New Southern California Pop From Quetzal, Spiral Stairs and Kera

We're heading down south this week to see what's new in Southern California pop music, including a sultry single from Kera and the Lesbians, a return to recording for Spiral Stairs and an emotional album filled with social commentary from Quetzal. 

Quetzal, 'The Eternal Getdown'

There’s a lot happening on the new album by veteran East L.A. band Quetzal. Writer Deborah R. Vargas came up with this fanciful assessment to start her liner-notes essay: “If indigenous African ancestors of the Americas boarded Parliament’s mothership, the soundtrack for this journey would be ‘The Eternal Getdown.’” That works.

A different sense of mothership is at the heart of this album, though, specifically in the two songs that close the album, framing the dark and light, despair and hope, ancient and modern, struggles and strengths that yin-yang through its generous 78-minute run.

The first of those two is “Toro Ayotzinapa,” rocked-up son jarocho, based on a traditional tune “Toro Zacamandú,” reworked in response to the horror in that happened in 2014 in the town of Iguala, Guerrero where 43 students, the “Ayotzinapa 43,” were slaughtered by a drug cartel. “Ay no mas,” sings Martha Gonzalez between verses depicting the massacre, as a mix of traditional and modern instruments -- violins, guitarra de son, jarana, Hammond B-3 among them -- swirls around her, her voice and spirit fully engulfed by grief of the mothers of the murdered youths.

She’s again in the role of a mother on the next song, the album closer, “La Indita,” but in this case its her real-life role as she duets with Sandino Gonzalez-Flores, her 10-year-old son. Sandino's father is Gonzalez' husband and band founder, Quetzal Flores. The song is a Veracruz-originated tribute to the Virgin of Guadalupe, with words by Gilberto Gutierrez of the group Mono Blanco, which was at the forefront of the Nuevo Movimiento Jaranero.

That movement was dedicated to preserving and renewing musical and cultural traditions in Southern Veracruz, where the Gonzalez-Flores clan has spent a lot of time. The mother and child sing to each other, as well as to the Virgin, accompanied only by a marimbol, a bass marimba from Africa via Cuba. As horrific as “Toro Ayotzinapa” is, this is a sweet tonic of faith and endurance, passed down through the generations.

To some extent, those two songs are distillations of what has come before -- not just on this album, but in Quetzal’s artistic evolution. Throughout “The Eternal Getdown,” those contrasts and complements, and that sense of history as a living organism, abound in various tapestries.

Hard-hitting funk pushes traditional son. The rural folk sounds of the tarima (percussion of feet on a wooden platform) and jarana (a small guitar-like instrument) blend with urban Hammond B-3 and electric guitars. Guests ranging from soul singer Aloe Blacc (whose parents are from Panama) on the perky “Let’s Get to Knowing,” released as a single last summer, to several accomplished mariachis who help extend the connections that have been part of the Quetzal mission since Flores founded the group in a Little Tokyo cafe in 1993. And Gonzalez’s fierce cries for social justice in today’s world spring from scholarly knowledge of centuries’ worth of injustice.

Now she is scholarly, bearing a Ph.D. in gender, women and sexuality studies and serving on the faculty at Scripps, (though currently she’s on a one-year artist-in-residence stint at Arizona State). And the album is Quetzal’s second for Smithsonian Folkways. The last one, 2012’s “Imaginaries,” won the Grammy for best Latin, rock, urban or alternative album. Never, though, is this academic or a museum piece. Not in the least.

The music fully captures the life of the ideas it conveys. “Barrio Healer” might be mostly “East L.A.” with funky bass, Latin percussion and soul vibe. “Olokun y Temayá” cleaves closer to Mexican-American folk, while “La Lloroncita” is slow-burn Latin balladry with violin and plucked guitarra de son. “Mamá Nahual” balances traditional and modern; dramatic lines from a jarana work alongside some Moog synthesizer.

Even a folk-rooted version of “La Bamba” bears a stamp of new perspectives. And a few little instrumental interludes serve as transitions, dreamlike and otherworldly -- Flores’ solo “Ay que no que no” has him playing requinto doble, a small Spanish guitar, run through an echo effect for some space-age son.

And then there’s “Unbound (Sueltos),” which somehow embraces all of the above: hard-hitting urban soul-funk-prog (yes, prog, particularly in some Hammond and violin flights) with a strong message, sung in English, of creating, building, planting, laying the foundations of movements “so they last.” A perfect home base for the mothership.

Spiral Stairs, 'Doris and the Daggers'

There is something sweetly old-fashioned about “Doris and the Daggers,” the new album, from Spiral Stairs, a.k.a. Scott Kannenberg of the bands Pavement and Preston School of Industry. It’s not retro, per se.

This isn’t a Tin Pan Alley tribute, or even an evocation of a ‘60s/‘70s/‘80s/‘90s aesthetic, though there are some echoes of those latter decades -- a percolating Talking Heads-ian rhythm here (“No Comparison”), a Cure-ish guitar line there (“Exiled Tonight”). And the relatively basic rock instrumentation and DIY sound harks back to the way ‘90s Pavement harked back to the way ‘80s “college rock” harked back to ‘60s garage rock (which, arguably, harked back to a lot of ‘50s rock).

Rather, it’s a wistful nostalgia permeating these tracks, like the scent of jasmine on a moonlit night, that connects the various sounds and moods, from the darker tones of opener “Dance (Cry Wolf)” and its declaration of dedication (“I will never leave you,” Kannenberg promises) to the folk-rock (with violin) of “Mother’s Eyes.”

He cites Aussie songsmith Paul Kelly and Englishman Lloyd Cole as obsessions, and both of their easy wit and uncomplicated musicality figure into things here, the understated “AWM” (which seems to stand for “Always Wanting More”) wearing those influences on its musical and emotional sleeve.

Kannenberg works in a trio format with regular associate Matt Harris on bass and Justin Peroff from Broken Social Scene on drums for the core recordings, with additional touches added by Kelley Stoltz, Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew and the National’s Matt Berninger.

On one end of the emotional scale is his happy family life, returning to California after having spent time living in Australia. “The Unconditional” is a sentimental love note to his young daughter.

On the other end is darkness, stemming from death of his drummer Darius Minwalla, best known as a member of the Posies, just before recording was to begin in 2015. “Mother’s Eyes” is a tribute to him, while Minwalla’s voice is heard as the oddball narrator of the closing title track, a portrait of the elderly woman who owned the bar at which Kannenberg was a regular in Sydney. It all really is sweet and sentimental. And freshly old-fashioned.

Keep an ear out for ... . Kera & the Lesbians

There was a nagging sense of well, something, as Kera & the Lesbians played the first few songs of their impressive set opening for touted New Orleans band Hurray for the Riff Raff recently in the rustic old Masonic Lodge on the grounds of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Something about the soaring melodies, the masterful use of dramatics and dynamics as Kera and the band (three dudes, in fact) could move from sketchy to quasi-orchestral and back with seeming ease, the baring-of-the-soul from always-animated Kera Armendariz in her role of outsider looking for love and longing for belonging, infused with echoes of the romantic  pop classics of the ’50s and ‘60s.

And then, several songs in, they did “Crying,” Roy Orbison’s 1962 pop-aria that stands as one of the most affecting encapsulations of yearning and heartache of modern times. “I was all right for a while, I could smile for a while,” she sang, dolorously. That was it! That was the song that seemed to inform the whole set, the musical and emotional core of K&theL’s approach.

“Roy Orbison is my jam!” Kera exclaimed after the show, smoking a cig at the top of an outdoors flight of stairs, at the complimentary mention of her version of the song.

He’s not her only jam. Talking Heads and Tears for Fears were just a couple of the other thoughts that popped to mind in the course of the band’s set, all incorporated organically and masterfully into a distinctive, personal, engaging presentation that has moved far beyond what Kera a few years ago in the early days of the act referred to as “bipolar folk.”

An album last year, released on Bandcamp, is a big step toward where the band seems headed now. And a single, the very Orbison-esque “I’m Late,” released in January on Bandcamp and featuring the group the Wild Reeds, points to more possibilities.

Kera reports that she’s writing new songs and another album will likely come at some point. But at the moment she’s thinking visually with a short film in post-production and set to feature three new songs as the soundtrack. So keep an ear, and an eye, out for that. But if you have a chance to see Kera and crew, don’t hesitate.