Happy for The Parson Red Heads moving back to Oregon where genuine people are usually bred, but very sad for LA as we need more bands and people like them.  Their last official show as residents at The Echo was full of family, friends, fellow musicians, bloggers and some people who just heard there was [...]

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During one song I did not recognize, Hitchcock took a wild fuzztone solo while still singing the lead melody, which is not a thing people can just do. Rieflin delivered a brief studious lecture about how to make a proper studio recording as human hands grew from spectators’ eyeballs and undid the Gordian knot that binds commerce and music in our post-industrial society.

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Halloween Swim Team sounded fairly cacophonous through the storefront windows, but the Monolators insisted the door be shut for their aggressive psych-rock, lest blameless strollers on Sunset be caught in the fusillade and begin to yell for the cops. A onetime trio once shrunk to the husband-and-wife team of Eli and Mary Chartkoff but now swollen to a quintet, the band handed out cardboard keys to Thursday’s release of their digital EP Ruby I’m Changing My Number. The crowd, now rapt and judging from a whole new set of standards, were delighted all over again with this brief and forceful turn.

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The clear winner for me was “I Knew a Young Girl.” Stripped of all the fuzz and fog that are associated with trying to sound vintage, the song stands alone—haunting but at the same time beautiful. Singer-songwriter Evan Way guides you with his melody until the gentle backing vocals of Brette Marie carry you off. Before you’re wisped away into the Pacific, the song ends and you’re alone.

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