Lemon Sun has a had a good week. The songs “Same Old Ground” and “Congratulate Our Thievery” have been chosen as INTERNATIONAL SONGWRITING COMPETITION finalists out of over 15,000 entries. Here’s a reason why it was good to shell out the entry fee and get these judges listening: Tom Waits, James Mercer (The Shins), Robert [...]

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Dub Club is an L.A. institution and now (after almost five years of filming) the documentary Return Of The Rub-A-Dub Style—which follows both the organizers of Dub Club and the long line of original reggae and dub stars they’ve brought to perform exclusive shows in L.A.—is about to release. This interview by Nolan Knight.

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As the songs progressed during the band’s set, thoughts transcend early Beach Boys, and visit Beachhouse sans echo trails, stare at the sea with the Cure, climb through a popping bass strolling Superfly, and suddenly a cowboy appears, faintly. I can only hope that Cryptacize’s move to L.A. this summer will entice that cowpoke apparition hiding behind the endless summer beach party to hang out for a clambake.

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Gangi will be playing their final residency at Spaceland tonight so we are lifting this interview out of our archives. The vinyl version of their album A is almost out and they are already working on the follow-up Gun Show, with a title track that sounds like T. Rex and Funkadelic together in three minutes. They speak here when issues of toxic mold were much more on their minds. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

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We flopped happily far up front at mainstage as lengthening shadows set the mood for My Bloody Valentine. Management was handing out earplugs at the gate and small wonder, since toward the end of “You Made Me Realise,” guitarists Kevin Shields and Bilinda Butcher (the latter impassive as a Xanax-bombed soccer mom) loosed a gorgeous fifteen-minute-plus feedback annihilation that was easily the loudest thing I’ve ever heard in decades of doting on amplified music. It was less a solo than a hideous (and hideously effective) evocation of nightmare; a compressed and aestheticized variation on the opening bombardment at the Somme, another historic din that produced few actual causalties.

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Watching X and My Bloody Valentine put into perspective all these kids making noisy pop music by recalling the rich and fabled genealogy of this newfangled uprising and putting a sincere (albeit wrinkled) face on sounds that were once something controversial and that today’s babies take for granted… it must be oddly pleasant to play a show you never would’ve been asked to play in your own heyday, knowing that tropes you helped invent are propelling smooth-skinned foals into stardom from what middle-aged critics are carelessly referring to as the “outside” or the “fringes” while you wonder where the hell that leaves you?

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L.A. RECORD put photographer Lindsey Best through three dessicating days at the Coachella fun factory and she returned with this giant pile of beautiful photos and without any evidence whatsoever of sun damage to herself. Captured in full glory here are TV On The Radio, Leonard Cohen, M.I.A., No Age, Antony and the Johnsons, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Morrissey, Lykke Li, Public Enemy and many more!

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Soul-pop singer Lykke Li can be so cute and dark simultaneously, singing about heartbreak and insecurity while playing the kazoo around her neck and dancing better than Beyonce. Yes, she has great style, but please, world, stop comparing her to an Olsen twin. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

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Although we have yet to toy around with the Coachooser, we present here (via Goldenvoice and Coachella) the set times for this weekend:

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dan monick | installation by lucy burrows

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