Leonard Cohen

Cobalt Cranes Step Out of the Garage

When Cobalt Cranes caught our ear in 2010 with their In Media Rez EP, they'd conjured an appealingly dirty melange of the Stooges and the Vaselines. Now, after the release of their debut full-length LP, Head in the Clouds, they've stepped out of the garage and into a world of pop that's as sweeping ... More >>

Low Cut Connie Is the Coolest Critically Lauded Band That You've Never Heard Of

Low Cut Connie is a band that basically defies all laws about how a band is supposed to make it in 2013. I know this because instead of sending me a CD or asking me to review a show, the duo's singer took me out to lunch and invited my band to open for them. Combustible frontman/upright pianist Ada ... More >>

L.A.'s Best Comics Tell the 50 First Jokes of 2013

Q: What has a hundred thumbs and loves dead moms? A: Fifty comedians crammed on a stage at the Downtown Independent Theater, that's who. For the third year in a row, 50 of L.A.'s favorite weird and edgy and off-beat comedians told their first jokes of the new year in rapid two-minute succession ... More >>

The 20 Worst Hipster Bands: 10-1

Top 20 Worst Bands of All Time Top 20 Musicians of All Time, in Any Genre Top 20 Whitest Musicians of All Time 10. White Rabbits Why do bands need a second drummer? In recent years everyone from Local Natives to Bon Iver to fucking Radiohead has thrown a second kit out there, or at least a floor to ... More >>

Top 20 Sexiest Male Musicians of All Time: #10-6

See also: *Top 20 Sexiest Male Musicians of All Time: #20-16 *Top 20 Sexiest Male Musicians of All Time: #15-11 10. Jared Leto Underneath all that guyliner we still see you, Jordan Catalano. You've ditched the shaggy hair and flannels for a pink mohawk and studded leather but it's OK. Every time y ... More >>

Fiona Apple and the Best of SXSW Yesterday

​See also: Five Attractive Strange People Working for Tips at SXSW If you're familiar with chaos theory, which in its basic form is the attempt to find patterns in the random acts of shit on Earth, then you may understand the difficulty that comes with describing a full day at SXSW. To break down ... More >>

Ecco Announces First 3 Bourdain Titles: Roy Choi and Some Other People

​Last September Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, announced that Anthony Bourdain (chef, crime novelist, No Reservations guy, friend-of-Chang, occasional writer of Treme episodes, etc.) would have his own line of books, one that would publish a small handful of titles every year. W ... More >>

Rum Cannonball: The Life Aquatic's Mythical Drink on Bill Murray's Birthday

Bill Murray as explorer Steve Zissou in The Life Aquatic​1 hour and 26 minutes into Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, as he's about to lead a daring raid on the decrepit Hotel Citroën, Bill Murray pauses and tosses off the line (one of many throwaway lines in the film): "They ... More >>

Tim Robbins Interview: How Crawling Through Shit Made Him A Musician

​Interview by Dan Hyman Tim Robbins has crawled through feces before, while making his escape toward freedom in Shawshank Redemption. But that was fiction. The past few years, however, were not. "I had a rough period," says the 52-year-old actor, noting the collapse of a movie he was puttin ... More >>

Music Picks: Elvis Costello & the Imposters, Prince, Ricky Martin, Carrie Rodriguez, The Low Anthem, Mogwai

Also, Gutbucket Chamber Orchestra, Pegi Young, Mike Stinson and others

Werner Herzog at Cinefamily

Early documentaries by the great filmmaker

Jim Dickinson Rides Again; Vernon Wray's Wasted

Fixing Coachella

Goldenvoice plans to regain the fans' love after a chaotic 2010 festival. Two words: fewer people

Tonight: Concrete Blonde, We Barbarians, Tame Impala, Frank Fairfield, Diego Garcia

Amber BoggsConcrete Blonde​If only there were movies and TV shows about vampires for songs like the ones on Bloodletting. Oh, wait. There are. Few, though, are as truly dark and compelling as Concrete Blonde's seminal (so to speak) 1990 album, which gave the band its biggest hit in "Joey" and ... More >>

East Coast Clobbers West Coast in 2009 Pazz & Jop Music Poll

Well, if you're keeping track at home, the so-called "west coast sound" got clobbered this year in the Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll of the year's best music. And when we say "clobbered," we actually mean "beaten to a bloody pulp." Consider this: In the list of the top 100 albums o ... More >>

Village Voice's Rob Harvilla On the Ten Best Indie Records of 2009

By Rob Harvilla Yeah, pal, that's "college rock," scare quotes very much included. Look, it's a meaningless term. As are "indie," "alternative," "hipster," etc., etc. Let's not overthink this: Here we have ten splendid records with an amorphous rock 'n' roll designation, albeit in a perhaps slightl ... More >>

Stage Raw: Rachel Rosenthal at 83

COMPREHENSIVE THEATER LISTINGSLATEST NEW REVIEWSSTAGE FEATURE on Poland, where theater is hipRACHEL ROSENTHAL AT 83 ​The Rachel Rosenthal Company (founded in 1989) is throwing a fundraiser to help celebrate the performance artist's 83rd birthday, past achievements and the upcoming publication o ... More >>

Publishing Your Novel Online

A guide to the mind games you'll play on yourself

Last Night: The All Ladies Choir and AsDSSka at Family Bookstore

Sunday night at Family Bookstore on Fairfax found an assorted bunch of artsy types milling around waiting for the The All Ladies Choir and David Scott Stone and Aska to perform. The event was for a screening of Aska's new music video, which was shot by Spike Jonze and Crystal Moselle (which West Coa ... More >>

Living Large: A Sous Chef at Cut Does Coachella, Creates Midnight Feasts, Trusty Crock Pot Involved

Imagine that table filled with eight tired but overjoyed Coachellans This past weekend at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival in Indio was pretty memorable: Leonard Cohen at sunset; singer/vegan Morrissey's classic between-song nugget of food criticism directed at the BBQ shack -- "I smell burnin ... More >>

LA Weekly Coachella Awards 2009: The Best and Worst of the Festival

View more Coachella pics here: Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Half-Dressed People & Scenes from the Desert Timothy NorrisCoachella 2009, at the awards ceremony Weirdest Between-song Banter: Paul McCartney, bless his heart, played an epic set, staked a claim on a body of work that only fools would i ... More >>

Ten Coachella Picks: Ariel Pink, Genghis Tron, Vivian Girls, Mastodon

Plus, A Place to Bury Strangers, Mexican Institute of Sound, Gui Boratto, MSTRKFT and more

Rock Picks: Mark Eitzel, Wanda Jackson, Dan Deacon, Heartless Bastards

Plus, Hecuba, James Pants, Angus & Julia Stone and others

Coachella: Indio Times 10

Goldenvoice’s Paul Tollett on the decade-old music festival

Scarlett Johansson's Album of Tom Waits Covers Doesn't Suck

Some Paintings

The artists in the third L.A. Weekly Annual Biennial

2007's Long Players You Might Have Missed

Eleven handcrafted gems

Lee Hazlewood: A Stranger in This Land

The renaissance cowboy cut a wide swath through the West, and inspired a generation of songwriters

Live in L.A.

Beirut with Colleen and Alaska in Winter at Avalon, October 10

Beirut at Avalon, 10/10

Beirut Avalon, Oct 10, 2007 Words and photos by Rena Kosnett Zach Condon has the voice of a champion. Hearing Condon, the 21 year-old high school drop-out/New Mexico native behind the powerful Balkan-Klezmer arrangements of Beirut, sing at Avalon Wednesday night helped me establish a personal c ... More >>

Phil Noir: The Dark at the Top of the Stare

Phil Spector’s trial reaches its endgame

Rock Picks: Los Lobos, No Age, Los Abandoned, Slayer

For the week of August 23-30

Rock Picks

For the week of August 17 - 23

Coachella: Friday

(Brief note regarding Lina's very complete Do and Don't list: I'd like to add one thing: DO bring your tickets! I overheard someone saying they got within a half hour of arriving here before realizing they forgot their tickets, they had to turn around to go all the way back to LA. 2:00 p.m. Stuck ... More >>

Rock Picks

For the week of Jan 12 – 18

Rock Picks

For the week of Nov. 30 – Dec. 7

The Fallen Idol

Wings & Things

Reviews of Willie Nelson's Songbird and Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose

Get Your Cover On

On rock-tribute albums by Nouvelle Vague and Susanna & the Magical Orchestra, old is the new new...

Theater Reviews

Including this week's pick, Static and Highways Birthday Bash

Los Angeles Film Festival

Critics Choices and Schedule

Quiet Surrealism

Triumph of the Ill

“Beautiful Losers” in Newport Beach

Rock Steady

The Contemporaries

Words, Music, and More Words

John Wesley Harding, handsome singer-songwriter and now, annoyingly, big-time novelist

Leni Stern Is Real

Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

Rufus Wainwright poses as rock star, makes an imperfect-summer record

See Dubya Read

Never mind, he chose TV over the Texas book festival

Fulfillment

A Publishing Memoir