Bethany Cosentino is perhaps the most on-message songwriter in rock music right now. Over her two albums as Best Coast, including this year’s “The Only Place,” the L.A.-based singer returns to her favorite themes — the pleasures of California, the pangs of coupledom — with the same dedication that Rick Ross applys to describing his car fleet.But one song that she played at her big homecoming show at the Wiltern on Friday showed she might be growing uncomfortable in that niche. “How They Want Me to Be” is a tender bit of pre-Beatles pop with a light country haze. On Friday, Cosentino played it as a rebuttal to her stereotype as a stoner cat lady-turned-overnight superstar. “All of my friends stick up their noses, ask ... Continue reading →

Donna Summer left us many legacies, and one of the most fascinating is the way her music brought gay and straight audiences together on the dance floor. For decades, her music has been a staple in gay club playlists while also topping mainstream pop charts. Her music blended the sexual and the spiritual with sonic invention that forever changed the way we party. That contribution is perhaps nowhere more evident than at A Club Called Rhonda. The peripatetic L.A. club is famous for its polysexual hedonism and mix of classic disco and adventurous electronic dance music. We asked the club's founders to assess her legacy, and how it informs today's nightclub culture. What does today’s dance music explosion owe to Donna Summer -- both in ... Continue reading →

The buzzy story out of Saturday night's Hollywood Forever set by the haunting, villainous R&B act the Weeknd was that Drake came by for an extended guest vocal slot. But Drake's more interesting turn on the mike came right afterward. "I remember the first time I heard the Weeknd," he said in a quick soliloquy to a rapt sold-out audience (save for the one attendee who tried to throw a drink at him). "I was in Toronto, and it was raining. I heard two songs, 'What You Need' and 'The Party & the After Party,' and I thought, 'This is greatest thing to happen to music in a long time.' " Drake is known for many moods -- self-regard and self-loathing among them. But he's ... Continue reading →

At the start of “Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall,” the last song Coldplay performed at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday night, the band flicked on halos of lasers, cued a four-on-the-floor drum beat and sang about how it wanted to “turn the music up, I got my records on / I shut the world outside until the lights come on.” For an act that crankier critics accuse of playing middlebrow post-indie-rock for Apple adverts, this was awfully ravey. The London quartet, one of the biggest bands to emerge in the 2000s, is certainly grounded in earnest guitar-and-piano emoting (with the good taste and huge budgets that afford Brian Eno as a producer). But that move implies that it sees the rise of dance-music culture as ... Continue reading →

In Mark Ford’s new documentary, "Uprising: Hip-Hop and the L.A. Riots," which airs tonight on VH1, the music coming out of South L.A. in the early '90s was more than just news, or what Chuck D of Pubic Enemy called the "black CNN." The explicit and furious hip-hop and gangsta rap that flowed out of that community was a warning about the riots that would erupt there on April 29, 1992. “Ironically, I was working at the real CNN at the time. I remember being baffled by the violence and not really having a frame of reference for it,” Ford said. “But as I studied hip-hop, I saw that it was music with very specific grievances. Some people took a song like “F… tha Police” ... Continue reading →

Hint: Use 'j' and 'k' keys to move up and down Bin Iver found a bird with a broken leg. He brought it inside, and he kissed me, and now he’s making a tiny splint. He named the bird ‘Little Love’. Sometimes Bon Iver tenderly whispers, ‘Can I be the little spoon now?’ I’m lying in bed right now, and Bon Iver is chopping up heirloom tomatoes for our frittata. Today Bon Iver wrapped me in his flannel, which smelled like charred pine and licorice, and took me outside to show me a perfect spiderweb. This morning, after our passionate and tender lovemaking, Bon Iver brought me fresh-brewed coffee in a mug he’d carved out of the branch of a tree that fell in the ... Continue reading →