College Kids Kim Haden and Malcolm Sosa
Wow, is it July already? Those of you who have been here before will know that I’ve had “a thing” for musicians who live and work on the Eastside of Los Angeles — Silver Lake, Echo Park, Los Feliz, Eagle Rock, etc. — whom I first discovered back in 2008 when I came across this little indie rock band on MySpace called The Airborne Toxic Event. It started with a few of their friends, and as they say, the rest is history. Let’s see what everyone’s up to.
I’ve decided this will be my last round-up, though I’ll continue to try to keep up with my favorites separately, of course. I’m also excited to be taking a long-overdue trip to my “musical mecca” next month and will hopefully be able to catch a lot of these folks in their natural habitat. Musings to follow.
Dearly Departed: unfortunately, two of my favorites are definitely gone — The Union Line and Voxhaul Broadcast. I would give links to their goodbye pages and songs to remember them by, but it appears they’ve both taken down their sites. Bummer. Bands who plan on breaking up this year: please leave something up, ok? Whatever shit happened, you still have fans.
Part I: Autolux | Black Hi-lighter | Broadheds | College Kids | Correatown | Dawn of Sequins (Eli & Mary of The Monolators) | Doom and Gloom | Downtown/Union | Eagle and Talon (projects of Alice Lin and Kim Talon) | Eastern Conference Champions | Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros | Everest
Autolux
The only photo Autolux has uploaded to their Facebook page this year is the one above. Good news. Not much else, but they’ll be playing 2 shows with Nine Inch Nails in Canada — November 24 in Edmonton and November 25 in Calgary. Their last album was Transit Transit in 2010.
Black Hi-lighter
Indie glam rock from Highland Park. Bite The Bullet was released in March. They’re performing at Echo Park Rising on Saturday 8/17 at The Echo.
web | facebook | bandcamp | twitter | soundcloud
Broadheds
I recently wrote about these guys. The band features members of Fitz and the Tantrums/M83, Kooks/Earlimart, Beck/NIN and Peter Walker, formerly of The Eulogies and Dangerbird Records co-founder. Their debut album was released in April, featuring a 64-page art book by Mark Todd. It was written and produced by guitarist/vocalist Walker. Justin Meldal-Johnsen (Beck, Nine Inch Nails) plays bass. Denny Weston Jr. (Kooks, Earlimart) plays drums. James King (Fitz and The Tantrums, M83) plays saxophone. They had a handful of shows April-July, but I think this is a one-off project, so it’s unclear if there will be more.
web | facebook | twitter | soundcloud | bandcamp | dangerbird records
::: BUY ALBUM ON iTUNES :::
College Kids
College Kids are primarily the dynamic duo of Malcolm Sosa (Rademacher) and Kim Haden (formerly of Light FM). They occasionally play in and around L.A. (most recently on July 4th at Taix) and Fresno/San Francisco. They’re currently working on (and almost done with) their first EP, and Malcolm is working on some new songs. Kim just finished recording a solo record. Hopefully the relocation to L.A. will mean more shows and greater activity in general.
Correatown
The solo project of Angela Correa. For the past year, she’s been touring her album Pleiades (Highline Records, 2012) around the U.S. and UK/Europe, which finished up this past spring. She’s back in Los Angeles now, thinking about her next project, and possibly in writing and recording mode by late summer.
web | facebook | twitter | bandcamp
Dawn of Sequins
Dawn of Sequins (Eli and Mary, formerly of The Monolators) are currently finishing the mixing of their debut album with Luke Ehret, and it will be coming out as a cassette on Vanity Projects in the Fall. They’ll be performing at Pehrspace in L.A. on August 5 to celebrate Matt Teardrop’s birthday. And I see from the listing that congratulations to Eli and Mary are in order. In other news, they cover Miley Cyrus on a new Mabson Enterprises compilation.
web | facebook | soundcloud
Doom and Gloom
Formerly in Castledoor, Nate and Liska now make up the cheery duo Doom and Gloom. They’re living in Fresno now, but get down to L.A. occasionally. They’re putting together some new music, and have recorded a cover song for an upcoming compilation but no additional details for now. They have some demos up on bandcamp. Listen below.
Downtown/Union
I’ll be honest I haven’t a clue as to whether or not these guys are still together. When you do a Google search and the first site that comes up for a band is a MySpace page, that has to be a bad sign.
Eagle and Talon
Here is my attempt to follow the musical exploits of the ladies from Eagle and Talon. Kim Talon is currently based in Brooklyn, where she has a new project called JAN, with band members residing in Los Angeles (that’s got to be challenging). Her recent self-titled LP was recorded with producer John Goodmanson in Seattle with some of her favorite L.A. musicians: Andrew Jeffords (Traps PS), Corey Fogel (Julia Holter), Daphne Chen (Section Quartet) and Davin Givhan (Saul Williams). She recently toured in Europe, the U.S. and are back in Europe in August. The live band includes Davin Givhan, Lia Braswell (of Gothic Tropic, Peter Pants) and Melinda Holm (Har Mar Superstar). As for the other half of Eagle and Talon, Alice Lin has been part of Alice and Michi (with Kono Michi) and seems to be based in both NYC and LA. There’s a recent remix of the song “Fighters.”
JAN: web | facebook | twitter
Alice & Michi: facebook
Eastern Conference Champions
Eastern Conference Champions are “writing tunes for their new record.” But the biggest news (for me, anyway) is that they’ll be performing at Echo Park Rising this year. Why? Because I’ll be there! (yes, I’m having a difficult time getting my head around this too, but that’s the rumor, anyway). Their last release was Speak-Ahh, from way back in 2011. I assume when the new album comes out, their website will join us in the present time. Actually not so bad as these things go; last updated August of last year. [hot off the presses: studio booked for the start of August for recording.]
web | facebook | twitter | youtube
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros
We’re just in time for a “first listen” of the new Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros album on NPR. It gets released in two days, on July 23rd, so listen quick while it’s still up! You can pre-order the album here. They’re currently in the midst of a big U.S. tour. See their official site for the complete schedule.
web | tumblr | facebook | twitter
Everest
Jay Blakesberg Photography
Stay tuned… part II coming soon!
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