LA Bridged: Panache Booking’s Village of Love benefit celebrates intersections of activism and LA music
Entrance at Village of Love, February 14, 2017 It's 9:00, exactly 50 minutes after I lapped the Teragram Ballroom for the first time. Nearly an hour and exactly $13 later, I finally approach the show I've circled the streets of LA to see, and perhaps unlike exorbitant parking fees near downtown, I know the money being raised at tonight's Panache Booking Village of Love Valentine's Day extravaganza is going to a good cause: Planned Parenthood. Something about the venue felt cavernous, and after wandering through a dark hallway, I ended up at the stage, where my valentine for the evening was [...]
Oakland’s garage punk duo Dark Beach to play final show Friday at The Golden Bull
Dark Beach (photo: Niki Pretti Photography) It's a dark time for all lovers of Oakland's Dark Beach. After five years of crafting gloomy-yet-fun tunes while exploring their mutual love of mermaids and mythical creatures, the duo of Melissa Dale and Faith Gardner have announced they're playing their final show as Dark Beach this Friday. Dark Beach as a musical collaboration was born in 2011, after Dale, who was drumming for Sweet Nothing, and Gardner, a guitarist in Hooray for Everything, struck up a kinship on seeing each other at local shows and wanting to start up something new. Gardner says [...]
Q+A: Beloved monthly concert series Wood Shoppe goes out with a Bam!Bam! in final show
The first Tuesday of every month hold a special place for countless Bay Area music fans. It's the night when team Wood Shoppe puts on their monthly series at Brick & Mortar with a simple premise that's endured show after show: Three great bands, one DJ, no cover. However, next Tuesday's show will be their last. After four and a half years of bringing local and national bands to curious, up-for-anything audiences, Wood Shoppe announced they're set to "wrap up [their] little series." The initial Wood Shoppe idea was born over a night of ramen, where Acacia Newlon pitched her [...]
Never Young craft a noisy, urgent sucker-punch in “Beta Male Erotica”
Never Young are one of our favorite local bands to turn up all the way when we just want to scream into a pillow and thrash away all our feelings. Each and every day, this becomes more true. Take today, when we share their new track "Beta Male Erotica." Urgent and aware, it's a righteous gut punch to a "very specific and often unsuspecting type of misogynist," says founding member Christopher Adams. "Sad things start to resonate the romance washed away/I'm choking on misogyny while the singer masturbates," are the words that paint a poetic picture of an anxious scene [...]
Trails and Ways squeeze in one more bite of summer with new song “Happiness”
Trails and Ways have such a mythical backstory that it's easy to forget they only have an EP and one full-length record under their belt. From college roommate-ing to living in Brazil to lineup shifts, even having their last record Pathology released on a Brazilian label (Balaclava) in addition to Barsuk, the Oakland band is truly living out each musical moment their path has afforded, with great fanfare. Solo artist Kendra McKinley has even joined the ranks on guitar in the current live lineup. This week, to add the growing momentum, the band has released new song "Happiness." Think summer, [...]
Happy release day to Oakland’s Tanukichan: Fuzzy, emotional debut EP ‘Radiolove’ out today
At the top end of the summer, we got to know Oakland's Tanukichan, who is Hannah Van Loon, formerly of Trails and Ways. But now, we're really getting to know her. The delectable first course of her musical career, following the appetizer single we got a few months back, comes in the form of debut EP Radiolove, which is out today on Company Records. She covers lots of ground in the four songs that comprise the release. Each song is perfectly balanced and emotionally stunning, steeped in moments of somberness and, on the other side of the coin, sheer fuzzy [...]
Marielle V Jakobsons debuts video for “White Sparks” using her innovative macro-cymatic instrument
To the untrained eye, macro-cymatic looks like something related to plants, or movies, but definitely something scientific. When I read that Oakland-based Marielle V Jakobsons, the electronic musician who also performs in Date Palms, created a macro-cymatic instrument, my first instinct (following this mental aside about photosynthesis and the like) was to say, "Tell me more!" It's not every day that a musician creates an entirely new way of experiencing music through the senses, so the intrigue that the scientific-sounding name alone sparked was worth exploring further. Though the concept was hard to wrap the mind around at first, it's [...]
Globelamp to bring shimmery, introspective West Coast psych-folk to Brick & Mortar
If you don't know Globelamp, you probably know her voice. Equal parts warbly and sultry, and unique as all, she's most known for her contributions in Foxygen and especially their single "San Francisco" ("That's okay / I was born in LA"). In the years following an abuse-ridden breakup from the band, Elizabeth Le Fey continues to make music under her Globelamp name in Olympia, Washington. On tour for her latest record The Orange Glow, which came out June 10 on Wichita Recordings, she takes the stage in San Francisco next Monday. One of the record's standouts is a song that [...]
Hey now: Don’t Dream It’s Over to bring art exhibition to life at SFMOMA
Hey now, hey now, let's catch our '80s nostalgia "deluge in a paper cup," as Neil Finn of Crowded House lightly crooned in their 1986 breakout hit "Don't Dream It's Over." A shining, majestic example of New Zealand pop balladry, the song is seeing new light in a fabulously curated SFMOMA event that's capping off Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July's exhibition, "Learning to Love You More." Before we dive into an endless hole of lyric quoting, let's explore the simple yet brilliant concept that anchors the event. Will Rogan and Jonn Herschend of The Thing Quarterly, a local publisher, have [...]
With music and art, Inclusive Lands welcomes you with open arms this Outside Lands weekend
Design by Swasti Mittal It's no secret that Outside Lands is extremely difficult to get in, especially this year. In its ninth iteration, tickets for this year's Golden Gate Park festival went on sale before the lineup was even released, and as tickets quickly sold out, many had to resort bucking up and buying exorbitantly-priced second-hand passes or seeking out other options, i.e. cry about not being able to cry to "Let Down" or simply move on. If you're not cramming into one of those shuttles this time, here is one of those options: Inclusive Lands. Organized by the new [...]