New York, NY (Top40 Charts) LA LOM shares "San Fernando Rose," the second single off of their debut album The Los Angeles League of Musicians (August 9 on Verve Records). Inspired by classic girl groups of the '60s, and '90s love songs from the likes of Selena that the band listened to on cumbia radio in their native Los Angeles - "San Fernando Rose" serves up a heavy dose of drama with a wall of sound wallop perfect for hip swaying.
LA LOM's 13-song collection of all original music seamlessly weaves together the diverse genres and cultures of Los Angeles. They announced the album in June, just before hitting the road with Vampire Weekend - and the news was met with a feature with the Los Angeles Times, an interview on KCRW's Press Play, coverage in Billboard, Top40-Charts, Variety, and praise for single "Danza De LA LOM" from Consequence - "it sounds like pure sunshine" - which is also featured on Grimy Good's 15 Songs of the Summer list: "The rumble of its percussion and the simmer of its guitars are enough to confirm that it'll have you swooning. Grab your lover and spend an evening lost in the song's torridly amorous rhythms."
LA LOM is: Zac Sokolow (Guitar), Jake Faulkner (Bass), and Nicholas Baker (Drums/Percussion).
Says Zac Sokolow, about "San Fernando Rose": "A lot of the music that inspired us early on were some of the classic girl group recordings from the early 60's. Groups like The Ronettes, The Marvelettes, The Chantelles, etc. A lot of these melodies in those kinds of songs have a way of making you feel nostalgic and both uplifted and sad at the same time. I used to drive home from playing gigs and listen to the Cumbia station on the radio in LA, and I often felt the same way listening to love songs by Selena, or Los Angeles Azules, or other great pop Cumbia bands from the 90's and early 2000's. The melody for 'San Fernando Rose' gives me a similar kind of feeling.
We often name a lot of songs after places that mean a lot to us around Los Angeles, the city that we come from and love. A lot of our songs are named after girls, sometimes real, sometimes imaginary, sometimes somewhere in-between."
With just a handful of singles released so far, LA LOM's rise has been meteoric: millions of views for their rich-hued and self-made videos, hundreds of thousands of followers on socials, and fans that include Beck, Zane Lowe and more. For a group that has just started touring nationally, they are selling out major rooms across the U.S., and will make their festival debuts at Newport Folk and Pitchfork London among many others this year.
Listening to LA LOM is like turning the radio dial to discover a series of stations that music obsessives could only dream of. They find inspiration in the classic Mexican Boleros and the Cumbia Sonidera woven into the very fabric of LA's soundscape, resonating through the streets from car stereos, backyard parties, and lively dance halls. Added to this is the guitar-driven twang of Peruvian Chicha, Bakersfield Country, traditional folk music from Sicily, Turkey and beyond, plus soulful ballads from the 1950s and '60s that they grew up listening to on LA's oldies station, K-EARTH 101, evoking the laid-back aesthetic that defines the region.
While LA LOM has broken out over the past year, it didn't happen overnight. Similar to The Beatles in Hamburg, LA LOM coalesced as they cut their teeth playing extensive
sets, five nights a week, at the historic Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. With buzz building around Los Angeles, they headed to the studio and began cutting singles - their first EP was released in 2022.
The Los Angeles League of Musicians was produced by Elliot Bergman (Cage the Elephant, Major Lazer, Wild Belle) and recorded mostly at his studio Figueroa. Laid back and lo-fi, they bottle up the energy of a crowded dance floor, a hot, sweaty night - songs that were designed to make you want to sway your hips.
The roots of LA LOM run deep. Zac Sokolow's musical lineage spans generations, starting his creative journey performing alongside his father, a respected figure in LA's bluegrass community, whose family relocated from Buenos Aires to LA in the 1930s. Jake Faulkner comes from a family of Venice artists and met Zac at age 16. Zac and Jake honed their craft through years of collaboration in various bands within Southern California's vibrant Rockabilly scene before eventually joining to form LA LOM. Nicholas Baker was steeped in Latin music from childhood by his grandmother, who hailed from a musical family in Durango, Mexico, and gained fame as a DJ on a Spanish-language radio station in Tucson, Arizona. He studied Latin percussion with renowned Nuyorican bassist and percussionist Roberto Miranda.
Pre-Order The Los Angeles League of Musicians: lalom.lnk.to/LaLom
Watch the music video (performed live) / listen to "San Fernando Rose" here:
Tracklist:
1. Angels Point
2. Figueroa
3. Maravilla
4. '72 Monte Carlo
5. El Sereno
6. Lorena
7. Lucia
8. Danza de LA LOM
9. Espejismo
10. Ghosts of Gardena
11. Moonlight Over Montebello
12. Rebecca
13. San Fernando Rose
