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Christopher Owens’ former group Girls set the indie world on fire with their 2009 underground hit Album. Owens’ singing voice drew comparisons to Elvis Costello; the songs evoked ’60s power-pop, ’70s punk and contemporary indie rock. Continue reading
In five years, when zombies overrun us, Alfred Darlington is going to look back on these days as the golden age of electronic music. Darlington, better known by the production moniker Daedelus (pictured), tells EW that he would prefer the zombies to be of the slow, mindless variety. Continue reading
Blissful blues. Sounds like an oxymoron, but that phrase hits at the essence of The California Honeydrops, who take the catharsis of singing the blues to a devil-may-care, happy-go-lucky level. The New Orleans-inspired stylings of the five-piece band from Oakland overflow with unabashed, easygoing joy, or in the spirit of The Big Easy: Laisser les bon temps rouler! Continue reading
Musical institutions too often destroy the very music they prize by refusing to look forward, relying instead on constant rehashing of the greatest hits of earlier decades and centuries. This month brings to town some progressive musicians who are keeping their traditions alive and growing. For example, Brothers Colin and Eric Jacobsen are proving that classical music is no musty museum but rather a living tradition. Continue reading
When EW caught up with The Horde & the Harem (THATH)’s Ryan Barber, he was in heaven. Well, at least music heaven for the hip-and-up-and-coming as well as the hip-established: South by Southwest. Continue reading
LA-based Foxygen takes your dad’s classic rock LP collection, consumes it and filters it through their ADHD brains, regurgitating 2012’s Take the Kids Off Broadway or 2013’s We are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic — big, sloppy, messy records referencing everything from the Rolling Stones to the Kinks to the Mysterions, but with a certain post-vinyl-revival sense of irony; like Brooklyn’s MGMT, they don’t limit their frame of reference to punchy classic rock. Continue reading
There’s a sweetness inherent in the name Bent Knee … a marriage proposal on bent knee, an apology on bent knee, Prince Charming holding the glass slipper on bent knee. But all that sweetness goes out the window when Courtney Swain starts singing “I Don’t Love You Anymore.” Continue reading
If you want to get creative, sometimes you have to isolate yourself. At least that’s what the Seattle-based indie rock band Ivan & Alyosha did when creating their full-length debut, All the Times We Had. “We demoed these songs in a cabin an hour north of Seattle where we could get away and have really bad phone service,” bassist Pete Wilson says with a laugh. “Once it stops being annoying that you can’t check Facebook, the isolation becomes nice. We need to detox every once in a while from all that.” Continue reading
The emotional barometer of bluegrass registers somewhere between hilarity and sorrow, like a hee-haw hiccup after an epic night of breakup drinking. Bluegrass laughs at funerals and cries at birthdays. Likely the antic mood of bluegrass, part comedy and part tragedy, derives from all that steamy choo-choo chugging on the snare and washboard, the hard, syncopated strumming of the strings and the mournful Appalachian moon-calls that scratch harmonic tattoos into the clouds. Continue reading
If your band has been around for 15 years and you have released almost 20 albums and live DVDs combined, then you are definitely doing something right. Andy Farag — the percussionist for the popular progressive rock band Umphrey’s McGee — understands the secret to the band’s longevity. Continue reading