California Sounds: Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions, Mike Watt and the Garden

Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions, “Let Me Get There” (Tendril Tales). The East Los Angeles-born singer is best known for her platinum work as one half of Mazzy Star, whose dreamily slow-moving hit “Fade Into You” helped drive the city’s so-called Paisley Underground scene to the top of the charts.

On “Until the Hunter,” her third solo album and the first in six years, Sandoval and her Warm Inventions collaborator Colm Ó Ciosóig gather sparse guitar melodies as a tapestry behind her alluring voice. Immediately identifiable, she could sing Tyler, the Creator’s Twitter feed and make it sound romantic.

For the song “Let Me Get There,” Sandoval teamed with Philadelphia singer and guitarist Kurt Vile. The match-up makes for an interesting case study. Like “Something Stupid,” Frank Sinatra’s duet with his daughter Nancy, or Leonard Cohen’s work with choirs, or pretty much everything by Sonny & Cher, the combination of refined and unrefined voices makes for interesting tension.

Elsewhere on the record, Sandoval revels in echo as Ó Ciosóig, best known as the drummer for My Bloody Valentine, offers delicate support.

The Garden, “California Here We Go” (Epitaph). Twins Wyatt and Fletcher Shears are from Orange, and they have created their own punk-based musical style the way other twins concoct secret languages. Formed in 2011, the Garden issued its early music on the famed Burger Records imprint, and is now on the larger Epitaph.

A weird mix of hard core, screamo, new wave, beat-based music and suburban freakishness, the Garden calls its sound “vada vada,” defined as “an idea that represents pure creative expression, that disregards all previously made genres and ideals.”

One previous video shows them rolling through suburbia waving a “vada vada” flag and finger-shooting at houses; another promo clip shows them dressed as clowns, riding a mini-bike and waving an American flag. No two songs are alike, but they all share a dada sensibility that revels in musical non sequiturs.

The brothers dress up as the creepy baseball gang from the movie “The Warriors” for the video for their “California Here We Go.” As stabbed new wave keyboard chords, distorted bass guitar and Tyler’s drumming provide a bed, Wyatt rolls through lyrics that offer a destination — California — but not much of a road map. Given their wandering ways, that’s not surprising.

Mike Watt, “Against the 70’s” live (Columbia). The longtime San Pedro bassist is best known for co-founding Minutemen with drummer George Hurley and the late D. Boon. The hardest working bassist in rock, Watt has toured with bands including the Stooges, Jane’s Addiction and Sonic Youth.

Watt signed to Columbia Records as a solo artist in the mid-1990s and issued a trio of albums packed with now famous underground compatriots. The best of these was the first, called “Ball-Hog or Tugboat?” Featuring appearances by now-members of Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, the Pixies, Wilco, Meat Puppets and a dozen-plus others, it rumbles with musical horsepower.

The proof is on the new live album “Ring Spiel Tour ’95,” which documents a Chicago gig at Cabaret Metro from that year featuring, among others, Dave Grohl on drums and Eddie Vedder and Pat Smear (the Germs, Foo Fighters) on guitars.

One of the most powerful of the lot is “Against the 70’s,” Watt’s warning to future youth on the dangers of musical flatulence. “Baby boomers selling you rumors of their history,” sing he and Vedder, “forcing youth away from the truth of what’s real today.”

There’s a lot of terrible music out there. For tips on the stuff that’s not, follow Randall Roberts on Twitter: @liledit

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