We get so sick of the rock-n’-droll twang-with-Hallmark-lyrics that passes itself of as “country music” these days.  Let’s just call it for what it is: brain-dead crap pandering to the lowest common denominator. We won’t name names, but you and they know who the purveyors are. Hint: many appear regularly on the completely fraudulent “Country” Music Awards.  ‘Nuff said.

So it has been refreshing to hear some real country music from 26-year old Ashley Monroe (formerly of the Pistol Annies with Miranda Lambert) on her newly released debut album Like A Rose. Monroe’s songs tell well their tales that range in tenor from the lascivious all the way to the heartbroken.  And get this: the music is traditional, real country. Vince Gill produced the album well, and between the two of ’em, they got it right.

The song’s earthbound subjects range from 14-year-olds stealing pickup trucks, to coming-of-age struggles, to laments for losing out to the “other woman,” to the depths of out-of-wedlock pregnancy.  Monroe is garnering a lot of press in particular for the (calculating?) scene-stealer Give Me Weed Instead of Roses, on which Monroe looks past romantic, “teddy-bear” love in favor of whips and chains, whipped cream, whiskey and weed.  She’s to be forgiven if the song serves its obvious purpose in a post-Fifty Shades world:  as the gateway to the rest of her (more thoughtful) songs on the album.  Speaking of which, Monroe evidently co-wrote all the songs on the album, and is joined by Blake Shelton (please forgive her) on the joust-jesty You Ain’t Dolly (And You Ain’t Porter).

To get a better feel for Monroe and her music, you can go below and scroll over to the 37:00 minute mark of last night’s Tonight Show episode to watch Monroe perform the fine title track from the new album (never mind the bizarre commercial interruption–come on Jay, it’s the 21st century!).  We  knew from the moment we saw her vintage Gibson Hummingbird that she was legit.  Despite some glamor and glitz (who can blame her) Monroe and band acquit themselves well.  You can also watch some videos in which Monroe explains and performs some of the songs and can stream the entire album for a piece by plugging in your email address over at Monroe’s website HERE.  And if you can’t deal with the Tonight Show’s arcane video and lame commercial interruption, you can bypass it and at bottom watch another video vignette (via American Songwriter) of this legitimate country artist singing the title song.  Our hope for Monroe is that she sticks to the “real country” found on this album, and resists going the way of the CMA cabal.  Keep keepin’ it real (country) Ashley.  We’ll be listening.

Clem Snide’s Eef Barzelay continues to be one of America’s best songwriters.  Barzelay never fails to evoke emotional responses in his songs, ranging from tears to laughter, with intelligence and soul.  He’s written too many gems to mention quickly and so many that some have even gone unrecorded.  Take for example his song We Are Flowers.  Check out Barzelay’s 2010 Tiny Desk Concert below for NPR, but pay particular attention (or skip ahead to 9:00-13:30) to the understated and unrecorded mini-masterpiece We Are Flowers.

After We Are Flowers, check out Eef’s new song The Woods, which was made special for a BBC show and released on his Bandcamp in February.

Long live Eef!  While Eef’s been busy recording great fan-funded songs (see the second “HERE” ahead), we hope for the release this year of a formal full-band or multi-instrument album by Barzelay or Clem Snide.  Until then, check out these songs and look into the back catalog of this great singer-songwriter HERE or HERE.

Singer-songwriter Samantha Crain recently released a fine new album entitled Kid Face. Crain is Oklahoma-born and of Choctaw heritage, and she’s been garnering adulation from critics, fellow-artists and fans for quite some time.  Check Crain and her band performing her song Paint off of the new album for KDHX a few weeks ago.  You can watch other three other performances by Crain on KDHX HERE. 

Crain writes this about Paint:

“While on tour in Europe in the fall of 2011, I traveled alone and by train.  This rewarded me with cherished reflection and silence.  I began writing these lyrics while waiting in the Yatton Rail Station just between Bristol and Weston-super-Mare.  I was passing the time by peeling paint chips off of the declining shelter posts and began to feel detached from society.  It was as if I was an apparition, gently and quietly moving around the globe, observing but not participating.  After this feeling had come over me, I then became very excited, for this is what I had set out to become so many years ago, but then I became very downcast because it occurred to me; who loves a ghost?”

The song’s well-wrought lyrics are as follows:

“There where the paint had come off
That’s where I stopped
I looked at the flecks there
Then brushed them off
Thought “Hold to your host,
that was the most, the best you’ll find”

I’m trying not to disappear
Into the shadows
Into a tunnel that doesn’t end
Doesn’t know where to go
So where is that ghost?
That was the most, the best you’ll find

There’s a real problem here
I know
I’m almost young this year
Now that I’m older

I don’t want to be a cynic
It’s much too soon for that
Still it feels like something’s missing
And that’s a real drawback
So where is that host?
That was the most, the best I’ll find

There’s a real problem here
I know
I’m almost young this year
Now that I’m older

There’s a real problem here
I know
I’m almost young this year
Now that I’m older”

American Songwriter has a new interview with the intelligent, erudite and poetic Crain that you can view HERE.

Antony is a purist currently at the top of his game, though we’ll see what the future brings.  He’s a force of nature. Or un-nature, as you wish.  There can be no debate, however, that he sings with more heart and soul than many can muster.  In Paris this week, as a part of his series of concerts (with big band backing) at Salle Pleyel, Antony (again) collaborated with Lou Reed on a stirring rendition of Reed’s sweetly-adroit Candy Says.

On Sunday, honesty is never inappropriate, and as Reed sings: “Candy says I’ve come to hate my body, and all that it requires in this world.”  In that vein, who hasn’t swallowed whole the words, “If I could walk away from me.”  Check below as Reed reads it perfectly, and then Antony takes the song over at 7:17.  After Candy Says, watch Antony stake his claim on several other songs as one of the most affecting and effective artists of our generation.  All videos courtesy of the superb captures of LysWantTwo.

Also check out Antony’s marvelous cover of The Marvelette’s Someday, Someway:

And check out this revelatory cover of Leonard Cohen’s If It Be Your Will:

And second-to-last but not second-to-least, check out the audio (with vignettes) of the now-definitive cover of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive.

And finally, check out this hopeful version of Hope There’s Someone.

We love Charles Bradley, a great old soul soul who has smartly combined with “His Extraordinaires” (in actuality The Menahan Street Band).  Check them out below in a newly-released video from last year’s UTOPiAFest performing The World (Is Going Up In Flames).  Given the song title, it’s apropos that the song is performed in a downpour.  We loved the song when we first saw Bradley and band back in 2011, but they’ve tightened up matters considerably since then.  As the Menahan’s urgently sing behind Bradley:  “Turn it up, turn it up!!”  Bradley will release his new album Victim Of Love on Daptone April 2nd.

If you find yourself in Utopia, Texas this coming Sept. 19-21 (instead of now for SXSW), check out UTOPiAfest on the Four Sisters Ranch there.

Love him or hate him, Steve Earle has a history of stirring things up, whether on behalf of his anti-war or anti-death-penalty causes (go Steve!), or his manifold other causes.  Now, via his official video for new song Invisible (off his impending new album The Low Highway), comes yet another Steve Earle. Via the song and video, Earle rightly (but not self-righteously) lambasts those of us (guilty) who treat as invisible the destitute folks that wander our towns and cities.

If we may throw on the hair shirt for a moment, here’s how it works at the glass house known as Chez Lefort.  At times we use the excuse that we simply don’t know these folks and there are lots to know and too many tasks to be done.  At others, we use the excuse that we’ve seen these same folks around town time and again, and nothing ever changes.  And nothing ever changes.

Continuing a long line of artists, writers and troubadours that have depicted and reminded of the downtrodden in need of empathetic souls, Steve Earle reminds of the effort owed in his new song/video Invisible. It can take “An angel bendin’ down, to whisper in your ear.”

Earle’s song and video follow last month’s release by Helado Negro (Robert Carlos Lange) of the stirring Dance Ghost video (see at bottom) that caused us to look around and see a separate spectral subculture (the immigrants in our communities) in need of the human touch.  We all need those reminders.

So this weekend, be ye on State Street or Martin Luther King Avenue, or out in front of that Rescue Mission, skip the blinders and look up from that apparat glass, and see.  And as John Prine wrote a long-time back (about yet another sequestered subset):  “Say ‘Hello in there.  Hello.'”

It’s been a good week for Frightened Rabbit fans. Tuesday night they killed on Conan in commendable support of their non-pedestrian and lyrical Pedestrian Verse album. Today the band appeared on KCRW. You can listen to and (eventually) watch the entire session HERE. To get a feel, check out their performance below of one of the highlights of the new album, State Hospital.  They are currently on tour in the US and storming through the West Coast and Cali this and next week.  You can check their US dates and buy your ticket for their 3/13 show at the Henry Fonda Theater in Hollywood HERE.  Updated:  you can now also watch their performance of The Woodpile on KCRW at bottom.

The XX continue to be the kings and queens of covers.  Check them out below covering Kings of Tomorrow’s Finally on BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge Late.  Matches the rain outside perfectly.  Or it could be the perfect Jeffreys Bay surf soundtrack.

After writing about them yesterday, we were thrilled to discover that Parquet Courts recently performed for WNYC’s Soundcheck studio. Watch the band’s Andrew Savage and Austin Brown below as they perform a medley of two of their songs, Master Of My Craft and Borrowed Time.  The Fall’s influence on the band is particularly evident on Master Of My Craft.

These radio studio performances are tricky business. For the balladeers and other similars it can push them over the top, but for rockers lacking an audience’s energy and participation, it can be dicey (particularly when viewed rather than listened to).  Watch the young Parquet Courts as they deftly walk that tightrope.  Ultimately the band wins out and stays aloft.  You can listen to the rest of the band’s session and interview at WNYC HERE.  Having just tried both, we’d say the audio version is the pick.  And that’s our public service announcement for the day.  And that part yesterday about not caring for Stoned And Starving? Fuggedaboutit.  The song was the highlight of this WNYC session (as heard on the longer audio version).

Irish band BellX1 is prepping the release of their next album Chop Chop.  The band’s songs have been known to intermittently refuse to leave The Lefort Jukebox.  BellX1 has released beguiling official video/song entitled Starlings Over Brighton Pier to accompany their new hypnotic song Starlings Over Brighton Pier off the new album.  Check it out below.  Be prepared to be mesmerized by both the starlings and the song, which bodes well for the new album.  Enjoy.  Oh, and we’ve been assured there was no CGI involved.