Author Archives: Crystal Eckstadt

PHOTOS: JULIA LOFSTRAND | Autism, a largely misunderstood developmental disorder affecting a range of issues from social skills to speech, affects 1 in 36 children in the US today. After a pandemic hiatus, Stephen and Kristin Stills annual Light Up The Blues charity concert finally returned to The Greek Theater in Los Angeles for its 6th year. All proceeds of the show went to Autism Speaks.

The Stills created Light Up The Blues to support other parents in need, as their own child Henry was born autistic. Hosted by comedian Jeff Garlin and actress Camryn Manheim, this year’s lineup featured veteran Light Up The Blues performers Neil Young, who also has children on the Autism spectrum, Joe Walsh, Willie Nelson, and Stephen Stills.

Always a generational family affair, Lukas Nelson + his band Promise of the Real and Chris Stills shared the bill with their legendary fathers. This year’s performers with autism were rapper Soulshocka, opera singer Amanda Anderson, and singer/guitarist Will Breman with indie-folk star Sharon Van Etten making a guest appearance.

We caught up with a few Light Up The Blues folks on the “Blue Carpet” before the show. Even famed ‘60s/’70s photographer, Henry Diltz, stopped by for The Stills’ family photo shot.

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PHOTOS: DANIEL GRAY | Examining a post-punk dystopian landscape with all the appropriate trimmings: working-class suffering, government failings, and the compounding existential dread facing us all, Detroit’s Protomartyr took over downtown Los Angeles’ Teragram Ballroom on a rain-drenched Wednesday night. Out on tour in support of their pandemic release Ultimate Success Today (2020), the venue set in a seedier part of town was the right place for the dissonant power rock four-piece.

LA-based opener Immortal Nightbody, the moniker of rapper/ singer/ producer Sim Jackson, brought in an unusually large crowd eager to see the cross-pollination of rap and dark wave, two subversive genres in their own right. By the time Protomartyr opened with the dark bass and airy surf rock of “Maidenhead,” the crowd had uncomfortably swelled as frontman Joe Casey yelled at us, “Don’t feel nothing for anyone, Don’t feel no love for anything,” their post-apocalyptical sphere taking shape.

Greg Ahee (guitar), Scott Davidson (bass), and Alex Leonard (drums) alongside Casey, referred to as one of the great punk poets of our generation and the band’s “Drunk Uncle,” barreled through Protomartyr’s 16-song set. Casey held a beer in one hand, and microphone with a poetic style baritone—often compared to The Fall’s Mark E. Smith—in the other for the entire night.

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PHOTOS: JULIA LOFSTRAND | Sharon Van Etten celebrated Tramp’s 11th, not 10th, Anniversary at the Troubadour in Los Angeles this past Sunday. Not wanting the album’s milestone to be buried by her album released last year, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, the show sold out within minutes upon which she released live stream tickets with all proceeds going to the Turkey-Syria Earthquake Relief fund.

Neil Young played his first debut solo show at the Troubadour, an unknown Elton John played eight shows there that launched his career, and Sharon Van Etten, one of the great modern indie-folk artists of our time, continued this iconic venue’s legacy.

Adriana McCasim was a fitting opener for the night. Spatial and anxious, her self-produced songs were a perfect subtle prelude. Shortly afterward, Sharon Van Etten and her band were greeted on stage by fervent applause that turned deathly silent as the brooding instrumentals of Tramp’s opening track “Warsaw” collided with her timeless voice. “Warsaw,” followed by “Give Out” and “Serpents,” is a most haunting piece of album sequencing.

Van Etten released the video for “Serpents” only just last month. Not feeling comfortable in her own skin, she killed the video upon its release—it’s one about an abusive relationship that decimated her sense of self and spawned many of her songs. Since then, she’s fallen in love with the right person, had a child, and gone back to school to become a therapist. The raw emotion of that song and what it has taken for her to step into her power radiated into the audience.

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PHOTOS: KRIS KUGANATHAN | At the intersection of folk rock, Americana, soul, and indie music, Kevin Morby as I see it sits at the helm of a cross-genre he’s made his own.

Success for the Kansas City native has been anything but overnight. A seven studio album climb that started with his debut solo album Harlem River back in 2013, Saturday night’s performance at the historic Belasco Theater in downtown Los Angeles was the arrival of something great for Morby. Touring on his newest release, This Is a Photograph, you could feel his rise in the air. Opening act, Cassandra Jenkins, who has toured with Courtney Barnett and sang backup vocals on This is a Photograph brought her serene, experimental brand of indie music and lusty vocals to the scene. The crowd was receptive.

Last year I went to see Kevin Morby open for Hamilton Leithuaser, but this year headlining his own show, the atmosphere felt different. The 18-song setlist—half This Is a Photograph and the other half playing like a Kevin Morby’s greatest hits collection—was spiritual in service. We were all there for him. We knew all of the words. We were connected and uplifted by Morby and his band as they dispelled whatever dark matter we brought with us from our frantic lives. A metallic gold fringe jacket, Midwestern grace, rhinestone lined eyes, and a unique quickstep stage gait, he reels you into his synergetic world of secular spiritual music even though one listen to “Five Easy Pieces” will tell you it ain’t no church song.

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Often referred to as the voice of a generation, Australian singer-songwriter/guitarist Courtney Barnett has developed a cult following for her self-deprecating lyrics and raspy guitars. Thrust into the spotlight as an unintentional spokesperson for depression, her music speaks to audiences who feel disconnected from the current culture of toxic positivity. More than just a documentary, Anonymous Club brings the viewer into the honest midst of her mental health struggles.

Shot on a 16mm camera by director and longtime Courtney Barnett music video collaborator Danny Cohen, the documentary traverses three years of live footage and snippets from an audio diary Cohen implored her to keep. At the heart of film is the portrayal of a solitary artist driven more by compulsion than a singular passion. “I sing angrily, and lost my voice because of my anger,” she says, as she paces around a room one night after a live show.

This angst, an ingrained part of her personality, is dissected when she shares she’s had depressive moods since she was ten with thoughts of being an emo kid before knowing what emo is. She talks about breaking down on stage and crying through a song because she’s so depressed, and the crowd is like “WTF.” It was a liberating experience for her she admits with a sense that she needs these songs as much as her audience relates to them. Songs are her form of communication and connection.

Barnett has been releasing her music on Milk! Records, a label she started back in 2012. Uncontrolled by executives, the film shows her grappling with the collective narrative she’s created. On one hand she understands that showing up in the world wholly as herself is helping people, but on the other, we see intense rumination that her art is futile, and she can’t be of service to anyone if she can’t even help herself.

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PHOTOS: JULIA LOFSTRAND | Cruel World Festival, which was initially set to make its debut in 2020, will go down in history in 2022 as a pivotal festival for some of the most era-defining bands in modern history who’ve retained their monolithic status.

Powerhouse, genre-originating bands—Devo, Blondie, Bauhaus, Public Image Ltd., and Morrissey—juxtaposed with the descendants of their music, was unlike anything I’ve experienced. Opting to cover Sunday and not Saturday’s show based on the 10 degree temperature difference somehow didn’t make the day any less hot. As we were all prepared to burn in black under the cloudless SoCal sky, this daylit underground party was filled with a joyous, chinoiserie parasol dotted, drama-free crowd. Music was everyone’s priority.

I made the long journey through the gates of the Pasadena Rose Bowl around 12:30 PM just in time catch Soft Kill’s deep bass and lofty lyrics. “We all got lost along the way,” lead singer Tobias Sinclair screamed into the mic during “Whirl.” “Yeah!” I thought, relishing the idea that all of us at this festival have at some point in our lives felt this way and that among this festival was our tribe.

Catching LA-based trio Automatic next, I thought their performance was more suited for this crowd than when I last saw them open for IDLES. I caught up for a brief interview with UK cold wave duo KVB to talk about their proper British castle wedding they recently had “to make the pandemic less shit” and their upcoming tour supporting their latest release, Unity, recorded with legendary My Bloody Valentine producer Andy Savours.

Heading over next to catch Sextile’s high-energy set, they played a brand new song that carried early The Crystal Method and Gang of Four vibes. As the early afternoon rolled on, I stopped at the “Sad Girls” stage to catch the English Beat and revelled in “Mirror in the Bathroom”—a perfect ‘80s ska-pop tune in the middle of the day.

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PHOTOS: MATTHEW BELTER | Jae Matthews and August Muller, the darkwave EBM outfit known as Boy Harsher have amassed a veritable cult following. In 2018 they reissued their early catalogue on their own label, Nude Club, while steadily generating new releases, ensuring their already immortal legacy is kept within their purview. With a sold-out tour stretching until August, Boy Harsher is one of the biggest acts to come out of the electronic underground.

The Belasco’s historic, cavernous ballroom radiated with the best dressed goth and fetish attire in LA as Austin-based opener Troller played for the quickly swelling venue. The crowd was receptive to their shoegaze/dark wave fusion; their share of converts imminent. It was all in anticipation of Boy Harsher taking the stage, and their performance was nothing short of seductive.

Sifting between their 6-year catalogue of music, Matthew’s voice, a crescendo of breathy lulls and high pitch screams, alternated between two microphones cutting through Muller’s synth and drum machines. Their simple algorithm—which could easily come off as basic live—is instead a provocative and sanctifying experience, including one bad ass dance party.

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PHOTOS: JULIA LOFSTRAND | In the Melvins’ documentary The Colossus of Destiny: A Melvins Tale, Jello Biafra of Dead Kennedys said of the band, “the fact that they get to be the Melvins and do what they want to do and get paid off of it is very rare.” Faith No More’s Mike Patton underscored, “They are a force of nature.”

Doing what one wants and being a force of nature is precisely what the Industrial Strength Tour featuring Ministry, Melvins, and Corrosion of Conformity is all about. Innumerable albums later—Ministry released their 15th studio album last year while Melvins are up to their 25th release—the fact that these bands play for their own headspace and can pack a venue of fans spanning generations is remarkable.

For many at this show, the subculture these bands have created was never a passing phase but vessels for their dark emotions and an extension of themselves that they’ve carried far into adulthood. A recently retired woman next to me explained she was going to spend her freedom following Ministry wherever they play, as she intermittently screamed lead singer Al Jourgensen’s name from the crowd. A salt-and-pepper father with his teenage son hung over a railing appreciating together the sound of musicians who are dedicated to their craft. And mixed in with the current wave of the SoCal industrial scene was a much older woman with neon yellow-green hair. She looked inspiring.

The bands on this bill are inventors of their genres, making this event not only a seriously amazing rock show but an educational history. Ministry is at the inception of industrial music. The versatile Melvins, although not fully aligned with grunge, are held directly responsible for it, and Corrosion of Conformity is thought to be one the first punk-metal bands. And how is everyone sounding at this stage of their game? Pretty fucking fantastic if you ask me.

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