Full house sees the Duke Spirit deal

Liela Moss can talk the talk. Now her band, the Duke Spirit, has "The Step and the Walk," and the sky might be the limit.

That single, off the British quintet's new album "Neptune," capped a set that made you forget its occasional soft spots on Wednesday night at the Echo, which was more crowded than NME's thesaurus of platitudes. The shoulder-to-shoulder masses witnessed a band that's about one tick short of a 12 o'clock high, as Moss and bandmates dealt lean, foreboding garage rock that harks back to the '80s and '90s Britpop heydays.

It all hinges on Moss, the singer who's as much icy hot as hot-and-bothered. Her pipes have drawn comparison to Patti Smith and Nico and PJ Harvey; maybe there's some more-gutteral Chrissie Hynde in there too, in the phrasing; and somebody in the throng even suggested Christina Amphlett of Divinyls, which ... might not be too far off. Whatever. Moss delivers, even if you feel at times she's trapped between offering herself directly to the crowd and maintaining her veneer of detached cool.

There's a weather-beaten intelligence in Duke Spirit songs such as "Send a Little Love Token," "Into the Fold" and "Cuts Across the Land" (the latter from their 2006 debut) that lesser bands might suffocate in histrionics. On Wednesday, nobody was gasping for air, except maybe the bartenders.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit return to L.A. for a May 13 show at the Troubadour.

||| Stream: "Send a Little Love Token" [login required].

Photo by Kevin Bronson / LAT

[Be still your indie-rock hearts for a minute -- this local-music installment groups three veterans of the L.A. scene with new albums, hosts of collaborators and upcoming shows:]

Jim Bianco

One of the originals on the Hotel Cafe scene, Jim Bianco comes as close as anybody I've heard to filling the long shadow of Randy Newman. On his third album, "Sing" (March 4, Hotel Cafe Records), Bianco's nifty horn-, accordion- and piano-flavored arrangements and (occasionally) smilingly bawdy vignettes are as fit for smoky dives as swanky lounges. And the singer's vaguely Waits-ian rasp is made for couplets like "To hell with the devil / I'm sellin' my soul to you," not to mention elastic enough to sell piano ballads ("Painkiller") and groovy excursions ("If Your Mama Knew," which sprinkles in "Rhapsody in Blue"). "Sing," the Brooklyn native's third album, is the first release on a new label spun off the Cahuenga Boulevard venue and includes cameos by Gary Jules and Cary Brothers.

||| Live: Bianco plays his album-release show at the Hotel Cafe on March 4, and a free in-store at Amoeba Music at 7 p.m. March 5. He also performs on the Hotel Cafe Tour (March 8 at the House of Blues Anaheim and April 12 at the Music Box @ Fonda).

||| Download: "I Got a Thing for You". Check out the video for the song here.

Photo by Bethany Dwyer



Shane Alexander

The frontman of the longtime L.A. band Damone -- before they sold the name to these people -- Shane Alexander has stretched out incrementally on each of three solo albums, and his latest, "The Sky Below" (out today on BuddhaLand Records) muscles up considerably. Alexander, whose vocals might remind you the Gin Blossoms' Robin Wilson (or a couple other '90s radio mainstays), remains an effective acoustic troubadour (especially on the title track), but with the help of backing players Chad Crawford, Charlie Paxson, Billy Mohler and Kim Bullard, he has created a catchy slice of meticulously produced mid-tempo rock.

||| Live: Alexander (co-billed with the bluesy Chris Pierce) plays the Troubadour on Wednesday.

||| Stream: "Amsterdam" here.

Photo: viakarlo@snapglamstudios.com

James Combs

James Combs gets a lot of mileage out choked notes, sprightly orchestration and a sprinkling of synths on his third album, "To Know You Is to Save You." His filmy vocals are best when paired with collaborators Kelly De Martino and Erin Shawn Hawkins, but even alone they are ripe for his wry storytelling, amplified by a host of backing players that includes Nik Freitas (whose own album, "Sun Down," is coming April 8). These are the tunes of vivid, waking dreams, and, every so often, realization.

||| Live: Combs, joined by Wisely and Buddy, plays El Cid on Friday.

||| Download: "Oh Me."

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

     

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit play the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk":

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first to albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

"No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

[One in a series on new music by L.A. artists ...]

"Staring at Yourself," the second EP from L.A. seven-piece I Make This Sound, doesn't leave you much time for navel-gazing. Rich with vivid imagery and lush, playful arrangements, Jonathan Price and his piano-man voice lead you through all manner of intrigue and orchestral derring-do; sometimes it feel like the band is packing 10-minute epics into four minutes. Like on "One, Two, Three!" -- one moment you're seduced by a tinkling piano, the next you're bopping to girl-group backing vocals, and the next you're going 100 mph on a guitar riff. A nice ride.

||| Download: "The King and Queen."

On their "Eat Your Heart Out" EP, L.A. quintet the Breakups go easy on everything -- the jangly guitars, the twinkling keys, the harmonies. Easy-does-it, however, does not equal easy listening. The ebb and flow of the six-song effort and the wry nuances of numbers like "Tissue Sample" and "After the Fact" make this a nifty record that glances back at power pop's '70s heyday but reminds you more of the likes of Fountains of Wayne, Nada Surf and (vocally) Michael Penn.

||| Download: "After the Fact."

||| Live: I Make This Sound and the Breakups celebrate their EP releases tonight at the Echo, supported by Amateurs and Le Switch.

Photos: the Breakups by Denver Mark Bon, I Make This Sound by Rebecca Sanabria

Highlights for Wednesday, Feb. 13

The Weather Underground, with A For Attack and Free Moral Agents supporting, continues its residency at the Silverlake Lounge. .... Captain Automatic plays downtown at Bordello. ... Andre Williams and the Flash Express bring the party to Club NME at Spaceland. ... And Brian Wright & the Waco Tragedies and Ferraby Lionheart are on the bill at the Hotel Cafe.

Meet Kárin Tatoyan. She's the one who started her set Monday night at Spaceland on her knees, not so much launching into song as breaking into an incantation. Who jammed virtually breathlessly for the first 10 minutes, teetering between hysteria and rapture. Who commanded your attention despite the fact the faces of her otherwise nattily attired sidemen were streaked with glitter paint. Who had you believing, straightaway.

Think of Tatoyan as a baroque Bjork. If her haunting vocals don't dazzle you, her odd music will -- counterposing, as it does, weird electronics, sound effects and loops with the very organic tones of a French horn and cello. Seeing her is like watching an Escher come to life. Almost-mathematical repetition gives way to chaos; melodies build and build yet resist payoff, like stairways to nowhere. On Monday, she started one number with an innocent comment that rang fairly large: "I'm gonna make a new sound." (It referred to a noise she was trying to loop.)

Her opening set for the Pity Party's residency was only the 10th live performance for Tatoyan, a 24-year-old of Syrian-Armenian descent who studied experimental music at Mills College. It was as distinctive (and almost improvisational) as anything you'll see in an L.A. club. She has only one DIY release, "The History of Stains" EP (which sounds a bit restrained compared to the stage show), but there are some labels snooping around. Stay tuned.

||| Download: "Fit In."

Photo by Kevin Bronson / LAT

Highlights for Tuesday, Feb. 12

Low Vs Diamond checks in at the Viper Room. ... She's Your Sister plays the Silverlake Lounge. ... It's Aushua and Moris Tepper at the Echo, and Talkdemonic at Spaceland. ... And in the Alterknit Lounge at the Knitting Factory, Ride on Rides performs.

The weekend seemed to be all about glitz, glamour and Grammy, but not in the middle of the black-clad, dancing throng Saturday night at the Wiltern, or among the bouncing youngsters Friday at the Echo, or among the sweaty, swaying masses who packed the Echoplex on Friday. With so many good bands visiting from across the pond, it made sense to get out -- at least more sense than it made to give a best new artist award to somebody for her sophomore album.

Editors' set on Saturday at the Wiltern was surprising, darned-near transcendant. The bill offered an interesting triage of mid-level bands -- San Diego's Stonesy Louis IV and synth-rocking Canadians Hot Hot Heat joined the Birmingham, England, quartet in packing the theater. If the music wasn't diverse enough, the disparity among the bill's lead vocalists was: Even toned down from the band's early days, Louis XIV's Jason Hill affects a pretty effective Bon Scott; Hot Hot Heat's Steve Bays is nervous and yelpy, though not so much since his quartet became a radio band; and Editors' Tom Smith can fill any room with his stentorian boom.

Smith carried the night, ricocheting around the stage to a nifty light show as his band's songs pogoed between gloom and hope. Ian Curtis, two points ahead in his battle with the demons.

While Hot Hot Heat did little better than fashion a live approximation of its radio hits, Louis XIV offered some surprises of its own. With its sophomore album, "Slick Dogs and Ponies," the quartet has graduated from its glam-garage origins ... I mean, string players? Even with Hill having equipment troubles Saturday, the set approached arena rock-like territory, with more hits (the new track "Guilt by Association" and the band's new take on its radio hit, "Finding Out True Love Is Blind") than misses (the too-close-to-Bowie new song "Air Traffic Control.")

Friday night in Echo Park offered some contrasts as well -- the fresh-faced pop of the Kooks (and the even-fresher-faced openers the Morning Benders) upstairs at the Echo (average crowd age: 25), and the jammy psych-rock of Welsh veterans Super Furry Animals downstairs in the Echoplex (average crowd age: 35).

Even given the venue's terrible sightlines, the Super Furries' show was satisfactorily sweaty, the quintet jamming long into the night. The Kooks, playing the second of two sold-out club shows (they will likely be at the Wiltern their next time through L.A.), connected quickly with their youthful crowd, and the Morning Benders -- the release of their debut still three months away -- showed that their frisky Fab Four-isms pack a lot of punch.

Photo of Editors' Tom Smith courtesy of Timothy Norris

Call me overly starched, but I tend to distrust girls who stick their tongues out at me, write things like "Ur So Gay" and have a handbag full of A-list producers for their music. We need another manufactured pop diva like the Hotel Cafe needs another singer-songwriter.

That said, it was impossible to deny the charisma and chops of L.A.-based Katy Perry on Thursday night at a very packed Viper Room. A musical diarist in the vein of January's diva-of-the-month, Kate Nash, Perry infuses her boyfriend-bending pop with plenty of bite and, for her age (22), a healthy dose of self-awareness. The Santa Barbara native will have a lot of appeal among the teen masses -- and maybe among those whose attention spans run longer than your average text message.

She'll be on the Warped Tour this summer (hmm, there goes the "punk") and her debut album is due on Capitol on June 10. Color me curious to have a listen.

◊ ◊ ◊

My spies Thursday at the Troubadour have stoked my anticipation for tonight's Kooks show at the Echo. In the first night of their two-show L.A. stand, the British quartet played a set that was about two-thirds material off their catchy debut "Inside In/Inside Out" and about one-third songs off their forthcoming "Konk" (due April 15). Front man Luke Pritchard was happily unhinged, channeling (as he is wont to do) his pop Mick Jagger.

◊ ◊ ◊

Earlier Thursday, Ironworks Music -- the label founded by Kiefer Sutherland and Jude Cole -- showcased its artists to a full house at the Roxy. Teenager rockers Billy Boy on Poison started the night with a muscular set, and headliner Rocco Deluca ended the evening with a jammy, incense-laden performance that included a cameo from Daniel Lanois.

The middle set was an eye- (and ear-) opener. It featured new signees Honeyhoney, a collaboration between guitarist Ben Jaffe and singer/fiddler/banjoist Suzanne Santo that expands to a quartet for their live shows. Honeyhoney's set (and its forthcoming debut EP "Loose Boots") featured folk rock with whole spice rack emptied in -- you weren't sure whether it was mountain music or carnival music at some points. But Santo's voice, the fun arrangements and interesting instrumentation (was that banjo/electric guitar/synth on one song?) made it very compelling. More on these folks later.

You could balance all of the Bravery's critical mass on a guitar pick, but the New York City quintet's fashion rock is all over the radio, and the band is adept at replicating those hits in a concert setting. They did Saturday night in a manner that set the tone for the whole evening -- tight, energetic and professional.

The occasion was the grand-opening bash for downtown's Crash Mansion, a seemingly nondescript brick box of a building at Grand and Olympic that has been dressed up just enough that it could become a player on the local concert scene. The Bravery, in the middle of a sold-out tour, packed the place, with support from two British up-and-comers, the impressive Your Vegas and the not-so-impressive Switches. Your Vegas (album coming on Universal) makes anthemic rock that rises above the pedestrian thanks to Coyle Girelli's soaring vocals. Switches (album coming on Interscope) never rise above hodge-podge.

As for the venue ... tight, energetic, professional. The main room, its walls decorated by vintage murals, seems to be almost square, but makes for nice space thanks to the booths on its flanks. The sound was almost as good on the fringes of the room as it was in the center (but decidedly murky from the VIP mezzanine or underneath the mezzanine's overhang). A second club in a separate room figures to play host to Silverlake Lounge-sized shows. Overall, it's an easy club to negotiate, and you won't have many complaints if you avoid the expensive parking lots ($15 adjacent to the club, $10 across the street, $3 to $4 lots within two blocks; I found free street parking less than three blocks away) and don't mind a slightly claustrophobic men's room.

Bring on the music.

[Short takes on new albums:]

 

Louis XIV, "Slick Dogs and Ponies" (out today, Atlantic): Clever boys, these Louis XIV lads. You wanted to write them off as one-note eyeliner rock after "Finding Out True Love Is Blind," but their sophomore album won't let you. It's every bit as gleefully indulgent -- nicking T. Rex, Bowie and a handful of other glammy bands that actually were British and didn't just adopt the accent from, er, the San Diego district of London -- but it covers much more sonic geography, and with witty lyrics to boot.

||| Live: Louis IV play Feb. 9 at the Wiltern and Feb. 10 at the House of Blues Anaheim.

||| Watch the slightly creepy video for "Guilt by Association." Hey, is that the Playboy Mansion?

Dengue Fever, "Venus on Earth" (Jan. 22, M80): It's never about getting your brain around the groundbreaking Cambodian psych-pop band's music -- most of songwriter Zac Holtzman's numbers feature Chhom Nimol singing in her native Khmer. It's about opening your ears to exotic (and exotic combinations of) sounds; on this more English-heavy third album, the vibe is at turns seductive, celebratory, cinematic and wistful, and never lost in the translation.

||| Live: Dengue Fever celebrates its album release with a show Thursday at the Echoplex.

||| Download: "Sober Driver"

Chris Walla, "Field Manual" (today, Barsuk): Much respect for Walla as a force behind Death Cab for Cutie,  and as a producer, but I found little on the pallid "Field Manual" to guide me.

||| Download: "Sing Again"

Happy triumphed over sad on a wintry Monday night at the Echo, but not by much. The final night of the Radar Bros.' residency had the feel of a plot point in which an epic movie loses a beloved character, only to have fortune smile on another.

The occasion was the record release show for the Radar Bros.' new "Auditorium" -- and at the same time, bizarrely, a farewell show (at least for a while) for the veteran band in its current incarnation. With many of his players moving on to other projects, frontman Jim Putnam, a father figure to many in the Silver Lake/Echo Park music vortex, gave a stoic and sublimely beautiful performance to a crowd dotted with indie rockers old and young. Among them, even, was a promoter who remembered doing a flyer for a Radar Bros. show before Spaceland opened.

Yes, kids, there was a such a time.

A sing-along with friends, girlfriends and guest musicians capped the set, before the crowd graciously demanded and received two encores. You'd think somebody might have gotten a little misty-eyed, but, no, 15 minutes later there was Putnam back onstage, standing in with post-headliner band Adeline.

Earlier, the crowd got a good-natured acoustic set from Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert (joined briefly by bandmate Nikki Monninger) that included covers of songs by the Movies, Joy Division and Bjork.

But the room was almost full for the night's opener, Everest, and with good reason. The fivesome of local players with distinguished indie resumes played a powerul and poignant set of rock-Americana as they continue to work toward their album release on Neil Young's Vapor Records in April.

This past week did nothing to slow their momentum. En route to a gig at the Sundance Film Festival, guitarist Joel Graves won enough money at a Mesquite, Nev., casino to pay for the band's rooms. Then, at the festival, Young himself took in a show.

Not that playing in front of his idol fazed frontman Russell Pollard. "Before the show, somebody told us he was in the audience and my face turned white," Pollard says. "So I went out and said hello and thanked him for coming. Two songs into the show I spotted him bobbing his head ... It was the most epic moment of my life."

Young liked what Everest was doing, his manager Elliot Roberts later reported. So did the folks Monday at the Echo.

I suggest catching them before they outgrow venues this size. [Next gig: Feb. 19 at a Radio Free Silver Lake showcase at Boardner's in Hollywood.]

Photos, from top: Friends join Jim Putnam (left) for a sing-along during the Radar Bros.' finale; Nikki Monninger and Brian Aubert of Silversun Pickups cover the Movies' "Creation Lake"; and Everest's Russell Pollard performs. By Kevin Bronson / LAT

Ears Wide Open: Jim Bianco, Shane Alexander, James Combs

[Be still your indie-rock hearts for a minute -- this local-music installment groups three veterans of the L.A. scene with new albums, hosts of collaborators and upcoming shows:]

Jim Bianco

One of the originals on the Hotel Cafe scene, Jim Bianco comes as close as anybody I've heard to filling the long shadow of Randy Newman. On his third album, "Sing" (March 4, Hotel Cafe Records), Bianco's nifty horn-, accordion- and piano-flavored arrangements and (occasionally) smilingly bawdy vignettes are as fit for smoky dives as swanky lounges. And the singer's vaguely Waits-ian rasp is made for couplets like "To hell with the devil / I'm sellin' my soul to you," not to mention elastic enough to sell piano ballads ("Painkiller") and groovy excursions ("If Your Mama Knew," which sprinkles in "Rhapsody in Blue"). "Sing," the Brooklyn native's third album, is the first release on a new label spun off the Cahuenga Boulevard venue and includes cameos by Gary Jules and Cary Brothers.

||| Live: Bianco plays his album-release show at the Hotel Cafe on March 4, and a free in-store at Amoeba Music at 7 p.m. March 5. He also performs on the Hotel Cafe Tour (March 8 at the House of Blues Anaheim and April 12 at the Music Box @ Fonda).

||| Download: "I Got a Thing for You". Check out the video for the song here.

Photo by Bethany Dwyer



Shane Alexander

The frontman of the longtime L.A. band Damone -- before they sold the name to these people -- Shane Alexander has stretched out incrementally on each of three solo albums, and his latest, "The Sky Below" (out today on BuddhaLand Records) muscles up considerably. Alexander, whose vocals might remind you the Gin Blossoms' Robin Wilson (or a couple other '90s radio mainstays), remains an effective acoustic troubadour (especially on the title track), but with the help of backing players Chad Crawford, Charlie Paxson, Billy Mohler and Kim Bullard, he has created a catchy slice of meticulously produced mid-tempo rock.

||| Live: Alexander (co-billed with the bluesy Chris Pierce) plays the Troubadour on Wednesday.

||| Stream: "Amsterdam" here.

Photo: viakarlo@snapglamstudios.com

James Combs

James Combs gets a lot of mileage out choked notes, sprightly orchestration and a sprinkling of synths on his third album, "To Know You Is to Save You." His filmy vocals are best when paired with collaborators Kelly De Martino and Erin Shawn Hawkins, but even alone they are ripe for his wry storytelling, amplified by a host of backing players that includes Nik Freitas (whose own album, "Sun Down," is coming April 8). These are the tunes of vivid, waking dreams, and, every so often, realization.

||| Live: Combs, joined by Wisely and Buddy, plays El Cid on Friday.

||| Download: "Oh Me."

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

     

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit play the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk":

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first to albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

"No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

[One in a series on new music by L.A. artists ...]

"Staring at Yourself," the second EP from L.A. seven-piece I Make This Sound, doesn't leave you much time for navel-gazing. Rich with vivid imagery and lush, playful arrangements, Jonathan Price and his piano-man voice lead you through all manner of intrigue and orchestral derring-do; sometimes it feel like the band is packing 10-minute epics into four minutes. Like on "One, Two, Three!" -- one moment you're seduced by a tinkling piano, the next you're bopping to girl-group backing vocals, and the next you're going 100 mph on a guitar riff. A nice ride.

||| Download: "The King and Queen."

On their "Eat Your Heart Out" EP, L.A. quintet the Breakups go easy on everything -- the jangly guitars, the twinkling keys, the harmonies. Easy-does-it, however, does not equal easy listening. The ebb and flow of the six-song effort and the wry nuances of numbers like "Tissue Sample" and "After the Fact" make this a nifty record that glances back at power pop's '70s heyday but reminds you more of the likes of Fountains of Wayne, Nada Surf and (vocally) Michael Penn.

||| Download: "After the Fact."

||| Live: I Make This Sound and the Breakups celebrate their EP releases tonight at the Echo, supported by Amateurs and Le Switch.

Photos: the Breakups by Denver Mark Bon, I Make This Sound by Rebecca Sanabria

Highlights for Wednesday, Feb. 13

The Weather Underground, with A For Attack and Free Moral Agents supporting, continues its residency at the Silverlake Lounge. .... Captain Automatic plays downtown at Bordello. ... Andre Williams and the Flash Express bring the party to Club NME at Spaceland. ... And Brian Wright & the Waco Tragedies and Ferraby Lionheart are on the bill at the Hotel Cafe.

Meet Kárin Tatoyan. She's the one who started her set Monday night at Spaceland on her knees, not so much launching into song as breaking into an incantation. Who jammed virtually breathlessly for the first 10 minutes, teetering between hysteria and rapture. Who commanded your attention despite the fact the faces of her otherwise nattily attired sidemen were streaked with glitter paint. Who had you believing, straightaway.

Think of Tatoyan as a baroque Bjork. If her haunting vocals don't dazzle you, her odd music will -- counterposing, as it does, weird electronics, sound effects and loops with the very organic tones of a French horn and cello. Seeing her is like watching an Escher come to life. Almost-mathematical repetition gives way to chaos; melodies build and build yet resist payoff, like stairways to nowhere. On Monday, she started one number with an innocent comment that rang fairly large: "I'm gonna make a new sound." (It referred to a noise she was trying to loop.)

Her opening set for the Pity Party's residency was only the 10th live performance for Tatoyan, a 24-year-old of Syrian-Armenian descent who studied experimental music at Mills College. It was as distinctive (and almost improvisational) as anything you'll see in an L.A. club. She has only one DIY release, "The History of Stains" EP (which sounds a bit restrained compared to the stage show), but there are some labels snooping around. Stay tuned.

||| Download: "Fit In."

Photo by Kevin Bronson / LAT

Highlights for Tuesday, Feb. 12

Low Vs Diamond checks in at the Viper Room. ... She's Your Sister plays the Silverlake Lounge. ... It's Aushua and Moris Tepper at the Echo, and Talkdemonic at Spaceland. ... And in the Alterknit Lounge at the Knitting Factory, Ride on Rides performs.

The weekend seemed to be all about glitz, glamour and Grammy, but not in the middle of the black-clad, dancing throng Saturday night at the Wiltern, or among the bouncing youngsters Friday at the Echo, or among the sweaty, swaying masses who packed the Echoplex on Friday. With so many good bands visiting from across the pond, it made sense to get out -- at least more sense than it made to give a best new artist award to somebody for her sophomore album.

Editors' set on Saturday at the Wiltern was surprising, darned-near transcendant. The bill offered an interesting triage of mid-level bands -- San Diego's Stonesy Louis IV and synth-rocking Canadians Hot Hot Heat joined the Birmingham, England, quartet in packing the theater. If the music wasn't diverse enough, the disparity among the bill's lead vocalists was: Even toned down from the band's early days, Louis XIV's Jason Hill affects a pretty effective Bon Scott; Hot Hot Heat's Steve Bays is nervous and yelpy, though not so much since his quartet became a radio band; and Editors' Tom Smith can fill any room with his stentorian boom.

Smith carried the night, ricocheting around the stage to a nifty light show as his band's songs pogoed between gloom and hope. Ian Curtis, two points ahead in his battle with the demons.

While Hot Hot Heat did little better than fashion a live approximation of its radio hits, Louis XIV offered some surprises of its own. With its sophomore album, "Slick Dogs and Ponies," the quartet has graduated from its glam-garage origins ... I mean, string players? Even with Hill having equipment troubles Saturday, the set approached arena rock-like territory, with more hits (the new track "Guilt by Association" and the band's new take on its radio hit, "Finding Out True Love Is Blind") than misses (the too-close-to-Bowie new song "Air Traffic Control.")

Friday night in Echo Park offered some contrasts as well -- the fresh-faced pop of the Kooks (and the even-fresher-faced openers the Morning Benders) upstairs at the Echo (average crowd age: 25), and the jammy psych-rock of Welsh veterans Super Furry Animals downstairs in the Echoplex (average crowd age: 35).

Even given the venue's terrible sightlines, the Super Furries' show was satisfactorily sweaty, the quintet jamming long into the night. The Kooks, playing the second of two sold-out club shows (they will likely be at the Wiltern their next time through L.A.), connected quickly with their youthful crowd, and the Morning Benders -- the release of their debut still three months away -- showed that their frisky Fab Four-isms pack a lot of punch.

Photo of Editors' Tom Smith courtesy of Timothy Norris

Call me overly starched, but I tend to distrust girls who stick their tongues out at me, write things like "Ur So Gay" and have a handbag full of A-list producers for their music. We need another manufactured pop diva like the Hotel Cafe needs another singer-songwriter.

That said, it was impossible to deny the charisma and chops of L.A.-based Katy Perry on Thursday night at a very packed Viper Room. A musical diarist in the vein of January's diva-of-the-month, Kate Nash, Perry infuses her boyfriend-bending pop with plenty of bite and, for her age (22), a healthy dose of self-awareness. The Santa Barbara native will have a lot of appeal among the teen masses -- and maybe among those whose attention spans run longer than your average text message.

She'll be on the Warped Tour this summer (hmm, there goes the "punk") and her debut album is due on Capitol on June 10. Color me curious to have a listen.

◊ ◊ ◊

My spies Thursday at the Troubadour have stoked my anticipation for tonight's Kooks show at the Echo. In the first night of their two-show L.A. stand, the British quartet played a set that was about two-thirds material off their catchy debut "Inside In/Inside Out" and about one-third songs off their forthcoming "Konk" (due April 15). Front man Luke Pritchard was happily unhinged, channeling (as he is wont to do) his pop Mick Jagger.

◊ ◊ ◊

Earlier Thursday, Ironworks Music -- the label founded by Kiefer Sutherland and Jude Cole -- showcased its artists to a full house at the Roxy. Teenager rockers Billy Boy on Poison started the night with a muscular set, and headliner Rocco Deluca ended the evening with a jammy, incense-laden performance that included a cameo from Daniel Lanois.

The middle set was an eye- (and ear-) opener. It featured new signees Honeyhoney, a collaboration between guitarist Ben Jaffe and singer/fiddler/banjoist Suzanne Santo that expands to a quartet for their live shows. Honeyhoney's set (and its forthcoming debut EP "Loose Boots") featured folk rock with whole spice rack emptied in -- you weren't sure whether it was mountain music or carnival music at some points. But Santo's voice, the fun arrangements and interesting instrumentation (was that banjo/electric guitar/synth on one song?) made it very compelling. More on these folks later.

You could balance all of the Bravery's critical mass on a guitar pick, but the New York City quintet's fashion rock is all over the radio, and the band is adept at replicating those hits in a concert setting. They did Saturday night in a manner that set the tone for the whole evening -- tight, energetic and professional.

The occasion was the grand-opening bash for downtown's Crash Mansion, a seemingly nondescript brick box of a building at Grand and Olympic that has been dressed up just enough that it could become a player on the local concert scene. The Bravery, in the middle of a sold-out tour, packed the place, with support from two British up-and-comers, the impressive Your Vegas and the not-so-impressive Switches. Your Vegas (album coming on Universal) makes anthemic rock that rises above the pedestrian thanks to Coyle Girelli's soaring vocals. Switches (album coming on Interscope) never rise above hodge-podge.

As for the venue ... tight, energetic, professional. The main room, its walls decorated by vintage murals, seems to be almost square, but makes for nice space thanks to the booths on its flanks. The sound was almost as good on the fringes of the room as it was in the center (but decidedly murky from the VIP mezzanine or underneath the mezzanine's overhang). A second club in a separate room figures to play host to Silverlake Lounge-sized shows. Overall, it's an easy club to negotiate, and you won't have many complaints if you avoid the expensive parking lots ($15 adjacent to the club, $10 across the street, $3 to $4 lots within two blocks; I found free street parking less than three blocks away) and don't mind a slightly claustrophobic men's room.

Bring on the music.

[Short takes on new albums:]

 

Louis XIV, "Slick Dogs and Ponies" (out today, Atlantic): Clever boys, these Louis XIV lads. You wanted to write them off as one-note eyeliner rock after "Finding Out True Love Is Blind," but their sophomore album won't let you. It's every bit as gleefully indulgent -- nicking T. Rex, Bowie and a handful of other glammy bands that actually were British and didn't just adopt the accent from, er, the San Diego district of London -- but it covers much more sonic geography, and with witty lyrics to boot.

||| Live: Louis IV play Feb. 9 at the Wiltern and Feb. 10 at the House of Blues Anaheim.

||| Watch the slightly creepy video for "Guilt by Association." Hey, is that the Playboy Mansion?

Dengue Fever, "Venus on Earth" (Jan. 22, M80): It's never about getting your brain around the groundbreaking Cambodian psych-pop band's music -- most of songwriter Zac Holtzman's numbers feature Chhom Nimol singing in her native Khmer. It's about opening your ears to exotic (and exotic combinations of) sounds; on this more English-heavy third album, the vibe is at turns seductive, celebratory, cinematic and wistful, and never lost in the translation.

||| Live: Dengue Fever celebrates its album release with a show Thursday at the Echoplex.

||| Download: "Sober Driver"

Chris Walla, "Field Manual" (today, Barsuk): Much respect for Walla as a force behind Death Cab for Cutie,  and as a producer, but I found little on the pallid "Field Manual" to guide me.

||| Download: "Sing Again"

Happy triumphed over sad on a wintry Monday night at the Echo, but not by much. The final night of the Radar Bros.' residency had the feel of a plot point in which an epic movie loses a beloved character, only to have fortune smile on another.

The occasion was the record release show for the Radar Bros.' new "Auditorium" -- and at the same time, bizarrely, a farewell show (at least for a while) for the veteran band in its current incarnation. With many of his players moving on to other projects, frontman Jim Putnam, a father figure to many in the Silver Lake/Echo Park music vortex, gave a stoic and sublimely beautiful performance to a crowd dotted with indie rockers old and young. Among them, even, was a promoter who remembered doing a flyer for a Radar Bros. show before Spaceland opened.

Yes, kids, there was a such a time.

A sing-along with friends, girlfriends and guest musicians capped the set, before the crowd graciously demanded and received two encores. You'd think somebody might have gotten a little misty-eyed, but, no, 15 minutes later there was Putnam back onstage, standing in with post-headliner band Adeline.

Earlier, the crowd got a good-natured acoustic set from Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert (joined briefly by bandmate Nikki Monninger) that included covers of songs by the Movies, Joy Division and Bjork.

But the room was almost full for the night's opener, Everest, and with good reason. The fivesome of local players with distinguished indie resumes played a powerul and poignant set of rock-Americana as they continue to work toward their album release on Neil Young's Vapor Records in April.

This past week did nothing to slow their momentum. En route to a gig at the Sundance Film Festival, guitarist Joel Graves won enough money at a Mesquite, Nev., casino to pay for the band's rooms. Then, at the festival, Young himself took in a show.

Not that playing in front of his idol fazed frontman Russell Pollard. "Before the show, somebody told us he was in the audience and my face turned white," Pollard says. "So I went out and said hello and thanked him for coming. Two songs into the show I spotted him bobbing his head ... It was the most epic moment of my life."

Young liked what Everest was doing, his manager Elliot Roberts later reported. So did the folks Monday at the Echo.

I suggest catching them before they outgrow venues this size. [Next gig: Feb. 19 at a Radio Free Silver Lake showcase at Boardner's in Hollywood.]

Photos, from top: Friends join Jim Putnam (left) for a sing-along during the Radar Bros.' finale; Nikki Monninger and Brian Aubert of Silversun Pickups cover the Movies' "Creation Lake"; and Everest's Russell Pollard performs. By Kevin Bronson / LAT

Incoming: The Duke Spirit, the Raveonettes, British Sea Power

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

     

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit play the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk":

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first to albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

"No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

[One in a series on new music by L.A. artists ...]

"Staring at Yourself," the second EP from L.A. seven-piece I Make This Sound, doesn't leave you much time for navel-gazing. Rich with vivid imagery and lush, playful arrangements, Jonathan Price and his piano-man voice lead you through all manner of intrigue and orchestral derring-do; sometimes it feel like the band is packing 10-minute epics into four minutes. Like on "One, Two, Three!" -- one moment you're seduced by a tinkling piano, the next you're bopping to girl-group backing vocals, and the next you're going 100 mph on a guitar riff. A nice ride.

||| Download: "The King and Queen."

On their "Eat Your Heart Out" EP, L.A. quintet the Breakups go easy on everything -- the jangly guitars, the twinkling keys, the harmonies. Easy-does-it, however, does not equal easy listening. The ebb and flow of the six-song effort and the wry nuances of numbers like "Tissue Sample" and "After the Fact" make this a nifty record that glances back at power pop's '70s heyday but reminds you more of the likes of Fountains of Wayne, Nada Surf and (vocally) Michael Penn.

||| Download: "After the Fact."

||| Live: I Make This Sound and the Breakups celebrate their EP releases tonight at the Echo, supported by Amateurs and Le Switch.

Photos: the Breakups by Denver Mark Bon, I Make This Sound by Rebecca Sanabria

Highlights for Wednesday, Feb. 13

The Weather Underground, with A For Attack and Free Moral Agents supporting, continues its residency at the Silverlake Lounge. .... Captain Automatic plays downtown at Bordello. ... Andre Williams and the Flash Express bring the party to Club NME at Spaceland. ... And Brian Wright & the Waco Tragedies and Ferraby Lionheart are on the bill at the Hotel Cafe.

Meet Kárin Tatoyan. She's the one who started her set Monday night at Spaceland on her knees, not so much launching into song as breaking into an incantation. Who jammed virtually breathlessly for the first 10 minutes, teetering between hysteria and rapture. Who commanded your attention despite the fact the faces of her otherwise nattily attired sidemen were streaked with glitter paint. Who had you believing, straightaway.

Think of Tatoyan as a baroque Bjork. If her haunting vocals don't dazzle you, her odd music will -- counterposing, as it does, weird electronics, sound effects and loops with the very organic tones of a French horn and cello. Seeing her is like watching an Escher come to life. Almost-mathematical repetition gives way to chaos; melodies build and build yet resist payoff, like stairways to nowhere. On Monday, she started one number with an innocent comment that rang fairly large: "I'm gonna make a new sound." (It referred to a noise she was trying to loop.)

Her opening set for the Pity Party's residency was only the 10th live performance for Tatoyan, a 24-year-old of Syrian-Armenian descent who studied experimental music at Mills College. It was as distinctive (and almost improvisational) as anything you'll see in an L.A. club. She has only one DIY release, "The History of Stains" EP (which sounds a bit restrained compared to the stage show), but there are some labels snooping around. Stay tuned.

||| Download: "Fit In."

Photo by Kevin Bronson / LAT

Highlights for Tuesday, Feb. 12

Low Vs Diamond checks in at the Viper Room. ... She's Your Sister plays the Silverlake Lounge. ... It's Aushua and Moris Tepper at the Echo, and Talkdemonic at Spaceland. ... And in the Alterknit Lounge at the Knitting Factory, Ride on Rides performs.

The weekend seemed to be all about glitz, glamour and Grammy, but not in the middle of the black-clad, dancing throng Saturday night at the Wiltern, or among the bouncing youngsters Friday at the Echo, or among the sweaty, swaying masses who packed the Echoplex on Friday. With so many good bands visiting from across the pond, it made sense to get out -- at least more sense than it made to give a best new artist award to somebody for her sophomore album.

Editors' set on Saturday at the Wiltern was surprising, darned-near transcendant. The bill offered an interesting triage of mid-level bands -- San Diego's Stonesy Louis IV and synth-rocking Canadians Hot Hot Heat joined the Birmingham, England, quartet in packing the theater. If the music wasn't diverse enough, the disparity among the bill's lead vocalists was: Even toned down from the band's early days, Louis XIV's Jason Hill affects a pretty effective Bon Scott; Hot Hot Heat's Steve Bays is nervous and yelpy, though not so much since his quartet became a radio band; and Editors' Tom Smith can fill any room with his stentorian boom.

Smith carried the night, ricocheting around the stage to a nifty light show as his band's songs pogoed between gloom and hope. Ian Curtis, two points ahead in his battle with the demons.

While Hot Hot Heat did little better than fashion a live approximation of its radio hits, Louis XIV offered some surprises of its own. With its sophomore album, "Slick Dogs and Ponies," the quartet has graduated from its glam-garage origins ... I mean, string players? Even with Hill having equipment troubles Saturday, the set approached arena rock-like territory, with more hits (the new track "Guilt by Association" and the band's new take on its radio hit, "Finding Out True Love Is Blind") than misses (the too-close-to-Bowie new song "Air Traffic Control.")

Friday night in Echo Park offered some contrasts as well -- the fresh-faced pop of the Kooks (and the even-fresher-faced openers the Morning Benders) upstairs at the Echo (average crowd age: 25), and the jammy psych-rock of Welsh veterans Super Furry Animals downstairs in the Echoplex (average crowd age: 35).

Even given the venue's terrible sightlines, the Super Furries' show was satisfactorily sweaty, the quintet jamming long into the night. The Kooks, playing the second of two sold-out club shows (they will likely be at the Wiltern their next time through L.A.), connected quickly with their youthful crowd, and the Morning Benders -- the release of their debut still three months away -- showed that their frisky Fab Four-isms pack a lot of punch.

Photo of Editors' Tom Smith courtesy of Timothy Norris

Call me overly starched, but I tend to distrust girls who stick their tongues out at me, write things like "Ur So Gay" and have a handbag full of A-list producers for their music. We need another manufactured pop diva like the Hotel Cafe needs another singer-songwriter.

That said, it was impossible to deny the charisma and chops of L.A.-based Katy Perry on Thursday night at a very packed Viper Room. A musical diarist in the vein of January's diva-of-the-month, Kate Nash, Perry infuses her boyfriend-bending pop with plenty of bite and, for her age (22), a healthy dose of self-awareness. The Santa Barbara native will have a lot of appeal among the teen masses -- and maybe among those whose attention spans run longer than your average text message.

She'll be on the Warped Tour this summer (hmm, there goes the "punk") and her debut album is due on Capitol on June 10. Color me curious to have a listen.

◊ ◊ ◊

My spies Thursday at the Troubadour have stoked my anticipation for tonight's Kooks show at the Echo. In the first night of their two-show L.A. stand, the British quartet played a set that was about two-thirds material off their catchy debut "Inside In/Inside Out" and about one-third songs off their forthcoming "Konk" (due April 15). Front man Luke Pritchard was happily unhinged, channeling (as he is wont to do) his pop Mick Jagger.

◊ ◊ ◊

Earlier Thursday, Ironworks Music -- the label founded by Kiefer Sutherland and Jude Cole -- showcased its artists to a full house at the Roxy. Teenager rockers Billy Boy on Poison started the night with a muscular set, and headliner Rocco Deluca ended the evening with a jammy, incense-laden performance that included a cameo from Daniel Lanois.

The middle set was an eye- (and ear-) opener. It featured new signees Honeyhoney, a collaboration between guitarist Ben Jaffe and singer/fiddler/banjoist Suzanne Santo that expands to a quartet for their live shows. Honeyhoney's set (and its forthcoming debut EP "Loose Boots") featured folk rock with whole spice rack emptied in -- you weren't sure whether it was mountain music or carnival music at some points. But Santo's voice, the fun arrangements and interesting instrumentation (was that banjo/electric guitar/synth on one song?) made it very compelling. More on these folks later.

You could balance all of the Bravery's critical mass on a guitar pick, but the New York City quintet's fashion rock is all over the radio, and the band is adept at replicating those hits in a concert setting. They did Saturday night in a manner that set the tone for the whole evening -- tight, energetic and professional.

The occasion was the grand-opening bash for downtown's Crash Mansion, a seemingly nondescript brick box of a building at Grand and Olympic that has been dressed up just enough that it could become a player on the local concert scene. The Bravery, in the middle of a sold-out tour, packed the place, with support from two British up-and-comers, the impressive Your Vegas and the not-so-impressive Switches. Your Vegas (album coming on Universal) makes anthemic rock that rises above the pedestrian thanks to Coyle Girelli's soaring vocals. Switches (album coming on Interscope) never rise above hodge-podge.

As for the venue ... tight, energetic, professional. The main room, its walls decorated by vintage murals, seems to be almost square, but makes for nice space thanks to the booths on its flanks. The sound was almost as good on the fringes of the room as it was in the center (but decidedly murky from the VIP mezzanine or underneath the mezzanine's overhang). A second club in a separate room figures to play host to Silverlake Lounge-sized shows. Overall, it's an easy club to negotiate, and you won't have many complaints if you avoid the expensive parking lots ($15 adjacent to the club, $10 across the street, $3 to $4 lots within two blocks; I found free street parking less than three blocks away) and don't mind a slightly claustrophobic men's room.

Bring on the music.

[Short takes on new albums:]

 

Louis XIV, "Slick Dogs and Ponies" (out today, Atlantic): Clever boys, these Louis XIV lads. You wanted to write them off as one-note eyeliner rock after "Finding Out True Love Is Blind," but their sophomore album won't let you. It's every bit as gleefully indulgent -- nicking T. Rex, Bowie and a handful of other glammy bands that actually were British and didn't just adopt the accent from, er, the San Diego district of London -- but it covers much more sonic geography, and with witty lyrics to boot.

||| Live: Louis IV play Feb. 9 at the Wiltern and Feb. 10 at the House of Blues Anaheim.

||| Watch the slightly creepy video for "Guilt by Association." Hey, is that the Playboy Mansion?

Dengue Fever, "Venus on Earth" (Jan. 22, M80): It's never about getting your brain around the groundbreaking Cambodian psych-pop band's music -- most of songwriter Zac Holtzman's numbers feature Chhom Nimol singing in her native Khmer. It's about opening your ears to exotic (and exotic combinations of) sounds; on this more English-heavy third album, the vibe is at turns seductive, celebratory, cinematic and wistful, and never lost in the translation.

||| Live: Dengue Fever celebrates its album release with a show Thursday at the Echoplex.

||| Download: "Sober Driver"

Chris Walla, "Field Manual" (today, Barsuk): Much respect for Walla as a force behind Death Cab for Cutie,  and as a producer, but I found little on the pallid "Field Manual" to guide me.

||| Download: "Sing Again"

Happy triumphed over sad on a wintry Monday night at the Echo, but not by much. The final night of the Radar Bros.' residency had the feel of a plot point in which an epic movie loses a beloved character, only to have fortune smile on another.

The occasion was the record release show for the Radar Bros.' new "Auditorium" -- and at the same time, bizarrely, a farewell show (at least for a while) for the veteran band in its current incarnation. With many of his players moving on to other projects, frontman Jim Putnam, a father figure to many in the Silver Lake/Echo Park music vortex, gave a stoic and sublimely beautiful performance to a crowd dotted with indie rockers old and young. Among them, even, was a promoter who remembered doing a flyer for a Radar Bros. show before Spaceland opened.

Yes, kids, there was a such a time.

A sing-along with friends, girlfriends and guest musicians capped the set, before the crowd graciously demanded and received two encores. You'd think somebody might have gotten a little misty-eyed, but, no, 15 minutes later there was Putnam back onstage, standing in with post-headliner band Adeline.

Earlier, the crowd got a good-natured acoustic set from Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert (joined briefly by bandmate Nikki Monninger) that included covers of songs by the Movies, Joy Division and Bjork.

But the room was almost full for the night's opener, Everest, and with good reason. The fivesome of local players with distinguished indie resumes played a powerul and poignant set of rock-Americana as they continue to work toward their album release on Neil Young's Vapor Records in April.

This past week did nothing to slow their momentum. En route to a gig at the Sundance Film Festival, guitarist Joel Graves won enough money at a Mesquite, Nev., casino to pay for the band's rooms. Then, at the festival, Young himself took in a show.

Not that playing in front of his idol fazed frontman Russell Pollard. "Before the show, somebody told us he was in the audience and my face turned white," Pollard says. "So I went out and said hello and thanked him for coming. Two songs into the show I spotted him bobbing his head ... It was the most epic moment of my life."

Young liked what Everest was doing, his manager Elliot Roberts later reported. So did the folks Monday at the Echo.

I suggest catching them before they outgrow venues this size. [Next gig: Feb. 19 at a Radio Free Silver Lake showcase at Boardner's in Hollywood.]

Photos, from top: Friends join Jim Putnam (left) for a sing-along during the Radar Bros.' finale; Nikki Monninger and Brian Aubert of Silversun Pickups cover the Movies' "Creation Lake"; and Everest's Russell Pollard performs. By Kevin Bronson / LAT

Ears Wide Open: I Make This Sound, the Breakups

[One in a series on new music by L.A. artists ...]

"Staring at Yourself," the second EP from L.A. seven-piece I Make This Sound, doesn't leave you much time for navel-gazing. Rich with vivid imagery and lush, playful arrangements, Jonathan Price and his piano-man voice lead you through all manner of intrigue and orchestral derring-do; sometimes it feel like the band is packing 10-minute epics into four minutes. Like on "One, Two, Three!" -- one moment you're seduced by a tinkling piano, the next you're bopping to girl-group backing vocals, and the next you're going 100 mph on a guitar riff. A nice ride.

||| Download: "The King and Queen."

On their "Eat Your Heart Out" EP, L.A. quintet the Breakups go easy on everything -- the jangly guitars, the twinkling keys, the harmonies. Easy-does-it, however, does not equal easy listening. The ebb and flow of the six-song effort and the wry nuances of numbers like "Tissue Sample" and "After the Fact" make this a nifty record that glances back at power pop's '70s heyday but reminds you more of the likes of Fountains of Wayne, Nada Surf and (vocally) Michael Penn.

||| Download: "After the Fact."

||| Live: I Make This Sound and the Breakups celebrate their EP releases tonight at the Echo, supported by Amateurs and Le Switch.

Photos: the Breakups by Denver Mark Bon, I Make This Sound by Rebecca Sanabria

Highlights for Wednesday, Feb. 13

The Weather Underground, with A For Attack and Free Moral Agents supporting, continues its residency at the Silverlake Lounge. .... Captain Automatic plays downtown at Bordello. ... Andre Williams and the Flash Express bring the party to Club NME at Spaceland. ... And Brian Wright & the Waco Tragedies and Ferraby Lionheart are on the bill at the Hotel Cafe.

Meet Kárin Tatoyan. She's the one who started her set Monday night at Spaceland on her knees, not so much launching into song as breaking into an incantation. Who jammed virtually breathlessly for the first 10 minutes, teetering between hysteria and rapture. Who commanded your attention despite the fact the faces of her otherwise nattily attired sidemen were streaked with glitter paint. Who had you believing, straightaway.

Think of Tatoyan as a baroque Bjork. If her haunting vocals don't dazzle you, her odd music will -- counterposing, as it does, weird electronics, sound effects and loops with the very organic tones of a French horn and cello. Seeing her is like watching an Escher come to life. Almost-mathematical repetition gives way to chaos; melodies build and build yet resist payoff, like stairways to nowhere. On Monday, she started one number with an innocent comment that rang fairly large: "I'm gonna make a new sound." (It referred to a noise she was trying to loop.)

Her opening set for the Pity Party's residency was only the 10th live performance for Tatoyan, a 24-year-old of Syrian-Armenian descent who studied experimental music at Mills College. It was as distinctive (and almost improvisational) as anything you'll see in an L.A. club. She has only one DIY release, "The History of Stains" EP (which sounds a bit restrained compared to the stage show), but there are some labels snooping around. Stay tuned.

||| Download: "Fit In."

Photo by Kevin Bronson / LAT

Highlights for Tuesday, Feb. 12

Low Vs Diamond checks in at the Viper Room. ... She's Your Sister plays the Silverlake Lounge. ... It's Aushua and Moris Tepper at the Echo, and Talkdemonic at Spaceland. ... And in the Alterknit Lounge at the Knitting Factory, Ride on Rides performs.

The weekend seemed to be all about glitz, glamour and Grammy, but not in the middle of the black-clad, dancing throng Saturday night at the Wiltern, or among the bouncing youngsters Friday at the Echo, or among the sweaty, swaying masses who packed the Echoplex on Friday. With so many good bands visiting from across the pond, it made sense to get out -- at least more sense than it made to give a best new artist award to somebody for her sophomore album.

Editors' set on Saturday at the Wiltern was surprising, darned-near transcendant. The bill offered an interesting triage of mid-level bands -- San Diego's Stonesy Louis IV and synth-rocking Canadians Hot Hot Heat joined the Birmingham, England, quartet in packing the theater. If the music wasn't diverse enough, the disparity among the bill's lead vocalists was: Even toned down from the band's early days, Louis XIV's Jason Hill affects a pretty effective Bon Scott; Hot Hot Heat's Steve Bays is nervous and yelpy, though not so much since his quartet became a radio band; and Editors' Tom Smith can fill any room with his stentorian boom.

Smith carried the night, ricocheting around the stage to a nifty light show as his band's songs pogoed between gloom and hope. Ian Curtis, two points ahead in his battle with the demons.

While Hot Hot Heat did little better than fashion a live approximation of its radio hits, Louis XIV offered some surprises of its own. With its sophomore album, "Slick Dogs and Ponies," the quartet has graduated from its glam-garage origins ... I mean, string players? Even with Hill having equipment troubles Saturday, the set approached arena rock-like territory, with more hits (the new track "Guilt by Association" and the band's new take on its radio hit, "Finding Out True Love Is Blind") than misses (the too-close-to-Bowie new song "Air Traffic Control.")

Friday night in Echo Park offered some contrasts as well -- the fresh-faced pop of the Kooks (and the even-fresher-faced openers the Morning Benders) upstairs at the Echo (average crowd age: 25), and the jammy psych-rock of Welsh veterans Super Furry Animals downstairs in the Echoplex (average crowd age: 35).

Even given the venue's terrible sightlines, the Super Furries' show was satisfactorily sweaty, the quintet jamming long into the night. The Kooks, playing the second of two sold-out club shows (they will likely be at the Wiltern their next time through L.A.), connected quickly with their youthful crowd, and the Morning Benders -- the release of their debut still three months away -- showed that their frisky Fab Four-isms pack a lot of punch.

Photo of Editors' Tom Smith courtesy of Timothy Norris

Call me overly starched, but I tend to distrust girls who stick their tongues out at me, write things like "Ur So Gay" and have a handbag full of A-list producers for their music. We need another manufactured pop diva like the Hotel Cafe needs another singer-songwriter.

That said, it was impossible to deny the charisma and chops of L.A.-based Katy Perry on Thursday night at a very packed Viper Room. A musical diarist in the vein of January's diva-of-the-month, Kate Nash, Perry infuses her boyfriend-bending pop with plenty of bite and, for her age (22), a healthy dose of self-awareness. The Santa Barbara native will have a lot of appeal among the teen masses -- and maybe among those whose attention spans run longer than your average text message.

She'll be on the Warped Tour this summer (hmm, there goes the "punk") and her debut album is due on Capitol on June 10. Color me curious to have a listen.

◊ ◊ ◊

My spies Thursday at the Troubadour have stoked my anticipation for tonight's Kooks show at the Echo. In the first night of their two-show L.A. stand, the British quartet played a set that was about two-thirds material off their catchy debut "Inside In/Inside Out" and about one-third songs off their forthcoming "Konk" (due April 15). Front man Luke Pritchard was happily unhinged, channeling (as he is wont to do) his pop Mick Jagger.

◊ ◊ ◊

Earlier Thursday, Ironworks Music -- the label founded by Kiefer Sutherland and Jude Cole -- showcased its artists to a full house at the Roxy. Teenager rockers Billy Boy on Poison started the night with a muscular set, and headliner Rocco Deluca ended the evening with a jammy, incense-laden performance that included a cameo from Daniel Lanois.

The middle set was an eye- (and ear-) opener. It featured new signees Honeyhoney, a collaboration between guitarist Ben Jaffe and singer/fiddler/banjoist Suzanne Santo that expands to a quartet for their live shows. Honeyhoney's set (and its forthcoming debut EP "Loose Boots") featured folk rock with whole spice rack emptied in -- you weren't sure whether it was mountain music or carnival music at some points. But Santo's voice, the fun arrangements and interesting instrumentation (was that banjo/electric guitar/synth on one song?) made it very compelling. More on these folks later.

You could balance all of the Bravery's critical mass on a guitar pick, but the New York City quintet's fashion rock is all over the radio, and the band is adept at replicating those hits in a concert setting. They did Saturday night in a manner that set the tone for the whole evening -- tight, energetic and professional.

The occasion was the grand-opening bash for downtown's Crash Mansion, a seemingly nondescript brick box of a building at Grand and Olympic that has been dressed up just enough that it could become a player on the local concert scene. The Bravery, in the middle of a sold-out tour, packed the place, with support from two British up-and-comers, the impressive Your Vegas and the not-so-impressive Switches. Your Vegas (album coming on Universal) makes anthemic rock that rises above the pedestrian thanks to Coyle Girelli's soaring vocals. Switches (album coming on Interscope) never rise above hodge-podge.

As for the venue ... tight, energetic, professional. The main room, its walls decorated by vintage murals, seems to be almost square, but makes for nice space thanks to the booths on its flanks. The sound was almost as good on the fringes of the room as it was in the center (but decidedly murky from the VIP mezzanine or underneath the mezzanine's overhang). A second club in a separate room figures to play host to Silverlake Lounge-sized shows. Overall, it's an easy club to negotiate, and you won't have many complaints if you avoid the expensive parking lots ($15 adjacent to the club, $10 across the street, $3 to $4 lots within two blocks; I found free street parking less than three blocks away) and don't mind a slightly claustrophobic men's room.

Bring on the music.

[Short takes on new albums:]

 

Louis XIV, "Slick Dogs and Ponies" (out today, Atlantic): Clever boys, these Louis XIV lads. You wanted to write them off as one-note eyeliner rock after "Finding Out True Love Is Blind," but their sophomore album won't let you. It's every bit as gleefully indulgent -- nicking T. Rex, Bowie and a handful of other glammy bands that actually were British and didn't just adopt the accent from, er, the San Diego district of London -- but it covers much more sonic geography, and with witty lyrics to boot.

||| Live: Louis IV play Feb. 9 at the Wiltern and Feb. 10 at the House of Blues Anaheim.

||| Watch the slightly creepy video for "Guilt by Association." Hey, is that the Playboy Mansion?

Dengue Fever, "Venus on Earth" (Jan. 22, M80): It's never about getting your brain around the groundbreaking Cambodian psych-pop band's music -- most of songwriter Zac Holtzman's numbers feature Chhom Nimol singing in her native Khmer. It's about opening your ears to exotic (and exotic combinations of) sounds; on this more English-heavy third album, the vibe is at turns seductive, celebratory, cinematic and wistful, and never lost in the translation.

||| Live: Dengue Fever celebrates its album release with a show Thursday at the Echoplex.

||| Download: "Sober Driver"

Chris Walla, "Field Manual" (today, Barsuk): Much respect for Walla as a force behind Death Cab for Cutie,  and as a producer, but I found little on the pallid "Field Manual" to guide me.

||| Download: "Sing Again"

Happy triumphed over sad on a wintry Monday night at the Echo, but not by much. The final night of the Radar Bros.' residency had the feel of a plot point in which an epic movie loses a beloved character, only to have fortune smile on another.

The occasion was the record release show for the Radar Bros.' new "Auditorium" -- and at the same time, bizarrely, a farewell show (at least for a while) for the veteran band in its current incarnation. With many of his players moving on to other projects, frontman Jim Putnam, a father figure to many in the Silver Lake/Echo Park music vortex, gave a stoic and sublimely beautiful performance to a crowd dotted with indie rockers old and young. Among them, even, was a promoter who remembered doing a flyer for a Radar Bros. show before Spaceland opened.

Yes, kids, there was a such a time.

A sing-along with friends, girlfriends and guest musicians capped the set, before the crowd graciously demanded and received two encores. You'd think somebody might have gotten a little misty-eyed, but, no, 15 minutes later there was Putnam back onstage, standing in with post-headliner band Adeline.

Earlier, the crowd got a good-natured acoustic set from Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert (joined briefly by bandmate Nikki Monninger) that included covers of songs by the Movies, Joy Division and Bjork.

But the room was almost full for the night's opener, Everest, and with good reason. The fivesome of local players with distinguished indie resumes played a powerul and poignant set of rock-Americana as they continue to work toward their album release on Neil Young's Vapor Records in April.

This past week did nothing to slow their momentum. En route to a gig at the Sundance Film Festival, guitarist Joel Graves won enough money at a Mesquite, Nev., casino to pay for the band's rooms. Then, at the festival, Young himself took in a show.

Not that playing in front of his idol fazed frontman Russell Pollard. "Before the show, somebody told us he was in the audience and my face turned white," Pollard says. "So I went out and said hello and thanked him for coming. Two songs into the show I spotted him bobbing his head ... It was the most epic moment of my life."

Young liked what Everest was doing, his manager Elliot Roberts later reported. So did the folks Monday at the Echo.

I suggest catching them before they outgrow venues this size. [Next gig: Feb. 19 at a Radio Free Silver Lake showcase at Boardner's in Hollywood.]

Photos, from top: Friends join Jim Putnam (left) for a sing-along during the Radar Bros.' finale; Nikki Monninger and Brian Aubert of Silversun Pickups cover the Movies' "Creation Lake"; and Everest's Russell Pollard performs. By Kevin Bronson / LAT

Kárin Tatoyan reaches for a new sound

Meet Kárin Tatoyan. She's the one who started her set Monday night at Spaceland on her knees, not so much launching into song as breaking into an incantation. Who jammed virtually breathlessly for the first 10 minutes, teetering between hysteria and rapture. Who commanded your attention despite the fact the faces of her otherwise nattily attired sidemen were streaked with glitter paint. Who had you believing, straightaway.

Think of Tatoyan as a baroque Bjork. If her haunting vocals don't dazzle you, her odd music will -- counterposing, as it does, weird electronics, sound effects and loops with the very organic tones of a French horn and cello. Seeing her is like watching an Escher come to life. Almost-mathematical repetition gives way to chaos; melodies build and build yet resist payoff, like stairways to nowhere. On Monday, she started one number with an innocent comment that rang fairly large: "I'm gonna make a new sound." (It referred to a noise she was trying to loop.)

Her opening set for the Pity Party's residency was only the 10th live performance for Tatoyan, a 24-year-old of Syrian-Armenian descent who studied experimental music at Mills College. It was as distinctive (and almost improvisational) as anything you'll see in an L.A. club. She has only one DIY release, "The History of Stains" EP (which sounds a bit restrained compared to the stage show), but there are some labels snooping around. Stay tuned.

||| Download: "Fit In."

Photo by Kevin Bronson / LAT

Highlights for Tuesday, Feb. 12

Low Vs Diamond checks in at the Viper Room. ... She's Your Sister plays the Silverlake Lounge. ... It's Aushua and Moris Tepper at the Echo, and Talkdemonic at Spaceland. ... And in the Alterknit Lounge at the Knitting Factory, Ride on Rides performs.

The weekend seemed to be all about glitz, glamour and Grammy, but not in the middle of the black-clad, dancing throng Saturday night at the Wiltern, or among the bouncing youngsters Friday at the Echo, or among the sweaty, swaying masses who packed the Echoplex on Friday. With so many good bands visiting from across the pond, it made sense to get out -- at least more sense than it made to give a best new artist award to somebody for her sophomore album.

Editors' set on Saturday at the Wiltern was surprising, darned-near transcendant. The bill offered an interesting triage of mid-level bands -- San Diego's Stonesy Louis IV and synth-rocking Canadians Hot Hot Heat joined the Birmingham, England, quartet in packing the theater. If the music wasn't diverse enough, the disparity among the bill's lead vocalists was: Even toned down from the band's early days, Louis XIV's Jason Hill affects a pretty effective Bon Scott; Hot Hot Heat's Steve Bays is nervous and yelpy, though not so much since his quartet became a radio band; and Editors' Tom Smith can fill any room with his stentorian boom.

Smith carried the night, ricocheting around the stage to a nifty light show as his band's songs pogoed between gloom and hope. Ian Curtis, two points ahead in his battle with the demons.

While Hot Hot Heat did little better than fashion a live approximation of its radio hits, Louis XIV offered some surprises of its own. With its sophomore album, "Slick Dogs and Ponies," the quartet has graduated from its glam-garage origins ... I mean, string players? Even with Hill having equipment troubles Saturday, the set approached arena rock-like territory, with more hits (the new track "Guilt by Association" and the band's new take on its radio hit, "Finding Out True Love Is Blind") than misses (the too-close-to-Bowie new song "Air Traffic Control.")

Friday night in Echo Park offered some contrasts as well -- the fresh-faced pop of the Kooks (and the even-fresher-faced openers the Morning Benders) upstairs at the Echo (average crowd age: 25), and the jammy psych-rock of Welsh veterans Super Furry Animals downstairs in the Echoplex (average crowd age: 35).

Even given the venue's terrible sightlines, the Super Furries' show was satisfactorily sweaty, the quintet jamming long into the night. The Kooks, playing the second of two sold-out club shows (they will likely be at the Wiltern their next time through L.A.), connected quickly with their youthful crowd, and the Morning Benders -- the release of their debut still three months away -- showed that their frisky Fab Four-isms pack a lot of punch.

Photo of Editors' Tom Smith courtesy of Timothy Norris

Call me overly starched, but I tend to distrust girls who stick their tongues out at me, write things like "Ur So Gay" and have a handbag full of A-list producers for their music. We need another manufactured pop diva like the Hotel Cafe needs another singer-songwriter.

That said, it was impossible to deny the charisma and chops of L.A.-based Katy Perry on Thursday night at a very packed Viper Room. A musical diarist in the vein of January's diva-of-the-month, Kate Nash, Perry infuses her boyfriend-bending pop with plenty of bite and, for her age (22), a healthy dose of self-awareness. The Santa Barbara native will have a lot of appeal among the teen masses -- and maybe among those whose attention spans run longer than your average text message.

She'll be on the Warped Tour this summer (hmm, there goes the "punk") and her debut album is due on Capitol on June 10. Color me curious to have a listen.

◊ ◊ ◊

My spies Thursday at the Troubadour have stoked my anticipation for tonight's Kooks show at the Echo. In the first night of their two-show L.A. stand, the British quartet played a set that was about two-thirds material off their catchy debut "Inside In/Inside Out" and about one-third songs off their forthcoming "Konk" (due April 15). Front man Luke Pritchard was happily unhinged, channeling (as he is wont to do) his pop Mick Jagger.

◊ ◊ ◊

Earlier Thursday, Ironworks Music -- the label founded by Kiefer Sutherland and Jude Cole -- showcased its artists to a full house at the Roxy. Teenager rockers Billy Boy on Poison started the night with a muscular set, and headliner Rocco Deluca ended the evening with a jammy, incense-laden performance that included a cameo from Daniel Lanois.

The middle set was an eye- (and ear-) opener. It featured new signees Honeyhoney, a collaboration between guitarist Ben Jaffe and singer/fiddler/banjoist Suzanne Santo that expands to a quartet for their live shows. Honeyhoney's set (and its forthcoming debut EP "Loose Boots") featured folk rock with whole spice rack emptied in -- you weren't sure whether it was mountain music or carnival music at some points. But Santo's voice, the fun arrangements and interesting instrumentation (was that banjo/electric guitar/synth on one song?) made it very compelling. More on these folks later.

You could balance all of the Bravery's critical mass on a guitar pick, but the New York City quintet's fashion rock is all over the radio, and the band is adept at replicating those hits in a concert setting. They did Saturday night in a manner that set the tone for the whole evening -- tight, energetic and professional.

The occasion was the grand-opening bash for downtown's Crash Mansion, a seemingly nondescript brick box of a building at Grand and Olympic that has been dressed up just enough that it could become a player on the local concert scene. The Bravery, in the middle of a sold-out tour, packed the place, with support from two British up-and-comers, the impressive Your Vegas and the not-so-impressive Switches. Your Vegas (album coming on Universal) makes anthemic rock that rises above the pedestrian thanks to Coyle Girelli's soaring vocals. Switches (album coming on Interscope) never rise above hodge-podge.

As for the venue ... tight, energetic, professional. The main room, its walls decorated by vintage murals, seems to be almost square, but makes for nice space thanks to the booths on its flanks. The sound was almost as good on the fringes of the room as it was in the center (but decidedly murky from the VIP mezzanine or underneath the mezzanine's overhang). A second club in a separate room figures to play host to Silverlake Lounge-sized shows. Overall, it's an easy club to negotiate, and you won't have many complaints if you avoid the expensive parking lots ($15 adjacent to the club, $10 across the street, $3 to $4 lots within two blocks; I found free street parking less than three blocks away) and don't mind a slightly claustrophobic men's room.

Bring on the music.

[Short takes on new albums:]

 

Louis XIV, "Slick Dogs and Ponies" (out today, Atlantic): Clever boys, these Louis XIV lads. You wanted to write them off as one-note eyeliner rock after "Finding Out True Love Is Blind," but their sophomore album won't let you. It's every bit as gleefully indulgent -- nicking T. Rex, Bowie and a handful of other glammy bands that actually were British and didn't just adopt the accent from, er, the San Diego district of London -- but it covers much more sonic geography, and with witty lyrics to boot.

||| Live: Louis IV play Feb. 9 at the Wiltern and Feb. 10 at the House of Blues Anaheim.

||| Watch the slightly creepy video for "Guilt by Association." Hey, is that the Playboy Mansion?

Dengue Fever, "Venus on Earth" (Jan. 22, M80): It's never about getting your brain around the groundbreaking Cambodian psych-pop band's music -- most of songwriter Zac Holtzman's numbers feature Chhom Nimol singing in her native Khmer. It's about opening your ears to exotic (and exotic combinations of) sounds; on this more English-heavy third album, the vibe is at turns seductive, celebratory, cinematic and wistful, and never lost in the translation.

||| Live: Dengue Fever celebrates its album release with a show Thursday at the Echoplex.

||| Download: "Sober Driver"

Chris Walla, "Field Manual" (today, Barsuk): Much respect for Walla as a force behind Death Cab for Cutie,  and as a producer, but I found little on the pallid "Field Manual" to guide me.

||| Download: "Sing Again"

Happy triumphed over sad on a wintry Monday night at the Echo, but not by much. The final night of the Radar Bros.' residency had the feel of a plot point in which an epic movie loses a beloved character, only to have fortune smile on another.

The occasion was the record release show for the Radar Bros.' new "Auditorium" -- and at the same time, bizarrely, a farewell show (at least for a while) for the veteran band in its current incarnation. With many of his players moving on to other projects, frontman Jim Putnam, a father figure to many in the Silver Lake/Echo Park music vortex, gave a stoic and sublimely beautiful performance to a crowd dotted with indie rockers old and young. Among them, even, was a promoter who remembered doing a flyer for a Radar Bros. show before Spaceland opened.

Yes, kids, there was a such a time.

A sing-along with friends, girlfriends and guest musicians capped the set, before the crowd graciously demanded and received two encores. You'd think somebody might have gotten a little misty-eyed, but, no, 15 minutes later there was Putnam back onstage, standing in with post-headliner band Adeline.

Earlier, the crowd got a good-natured acoustic set from Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert (joined briefly by bandmate Nikki Monninger) that included covers of songs by the Movies, Joy Division and Bjork.

But the room was almost full for the night's opener, Everest, and with good reason. The fivesome of local players with distinguished indie resumes played a powerul and poignant set of rock-Americana as they continue to work toward their album release on Neil Young's Vapor Records in April.

This past week did nothing to slow their momentum. En route to a gig at the Sundance Film Festival, guitarist Joel Graves won enough money at a Mesquite, Nev., casino to pay for the band's rooms. Then, at the festival, Young himself took in a show.

Not that playing in front of his idol fazed frontman Russell Pollard. "Before the show, somebody told us he was in the audience and my face turned white," Pollard says. "So I went out and said hello and thanked him for coming. Two songs into the show I spotted him bobbing his head ... It was the most epic moment of my life."

Young liked what Everest was doing, his manager Elliot Roberts later reported. So did the folks Monday at the Echo.

I suggest catching them before they outgrow venues this size. [Next gig: Feb. 19 at a Radio Free Silver Lake showcase at Boardner's in Hollywood.]

Photos, from top: Friends join Jim Putnam (left) for a sing-along during the Radar Bros.' finale; Nikki Monninger and Brian Aubert of Silversun Pickups cover the Movies' "Creation Lake"; and Everest's Russell Pollard performs. By Kevin Bronson / LAT

Weekend report: the non-Grammy edition

The weekend seemed to be all about glitz, glamour and Grammy, but not in the middle of the black-clad, dancing throng Saturday night at the Wiltern, or among the bouncing youngsters Friday at the Echo, or among the sweaty, swaying masses who packed the Echoplex on Friday. With so many good bands visiting from across the pond, it made sense to get out -- at least more sense than it made to give a best new artist award to somebody for her sophomore album.

Editors' set on Saturday at the Wiltern was surprising, darned-near transcendant. The bill offered an interesting triage of mid-level bands -- San Diego's Stonesy Louis IV and synth-rocking Canadians Hot Hot Heat joined the Birmingham, England, quartet in packing the theater. If the music wasn't diverse enough, the disparity among the bill's lead vocalists was: Even toned down from the band's early days, Louis XIV's Jason Hill affects a pretty effective Bon Scott; Hot Hot Heat's Steve Bays is nervous and yelpy, though not so much since his quartet became a radio band; and Editors' Tom Smith can fill any room with his stentorian boom.

Smith carried the night, ricocheting around the stage to a nifty light show as his band's songs pogoed between gloom and hope. Ian Curtis, two points ahead in his battle with the demons.

While Hot Hot Heat did little better than fashion a live approximation of its radio hits, Louis XIV offered some surprises of its own. With its sophomore album, "Slick Dogs and Ponies," the quartet has graduated from its glam-garage origins ... I mean, string players? Even with Hill having equipment troubles Saturday, the set approached arena rock-like territory, with more hits (the new track "Guilt by Association" and the band's new take on its radio hit, "Finding Out True Love Is Blind") than misses (the too-close-to-Bowie new song "Air Traffic Control.")

Friday night in Echo Park offered some contrasts as well -- the fresh-faced pop of the Kooks (and the even-fresher-faced openers the Morning Benders) upstairs at the Echo (average crowd age: 25), and the jammy psych-rock of Welsh veterans Super Furry Animals downstairs in the Echoplex (average crowd age: 35).

Even given the venue's terrible sightlines, the Super Furries' show was satisfactorily sweaty, the quintet jamming long into the night. The Kooks, playing the second of two sold-out club shows (they will likely be at the Wiltern their next time through L.A.), connected quickly with their youthful crowd, and the Morning Benders -- the release of their debut still three months away -- showed that their frisky Fab Four-isms pack a lot of punch.

Photo of Editors' Tom Smith courtesy of Timothy Norris

Call me overly starched, but I tend to distrust girls who stick their tongues out at me, write things like "Ur So Gay" and have a handbag full of A-list producers for their music. We need another manufactured pop diva like the Hotel Cafe needs another singer-songwriter.

That said, it was impossible to deny the charisma and chops of L.A.-based Katy Perry on Thursday night at a very packed Viper Room. A musical diarist in the vein of January's diva-of-the-month, Kate Nash, Perry infuses her boyfriend-bending pop with plenty of bite and, for her age (22), a healthy dose of self-awareness. The Santa Barbara native will have a lot of appeal among the teen masses -- and maybe among those whose attention spans run longer than your average text message.

She'll be on the Warped Tour this summer (hmm, there goes the "punk") and her debut album is due on Capitol on June 10. Color me curious to have a listen.

◊ ◊ ◊

My spies Thursday at the Troubadour have stoked my anticipation for tonight's Kooks show at the Echo. In the first night of their two-show L.A. stand, the British quartet played a set that was about two-thirds material off their catchy debut "Inside In/Inside Out" and about one-third songs off their forthcoming "Konk" (due April 15). Front man Luke Pritchard was happily unhinged, channeling (as he is wont to do) his pop Mick Jagger.

◊ ◊ ◊

Earlier Thursday, Ironworks Music -- the label founded by Kiefer Sutherland and Jude Cole -- showcased its artists to a full house at the Roxy. Teenager rockers Billy Boy on Poison started the night with a muscular set, and headliner Rocco Deluca ended the evening with a jammy, incense-laden performance that included a cameo from Daniel Lanois.

The middle set was an eye- (and ear-) opener. It featured new signees Honeyhoney, a collaboration between guitarist Ben Jaffe and singer/fiddler/banjoist Suzanne Santo that expands to a quartet for their live shows. Honeyhoney's set (and its forthcoming debut EP "Loose Boots") featured folk rock with whole spice rack emptied in -- you weren't sure whether it was mountain music or carnival music at some points. But Santo's voice, the fun arrangements and interesting instrumentation (was that banjo/electric guitar/synth on one song?) made it very compelling. More on these folks later.

You could balance all of the Bravery's critical mass on a guitar pick, but the New York City quintet's fashion rock is all over the radio, and the band is adept at replicating those hits in a concert setting. They did Saturday night in a manner that set the tone for the whole evening -- tight, energetic and professional.

The occasion was the grand-opening bash for downtown's Crash Mansion, a seemingly nondescript brick box of a building at Grand and Olympic that has been dressed up just enough that it could become a player on the local concert scene. The Bravery, in the middle of a sold-out tour, packed the place, with support from two British up-and-comers, the impressive Your Vegas and the not-so-impressive Switches. Your Vegas (album coming on Universal) makes anthemic rock that rises above the pedestrian thanks to Coyle Girelli's soaring vocals. Switches (album coming on Interscope) never rise above hodge-podge.

As for the venue ... tight, energetic, professional. The main room, its walls decorated by vintage murals, seems to be almost square, but makes for nice space thanks to the booths on its flanks. The sound was almost as good on the fringes of the room as it was in the center (but decidedly murky from the VIP mezzanine or underneath the mezzanine's overhang). A second club in a separate room figures to play host to Silverlake Lounge-sized shows. Overall, it's an easy club to negotiate, and you won't have many complaints if you avoid the expensive parking lots ($15 adjacent to the club, $10 across the street, $3 to $4 lots within two blocks; I found free street parking less than three blocks away) and don't mind a slightly claustrophobic men's room.

Bring on the music.

[Short takes on new albums:]

 

Louis XIV, "Slick Dogs and Ponies" (out today, Atlantic): Clever boys, these Louis XIV lads. You wanted to write them off as one-note eyeliner rock after "Finding Out True Love Is Blind," but their sophomore album won't let you. It's every bit as gleefully indulgent -- nicking T. Rex, Bowie and a handful of other glammy bands that actually were British and didn't just adopt the accent from, er, the San Diego district of London -- but it covers much more sonic geography, and with witty lyrics to boot.

||| Live: Louis IV play Feb. 9 at the Wiltern and Feb. 10 at the House of Blues Anaheim.

||| Watch the slightly creepy video for "Guilt by Association." Hey, is that the Playboy Mansion?

Dengue Fever, "Venus on Earth" (Jan. 22, M80): It's never about getting your brain around the groundbreaking Cambodian psych-pop band's music -- most of songwriter Zac Holtzman's numbers feature Chhom Nimol singing in her native Khmer. It's about opening your ears to exotic (and exotic combinations of) sounds; on this more English-heavy third album, the vibe is at turns seductive, celebratory, cinematic and wistful, and never lost in the translation.

||| Live: Dengue Fever celebrates its album release with a show Thursday at the Echoplex.

||| Download: "Sober Driver"

Chris Walla, "Field Manual" (today, Barsuk): Much respect for Walla as a force behind Death Cab for Cutie,  and as a producer, but I found little on the pallid "Field Manual" to guide me.

||| Download: "Sing Again"

Happy triumphed over sad on a wintry Monday night at the Echo, but not by much. The final night of the Radar Bros.' residency had the feel of a plot point in which an epic movie loses a beloved character, only to have fortune smile on another.

The occasion was the record release show for the Radar Bros.' new "Auditorium" -- and at the same time, bizarrely, a farewell show (at least for a while) for the veteran band in its current incarnation. With many of his players moving on to other projects, frontman Jim Putnam, a father figure to many in the Silver Lake/Echo Park music vortex, gave a stoic and sublimely beautiful performance to a crowd dotted with indie rockers old and young. Among them, even, was a promoter who remembered doing a flyer for a Radar Bros. show before Spaceland opened.

Yes, kids, there was a such a time.

A sing-along with friends, girlfriends and guest musicians capped the set, before the crowd graciously demanded and received two encores. You'd think somebody might have gotten a little misty-eyed, but, no, 15 minutes later there was Putnam back onstage, standing in with post-headliner band Adeline.

Earlier, the crowd got a good-natured acoustic set from Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert (joined briefly by bandmate Nikki Monninger) that included covers of songs by the Movies, Joy Division and Bjork.

But the room was almost full for the night's opener, Everest, and with good reason. The fivesome of local players with distinguished indie resumes played a powerul and poignant set of rock-Americana as they continue to work toward their album release on Neil Young's Vapor Records in April.

This past week did nothing to slow their momentum. En route to a gig at the Sundance Film Festival, guitarist Joel Graves won enough money at a Mesquite, Nev., casino to pay for the band's rooms. Then, at the festival, Young himself took in a show.

Not that playing in front of his idol fazed frontman Russell Pollard. "Before the show, somebody told us he was in the audience and my face turned white," Pollard says. "So I went out and said hello and thanked him for coming. Two songs into the show I spotted him bobbing his head ... It was the most epic moment of my life."

Young liked what Everest was doing, his manager Elliot Roberts later reported. So did the folks Monday at the Echo.

I suggest catching them before they outgrow venues this size. [Next gig: Feb. 19 at a Radio Free Silver Lake showcase at Boardner's in Hollywood.]

Photos, from top: Friends join Jim Putnam (left) for a sing-along during the Radar Bros.' finale; Nikki Monninger and Brian Aubert of Silversun Pickups cover the Movies' "Creation Lake"; and Everest's Russell Pollard performs. By Kevin Bronson / LAT

Katy Perry wins over Viper Room crowd

Call me overly starched, but I tend to distrust girls who stick their tongues out at me, write things like "Ur So Gay" and have a handbag full of A-list producers for their music. We need another manufactured pop diva like the Hotel Cafe needs another singer-songwriter.

That said, it was impossible to deny the charisma and chops of L.A.-based Katy Perry on Thursday night at a very packed Viper Room. A musical diarist in the vein of January's diva-of-the-month, Kate Nash, Perry infuses her boyfriend-bending pop with plenty of bite and, for her age (22), a healthy dose of self-awareness. The Santa Barbara native will have a lot of appeal among the teen masses -- and maybe among those whose attention spans run longer than your average text message.

She'll be on the Warped Tour this summer (hmm, there goes the "punk") and her debut album is due on Capitol on June 10. Color me curious to have a listen.

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My spies Thursday at the Troubadour have stoked my anticipation for tonight's Kooks show at the Echo. In the first night of their two-show L.A. stand, the British quartet played a set that was about two-thirds material off their catchy debut "Inside In/Inside Out" and about one-third songs off their forthcoming "Konk" (due April 15). Front man Luke Pritchard was happily unhinged, channeling (as he is wont to do) his pop Mick Jagger.

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Earlier Thursday, Ironworks Music -- the label founded by Kiefer Sutherland and Jude Cole -- showcased its artists to a full house at the Roxy. Teenager rockers Billy Boy on Poison started the night with a muscular set, and headliner Rocco Deluca ended the evening with a jammy, incense-laden performance that included a cameo from Daniel Lanois.

The middle set was an eye- (and ear-) opener. It featured new signees Honeyhoney, a collaboration between guitarist Ben Jaffe and singer/fiddler/banjoist Suzanne Santo that expands to a quartet for their live shows. Honeyhoney's set (and its forthcoming debut EP "Loose Boots") featured folk rock with whole spice rack emptied in -- you weren't sure whether it was mountain music or carnival music at some points. But Santo's voice, the fun arrangements and interesting instrumentation (was that banjo/electric guitar/synth on one song?) made it very compelling. More on these folks later.

You could balance all of the Bravery's critical mass on a guitar pick, but the New York City quintet's fashion rock is all over the radio, and the band is adept at replicating those hits in a concert setting. They did Saturday night in a manner that set the tone for the whole evening -- tight, energetic and professional.

The occasion was the grand-opening bash for downtown's Crash Mansion, a seemingly nondescript brick box of a building at Grand and Olympic that has been dressed up just enough that it could become a player on the local concert scene. The Bravery, in the middle of a sold-out tour, packed the place, with support from two British up-and-comers, the impressive Your Vegas and the not-so-impressive Switches. Your Vegas (album coming on Universal) makes anthemic rock that rises above the pedestrian thanks to Coyle Girelli's soaring vocals. Switches (album coming on Interscope) never rise above hodge-podge.

As for the venue ... tight, energetic, professional. The main room, its walls decorated by vintage murals, seems to be almost square, but makes for nice space thanks to the booths on its flanks. The sound was almost as good on the fringes of the room as it was in the center (but decidedly murky from the VIP mezzanine or underneath the mezzanine's overhang). A second club in a separate room figures to play host to Silverlake Lounge-sized shows. Overall, it's an easy club to negotiate, and you won't have many complaints if you avoid the expensive parking lots ($15 adjacent to the club, $10 across the street, $3 to $4 lots within two blocks; I found free street parking less than three blocks away) and don't mind a slightly claustrophobic men's room.

Bring on the music.

[Short takes on new albums:]

 

Louis XIV, "Slick Dogs and Ponies" (out today, Atlantic): Clever boys, these Louis XIV lads. You wanted to write them off as one-note eyeliner rock after "Finding Out True Love Is Blind," but their sophomore album won't let you. It's every bit as gleefully indulgent -- nicking T. Rex, Bowie and a handful of other glammy bands that actually were British and didn't just adopt the accent from, er, the San Diego district of London -- but it covers much more sonic geography, and with witty lyrics to boot.

||| Live: Louis IV play Feb. 9 at the Wiltern and Feb. 10 at the House of Blues Anaheim.

||| Watch the slightly creepy video for "Guilt by Association." Hey, is that the Playboy Mansion?

Dengue Fever, "Venus on Earth" (Jan. 22, M80): It's never about getting your brain around the groundbreaking Cambodian psych-pop band's music -- most of songwriter Zac Holtzman's numbers feature Chhom Nimol singing in her native Khmer. It's about opening your ears to exotic (and exotic combinations of) sounds; on this more English-heavy third album, the vibe is at turns seductive, celebratory, cinematic and wistful, and never lost in the translation.

||| Live: Dengue Fever celebrates its album release with a show Thursday at the Echoplex.

||| Download: "Sober Driver"

Chris Walla, "Field Manual" (today, Barsuk): Much respect for Walla as a force behind Death Cab for Cutie,  and as a producer, but I found little on the pallid "Field Manual" to guide me.

||| Download: "Sing Again"

Happy triumphed over sad on a wintry Monday night at the Echo, but not by much. The final night of the Radar Bros.' residency had the feel of a plot point in which an epic movie loses a beloved character, only to have fortune smile on another.

The occasion was the record release show for the Radar Bros.' new "Auditorium" -- and at the same time, bizarrely, a farewell show (at least for a while) for the veteran band in its current incarnation. With many of his players moving on to other projects, frontman Jim Putnam, a father figure to many in the Silver Lake/Echo Park music vortex, gave a stoic and sublimely beautiful performance to a crowd dotted with indie rockers old and young. Among them, even, was a promoter who remembered doing a flyer for a Radar Bros. show before Spaceland opened.

Yes, kids, there was a such a time.

A sing-along with friends, girlfriends and guest musicians capped the set, before the crowd graciously demanded and received two encores. You'd think somebody might have gotten a little misty-eyed, but, no, 15 minutes later there was Putnam back onstage, standing in with post-headliner band Adeline.

Earlier, the crowd got a good-natured acoustic set from Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert (joined briefly by bandmate Nikki Monninger) that included covers of songs by the Movies, Joy Division and Bjork.

But the room was almost full for the night's opener, Everest, and with good reason. The fivesome of local players with distinguished indie resumes played a powerul and poignant set of rock-Americana as they continue to work toward their album release on Neil Young's Vapor Records in April.

This past week did nothing to slow their momentum. En route to a gig at the Sundance Film Festival, guitarist Joel Graves won enough money at a Mesquite, Nev., casino to pay for the band's rooms. Then, at the festival, Young himself took in a show.

Not that playing in front of his idol fazed frontman Russell Pollard. "Before the show, somebody told us he was in the audience and my face turned white," Pollard says. "So I went out and said hello and thanked him for coming. Two songs into the show I spotted him bobbing his head ... It was the most epic moment of my life."

Young liked what Everest was doing, his manager Elliot Roberts later reported. So did the folks Monday at the Echo.

I suggest catching them before they outgrow venues this size. [Next gig: Feb. 19 at a Radio Free Silver Lake showcase at Boardner's in Hollywood.]

Photos, from top: Friends join Jim Putnam (left) for a sing-along during the Radar Bros.' finale; Nikki Monninger and Brian Aubert of Silversun Pickups cover the Movies' "Creation Lake"; and Everest's Russell Pollard performs. By Kevin Bronson / LAT

The Bravery break in downtown's Crash Mansion

You could balance all of the Bravery's critical mass on a guitar pick, but the New York City quintet's fashion rock is all over the radio, and the band is adept at replicating those hits in a concert setting. They did Saturday night in a manner that set the tone for the whole evening -- tight, energetic and professional.

The occasion was the grand-opening bash for downtown's Crash Mansion, a seemingly nondescript brick box of a building at Grand and Olympic that has been dressed up just enough that it could become a player on the local concert scene. The Bravery, in the middle of a sold-out tour, packed the place, with support from two British up-and-comers, the impressive Your Vegas and the not-so-impressive Switches. Your Vegas (album coming on Universal) makes anthemic rock that rises above the pedestrian thanks to Coyle Girelli's soaring vocals. Switches (album coming on Interscope) never rise above hodge-podge.

As for the venue ... tight, energetic, professional. The main room, its walls decorated by vintage murals, seems to be almost square, but makes for nice space thanks to the booths on its flanks. The sound was almost as good on the fringes of the room as it was in the center (but decidedly murky from the VIP mezzanine or underneath the mezzanine's overhang). A second club in a separate room figures to play host to Silverlake Lounge-sized shows. Overall, it's an easy club to negotiate, and you won't have many complaints if you avoid the expensive parking lots ($15 adjacent to the club, $10 across the street, $3 to $4 lots within two blocks; I found free street parking less than three blocks away) and don't mind a slightly claustrophobic men's room.

Bring on the music.

[Short takes on new albums:]

 

Louis XIV, "Slick Dogs and Ponies" (out today, Atlantic): Clever boys, these Louis XIV lads. You wanted to write them off as one-note eyeliner rock after "Finding Out True Love Is Blind," but their sophomore album won't let you. It's every bit as gleefully indulgent -- nicking T. Rex, Bowie and a handful of other glammy bands that actually were British and didn't just adopt the accent from, er, the San Diego district of London -- but it covers much more sonic geography, and with witty lyrics to boot.

||| Live: Louis IV play Feb. 9 at the Wiltern and Feb. 10 at the House of Blues Anaheim.

||| Watch the slightly creepy video for "Guilt by Association." Hey, is that the Playboy Mansion?

Dengue Fever, "Venus on Earth" (Jan. 22, M80): It's never about getting your brain around the groundbreaking Cambodian psych-pop band's music -- most of songwriter Zac Holtzman's numbers feature Chhom Nimol singing in her native Khmer. It's about opening your ears to exotic (and exotic combinations of) sounds; on this more English-heavy third album, the vibe is at turns seductive, celebratory, cinematic and wistful, and never lost in the translation.

||| Live: Dengue Fever celebrates its album release with a show Thursday at the Echoplex.

||| Download: "Sober Driver"

Chris Walla, "Field Manual" (today, Barsuk): Much respect for Walla as a force behind Death Cab for Cutie,  and as a producer, but I found little on the pallid "Field Manual" to guide me.

||| Download: "Sing Again"

Happy triumphed over sad on a wintry Monday night at the Echo, but not by much. The final night of the Radar Bros.' residency had the feel of a plot point in which an epic movie loses a beloved character, only to have fortune smile on another.

The occasion was the record release show for the Radar Bros.' new "Auditorium" -- and at the same time, bizarrely, a farewell show (at least for a while) for the veteran band in its current incarnation. With many of his players moving on to other projects, frontman Jim Putnam, a father figure to many in the Silver Lake/Echo Park music vortex, gave a stoic and sublimely beautiful performance to a crowd dotted with indie rockers old and young. Among them, even, was a promoter who remembered doing a flyer for a Radar Bros. show before Spaceland opened.

Yes, kids, there was a such a time.

A sing-along with friends, girlfriends and guest musicians capped the set, before the crowd graciously demanded and received two encores. You'd think somebody might have gotten a little misty-eyed, but, no, 15 minutes later there was Putnam back onstage, standing in with post-headliner band Adeline.

Earlier, the crowd got a good-natured acoustic set from Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert (joined briefly by bandmate Nikki Monninger) that included covers of songs by the Movies, Joy Division and Bjork.

But the room was almost full for the night's opener, Everest, and with good reason. The fivesome of local players with distinguished indie resumes played a powerul and poignant set of rock-Americana as they continue to work toward their album release on Neil Young's Vapor Records in April.

This past week did nothing to slow their momentum. En route to a gig at the Sundance Film Festival, guitarist Joel Graves won enough money at a Mesquite, Nev., casino to pay for the band's rooms. Then, at the festival, Young himself took in a show.

Not that playing in front of his idol fazed frontman Russell Pollard. "Before the show, somebody told us he was in the audience and my face turned white," Pollard says. "So I went out and said hello and thanked him for coming. Two songs into the show I spotted him bobbing his head ... It was the most epic moment of my life."

Young liked what Everest was doing, his manager Elliot Roberts later reported. So did the folks Monday at the Echo.

I suggest catching them before they outgrow venues this size. [Next gig: Feb. 19 at a Radio Free Silver Lake showcase at Boardner's in Hollywood.]

Photos, from top: Friends join Jim Putnam (left) for a sing-along during the Radar Bros.' finale; Nikki Monninger and Brian Aubert of Silversun Pickups cover the Movies' "Creation Lake"; and Everest's Russell Pollard performs. By Kevin Bronson / LAT

Incoming: Louis XIV, Dengue Fever, Chris Walla

[Short takes on new albums:]

 

Louis XIV, "Slick Dogs and Ponies" (out today, Atlantic): Clever boys, these Louis XIV lads. You wanted to write them off as one-note eyeliner rock after "Finding Out True Love Is Blind," but their sophomore album won't let you. It's every bit as gleefully indulgent -- nicking T. Rex, Bowie and a handful of other glammy bands that actually were British and didn't just adopt the accent from, er, the San Diego district of London -- but it covers much more sonic geography, and with witty lyrics to boot.

||| Live: Louis IV play Feb. 9 at the Wiltern and Feb. 10 at the House of Blues Anaheim.

||| Watch the slightly creepy video for "Guilt by Association." Hey, is that the Playboy Mansion?

Dengue Fever, "Venus on Earth" (Jan. 22, M80): It's never about getting your brain around the groundbreaking Cambodian psych-pop band's music -- most of songwriter Zac Holtzman's numbers feature Chhom Nimol singing in her native Khmer. It's about opening your ears to exotic (and exotic combinations of) sounds; on this more English-heavy third album, the vibe is at turns seductive, celebratory, cinematic and wistful, and never lost in the translation.

||| Live: Dengue Fever celebrates its album release with a show Thursday at the Echoplex.

||| Download: "Sober Driver"

Chris Walla, "Field Manual" (today, Barsuk): Much respect for Walla as a force behind Death Cab for Cutie,  and as a producer, but I found little on the pallid "Field Manual" to guide me.

||| Download: "Sing Again"

Happy triumphed over sad on a wintry Monday night at the Echo, but not by much. The final night of the Radar Bros.' residency had the feel of a plot point in which an epic movie loses a beloved character, only to have fortune smile on another.

The occasion was the record release show for the Radar Bros.' new "Auditorium" -- and at the same time, bizarrely, a farewell show (at least for a while) for the veteran band in its current incarnation. With many of his players moving on to other projects, frontman Jim Putnam, a father figure to many in the Silver Lake/Echo Park music vortex, gave a stoic and sublimely beautiful performance to a crowd dotted with indie rockers old and young. Among them, even, was a promoter who remembered doing a flyer for a Radar Bros. show before Spaceland opened.

Yes, kids, there was a such a time.

A sing-along with friends, girlfriends and guest musicians capped the set, before the crowd graciously demanded and received two encores. You'd think somebody might have gotten a little misty-eyed, but, no, 15 minutes later there was Putnam back onstage, standing in with post-headliner band Adeline.

Earlier, the crowd got a good-natured acoustic set from Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert (joined briefly by bandmate Nikki Monninger) that included covers of songs by the Movies, Joy Division and Bjork.

But the room was almost full for the night's opener, Everest, and with good reason. The fivesome of local players with distinguished indie resumes played a powerul and poignant set of rock-Americana as they continue to work toward their album release on Neil Young's Vapor Records in April.

This past week did nothing to slow their momentum. En route to a gig at the Sundance Film Festival, guitarist Joel Graves won enough money at a Mesquite, Nev., casino to pay for the band's rooms. Then, at the festival, Young himself took in a show.

Not that playing in front of his idol fazed frontman Russell Pollard. "Before the show, somebody told us he was in the audience and my face turned white," Pollard says. "So I went out and said hello and thanked him for coming. Two songs into the show I spotted him bobbing his head ... It was the most epic moment of my life."

Young liked what Everest was doing, his manager Elliot Roberts later reported. So did the folks Monday at the Echo.

I suggest catching them before they outgrow venues this size. [Next gig: Feb. 19 at a Radio Free Silver Lake showcase at Boardner's in Hollywood.]

Photos, from top: Friends join Jim Putnam (left) for a sing-along during the Radar Bros.' finale; Nikki Monninger and Brian Aubert of Silversun Pickups cover the Movies' "Creation Lake"; and Everest's Russell Pollard performs. By Kevin Bronson / LAT

Radar Bros.' finale turns into an all-star night

Happy triumphed over sad on a wintry Monday night at the Echo, but not by much. The final night of the Radar Bros.' residency had the feel of a plot point in which an epic movie loses a beloved character, only to have fortune smile on another.

The occasion was the record release show for the Radar Bros.' new "Auditorium" -- and at the same time, bizarrely, a farewell show (at least for a while) for the veteran band in its current incarnation. With many of his players moving on to other projects, frontman Jim Putnam, a father figure to many in the Silver Lake/Echo Park music vortex, gave a stoic and sublimely beautiful performance to a crowd dotted with indie rockers old and young. Among them, even, was a promoter who remembered doing a flyer for a Radar Bros. show before Spaceland opened.

Yes, kids, there was a such a time.

A sing-along with friends, girlfriends and guest musicians capped the set, before the crowd graciously demanded and received two encores. You'd think somebody might have gotten a little misty-eyed, but, no, 15 minutes later there was Putnam back onstage, standing in with post-headliner band Adeline.

Earlier, the crowd got a good-natured acoustic set from Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert (joined briefly by bandmate Nikki Monninger) that included covers of songs by the Movies, Joy Division and Bjork.

But the room was almost full for the night's opener, Everest, and with good reason. The fivesome of local players with distinguished indie resumes played a powerul and poignant set of rock-Americana as they continue to work toward their album release on Neil Young's Vapor Records in April.

This past week did nothing to slow their momentum. En route to a gig at the Sundance Film Festival, guitarist Joel Graves won enough money at a Mesquite, Nev., casino to pay for the band's rooms. Then, at the festival, Young himself took in a show.

Not that playing in front of his idol fazed frontman Russell Pollard. "Before the show, somebody told us he was in the audience and my face turned white," Pollard says. "So I went out and said hello and thanked him for coming. Two songs into the show I spotted him bobbing his head ... It was the most epic moment of my life."

Young liked what Everest was doing, his manager Elliot Roberts later reported. So did the folks Monday at the Echo.

I suggest catching them before they outgrow venues this size. [Next gig: Feb. 19 at a Radio Free Silver Lake showcase at Boardner's in Hollywood.]

Photos, from top: Friends join Jim Putnam (left) for a sing-along during the Radar Bros.' finale; Nikki Monninger and Brian Aubert of Silversun Pickups cover the Movies' "Creation Lake"; and Everest's Russell Pollard performs. By Kevin Bronson / LAT