination with "animal rights, quantum mechanics, El Chupacabra, vacuum tubes and cheap-sounding synthesizers." There's even a tuneful nod to "Stephen Hawking."

Hello Dragon -- the music and DIY sleeves -- is the handiwork of Chris Zerby and Julie Chadwick, who were the principals in the edgy Boston power-pop band Helicopter Helicopter. They brought their crunchy guitars and boy-girl vocals to L.A. a couple years ago, but have now started over, having joined forces with fellow Beantown expats Josh Pickering (keyboards) and Sean Burgess (drums).

You can order an EP -- and download some songs -- here. Hello Dragon has only played three shows thus far; a recent one was postponed because Chadwick suffered a hand laceration in a kitchen mishap. But look for a gig in September, Zerby says, along with some more crafty packaging: "We haven't broken out the glitter glue yet, but you never know."

||| Get started right here by downloading "Birds of Prey."

Photo of Zerby and Chadwick by Josh Pickering.

[Another installment in our series highlighting local music:]

The Red Button presses all the right buttons for fans of pure pop. Its album, "She's About to Cross My Mind," sounds as if it should be crackling out of an AM radio, the tunes of some youngsters angling to be the next Fab Four. Yes, it's hopelessly retro, right down to its very mod sleeve, but the record's easy psychedelia and friendly Merseybeat go down easily. Even the Little Steven's Underground Garage radio show tabbed "Cruel Girl" as its No. 1 song last week.

It's no surprise that the duo pushing all the buttons here are veteran songwriters Seth Swirsky and Mike Ruekberg. Swirsky, a longtime songwriter-for-hire who made his first solo album a couple years ago, is also an artist and well-known collector of sports memorabilia. Ruekberg was the driving force behind the Minneapolis pop band Rex Daisy. Together they explore their love of all things jangly, harmonic and Beatles.

||| The Red Button perform as an acoustic duo tonight at Spaceland as part of the 10th annual International Pop Overthrow festival. Astra Heights and the Prix are among the other bands on the bill.

||| Download: "Cruel Girl."

Photo of Mike Ruekberg, left, and Seth Swirsky courtesy of Luck Media.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan with his dollop of pop:]

Dylan Hay Chapman, lead singer-songwriter for local popsters Service Group, tells me that the origin of the group's name lay in a high school student contingent assigned to work in the cafeteria ("the kids that weren't into athletics"). I wasn't far wrong in guessing that it sounded like a catering firm for high schools; either that or sex trade camp followers for the military (but, no, wait, that was Joy Division).

Chapman is a breezy fellow with a band that has patiently slogged it out in the rock 'n' roll toilets of Los Angeles for the past several years. Now, their brand of altered retro-pop may get a boost from their second album, "Principals of Electronic Circuitry," being released Sept. 25 on their own label, Squid vs. Whale.

"We're all happy with the album," says Chapman. "It's been kicking around for two years, so [we're well practiced]. We know we have a lot of playing and promoting to do. The second album is the same sensibility as the first, only the fast songs are faster, the slow songs are slower. It's a little more refined; the corners are sharpened."

[One in a series highlighting new music by Los Angeles bands:]

On its first album two years ago, the Prix gave us a collection of two-days-away-from-a-razor power pop that displayed quite a bit of muscle and maybe a little moxie, not to mention a kinship with decades of artists who honed their hooks in a garage. If "Frix the Prix" got only a modest reception, it might have been because the Prix never bothered to slather its retro feel in eight layers of irony.

"St. Domino," the new EP from the quartet, expands its palette considerably, with touches of glam and new wave seeping into six rollicking songs recorded at Red Rockets Glare studio with Raymond Richards and Dan Long. You might even hear a little Smiths along with the quartet's frenetic piano lines and harmonies. The Prix (Cashew Von Harding, Blake Jordan, Zach Ziegler and Stephen Mills) are the resident band this month at club Kiss or Kill (recently moved to Wednesday nights at El Cid). This week, they celebrate the release of "St. Domino" at Kiss or Kill with support from Star No Star, the Power Cords and Service Group.

||| Download "The Chevalier."

Photo of the Prix by Sterling Andrews. [Thanks to reader A. Martinez for the reminder.]

[This blog has been silent for a couple days, and one e-mailer even suggested I had run off and joined the Warped Tour. Hey, I didn't like Paramore that much. No, this little digital portal suffered because I was on jury duty, which pushed my day job into a night job and pushed the blogging into ... well, you get the idea. Silly me for thinking I'd have time to squeeze in a blog post, or even get away to see the Klaxons on Tuesday night. The judge was kind of a rock star, even if he threatened anybody who dared to use his iPod in the courtroom. So here's a little song I like, with some more to come:]

Mendocino-based singer-songwriter Chrisopher Blue has gotten his first name, which has no "t," misspelled all over the West Coast. I'm here to apologize for careless typists everywhere, and to tell you that his album "Room Tones" is perfect rainy-day listening. Well, if it ever rained here. Blue -- who used to play in a band with Duff McKagan and actually almost quit music if not for words of encouragement from Mark Lanegan -- is in town for a couple shows this weekend. Maybe it'll cloud up.

||| See Chrisopher Blue performs Saturday at Room 5 on Fairfax and Sunday at Tangier in Los Feliz.

||| Download: "Good Time Baby" as performed live on Seattle's KEXP-FM.

Thursday, July 12

What a night for shows: Patrick Park and Emma Burgess play Spaceland; Dr. Dog and the Delta Spirit hold forth at the Echo; the Little Ones play the Indie 103.1 bash at the Hammer Museum (last week's with Great Northern was pretty swell, I hear); Everest headlines the Silverlake Lounge; the Sharp Things bring their sharp orchestral pop to the Mint; and the Front and the Monolators are among the band's playing a Rock Insider event at the Scene in Glendale.

[Ears Wide Open is an occasional series highlighting L.A. bands and their music:]

Six guys, six sensibilties -- and "an anything-goes type of mentality," singer-instrumentalist Tommy Valencia says. You're not getting an album when you happen upon "TOCA," the debut from the L.A. band of that name. You're getting paraded through every department of your mental record store. It's not so much genre-bending as it is genre-hopping. The album quick-cuts between rock to jazz to reggae to pop to hip-hop to punk.

It might all seem a bit contrived, if the songs -- the work of musicians with impressive resumes as collaborators and session men -- didn't reflect such a passion for those excursions. Among the guests on the record (which was released in May) are the likes of Aceyalone, Pigeon John and Busdriver. What TOCA members Xinxo (Danny Rodriguez), Danny Levin, Max Heath, Valencia and brothers Ceschi and David Ramos have produced is a collection that's bound to land a track or two or your iPod. Maybe even this one:

Download: "Liar."  Photo courtesy of TOCA.

And here's the video (featuring Pigeon John) for that song:

I know, the headline sounds like some kind of Blue Light Special. But take it literally -- thanks to KCRW-FM, you can download the new single off the Greyboy Allstars' album "What Happened to Television?" Oh ... (inserting my best announcer's voice) ... if you act now.

The song is the killer cover of "How Glad I Am," which features vocals by the Living Sisters -- the trio of L.A. women who are estimable artists in their own right, Eleni Mandell, Inara George and Becky Stark.

Have at it: "How Glad I Am."

[Contributor Casey Dolan unearths a gem:]

Chicago singer-songwriter David Vandervelde was only 19 three years ago when he penned and recorded "Nothin' No," a slow-drag bang-your-header. It's only now being pushed as the second single from his debut album on Secretly Canadian, "The Moonstation House Band." Took a while. Ex-Wilco guitarist, Jay Bennett, co-wrote the tune and plays bass, but Vandervelde handles all the other chores, including production. There's a wonderful sense of crazy youthful abandon in the track, from Vandervelde's reedy whine to the hemorrhaging tubes in the amps (electric Neil Young fans, take note!). This is a song that demands to be played loud.

||| Download: "Nothin' No"

||| Vandervelde hits L.A. on July 13 for a show at Spaceland.

[Contributor Casey Dolan suffered an anxiety attack watching this video:]

The first video from Unkle's new album, "War Stories" (due July 24) is bound to get viewers feeling a bit constricted around the chest. Ian Astbury, on hiatus from resurrecting the ghost of Jim Morrison, sings the song "Burn My Shadow" as actor Goran Visjnic ("ER" and "Welcome to Sarajevo") wakes up in his boozy post-disaster flat to discover that he has a bit of a problem and not much time to solve it. Director Miguel Sapochnik, who previously worked as a storyboard artist for the films "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Winter Guest," guides us to an explosive climax in this compelling video. David Cronenberg would be proud.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]

Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.

||| Listen to "The Man."

Photo from Dr. Cornel West

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

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Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

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More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

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Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

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Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

◊ ◊ ◊

Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

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Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

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And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

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Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

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I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

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Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

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Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

◊ ◊ ◊

Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Ears Wide Open: The Red Button pops off

[Another installment in our series highlighting local music:]

The Red Button presses all the right buttons for fans of pure pop. Its album, "She's About to Cross My Mind," sounds as if it should be crackling out of an AM radio, the tunes of some youngsters angling to be the next Fab Four. Yes, it's hopelessly retro, right down to its very mod sleeve, but the record's easy psychedelia and friendly Merseybeat go down easily. Even the Little Steven's Underground Garage radio show tabbed "Cruel Girl" as its No. 1 song last week.

It's no surprise that the duo pushing all the buttons here are veteran songwriters Seth Swirsky and Mike Ruekberg. Swirsky, a longtime songwriter-for-hire who made his first solo album a couple years ago, is also an artist and well-known collector of sports memorabilia. Ruekberg was the driving force behind the Minneapolis pop band Rex Daisy. Together they explore their love of all things jangly, harmonic and Beatles.

||| The Red Button perform as an acoustic duo tonight at Spaceland as part of the 10th annual International Pop Overthrow festival. Astra Heights and the Prix are among the other bands on the bill.

||| Download: "Cruel Girl."

Photo of Mike Ruekberg, left, and Seth Swirsky courtesy of Luck Media.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan with his dollop of pop:]

Dylan Hay Chapman, lead singer-songwriter for local popsters Service Group, tells me that the origin of the group's name lay in a high school student contingent assigned to work in the cafeteria ("the kids that weren't into athletics"). I wasn't far wrong in guessing that it sounded like a catering firm for high schools; either that or sex trade camp followers for the military (but, no, wait, that was Joy Division).

Chapman is a breezy fellow with a band that has patiently slogged it out in the rock 'n' roll toilets of Los Angeles for the past several years. Now, their brand of altered retro-pop may get a boost from their second album, "Principals of Electronic Circuitry," being released Sept. 25 on their own label, Squid vs. Whale.

"We're all happy with the album," says Chapman. "It's been kicking around for two years, so [we're well practiced]. We know we have a lot of playing and promoting to do. The second album is the same sensibility as the first, only the fast songs are faster, the slow songs are slower. It's a little more refined; the corners are sharpened."

[One in a series highlighting new music by Los Angeles bands:]

On its first album two years ago, the Prix gave us a collection of two-days-away-from-a-razor power pop that displayed quite a bit of muscle and maybe a little moxie, not to mention a kinship with decades of artists who honed their hooks in a garage. If "Frix the Prix" got only a modest reception, it might have been because the Prix never bothered to slather its retro feel in eight layers of irony.

"St. Domino," the new EP from the quartet, expands its palette considerably, with touches of glam and new wave seeping into six rollicking songs recorded at Red Rockets Glare studio with Raymond Richards and Dan Long. You might even hear a little Smiths along with the quartet's frenetic piano lines and harmonies. The Prix (Cashew Von Harding, Blake Jordan, Zach Ziegler and Stephen Mills) are the resident band this month at club Kiss or Kill (recently moved to Wednesday nights at El Cid). This week, they celebrate the release of "St. Domino" at Kiss or Kill with support from Star No Star, the Power Cords and Service Group.

||| Download "The Chevalier."

Photo of the Prix by Sterling Andrews. [Thanks to reader A. Martinez for the reminder.]

[This blog has been silent for a couple days, and one e-mailer even suggested I had run off and joined the Warped Tour. Hey, I didn't like Paramore that much. No, this little digital portal suffered because I was on jury duty, which pushed my day job into a night job and pushed the blogging into ... well, you get the idea. Silly me for thinking I'd have time to squeeze in a blog post, or even get away to see the Klaxons on Tuesday night. The judge was kind of a rock star, even if he threatened anybody who dared to use his iPod in the courtroom. So here's a little song I like, with some more to come:]

Mendocino-based singer-songwriter Chrisopher Blue has gotten his first name, which has no "t," misspelled all over the West Coast. I'm here to apologize for careless typists everywhere, and to tell you that his album "Room Tones" is perfect rainy-day listening. Well, if it ever rained here. Blue -- who used to play in a band with Duff McKagan and actually almost quit music if not for words of encouragement from Mark Lanegan -- is in town for a couple shows this weekend. Maybe it'll cloud up.

||| See Chrisopher Blue performs Saturday at Room 5 on Fairfax and Sunday at Tangier in Los Feliz.

||| Download: "Good Time Baby" as performed live on Seattle's KEXP-FM.

Thursday, July 12

What a night for shows: Patrick Park and Emma Burgess play Spaceland; Dr. Dog and the Delta Spirit hold forth at the Echo; the Little Ones play the Indie 103.1 bash at the Hammer Museum (last week's with Great Northern was pretty swell, I hear); Everest headlines the Silverlake Lounge; the Sharp Things bring their sharp orchestral pop to the Mint; and the Front and the Monolators are among the band's playing a Rock Insider event at the Scene in Glendale.

[Ears Wide Open is an occasional series highlighting L.A. bands and their music:]

Six guys, six sensibilties -- and "an anything-goes type of mentality," singer-instrumentalist Tommy Valencia says. You're not getting an album when you happen upon "TOCA," the debut from the L.A. band of that name. You're getting paraded through every department of your mental record store. It's not so much genre-bending as it is genre-hopping. The album quick-cuts between rock to jazz to reggae to pop to hip-hop to punk.

It might all seem a bit contrived, if the songs -- the work of musicians with impressive resumes as collaborators and session men -- didn't reflect such a passion for those excursions. Among the guests on the record (which was released in May) are the likes of Aceyalone, Pigeon John and Busdriver. What TOCA members Xinxo (Danny Rodriguez), Danny Levin, Max Heath, Valencia and brothers Ceschi and David Ramos have produced is a collection that's bound to land a track or two or your iPod. Maybe even this one:

Download: "Liar."  Photo courtesy of TOCA.

And here's the video (featuring Pigeon John) for that song:

I know, the headline sounds like some kind of Blue Light Special. But take it literally -- thanks to KCRW-FM, you can download the new single off the Greyboy Allstars' album "What Happened to Television?" Oh ... (inserting my best announcer's voice) ... if you act now.

The song is the killer cover of "How Glad I Am," which features vocals by the Living Sisters -- the trio of L.A. women who are estimable artists in their own right, Eleni Mandell, Inara George and Becky Stark.

Have at it: "How Glad I Am."

[Contributor Casey Dolan unearths a gem:]

Chicago singer-songwriter David Vandervelde was only 19 three years ago when he penned and recorded "Nothin' No," a slow-drag bang-your-header. It's only now being pushed as the second single from his debut album on Secretly Canadian, "The Moonstation House Band." Took a while. Ex-Wilco guitarist, Jay Bennett, co-wrote the tune and plays bass, but Vandervelde handles all the other chores, including production. There's a wonderful sense of crazy youthful abandon in the track, from Vandervelde's reedy whine to the hemorrhaging tubes in the amps (electric Neil Young fans, take note!). This is a song that demands to be played loud.

||| Download: "Nothin' No"

||| Vandervelde hits L.A. on July 13 for a show at Spaceland.

[Contributor Casey Dolan suffered an anxiety attack watching this video:]

The first video from Unkle's new album, "War Stories" (due July 24) is bound to get viewers feeling a bit constricted around the chest. Ian Astbury, on hiatus from resurrecting the ghost of Jim Morrison, sings the song "Burn My Shadow" as actor Goran Visjnic ("ER" and "Welcome to Sarajevo") wakes up in his boozy post-disaster flat to discover that he has a bit of a problem and not much time to solve it. Director Miguel Sapochnik, who previously worked as a storyboard artist for the films "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Winter Guest," guides us to an explosive climax in this compelling video. David Cronenberg would be proud.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]

Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.

||| Listen to "The Man."

Photo from Dr. Cornel West

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

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Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

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More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

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Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

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Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

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Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

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Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

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And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

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Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

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Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

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I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

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Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

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Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

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Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Service Group serves up a pop winner

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan with his dollop of pop:]

Dylan Hay Chapman, lead singer-songwriter for local popsters Service Group, tells me that the origin of the group's name lay in a high school student contingent assigned to work in the cafeteria ("the kids that weren't into athletics"). I wasn't far wrong in guessing that it sounded like a catering firm for high schools; either that or sex trade camp followers for the military (but, no, wait, that was Joy Division).

Chapman is a breezy fellow with a band that has patiently slogged it out in the rock 'n' roll toilets of Los Angeles for the past several years. Now, their brand of altered retro-pop may get a boost from their second album, "Principals of Electronic Circuitry," being released Sept. 25 on their own label, Squid vs. Whale.

"We're all happy with the album," says Chapman. "It's been kicking around for two years, so [we're well practiced]. We know we have a lot of playing and promoting to do. The second album is the same sensibility as the first, only the fast songs are faster, the slow songs are slower. It's a little more refined; the corners are sharpened."

[One in a series highlighting new music by Los Angeles bands:]

On its first album two years ago, the Prix gave us a collection of two-days-away-from-a-razor power pop that displayed quite a bit of muscle and maybe a little moxie, not to mention a kinship with decades of artists who honed their hooks in a garage. If "Frix the Prix" got only a modest reception, it might have been because the Prix never bothered to slather its retro feel in eight layers of irony.

"St. Domino," the new EP from the quartet, expands its palette considerably, with touches of glam and new wave seeping into six rollicking songs recorded at Red Rockets Glare studio with Raymond Richards and Dan Long. You might even hear a little Smiths along with the quartet's frenetic piano lines and harmonies. The Prix (Cashew Von Harding, Blake Jordan, Zach Ziegler and Stephen Mills) are the resident band this month at club Kiss or Kill (recently moved to Wednesday nights at El Cid). This week, they celebrate the release of "St. Domino" at Kiss or Kill with support from Star No Star, the Power Cords and Service Group.

||| Download "The Chevalier."

Photo of the Prix by Sterling Andrews. [Thanks to reader A. Martinez for the reminder.]

[This blog has been silent for a couple days, and one e-mailer even suggested I had run off and joined the Warped Tour. Hey, I didn't like Paramore that much. No, this little digital portal suffered because I was on jury duty, which pushed my day job into a night job and pushed the blogging into ... well, you get the idea. Silly me for thinking I'd have time to squeeze in a blog post, or even get away to see the Klaxons on Tuesday night. The judge was kind of a rock star, even if he threatened anybody who dared to use his iPod in the courtroom. So here's a little song I like, with some more to come:]

Mendocino-based singer-songwriter Chrisopher Blue has gotten his first name, which has no "t," misspelled all over the West Coast. I'm here to apologize for careless typists everywhere, and to tell you that his album "Room Tones" is perfect rainy-day listening. Well, if it ever rained here. Blue -- who used to play in a band with Duff McKagan and actually almost quit music if not for words of encouragement from Mark Lanegan -- is in town for a couple shows this weekend. Maybe it'll cloud up.

||| See Chrisopher Blue performs Saturday at Room 5 on Fairfax and Sunday at Tangier in Los Feliz.

||| Download: "Good Time Baby" as performed live on Seattle's KEXP-FM.

Thursday, July 12

What a night for shows: Patrick Park and Emma Burgess play Spaceland; Dr. Dog and the Delta Spirit hold forth at the Echo; the Little Ones play the Indie 103.1 bash at the Hammer Museum (last week's with Great Northern was pretty swell, I hear); Everest headlines the Silverlake Lounge; the Sharp Things bring their sharp orchestral pop to the Mint; and the Front and the Monolators are among the band's playing a Rock Insider event at the Scene in Glendale.

[Ears Wide Open is an occasional series highlighting L.A. bands and their music:]

Six guys, six sensibilties -- and "an anything-goes type of mentality," singer-instrumentalist Tommy Valencia says. You're not getting an album when you happen upon "TOCA," the debut from the L.A. band of that name. You're getting paraded through every department of your mental record store. It's not so much genre-bending as it is genre-hopping. The album quick-cuts between rock to jazz to reggae to pop to hip-hop to punk.

It might all seem a bit contrived, if the songs -- the work of musicians with impressive resumes as collaborators and session men -- didn't reflect such a passion for those excursions. Among the guests on the record (which was released in May) are the likes of Aceyalone, Pigeon John and Busdriver. What TOCA members Xinxo (Danny Rodriguez), Danny Levin, Max Heath, Valencia and brothers Ceschi and David Ramos have produced is a collection that's bound to land a track or two or your iPod. Maybe even this one:

Download: "Liar."  Photo courtesy of TOCA.

And here's the video (featuring Pigeon John) for that song:

I know, the headline sounds like some kind of Blue Light Special. But take it literally -- thanks to KCRW-FM, you can download the new single off the Greyboy Allstars' album "What Happened to Television?" Oh ... (inserting my best announcer's voice) ... if you act now.

The song is the killer cover of "How Glad I Am," which features vocals by the Living Sisters -- the trio of L.A. women who are estimable artists in their own right, Eleni Mandell, Inara George and Becky Stark.

Have at it: "How Glad I Am."

[Contributor Casey Dolan unearths a gem:]

Chicago singer-songwriter David Vandervelde was only 19 three years ago when he penned and recorded "Nothin' No," a slow-drag bang-your-header. It's only now being pushed as the second single from his debut album on Secretly Canadian, "The Moonstation House Band." Took a while. Ex-Wilco guitarist, Jay Bennett, co-wrote the tune and plays bass, but Vandervelde handles all the other chores, including production. There's a wonderful sense of crazy youthful abandon in the track, from Vandervelde's reedy whine to the hemorrhaging tubes in the amps (electric Neil Young fans, take note!). This is a song that demands to be played loud.

||| Download: "Nothin' No"

||| Vandervelde hits L.A. on July 13 for a show at Spaceland.

[Contributor Casey Dolan suffered an anxiety attack watching this video:]

The first video from Unkle's new album, "War Stories" (due July 24) is bound to get viewers feeling a bit constricted around the chest. Ian Astbury, on hiatus from resurrecting the ghost of Jim Morrison, sings the song "Burn My Shadow" as actor Goran Visjnic ("ER" and "Welcome to Sarajevo") wakes up in his boozy post-disaster flat to discover that he has a bit of a problem and not much time to solve it. Director Miguel Sapochnik, who previously worked as a storyboard artist for the films "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Winter Guest," guides us to an explosive climax in this compelling video. David Cronenberg would be proud.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]

Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.

||| Listen to "The Man."

Photo from Dr. Cornel West

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

◊ ◊ ◊

Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

◊ ◊ ◊

More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

◊ ◊ ◊

Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

◊ ◊ ◊

Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

◊ ◊ ◊

Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

◊ ◊ ◊

And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

◊ ◊ ◊

Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

◊ ◊ ◊

I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

◊ ◊ ◊

Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

◊ ◊ ◊

Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Ears Wide Open: The Prix's grander new sound

[One in a series highlighting new music by Los Angeles bands:]

On its first album two years ago, the Prix gave us a collection of two-days-away-from-a-razor power pop that displayed quite a bit of muscle and maybe a little moxie, not to mention a kinship with decades of artists who honed their hooks in a garage. If "Frix the Prix" got only a modest reception, it might have been because the Prix never bothered to slather its retro feel in eight layers of irony.

"St. Domino," the new EP from the quartet, expands its palette considerably, with touches of glam and new wave seeping into six rollicking songs recorded at Red Rockets Glare studio with Raymond Richards and Dan Long. You might even hear a little Smiths along with the quartet's frenetic piano lines and harmonies. The Prix (Cashew Von Harding, Blake Jordan, Zach Ziegler and Stephen Mills) are the resident band this month at club Kiss or Kill (recently moved to Wednesday nights at El Cid). This week, they celebrate the release of "St. Domino" at Kiss or Kill with support from Star No Star, the Power Cords and Service Group.

||| Download "The Chevalier."

Photo of the Prix by Sterling Andrews. [Thanks to reader A. Martinez for the reminder.]

[This blog has been silent for a couple days, and one e-mailer even suggested I had run off and joined the Warped Tour. Hey, I didn't like Paramore that much. No, this little digital portal suffered because I was on jury duty, which pushed my day job into a night job and pushed the blogging into ... well, you get the idea. Silly me for thinking I'd have time to squeeze in a blog post, or even get away to see the Klaxons on Tuesday night. The judge was kind of a rock star, even if he threatened anybody who dared to use his iPod in the courtroom. So here's a little song I like, with some more to come:]

Mendocino-based singer-songwriter Chrisopher Blue has gotten his first name, which has no "t," misspelled all over the West Coast. I'm here to apologize for careless typists everywhere, and to tell you that his album "Room Tones" is perfect rainy-day listening. Well, if it ever rained here. Blue -- who used to play in a band with Duff McKagan and actually almost quit music if not for words of encouragement from Mark Lanegan -- is in town for a couple shows this weekend. Maybe it'll cloud up.

||| See Chrisopher Blue performs Saturday at Room 5 on Fairfax and Sunday at Tangier in Los Feliz.

||| Download: "Good Time Baby" as performed live on Seattle's KEXP-FM.

Thursday, July 12

What a night for shows: Patrick Park and Emma Burgess play Spaceland; Dr. Dog and the Delta Spirit hold forth at the Echo; the Little Ones play the Indie 103.1 bash at the Hammer Museum (last week's with Great Northern was pretty swell, I hear); Everest headlines the Silverlake Lounge; the Sharp Things bring their sharp orchestral pop to the Mint; and the Front and the Monolators are among the band's playing a Rock Insider event at the Scene in Glendale.

[Ears Wide Open is an occasional series highlighting L.A. bands and their music:]

Six guys, six sensibilties -- and "an anything-goes type of mentality," singer-instrumentalist Tommy Valencia says. You're not getting an album when you happen upon "TOCA," the debut from the L.A. band of that name. You're getting paraded through every department of your mental record store. It's not so much genre-bending as it is genre-hopping. The album quick-cuts between rock to jazz to reggae to pop to hip-hop to punk.

It might all seem a bit contrived, if the songs -- the work of musicians with impressive resumes as collaborators and session men -- didn't reflect such a passion for those excursions. Among the guests on the record (which was released in May) are the likes of Aceyalone, Pigeon John and Busdriver. What TOCA members Xinxo (Danny Rodriguez), Danny Levin, Max Heath, Valencia and brothers Ceschi and David Ramos have produced is a collection that's bound to land a track or two or your iPod. Maybe even this one:

Download: "Liar."  Photo courtesy of TOCA.

And here's the video (featuring Pigeon John) for that song:

I know, the headline sounds like some kind of Blue Light Special. But take it literally -- thanks to KCRW-FM, you can download the new single off the Greyboy Allstars' album "What Happened to Television?" Oh ... (inserting my best announcer's voice) ... if you act now.

The song is the killer cover of "How Glad I Am," which features vocals by the Living Sisters -- the trio of L.A. women who are estimable artists in their own right, Eleni Mandell, Inara George and Becky Stark.

Have at it: "How Glad I Am."

[Contributor Casey Dolan unearths a gem:]

Chicago singer-songwriter David Vandervelde was only 19 three years ago when he penned and recorded "Nothin' No," a slow-drag bang-your-header. It's only now being pushed as the second single from his debut album on Secretly Canadian, "The Moonstation House Band." Took a while. Ex-Wilco guitarist, Jay Bennett, co-wrote the tune and plays bass, but Vandervelde handles all the other chores, including production. There's a wonderful sense of crazy youthful abandon in the track, from Vandervelde's reedy whine to the hemorrhaging tubes in the amps (electric Neil Young fans, take note!). This is a song that demands to be played loud.

||| Download: "Nothin' No"

||| Vandervelde hits L.A. on July 13 for a show at Spaceland.

[Contributor Casey Dolan suffered an anxiety attack watching this video:]

The first video from Unkle's new album, "War Stories" (due July 24) is bound to get viewers feeling a bit constricted around the chest. Ian Astbury, on hiatus from resurrecting the ghost of Jim Morrison, sings the song "Burn My Shadow" as actor Goran Visjnic ("ER" and "Welcome to Sarajevo") wakes up in his boozy post-disaster flat to discover that he has a bit of a problem and not much time to solve it. Director Miguel Sapochnik, who previously worked as a storyboard artist for the films "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Winter Guest," guides us to an explosive climax in this compelling video. David Cronenberg would be proud.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]

Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.

||| Listen to "The Man."

Photo from Dr. Cornel West

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

◊ ◊ ◊

Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

◊ ◊ ◊

More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

◊ ◊ ◊

Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

◊ ◊ ◊

Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

◊ ◊ ◊

Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

◊ ◊ ◊

And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

◊ ◊ ◊

Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

◊ ◊ ◊

I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

◊ ◊ ◊

Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

◊ ◊ ◊

Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Chrisopher Blue brings 'Room Tones' to Room 5

[This blog has been silent for a couple days, and one e-mailer even suggested I had run off and joined the Warped Tour. Hey, I didn't like Paramore that much. No, this little digital portal suffered because I was on jury duty, which pushed my day job into a night job and pushed the blogging into ... well, you get the idea. Silly me for thinking I'd have time to squeeze in a blog post, or even get away to see the Klaxons on Tuesday night. The judge was kind of a rock star, even if he threatened anybody who dared to use his iPod in the courtroom. So here's a little song I like, with some more to come:]

Mendocino-based singer-songwriter Chrisopher Blue has gotten his first name, which has no "t," misspelled all over the West Coast. I'm here to apologize for careless typists everywhere, and to tell you that his album "Room Tones" is perfect rainy-day listening. Well, if it ever rained here. Blue -- who used to play in a band with Duff McKagan and actually almost quit music if not for words of encouragement from Mark Lanegan -- is in town for a couple shows this weekend. Maybe it'll cloud up.

||| See Chrisopher Blue performs Saturday at Room 5 on Fairfax and Sunday at Tangier in Los Feliz.

||| Download: "Good Time Baby" as performed live on Seattle's KEXP-FM.

Thursday, July 12

What a night for shows: Patrick Park and Emma Burgess play Spaceland; Dr. Dog and the Delta Spirit hold forth at the Echo; the Little Ones play the Indie 103.1 bash at the Hammer Museum (last week's with Great Northern was pretty swell, I hear); Everest headlines the Silverlake Lounge; the Sharp Things bring their sharp orchestral pop to the Mint; and the Front and the Monolators are among the band's playing a Rock Insider event at the Scene in Glendale.

[Ears Wide Open is an occasional series highlighting L.A. bands and their music:]

Six guys, six sensibilties -- and "an anything-goes type of mentality," singer-instrumentalist Tommy Valencia says. You're not getting an album when you happen upon "TOCA," the debut from the L.A. band of that name. You're getting paraded through every department of your mental record store. It's not so much genre-bending as it is genre-hopping. The album quick-cuts between rock to jazz to reggae to pop to hip-hop to punk.

It might all seem a bit contrived, if the songs -- the work of musicians with impressive resumes as collaborators and session men -- didn't reflect such a passion for those excursions. Among the guests on the record (which was released in May) are the likes of Aceyalone, Pigeon John and Busdriver. What TOCA members Xinxo (Danny Rodriguez), Danny Levin, Max Heath, Valencia and brothers Ceschi and David Ramos have produced is a collection that's bound to land a track or two or your iPod. Maybe even this one:

Download: "Liar."  Photo courtesy of TOCA.

And here's the video (featuring Pigeon John) for that song:

I know, the headline sounds like some kind of Blue Light Special. But take it literally -- thanks to KCRW-FM, you can download the new single off the Greyboy Allstars' album "What Happened to Television?" Oh ... (inserting my best announcer's voice) ... if you act now.

The song is the killer cover of "How Glad I Am," which features vocals by the Living Sisters -- the trio of L.A. women who are estimable artists in their own right, Eleni Mandell, Inara George and Becky Stark.

Have at it: "How Glad I Am."

[Contributor Casey Dolan unearths a gem:]

Chicago singer-songwriter David Vandervelde was only 19 three years ago when he penned and recorded "Nothin' No," a slow-drag bang-your-header. It's only now being pushed as the second single from his debut album on Secretly Canadian, "The Moonstation House Band." Took a while. Ex-Wilco guitarist, Jay Bennett, co-wrote the tune and plays bass, but Vandervelde handles all the other chores, including production. There's a wonderful sense of crazy youthful abandon in the track, from Vandervelde's reedy whine to the hemorrhaging tubes in the amps (electric Neil Young fans, take note!). This is a song that demands to be played loud.

||| Download: "Nothin' No"

||| Vandervelde hits L.A. on July 13 for a show at Spaceland.

[Contributor Casey Dolan suffered an anxiety attack watching this video:]

The first video from Unkle's new album, "War Stories" (due July 24) is bound to get viewers feeling a bit constricted around the chest. Ian Astbury, on hiatus from resurrecting the ghost of Jim Morrison, sings the song "Burn My Shadow" as actor Goran Visjnic ("ER" and "Welcome to Sarajevo") wakes up in his boozy post-disaster flat to discover that he has a bit of a problem and not much time to solve it. Director Miguel Sapochnik, who previously worked as a storyboard artist for the films "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Winter Guest," guides us to an explosive climax in this compelling video. David Cronenberg would be proud.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]

Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.

||| Listen to "The Man."

Photo from Dr. Cornel West

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

◊ ◊ ◊

Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

◊ ◊ ◊

More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

◊ ◊ ◊

Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

◊ ◊ ◊

Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

◊ ◊ ◊

Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

◊ ◊ ◊

And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

◊ ◊ ◊

Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

◊ ◊ ◊

I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

◊ ◊ ◊

Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

◊ ◊ ◊

Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Ears Wide Open: TOCA's wide-ranging sounds

[Ears Wide Open is an occasional series highlighting L.A. bands and their music:]

Six guys, six sensibilties -- and "an anything-goes type of mentality," singer-instrumentalist Tommy Valencia says. You're not getting an album when you happen upon "TOCA," the debut from the L.A. band of that name. You're getting paraded through every department of your mental record store. It's not so much genre-bending as it is genre-hopping. The album quick-cuts between rock to jazz to reggae to pop to hip-hop to punk.

It might all seem a bit contrived, if the songs -- the work of musicians with impressive resumes as collaborators and session men -- didn't reflect such a passion for those excursions. Among the guests on the record (which was released in May) are the likes of Aceyalone, Pigeon John and Busdriver. What TOCA members Xinxo (Danny Rodriguez), Danny Levin, Max Heath, Valencia and brothers Ceschi and David Ramos have produced is a collection that's bound to land a track or two or your iPod. Maybe even this one:

Download: "Liar."  Photo courtesy of TOCA.

And here's the video (featuring Pigeon John) for that song:

I know, the headline sounds like some kind of Blue Light Special. But take it literally -- thanks to KCRW-FM, you can download the new single off the Greyboy Allstars' album "What Happened to Television?" Oh ... (inserting my best announcer's voice) ... if you act now.

The song is the killer cover of "How Glad I Am," which features vocals by the Living Sisters -- the trio of L.A. women who are estimable artists in their own right, Eleni Mandell, Inara George and Becky Stark.

Have at it: "How Glad I Am."

[Contributor Casey Dolan unearths a gem:]

Chicago singer-songwriter David Vandervelde was only 19 three years ago when he penned and recorded "Nothin' No," a slow-drag bang-your-header. It's only now being pushed as the second single from his debut album on Secretly Canadian, "The Moonstation House Band." Took a while. Ex-Wilco guitarist, Jay Bennett, co-wrote the tune and plays bass, but Vandervelde handles all the other chores, including production. There's a wonderful sense of crazy youthful abandon in the track, from Vandervelde's reedy whine to the hemorrhaging tubes in the amps (electric Neil Young fans, take note!). This is a song that demands to be played loud.

||| Download: "Nothin' No"

||| Vandervelde hits L.A. on July 13 for a show at Spaceland.

[Contributor Casey Dolan suffered an anxiety attack watching this video:]

The first video from Unkle's new album, "War Stories" (due July 24) is bound to get viewers feeling a bit constricted around the chest. Ian Astbury, on hiatus from resurrecting the ghost of Jim Morrison, sings the song "Burn My Shadow" as actor Goran Visjnic ("ER" and "Welcome to Sarajevo") wakes up in his boozy post-disaster flat to discover that he has a bit of a problem and not much time to solve it. Director Miguel Sapochnik, who previously worked as a storyboard artist for the films "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Winter Guest," guides us to an explosive climax in this compelling video. David Cronenberg would be proud.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]

Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.

||| Listen to "The Man."

Photo from Dr. Cornel West

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

◊ ◊ ◊

Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

◊ ◊ ◊

More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

◊ ◊ ◊

Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

◊ ◊ ◊

Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

◊ ◊ ◊

Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

◊ ◊ ◊

And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

◊ ◊ ◊

Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

◊ ◊ ◊

I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

◊ ◊ ◊

Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

◊ ◊ ◊

Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Greyboy Allstars download, today only

I know, the headline sounds like some kind of Blue Light Special. But take it literally -- thanks to KCRW-FM, you can download the new single off the Greyboy Allstars' album "What Happened to Television?" Oh ... (inserting my best announcer's voice) ... if you act now.

The song is the killer cover of "How Glad I Am," which features vocals by the Living Sisters -- the trio of L.A. women who are estimable artists in their own right, Eleni Mandell, Inara George and Becky Stark.

Have at it: "How Glad I Am."

[Contributor Casey Dolan unearths a gem:]

Chicago singer-songwriter David Vandervelde was only 19 three years ago when he penned and recorded "Nothin' No," a slow-drag bang-your-header. It's only now being pushed as the second single from his debut album on Secretly Canadian, "The Moonstation House Band." Took a while. Ex-Wilco guitarist, Jay Bennett, co-wrote the tune and plays bass, but Vandervelde handles all the other chores, including production. There's a wonderful sense of crazy youthful abandon in the track, from Vandervelde's reedy whine to the hemorrhaging tubes in the amps (electric Neil Young fans, take note!). This is a song that demands to be played loud.

||| Download: "Nothin' No"

||| Vandervelde hits L.A. on July 13 for a show at Spaceland.

[Contributor Casey Dolan suffered an anxiety attack watching this video:]

The first video from Unkle's new album, "War Stories" (due July 24) is bound to get viewers feeling a bit constricted around the chest. Ian Astbury, on hiatus from resurrecting the ghost of Jim Morrison, sings the song "Burn My Shadow" as actor Goran Visjnic ("ER" and "Welcome to Sarajevo") wakes up in his boozy post-disaster flat to discover that he has a bit of a problem and not much time to solve it. Director Miguel Sapochnik, who previously worked as a storyboard artist for the films "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Winter Guest," guides us to an explosive climax in this compelling video. David Cronenberg would be proud.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]

Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.

||| Listen to "The Man."

Photo from Dr. Cornel West

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

◊ ◊ ◊

Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

◊ ◊ ◊

More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

◊ ◊ ◊

Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

◊ ◊ ◊

Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

◊ ◊ ◊

Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

◊ ◊ ◊

And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

◊ ◊ ◊

Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

◊ ◊ ◊

I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

◊ ◊ ◊

Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

◊ ◊ ◊

Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

David Vandervelde's 'Nothin' No'

[Contributor Casey Dolan unearths a gem:]

Chicago singer-songwriter David Vandervelde was only 19 three years ago when he penned and recorded "Nothin' No," a slow-drag bang-your-header. It's only now being pushed as the second single from his debut album on Secretly Canadian, "The Moonstation House Band." Took a while. Ex-Wilco guitarist, Jay Bennett, co-wrote the tune and plays bass, but Vandervelde handles all the other chores, including production. There's a wonderful sense of crazy youthful abandon in the track, from Vandervelde's reedy whine to the hemorrhaging tubes in the amps (electric Neil Young fans, take note!). This is a song that demands to be played loud.

||| Download: "Nothin' No"

||| Vandervelde hits L.A. on July 13 for a show at Spaceland.

[Contributor Casey Dolan suffered an anxiety attack watching this video:]

The first video from Unkle's new album, "War Stories" (due July 24) is bound to get viewers feeling a bit constricted around the chest. Ian Astbury, on hiatus from resurrecting the ghost of Jim Morrison, sings the song "Burn My Shadow" as actor Goran Visjnic ("ER" and "Welcome to Sarajevo") wakes up in his boozy post-disaster flat to discover that he has a bit of a problem and not much time to solve it. Director Miguel Sapochnik, who previously worked as a storyboard artist for the films "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Winter Guest," guides us to an explosive climax in this compelling video. David Cronenberg would be proud.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]

Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.

||| Listen to "The Man."

Photo from Dr. Cornel West

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

◊ ◊ ◊

Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

◊ ◊ ◊

More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

◊ ◊ ◊

Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

◊ ◊ ◊

Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

◊ ◊ ◊

Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

◊ ◊ ◊

And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

◊ ◊ ◊

Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

◊ ◊ ◊

I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

◊ ◊ ◊

Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

◊ ◊ ◊

Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Tick, tick, tick ... it's Unkle's new video

[Contributor Casey Dolan suffered an anxiety attack watching this video:]

The first video from Unkle's new album, "War Stories" (due July 24) is bound to get viewers feeling a bit constricted around the chest. Ian Astbury, on hiatus from resurrecting the ghost of Jim Morrison, sings the song "Burn My Shadow" as actor Goran Visjnic ("ER" and "Welcome to Sarajevo") wakes up in his boozy post-disaster flat to discover that he has a bit of a problem and not much time to solve it. Director Miguel Sapochnik, who previously worked as a storyboard artist for the films "A Life Less Ordinary" and "The Winter Guest," guides us to an explosive climax in this compelling video. David Cronenberg would be proud.

 

[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]

Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.

||| Listen to "The Man."

Photo from Dr. Cornel West

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

◊ ◊ ◊

Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

◊ ◊ ◊

More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

◊ ◊ ◊

Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

◊ ◊ ◊

Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

◊ ◊ ◊

Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

◊ ◊ ◊

And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

◊ ◊ ◊

Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

◊ ◊ ◊

I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

◊ ◊ ◊

Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

◊ ◊ ◊

Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Prince and Dr. Cornel West address the Man

[Contributor Casey Dolan knows a truly funky thing when he hears it:]

Following Buzz Bands' exclusive on his Purple Majesty, here is "Dear Mr. Man," an ingenious mix of soul and polemic from Prince and Dr. Cornel West that harks back to the days of Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. There's more than a healthy dollop of simmering funk. Dig those delicious, understated horn charts and Prince's slinky vocals. West, a Princeton professor of Religion and African American Studies, has brought together a hodge-podge of talent -- Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest and Jill Scott among others -- to address the issues facing a black person in America today. The forum is the CD, "Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations," to be released Aug. 14 in partnership with West's Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB). The link is only streamable at present.

||| Listen to "The Man."

Photo from Dr. Cornel West

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

◊ ◊ ◊

Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

◊ ◊ ◊

More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

◊ ◊ ◊

Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

◊ ◊ ◊

Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

◊ ◊ ◊

Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

◊ ◊ ◊

And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

◊ ◊ ◊

Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

◊ ◊ ◊

I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

◊ ◊ ◊

Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

◊ ◊ ◊

Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Common plays an uncommonly great 'Game'

[Contributor Casey Dolan can't stop "dancing like a butterfly":]

Common's first single, "The Game," from his upcoming album, "Finding Forever," is a churning track, with rhymes swooping in and out, syncopatingly seducing the listener like a prizefighter looking to land his blow. He may be a Chi-town native, but there's a New York feel to both the song and black and white video. Shades of Elia Kazan, John Cassavetes and John Frankenheimer, except edited by a DJ/mixer with ADD. You can smell the smoke and sweat. The track has a old school funky horn sample and one helluva beat that propels it from start to finish -- from the locker room mirror shots in the opening to the gauzy glaze of a packed club at video's finish. Kanye West produced the track and the great DJ Premier adds the scratching that serves as the basic fabric.

Here it is:
   

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

◊ ◊ ◊

Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

◊ ◊ ◊

More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

◊ ◊ ◊

Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

◊ ◊ ◊

Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

◊ ◊ ◊

Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

◊ ◊ ◊

And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

◊ ◊ ◊

Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

◊ ◊ ◊

I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

◊ ◊ ◊

Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

◊ ◊ ◊

Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Strokes video: Sirius or delirious?

[Contributor Casey Dolan, who will be weighing in here on many things digitized, is starry-eyed and bible black:]

The new Strokes video, directed by Warren Fu, pays its respects to both Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” with a floating black monolith and lysergic cyclotron finale and Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” with sped-up footage of the human ant farm. Worthy homages, but it’s all dross.

A time capsule containing the holy relic of a holographic Strokes performing “You Only Live Once” is shot into space following a nuclear exchange. Destination? The dog star, Sirius, beacon to our galaxy. Interesting choice, but Sirius A or its miniature dwarf star, Sirius B? Either place and the capsule would be boiled. Scientists put Sirius A at 8.6 light-years from Earth. The capsule’s onboard tracking monitor puts Sirius at 40,000 light-years.

Ehh, so what if Fu fudges the numbers? It’s all an exercise in style, but forget the song. There’s utterly no connection between song and image. Hey, you might say, Sirius has played a significant role in millennialist thinkers over the centuries (not to mention lent its name to a satellite radio outfit). That’s Fu’s dog-eared ace up his sleeve. The star was the projected destination for the French, Swiss and Canadian cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, a modern mystical update on the Knights of the Templar, but many members managed to have an earthly death before immolation by a celestial object.

||| Go here to watch it. Think of it as a trip to outer space.

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

◊ ◊ ◊

Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

◊ ◊ ◊

More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

◊ ◊ ◊

Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

◊ ◊ ◊

Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

◊ ◊ ◊

Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

◊ ◊ ◊

And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

◊ ◊ ◊

Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

◊ ◊ ◊

I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

◊ ◊ ◊

Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

◊ ◊ ◊

Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Ears Wide Open: Bodies of Water

[Another in an occasional series covering artists playing around Los Angeles:]

"There's so much joie de ... something," a friend said to me during a recent set by L.A.'s Bodies of Water, the Monday night residents this month at the Echo. Indeed, something.

Summoning an energy maybe only a D-cell battery short of the Arcade Fire or Polyphonic Spree, Bodies of Water are certainly not lacking for bodies. The group's core -- the husband-and-wife team of David (guitar) and Meredith (organ) Metcalf, Jessie Conklin (drums) and Kyle Gladden (bass) -- swells to 10 members live, including three horn players, a violist, another guitarist and another drummer.

Sometimes you wonder if there are enough microphones to go around; since almost everybody sings, the exuberant noise on Bodies' debut album, "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" (due July 24), escalates into a band sing-along. The sprawling arrangements and intertwined vocals give Bodies' gospel-folk a proggy feel -- not to mention the notion that you're just one tent short of a revival.

More cowbell.

||| See: Bodies of Water plays free shows the next two Mondays at the Echo -- supported tonight by the like-minded Parson Redheads, who, we think, still hold the record for most musicians on the Echo stage.

||| Download: "These Are the Eyes."

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

◊ ◊ ◊

Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

◊ ◊ ◊

More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

◊ ◊ ◊

Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

◊ ◊ ◊

Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

◊ ◊ ◊

Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

◊ ◊ ◊

And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

◊ ◊ ◊

Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

◊ ◊ ◊

I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

◊ ◊ ◊

Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

◊ ◊ ◊

Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

The Sea and Cake: crossing into L.A.

[Here's an excerpt from Casey Dolan's weekly Downloads column, which you can find here:]

The Sea and Cake, "Crossing Line": An odd piece of musical magic from Chicago’s venerable band, “Crossing Line” is from the new album “Everybody” — the Sea and Cake’s first release in four years. Sam Prekop’s half-asleep, funky white-boy vocals are a perfect juxtaposition with the low-budget distorted guitars, and listen to Eric Claridge’s wonderfully in-the-pocket bass. It’s hard to make out what Prekop is singing about, but the subtle, organic music more than makes up for the obscured lyrics. It’s a casual groove for a summer afternoon. Download.

||| See the Sea and Cake perform Saturday and Sunday at the Troubadour.

Photo by Jim Newberry.

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

◊ ◊ ◊

Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

◊ ◊ ◊

More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

◊ ◊ ◊

Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

◊ ◊ ◊

Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

◊ ◊ ◊

Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

◊ ◊ ◊

And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

◊ ◊ ◊

Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

◊ ◊ ◊

I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

◊ ◊ ◊

Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

◊ ◊ ◊

Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Arcade Fire, Hullabaloo tickets go on sale

Computers are likely to be busy around 10 a.m. Saturday when tickets for the Arcade Fire's shows May 29 and 30 at the Greek Theatre go on sale.

Tickets for another big show go on sale Saturday, too -- the third annual Hullabaloo, a benefit for the Flea-founded Silverlake Conservatory of Music. The bill for this year's show (May 5 at the Fonda Theatre) includes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Vedder, Charlie Hayden, the Ditty Bops and students from the school. Woody Harrelson will emcee; magician Rob Zabrecky. The price tag ($250, or $500 for VIP ticket) includes food, beverage and parking. Tickets will only be available through the school's website.

◊ ◊ ◊

Download: Local orchestral pop ensemble the Minor Canon, who have two weeks left in their Monday residency at Spaceland, have made another song from its new album "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" available for download. Visit the band's MySpace for "The Rockets Countdown."

◊ ◊ ◊

More: Voxtrot's self-titled debut is out May 22 (the band plays May 29 at the El Rey Theatre). Seriously catchy. From the new album, here is "Kid Gloves."  ... And "Garden State" soundtrack balladeer Cary Brothers releases "Who You Are" on May 29. It's easy to hear why he's become a favorite in L.A. coustic circles. Here's the title track.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for the weekend: The Autumn headline the Roxy tonight. ... On Saturday, it's battling bands from the U.K. -- the hot Klaxons play the Ex-Plex, while Art Brut performs at the Troubadour. ... Indie darlings Smoosh play the Knitting Factory on Saturday, and the blippy Books perform at the Malibu Performaning Arts Center.

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

◊ ◊ ◊

Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

◊ ◊ ◊

Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

◊ ◊ ◊

Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

◊ ◊ ◊

And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

◊ ◊ ◊

Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

◊ ◊ ◊

I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

◊ ◊ ◊

Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

◊ ◊ ◊

Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

The National, and other anticipatory ramblings

[Kevin Bronson is taking a little time off to alphabetize his CD collection -- and where do you put these people? Starting Thursday, please welcome guest blogger Jeff Weiss, who is taller and has a better fastball. Meanwhile, Bronson empties his notebook ...]

Several upcoming releases have me geeking out. Like "Boxer" from the Brooklyn-based five-piece the National, due May 22. "Alligator" was my album-of-the-ear a couple of years ago (refresher). Quick first impression after "Boxer" arrived this week: more orchestral, no less heady. Here's a taste:

||| Download: "Fake Empire."

Then there is "Spells" by the Comas, coming April 17 on Vagrant. A little bit of everything here, and all good: Weezerish bursts of ear candy, a couple of epic anthems and a dose of contemplative dreampop that reminds me of the fine New York duo Joy Zipper.

||| Download: "Red Microphones."

First impression of "Baby 81," due May 1 from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: It's the great, gutsy rock 'n' roll record you suspected all along they could make. And, hey, the photo on their website was taken right in front of our favorite downtown L.A. bar. The band plays the Wiltern on May 8. And it might just be me, but the first single is a middle-of-the-pack song compared to the rest of what's on the album.

||| Stream: "Weapon of Choice."

And for you dancers who might have already worn out this album, there will be the moodier, eyeliner-informed "Night of the Furies" by the Rosebuds. It's out April 10 on Merge.

||| Download: "Get Up Get Out."

◊ ◊ ◊

Live, in store and now on disc: Amoeba Music has released a four-track, limited-edition EP titled "TV on the Radio Live at Amoeba," which captures a slice of the band's in-store appearance in Hollywood last September. The "limited edition" part means the EP will be sold for the next 30 days, or while supplies last. You weren't among the hipster throngs in the aisles that day? Looky here.

◊ ◊ ◊

Yikes: Arcade Fire canceled eight European dates because Win Butler is suffering from "sinus and bronchial infection" that will require sinus surgery. He explains on his diary here, but suffice to say the band will not play live again until their Coachella warmup, which is April 26 at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre. The band is scheduled to play on the second day of the three-day festival in the desert. Personal note: I had sinus surgery several years back, and I can testify that you can't sing when you have a weeklong bloody nose.

◊ ◊ ◊

Nice addition: One of L.A. finest purveyors of funk, the Breakestra, has joined the lineup for KCRW's "A Sounds Eclectic Evening" on April 14 at Gibson Amphitheatre. Old school.

◊ ◊ ◊

And finally: We'll miss you, Sharp Ease.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Wednesday, March 28: Anya Marina joins the bill for the final night of the Greg Laswell residency at the Hotel Cafe. ... San Diego metallurgists the Locust rock the Knitting Factory. ... Scanners and Datarock invade Spaceland for Club NME. ... And welcome back, Hoodoo Gurus. The tuneful Aussies perform at the El Rey Theatre.

Photo of the National by Sonya Kolowrat.

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

◊ ◊ ◊

Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

◊ ◊ ◊

I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

◊ ◊ ◊

Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

◊ ◊ ◊

Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

To health, and a wealth of Limbeck

[Humble apologies for the dearth of posts last week. I was walloped and waylaid by the condition my doctor called "That Nasty Thing That's Been Going 'Round," leaving me bedridden, feverish and so delirious that in one late-night hallucination my dog sang the Silversun Pickups' "Rusted Wheel" to me from the foot of my bed. Later I discovered I'd fallen asleep with the TV on, while the Silver Lake quartet was appearing on "Last Call With Carson Daly." Whew ... I thought my dog had lowered her singing voice. Now, here's to wellness:]

Limbeck's music wears like a flannel shirt on a brisk morning. The Orange County foursome, which shunned their pop-punk leanings after their first album, has matured largely in a tour van, with the highways and landscapes of the U.S. coloring their experiences. Limbeck recently expanded its travels to include Australia, where singer Robb MacLean and band mates Patrick Carrie, Justin Enstmiger and Casey Prestwood were greeted warmly on a 16-city tour. "Everyone was so hospitable," MacLean says. "They laugh a lot at your jokes -- which really lowers the bar on how funny your jokes have to be." On April 10, the quartet unveils its fourth album, this one titled, simply, "Limbeck." It's another growth spurt for the band's wide-eyed but grown-up Americana. The band won't be back in its home state until April 18 and 19 (Chain Reaction and the Troubadour, respectively) to play behind the release, but here's a new song to tide fans over:

Download: "Big Drag"

Photo of Limbeck by Bryan Sheffield

◊ ◊ ◊

Emma Burgess, who was the subject my Buzz Bands print column this week, will be back at the Hotel Cafe on March 27 (it's the release show for Norwegian songstress Kate Havnevik's album "Melankton"). Burgess' album "Swim" is thus far only available digitally, at eMusic on her MySpace website using the SnoCap software. Here's a taste:

Download: "Big Break"

◊ ◊ ◊

I was also sorry to have missed the Jason Lee-endorsed Midlake last week at the Troubadour, not that their album "The Trials of Van Occupanther" was as life-changing as Mr. Lee apparently found it. This song has been around the web a while, but here's a taste in case you missed it:

Download: "Roscoe."

◊ ◊ ◊

Seems like ages until the May release of "Trading Twilight for Daylight" by the gorgeously melancholic local outfit Great Northern. They play tonight at the Viper Room with the Pity Party at Indie 103.1's "Check One ... Two" night. In the interest of tiding you over:

Download: "Home."

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Monday, March 5: The red-hot Airborne Toxic Event opens its residency at the Echo, with the Happy Hollows among those supporting. ...  Australians the Panda Band play Spaceland in the first of their three L.A. dates in seven days; the occasion is the first night of Berko's residency. ... Buffalo Roam and Castle Door have a dual residency at the Silverlake Lounge. ... The Vacation rock Safari Sam's. ...  And To Live and Die in L.A. and Kissing Tigers play a free show at the Troubadour. 

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

◊ ◊ ◊

Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

If these songs are any indication, Elevator is going up

Only one member of the band is old enough to have a beer, and three others look as if they just walked out of a casting call for "The Brady Bunch." But Great Glass Elevator dispenses sophisticated pop songs, marrying its merry melodies with unexpected choruses and bridges, none of which is wasted on the trifles of playground love.

"A lot of men turn / their hearts to ashes / while they suck the world dry / to please the masses," David Braun sings in "Drunk on Another Planet," the first song off the band's third EP, "Our Hands Turn Into Machines."

When I first saw the Orange County quintet in early 2006 playing to a typically giddy all-ages Tuesday night crowd at the Key Club, Braun and band mates Andrew Honore, Matt Mason, Barrett Slagle and Josh Stephens augmented their theatrical live show with videos and sundry antics. None of that was present, or necessary, when Great Glass Elevator played Tuesday night to a small crowd at the Troubadour. The songs were enough.

Signed to Atlantic last May, the quintet is currently touring and writing songs for its full-length.

Meanwhile, they are offering the "Our Hands Turn Into Machines" for free download (email address required). As the kids would say: Totally worth it.

Click here.

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

◊ ◊ ◊

Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.

Ears Wide Open: American Eyes and Jets Overhead

[Here's some Friday-fresh music to sample:]

American Eyes plays as if it secured the last existing copyright on suburban teenage angst, with a sound that infringes on a lot of territory -- retro metal, dancy but hard-edged '80s new wave and even a little emo. Fresh off a recording session with Josh Abraham (who has worked with Velvet Revolver and Weezer, among others), the L.A. quintet is self-releasing an EP titled "Space." With their roots in the San Fernando Valley and their amps on the Sunset Strip, the quintet returns to the Key Club -- where the band has long been a favorite of young crowds -- for a record-release show at 10 tonight. Expect front man David Henry Zonshine to be at his swaggering best.

||| Download: "Burn It to the Ground."

◊ ◊ ◊

Three-year-old Canadian rock band Jets Overhead, just nominated for a JUNO award for best new band, has an interesting philosophy -- the quintet gives away its music via its website and asks the downloader to make a voluntary purchase. It's worth it. The band's 2006 "Bridges" album is a great slice of guitar rock (especially the track "Shadow Knows"), and its "Jets Overhead" EP from the previous year is worth a hit to your PayPal account too. Here's hoping for an L.A. tour stop sometime this year.