Grizzly Bear (Band)

The Best Concerts to See in L.A. This Weekend

Don't forget to check our constantly-updated Los Angeles Concert Calendar Friday, September 13 Monophonics THE MINT Monophonics are like a whole section of the record store come to life -- especially that wall above the register where they keep the serious stuff. The Bay Area band do acrobatic son ... More >>

The Best Concerts to See In L.A. This Weekend

Don't forget to check our constantly-updated Los Angeles Concert Calendar Friday, August 9 The Standells THE SATELLITE Although it's easy to erroneously associate savage, stomping garage-rock innovators The Standells with Boston (thanks to their 1966 hit "Dirty Water"), make no mistake, these guys ... More >>

The Best Concerts to See in Los Angeles This Weekend

Don't forget to check our constantly-updated Los Angeles Concert Calendar Friday, May 17 The International Swingers VIPER ROOM With New York's Met Gala "punk" event and exhibit dominating the media last week, it's sadly ironic that the innovators and music makers responsible for this in-your-face ... More >>

Under-the-Radar Acts to See at Coachella

[Editor's note: Weekly scribe Jeff Weiss's column, "Bizarre Ride," appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday. His archives are available here.] Beware any tutorial about the "right way" to do Coachella. Stay sentient, steer clear of phosphorescent forms in spirit hoodies, drink water, and never m ... More >>

How Can I Convince My Parents That My Band Isn't a Terrible Idea?

[Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist, and is the author of The Girls' Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to help you ... More >>

Cassandra McGrath's Stories to Make You Cry

[Editor's note: Weekly scribe Jeff Weiss's column, "Bizarre Ride," appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday. His archives are available here.] Cassandra McGrath is telling me the saddest story I've heard in a while. We're in the dining room of the 28-year-old folk singer's Echo Park house and sh ... More >>

Fan Landers: Do I Deserve More Money Than My Lazy Bandmates?

Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist, and is the author of The Girls' Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to help you ... More >>

In Defense of Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bear Greek Theatre 10-10-12 See also: Our review of Animal Collective and Flying Lotus at Hollywood Bowl, 9/23/12 Grizzly Bear, the musical emblems of Williamsburg, played a solid, nearly two hour set at the Greek Theater last night. The quartet, boosted by a Phantom of the Opera-esque key ... More >>

Myspace Was Better Than Facebook (For Music)

With Facebook's stock and growth rates skydiving, it's time to say something that should have been said a long time ago: Myspace was better. Maybe not when it came to its coding or those garish "personalized" pages, but definitely when it came to music. Back in the day -- say, about 2004 or so -- ... More >>

Jay-Z and Kanye West - Staples Center - 12-11-11

Christopher Victorio​Jay-Z and Kanye West Staples Center 12-11-11 See also: Our Jay-Z and Kanye West slideshow Better than: Goofus and Gallant "Will they kiss?" my buddy Jeff wondered aloud before the start of last night's Jay-Z and Kanye West show at Staples Center. I was more wrapped up ... More >>

Bassist Mark Tulin, the Missing Link Between Psych Legends the Electric Prunes and the Revamped Smashing Pumpkins, RIP 1948-2011

​We received news from the Smashing Pumpkin's camp that their friend and collaborator, bassist Mark Tulin from 1960s psychedelic garage legends the Electric Prunes, passed away this weekend. Here's a moving tribute by Billy Corgan, courtesy of StudioDog Kerry Brown: A Few Thoughts on the Pa ... More >>

Music to Pick Up/Download

Listen: New Dntel Tracks From Upcoming Album "After Parties" (Free MP3)

Listen: New Dntel Tracks From Upcoming Album "After Parties" (Free MP3)

Tonight: Guided by Voices, Tired Pony, First Aid Kit, Twin Shadow, Radars to the Sky, Evan Voytas, Wet & Reckless

Guided by Voices​You could almost feel the pop geeks pinching themselves when Dayton, Ohio's favorite former fourth-grade schoolteacher Robert Pollard announced earlier this year that Guided by Voices would reunite to play the Matador at 21 festivities, and then do a reunion tour too. The tou ... More >>

Tonight: Lost in the Trees, Brahms and Smetana, The Joy Formidable

​"This young North Carolina-based outfit recently signed with L.A.'s Anti- label, which just yesterday released a newly reworked version of Lost in the Trees' 2008 debut, All Alone in an Empty House. Full of dramatic string arrangements and folky acoustic guitar, Empty House belongs to the sam ... More >>

Over the Weekend: Neon Indian ( Peanut Butter Wolf) at the Natural History Museum

Andrea Whiting​If you ever need even more proof that Los Angeles is more than its glittery and/or augmented parts, take your (San Franciscan?) friends to First Fridays: the first weekend of every month, sans summers, a couple hundred of L.A.'s smartest and most stylish hipsters take over the h ... More >>

Over the Weekend: Miike Snow at El Rey

​ After dancing my ass off at the El Rey on Sunday night, here's what I've successfully established: Miike Snow is not: mythical, Mark Ronson, a lonely Swedish dude, a blinged-out jackelope. Miike Snow is: where the party at, secretly into Phantom of the Opera, responsible for some unexpecte ... More >>

Watch: Local Natives Go Blue Blood (via Zissou) for "World News" Video

Local Natives​Life is apparently quite sweet for the young lads of Local Natives. The Silver Lake via Orange County quintet signed to French Kiss Records last year, and has been getting loads of winning press since releasing its LP debut, Gorilla Manor, in February. Among the comparisons tha ... More >>

Music Picks: Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, VoicesVoices, Peter Gabriel, Jakob Dylan

Also, Ane Brun, the Melodians, Kate Miller-Heidke, Ian Whitcomb and others

Day 1: Volcano, Disorganization Can't Stop the Music

We're tempted to tell you about Jim Morrison and the really interesting remixes of their old catalog featured on the soundtrack to the new documentary People Are Strange. This is because we spent a few hours listening to it trapped in traffic trying to get to the parking lot so we could get to spend ... More >>

Interview: LA Video Directors Radical Friend on Yeasayer's 'O.N.E.' and Shape-Shifting Aliens

​The band-playing-in-a-club remains a classic music video form. More than half the videos that aired on MTV's first day, August 18, 1981, were performance videos. So when local futuristic director duo Radical Friend and pop apocalypse band Yeasayer decided to make a performance video, they pla ... More >>

Music Picks: Sasha & Kazell, She & Him, Efterklang, Xiu Xiu

Also, Holly Miranda, Les Blanks, Mumiy Troll and others

Getty's Foundation: Dirty Projectors Play Disney Hall

Show features L.A. Philharmonic and Alarm Will Sound

Allison Schulnik at Mark Moore Gallery

Coachella Confirmations Begin to Trickle In, Rumors Abound

The Coachella message board is doing a good job of tracking the upcoming Coachella Music and Arts Festival in Indio. Now's the time that bands begin leaking confirmations, revealing their hands on MySpace, Twitter and Facebook, and basically spilling the beans one way or another. For example, this f ... More >>

Tonight at the Silent Movie Theater: LA Premiere of 'All Tomorrow's Parties' Documentary

Tonight Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater will host the Los Angeles premiere of what looks to be a pretty amazing movie on the All Tomorrow's Parties festival -- at least judging by the trailer below. Those featured in the film, in case your eyes can't register all that stuff so quickly, in ... More >>

L.A. Artist Allison Schulnik New Claymation Video for Grizzly Bear

Allison Schulnik is an L.A.-based artist known primarily for her self-described "goopy" oil paintings of clowns or hoboes or vaguely yeti-like creatures. They're kind of multi-colored Bondo meets the nether-spiritworld. But Schulnik, who was one of the artists in the Weekly's "Some Paintings" show ... More >>

Suck It Brooklyn: All Your Bands Are Safe, Boring, and Sound the Same, says LA

New York magazine"These B'klyn Bands Could Be Your Life, (If your life was LAME, that is!)," says a way-cooler Los Angeles​Breaking news! Stereogum reports that New York magazine has just named Brooklyn "the music capital" of America (or perhaps the world?--unclear). Grizzly Bear, MGMT, and Th ... More >>

Dirty Projectors to Perform at Disney Hall Alongside the LA Philharmonic in February

Those of you lucky enough to have been at either of the two Dirty Projectors shows last night will understand, perhaps. Or maybe you saw the Brooklyn band at the Troubadour in the summer, when they did a lot of the music from their totally magnetic new Bitte Orca; or at the Echoplex two years ago, w ... More >>

Grizzly Bear and Beach House at Palladium

View more photos in the "Grizzly Bear, Beach House @ Palladium" slideshow. Last night New York band Grizzly Bear made its Palladium debut to a packed house of head-nodders and quiet groovers. It was a night in which the human voice reigned supreme. Timothy NorrisVictoria Legrand of Beach HouseR ... More >>

Gold from the Treasure Island Festival

​ Despite the auspicious image above, the only green spotted at the Treasure Island Festival this weekend, was that being smoked by the heavy hippie and hipster quotient that swarmed San Francisco's finest former Naval base cum music festival grounds. Indeed, for any wayward Angelenos incubat ... More >>

Rock Picks: Grizzly Bear, Michigan and Smiley, Meshell Ndegeocello, Aztlan Underground

Also, Ghostface Killah, Pi, Brother Ali and others

INCHES003: New Wax from FlyLo, Triorganico, Adam Payne and Dublab ( MP3s, Chart)

In the unpredictable wake of music's digital rebirth, vinyl has experienced a modest boom in popularity, seen by many (with delicious irony) as a replacement for the awkward middleman that is the compact disc. INCHES seeks not only to review the output of L.A.'s healthy vinyl community (artists and ... More >>

MATT POPIELUCH ON FOREIGN BORN

Why his band's not pop, or rock, or anything predictable

Dirty Projectors: Balls Deep in the R&B

A scheduled “interview” with Dave Longstreth turns into a game of text-message cat-and-mouse

Rock Picks: Daedelus, Peanut Butter Wolf, Femi Kuti, Isis

Also, The Choke, Nouvelle Vague, Wilco, Sunset Rubdown and others

SXSW Overview: Where We Were, What We Saw, What We Missed

View the SXSW archives for complete coverage . Randall RobertsStrange Boys drummer Matt Hammer at the Beauty Bar It's all a blur, but a few snapshots remain. Many who follow the fest, of course, were there and damn sure weren't anywhere near the Internets. We were. We were blogging. Over the past ... More >>

Screw Metallica: Southern Lord Showcase Kills at SXSW

Randall RobertsPelican rips it at the Southern Lord Records showcase I'm sure Metallica was great. They were good when I saw them at the LA Forum a few months back, where the dudes in the pit were in their typical testostero-frenzied state. And the indulgent 45-minute soundcheck that preceded their ... More >>

SXSW '09, Day 2: On Applying for Secret Canadian Citizenship, The Tidal Wave of Tastemaking, and Dirty Projecting

Last year was my first year in Austin, so I can't really speak to nebulous notions of the SXSW "good ol' days." Anecdotal evidence suggests that the place has expanded exponentially each year since the rise of the Internet, and the demolition of the quasi-mythological monoculture. In layman's term ... More >>

SXSW '09, Day 1: On Max Tundra, Mojoe, and Mediocrity

I have this theory: like most things, greatness at music generally* requires an alloy of natural talent, providence, and an Outliers-like tenacity requiring 10 years hard labor in dingy crackerbox clubs, or snagging a Best New Music on Pitchfork--whichever comes first. The corollary being that for ... More >>

Google's New Killer App? Why Are Music Bloggers' Posts Disappearing, and Who Is Deleting Them?

Department of Eagles and Cave Singers at the Troubadour: Adorers, and Harmonies, Galore

(Photos by Timothy Norris. View more photos in the Department of Eagles slideshow.) This was supposed to be the weekend that New York took over da clubs with its uniquely American sounds. The Animal Collective was gigging two sold out shows on Friday and Saturday, and Department of Eagles and th ... More >>

Weiss' 25 Best Non Hip-Hop Songs of 2008 (A-L)

Graffiti originally spotted on Bedford Ave., Williamsburg in 2002--soon followed by copycat crimes on Silverlake Blvd. and San Francisco's Mission District. Now playing at a Hot Topic near you. For spread-the-wealth reasons, this list was restricted to songs from albums that did not make the Top ... More >>

Let the Listing Begin: Ten Great Folk Records of the Past Decade

You're going to be seeing a lot of lists in the next few weeks. Lists of bests and worsts of year, lists of disappointments, lists of dance mixes and YouTube clips. We figured we'd begin our weeks of lists with one that captures not the year in music, but one aspect of the decade in music: new wei ... More >>

On Their Grizzly (Bear)

Credit Stephen Colbert's least favorite band, Grizzly Bear, for intuitively understanding the nature of the Internet better than nearly anyone else after performing brilliant new cut, "2 Weeks" on Letterman last week and then immediately posting it for free download on their website. Don't get me ... More >>

Part 1: Thoughts on Music Now. (The festival that is. You'll have to wait for my multi-volume treatise on the state of music today.)

The rise of classically informed indie music, one awesome photograph of MC 62 Foot Jesus, and my thoughts on "conflict of interest" in music criticism today. ALSO, a member of Grizzly Bear getting crunk in a Cincinnati, OH parking lot. It's kind of like US Weekly for obscure people.

Grizzly Bear and the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall, March 1

Grizzly Bear and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Walt Disney Concert Hall Saturday, March 1 photos by Timothy Norris You knew Saturday night was turning magical when a roustabout in the audience at Walt Disney Concert Hall let out a yelp of glee during the LA Philharmonic's octane-fueled performanc ... More >>

Grizzly Bear live on Morning Becomes Eclectic, Feb. 27

On Wednesday morning, the subterranean temple that is the KCRW studio complex on the campus of Santa Monica College played host to a great six-song set by Grizzly Bear, of Brooklyn, New York. Broadcast live on Nic Harcourt's Morning Becomes Eclectic show, the set, which you can listen to on the stat ... More >>

Concerts and Tickets Coming Up

Autechre - 4/14, Echoplex Bad Religion - 3/4,5,11,13, House of Blues Bamboozle (All-American Rejects, Jimmy Eat World, Paramore) - 4/5, Verizon Amphitheater Bamboozle (My Chemical Romance, Anti-Flag, Saves the Day, Chiodos) - 4/6, Verizon Amphitheater Bjorkestra - 3/9 , Safari Sam's Black Keys ... More >>

Grizzly Bear teams with the Los Angeles Philharmonic

Great news from the L.A. Phil just arrived. Anyone who was at the recent Songs of the City series at Walt Disney Concert Hall and heard Daniel Rossen's voice echo through the room will understand: Don't miss this show. LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC AND INDIE ROCK BAND GRIZZLY BEAR CO-HEADLINE FOR ONE-N ... More >>