Wingspread

We like to compare bands to other bands, especially if the other bands are local, or small, or obscure: That’s why we’re excited to report that Los Angeles’ Big Eagle sounds like the Pillows meets Two Sheds, but the attitude is all Prairie Dog. Let’s hear it for sweet-voiced hipster lady bandleaders! Big Eagle itself identifies influences like Emmylou Harris and Stephen Stills, but goes in for some oddballs, too, vintage style: Bobbie Gentry and Buffy Sainte-Marie. But leaving aside all those other folks, singer/songwriter Robyn Miller channels pure campfire smoke and bottles of amber liquid in her lyrical poetics, as on the aching “Colorado.” A beautiful, no-nonsense tone stretches out of her, to spin sad stories like the irresistible “By Satellite,” whose refrain repeats, “Secretly you want me dead.”

Hot Lunch and Big Eagle open for Bart Davenport and Kelley Stoltz.
Fri., May 22, 9:30 p.m., 2009