Evidently Arcade Fire’s new album Reflektor was leaked to the interweb, and the band has just “retaliated” by releasing a stream of the new album (all hour and 25 minutes of it) set to the classic Brazilian film Black Orpheus.  We’re still digesting many of the tracks, but let us know what you think (of the album primarily, but the meshing with the film too).  Below are the album’s track times and links within the film.  Says there that Porno comes before Afterlife.  We hope not a pearly gates inquiry.

0:00:00 Reflektor
0:07:34 We Exist
0:13:17 Flashbulb Eyes
0:16:00 Here Comes the Night Time
0:22:30 Normal Person
0:26:53 You Already Know
0:30:51 Joan of Arc
0:46:22 Here Comes the Night Time II
0:49:07 Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice)
0:55:23 It’s Never Over (Hey Orpheus)
1:02:02 Porno
1:08:05 Afterlife
1:14:02 Supersymmetry

One of the primary driving forces in modern electronic music for fifteen-plus years has been the artist Moby. We were pleasantly  surprised, then, to find the vignette below of Moby and band performing unplugged the beautifully-deceptive The Perfect Life on WNYC.  It seems Moby is open to multiple musical avenues. Case in point: his superb new album Innocents on which he concentrates on collaborations with other musical consorts (Damien Jurado, Al Spx, Wayne Coyne, Mark Lanegan, etc.) and enlists his first non-Moby producer Mark “Spike” Stent.  The results are stunningly good.

Watch below as Moby limns Bowie a bit and the group emits ebullience and a perfect sound despite the imperfect life imparted lyrically (set forth in full at bottom).

And watch as baby Mona (Moby’s infant goddaughter) reacts (to the lyrics?) by covering her ears and crying (how you say, “adorbs”?).  Everyone’s a critic!  To catch the whole Moby set and interview on WNYC, go HERE or to the WNYC widget embeded below the video.

“Oh
We close our eyes
The perfect life
Is all we need

You open up when you had me in your hands
Slipping far away with the world at your command
You sing me to sleep and then you hit me awake
It’s a perfect life, a perfect life

I only want to be here when you’re by my side
Oh I believe now, I’ll love you ’til I die
You will sing me to sleep, you will hit me awake
In the perfect life, the perfect life

Oh
We close our eyes
The perfect life, life
Is all we need

Little Mike he steps everywhere
Knives in his pockets and bullets in his hair
He has nothing to live for, nothing left to say
He’s locking all the doors to keep the older wolves at bay

Spoons and foil are all he needs.
A bed and some china
A lighter and some speed
It will sing you to sleep, it will hit you awake
In the perfect life, a perfect life.

Oh
We close our eyes
The perfect life, life
Is all we need

Oh
It goes all night
The perfect life, life
Is all we need

Oh
We close our eyes
The perfect life, life
Is all we need

Oh
We close our mind
The perfect life, life
Is all we need

The perfect life, the perfect life, the perfect life
All we need.”

Regrets.  Encore. Nous regrettons tout. We opted out of Okkervil River’s concert this past Sunday at the Wiltern Theater in LA. What were we thinking?

Had we seen last night’s broadcast of the band on Conan last week, in advance of the Wiltern show (poster for the show above), we would have crawled through cut glass to attend on Sunday. Instead we have but more regrets. Such is life at times. We won’t make that mistake next time, and are crossing-fingers for a return visit next year.  To see the cause of our angst, watch Okkervil River conquer Conan’s stage last night in their performance of Down Down The Deep River, one of the many song highlights on their outstanding new album, The Silver Gymnasium.  If you don’t own this album, you are completely missing the boat (down down that deep Okkervil River).  Watch below as leader Will Sheff and the band play with verve and panache throughout.  Tour de force.

We’ve been watching from afar as family/friends have been traipsing off to the Kanye/Kendrick tour (de force) and others have been planning attendance at this year’s annual Bridge School Benefit concerts this coming weekend (only CSN&Y, Arcade Fire and Tom Waits will play, so no big deal really).  We cannot attend, but some consolation arrived via the announcement that the Bridge School would stream this Saturday’s concert.  So to catch the show (which will only feature, amongst others, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Arcade Fire, My Morning Jacket, Jenny Lewis, Elvis Costello and Diana Krall) you can watch it HERE beginning at 5pm PST.

You can see the streaming announcement below:

Sufjan Stevens has recently been cleaning up his digital attic, releasing a series of odds and ends from his found-drives.  The latest is surely the best of the lot:  an early live jam (with piano intro and outr0) of It’s A Long Life, an early jam that would eventually become the life-affirming close of the 20-minute Impossible Soul off of The Age of Adz’s (and one of the highlights of his tour in support of the album).

Stevens had this to say about the recording on his blog:

“More obsolescence found on old hard drives. This one is hilarious: a live jam session in Seattle, WA (circa 2009?) that evolved into the last party section of “Impossible Soul.” Casey on bass, James on drums, me on piano, overdub choir is a bunch of folks I don’t remember who. Recorded in Casey’s living room. We were just trying to have fun. For those of you suffering the darkness, remember: It’s a long life. Pace yourself. Put your face together. Stay Positive!”

Listen below and stay positive!

The most pleasant surprise for us at this year’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival was the early set by Athens, GA’s Manchester Orchestra.  Lead singer Andy Hull mesmerized with his songs and evocative-to-brazen vocals, backed beautifully by the other members’ resonant harmony vocals and playing.  To our ears they meld the best of Band of Horses, Modest Mouse and even a bit of Clem Snide/Eef Barzelay (very high praise from these parts).  Once again we were left to wonder:  how is it possible that we have not clued in completely on Manchester Orchestra before?  After all, they’ve been around for almost ten years and released three critically-acclaimed albums (they are reportedly nearing release of a new album).  Well, no mas.  We’re onto this great band.

We thought of Manchester Orchestra today because A.V. Undercover is conducting their annual vote for best cover song of their annual series, and the band’s cover of The Faces’ Ooh La La is amongst the candidates.  Against lots of great competition (which you can check out and vote on HERE), and because it’s one of our all-time favorite songs, we voted early-and-often for their Ooh La La.  Check out the perfect interpretation below.

After, watch Manchester Orchestra’s stunningly good Hardly Strictly Bluegrass set below.

Arcade Fire’s highly-anticipated new album Reflektor will be released next week.  The band continued to kick up a fuss about the album by appearing last night on The Colbert Report.  After a mostly-lame interview, the band faked viewers by ostensibly kicking off Normal Person in giant paper mâché heads, only to have the camera swing over to the pseudonymous “The Reflectors” band in fancy garb (including Nudie Cohn-esque jackets) and standard (for them) instrumentation.

Any concerns that Arcade Fire had gone electro-disco (owing to LCD Soundsytems’ James Murphy’s involvement on the album) were quickly dispelled as the ten-piece band blazed the stage on Normal Person.  Said disco could be heard, however, pulsing behind their infectious, web-only performance of Afterlife.  Check out both performances below.

We know Reflektor is going to be good; we just don’t know how good.  These performances bode incredibly well for the album.

Indianapolis folk duo Lily & Madeleine had their song In The Middle go viral on YouTube last year, resulting in their signing to Asthmatic Kitty.  The duo has now announced the release of their self-titled debut album on October 29th via Asthmatic Kitty.  The first track to be released is Devil We Know, and it has mesmerized us.  In the songs’ lyrics we hear wisdom that belies their age, and their vocals coalesce perfectly (as you would expect from sisters).  As has been said about the subjects of their songs and the new album:  ““These songs are an expression of youth as all Romantic poetry knows it to be: a repository of yearning and wisdom that will eventually have to do battle with the world in order to retain its luster.”

Check Devil We Know out immediately below (the song’s lyrics are at very bottom).  After, watch the artists’ recent appearance on CBS This Morning and their performance of Come to Me, also off the new album.  And at bottom is the new official video for Come To Me.

Devil We Know:

“April, I can hear your anger a marching
Here it comes again
And the flowers will forgive your rage and your barking
Here it comes again

The grass is dying, and the water comes to revive it
Here it comes again
The great whisper across the plains gives to thunder
Here it comes again

There’s a tree line somewhere nobody knows
We’ve been pining and now we’re soaked to the bone
We’ve been pining and now we want to go home
It’s the devil we know

Lower the curtain, let the rain come down like a spirit
Let it hit the ground
Come the memory, come the shivering cold, let the rain fall
It’s the devil we know
It’s the devil we know
It’s the devil we know”

One of our favorite bands of the new millennium was the Central Coast’s own Buellton.  In 2001 Buellton released its debut album Avenue of the Flags to critical acclaim (amongst others, Allmusic gave it 4/5 stars) and much fan love.  The album astonished with the band’s ability to cover all bases:  whether jangling, prog-ing, rocking, or folking around, the inventive melodies, compelling vocals and oblique lyrics gave listeners multiple reasons to leave the CD (yes, compact disc) on repeat.  To give you an idea: Avenue of the Flags remains in rotation at Chez Lefort over twelve years later.

Following the debut album, Buellton toured successfully but then went on hiatus because: life.  Band members were wed, had kids and jobs, and did what they did.  And twelve years passed.  But over the last few years, rumors leaked out that Buellton was back with new songs and working in the recording studio.  Yes, there were skeptics given the years and similar rumors that turned out to be wishful-thinking.  But turns out the rumors were true.  This week the band announced they will release their sophomore album, Silent Partner, in early 2014, and released the addicting new track, Over and Out.  Go over to the band’s site HERE, and listen to the song over and…over.  And get ready to enjoy what will likely be one of the highlights of 2014:  new album Silent Partner.

Last night, while Atoms For Peace thoroughly treated and titillated all in attendance at the Santa Barbara Bowl (more about their fantastic show soon), the band released the official video for Before Your Very Eyes off of their recent album AMOK.  The video is compellingly cataclysmic, as you will see below.  And the song makes a perfect set opener, as it has their entire tour.  We hope you get to catch these fantastic players at this weekend’s Treasure Island Music Festival.