Try to think of terms that say rock and roll band: danger, sleeze, sex, charisma, Ike Turner, Stooges, hipshake…knife fight? The Icarus Line has it all in spades. Having them pop up every few months on the live radar is like a big game of duck duck goose: band, band, band, band, BAND, band, band. [...]

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“What to say about Yuck? Songs! Like with the G chord and all that. Something about Yuck’s “aw shucks” approach to recording and playing live is so disarming that all the “but wait, doesn’t this just sound like Teenage Fanclub and Yo La Tengo and Dinosaur Jr.” feeling goes right out the window.” —Billy Gil [...]

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There was a lot written about Salem being booed off the stage at SXSW, a lot of speculation that they were not the dark wizards of mystery they play in magazine articles, but just a few regular folks trying to get their time in the limelight. Well whatever happened in Texas, here in Los Angeles [...]

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Death Alison Mosshart may still be running around with Jennifer Herrema’s DNA, but when RTX rolls onto the stage you know who has been living the real deal forever. Unfortunately, the years of abuse have taken their toll and the fog that has settled over Jennifer’s gorgeous face and laserthinkingmusicalgenius pretty much makes impossible any [...]

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Mike Watt rediscovered nature some time ago riding a bicycle around San Pedro. He’s full of facts about birds—knowledge he relishes like a librarian. Watt recently released Hyphenated-Man, an existential opera and surreal expression of Watt’s head broken into 30 mirror pieces, each piece inhabited by a creature from a Hieronymus Bosch painting: 30 evil beings that reside in a man’s mind, rather than reality. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

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Autolux mines some part of the subconscious which seems to confuse people. My brother swears they are heavy metal, my friend George swears they are a Radiohead ripoff, the guy behind me at the show in his Ed Hardy shirt yelling “Ya Brah!” at the stage then trying to pick a fight with me…well I’m [...]

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400 Blows is excellent band-focused, powerful, mysterious, skilled, passionate, and unique. I am afraid the crowd response to their set was a bit underwhelming. Not that it wasn’t packed with attentive fans, but with the tornado of sound and fury that they were unleashing it seemed like they deserved more than the tepid reception they [...]

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Tamaryn’s record is gorgeous. Lush, swirling guitars; precise, stabbing bass lines and delicate, mysterious vocals that float over the mix and carry you away. It is quintessential dreampop with just enough quirk to make it personal and moving. Live, they played up the mystery, romance and violence of the tracks and transported the room to [...]

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More hot shoegaze jams from the Mexican Summer label, Young Prisms have fresh and innocent vocals which bring play really well off of the LAMC-like harsh jangley guitar. They have worked to create a gorgeous sound and though their set was uneven, when they put it together they were fantastic. I have to say their [...]

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Weekend played The Echo’s longstanding Part Time Punks show last Sunday, January 23. Weekend’s record ends up sounding something like a West Coast version of A Place To Bury Strangers, but live they have their own approach: Reserved tension instead of brutal bombast, a bit more emphasis on atmospherics in the vocals, a sense of [...]

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