The LA Setlist: July 22-28, 2024

There’s a whole stratum of muscular, melodic mainstream rock that’s largely ignored by hipster media outlets yet sells by the bucketload to fans who trust their ears more than their peers. One of its biggest names is Florida’s Shinedown who, ever since their 2001 major label-molded formation, have unleashed a string of Platinum- and Gold-certified albums while touring relentlessly both as headliners and alongside the likes of Rob Zombie and Godsmack. Almost ignoring the multiple rock trends that have come and gone in the past quarter-century, Shinedown has continued to craft hugely singable, massively dynamic music which has slowly shifted towards more polished, poppy production. Their seventh full-length, 2022’s Planet Zero, is a concept effort that warns of the dangers of toxic intolerance, cancel culture, and social media. In May, Shinedown surprised fans by dropping boldly shape-shifting single “Darkside,” an underrated gem from the 2018 album Attention Attention.

With her potent yet supple mezzo-soprano pipes and innately commanding presence, stage and screen fixture Idina Menzel has been dubbed both the “Queen of Broadway” and a Disney Legend. First making headlines with her 1996 Broadway debut in Rent, she earned a huge musical theatre following through celebrated performances on both sides of the Atlantic. But what propelled Menzel into living rooms and onto playlists worldwide was her early 2000s transition into film and television, notably in Disney’s Enchanted, TV series Glee, and as a voice of the massively successful Frozen franchise. Somehow, she’s also found time to record seven studio albums of her own, which include many self-penned songs and co-compositions. Menzel’s transition from stage to screen reads like something from a bygone age, fueled by a three-octave vocal versatility honed by her early years as a wedding singer and, like all true greats, defying easy classification. Tickets at AXS.

In a death metal scene splattered with clichéd shock-and-gore band names, San Francisco’s Fallujah – a reference to the ferociously contested Iraqi insurgent stronghold – stand out even on paper. Their of-its-time moniker hints at the band’s increasingly progressive take on core genre motifs since evolving from more traditional grind/deathcore roots towards the end of the 2000s. With a personnel history as complex as their music, Fallujah emerged from the pandemic with their fifth album Empyrean featuring yet another lineup. But far from sounding incoherent, Empyrean fuses everything admirable about prior incarnations into a remarkably confident, massively dynamic outpouring of furiously shreddy histrionics punctuated with perfectly paced foils of bleak melodo-death, irreverent jazz-fusion, and ethereal backing vocals.

To mark its 10th anniversary, a remixed/remastered version of Fallujah's landmark album The Flesh Prevails was just released. Fallujah will be playing The Flesh Prevails in its entirety on July 24 at 1720, but hopefully they'll include some of the blisteringly cathartic cuts from Empyrean. Tickets to the all-ages show at Dice.

Releasing music and performing as St. Kio, LA-based Nicole Bandoquillo is a self-taught Filipina multi-instrumentalist, artist and producer. Creating at an intriguing crossroads of gauzy shoegaze and jagged post-punk, with flecks of new wave sheen juxtaposed against abrasive grunge and noise rock flirtations, she’s been busy over the past couple of years releasing singles that have earned an underground cult following. On her newly released debut EP Infinity Mirror, St. Kio both confirms and consolidates her singular statement, melding ethereal bedroom pop and jarring noise with jangly washes of sound and lush vocals with nods to the early 2000s indie band heyday. While her soundscapes and lyrics can seem introverted, emanating from places of isolation and loss, St. Kio’s music also has a broader societal mission to help marginalized people – including femmes, BIPOC, and queer individuals – find happiness, hope, comfort, and empowerment. Tickets at AXS.

The same stripped-down, single-minded take on traditional honky-tonk and Bakersfield country that got Dwight Yoakam the cold shoulder in early '80s pop-oriented Nashville would soon be his gift to the world. Ironically, Yoakam had to relocate to LA to find an audience among Southern California’s burgeoning classic country-inspired cowpunk scene that was partially a reaction to the increasingly glossy and homogenized urban cowboy “Nashvegas” sounds of the time. This was the springboard for his sensational 1986 debut full-length, Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc., which ushered in a decade-long run of Platinum- and Gold-certified albums for the Kentucky-born singer-songwriter. Yoakam’s subtly shifting revivalism simultaneously made country music acceptable to rock audiences while saving it from becoming solely a pop subgenre with rustic window dressing. His album sales drooped as his acting career bloomed, notably in 1996's Sling Blade, yet country music remains forever in Yoakam’s debt. Tickets at AXS.

While many of us were wiling away the 2020 lockdown binging TikTok or (allegedly) baking sourdough, hardcore punk singer Ian Shelton was forming a new band. With his previous outfit, Seattle’s Regional Justice Center, on hold, he released what was effectively a solo EP, My Life is Over, as Militarie Gun in late 2020. Expanding this melodic hardcore expression into an LA-based five-piece band, two further EPs emerged the following year alongside, as pandemic restrictions eased, attention-getting shows with the likes of Fiddlehead and Touché Amoré. All this set the stage for Militarie Gun’s debut full-length, Life Under the Gun, which made many 2023 year-end lists, including being ranked #1 on Stereogum’s “Best Hardcore Albums of 2023.” Confessional and relentless yet accessibly hooky, Life refuses to pander to or be imprisoned by hardcore’s self-imposed boundaries and, in so doing, has been a gateway drug for thousands of genre newbies. Tickets to the all-ages show at AXS.

Jean and Marcus Baylor come together not only as a married couple, but also at a distinctive musical crossroads of soul, gospel, and jazz. Both the offspring of pastors, Jean’s silken vocals first gained attention as half of big-sellin’ Philly R&B duo Zhané (“Hey Mr. D.J.”), while drummer/composer Marcus was making his name with LA jazz fusion institution Yellowjackets. Since the 2010s, the virtuosic pair’s spiritual jazz as The Baylor Project has earned seven GRAMMY Award nominations and an NAACP Image Award, as well as a loyal in-the-know fanbase. Their latest single “Walk With Me, Lord (SOUND | SPIRIT)” finds soaring vocals dancing with fluttering drums to transporting effect. Released in celebration of Black Music Month and Juneteenth, the Baylors’ radical and dramatic interpretation of this traditional prayer song is an arresting, accomplished pairing of two of the oldest channels of human expression: voice and percussion. Tickets at Dice.

This co-headlining '90s nostalgia tour will be equally time-transporting and a reminder of why singer-songwriters Melissa Etheridge and Jewel sold absurd quantities of albums back then. Both are triumphs of substance over style, their careers built on organic songcraft and vocal performance rather than ultra-produced marketing triumphs. Having honed her craft in LA’s lesbian bars in the mid 1980s, Etheridge’s commercial breakthrough coincided with her public coming out in ’93, when her fourth album Yes I Am started selling millions, propelled by singles “Come to My Window” and “I’m the Only One.”

Alaska-raised Jewel exploded with her almost entirely self-penned 1995 debut album Pieces of You, partially recorded at the San Diego coffeehouse where she was discovered, which became one of the best-selling debuts of all time. A sweet, simple and pure-voiced foil to the all-powerful angsty grunge of the era, Pieces of You remains a 13-song soundtrack for millions.

Tickets at Ticketmaster.

With surf culture and its eponymous music genre being firmly rooted in early 1960s Southern California, it’s only appropriate that the multi-stage Surf Guitar 101 Festival takes place at a throwback Long Beach hotel. Since 2008, this niche event has been gathering not only some of the best international, national, and local exponents of instrumental surf music, but also themed vendors slingin’ everything from DVDs to Tiki mugs. While surf music was elbowed out of the charts by the mid-‘60s British Invasion, it lingers as a cult interest and even enjoyed a mini revival after the 1994 movie Pulp Fiction featured several surf songs. Though surf’s godfather guitarist Dick Dale passed in 2019, it remains an admirable labor of love for Surf Guitar 101 acts like The Surfaris (“Wipe Out”), the reunited Ghastly Ones, the Mermen, the Coffin Daggers, and the Boss Martians.