Radio Free Silver Lake

The L.A. Show Low Down (Or: "You Say That You’d Rather Run To Take To Another World, We’re Not Going To Wait And See, And I’d Rather Run Than Die, So Run...")

by Brad Roberts

After last week's non-stop run of shows, I'll probably take it easier this week. I think It was as much determination as it was desire to see a bunch of bands, which quickly proved my old adage that the more shows you see, the more you want to see. It's a self-perpetuating reaction, almost like a drug, when the shows are as stimulating as the ones I've just seen. The endorphin rush lasts all the next day, helping to get me through work so I can go home, put on my dancing shoes and head out into the night again.

It makes me glad I've been laying low for a few months, because the exhilaration level has been boosted to a higher pitch. Adding to this the fact that some of these shows brought out a lot of people I haven't seen in a long time. Emily Gold at Harvard & Stone on Tuesday, Seasons at the same venue on Wednesday, along with a magnificent new band called Bebopalula, and The Henry Clay People at Bootleg Bar with The Dig made for a very eventful week.

Even though I came lately to The Brian Jonestown Massacre (above), I've been able to see them through a few of their phases and have seen watched them change from a band that seemed at the end of their long, strange journey, and how they have turned into one of the most reliable acts around. From a show at Safari Sam's in 2006, when Anton threw two members of the band out of the act that night, to a show at The Wiltern in 2014 that was a model of professionalism and precision. And no matter what the dramatic circumstances, they have always delivered astounding sets of music, even at their most chaotic.

So it's with great anticipation and excitement that I look forward to the first night of their three-night run at Teragram Ballroom, A perfect venue for this band because it's not too big and not too small and this great Hippie Rock band needs both space and intimacy. Their music is so reminiscent of sixties rock, yet so completely contemporary sounding that I feel transported into the past and the present simultaneously. And you don't even need to have dropped acid for the effect to take hold. They play through next Tuesday and all the shows are sold out! DANGER: Returning back to Earth after this is over may prove to be a challenge.

Album Review: Brendan Eder Ensemble

by Brad Roberts

What a treat to get this CD. As a big fan of chamber ensemble music, I knew the minute the first song began that I was in for something special and unusual. But genre labels may prove difficult for the Brendan Eder Ensemble. Just as you think you may have pegged their sound, the next song forces you to redefine their boundaries.

Obviously Eder is classically trained with a broad musical knowledge, for the influences of the classics, jazz, and Broadway all are evident. Ravel, Debussy, Kurt Weill, Dizzy Gillespie, and Stephen Sondheim all came to mind instantly. Such an eclectic mix led me to want to find out more about Eder's background.

A graduate of the Santa Fe University of Art and Design and a winner of the Ellis Prize for Composition in 2008, the Los Angeles native already has a few film scores for some independent and experimental films to his credit including Ari Aster's Portrait Series and Feeding Mr. Baldwin.

He plays the drums and something called the melodica, which is a free reed system hand held organ operated by blowing through a mouthpiece to produce a sound somewhere between an organ and a harmonica. Accompanists on the album play a range of wind instruments which adds up to a wind orchestra.

Show Spotlight: The War on Drugs at the Troubadour Friday April 4 & Saturday April 5

By Kathryn Pinto

This weekend the War on Drugs return to LA with two sold out shows at the Troubadour, Friday with White Laces opening, and Saturday with Line & Circle. Frontman Adam Granduciel and the band are touring in support of their latest album Lost in the Dream (out now on Secretly Canadian).

Their previous album Slave Ambient, an undulating  roadtrip of a record was their breakthrough album. Just the mention of  the War on Drugs brings to mind late nights on the now-defunct turntable.fm when  night shifters and insominacs had run through all the  playlists and all the new tracks, someone would play “Black Water” or “Baby Missiles”  then just play it again. Chatter evaporated in a room where easy choices were routinely called out as #LHF “Low Hanging Fruit,” which is to say that the War in Drugs had the power to silence and bliss out the critics, or at least a roomful of the most passionate writers and music lovers.

Lost in the Dream is a new level of confidence and maturity. Granduciel wrote the songs on the album and recorded many alone. While Lost in the Dream is Granduciel’s project, colored by heartbreak of a disintegrating relationship,  it is informed by two years of touring as a band who are so much a given that their physical presence was not even required for all parts of the project. Like Slave Ambient the new album is rambling road trip music. It wears its classic rock influences --Bruce Springsteen, Dire Straits, Rod Stewart--on its sleeve, but  offhandedly with a shrug. On first listen it washes over you, sinks in without you realizing it, planting seeds of ideas to come back to. The relaxed feel, this Sunday morning vibe  belies the complexity and perfectionism of the album's making, which reveals itself slowly over  repeated listens. This weekend's shows promise to be some of the best live music this year.

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The War on Drugs play Friday April 4 (with White Laces) and Saturday April 5 (with Line & Circle) at the Troubadour (9081 Santa Monica Blvd, West Hollywood CA, 90069). All ages, doors open at 8pm. Both shows are sold out.

The Best of 2013, So Far

By Staff

Once again the Radio Free Silver Lake staff brings you our highly subjective picks for the best of the year so far.

Kathryn Pinto, Editor in Chief

Albums
Brass Bed - The Secret Will Keep You
Brass Bed has a phenomenal live show, but I wasn’t prepared for how much I would love their new album. The guitars are angular and dissonant, they feed back and bleed out, but the melodies swing. The lyrics wonder a moody what next? It’s no surprise that these are guys in their late twenties a point where they have begun to set a course, but nothing has yet gelled in its mold. This contrast of confidence with an undercurrent of uncertainty results in a textured, thoughtful collection of tracks that rocks.

The Hectors - Her Dark Majesty
The common thread of this list is smart, moody guitar music with some pretty melodies and a few pop hooks. The title track has a gorgeous melody and resonates a deep sense of longing. There’s a 90’s northwest vibe with shades of K Records that I find very appealing Her Dark Majesty is among other things an album that showcases front woman Corrine Dinner’s voice, which is not often on given its due at live shows.

Best Of 2013 So Far (Part 2)

by Brad Roberts

Being asked to come up with a five best of the half year, is proving to be difficult. Haven't heard a lot of the newest releases by some local bands, and have been impressed with a few records from national acts, but this list may suffer from the sin of omission. However I do feel fairly confidant about my favorite album of the year so far: Trouble Will Find Me by The National. As far as a local act goes, Many Embers (above) is one of the most promising I've seen this year.

I'm the kind of person who believes in the constant evolution of music. I'm not one to dwell on the nostalgic 'trips down memory lane' pining for the 'good old days'. I've generally found it annoying to listened to all the talk about "The greatest rock and roll album ever" for most of my life. And I've always said to myself, "how can they possibly say that, how do they know what's coming next"? It's always easier to take a segment of time, like a year or six months, and select one's favorites based on a calendar.

This year, it seems like the biggest impression has been made on me by individual songs. When I get an album that has at least one song I love, I tend to listen to that song over and over until I can manage to get beyond it and find another, newer song. I often get so enthusiastic about these songs that I will usually refer to them as "The Greatest Rock and Roll Song Ever"...until the next one comes along.

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.)