Near the end of CSS’ set at The Regent, singer Lovefoxx reminisced with the crowd about the band’s previous gigs in Los Angeles. There was their first show in the city, somewhere in the Fashion District. At least one person in the audience was there. There was some back and forth about a show where Lovefoxx lost her voice. As for this show, it was jam packed. But, Lovefoxx said to the crowd, the love for CSS in the room might not have been about the band itself.
“We were playing in the background of your life,” she said. “And I think that you’re all here because you just love your history and your songs. We’re just lucky to have been in the background on your MySpace page.”
Mary Ocher live at 2220 Arts + Archives in Los Angeles on Thursday, January 16, 2025 (Pic: Liz O.)
“It feels like the apocalypse,” Mary Ocher said on stage at 2220 Arts + Archives. “But,” the Berlin-based artist added, “it feels like the apocalypse everywhere.”
It’s Thursday night, one week and one day after the wildfires began, and we’re in a small, indie theater on Beverly Blvd., just outside of downtown Los Angeles. In all honesty, the city looks better than it did a week ago. Last week, the downtown sky was orange-gray, casting a haze over streets, still littered with the debris from the windstorms, that made everything look like a 1970s photograph. Even with a mask, it was hard to walk around those first few days without feeling ill. Headaches, sore throats, coughs— the sort of things you might expect when wildfires loom in the distance— came and went with open windows and errand runs.
Ride live at The Fonda on Thursday, December 19, 2024 (Pic: Liz O.)
Early on in Ride’s set at The Fonda on December 19, as the band played “Dreams Burn Down,” the spotlights danced furiously with every wave of guitar noise that crashed over the crowd. Small specks of light flickered across the dark walls of the theater, burning out as soon as the shoegaze interludes cut back to the song. Everything was tightly choreographed, the lights and sound so in sync with each other that it was as if I had been swallowed by the music. When you can imagine the music as this living, breathing entity and you are, if only for a moment, existing in the belly of it, it’s an amazing, and rare, feeling.
This was my first Ride concert and, honestly, I think it’s an ideal time to see the band. While I love the now-classic albums, Nowhere and Going Blank Again, Ride released an album this year, Interplay, that’s a career best. It’s a fantastic collection of psychedelic guitar pop and one of my favorite albums of 2024. If you haven’t heard it yet, you should fix that asap.
I’ve been listening to Interplay since it was released earlier this year and had wanted to finally catch Ride on this tour. In fact, I was about to check for tickets when my friend Melissa was all like, just won tickets to see Ride, want to go with me? Of course, I did. This was an even better opportunity. Melissa and I have been friends since sometime around Y2K, when we crossed paths nerding out over British bands first in a chat room and then IRL at places like Cafe Bleu, a club night in West Hollywood at the time where you could actually dance to “Twisterella” and sway to “Vapour Trail.” Yet, neither of us had seen Ride before, so this was bound to be a memorable night.
Cadal live at Slipper Clutch on November 7, 2024 (Pic: Liz O.)
There are two people in front of me in line at Slipper Clutch, but, from my vantage point at the top of the stairs, I can see inside the venue’s top level bar. The crowd is solid, especially for a Thursday night downtown. Out on the streets, there’s no foot traffic. I can only imagine that downtown Los Angeles’ residents are safely tucked into their luxury apartments, broadcasting night time rituals or sleep hacks or whatever inanity is trending on TikTok this week. Inside Slipper Clutch, though, there’s a lot of life. The bar is bustling, people are walking towards the dance floor. I can hear a band play live, but at this point, I’m not sure which band that is.
I’m at Slipper Clutch to catch Cadal, a band from Santiago, Chile. For the past couple weeks, I’ve been listening to their album, Fiesta Nueva, which came out last year and is full of raw, dark punk energy. On this tour, Cadal is only playing two dates in the U.S., one of which is this show on a Thursday night in early November. It’s the sort of show you wouldn’t want to miss if you’re into borderline-goth, danceable indie bands. Plus, it’s just not that often that you can catch a stacked lineup with a headliner who has never played L.A. before for just $10 at the door. That’s the kind of show I’m compelled to support.
Los Bitchos live at Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 3, 2024 (Pic: Liz O.)
At 10 p.m. on Thursday night, Belinda Carlisle’s 1980s pop hit “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” played inside Teragram Ballroom, the volume increasing as the lights on the stage dimmed, then glowed purple. The members of Los Bitchos— four full-time members and one touring guitarist— take the stage and dance as they adjust their instruments, waiting for the song to nearly fade away before beginning a set that sounds nothing like Belinda Carlisle.
On Talkie Talkie, the new album from Los Bitchos, you can hear a bit of an ‘80s pop sheen in the production. It’s a subtle nod, but it’s there in the “La Isla Bonita” vibe of “Talkie Talkie, Charlie Charlie” and the dreamy Balearic disco of “Don’t Change.” On stage, though, Los Bitchos’ sound is raw and urgent, like they’re leading a party that might teeter— to appropriate a B-52s song title— out of bounds at any second.
Paul Barker of Lead Into Gold at Slipper Clutch on Thursday, September 19, 2024
Paul Barker is playing upstairs at The Slipper Clutch, in a tiny, attic-like space covered with murals and old show flyers. It’s loud, and I forgot my earplugs, so I hang out towards the back of the room, which is what I did when I saw Ministry many years ago— back when Barker was in the band— at a show that ranks at number 2 on the list of loudest concerts I’ve ever attended. This show at Slipper Clutch, however, isn’t as much of a raucous. The raw and rhythmic music is comfortably booming where I stand.
As for the vibe, it’s one that I’ve always known, the fringe of L.A. nightlife. It’s also one that I often fear is edging closer to extinction because there are fewer independent spaces in L.A. and fewer events that are more about the music than whatever shit went viral last week. And, in the most pessimistic moments, I think that there are simply fewer people who are interested in leaving the house and taking the chance on something that an algorithm didn’t send their way.
Future Islands live at The Shrine on September 18, 2024 (pic: Liz O.)
I saw the first Future Islands fan rush the stage at the end of “Corner of My Eye,” which closed out the band’s main set at The Shrine on Wednesday night. The way I remember it, which may or may not be 100% accurate, Samuel T. Herring was singing “thank you, thank you.” Someone in a plaid shirt ran up from audience’s right hand side and embraced the singer. Security appeared. Herring said something along the lines of, it’s okay. Later on, when Future Islands and openers Oh, Rose were in the midst of a “Vireo’s Eye” dance party during the encore, I saw two more people hop on to the stage, where they were promptly chased off by security. It was a déjà vu-inducing scene for me, and maybe for anyone else in the crowd who has been to a Morrissey show.
It was a fitting end to the night because, nearly two hours earlier, when Future Islands kicked off the show with “King of Sweden,” I thought, this vibe is so Morrissey. Herring has a different style of performance than Moz— there’s a good amount of HIIT-level cardio happening during a Future Islands show— but he also taps into a similar level of intensity that is infectious. The teenage girls in front of me bopped up and down excitedly. The totally ordinary looking dudes a few rows in front morphed into dancing machines. I wondered if anyone would rush the stage. It took a while, but they did.
View from the balcony while Strangeways played at The Smiths/Morrissey Convention on Sunday, August 25, 2024. (Pic: Liz O.)
It was still early in the evening when Strangeways dropped us back into 1992 with a little “Glamorous Glue.” Up on the balcony at Avalon, the crowd sang along, “everyone lies/nobody minds/everyone lies” and the energy grew more dynamic as the song progressed. If you knew the song— and, certainly, everyone in this room did— you could anticipate what would happen once The Smiths/Morrissey tribute band reached the final verse.
“We look to Los Angeles—“
The crowd roared, nearly overpowering the second half of the sentence.
“— for the language we use.”
Down on the floor, right in front of the stage, people jump up and down, their arms waving in the air as they chant, “London is dead! London is dead!”
In this brief moment where L.A. pride and Morrissey-mania converge, I realize why I’ve always had a good time at The Smiths/Morrissey Convention. It’s a legit, local gathering made by and for fans that still happens in spite of all the forces that make it more difficult for subcultures to exist.
Neyva live at Leiminspace on August 3, 2024 (Pic: Liz O.)
It was a quiet Saturday night in Chinatown. Out on Broadway, all the shops, as well as many of the restaurants, were closed by 8 p.m. The day-trippers had long gone and the club crowd was yet to arrive. In that strange in between time, though, the scene on Lei Min Way, a small, pedestrian-only street inside Central Plaza that tourists always miss, was a vibe.
The crowd gathered in and around art gallery Leiminspace wasn’t large, but it was high-quality. That’s the thing people often don’t understand about events— maybe because real life doesn’t translate well on social media— the size of a crowd doesn’t determine whether or not something is worthwhile. What matters is how engaged people are with what’s happening in that IRL space. And it was clear from the first note of Neyva’s set that people were rapt by both the music and the performance.
Low Leaf live at L.A. State Historic Park for Listening by Moonrise on July 21, 204 (Photo: Liz O.)
There’s a pocket in L.A. State Historic Park where city life almost fades away. It’s near the back of the 32-acre park, just beyond sculptor Anna Sew Hoy’s bronze arches, “Psychic Body Grotto,” between the track that runs around the periphery of the park and the small creek bed that fills during storms. Here, the trees are large, at least by the standards of downtown Los Angeles. Even though many of their leaves have already fallen and dried, there is still plenty of shade and a cool breeze rustles through them. The reminder that we’re still in L.A. comes every five to ten minutes, when A Line trains whizz past the park to and from the Chinatown Metro station.
L.A. State Historic is my local park, so I’m here often, but on this particular Sunday, I stopped by for music. A few times a year, around the full moon, the local arts and culture non-profit Clockshop, the same group that puts on the annual Kite Festival, hosts a music and sound event called Listening By Moonrise. For the July session, they teamed up with Living Earth, a fairly new collective that produces events that bring together performance and local nature. On this occasion, the performers are Salenta + Topu, a jazz duo that met in Brooklyn, but are now based in L.A., and Low Leaf, who makes impossible-to-categorize music with, primarily, a harp and synthesizer.
