This year’s Sunset Junction is a bit of a return to its roots in local music – The Fold is curating a stage that synopsizes much of the recent moments in Silver Lake guitar rock.

But one of its marquee performers – the woozy, harmony-heavy quartet Chief – has been sleeping around a bit, at least geographically.

The band met while attending New York University and makes its home in Santa Monica, which kind of befits their take on the dappled jangle of the Byrds and Wilsonian vocal pyrotechnics. But for those wondering how Chief skated to a high-profile deal with Domino for its debut without yet making a huge fuss on the local circuit, they swear they paid their dues back East.

“We were a band for three years before moving back to California,” said front man Evan Koga. “We had a lot of our early grind back East. I guess we’re as much of a New York band as we are an L.A. one at this point.”

Pollyn is a three-piece, except when the act is an eight-piece. The lineup swells during live performances, which are difficult to describe because they create a sort of coherent chaos that's almost pointless to pick apart.

Genevieve Artadi wails wraith-like, wrapping a moody melancholy into Adam Weissman's frenetic but funky beats. Guitarist Anthony Cava delivers spare guitar lines in the key of Liquid Liquid, whose music the group has previously remixed. Horns add equal parts celebration and sadness. Backup singers buoy the potentially downbeat into the uplifting.

Their influences are similarly tasteful and shambolic. The beats resemble an afterword to the Mo' Wax and trip-hop textbook, so much so that Weissman was once tapped to contribute songs for UNKLE. The syncretic mix of unexpected sounds mirrors the Gorillaz, without resembling the act sonically. Unsurprisingly, the band also remixed Damon Albarn's cartoon project. You might hear a little Blonde Redhead, a little Portishead, but neither are really accurate comparisons.

In the wake of releasing its debut album, last year's "This Little Night," Pollyn has issued a trio of remix EPs that capture the act's eclecticism and songwriting flexibility. This year's "Still Love" found white-hot dubstep producers Debruit and Blue Daisy reworking the title track -- while Sid Roams, best known for working with hard-boiled Queens rappers, contributed something fit for sub-woofers stashed in the trunk.

Pollyn's forthcoming and final remix record, "Shake Out the Other Way," finds the group working with artists including gangsta rapper Freddie Gibbs, underground hip-hop idol Exile and Stones Throw-signed disco-fusionist James Pants. Perhaps the highlight comes from Nosaj Thing, whose "Other Side" validates every ounce of acclaim thrown his way in the last year.

Amounted together, it illustrates why the band is the meeting point of the blunted beats emanating from "The Low End Theory" and the dulcet pop that regularly pops up on KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic," where the band did an in-studio last September. 

In advance of the act's 5:05 p.m. appearance Saturday at Sunset Junction (at the Fold Stage), Weissman spoke with Pop & Hiss about the EPs, the band's forthcoming record and its history.

Though events start happening at West Hollywood clubs on Aug. 26, only Aug. 28 will feature two outdoor stages and a host of nationally known acts. 

Set times for that day's fest, which will close down a stretch of Sunset Boulevard to house the two stages, were unveiled today, and will feature a closing hand-off of sorts from a pair of Chicago-bred artists. Veteran rap lyricist Common will finish out a stage near the corners of Sunset and San Vicente Boulevard, ending his set moments before the Smashing Pumpkins take to a stage closer to Doheny Drive at 8:20 p.m.

The Aug. 28 portion of the fest, in which music starts at 1 p.m., will involve a host of Sunset Strip venues, including the Cat Club, the Key Club, the Roxy Theatre and the Whisky A Go-Go, with bands playing throughout the afternoon and into evening. Tickets for Saturday are $49.50 in advance, and $60 at the gate. Other acts on the bill include Semi  Precious Weapons, Travie McCoy, Neon Trees and the Binges. Fergie is slated to guest with Slash.

Full set times after the jump:

On the new, "locals only" stage presented by The Fold, which books acts at Silverlake Lounge, the Bootleg Theater and other neighborhood clubs, the bands will include: Leslie and the Badgers, the Deadly Syndrome, the Crystal Antlers, Sam Sparro and Pollyn. On other stages, we've got Fitz and the Tantrums, Mayer Hawthorne, Lee Scratch Perry, Dam-Funk, and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. And some special highlights: Bad Brains, Ghostland Observatory (who will snazz up the proceedings with a laser light show) and a Miles Davis tribute based around remixing his seminal double album, "Bitches Brew."

In terms of tapping into the zeitgeist of young, hip Silver Lake bands, the Silver Lake Jubilee, held earlier in the year, seems to have stolen some of the fair's thunder, though it also didn't really feature any band you couldn't see in an average month at Spaceland or the Echo.

The festival's full lineup is available after the jump.

--Margaret Wappler

Photo of crowd cheering for Nico Vega at last year's festival. Credit: Ann Johansson / For The Times

With a bill that includes the intricate atmospheres of indie rockers Foreign Born and harmonizing pros the Living Sisters, this weekend's Silver Lake Jubilee is certainly launching with a strong local presence, boasting 30 artists spread over two days.  

It could have been, perhaps, even bigger.

"We wanted to have ultimate control over what kind of bands are playing," said Marcus Rodriguez, a member of the Silver Lake Jubilee's music advisory board. "There were three or four people who contacted us, and said they could bring such-and-such people if such-and-such band was featured. That’s not what we’re trying to do. That can be the failure of a festival in its infancy. I don’t want us to lose the reins. This is for the community, by the community."

The initial aims of the outdoor street festival are much smaller than the Silver Lake's August event Sunset Junction, which turns 30 this year and has survived some recent tense moments with local businesses and residents over how the fest has cordoned off streets. With the help of Origami Vinyl's head Neil Schield, Spaceland's Mitchell Frank and Buzzbands blogger Kevin Bronson, the Jubilee has booked a local-centric lineup that does away with the Junction's more mainstream fare -- as well as its $20 entry fee. The cost to get into the Jubilee is $5.

Keeping admission fees low was a goal from the start. It was helped by the fact that every band appearing on one of the Jubilee's three stages is doing so for free. Schield took the lead on booking acts, leaning, he said, on Spaceland's Frank as a "security blanket." 

"It’s an art community festival, and it’s about giving back to the community," Schield said. "That was attractive. As much as I love the Sunset Junction, it’s stepped away from some of the local things it was founded upon. It brings in bigger bands from out of town, and this is going back to what Sunset Junction used to be."

Did Silversun Pickups money buy the Dangerbird fellows their fancy new digs?

We can only hope for all parties involved, but either way, it's an eye-catching pad. Style Section L.A., founded by two L.A. Times fashion refugees and an editor for the Advocate, posted a Q&A recently with Dangerbird co-owners Peter Walker and Jeff Castelaz about their label's headquarters, which was designed by local architect Barbara Bestor. It's a natural collaboration -- Bestor and Dangerbird have been defining Silver Lake cool for many years now. Bestor is the author of "Bohemian Modern," a documentation of area homes, and Dangerbird has cultivated not only the Silversun Pickups but also Sea Wolf, Division Day, Dappled Cities and Darker My Love.

The new compound anchors the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Lucile Avenue in a striking shade of cerulean blue, and it features two buildings linked by an outdoor space with a basketball court that will eventually host performances. (Perhaps they'll break it in for Sunset Junction?) But, as writer and photographer Kiino Villand points out, the heart and soul of the building is the graphic on the outer wall in honor of Castelaz's son, Pablo Thrailkill Castelaz, who died of cancer last year, and Pablove, the awareness and fund-raising foundation that supports the pediatric cancer community in and around Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.

Read the piece here for more on the Dangerbird home and its open, airy vibe.

-- Margaret Wappler

Photo: Kiino Villand

There’s always a resigned finality to the second day of Sunset Junction. Although L.A.’s Indian summer will surely stretch on for weeks, the feeling that the season is officially over (and all of its unrealized potential) is palpable.

Even as Sunset Junction has swelled from a neighborhood-only street fest to one that can attract a Coachella-sized headliner in Conor Oberst, Ollin’s Scott Rodarte revealed in the midafternoon Saturday sun that there are continued benefits to being a local, although it helps if you have a guitar. 

Had the East L.A. six-piece not been on the bill, Rodarte said, the band would have done what it’s done in years past: show up with instruments and become “sneakers-in,” avoiding the $20 entrance fee by pretending to be a part of the lineup. One of more than 25 artists performing on the first day of the two-day affair, Ollin, in many ways, felt like the quintessential Los Angeles act. 

On a day in which seemingly 1 out of every 2 bands mentioned the proximity in which they lived to the Silver Lake event, Ollin, a Latin-heavy melting pot of ethnic sounds, did them all one better by actually performing songs about the area. Melding Mexican folk with a punk attitude, as well as a flash of an Irish whistle, Ollin’s odes to the long-since-displaced residents of Chavez Ravine were as fit for a fiesta or a pub. With its megaphone-enhanced beer vendors, Sunset Junction is a bit of a middle ground. 

Sunset Junction is the first of what will be three late-summer outdoor fests in Los Angeles, with the underground rock-focused FYF Fest tabled for Sept. 5 in Chinatown and the more mainstream, three-day Sunset Strip Music Festival set to conclude with a street fair Sept. 12. As Ollin illustrated, one of the Sunset Junction’s main selling points remains its diversity. 

Though none of these veteran bands might be in its commercial heyday, all three boast deep discographies and notorious live stage shows, raising a quandary to anyone still clutching an overpriced watery margarita at the conclusion of the two-day street festival. In an effort to ease the psychological conflict such a crisis inculcates, Pop & Hiss presents a Tale of the Tape.

Los Angeles Times contributor Don Waller has a story in today's Calendar about Chris Clark's return to the stage. The 63-year-old soul singer made her debut in 1965 with "Do Right Baby, Do Right," which Waller writes is "one of the most uncharacteristically funky records Motown ever made."

While never having a breakout hit for the label, Clark did receive an Academy Award nomination for co-scripting the 1972 Diana Ross-starring Billie Holiday biopic "Lady Sings the Blues."

Waller tracks her return to the stage. She'll perform Sunday night at the Sunset Junction Street Fair.

Her "Love's Gone Bad," from her 1965 debut, is above. Here's an excerpt from the story: 

Clark left Motown in 1982 and married Ernest Tidyman -- writer of the original Shaft novels and "The French Connection" and "High Plains Drifter" screenplays -- who died, at age 56, two years later.

"I tried to sell some scripts and did some rewrite work on low-budget films," says Clark. "In 1990, I went to Africa to photograph the animals but fell in love with the people. I'd still be there if I could've found a Masai warrior to support me.

"When I got back, I was like a fish out of water. I wanted to make another album, but first I checked myself into Betty Ford."

Our genial blog-sparring partners over at West Coast Sound have compiled a useful guide as to who can wrangle an elusive complimentary neighborhood-resident wristband to this weekend's Sunset Junction Festival. In short, if you swing by Tsunami Coffee House on Tuesday or Wednesday between noon and 7 p.m. with a valid California ID and a utility bill to prove residency at any address that falls within the house numbers and streets below, you're set. Full address list after the jump.