The Joy Formidable put out a powerful-punch of an album (The Big Roar) last year, and then blazed through concert halls everywhere.  We confess that while their sound grabbed us initially, by the time the band came through Santa Barbara we had grown weary of their somewhat monotonous (though still riveting) distortion sonances.  So it comes as a relief that Wolf’s Law, the first track to be released post-Big Roar, evinces a quantum shift in sound with different instrumentation (now including strings and piano) and more-subdued vocals from singer Ritzy Bryan.

And the official video has some cool effects too.  Check it out below.

The beguiling Polica performed their song Dark Star on The Jimmy Kimmel Show last night.  Check it out below.  Slick compared to the radio show performances, but compelling nonetheless.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWi3hcqdiS4&feature=em-uploademail

The prodigiously talented electro-psych band, Animal Collective, is soon to release its ambitious new album Centipede Hz.  Centipede Hz follows on the heels of the band’s breathtaking last album, Merriweather Post Pavilion.  Centipede Hz is currently streaming on Animal Collective‘s site.  Go there and stream the entirety of the new album, conveyed via videos.  Check out this audio-visual magical mystery tour, and then submit your own custom mixtape to be eligible to win a vinyl pressing of the album. More info on that on mixcloud.

There’s a lot of shimmering sound to chew on with the new album, but the trademark Animal Collective quality continues to shine through.

It’s been a long time since we took time to tout a tome.  It’s not like we’ve stopped reading, but there just simply aren’t enough posts in a day (reasonable minds may differ). Simply put, Jess Walter’s most recent book, Beautiful Ruins, is the most enjoyable read we’ve had in quite some time.  If you need a great novel to finish out the summer’s days, this is it.

Jess Walter is an award-winning storyteller (Citizen Vance, The Zero) who is facile in all genres, including non-fiction.  But with Beautiful Ruins, he’s outdone himself.  Walter introduces us to a dozen characters whose lives are, knowingly and unknowingly, intertwined over a span of 70 years, ranging from a dying actress and Richard Burton on a movie set and elsewhere in Italy in 1962, to an Italian innkeeper, to a Hollywood producer, to the producer’s idealistic assistant, to a heartbroken World War II veteran.  Together with their spouses, lovers, progeny and friends, Walter weaves a tale of success, failure, heartbreak, resignation and resolve.  You know:  life.  In the course of doing so, Walter uses every literary trick in the proverbial book to capture the human condition, though all in service of the story and never merely for show.  Early on, the chapters alternate between the various eras to great effect.  Eventually Walter uses virtually all literary tropes available to tell the tale:  poetry, short story, movie pitch-piece, memoir, play, screenplay…they’re all there.  And all are used in service of the captivating storylines.  If it sounds at all mechanical, it is not.  The highly entertaining pages fly by.  Walter is at his best capturing conversation and using pathos and bathos (some of Burton’s lines had us laughing aloud) to illumine the characters and their interlaced lives.  And he does it so well and so deftly that you won’t realize how entertained you’ve been in the process.

We will be shocked if, as a result of this must-read novel, Walter doesn’t take home many of the literary prizes available for 2012.

We haven’t been able to get back to our beloved San Francisco since deep, sunny winter. So we had to pull up the official videos for two phenomenal pop songs by Stephanie Finch and the Company Men (Chuck Prophet, Kelly Stoltz and Rusty Miller). Ms. Finch is the very talented spouse of the sorta-talented Chuck Prophet (jk, Chuck) who has also collaborated with Jonathan Richman and Mark Kozalek. If you haven’t had the pleasure, Finch has crafted pop songs of the highest order. There’s nothing new under the fog, but these songs still wrap you up in pop velvet.

The two featured songs (Transmission and Don’t Back Out Now) are off of her underrated, under-appreciated 2010 album Cry Tomorrow, her consummate compendium of “love letters to classic song.” The videos for these fine songs feature multiple facets of San Francisco and together function as a veritable travelogue of that fine City. On the recently released video for Transmission, Finch hints at Neko Case and busks at BART, while on Don’t Back Out Now Finch and the fellas goof off all over the fabled village. Check ’em out below, and go buy Cry Tomorrow at the link above.

For those attending October’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, Chuck Prophet and Stephanie (as a member of Prophet’s backing band Mission Express) will appear as a part of this year’s vaunted lineup. San Francisco, we’re comin’ for you soon.

This is starting out to be a very Feisty week for us.  First, the multi-talented femme simply slayed Sunday night on the From the Basement broadcast (check back for that video–not to be missed).  And we’ve been off the grid and have been playing catch-up with the world.  We just discovered that Feist is dabbling deliciously in the world of heavy metal.  We’ll admit that metal isn’t the first genre we reach for in the morning (or at night) for listening pleasure.  While we grew up on the thrash of ’70s punk music from NYC, London and LaLaLand (in that chronological order), we nonetheless have not given metal much mental bandwidth.  Historically, the rare lyrical intelligence (a primary driver for us) in metal, coupled with the seeming (we admit ignorance, ye metal experts) monotony of the sound has pushed us away. Ya gotta give credit to Leslie Feist and Mastadon.  In combo, they’ve made a great argument for the possibilities of the genre.

As a part of this year’s Record Store Day celebration, Feist and Mastadon collaborated on a split seven-inch record, with Feist covering Mastodon’s Black Tongue and Mastodon covering Feist’s A Commotion.  Now both tracks are available digitally.  In addition to the digital release, an interactive video has been put together for A Commotion that shows Feist in full metal mode and enables users to slide a bar back and forth to choose between the original Feistian version (full to the left) and the Mastodon cover (full to the right), and all parts in between.  We recommend splitting the difference and setting the bar in the middle.

Check out immediately below that interactive version, followed by the just-released official video for the Mastodon version.  And then check out at the very bottom Feist’s hair-raising version of A Commotion as performed this year at Bonnaroo.  Brava and bravo!

As proof that this music festival thang has reached critical mass, even Stephen Colbert has gotten into the game with his Colbchella Festival held last week in NYC on the US Intrepid.  The major upside was that Grizzly Bear was one of the featured performers.  In case you missed it, check out their performances below of Yet Again, Sleeping Ute and Two Weeks, followed by a classic Colbert interview with the band.

We’re proud patrons of Montreal band Plants and Animals, having repeatedly touted their albums and live performances.  We particularly love their passionate live delivery.  For further proof of their live chops, check out their performances of Lightshow and Crisis (off of their great recently-released album, The End of That) from a just-released HearYa session in May of this year.  Lightshow is particularly powerful.

To soundtrack this laconic Sunday afternoon, check out the greatly-gifted Dawes meshing and killing softly on their heavenly My Way Back Home.   We love the spare, soft-sung delivery, but especially the harmonies beginning at 4:34 (on a Best Fit Session).  Caution:  chills may ensue when the three-part harmonies lift-off from 4:57 to 5:19.  Love this band.  Crosby, Stills and whatever.

We’ve previously touted the tautly-captured live music series, From the Basement.  Nigel Godrich (Radiohead-producer, Atoms of Peace member) and crew began their new season last week featuring The Shins, Aimee Mann, and Father John Misty.  Check out last week’s episode below with The Shins dominating and slaying on songs from their pop-tastic album, Port of Morrow  (Part 1 and at the beginning of Part 2).  Then (at 6:54 of Part 2) we get the rare treat of Aimee Mann and James Mercer collaborating on Mann’s new song Living a Lie followed by Mann charming on Charmer, the title track off her impending album.

And then tomorrow night (Sunday, August 19) at 10pm E/P tune in to either 3net.com (in 3D if you can do it) or that same TV channel (if you can find it) and check out the fantabulous Feist on an all-new episode, along with The Happiness Project.  A trailer for the show is at bottom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NhNn9l4oZA&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zt6SNV0n7Q&feature=channel&list=UL