The Line of Best Fit captured Okkervil River’s charming recent performance (in a dry-docked wooden sailboat no less) of their heart-wrenching and masterful song, Love to a Monster (a bonus track off of 2007’s “The Stage Names” album), at The End of the Road Festival in Dorset, England.  Check out the performance below and the well-wrought lyrics after.

“Lover, now that you’ve left me, I’m glad you’re unlovely.
‘Cause if you could take all the heat in your heart and just hang it from you,
I wouldn’t be able to bear the way you cannot love me.
It’s much easier of me to make a monster out of you.

And so here I go, substituting the glow from your temples,
all our sighs and our trembles, and each last letter sent you
from the cheap little pen of this weak little man
the one singing – out his jangling, ringing
and hopefully stinging attack upon you.

Yeah, so here I go, just exploding the hope we’ll be speaking
some day, years from now, seeking friendship and understanding.
Yeah, I hope you get angry, and hurt, and have the hardest of landings.
And I hope your new man thinks of me when he sees what a number I did on you.
Come on boys.

I grow tired of this song. Turn my eyes
to the blonde in the bleachers.
She’s a lovely young creature.
I think she’s seeking adventure.
I think she’s ready to see that the world ain’t so sweet nor so tender.
I won’t break her, just bend her, and make her into my new ringer for you.

I stay in the same comfy town, write the same old songs down, drive the same streets,
seek the same sense of dull peace, whisper the same sweet words to the chippies.
The same walk by the road where the same muddy snow’s finally leaving,

But I’ll fight off the spring; I don’t want lovely things,
I don’t want the earth new.”

For obvious reasons, the performance above reminded us of Lyle Lovett’s great song, If I Had a Boat, which you can check out below (as introduced by John Prine).

And here’s another version of Love to a Monster on A Takeaway Show segment filmed on the banks of the Seine River in Paris:

# 6.2- Okkervil River-Love to a monster by lablogotheque

We caught Baltimore’s Future Islands’ early set at Muddy Waters on Wednesday (the later set being sold out), and came away from the enjoyable set still unsure of the long-term merit of the band.  They are critically acclaimed and filled the Muddy with swelling synth and bass sounds.  We’ll delve deeper into their discography and report back our findings in the future.  The three-piece played a well-received set that was marked by the flip-of-the-switch theatrics of lead singer, Sam Herring (pictured above), and seriously-stoic, but accomplished, delivery by his two band mates (Gerrit Welmers and William Cashion) on keyboards, bass and guitar.  One minute Herring is the boy-next-door chatting amiably with the crowd, and the next he’s Jack Black channeling death-growl metal and flailing around the stage.  After the set Herring reverted to his (we suspect) likable self (as pictured above).  More Jeykll, less Hyde, kind of thing.

To get a feel for the Kona conundrum, check out their performance of Before the Bridge on KCRW below. Herring seriously scaled back the method-acting for KCRW, but you still get a feel for the Jack Black Leads Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark effect.  Let us know what you think.  For now, we’re giving them the benefit of the doubt.

We regretted having to miss Portland band, Blind Pilot, when they recently played here.  But then again, we got to see the the Woods, Kurt Vile, the Felice Brothers, M. Ward and Bright Eyes.  For free.  In Golden Gate Park.  That’s a tradeoff we’re willing to accept.

We really would have liked, however, to have caught the NPR-favored Blind Pilot live in our little town.  As you can see below, the band delivers stirring melodies with harmonious vocals, and all with clear-eyed vision of its musical path.  To get a flavor, check out the band’s performance on KCRW yesterday of Keep You Right (you can download the studio version and buy their music at Blind Pilot’s site) off of its recently-released and critically-acclaimed album, “We Are The Tide.”  The band has augmented their lineup and sound on the new album, and it’s a comely combo.  Musically, they fall somewhere in the spectrum between updated-Fleetwood Mac and The Head and the Heart/Doe Bay Festival-singalong genre.  Their flight is directly on target into our world.

Lykke Li showed up on the Letterman Show last night to perform Silent My Song off of her second album, “Wounded Rhymes.” Check out Li (with Princess Leia ‘do) with her tour mates, fellow Swedes First Aid Kit, singing shimmering backing vocals. Check it out below courtesy of The Audio Perv. We agree wholeheartedly (as usual) with Letterman, whose terse review was: “lovely“, “beautiful,” and “haunting.”

Check out Feist’s just-released official video for the first single, How Come You Never Go There, from her album, “Metals.” Check out her impersonation (?) of Alanis Morrisette (both Canadians anyway) in what appears to be a trailer from the impending Hobbit movie.

One of our favorite singer-songwriters, Damien Juradao, has announced the release in February of a new album (via Secretly Canadian), “Maraqopa.”  Producer Richard Swift is at the helm as he was on Jurado’s last record, Saint Bartlett , which made our Top Albums list for 2010.

We hear the news on the new album’s first track, Nothing is the News, that there will be sound expansion and chances taken on the new album.  Check out the old emphatically shifting into the new at 0:34 into Nothing Is the News below, along with the songlist for Maraqopa way below.

And then below that, compare and contrast the new track to one of our favorite Jurado songs, Ohio, as performed solo by Damien.

“Nothing is the News” by Damien Jurado by DOJAGSC

Tracks

1. Nothing Is The News
2. Life Away From The Garden
3. Maraqopa
4. This Time Next Year
5. Reel To Reel
6. Working Titles
7. Everyone A Star
8. So On, Nevada
9. Museum Of Flight
10. Mountains Still Asleep

Australian band, Goyte, showed up recently on KCRW and performed their worldly (popular) song, Somebody That I Used to Know, which was just released in July.  The performance keeps making sense until 2:34 when Kimbra’s (cool name) musical rapture kicks in to take it to another level.  Her hands have it, hands down.  After this addictive musical trollope, check out two other Kimbra videos (so easily distracted are we).

We’ve raved about Jessica Lea Mayfield before.  And we will rave again because she strikes a vein that the stricken vain won’t feel. Check out a newly jet-black-coiffed Jessica performing “Blue Skies Again” solo-acoustic at WNRN in Charlottesville, Virginia.  We especially like the added chorus yips.  And then for comparison check out  a blonde Mayfield and band performing the same song on KEXP electrically.  And then check out two more performances on  WNRN, the devastating Somewhere in Your Heart and I’ll Be The One You Want. She has a field day with these songs.

Feist’s “Metals” album is still holding feisty to its top spot in our jukebox, and the song, Get It Wrong, Get It Right, is one of the gems of Metals‘ gem faire.  Check out below the just-released video from CBC’s Studio Q in which Feist and band give a particularly poignant read of the song.  Listen in as Feist sings, with haiku eloquence, of relational trials endured and hope evinced.  And she gets it right, gets it right, gets it so right.  The song’s lyrics follow the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWspaTPB1lw

Get It Wrong, Get It Right

“Wind on the fields blowin’ your hair
Wheat of gold, wheat of gold, wheat of gold
Wheat of gold, hand to hold, hand to hold

Come to the hill, got a nest to build
String and grass, string and grass, string and grass
String and grass, be the past, be the past

Climb up to the clouds, tops of the trees
Little road, little road, little road
Little road, come and go, come and go

River dam, lake fills up the land
Skippin’ stones, skippin’ stones, skippin’ stones
Skippin’ stones, build a home, build a home

Cold outside, warm by the fire
Get it wrong, get it wrong, get it wrong
Get it right, get it right, get it right

In our continuing efforts to pay homage to our French-Canadian roots, we introduce (we surmise) to you Canadian singer, Beatrice Martin, who has been making huge inroads (over 10,000,000 hits for her video below of Comme des Enfants) in both her native French and English tongues (she’s Canadian after all).  Martin has made her mark in Canada and other Francophone environs as “Coeur de Pirate” (Pirate Heart) and elsewhere as a part of the English side-project, “Armistice.”

Toronto-based music blog, Chromewaves, pointed to Martin, Couer de Pirate and Armistice in their post today in which Chromewaves rave-viewed the Couer de Pirate show in Toronto last Friday (in support of the band’s brand new album, “Blonde“).  Chromewaves said the following about the new album:  “The girlish, chanson-derived charms of Coeur de Pirate have blossomed into widescreen, swinging-’60s full-band pop gems with Martin functioning less as a singer-songwriter than a full-on bandleader.”

To begin to get a feel for Martin and crews, first check out Armistice’s (with Mariachi El Bronx) official video for their song, Mission Bells (followed by the song’s lyrics).  And then check out Couer de Pirate’s humorous/inventive official video for new song, Adieu (off of Blonde), and the official video for previously mentioned ballad, Comme des Enfants .

“MISSION BELLS

I can still feel you there
Are we tangled in time somewhere
And it’s been a while since you’ve been ‘round here
Since you locked me in some devastated stare

Oh then we could ring out like mission bells
Across the yard we knew so well
Come on come on give me my turn
To sing once more
And let it burn

‘Cause I’m
I’m just no good
So leave me, as you should
And surrender to some unholy war
‘Cause we forgot what we first came here for

Oh then we could ring out like mission bells
Across the yard we knew so well
Come on come on give me my turn
To sing once more
And let it burn

Come on come on come on now you sing it
Laying me low in bells that come ringing and,

We could ring out like mission bells
Across the yard we knew so well
Come on come on give me my turn
To sing once more
And let it burn”