Foreign Born got a little tube time

Tuesday night, and as television cameos go, this one, on the new NBC show

"Chuck," was pretty killer. The L.A. quartet, whose album "On the Wing

Now" just came out on Dim Mak, is giving away a free download (for today only) to

celebrate. (If I’m reading the storyline correctly, the blonde is a CIA agent charged

with protecting her nerdy date. Go nerds!)

||| See Foreign

Born this weekend at the Swerve

Festival.

||| Download: "Into Your

Dream."

[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."

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.

famous local-music awareness program:]

Don’t be deceived by the religious connotations in their band name — the Stevenson Ranch Davidians

aren’t cultists. "It’s very tongue-in-cheek," singer-guitarist Dwayne

Seagraves says, "but people don’t always get it. Some people think we’re a

religious band."

The Davidians — who are indeed from the Santa Clarita Valley development Stevenson

Ranch — do have their devotions, however. On "Psalms, Hymns & Spiritual

Songs," their self-released album from last year, the quartet visits the altar of

Britpop as rendered by the likes of Travis, the Verve and Blur, not to mention the

pop-psych pioneers of the ’60s. The Davidians nurture their version of that sound with

songs that are patiently paced, gently couched in reverb and simple in lyrical

approach.

Seagraves and band mates Jessica Latiolait, Bryan Showalter and Cary Chafin are

already writing songs for a follow-up to "Psalms," which was recorded in

Raymond Richards’ Red Rockets Glare studio in Rancho Park. The album has been picked up

by a European indie label for distribution, so the foursome hopes to tour there later

this year.

||| Stevenson Ranch Davidians, with the Black Pine among the supporting acts,

perform Wednesday night at the Echo.

||| Download: "Beginnings and

Ends."

"Hideout," the new album by Film School, isn’t out until Sept. 11, but

it’s already creating a buzz from those who’ve heard its buzzing guitars and

reverb-heavy dynamics. Its the kind of album that dares you to roll up your car windows,

crank it and be swallowed whole. If the band’s debut album was a bit hit-and-miss,

there  are precious few misfires on this one.

Greg Bertens (the artist formerly known as Krayg Burton, at least on the first album)

and mates have relocated to Los Angeles from San Francisco. Let’s see, that makes

tonight’s show at Spaceland a hometown gig, then. Brilliant.

||| Download "Lectric."

||| Brooklyn’s Pela is an opening act for that

show tonight. It will be drummer Tomislav Zovich’s final tour with the band.

Touts for Tuesday, Aug. 14

Oh, what a night: The Magic Numbers and

the Little Ones bring their feel-good

pop to the El Rey. … Dengue

Fever rocks the Knitting Factory. … The One AM Radio looses his gauzy

bedroom pop on the Echo. … Buckfast

plies its Anglophile rock at the Mint. … Eulogies, the new trio assembled by

singer-songwriter Peter Walker, plays a set at the Troubadour opening for rockers the Wildbirds. … The Finches and the Coral Sea entertain at Bordello.

… And Aushua plays the early set at the

Silverlake Lounge.

Photo by Marla Aufmuth

[This installment of our local music series is brought to you by arts &

crafts:]

An EP

arrived this week in a colorful, hand-decorated cardboard sleeve (inscribed

"#014"), a sure sign that either the music inside is really something special,

or that somebody has too much time on her hands. I can’t speak to the latter, but the

five tunes on "EP 01" by Los Angeles quartet Hello Dragon are stickier than Velcro —

slightly spaced-out pop anthems that reflect the band’s stated fascination with

"animal rights, quantum mechanics, El Chupacabra, vacuum tubes and cheap-sounding

synthesizers." There’s even a tuneful nod to "Stephen Hawking."

Hello Dragon — the music and DIY sleeves — is the handiwork of Chris Zerby and Julie

Chadwick, who were the principals in the edgy Boston power-pop band Helicopter Helicopter. They brought

their crunchy guitars and boy-girl vocals to L.A. a couple years ago, but have now

started over, having joined forces with fellow Beantown expats Josh Pickering

(keyboards) and Sean Burgess (drums).

You can order an EP — and download

some songs — here. Hello Dragon

has only played three shows thus far; a recent one was postponed because Chadwick

suffered a hand laceration in a kitchen mishap. But look for a gig in September, Zerby

says, along with some more crafty packaging: "We haven’t broken out the glitter

glue yet, but you never know."

||| Get started right here by downloading

"Birds of Prey."

Photo of Zerby and Chadwick by Josh Pickering.

[Another installment in our series highlighting local music:]

The Red Button presses all the right

buttons for fans of pure pop. Its album, "She’s About to Cross My Mind,"

sounds as if it should be crackling out of an AM radio, the tunes of some youngsters

angling to be the next Fab Four. Yes, it’s hopelessly retro, right down to its very mod

sleeve, but the record’s easy psychedelia and friendly Merseybeat go down easily. Even

the Little

Steven’s Underground Garage radio show tabbed "Cruel Girl" as its No. 1

song last week.

It’s no surprise that the duo pushing all the buttons here are veteran songwriters Seth Swirsky and Mike Ruekberg. Swirsky, a longtime

songwriter-for-hire who made his first solo album a couple years ago, is also an artist

and well-known collector of sports memorabilia.

Ruekberg was the driving force behind the Minneapolis pop band Rex Daisy. Together they explore their love

of all things jangly, harmonic and Beatles.

||| The Red Button perform as an acoustic duo tonight at Spaceland as part of the

10th annual International Pop

Overthrow festival. Astra Heights

and the Prix are among the other bands

on the bill.

||| Download: "Cruel

Girl."

Photo of Mike Ruekberg, left, and Seth Swirsky courtesy of Luck Media.

[Contributor Casey Dolan with his dollop of pop:]

Dylan Hay Chapman, lead singer-songwriter for local popsters Service Group, tells me that the origin of the group’s

name lay in a high school student contingent assigned to work in the cafeteria

("the kids that weren’t into athletics"). I wasn’t far wrong in guessing that

it sounded like a catering firm for high schools; either that or sex trade camp

followers for the military (but, no, wait, that was Joy Division).

Chapman is a breezy fellow with a band that has patiently slogged it out in the rock

‘n’ roll toilets of Los Angeles for the past several years. Now, their brand of altered

retro-pop may get a boost from their second album, "Principals of Electronic

Circuitry," being released Sept. 25 on their own label, Squid vs. Whale.

"We’re all happy with the album," says Chapman. "It’s been kicking

around for two years, so [we’re well practiced]. We know we have a lot of playing and

promoting to do. The second album is the same sensibility as the first, only the fast

songs are faster, the slow songs are slower. It’s a little more refined; the corners are

sharpened."

Read Full Story

[One in a series highlighting new music by

Los Angeles bands:]

On its first album two years ago, the Prix gave us a collection of

two-days-away-from-a-razor power pop that displayed quite a bit of muscle and maybe a

little moxie, not to mention a kinship with decades of artists who honed their hooks in

a garage. If "Frix the Prix" got only a modest reception, it might have been

because the Prix never bothered to slather its retro feel in eight layers of irony.

"St. Domino," the new EP from the quartet, expands its palette

considerably, with touches of glam and new wave seeping into six rollicking songs

recorded at Red Rockets Glare studio with Raymond Richards and Dan Long. You might even

hear a little Smiths along with the quartet’s frenetic piano lines and harmonies. The

Prix (Cashew Von Harding, Blake Jordan, Zach Ziegler and Stephen Mills) are the resident

band this month at club Kiss or Kill

(recently moved to Wednesday nights at El Cid). This week, they celebrate the release of

"St. Domino" at Kiss or Kill with support from Star No Star, the Power Cords and Service Group.

||| Download "The Chevalier."

Photo of the Prix by Sterling Andrews. [Thanks to reader A. Martinez for the

reminder.]

[This blog has been silent for a couple days, and one e-mailer even suggested I

had run off and joined the Warped Tour. Hey, I didn’t like Paramore that much. No, this little digital

in the courtroom. So here’s a little song I like, with some more to come:]

Mendocino-based singer-songwriter Chrisopher

Blue has gotten his first name, which has no "t," misspelled all over the

West Coast. I’m here to apologize for careless typists everywhere, and to tell you that

his album "Room Tones" is perfect rainy-day listening. Well, if it ever rained

here. Blue — who used to play in a band with Duff McKagan and actually almost quit

music if not for words of encouragement from Mark Lanegan — is in town for a couple

shows this weekend. Maybe it’ll cloud up.

||| See Chrisopher Blue performs Saturday at Room 5 on Fairfax and

Sunday at Tangier in Los Feliz.

||| Download: &qu

ot;Good Time Baby" as performed live on Seattle’s KEXP-FM.

Thursday, July 12

What a night for shows: Patrick Park and Emma Burgess play Spaceland; Dr. Dog and the Delta Spirit hold forth at the Echo;

the Little Ones play the Indie 103.1

bash at the Hammer

Museum (last week’s with Great Northern was pretty swell, I hear); Everest headlines

the Silverlake Lounge; the Sharp

Things bring their sharp orchestral pop to the Mint; and the Front and the Monolators are among the band’s playing

a Rock Insider event at the Scene in

Glendale.