The Monday Show Low Down (Or “My Kingdom for a Bomb Pop...”)

Welcome to the days of stuffy summer shows, as evidenced by last Friday’s fantastic but incredibly crowded Band of Horses performance at The Echo. The choice between moving up close to the stage or hanging back under the cool breeze of the fans was like the little boy picking between the ball and the sword in Koike and Kojima’s Lone Wolf & Cub: We sweat it out like ronin.

As far as this week’s show options go, if you haven’t gotten tickets to see Belle & Sebastian play the Hollywood Bowl – with the LA Philharmonic backing them and The Shins opening it all up – there’s always The Silversun Pickups at The Hammer Museum at UCLA, Great Northern and Fielding at The Echo, and more.

And Friday sees the quality line-up of Hawthorne’s bad gods Dios Malos and local smile merchants The Little Ones, along with Submarines and Peter and the Wolf, at The Echo, while Saturday sees Petra Haden w/ The Sell-Outs and Lavender Diamond delivering a double-dose of pretty-sounding music at Safari Sam’s.

In Related News:

- Guess I was wrong about you not being able to see The Silversun Pickups or Cold War Kids in LA any time soon. SSPU are playing this week (see above) before leaving on tour and then on August 17 at The Troubadour upon their return, while the Cold Wars Kids are opening up for The Editors here at Tuesday, August 8.

- From the helm of the Ship Collective, Earlimart report that “well we're really close to finishing the new record. mixing as we speak.”

- The following bands have announced show dates for LA (see the right-hand column for details): Sea Wolf, Division Day, Space Mtn, Bedroom Walls, The Church, Marjorie Fair, Great Northern, The Minders, Mew, Roger Joseph Manning Jr, Let’s Go Sailing, Papa M, Dirty on Purpose, The Sleepy Jackson, Black Heart Procession, Birdmonster, French Kicks, Headlights, The Subways, and The Black Keys.