It’s been a Spoon Summer here at Chez Lefort.  Months after its release, we remain hopelessly smitten by Spoon’s latest album, They Want My Soul (which will feature prominently in our Best Albums of 2014 list come year-end).   They’ve been wowing in performance on all media outlets, and last night they gave Letterman a chance.  Watch below as the band perform on the Late Show one of our favorites from the new album, Inside Out.  The band is still out on tour in support of the album and has a few more U.S. tour dates before heading over to Europa. You can see all the dates HERE.

One of the best surprises of the year has been Sylvan Esso, the duo comprised of Mountain Man’s Amelia Meath and Megafaun’s Nick Sanborn.  We have repeatedly touted Sylvan Esso’s eponymously-titled debut album (bound to be high on our Best Albums of 2014 list) and its uber-catchy songs (especially Coffee, Play It Right, and Hey Mami).  The duo make an infectious and ebullient blend of electronic folk-pop music that deserves a much wider audience.  Today they dropped their official video for the comparatively-brooding track Dreamy Bruises.  The video’s a trickster, beginning ominously and foreboding, but naturally (for these two) ending in light and lights.  Nicely done.  Watch it below, and then pick up their album on Partisan Records.  The song’s lyrics follow the video.

“Ohio small road
colored lights in the night
find some hand to hold
let the car coast with no lights

ohweeohweeoh kids move so slow
moon in the window and no girls on the floor

ohweeohweeoh kids move so slow
dudes are wrapped around each other drinking and the sweat is fallin’

ohweeohweeoh kids move so slow
jumped across a river I don’t know where to go

ohweeohweeoh kids move so slow
its the smallest water pile dreamy bruises
rotten lovers

will it say I want you
to see all the ways I care
to see how a skin so smooth
to see how my blood runs blue

pull at the hand that moves you
’tis the heart beat don’t fight
let your limbs flare in the mood
like you’re a wild thing through the night

and how can we question
what we know feels right
black eyes turn to marigolds
in the morning light

ohweeohweeoh kids move so slow
shakin’ all the water off like dogs at the pool

ohweeohweeoh kids move so slow
they’re kickin’ all the records over actin’ like they hanging water

ohweeohweeoh kids move so slow
down in the basement where the sun don’t show

ohweeohweeoh kids move so slow
naked dollars wonder piles dreamy bruises rotten lovers

will it say I want you
to bend me back two
to make me sing your tune
to make those words so smooth

fill me like a song do 8x

fill me like a song do
(ohweeohweeoh)”

We’ve been raving about the Canadian band Bahamas and their new album, Bahamas Is Afie, to all who will listen.  Thankfully, we’re not alone and the band has been receiving deserved accolades.  More to the point, CBC Music has just released six outstanding performances by the band of four songs off the new album and two older gems.  Watch below as multitalented leader Afie Jurvananen, gifted backup vocalist Felicity Williams, superb pedal steel player Christine Bougie and The Weakerthans’ drummer Jason Tait captivate from note one.  Our  pick of the performance litter is Like A Wind, which blows us away.  Enjoy and pick up the new album HERE.

It’s been a good week in unplugged-Jack White world with La Blogotheque’s release of their session with White unplugged at Fountainebleau.  To add to it, check out below First Aid Kit’s scintillating salute of White with their cover of Love Interruption on Triple J’s Live A Version series.  After a cute introductory tribute via Tenacious D’s (in Jack-world that would be Jack Black’s) Tribute,  watch as the Swedish duo start slowly and build a countrified version to full rocker, capped off by their guitar player and the  drummer’s rousing brush flourishes at 3:50.  Outstanding.

Kendrick Lamar is seemingly everywhere these days, and deservedly so.  Everything Lamar touches turns to hip-hop art.  This week featured a couple of fantastic new cameos by Lamar that added immensely to strong showings from the main attractions.

First, Atlanta’s Jeezy celebrated the release this week of his new album, Seen It All: The Autobiography.  Jeezy’s enlisted the help of some dude named Jay Z on the album’s title track, but now he’s brought the heat in a remix of Holy Ghost featuring the all-time energy and intelligence of Kendrick Lamar (who enters hard at 2:48).  Check it out below.  Dang.

Illustration by Shintaro Kago

The second cameo comes via Flying Lotus, who has been streaming through our consciousness since at least 2010, after which we gave him credit in our Best Albums (Cosmogramma) and Best Songs (And the World Laughs With You) of 2010.  But we acknowledge being simpleton, lyric-centric music-lovers and admit to becoming distracted and missing a lot of great instrumental music, including FlyLo’s.  But we quickly snap back to attention when words are added to the FlyLo mix (along with more musical aggression).  And when those words are aggressively provided by the great Kendrick Lamar, we are all-in.  Check out below the new FlyLo track Never Catch Me, featuring the luminous Mr. Lamar.  The track starts out briefly woozy, but the drums kick it up quickly and at 0:13, Kendrick enters and it’s off to the races “with hope inside of my bones.”  Superb.

We’ve all been thrilled by Jack White’s incendiary electronic guitar flourishes, but his enthralling unplugged performances have become even rarer these days.  Today France’s fanastique La Blogothèque remedied this conundrum by releasing (on its A Take Away Show series) a special vignette filmed at the Château de Fountainebleau of White, Lillie Mae Rische, Dominic Davis and Fats Kaplin unplugged and performing two gems from White’s treasure-trove discography.  Watch below as White and ensemble first perform the older White Stripes’ track The Same Boy You’ve Always Known (beginning perfectly with the chapel bells’ harmony starting at 0:36).  This performance segues to the rooftop where White and Rische render a superb version of the castigating Entitlement off of his much-acclaimed recent album, Lazaretto.  Well-played (and sung) Mr. White, and well-captured La Blogothèque.  Bravo!

As mentioned previously, we love the new album Brill Bruisers from The New Pornographers.  Last night the band appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman and beautifully bruised the stage on the shimmering title track from the album (one of our 2014 Songs of the Week).  Check it out below with the talented A.C. Newman leading the way, and Neko Case joining a horde of other harmonic Pornographers for a crowd-pleasing performance.  Fantastic sound!  Tongues will wag though:  where in the world was Dan Bejar?  The band is out on tour and coming to California next month.  Check the tour dates HERE.  They’ll be at the Wiltern in LA on October 17th, and we can’t wait.

A highway of ink and a constellation of pixels have justly been spilled on the songwriting of Leonard Cohen. We’ve been transfixed by Cohen’s songs since we first set our ears on his debut album Songs of Leonard Cohen (released in 1967).  We don’t have the time or the energy to do Cohen’s songs justice right now (for example, he long-ago wrote one of the greatest songs of our lives–Hallelujah).

Instead will give you the official lyric video for the first song released from the 80 year-old’s imminent new album Popular Problems.  We confess we were somewhat skeptical when we first heard of the upcoming album, but listen below on Almost Like The Blues as Cohen paints a restrained masterpiece that tells of the horrors and redemption of modern man, with piano, horn and bongo-accompanied jazz-inflections.  With Boko Haram, Syria and Richard Dawkins shadings, it’s almost like the blues.  We can’t wait for the new album.  Long live Leonard!

One of the first glimpses we were given of Sharon Van Etten’s terrific Best of 2014 album Are We There was exactly one year ago via the track Tarifa (check our post our HERE to see an unplugged version and Van Etten’s explanation of the song).  Last night SVE brought matters full circle by performing Tarifa on Jimmy Kimmel Live.  Watch below as SVE and fine band perform Tarifa and Break Me.  She’s one of our best, as is Are We There.  We look forward to catching SVE at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival on October 3rd.

It’s been four years since Interpol released its last album, but on September 9th the band will release their new, anagrammatically-entitled album El Pintor.  Like many, we’ve followed this band and their alt-J(oy Division) musical sounds since the early millennium.  We admit, however, to losing touch with the band a bit over time.  Well, that time is over.  We’ve been listening to as much of El Pintor as possible and find ourselves hopelessly smitten with the band’s new songs (we’ll have a review of the album near-term).

Earlier this summer we were thrilled to hear Interpol’s new song All The Rage Back Home, and watch its atmospheric official video (see below) with its black-and-white embellished surf frames.  But as is often the case, live the band takes the song to another level entirely.  In support, the band recently ventured into the historic Mack Sennett Studios in Silver Lake to perform new songs from the imminent album plus some older favorites.  The evening was part of the streamable NPR’s First Listen Live.  Watch below as vocalist Paul Banks, tremolo-maestro guitarist Daniel Kessler and drummer Sam Fogerino nail the song down and lift it up beyond the studio version.  We particularly love keyboardist Brandon Curtis’s added backing vocals and MC-like inflections (hey hey hey hey!).  The song is all the rage at Chez Lefort and is our Song of the Week.

Watch/listen to the full session via KCRW below or HERE.  The song’s lyrics are at bottom.  The band is out on tour and coming to Cali next month–check out the dates HERE.

Lyrics:

“When she went then love come over,
My head abounds,
Oh, the feelings.
And she wept, hold me again,
I made no sound.
Oh, the beating.
And she swore love is never gone, so easily.
Then we went over again,
My head abounds
Oh, the feeling.

She sang, you don’t need time,
Be tame, you won’t meet your mate inside.
My faith won’t lie.

He sang you don’t need need mine,
Behave, you wanna leave my lady lovers,
of my 18 summers, alone.

She said you don’t read minds,
Be patient.
You won’t leave me shaken,
Leave me shaken.

I keep falling,
Maybe half the time,
Maybe half the time.

I keep falling,
Maybe half the time,
Maybe half the time.

It’s all the rage back home,
It’s all the rage back home.

When she sang, love come over,
My head abounds, oh the feeling.

She said you wanna refine, be paid,
you wanna see my face in lights,
My faith won’t lie.

But my sweet, you don’t read minds,
Do away, and just say you love me,
just say you love me, alone.

She said you don’t read minds, be patient,
you won’t see me shaken,
Well I’ve been mistaken.

I keep falling,
Maybe half the time,
Maybe half the time.

I keep falling,
Maybe half the time,
Maybe half the time.

It’s all the rage back home,
It’s all the rage back home.

All the rage back home,
All the rage back home.

I keep falling,
Maybe half the time,
Maybe half the time.

It’s all the rage back home,
All the rage back home,
All the rage back home.

Falling,
Maybe half the time,
Maybe half the time.

It’s all the rage back home.
All the rage back home,
All the rage back home,
All the rage back home.”