Foreign Born

Related Content

• Radiohead's "Exit Music (For a Film)" as a Romeo and Juliet teaching tool
  April 23, 2013
• Toots & the Maytals
  April 2, 2013
• Muse
  March 6, 2013
• Has Radiohead been dissected to death yet? OK Computer is 15
  June 15, 2012
• Local Frames: New videos from Cloud Cult, the Ocean Blue, Enemy Planes, and more
  February 21, 2013

More About

• Matt Popieluch
• Lewis Pesacov
• Garrett Ray
• World Music
• Indie Rock and Indie Pop

L.A.'s Foreign Born are tough to pin down, stylistically. On new album Person to Person, the foursome takes gooey globs from various genres—world-music polyrhythmics; shoegaze glint; a touch of beetle-browed, post-Radiohead gloom; some ace Strokes-ian dynamics—and squishes them into a sound that feels as earnestly urgent and alive as anything else that's happening in rock right now. I do wish that vocalist Matt Popieluch didn't remind me so damned much of Bono—part of this is probably down to whatever vocal effect was employed to make the guy sound like he's wearing a halo and tooling around with huge white wings on his back—but the constant presence of kitchen-sink percussion tactics and bright, rippling guitar leads more than makes up for this. Seriously: If groupies aren't breaking guitarist Lewis Pesacov and drummer Garrett Ray off some at after-parties, there's no justice in this world. With the Veils and Faces on Film. 18+.
Wed., July 22, 8 p.m., 2009