Whether it’s Bloops and Bleeps, Turd & Main, the OK Corral, the Wayback Machine, These Are the Breaks, Eat Your Paisley, or any of our many other review sections, giving us a suggested section lets us know that:

1. You have an opinion on where your music might be a good fit.
2. You actually read our magazine, and aren’t some random PR intern in an office in Santa Monica who sends out 50 demos a day, and…
3. You care about giving us poor, overworked, underpaid music types a hand with the literally thousands of music submissions we get every year!

Really, by giving us a section name, you’re saving us time and making sure our one musical expert who knows the most about your type of music will be able to give you the fairest of shakes. Album reviewing isn’t that glamorous: we get so many submissions that literally, all we want to do is curl up in the shower naked like Glenn Close in the beginning of The Big Chill because we just feel so defeated and confused, without answers to the meaning of it all! By providing us with those answers, you also provide yourself with a big leg up against the competition.

And we know what some of you (the piss-ants) are saying: “Oh, L.A. RECORD, my forward-thinking opus about man’s insignificance in the face of technology is beyond categorization!” Waaaah! First of all, you’re kidding yourself, because if you have any fans at all,  they are going to describe you to their friends by whatever genre they think you belong in. “Have you heard this psychedelic glitch hop take on Stevie Nicks?”

But secondly, you can always list multiple categories you might think apply: Suicidal Tendencies might fit well in either Ties & Flies or Satan’s Hoary Maw; Arabian Prince would be at home in both Bloops and Bleeps or These Are the Breaks. You get the idea! The categories are intentionally loose, because we too share your distrust of one-size-fits-all genre fascism.

So, send us your albums, send us your suggested category names, and hey, here’s another great idea: send it to us on vinyl! That way, we can list it in our Spin to Win section!

-Dan Collins

P.S. Please, don’t be distraught if you submit something and it doesn’t get reviewed. Math alone dictates that we can’t publish all the things we love from all of you. It’s probably not that you suck, but more like we had too many banjo-based folk albums to put in print this season and had to turn our focus to CD-Rs burned by teenagers wearing hockey masks who play in West Covina. Keep sending in your submissions, and if you’re good, we will take notice. For more info on sending us your shit, click here.

“The first time we played here was a disaster,” singer Jon King admitted early into the night. Apparently last time U.K. post-punk legends Gang of Four came to the Music Box, their bass player ran into a steel pillar, shattered his nose to pieces, and the blood poured thick. This time they played a 17-song set without any blood loss, with a mix of new material from Content—their first new record in over fifteen years!—and killer tracks off their classic 1979 album Entertainment!. Same set as the night before at the House of Blues in Anaheim, but I bet no one knew or cared; I’m guessing I’m one of the few who made the trek to Downtown Disney Hell AND the significantly closer and less irritating venue The Music Box.

Original members Jon King and Andy Gill were joined onstage by Thomas McNeice on bass and Mark Heaney on drums, replacing the original rhythm section of Dave Allen and Hugo Burnham, who bowed out after Gang of Four’s last tour over five years ago. They opened with “You’ll Never Pay For The Farm” from Content, which pleased the crowd but it wasn’t until a few songs in, when they launched into the iconic “Ether” from Entertainment! that the crowd got to screaming and stomping and freaking out. I guess we all appreciate the band’s recent efforts, but I don’t think anyone would deny that Content is no Entertainment!, and thankfully King and Gill were happy to give us what we all wanted.

Unfortunately no microwaves or toaster ovens were bashed with baseball bats, as I so eagerly anticipated after King promised me we’d see some appliance-smashing on this tour. However, Gill did totally destroy his guitar on stage and dangle the mangled innards over the front row on the tail end of “Anthrax.” “Anthrax” was all about Gill; he opened it center stage, droning alone, totally stone-faced, and daring the audience to complain about it. With his eyes narrowed, he fiercely faced the audience and forced us to endure the abrasive sounds of the strings of his Stratocaster against the metal mic stand.

King also demanded our attention—with his slightly out-of-date dance moves, strutting and grooving across the stage, arms flailing and crossing at the wrists. He even threw himself at one point as if possessed by demons, and attempted a somersault during “To Hell With Poverty.” That man has way more energy than musicians several decades younger than him—totally admirable, and he put on quite a show with all the enthusiasm of a young punk would have.

Three decades in, Gang of Four’s still got it.

—Lainna Fader

They called it C’est L’amour, and the residency ran February 6-20, witnessing music performances by Ohioan, Ah Holly Fam’ly, Semiconscious Gloria, Seasick, Pocahaunted, Moon Duo, Woolen, Tremblexy, Random Patterns, Alpine Decline, howardAmb, Vaginals, Missincinatti, and LA Fog, with a few special guests. Sketch comedy curated by Friends of the Family, the trio of Nick Barton, Greg Newman, and Alec Owen. A movie night with screenings by Andrew Huang, Ariana Nalate (Air), Nick Corvinus, Chris Frias, Anna Ayeroff, Elena Megalos, Ben Bigelow, and Eli Stonberg. Along the walls hung the artwork of Liza Epps, Lynde Low, Adam Stamp, Erina Digby, Peter Van Dyke, Billy Franevsky, Alex Pfender, Andrew Huang, Lauren Lim, Michal Carman, Alicia Papanek, Will Canzoneri, and Jonathan Smith. Many of which sold!

Moon Duo live at Synch Space performing “Stumbling 22nd Street.” Video by Samantha Cornwell

Pocahaunted performing “UFO,” also by Samantha Cornwell

For more Poca, see this nice black and white Pocahaunted performance photo gallery on wearerebels.com.

Some of the videos screened:

“Baby, I Love You” video by Chris Frias

Delphic-”Doubt” video by Andrew Huang

Tune-Yards-”Hatari” video by Eli Stonberg

Ernest Gonzales-”Etchasketch Trees” video by Ariana Natale (Air)

“Canvas” by Elena Megalos with music by Random Patterns

This photo gallery comes from C’est L’Amour survivor Peter Van Dyke.

[View with PicLens]

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Download: Mika Miko “I Got a Lot (New New New)”

(off We Be Xuxa out now on PPM)

It’s hard to think of We Be Xuxa as a “sophomore album,” since Mika Miko have been sharing their music on 7” and cassette since the days when George W. Bush could still get reelected—everybody and their dad has seen Mika Miko play the Smell a billion times and probably stumbled into one of their sets at a college campus, warehouse, or SXSW showcase. Though at first they kinda filled the ecological niche abandoned by the Sharp Ease, Mika Miko’s fame and goodwill has shot far past that—and past anything we expected. They’ve proven to be unstoppable juggernauts of three-chord joy equally at home on a stage with metal hardcore punkers, noise bands, electro hip-hop brats, pop bands, smoke machines and smoky barbecues bursting with Tofurky beer brats.

And what I’d like to do with We Be Xuxa is sculpt a little narrative about musical arcs, and where this album fits into Mika Miko’s happy lifespan, and how it shows a progression or should be showing a progression or has too many extras or not enough. But Mika Miko stands gleefully outside of the spotlight of conventional criticism, as they continue to bang out the most fun-rockin’ sounds of these Smell-y times. They think of themselves as a live band, with recordings being more documentary than sound-crafting, so who am I to even judge? I wouldn’t want to immortalize myself poo-pooing a band whose t-shirts will still be worn thirty years from now by kids in Austin and Greece, but if I write a praise-piece, I may be stroking this generation’s Leaving Trains. (Never head of ‘em? Just ask an Angeleno aged 40-46 and prepare for some teary-eyed adulation).

So fuck history and fuck the scene. This album is really really fun to listen to, and never gives me dry mouth the way, say, bands like No Age sometimes do. (There, I said it!) Whereas so many acts who have “broken out” of the Smell excel at noisy dissonance and minimalist sound, Mika Miko remains minimal in the tried-and-true ways of their forefathers/mothers—three chords, screams and shouts, and short songs that sound nothing like Sonic Youth funneling Steve Reich and so much the better for it. On the surface, We Be Xuxa almost seems like a retread of old school American punk, but actually it evokes without constant copying—it’s fresh-faced punk, yet my heart hears Born Innocent-era Redd Kross in their sisterly choruses, and early early Black Flag or even Ramones in their strumming (minus Greg Ginn’s noodling) and Wipers downturns on the chords, and a Darby Crash-like insistence on writing lyrics too self-referential and profound to sing straight into the microphone. And there’s even a Urinals cover!?! And there’s a Beach Blvd-esque melodicism to Jessie Clavin’s bass lines, one that perfectly matches their Descendants-like love of making up pragmatic gerunds such as “Totion.”

A lot of reviewers have said these gals (et dude) sound like X-Ray Spex, but that is a lazy lie! Jenna Thornhill only seriously plays sax on one song, “Sex Jazz,” and that’s more of a death disco stomp—like Public Image Limited’s “Annalisa” as covered by Suburban Lawns. If I were to compare her to a punker dead, I would say that when Thornhill really sings, and has room to stretch out a bit past the Kipper Kid mongoloid voice she affects, she strongly evokes Mia Zapata’s womanly growl from the old Gits albums. She’s got some seriously untapped talent playing hide and seek with Jennifer Clavin on dueling phone-vocals. But when you hear the chemistry on call-and-response cryptic craziness like “Turkey Sandwich,” you can’t blame them for not exploring new skills when the old ones still work so well.

And the best part of the album is something that I have to admit I have NOT heard yet! Though L.A. RECORD always promises me free vinyl, the most I’ve gotten so far is a Halloween Swim Team single I could have scammed anyway. Ergo, I’ve only heard We Be Xuxa in its digital format, so haven’t been able to replicate the sweet secret I’ve been told exists on the end of the album—namely, that the final groove of the final song never terminates, and that your record player will just keep spinning it over and over again in a sonic loop-de-loop of delight. If that’s true, that puts We Be Xuxa on the par with vintage vinyl such as Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and another PiL song, “The Cowboy Song.” Perhaps this attention to detail, plus the piano plinks on punk-perfect “Beat the Rush” and the bomb drops on “On the Rise,” prove that Mika Miko care more about crafting studio albums than they care to admit. No matter—Mika Miko is a band enjoying a well-deserved rocket ride to fame and good cheer, and We Be Xuxa is a perfect transmission back to home base that will still sound good thirty years from now, even if I’m just blasting it on my way to the latest hip all-ages venue in Culver City.

—Dan Collins

Download: The Warlocks “Red Camera”

(from The Mirror Explodes out now on Tee Pee)

As Charlie Brown might say, good grief! So many reviewers for so many publications NOT based in L.A. have slammed the Warlocks time after time, treating them like pompous golden idols who needed to be melted with cruel words into the fire of TRUTH, the truth being that no one who dresses like the Velvet Underground that much can possibly be authentic. Even in the Warlocks’ golden age in, say, 2002, half their reviews were praise pieces, and the other half were “shit sandwich.” And when the band took an experimental misstep with 2005’s Surgery, critics forked them with epithets such as “monochromatic,” “the Snorelocks,” and even “un-magical ass clowns.” The Warlocks have been panned for both self-similarity and for trying different sounds, for taking drugs and not taking drugs, for their chaos and careerism. At this point in their career, if they made a fantastic album, would anyone stop coming up with memes long enough to notice?

Of course, the Warlocks have certainly encouraged meme queens with their own awkward attempts at self-branding. For their last album, they attempted to go “evil,” calling their album Heavy Deavy Skull Lover, putting a Kenneth Anger-esque red-tinted naked gypsy on the cover, and even releasing their album on Halloween. It didn’t work—the album was more dull than dark, much of its echoey guitar picking sounding like the incidental music from Twin Peaks.

But the past is the past, and like with Batman movies, you’ll enjoy the franchise a whole lot more if you employ some selective memory loss. If Surgery was the Warlocks’ End of the Century, and the last album was their Subterranean Jungle, then their new album The Mirror Explodes is at least Animal Boy, if not an out-and-out Brain Drain. It’s as if the last two albums never happened, yet all the best bits from that bizarro world got crystallized into good things. The Mirror Explodes has the concise, no-time-for-bullshit manner of Surgery, with all the shoe-gazey stuff Heavy Deavy Skull Lover was accused of, and yet says more and evokes more, all the while somehow being more true to the best parts of what has made the classic Warlocks a cut above their black-clad brethren.

By the way, if you’re listening for all this in the track that L.A. RECORD has been permitted to provide above, just stop—that’s the shittiest song on the album. Let’s start with track three: “Slowly Disappearing.” Predictably there’s a helluva lot of Spaceman 3 on this track, but so too is there some Sonic Youth-iness, the first direct influence I’ve ever seen from that band upon this band. And it works. I can’t make out who’s singing this song, but he/she’s doing one hell of a Kim Gordon imitation, straight off one of the moody songs on Goo. It’s Youth-y but toothy and droney in a way Thurston’s gang never really captured. In fact, this song’s shakers and booming drums and vision-invoking repetition make the new lineup of the Warlocks sound more than a bit like Indian Jewelry! Perhaps here is the tribalism that membership on Tee Pee Records promised.

Even the band’s lyrics, never their strong suit, seem very much improved from the recent past. For all the posturing they’ve been accused of, classic Warlocks songs like “Shake the Dope Out” really did ring true to anyone who’s taken downers to undilate their eyes before work—and “There Is a Formula to Your Despair” off this record feels just as human, perhaps more so, because it’s clearly a post-drug song as pitiful as a Woody Allen caricature. There’s a pace and progression similar to Matt Hollywood-era Brian Jonestown Massacre, but with better little feedback noises and drum build-ups that evoke Maureen Tucker, and a lysergic tremolo set to the square-wave pattern on somebody’s effect pedal. If you have friends as annoyingly self-pitying as mine, you will immediately relate to this song, even as you’re weirded out by the prospect of getting hooked every time Bobby Hecksher talks to you like a friend.

It’s like this band found a whole new side of the kraut-glam-Floyd-Velvets era to appreciate. “Standing Between the Lovers of Hell” starts where a normal Velvets songs ends, screechy and sanguine, with a Tucker “thump-thump” so primitive, it’s almost in 1:1 time, until halfway through the song when it jumps to the standard 4:4, and then phases into a Stooges wah-wah thing. This almost could have become “We Will Fall” if they’d gotten John Cale to play viola over it. And those vocals! I think it’s Bobby, but it sounds like if Tom Waits and Robert Smith gave birth to a singer with a penchant for helium.

I could go on and on. From the Public Image Ltd. guitars on “Frequency Meltdown” to the warped Joy Division keys on “Static Eyes” to the millions of sounds throughout the album that just cannot be identified, there’s so much to learn on each relistening. Hecksher and the gang have succeeded at making a record that’s both true to form and different, one that definitely tears the “monochromatic” tag to shreds. Oddly enough, as I was in the throes of composing this review, I ran into Bobby at a party, and he told me that he considered this album a capstone to allow the band to go in a completely new musical direction. If so, then The Mirror Explodes is an easy-to-enjoy adieu to a sound that has always been deeper than the affectations of hip. Adios, amigos!

—Dan Collins

The Warlocks’ The Mirror Explodes is out now on Tee Pee.

Cameron of Glasser (interviewed here and reviewed here) sends us her new video for “Apply,” directed by Jacinto Astiazarán. Watch for Glasser’s EP soon on True Panther Sound!

One must personally invest in subject matter. In the case of Monotonix, that dedication involves a smush of bodies holding each other by the waist with one hand and passing around people in the air with the other. Perhaps that involves your own body, whether you asked for it or not, rising seven feet in the air on drunk people’s fingertips. The Monotonix threesome is the hairiest, sweatiest 3-headed creature since mythological times. There’s a blues-riffing guitar and a rousing drumbeat, but the physicality of the band’s performance overshadows everything else. The look in singer Levi “Ha Haziz” Elvis’s eyes, wide open and peering about, is louder than the English and/or Hebrew words he’s growling into the microphone. Anavan’s Aaron Buckley took on the role of making sure the mic, as well as the guitar and drum being tossed around Spaceland, remained plugged in. He appeared delighted with the responsibility—as focused as a hyena. Earlier, Anavan opened the evening’s events by delivering that warm, gushy tootsie-pop three licks below its hard-candy shell. The Mae Shi played next, pep-rally shouting in unison while the audience played under the band’s signature parachute tarp—we all miss kindergarten, don’t deny it. Tonight’s lineup combined effectively to unwind any gripes dragged in, draining the mind of all bullshit. The room reeked of camaraderie and armpits by the time “Ha Aziz” turned his underwear into a thong.

“My body language says I am not afraid.” — Monotonix

—Daiana Feuer

daiana feuer

(from Wyllt out Tue., Apr. 21, on Tee Pee)

I can’t decide if Black Math Horseman truly glides along the oaken warp in the coffin of Doom, or if they just wanted to sound kinda like Witch so they could get signed to Tee Pee. Certainly they have all the trappings of a dyed-in-the-wolf Invaders comp band: the word “Black” in their name, tons of echo on the vocals, big bold tom-tom beats, songs built around the first three notes on Black Sabbath, and vaguely Arapaho-sounding references in the stuff they talk about: horses, deer slaying, songs about birds. But they got my attention with a couple things. The first is their singer. I’m a sucker for alto female vocalists, going back to Judy Henske, Grace Slick, Linda Ronstadt, and the chick from We Five, and though Sera Timms doesn’t sound much like any of them, the depth of her voice gives her a world-weary, androgynous power that is the inverse of the male falsetto. What Grace Jones was to Marc Bolan, Sera Timms is to Geddy Lee. The second thing is Ian Barry’s guitar picking, which isn’t afraid to go a bit post-Syd Pink Floyd. Right when these guys are getting a little sludge-by-numbers and moving into some serious Tool territory, Barry lifts them out with shimmering brightness, the kind the Hoodoo Gurus used back in the day. This is an album to listen to in the dark, and to listen to LOUD. By the time you get to the last track, and Timms starts screaming like Cronos from Venom, you’ll realize that while these guys are playing their cards a bit close on their first release, they’ll probably be doing some really original and evil stuff in the years to come.

—Dan Collins

Black Math Horseman’s Wyllt is out Tue., Apr. 21, on Tee Pee.

Download: Wavves “So Bored”

(from Wavvves out now on Fat Possum)

Let’s all just admit it. We cut our teeth on the cutting edge, but now the cutting edge just doesn’t cut it no more. Too many of L.A.’s brutal feedback boys and girls have made good in the last few years. And reviewers and scene-leeches like myself have started reining in the hyperbolic praise we once lavished on any passing post-post-punk who might let us party in the van after the show. Overblown effects pedals and promises of Steinlager no longer suffice: we want to see a new light shining in those sleep-deprived eyes that didn’t display its first glimmer for Deerhoof and No Age.

So some reviewers seem to be approaching Nathan Williams’ band Wavves with caution because of his similarities to more successful noise bands, when what this dude really needs is a high-five and some nurturing love to help him move into the more original style he hints at—and sometimes really nails—with Wavvves. Some songs on here are repeats of what we’ve seen before—even repeats of each other. But the album still really rocks and shines, and could shine more if Williams could be encouraged to dive head first into his own headspace.

That’s not to say that Wavves’ sameness has hurt him any. Some other publications are going apeshit on him/them, calling him “the Times New Viking” of quasi one-man bands. Well, he’s not—in fact, this spring sees one-man-band releases by both Corridor and Bobb Bruno that outshine Wavvves, even in the ambient noise department. But on Wavvves, we see a streak of dry heat, humor and fragility like nothing we’ve seen before in modern noise. If the Smell is CBGB’s, then Wavves is no mere Mink Deville—he’s Mumps or higher, with a unique insight that deserves respect and time to grow.

Or maybe the Dictators would be a better comparison. This is beefy music, humorous at times, full of both rock and jock. The bent effects pedals, keys, and drums sometimes thock you on the bones like the best of Mae Shi. But at the same time, there’s a sunniness here, a surfiness, or at least a beachiness.

Now, a lot of noise fans, including Williams himself, have pointed to Wavvves’ high harmonies as being Brian Wilson-esque. But that’s so vaguely obvious, like comparing Osama Bin Laden to the Iron Sheik. Sure, words like “Sun” and “Surf” and “Beach” and “Summer” show up in nearly every song. But this record is far more a child of Beach Blvd than the Beach Boys, and there’s Descendants and PiL and Dead Kennedys and Nick Cave and Redd Kross and Billy Corgan and even James hiding there in the lead guitar licks and melodic bass lines. And Williams intentionally forces some bummer into his summer—the monotonous, fried aggression on songs like “Summer Goth” actually make me imagine what Duane Peters might have felt like in the summer of 1982, skating to US Bombs practice after doing shitty crank all night.

And of course everything’s so overblown and overcranked that if our national debt could talk, it would look over at Wavvves and say “Damn, you’re in the RED!” And that makes it fun to listen to, especially when dialed to the tweeter-snapping max. But Wavvves’ greatest success is in the melodies—some simple, some transcendent—that bring it/him to a level far above your friend’s party band.

And those harmonies! Here we see the same high-pitched oohs and aahs accompanying the music that Kim Deal did so well over Black Francis’s melodies in the Pixies. Soft songs like “Weed Demon” definitely find their way to Mariana on a wave of mutilation. And crunchers like “To the Dregs” pull you across the shoals with angelic siren songs—the mythological Odysseus kind, not the police truck kind, though Wavvves has plenty of that, too. Those harmonies are perhaps one of the reasons this album succeeds at something many noise bands don’t—sounding as good as or better on recordings than they do live.

There is one legitimate comparison one can make between Nathan Williams and Brian Wilson, though, and that’s that both save their most creative and introspective talents for their instrumentals. But whereas Brian Wilson’s instrumentals lacked the sonorous ring of his family’s vocal stylings, on Wavvves, the lack of harmonies in the instrumentals really allows Williams to get closer to pioneers of noise and electro in a way that all bands would do well to study. “Rainbow Everywhere,” one of the best intro songs I’ve heard in a while, captures the diode-diddling splendor of Morton Subotnick and somehow sprinkles it with teenage wanderlust. And “Goth Girls” is a wondrous, cavernous, bubbly duel between electronic synth noises and anthemic, dirgy distortion—something like Steve Reich fucking Raymond Scott in the mouth, but gently, because they’re in love.

Are you confused on whether or not I actually recommend the album? Good, because Wavvves confused the hell out of me, too. I still think Wavves has lots of room to grow, and I would love to see him do more pure noise, use some sampling, and perhaps find a way to add his clear love for hip-hop into the mix in a way still palatable for feedback fans. But Wavvves is a must-have album for your springtime collection, and may be the bridge to even better bummers come summer.

—Dan Collins

Wavvves is out now on Fat Possum.

Stream: Le Switch “Sunday Morning”

(from The Devil Needs a Cough Drop on Autumntone)

On Le Switch’s latest 3-song EP, The Devil Needs a Cough Drop, singer Aaron Kyle sounds like he could use one as well. Kyle sings with an extreme urgency—a vocal style that falls somewhere between Memphis soul and death metal. It’s a voice that can overwhelm a recording, but Le Switch has a tightness and a confidence that you would expect from a band that has been one of the best and most prolific live acts in the Silverlake scene. The Devil leans more toward Kyle’s mournful side, with challenging 5-to-6 minute R&B epics, effortless backup vocals and really clean production—especially on the powerful “Sunday Morning,” which sounds like a death march with the sinister organ entwined with Maria De Luca’s trumpet. Kyle sounds like he’s crazy drunk at a bar screaming maniacally to some chick that he claims he’s broken up with but sounds like he’s going to eventually call after a few more drinks. The EP was produced by the band’s drummer Joe Napolitano, and he manages to make the songs sound clear compared to their more cluttered live sound. These songs would have been perfect for FM radio—if that still existed.

—Scott Schultz

Le Switch’s The Devil Needs a Cough Drop on Autumntone.