As mentioned yesterday, long-time Lefort-fave Eleanor Friedberger is opening tonight for The Decemberists at the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara. A founding member of the legendary/vaunted band The Fiery Furnaces, Friedberger has gone on to issue a series of superb and highly-acclaimed solo albums. Friedberger is set to  release her new album, Rebound, on Frenchkiss Records on May 4, 2018. Check out below the ravishing first song In Between Stars via its official video. As usual with Eleanor, we love this new song and can’t wait to Rebound! You can pre-order it HERE.

About the video below, Friedberger says: “I saw Danny do live visuals for Body/Head (Kim Gordon and Bill Nace) and Bjorn Copeland (formerly of Black Dice) while I was in LA in January. I thought his use of analog feedback and bold color fit the mood of Rebound perfectly. With a little moral support and instruction from Kim Gordon: ‘move around, just twirl.’ I turned the camera on myself and hit record.”

Following tonight’s opening for The Decemberists, Friedberger sets on various dates between now and June. All tour dates and tickets can be found HERE, including her headlining May 9th in LA at the Moroccan Lounge.

Long-time faves The Decemberists last week released their new album, I’ll Be Your Girl, on Capitol. It’s a feisty affair featuring augmented sounds and glowering lyrical glances. In short: we like it a ton.

The band showed up on Jimmy Kimmel Live! this week and performed Severed and We All Die Young. Check ’em out below. Severed adds analog-synth lead a la Depeche Mode, and features autocratic, POTUS-inspired lyrics and heavenly harmonies. Though written before and unrelated to Parkland, We All Die Young is an outstanding rocker, the chorus of which (with its children’s choir mien) can’t help but remind us of that tragedy. Which reminds: don’t forget the March For Our Lives this Saturday, March 24th, throughout the nation. Those responsible will have to suffer repercussions.

As mentioned previously the band will pay their first visit to Santa Barbara this Friday night, performing at the Arlington Theater with the fabulous Eleanor Friedberger opening (more on Ms. Friedberger tomorrow). Don’t you miss it! Tickets are still available HERE.

We caught wind of the multi-talented artist Natalie Prass back in 2015, first featuring her phenomenal La Blogatheque set (see also at bottom a performance of Bird of Prey way back at the 2015 SXSW). Her debut album was a beauty and augured well for her future. Prass will soon release her follow-up album The Future And The Past. To give a flavor, the popolicious Prass appeared on Conan last night and sang new song Short Court Style, the first song from the new album. As can be seen, Prass played it like a star, letting her pop freedom-flag fly, singing with style, and contributing dance moves (and even sounding a bit Michael Jackson-y along the way). Watch Prass swinging for the fences below. Sweet stuff from Ms. Prass. Afterwards watch the song’s official video.

The Future And The Past will be released on June 1st on ATO and you can pre-order it HERE.

Okkervil River has today released the second song, Pull Up the Ribbon, from their impending album In The Rainbow Room, via the song’s official video. The new song follows on the heals [sic] of last month’s fantastic first song, Don’t Move Back To LA, from the new album.

Watch the video below directed by Christopher Good featuring, among other things, Revolutionary-war-togged soldiers safeguarding and playing a golden guitar at ocean’s edge, dressers filled with bones and other cataclysmic semaphores. The song’s opening bars resemble (mimic?) recent War On Drugs sounds, but the signature vocals of leader Will Sheff kick in (aided and abetted by Lip Talk-Sarah K. Pedinotti) to take the song to another level. Sheff even tosses in a vocal turn at the 3:16 mark that would make Jim James proud (high praise in our book).

About the song, Sheff had this to say:

“When I first started working on “Pulled Up the Ribbon” I felt really excited about the melody and the chords in a way that made me nervous, because I felt pressure to write lyrics for it and nothing seemed quite right. I started with something quite dark and violent, and it felt like a good direction but I kept hitting creative dead ends. And then I realized there was something in the melody and phrasing that seemed like it was about destruction and doom but also something else that felt like it was about creation and birth. So I decided to try to write a kind of praise song for the force behind all of those things. The song started as a waltz ballad, briefly turned into a Motown-style number, and then we streamlined it and Will Graefe added that hook. I had heard some of the great vocal performances on our keyboardist Sarah’s album with her project Lip Talk and knew I wanted her to sing on the song, and she elevated it further. And then, when I took the song to Shawn Everett to mix, he stripped out a lot of the padding from the track and made everything more aggressive and skeletal, with the drums and bass way up in the mix, the beauty amped up but also the spooky stuff. This was the only one of Shawn’s mixes where there were no notes, no tweaking. He played me the track and said “whoa” and approved it and we moved on.”

We can’t wait for In The Rainbow Room (pick it up HERE) and the Okkervil River tour to ensue (coming to Cali in late May/early June–get tickets HERE).

One of the loftiest highlights of last year’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival was our long-time fave female singer-songwriter, Brandi Carlile. Carlile simply has the most powerful, yet nuanced, female voice we have ever heard perform live to match her sensational songwriting. Carlile tore the roof of Golden Gate Park at HSB, which is no small feat. You can watch her HSB set HERE.

To get a feel, watch Carlile’s performances this week on Colbert’s Late Show below, replete with superb string-section. First up is the The Joke off of her fantastic recent album, By the Way, I Forgive You.  The song is the lead single off the album, and Carlile wrote it in opposition to today’s sociopolitical malaise. About the song, she told NPR “there are so many people feeling misrepresented. So many people feeling unloved.  Little girls who got so excited for the last election, and are dealing with the fallout. The song is just for people that feel under-represented, unloved or illegal.”

The performances below have everything we want from music: passion, power, poetry (lyrics at bottom) and beauty. If you’re short on time, just listen to Carlile’s otherworldly vocals for 17 seconds at the 3:52 mark of The Joke or for five seconds at the 3:58 mark of Whatever You Do (a web-only video). Wow. The joke’s on them! God bless Brandi Carlile! It’s high-time Carlile becomes a household name across this land.

Go pick up By the Way, I Forgive You and catch her tour HERE.

The Joke:

“You’re feeling nervous, aren’t you, boy?
With your quiet voice and impeccable style
Don’t ever let them steal your joy
And your gentle ways, to keep ’em from running wild
They can kick dirt in your face
Dress you down, and tell you that your place
Is in the middle, when they hate the way you shine
I see you tugging on your shirt
Trying to hide inside of it and hide how much it hurts

Let ’em laugh while they can
Let ’em spin, let ’em scatter in the wind
I have been to the movies, I’ve seen how it ends
And the joke’s on them

You get discouraged, don’t you, girl?
It’s your brother’s world for a while longer
We gotta dance with the devil on a river
To beat the stream
Call it living the dream, call it kicking the ladder
They come to kick dirt in your face
To call you weak and then displace you
After carrying your baby on your back across the desert
I saw your eyes behind your hair
And you’re looking tired, but you don’t look scared

Let ’em laugh while they can
Let ’em spin, let ’em scatter in the wind
I have been to the movies, I’ve seen how it ends
And the joke’s on them

Let ’em laugh while they can
Let ’em spin, let ’em scatter in the wind
I have been to the movies, I’ve seen how it ends
And the joke’s on them.”

Whatever You Do:

“If I don’t owe you a favor, you don’t know me
I don’t believe we’ve ever even met
If there’s a God in heaven, you can show me
Then I guess I should admit I lost the bet
There are moments I could hold you forever
And there are moments that lasted way too long
There are days when I change with the weather
To hold you in place would be wrong

There’s a road left behind me that I’d rather not speak of
And a hard one ahead of me, too
I love you, whatever you do
But I got a life to live, too

I never met a morning I could get through
With nothing on my breath to hold the night
And I never said I’m sorry, but I meant to
I never met a coward I don’t like
There are reasons why a body stays in motion
But at the moment, only demons come to mind
There are days when I could walk into the ocean
With no one else but you to leave behind

There’s a road left behind me that I’d rather not speak of
And a hard one ahead of me, too
I love you, whatever you do
But I got a life to live, too
There’s a road left behind me that I’d rather not speak of
And a hard one ahead of me, too
I love you, whatever you do
But I got a life to live, too”

On Friday Talking Heads maestro, David Byrne, released his superb new album, American Utopia, and appeared on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show to perform single Everybody’s Coming to My House. Watch below as Byrne and his 11-piece backing band roamed all over Colbert’s studio, including while surrounding Colbert’s desk with Colbert participating. It’s a rollicking performance of a great and timely song, and we can’t wait to catch Byrne and band at the Santa Barbara Bowl on August 24th.

Byrne’s supporting world tour runs until mid-September. Check out the dates below.

David Byrne 2018 Tour Dates:

03/10 – Kingston, NY @ Ulster Performing Arts Center
03/16 – Santiago, CL @ Lollapalooza Chile
03/18 – Buenos Aires, AR @ Lollapalooza Argentina
03/19 – Buenos Aires, AR @ Teatro Gran Rex
03/20 – Montevido, UY @ Teatro de Verano
03/22 – Porto Alegre, BR @ Pepsi On Stage
03/23-25 – Sao Paulo, BR @ Lollapalooza Brasil
03/26 – Curitiba, BR @ Teatro Positivo
03/28 – Rio de Janerio, BR @ Km De Vantagens Hall
03/29 – Belo Horizonte, BR @ Km De Vantagens Hall
04/03 – Mexico City MX @ Metropolitan Theater
04/05 – Monterrey MX @ Auditorio Pabellón M
04/07 – Guadalajara, MX @ Corona Capital Guadalajara
04/12 – San Diego, CA @ San Diego Civic Centre
04/14 – Indio, CA @ Coachella Music Festival
04/15 – Tucson, AZ @ Centennial Hall
04/17 – San Diego, CA @ San Diego Civic Theater
04/18 – Las Vegas, NV @ Smith Center for the Arts
04/19 – Mesa, AZ @ Mesa Arts Center-Ikeda Theater
04/21 – Indio, CA @ Coachella Music Festival
04/24 – Dallas, TX @ Winspear Opera House %
04/25 – Oklahoma City, OK @ The Criterion %
04/27 – San Antonio, TX @ Tobin Center for the Performing Arts %
04/28 – Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall Outside Lawn %
04/29 – New Orleans, LA @ New Orleans Jazz Fest
05/04 – Atlanta, GA @ Shaky Knees Music Festival
05/05 – Memphis, TN @ Beale Street Music Festival
05/06 – Nashville, TN @ Ryman Auditorium
05/08 – Asheville, NC @ Thomas Wolfe Civic Auditorium
05/09 – Charlotte, NC @ Ovens Auditorium
05/10 – Durham, NC @ Durham PAC
05/12 – Washington, DC @ The Anthem
05/13 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Benedum Center for the Arts
05/15 – Milwaukee, WI @ Riverside Theater
05/16 – Madison, WI @ Orpheum Theater
05/17 – Minneapolis, MN @ Orpheum Theater
05/18 – Minneapolis, MN @ Orpheum Theater
05/19 – Saskatoon, SASK @ TCU Place
05/20 – Edmonton, AB @ Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium
05/21 – Calgary, AB @ Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium
05/23 – Vancouver, BC @ Queen Elizabeth Theater
05/24 – Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theater
05/25-26 – George, WA @ Sasquatch! Music Festival
05/27 – Portland, OR @ Keller Audiorium
05/28 – Eugene, OR @ Hult Center
05/30 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Capitol Theatre
06/01 – Chicago, IL @ Auditorium Theater #
06/02 – Chicago, IL @ Auditorium Theater
06/03 – Chicago, IL @ Auditorium Theater
06/05 – Des Moines, IA @ Des Moines Civic Center
06/07 – Kansas City, MO @ Kauffman Center for the Arts
06/08 – St. Louis, MO @ Peabody Opera House
06/09 – Indianapolis, IN @ Farmers Bureau Lawn Amphitheater
06/14 – Oxford, UK @ New Theatre *
06/15 – Glasgow, UK @ Glasgow Royal Concert Hall *
06/17 – Birmingham, UK @ Birmingham Symphony Hall *
06/18 – Manchester, UK @ Manchester Apollo *
06/19 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo *
06/20 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo *
06/22-23 – Prague, CZ @ Metronome Festival
06/25 – Zagreb, HR @ INmusic Festival
06/26 – Wien, AT @ Museumsquartier
06/29-07/01 – Ewijk, NL @ Down The Rabbit Hole
07/05 – Gdynia, PL @ Open’er Festival
07/06 – Roskilde, DK @ Roskilde Festival
07/08 – Werchter, BE @ Rock Werchter
07/11 – Oeiras, PT @ Cool Jazz Festival
07/13 – Bilbao, ES @ Bilbao BBK Live Festival
07/14 – Barcelona, ES @ Cruilla Barcelona
07/17 – Zürich, CH @ Theater 11
07/19 – Ravenna, IT @ Ravenna Festival
07/20 – Perugia, IT @ Umbria Jazz Festival
07/21 – Trieste, IT @ Piazza UNita
07/27 – Camden, NJ @ XPoNential Music Festival
07/29 – New York, NY @ Panorama Music Festival
07/31 – Boston, MA @ Blue Hills Bank Pavilion
08/01 – Shelburne, VT @ Shelburne Museum – The Green
08/03 – Toronto, ON @ Sony Center for the Performing Arts
08/04 – Toronto, ON @ Sony Center for the Performing Arts
08/05 – Canandaigua, NY @ Marvin Sands Performing Arts Center
08/07 – Cleveland, OH @ Jacobs Pavilion at Nautcia
08/08 – Grand Rapids, MI @ Devos Performance Hall
08/10 – Detroit, MI @ Fox Theater
08/11 – Huber Heightes, OH @ Rose Music Center
08/12 – Cincinnati, OH @ PNC Pavilion at Riverbend
08/16 – Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater
08/17 – Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater
08/18 – San Jose, CA @ City National Civic Auditorium
08/21 – Sacramento CA @ Community Theater
08/22 – San Francisco, CA @ Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
08/24 – Santa Barbara, CA @ Santa Barbara Bowl
08/25 – Los Angeles, CA @ Shrine Auditorium
08/27 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheater
08/28 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheater
09/15 – Queens, NY @ Forest Hills Stadium ^
09/17 – Brooklyn, NY @ Kings Theatre ^

% = w/ Perfume Genius
# = w/ Benjamin Clementine
* = w/ Laura Mvula
^ = w/ tUnE-yArds

Long-time Lefort-fave Neko Case has unveiled the title-track of her impending new album, Hell-On, to be released June 1st by Anti-. You can read below the italicized precis of Ms. Case’s new album, which can be pre-ordered HERE.  We can’t wait!

As you will hear below, the new song is a musically-complex and beguiling affair filled with intelligence, pluck and poesy (see lyrics at bottom), all trademarks of Ms. Case, including the following inspirational verses:

“God is a lusty tire fire
Its bristles scrape and strike the stage
A rock, paper, scissors’ rage
Have mercy on the natural world”

and:

“My voice is a fracture
For shinbone’s lust
Pounding barefoot ground
It lifts you up and sits you just
Just at sorrow’s waterline”

Ms. Case on the new album:

“My name is Neko Case. I am a music producer, songwriter, and musician. I just finished a record called Hell-On with a cast of talented musicians, techs, label folks, and friends.

“What I want you to know about me isn’t too much, nor do I want to over talk it. What you take away on your own, as a listener is most important. I worked really hard and I was present for every second of this project. Producing a record is a huge task and there were times I was deep in the weeds, but that is normal for a record that takes a year plus. The weeds aren’t so bad. There were a lot of break-through moments, belly-laughs, sleepless nights, and grubby, shiny jeans. In the end it was all worth it and I am so proud of how it turned out, and I am so grateful to have worked with such dedicated, giving artists to make it happen.

“There were a few challenges during the making of this record from small (scheduling difficulties, and occasional miscommunication) to large (my house burning down while I was overseas.) But none of them are the story of this recording, the songs are the story. They are my best self. They are everything I’ve worked for since I was a kid, whether I knew it or not. I write songs from a feeling of solidarity with folks who feel alone or isolated, I think I’m trying to comfort people in this way. It’s not a forceful way rather ‘no commitment necessary;’ take it if you want it, take it as you can. My style is odd, I don’t know what genre this is. I don’t have a pretty voice or a trained voice, and I am constantly disappointed that I don’t have a ‘tough’ voice, no matter how hard I practice, but it’s mine, and for all its loud, heavy-handed, nasal, vibrato-less qualities I accept it. The closest sound I have found to compare it to is Bulgarian Folk singing. My Eastern ancestors could have been proud of me a century ago? I could have been a droning ‘caller of wasps’ perhaps? I just invented that job, I like the sound of it.

“The songs are who I believe myself to be and that will change, but for now that’s how it is and I’m very satisfied with that.”

Hell-On Tracklist:

Last Lion Of Albion
Halls of Sarah
Bad Luck
Curse of the I-5 Corridor
Gumball Blue
Dirty Diamond
Oracle Of The Maritime
Winnie
Sleep All Summer
My Uncle’s Navy
Pitch Or Honey

Hell-On lyrics:

“God is not a contract or a guy
God is an unspecified tide
You cannot time its tables
It sets no glass or gables
God is a lusty tire fire
Its bristles scrape and strike the stage
A rock, paper, scissors’ rage
Have mercy on the natural world

My voice is not the liquid waves
The perfect rings around a heron’s legs
My voice is straight garroting wire
A stolen mile of fingerprints
Peeled the quiet from the dunes
Captured and re-spooled as ruin to be used
At a different time

My voice is a fracture
For shinbone’s lust
Pounding barefoot ground
It lifts you up and sits you just
Just at sorrow’s waterline
I drape you on tomorrow’s plate
Fair as metal, marrow spilling
Not yours but mine
I’m an agent of the natural world

Don’t you tell me I didn’t warn you
That that’s some gravity you ought not to play with
Don’t you tell me I didn’t warn you
That that’s some gravity you ought not to play with

Nothing quite so poison as a promise
Nothing quite so poison as a promise
Nothing quite so poison as a promise
Nothing quite so poison as a promise

And me, I am not a mess
I am a wilderness, yes
The undiscovered continent for you to undress
But you’ll not be my master
You’re barely my guest
You don’t have permission to take any pictures
Be careful of the natural world

Nature can’t amend its ways
Boils along and then replays
Despite heartfelt springtimes of regret
The storms she still cries for days
Have mercy on the natural world”