Author Archives: Nicole Poulos

PHOTOS: JULIA LOFSTRAND | Artists, and musicians in particular, have always been at the forefront of using their mediums as a means for change and tools to fight oppression. In the midst of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, a large ominous cloud hangs over us in the shape of a question mark, punctuating the sentence, “What’s next?” How do we keep these conversations going and funnel them into actual change?

In its third year, the three-day Girlschool festival spearheaded by Anna Bulbrook (the Airborne Toxic Event, band member; Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Beyoncé, Vampire Weekend, recording violinist) served as a vision of that future. It’s a level and an inclusive playing field where artists mix with fans, parents bring their kids, and all are welcome—men, women, non-binary, and all gender identifying persons.

The Girlschool festival has indeed expanded to be a platform for not only women, but for all types of disenfranchised groups and communities, and the panels this year skewed more political with topics focused on activism. In addition to artists and journalists, panels featured an array of unique voices—from civil rights activist Ashlee Marie Preston, poet Shauna Barbosa, and a keynote talk by punk rock pioneer and Sleater-Kinney founding member, Carrie Brownstein.

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PHOTOS: MATT DRAPER | TVD LA had the distinct pleasure of sitting down with Larry Little (co-founder) and Duncan Smith (talent buyer) of Resident LA, our soon to be new favorite venue and watering hole located in the Arts District in downtown LA.

On our first visit we were so impressed with the space and the atmosphere these two gentlemen have created—an incredible outdoor environment which boasts an actual beer garden and their creative music programming—we just had to get the inside track on the methods behind their mad genius.

Downtown LA seems to have had resurgence in live music in the past two years with several newly renovated spaces opening, showcasing both local and national acts. Why now, why this neighborhood?

The city just keeps expanding east in terms of nightlife, mostly because artists generally live where rents are cheaper—and so it’s gone from Echo Park to Highland Park to now hitting places like Boyle Heights. The Arts District has been opening up and adding not only residential units and artist work spaces, but bars, restaurants, and retail by the very nature of the old warehouse spaces that line its streets. It was only a matter of time before people started populating the neighborhood.

Our partners Tim and Bridget have owned and have lived in our building since 2000, and we all just love its inside/outside options and felt it was perfect for a venue and beer garden. We wanted to create a new option for this neighborhood in a 200+ capacity room that allows us to take chances on artists at early stages and support the arts.

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PHOTOS: JULIA LOFSTRAND | Grace Potter sauntered on stage in hot pants and a sparkly cape, strapped with a flying V—the very embodiment of a rockstar.

We spent Grace Potter’s record release day with the woman herself, celebrating her ascent as the queen of modern disco with her new album, Midnight. Potter’s debut solo record displays her finely tuned skill for songcraft and places a pop sheen atop her rock and Americana gumbo.

Grace’s live show is also a reflection of someone who is a true master of her craft. The woman has been touring for 10 years which has made her a performer who melts both minds and hearts. She’s explosive and there is no greater feeling and nothing more contagious than seeing her lost in the music—the moment where the spirit takes over. Grace had many of these moments throughout the show at the Fonda Theatre last Friday evening which spread to her adoring crowd, inducing dancing, shaking and complete abandon.

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PHOTOS: JULIA LOFSTRAND | Although devoid of a country radio station, LA has always fostered a thriving scene for twang-leaning artists and singer-songwriters. From the Laurel Canyon days of the 1960s to the current Beachwood Canyon scene, HONEYHONEY wonderfully carry this torch.

We were delighted to co-present along with our friends at LA’s Goldenvoice, the duo of Ben Jaffe and Suzanne Santo at the El Rey on July 1. Suzanne and Ben are an unexpected tour de force with banjo driven songs like “Ohio”—which instigated an audience sing along—to the plaintive heart tugger, “You and I.”

The duo’s chemistry and the ease of their musical exchange on stage is that of seasoned performers and masters of their craft. HONEYHONEY is currently on tour supporting their new album, 3—and we heartily endorse lending an ear. (Live, and on vinyl.)

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PHOTOS: CHAD ELDER | Setting the tone for the evening at the Troubadour last Thursday was Los Angeles new comer Jon DeRosa.

My favorite part of this show and DeRosa’s music in general is that it’s unexpected. We all judge a book by its cover and from staring at DeRosa on stage you start to wonder if he is a lost member of the Source Family or if he just rode in on a Harley from Sturges. But as the band starts, DeRosa’s music conjures the crooning spirits of yesteryear such as Perry Como and Roy Orbison—enveloped by ghostly orchestration with David Lynch as puppet master. Definitely NOT what is anticipated by the book’s cover.

The music is both vintage and futuristic and although categorized as “pop,” DeRosa is in a genre all his own and it’s spellbinding. DeRosa held the audience’s captive attention for six beautiful songs, the same way a spiritual leader would command the attention of his congregation. Highlights include the dreamy, “Fool’s Razor” and gorgeous duet “Dancing in a Dream,” which on DeRosa’s album Black Halo features Carina Round. DeRosa closed his set with the eerier “High & Lonely,” gently taking the audience to another realm—not quote earth and not quite space—but somewhere in between.

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PHOTOS: CHAD ELDER | Maintaining and operating at a high level of greatness is not an easy thing to do. Especially in a creative field. This is one of the many things that has made Spoon stand out since they first started releasing music 20 years ago—they are consistently fantastic.

Spoon has been performing and creating music at a very high level and are one of those indie bands you can’t file into a “sounds like this” category. Okay, yes I know Spoon has influences but they have a sound that is distinctly theirs, led by accidental rock star Britt Daniel and the band’s driving but subtle keys and guitar textures.

It has been four years in between albums for this band—a lifetime in our world of one hour news cycles and 140 character attention spans, but it was worth the wait. I don’t think I ever will understand the idea of “constant stream of content” and that artists should be consistently releasing music. Constantly creating, yes…releasing, no. I think of Spoon, especially with this stellar last album They Want My Soul, as that friend that we all have who doesn’t reveal a lot but when they do it’s always pearls of wisdom. Who cares if you are talking if you are just talking to make noise?

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TVD LA had an opportunity to chat with A Winged Victory for the Sullen, the ambient duo consisting of Dustin O’Halloran and Adam Wiltzie. Their latest project is the score for ATOMOS, a dance composition for famed choreographer Wayne McGregor (Random Dance, the London Ballet, and that guy Thom Yorke).

A Winged Victory for the Sullen brings this score to the El Rey on Sunday, April 5th.

We can assume writing for both dance and film involve telling a story. How is the approach for scoring for dance different from your work scoring for films?

The history of dance and music together is much older and really developed together—it’s very natural in the sense that music comes first and the choreography comes after. You have lots of images and concepts in your head, but it’s really close to writing for yourself. Film seems to have confines as you are locked into edits and timing—it’s really two different ways to work. Both have the object of telling a story, but dance is something that is movable and happens in the moment, and film is something carved out in time.

This process is incredibly unique. Since choreography and dance tend to be dictated by the music, did the movement of the dancers come to mind or have an effect on the movement of the music? Did you see clips, did you send the dancers demos?

We started working on the score on our own with just some images and videos that Wayne McGregor sent us. About half way through the process we went to London to his studio to see what he was creating. We really could not imagine how someone would dance to our music, so the biggest inspiration was how well it worked. It just made us more confident that we were on the right path. The whole dance piece is built in a kind of modular way with these little scenes that could be put together or separated …much like atoms.

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TVD LA recently chatted with The Silent Comedy’s Joshua Zimmerman to discuss the reissue of their debut album Common Faults, which is being pressed to vinyl for the very first time. 2015 also marks the 5th anniversary of the release, so to celebrate they’ve remixed the album and will be taking the vinyl on the road playing shows in select record stores throughout California.

The vinyl is available for pre-order now and the album will also be released digitally on April 14th.

You call Common Faults a transitional album that brought the band into their current sound. Can you elaborate on that? What was it in the writing and recording of this record that made you guys change the sonic direction of the band? Was the change intentional when going into this project or did it happen organically?

The process of transition in the band’s sound happened naturally over the course of making Common Faults. We started to experiment with how to capture a more energetic sound, and focused less on the acoustic songs that had made up our fledging recordings before that. Many of these songs developed from the live show, so these recording sessions were the first time we were analyzing parts, and realizing that the band would benefit for a more organized writing process. It took a while for these lessons to be fully assimilated, but you can see the product of lessons learned from making Common Faults in our new recordings.

Can you tell our readers the production process of this reissue and what you did to change the sound of the album?

One of the regrets we had about Common Faults was that we didn’t have sufficient time or resources to mix the album. We had so little money that my brother Jeremiah and I ended up mixing it ourselves in a very short amount of time. There are years of experience that a professional mixer brings to the process that we simply didn’t have.

For the reissue, we turned the raw tracks over to the extremely talented and accomplished Brian Malouf, who mixed our last couple of projects. Brian took the tracks and gave them a richness that hadn’t been present before. The original version of Common Faults was a little flat, and the remixed songs have a depth and clarity that brings them closer to our original vision.

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PHOTOS: CHAD ELDER | We know all too well what happens with musicians from Seattle left to their devices in a place that’s raining and grey for over half the year—they’re stuck inside. And what do you do inside? Listen to a lot of records and play a lot of music.

The darkness and the dreary weather and seclusion of the indoors has made Seattle a breeding ground for loud, heavy, weird—and awesome. My Goodness, themselves from Seattle have that heaviness, but don’t sound quintessentially of Seattle. Their sound is an almost perfect melding of blues, metal, and simple but hard hitting punk chords—yet there is nothing slouchy here…the band is very, very tight.

My Goodness pulls off the delicate balance of paying a small homage to their influences, and sounding completely different at the same time. Although these genres are often interchangeable and have been stirred and shaken by the best music mixologists (we salute you Mr. Jack White) you have never heard anything quite like this. These guys deliver live like a true hardcore band, unrelenting and driving from song to song where you can’t look away, sneak to the restroom, or even talk to you friend standing next to you about what a great show it is, but at the same time I could take my most sensitive of friends who prefer seeing music in a VIP box at a stadium or a nice seated theatre, and they wouldn’t be turned off.

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One of the finer things about Los Angeles is the abundance of culture. LA is a melting pot of people, few of whom are from here. Having such a rich cross-section of cultures translates into incredible food—and great music.

Dengue Fever is a cross-section not only of cultures but of eras. The band’s sound is a take on ’60s era Cambodian psychedelic pop, a little Bollywood, and surf rock played by a group of alt rockers and fronted by former wedding singer and the lone Cambodian, Chhom Nimol. If this doesn’t excite you or have you curious, you need to get your pulse checked.

Nimol sings in her native tongue (note to you—buy the record to read the lyrics) with her vocals both sinuous and sensual—it’s world music for the cool kids.

This week the band celebrates the release of their sixth album, The Deepest Lake on their own label, Tuk Tuk. This hometown show tonight at the Echoplex will not only be a worldly delight, but the crowd is bound to be refreshingly diverse as the headliner’s sound.

PHOTOS: MANNY HEBRON | There’s one thing that’s almost as exciting as seeing a great show, and it’s seeing a band in the early stages of being great—where you know that they’re really good now but after 200 shows, they’ll be amazing. This is Waters, a stellar work in progress with infinite potential and we were thrilled to be there to see the very beginnings of what could possibly be our new favorite band.

The best thing going on in alternative rock right now is that it is indefinable—there are synths, electric guitars, acoustic guitars, tambourines, sleigh bells, mellotrons…banjos—you name it…alternative means anything. Alternative rock I think has been burst wide open and made nebulous due to its age and of course technology. If you’re between the ages of let’s say 18 and 35 (which most new young bands are) chances are that you grew up listening to everything—The Beatles (we hope), The Notorious B.I.G, LCD Soundsystem, Dave Matthews, Jay Z, Soundgarden, Faith No More, Fiona Apple, Spoon, N’ Sync etc. Having influences and access (thank you internet) to all genres and styles of music have made lots of indefinable sounds, all lumped under “alternative rock.” Enter Waters

I didn’t know anything about Waters going into this show except that they were from San Francisco and that I really loved the record, so I was surprised to see band with an acoustic guitar up front in an “alternative rock band.” Their sound is jammy, catchy, it jangles and it rocks. I can’t really describe it , except for being Waters. One of my favorite things is that they wear their hometown on their sleeve, possessing a wonderful air of San Francisco charm—the charm of peace and love that is ever-present in the place that birthed the summer of love and where hippies once ruled, and in a sense still do, but that’s for another article.

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PHOTOS: CHAD ELDER | We attended night 1 of 2 of Ryan Adams’ Los Angeles shows at the Wiltern—technically a hometown show for the New Yorker via North Carolinian who resides here in LA and set up his PaxAm music making shop at the famous Sunset Sound here in town.

I’ll take a few obligatory sentences to briefly touch on Ryan Adams’ prolific, and what some would call, tumultuous career. Adams has grown up as an artist and person in the public eye, lauded as the next big thing from a very early age and watched with scrutiny by the industry and media under a microscope through business battles, drug addiction, and personal and artistic struggles.

With his newest self-titled album, Adams has come to a point of zen where all the dots connect. Adams has become the Tom Petty of this generation, the triple threat—masterful songwriter, monster player, and master showman—and in my opinion made the record that Tom Petty should have. We’ll pause for blasphemy.

Ryan Adams has also been known for being unpredictable—some of his darker, personal demon-filled shows were either a disaster or incredible, and it seems it’s now that the fury, fire, and hot temper has been channeled into the music.

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Tis the season for tidings and joy and we here at TVDLA are thrilled to exclusively share a rock ‘n’roll Holiday treat, “The Anti Social Young American Christmas Lover’s Brigade” by Gary Calamar.

“I set out to write a Christmas song but wanted to give it some edge. So I came up with this sub-culture of punky, gothy kids who hate everything—except Christmas. I was inspired by The Kinks “Village Green Preservation Society, T-Rex’s “Children Of The Revolution,” and David Bowie’s “Young Americans.” My 12-year-old daughter Zoe does some lovely background vocals and I also got help from James Combs and Steven Stern who produced the track. It’s dedicated to the infamous Kim Fowley and the Spirit of Rock and Roll!”

This song comes of the heels of Gary Calamar’s debut EP, “You Are What You Listen To,” released this fall on Atlantic Records. Many of you are probably familiar with Gary’s name and voice from his Sunday night radio show on KCRW and his music supervision work on award-winning shows such as True Blood, Dexter, House, and Six Feet Under.

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PHOTOS: KELSEY HENG | The Record Parlour is small but graciously stocked establishment that along with the record store is a museum for music geeks. The walls are adorned with unexpected and subtle gems like a framed photo of Dean Martin with an autographed cocktail napkin, a very early one page “fill in the blank” music publishing agreement, a bust of Elvis, an old cigarette machine, an enlarged painting of Bowie’s Diamond Dogs cover, a ceramic Joker lamp, and plenty of other eccentric delights to occupy the eyes.

The event kicked off with a DJ spinning vinyl that he picked out of crates from song to song while Will Dailey fans and friends congregated and enjoyed some crate digging and libations until just after 8pm when Will Dailey and crew ripped into their blistering set. The most comprehensive way to describe Will is an “absolute pro.” Will is an artist’s artist, a brilliant songwriter, master showman and beast of a guitar player.

The Record Parlour, although small boasts a real stage with a PA and is equipped with just enough backline (and some stellar vintage gear) to host an entire band. Will Dailey kicked his set off with “Sunken Ship,” the first single from his latest album National Throat and followed that with eight stellar tracks of older fan favorites, including this nerd’s personal favorite, the Wilco-esque, “Down the Drain,” and newer songs from National Throat rearranged for the live setting.

Will rocked up the banjo driven, “Higher Education” with no banjo and haunted the audience with the dream inducing “Castle of Pretending” with his perfect falsetto. The band also, to the crowd’s delight, dropped in a clever and stellar cover of Arcade Fire’s “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains).”

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We’re thrilled to be able to talk to one of our favorite local crate digging establishments in Hollywood, The Record Parlour. Just over a year old, not only does the shop have an incredible collection in house, they can find you just about any title you have your heart set on—they found for me the Pointer Sisters’ Steppin in under 24 hours—and they possess one of the things LA is best known for—vibe.

Stepping into The Record Parlour is like stepping back into time, or stepping into the dream world of any music gear geek. They have on display loads of vintage amps, microphones, and my personal favorite, a Fender Rhodes—most of the pieces in, or getting into working condition.

The store has been building a name for themselves for putting on some of the most exciting and unique in-store shows and showcases in town, from pop-up shows with bands like Vintage Trouble to the event we are honored to be a part of this Friday, November 21—Will Dailey playing live with his band, with the entire performance being recorded and transferred directly to vinyl.

Please introduce yourself. Who are you and what do you do at The Record Parlour?

We are Chris Honetschlaeger, founder of The Record Parlour in Hollywood and Chadwick Hemus, store manager and partner.

How long has the store been open?

We first opened our doors in August of 2013.

But I heard that record sales are in decline—what made you want to open a record store?!

The “vinyl format” was more interesting to me than unreliable record sales figures from dubious sources. Double-digit growth in new record players and triple digit growth at vinyl pressing plants were a better indicator of the market opportunity for me. The Record Parlour is growing steadily month over month since opening and our store focuses on original releases versus new releases.

What is the last record your store sold?

We just sold 20 Zappa records to one guy about 15 minutes ago using Instagram.

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