Record Store Day’s Black Friday approaches on November 28th.  In support, Swedish sisters First Aid Kit will release a special 10” with Simon and Garfunkel’s epic song America.  The duo has now released a self-produced music video (watch below) which tracks their tours across the U.S and adds vintage film of the country.  The 10” release will also feature a previously unreleased track, Brother.

Afterwards, watch from 2012 as First Aid Kit honored Paul Simon (who watches approvingly in the audience) by covering the same song at the 2012 Polaris Music Awards.  Showing that they can kill it live under pressure and in front of one of their idols, this performance is one of our all-time favorites.

Someone once sang “Put on your red shoes and dance the blues.”  Well, the great Brit-pop group Belle & Sebastian have just done that by releasing the first video for their lead single, The Party Line, off of their impending new album Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance.  We love this track with its synthesizer-flavored dance motifs.  The video is a historical vignette of people dancing/partying over the ages, but with the usual embedded melancholy we’ve come to expect from this band.  The video was directed by LeBlanc + Cudmore.  Check it out below.  We can’t wait for the new album.

As we’ve been writing since September, Damien Rice has just released his first album in eight years, the critically-acclaimed My Favourite Faded Fantasy. From what we’ve heard, we are in complete agreement with said critics.  Last night Rice showed up on the Letterman Show and performed his resplendent I Don’t Want To Change You off the new album. Watch below as Rice eschewed a backing band in favor of a seven-piece string section (which meshes nicely with the obligatory singer-songwriter rug).  We love this song and performance.

Rice also has announced more North American tour dates for next year (in Oakland and LA on 4/23 and 4/24, respectively).  You can see the dates HERE.

Many have said that we don’t know The Very Best (cha! don’t vex I!).  Say what you will, but all that ended last month when we discovered a heart-rending performance by the duo of singer Esau Mwamwaya and producer Johan Hugo (who go forth under the humble moniker, The Very Best).  At the time of our discovery, we couldn’t find much on the ensemble and feared the worst.  Thankfully,  The Very Best have just announced that they will release a new album in 2015.   The new album was recorded in Mali’s M’dala Chikowa Village.  Below you can watch/listen to the first single from the album, Hear Me.  We love the hypnotic song, with sublime bass added by Vampire Weekend’s Chris Baio.   Check out the time-lapse video below in which Hugo filmed M’dala Chikowa Village.  We love this track and hope for deliverance from the Mali (and other) oppressors.

Hugo has this to say about the song and video:

Hear Me:

“We wrote this song in May 2014, only days before the Malawi general elections. It was also the 50th anniversary for Malawi independence from colonial rule. One day we where sitting outside the house listening to the radio and Joyce Banda (the president that day) was talking about something to do with the election and progress, or lack of progress for Malawi as a nation. We put an iPhone next to the radio and recorded some of her voice. That’s the voice you can hear in the beginning of the song. Esau really wanted to write a song about the corruption, poverty, struggle of Malawi, and how frustrated he was about the fact that very little has changed since independence. We recorded the whole song that day, and the next day we asked the local church choir to come in and record some choir vocals for it. As with most vocals and instrumentation on this record, we recorded them outdoors, on the beach, singing the bridge and last chorus with Esau. Back in London a month later, Chris Baio from Vampire Weekend came in and played bass on the song.”

And the video:

“Between writing songs and recording, we would climb the mountains above the lake and set the camera up to take time lapses. any time we wanted a break we would bring the camera on a tripod to the shop or to someones small house and always leave it taking time lapses. we would sit for hours in the dark while the camera clicked away, working on a song, tweaking melodies or words. mosquitos everywhere. Sometimes we would leave the camera running and trek back to the house, hoping none would find it.”

We look forward to much more of The Very Best.

Oh what we wouldn’t have done to catch a show on the fantastic Damon Albarn & The Heavy Seas tour.  The tour is being touted as the Best of 2014, and from what we’ve seen we cannot disagree (due deference to Elbow and The National).  Both tonight and last night at Albert Hall in London, Albarn and his fabulous ensemble of singers and players were joined by the brilliant Brian Eno, Blur’s Graham Coxson and De La Soul.  Check out below as Eno joins for the recent, Sunday-perfect Heavy Seas of Love, Coxson joining for Blur’s feel-good song Tender, and De La Soul joining for Gorillaz’ Feel Good Inc.  There was beauty and magic to behold, and thankfully several  fans captured the proceedings.  Check out the videos below of those three performances. Included first are alternative videos of Heavy Seas of Love, the first better visually and the second better sounding.  What a heartwarming, joyous way to end a concert.  Bravo Damon (and Eno)!  Afterwards watch as Tender was its usual beautiful self and Feel Good Inc. was just that.  There you have it: a hat trick of love and good will.  What could be better on a Sunday?

Heavy Seas of Love (better visual):

Heavy Seas of Love (better sound):

Tender:

Feel Good Inc.:

The great Kendrick Lamar performed last night on Saturday Night Live and simply slaughtered.  Again.  Lamar and large ensemble first raged through his new single, i, sporting spooky contact lenses, dancing, adding some libbing, and ending the song ferociously.  Later, Chantal Kreviazuk opened and collaborator Jay Rock set up Kendrick to deliver the track Pay For It.  So dang good.

Check ’em both below.

In the interest of time, we advise/remind that Charlottesville, Virginia’s The Sons of Bill (literally, three brothers whose dad is “Bill”) are playing the Lobero Theater tonight.  They are out in support of their buzz-worthy, brand new album Love and Logic.  To get a feel for the band, check out three songs from the new album.  First up is the just-released live video of the driving song Bad Dancer (which starts off reminding of Modern English’s I Melt With You but moves forward from there), followed by the audio for the pop-majestic Brand New Paradigm (which would be atop the charts in an ideal world, with its Beatles, Lennon and Elton influences and harmonies), and finally the homespun Lost In The Cosmos (Song For Chris Bell) (with vocals that remind of Yoni Wolf of the great Why? band).

To sum up:  we whole-heartedly subscribe to The Sons of Bill and this vow from another song, Hymnsong, off the new album:

“We’re convinced that there’s a cadence to the murmurs in the dark,
rapt in patient arbitration, between our weary head and heart,
til’ our spirits cease their raging in the silence of the night,
we’ll look for love and logic in the dying of the light.”

The band is out on tour and you can see the rest of the post-Lobero dates HERE (including tomorrow night at the Great American Music Hall in SF).

It’s been a rare throwback week on The Lefort Report, featuring the imprimatur throughout of the greatest, Bob Dylan.  Between last weekend’s The New Basement Tapes’ performance, and two new, Dylan-esque songs by Bonnie “Prince” Billie and Houndmouth, it’s been a downright Robert Zimmerman week.  To finish it off, we give you below two more performances by The New Basement Tapes (Marcus Mumford, Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith, Elvis Costello, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, and Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Rhiannon Giddens), who were recently brought together by producer T-Bone Burnett to add musical life to a collection of previously lost, circa-Basement Tapes lyrics by Dylan.

Without further ado, first check out below their performance of Kansas City on Ellen (we love the harmonies supplied by Giddens, Goldsmith and James to go with the best use yet of Marcus Mumford on lead).  After, check out the performance (featuring Costello on lead vocal) on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon of the title track of the ensemble’s new album, Lost On The River.  Great stuff from this super-group.

Sylvan Esso’s addicting song Coffee may very well end up as our Best Song of 2014.  Time will tell, but certainly we’ve sang its/their praises since early-adopting the song in January.

Last night the duo (Amealia Meath and Nick Sanborn) were the musical guests on Conan.   Check out Coffee and web-exclusive Hey Mami below.  While we’ve heard both before, the duo has added interesting inflections and even more space to the songs, and Meath has Feisted/Joni-ed/Rickie-d her vocals in spots, all to great effect.  We love this act.

Sylvan Esso opens for Foster The People tomorrow night (Saturday) at the Santa Barbara Bowl.  Get there in time to catch ’em–the show starts at 6:30 pm.

Coffee:

Hey Mami:

We’ve been fans of the Indiana band Houndmouth since we first laid ears on them back in 2012 .  In that same year they were signed to Rough Trade and released the critically-acclaimed album From the Hills Below the City.  Heretofore we’ve loved the much-vaunted verve and drive of the band live, and leaders Matt Myers and Katie Toupin in particular.

Houndmouth is currently at work on their sophomore album (as yet untitled), which will be released in 2015.  And now they’ve released the first song from these sessions, a dramatic downshift entitled For No One.  In contrast to their prior program, For No One is a superb, spare and intense ballad sung in the key of Dylan and delivered with vivid, Dylan-esque imagery (including one more reference in song to Kon Tiki).  Bravo!  Check it out below.