FYF Fest @ Los Angeles Historic State Park [1245 N. Spring St.] 9/5/09: The Black Lips / Lightning Bolt / Tim & Eric / Lucero / Converge / F* Up / The Thermals / No Age / Matt Skiba / Glass Candy / Japanther / Times New Viking / Darker My Love / Carbonas / Peanut Butter Wolf / Crystal Antlers / AA Bondy / Mika Miko / Har Mar Superstar / Nobunny / Telepathe / Cold Cave / The Strange Boys / Katie Stelmanis / Dios / NinjaSonik / Kurt Vile / Eat Skull / Avi [...]
Tired of cold British festivals? Well check out some of the European festival for your fix of sunshine! Primavera Dates: 28th-30th May Place: Barcelona, Spain Website: http://www.primaverasound.com One of the problems with British festivals is the weather. It can never be truly predicted and although you can still have plenty of fun in the rain it's not so much fun having to trudge [...]
tonight in NYC * DANCE * THIS WEEK IN INDIE * Auditory Assault Festival * The Proclaimers @ City Winery * Bill Frisell Trio @ Village Vanguard * Leonard Cohen @ Radio City Music Hall * Local Correspondents Festival @ Bar 4 * Peaches, Drums of Death @ Webster Hall * Brooklyn Folk Festival @ Jalopy Theater * Children, Lapdog [...]
Thursday 5/7: The Silent Years @ Spaceland Sleepytime Gorilla Museum @ Key Club Fonseca @ El Rey Theatre Van Morrison @ Orpheum Theatre Her Space Holiday @ The Echo Mae West @ Troubadour Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros @ The Regent Theatre Chelsea Girls @ Roxy Theatre Katchafire @ Brixton South Bay Lebowski Fest @ Wiltern Friday 5/8: Spectrum, Abe Vigoda, Entrance @ Echo Voxhaul Broadcast, Local [...]
More than 1,800 bands will descend (that's right -- descend, as in hordes, like locusts) on Austin, Texas, March 18-22 for the annual South by Southwest Festival. If you've made plans to go, it's hard not to become overwhelmed at the thought of how to figure out who to see and when. Wait. Let me rephrase that: once the tsunami of media, music and beer that is SXSW completely takes you under, only then can you submit to the task of assembling a reasonable schedule of events for yourself. You have to give in [...]
Mark and I stumbled upon this record a few weeks ago, and both instantly fell in love with it. The songs and the singer sound like a cross between Lightnin' Hopkins and Mississippi John Hurt. Intriguing, no? Mark bought the record, and I wrote down the title so that I could research it from home. Unfortunately, I could not find any information on it. Not even so much as a picture of the album cover exists anywhere on the Internet. So, I had Mark digitize it for me (thanks, Mark!) and we photographed the cover and side-A label. I've also [...]
[Hide the live chickens, Alice Cooper is celebrating a birthday today ...] Matt & Kim's latest album, "Grand" (released in January on Fader), is pretty lightweight stuff, but the duo [pictured] can charm an earflap beanie off a hipster and they always draw well in L.A. With the Mae Shi on the bill, the sold-out Troubadour should be party central (and there's a pizza party afterwards). ... Katy Perry admirer Little Boots , the "hotly tipped" (NME's words) dance-pop songstress from London, totes her [...]
Singer/songwriter Andrew Bird , over a span of eight albums now, has quietly moved from obscurity into something resembling mainstream. Whether you recognize his work in recent Residence Inn commercials , playing in a Barnes & Noble, or in your iPod, his quirky violin, guitar and whistling melodies find a way to burrow into your head. His latest, Noble Beast -- released last week, finds Bird scaling back some of his eccentricities down to a still challenging piece of work that dares some radio airplay. What hasn't been pared [...]
The beginning of a new year comes with rampant speculation of who is going to be on each upcoming festival's line-up. I'm going to break down some of the rumours, and talk about the festivals I am most excited about in 2009. So break open your calendar and get ready to plan your year in festies: Big Ears Festival (Knoxville, TN) February 6-8 Usually the festival season doesn't [...]
Audio Fiction 's self-titled Audio Fiction has the recipe for success, but it comes off as just a little over-baked. Female singers are incredibly popular this year, so it seems like Kristin 's vocals with their Gwen Stefani meets Jenny Lewis sound should be a sure-fire hit. However, she lacks Lewis' subtlety and embraces Stefani's confidence just a bit too much. She's by no means awful, but she's not as great as her counterparts, found in Darren "Mr. Audio" on bass, Charles on guitar and [...]
When one thinks of rock opera, they usually think of a concept album like The Who 's Tommy or even some might argue more recently My Chemical Romance 's The Black Parade . None of these so called rock operas even come close to East Village Opera Company 's interpretation on their latest release. EVOC is giving you opera old e school style. Olde School is a collection of popular operatic pieces. The classics are there with George Handel , Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus [...]
In a deck of cards, the Joker stands out and doesn't fit into any one suit. Similarly, The Joker's Daughter , the musical collaboration of Helena Costas with the production of Danger Mouse , stands out in music and doesn't quite fit any one genre. Sure there's rock, electronica, psychedelia, but there's also hints of genres like polka. In just three songs, Costas managed to fit a lot of surprises. The Worm's Head is a 7 inch teaser of the music of The Joker's Daughter before the debut full-length is released by [...]
Electro rock group Shiny Toy Guns is finally releasing a new album and it is actually all new songs. I know it got a little confusing after they released We Are Pilots three times, but Season of Poison is their legitimate second album. Granted, there are several similarities, but many more differences. The first major and most noticeable difference is that Sisely Treasure has taken over the duties of Carah Faye Charnow . Treasure is a good fit for the band and she manages to balance [...]
Hands down, Ray LaMontagne is one of the best kept secrets in music. Influenced by Richard Manuel and Rick Danko of The Band and Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young , LaMontagne is best know for his soft-spoken demeanor and raspy voice. His new album, Gossip in the Grain, is no stray from that signature sound. Produced by Ethan Johns , the mastermind behind Gold and Heartbreaker by Ryan Adams and On My Way [...]
Snow Patrol was my favorite little secret until their one little song blew up and I was forced into a blizzard of Snow Patrol overload. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people who doesn't wish a band success and these guys have earned it. I'm just annoyed that it took one of their least interesting songs (it barely used over three notes) to propel them to that level of success. On their fifth studio album A Hundred Million Suns , Snow Patrol seemed to struggle with a choice between continuing with the simple pop [...]
Times New Viking are on a voyage to rock you with their loud noise rock. On their Stay Awake EP , Times New Viking carries you on a whirlwind of a rock album with influences from punk to shoegaze. Fittingly to the track title, "Call & Respond" has a nice back and forth between the vocals and the guitar. Fans of Los Campesinos! will love how Beth Murphy and Adam Elliott conquer the vocals and lead the song into the repetitious "Pagan Eyes." "Hate Hate [...]
Finally! Enough with the bands everyone was talking about, Friday provided me with some real excitement for the first time at CMJ. Maybe it's because I'm a dirty punk rock fan who just needed some bands who were less worried about all the posturing and posing and just came to give a good show. Top to bottom, I made my day about bands who laid it all out on the table. First up were one of my favorite bands playing CMJ, Ponytail. Fuck it, they're one of my favorite bands period, and it was cool to [...]
In the Half Japanese documentary The Band That Would Be King , David Fair explains, " it's pretty easy to play a guitar…once you know the science of it. The high notes - the little skinny ones - make high sounds; the big fat ones make low sounds. And then, if you go on the part of the guitar near where you pluck it, that makes high sounds, and down at the other end [that makes low sounds]– and then you've got it mastered. Oh, and if you want to go fast - play fast. [...]
Lovedrug 's first record, Pretend You're Alive , is honestly still one of my favorite albums. This album holds some of the most honest and moving songs I've ever heard, like "Down Towards the Healing" and the title track "Pretend You're Alive." The piano and often drawn out guitars created a dark ambiance with heart wrenching lyrics from Michael Shepherd 's breathy vocals. Sadly to say, there are only a handful of songs on The Sucker Punch Show that I really liked. In reality, I actually hated it at first, but [...]
Eric Bachmann , make up your mind, is it forfeit or fortune? Are you making a pop album? A freak folk album? An Eastern European-influenced album? Do you or do you not have an accent? Neil Diamond !?!? Albums like The Clash 's London Calling and more recently My Morning Jacket 's Evil Urges managed to be eclectic without sacrificing consistency or coherence. Forfeit/Fortune is an eclectic album that fails where those bands succeeded, principally because Crooked Fingers isn't always that good at some [...]
Beach House – “Norway” From the forthcoming Teen Dream, out 1/26/2010 from Sub Pop. More about Beach House
Yes, here it is people, the official extended remix video of Beyoncé's latest single 'Video Phone' featuring Lady GaGa that has been hyped up as the video of the [...]More about Lady GaGa
Just wanted everyone in L.A. looking for a to do this Thursday night, to check out a great show, from London-Transplant, now L.A. inhabitant Samuel Stewart. He is the offspring [...]More about Vampire Weekend
Beck pays tribute to sound architect Harry Partch with 10 minute opus, defends Radiohead who pay respect to WWII British solider Harry Patch. Beck -"Harry [...]More about Beck
I am still waiting to hear Animal Collective’s new EP, Fall Be Kind. In the meantime, we have the Brother Sport single to hold us over. It [...]More about Animal Collective
I hate that people expect a person to stay classy after a break up. Fuck that, I was never like that and I'm not going [...]More about Beyonce
Thirteen tunes that have entertained my ears over the past few months. Burn it to a CD and play it loud in your car. Enjoy. [...]More about The xx
Another track from Lil Wayne’s mixtape No Ceilings which is dropping on Halloween. In this one Wayne goes over Jay-Z’s Run This Town single that featured [...]More about Lil' Wayne
So here comes this freestyle or whatever it is from Kanye. No one seems to know if it is new or some unreleased stuff but [...]More about Kanye West
I’m not too familiar with Bubblegum Sci Fi. To tell you the truth, tonight was the first I’ve heard of them when this track showed [...]More about Passion Pit
The Cribs - We Share The Same Skies
k-os - I Wish I Knew Natalie Portman
nekocasefallon
Animal Collective - Graze (Fall Be Kind)
new music from vampire weekend – cousins + music video
WKND PLYLST!! This has nothing to do with NEW MOON!
HOT CHIP TAKE another crack at IT and I’m IN
The Beach House Theory of 2k10.
Friday Five: Surf Songs
