Make Music Pasadena returns June 1, and Amoeba is proud to be a sponsor of the event. We’ll be on hand with music for sale, and we’ll be giving away swag at the Amoeba booth (near the Old Pasadena Indie Rock Stage, on Colorado Blvd. near Raymond Ave.) as well as at the LA Weekly booth on the other side of the event. Stop by to pick up a free fan — it’s hot in Pasadena.

Robert DeLong performing live at Amoeba Hollywood

Make Music Pasadena is hailed as the West Coast’s largest free music event. There will be more than 150 bands, including electro-pop bands Yacht and Tanlines; indie-EDM star Robert DeLong; L.A. indie pop band Hunter Hunted; indie rock stalwarts We Are Scientists; world-folk band Taken By Trees (which features Victoria Bergsman of Concretes/“Young Folks” fame); local dream-pop acts Superhumanoids and Haunted Summer; afro-Mexican folk band Las Cafeteras; KCRW’s DJ Valida; experimental pop duo High Places; and more.

Amoeba.com has many of the bands playing at Coachella this weekend and next available digitally. Pick up some of the albums below before your drive out to the desert!

 

Dinosaur Jr. - Chocomel Daze (Live 1987)

Recently released live set from 1987 from the legendary college-rock band, in all their You're Living All Over Me glory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Divine Fits - A Thing Called Divine Fits

A surprisingly strong side project featuring Spoon's Britt Daniels and former Wolf Parade/Handsome Furs barker Dan Boeckner.

 

We’ve already done our fair share of end-of-the-year lists, but with all the hooplah about Kendrick Lamar this and Beach House that, we were bound to miss a few records that some of us really loved. Below are 10 you can download from Amoeba.com.

 

Iris Dement - Sing The Delta

$9.98

Dement’s woozy voice and salt-of-the-earth lyrics have please roots country fans for years, and in 2012 she released one of her best collections yet, Sing the Delta. She can sing a blues ballad to break your heart (“Before the Colors Fade”) or a rollicking country rocker (“The Night I Learned How Not to Pray”) with equal ease, her voice carrying a remarkable tone that pierces through like a biting wind chill.

 

 

 

 

Bobby Womack - The Bravest Man In The Universe

$9.98

I am always very nostalgic about music from the decades past. But I have been even more nostalgic than normal the last couple of months. I really dove head first back into the '90s. I feel like I was obsessed with the '80s for most of my time during the '90s. I did obviously live through the '90s but I have really been appreciating it so much more this last couple of months. I have been dissecting the '90s down to all of its genres and making mix CDs for '90s indie, britpop & shoegaze, freestyle,r&b, hip hop and dance music. It has been a ton of fun and I will be soon posting some of my favorites of the '90s on the blog soon I hope. But it has really also got my thinking of the year we are currently living in. Because there really is still a ton of amazing music coming out this year. You might think that every band name and every type of song has already been written. But this really is not the case. I suppose there will be some day when I stop liking new music. But at this point in my life I am both obsessed with the bands from the last 30 years but also super excited about what lies around the corner. I am still amazed every week when I fall in love with some new song or some new band. I am so happy that I lived through the '80s and '90s. But I am really so happy to be living in this moment of time as well!

The Shins are finally back with a new album for us to enjoy. This band has been around now for over 15 years. This is their fourth album. And what a fantastic album it is. It has been five years since their last album, Wincing The Night Away. I was a bit worried since this is their first album after leaving Sub Pop. James Mercer is still of course the voice behind The Shins. But the band has a whole new set of members other than James. That James Mercer has one of those amazing voices that can just do no wrong. I was never really obsessed with this band. But I did always like them. A certain ex-boyfriend of mine was obsessed. And it did wear off on me a bit. That tends to happen. I was starting to get really excited for this album. And now I can't get enough of it. It is the perfect album to put us all in the mood for summer. My favorite tracks on the new album are "No Way Down" and "40 Mark Strasse." Those are the songs that keep making me come back for more.

Daniel Rossen’s Silent Hour/Golden Mile EP came out today, and true to form for Grizzly Bear’s Rossen, it doesn’t disappoint. Though he’s perhaps the lesser-known entity of Grizzly Bear (the other being gravy-voiced Ed Droste), everything Rossen has released to this point, both within the band (his gorgeous “Deep Blue Sea," for instance”) or without it (as part of Department of Eagles) has born an unmistakable stamp. It’s a tribute to his talent that you can say that without being able to describe just what that stamp is. It’s a certain mysteriousness that is part of what makes Grizzly Bear so alluring, where you’re very much hearing folk-rock with a kind of doo-wop vocal delivery — sounds simple enough — but everything is curiously out of reach. Lyrics are more suggestive than descriptive, intimating nostalgia and loss without really being forthright about it, and arrangements tend to spiral out rather than circle back to where they’ve started. Silent Hour/Golden Mile is actually more direct than some of Rossen’s other work. “Up On High” wouldn’t be out of place on a Grizzly Bear album, while “Silent Song” and “Golden Mile” are relatively straightforward rock songs that still spin off from typical construction, with spindly guitars and high, cooing vocals that remind me a bit of mid-period Radiohead without actually sounding anything like that. Both songs also benefit from hummable moments — not something Rossen is always known for — as well as the kind of high, lap steel guitar lines found famously in Santo & Johnny’s “Sleepwalk” or George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord.” At five songs, Silent Hour/Golden Mile leaves you wanting for much more, which I’m guessing we’ll get in the form of the next Grizzly Bear or Department of Eagles album, but the EP is far from a departure or indulgence. It’s more like a treat, an appetizer for something bigger.