Radio Free Silver Lake

Album Review: FIDLAR – FIDLAR (Mom & Pop)

By Seamus Simpson

Ever since I heard their single “Cocaine” I thought to myself that maybe the kids were onto something, but I would just have to wait and see. Lo and behold FIDLAR’s  first full length fell into my lap to review and I couldn’t be happier. This album has so much energy and youthful exuberance that you can’t help but want to jump around the room when you hear it.

The album slaps you in the face with the opening track and lead single “Cheap Beer,” a short and sweet song that made me pine for being 21 again. With its mantra of “I drink cheap beer, so what, fuck you” you know immediately what kind of band you are dealing with. Nothing complicated but good straight songs with a surf twinge, punk rock speed, garage band ethos, and a middle finger to the world.

It doesn’t stop there. The hits keep coming right square in the middle of your face with “White on White” and “Stoked and Broke”. They meander a little in the middle of the album with a couple of songs like “No Waves” and “Blackout Stout” that are little too reminiscent of the San Diego band WAVVES. Which isn’t itself a bad thing, just that they don’t need to borrow from anybody else’s sound. What they have is already really great.

With song titles like “Wake Bake and Skate” “5 to 9” and “Paycheck” you get the distinct feeling that these guys don’t have any big worries in the world, and I find that refreshing. It’s tiresome to hear the same folk rock love ballads plague the current crop of young bands coming out right now, and in juxtaposition these guys just want to get out and have a good f**king time.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the previously mentioned single “Cocaine.” Sounding like it was re-mastered into a superior version of the original, it closes the album with a huge bang. If I were 19 or 23 this band would be the soundtrack to my life; as it stands I will just listen and live vicariously through their music and be reminded of parties past.

 

FIDLAR's self-titled album is out now on Mom & Pop Records. FIDLAR play a sold out show at The Echo (Los Angeles) March 20, 2013.

Favorites of 2012 - RFSL Staff Edition, Part 1 Albums

By Staff

Here are some of the Radio Free Silver Lake staff’s favorite albums and EP’s we’ve been listening to from the past year. Every December as we consider our lists we realize just how much music is out there and how many records we hadn’t heard in the past twelve months. In particular RFSL’s focus on live and local music means that there are many national releases that we don’t get a chance to spend as much time listening to as we’d like. Without attempting to be encyclopedic in any way, but from our point of view, here is the music we like and want to share with our readers from 2012.

Jed, Video Free Silver Lake

Favorite Albums of the Year (LA Albums)
Lavender Diamond - Incorruptible Heart
Races - Year of the Witch
bikos - Let Down Your Avant Garde 

Favorite Albums of the Year (Non-LA albums):
Valdimar - Um Stund
Corin Tucker - Kill My Blues
Sharon Van Etten - Tramp
Tilbury - Exorcise
First Aid Kit - The Lion's Roar

Brad Roberts, Senior Editor
I think it's only fair, when making a best-of-the-year list, to admit outright that all I heard was just the tip of the musical iceberg of the world's music. After spending a lifetime with them, I know my musical tastes very well. I know what appeals to me and I know what doesn't, though I try to keep an open mind and am amenable to broadening my horizons, I don't want to waste time on what the music industry terms popular music.

Favorite Albums of the Year (LA Albums)

1. Earlimart - System Preferences

Album Review: The Generationals - Lucky Numbers EP

By Seamus Simpson

Every so often our lovable editor throws a bunch of music my way and asks what sticks. Most often nothing, but this time I took notice of this three song EP, The Generationals’ Lucky Numbers. Although I wasn’t blown away at first, the songs just kind of drilled their way into my head like little earworms.

It has a lot of things you’ve heard before or maybe you haven’t, but it seems both familiar and fresh at the same--no mean feat in this day and age. The Generationals have a heavy keyboard influence, but aren’t limited by it with the addition of guitars, bass, and drums like a “normal” band.

So let’s break the three songs down.
First up is “Hazel House” which starts with a very bright and very catchy keyboard line that quickly breaks down into a minimalist structure that keeps the song going at a steady, yet pleasing place. Then it is abruptly broken by a garage guitar line that sounds like something from an old California surf rock record. All in all it has a nice ‘driving down the freeway with the beach one side of you and the mountains on the other’ type of vibe.

Next is “Lucky Numbers” which, and I mean this in a good way, has a heavy Passion Pit vibe going. Most of the song is centered on a great keyboard hook. It has a bit of the herky-jerky feel that many Passion Pit songs have. It’s not a true “dance” song, but at the very least something you could groove to on the dance floor.

The last song, “Sale City,” is the stand out track. It is a much darker song in tone than the other two and has a more traditional sound. By traditional I mean it has a general early The Cure feel to it that I immediately fell for. It sounds like a song straight out of the post-punk ethos of the late 70’s or early 80’s.

All in all an EP worth getting, and it has me interested in seeking out more of The Generationals music to see if this is the direction the band is taking.

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Lucky Numbers is out now. The Generationals' first two albums Con Law and Actor-Caster are available from Park the Van.

Album Review: The Deadly Syndrome – All in Time

By Seamus Simpson

When I first saw The Deadly Syndrome years ago, 2006 I think, I was first stuck by all the cute little cutout ghosts littering the stage. Then I was blown away by the talent this band had.
Solid songwriting – check
Good thematic – check
Great vocals- check

They had all the makings of a great pop band, and over the past six years they only got better every time I saw them. Somewhere along the line, though, it seemed that they disappeared from my radar; well they are back with a new album titled All in Time which makes the time they were absent seem like it was worth it.

The album takes them in a different direction from their earlier material, but this is usually what you want from a band. You want them to grow as you grow, and they have accomplished this development in spades. This album is an ethereal trip through the mind of the band, a group that has grownup aspirations and is ready to move on to the next phase of their lives.

The album opens with a slow burn of a song called “Demons” which has the air of a person wrestling with those demons in their own mind. It is a beautiful start to a beautiful record. The way the drums blast through your speakers are bound to make you jump a little is juxtaposed with the dreamy opening. The album has a certain yearning. Songs like “It’s a Mess” with its acoustic picking, gentle organs, and strange swirling samples underneath are just pure beauty. The album as whole is great, but the stand out tracks to me come at the end of the album in “Whatever Comes Our Way” and “Maine” which tend to lean a little more in the old sounds of their earlier music and mixed with the new more sonic direction they are headed in. If I had any complaint about this album, it is that I could have used more of it. The Deadly Syndrome has a good grasp of where they want to be and where they are going with this album. If you get a chance to catch them at a live show soon, do yourself a favor and see it for yourself. I know I will be there.

Live Review: Calvin Love and Divine Fits at the Masonic Temple at Hollywood Forever Cemetery August 28, 2012

By Kathryn Pinto

A parking tip for the Masonic Temple: it’s a warm night, go ahead and show a little skin. Pretty soon you’ll meet the most polite, best looking security detail in town and they’ll be raising each other up on the walkies, moving golf carts out of your way, making sure you get a good spot in the lot so you don’t have to walk too far. Thanks, guys.

It was a fitting welcome to my first show at the Masonic Temple, a beautiful venue with a reverent vibe even when packed for a sold out show. Approaching the low, barely shin-high stage, crossing the carpeted floor you enter a very intimate space to see a performer you felt familiar with, but is who now so close to your physical space as to give you pause. Calvin Love, playing solo on an August night warm enough to make even beer bottles sweat, did nothing to break the spell of strange closeness.

Love, familiar to eastsiders as the longtime guitarist for Red Cortez/Just an Animal played a set of new solo material more bedroom pop than the anthemic soaring of his former band. Love played alone on stage with backing tracks, alternating between guitar and a small keyboard surrounded by an armada of effects pedals that he adjusted as if he were auditioning for the scientist role on a telenovela. These were compositions of heavily layered electronic and synth tracks and guitar. There are limitations to what an artist can draw out of backing tracks and heavily processed vocals in this type of a 21^st century one-man-band set up, and you sometimes wished that the other former Red Cortezes (one or more of whom has been conspicuously present in the audience at his live shows) would just get up there and help the guy fill out the sound. Despite the constraints Love delivers in his live show. He works 1980’s synth pop to its full dancy exhilarating effect, always moving the entire set. His performance radiates charm and charisma. While playing two instruments and singing he manages to dance a little two-step while performing the entire set with an inner bounciness like super balls overflowing onto the sidewalk.  The set was a promising preview of  the album he has  in the works for official release, a reworking of New Radar released on bandcamp in May .

By the time Divine Fits was about to take the stage I had made a full reconnaissance of the Masonic Temple indoors and out and discovered an air conditioning vent in the front third of the room, plenty close to the stage. Sold. As Divine Fits opened with “Baby Get Worse” the Masonic Temple was like a steam room with chandeliers, the heavy air underscoring the collision of the sacred and profane. Divine Fits, a meta group lead by Britt Daniel of Spoon and Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade and Handsome Furs, and including New Bomb Turks' Sam Brown, along with Alex Fischel on keyboards, is hard-driving blues slanting rock played by guys who are not as intimidating as that description would suggest. The keyboards, with entire synth lines that sound like they time traveled to the stage from the 1980's in a DeLorean, fill out the arrangements in a way that both lightens and winks at the rest of the dudey blusesy straight rockin’ enterprise. Daniel and Boeckner trade off lead vocals, mostly song for song, and occasionally within the same song as they do on “Civilian Stripes.” The effect is to keep the center of gravity of a moving target. Daniel radiates enthusiasm. He's a little dorky, but also relatable. There isn't anything in the show that breaks new ground, but it played as if these four guys had gotten together and asked each other, "What do you love about rock 'n roll? OK, let's do that. Let's do everything that's fun and awesome that we dreamed of when we were fifteen."

Love has been making some trips down to LA and playing shows with music from the New Radar album he released on bandcamp in May. (The tracks are no longer available through bandcamp as he prepares for an official release on a well-regarded local label.)

Best of 2012 So Far: Part II (Lazy summer edition)

By Kathryn Pinto

Early in July Brad Roberts gave you his picks for the best music of the first half of 2012 and we promised you a Part II. Summer is lazy; there are lots of shows to see. After a little vacation, here are my album picks for January to June of this year. This is not a comprehensive list--there are far too many albums released for one person to absorb everything--but it's an opportunity to point out some of the best music we’ve heard this year with a focus on emerging acts and live music.

Rademacher - Baby Hawk (Part III of III) (Self released, 2012)
Baby Hawk III is simply the record I’ve wanted to listen to more than any other this year. Malcolm Sosa’s songwriting is unparalleled, but it is his chemistry with his band (particularly Kim Haden) and effervescent production from Josiah Mazzaschi at the Cave Studio that lifts the Baby Hawk trilogy above all earlier Rademacher records. Impressively, Sosa's lyrics create expansive visual imagery with very few words. “We were all drunk and dreaming/popcorn on the ceiling” from “Who Knew Love” might be one of the most evocative turns of phrase I’ve heard this year. The instrumentation and production on Baby Hawk III percolate up through the songwriting, setting loose the tracks to be something that compels you to roll down your car window and sing out to the summer sky.

Auditorium - Nights Worth Living (EP) (Self released, 2012)
There are so many good things going on here. Spencer Berger as a one-man show is an enormously talented songwriter and vocalist, but he’s also not afraid to be uncool, or more precisely, to be unhip. Free to geek out in both writing and arrangements, Berger fills these songs with tremendous heart and humor. “The Sex Offenders” could be the most wrong thing written in a song except that it rings true and very funny. “There's a bunch of sex offenders living down the street from me/
But I guess if they've found forgiveness in the law/
Then there's probably some hope for me.”

Japandroids  - Celebration Rock (Polyvinyl, 2012)
Sometimes music at its most essential is a physical thing. It’s the way guitar strings and vocal chords vibrate, sound waves push through the air. It’s the heavy weight of damp sweat in the air, bodies so close together at a show that someone else’s saturated t-shirt slides against your skin. It’s about raw release. Music like this doesn’t care about beautiful construction--just holding itself together enough to shout along, raise a first, and push toward the front of the stage. Go for broke sound, all guitars and exhilaration. Japandroids call it Celebration Rock.

Album Review: Torches - Heads Full of Rust

Torches - Heads Full of Rust

By Seamus Simpson

An album to drive through the desert to…

The new album by Torches Heads Full of Rust immediately strikes me as an album tailor made for long drives though the desert in the middle of the night with the stereo on high. From the first shimmering guitar line of the appropriately named “Out of the Desert” you feel the need to just get out of where ever you and find someplace where you can scream at the top of your lungs “someone let me out of here.” You can almost see the endless road stretching out before you as make the midnight run through the middle of the country.

The kinetic single of the album “I Want Something” is a perfect follow-up song to this. The song grabs you by the shirt, and the catchy chorus will have you screaming out the window. By the time you get to “Silver Haired Girl” the band starts to show a bit of its more mellow side. It seems that somehow they almost distilled all the best parts of another LA band, Film School, but instead of keeping the dreamy guitars up front they tend to keep the songwriting a little more grounded and the vocals to the foreground instead of buried which is the tactic most other dream pop bands seem to do.

The middle of the record tends to slow down a bit from the rush of the beginning of the album but this isn’t so much a bad thing as by the time you get there you don’t even notice that it has happened. It's one of those albums that you listen to and somehow start drifting off into your own thoughts only to be taken in by a great line, a well played tasteful drum beat, or harmonized boy/girl vocal part done in that classic California way. It’s almost as if you don’t listen to the record so much as drift or lilt though it.

The is book ended by great songs that almost like a tasty desert after eating the main course in the spacey instrumental track “Whine” and the dreamy rim shot staccato beat of the song “Six” which almost has a certain goodbye quality to it. I would say that Torches really have a well-put together album and stand poised to take the California dream pop title away from all comers.

I suppose of there was any case to be made against the record is the way a few of the songs bleed together in the middle of the album, but I suppose the same case can be made with most bands that have a distinctive sound. If you are like me though and enjoy shimmery guitars, driving staccato beats, dreamy vocals, and bass lines that don’t so much follow the song give it a sense of tension then I think you would enjoy this record thoroughly. 

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Torches plays this Saturday June 23 when Radio Free Silver Lake presents Radars To The Sky, The Hectors, Fort King,  Torches, Ceeca at The Central, 1348 14th St, Santa Monica, CA. Doors open at 8pm, $8, 21+.

Music We Like: Little Red Lung (EP)

By Kathryn Pinto

Genre-defying Little Red Lung came to us not through Zoë-Ruth Erwin, front and center of the project, but because of drummer Nathan Kondor who also plays with RFSL faves George Glass. George Glass is dyed-in-the-wool boy rock—the pleasure in the music is in seeing how far down and around the block a guy can take a guitar line. It’s like trading baseball cards, beauty in the detail and knowledge of minutiae, which on its own terms is an excellent, but quite distinct flavor.

Little Red Lung, who release their self-titled EP at The Satellite tonight, is something else entirely. It’s about the broad epic sweep of sound, aural space not as a small soundproofed practice space, but a sweeping cloud-churned landscape that requires a wide horizontal expanse. The self-titled EP is dramatic and orchestral in its breadth and ambitious in its construction. Credits include strings, brass and a percussion section of marimba, glockenspiel, vibraphone and woodblocks in addition to drums. These arrangements evoke a deep dark velvety chocolate night, a gypsy feel with a nod to Devotchka, the 7”, 45 rpm operas of Roy Orbison, and the windblown moors of Kate Bush.

You’d swear that Erwin has the kind of voice you’d have if yours would only cooperate. Her vocals play as an instrument, their power to convey emotion in restraint--to connect with the listener by holding back, rather than through a struggle against the body to get a sound and a feeling out. On songs like “Ink Blot” and “Into a Landfill” lyrics are ambiguous, yet rich with imagery that suggests misinterpretations, miscommunication and love gone wrong, and in “Into a Landfill” a wish that the narrator could have identified deal breaking flaws a bit earlier in the story. This is an outstanding record from a band that is not afraid to be itself, ambitious and unreserved.

 

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Little Red Lung plays a record release show tonight, Thursday May 10 at The Satellite, 1717 Silverlake Blvd, LA, 90026, presented by LA Underground. New self-titled EP available at: iTunes, Amazon, Bandcamp, and littleredlung.com. Seasons, Dorian Wood, and San Francesca open. Doors at 8:30 pm, show: 9:00 pm $8.00, 21+.

Album Review - RACES - Year of the Witch

By Jackie Lam

For those who have long been endearing devotees of Eastside darlings RACES, the day has come for the release of their highly anticipated full-length Year of the Witch. The six-member outfit originating from what was supposed to be a one-time jam sesh among musical pals that unexpectedly turned into a collaborative wunderkind of fortutious songmaking has created an album that does not disappoint.

A follow-up to their 2011 EP, Big Broom, YOTW is the band’s first album under Brooklyn’s Frenchkiss Records and offer s a handful of fresh tracks and there’s a bit of room to breathe, and space to experiment and toy around with.

Highlights include “Year of the Child,” a brief opener and gentle prequel of sorts to the title track, a sampling of sorts crescendoing harmonies and lush string patches. Lead singer and guitarist Wade Ryff and the bright vocal stylings of Breanna Wood complement one another magically. “Song of Birds” is rooted in more traditional sensibility of a modern rock ballad, with a playful sound patch that resembles the mimicry of birds. “Lies,” threaded with an expansive, lush guitar melody, is one of my favorites. There’s also a sterling recording of “Big Broom,” their signature hit and one that was on steady rotation on local airwaves and music clouds alike. The one they made that memorable music video of. You know, the one where they’re all smushed up and cozy in a sea of colorful balloons.

The 12-track record highlights the dense textures, organic writing, and seamless harmonies that make up the band's signature sound. There's a bit of wistfulness and an understated lyrical quality to their music, without reeking of oversentimentality. And as accomplished as the album is for RACES, there's really nowhere to go but up.

Year of the Witch is out and is available for purchase at Insound, Amazon, and your local friendly neighborhood music shop.  A few tracks are available for streaming on their bandcamp page.

 RACES will be celebrating their album release with a show this Friday, March 30th at The Echo with Living Things and Incan Abraham, followed by a handful of shows on the West Coast.

Album Review - NO - Don't Worry, You'll Be Here Forever

By Jackie Lam

I first got wind of Echo Park denizens NO when they opened for RACES at The Bootleg a few months back. The place was scattered with regulars and perfect nobodies such as myself with the usual yearnings for some solid live music on a weekday night. Enter NO,  a cadre of lanky bearded fellows who took to the stage in the form of a tangle of slender arms swaddling guitars. The short set they played that evening was tremendous, and their expansive sound seemed to occupy each inch of the venue with a somber, moody tenderness.

NO's EP, Don’t Worry, You’ll Be Here Forever, released last November, is a fistful of tracks that are both intricate, brooding, and elegalic. Fronted by New Zealand native Bradley Hanan Carter and his bandmates Sean Daniel Stentz, Joseph Sumner, Reese Richardson, and Mike Walker, the five-piece has written sophisticated musical compositions like only veterans of indie rock can.

While some debut EPs feel like iffy experiments and unformed songs, with the band seeming to struggle to come up with a specific sound or intent, NO’s EP could comprise the first half of a full-length album and almost under-reaching, as if they have yet to fully showcase their capabilities. With its enigmatic lyrics, delicate textures, and morose, temporal quality is a not-too-far-off nod to The National, but has its own stylistic flourishes.

The opening track, “Another Life,” lead vocalist Hanan Carter’s low, expressive tenor bears is grounded in a  gentle rhythmic current. Highlights include “Big Waves,” one of my favorites on the album, briefly starts with a field recording of shouting children at play, and is saturated in faded brightness. “Stay with Me,” the last track, is a man recounting his faults amiss in deep pool of reflection and regret, trying to hold on to what remains precious to him. "Coming Down" is awash in a swirl of dream-inspired lyrics and is tethered by a recurring pipe-organ melody.

Listening to these tracks is like coming across a long-forgotten diary in an abandoned basement. A vivid tapestry of aural vignettes, in which each song seamlessly carries a narrative arch and is tangible and emotive. What pervades throughout Don't Worry, You'll Be Here Forever is the lingering notion of hope and promise.

NO has a Monday night residency at The Echo for the entire month of March.  The entire EP is available for streaming on their BandCamp page. A limited run (only 500 copies were made) of vinyl copies are available for purchase at Origami Records.