If you don’t like Jail Weddings, you don’t like music. The L.A. 10-piece takes all the whimsy of ’60s-era pop and doo wop, and fuses it with a ragged, punch-drunk swagger that’s pure rock & roll. Katya Hubiak and Jada Wagensomer’s angelic harmonies flank charismatic front man Gabriel Hart’s belted vocals while the band backs them with a wall of sound that would make Phil Spector proud. The last time [...]

Jail Weddings have taken on the burden of being the 10-member-deep spokespeople for this unique musical atmosphere. With the end of his post-Starvations project Fortune’s Flesh, singer/guitarist/songwriter Gabriel Hart has gathered like-minded adventurers (including fellow members of The Starvations, Flash Express, The Sun, Grand Elegance, Terrors, plus some noteworthy newcomers) to round out the line-up of his new outfit, which has mastered an updated take on the darker side of [...]

Amanda Jo Williams, Sweaters and Jail Weddings @ the Bootleg Theater. There’s plenty to like on this local bill. Amanda Jo Williams laces her starry-eyed country with weirdness, and Sweaters rock with a familiar sort of comfort, thanks, largely to the soulful keyboard orchestrations. Headliners Jail Weddings have a new album, “Love Is Lawless,” and cause an old-fashioned ruckus. A 10-member band, Jail Weddings fleshes out its ’60s-era garage rock [...]

There’s a way, way, way over-the-top passion (“unbridled,” as the rock critics would say) about Jail Weddings, that 10-person community of souls under the stewardship and throbbing warble of singer Gabriel Hart. The band’s buoyantly bombastic teen-trauma anthems run roughshod over that long-forgotten ’60s sound where Roy Orbison wailed like he was hurting so bad he was, well, he was just about ready to die! (Then there was Scott Walker’s [...]

Took a minute, but there on the dusty shelves in the Buzz Bands archives is a copy of the Starvations’ 2003 “Get Well Soon,” whose dark bar-band swagger sounds pretty good to this day. The Starvations died of hunger back in ’05, but singer-guitarist Gabriel Hart, thankfully, lives on, even if his music seems to be aging in reverse — judging from “Love Is Lawless,” the debut album from his [...]

Jail Weddings singer, guitarist and svengali Gabriel Hart spent the early part of the 2000s rejiggering the Gun Clubbed greaser anthems of his first band, the Starvations, through a couple line-up and name changes and some solo stints, along the way making some of the most underrated, moody garage rock of the decade. Partly due to those frequent changes and infrequent touring, his LA-based acts have remained a bit of [...]

“If you’re new to their old-timey-fused-with-new-timey brand of rock, check out the ten-piece’s latest video for “I Thought You Were Someone I Knew”, or our personal favorite, “I’m My Own Doctor”.

“Jail Weddings debut album Love is Lawless … I’m pretty psyched for it. My only wish is that one day the “Phil Spector/ Jail Weddings California State Prison Session” can happen. Now that would be one hell of a marriage.”

“From the sublime “I Thought You Were Someone I Knew” to the cathartic “Somebody Lonely,” Love Is Lawless is not only a passionate tour de force, but a rollicking good time.”

“The 10-piece Los Angeles band combines The Supremes, The Temptations and Elvis — and breaks all of their hearts.”