California
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It is unfortunate that those who hate Deap Vally find it way easier to articulate why than those who love them. There’s little new in the bluesy, garage-rock riffs that pose and swagger their way through debut album Sistronix, and it’s not as if - on the evidence of the hidden a cappella track that closes off the album - they have the greatest voices. Even the two-piece, guitar and drums setup has been done before, with the White Stripes so obvious a reference point it would be negligent not to mention it.But it is its very simplicity that makes the Californian duo’s music so direct and so Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
For starters, Middle Class Rut is a great name for a band. It sounds irritated, punky, full of fighting spirit. Happily the duo from Sacramento California, live up to it. Their second album is an impassioned roar, occasionally a howl of disgust, grounded somewhere between punk and heavy rock, but smeared with distortion and MCR’s own take on the wall of sound.What really sets them apart are their drums. Sean Stockham attacks his kit with ferocity but also precise rhythmic bite. At least half the songs recall the Beastie Boys’ use of Led Zeppelin’s “When The Levee Breaks”. They’re not hip hop Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Reasons behind the prolonged absence of Queens of the Stone Age are legion, including line-up turbulence, successful side projects and the near-death experience of band linchpin Josh Homme. As if to acknowledge and compensate for the lengthy gap in new material since 2007‘s Era Vulgaris, there’s little that hasn’t been thrown into the ...Like Clockwork mix: power ballads, industrial sleaze, surprising reunions, the sound of broken glass - and Elton John on piano.That contribution - the joyous backdrop, half-buried in the mix, of a song called “Fairweather Friends” that begins like something Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The Eagles recorded their first two albums in London in the early Seventies, though they couldn't have imagined they'd be back 40 years later to present their new documentary, History of the Eagles Part One, at Sundance London. There is, as you may have surmised, also a Part Two, which is available in the DVD and Blu-ray package that goes on sale on Monday 29 April.The band now comprises Glen Frey, Don Henley, Timothy B Schmit and Joe Walsh. Former lead guitarist Don Felder, once a major stakeholder in the cash-spinning conglomerate that the Eagles became, has been cast into limbo following a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Cold War Kids remain all mixed up. The Californian band appeared in 2006 bearing tasty blues-rock indie that leapt about in the same places Jack White hangs out. There was lots of media blather about their being a Christian band since most of them had met at the private Christian college, Biola University. Then it turned out they had much more complex and conflicted theological perspectives than were easy to sum up in music mag pull-quotes.Their first two albums were lively, punchy efforts in the blues-indie vein but on their last one, Mine is Yours, they appeared to be strugging to find Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There was a common theme to overheard discussions about Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. Whether in cinema doorways, school playgrounds or pubs, the consensus seemed to be that it laid out Tolkien’s tale in a suitably epic fashion and was no less a feat than the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And yet, and yet… because we’d seen it all before – the silhouetted convoy traipsing over pan-shot New Zealand landscapes, the wizards, orcs and elves - because we’d seen it all before the experience was unexpectedly anticlimactic. Thus it is with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s seventh album. It does what it does Read more ...
mark.kidel
When I first approached John Adams with the idea of making a documentary about him, he gently but firmly turned me down: he had unequivocally bad memories of a film made a few years back, an uncomfortable ride with a director who thought nothing of editing a sequence in which John spoke about one piece, while a completely different one was being played to illustrate his comments. When John had objected, the director in question had dismissively refused to make any changes.I had come to John via other films, as often happens: a documentary about Bill Viola, The Eye of the Heart (2003) had led Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Californian oddballs Camper Van Beethoven are best known for their strange song “Take The Skinheads Bowling” which established the group in 1985 and was re-popularised when used in Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine. With the exception of a sabbatical during the Nineties, when Camper Van Beethoven frontman David Lowery had success with the more accessible Cracker, they’ve been lurking in the shadows of US alternative music ever since.Their unpredictable assaying of multiple musical styles, usually filtered through the prism of psychedelic folk punk, has given them solid cult status. La Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Thao Nguyen is a versatile lady. Nearly two years on from her blissful, tUnE-yArDs-produced collaboration with indie songwriter Mirah, this third album with her own band the Get Down Stay Down brings her back to her exuberant, experimental roots. From the title track’s bouncy rallying cry to the softly-spoken duet with Joanna Newsom at the album’s mid-point, We The Common would be a boundary-pusher for most acts. For Nguyen, it’s just another day at the office.Inspired by her first visit to Valley State Prison through her involvement with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, “We The Read more ...
Nick Hasted
“It’s like you’re a vampire,” whey-faced LA security guard Jacob is told. He gives a dawning, diffident look of recognition. Back in the cramped apartment he’s stopped leaving by day, he places a crucifix on his face, not quite expecting it to sizzle. For much of director Scott Leberecht’s atmospheric debut, he seems to be following Jacob’s progressive weakening by a rare disease with vampirism’s effects: blood-thirstiness, and enforced night-dwelling, ever since sunlight first blistered his skin aged 12. It takes us a while to realise the “vampire” description’s truth. The transition to a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“It’s an expression of our collective souls coming together,” said The Beach Boys’ Mike Love of his band, in this celebration of their 2012 50th anniversary world tour and recent album That’s Why God Made the Radio. Subsequent to the making of Doin' it Again and during the ensuing global jaunt, Love announced he was ditching fellow Beach Boys Alan Jardine, David Marks and Brian Wilson, whom he had been sharing the stage with. Not much of a shelf life for this collective expression, with little chance of doing it again. Love’s own Beach Boys – without that trio – picked up the baton after Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Ke$ha’s presentation is very shrewd. When she first appeared a couple of years ago, she seemed to be trashy, binge-drinking progeny of the Lady Gaga phenomenon. As time passed, the 25-year-old Californian singer tempered this version of herself with a musical self-awareness contrary to tabloid reports of global boozing and bum-flashing. Notably, she worked with Wayne Coyne of space-pop alt-rockers The Flaming Lips, contributing a track to, and appearing on the cover of, The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends. More recently she’s been telling anyone who’d listen that her second album, Warrior Read more ...