Radio Free Silver Lake

Show Spotlight: GIVERS, Caddywhompus, Family of the Year at the Bootleg Theater, June 2

By Kathryn Pinto
Photo By Zach Smith

GIVERS’ joyful, polyrhythmic music broke the spell of melancholy in a month of beautiful, but downhearted music. I first listened to them on one of those days when I thought I would never catch up on email or listening to the tracks piling up in my inbox. So I took a chance on a slightly familiar name in one of those emails and played a couple of GIVERS’ songs. To my surprise, it was bouncy, danceable, percussive music that made me feel like my heart was hopping on a trampoline, in contrast to the doleful, yet excellent, releases of recent weeks (see Bon Iver, the Antlers, Other Lives).

GIVERS, from Lafayette, Louisiana play the Bootleg Theater Thursday with Caddywhompus and Family of the Year. Their debut album In Light comes out Tuesday June 7, but is now streaming in its entirety on NPR Music’s First Listen. Band members Tiffany Lamson and Taylor Guarisco caught up with me by phone from a gas station in Denver on their way out to the Sasquatch Festival and schooled me on young avant-garde Cajun bands, why every band needs a solar bus and their tour van playlist.

Radio Free Silver Lake: We’re really excited to have you guys play LA next week.

Tiffany Lamson: Yeah, we are really excited to play. We love playing on the West Coast; we’ve only done it twice and every time it’s just amazing.

RFSL: How’s your tour going so far?

Taylor Guarisco: The tour is going great. The tour started in New York. We spent a week [there] … just spreading the word about the album that’s about to come out. It’s called In Light; it’s coming out June 7^th. We’re really excited about it because we put a lot of love into it.

The L.A. Show Low Down (Or: "There Was A Silent Flash Before The Earth Started Closing Upon Itself, I Felt At Peace And Alive Even Though This Shit Was Going Down...")

by Brad Roberts

A holiday week gives many of us a four day work week, which means more time for fun. Monday is kind of slow, but the rest of the week picks up. I'm particularly looking forward to Hands at The Satellite on Tuesday. Alpine Decline are at 3 of Clubs on Wednesday, the same night as Gruff Rhys brings his latest collection of hyper-imaginative compositions to The Echo. Great chance to see a wonderful artist in a small venue.And now there's a show with Seasons, Modern Time Machines and The Terrapin at The Satellite. Curses!

Avi Zahner-Isenberg (pictured above) has been playing a lot of solo and semi-solo shows lately and it's been real interesting to watch him explore ambient and distant musical territory and an honor to accompany him on this journey. On Thursday he's at The Satellite, then in July he heads off to Europe for a series of dates. And influential rock legends Archers of Loaf return for a two-night stand at The Troubadour.

Sorry for the cryptic message in the headline, but I saw Terrence Mallick's The Tree Of Life this weekend and it had that effect on me, and the words from an old Chad VanGaalen song seemed appropriate. Like Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, I think it's the biggest budget experimental film I've ever seen. How he was allowed to do it amazes me.

Show Spotlight: WALK and Moses Campbell at Lot 1 Tonight

By Kathryn Pinto

WALK is an impressive but elusive band who played the Let's Independent Lost Episode show last year and at an RFSL residency show at Labrie's earlier this year. These guys don't play too often so the best bet is to reshuffle your previous plans and check them out. Tonight they play with the equally delightful Moses Campbell at Lot 1 in Echo Park. Maston and MASX support.

 WALK plays tonight May 28 at Lot 1 at 1533 Sunset Blvd., 21+, $5, doors at 8:30. For more details, check out the band's site.

ICEBREAKER by WALK

Show Spotlight: The Movies Tribute Show

by Joe Fielder 

LA act The Movies were one of our favorite acts. They were equal parts art and fun, their songs were as catchy as the day is long, and their live show a thing of goddamn kinetic beauty. The members sadly went their separate ways a few years back and we've been holding an informal Irish wake in the band's honor ever since...

Apparently, we're not the only ones -- as a number of fantastic LA bands have organized a tribute show for Saturday, June 25th at The Satellite in Silver Lake. The performers playing that night include members of Seasons, Shadow Shadow Shade, The Happy Hollows, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Wet & Reckless, Death to Anders, Light FM, Wrong Way Driver, Amusement Parks on Fire, Hall of Fame, George Glass, and a "surprise special guest."

There will also be special footage, posters, and photos on display by Jeff Koga, Sterling Andrews, Simon Cardoza, and Ryan Maples, and the first fifty people will receive a CD loaded with never before heard recordings and live performances.

If you recall how much damn fun shows with The Movies were, you'll want to keep that night free. (And if you don't, you'll probably want to head to iTunes or Amazon and pick up "Based on a True Story" to start...)

Photo by Sterling Andrews.

Festival Report: Silver Lake Jubilee 2011, Part II

By Kathryn Pinto

It’s the second year of the Silver Lake Jubilee, unquestionably one of my favorite festivals of the summer season. The music lineups aren’t as high profile as some of the other festivals in town, but the event is neighborhood-focused. In that spirit, the bands are a crop of up and comers from Silver Lake and the east side. As a music web site Radio Free Silver Lake primarily concerns itself with music, but we’re also interested in the neighborhood, the context of the music. In the first year of the festival the organizers anchored its physical space with stages, had food trucks in the middle and then concentrated on creating “villages,” a kids’ village, an art village an eco village. My critique of last year’s festival was that it was too dominated by bands, beer and food and that these villages, which had great potential, were anemic and under-populated. This time around I was disappointed to see that those areas had been drastically scaled back. One of the positively reviewed aspects of this year’s Coachella festival (which I did not attend) was the visual art installations and the potential for more art at festivals like it. That would be a great way to enrich the Jubilee in coming years. On to the music.

Saturday

Marvelous Toy: Some people are born to perform on an outdoor stage on a near perfect early summer day. The madly coiffed Jordan Hudock of Marvelous Toy fits that bill, managing to be both imposing and goofy, onstage and off. As the band launched into “Waiting for the Fire” fans witnessed them playing a song they know is destined to be a hit. Yes, Jordan sells every song in every set, but he knows this one is gold. Not to be underestimated, the band has the substance and muscle to let their irrepressible front man shine. These days when so much music is heard through the echo chamber of the Internet, the members of Marvelous Toy play like real flesh and blood humans. The band played most of the songs from their new EP Moving. The five piece (vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards, drums) is a couple rows of sequins away from being Neil Diamond, and I mean that in the best possible way. The man can put on a show, and he can write a song. Standing right in front of the stage as they closed with “I Have to Write This Over,” I had a sudden sense of limitless love for the Jubilee. They make it so easy to go have a good time.

Festival Report: Silver Lake Jubilee 2011

by Brad Roberts

Let me tell you about my weekend. First I started paying attention to the weather reports early in the week, cause if it was going to be shitty, like last weekend, I didn't even know if I wanted to go to the Silver Lake Jubilee and freeze my ass off in the cold rain. No thanks.

Well, not only did the world not end this weekend, the weather was fine. Black Flamingo were scheduled to be on stage at 6 PM Saturday and nobody got raptured up. Anyway, they would have had to squeeze us like sponges to get all the alcohol out so we'd be rapture-ready.

I arrived by 2:50 on Saturday to be sure to see Marvelous Toy (above) kick off the festival for me. Perfect band, perfect weather, it was windy but sunny, perfect crowd, it couldn't have been better. I checked in at the hospitality center, got my weekend wrist bands and headed off to see my first set. One needs to make a slight adjustment when watching a band outdoors during the day. For one thing, it's easy to become distracted by all the activity going on around you. In a dark bar, you don't know (and maybe don't want to know) what's going on around you, so the musicians become your absolute focal point.

Nonetheless, Marvelous Toy were able to deliver a set of such passion and punch that the audience couldn't turn away, me included. The sound was good and the band is a longtime favorite of Radio Free Silver Lake. Especially after heroically holding down December for us during our residency run at LaBrie's. And December is not an easy month, coming right after Thanksgiving and ending with the two big holidays. People are busy or out of town. Even indie rockers have families.

Album Review: Metronomy - The English Riviera

By Seamus Simpson

Pool Parties, Margaritas, and Metronomy

If you are planning on having any type of pool party, BBQ, or yard sale I have the album for you. Metronomy’s second album English Riviera is tailor made for the summer time. Lucky for us they released it just in time for the first holiday weekend of the season. The album is as light as a cool breeze and has just the right amount of BPM’s to keep the party moving when it needs to. I confess to not knowing much about this band other than a video I saw by them a couple of years back. It was a quaint enough video and we all laughed and enjoyed their crazy antics, or at least I did. The problem was that when Metronomy started a couple of years back when there was already a glut of breezy electronic music from bands like Cut Copy, Passion Pit, (enter generic electronic band’s name), and I wanted to see who was going to endear themselves and rise to the top.

Well, I can say I have been happily rewarded by this band and this album. The album starts off with a seagulls and seawater while rolling into the almost psychedelic “We Broke Free.” Then into the beautiful vocals of Anna Prior in “Everything Goes My Way,” and from there you are taken on an incredible journey of sipping poolside margaritas with your friends be they elite hipster, neo-burning man hippies, or just plain good ole boys. Other standouts include 1980’s bass heavy new wave dance hit “She Wants,” the minimalist Cars-esque synth number “Corinne,” and my favorite and the album's standout track “The Bay” with one of the most infectious choruses you will hear all summer. You will find yourself mindlessly singing one of these songs over and over. It may sound like a bad thing, but in this context it is perfect.

If you are planning an outdoor summer party do yourself a favor and rock this at right about the 2^nd hour mark, when most of your friends are buzzed, but not yet not drunk. Before you know it you will be in a music video of a good time. Now if this doesn’t happen, don’t come blaming me because you don’t know how to throw a party. Did you get a keg? Did you get ribs? Did make sure to keep your one crazy drunk friend from finding out about it? See I can’t be blamed for the planning and no amount of good music is saving this snooze-fest you are calling a “get together.”

Trust me. I know how to throw a party.

 

Video Free Silver Lake: San Francesca, HMBSMS, Ganglians, Johan Agebjorn and Gus Gus

By Jed

1) San Francesca (formerly le Verita) are a duo from the bay area, and have just released a video for "Marseilles."  Their new EP SSS11 can be downloaded for free here and their previous releases can be found here. We start with a blonde lady at a party checking here blackberry and end with her being chased down a hallway. How do we get from this first plot point until the last? Watch it, and you tell me.

Ticket Giveaway: Rabbits, Rabbits, Rabbits at the Echo TOMORROW night!

By Joel Robinson

Yes, back again! And this time with freebie entry for a reader & guest to a good'un tomorrow night over at the Echo.

That's right, if you act now you may be the fortunate folk that wins free entry to catch Rabbits, Rabbits, Rabbits as they play at the Echo tomorrow night. The night features White Denim and includes The Allah Lahs...should be great fun!



Of course you may wonder why, pray tell, does Radio Free Silver Lake choose to focus on Rabbits, Rabbits, Rabbits as our driver for this one? Well, that is because we here at RFSL have been RRR fans for some time now, as evinced by our post from a bit back as found HERE; and thus we are wicked excited to have them playing in the 'hood again!

Okay, no matter whom your act of choice may be, it's gonna' be a night of fun that reminds one of why it's so sweet to live where we do, so take a stab at free entry...sweeten it up that much more by gettin' in for free! To get in the mix for that, drop an e-mail to "RFSLjoel(at)gmail(dot)com” that includes "the Echo screams Rabbits, Rabbits, Rabbits" in the subject line and your full name (and any other comments you may have) in the e-mail text. Please be certain we have that e-mail by NOON TOMORROW (that is day-of-show, folks) to secure your spot in the mix.

And as I'm prone to say (because it's so often true) this one is worth a trip out to Sunset whether one is a lucky winner or not! Enjoy, my RFSL friends! -jdr

The L.A. Show Low Down (Or: "How Long Have You Been Running, With Feet Made Of Stone...")

by Brad Roberts

Hope everyone who came out to Silver Lake Jubilee had as much fun as I did. On Saturday, the weather was perfect, music was provided by a wealth of diverse bands, and the crowd was dense, but not tightly packed. It couldn't have been better, so I'm about to head out to do the same thing today (Sunday). Note: Sunday was great too and the weather was super-cooperative. In just two short years, this has become a major community event.

The weekend festival, and a busy schedule of concerts last week, have left very little time to put this week's Low Down together, so forgive the brevity. Just go out and see some live music. It seems like a bit of a lull this week, which is good because I'll have more time to write. But even a light week offers many treasures. Future Ghost, fresh from a set at the Jubilee are at The Echo on Monday. Radars To The Sky are back on stage at Silver Lake Lounge this Wednesday, and Seasons conclude their Casey's Bar residency on Friday with Manhattan Murder Mystery. Big shows this week include two shows by Yeasayer at The Fonda and a rare opportunity to see Stevie Nicks at a venue like The Wiltern.

It's looking to be quite a remarkable summer of music. From the extraordinary CD releases of the last few months, like Fleet Foxes, Low, Eastern Conference Champions, The Belle Brigade, Chad Van Gaalen and too many to list here, to a concert schedule with many of these bands.