Hello! Welcome back to my new release blog. I am so sorry that I have been neglecting you. It has been a busy two months of new releases! Maybe you didn't notice...but it is already October. Not sure how that happened. It is already October 13th actually! This is absolutely one of my favorite months. I wish it was October every month!  Although I was not exactly enjoying the warm weather yesterday. Although we did not really have a crazy hot Summer this year in Los Angeles. So I can't blame Summer for trying to squeeze a couple of more days into October. But October is most certainly here and November is quickly approaching. All of the music labels are rushing to get their best new albums out to you before the end of the year. And all the movie studios will soon be rushing to get their best movies out before the end of the year! So lets go back in time and catch up a bit on what has come out the last couple of weeks. Then we can actually move onto October! First up is the week of 9/13 and 9/20...

I fell in love with The Drums when they put out their Summertime EP last year. How could I not love this band. It was the perfect pop record. Brilliantly pop friendly songs heavily influenced by The Smiths and Joy Division. But adding more modern sounds and synths. I fell in love. They also released their debut self titled full length album last year. Which was also fantastic. And now they have unleashed their second album called Portamento. You can never capture that excitement of a first record. But I am still loving this new album. The songs are catchier than anything and they just make me happy. A nice way to end my summer for sure. If you have still not joined the cult of The Drums. You should start with their first album The Drums or the Summertime EP. You will not be disappointed.

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Geoffrey O’Connor, frontman for Australian indie pop band Crayon Fields, released his debut record under his own name this week with Vanity Is Forever, a dark and sexy collection of new romantic pop reminiscent of Bryan Ferry and later-period Roxy Music. It’s gorgeous stuff, and tonight he’ll play it at Hollywood Forever Cemetery alongside Swedish songsmith Jens Lekman at 8 p.m. I took a minute to chat with O’Connor about his music upbringing and influences — surprise, it’s not all ’80s all the time!

PST: Can you tell me a little bit about your musical background up until releasing Vanity Is Forever?

O’Connor: I’ve been writing and recording songs since high school, which is when I started playing with Crayon Fields — we are now working on album number three. I released a solo record in 2007 as Sly Hats, but then decided to drop the name for the one my mother gave me.

PST: What are some of the influences, musical or otherwise, that got you making the music that appears on this album?

O’Connor: Classics like Fleetwood Mac, Lou Reed and Dory Previn are the first musical influences that come to mind. I work in a cinema and get to see a lot of free movies — often there will be a memorable scene or quote that will trigger a song idea, even in the ones I don’t like.

PST: I definitely hear a cinematic quality to your music. Have you or would you consider scoring a film?

Reviews of some of my favorite albums from the past couple of weeks:


Dum Dum Girls - Only In Dreams (CD or LP)

Noise popettes Dum Dum Girls started out rough, all motorcycles and dingy guitars and black nail polish, on their excellent debut album, I Will Be, before expanding the lo-fi quality of their sound to brighter places with this year’s He Gets Me High EP. They continue that trajectory with their second full-length, Only In Dreams, which ups the pop ante considerably. While The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde always had been a touchstone for singer/guitarist Dee Dee’s smoky drawl, the band’s music serves as a signpost here as well, insofar as Only in Dreams combines rock toughness and girl-group melodies in a way rarely seen with such success since that band — check out “Caught In One” for one of the best examples. Elsewhere, the band sounds a bit like early Go-Gos (the jangly “Bedroom Eyes”), The Bangles (“Hold Your Hand” is kind of like an indie-rock “Eternal Flame”) or Mazzy Star (it might bother you how much “Coming Down” sounds like “Fade Into You,” if the tremoloed riffs and breakup lyrics weren’t so damn effective). While they struggle a bit to establish their own identity apart from their forebears, Only in Dreams proves Dee Dee and co. to be formidable purveyors of classic pop-rock.

Free download of "Bedroom Eyes" by Dum Dum Girls.

Earlier this week while I was walking home from a night out with friends I was surprised by a stranger who randomly yelled out to me across an intersection, “How do you do this all the time?” I assumed by the question and the incredulous affectation that colored his shout that this fellow had to be the sort of out-of-towner used to strolling casually along level sidewalks, not straining to climb them. Living in San Francisco’s Chinatown for eleven years has provided me with plenty of street-side entertainment in the form of visitors struggling to get from point A to point B and these hapless pedestrians have become common fodder for egregious porchfront commentary among my friends and I, especially the drunk ones falling uphill. I offered the winded tourist no reply, but I began to sing to myself a song that hadn’t invaded my head space for some time, “all we need is just a little patience...”

A Place To Bury Strangers-
A Place To Bury Strangers
(Killer Pimp)









Studio-
West Coast
(Information)









Justice-
Cross
(Vice)









Explosions in the Sky-
All Of a Sudden I Miss Everybody
(Temporary Residence)








Jens Lekman-
Night Falls Over Kortedala
(Secretly Canadian)

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