Also playing Monday:
COCOROSIE, KATIE STELMANIS at the Henry Fonda Theater; THE ICARUS LINE, GOLDEN YEARS, MOONRATS, OMODAKA at the Silverlake Lounge; SAINT MOTEL, LEMON SUN, ARMY NAVY, RED WIRE BLACK WIRE at Spaceland.
Marcus Leatherdale
A vintage photo of the Avengers, the influential first-wave punk band
Doug Paisley — burnished gold piano ballads and Southern soul (via Canada)
Related Content
More About
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22
Pink Mountaintops, the Pack A.D., Xu Xu Fang at the Echo
Evidently it’s not enough for Vancouver’s Black Mountain to get together every couple of years and bang out an album’s worth of exceptional psych steeped in both the slow burn of Southern rock and the expansiveness of Pink Floyd’s best work. Nay, the Secretly Canadian–signed collective has even more outlying aural lands to till, evidenced by a bevy of side projects that include the slightly more pop-influenced Pink Mountaintops. Songwriter and singer Stephen McBean is still at the center, but the group’s lyrical focus has long been love, and not the universal, unerring sort. Pink Mountaintops’ 2004 self-titled debut featured a song called “Sweet ’69,” and the band’s recently released third album Outside Love was described in its own press release as reading “like a Danielle Steele romance novel.” Though PM’s membership has been known to swell to unwieldy proportions, this lineup, which includes Black Mountain’s Matt Camirand, will weigh in at a spare six. Vancouver blooze-hounds the Pack A.D. — Beck Black and Maya Miller — should rightly pave the way. (Chris Martins)
Also playing Tuesday:
EDWARD SHARPE & THE MAGNETIC ZEROS at El Rey Theatre; IN FLAMES, BETWEEN THE BURIED & ME, 3 INCHES OF BLOOD, THE FACELESS at the Fox Theater (Pomona); THE ROPES, HAPPY BIRTHDAY SECRET WEAPON, YOUNG HUNTING at the Echo Curio; THE 88, AM, EXTRA, ADELINE & THE PHILISTINES at Spaceland; MILEY CYRUS, METRO STATION at the Staples Center;
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23
Ooh La L.A. Festival, feat. Sebastien Tellier, Gonzales, Cocoon, Hollywood, Mon Amour at the Henry Fonda Theater
The French want us Angelenos to pay attention to what they’re doing over there, apparently. It’s not enough that Parisian dirty electro and house found its American footing in Los Angeles, and that Justice, Busy P and the entire Ed Banger posse practically lived here last year (to say nothing of Kitsune). No, there’s more to 21st-century French music than Daft Punk and its imitators, and the first annual Ooh La L.A. Festival, which takes place over three days, seeks to stamp that declaration on our foreheads. Wednesday’s opening night features Sebastien Tellier, the song stylist who moves from soft piano ballads to funky electro tracks with grace and ease; doing a similar tightrope walk is Gonzales, whose work first as a dance producer (Peaches, Feist, Jamie Lidell) has given way to more formal, structured songs; and Cocoon, a two-piece that makes gorgeous, tense, ambient tracks with minimalist beats and a shocking sense of the mysterious. Thursday’s installment features Hollywood, Mon Amour, a side project of Nouvelle Vague that trades in updated versions of soft rock and disco cheese; electronic pop chanteuse Emilie Simon; and French rockers the Do. Friday, the French showcase what they’ve been doing best for the past decade: making awestruck Angelenos wish they were in a Paris dance club. Brodinski, the Shoes (no, not the power-pop band) and Jamaica (a.k.a. Poney Poney) do it to it. Will L.A. transplant Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk be there checking out his countrymen? You’ll never know. (Randall Roberts)
Slavic Soul Party at the Echo
Wuddup, why now, what’s with all the Balkan brass bands, and how can they possibly rock so incredibly hard? Not the least of this newish wave of honking polka punks are the mighty Slavic Soul Party from NYC. This sometimes really big band (the lineup fluctuates) mixes all your fave Romanian, Moldovan, Bulgarian and Romany sounds along with some tasty American roots stuff like second-line, gospel and jazz. All this makes them sound fun — but check out the band’s fifth album, Taketron (Barbes), which dusts off the Old World with a peculiar yet logical and very cool connection to ska and flamenco, and especially with dance-club music, courtesy Japanese drummer Take Toriyama’s electronic-inspired polyrhythms. There’s an intelligent, modern-jazzy vibe honking out from the group’s ultratight brass section too, a fiery crew, that. Oh, hey, you just wanted to dance your socks off? Go, go. (John Payne)
Amazing Baby, the Entrance Band at the Troubadour
Part of the so-called Wesleyan Mafia (along with MGMT and Das Racist), Brooklyn’s breathlessly hyped Amazing Baby kick out loopy, goofy psych-rock jams that sound like what would happen if Beck turned the attentions of his new Record Club to The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Unlike those early Pink Floyd tunes, the songs on Rewild, Amazing Baby’s recently released debut album, aren’t always as catchy as you want them to be, especially considering the fact that founding members Will Roan and Simon O’Connor both used to work as ring-tone designers. But appealingly spacy textures — and a song about the narwhal — they’ve most definitely got. L.A.’s Entrance Band used to be Baltimore-based Guy Blakeslee’s solo freak-folk thing; now they’re a band that includes Paz Lenchantin of Zwan on bass. Remember Zwan? (Mikael Wood)
