Belated Spotlight on The Western States Motel & The Monolators

Last night marked the end of The Western States Motel and The Monolators' residencies -- at Spaceland and Pehrspace, respectively -- and, well, here are some interview links and videos which we probably should have posted yesterday or before...

THE WESTERN STATES MOTEL --

On their first album: "I started in on some recordings I intended to use as a score for this short film that was bouncing around my head, but I eventually ditched the film idea, and slowly shifted my focus to actual songs with vocals and all that. I recently enlisted a couple of friends to play the songs live, and now we're a band."

On their new EP: "The new ones all came about here in LA. Basically the same deal in terms of working at home, but we were able to record the drums sort of under-the-radar at a somewhat legitimate recording studio in Hollywood."



THE MONOLATORS --

On their beginnings: "We started as a three-piece back in, let’s see, 2002. We were very, very different then. I was the bass player, and a friend of ours, Mike, played guitar. He was big into rockabilly and we had much more of a retro/surf kind of sound. We recorded our first record (in our garage) with Mike and it very much had that sound."

On their new EP: "I tried to write something that was kind of a gentle reprimand to Los Angeles. Basically complaining about people not dancing--the typical east side 'we're too cool to dance' type of scene.."