M.I.A. guested on The Colbert Report last night in support of her marvellous new album, Matangi.  In addition to performing Y.A.L.A. and being interviewed briefly by Colbert during the main show, you can see a web-exclusive performance of Come Walk With Me below.  During the short interview, Maya, M.I.A., Mathangi Arulpragasam she was, as usual, straight up honest. When Colbert asked her thought on his show she replied, “I don’t know, I’ve never watched.”  Watch all of the above below in the reverse order.  She is mesmerizingly talented.

We know a teenage girl or two that love(s) Justin Bieber.  We used to get the allure, but it’s been quite some time since those Bieber home videos.  The rush by music’s teen-stars to adulthood and an adult audience (Bieber and Ms. Cyrus most obviously) these days is unnerving and is a diss(ervice) to their young audiences.  Take your time; why rush it?  What’s particularly galling is the lengths to which these young-ish musicians will go to kick their young fans to the curb in order to transition (so says they) to an adult audience.  Miley’s questionable indiscretions have mounted ridiculously quickly.  And Bieber?  The latest is his song collaboration with R. Kelly entitled PYD. Really? Why on earth does Justin Bieber choose to work with R. Kelly whose songs and videos are known for their lascivious sexual content?  (There was that one mix-up where he curiously wrote and recorded the stirring–in a good way–I Believe I Can Fly; but that’s the rare exception in his discography.)

We don’t get it, and neither apparently does Sufjan Stevens, who wrote the following today and embedded the song on his Tumblr Ghetto blog:

“Shout out to over-sexed teenagers. Shout out to sex abbreviations that sound like the word “puberty.” Shout out to animal euthanasia as sexual innuendo. Shout out to the new genre: nymphomaniac pop. Shout out to my Biebs. Go get some, bro. I’ll be reading the psalms, eating Scotch oatmeal cookies, etc. The world is abundant.”

Stevens’ message to Bieber follows on the heels of his earlier hilarious message to Ms. Cyrus.

For context, listen below to the new Bieber/Kelly collaboration in song (if you must).

Barcelona’s Delorean got together with Chairlift’s multi-talented Caroline Polachek in the Opus 40 sculpture park in NYC for the intriguing new video for  Delorean song Unhold (via Nowness) off of the band’s album Apar.  The video’s director Eric Epstein says “The moving footage is resolved to a flat plane, so that everything in relief from that surface skews and stretches.”  There’s plenty of beauty to go with the wooziness engendered by the video’s effects.  Check it out below.

Delorean: Unhold on Nowness.com

We’ve been fans of Nicholas Jaar’s electronic soundscapes for quite some time.  His album Space is Only Noise was amongst our favorite albums of 2011.  Thus it’s no surprise that we have quickly glommed onto Darkside, his new collaboration with guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington.   To get a feel for this comely combo, check out their stellar performance on KCRW of Paper Trails off their recently-released debut album Psychic, which you can buy HERE.  Watch/listen-to this mesmerizing amalgam of electronica with African and Jamaican-dub influences while twelve and a half minutes float intriguingly by.  King Sunny meet King Tubby on the Darkside.  You can watch the entire KCRW session HERE.  If you like what you hear and see, you can listen to even more Darkside and remixes HERE.  Darkside will return on tour to the West Coast in January (they will play the Fonda on 1/25), and all dates can be found HERE.

Fans of Damien Jurado (that would be us) will be excited to learn that Jurado’s new album, Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son, will be released in January on Secretly Canadian.  Once again Jurado has teamed with producer Richard Swift.  And now Jurado has dropped the official video for the first released song, Silver Timothy, which you can watch below.  Jurado and Swift have not let us down before, and we expect the same from the new album.  Silver Timothy is an audio-overload that smacks of various ’60s movie soundtracks, but with Jurado’s signature vocals lighting the way.

After the video, read a well-written piece by Father John Misty on Jurado’s new album, amongst other things.

Father John Misty writes:

Damien is out of his goddamn mind.

This isn’t a recent development, but it’s an important aspect of his work that often goes ignored. In place of this key element is the idea that his music is a sober and in-depth excavation of the American landscape and rural psyche. Well, folks, I’m sorry, but it’s not. In other words: there is no railway station east of Ohio.

Abandoned motels, barren highways, magazine killers, Chevrolets backing out of driveways in the middle of the night, wedding photos, intoxicated hands, bleary-eyed circus clowns, barstool salvation, yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it: “America.” We’d all like to live there, but we don’t. No one does. We’re stuck with Jamba Juice and the internet, occasionally a charming, aesthetically pleasing dilapidated monument of the pre-Air Conditioned Nightmare on the side of the road. For a minute we can marvel and say “Wow, there’s nothing out here!” Nothing except a huge fucking interstate freeway and a massive telecommunication network on which we can Instagram bucolic isolation.

Out there is nowhere, but inside is endless.

You know what else they have a lot of in “America”? Religion. Don’t leave out that old-time relijun or your souffle of polite, revisionist, fantasy America is going to fall flat at the foot of the Cross. When “folk” comes up in their iTunes genre column, them lily-white champions of gravel-voiced, hard-won-wisdom-shilling, Millennial old-timin’ expect some goddamn symbolic imagery, man! Not actual faith per se, I mean, c’mon now, what are you: fucking insane?

Damien Jurado is every character in every Damien Jurado song. He is the gun, the purple anteater, the paper wings, the avalanche, the air show disaster, Ohio, the ghost of his best friend’s wife. It is a universe unto its own, with its own symbolism, creation myth, and liturgy. You might go as far as to call it a religion, and your religion is a character in his religion.

Level with me. You’re reading this because of Damien Jurado’s new album, Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son (produced by Richard Swift). You are a progressive minded, left-leaning person who in parlor-style conversation regarding the globo-political ramifications of Sky Person relationships laughs knowingly so as not to be judgmental and very reasonably concedes “Well, I don’t believe He’s some old man with a beard sitting up in the clouds” at which point everyone agrees on [insert benign middle-ground] and moves on.

Consider this: What if the only way to understand a religion is to create your own?

Who is this Silver community? Where the hell are they in the Bible? Is this heresy? Agnostic reference? Isn’t this sun business a little, I don’t know, animistic? Pagan? Go ahead and answer that question for yourself. I’ll give you a second.

Do you understand the music any better?

Faith is like theater: it isn’t meant to be read, or analyzed it is meant to be performed and inhabited. Upon being asked if he believed in Gawd or not, Norman Mailer replied, “Sure, why don’t you and make him better?”

You know that adage we all use so we have something to say while we shrug our shoulders? “People change”? That one. Is that applicable to Jesus Christ? Maybe he’s been on a personal journey of discovery since he ascended. He went through the 60′s, 70′s, he turned on, tuned out, got disillusioned. Why can’t we talk about that Jesus? Does it have to be the old-timey one all the time? American folk Jesus, ugh. The one who’s always winning Best Soundtrack Oscars for people. Rarely do stories of faith make us identify with Jesus. It’s Abraham, Satan, Silver Timothy, Salome, Dr. J, Saul of Tarsus; divinely imperfect brothers and sisters who give Gawd something to do.

Damien Jurado made up his own Jesus because a Damien Jurado album needs a beautiful Jesus. Some freaky space Jesus that I don’t recognize. The name is the same, a lot of the imagery is the same, but he’s reborn. Born again, I mean. Yeah, as if Jesus got born again. That’s what this album sounds like.

Jesus is out of his goddamn mind, and I want to live in Damien’s America.

Sign me up.

— Father John Misty; 09-20-2013

Joseph Arthur is ever lifting his game and his art. In addition to compiling a stupendous discography (including his recent, cardinal album The Ballad of Boogie Christ), Arthur has for years been a notorious painter.  Recently Arthur has decided to combine the two on stage.  Concurrently.

Watch Arthur’s performance below in Liechtenstein at Little Big Beat Studios in front of a live audience.  Arthur and band perform the wordy/rappy I Miss The Zoo while Arthur paints a canvas. Don’t try this at home.  It’s synchronous transcendence.  While you’re at it watch the other performances captured well by Little Big Beat. And whatever you do, go support this fine artist and buy The Ballad of Boogie Christ (Real World Records / Proper Distribution) HERE.

We’ve said it once, we’ve said it twice, and we will say it evermore: Will Sheff’s Okkervil River has consistently produced some of the best albums in the post-millennium oeuvre.  The most recent, The Silver Gymnasium, may be the crowning achievement.  At a minimum it is one our favorite albums of 2013. And one of our favorite songs off the album is Pink Slips, which you can watch the band perform below via KDHX.  We love the whole, rockin’ performance, but particularly from 3:34 to the end.  The ensemble is superb, but Lauren Gurgiolo’s guitar playing and Cully Symington’s drumming stand out (in addition to the high background vocals that smack of The Flaming Lips).  After, check out two more greats from the band for KDHX, the fantabulous anthem Stay Young and Where The Spirit Left Us.  And at bottom you can listen to the entire KDHX session and an extra song.

We loved Beyoncé‘s sister, Solange, from the moment we first heard her (as added vocalist on Of Montreal’s fine 2010 False Priest album).  After a mercurial year of burgeoning accolades and notoriety, news recently arrived that Solange was adding even further to her plate by starting her own label, dubbed Saint Records.  And now Saint Records has released a 12-track compilation of their artists entitled Saint Heron.  The clear highlight so far is Solange herself with new song Cash In.  Check it out below.

We like the old-school-ish R&B sounds and her savory vocal, but with added lyric and harmonic complexity, dynamics and, yes, cowbell.  Check it out below.  The song’s lyrics follow (including a line we attribute to the great Warren Zevon).  We love this artist.

“We don’t need a love affair
Listen to the sounds of despair
We don’t need to lay in bed
Waking up from place to place
We don’t need to pay a rent
Listen to the sounds of this right here
We don’t gotta pave our way
We can live from place to place

Come on, love, let’s get away
Listen to the sounds of despair
Take your money to the bank
Tell ’em we gonna throw it all away
Candy coated painted moods
Listen to the sound of it in you

We don’t need a love affair
Listen to the sounds of despair
We don’t need to lay in bed
Sleep all day, we’ll sleep when dead
We don’t need to wait on them
Listen to the sounds of this right here
We don’t need to pave our way
Take this love on face to face

Come on, love, let’s get away
Listen to the sounds of despair
Take your money to the bank
Tell ’em we gonna throw it all away
Candy coated painted moods
Listen to the sound of it in you

Take your money to the bank
Tell ’em we gonna throw it all away
Freedom wins to paper chase
Tell ’em we got soul and we gonna stay
Righteous fallen people pray
But we got something real
That you’re going to hate
Makeup test and change your name
Nobody has the power but you and me
Baby, you run for you and you run for me
We gonna tell ’em what it is
Yeah, we don’t care
Gotta live our lives and don’t look back
Best believe I believe in love
Yeah, I got the faith
This to be the lies, the color test
Play it out from place to place
And get away”

Lyle Lovett came through town this week with Ryan Bingham and John Hiatt.  And we missed it.  In lieu, we watched Lovett’s performance below of If I Had a Boat, one of our all-time favorites.

We’ve been fans of Giant Sand, Giant Giant Sand, and Howe Gelb solo for a considerate amount of time and were thrilled to learn that Gelb has released a fantastic new solo album entitled The Coincidentalist (which you can stream at the Wall Street Journal HERE).  The new album traipses amiably from rock to folk to jazz, with assistance from M. Ward on guitar, Andrew Bird, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, pedal/steel guitarist Jon Rauhouse, Giant Sand bassist Thøger Tetens Lundand and Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley. We will have a full review of the new album soon-come.

To get more of a feel for Gelb, watch below as KEXP has just released these videos of Gelb performing a few songs live in the Bunny Glade at Pickathon last August.

Gelb begins a new leg of a tour in LA next week (Wednesday 11/20 at the Hotel Cafe), and you can see all the dates HERE.