Friday 12/6 at The Southern Café and Music Hall
LA LOM, an acronym for the Los Angeles League of Musicians, floats out a dreamy-yet-driving instrumental soundtrack with West Coast cool. More of a three-piece than a league, per se, the band’s sound careens smoothly through adventurous, succinct tracks that lilt with well-placed, heartbreaking chords and trembling guitar riffs. Zac Sokolow’s lyrical lead guitar—reminiscent of Link Wray’s more lucid solos and a dry land Dick Dale—call to mind the best strains of sad ’60s pop ballads. The sensible, syncopated bass line color provided by Jake Faulkner is offset by the danceable heat from Nicholas Baker’s economical drum and percussion-based beats. Baker often opts for replacing the typical snare drum spot with conga hits while kicking the bass drum and riding the hi-hat for an undulating groove.
It makes sense that LA LOM formed in 2019 for a nightly residency in L.A.’s Roosevelt Hotel lobby. Each song moves forward by constructing new scenes, deftly lit and advancing on a road mapped out by Latin music influences (Mexican boleros, Cumbia sonidera, Peruvian chicha), leading to a distinctly SoCal simmer that carries the cinematic history and intrigue of the Roosevelt’s Hollywood Boulevard locale.
On this year’s self-titled debut, tracks like “Ghost of Gardena,” “Rebecca,” and “San Fernando Rose” are offset with piano, strings, and bells in the latter song that play up what could be the opening soundtrack to a West Hollywood-based, Mexican-American James Bond movie. Ultimately, it’s Sokolow’s inventive guitar lines that make the difference for a fully instrumental group such as LA LOM. His wizardry with genuine and passionate leads replaces the need for a vocalist, and captures a breadth of emotion that words often cannot.
Openers The National Reserve represent the other coast’s media Mecca, as the Brooklyn-based five-piece that, ironically enough, flaunts its down-to-earth ’70s rock ‘n’ roll on its most-streamed Spotify track, “California.” The group’s not breaking any new ground but that hardly seems what it’s after.