Dirty Gold- California Sunrise

In the past year, Sarah Negahdari, the singer, guitarist, and chief songwriter of Los Angeles art-rock trio The Happy Hollows, has caused quite a commotion in the music world. Wired Magazine called her “one of the coolest women in rock,” Pitchfork wrote that her voice “commands attention on both the stompers and serenades,” and The Huffington Post branded her a “rock goddess.” Now The Happy Hollows are set to release their debut album Spells via Autumn Tone Records. 

The band’s music combines innovative structures, surreal lyrics, and fiercely adept instrumentation to recreate reality into a jagged panorama of vibrant, kaleidoscopic collage. Their songs straddle the sub-genres of post-punk, 90s college rock, and 80s pop yet they create a sound all their own by deconstructing these genres. Taking pop melody as a starting point, they do away with the traditional verse/chorus approach, and write music that is both catchy and challenging.

The Happy Hollows- Tambourine

The Happy Hollows- Faces

Blair now lives in Brooklyn, but until recently, gigged in and around the Silver Lake and Echo Park neighborhoods of Los Angeles.  But this story doesn’t begin on the west coast, far from it actually.

Blair grew up in the Deep South, New Orleans specifically, and in a town as soaked in gin as it is jazz, brass and funk, an adolescent Blair alternately drifted towards the sounds of Neil Young and Bob Dylan drifting out of her mother’s turntable.  But she is no folkie. Born in the ‘80s it was inevitable that the pop sounds of ‘90s FM radio would seep into her musical DNA; remember, these were the days when Nirvana and Beck dominated the airwaves.  A quick study, Blair taught herself guitar by listening to and learning the tunes on John Frusciante's first solo records and by her late teens was opening for the likes of Cat Power and Bright Eyes.  Fast forward to 2007. At 22, Blair self-releases her debut EP, Pluto. At four songs the EP is a quick dash through the past four decades of pop music as filtered by someone who grew up with a healthy collection of Kate Bush, PJ Harvey, Replacements, Velvets and Pavement.

Blair- Hello Halo

Blair- Hearts

Covered in kudzu and swathed in a blanket of humidity, Spanish moss, feedback and reverb exists Futurebirds. Here, at this intersection, we find a synthesis of the two extremes of Neil Young's yin and yang.  It's at this crossroads, on this plane that Futurebirds meld the sweet, lilting, pedal steel and harmonies of the Stray Gators with the raucous, buzzing, distortion of Crazyhorse. 

Futurebirds- Johnny Utah

The players are the Roadside Graves- John, Colin, Rich, Mike, Jeremy, and Dave, along with special guests like Fun Machine’s virtuoso keyboardist Johnny Piatkowski on the farfisa and mellotron. The sound is that of the teetering ramshackle wall of sound, the sparse and tenderly haunted finger-picked ballad, Irish table chantey, the harmonium soaked funeral march, dark rumbling surf-folk, the ocean floor.   

Our goal is to create music for people who love music, in all its many facets and faces. The music traverses a wide landscape of topics and sounds, and it is the hope of the group that it will prove as good of company to our listeners in their lives as it has to us in ours as we wrote and performed it, for it’s yours now. 

Roadside Graves- Far and Wide

The Henry Clay People are a rock and roll band from Los Angeles. With common comparisons to Pavement and The Replacements they play a type of no-frills, pretention-free rock that has sorely been missing from LA. The band is made up of brothers Joey (vocals, guitar) and Andy (guitar, vocals) Siara, Noah Green (bass, vocals) and Eric Scott (drums). 

Henry Clay People- Working Part Time

First of all, Le Switch are not French (if they were, they'd probably be L'Interrupteur or Le Bouton). They definitely haven't worked with M.I.A, and they're not that new British buzz band. They're a Los Angeles based rock 'n' roll band fronted by singer/guitarist Aaron Kyle. Le Switch got their start in 2006 when Kyle recruited drummer Joe Napolitano, trumpet/viola player Maria DeLuca, bass player Christopher Harrison and keyboard player Josh Charney. 

Le Switch- Pristine

Founded in 2005, Los Angeles based Autumn Tone Records has set its sights on uncovering, and in some cases, widely introducing artists whose craft transcends the boundaries of trend, genre, and we hope… time. In our first two years Autumn Tone's diverse roster of artists produced highly-praised records ranging from Daniel Hutchens hauntingly beautiful, acoustic, album Lesser (dual-released with his David Barbe produced Lovesongs for Losers) to folk-noir outfit Travel By Sea's debut Shadows Rise. 2008 has seen an exciting increase in our roster and releases beginning with the Spring release of Travel by Sea's Days of My Escape, followed up by the digital-only reissue of J Tillman's solo-catalog (he of Sub Pop indie-darlings Fleet Foxes). 2008 has also seen the addition of three promising new acts; two from our native Los Angeles and one from New York. On the West Coast, Le Switch and The Henry Clay People release their highly-anticipated Autumn Tone debuts having garnered rave reviews and wide-followings as Silver Lake music scene stalwarts. Keeping things bi-coastal, Roadside Graves will release their Autumn Tone debut in Spring of 2009. Stay tuned for updates per the rest of Autumn Tone's '09 release schedule. Autumn Tone Records, independently owned and operated, was founded by Justin Gage, who also writes the popular music blog An Aquarium Drunkard, and hosts the weekly Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS Satellite Radio. 

AutumnTone

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