Color Us Impressed
Heard Mentality: The best of the music, arts and culture blog for the week of Aug. 3-9
The Color Turning may currently be based in LA, but their strong Orange County roots prompted them to hold the CD-release party for their LP Good Hands Bad Blood at Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa, writing this about the venue on their MySpace:
“The Detroit Bar is a place close to our hearts. And we could not be more excited about this show. We’ve seen and played many great shows there and developed a lot of good relationships in the confines of that bar. It’s more than a fitting venue to celebrate the release of our first full-length record.”
Good Hands Bad Blood was released on Softdrive Records, the label founded in 2006 by Scott Weiland. It’s full of thoughtful indie, with catchy yet abstract songs such as “Me Versus Me” and “Doppelganger.” The Aug. 6 show at Detroit filled the room and showed off the band’s harder-rocking side (especially in contrast to elegantly mellow opening act Yellow Red Sparks, good pals with the Color Turning).
Working with a dude like Weiland has its perks: The Color Turning is being pushed by hip PR group Team Clermont; the record was previewed on AOL’s Spinner site (AOL is finally good for something); and, this week, the band is headed up the coast for shows in Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, San Francisco and Oakland.
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What’s going on with the Jakes? The Newport Beach band has been promising an announcement for a while now, with a blog post on their MySpace last week hinting at “big news coming soon,” in fact, within the “next few weeks.”
They’ve showcased for a variety of major and large indie labels recently, so it’s an easy guess this has something to do with signing a deal. I talked with lead singer Sameer Gadhia in June about the departure of keyboard player Ehson Hashemian. Gadhia noted that Hashemian wasn’t “comfortable” with a “couple of things going on with the band right now.” Hmm.
The Jakes are already on Red Light Management, the same company as meganational acts Dave Matthews Band, OAR and Phish—along with recently relocated Orange County expatriates Local Natives (who now live in LA, where they’re playing this month’s Monday-night residency at Spaceland). Record deal seems like a natural next step.
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There are some very obvious changes going on at Heard Mentality, both visually and content-wise. In addition to the design getting a tweak, we’ve expanded our purview to include (as it’s officially and very professionally referred to) “music and culture and stuff”—thus all of the posts recently about indie crafts, art galleries and comic-book conventions; look forward to more elements that somehow don’t fall into those categories. Be sure to give us your thoughts on the changes in our comments.
aching@ocweekly.com
