He’s My Brother She’s My Sister “Tales That I Tell”
(from their self-released, self-titled EP out now)

On their self-titled seven-track EP, He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister forego a singular vision and instead deliver an album of duality. Brother and sister Robert and Rachel Kolar represent two distinct faces of the band. On the first track, “Tales That I Tell,” Rachel sings like a woman scorned, her confident if not slightly intimidating drawl backed by hoof-clopping percussion and muscular acoustic guitar. It’s a track that’s fairly straightforward and after a full listen, isn’t really indicative of the EP as a whole. The other face is Robert, most fully realized on the song “Coattails.” Like a Johnny Cash-infused version of the Stray Cats’ “Rock This Town,” the song walks a line between rock ‘n’ roll and down-home folk. The vocals echo brazenly and really drive the track forward, frenzied and shouted. And while these two tracks stand as distinct visions, everything else is the intertwined mix of the two, most excellently represented on the cover of “Moonage Daydream.” The languidly strummed dirge rolls along, picking up drums and duetted vocals and, finally, a Mexican horn section which would have no trouble feeling at home in the credits of a Sergio Leone film. He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister is a two-headed snake of a folk band, and both sides are loaded with venom.

—Steven Martinez

—Daiana Feuer (words + video + recording)

Thursday night the Echo hosted Lemon Sun’s album and video release party, with Red Arrow Messenger and Leopold and His Fiction joining as openers. The Echo was almost empty when Red Arrow Messenger started playing. Their blues-tinged folk-pop and tight harmonies were lost on the Echo, as few people were there to hear it. The handful of  people who were there refused to come anywhere near the stage, with the exception of one guy who danced alone right in front of lead singer Jesse Nolan, screaming the words to every song, much to Nolan’s amusement.

Leopold and His Fiction followed, and with frontman Daniel James’ arrival on stage came tons of girls shrieking and vying for his attention. This San Francisco-based blues-rock trio played a strong, high-energy set that inspired the crowd to dance. James’ moody vocals brought to mind Jack White of the White Stripes backed by twangy ’60s era rock guitar. I was baffled by how bassist Micayla Grace could play a rock show in high heels. I guess she’s just that good.

Red Arrow Messenger and Leopold and His Fiction were fun and all, but the show was all about Lemon Sun, no question about it. Lemon Sun’s effortless charm instantly hooked the crowd. The members of Lemon Sun are confident, seasoned performers who know how to bring an audience together. Lead singer Rob Kolar’s voice was strong, reminiscent of Britt Daniel of Spoon. Lauren Brown of He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister came on stage to tap dance, but unfortunately her tap dancing was entirely drowned out by the music. Highlights from the set include “Touch the Lightning,” a cover of “Melt With You,” and the closer, “Three Words.”

After their show, Lemon Sun premiered their new stop-motion video for “Touch the Lightning,” directed by Emily Wilder and featuring lead singer Rob Kolar and a very persistent suitcase full of lightning. The song itself is incredibly catchy. “Touch the Lightning” is inspired by Graham Hancock’s Supernatural, a book about the evolution of human consciousness and connecting with the spiritual world through various means of mind expansion. Wilder’s interpretation involved an ungodly amount of still photographs painstakingly pieced together into a three-minute long video.

—Lainna Fader (words + Lemon Sun photos)

8PM SHOW
10:30PM AFTER PARTY. AFTER PARTY FEATURES CHRIS HOLMES DJING, PERFORMANCE BY MECCA, AND DISPLAY OF SHELBY DUNCAN’S PERFORMER PORTRAITS.

Peter Mehlman’s white hair stands on edge but he seems laid back enough to handle the curious crowd kneeling on his rug. They are behaving. If you run into these people the following night—Halloween Saturday—like I did, you encounter a wholly different creature letting it all hang out, runny make up, doing spontaneous splits on concrete.

photos courtesy of Post-Fact

In order to raise money for the next run of their play, New, Post-Fact Productions—Rachel Kolar & Lauren Brown—convinced Mehlman (Seinfeld writer/producer) to host a masquerade gala at his house. Gala doesn’t really describe the living room cocktail concert vibe. It was a casual and polite affair aside from a few rowdy adults and a topless one-man dance party wearing shiny leggings called Oliver. The performances hit intimate and quirky heights. An abstract movement piece by girls wearing underwear and black lipstick aroused the audience—I remember it now red-lit, the girls panting like dinosaurs or humans bursting from alien pods. That may be a false memory but I do recall voyeuristic attraction to their aggressive body movements. Amanda Jo Williams got the audience bobbing, corrupting their minds with sunshine and frogs. Heel-toe stomping followed He’s My Brother She’s My Sister’s jubilant clap. Ana Calderon spun favorites during wine chatter, and though Peter Mehlman reading a short story was neat, the biggest treat wore a Medusa mask and could seduce both mortals and gods using angelic persuasions—Henry Wolfe Gummer. Lights off. A tree rustled outside the floor-to-ceiling window and Gummer sat on the wall-less edge of a floating dining room. The way he kissed his D’s and crossed his T’s reminded me more of Mia Doi Todd than Jeff Buckley—but the latter when I found myself romanticizing my weaknesses. Of course fire crackled near his swinging feet.

—Daiana Feuer

The Last Shout of Yet Another Rock Band: The surrounding mallspace changes with the commercial fortunes of Hollywood Blvd., but the Knitting Factory continues to take on a fine patina of rockist grunge. The Tinseltown Knit is the last great Boulevard rock joint and if Hollywood itself faded into a John Carpenter movie hellhole, this place would be its Al’s Bar. Subdivided by genre, the main room boomed with club kids while about a dozen bits of hipster jetsam crammed the tiny AlterKnit Lounge for the reputed last-ever show by the Horse Thieves. Lead guitarist Alex Maslansky confirmed the terminal status by mumbling something about “the last temptation of the Horse Thieves” before his band twinkletoed off into a twee-country that might be called “cowpop.” Their MySpace page shows them fairly deft hands at Cali country vaudeville in the ironic-distance mode. At this transit lounge for distracted hipsters, the trio sped through despite complaints about the sound and an audience standing around in the usual flat affect. Even at the clipped length of sets at the AlterKnit, the end couldn’t come soon enough, so I left as the last song came loading into the chute, with Maslansky’s elegant hawgleg grunt receding as I zigzagged down the corridor.

Castellari vs. Tarantino: From there, I felt like a bit of regenerative ultraviolence, so I legged toking over to one of the last screenings of Inglourious Basterds during its long stay at the Arclight. I was way behind seeing this partially because I wanted to screen the 1978 Enzo Castellari original first, a full-tilt basher that never played the Southern drive-in circuit or much of anywhere else in North America. Basterd kin to The Dirty Dozen, Cross of Iron and Kelly’s Heroes and chock with affectionate shoutouts to all three, Inglorious Bastards treats American participation in WW II like a big-budget proto-Burning Man party, complete with hippies, guns, designer explosions, naked Nazi chicks, rockin’ individualized uniforms and more fuck-you attitude than a fistful of middle fingers. This is very likely the only punk-sensible WW II movie, as almost all the characters are in cheerful rebellion against everything but dismantling the Third Reich, itself a kind of ultimate in bummer Authority. This sensibility resurfaces in Quentin Tarantino’s epic in Brad Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine, a Tennessee hillbilly whose unstated-but-sufficient reason for hating Nazis is they’re such obvious and insufferable pricks. Basterds rebukes an entire substratum of WW II cinema of the 1950s-1970s that tended for Cold War reasons to “humanize” servants of the Third Reich; even Patton managed to make the Red Army look a lot less savory than the generic-looking Good Germans George C. Scott spent most of its runtime jawboning to death. The takeaway serves Q’s trademark sense of justice well—history too often fails to mark survivors with anywhere near the right degree of thoroughness.

Brief Dream of Decom: My experience of this 6th installment of Burning Man’s annual L.A. afterparty was short and full of wonder. A lady named Gypsy Goddess was visiting me that weekend and we took up where we left off when parting at Burning Man 2009. Consequently, we didn’t get out to the Cornfield (what the rest of the world calls Los Angeles State Historic Park in otherwise nondescript Naud Junction) on Saturday, until the hour was already well advanced. Decom has gone from a big outdoor art-party in the Warehouse District to a mini-BRC, with exhibits Patrick Shearn’s and Cynthia Washburn’s Holding Flame seeming to have the dust still on them. All the pals we saw looked to be recuperating, minds still blown and reeling from what everyone swears was a miraculous uber-Burn—seven days of bliss difficult to absorb even by the breakneck hedonics of the L.A. underground party set. I was informed my presence was required back in bed so we headed there, walking all the way back to Union Station as hippies and party folk streamed past us, their great glad Fellini smiles smearing the night like glowsticks. We were high by the time we passed through Olvera Street.

All Night Horrorthon: When the all-night horror marathon became part of U.S. culture, I don’t know, but the practice was already venerable and going full-blast in the South and Midwest of my youth. The surplus gross tonnage of horror/SF/giant-bug cinema produced from the sound-era on had already taken over Friday and Saturday night TV in most regions, with vintage flicker featuring Boris, Bela and Vincent buttressing the surreal slasher/cannibal/lesbian-vampire fests then unspooling at drive-ins. One of the best things about L.A. is that it hosts several such dead man’s parties every October, with the bill at the Aero on Halloween Night looking like prime slime for fans of Reagan/Bush I-era High Cheese. The New Beverly’s seven-feature hoedown on Oct. 10 showed the finicky hands of true gutbucket connoisseurs. Dog Soldiers (2002) is a nice U.K. howler about how well an out-on-maneuvers platoon of Her Majesty’s Own serve up as werewolf-feed. About a reel into The Burning (1981) came realization I’d seen this Friday the 13th knockoff back when it came out, but I stayed for every hack and gouge anyway. Future master-thespians Jason Alexander (sporting a riot of hair on his skull) and a pre-mummification Holly Hunter keep things moving, treating the between-slaughter bits as Catskills cabaret. This superior genre entry represents the first nickel Miramax’s Bob & Harvey Weinstein made in the biz and well-earned it was. After such slick popcult, nothing less than the high art of Lucio Fulci’s The House by the Cemetery (1981) would do. Among the most delirious of the late maestro’s films, the only difference between this and any academically recognized surrealist “transgressive” or avant-art masterpiece is the near-incidental horror claptrap of what passes for the plot. Few Ken Russell movies ever made the grindhouse/arthouse jump, but the ones that did (The Devils, Tommy, Altered States) all recall the balls-out gonzo Fulci applies here to the art of the body count. It ended with a flash of maggoty poetics well past the midnight hour and house lights went up on an almost-full room. The “surprise” movie turned out to be rare episodes of Tales from the Crypt, so I took a long, quiet walk around Hancock Park, toked up a monsteroso indica buzz and settled back in time for opening credits of Superstition (1982). A little-screened modern-witchcraft wheeze with many longueurs, a few interesting arty pretensions and scads of stylish murders, end credits flapped at about 4:30 a.m. and Fight for Your Life (1977) cranked up moments after. I’d read of this storied shock-morality fable and theatre management warned us of it in vague but emphatic terms many hours before. Nearly everyone around me was gently snoring when this worn print of the event’s oldest, cheapest movie started clattering. Its plot details an interval of rape and brutalization inflicted in the far suburbs on a peace-loving African American family by three maniacs—all gross racial stereotypes including an indolent Latin, a rape-crazy Asian and a windy, psychotic Southern redneck. The latter is a tour-de-force acting job by none other than William Sanderson, the backwoods idiot on Newhart with the two brothers Darryl. Nearly everyone in the movie is a voluble bigot and all own their hatreds lovingly at top volume, spacing bouts of low-budget Salo-like sadism with a kind of verbal violence that tends to make Angelenos of all ethnicities exceedingly nervous. The adenoidal sawing in the seats abruptly choked off and tight uneasy laughter welled up as one over-the-top offense to human decency chased another in a movie perhaps best described as a Last House on the Left for racists. Worse, as very likely the only authentic hillbilly in the house, I got a sudden, immersive sense-memory (total props to the brilliant Sanderson) of what old-school rednecks were like back in that long-gone day. The recollections thus let loose sent several nightmares back-projecting in my own mind, pulling me home to Gothic Dixie as the film clattered on in front of me. The abused family was about to take revenge and, from the far back, I could see heads beginning to sink and disappear below seat level when my (muted) cell throbbed and I bolted outside. At the other end was a tiny, tender voice calling from Caracas, where it was already mid-morning and all she wanted was for me to be careful going home tonight in crazy L.A. Thanks, baby. I incinerated the last shavings in my weed pipe before finally resorting to shrooms, the preliminary buzz of which hit sometime in the second reel of Galaxy of Terror (1981), last in the marathon. As pretty much your basic early-1980s Roger Corman B-movie, this welter of space-opera clichés sports nothing worse than a woman being raped to death by a giant slug. Sick. Featuring astoundingly weird acting (from Sid Haig, Ray Walston, Robert “Freddy Kreuger” Englund, Joanie from Happy Days and the stickwood son of Oliver from Green Acres) and dialogue even H. Beam Piper would reject as too unlike human speech, it was the kind of flick a roomful of semi-strangers could bond over and did. There was a Tom & Jerry cartoon afterwards, followed by an old TV sign-off message as a Soviet-looking ordnance parade rolled by to the tune of “The Star Spangled Banner.” As I slipped out the lobby for home, there was still a swarm of dazed and happy folks on the pavement outside, all of them wisely unwilling to leave this 12-hour temporary community for the slate-grey of another midtown Sunday morning.

Cali Countryfolk and Woes of a Cub Rockcrit: Outgoing L.A. RECORD photog and writer Scott Schultz says I’m “an L.A. institution” and I hope that’s not one of the reasons he’s off to photograph rock bands in China for a year. He cites the rotten economy and that’s certainly plainly visible in the local scene, as veterans like Scott are vanishing in favor of kids who’d be making bones elsewhere in the literary underground had not 1) the L.A. music scene blown up as it has in the past half-decade and 2) the economy hadn’t (symmetrically) imploded, making the reaches of urban deep-innerspace suddenly attractive as a Subject. Most of the local music writers around when I got my first rockcrit job a decade ago couldn’t be bothered with live music and almost all are now gone, replaced by striplings doing something remarkably close to what I did when starting out. A scheduling bump with the RECORD struck my name from the list at the “secret” Flaming Lips-o-palooza at the Montalban last Thursday, Oct. 15th, so Scott got to cover that and I wound up at the Echoplex instead, getting the joy of seeing one of L.A.’s wondrous little surprises, He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister. Cali country is something I love with the fervor of a late convert, since even Buck Owens was little more than some jackass on TV until I moved my Dixie-fried ears out here for an accidental steeping in the Bakersfield Sound and its many variants. Robert Kolar and Felipe Ceballos from tough indie wide-boys Lemon Sun contribute heavily to Brother/Sister, with the whole, shifting, multi-piece concatenation in the great line of Gram Rabbit and the Parson Red Heads in the insistence on coupling the High with the Lonesome. The Lemon Sun songcraft is certainly there, with harmonies and filigree from Rachel Kolar, Lauren Brown, Robby Delosier, Molly Collins and more making the crowd-lonely poetics of the genre sound fresh, even sociable. I snagged one of their 3-song EPs outside as fellow RECORD scribe Steve Slaughter from Cigarette Bums unloaded upon my geezer’s shoulders a doleful and familiar blues—bumped off guest lists, girlfriend logistics, erratic hours; the usual sleepless days and wasted nights. Steve, who made notes of everything and had even brought a tape recorder (something I’d quit doing years ago), longed for an exclusive on Devil Makes Three, and got one by my simple expedient of slowly walking out the door into the Echo Park night. He was happily interviewing one of the members of Brother/Sister as I went back inside for a linger before Old Man Markley. This passel of root-tooters were fresh from a gig at Brick by Brick, an oldtime San Diego dive I’m overjoyed to hear is still open. This unsigned gang of owlhoots packs a heavy reliance on trad instrumentation (banjo, kazoo, washboard) along with trainwhistle harmonies and a hellcat’s freight of regret. The place was full of tattooed girls and urbane cowboys already, like some peyote dream of Hoot Gibson, who used to shoot movies about four miles from here in some other America altogether.

—Ron Garmon

Hotel Cafe has designed itself like an old jazz club, with tables near the stage and standing room in the back.  This may have proven beneficial for Lemon Sun, however, putting them in more of a spotlight and enhancing their presence.  This was most obvious during “Fall For You,” their semi-love song that made even the guys in the room feel like they were the You the song refers to.  Kolar’s continuous smiles throughout the song gave both the song and performance even more credibility. As the set moved from a ska sound to a more blues-y vibe, the band relaxed, emitting a Southern feeling to the Hollywood crowd.  Laura Brown’s tap dancing added to the realness of this sudden dip into the South and gave the band a very unique addition to their live performance. It is clear these guys didn’t just find each other on Craigslist.  The vibe they give off during their performance implies a much deeper relationship and talent. Lemon Sun successfully incorporates music through the decades to produce a very likeable performance. Their eleven-song set ended in what seemed to be a rock opera, including a cover of “Melt With You,” with a strobe light, Felipe Ceballos on his feet slamming the drums and the whole stage illuminating the dim room with their energy.  It is no surprise that Lemon Sun is essentially based on a dream Kolar once had—by the end of a set, they have glided you through your own dream sequence leaving you refreshed and desiring more.

—Britt Witt

Daiana Feuer

Country-clad strangers huddled around the bar and red-lit couches, holding beers and cookies rather than guns. The DJ played Hank Williams between bands until they ran out of his material, then Loretta Lynn took over. Chilling on the tiered seating beneath The Cowboy Show’s intimate vibe, the audience sat rapt, almost hypnotized, every time a band took stage.

Amanda Jo Williams traveled west from middle of nowhere, Georgia. She is that small town girl chasing untamable lovers. Her squeaky voice reaches as high as she is tall, with an accent that washes her in the purity of cartoons.  A gently strange man called “5” wearing velour pants, long hair and big sunglasses, accompanied her on electric guitar, as if picking flowers or painting with watercolors. Lauren Brown, of He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister, added tap-dancing on a large box. The rhythm she created for “Nickel On My Back” almost turned the song into a hip hop remix. ONE heckler in the crowd felt the need to repeatedly hoot at Lauren. It can’t be helped. She is a babe. There’s got to be a rowdy cowboy in the bunch.—He’s lucky he didn’t get jumped by banditos.

Horse Thieves opened The Show with tales of raucous forms. Alex Maslansky works at Stories by day, but at night he dons a big jacket, swaggers in with a deep tone, and shakes his hand across his guitar as if it were the rolling hip of Elvis. The bleach-blond Brie Turner O’Banion on piano creates accompaniment for a brawl at the card table while adding poker-faced vocals to Maslanky’s lead. This Bonnie & Clyde had a third but essential wheel, drummer of drummers Nick Murray sat in with the band, contributing his finesse to a magical set.

When Crooked Cowboy & Freshwater Indians closed the night, the room transported to a hallucinated otherland, zenned out on the yelping coyotes of its imagination. Crooked Cowboy has got some soul. His two accompanying lady singers “doo doo doo” more meaningfully than a reverb-laden word or two could possibly equal. The tall one (name could not be found!) grabs her own throat and rattles her esophagus. When with tambourine in hand, her entire body jolted and bounced as powerfully as a wound-up toy. It was a thing of sheer beauty. Crooked Cowboy himself is one of a kind, bobbing his head surrounded by machinery, dueling basses, and a sensibility that’s spooky as a glimmering cobweb in a ghost town.

If only The Cowboy Show lived in a box you could open and partake when needed. These bands fit well together. An essence felt nourished by their crossing. In the saloon of dreams, it was a lovely night.

—Georgia Dorge

(from the Sir EP on Manimal)

Three sung letters punctuate the dark—Y-E-S, Y-E-S, Y-E-S, Y-E-S—sort of a mind-shift lube, like those metal clips used to keep Alex DeLarge’s eyes peeled open for enlightenment. We listen in wait as that single syllable word expands and contracts upon us. What are we agreeing to, subdued by Hecuba’s soft sonic demand? After several minutes, a spotlight opens on a pair of neon-colored creatures, one pink and the other, green. Two girls sit politely, half snarl, half smile, and gently judge their surroundings with a big, hard gun under their legs. Thus we are introduced to NEW, a temporary escape into the mindspace of playwright/actress Rachel Kolar, working opposite Lauren Brown, for avant-Pete’s sake. Here, the sun rises with Hecuba, has noon tea with Rainbow Arabia and sets under Black Hole Oscillator’s sheets. In this post-everything conceptual context, using these bands as soundtrack makes the landscape or thought relevant to our humanihil sympathetic, and kinda makes you feel at-home-cozy. We pause at the intersection of fashion, the absurd, seeking meaning and/or/at least entertainment; trying to inject a little fun, a little neon, into the meat locker of zannis (those dummies hanging from the ceiling) hovering around us in gray and black, their stitches showing and their genitals possibly shoved up into their bellies. Rachel and Lauren make pretty monsters with fluorescent beehives. Will their opportunistic experiment grow vigorous and healthy? Or will the girls bitch slap each other mid-poem?
—Daiana Feuer