It’s been a while since we last caught the great soul-revivalist Charles Bradley (aka “The Screaming Eagle of Soul”)  and his gregarious, generous and gracious act.  So we were thrilled to see KEXP release 24 minutes of goodness from Bradley and his stalwart Extraordinaires (members of the Menahan Street Band) at this year’s Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle.  Check out the full performance below.  Bradley and his Extraordinaires are once again on fire at Bumbershoot as they perform You Put the Flame On It, Crying in the Chapel, Strictly Reserved for You and Let Love Stand a Chance for KEXP off of their fantastic album from earlier this year, Victim of Love.  We like the added psychedelia and Ernie Isley-esque guitar riffs on a couple of these songs.  Bradley can do no wrong in our book.

All were shocked last night when Elvis Costello and The Roots performed together on the Jimmy Fallon Show.  Well, not exactly.  You see the artists actually recorded their new joint-album Wise Up Ghost in The Roots’ dressing room in the Fallon studio.  Watch below as Costello and The Roots soundly strutted the best song off the new album, Walk Us Uptown, augmented by a horn section of four.  After, check out their web-only rendering (with added female vocalist) of the slow-ful Tripwire, with nursery-piano sounds leading into a superb group vocal.  At bottom watch Costello’s interview with Fallon in which Elvis explained how The Roots collaboration came about.  Superb stuff.  Costello will again appear on the Fallon Show on Thursday.

Grizzly Bear announced today that in November they will release Shields: Expanded, an expanded version of one of the Best Albums of 2012.  Expanded is the original album plus eight added songs, remixes, and demos.  For those already owning Shields, you can purchase the eight added tracks via a separate release entitled B-Sides.  The new release adds three demos recorded in Marfa, Texas before tracking of the album began in New York and Cape Cod, along with remixes from Nicolas Jaar, Liars, and Lindstrøm.  Check out the gripping Will Calls (Marfa Demo) below. As you’ll hear, even their discards hold trump cards.

In addition to discovering Perfume Genius over the weekend, we also chanced upon Denmark’s Agnes Obel.  It’s a wonder we haven’t discovered Obel before given her strong following in Europe and her songs’ use in various commercials and on various TV shows, including Grey’s Anatomy.  Obel released her debut album Philharmonics in 2010 to deserved critical acclaim and will soon release her highly-anticipated sophomore album, Aventine, on PIAS Recordings.  As you will see and hear below, Obel’s work is enchanting and deceptively simple on the surface.  But beneath the songs’ facades are subtle, tasteful flourishes and lyrical depth that effortlessly carry the intrigued listener along while reminding of Kate Bush and a bit of Feist.

Begin below with the recent posting by La Blogotheque of Obel’s performance of unreleased song, Smoke and Mirrors, and then progress chronologically from Riverside from her first album to the recently-released video for The Curse off of her new album (which will be released on September 30th).  We look forward to hearing more from Ms. Obel.

Turns out we’ve missed another one.  Thanks to The National’s recent cover of a Perfume Genius song (Learning—a rather dark, but cathartic, ditty that you can listen to at bottom), we have finally found Perfume Genius, which is the nom de chanteur of Seattle-based solo artist Mike Hadreas.  Hadreas’ songs are filled with heart-on-sleeve assessments and invocations that are roundly resonating with us this Monday (natch).  Check out some examples below in these performances last year for La Blogotheque’s A Take Away Show.  Beautiful, but heavy material, as reflected in the artist’s face as he performs.  Perfect for your Monday.  We don’t like Mondays, can you tell?

We first discovered Diego Garcia in 2011 following the release of his solo debut album Laura.  On that album Garcia fittingly and beautifully combined nylon-stringed Latin sounds (given his Argentine parents) with English-lyric, ’60s-crooner romanticism to tell the story of his lost and found love, Laura (who he would eventually marry).  Two years later Garcia will soon release a new album, Paradise, which continues and expands upon this melodious melange.  Garcia has made two tracks from the album available for streaming, Sunnier Days and Start With The End, which you can listen to below.  As you will hear, Sunnier Days (which is also downloadable) is pop magic that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Belle & Sebastian album (high praise in our book).  Garcia has said that Sunnier Days “is one of my proudest moments. For me, it’s a strong pop song in that it takes your mind off things, both sonically and lyrically. But underneath the surface there is a deeper spiritual message that hopefully bring you closer to the truth.”  After, check out Start With The End, the propulsive Spanish-guitar album opener. About the song, Garcia says, “It was the last song written for the record and I felt like making a little noise to celebrate.  I got my girl back, I have a family now. I spent three years on the road, and the future is wide open. We brought this new energy to this completely new place in my life. But in real life there are still cracks, and as an artist what I’m intrigued by is looking into those cracks for whatever beauty is there. That never goes away.”

These songs bode incredibly well for Paradise, which you can order HERE.  Garcia will soon head out on a US tour in support of the album and you can check the dates HERE.

The songwriter’s songwriter, Bill Callahan (Smog), recently set up for NPR in Manhattan’s 6th & B Community Garden to perform his new song Small Plane off of his impending Dream River album.  Trustworthy folks are pronouncing Dream River as Callahan’s best album to date (which sings volumes).

Watch below as Callahan, with his poet’s ear and beauteous baritone, sings his dulcet ode to intimacy and trust in a relationship.  While listening to this song, it is hard to dispute that “I really am a lucky man.”  You can go HERE to pre-order Dream River on Drag City.  Callahan will head out in a week on an international tour in support of the new album, including at Soho in Santa Barbara on November 15th.  Go to Club Mercy for tickets.

Okkervil River’s new album, The Silver Gymnasium, is justly receiving rave reviews across the board.  As mentioned before here, The Silver Gymnasium is a nostalgic look back (circa 1986-’89) by talented leader Will Sheff at his childhood upbringing in Meridien, New Hampshire.  Throughout, the album manages a somewhat brighter outlook and sonic hue than on prior Okkervil releases (all fantastic, in their own right).  In addition, the album has been crafted to reflect the music of the time when Sheff was in Meridien, including emphasized synthesizers (which may have been a consequence of Sheff’s other recent solo efforts) and other effects heard less often on prior albums.  This past Monday, the band performed at WNYC, and you can watch the band perform three superb songs from the new album that are guaranteed to make their mark on you.  Stay Young has quickly become one of our favorite songs of the entire year.  Check out the powerful WNYC performances below, and go buy the new album HERE.  And if we may: “How long have you been missing love?”

We can’t wait to catch them next month when they hit Cali, including on October 20th at the Wiltern in LA.  There’s also a video game associated with the new album, which you can play HERE.

For the adventurous and exactingly literate, the three songs’ rich lyrics are at bottom.

Down Down the Deep River:

“You’re spit into the center of your hometown. And there are leaves in the street, and there are friends around you now, and all the days in your life in a line (or the way they seemed by ’89)… But it’s not alright. It’s not even close to all right.

Down a hall of a house, down a road in December
(Down, down, down the deep river, down, down, down the deep river)
Down a hall of a house, down a road in December
(Down, down, down the deep river, down, down, down the deep river)

We lie awake at night in a tent. I say, “Tell me about your uncle and his friend, because they seem like very bad men. Well, we want to keep away from them!” (Bend in the road back there. We saw the place they go.)

“Tell me about the greatest show, or the greatest movie you know, or the greatest song that you taped from off the radio. Play it again and again. (It cuts off at the ending, though.) Tell me I’m always going to be your best friend. You said it one time, why don’t you say it again? All the way down the line to where the telephone ends, come on and shout it on down the wire! And that it’s not alright, that it’s not even close to alright.”

Down a hall of a house, down a road in December
(Down, down, down the deep river, down, down, down the deep river)
Down a hall of a house, down a road in December
(Down, down, down the deep river, down, down, down the deep river)

And as the rescue party, the volunteer team – they’re just kids of eighteen, and it’s the worst thing they’ve seen – as they’re all standing around that tree, and I’m so sorry, and I can’t stop crying.

(Oh, I know.)

Shivering from the late fall cold, I felt like a solid ghost. I ran, and I couldn’t slow. My father found me though, and my father took me home. He said, “Oh, son, I saw you get knocked down and I ran out. I bet your head was spinning! With that bright pain you’re stunned, when you’ve only just begun to be only just beginning. Tossed in the viper pit, all those feelings and fears and all the difficult shit in all those tender years. There was something in the air… Something gathered in the air. Something singing in the wind… Oh, I’ll be your fighter and I’ll be your mirror, and you’ll be all right because I’ll be right here. Oh, kid, I’m not going anywhere. I swear I’ll try to not be going anywhere. Though it’s not all right, it’s so far from all right, we’ll make it into a choice somehow. I don’t know. But you’ll have a choice somehow.

“Down a hall in your house, down a road in December
(Down, down, down the deep river, down, down, down the deep river)
We can never go back; we can only remember
(Down, down, down the deep river, down, down, down the deep river)

“And maybe they told you about the summer sky. And maybe they said there’s a great gold spirit in the summer sky, and all your friends – all your best, best friends – are going to gather around your bed at night. Well that doesn’t make it all right, because it’s still so far from all right. Oh, kid, I know.”

Down a hall in your house, down a road in December
(Down, down, down the deep river, down, down, down the deep river)
Up the stairs, four flights up, can you feel my heart shiver?
(Down, down, down the deep river, down, down, down the deep river)
Walking in the dawn, with that dream getting dimmer and dimmer. Say you still see it. Say you remember. Are we going to the deep river? I know it’s scary, baby.”

Stay Young:

“Young, stay young, stay strong and get on with it; gone way gone, one day it’s all gone and you’re all done.

All my friends are running to their own corners, the hurters and the haters and the faders and the mourners. The world goes to its work and it is not gentle, in what it breaks you down into.  All my friends are looking in life, and it’s a long, long, long, long, lonely time. I said that when you met me I was just dying. I said it to no one. I said it in silence.

Young, stay young. Face dawn, all talk and quick.  Stunned,stay stunned, mind blown, and your jaw drops, and all these hateful people judging and hand-wringing. Oh, lord, why don’t you bury me in all they call sinning? Open up your heart, show me the place where love is missing. How long have you been missing love?

I see all creation pulsing and divided up between it. Now you have to lay me down because my head is spinning.

Try, try hard to drop fear and to drop your guard. Off, off of love, off drugs. Just feel it in your blood.

And I call to all my friends: all the cracked-cassette-tape-thrillers, all the hand-inside-the-tillers, and the hundred-dollar-billers, standing by the stone that was rejected by the builders, there was drinking at the bar, they carried from the burning building.

Never let it be said daddy wasn’t willing. Well I know you miss him, girl I’ve lost the edges off the earth, you make it wider. When I see your crying, don’t you know it’s killing me?

Now climb, climb up. Way up to see the sun. One, one draw. One life. One love. You’ve only got one.

And young, stay young girl. Get tough.  Get on with it.  Young, stay young. It’s a heartbreak; step with it; stay young.”

It Was My Season:

“Tell me a reason
To break things off
Stop the bleeding
When it’s my season
Mind was just revving
Your eyes they went hard
Our parents were freaking
But it was our season
All that time ago

If you want to stop our thing you’ll stop my heart
All this pain inside’s still just too sharp
What was I thinking?

Step out of your trailer
And into this dark
It’s warm and it’s breathing
And it’s our season
Your dad is half sleeping
But really he’s gone
Can you hear his VCR weeping
They crossed his wires completely
When they made him fire that gun

I’ll say to you: to cut it off’s to cut me down
If they take me out of school, you out of town
I called a friend, my world at end, my words unwound
I said: It’s crashing down around our heads
We’re dumb, we’re dead, shut up about it now

I won’t say I’m sorry
And how would they know?
Below the Atari
Well, I could feel your heart was just going
We’ll meet on the weekend
Your dad won’t be home
Your sister’s out cleaning
You don’t need to speak it
Because I know, baby, I know
I said I know
You know I know
I know (that it was our season)
Baby, I know (it’s hard to believe it)
I said I know (there isn’t a reason)
You know I know (it’s only a feeling)

When I look back on it now
Remember mixed up I got
Before they got me sorted out
All that heart-in-my-mouth
All that head-filled-with-doubt
It’s fading out
I hardly think about it now

They say that I’ll go to college
And you will stay home
And watch while I’m leaving
The cold will just creep in
Oh, Jason, I know”

Like many of our generation, The Clash were OUR band in our formative years.  We lived through school and life with The Clash leading the way, and have yet to experience a more thrilling or better concert than their 1979 show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium (their second show ever in the US).  Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Topper Headon could do no wrong in our book.  And that feeling persists to this day.  So we were thrilled to learn that the band would release a massive new, all-encompassing box-set this week entitled Sound System.

To coincide with the release of the new box-set, Google Plus has produced a new documentary on the band entitled Audio Ammunition, which includes never-before-seen footage of the band and interviews concerning each of their incendiary albums.  You can see it in five parts below.  In addition, Google Plus is releasing various videos of other artists covering Clash songs.  So far the pick of the litter (somewhat surprisingly) is Kurt Vile’s take on the politically-charged Guns of Brixton.  Check it out at bottom following Audio Ammunition.

Wisconsin’s Volcano Choir made its TV debut last night in support of their new album Repave on the Jimmy Fallon Show. They performed their epic sounding ode Bygone with Justin Vernon be-hoodied and miming/semaphoring the song’s lyrics.  Your guess as to the exact meaning of the lyrics is as good as ours.  Regardless, they stamped their imprint firmly on the Fallon studio stage and set sail!

The band’s current tour dates follow the performance and the song’s lyrics below.

“Day dead byegone
Laying near the lights
Of the (k)nights of the northern lodges
There’s a border road
No one slipslides or is stoppin’
And the neighborly, sleeping in a coffin

With enough keif
You could really bore someone
Took a rat trap out to the Ache Inn
We were drinking all the ways to down
Door is wide open
You know what were saying ‘bout us now
He’s a legend
I’m a legend
And we both go tripping through the door

You know that we are northern now
I heard you promise me
At the north end of monogamy
Cut there from filament lead

Somewhere I heard you scream:
For others’ hearts
And in the limiest of lights
Hold the keys to a Cuban flight that you won’t ever ride
It’s time to up and die

Set sail!
Set sail!
Set sail!
Set sail!

Hon, you plenty competent
So why aren’t you confident
It’s softening to be softening
Then why are you so constant then?
Are we going on a coat ride?
Well, we’re off and definitely stumbling
Tossin’ off your compliments, wow
Sexting all your Parliaments”

TOUR DATES:

9/06 | Chicago, IL: Metro w/ Sylvan Esso
9/07 | Indianapolis, IN: The Vogue w/ Sylvan Esso
9/08 | Toronto, ON: Phoenix Concert Theatre w/ Sylvan Esso
9/09 | South Burlington, VT: Higher Ground w/ Sylvan Esso
9/11 | Boston, MA: Paradise Rock Club w/ Sylvan Esso
9/12 | Washington, DC: 9:30 Club w/ Sylvan Esso
9/14 | New York, NY: Webster Hall w/ Sylvan Esso
9/27 | Madison, WI: Orpheum Theater w/Field Report
9/28 | Milwaukee, WI: The Pabst Theater w/Hello Death
10/18 | Minneapolis, MN: First Avenue w/Mark Mallman (solo)
10/19 | Eau Claire, WI: Schofield Auditorium w/Adelyn Rose
11/10 | Melbourne, VIC: Werribee Park: Harvest Festival 2013
11/16 | Syndney, NSW: The Domain: Harvest Festival 2013
11/17 | Brisbane, QLD: Botanic Gardens: Harvest Festival 2013
1/17/14 | Phoenix, AZ: The Crescent Ballroom
1/18/14 | Los Angeles, CA: Fonda Theatre
1/19/14 | San Diego, CA: House of Blues
1/23/14 | Portland, OR: Wonder Ballroom
1/24/14 | Vancouver, BC: Commodore Ballroom
1/25/14 | Seattle, WA: Neptune Theatre