The Soft Moon – “Insides”
 
More new Soft Moon! “Insides” is gloriously creepy, with its sustained, Gremlin-style whispered vocal hovering in the background like a ghost, while the foreground finds piercing new wave sound and Luis Vasquez stepping out of the shadows just a bit with a wordless sounding but emotive vocal. Along with the recently debuted “Die Life,” Zeros sounds like a winner; it’s out Oct. 30 on Captured Tracks (preorder here). Boy, all this great goth from S.F. Isn’t it like beautiful and everyone is nice there?
 



Horrid Red – I’m Terribly Hurt
 
I don’t know much about S.F.’s Horrid Red, but I’m incredibly intrigued after hearing “I’m Terribly Hurt,” a goth pop song that hits both sides of the coin thanks to that droning organ and soaring synths and breathless vocals both creepy and romantic. Nightly Wreaths is due Oct. 9 on Terrible Records.
 

Amoeba Hollywood has started regularly selling tickets to local shows, with the added bonus of charging low service fees (if you're into saving money and who isn't really?).

All tickets can be purchased at the registers (while supplies last) for a $2 service fee. We take cash and credit cards for all ticket sales.

Please note that on the day of the show, we will stop selling tickets for that show at 5pm.

If you have a question about whether we've sold out of a specific show, please call the store at 323-245-6400.

JUST ADDED SHOWS:

Saint Etienne The Fonda Theatre  November 3

Paul Banks The Fonda Theatre December 5

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Sic Alps have long been an S.F. favorite, fusing the hippie aesthetic of the San Francisco of lore (Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane) with the newer noise-garage ethos similarly employed by acts like Ty Segall, who played in Sic Alps for a time, and Thee Oh Sees, with whom they’ll play at the the El Rey Theatre Sept. 9. The band boasts a prolific career in a short time — the band formed in 2004 and has released over a dozen EPs, three regular albums and another, A Long Way to a Shortcut, compiling their singles. Now, they’ve chosen to give their fourth album a self-titled name (out Sept. 18; preorder here), and with that comes a somewhat cleaner sound, complete with strings, courtesy of Ryan Francesconi, who arranged strings for Joanna Newsom. I spoke with frontman Mike Donovan about the new album and the band’s trajectory.
 
PST: One of the most noticeable new sounds on the record is the strings on songs like “Glyphs” and “Rock Races.” Can you talk about how that came about and working with Ryan Francesconi?

Flying Lotus feat. Erykah Badu – “See Thru to U”
 
This sumptuous, propulsive track comes from L.A. beat maestro Flying Lotus’ new album, Until the Quiet Comes, due Oct. 2 on Warp (preorder here). Expect more excellent pair-ups, such as another with Thom Yorke, on the album.
 

 

Deerhoof – “Fête d'Adieu”
 
So excited to share a new track from S.F.’s Deerhoof, one of my all-time favorite guitar bands. For a while there, it seemed minus guitarist Chris Cohen, the band was losing steam on the lackluster Deerhoof vs. Evil. “Fête d'Adieu” is very promising, however, employing the poppier balance of melodicism with awkward time signatures and chirpy vocals that they moved toward on the Cohen-less but still excellent Friend Opportunity. Here’s hoping Breakup Song is awesome! (Preorder the album here.)

 

Redd Kross have been the quintessential underground band for the past three decades. The band has nearly always eschewed both pop and indie convention by staying true to its sound, likely angering as many pop fans with its snottiness and random references to Tatum O’Neil and Shonen Knife as they would indie purirsts with its insistence on lacing its acidic songs with undeniable pop hooks.
 
From Hawthorne, Calif. and based around the duo of brothers Jeff and Steve McDonald, Redd Kross first released music in 1980 with a self-titled EP, after opening for Black Flag as teenagers for its first gig. Other musicians came and went as the band released records throughout the ’80s and ’90s, hitting their stride with 1987’s Neurotica and 1990's Third Eye. Following 1997’s Show World, the band all but disappeared, with its members occasionally surfacing for other projects — Steve McDonald famously added bass parts to The White Stripes’ White Blood Cells, redubbing it Redd Blood Cells, which saw thousands of downloads and press hubbub. The brothers McDonald separately produced albums by other artists as well.
 
The elusive band returned in 2006 to play a set at REDCAT in Los Angeles covering the band’s entire catalog, featuring the Neurotica-era lineup of the McDonalds, Robert Hecker and Roy McDonald. They toured and played a killer set of the entire Born Innocent album opening for Sonic Youth, who played all of Daydream Nation (I was there! Yessss.), at the Greek Theater in L.A. In 2008 they played Coachella, among numerous other festivals and appearances over the past few years. Now, finally, Redd Kross have released an album of new material, entitled Researching the Blues. The album has seen some of the band’s best reviews, garnering an 81% on reviews aggregator Metacritic, and it’s not hard to see why, hearing the enlivened swagger the band displays on songs like the title track (download free here), while maintaining the dynamism that has always set the band apart, also including shimmering power-pop ballads like “Dracula’s Daughter” and “Winter Blues.”