Review: Hella’s Zach Hill Crushes Minds, Tattoos Faces on Second LP, ‘Face Tat’

November 22, 2010November 19, 20101 Comment

"Put your face right here."

Zach Hill destroys lives with his drumming. He’ll forever alter you with his stickwork. Might even rearrange your face, carve something into it. Maybe that’s why the Hella mastermind he called his new album Face Tat.

“In 1969, James Brown coined the phrase ‘give the drummer some,’ forever providing skinsmen a handy shorthand and safeguard against singers who don’t like to share. But Zach Hill has always gone out and gotten it himself. The self-taught kit-pummeler …”

Finish that sentence and read a few more over at The A.V. Club.

Continue reading →

Feature: All Hail King Skinny Shitster, Wavves’ Nathan Williams (Also: He May Be Leaving Fat Possum Records, Definitely Digs Lil Wayne)

September 2, 2010October 6, 2010

Wavves and Snacks the cat -- which one looks more together?

A little while back I had the hazy, kinda strange pleasure of interviewing Wavves’ Nathan Williams in the Los Angeles apartment he shares with girlfriend and Best Coast singer, Bethany Cosentino. What I discovered was the living embodiment of all that on-album ennui — a dude who probably hasn’t sat up straight since … well, ever. But that may very well be to his music’s advantage, as Wavves’ new album, King of the Beach, is mighty high on my list of the best albums of 2010 so far.

Read the feature, All Hail King Skinny Shitster, over at L.A. Weekly (also in print this week). As a supplement to that, you can check out a few choice scraps from the cutting room floor on West Coast Sound, in the blog post, “Wavves May Leave Fat Possum Records, Wants to Meet Lil Wayne, Plays FYF Fest on Saturday,” whose title is also quite self-explanatory. Also: go to FYF Fest this weekend. You won’t be sorry.

Continue reading →

The Best of the Fest: No Age, Wavves, and Japanther + Ninjasonik Slay at L.A.’s FYF (MP3s)

September 7, 2009April 22, 2010

Wow. That was intense. And incredible. Those who survived FYF Fest this weekend in L.A. should be easy enough to spot: dusty clothes, compulsive head-bobbing, bleeding ears. The LA Weekly‘s West Coast Sound blog has been posting some solid roundups of what went down in the Los Angeles State Historic Park, kicked off by yours truly with this entry.