Metronomy has been turning heads for years with their music and revered re-mixology (of Gorillaz, Architecture in Helsinki,  Kate Nash, and U2, amongst others).  They are the pop-dance-rock project of Londoner, Joseph Mount, keyboardist/saxophonist Oscar Cash, bassist Gbenga Adelekan and former Lightspeed Champion drummer Anna Prior.  Their most recent album, The English Riviera, received critical acclaim this year and was nominated for Britain’s prestigious Mercury Prize (won this year by PJ Harvey for her fantabulous “Let England Shake“).

The band has been gaining a larger following over the years owing in no small part to their inventive music videos.  Check some of ’em out below.  Our diagnosis:  catchier than SARS or Sandusky.

Kathleen Edwards has released the official video for new song, Change The Sheets, from her impending new album, “Voyageur,”.  As mentioned earlier, Voyageur was produced by Kathleen Edwards and Justin Vernon (of Bon Iver).  Check it out below.

Last night, the Black Keys appeared on “The Colbert Report” and performed Lonely Boy and Gold on the Ceiling (the latter for web-only) off their new album, “El Camino.”  The main duo of the band, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, also sat down with Colbert for the usual Colbert-interview-hilarity.  We admit we struggle with the merit and popularity of the band (hasn’t it all been done before?  White Stripes, etc?), but know that we are the black-key minority to all you white-key lovers of the band.  And we take our hats off to Auerbach for his production on Jessica Lea Mayfield’s fine “Tell Me” album.  Check ’em out below in the order listed above.

Lonely Boy:

Gold on the Ceiling:

Interview:

We’d been hearing raves about Glasgow-band, Veronica Falls, but after quickly checking out a few of their offerings, we were frankly nonplussed (turns out attention-deficit can be a bane–who knew?).  And then we stumbled upon Insound’s recent charismatic capture of the band in their Studio Sessions, and the quick-strum, propulsive, over-the-falls, nostalgic sound of the band performing their new song, Bury Me Alive, and the comely Come On Over (off of their eponymous debut album). And thereafter we’ve been falling all over for Veronica Falls.  These are players who play their instruments with fervor and skill, but ultimately mesh their sound into a beguiling, intertwined whole, and in so doing remind us conceptually of the seminal Feelies.  Their lyrics oft-times center around mordant themes, but the band as said this about that:  “[The lyrics] are not really meant to be taken at face value, to be totally honest,” says Roxanne. “They’re tongue-in-cheek. Like how Daniel Johnson and Roky Erickson wrote lyrics that are so far fetched, it is more about the imagery and storytelling. If you take it literally then more fool you.”  With continued growth and evolution, this young band will be a force to be reckoned with.

Check out those two performances from Insound Studio Sessions below, and then check out their more punkish Beachy Head (evidently a reference to a suicide spot).   Pass the Ray-Bans, you never know what or who might fall at your feet.  Great stuff.

Bury Me Alive:

Come On Over:

Beachy Head:

Ryan Adams showed up on the Letterman Show proper and performed the song Lucky Now off his new album, Ashes & Fire. Check it out below courtesy of the Audio Perv.Before he recorded for the show, Adams played a stellar hour-long webcast that you can check out below. We like Adams’ new and improved vocals, and we’re doing our darndest to like the new compositions off of his new album. Check it out.

Mates of State, one of our favorite married-musician duos (and that genre’s numbers are growing), showed up the other day at NPR to perform a Tiny Desk Concert.   And they brought along two additional Mates.  Check the assembled Mates ensemble perform two songs (Sway and Desire) off their  recent pop-trove, Mountaintops, and one of our all-time favorite compositions of theirs (My Only Offer) off of 2008’s masterful “Re-Arrange Us” album. Check ’em out below.

No, we’re not talking about the “Best of 2011” lists unleashed each year at this time (ours are still being sanded, but we’re up to 120-grit sandpaper).  We’re talking about Christmas carols (begrudgingly–people, no more Christmas lights or carols before December 1st–please!) and the saving new interpretations served up each year by metiers adept in this trade.  Sufjan Stevens and a cadre of carolers have over the years given us revelatory (or at least charming) new renditions of the old chestnuts and occasionally added a talisman or two in the process.

Our favorite all-time Christmas carol is O Holy Night, and our favorite version thereof is still (John) Hughes & (Tad) Wagner’s harmony-heavy read (which you can listen to way below) taken from a great Christmas compendium, “The Gift,” which is a mainstay each year at Chez Lefort.  Aquarium Drunkard is pointing to a new read of O Holy Night by Josh T. Pearson, who earlier this year gave us Real (and heavy) Country music in the form of his great album, “Last of The Country Gentlemen.”  You can check Pearson’s O Holy Night below or go over to Aquarium Drunkard and stream/download Pearson’s fine iteration, which is stark and affecting but seems at moments like Christ alone at the end in Gethsemane, rather than at the beginning in Bethlehem.  We’ll put it down as reverential.  After Pearson, check out Hughes & Wagner’s reworking after.  Enjoy.

Happy Holidays all.

Josh T. Pearson–O Holy Night

Hughes & Wagner–O Holy Night

[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/01-Oh-Holy-Night.mp3|titles=01 Oh Holy Night]

We were recently introduced to Montreal band, Adam & the Amethysts, and have since fallen heavily for their musical purple reign.  They recently released their second album, “Flickering Flashlight,” and it has been quickly rising up our favorite 2011 albums list.  The album is a masterful mix of pop styles that limns many influences (from Girls’ Spector-echo-pop, to 60s’ farfisa organ, to R&B, to plucky folk), but adds hale harmonies, handclaps, chamber touches (cello, clarinet), found sounds (spoons, bottles, bells, etc.), and a waltz or two.  Simplicity has never been more complex.  And all as recorded in leader Adam Waito’s apartment no less, and no more.  Lyrically, the songs movingly capture Waito’s lived-in life between his decampment from the tundra of Thunder Bay, Ontario (a motherlode of amethyst gems–hence the band name) to metropolitan Montreal, and the inevitable remigrations.

The band’s label, Kelp Records, adds this to the understanding:  “For Flickering Flashlight, the Amethysts include musicians drawn from across Montreal’s indie, weird-punk, folk and pop scenes, including members of Miracle Fortress, Sunset Rubdown, Mixylodian, Code Pie, Fuji Hakayito and North, My Love. Rebecca Lessard plays cello and sings back-up vocals. Scott Gailey plays bass. But listen for other things, too: campfire samples, beer bottles, analog synths, electric hand mixers.”  We hear that, and then some.

Initially drawn in by the new album’s dreamy anthem, Dreaming, we now can’t get Flickering Flashlight out of our jukebox.  Pliers, WD-40, Radiohead–nothing.  Every song a gem (beg your pardon).

Given the impending holiday and Christmas season (and its added difficulties for some), the song from the album that’s caught us in its grip is the mournful Adam Called Me Over Christmas, which concerns the passing of Waito’s childhood friend. Due to a digital dust-up, we initially thought this song was the opening track of the album and were concerned about the non-Dreaming songs on the rest of the album.  We were initially put off by the song’s simple narrative that eschews any artifice (see the lyrics below).  But now we get that this approach draws the attention-deprived in and adds immeasurably to the emotional wallop of the song.  With a simple phrase (“and now it’s too late”) and cry, we are quickly brought back to our own losses and our lament for our inaction.  And in the spoon-and-bottle (?) percussion at the end, we have at times imagined morse code signals to and from the other side.  Adam to Adam.  There are few songs as affecting.

We’ll end with this in this holiday season: you who are afflicted, please call.  We plead with you, please call.  For there are many who will happily answer.  And life will be better.

Adam & the Amethysts–Adam Called Me Over Christmas

[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/08-Adam-Called-Me-Over-Christmas.mp3|titles=08 Adam Called Me Over Christmas]

Lyrics:

“Adam called me over Christmas, in the middle of the night, but I wasn’t there, and he apologized to my sister, didn’t call him back, and now it’s too late for that; Adam and me were in Candor Garden, and the other kids played with toys, we just sat in our corner drawing our stories, and the teacher thought we were nuts.  Adam called me over Christmas, in the middle of the night, but I wasn’t there and he apologized to my sister, didn’t call him back, and now it’s too late for that.  Adam and me were at Adam’s house playing, and his brother accused him of something, and started choking him until Adam threw up, his mom yelled at him, and I went home.  Adam called me over Christmas, in the middle of the night, but I wasn’t there and he apologized to my sister, didn’t call him back, and now it’s too late for that.”

For other songs somewhat on this tangent, check out The Antlers’ Wake and Sharon Van Etten’s Don’t Do It.  There are many more.

And check out Adam & the Amethysts performing their fine song, Prophecy, for Canada’s SouthernSouls below:

Archer of Loaf’s song, Web In Front, was the first and best song off of the band’s seminal 1993 album, “Icky Mettle.”  We played Web in Front literally a thousand times and still haven’t grown tired of its two minutes and seven seconds.  Simply brilliance.

Archers of Loaf reunited for a short tour this year and re-released Icky Mettle and, will soon re-release its second album, “Vee Vee” on Merge Records. The band’s lead singer-guitarist Eric Bachmann, who has been occupied with his subsequent band, Crooked Fingers, showed up on the A.V. Club to play and discuss Web in Front. Check both out below. And listen to the album version after. And the lyrics are at the very bottom. “And there’s a chance that things’ll get weird; yeah, that’s a possibility.” Indeed.

Eric Bachmann of Archers Of Loaf discusses and performs “Web In Front”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14FqfE92yK8

Web in Front:

“Stuck a pin in your backbone.
Spoke it down from there.
All I ever wanted was to be your spine.
Lost your friction and you slid for a mile.
Overdone, overdrive, overlive, override.

You’re not the one who let me down,
But thanks for offering.
It’s not a voice and I’m not around.
But thanks for picking it…

Up, on the radio.
Sampled your rust from a faucet, I know.
I’ve got a magnet in my head,
A magnet in my head.
Extra thick, extra long, the way it was wasted.

And there’s a chance that things’ll get weird.
Yeah, that’s a possibility.
Although I didn’t do anything,
No, I didn’t do anything.

All I ever wanted,
All I ever wanted,
All I ever wanted was to be your spine.

(repeat)

In a mouth kept shut and a tongue twist tie.
You’re the web in front, you’re my favorite lie.
You’re a buck my lip, you’re a lash my lie.
You’re the web in front of a favorite lie.

Stuck a pin in your backbone.
Spoke it down from there.
All I ever wanted was to be your spine.
I’ve got a magnet in my head, a magnet in my head.
Extra thick, extra long, the way it was wasted… wasted.”

We tried but just missed The Belle Brigade at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass this year.  They have a big buzz about them.  We’ll leave a more thorough assessment for another day, but for now check out the video for their song, Losers.  If you need some uplift and/or if you’re a dog lover, this is the video for you!  Go beagle go!!