French pop icons romance and rock L.A.

Charles Aznavour croons to fans' delight and Johnny Hallyday shakes it up in separate shows.

French expatriates living in Los Angeles got a reminder of home this week at separate concerts by Charles Aznavour and Johnny Hallyday, two aging giants in French pop music whose relatively limited renown in the United States seems only to have endeared them more deeply to their fans. When Aznavour asked which language he should sing his next song in during his performance Sunday night at the Gibson Amphitheatre, the response from the audience came quickly and with audible pride: "En français!"

The shows illustrated plenty of differences between the singers and the traditions from which they descend: Aznavour and the lyric-driven chanson versus Hallyday and his Continental take on American rock 'n' roll.

But there were similarities too, including each man's all-black wardrobe and a shared repose that worked in appealing opposition to the melodrama in both singers' material.

For Aznavour, 87, that low-key assurance felt like the natural product of the countless hours he's spent onstage over the last half century, playing gigs fundamentally indistinguishable from Sunday's.

Backed by a slick eight-piece band, the singer pondered romance and nostalgia in "L'Amour C'est Comme un Jour" and "La Bohème," punctuating his words with understated facial expressions; "What Makes a Man," Aznavour's well-known depiction of a lonely drag queen, was draped in existential gloom, tender but cool to the touch.

Occasionally his reserve turned dreary, as in "Yesterday, When I Was Young" and "She," his biggest English-language hit.

Mostly, though, Aznavour projected a kind of très chic fatalism that seemed open still to fresh disappointment.

Performing for the first time in L.A. (where he's nevertheless lived since the early 1970s), Hallyday, 68, kept his mustachioed upper lip similarly stiff Tuesday night at the Orpheum Theatre.

Album review: Noel Gallagher's 'Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds'

When Brit-pop super-group Oasis last toured, before the band’s acrimonious split in 2009, songwriter-guitarist Noel Gallagher mainly stuck to his customary stance behind younger brother and lead singer Liam.

Two years later, couched by cheeky diatribes in the media, Gallagher is front and center, both live and on his solo debut, “Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds.” Not as memorable as Oasis’ best anthems in the ’90s, or as nasally rock-ready as his brother's latest incarnation, Beady Eye, the album hovers within a melodic good-to-average middle ground.

If Liam hones the Stones, Noel reworks later-era Kinks, forgoing guitar theatrics for the inclusion of strings, horns and a chorus, sometimes to overwrought effect. His bright tenor, though, serves him well. Recorded in England and Los Angeles, the album encircles themes of love, melancholy and aging.

MTV Iggy brings global music to stateside listeners

MTV's new brand hopes to link U.S. audiences to imports and trends with weekly series, website.



K-pop, Norwegian heavy metal, Bollywood and Brazilian baile funk are just a few of the international sounds that MTV is hoping to connect to American listeners with a new multi-platform brand, the network announced on Thursday.

MTV Iggy, which the network will officially launch on Friday, will serve as this hub for global music and trends that will expose international acts through the MTV brand. 

“For a very longtime the world has been inspired by American pop music and pop culture. And now we want to do the reverse. We want to bring global artists into the US,” said Nusrat Durrani, senior vice president and general manager of MTV World. “We all know the world is becoming a much more global place … and music discovery is increasingly happening on social platforms.”

Italy rocks L.A. during ‘Hitweek’

The show features Italian musicians of different genres as part of a U.S. tour to pursue new fans.

When one thinks of Western European countries exporting great pop and rock music, the U.K., France and even Spain come to mind. But Italy? Not so much.

This week, however, it’s Italy’s turn to shine as big-name musicians from multiple genres play L.A. as part of the annual Italian music showcase “Hitweek,” Tuesday through Thursday. 

“Every time I go abroad, people talk about music from Italy and they talk opera or something about the mandolin, but we have much more to offer,” said Francesco Del Maro, who helped organize the mini-touring festival for the Italian government in conjunction with Puglia Sounds, which promotes the music of Puglia, in southern Italy (four of the acts playing this year are from Puglia).

This year’s lineup offers a rare window into Italy’s popular music scene beyond electronic music, already popular with Americans, with touches on rap, rock and jazz.

OohLaL.A. showcases the diversity of Franco-friendly sounds

The Gallic festival, which starts Thursday at the El Rey, will feature Tinariwen, DJ Etienne de Crecy and Nouvelle Vague.

Some invasions are hostile, but some others come shrouded in Gitanes smoke, Godard references and new wave pop retrofitted for the international cocktail lounge.

The breathlessly named OohLaL.A. Festival will take over the El Rey for three nights starting Thursday, bringing with it a friendly army of French or French-speaking musicians, including Nouvelle Vague, the Tuareg ensemble Tinariwen and house DJ Etienne de Crecy.

Now in its third year, the festival was conceived by Sylvain Taillet, an A&R executive at the French record label Barclay, as a way to ease the passage of Franco-friendly music into American ears, a luxury long ago gifted to the British but seemingly no one else.

“I wanted to introduce L.A. audiences,” Taillet wrote in an email, “to what I consider to be our most exciting acts and showcase the diversity of French music, from electro… to the more eclectic sounds that emerge from our cultural melting pot.”

Nick Lowe: Taking the low-key approach

The English singer-songwriter isn't too impressed with today's music. Instead, he's doing what he does best: elegantly mature, sophisticated pop songs. 

Nick Lowe, lauded in many quarters as one of pop music's master craftsmen of the last three decades, says he hears a lot of pretty good music these days. And that's not good.

“Sad to say, it seems everyone can make a pretty good record in their bedroom today,” the 62-year-old English singer and songwriter said recently. “You go buy the kit and you can make a pretty good record. ‘Pretty good' is the new ‘terrible.' In a tsunami of ‘pretty good' stuff, you can't find the really good stuff. So I've kind of given up looking.”

Instead, Lowe focuses on continuing to hone his own skills, the results of which are evident on his wryly (as usual) titled new album, “The Old Magic,” which comes out Tuesday as he embarks on a string of North American shows opening for Wilco. After that, he'll do a handful of solo shows, including Oct. 7 at Largo.

As with his previous studio collection, 2007's “At My Age,” the new album is a collection of elegantly mature, astutely sophisticated pop songs from an artist who clearly is no longer one of the new kids on the block — and utterly pleased not to be.

It includes “House for Sale,” a country-leaning ballad with the same kind of resigned anguish as George Jones' classic breakup tune “The Grand Tour”; in “Stoplight Roses,” he explores the desperation of one whose idea of an apology is a spray of sagging flowers bought at a traffic intersection; and “I Read a Lot,” in which he ruminates on the way he spends his time after being abandoned by a lover.

His always-catchy melodies first caught the ear of the pop world in the late '70s as a musical mate of Elvis Costello, Graham Parker and others steeped in American roots music who were blindly lumped in with the U.K. punk-rock explosion.

Album review: Arctic Monkeys 'Suck It and See'

Its latest effort shows that the British group that once showed such promise needs to find its footing.

Urgency proved the currency when Arctic Monkeys exploded in 2006. The British group’s first album, “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not,” was the quickest-selling debut in U.K. history, and its prickly alt-rock songs carried commensurate propulsion. Frontman Alex Turner’s witty, succinct chronicles of young life even pegged him as an heir to great English songwriters like Elvis Costello and Paul Weller.

Alas, Arctic Monkeys have been running away from that initial promise ever since: Their last two albums, 2007’s “Favourite Worst Nightmare” and 2009’s “Humbug,” seemed like showcases to prove they could rock hard. The latest, “Suck It and See” (English slang for “give it a try”), slows the pace but ultimately feels even more detached.

Scotland’s Glasvegas dives into L.A. life

The quartet trades Glasgow for Santa Monica to work on its sophomore album, ‘Euphoric///Heartbreak\\\,’ and gets a hit of inspiration and excess.

Glasgow’s rainy streets are a far cry from the sunny shores of California, but for Glasvegas, Los Angeles felt like a perfect fit as soon as the Scottish quartet stepped off the tour bus in front of the Troubadour. It was January 2009 and the band had just released its self-titled debut album to much critical acclaim, and was about to play its first L.A. gig at the legendary venue. “I felt like I was home, and I don’t know why that is,” lead singer James Allan says of the first time he set foot in L.A. “Everybody told me I’d hate it.”

Thoughts of living in L.A. lingered as the band toured the globe, opening for U2 and picking up a multitude of awards along the way, as well as a nomination for the prestigious British Mercury Prize, whose judges cited its debut album’s “bittersweet sounds of classic rock ’n’ roll” and “gloriously elegiac anthems of contemporary life.”

When it came time to get serious about writing their sophomore album, James and his band mates — guitarist and cousin Rab Allan, bassist Paul Donoghue and drummer Caroline McKay (who has since left the band and been replaced by Jonna Löfgren) — decided to return to L.A. to set up shop in an idyllic three-story beach house rental next to the Santa Monica Pier. For five months they wrote and recorded tracks for what would become “Euphoric///Heartbreak\\\,” which came out May 17 on Columbia Records.

When asked why they chose the Southland, of all places, James Allan says, “I went to Los Angeles to put myself in an unfamiliar setting and see how that would influence the music. It’s such a fascinating place, Santa Monica. I always think that if ever anybody thinks it’s easy they should go and spend a bit of time in Los Angeles. If you do that and you come back and you’re still inspired, then you can wear the badge that says ‘I survived L.A.’”

The city’s complexity brought challenges for the enigmatic frontman, who was once a professional soccer player in his native Scotland. He found himself indulging in some of the city’s excesses, leading the band to cancel its first coveted Coachella slot due to “exhaustion” — but later acknowledging that drugs had been involved, and participating in five-day party marathons with little or no sleep.

“Like anything that’s that beautiful, if any bad stuff is inside of you, [Los Angeles] will bring that bad stuff to the front of you,” Allan says. “The brighter the sunshine, the blacker the shadow, as well.”
He says dystopian images of Los Angeles from the 1982 sci-fi film “Blade Runner” penetrated his subconscious and informed the sound of the new record. “I used to think of [Los Angeles] in a Ridley Scott, Vangelis, ‘Blade Runner’ way,” he says. “It was always post-apocalyptic noir and it was always on the beach. That’s what I was imagining we could make something sound like.”

Despite a canceled gig, commit to listening to Allo Darlin’

The wistful young pop of London's Allo Darlin' doesn't necessarily make a dashing entrance. It arrives hunched shouldered and shy, all jangly melodies and nervous aggression, knowingly not fitting in, but far from eccentric. If Allo Darlin's self-titled 2010 debut was overlooked, chalk it up to its celebration of the ordinary, and roll-of-the-eyes weariness toward bohemian quirks.

Looking a "neurotic" and "paranoid" lover square in the face, singer Elizabeth Morris hits him where it hurts. "Woody Allen couldn't play you," chides Morris, singing with a grow-the-heck-up directness on a song that's named after the famed director.

Musically, it all goes down with tambourine-accented beats, but if the sound is a tad Belle & Sebastian cutesy, Morris makes it clear that those anxious ticks and forced drama are anything but. "So cerebral," Morris sings of one of Allen's characters, impatient with those who run away from romance. 

Album review: Art Brut's 'Brilliant! Tragic!'

“I’m still here!” Eddie Argos exclaims on the new Art Brut album, and he’s probably just as surprised as the rest of us. When this English group emerged in 2004 with the delightfully self-explanatory “Formed a Band,” it had all the makings of a short-lived art-school prank; a subsequent full-length, “Bang Bang Rock & Roll,” somehow extended the charm of that debut single, with equally straightforward songs such as “Good Weekend” and “Moving to L.A.”