BUZZ BANDS

At least her spirit is full

The legions in the Los Angeles music community who regard Eleni Mandell as a local treasure will tell you she defies categorization. Too bad she simply can’t deny it.

“I’m not trying to be a jack-of-all-trades,” says the woman whose fifth album, “Afternoon,” is the latest in a line of shape-shifting documents, segueing seamlessly from pop to country to jazz, with her stark vocals and rapt lyrics serving as musical thread. “The music I grew up listening to -- the Beatles, Dylan, the Stones -- their songs were not all the same.”

Mandell’s changeling aesthetic has not only earned a following in L.A. (where she has shows the next two Sundays at Tangier in Los Feliz) and New York (where she’ll do a residency in October), but also in a few Midwestern locales with radio stations that have broad palates.

Her expansive stylings “haven’t done me too much good in the record business,” she says wryly. “But I am getting all that spiritual fulfillment.”

Relative sincerity

Max Bemis seemed to have it backward: He dropped out of rock to go to college. The frontman of the L.A. foursome Say Anything, still a teenager when his band signed to Doghouse Records, delayed working on an album in favor of school. “But I was not tailored for it,” says Bemis, 20. “I don’t work well in classrooms.”

He returned after a semester and finished work on “Say Anything Is a Real Boy,” an indie pop/classic, rock/punk melange with a rather furrowed worldview and the biting turns of phrase to prove it.

“Kids are real cynical,” Bemis says, “Although I try to have a hopefulness in the music as well. It’s important to stay relatively sincere and have a sense a humor.”

Bemis and Coby Linder, Kevin Seaton and Casper Adams, who play Saturday night at Chain Reaction in Anaheim, embark on their first national tour in October.

Fast forward

Next big thing alert: The Futureheads break away from duties as opening band on Franz Ferdinand’s tour to play Monday night at Spaceland. The British quartet plays inspired punk with intricate vocals at breakneck speed.... It’s a good week to catch some impressive touring indie artists. Among them: Cleveland, Ohio, quartet Rosavelt, playing Spaceland tonight in support of its new release, “The Story of Gasoline,” channels the Replacements with some down-home variations. Chicago quartet the M’s possess a rockin’ bravado that is neither forced nor cheeky; they play in support of always-good the Natural History on Wednesday at the Silver Lake venue.... Kill Radio celebrates the release of its album “Raised on Whipped Cream” Friday night at the Key Club, with upstart punkers the Kinison supporting.