SSION | Fool’s Gold | Self-released
NO AGE | Every Artist Needs A Tragedy | PPM
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Between bands like Foot Village, BARR, and Lavender Diamond (see reviews below), LA is undergoing a scene explosion unlike anything the city has seen since Darby Crash was alive and puking. One of the central forces is the guitar-drums duo No Age. Formed out of the ashes of the gloriously short-lived Wives, they’re a pop band with noise motives, writing sun-bleached songs that at once chime and roar. This month they’re giving the outside world what-fer by releasing four EPs and a seven-inch on five obscure labels at the same time, but Fat Cat will make it easier for everyone when they compile them as a full-length this fall.
Foot Village is an acoustic hardcore quartet that touts itself as antielectricity; there aren’t any guitars in the mix, just drums and a whole lot of yelling. Most of the songs on the new full-length are named for countries–“Brazil,” Korea,” “Where Ever the Fuck Arnold Schwarzenegger’s From”–but the centerpiece is “Egypt,” a seven-minute epic of free-jazz moaning that grows ever more tortured, punctuated by coughing fits and explosions of unsynchronized pounding. It’s political, confrontational, and a little annoying. Linda Sharrock fans, take note.
KALABRESE | Rumpelzirkus | Stattmusic
A bunch of bands have been lumped into this whole freak-folk thing for reasons that have little to do with the actual music. Lavender Diamond are a good example: from the very first note their new record, Imagine Our Love, is nothing but utterly majestic, deeply unfreaky soft rock. With a virginal lilt that’s way more Karen Carpenter than Karen Dalton, singer Becky Stark repeatedly hangs on the word love, stretching it across multiple measures of piano, violin, and a slowly slapped tambourine.
