Podcast: Why? live @ Pitchfork Music Festival (7.17.10)

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Earlier this summer, a good friend of mine convinced me to check out the Why? show at the Glass House in Pomona.  I previously had been on the fence about the Berkeley/ Oakland-based indie rock/ hip hop outfit (despite digging their third record, 2008’s Alopecia); however, I must say that their performance was one of the most giddily exuberant and youthful that I’ve seen in some time, and the show was one of the most fun I’ve been to since whenever I last heard the Henry Clay People live.  In the end, it was like some weird, drunken high school pep rally (but with, you know, California-based indie rock and alternative hip hop).

Luckily, an intrepid taper caught Why?’s excellent set at the Pitchfork Music Festival earlier this month, and we’re now offering it up for you.  Podcast and setlist after the jump.  Check it out.

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July 29, 2010 | Filed Under Featured Media, Podcasts | Leave a Comment 

Album Review: Futurebirds – Hampton’s Lullaby

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By Travis Woods

Release Date: 6.27.10

Label: Autumn Tone

A crisscrossed amalgam of crunchy guitar kinetics and hazy, swamp-murked atmospherics, Futurebird’s Hampton’s Lullaby is a record soaked to the marrow in Southern Gothic and bound together by golden streaks of pedal steel and alternately lovely and yowling vocals.  A full-length debut of startling assuredness and fully realized mood, Hampton’s Lullaby evokes sweaty imagery of dark summer nights in the deep south, coupled with gritty, blue-jeans’d Americana as refracted through a cough-syruped prism of lysergic psychedelia.   As perfect a soundtrack for ruminative, whiskey-soaked warm evenings as one is likely to find in this hot summer, Futurebird’s Hamptons is a lullaby well worth hearing.

Listen to “Johnny Utah” by Futurebirds

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July 28, 2010 | Filed Under Album Reviews | 2 Comments 

New Tunes: Local Natives live @ Daytrotter

The moody, grandeur-laden and vocally-charged atmospherics of Local Natives are making yet another appearance on Daytrotter today, and the sinuous, sweaty jams of cavernous pop are well worth checking out–live, full-bodied takes on “Sticky Thread,” “Wide Eyes,” and “Cubism Dream” with evolved arrangements.  I’ve had them on repeat all morning–they shed new light and add new dimensions to what is already one of 2010’s best albums.

Listen to Local Native’s Daytrotter session.

July 26, 2010 | Filed Under Music News, New Tunes | Leave a Comment 

Mixtape #49: “So Much Style That It’s Leavin’”

Every Wednesday, Web in Front will be offering up a digital mixtape, comprised of whatever happens to be floating through my head and ears at the time–great local music (including exclusive unreleased tracks from our Featured Artist Interviews), old favorites and oddball obscurities; also featured will be mixes made by some of our favorite Los Angeles musicians, along with the stories and explanations behind their picks.

Today’s mixtape is all kinds of weird, skipping as it does within a handful of songs through massive chunks of new music — fresh tunes by Blonde Redhead, the Walkmen, Fitz and the Tantrums, the Parson Redheads and John Carpenter — with occasional punctuation by older, more obscure titles from the likes of Pavement, Bob Dylan, and Spritualized.  Check it out–tracklisting and song info after the jump.

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July 21, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

Podcast: Fitz and the Tantrums live @ the Hammer Museum (7.15.10)

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Photo Credit: Timothy Norris for L.A. Weekly

Due to a wildly frustrating combination of death-lurch L.A. traffic, zero parking opportunities, and general tardiness on my part, I unfortunately missed Fitz and the Tantrums’ sweaty and soulful crowd-pleasing show at the Hammer Museum on Thursday as part of the Buzzbands.la-curated Also I Like To Rock series.  While I’m still knocking my head against a wall due to missing what was, by all reports, an absolutely spectacular show, I can at least do so in time to the band’s swaggering, headbobbing beat, thanks to an intrepid local taper.  Listen to the show and check out the setlist after the jump–the band’s closing cover of the Eurythmic’s “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” is worth the price of admission alone (and since that price is free, you really have no excuses here).

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July 19, 2010 | Filed Under Featured Media, Podcasts | 3 Comments 

The Airborne Toxic Event Set To Release Concert Film/ Live Album

Local hotshots the Airborne Toxic Event announced today the release of All I Ever Wanted: Live At The Walt Disney Concert Hall, a documentary film about the lead-up to the band’s final concert of their 354-date tour for their debut record.  The film chronicles the coalescing of the band, the venue and a string quartet with a children’s choir, a massive marching band, and traditional Mexican folkórico dancers into what has been, thus far, the band’s most unusual and surprising live set (at least that I’ve seen–also, it was a pretty damn good show).

The film will premiere in Europe at the Raindance Film Festival in London on September 30th, and be released on September 7th on Blu-Ray and Deluxe CD/ DVD.  Check out the trailer below.

July 14, 2010 | Filed Under Music News, New Music Preview, New Tunes, New Videos | Leave a Comment 

Album Review: Admiral Radley – I Heart California

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By Travis Woods

Release Date: 7/13/10

Label:  The Ship

Admiral Radley’s I Heart California album (a ‘that-makes-sense’ merging of Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle and Aaron Burtch with Earlimart’s Aaron Espinoza and Arianna Murray) is both a fitting, bittersweet nod to the artists’ home state as well as a little-less-than-fitting, bittersweet nod to the artists’ more famous day jobs.  While the sublime title track weds the very best of what you’d expect from artists like Lytle, Espinoza and Murray – buzzy, breathy dark-pop, acidic lyricism, and textured, nuance-hewn production – it also throws down a gauntlet that the album’s remainder never quite overcomes.

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July 14, 2010 | Filed Under Album Reviews, Exclusive Features | 2 Comments 

Tonight: Andy Clockwise w/ Marvelous Toy and Silent Comedy at the Troubadour

Looking for a fun, ear-rattling n Tuesday night in Los Angeles?  You can’t go wrong with braving a trip to West Hollywood to catch Andy Clockwise with Web in Front favorites Marvelous Toy at the Troub.  Seriously–MT has taken every consecutive live show of theirs up a notch each time I see them.  Woozy, piano-driven rock and pop of the most entertaining order.  Check it out.

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July 13, 2010 | Filed Under Music News | Leave a Comment 

Where is My Mind?: My First

A monthly Web in Front column by KROQ Locals Only DJ Kat Corbett, Where is My Mind? features Kat’s musings about, rants on, and love letters to music–local, national, world, whatever.

By Kat Corbett

He had long dirty hair and a voice carved from whiskey and factory smoke.  I was 12.  He was the Prince of Darkness.

Ozzy Osbourne at the Worcester Centrum was my first concert.

Don’t ask me who was in the band or the set list or what album he was touring on because I have no idea.  At the time I had been listening to a schizophrenic list of artists from my parents record collection which was heavy on the Motown and not so much on dudes who beheaded birds at business meetings.  Don’t ask me how I convinced my parents to let me go with a school friend they had never met and her much older neighbor in his primed out Mustang to a venue that was an hour away.  It must have been a fantastic lie—one filled with rainbows and kittens and no inkling of their pre-teen daughter in a room full of fisted devil horns raised high while shit got lit on fire.

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July 12, 2010 | Filed Under Exclusive Features, Where Is My Mind? | 5 Comments 

Podcast: Pavement live in Berkeley, CA (6.25.10)

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Due to my buzzing fanboy excitement over snagging tickets to see Pavement with Sonic Youth and No Age at the Hollywood Bowl in September, and constantly debating whether or not to hit the Matador anniversary party that Malkmus and Co. will be headlining in Las Vegas in October, I’ve been on something of a Pavement kick lately–so this podcast of a recent show in Berkeley should be of no real surprise.  Also not surprising (to Pavement fans, at least)?  It’s kind of incredible.  Massive setlist and podcast after the jump.

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July 8, 2010 | Filed Under Featured Media, Podcasts | Leave a Comment 

New Video: Admiral Radley – “I Heart California”

Call me crazy, but I think the implication in the song and video for Admiral Radley’s (a collusion of Grandaddy and Earlimart) “I Heart California” is that singer Jason Lytle has something of a conflicted relationship with la la land and surrounding environs.  It’s a  little too on the nose, sure, but the video’s karaoke-styled video still works in some funny jabs, especially at our current governor; moreover, that song is catchy.  Video via Stereogum; be sure to catch Ad Rad when they play the Hammer Museum this Thursday with the Happy Hollows.

July 7, 2010 | Filed Under Featured Media, New Music Preview, New Tunes, New Videos | Leave a Comment 

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