The LA Setlist: Sep. 16-22, 2024

Enormous early-career success tends to either leave a musician hungry for further commercial reward or sets them fiscally free to explore more authentic and adventurous paths thereafter. In the case of Ireland’s Hozier, the international radio and chart ubiquity of his soulful 2013 debut single “Take Me to Church” and multi-million sales of his eponymous full-length the following year appears to have had the latter result. Only Hozier, who was just 23 when his career exploded, was already plenty honest and bold: “Take Me to Church” calls out gay discrimination within the Catholic Church – in his majority-Catholic homeland. Drawing from blues, soul, and folk, with hints of his choral background with hit Irish ensemble Anúna, what followed was 2019’s socio-politically conscious Wasteland, Baby! and then last year’s Unreal Unearth, an admirably ambitious concept album loosely based upon Dante’s Inferno and featuring Hozier’s first Irish language recordings. Tickets at Ticketmaster.

Bon Iver’s 2007 debut album For Emma, Forever Ago opened the door for musicians worldwide to discover (or reveal) their inner, introspective folkie. Of the slew of alt-folk acts since, Hazlett – a well-traveled, lavishly bearded Aussie whose music takes shape in Sweden alongside producer Freddy Alexander – transcends cloning with the headily delicate alone-ing of last year’s Bloom Mountain album and Goodbye to the Valley Low EP (a second installment of which is due in October). Recorded in an off-grid cabin on Sweden’s west coast, Goodbye to the Valley Low’s ambient folk is arrestingly mesmerized and entrancing, but all that atmosphere would count for little without its off-kilter melodies and Hazlett’s aptly glacial vocals. After successful European touring with Wild Rivers and Josiah and The Bonnevilles, Hazlett is already making his second U.S. trek this year, on which the 250-capacity Moroccan Lounge will make a sublime setting for his understated, escape-inside-your-head songcraft.

Tickets to the all-ages show at Ticketmaster.

Surely among the GOAT polymath creatives, Donald Glover is a top-tier comedian, writer, actor, and, as Childish Gambino, conveyor of quirky rap and psychedelic/funky soul. Still barely in his forties, he was writing for the hit sitcom 30 Rock at age 23, before Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning roles in NBC’s Community and Atlanta on FX. Somehow, between all this and a movie career, he’s also released five Childish Gambino albums, two of which made the Top 10 stateside, plus a number one single with 2018’s poignant and timely “This Is America”. Released in July, Bando Stone and the New World, the eponymous soundtrack from his upcoming film, is billed as the final Gambino full-length, as he plans to retire the name thereafter. Mind you, he also announced that his 2018 tour would be his last, but here he is for what really might be your final chance to witness the GRAMMY-winning Gambino onstage. Tickets at AXS.

Pulp, and especially charmingly nerdish frontman Jarvis Cocker, have become something of a British institution over the past 45 years, while their very Britishness has helped make them a cult act stateside, too. They were already a veteran outfit when they found what ostensibly appeared to be overnight success in the mid 1990s with albums His ‘n’ Hers and Different Class, propelled by singles “Mis-Shapes/Sorted for E’s & Wizz” and era anthem “Common People.” While to this day associated with Britpop, Pulp were more artsy and nuanced than many of their Paul Weller-haired peers, fusing stylish, disco-inflected pop-rock to kitchen sink realism lyrics that resonated widely. With the angular, bespectacled Cocker the band’s sole constant (longtime bassist Steve Mackey tragically passed last year), Pulp have twice disbanded for considerable periods, most recently reforming in 2022, though they haven’t released an album since ‘01’s well received We Love Life. Tickets at Live Nation.

Whatever you think of Taylor Swift, we’re indebted to her for inspiring so many other would-be artists, including Arizona’s Victoria Bigelow, who started strumming her Walmart guitar as a preteen in the spell of Swift’s first album. Having survived the famously oversubscribed Nashville music scene as a teenager, she headed west, where the desert and motherhood continue to inform her achingly cathartic, dreamily swooning Americana – a sound indebted more to Mazzy Star than Grand Ole Opry. Released in May, Bigelow’s Songs for No One Vol 2 EP continues her breathily breathtaking storytelling and Trojan Horse social commentary, with “The Kids” single lamenting premature loss of innocence in the AI/Internet age with trademark exquisite yet broodingly strong wistfulness. The sleek Lobby Bar of the upscale Thompson Hollywood is an unlikely backdrop for Bigelow’s dustily confessional tales and cinematic arrangements, which only makes this performance all the more intriguing. Tickets at Tixr.

Although perpetually associated with chillwave, the throughline of Chaz Bear’s 15 years as Toro y Moi has been a lack of throughline. This restless South Carolina songwriter/producer did indeed start out with dreamy lo-fi bedroom recordings that, alongside Neon Indian and his childhood friend Ernest Greene (aka Washed Out), came to define early chillwave. But since then, this carefree creator has irreverently veered into power pop, contemporary R&B, dancefloor synth-pop, and funky psychedelia. True to form (or the lack of it), Toro y Moi’s stripped-back, largely acoustic Sandhills EP last year, which he recorded back in his native Columbia during the 2020 COVID lockdown, found him bathing in both lyrical and musical nostalgia. Revisiting his high school years and vocalizing the sensations of returning to his hometown, Sandhills finds Bear delving into Americana, folk, and Southern motifs more than he has since his very earliest efforts. Tickets at Ticketweb.

While marrying throwback Cambodian pop and psychedelic rock might not sound like a recipe for success, LA’s Dengue Fever have made an international career out of it for close to a quarter-century (including even performing in Cambodia). Formed in the hipster Silver Lake neighborhood in 2001 by local indie luminaries Ethan and Zac Holtzman (the latter of Dieselhead), Beck saxophonist/flutist David Rallicke, Radar Bros bassist Senn Williams, and drummer Paul Smith, their crucial jewel is vocalist Chhom Nimol, a bona fide pop star in Cambodia who’d just arrived stateside. With celebrated songbird Nimol aboard, the sextet started with covers of 1960s and ‘70s Cambodian hits – many by artists who perished in the Khmer Rouge “killing fields” of the late ‘70s – but soon generated original material still sung in the Khmer language. Eight years since their previous album, Dengue Fever made a very welcome return with Ting Mong last year.

Trinidad-born, LA-based “Queen of Rap” Nicki Minaj has lost little of her signature nasty flow in her forties, as evidenced by last year’s ambitious Pink Friday 2 album, a thematic follow-up to her 2010 breakout debut. While she’s cut back on her multiple, varied voices/alter egos and the filthy yet undeniably funny lyricism of classics like 2014’s “Anaconda” between the two releases, she remains stylistically and verbally nimble. The 22-track record is an artful balance of fan pleasing and self-pleasuring, if subtle, creative growth, tempering vivid pop with vulnerable introspection (including about her father’s passing) and inventive use of samples from Billie Eilish, Cyndi Lauper, and Waka Flocka Flame, plus features from Lil Wayne, Drake, J. Cole, and more. Tickets at Ticketmaster.

An offshoot of Norway’s infamous 1990s black metal scene, Mortiis is a pioneering dungeon synth band and alter ego of its principal, Håvard Ellefsen, who frequently performs in a bizarre prosthetic goblin mask and ears. The original bassist of influential black metal band Emperor, Mortiis went solo in 1993, launching a blizzard of releases that earned spreads in the likes of Kerrang! magazine. But, while he retained black metal motifs and, in his most popular era around 2004’s The Grudge, certainly made heavy music, Mortiis often strays far from metal tradition, incorporating industrial programming, gothy synths, and even flutes. Indeed, songs like 2001’s “Parasite God” are downright, if darkly, Depeche Mode bouncy/hooky. Mortiis’ most recent album, 2020’s Spirit of Rebellion is a re-recording of ‘94’s Ånden som Gjorde Opprør, and on this tour he’ll be reaching back still further, performing his debut Født Til Å Herske in its entirety.

Tickets to the all-ages show at Ticketmaster.

Featuring former members of Nardcore stalwarts Stalag 13 and area post-punk/deathrock standouts Detoxi and Catholic Spit, Ventura’s Head Cut have swiftly become among SoCal’s most compelling dark offerings. Debuting with an eponymous 2022 album, the foursome’s foundation is the accomplished, often polyphonic Cure-ish bass playing of Oscar Estrada which, alongside Seth Pettersen’s angular/haunting guitar and serving-the-song beats from ex-Stalag 13 vocalist John Crerar, cajole Sasha Green’s anguished yet assertive Spanish/English vocals. At once ethereal, punky and danceable, Head Cut’s live shows inevitably focus on Green, a keeps-you-guessing figurehead who never seems to appear in the same outfit (or persona) twice. In May, Head Cut released their spirited sophomore collection Corazón Negro, which displays their evolution through frequent gigging along the way. With its Ventura-appropriate surfing guitar moments and Green’s attention-holding range – from a tremulous Siouxsie-esque wail to stylized yelps and spoken word - Corazón Negro will surely top many darklings’ year-end lists. Tickets at Eventbrite.