As evidenced on “The Year of Magical Drinking,” the new album by Apex Manor released today on Merge, songwriter Ross Flournoy doesn’t turn pop music into brain surgery. It can be hard on the heart, though, and Flournoy’s first post-Broken West outing effectively tugs those strings with effortless melodies and a plain-spoken sincerity that’ll settle […]
Ross Flournoy was bowed but not broken when his indie-pop band the Broken West disintegrated more than a year ago. “I had no idea what I was going to do,” he said of his year of stewing, soul-searching and, eventually, songwriting. “Being on Merge, it’s not like you break up your band and then you […]
Raymond Richards has been something of a two-headed beast the past few years, his burgeoning duties as an up-and-coming producer at his humble garage studio forcing his singer-songwriter side to the back burner. But now Richards (whose Red Rockets Glare Studio has birthed albums by Local Natives, the Broken West and Ferraby Lionheart, among others) […]
Music doesn’t feel so much like a business to Evan Slamka these days, and the Los Angeles singer-songwriter likes it just fine. With his new quintet Square on Square, Slamka has emerged from three-plus years of personal reflection and creative regeneration that followed the dissolution of Majorie Fair, which released one excellent album (“Self Help […]
[Welcome to June. We’ll celebrate by kicking off some new residencies – and by wishing the Broken West’s Ross Flournoy a happy birthday …] Oliver Future takes another big step in its morphosis by launching a residency at the Echo, and the first night will offer Useless Keys as main support. … At Spaceland, Castledoor […]
[Happy birthday to Kim Gordon. And happy Tuesday to you …] Tinted Windows, the seemingly unlikely conflagration of Taylor Hanson (Hanson), Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne), James Iha (Smashing Pumpkins) and Bun E. Carlos (Cheap Track), hits town for a sold-out show at the Troubadour tonight. Tinted Windows’ debut album, out last week, doesn’t exactly […]
[Happy 63rd birthday to the Rev. Al Green … now for some sermonizing of my own:] As if the heaping helping of Monday night residencies don’t have your concert-going plate full, some great touring acts are hitting town: U.K. dance-gazers Friendly Fires (whose self-titled debut was one of my favorite ablums of 2008) play the […]
Eleven L.A. artists cover Paul (and Linda) McCartney on the new charity compilation “RAM on L.A.,” being released digitally on Monday through local blog Aquarium Drunkard’s Autumn Tone Records. Justin Gage, the man behind the blog and the label, explains that as he hatched the idea for a compilation of local bands last year, he […]
[Happy birthday to Abe Vigoda – not the band, silly, the actor. Abe’s 88 today, and we love him as much as Conan O’Brien does.] The pride of Issaquah, Wash., Modest Mouse [pictured], hits town tonight for a show at the Palladium that, as of early this morning, was not sold out. Mimicking Birds (signed […]
[Happy birthday to Ian Brown of the Stone Roses … when’s that next show, dude?] Tonight: Thurston Moore is playing the Smell, and here’s hoping the regulars get in. … Big rawk shows all over: At the three-day tattoo to-do Musink at the O.C. Fairgrounds, the headliners the next three days are Rev. Horton Heat, […]
