Sleep really is the cousin of death, turns out. Jeshua is the auntie, watching them bicker and trying to reign them both in before they ruin the function for everyone.  Contrary to the moribund titles of these singles, the versatile, luxuriant-haired L.A. born-and-bred vocalist and songwriter is thriving, blessed and booked during these trying times. These songs, however, highlight a malaise simmering beneath the surface threatening to swallow them whole. ►

This is the insomniac national anthem. Gianna Gianna’s latest ‘Suffer’ is a skittering, frenetic passion play in many acts, except you’re the one hung up in the end. It’s so intense listening to this during quarantine—its propulsive tempo and fortissimo power shake you out of your unwashed PJs. This is free-punk, rousing and potent and a sonic hookworm, pulling you close for a bite just before snatching itself away. ►

Evan Myall was the guitarist and songwriter in San Francisco (but loved by L.A.) psych band Sleepy Sun, but now he's moved here with a new sound and a new name to go with it. Formerly Evan Reiss, he's reconfigured himself around his middle name for his debut solo album, due out this Friday on Royal Oakie. Myall's self-titled record is like the nighttime counterpart to Sleepy Sun's cosmic power. It's all shadow, silhouette, suggestion and space lit by starlight instead—an album like the somber post-SMiLE Beach Boys or Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue ►

Yung Student Loans is K-Town’s most enigmatic rapper, making music entirely in a vacuum—trap-meets-emo-meets-Sleepy Brown. I Stay Lonely (A True Romance) is a very sad album about scorned love, delivered through a veneer of soft-sarcasm. The project practically screams ‘You can’t hurt me! I already hurt myself!’ Those words aren’t used at any point in this album, but they so easily could be.  ►

There were a lot of bands between Blue Cheer's Vincebus Eruptum and that first Ramones album that came from nowhere and had nowhere to go. They were too crude for prog, too early for punk, too heavy for garage and way too weird for good-time dive-bar party music, although they surely spent plenty of time in dive bars. Now it's fifty years later but that's still the place where L.A.'s Salt Lick come from, even if their new "California Mud" offers just a little bit of 'proto' and a whole lot of 'punk. ►