Artsweek Editor

September 16, 2010

FYF Festival Satisfies Despite Growing Pains

By Artsweek Editor

September 4, which marked the seventh year of FYF Fest, saw downtown Los Angeles look a little like God’s idea of a cruel joke on hipsters.

August 25, 2010

Making Wavves at SOhO

By Artsweek Editor

At “Rock the Bells” a few years back, the MC announced that the special guest for the show would be Lauryn Hill. As in Fugees, “Killing Me Softly” Lauryn Hill.

May 13, 2010

A Record Made for the People ***

By Artsweek Editor

With The People’s Record, Club 8 heads closer in the direction of tropicália, a genre which it had previously only hinted at over the course of its six-album career thus far.

November 12, 2009

Betties Battle It Out

By Artsweek Editor

I found out about last Saturday's season-closing bout between the Mission City Brawlin' Betties and the West Coast Derby Knockouts entirely by chance. At dinner with a VP at Citrix, she casually mentioned that a few of h...

November 12, 2009

Pixies at the Palladium

By Artsweek Editor

Pixies, widely held to be grunge's progenitors as well as early '90s alt-rock darlings, kicked off its Doolittle tour in rollicking style last Wednesday at the Hollywood Palladium. The band's members have lost nearly all...

October 22, 2009

It’s a Wild, “Wild” World Out There *****

By Artsweek Editor

"Where the Wild Things Are" has achieved a rare quadruple-media self-referential storm that has taken the beloved children's book from its place at the bottom of boxes in attics and elevated it to a multimedia cultural f...

October 22, 2009

Ghostface Killah’s Spectre Haunts Velvet Jones

By Artsweek Editor

Fresh off an appearance at VH1's Hip Hop Honors, founding Wu-Tang Clansman Ghostface Killah made a shambolic appearance at Velvet Jones last Saturday night. Apparently battling some sort of flu, Ghost basically turned hi...

September 24, 2009

New Album Reviews: No Age (***) and The Swell Season (****)

By Artsweek Editor, Nicole Sands

No Age returns to smaller releases after flirtation and romance, brought singer-its last two projects have produced LPs. The Losing Feeling EP - due out Oct. 6 - is a bit of a departure for the band, which abandons the f...

September 17, 2009

Magical Mystery Tour *****

By Artsweek Editor

Reviewing a video game is a strange experience, and one that has little to do with actually playing the game. True, you play more of the game than probably 80 percent of the people that play the game (let alone read your...

May 14, 2009

“Star Trek” Rebooted *****

By Artsweek Editor

Although big screen re-imaginings of comic books or TV series have long been de rigueur, none have taken on a series with such a rich back story and committed fan base as "Star Trek." With the collected weight of the ori...

April 23, 2009

Psychedelic Mushrooms

By Artsweek Editor

Before seeing the band's set, I was rather surprised to see a long line of students waiting to see an Israeli trance duo named after an afflicted fungus wrapped around the UCen. Last Wednesday evening in the Hub, Infecte...

April 23, 2009

Spending 4/20 With Fleet Foxes

By Artsweek Editor

Two days after playing to a sweaty Coachella crowd, the musicians of Fleet Foxes must have felt a bit of déjà vu when they looked out into the crowd and saw it full of the same smiling and stoned faces looking ...

March 5, 2009

Q&A: A Chat With No Age Frontman Randy Randell

By Artsweek Editor

Guitarist Randy Randall and drummer Dean Sprunt are collectively known as the noise punk band No Age. Randy and Dean have become iconic in the L.A. music scene, inspiring hordes of imitators and inspiring throngs of rail...

March 5, 2009

Another Acid High *****

By Artsweek Editor

The Black Lips' musical talent somehow surpasses its considerable reputation for debauchery. That's saying a lot for a band that has been banned from multiple concert venues in L.A. for its members making out onstage and...

February 19, 2009

Case of the Missing Keys ***

By Artsweek Editor

The Black Keys will always suffer from comparisons to the White Stripes. Like the band's Midwestern garage-rock duo counterparts also named after a color and a noun, the Black Keys has spent its time in the dingy but pow...

February 12, 2009

CD: International Dischord **

By Artsweek Editor

Based on his undeniable talent and innovation as a producer for acts like Spank Rock and M.I.A., Diplo probably deserves to have his work released as part of a compilation.