It’s that time.  Glastonbury began on Wednesday and continues through this weekend.  While there are no video streams available for we Americans (you know, still bitter over that Revolutionary War outcome), the BBC is doling out some tasty video tidbits.  Having reviewed them all, below are our faves so far.

First up is the critically-acclaimed Everything Everything performing their fantastic song Regret.  In short, we have no regrets in watching the performance repeatedly.  Super vocals, harmonies and playing from this band, which is one we need to suss out far more.

And because she’s so perfectly different, check out new fave Kate Tempest’s superlative spoken word The Beigeness.  “One man’s flash of lightning ripping through the air is another’s passing glare.  Hardly there.”  Indeed.

Next up is our fave Sharon Van Etten performing the title track from her spectacular new EP, I Don’t Want To Let You Down.  The vocals!  Beauty right there.

Next up is the big-top production of Florence + the Machine performing great new song Ship To Wreck.
Florence has obviously recovered from that foot-fracture at Corpchella.  Nice, bare-footed movement!

Next up is Caribou performing their worldwide hit, Can’t Do Without You.

Then check out Wolf Alice giving the Scissor Sisters’ Take Your Mama the full Stones-y treatment.

Then check out Aussie Chet Faker’s performance of Talk is Cheap, replete with legendary Glastonbury sing-along.

Next up is great young band The Districts ripping on their stellar song 4th and Roebling.

And why not The Waterboys updating their seminal Whole of the Moon. After, check out a beautiful acoustic version of the same song by the stellar Staves.

After Charleston, we’ve been away.  Guarding our lives.  Mañana turned into la semana.   And here we are.  But not here.  Same as it ever was.  Some things are looking up though.  Against all odds.  Here’s to your health and love.

While we were away, we spotted some magical musical moments this past week.  Below are our favorites from the week.

We will confess that Lucero has never registered the highest on our rock n’ roll Richter scale.  But perhaps we’ve been too hasty.  This week the band released a new song that demanded repetition, if for no other reason than they braved to mention one of the all-time greats,  Warren Zevon, in the song’s title.  The band will soon release All A Man Should Do on Sept. 18th, and this week dropped the lead single, Went Looking For Warren Zevon’s Los Angeles.  The song is a touching look back on life in music in the modern world.  About the record, which also pays homage to The Replacements but especially Big Star, leader Ben Nichols said: “I was 15 years old in 1989. This record sounds like the record I wanted to make when I was 15. It just took 25 years of mistakes to get it done.”  Stuff happens, and happened in spades to greats Zevon, Paul Westerberg and Alex Chilton along the way.  Such is life.  A great new song here from Lucero.  Check it out below.

In repeat news, great Omaha-punk band, Desaparecidos (Conor Oberst’s punk ensemble) has just released Payola, their first album in 13 years.   Watch below as Conor and crew slay the song, City On The Hill, on the Seth Meyers show.  So good!!

And then below check out different sounds from the punk rock band Titus Andronicus and lead singer Patrick Stickles.  While we await the release of their new album, The Most Lamentable Tragedy, listen as Stickles and the boys yield a new song off the album, Come On, Siobhan, which pays tribute to the Irish sounds of the Pogues and Dexy’s Midnight Runners, with a sprig, in the chorus, of Stiff Little Fingers.  But ultimately it is it’s own ode. We love this new song.  They will come to Cali in September.  Get your tickets HERE.

Also the newly anointed Philly band, Hop Along, made the big time by appearin’ and killin’ on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert, as witnessed below.  We love everything about this band, but especially the indie-meets-Joplin vocalese of lead singer Frances Quinlan.  Here’s to a long-life.  The set list and times are below.

“Horseshoe Crabs” 00:00
“Well-Dressed” 04:35
“Sister Cities” 09:04

Finally, the legendary Morrissey was to appear on Jimmy Fallon and, miraculously, did not cancel.  News enough, but do watch below as he performs Kiss Me a Lot on the Tonight Show, and pay particular attention to (no, not that silly shirt) his pristine, never-miss-a-note vocals.  So very good.

The great Bill Fay has put out a new album entitled Who Is the Sender?  It’s a masterpiece, bar none.  Amongst the beautiful songs on the faithful Fay’s superlative album is A Page Incomplete.  Honestly, we haven’t heard a more honest and forthcoming song than this.  Who doesn’t feel unfulfilled?  Incomplete?  Though Fay could not have intended the song’s correlation, in the aftermath of Charleston, we have been listening to this song over and over.  Who doesn’t hope for better?  Let this song be a balm.  “There’s an age up ahead, out of reach, of this one’s grip, there’s an age up ahead, out of reach of this one’s grip, this I have to believe, that this world has got to change.”  Charleston?  This world and the world beyond has got to change.  Have mercy.  Hearts on hold.

We had lost track of A.V. Undercover’s great series in which they list songs and capture artists covering them.  But today we stumbled upon one of the latest and best vignettes featuring our faves Sylvan Esso, combining with Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner (hence “Sylvan Wasner“), to cover Gillian Welch’s brilliant ode to music piracy, Everything Is Free.  We love their treatment on this devastating cover.  To our ears it sounds like a eulogy for songwriters everywhere, and the soft-pulsing synth-sound emblematic of the weakening pulse of musicians everywhere.  Thanks for piling on Apple.

“Everything is free now, that’s what they say
Everything I ever done, gonna give it away
Someone hit the big score, they figured it out
They were gonna do it anyway, even if it doesn’t pay

I can get a tip jar, gas up the car
Try to make a little change down at the bar
Or I can get a straight job, I done it before
Never minded workin’ hard, it’s who I’m workin’ for

Everything is free now, that’s what they say
Everything I ever done, gotta give it away
Someone hit the big score, they figured it out
They were gonna do it anyway, even if it doesn’t pay

Every day I wake up, hummin’ a song
But I don’t need to run around, I just stay at home
And sing a little love song, my lover, myself
If there’s something that you wanna hear, you can sing it yourself

Cause everything is free now, that’s what I said
No ones gotta listen to the words in my head
Someone hit the big score, I figured it out
And I’m gonna do it anyway, even if it doesn’t pay”

We’ve been big fans of Aussie Courtney Barnett since January 2014, but the world’s caught on and she’s been taking it by storm in concert in support of her new album Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit.  She received raves at last weekend’s Bonnaroo, and showed up last night on Fallon’s Tonight Show (her second performance for Fallon following last year’s) lto perform the punked-up Pedestrian At Best.  We will admit it’s not our favorite song of hers (that would be Depreston or Avant Gardener), but there’s no denying Barnett performed the song with passion and a vengeance.  Check it out below.

This week has started out quietly and grayed-out with the yearly fog malaise.  Thankfully, xx’s Jamie xx showed up on Seth Meyers last night in support of his critically-acclaimed solo album In Colour, and performed the poignant-but-lifting Loud Places with xx’s Romy Madley Croft on lead vocals, backed further by xx member Oliver Sim and a rollicking gang of backup singers, including Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek, Savages’ Jehnny Beth, Moses Sumney, Norwegian artist Okay Kaya and others.  I’ve got sunshine in a video.  Superb!

Playin’ catch-up, let’s wrap up the week with four of our favorite live music performances captured this week by the powers that be.

First, check out this heartwarming NPR piece on Kendrick Lamar’s classy visit to Mr. Mooney’s class at High Tech High School in North Bergen, N.J.  Awesome stuff.

Then, watch Dawes impress on Conan with their performance of Things Happen off of their great new album All Your Favorite Bands (they are definitely one of ours).  Dawes never fails to impress live, as you can see below.

Next, check out the ever-impressive Patrick Watson and crew simply wowing on KCRW with their performance of Good Morning Mr. Wolf off his fantastic new album Love Songs For Robots.  You can watch the entire, beguiling 45-minute episode HERE.  We can’t wait to catch Watson at the Teragram in October.

Finally, check out the emphatic delivery below by Brandi Carlisle of her incendiary The Things I Regret off her new album The Firewatcher’s Daughter.  Carlile is one of our most under-appreciated artists.

Torres, led by gifted singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott, has been wowing critics and fans alike with its fantastic new album, Sprinter, and its scintillating live shows in support.  We caught Torres recently when they played the Echo in LA and were mesmerized by what we saw and heard.

Mackenzie Scott came out at the Echo dressed all in black with leather jacket and her game face and method acting on, and raged through an urgent and occasionally menacing performance of nine songs that electrified the crowd.   After putting flame to herb (no, not that kind) to set the stage, Scott and band kicked off with Son, You Are No Island from Sprinter.  Each song thereafter was performed with intensity (especially on vocals) and heft worthy of Patti Smith or PJ Harvey.  Very impressive, as was the backing by her band this evening.  It wasn’t until midway through the set that Scott stepped out of her persona briefly to cordially thank the audience and admit she is “not a good conversationalist.”  Turning quickly back to her guitar, Scott kicked into the highlight of the evening.  Though Strange Hellos is not amongst our favorite songs on the new album (those would be the quieter The Exchange and Ferris Wheel, which were left off the setlist), her fierce, frothing and singing-in-tongues vocals and delivery of the song sent chills down our spines and admiration up our cerebellums.  It was a simply stunning performance and, together with the rest of the set, gives hope that Torres will continue to gain fans for her well-wrought and intense music.

See the Echo setlist at bottom.  To get a feel for Torres, check out the band’s performances of songs Sprinter and A Proper Polish Welcome recently on KEXP.  To hear the whole KEXP session go HERE.  Afterwards, check out Scott’s solo performance of the latter song for NPR at SXSW.  Beauty right there.

Echo Setlist:

Son, You Are No Island
New Skin
Sprinter
A Proper Polish Welcome
Cowboy Guilt
Strange Hellos
Honey
The Harshest Light
November Baby

Photo by Shawn Brackbill for Partisan Records

We wondered where Santa Barbara-spawned, now LA-resident, Gardens & Villa had wandered off to.  Now we know.  The band is back with a brazen new track, Fixation, from their impending new album Music For Dogs on Secretly Canadian. According to the boys’ press release, the album “is a deeply personal album that pokes, prods, and even strangely celebrates the zeitgeist of music commerce, pleasure culture, technological advances and the new home they’ve found in Los Angeles.”

We’ve had Fixation on repeat, and yes, we have become fixated with it.  We love the pounding keyboards and ethereal vocals, and pretty much everything about it.  The keys and chorus (“My whole life fixation/See if we can make it underneath the radar”) mesh perfectly on the song, which is said to be “a song about the beauty in bottoming out and then finding the false bottom.”  To our ears the song sounds like a great mashup of Animal Collective, The Cars and Tame Impala.

Music For Dogs was produced by Jacob Portrait (Unknown Mortal Orchestra) and band members Adam Rasmussen and Chris Lynch are joined on it by the rousing rhythm section of Dusty Ineman (drums) and Shane McKillop (bass).

You can pre-order Music For Dogs HERE.

Gardens & Villa Tour Dates (Tix HERE)

Fri. June 26 – Los Angeles, CA @ Center For The Arts, Eagle Rock
Tue. Sept. 15 – Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom
Thu. Sept. 17 – Austin, TX @ The Parish
Fri. Sept. 18 – Dallas, TX @ Club Dada
Sat. Sept. 19 – Houston, TX @ House of Blues/Bronze Peacock
Sun. Sept. 20 – New Orleans @ Gasa Gasa
Tue. Sept. 22 – Atlanta, GA @ Aisle 5
Wed. Sept. 23 – Carrboro, NC @ Cats Cradle
Thu. Sept. 24 – Washington, DC @ Rock & Roll Hotel
Fri. Sept. 25 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
Sat. Sept. 26 – Philadelphia, PA @ Boot & Saddle
Tue. Sept. 29 – Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
Wed. Sept. 30 – Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz PDB
Thu. Oct. 1 – Toronto, ON @ The Garrison
Fri. Oct. 2 – Detroit, MI @ UFO Factory
Sat. Oct. 3 – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
Sun. Oct. 4 – Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St. Entry
Tue. Oct. 6 – Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater
Wed. Oct. 7 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge
Thu. Oct. 8 – Las Vegas, NV @ Bunkhouse Saloon
Fri. Oct. 9 – San Diego, CA @ IRENIC