October 31, 2026

Bands

Bands

Raveonettes at Triple Rock Social Club (26 Sep 2012 )

Flashback: Raveonettes at Triple Rock Social Club (26 Sep 2012)

vu@weheartmusic.com March 5, 2025

I previously mentioned that I’ve seen Danish indie rock duo The Raveonettes at at least twice (I’m almost certain I’ve seen them prior to 2007, because I was listening to Whip It On in 2002 and would have likely seen them on that tour (if they toured at all).

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Earlimart

Serenading the Spirit of Someone You Love

Robin Lapid March 3, 2025

In a compact set that packed a heartfelt wallop, L.A. band Earlimart wanted to serenade a love lost too soon. “It feels like Elliott’s spirit is here,” said singer Aaron Espinoza. He was talking about the late Elliott Smith, the soft-spoken singer-songwriter, friend, and muse who, according to Espinoza, used to “weird” the band out by standing front and center at their L.A. gigs back in the early aughts. Smith, who died in 2003, inspired the sound of Earlimart’s most well-known album, Treble and Tremble, released in 2004. That album conjured Smith in its whispered, resonant lyrics and mellowed-out vibes, the sound of soft-spoken indie rock shows that filled Spaceland and other intimate venues around Echo Park and Silverlake, where I’d see them play regularly back in the day.

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Art Brut at Triple Rock Social Club (09 Nov 2009)c

Flashback: Art Brut at Triple Rock (09 Nov 2009)

vu@weheartmusic.com February 28, 2025

Oh man, how I love Art Brut. This isn’t really a band, it’s more like a weird art-rock with singer Eddie Argo “singing” or talking over music. Argo writes the best songs, like “Formed a Band”, which tells the secret origin of him forming a band: “Formed a band, we formed a band! Look at us, we formed a band! … And yes, this is my singing voice, it's not irony, it's not rock and roll. We’re just talking to the kids.”

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Lunasa

Minneapolis: March 14, 2025

vu@weheartmusic.com February 14, 2025

Minneapolis: March 14, 2025 Pre-game your St Patrick’s Day with Irish traditional band Lúnasa at the Pantages Theatre, in Minneapolis, on March 14. The band now features guest artist award-winning fiddler Colin Farrell (from Manchester, England), bassist Trevor Hutchinson (former member of The Waterboys, piper and Riverdancer, Cillian Vallely, flutist Kevin Crawford, All-Ireland fiddle champion Sean Smyth (founding member of Donal Lunny’s Coolfin), and guitarist Ed Boyd (worked with with Flook and Kate Rusby.)

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Stuart Murdoch photo by Amy Timko

Write About Love, and Music, and California

Robin Lapid February 12, 2025

On a blustery, cold San Francisco night (cold for San Francisco, that is—a frigid 45 degrees), I walked to the end of a long line of well-dressed indie kids of all ages. We were queuing up on Valencia Street outside The Chapel music venue in San Francisco’s Mission District, the neighborhood that just happened to play a part in Nobody’s Empire, the debut novel by Stuart Murdoch, Scottish singer and mastermind behind the twee-pop wonderband Belle and Sebastian. Fans of the band, which dug its deep, pop hooks and its wispy rhymes into the hearts of twee music lovers from 1996 on, also know it as the name of one of their songs and the album it’s on. The book tour promos played to its audience: It was marketed as a night of “readings, songs, live Q&A, and book signing,” and it featured informal chats with moderators and hosts Mike Schulman and Nommi Alouf, the latter of whom figures in the novel as the college radio station DJ who invites the main character on her radio show.

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