Event Details
Date: Thursday, July 19, 2012
Start Time: 8:00 PM
Event Type: Special Events, Concerts
Last Updated: June 13, 2012
Views: 1
Folk Yeah PresentsBeachwood SparksAllah-Las, Sweet Chariots, DJ Britt GoveaBeachwood SparksSome albums were made to be played on a Saturday night. The Tarnished Gold was meant to be played on a Sunday afternoon. Listening to Beachwood Sparks first album in 11 years is like being under cobalt blue skies and smelling the night-blooming jasmine on a perfect spring day in Los Angeles. Thats definitely the idea, founding member Brent Rademaker confirms.The world has caught up to Beachwood Sparks since they came out of nowhere in 2000 with their self-titled debut album, bringing new life to what Gram Parsons famously described as cosmic American music, and recapturing L.A.s laidback but vibrant heyday back in the late 60s and early 70s. At the time, this kind of harmony-rich, irony-free music was rare. After their second album, 2002s trippier Once We Were Trees, and the decidedly offbeat 2003 EP Make the Cowboy Robots Cry, Beachwood Sparks called it quits. But during the subsequent half decade, the indie music scene began to change with the appearance, and wholesale acceptance, of multi-voiced throwback groups from Fleet Foxes to Bon Iver to Grizzly Bear. Clearly, the time is right for an album that stands as the purest expression of this hallowed form to appear in the 21st century, as the planets at long last align for this single-minded band.The Tarnished Gold is the work of the classic Beachwood Sparks lineup: singer/guitarist Chris Gunst, singer/bassist Brent Rademaker, singer/multi-instrumentalist Farmer Dave Scher, and drummer Aaron Sperske, with invaluable support from guitarist and longtime friend Ben Knight (The Tyde). For the sessions, the band expanded to seven pieces, with guitarists Knight and Neal Casal (solo artist and former member of Ryan Adams and the Cardinals), with Dan Horne on pedal steel in place of Scher, who opted to play organ, key, flying V guitar and electrified melodica. Also lending a hand were Gunsts wife Jen Cohen, Sparks very first drummer Jimi Hey, Brents brother Darren (leader of The Tyde) and L.A. indie-rock maestro Ariel Pink. Once We Were Trees producer Thom Monahan returned to his familiar spot behind the console.Allah-LasGreil Marcus liked to refer back to "The Old, Weird America" when discussing a certain famous set of recordings that emanated from a Woodstock cabin basement. ALLAH-LAS sound like the Old, Weird Los Angeles: Strains of true surfing music, American harmonies, Sunset Strip backbeat, desert ramble filtered through Goldstar Sessioneers; That pre-fuzz pedal 'electrified folk' music and pop groups hitting that California sound with the tambourine on just the right beat. When you hear it, you see things Venice's arches lit at night with the ocean in the distance; mid-century hamburger stands and slow-moving main drags in residential nights; Teen-age revues at 400 person ballrooms; Ferus Gallery beatniks; bungalows in canyons; hidden deco stairsteps peeking from leafy hillsides; kustom kars and dovetails and chicks in OP shorts with long, long hair. Like a Dennis Hopper photo come to life. You look at their well worn Fender guitars, their real surfer tans, their dusty suede boots - and you see it's a sound natural to them; This isn't an act.