We are starting to like Annie Clark.  Check out her St. Vincent set at Coachella way below, including her performance and crowdsurf of new song KROKODIL.  You can check out just Krokodil and the crowdsurfing in the first video below, or check out the entire set at bottom.  Emotion evinced.  An angry Annie Clark we like.  Replicants don’t anger do they?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJuo3IkyprI&feature=related

In honor of this Saturday’s Record Store Day (April 21st), Domino Records commissioned Nashville’s up-and-coming Caitlin Rose to cover two Arctic Monkeys songs for a limited edition 7-inch record release on said Day.  Alex Turner is one of favorite songwriters and Rose does his songs a great service.  Check out below Rose covering Piledriver Waltz, which first appeared in the British film Submarine as a bittersweet acoustic love song, and then later was featured on the Monkeys’ most recent album Suck It and See.  Rose’s sound reminds us of Jessica Lea Mayfield (high compliment in our book) and complements this song well.  On the other side of the 7-inch will be Rose’s cover of Suck It and See’s standout ballad Love Is A Laserquest.

This Saturday, Record Store Day, get out and support your local record stores!!  In Santa Barbara, get yourself over to Warbler Records on De La Guerra.  Venturans go to Buffalo Records.  And SLO people, get on down to the bountiful Boo Boo Records.

For now, check out the video for “Piledriver Waltz”.

Still reveling in Radiohead’s show at the Santa Barbara Bowl on Thursday, we were thrilled this morning to find out that Radiohead’s streamed set at Coachella last night can be viewed in its entirety.  Check the setlist and the video below.

Setlist:

Bloom
15 Step
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Morning Mr. Magpie
Staircase
The Gloaming
Pyramid Song
The Daily Mail
Myxomatosis
Karma Police
Identikit
Lotus Flower
There There
Bodysnatchers
Idioteque

Encore:
Lucky
Reckoner
Everything In Its Right Place (with “After The Gold Rush” intro)

Encore 2:

Give Up the Ghost
Paranoid Android

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZEb0ZQKaMY&feature=related

When it was announced (as we had predicted) that Radiohead, our favorite live band for the last 15 years (due respect to Arcade Fire, Elbow, The National, Bon Iver and U2), would grace the hallowed Santa Barbara Bowl on their 2012 tour, the show quickly became the most sought after show in Santa Barbara Bowl history.  Somehow those present Thursday managed to buy, beg, borrow or steal a Golden Ticket to the Bowl to see Radiohead.   As we walked into the Bowl, the first folks we met had just flown in from Hong Kong the prior day just for the show.  The second couple we met were newlyweds from Mexico City who had flown in to Santa Barbara from Japan as part of their honeymoon.  And so it went.  Radiohead are that kind of band, and the Santa Barbara Bowl is that kind of venue, and the two are a match made in heaven.  On Thursday night Radiohead continued its streak of commanding and unparalleled performances at the Bowl.

At 6:30 sharp, Oklahoma’s Other Lives opened with a surprisingly grand set that showed they are learning well from their headlining brethren.  Since their last time through town (last July at Soho opening for The Rosebuds–how about that for career trajectory?), Other Lives have garnered critical praise and fans.  What couldn’t helped being noticed this night was that the band has morphed from its fine chamber-rock sound at Soho into a larger arena-filling sound that at times sounded uncannily like Radiohead themselves.  Wily folks those Other Lives.

We hadn’t missed any of Radiohead’s legendary shows at the SB Bowl, and were ecstatic to attend again on Thursday.  While we had seen the band in the ’90s in San Francisco at Justin Herman Plaza and at the Warfield, nothing had prepared us for the quantum leap made by the band when we caught their 2001 shows at the Bowl in support of Kid A and Amnesiac.  In those intervening years, Radiohead had ascended to the very top of the throne of live rock music.  They confirmed this when they returned in 2008 to the Bowl (with the most elaborate stage lighting we had seen until Thursday) in support of In Rainbows.  And then lead singer, Thom Yorke, returned to the Bowl as a part of Atoms of Peace (along with the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea on bass) and delivered the show of the year in 2010.

The stage was thus set for another historic performance by the band at the Bowl, and they would not disappoint.  Yorke and crew came out to rightful adulation and cacophonous-sound/bombast and immediately kicked into Bloom, the opening track to last year’s Album of the Year, The King of Limbs.  Once again the stage lighting and sound were astonishing, and the band focused on its complex techno-rock sound and songs for most of the evening.  The full setlist can be seen below.  Sure, we hankered a bit for 2001’s Bowl set-lists (no Fake Plastic Trees or Neil Young covers this time around), but this band refuses to play it safe and continues to evolve and re-invent itself.  And so that means those moving, singalong choruses have (mostly) gone by the wayside, having been largely supplanted by techno-dance numbers.  Make no mistake though, their audience still hears and mines the huge heart of this band amidst the lyrical haiku, the trembling wires and in Yorke’s gear-shifting keyboard mallets.  And oh how the boys can sing!  Thom Yorke struggled ever-so-briefly early in their set Thursday, but he more than made up for it by then lifting his game and his voice heavenward.  With Yorke’s vocalisms, the audience seemed to alternate between shivers and smiles.  And every time Ed O’Brien stepped to the microphone, we were overwhelmed by his harmonies (one particular encouragement for future tours:  forget the cowbell and give us more Ed!!). Check out the Idioteque video below for a sample of Ed’s vocals.

Though at times we wished they had added Karma Police, Lucky and/or Kid A (as they had done at other shows on this tour), the crowd fed off of the band’s palpable joy in concentrating on their new songs and sound (Yorke and O’Brien had smiles on their faces nearly the entirety of the evening, and the songs are so new they had to use cheat-sheets at times).  Particular highlights of the evening were the new songs not even found on The King of Limbs, and especially Supercollider, Staircase, Daily Mail and Identikit.  Other highlights were Thom’s vocals on Nude(see far below for a perfect snippet), the beautiful, piano-led Codex, dancefastic Lotus Flower (viewable at bottom–“unfurl” away Thom!), Myxomatosis, our Best Song of 2011 Separator, and the driving Little By Little.  And of course the crowd adored stalwart songs Idioteque and show-closer Paranoid Android (the latter’s singalong chorus was particularly apropos on this rainy evening:  “Rain down, rain down, come on rain down on me, from a great height, from a great height, height”).  And at that song’s end, the skies opened up in answer.

Other facets worth mentioning:  previously-derided and underrated bass player, Colin Greenwood, has really upped his bass-playing ante. We particularly enjoyed some of the minimalist arrangements featuring Colin’s high-register bass playing.  And of course you can never go wrong adding a duel-drummer rhythm section, and particularly when comprised of band member Phil Selway and tour-helper Clive Deamer.  Further, Yorke’s superbly scratchy guitar-playing has rightfully come forward in the mix.  Unfortunately, Jonny Greenwood has slipped himself a bit more into the background (at least on stage).  This is is unfortunate given Greenwood’s intelligence and mega-talent, which was still seen aplenty including on bowed guitar and twisted knobs.

It all added up to what will undoubtedly be our show of the year for 2012.  We can’t wait for their return to the Santa Barbara Bowl.  Check out more pictures and our favorite found videos (in sequence) of the band at the Bowl below.  In addition, check out most, if not all, of the set via the stream at U Stream TV below (via At Ease).

Video streaming by Ustream

Daily Mail at the Bowl:

Pyramid Song at the Bowl:

Supercollider at the Bowl:

Lotus Flower at the Bowl:

Weird Fishes/Arpeggi at the Bowl:

Idioteque at the Bowl:

Full Nude (if you will) followed by key snippet at the Bowl:

Reckoner at the Bowl:

Paranoid Android at the Bowl:

Feist is headed to Coachella.  She’s likely the current generation’s best live female performer (due respect PJ).  She ain’t comin’ back to Cali any time soon (why the diss after she sought refuge/inspiration at our Big Sur, we’ll never know).  So if you’re out in the desert, make sure you don’t miss her set.  To see what you might miss, check out below her performance on Leno last night.  Stunningly good. Long live Feist! A good woman, as the song says.

It took a couple (OK, ten) of spins, but Lambchop’s heartrending Mr. M album has vaulted to the top of our Best Albums of 2012 So Far list.  Bandleader Kurt Wagner has fashioned a subtle but brilliant album that evinces seemingly effortless complexity and poesy.  Musically, Wagner has eschewed the wall of sound that he’s favored at times in Lambchop’s past and has instead stripped Mr. M’s songs of excess.  And in the process, the heart and soul has been revealed.  The net effect smacks at times of  Wagner-as-’50s or ’60s-crooner (for a similar effect check out the great albums of Richard Hawley).  But in the end it’s just Wagner doing what he does best:  writing intelligent, emotionally powerful songs.

Check out the video for 2B2 (with its con-texty lyrics) below, just one of the relentlessly superb songs from off of Mr. M (our personal faves are Kind Of, Nice Without Mercy and Mr. Met).  Wagner has said this about the song’s lines “One man cooks with powder / The other cooks with stones”:  “We [Wagner and founding bandmate Jonathan Marx] were talking on the phone and we discovered we were both cooking chickpeas. The lyrics are a basic chronicle of events surrounding a specific evening when I came to an understanding. Some might call this a revelation, I just call it a relief.”

Listen in and be relieved to know that songs as good as this are still being rendered.

We were chagrined to miss Ireland’s Lisa Hannigan when she came through Santa Barbara last year.  As can be seen from these new videos from the cinematic HibOO d’Live folks in Paris, Hannigan is gifted with a unique voice, singular compositions and delivery, and HibOO d’Live has captured her perfectly in a park, in a discordant construction zone, and with Tour Eiffel backdrop (the Eiffel bedecked in blinking lights that pulse perfectly to her guitar plucking).  Check out Hannigan below performing O Sleep, and Little Birds and Knot, respectively.  We won’t miss her next time she comes through town.

We’ve been huge fans of Central Coast “local” M. Ward from the get-go.  His Transfiguration of Vincent album remains one of our all-time favorites.  Ward attended Cal Poly and cut his musical chops in San Luis Obispo as a member of Rodriguez.  Despite this local connection, we have only seen him briefly in a short (but lively) set at last year’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival and as a key component of the luminous Monsters of Folk show at the Granada Theater in 2009 (the best show of that year).  So we are keyed up to catch his compositions and consummate playing in concert this Saturday at Soho in Santa Barbara.  For a flavor, check out his recent performances of new song Primitive Girl (off his just-released new album, A Wasteland Companion) on Conan last night (courtesy of the Audio Perv), and of Chinese Translation recently for KCRW.

Ireland’s underrated band, Bell X1, has given us some great music over the years (their 2009 single, How Your Heart is Wired, remains amongst our all-time favorites with its U2-meets-Radiohead gestalt).  We hadn’t seen them unplugged until we stumbled upon their recent Sleepover Show.  Check out the separated-at-birth interplay and harmonies of Paul Noonan and David Geraghty on Nightwatchmen and Velcro (with its road regrets/love mien) off of their most recent album, last year’s Bloodless Coup.

The great Tom Waits’ label, Anti, has announced the following great news about Waits soon-come appearances on the David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon shows:

“Tom Waits is heading to NYC this month to perform on late night television. It remains a mystery as to what gems the iconoclast will chose to perform on those stages…but he will be talking with the hosts as well as playing songs for the very first time live from his latest, Bad As Me, “the best-reviewed major album of 2011,” according to metacritic.com.”

Evidently Waits will perform on Letterman (Letterman has been Waits’ traditional show of choice for the last 30 years–check some of ’em out HERE) on April 24th and on the up-and-coming Jimmy Fallon show on April 25th.