If there existed such a thing as an aural dictionary, Martha Davis of the Motels’ voice would be a nice choice under “longing.”The Los Angeles-based singer’s stellar vocals (filled with the kind of subtlety and late-night pathos someone like Courtney Love would kill for) were on full display Monday night at Spaceland in a rare live gig announced just days ago and not on the venue’s official calendar.Tipped off by my co-worker Kevin Bronson, I jumped at the opportunity to see the band at the Silver Lake club. Growing up in Denver, I was weaned on a steady diet of Motels videos (and a host of other L.A.-based new wave acts, such as Berlin and Missing Persons, but the Motels somehow out-classed other L.A. bands from the era, even the Go-Go’s), thanks to a weekly public television show called “Teletunes” on KBDI-TV.

I have nothing but fond childhood memories of watching earnest yet well-crafted early videos like “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely” from the Motels during the early 1980s, before MTV became a vehicle for higher budget videos from genres other than rock, a la Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Despite overwhelming odds, the Motels briefly were stars in the early 1980s, scoring a Top 10 hit with “Only the Lonely” in 1982 and even performing on “Saturday Night Live” in January 1983.

And while nothing can match my memories of a young Davis on SNL and “Teletunes” on a decidedly down-market RCA screen at my childhood home, Monday’s concert came damn close.

Davis’ new band blew away the small audience lucky enough to catch the set. Who’s in Martha’s new lineup? An immensely talented bunch of lads, including Clint Walsh on lead guitar (he is also Gnarls Barkley’s touring guitarist), Eric Gardner on drums (Gardner is also in the touring version of Gnarls), Jon Siebels on bass (a former Eve 6 member) and Nick Johns on keyboards (who often tours with Ben Lee).

The embarrassment of riches on display served Davis well; as her backup band perfectly meshed with Davis’ pent-up vox on several classic Motels tunes such as “Only the Lonely” and the show opening “So L.A.” The only complaint? No “Take the L” and a somewhat abbreviated set (the Motels were stuck on the bill as the first of several acts at Spaceland).

If you have the chance, try and catch this lineup the next time they play in the area (Sept. 19 at the L.A. County Fair). The band’s manager, Jason Burkhart, says they are “working right now on putting together some more [earlier] dates for L.A.” We’ll keep you posted.

– Charlie Amter

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy’s “YAHHH!” Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC’s inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of “Stephanopoulos” in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth’s nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O’Reilly.

–August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

– Pauline O’Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today’s sad announcement from Neu!’s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! — many years removed from their ’70s heyday (I’m looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger’s signature, relentless “motorik” beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember “Spiders (Kidsmoke)”?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you’ll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there’s limited to no video reference for Neu!’s work to post in tribute, but there’s something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There’s no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band’s self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of “Hallogallo” spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

– Chris Barton

Yes, we’re about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today’s your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a “butternut reduction” without being a latecomer dweeb.

– August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News’ resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show “Red Eye” is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn’t know he was Cate Blanchett’s singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic “I’m Not There”). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker’s collective head explode into tiny fragments.

– August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn’t have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee’s new single, “Where Da G’s,” off 2007’s infuriatingly neglected “Maths & English,” the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B’s home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons — Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger — but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee’s at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

– August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them — and, really, wouldn’t we all want to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a guy named Rocky O’Reilly?]

Neon Neon, “Stainless Style” (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era’s dancefloor vacuousness comes … an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop — this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. “Stainless Style” is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, “Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It” (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O’Reilly walks a tightrope — to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on “The Never Never”), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. … Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast’s Spaceland residency. … Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, “Here’s to Being Here,” headlines the Troubadour. … At the Roxy, it’s the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. … The Chapin Sisters‘ residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose “Really Real for Forever” (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

– Kevin Bronson

Here’s the video for These New Puritans’ single, “Elvis” (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida’s “Low” is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong — it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of “Low.”

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Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band’s 50-minute foray saved the evening — even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn’t resist a swipe at Cave’s middle-aged fans — just you wait, Matt Le May, you’ll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I’ve been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can’t imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. “Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!” comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you’ll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there’s a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I’d already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried — Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album’s title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I’m delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

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