After a seven-year hiatus, Broken Social Scene is back with new album Hug of Thunder. The Canadian collective is as famous for their sprawling, emotional, baroque-pop as their ability to swell from 10 to 19 members onstage, at any given show. These days, they continue to grow concomitantly off-stage as well. Broken…

Photos: Celine Teo-Blockey PASADENA– Arroyo Seco Weekend proved a success, delivering a multi-generational music festival with something for everyone. Held in the shadow of the Rose Bowl on June 24 and 25, its slant toward jazz and funk brought out the Pasadena locals, armed with their deck chairs and picnic…

AZUSA, CALIF. — In 2005, Tank And The Bangas frontwoman Tarriona “Tank” Ball was forced to leave her school, family and home in New Orleans’ 8th Ward. When Hurricane Katrina made landfall, her neighborhood was submerged under 20 feet of water. Family members who did stay behind had to be rescued from…

Pasadena’s inaugural Arroyo Seco Weekend festival will forego EDM in favor of jazz and funk during its two-day, 30-act lineup. Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires, New Orleans torchbearers the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the Meters share the bill with headliners Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and Mumford & Sons, along with indie rock…

Pond has always been the spacier, looser offshoot to Australia’s tight, psych-band juggernaut, Tame Impala. Its last six albums imbibed a goofy spirit as the band members shape-shifted through rock, minimalism and garage pop; all within the limitless expanse of psychedelia. Pond’s upcoming seventh album, The Weather, bucks that trend. It is…

Mondo Cozmo, courtesy: Jess Lakin. LOS ANGELES — When Josh Ostrander first released his breakthrough hit, “Plastic Soul,” fans could access a free download only from the lawyer of the artist known as Mondo Cozmo. “Plastic Soul” sampled Erma Franklin’s “Piece Of My Heart,” which went on to be a caterwauling…

If you were unfamiliar with the work of Missouri-raised Jeb Loy Nichols, you would be forgiven for expecting a countrified sound from his latest LP, Country Hustle. Don’t be fooled by the iconography of the album art: white dude, 10-gallon hat and Nudie Suit. Nichols’ sound is funkier. It’s blue-eyed…

Photo: Celine Teo-Blockey SANTA BARBARA — The inaugural Starry Nites Festival, a two day event at the Live Oak Campground in the hills of the coastal, tourist town of Santa Barbara, offered a good time for music fans of all ages and musicians of all stripes, the weekend of of March…

Photo: Zachery Michael He’s a bassist in Tame Impala and drummer in its fuzzier, psych offshoot Pond, so some may be surprised to learn that Cameron Avery is an old-fashioned crooner with a great voice. Avery’s mom listened to Dean Martin, Aretha Franklin, Johnny Hartman and a lot of Elvis Presley. Cameron Avery,…

Bristol legend Roni Size brought his pioneering sound to the mainstream when New Forms, the debut album from Reprazent, his drum and bass collective, bested Radiohead’s OK Computer to the Mercury Music Prize in 1997.  Size went on to collaborate Stateside with Method Man, Cypress Hill and Rage Against The Machine’s Zack De La…