Friday five: This week's L.A. bounty from Fuzz, Weezer, HEALTH, more - Los Angeles Times
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Friday five: This week’s L.A. bounty from Fuzz, Weezer, HEALTH, more

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It’s sometimes hard to fathom the bounty of remarkable music emanating from Los Angeles in any given week. If the sound doesn’t arrive via the dozens of nightly gigs overwhelming clubs and theaters, it booms with the volume through new release announcements, video or song premieres, mixtape and album drops, streaming service exclusives or impromptu happenings.

Granted, some of it's terrible. Most of it is mediocre. It's nonetheless always easy to find five of note. This week's bounty below.

Open Mike Eagle and Thundercat, "Ziggy Starfish (Anti-Anxiety Raps)." The smart Los Angeles rapper Open Mike Eagle teamed with artist-bassist Thundercat during the new episode of "Why? With Hannibal Buress." The series airs on Comedy Central, and Eagle and Thundercat were its first musical guests. Both are in top form. So far Buress is three-for-three as a curator. He's hired Los Angeles beatmaker Flying Lotus as his in-house DJ.


Fuzz, “Pollinate." Taken from the forthcoming album by Ty Segall's power trio Fuzz, "Pollinate" continues the Blue Cheer-Black Sabbath-style riffage. It's this heaviness that sets it apart from Segall's more hook-laden, garage-band-style solo endeavors. In addition to Segall -- who drums in the band -- Fuzz features guitarist Charles Moothart and bassist Chad Ubovich. "Pollinate" is one of two tracks just released, both of which will appear on "Fuzz II," set to arrive via In the Red Records in October.


Weezer & Bethany Cosentino, "Go Away." Kindred spirits Weezer and Best Coast's Cosentino share a love of big hooks and anthemic guitars, and that combination drives their new song "Go Away." A solidly structured mid-tempo pop ditty about rejection, the video has an engaging, humorous conceit: trying to hook up via a Tinder-style dating app.


HEALTH, “Men Today.†The voluminous Los Angeles group HEALTH, which is in the middle of a residency at the Echo, has been teasing its hardened new work for a few months now. "Men Today" is the second new track to arrive of late. Like "Stonefist," the new work is from the forthcoming album "Death Magic," their first in six years.


Chelsea Wolfe, "Grey Days." The Los Angeles-based Wolfe is preparing to release her fifth studio album, "Abyss," and "Grey Days" suggests she's succeeded in crafting music to score, in her words, a “hazy afterlife… an inverted thunderstorm… the dark backward… the abyss of time." The teaser video for "Abyss" is haunting enough, and "Grey Days" mixes in some serious heaviness.


Follow Randall Roberts on Twitter: @liledit

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