Eli and Mary Chartkoff look more like the nice couple who’ve volunteered as museum

docents than rockers who thrash out garagey, 3-minute anthems that sound as if they were

kicked off the “Nuggets” boxed sets for being over-educated. But therein lies the charm

of their band, the Monolators, who, if

nothing else, remind you never to judge anybody by his fitted shirt.

Their new

EP, “You Look Good on the Train,” advances the good-humored agitation they set to tune

on last year’s album “Our Tears Have Wings,” and the addition of bassist Andrew Bollas

and guitarist Tom Bogdon has quashed those male-female duo comparisons the Monolators

heard while the Chartkoffs performed as a twosome.

“That was really a matter

of necessity — we’d had other members but they kept dropping out,” says Eli, who, in

fact, does work in the library at Occidental College (his wife teaches at Cal State

Northridge).

The new lineup has re-energized the singer-guitarist, perhaps in

the same way starting the band did. “I’d been in a series of bands that fell apart in

depressing ways, and I’d given up on being in a band,” Eli says. “I met Mary at a party,

and my ears perked up when she told somebody she played drums. Our first date was

playing music together. Drummers are hard to find — that’s the genius thing about being

married to one.”

||| See the Monolators perform tonight at

the Echo. Also playing: the Amateurs, Mezzanine Owls and Summer Darling.

||| Download: "You Look

Good on the Train."

Touts for Tuesday, Sept.

25

Crazy good

night to take in some music — if you’re not hitting the Arctic Monkeys/Voxtrot show at the Palladium, or sucking your thumb

with this guy at the El Rey, or wondering what

all the fuss is about over Midlake at the Fonda,

you have these nice, cozier opportunities: Ex-Jayhawk Mark Olson [left] brings his luscious

twang to the downtown club Bordello. … The Mulhollands put an exclamation

point on their residency at the Key Club. … And Mystery Jets (who open for the Klaxons on

Wednesday) lead the Dim Mak party at Cinespace.

[One in a series designed to keep one finger on the pulse

of the local music scene and the other on the "download" button:]

The Hectors have a sense of humor to

go along with their pop chops, which is only natural when you consider the L.A. quartet

has a boyfriend-girlfriend songwriting team, influences ranging from the syrupy to

Fugazi and a drummer who wanted to name the band the Lollipop Guild.

They’ve

done an interview (of sorts) to promote today’s release of their second EP,

"Sometimes They Collide." Watch it here and take notes.

"It’s amazing what we don’t have in common," singer-guitarist Corinne Dinner

says of the foursome that began in songwriting and recording lessons with beau Jim

Saunders (bass) and expanded to include Robert Bonilla (guitar) and Erik Greene (drums).

"The EP has a little bit of everything, from hooks to sludge."

It

has the poppy "Cold Star" (reminds me of Letters to Cleo), an anxious ditty

called "Carol and Sanford" — "about a really shy Bonnie and Clyde,"

Dinner says — and the brooding "I Drove All the Way From Bridgeport to Make It

With You," a line lifted from the Woody Allen movie "Stardust Memories."

The latter song was also on the Hectors’ first EP, which the band isn’t sharing anymore,

because, well, "none of us were very happy with it."

They’re in a

better mood now. They will celebrate "Sometimes They Collide" with a show

tonight.

||| See the Hectors, along with Radars to the Sky and Tigers Can Bite You, as part of the

"Let’s Independent" one-year anniversary bill tonight at Boardners. It’s a

free show presented by local blog Radio Free Silver Lake.

||| Download: "Proof of Sale."

Two American

dates by the English quintet the Orange

Lights — including a show Tuesday at the Viper Room — have been canceled after the

band’s bassist sustained injuries during a performance last week in London. According to

one report, Chris Gittins was attacked by a person wielding a bread knife after an

acoustic show. From the band’s management:

"The Orange Lights apologize

for canceling their North America dates in both L.A. and New York due to a serious

injury to the hand of bass player Chris Gittins. An unprovoked incident happened in

London which resulted in us also canceling a headline show at London Barfly the

following evening."

The Newcastle band is fronted by Jason Hart,

former touring guitarist for Spiritualized. Its debut album, "Life Is Still

Beautiful," was produced by Ken Nelson (Coldplay) and Chris Potter (the Verve) and

mixed in L.A. by Chris Lord-Alge. The band will try to reschedule the shows in Novmeber.

For a guy whose voice resounds as if he’s issuing the Ten Commandments instead of

singing in a post-punk band, Editors

frontman Tom Smith admits to a bit of confusion over reaction to the Birmingham,

England, quartet’s sophomore album, “An End Has a Start.”

“Of

course, when you get out of bed in the morning and read something cynical about

yourself, yes, it stings. But [the reviews] don’t seem to be unified in the things that

are wrong with it,” he tells me before playing a show in Portland, Ore., part of a

tour that brings the band to Los Angeles tonight. “I wouldn’t change a single thing

about [the album]. And no matter where we are or how small the venue, there is always

someone who’s been there since Day 1.”

And heady days those were;

Editors’ first two singles — “Bullets” and “Munich” — propelled

them into the limelight in England, where they were nominated for a Mercury Prize, and

the U.S. release last year of “The Back Room” helped them land a spot at

Coachella. To some, Editors were just another Joy Division/Echo & the Bunnymen

acolyte; that Coachella set made me think they had out-Interpolled Interpol.

Read Full Story

I know this sounds kind of dog-ate-my-homework, but I had a fairly substantial

end-of-the-week post prepared this afternoon, but it seems to have been lost in a

browser crash. Briefly, it suggested very strongly that you see this man at 7:30 tonight at the Greek, buy his

album on Tuesday and then went on to

recommend a million things you could see and hear this weekend. Well, not a million, but

lots, from Cat Power to Boys Noize. Darn.

Download "You’re a

Wolf" if you haven’t already. And have a good weekend. I will get better.

–>

So here’s my dirty little secret: Until last

night, I had never attended a show at the Hollywood Bowl. I know, I know, it sounds

almost criminal, since I’ve lived just over the hill for about five years. But owing to

a general aversion to large crowds and an often-noncommittal attitude toward the acts that draw them, I’d managed to avoid this

singularly Los Angeles experience.

There was no better way to swallow the

communal-music-experience happy pill than seeing Arcade Fire on Thursday. It was the

sixth time I’ve seen the band, at six different venues — the first being a 300-capacity

club in Silver Lake where it got so crazy that the group ended up playing percussion on

the ventilation shafts above the stage. The virtuosic chaos generated by the 10-strong

Montreal collective was too big for that room, to be sure, and on its second trip to the

Bowl on Thursday, its set felt almost like performance art. All that pandemonium,

dispensed like bread crumbs to hungry little creatures bobbing in and out of the

geometrically tidy partitions that make up the Bowl’s wedge.

Just

beautiful.

LCD Soundstystem provided a second

excellent reason to traipse up the hill, with James Murphy and gang delivering a set

that matched Arcade Fire’s in energy but couldn’t have been more different in form. With

LCD, it’s all about repetition and order. The beats are insistent, and the riffs come at

you again and again. If Arcade Fire’s exuberance seemed fuel for a wistful optimism, LCD

always seemed to me to be the soundtrack to a healthy cynicism. The huge disco ball that

was brought in for the occasion was not just a prop; it was a wink.

So your

nerdy blogger drank some wine, high-fived some people in the aisles, moved around a

little bit to ward off the autumn chill, looked at the ribbons of light in the night sky

and vowed to come back sometime. With a better-stocked picnic basket, a better camera

and more friends.

Photo: LCD Soundsystem and its disco ball (Kevin Bronson /

LAT) 

Division Day, the L.A. indie-rock quartet whose

album "Beartrap Island" is being re-released (on iTunes today, and in stores

on Oct. 2), is offering a free remix or cover song every Tuesday for eight weeks. It’s

nice of them, considering what they’ve been through with this album; after the foursome

self-released it last year, they was signed to a start-up label that planned to issue

"Beartrap" last spring. But the start-up label never quite started up.

Enter L.A. imprint Eenie Meenie, home

to Great Northern, Irving and Goldenboy, among others. The label has signed Division

Day, and now the remastered album — with two new tracks — is on the way.

||| Download the band’s cover of Depeche Mode’s "Enjoy the Silence."

Then: the Tandemoro remix of the album track "Ricky." And

then: the band’s cover of Sunny Day Real Estate’s "Every Shining Time

You Arrive."

||| See Division Day perform at the Echo on Oct. 2.

Touts for

Thursday, Sept. 20

Imagine Dylan having to fight his way out of

an Irish bar: That’s Ike Reilly’s music. The Chicago-area troubadour hits town with his

band the Ike Reilly Assassination for a

gig at Spaceland tonight behind its new release, "We Belong to the Staggering

Evening." Reilly played solo earlier this summer as support for Tom Morello on the

latter’s Nightwatchman tour.

Recommended if you like barroom poets.

||| Download: "When Irish Eyes Are

Burning."

Also: This little

gig at the Hollywood Bowl tonight is apparently the show of the year.

And also: The New

Pornographers, with Lavender Diamond

opening, play the Fonda Theatre, and it’s not sold out. … The Airborne Toxic Event joins

Maxeen for a show at Costa Mesa’s Detroit Bar. …

Film School has a free show at Amoeba at

7. … And Hello Stranger greets

the crowd at Filter’s Revenge of the Sunset Strip night at the Roxy.

If the recognizable names in Year Long Disaster don’t get your attention,

the familiarity of the L.A. trio’s riffage will — tight, bluesy metal that sounds as if

they swaggered into the middle of a Led Zeppelin-ZZ Top bar fight.

“I like

the old stuff,” singer-guitarist Daniel Davies says. “You always want to know where

things come from. You hear the Stones talk about Muddy Waters and you say, ‘What is

that?’ When I was 12 and Nirvana did a David Bowie cover, I knew I had to check that

out.”

There’s plenty of history in the band’s lineage — the frontman is the

son of the Kinks’ Dave Davies.

Drummer Brad Hargreaves manned the kit for Third Eye Blind, and bassist

Rich Mullins toiled for hard rockers Karma to Burn and Speedealer. And

Robbie Robertson’s son,

Sebastian, manages the band.

“As long as you don’t have a reality show,

you’re gonna be all right,” Davies says of carrying his famous name. “And if you have

the band to back it up.”

Not that any of this came at the snap of his

fingers. Four years ago, Davies and Mullins were battling demons. “We were living in a

room dreaming about starting a band, just wasting days. We were drinking and taking

drugs,” he says. “I remember I had 76 cents the day my dad left to go back to England.

So we went to rehab to try to pull it together.”

So far, so good. Year Long

Disaster’s self-titled debut is due Oct. 9 on Volcom

Entertainment, home to hard rockers (and notoriously outrageous showmen) such as Valient Thorr and Riverboat Gamblers, with whom YLD is

currently on tour.

||| See Year Long Disaster tonight at the

Roxy Theatre. Also: Oct. 7 at the Fonda Theatre as the support act for

Turbonegro.

|||

Download: "It

Ain’t Luck."

Photo: Mullins, left, Davies and Hargreaves (by Ryan

Russell)

Run Run Run seems to

be edging slowly away from the shoegazer stylings that put the quartet on the L.A. map a

few years ago. Oh, on cue from front man Xander Smith’s lyrics, the guitars will still

ache and rustle and rumble, but on the band’s forthcoming new EP, "Good

Company," the approach is more straight-ahead. The new material was conceived in

small town upstate New York and marked the first time the band had written songs as a

group.

Here’s a little taste — and details on a show tonight where you can

catch some of the new stuff:

||| Download: "Julie."

|||

See Run Run Run perform tonight at Safari Sam’s with the Dilettantes (new project from Brian

Jonestown Massacre’s Joel Gion) and the After Midnight Project, among

others.

Touts for Wednesday, Sept. 19

The Little Ones and the Deadly Syndrome in one club

tonight, for 8 bucks? Nice job, Detroit Bar.

… The Vacation headlines the Viper

Room, and, yes, they have a song called "Destitute Prostitutes," but the

poster promoting the night is pretty tasteless, even if it was intended as some sort of

social commentary by its creator, front man Ben Tegel. … Ian Ball of Gomez joins in at the Buddy

residency at Bordello. … The New

Pornographers play the Fonda Theatre. … There’s the West Indian Girl/Softlightes

show at Spaceland [see yesterday’s post]. … And Peanut Butter Wolf holds forth with a bunch of

cool collaborators at the Roxy.

[Midweek tidbits while you warm up for Thursday night’s show at the Hollywood

Bowl:]

Your frenzy will have to wait.

An inaugural festival called Girlfrenzy featuring chart-toppers Sheryl Crow, Avril Lavigne, Fiona Apple and Miranda Lambert (as well as

up-and-comers Sara Bareilles and Colbie Caillat) has been postponed.

Girlfrenzy was scheduled for Oct. 27 at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre, and only this

week organizers had announced the addition of a second stage for even-more-fledgling

females. The event will be rescheduled in 2008, a press release from co-promoter

LiveNation said. Why was the plug pulled? "No reason was given,

unfortunately," a representative says.

– Pairing: The opening act for the Jesus and Mary Chain on Oct. 23

at the Wiltern Theatre is Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, for those who can tell their BRMC

from their JAMC.

– Practice: Warehouse space in downtown

was apparently scarce, so Van Halen went ahead and rented the Forum to rehearse for its

Nov. 20 show at Staples. Nice room, but those acoustics! Anyway, Blabbermouth blabs

about it here. Another (lowercase) blabbermouth tells me that Eddie Van Halen

was shreddilicious, playing one long guitar solo with mouth agape as if to say, "I

can’t believe I’m doing this." His son, Wolfgang, who’s playing with the band, came

over after the song and tapped him on the shoulder: "Good job, Dad." Then,

during "Runnin’ With the Devil," David Lee Roth pulled Eddie’s fuzzy hat down

over his face and announced this solo would be done "Stevie Wonder style." It

didn’t look rehearsed. And Eddie nailed the solo, note for note.

—

Perfect: Did I mention how right I thought the Bravery was for Tuesday

night’s Maxim Style Awards bash at the Avalon?

– Posed:

This is a shameless ploy by a publicist to get his band’s name out there the week before

the group’s album is released, but I will fall for it this time: A Maryland girl was

suspended from middle school for three days for having a photo [at right] of the

pop-punk quartet All Time Low hanging

inside her locker, according to the publicist. The band (on L.A. imprint Hopeless Records) will perform in the

Southland Oct. 20-22, ostensibly fully clothed.