Cold War Kids (The Grammy Museum)

The Grammy Museum | Los Angeles, CA | April 24, 2016 | Photos: ZB Images CHOICES “In our first year of being a band we were asked to go on tour with Slayer…we were too scared. We thought we would get goat’s blood thrown at us.” – Nathan Willett THE BIG PICTURE “We’re precious about the holistic experience, not every little detail…the […]

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts by Cold War Kids

Cold War Kids | Dear Miss Lonelyhearts | Rating: 9/11 | Reviewed by: Rodney Schmidt | A contradictory dichotomist of sound that is soul and punk all in one band; the living meet the dead and the hopeless dance with the optimistic is what you get in Dear Miss Lonelyhearts by the Cold War Kids. Their ability to create a story, recite some poetry, or darken the soul […]

Robbers and Cowards by Cold War Kids

Cold War Kids | Robbers and Cowards (Downtown Recordings) | If you ever wondered if redemption and regret had a sound, it does. You can find that and more on Cold War Kids‘ Robbers and Cowards. A husband and father whose alcoholism is taking ahold of him in “We Used to Vacation” he warns no one in particular “I promised […]

MUSIC ON, WORLD OFF: #SaveLucifer Edition

The devil that you know is infinitely better than the one you don’t and that’s just one reason why I was invested in the FOX fantasy drama, Lucifer, starring Tom Ellis as everyone’s favorite hedonistic club-owning desire hound, Lucifer Morningstar, recently relocated to Los Angeles (the City of Angels, of course) due to boredom with his official duties as the Angel of Hell (aka the […]

Connecting The Dots With MisterWives

If you are Mandy Lee (vox), Etienne Bowler (drums), William Hehir (bass), Marc Campbell (guitar), Jesse Blum (keys, trumpet, accordion) and Mike Murphy (saxophone) aka MisterWives, how do you follow up your wildly successful 2015 debut album, Our Own House? You connect the dots. Produced by Bowler and Butch Walker (Weezer, Taylor Swift, P!nk), Connect The Dots (released on May 19th […]

Music On, World Off: What Are Fridays For, Again?

Fridays are cool; we tend to call in sick with some contagious but temporary condition, it kick starts the process of indulging in a weekend’s worth of activities that we’ll pretend never happened come Monday morning and new music comes pouring out of every streaming hole. But this Friday holds two extra cards: round two of Coachella (y’all have fun […]

Music On, World Off…Love, Dharma69: 2/3/17

So we’re 35 days into the new year: how’s it working out for you? Great. Now that we’ve gotten the awkward out of the way, we can talk about things that – unlike haphazardly applied human bans targeting certain groups of people – are basically harmless yet can be more cerebral than the current president of the United States…like music. If […]