Music

As promised, LA’s Local Natives rolled through town last night and offered up a display well worthy of its critical acclaim. But we expected that much, really: Just like the band’s powerful SXSW showcases, last night’s set found the band revelling in all of its Yeasayer-meets-Fleet Foxes hype–and then some…

In previewing last night’s Yann Tiersen performance at the Granada Theater, Observer contributor Doug Davis promised a rare treat–and from the looks of Andrew Shepherd’s slideshow of Tiersen’s, Sleep Whale’s abd Doug Burr’s performances last evening, it looks like that’s just what the crowds at the venue received. Check the…

Your normal Poster of the Week captain is out of the office today, keeping busy with the things that he actually gets paid to do (what a jerk). So, once again, the task of picking this week’s winning poster falls all the way to me. My choice? The above image…

In this week’s print edition, Doug Davis gets to thinking about Yann Tiersen, the man behind the Amelie soundtrack and, in turn, maybe the whole baroque twee movement of the mid-’00s. Writes Davis:A classically trained musician, Tiersen’s a multi-instrumentalist who rarely tours and, when he does, he’s as likely to…

Now that that’s out of the way, ​I’ll refrain from commenting on the few questionable performances by seasoned bank-earning professional musicians during the Idol Gives Back episode last night. Because, well, it was all for the good of many children. And there’s really no reason to diminish the fact that…

Los Angeles’ Local Natives emerged on the indie music front early this year with their debut album, Gorilla Manor, which earned its U.S. release on February 16. Since then, the band has received positive reviews from various publications and played shows all over the States, including multiple performances in Austin…

One of the reasons that the movie Amelie was so engaging (besides the beguiling performance of Audrey Tatou) was the soundtrack composed by Yann Tiersen. His offering was a compelling mixture of French folk music, classical piano, and pop—and it subsequently found footing with a number of mid-Noughties indie acts…

There’s something in life to intimidate every soul—a person, an opportunity, the heart’s desire—and perhaps that’s part of Frightened Rabbit’s appeal. Boldly seizing a moniker his mother hung on him when social anxiety held him back a year in nursery school, Scott Hutchinson’s Northern Scotland quintet plays earnest self-searching paeans…

Rapper B.o.B.’s song “Nothin’ On You,” is a massive hit, the kind that sells a million copies and sits at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. (Well, at press time, anyway; by the time you read this it very well could be No. 1.) With its lady-friendly R&B chorus…

There is no shortage of articles or opinions lauding the superb guitar playing skills of Jeff Beck. And deservedly so: He’s part of what one might call the Divine Three (along with fellow guitar gods Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton). But Beck is the lone member of that league who…

It was close to midnight and Toby Pipes’ cell phone was blowing up with people trying to get hold of him. Just another Saturday night? Not really. “I got a lot of phone calls,” he says. It was overwhelming. So Pipes didn’t answer any of them—not until later on in…

Seeing that The Happy Bullets have been a part of the Dallas-area music scene since 2003, it’s odd that more folks haven’t discovered the band’s many charms. Then again, it’s been five years since Jason Roberts and his merry crew unleashed any new music. It’s kind of hard to discover…

If you were a child in the ’80s, you probably had a mixture of fear and curiosity about the scrawny longhaired guys with bad teenage mustaches and sleeveless black T-shirts sporting gory or Satanic band logos. Warbeast’s debut CD, Krush The Enemy, is the kind of music those guys listened…

In Buddhism, a Foe Destroyer is one who achieves Nirvana and is no longer subject to rebirth. That’s a strange name for a band born only a month ago in the wake of Oso Closo’s breakup, not to mention one that boasts fewer than a dozen songs to its name…

If you’re looking for the YouTube version, you’ll find it right here.Old fans of Baruch the Scribe might be surprised by what they hear in this week’s video, shot last Wednesday out at El Sibil. As frontman Judson Valdez explains, his band flat-out doesn’t do acoustic sets anymore. Why? Well,…