Posts Tagged ‘review’

The annual FYF Fest, now in its seventh year, experienced serious growing pains Saturday at the Los Angeles State Historic Park downtown, even if the music onstage offered gratifying highs. The daylong concert featured 35 buzzing bands, a combination of rising, boundary-pushing underground acts and seasoned rock stalwarts, and drew an enthusiastic crowd estimated to be 20,000.

But just as last year, those arriving early to catch the first roster of bands were left stranded in interminable lines. Although the musicians onstage played to eager enthusiasts, the behind-the-scenes organization was visibly lacking throughout the day and night, as evidenced by overflowing trashcans, lack of water dispensaries and endless queues.

Festival-goers are nothing if not a dedicated bunch, though, and despite the many problems, the patient and the persistent experienced a hefty offering of musical joy. Here are highlights and lowlights:

Best costumes: The Dead Man's Bones children's choir was called Warm Glass of Milk, and it arrived decked in period costumes. The kids, ranging in age from preschoolers to teenagers, came portraying (among others) Charlie Chaplin, Audrey Hepburn, Janis Joplin and Ludwig van Beethoven, stood behind Bones' founders Ryan Gosling (yes, the actor) and Zach Shields and belted out a wonderful array of couplets, the best of which was "I raise my flag up into your heart / You let the winds come tear it apart."

Best singalong: It's hard to imagine that one year ago Local Natives were hustling the Eastside residency circuit. Because if the crowd's instant, rapturous reaction to the boozy piano intro to "Airplanes" was any indication, they were born to play to fields of thousands. It takes a special skill to make a line like "Every question, you took the time to sit and look it up in the encyclopedia" into a lighters-up moment, but the Natives' crystalline harmonies could make a cookbook feel anthemic.

Most inescapable fashion trend: The floral women's jumper, seemingly filched en masse from the closet of "Blossom," our early '90s sartorial saint. The hills of the L.A. State Historical Park were alive in rayon-floral jumpers and linen lady onesies. So the question is: Will the '90s revival last till next year or are we already nostalgic for 2000 and its velour track suits?

Best seamless incorporation of a train: Washed Out's set was too quiet, unfortunate considering the gorgeously subtle textures of Ernest Greene's bedroom chillwave. But every time the Gold Line train whizzed by the stage, quiet yet forceful, it so beautifully matched Greene's smoothed-out pastel pop that we wished for a sudden rush hour to occur at 8 p.m. on a holiday weekend.

Best evidence that rock 'n' roll is no longer dangerous: In addition to more mustaches spotted on Saturday, there were marked differences between Saturday's rock-oriented FYF and last month's electronic dance festival Hard, both of which were at the same location. For one, there were no police helicopters buzzing overhead keeping an eye on the "ravers" like at Hard. Nor were there the dozens of uniformed officers and squad cars guarding the periphery of the park. Rather, a lone cruiser sat parked at an intersection on North Spring. The scariest place at the fest was in the mosh pit for 7 Seconds, but the slam dancers managed to police themselves just fine, thank you very much.

Best dance set of the night: The sprawling crew that goes by the moniker !!! originally formed in Sacramento and have become reliable shepherds of the beat, never straying from their North Star of propulsive, thinking-man's funk. It's always a good sign when the viewers closest to the stage aren't the only ones dancing. All over the park, bubbles of dance erupted, pushing sweaty strangers closer together, everyone on a fearless mission to get down.

Most perplexing start: For the first portion of Panda Bear's set, Noah Lennox, as he's known to the DMV, seemed determined to scare off anyone seeking the saltwater lull of his breakthrough solo work, "Person Pitch," or the obsessive jams of Animal Collective. He opened with synth monoliths, almost violent in their inescapable tension, which were eventually spliced with disembodied rips from "Merriweather Post Pavilion." A little later, Panda Bear weakened a beautifully slumberous loop with mismatched vocals and guitar. It seemed like every time a lovely moment would take flight, Lennox would attack it with his version of musical DDT.

Best argument for organizational skills: Dear promoter Sean Carlson: We love you, and the Los Angeles music scene is all the better for your ambitiousness and boundless enthusiasm. But it's time to stage an intervention: The last two years of FYF have been some of the most frustrating concert experiences in recent memory. Want a bottle of water? Wait in line for 45 minutes. Have to use the facilities? That'll be an hour. Want something as wantonly luxurious as a cold beer? Soviet bread lines moved quicker. A great lineup means nothing if you spend half your time beneath punishing, shadeless sun unable to meet any basic human needs. Next year, double your capacity for every amenity or the "Y" in FYF may come to mean "You" instead of "Yeah" — and you can fill in the rest of the acronym.

Most unceremonious close: At other festivals and at their own concerts, the Rapture has been known to kill the crowd with a cowbell-laden dance-punk frenzy. Not so for its closing set at FYF. Perhaps Luke Jenner and company were directed to keep it chill for the finish lest all those American Apparel employees on their night off burst into rioting, but the last three or four songs were the equivalent of sticking a knife in a fat tire.

– August Brown, Margaret Wappler and Randall Roberts

Photos: Best Coast performs on the Oak Stage (top); Local Natives plays to the crowd (second); fans rock out (third); and Ted Leo performs in the hills of the L.A. State Historical Park with 35 other acts at the FYF Fest. Credit: Katie Falkenberg / For The Times.

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The fact that Nite Jewel titled their new e.p. “Am I Real?” seems apt.  This is a band touching on big ideas, but still implacably held by doubt.

Every piece is there for a truly devastating act – Ramona Gonzalez’s lilting voice has a wide reach and a knack for making sadness sound both icy and inviting at once. In her young career, she’s arrived at a fully-realized sound palette of soft-focus synthesizers, and this newest incarnation of her live band sports some high-wire instrumentalists. Her new e.p. is her most fidelity-focused and vigorously produced thing in her catalog and has maybe her best song yet on it.

And yet. At the release party for “Am I Real?” at the Troubadour last night, the band went back and forth between an intriguing sense of remove and just feeling distant and lax. They use obscurity to great effect on record, and like most problems in life, this can probably be solved live with lazers and fog machines.  But they need to figure out how to make their night-driving mood feel more definitely real in person.

The best part of Nite Jewel live is the exacting skill of the rhythm section – Cory Lee plays the record’s slap-bass samples with Bootsy Collins precision, and drummer Gavin Salmon manages to be both completely in pocket while breaking rhythms into tiny, sharp pieces. Gonzalez and her partner in Nite Jewel, Cole M. Grief-Neill,  are virtuoso synth wranglers, and even Julia Holter, the droll female backup singer with few responsibilities other than occasional high harmonies and a charming art-school-robot-dance, adds a certain languid mood to show.

But there’s practically no engagement with either the crowd or each other – there may be no band in existence who is this versed in funk and who exhibits less joy in playing it. Yes, that’s sort of their deal – using deep rhythms and disco tones to achieve their exact opposite effect, but it doesn’t necessarily make for an especially gripping live set.

That didn’t detract from the quality of the tunes – “Am I Real?” has a Daft Punk-ish bass swagger and girl-group gang harmonies that translate even better onstage; "White Lies" rides a lead guitar riff that borrows its mock-cockiness from no less than the "Top Gun" theme. “What Did He Say,” from her debut album “Good Evening” kept every ounce of its out-til-sunrise daze.  In a way, Nite Jewel's mystique may make for a more satisfying studio creation – their ambient, gossamer remix of Health’s “Die Slow” is a high point in that band’s recent smattering of edits. But if they’re going to be as fun to watch in person as they are to nod off to on the couch after a long night of bad decisions, they need to go for the throat and understand they’re very real — and very capable of a little more vigor.

-August Brown

Photo by Graeme Flegenheimer / ForceField PR

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There’s a modification of an old joke that came to mind on Wednesday night. “What does a 70-year-old jazz legend get to play on his birthday at the Hollywood Bowl?” The answer for the great Herbie Hancock is, of course, anything he wants.

Not that this would be anything new for Hancock, who has always gone his own way. Starting his career at only 21, the pianist has zigzagged through an array of musical high points that have included eye-opening bandleader, sideman to Miles Davis in a historic jazz combo and innovative cross-pollinator, first with the raucous jazz-funk fusion of the Headhunters and later helping launch both the hip-hop and music-video eras with 1983’s “Rockit.” And that doesn’t even cover an album of the year Grammy in 2008 for “River.”

Billed as “Seven Decades — The Birthday Celebration,” the L.A. Philharmonic realistically needed two or three nights to adequately capture Hancock, who is in his first year as its Creative Chair for Jazz. In a lineup full of high-wattage guests, the program was split into two parts, the first consisting of Hancock’s groundbreaking, mostly acoustic ’60s work and the latter dedicated to Hancock’s equally influential electric period and his new album, “The Imagine Project.”

Though most of the near-capacity crowd knew to arrive early, it was easy to pity the few stragglers hustling to their seats through Hancock’s first set. Opening with a weaving, breezy take on Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage,” the wealth of experience onstage was awe-inspiring as the pianist was joined by longtime collaborator Wayne Shorter on saxophone, Jack DeJohnette on drums, trumpeter Terence Blanchard and, briefly, electric bassist Nathan East.

Joined soon after by expressive young bassist Esperanza Spalding, the group eased into “Orbits,” a Shorter composition from the Davis years. While Blanchard filled Davis’ shoes beautifully with bright, arcing trumpet lines, it was Spalding who wowed the crowd with an acrobatic, joyful duel with Hancock that knocked around the song’s edges, showing she could more than hold her own with the veteran masters.

A textured, free exploration punctuated by DeJohnette’s shape-shifting percussion proved Hancock could still venture out without a net, but a set-closing “Cantaloupe Island” never entirely coalesced into the original’s insistent, clockwork rhythm (memorably sampled by the hip-hop group Us3 in the ‘90s, another example of Hancock’s broad reach beyond genres and generations).

Such themes run deep through “The Imagine Project,” an album loaded with high-profile guests from around the world, and, like the album, the results onstage were at times uneven. India.Arie gamely carried the lead vocal of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” which gained a fairly irresistible African-informed midsection from guitarist Lionel Loueke, but the song’s brassy opening by vocalist Kristina Train had little of the nuance Lennon’s plaintively hopeful lyrics demand.

Later collaborations such as the raga-dusted “Song Goes On” with tabla master Zakir Hussain and sitar player Niladri Kumar, and a cover of “The Times, They Are a’ Changin’” led by dusky-voiced Irish singer Lisa Hannigan fared better, as did “Tatamant Tilay / Exodus,” which featured the airily elegant Debbie Allen Dance Academy in the place of Malian trance-rockers Tinariwen, who appeared in a recorded backing track.

But the night got its greatest burst of energy from Hancock himself. Proving that even at 70 no one rocks a hip-slung keytar quite so convincingly, Hancock playfully faced down Brazilian percussionist Paulinho Da Costa during an extended “Watermelon Man” that brought laughs from both the crowd and the musicians.

After an abbreviated but still lethally funky “Chameleon” closed down the night, Hancock checked his watch as his many friends swayed to “Rockit” at curtain call, butting against the Bowl’s curfew. With a spirit still eager to stretch into new directions, Hancock still sounds timeless.

– Chris Barton

Photo: Herbie Hancock in the moment at the Hollywood Bowl Wednesday night. Credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

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Billie Joe Armstrong and company reinforce their scrappy punk status at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, inviting fans to come on stage and sing along.

Heads up, Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman: You may be in for some unexpected company come November.

“I’m running for governor of California!” Billie Joe Armstrong revealed Tuesday night at Irvine’s Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, where Green Day played one of the final dates of its U.S. tour in support of last year’s “21st Century Breakdown.”

That this announcement came not long after the frontman declared (in slightly saltier language) that he’s a rock star and can therefore do whatever the heck he wants was no cause for worry: Armstrong is a benevolent despot who encourages fans to join him onstage and launches free merchandise into the cheap seats with an air-powered T-shirt gun.

The singer’s introduction into state politics would present another problem, though: the early retirement of what might be America’s best live band.

Green Day is riding as high as it ever has this year, thanks in large part to the success of “American Idiot,” the Broadway adaptation of its 2004 album of the same name. And in Irvine the Oakland-based outfit — filled out to a six-piece with auxiliary players on guitars, keyboards and other instruments — seemed determined to prove that its theatrical streak runs deep.

Towering columns of fire erupted behind drummer Tré Cool during “Give Me Novacaine.” A video-screen backdrop depicted the ruins of a city skyline in “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” And confetti sprayed skyward as the band concluded its main set with an accordion-enriched version of its 2000 hit “Minority.”

Yet Tuesday’s three-hour show also emphasized the vitality of Green Day’s connection to its scrappy punk-scene roots. In older songs such as “Burnout” and “When I Come Around,” both from the group’s 1994 breakout, “Dookie,” Armstrong and his bandmates did what they were doing long before they graduated to arenas and stadiums, bashing out their hard-pop tunes with fat-free efficiency. Only the energy had been upped to suit the needs of a capacity crowd of more than 15,000.

In another nod to those cozy dive-bar days, Armstrong repeatedly invited audience members to take over his vocal duties, most memorably in “Longview,” Green Day’s first big single. The frontman’s initial pick flamed out after one verse, but her successor sang the rest of the song with an awestruck enthusiasm that collectivized the band’s superstardom while reinforcing it at the same time.

When the young man finished, he held out the microphone toward Armstrong, but Armstrong declined to take it back, obviously enjoying the sight of an ordinary kid temporarily granted extraordinary power. Following his idol’s earlier example, the fan mounted Cool’s drum riser and then leaped off it as Armstrong looked on approvingly.

Talk about noblesse oblige.

By Mikael Wood, Special to the Los Angeles Times

Photo: Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong performs at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater. Credit: Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times

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The heterosexual working couple may be replacing the band of brothers as the primary unit of the 21st century rock group. In Arcade Fire, Sleigh Bells and the Dirty Projectors, a balanced blend of male and female sensibilities creates the kind of buzz once caused by all the boy energy of classic rock. Relatively balanced, that is: In most groups built around such units, the man remains the primary creative force (at least on the surface). As in most workplaces, in pop music women have made significant but limited gains.

Jenny & Johnny represent a different situation. In this couple, the woman is the powerhouse and the man, though forceful in his own ways, rises to her challenges. Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice have been creatively and romantically involved for half a decade; the lady, one of indie's most successful thinking beauties, is the bigger star. Maybe that's why this project, though lighthearted, has some of the prickliness of a real day-to-day relationship. The title may be "We're Having Fun Now," but there's room for wisecracks, bitterness and worry amid the lovey-dovey stuff.

"I'm Having Fun Now" distinguishes itself from Lewis and Rice's solo efforts, or hers with band-on-hiatus Rilo Kiley, by going for a very specific tone. The fuzzy but bright production by the duo, with help from old friends Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes) and Pierre de Reeder (Rilo Kiley), has been compared to classic AM radio fare but is really closer to the jangle pop of the 1980s — bands like the Three O'Clock and Opal in L.A., Let's Active out of North Carolina, and the Chills from New Zealand. It's prettier than what today's shoegaze revivalists do, but still a little jarring and tart.

Merging voices and exchanging lines, Lewis and Rice don't duet so much as banter. Some, like "Switchblade," are directed at the kinds of shifty characters a musical couple might encounter in Hollywood. Others tackle the relationship theme in language that's highly literate and never over-sugared.

What other pop couple would dream of being together forever in a New Yorker cartoon? That's just how urbane and aware Lewis and Rice can be, working out their power dynamic with the "record" switch on.

– Ann Powers

Jenny & Johnny

"I'm Having Fun Now"

(Warner Bros.)

Three and a half stars (Out of four)

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