That FM beacon of proper taste emanating daily from Santa Monica, KCRW, won’t announce the lineup for its annual Sounds

Eclectic shindig until its on-air pledge drive starts on Jan. 26 — not that we’d want

anybody to miss that. But word is that a couple of local Buzz Bands favorites are

playing the concert, the scrappy quartet Cold War

Kids and the swoon-worthy trip-hop duo Bitter:Sweet.

Observation: At what other concert could you hear two such disparate acts on the same

bill? Guess that’s why they call it eclectic. The show will be April 14 at Gibson

Amphitheatre. Tickets go on sale Feb. 15 for KCRW members; Feb. 27 for general

public.

◊ ◊ ◊

Cold War Kids will pile up some frequent flier miles this month, having scheduled

dueling residencies in New York City and L.A. The local gigs will be a couple of those

let’s-return-to-where-it-started shows, in this case the Silverlake Lounge for Fold promoter Scott Sterling — who says, by

the way, he’s never had shows sell out more quickly. Those dates are Jan. 12 and 19, and

the band has another local show Jan. 26 at Spaceland. The NYC shows are Jan. 10

(Pianos), 17 (Union Hall) and 24 (Mercury Lounge).

In addition, bassist Matt Maust’s exhibition of album

art-inspired work, which just ended a run at the Orphanage Gallery in Silver Lake, opens

Jan. 18 at NYC’s Headquarters Studio (385 Broadway). The L.A. opening party drew a huge

crowd; before joining Nathan Willett, Jonnie Russell and Matt Aveiro in the band, Maust

was an in-demand designer for album art. He still does such work as time allows, and the

band’s website remains a great respository for his unique sensibilities documenting the

band’s travels.

Also at the Cold War Kids site: Free

download of six songs the band performed at a benefit show at the District Lounge in

Orange.

◊ ◊ ◊

Better horizons for L.A. indie-rock quartet Division Day: They’ve been signed to upstart

label Mercy Records, which will re-issue in March a remastered "Beartrap

Island" (a do-it-yourself release for the band last year). Division Day has the

February residency at Spaceland.

◊ ◊ ◊

The Plug Independent Music Awards will throw

their festivities Feb. 10 at Irving Plaza in New York City, with Stephen Malkmus,

Silversun Pickups and Deerhoof among the performers. Before that, the Plugs are taking

the show on the road — they’ve scheduled a show Saturday (Jan. 13) at the Little Radio

warehouse in downtown Los Angeles featuring Great Northern, Foreign Born and the Gray

Kid, among others.

If we knew what a "meem" was, we’d probably go on and on about

all the marketing tie-ins and such. But we’ll keep it to the music.

◊ ◊ ◊

Tonight’s touts: Punk straight outta Eagle Rock, the Briggs at the Troubadour; Scottish kids the View at Spaceland

Can’t blame the Colour for feeling fidgety. They’ve been working hard on two

continents for more than three years, making fans one riff at a time, and finally, on

Feb. 6, their debut album "Between Earth & Sky" will be released. Yes,

that’s the same album singer Wyatt Hull said was "probably long overdue" in an

interview in December 2005.

"It seemed like every time we got close to

something, something else would appear out of the cosmos," Wyatt said Thursday,

just before the L.A. quintet kicked off the second of its two residencies this month.

That’s right, the Colour are holding forth on Thursday nights at Spaceland and on Monday

nights at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa. They actually had a third residency planned in

San Diego this month, but it fell through at the last moment.

And the album, coming out on EMI’s new imprint Rethink

Records?

Well, nobody will accuse the Colour of making fashion music.

"Between Earth & Sky" is pedal-to-the-metal classic rock, built on a

sturdy blues foundation that supports Davey Quon’s tasteful guitar and Hull’s pained

singing. Some of the album borrows from the Rolling Stones the same way the Dandy

Warhols borrowed, but without the irony. In "Earth & Sky’s" context, the

earnestness is refreshing — after all, these college buddies who first met at BIOLA are

wrassling with plenty of spiritual issues in their songs, seemingly trapped between soul

and body in a world that increasingly favors instant (or at least high-speed)

gratification. That duality plays out dramatically in the two singles "Devil’s Got

a Holda Me" and "Save Yourself," with the latter adroitly walking a

tightrope musically and thematically. Color the Colour off to a good start.

||| Live: Jan. 8, 15, 22 and 29 at the Detroit Bar; Jan. 11, 18 and 25 at Spaceland.

||| Hear:

"Save Yourself."

◊ ◊ ◊

Tonight’s touts: Scottish teenagers The View hit the Viper Room; local punks The Bronx storm Safari Sam’s.

There’s been no official announcement yet, but it’s not much of a secret around

Silver Lake: Sea Wolf, the nom de tune of Alex

Brown Church, has signed to local indie Dangerbird Records. Church, the bassist and

singer in the pop quintet Irving, swept the Dangerbirders — not to mention local

audiences — off their feet with his lushly orchestrated music.

"The bottom line is that there is a vacancy in the recent history of this city

for a
singer-songwriter, and he’s the guy," label president Jeff Castelaz says. "We

think Sea Wolf has the characteristics to be on the radio. … He has a lot more in

common with Jackson Browne and Coldplay than an artist like Bright Eyes."

Plans are to release a five-song EP (built around the single "You’re a

Wolf") in May and a full-length album in the fall. Church is currently out of town

working on mixing the music.

Taking Sea Wolf on the road, however, poses a challenge — at his recent Spaceland

residency, Church assembled a band that included a host of pals, including string

players. Taking an eight-piece indie band on the road is "cost-prohibitive,"

Castelaz concedes. "But you tell Alex that and he just says, ‘Yeah, I know. We’ll

figure it out.’ And you believe he will."

Dangerbird, label home to such

other L.A. acts as Silversun Pickups and Darker My Love, also has an album forthcoming

from All Smiles, the new project from ex-Grandaddy guitarist Jim Fairchild.

—-

Of course, Church’s project puts Irving in

a pickle, although the band has no plans to tour until May. "We’re figure it out

when the time comes," singer-guitarist Steven Scott says. "As far as a

permanent replacement, I dont know. Alex has been there from the beginning."

In the meantime, Irving has what sounds like a fun project in the works. The band is

working on a series of EPs of cover songs. Distribution plans have yet to be worked out,

but the band is said to be applying its own twist to songs such as Bruce Springsteen’s

"I’m on Fire," Syd Barrett’s "If It’s in You," Harry Nilsson’s

"Without You" and the Ronettes’ "Be My Baby."

||| Hear

"You’re a Wolf" here.

Photo: Alex Church, as Sea Wolf, performs at the Troubadour. (Kevin Bronson /

LAT)

Exploring the fringes of today’s folk scene is often like stepping into the Wayback

Machine. Press one button, and you’re in a forest, swaying gently to an acoustic guitar.

Press another, and you’re in a room staring at black-light posters, convulsing to turgid

blues riffs.

“Some of the material being done now sounds older than the stuff that was done in the

’60s,” says Guy Blakeslee, 25, who, as Entrance, is a purveyor of the latter. His second

album, the miasmal, Black Sabbath-informed “Prayer of Death,” “has a lot to do not with

the drug aspect of psychedelia but with the overall consciousness,” Blakeslee says.

“Music can be a shortcut to those states of mind.”

Blakeslee, who moved to L.A. a year ago after four hard years of touring, is clearly

wary of some neo-folkies who’ve donned the vintage clothing and are playing the part. He

spent the last few years ingesting “a whole variety of old-time American recordings” and

applying the music to his stark outlook on life.

Which is? “The less afraid of death you are, the less you can be controlled in your

daily life,” he says, noting that in his travels he has seen “all these forces

manipulating the population through fear.”

For now, he aspires to be an

opposing force, with guitar in hand. With Paz Lenchantin on bass and Derek James on

drums, Entrance launches a tour as opener for Steve Malkmus & the Jicks on Saturday

night at the El Rey Theatre.

Touring with the ex-Pavement frontman is another thrill for Blakeslee. “I went to the

Lollapalooza show where they had to stop playing because there was so much mud being

thrown at them,” Blakeslee says. “But we found him in the crowd afterward and had our

picture taken."

Photo by Sophia Amoruso

U.S. audiences could be excused for their befuddlement when they hear the chorus of

“Wasted Little DJs,” one of the catchy singles from the nascent quartet the View — after all, some Americans call for

a translator just to have a normal conversation with a Scotsman. It’s Pig

Latin, explains singer-bassist Keiren Webster. “‘Wasted’ becomes ‘asted-way,’ ‘little’

becomes ‘ittle-lay,’ and so on,” he says. “It’s simple when you break it down.”

So is the View’s youthful exuberance — Webster, singer-guitarist Kyle Falconer,

guitarist Pete Reilly and drummer Steve Morrison, who hail from Dundee, are all

teenagers with one foot in the Britpop and punk pantheon and the other on the dance

floor. The four friends began as a cover band when most were 14, dashing out songs by

the likes of the Sex Pistols, Oasis and T. Rex. They started penning their own

adolescent kiss-offs about two years ago.

Although their debut, “Hats Off to the Buskers” (1965 Records/Columbia), isn’t out

until March 13, the View hits these shores this week, with shows Friday at the Viper

Room and Saturday at Spaceland. Their visit figures to push all the right buttons with

Anglophiles. “We’re really excited,” Webster says, hours before the band’s first U.S.

show, Tuesday in New York. “We want to be where the action is.”

Photo: www.theviewisonfire.com

Video: "Same

Jeans"

No matter what you might think of the Killers’ new album "Sam’s Town" (that

some find it Boss-y seems quite a compliment to those of us who find its occasional

overearnestness reminiscent of an adenoidal Meat Loaf), Brandon Flowers and company can

bring it live.

Though their set at Gridlock LA New Year’s Eve event at the Paramount Studios Lot

seemed weirdly timed (it started after midnight just as the smoke lifted from the

party’s modest fireworks display), they added some sparklers of their own. They politely

ripped through nine songs, with Flowers stopping only once to engage a throng that

packed the studio’s ersatz New York streets tighter than a celebutante’s bustier.

The band declined to appear on the red carpet (which was graced by a smattering of

celebrities) at the first-year event, and organizers asked professional photographers to

refrain from shooting during the band’s set. There was no denying the adoring crowd

their photo ops using cellphone cameras and palm-sized digitals, though. What’s New

Year’s Eve without a fond memory?

Photo: Brandon Flowers of the Killers at

Gridlock LA