Cover art for “Little Doll” single from Male Tears
I wasn’t planning on playing anything super new at last night’s Nocturno-presented fundraiser for Refugee Children Center. The Cure was the theme for the night and, by 1 a.m., I was trying to squeeze in as many songs from the band as possible. But, also, the crowd was riding this darkwave-meets-Italo-meets-Crystal Castles vibe, so right after Mr. Flagio’s classic “Take a Chance” faded out and “Vanished,” the Crystal Castle song, took over, I thought that new Male Tears song might work. And it did. Actually, “Little Doll” worked really well. It kept the crowd going between and segued nicely to “Fotonovela,” the old Spanish synthpop tune from Ivan, which lead to Depeche Mode and then to more Cure to close out the night.
Male Tears dropped “Little Doll” earlier this month. I gave it a listen because I liked the cover art. IDK if ‘80s Eastern European Fantasy Film is the intended aesthetic, but that’s how I see it and I love it. It turns out that I loved the song too. It’s catchy synthpop with a just a hint of early ‘90s Eurodance creeping in the background. Definitely a keeper. (If you want to snag a copy for yourself, here’s the link to the song on Bandcamp, which I think is still the more artist-friendly option.)
Anyhow, thanks to everyone who came out last night to dance and support Refugee Children Center. Here’s the set list.
Last night was a blast! Thanks to Larry G. for having me play at Underground last night and for everyone who turned up to my Friday the 13th darkwave birthday gig. I’ll be back at Underground for New Year’s Eve. Tickets are available now, so click this link to get yours asap. Keep scrolling to see what I played last night.
Spoiler alert: Romance by Fontaines D.C. is the album of the year.
Year-end lists are tough. I don’t even know how many versions of my top 2024 albums I drafted before settling on this one. It was, originally, a 10 album list. That just wasn’t working, though, so I expanded it to 15 and still ended up cutting a bunch of albums that are fantastic. What I’m getting at is that I’m not going to argue with anyone about what isn’t or isn’t on here. I already spent a few weeks arguing with myself and will probably continue to second-guess every choice until it’s time to make the 2025 list. If you don’t like it, make your own list.
All of these are albums that I like to listen to in full. A few of the picks have songs that turn up in my club sets, but club-friendly music is not a requirement here. I’ll have another list for that and, likely, a mix as well, so keep checking back between now and New Year’s Eve. Until then, read on for my top 15 albums of 2024.
The crowd in Nocturno’s New Wave vs. Darkwave room on Saturday, November 30, dancing to Mareux “Lovers from the Past” (Pic: Liz O.)
It’s 9 a.m. and I just poured my second cup of coffee after waking up an hour ago, so last night is a still kind of a blur. I played in the New Wave vs. Darkwave room at Nocturno, which was lit almost from the start. Like, I remember seeing people dancing in the line for the bathroom by the third or fourth song of the set.
I finally had the chance to play “Digital Slaves,” from Gesaffelstein’s latest album, Gamma. I’ve been listening to the album for a few months now and keep going back to that song because the lyrics are very 2024, but the sound is very 2004, and that juxtaposition makes a lot of sense in my brain. But, I haven’t had a gig where I thought it would work until last night, right after I heard the screams for She Wants Revenge “Tear You Apart” and noticed that the room was packed. Tl;dr is that “Digital Slaves” did really well and it’s a total keeper in the sets now, which is nice because I haven’t really played his music out since The Lash closed.
Anyhow, overall, the vibe was more darkwave than new wave, which is always fun. Thanks to Nocturno for having me play and for everyone who hit the dance floor last night. Check out the set list below.
Underground at Grand Star Jazz Club 11/29/24 (Pic: Liz O.)
The first surprise of the night was playing Underground, which, as always, was a blast. The second was when my husband I realized that Ryo (@human_revo), who has been documenting his cycling journey across the U.S., was in Chinatown. In a joint effort, we invited him and his crew to Underground and they stopped by for a bit. The cross-country journey ends in Santa Monica today and I highly recommend watching along if/when they’re live. It’s so inspirational.
Anyhow, here’s the set list from last night. I’ll be back at Underground for my Friday the 13th darkewave birthday bash (click for tix) and will be playing there New Year’s Eve. (Click here for NYE tickets.) Tonight is Nocturno with Depresion Post Mortem playing live. The party is already sold out, but if you have tickets, I’ll see you in the new wave vs. darkwave room.
The holidays have arrived at The Mermaid (Photo: Liz O.)
The Legend of the Stardust Brothers is playing on one of the TV sets inside The Mermaid when I arrive. The movie is bonkers in the best way possible and, since it just started, I take that as a sign that tonight’s going to be a good night. And it is. I start playing a little before 8 p.m. and, not long into the set, someone starts dancing to Amy Winehouse, then continues through Freda Payne at Stevie Wonder. Someone else starts head-bopping to Talking Heads and the guy who was dancing to the soul jams sings along with Madonna.
Splash!, on Sundays at The Mermaid, is not a genre-specific night, so really, anything goes at the DJ table. For two-and-a-half hours, I jump across decades, from the 1960s until today. I work in “My Generation,” from the latest La Femme album, which I’ve been listening to on repeat since I bought it earlier last week, and two songs from Fontaines D.C.’s album-of-the-fucking-year, Romance.
The crowd ebbs and flows, as is usual at bars, but it’s always a vibe. A group sitting next to me ask about “Tears Run Rings.” It’s Marc Almond, I tell them, “y’know, from Soft Cell.” They don’t know. I realize that we’re at a point where young adult Angelenos don’t remember the good KROQ Flashback Weekends, when you could hear “Sex Dwarf,” and maybe even “It’s a Mugs Game,” several times before Sunday night came around. I think that my new calling might be preserving the legacy of Los Angeles as a city where Soft Cell is not a one-hit-wonder.
The Phantom of the Paradise is playing when I finish up my set at around 10:30 p.m. David and Stefano take over on DJ duties. (Go listen to their project Tibia, especially if you’re into synthwave.) They’re playing jams and I hang out for close to an hour after I play to chat with them and wait for the rideshare prices to drop. Camp Flog Gnaw, which was happening at Dodger Stadium, must have just let out because Lyft is a good $3 more than it normally is at this time and Uber is more than double it’s usual price. When Lyft finally comes down to a rate that I’ll settle for paying, I head home. I mention the show and the surge prices to my driver, who starts telling me about how much less the drivers are making now than pre-pandemic. He said the drivers are basically “fighting for crumbs” right now, which I understand, and which you probably get too, because that’s life in the 2020s if you aren’t the sort of person who can pay to make elections go your way. It’s a conversation that I’ve had with a lot of drivers lately, but this one ends on a hopeful note, and I think that this same conversation keeps happening is hope. It means that people are seeing that tech wields far too much power over our existence right now and things have to change.
But, anyhow, you probably just came here to see what I played last night, so here’s the set list. Maybe come out to a gig soon. Click on this link to see where I’m playing next.
Sunday night, I played an open format set for Splash! at The Mermaid from 8 p.m. until last call. It started out as a quiet night, which was to be expected given the excitement of the past two nights in L.A. I didn’t mind the night’s slow start either, because it gave me time to DJ and catch up with friends who I hadn’t seen in ages and stopped by early in the evening.
At around midnight, though, a swell of people came into The Mermaid. Once I spotted the wave, I rode it and dropped the L.A. party bangers, like “Nowhere Girl,” “Living on Video” and “Send Me an Angel,” plus, of course “Blue Monday” and “Two of Hearts.” When I realized that we were close to last call, I slowed it down with the Art Laboldies. To give credit where it’s due, playing “Darling Baby” by The Elgins came via a dude who was blasting the song from his bike while cycling through Chinatown recently.
I ended up double-booked on the Saturday before Halloween. While that has happened before, it’s never happened while there was a World Series game going on at Dodger Stadium. Thinking about traffic and logistics and rideshare prices stressed me out, but, for reasons I don’t know, there was an Uber Black special early in the evening, which made the first two trips a little more budget-friendly.
Anyhow, I started the night with an hour-long set of spooky tunes at artist Albert Reyes’ haunted house party. Albert, who I’ve known since 2009, when I was a new staffer at L.A. Weekly and interviewed him, spends all year building a maze-like haunted house filled with narrow hallways, dark corners and art installations. I went through the haunt before the party started and was both awed and spooked, which might be the point.
I started DJing at around 8 p.m. and heard fireworks early in the set, which I guess is when the Dodgers won game two of the series. Here’s what I played.
The crowd at Club Underground’s Halloween party on 10/25/24 dancing to Robyn “Dancing on My Own”
It’s hard to describe the energy at Club Underground’s Halloween party last night. It wasn’t just the holiday vibes in the air. Right before the party started, Freddie Freeman hit a grand slam in the 10th inning of the first game of the World Series, a dramatic victory for the Dodgers. And Underground happens to be at the Grand Star in Chinatown, just downhill from Dodger Stadium. So, in addition to the very local regular crowd, where you can safely assume there are plenty of Dodger fans, there were people who came by after the game. Someone in line showed me video he took of the reaction to Freeman’s grand slam in the crowd. There were people screaming and hugging each other, with sprays of beer that looked like rain falling over the scene. It looked wild.
All that excitement helped set the mood for the night. I’ll write more after this I wrap up this weekend’s DJ gigs (I’m at Slipper Clutch for Dolce Vita tonight and The Mermaid for Splash Sundays tomorrow), but I will say that the costumes were great, the crowd was amazing and the vibe persisted until closing time. The set list is below. Don’t forget to get tickets for next Friday at Club Underground. It’s the release party for The Cure’s new album, Songs of a Lost World, and there are some really awesome giveaways. Click here to pick up your tix now.
I was on the treadmill the first time I listened to 3 AM (La La La), the latest album from Confidence Man, walking at 3.5 miles an hour, a brisk pace, but not quite enough to keep up with the strobelight pulse of songs like “I Can’t Lose You” and “Control.” Maybe I could have stepped up my own speed to a run, or at least a jog, but I didn’t feel like it, so I kept walking off beat, waiting to see if the vibe would shift somewhere over the course of an album that, four songs in, was starting to sound a little too much like a late ‘90s Eurodance throwback.
Confidence Man is the Australian four-piece fronted by Janet Planet and Suga Bones and backed by the veiled and cloaked individuals Reggie Goodchild and Clarence McGuffie. I first heard them during lockdown when someone DMed me Yuksek’s track “Gorgeous,” which features Confidence Man. Two years later, the band released Tilt, their second full-length, which quickly became a personal favorite. “Angry Girl” is the song that has appeared most often in my sets since 2022 because it has a dance punk vibe that works very well at L.A. clubs and it mixes seamlessly with The Rapture’s “House of Jealous Lovers.” But, the thing that made Tilt one of my favorite albums of that year was that it was super cheeky and the music was all over the place, kind of like a cross between Bis and Chicks on Speed back at the turn of the millennium. Given the new album’s title, which definitely alludes to both KLF (“3 AM Eternal”) and maybe also references ATC (“Around the World (La La La La La)”), it seemed like Confidence Man would continue that vibe. Fifteen minutes into 3 AM (La La La), though, I started to think that the spirit driving TILT was lacking on this album.
If I were tuned into Spotify, I would have just skipped through tracks or moved on to another album, but I actually purchased 3 AM (La La La) and downloaded it without hearing more than a couple preview Reels on Instagram. I had to stick it out for the whole album.
