Rough Trade Records

Henry Rollins: A Death in the Family

[Look for your weekly fix from the one and only Henry Rollins right here on West Coast Sound every Thursday, and come back tomorrow for the awesomely annotated playlist for his Saturday KCRW broadcast.] I am in San Francisco. It is a Saturday night and I should have been in Los Angeles watching T ... More >>

The Best Concerts To See in L.A. This Week: Nov 5-8

Monday, November 5 Leonard Cohen NOKIA THEATRE Well-dressed man Leonard Cohen is often referred to as a ladykiller; no doubt, the gifted songwriter, musician and poet is effortlessly suave, with a quiet charisma that surely aids in conveying the pointedly poignant words and hues of his music and po ... More >>

Music Picks: R. Kelly, Leonard Cohen, Cat Power

Warpaint: Back From The Road, Ready For The Bowl

Steve ApplefordWarpaint's Emily Kokal, Theresa Wayman, Stella Mozgawa and Jenny Lee Lindberg.​The road can take some getting used to for a young garage band. For the ladies of Warpaint, the last seven weeks riding tour buses and airplanes across Australia, Japan, Europe and the U.K. took a ser ... More >>

Zounds - The Echoplex - 9-18-11

Ron GarmonZounds​By Ron Garmon Zounds, Resist and Exist, Gestapo Khazi The Echoplex 9-18-11 Better than...standing in a hot shower and ripping your own clothes off. When I arrived at the Echoplex lines were snaking in both directions on Glendale Ave. Everywhere were punks and punkettes in w ... More >>

Warpaint at the Troubadour (Live Review)

Emily Kokal (vocals/guitar) of Warpaintr​ Warpaint played two sold out shows at the Troubadour this weekend, Friday with Aska and Sunday with Cc: and Drug Cabin. It took Warpaint six years to release their debut album The Fool, which came out on Rough Trade in October, but going slow is okay ... More >>

Origami Vinyl's Local Top Ten (Plus One!)

via origami vinyl's flickrneil schield of origami vinyl​ Independent Echo Park record store Origami Vinyl carries a strong collection of local music as well as new releases and luxurious reissues. Proprietor Neil Schield told us about their most recent top ten local sellers--as well as a loca ... More >>

Over the Weekend: Ghostland Observatory at Sunset Junction Street Fair

Timothy NorrisGhostland Observatory at Sunset Junction 2010​ [View more photos of the good, the fun and the grotesque in Timothy Norris' slideshow "Sunset Junction 2010: Day One with Ghostland Observatory, Bad Brains and more."] Dancing puppets, sexy masseuse referees, Rough Trade salesmen w ... More >>

Vinyl of the Week: Petrojvic Blasting Co.'s Debut LP, 'A History of Public Relations Dilemmae' [MP3]

In the strange wake of music's digital rebirth, vinyl has experienced a modest boom in popularity, seen by many as a replacement for the awkward middleman that is the compact disc. INCHES reviews the output of L.A.'s healthy vinyl community, believing that good music deserves much more than a handfu ... More >>

Live in L.A. This Weekend: Drive-By Truckers, Peter Gabriel, Les Savy Fav, First Fridays

Drive-By Truckers​You may not have noticed if you don't live in a neighborhood where "y'all" is the prevalent pronoun -- and no, that's not pejorative -- but the Drive-By Truckers have a new album out. "The Big To-Do" is just that, out-sized riffs, growling vocals and sweat-stained rhythms sup ... More >>

2009: The Year in Obsessions

L.A. Weekly’s music editor lists the 10 records he couldn’t get out of his head

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 >>

Best Alt-Country Folk Records 2009: Willie Nelson is Still A Badass

ALT-COUNTRY/FOLK Meet the Folk-ers Noah W. Bailey slices the Americana pie and determines that, yes, Willie Nelson is still a badass. We spent 2009 sorting through piles of folk and Americana releases, revising this list in our heads till the bitter end and failing repeatedly to understand the hyp ... More >>

Warpaint Signs to Rough Trade, Gigs the Standard for the Zero Film Fest

LA buzz band Warpaint has been busy of late. They just signed to the venerable Rough Trade Records imprint, recently concluded a tour opening for Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, gigged at the Echo with Vic Chesnutt on Tuesday night, and on Wednesday night played an intimate rooftop performance a ... More >>

Rock Picks: Sunset Rubdown, Alela Diane, Pelican, Rose Melberg

Also, Yacht, the Woolly Bandits, Linda Ronstadt and others

Part Time Punks Festival Weekend: Raincoats, Gang of Four, and more.

Part Time Punks Festival Weekend: Raincoats, Gang of Four, and more.

Sunday Sunset Junction by the Numbers (Approximately)

Sunday's Sunset Junction seemed a little empty. West Coast Sound investigates...

Tonight at Don't Knock the Rock: Mark Stewart & Pop Group Documentary 'On/Off'

​ The Don't Knock the Rock film series continues tonight at Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater with the LA premiere of On/Off, a documentary on the legendary post-punk auteur Mark Stewart, whose work in the late 1970s and early 1980s redirected post punk in a whole other direction, carvin ... More >>

ROCK PICKS: CEU, GIRL IN A COMA, COLDPLAY, GRAVEYARD

Also, Amadou & Mariam,The Pains of Being Pure, Jason Collett, The Smithereens, and others.

Dangerbird's Wings: Silversun Pickups' Label Bangs Out a Template for a Post–Major Label Landscape

Pickups’ new LP, Swoon, hits the streets soon

Part Time Punks Festival: A Certain Ratio, Pylon, Love is All, Daytime Television Tear a Hole in History

A Certain Ratio's Jeremy Kerr: still dark and menacing Old men acting weird. That’s one way to look at it, and if I were one of the four pre-teen boys in the band Daytime Television, whose versions of the Buzzcocks’ “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays,” "Part Time Punks" and “Teenage Kicks” ... More >>

KCRW's Jason Bentley to Take Over Morning Becomes Eclectic Feifdom

Longtime KCRW nighttime DJ Jason Bentley is gonna have to adjust his sleep schedule, as he'll be taking over for Nic Harcourt as the new host of the station's Morning Becomes Eclectic program. The show, which runs from 9 to noon weekdays, is one of the most visible and influential slots in the count ... More >>

Rock Picks: Tangerine Dream, Spindrift, Robyn Hitchcock

Also, Electric Six, Heartless Bastards, Scissors for Lefty and more

Rock Picks: The Kooks, Neil Young, Jerry Cole Memorial

Also, Kaki King, The Notwist and more

Rock Picks: Cat Power, Mountain Goats, Chapin Sisters

And other Feb. 28-March 6 shows

Rock Picks: Built to Spill, Meat Puppets, Julia Fordham

Plus other Feb. 21-28 shows

BBB (Big, Bold and Beautiful)

The clouds have parted and the birds are chirping what sounds like Japanese power pop. SXSW being an industry event I attend my first industry panel, "Idiots Unite!" (The idiots, of course, being anyone involved in this crazy business of show.) David Katznelson, president of Birdman Recording Group, ... More >>

Part Time Punks, full-time fun!

Accident at Sea

Unicorns become Islands

The Party Revisited

Delta 5�s non-reunion of Soviet socialist punk

Don't Postpone Maximum Joy!

A buncha beloved Brit post-punk finds its day in the (reissue) sun

New Stuff We Like

Who Are the Kills?

It�s High Time

This Ain't No Juilliard!

Life and violins at the school that Flea built

'Thees Ees Zee Reel Shit!'

Remembering Claude Bessy, a.k.a. Kickboy Face