Radio Free Silver Lake

Album Preview: Halfbluud

By Kathryn Pinto

This year splinter projects have been coming out in droves from the former Red Cortezes, one of the most promising  to date from frontman Harley Prechtel-Cortez . The new bedroom project called Halfbluud will release a six-song EP due out January 15. You can hear the songs live, Halfbluud plays tonight (like..now!) at Harvard & Stone, and you can preview the EP until Friday on bandcamp.

Red Cortez by any other name (Just An Animal, The Weather Underground, The Turncoats) disbanded early this year after a long and storied career that included opening for Morrissey, national tours, song placements on TV, playing Bonaroo, and most dear to our suadero-loving hearts, playing the Taco Zone Benefit in 2009.

Five Songs: Old Friends (Earlimart, The Hectors, Sea Wolf, Calvin Love, The Lonesome Heroes)

By Kathryn Pinto

1. Earlimart “10 Years” System Preferences (The Ship)
Until September, Ship Collective founders Earlimart hadn’t released a record since their work with Jason Lytle (of Grandaddy) on Admiral Radley. Earlimart’s Aaron Espinoza was also busy running his recording studio and record label The Ship. Before the release of System Preferences you were as likely to see Espinoza beardless and incognito stirring it up after the midnight sets at the Satellite with whomever had the moxie or ill fortune to challenge him in debate. The new album proves that Espinoza and bandmate Ariana Murray still have the slow burn songwriting fans fell in love with on earlier records.

2. The Hectors “Your Favorite Year" (upcoming self-released album)
The Hectors are the best kept secret in Los Angeles, at once one of the most serious bands around and the kid who takes one look at the music business and--bat and ball in hand--takes off down the block. This album exudes total reverence for their craft but punk rock in attitude and all else. The cool musical reference for these guys is some band on K Records sufficiently esoteric that you—and even I--have never heard of them. Just throw something more obscure than The Spinanes and Beat Happening on top of your standard Pavement and shoegaze references.

3. Sea Wolf “Old Friend” Old World Romance (Dangerbird)
Alex Church and his band return to the golden coast with Old World Romance. The sound is a warm rich amber glow, equal parts California sun and embers and low flame of a gypsy campfire somewhere in Eastern Europe. Church is as near and familiar as, “Yeah, Alex used to work here as a day job,” and as Hollywood distant as a guy who has a song on a Twilight soundtrack. Even on record Church is as soulfully shy as halting tangential talkstory at the merch table.

New Release: Erica Elektra on 'That's Intense'

From time to time we ask an artist  to join us with a guest column introducing a new release. Today  Erica Elektra (Hearts of Palm UK) weighs in on her favorite tracks from That's Intense, out now on Itunes, and describes how the album got its name.

By Erica Elektra

I sat down with Dan Horne of Lone Palm Studio to begin work on the album, and he asked me to describe the songs and the feeling I was going for. I told him that this was basically a concept album, of being brokenhearted and going through breakup after breakup. I wanted to convey my sadness. He was quiet for a while (as he often is) and then said… "Whoa, that’s intense.”  And he was absolutely right, cuz my album IS intense!

My favorite 5 tracks off the album, in no particular order, they are just what came to me.

1. “Kitten”
This is a song I wrote many, many years ago while I was living in Portugal. When leaving the country, I’d had to find a new home for my cat, and when I took her there (which was located in the Humboldt countryside), she ran away and disappeared. Her bones were found a few months later. This song was an homage to that sweet kitty who was so special to me. I had never recorded the song properly and when working on this album, I thought it would be really nice to revisit it and make it sound beautiful. After all, it fits in with the theme of “That’s Intense”… cuz losing a pet is really intense.

2. “Contract”
I like this song because it’s so simple. There are no real chord changes that distinguish the verses and choruses… in fact there is hardly a chorus at all. This song was an exercise in minimalism and it feels very different from what I usually do. Because of the simplicity, I feel like the heartfelt lyrics are able to penetrate the listener in a more direct way.

3. “Oh No”
I just like how this sounds like something you’d hear on the dance floor in some trashy club in Germany. It’s total Europop. Writing the music and lyrics also came really easy to me. Something about this song was just effortless, and that’s why I like it!

4. “Please Understand”
This was a song I built entirely on the Omnichord, and so the writing process was quite different from what I usually do. I also think it really represents the Erica Elektra sound… it sounds somewhat chipper and happy but when you listen to what I’m actually singing about, it’s quite sad. Someone once described my music as upbeat melancholia, like a rain cloud made out of cotton candy. I feel like this song is a perfect example of that. Plus I can’t help but love the use of dried out coconuts to replicate the sound of horses’ hooves during the choruses…

5. “Heading West”
This was really fun to flesh out in the studio. I love how Dan played the pedal steel and gave it a real country vibe. I also like all the hawk and rattlesnake samples we used. It just ended up sounding totally different from what I usually do. One other thing that made this a different type of song is that I wrote the lyrics with a non-musician friend of mine. I wasn’t feeling super inspired to write about anything, I was sick of sad love songs, and so I asked her to tell me what was on HER mind. She had just done a road trip from Oklahoma to California and had a lot of imagery and philosophy to talk about… so that’s what I wrote about!

 

Five Songs (plus or minus): The Clash, Pageants, Kissing Cousins, Salt Petal, Future Ghost, Gothic Tropic, Voxhaul Broadcast

By Kathryn Pinto

Some pretty great shows this week, notably The Clash covers show tonight at the Satellite and Echo Park Rising this Saturday. Echo Park Rising is a free all-day music festival and street fair that began last year as a remarkably well-coordinated response to the cancellation of the beleaguered Sunset Junction festival. Think of it as an all-day Monday night show hop, coordinated by local music venues and businesses along the main drag of Echo Park, but minus the part about looking for parking between sets. On a special “can’t count to five” edition of Five Songs we preview some of the acts playing Echo Park Rising with an eye to bands beyond our RFSL faves (a.k.a. “the same six bands” “the bands RFSL blows every week”). Plenty of  the usual suspects (Seasons, LA Font, Manhattan Murder Mystery, the Lonely Wild, NO, Fort King) will be there, too. A full listing of live music, participating businesses and sponsors is on the Echo Park Rising web site. But first we start with The Clash.

The Clash "White Riot"

 

The bar in my hometown that looked the other way to underage kids had Bass Ale on tap and The Clash on the jukebox. Many summer Sunday nights were spent with friends learning their discography with our bar change. The Clash are everything I love about punk rock and about music, especially the physical part about being in a loud, sweaty dark room, not giving a fuck, not having to talk to anyone and feeling the music through some crappy PA. I raise a skeptical eyebrow to this recent rash of covers tribute shows, but when it comes to The Clash it’s too hard to resist. The show is tonight Tuesday August 21 at the Satellite, free, with performances by The Henry Clay People, Duniven, Brian Whelan, The TC4, and The Bixby Knolls.

Echo Park Rising

Pageants “Edible Rust”

Pageants are Rebecca Coleman (formerly of Avi Buffalo) and Devin O’Brien’s project that was a heart-stealing highlight of Make Music Pasadena festival. Coleman’s vocals are the beautifully insistent other voice in the conversation made the debut Avi Buffalo album so compelling. It’s great to see that voice taking the lead in this band.

Kissing Cousins “You Bring Me Down”

Kissing Cousins are a gorgeously dark girl band that walks the line where sex meets death, and where attraction entangles itself into fear. The heavy reverberating vocals draw you into the shadows of this Southern-gothic-preacher’s-daughters-gone-wrong, any one of whom might torch your car if you crossed her.

Five Songs: Bands to See This Week (Happy Hollows, Black Apples, The Californian, Earlimart, Alpine Decline)

By Kathryn Pinto

In the coming week all kinds of bands  that have been laying low, on hiatus or out of the country are coming out of seclusion and playing live in LA. Knowing that I'll be on the road this weekend and next week, every band I've been waiting to see  booked a show on the exact dates I'll be gone. Rather than RSVP my regrets allow me to share those shows with you here. Go see some music, buy some merch, maybe even get a sweaty hug after the show.

Black Apples
Tonight, Thursday August 9 at the Echo
Free Show
Psychedelic garage rockers the Black Apples play a show for the release of their 7" and debut a fresh crop of  new songs. Young Hunting, Habits and Single Palms play in support.

The Happy Hollows
Saturday August 11 at the Satellite
Tickets
Guitar shredding pixie Sarah Negahdari and the guys have been busy lately, but some yet to be announced awesome news means that this will likely be the  last  Happy Hollows show for a few months. Don't miss it.

 

The Californian
Saturday August 11 at the Bootleg Theater
Tickets
Other musical configurations featuring of many of the same guys (the Mid Cities, the Breakups) have made appearances this summer, but the modern surf sound of the Californian songbook will be on stage Saturday in direct competition with the Happy Hollows. Choose wisely.

Earlimart
Monday August 13 at the Fonda (opening for Grandaddy) 8pm
Tickets

Ship Collective veterans Earlimart have famously been on hiatus for the past four years but now have an upcoming album that even Pitchfork deigns to acknowledge. The duo play Monday at the Fonda opening for Jason Lytle's legendary central valley outfit Grandaddy. The members of Earlimart were one half of Lytle's other recent project, the excellent Admiral Radley.
Earlimart "97 Heart Attack"

Alpine Decline
Thursday August 16 at the Bootleg Theater
Tickets
If you didn't have a chance to see Alpine Decline in their heavy, sweaty,  intimate,  neutron bomb of a show at Homeroom last week, this is your opportunity. The two are in town from China, where they teach a class in American Culture among other things, to master their upcoming record. Do not miss.

Five Songs: Live Picks (The Dig, Calvin Love, Conveyor, Yellow Alex, Escalator Hill)

The Dig

By Kathryn Pinto

The Dig “I Already Forgot Everything You Said” Midnight Flowers (Buffalo Jump Records, 2012)

Having two vocalists trading off lead and changing  focus adds to the tightness of the arrangements, and lends something unexpected to this band. The Dig have played LA as part of the Rock ‘n Roll Circus in 2010 and again last May they opened for the Henry Clay People, and this month the Brooklynites have been playing a spectacularly well-attended Wednesday night residency at the Silverlake Lounge. More impressive is the way they’ve been making the rounds of the local eastside clubs chatting up everyone and personally inviting them to their Wednesday shows. The Dig play tonight at the Silverlake Lounge along with Act as If, Max and The Moon and Andy and Joey Siara of the Henry Clay People playing an acoustic set.

Calvin Love “KONICA” New Radar (Self-Released, 2012)

Calvin Love’s live show is all charisma and stage presence with his guitar playing in the foreground in ways that are only hinted at by the quiet vocals and electronic squiggles of New Radar. Anyone who went over to bandcamp to get a sense of the solo Love (guitarist in Just an Animal, Red Cortez) had a welcome surprise at seeing him live at the American Royalty residency at the Echo Monday night.  Love had everyone (except maybe the most cynical of bloggers row) up and dancing at the late midnight set.

Conveyor “Woolgatherer” Conveyor (Paper Garden Records, 2012)

Another Brooklyn band, Conveyor came through town this week and played a show at Origami Vinyl and another Monday night at the Silverlake Lounge. The band combines live instruments, electronic sounds and harmonies in tight arrangements that left the crowd at Origami spellbound.

Hear the new Henry Clay People: Twenty-Five for the Rest of Our Lives

By Kathryn Pinto

The new Henry Clay People album Twenty-Five for the Rest of Our Lives is out today. We'll have more from the Clays later this week, but today we wanted to point you to a full album stream of the new record.These twelve tracks are the result of a labor of "we no longer give a fuck." Front man Joey Siara once described the Henry Clay People to me as something better to do on  a Tuesday night than sitting on a couch in Glendale watching Survivor.

 "[The new album]... comes from being a little bit burnt on playing music. ...and asking why go out and make anything that doesn't say anything. On the last record the songs I really liked were the ones that had a clear, pointed angry voice. On this record Andy [Siara] and I made almost a pact: We make an honest record about who we are and the things that go on in our brain.  If this is the last record that we ever make, then make it something that we can stand by and be proud of. That was the creative backbone of the record. Don't stop, don't settle for anything. ...There's a youthful optimism in playing rock 'n roll music--at first and then it's put against the challenges of getting older, what you sacrifice in order to follow your delusional dreams. It's an honest record about at what point is that sacrificing worth it. "

Five Awesome Songs with Radars to the Sky

Radars to the Sky play this Saturday, June 23rd at The Central in Santa Monica.  Radio Free Silverlake presents the show, which also features omnipresent buzzfave Torches, the inimitable The Hectors, the charisma parade of Fort King, and talented newcomer Ceeca.  If you write to radarstothesky(at)gmail(dot)com, and give them unlimited names, you and your friends are in for $5.

by Andrew Spitser

There really must be some theme I can muster here.  My five favorite songs of all time? (Impossible task.) Five songs you've never heard before? (Meh. I've covered some of my favorite underappreciated songs before. And it's not like I'm some connoisseur of of obscure tunes to begin with.)  A history of my musical tastes of 30-some-odd years? (I don't think anyone would read past "John Denver.") Five great songs by local bands we love? (Hard to pick five without slighting someone, and I haven't been going out very much in the last year or so, making the list rather dated.) One song from each of five continents? (I could just choose five Beirut songs instead, I guess.)  The five songs with the highest play totals in my iTunes? (I checked -- too narcissistic; if you want that, just go here.)

No, I guess this will simply be five songs that I'd like to share with you; some you've heard, some you might not have heard; some have influenced the way I write music, some not as much. But all are awesome. Now there's a theme.

1. "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" by The Smiths

Maybe because it's after midnight and I'm sitting in near darkness thinking about my daughter having turned 5 today, and I'm trying not to wake anyone with the clickety-clack of these keys, and I haven't been sleeping well; or maybe it's because I've always had a tendency to be slightly nostalgic for things, even before they end; but, in any event, but I'm feeling nostalgic. I've recently been trying to master Back to the Old House, which I was going to include here until I stumbled upon this incredible live video of "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now," which fits my mood just fine. Johnny Marr's guitar work on both of these songs is so rich, so textured, and so subtle, it's incredible. Back to the Old House doesn't even sound complicated, and I've been playing guitar for more than half my life, but there are subtle phrasing things that he pulls off, that absolutely make the song, that I can't quite pull off. A true master.

In this video, I can't get over the easy charisma that Morrissey carries. You take a picture of him up there on that stage, divorce it from the music, and you have a sort of odd-looking cat with a weird belt hanging phallicly down his pants. And even live, his dancing is sort of off, and he doesn't engage the crowd at all. But damn, is he not one of the greatest frontmen ever? Yes, yes, he is.

 

Five Songs: (Geronimo Getty, Torches, Auditorium, Rademacher, AA Bondy)

Aaron Kyle of Geronimo Getty (photo by Jean Claude)

By Kathryn Pinto

There’s a lot to see and hear and not so much time to write about it unless one stays home from the shows to write—and that’s no fun. Take it easy on us, we are cranky and old and haven’t had enough coffee. Consider this a round up of things I’m listening to and trying to find the words to put together for a full review, and a couple of others that the rest of the RFSL staff will weigh in on soon.

Geronimo Getty “Darkness Hides” from Darkness Hides (self-released)

After Le Switch called it quits, Aaron Kyle started turning up in small venues with an acoustic guitar playing new originals and covers of Buck Owens jams with the kind of delivery that left everyone in the room crying into their beer. Geronimo Getty is a full band, notably with Chris Harrison of Le Switch on electric guitar, and spirited enough in production to raise a glass to without ever losing the heartbreak.

 

Torches “I Want Something” from Heads Full of Rust (self-released)

It’s refreshing to hear a young LA band play something is so upbeat and fun. Torches’ live show has always been solid, but never this sunny and carefree. When the track cues on  this indie pop driving jam, it's nearly a Pavlovian response to roll down the car window. With this breezy a melody and equally breezy lyrics you can almost forgive the band for cynically namechecking Brooklyn.

 

Auditorium “Karaoke Freight Train” from Nights Worth Living - EP (self-released)

By abandoning all pretense of being cool and embracing  his innate theatrical ambition and the opera training of his youth, Auditorium wins big with a hero ballad of a karaoke singing best friend. The sound is as big as and powerful as the titular freight train, but the charm and beauty is in the small details, down to  the Chula Vista reference.

 

Rademacher “Minnesota” from Baby Hawk (Part III of III) (self-released)

“I-I-I got lost, I-I-I got crossed over, under and through...” Confusion has never been this poptomistic. From Part III of Rademacher's Baby Hawk trilogy comes a tour song,  images of the no man's land stretch of a tour, going dot to dot on a map, lost in the middle of the country and finding yourself in the middle of something, out there and in it. Recorded and engineered at the Cave Studio by  Josiah Mazzaschi it's the best possible kind of could-be radio pop song. Like what happened when bands like The Replacements and R.E.M. came out of obscurity and started getting airplay, a brief moment when radio was cool.

 

AA Bondy “I Can See the Pines are Dancing” from When the Devil's Loose (Fat Possum, 2009)

“I’m just going surfing,” called AA Bondy to me after his set  at The Echo at this month’s ESP residency, when I asked if he was in town working on a new album. His most recent album Believers (Fat Possum) came out in September 2011. Bondy plays "I Can See the Pines Are Dancing" as the finale of a Daytrotter session full of resonant  guitar tones and moody slurry vocals. Both recorded and live, Bondy's performance burns with charisma that keeps the audience hanging on every note.

 

Undercovered III Captured on Tape by Recording LA

By Kathryn Pinto

On April 7, Radio Free Silver Lake celebrated six years of covering the Silver Lake and eastside music scene with Undercovered III, a night of live music at the Satellite by LA bands covering other LA bands' songs. One Trick Pony, Rob Danson (Death to Anders), College Kids (featuring members of Rademacher), Dawn of Sequins ( Eli and Mary from The Monolators) and  The Californian, played.

Audio of the evening was captured by the tapers over at Recording LA. Those guys wrote some very kind words about our show and broke down a full set list for the evening, in addtition to posting the audio. I don't want to steal any thunder from them so I'm just going to direct you over to their site where you can read more.

Read Recording LA's post about Undercovered III.
Download the audio here.