Beatique

Category: Interview

  • San Gabriel Fights Off a Case of Adult Onset Goth on New EP

    San Gabriel James Bookert promo photo by Kassy Balli
    San Gabriel’s new EP, Adult Onset Goth, is out now. (Photo: Kassy Balli)

    James Bookert is trying not to get jaded with age. “Especially being from Austin, there are a lot of older, jaded musicians,” he says on a recent video call. “I was really at risk of becoming one of those people. Maybe, in some ways, I can be and I have to actively fight not to be.”

    That tension found its way into Adult Onset Goth, the EP that Bookert released in September under his alias, San Gabriel. “The older I get, the more serious I get,” he says. So Bookert imagined a medical infomercial tackling grown up teen angst. The title, though, isn’t a description of the EP’s sound. San Gabriel’s brand of synth-heavy melancholy is tempered with a touch of sweetness, a style that’s closer to Air’s soundtrack for The Virgin Suicides or Tame Impala on The Slow Rush. There’s a dose of rebellion on the EP too, in the form of the song “Fuck the Money,” where Bookert sings, “I was so tired of 9-5/Working for the weekend.”

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  • Haircut 100 Turns Up the Funk on First New Album in 40+ Years

    Haircut 100 Press photo by Andrew Cotterill
    (Photo: Andrew Cotterill)

    Back in June, Haircut 100 released Boxing the Compass, their first album in over 40 years. That decades-long gap between releases, though, wasn’t for a lack of trying. 

    “We played various festivals and a couple of gigs here and there and we always said, wouldn’t it be a shame if this didn’t lead to other things?” says bassist Les Nemes. “And it didn’t. It never did because we didn’t have any manager to get the momentum going and organize stuff.”

    Then, around the 40th anniversary of debut album Pelican West, Haircut 100 played London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Following the show, they linked up with manager Melvyn Taub. “He basically took over and everything that happened, even what’s happening now, I guess, in a way, is all down to Melvyn,” says Nemes. Sadly, Taub died in 2024. “He never really got to take it all the way through. So, everything we do, we do with Melvyn in mind. This is what Melvyn would have wanted.”

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  • Lia Braswell: The Drummer Takes Center Stage

    Lia Braswell promo photo
    Lia Braswell (photo: James Duran)

    Lia Braswell is center stage at Slipper Clutch, a barrage of multi-colored, psychedelic lights washing over her white outfit. Flanked by a guitarist and a bassist, the L.A.-based drummer and singer plays with all the energy of the lunar eclipse that passed shortly before her set began. By the time she bursts into new single, “If Not for the Chaos,” Braswell is both banging out the rhythm and belting the lyrics with full force. It’s intense. 

    Braswell plays live often, but, typically, not for her own project. Just days earlier, she returned to L.A. from a whirlwind trip to England, where she drummed for two Chelsea Wolfe shows. Later this month, she’ll head out on Wolfe’s U.S. tour before joining up with She Wants Revenge to drum on their European jaunt. 

    “I haven’t been playing a lot of solo shows recently,” Braswell said when we connected for a video call earlier that week. “Just getting my bearings around these songs that I’ve written live has been really fun, but also intimidating because I’m in charge of all of it, as opposed to working for somebody else.”

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  • Lisa Molinaro Turns an Impasse Into Art on Blind Trust

    Lisa Molinaro photo by Mary Luczycki
    Lisa Molinaro (photo by Mary Luczycki)

    Lisa Molinaro knows how to turn an impasse into art. “We All Get Stuck,” from the singer and musician’s debut full-length album, Blind Trust, uses a propulsive, yet repetitive rhythm that mimics pushing through the frustration. Strings build and then the drums release near the song’s conclusion, like a breakthrough for both the musician and the listener. 

    “It’s cathartic, but it’s mildly cathartic,” says Portland-based Molinaro during a recent video call. “You don’t get a full release.”

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  • Shonen Knife Brings Back The Classics with Let’s Knife Re-Cut

    Shonen Knife Press Photo by Kai Taylor
    (Photo: Kai Taylor)

    Let’s Knife wasn’t Shonen Knife’s first album. It wasn’t even the Japanese punk band’s first album in the U.S. Still, the 1992 release became a pivotal one for the trio, who had already been together for about a decade by that point. Songs from the album, like “Riding on the Rocket,” have remained fan favorites, and part of the band’s live sets, some 30+ years later. “It’s our core of Shonen Knife,” says singer/guitarist Naoko on a recent video call from Osaka. 

    There was a problem, though, in that Let’s Knife had fallen out of print and wasn’t available for streaming. Since Let’s Knife’s absence from streamers was beyond the band’s control, Shonen Knife’s U.S. producer Robby Takac (who is also bassist of Goo Goo Dolls and head of Good Charamel Records) suggested that they re-record it. “I thought it was a very good idea,” says Naoko. Not only would the songs be available again, but they would be recorded by the current lineup. Atsuko, Naoko’s sister, played drums for the band in the early 1990s. Now, she’s the bassist. Drummer Risa has been part of the fold for a little more than a decade.

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  • Surf Guitar 101 Is Happening This Weekend with Los Straitjackets, The Bomboras, Boss Martians and More

    Surf Guitar 101 2026 festival poster with art by Shag
    Surf Guitar 101 2026 festival poster with art by Shag

    Thirty years ago, Jeff “Big Tiki Dude” Hanson stumbled across surf music via an Insect Surfers show at the Doll Hut in Anaheim. He had heard 1960s groups like the Surfaris and the Pyramids via his dad’s 45 collection, but he didn’t dive into the genre until he noticed how Insect Surfers, a surf revival band who have been active since 1979, incorporated sounds inspired by spaghetti western film scores into their music. “They’re mixing the chocolate and the peanut butter, surf and spaghetti western,” says Hanson. That led him to regular surf shows at the Doll Hut and Huntington Beach’s Surfing Museum and on CD shopping trips through the South Bay. Today, Hanson has amassed an ample collection of CDs and vinyl across the genre. He also founded the Surf Guitar 101 festival, which celebrates its 17th annual event at Garden Grove Elks Lodge from Friday, July 31,  through Sunday, August 2, with a lineup that includes Los Straitjackets, The Bomboras, Boss Martians, Slacktone and many more. 

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  • Taylor Bickett: From TikTok Hit to Debut Album

    Taylor Bickett promo photo by Cooper Smith
    Taylor Bickett (Photo: Cooper Smith)

    Taylor Bickett didn’t initially set out to make an album. She was just writing more songs. But, with two EPs and some singles under her belt, plus a TikTok hit to her credit, the Nashville-based singer was up for the challenge. She sifted through her work looking for songs that she might want to release together. In the process, Bickett saw two themes emerge. “One, this idea of being afraid of commitment, wanting to run away from things,” she says on a recent video call. “Then this contrasting idea of craving intimacy and safety and love.”

    Those ideas became a push-and-pull on Bickett’s debut full-length album, Nothing I Can’t Undo. Released in mid-July, the album drops listeners into this conflict with opening song “The Arsonist,” where Bickett sings, “nothing is permanent/if you’re brave enough/to burn it down,” the tension continuing through the collection of soft pop songs that flit between electronic and folk production. 

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  • Parts & Labor Turn Up the Noise Rock on First New Album in 15 Years

    Parts & Labor by Tod Seelie Press Photo
    Photo: Tod Seelie

    Parts & Labor went all out for their first album in 15 years. Set of All Sets, released on July 10, is a one hour and 21 minute ride through 17 tracks that begins with a proggy overture and builds into rollicking noise rock augmented by two drummers and tempered with synth flourishes and interludes. That the band, who emerged from early 2000s Brooklyn, reconvened at all is no small feat considering that the members are now spread from coast to coast. That they managed to make such an ambitious album is all the more rare. 

    “The kind of maximalist approach really makes this stand out to us,” says Christopher Weingarten, drummer for Parts & Labor. “The hooks are so giant. The noise is so noisy. There are two drummers on it. It feels bigger. There are two discs. It’s huge.”

    Active between 2002 and 2012, the band formed around the songwriting core of Dan Friel and BJ Warshaw. Weingarten joined the fold in 2004. After his departure a few years later, Joe Wong stepped in on the drums. The four make up this current incarnation of Parts & Labor. 

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  • Julez and the Rollerz Channel Glam Power Pop on Dirty Little Rock N Roller

    Julez and the Rollerz press photo by Zach Adams
    Photo: Zach Adams

    Jules Batterman recalls driving along a dark desert highway with her now-husband on a cross-country move to California. “It felt like it was going on forever,” she says on a recent video call. 

    Years later, Batterman, who fronts the L.A. band Julez and the Rollerz, referenced that drive in “Time,” the opening track on debut album Dirty Little Rock N Roller. It’s a song about the passage of time and disconnecting from the world, including our phones. “We don’t need these distractions,” says Batterman. “Experience life for what it is because there is so much going on.”

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  • Replaced By Robots’ Retro-Futurist Theme For the End of the World

    Press photo courtesy of Replaced by Robots
    Photo courtesy of Replaced by Robots

    Replaced By Robots sounds like it could be anything from the title of a 1950s B-movie to a 2026 news headline. It’s actually the name of a band, albeit it one that embodies the terror and absurdity of both mid-20th century horror and modern life. That’s all embodied in Replaced by Robots’ video for their song of the same name, a stop motion romp through a Hollywood bot invasion where no one and nothing, not the musicians or the Angelyne-pink sports car, are safe. 

    “We were talking about how fun it would be if we had a Monkees-style TV show around the hijinks of the band,” says singer and keyboardist Heather Morgan. “Then, we thought, we should make a theme song.”

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