The LA Setlist: July 29 - Aug. 4, 2024

Following five albums in a decade, LA-based Dominican American singer/songwriter/producer Twin Shadow has been quiet lately – which perhaps explains his playing two nights at East Hollywood’s 299-capacity Barnsdall Gallery Theatre. His songwriting has evolved from unusually profound chillwave through romantic, synthy new wave, to the throwback soul and bachata of his most recent, eponymous offering. The throughline of such diverse craft has been sincere songwriting and vocals that span dusky, nostalgic confessions to plaintive, visceral yelps. On 2021’s Twin Shadow, which was partially recorded in Santo Domingo, things get worldy and dance. “Alemania” is a celebration of good times in Germany and the Dominican Republic; while the creepingly anthemic “Get Closer” is massaged with hand percussion, and “Johnny and Jonnie” feels borderline beachy. Jump at this opportunity to enjoy an artist who’s toured with the likes of Death Cab for Cutie and Beck in such an intimate setting.

Tickets to the all-ages show at Dice.

Like many artists on the influential Griselda hip-hop label that he co-founded a decade ago, Conway the Machine has released consistently compelling material with only modest commercial rewards. Last year’s Won’t He Do It, Conway’s first album since departing Griselda, was acclaimed as a career high for an artist respected for his paced, menacing diction and gritty bars. The record was stuffed with guests including Sauce Walka, Dave East, and Benny the Butcher, which helped it ambush the Billboard Heatseekers Top 10. The restless Buffalo MC returned in May with the similarly features-packed Slant Face Killah, its title a reference to the partial facial paralysis resulting from a 2012 shooting that also contributed to his signature slur. Indicative of the rap respect Conway the Machine still commands, Slant Face Killah includes head-turning collabs with genre veterans Cool & Dre and Swizz Beatz.

Tickets to the all-ages show at Live Nation.

Outlaw Music Festival is a touring, loosely themed rotating bill of country, folk, blues, and heartland rock. The festival takes its name from its iconic cofounder, Willie Nelson, pioneer of the outlaw country subgenre of the late 1960s. With his famed 420 lifestyle now decidedly mainstream, Nelson’s chief act of rebellion is continuing to not only tour at age 91, but also to relentlessly release new music. His well-received 75th album, The Border dropped in May.

Almost synonymous with ‘60s counterculture, Bob Dylan’s latest album, 2023’s Shadow Kingdom mostly revisits songs from his early career and is his first without drums or percussion.

John Mellencamp is the fest’s rocker, but his plainspoken take on the genre incorporates both musical traits and the narrative spirit of folk music.

Opener Brittney Spencer, one of the very few prominent Black country artists, graces the Hollywood Bowl just four years after breaking through on Twitter.

Tickets at Ticketmaster.

If you’re a casual fan of UB40 from their 1980s-1990s heyday, be ready for a rather changed band celebrating its 45th anniversary at The Greek Theatre. Co-founder Ali Campbell, the face and voice of the Brit reggae-pop survivors for 30 years, departed in 2008 and has sometimes performed with his own incarnation since. Confusingly, he was replaced by his brother Duncan until the latter’s retirement in 2021, and a third Campbell sibling, guitarist/vocalist Robin, remains aboard. Now fronted by the very able Matt Doyle and retaining four original members, recent UB40 shows are doubly nostalgic, recalling both the band’s string of once ubiquitous hits, many of which were covers – including the Neil Diamond-penned “Red Red Wine” and Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe,” which UB40 famously covered with Chrissie Hynde – and their original 1960s versions. Expect a balmy night of easy, familiar listening beneath the stars.

Tickets to the all-ages show at Ticketmaster.

While Esperanza Spalding is one of the best-known names in contemporary jazz, that accolade does the cross-pollinated, maverick nuances of her music a disservice. The bassist/vocalist’s nearly 25-year career, while centered around intimate interpretations of standards, has included a string of increasingly conceptual releases embracing influences ranging from experimental pop, art rock, and R&B to Afro-Latin genres and neo-prog. At 39, this former child prodigy shows no sign of abandoning the sense of sonic and stylistic adventure that has earned her five GRAMMY Awards, a string of US Jazz chart toppers, and four albums in the mainstream Billboard 200. Striking, outspoken, and endlessly curious, Spalding’s last studio album, 2021’s GRAMMY-winning Songwrights Apothecary Lab was composed and recorded in her traveling music laboratory in collaboration with an array of not only musicians, but also practitioners and researchers in fields including Sufism, music therapy, neuroscience, and Black American and Carnatic music. Tickets at Ticketmaster.

Welsh DJ Elkka began as a songwriter and vocalist before moving into production, and it shows in warm, melodic hybrid electronica that connects through her emotive vocals. A force on the London underground since 2016, when she launched label/collective femme culture and released her debut EP, Elkka broke out in 2021 with the single “Burnt Orange” and BBC Radio 1’s Essential Mix of the Year award. Her wide-eyed take on house marries UK bass, breakbeat, and classic house, with pulsing beats and hypnotizing fractals that transmit both time-honored euphoric dancefloor togetherness and a broader range of emotions traditionally underrepresented in the genre. Elkka’s much anticipated, characteristically fearless debut album, Prism of Pleasure dropped in June. As its title implies, the record explores, conveys and stimulates joy, but with a roundly 3D perspective that also delves into ostensibly incongruous sensations of grief and catharsis. Tickets at Dice.

Steeped in East LA’s Chicano community, Las Cafeteras passionately fuse folk music and spoken word with traditional son jarocho sounds and zapateado dancing. Named for the organization where they were taking classes when they formed twenty years ago (feminized, to honor women), they’ve become national ambassadors for Chicano culture, with original songs that reference pertinent themes including immigration reform, the Civil Rights Movement, the DREAM Act, and Ciudad Juárez femicides. Somehow, this enthused sextet makes even such weighty topics danceable and entertaining, expertly combining instrumentation that may be unfamiliar to many listeners including jarana and requinto jarochos, cajón, and quijada (a percussion instrument made from a large animal’s jawbone). While vivacious vocalist and dancer Denise Carlos is Las Cafeteras’ natural figurehead, the entire band performs with visible joy and palpable chemistry, delivering a concert experience that is at once exotic and Angeleno through-and-through.

Tickets to the all-ages show at Dice.

If “dream metal” seems a contradiction in terms, witness Iress and you will understand. Over the past decade, this fascinating LA doomgaze foursome has carved out a singular and single-minded niche at the intersection of metal, slowcore, and shoegaze connected by the astonishingly transporting, borderline folky vocals of Michelle Malley. Equally effective at ethereal, clean-guitar musings and claustrophobically heavy crescendos, Iress creates a push and pull of tension and release, realization and escape, acceptance and defiance. Following a pair of stunning albums, Iress’s recent Solace EP and singles reveal no let up in their thoughtful excellence, Malley’s otherworldly, often self-harmonized timbre capable of grainy anguish, soaring abandon, and inner-voice introversion – all within the same song. An enlightening gateway to metal for the uninitiated and to shoegaze for those who’ve previously found it too mopey and self-absorbed, Iress is truly something to behold and be treasured.

Tickets to the all-ages show at Live Nation.

On her LinkedIn profile, Arushi Jain self-describes as “Stanford Computer Science, Infrastructure Engineer and Creative Technologist.” The last of these hints at her musical persona as a modular synthesist, composer and singer credited with popularizing Hindustani classical music for a new generation by dovetailing it with new age-y experimental electronics. The New Delhi raised, Brooklyn-based multi-hyphenate seduced critics with her dreamy 2021 debut album Under the Lilac Sky, before further redefining traditional ragas (specifically wistfully romantic Raga Bageshri) on follow-up Delight, released in June. This time, Jain has extended her palette into the organic expressions of cellos, marimba, flute, classical guitar, and saxophone alongside her audibly trained voice in a soundbath of playful self-actualizing. An inspiring and thought-provoking figure who straddles the worlds of technology, academia and art, Jain was included on Forbes 30 Under 30 Music list last year and has been commissioned by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.

When Hard Music Festival debuted in 2007 as a relatively modest New Year’s Eve party in Downtown LA featuring Justice, Peaches, and 2 Live Crew, there was little sense that it would become not only America’s predominant electronic music gathering, but also an all-powerful brand that includes similarly themed concerts and cruises. Over the past 16 years, the annual Hard Summer Music Festival has become one of Hard’s flagship events (alongside Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas) and a must-do for EDM heads who travel from far and wide for its throbbing, escapist excesses.

Taking place at Hollywood Park adjacent to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, this year’s two-day edition includes performances by English brothers Disclosure, REZZMAU5 (REZZ and deadmau5), fellow Canadians Zeds Dead, Saturday's special guest Nelly Furtado, KETBOI69 (Partiboi69 and KETTAMA), Croatian producer/remixer Matroda, Sunday special guest Chase & Status, and many, many more. Tickets at Songkick.

The final night of a three-show residency billed as “An Intimate Evening with Lady Blackbird” will likely be your last chance for a while to witness the late-blooming jazz/soul singer in such snugly sleek surrounds. After years as a session and touring vocalist with the likes of TobyMac and production team Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the New Mexico-raised, LA-based chanteuse found solo fame across the Atlantic with her 2021 debut album, Black Acid Soul. The jazz-rooted, starkly understated collection peaked at number 6 on the UK Albums Chart, with two singles also making the Top 40, and Lady Blackbird did the rounds of Brit TV shows and jazz fests. With her signature peroxide afro, extravagant stage attire, and a voice at once commanding and vulnerable, Lady Blackbird has arena-sized star power and chops, but her late-night musings are best experienced in classy up-close settings like The Sun Rose. Tickets at Dice.

As the daughter of sitar legend Ravi Shankar and half-sister to GRAMMY-winning musician Anoushka Shankar, music was Norah Jones’ destiny. But no one was ready for the 27-million-plus sales and avalanche of accolades for her 2002 debut album, Come Away with Me, an inspired coming together of sophisticated vocal jazz and ‘70s SoCal singer-songwriter sensibilities that won five GRAMMYs. This vast validation released Jones to since enjoy a career of admirable authenticity and quiet adventure. Over eight further solo albums, she’s danced with inventive alt pop, country and mellow rock, while further showcasing her versatility and varied tastes in even more diverse side projects like the folk-flecked country of Puss N Boots. Released in March 2024, Jones’ ninth album, Visions, further showcases her innate curiosity with its gauzy garage-soul. Tickets at Ticketmaster.