Comes now another new song from the soon-to-be-released new album (“Mirror Traffic“) from Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks.  Based on this new song (Tigers, which you can download HERE) and the previously released Senators, we are excited to hear Malkmus moving away from his recent prog-blues-jam-guitar-star malaise.  We assume credit has to be given (begrudgingly) to soulless dilettante Beck for doing his producer-job and pushing Malkmus back to doing what he does best:  writing songs with strong melodies and evocative/humorous/poignant lyrics.  Check out Tigers below.

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks–Tigers

[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/tigers.mp3|titles=tigers]

We had a busy week and weekend (is there one person out there who didn’t?), and when the moment came last night to make the go/no-go decision on attending Best Coast, it was exceedingly easy to throw in the towel and instead gather with family to watch the (miraculous) victory of the American women in the World Cup we’d recorded and the day’s (horrifying) stage of the Tour de France (vive le Hoogerland!).  All of which led to this morning’s serious regret-hangover and yet another visage of creeping age and its creepy mindset (undoubtedly exacerbated by our current novel, “The Astral” by Kate Christensen, and its age-nauseum purview).  Add to that the fog’s recurring gray-bar imprisonment, and you’ve got a recipe for a dreadful morning.

And so what could come on our car’s CD player this morning but Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3‘s great cover of Bob Dylan’s aging-appropriate Not Dark Yet. Once again music and the mystery were having their way with us.  With his jangly melodies, stirring vocals and quirky lyrics (“Balloon Man,” etc.), we have been huge fans of Hitchcock since his 1984 album, I Often Dream of Trains. The combination of Hitchcock and Dylan’s soulful song can stop you in (and leave blood on) your tracks.  And so we were. 

Check out the song’s lyrics, the studio version by Hitchcock and a live rendering below.

Not Dark Yet

Shadows are falling and I’ve been here all day
It’s too hot to sleep, time is running away
Feel like my soul has turned into steel
I’ve still got the scars that the sun didn’t heal
There’s not even room enough to be anywhere
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

Well, my sense of humanity has gone down the drain
Behind every beautiful thing there’s been some kind of pain
She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind
She put down in writing what was in her mind
I just don’t see why I should even care
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

Well, I’ve been to London and I’ve been to gay Paree
I’ve followed the river and I got to the sea
I’ve been down on the bottom of a world full of lies
I ain’t looking for nothing in anyone’s eyes
Sometimes my burden seems more than I can bear
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

I was born here and I’ll die here against my will
I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standing still
Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from
Don’t even hear a murmur of a prayer
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3–Not Dark Yet

[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/02-Not-Dark-Yet.mp3|titles=02 Not Dark Yet]

And then the always-uplifting Soweto Gospel Choir came counterpointing onto the player and burned the figurative fog off with an ebullient reading of Dylan’s Forever Young. And the world was set right yet again.  Check the song out below their picture.

Soweto Gospel Choir–Forever Young

[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/16-Forever-Young.mp3|titles=16 Forever Young]

Consider all of this just a long-winded encouragement to not give in to lethargy and to get up and out to attend the Gardens & Villa/Hosannas show this Wednesday at Soho.  Don’t give up the fight.

Though we’re waiting before declaring definitively, this Interwebs thing might catch on in a couple of years.  Providing the best support (we are a tad myopic) for this theory are the cathartic, awe-inspiring live musical performances that you can find thereon.  These videos/streams will oft-times leave your face hurting from smiling and your cares dramatically drained.  Check out a few such performances below.

Naturally, first up is Bob Marley giving us a slow, but incendiary live reading of his great No Woman, No Cry from 1979. Oh how we miss Mr. Marley and lament his premature departure.

And then we have The National‘s standard show-stopper, Mr. November (which has been known to induce labor).  Below is a particularly great version that reminds us there can be no better place to be on 9/11 this year than at the Hollywood Bowl when they will appear with Neko Case and Sharon Van Etten.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28DMYdfdDwM&feature=player_embedded

Next up is The Flaming Lips and their prize-winning performance of Race for the Prize in Japan.

Then we have My Morning Jacket delivering a revenantial Dondante from Okonokos.

And how could we leave out the best live band on the current planet (no contest), Radiohead. Check out the band killing its song, 15 Step, in Prague.

And then we head into the gleaming Glastonbury shows.  Pilgrimage; we need a pilgrimage.  For the last decade Glastonbury has drawn the best artists, the best audiences, and the best performances of any festival on the planet.  Don’t believe us?  Check these out.  We need to go to there.

Check out Radiohead from 2003 Glastonbury killing Paranoid Android.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIklhgI-m2s&feature=related

Then there’s this epic 2008 Glastonbury performance by Elbow of their life-affirming One Day Like This. Strings and audience attached.

And then we have the re-grouped Blur from 2009 Glastonbury, doing their great Tender. “Loves the greatest thing that we have, I’m waiting for that feeling to come!!”  And the crowd!!  Oh my.

And finally, for one of those goosebump, take-over-the-world moments that only live music can provide, check out Arcade Fire‘s set-ending mega-anthem, Wake Up, as done at the 2010 Reading Festival (once again, the Brit audiences out-perform their counterparts throughout the world).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OmMPaLmxKg&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

This is for the burgeoning indie music/geeks-who-also-love-sci-fi crossover crowd (you know who you are).  Check out the official video of Other Lives’ For 12 song.  And said crowd will also want to check out Hooray For Earth’s official video for their song True Loves (and then the Cyriak Harris-directed video by of the Cereal Spiller remix of the same song). And finally in the sci-fi music video realm, check out Chad VanGaalen’s official video for Peace on the Rise.

We kidnapped a couple of college-bound cousins and sallied down to Soho last night for a great double bill of Stillwater, Oklahoma’s Other Lives and The Rosebuds, all as presented by Club Mercy.

First up was Other Lives, which consists of  leader Jesse Tabish (above) on guitar and keys, Jenny Hsu on cello and keyboards, Jonathon Mooney on piano,violin, guitar and harmonium, Josh Onstott on bass, organ and trumpet, and Colby Owens on drums.  Their music and songs at times reside in the brooding chamber-pop realm, but they can also make a more raucous, rockish sound driven by Owens powerful drumming and the others’ ensemble playing.  Most of the members contribute stunning harmony vocals to Tabish’s lead, the latter reminding of Interpol vocals at times (check out Tamer Animals in the video below).  Hsu greatly adds to the mix with occasional lead vocals, sweet harmonies and incisive cello and piano playing.  Taken as a whole, the band crafts complex songs of the heart and enlivens them with great ensemble performances.

Check out live performances of a couple of their gravitas-filled songs, For 12 and Tamer Animals, from their recent album “Tamer Animals.” And below those is the band performing Paper Cities on HearYa.

The Rosebuds followed, and we were pleasantly surprised to find that this was not just another twee husband-and-wife/boyfriend-and-girlfriend keyboard/guitar-based duo.  Instead the Rosebuds are an intermittently rocking four-piece featuring the valiant vocals and lively delivery of ex-marrieds Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp, with strong support on drums and violin.

Varying between uptempo, danceable numbers and broken-hearted ballads, the Rosebuds gave the disappointingly smallish audience a compelling set of sounds. Seizing on the sizing, Crisp even left her keyboard to come out onto the floor to motion the audience closer to the stage to create a more intimate setting.  As heard at Soho, the band’s gestalt is captured well by the title of their most recent album, Loud Planes Fly Low (a powerful album filled with odes to Crisp’s and Howard’s relationship–and the end thereof).  They were laudingly loud at times (especially when Other Lives’ Tabish joined them on one raucous song), but they glided well and low at other times.  We highly recommend you check out their new album.  The band should win over ample additional fans when it opens for Bon Iver on their national tour this summer.

You can check them out live below.

The Rosebuds – Loud Planes Fly Low from 521studies on Vimeo.

Photos by Lefort

My Morning Jacket came to the Santa Barbara Bowl Saturday and buttoned up the widely held belief that they are amongst the best live bands on the planet.  Despite having been on the road incessantly since mid-May in support of their new album, “Circuital,” the Jacket boys dug deep and threw off the ties that hinder and tether, and together with the audience, floated up into the sonic stratosphere.

Early on in the set, we briefly sensed the band’s exhaustion (understandable given their set the day before at the High Sierra Music Festival in the hinterlands northwest of Tahoe, and long travel after to Santa Barbara).  But they hid their fatigue well and galvanized behind hirsute guises and gazes, all the while gathering energy from the frenzied crowd and hallowed Bowl grounds.

As it has throughout its tour, the band opened with Victory Tour (Circuital’s opener) followed by Circuital.  The show began to take off with the  triumvirate of Off the Record, Anytime and Gideon.  The dynamic duo of At Dawn and Golden further levitated the crowd.  And then I’m Amazed floored.  For the hardcore connoisseurs, they then gave us the semi-obscure, reggae-influenced Phone Went West.  Next up was Dondante, the brilliant, elegiac ode to a former band member who left this earth too soon.  Introducing the song (perhaps in a nod to his passed friend), James said that the International Space Station would be flying over our direct location between 8:57 and 9:01.  He was narrowly off when the Station evidently (we missed it) became visible above the Bowl at 9:02.  Check the song and Station out below, courtesy of Sonic Ambulance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uMp1iYGTkU&feature=player_embedded

Throughout the night Jim James amazed with his ghost-siren vocals and percussive, driving guitar playing.  At times he seemed to sing with and to the revenants and spirits of the next world, just to let us in on a glorious vision and the sweetness of his longing.  And yet James tapped into the temporal too.  He stamped, rocked and repeatedly challenged drummer Patrick Hallahan, multi-instrumentalist Carl Broemel, and bassist Two-Tone Tommy to lift their games.  And each time they did, at times seeming to speak in musical tongues.  They left no question that in their musical revival tent, the spirits of Marvin Gaye, Joe Strummer, Neil Young (though he thankfully lives and plays on) and Bob Marley are well-channeled.

Hallahan deserves special mention as he is simply one of the best rock drummers in the business, playing with relentless drive and aplomb, all the while with his hair flailing and mouth agape (mirrored repeatedly by the slack-jawed audience that surrounded us).  And Broemel’s guitar, pedal steel and sax playing provide the perfect complement to the band and music.  We were initially unimpressed by Two-Tone Tommy, but it wasn’t long before he came to life, threw off his three-piece suit jacket, and began to dexterously slaughter the bottom line.  Bo Coster also added some nice touches on keys and percussion.

After Dondante, the band killed new crowd-favorite Holdin’ on to Black Metal.  The band was in full drive and the crowd responded by screaming the choruses, providing the best singalong we’ve heard since Arcade Fire’s Wake Up.   The one-two of Touch Me I’m Going to Scream Pt. 2 and crowd-favorite Mahgeeta euphorically ended the main set.

The audience’s hearty, Bowl-shaking effort to bring the band back was rewarded with an energetic encore consisting of Wordless Chorus, Highly Suspicious, and One Big Holiday. When James came back onstage he had a cape on, a la James Brown, which he eventually threw off and raced across the stage in abandon, ending in a drop-knee slide across the stage.  Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney couldn’t have done it any better, and the crowd went wild.  You can check Wordless Chorus below.

On Highly Suspicious, James one-upped Prince on vocals and the band raved on.  And then MMJ throttled up further with the anthemic One Big Holiday, tapping their last energy reserves and playing up to the very last second of the Bowl’s buzz-kill curfew (additional songs The Day Is Coming and I Will Sing You were on the band’s setlist but went un-played courtesy of the curfew).

A couple of minor “constructive complaints” about the show.  First: MMJ, please don’t go Milli Vanilli on us and drop in canned background vocal tracks.  Either bring Becky Stark and the Watson Twins (as seen recently on Conan, which you can check out HERE) or leave the canned vocals out.  They do a disservice to an otherwise perfect performance.  Second: the sound on the floor in GA was not optimum, with James vocals and Broemel’s instrumentals frequently getting lost in the mix.  While the sound at the sound board is  undoubtedly perfect, the sound on the floor seems to be lacking frequently in the reconfigured Bowl (all of which would seem to be easily remedied by adding some speakers at floor-level).

And finally, Central Coast, a word if we may:  We suggest that the next time My Morning Jacket comes to Santa Barbara you stay focused and do whatever you have to do to catch one of the best live bands on the earth.  Don’t let seats go unfilled like on Saturday.  It was another in a series of embarrassing moments recently for musical Santa Barbara.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOXgGzDYmhU&feature=player_embedded#at=174

Setlist

1. Victory Dance
2. Circuital
3. First Light
4. Off The Record
5. Anytime
6. Gideon
7. You Wanna Freak Out
8. At Dawn
9. Golden
10. Outta My System
11. The Way That He Sings
12. I’m Amazed
13. Dancefloors
14. Phone Went West
15. Slow Slow Tune
16. Dondante
17. Holdin On To Black Metal
18. Smokin From Shootin
19. Touch Me I’m Going To Scream Pt.2
20. Mahgeetah
———-
21. Wordless Chorus
22. Highly Suspicious
23. One Big Holiday

We are generally dismissive of “Official Videos” put out by bands, preferring to spend our time tracking down and waiting to be surprised by the more organic live performances where some time has elapsed to enable the artists to ruminate on and add dynamics to the sound beyond the recorded version.  Nonetheless, because of some cool videographical bits, we give you the Official Video for Bon Iver’s  Calgary from what is quickly ascending our “Best Albums of 2011 So Far” list.  Check it out.  Musically though, we’re saying it’s hard to beat the version done live on Colbert last week.