We have been long-time fans of British Sea Power, and especially their rock anthems.  After a two year album hiatus, BSP has announced the release (on 4/2) of their new album Machineries of Joy via Rough Trade Records.  According to the band’s frontman Yan, “We’d like the record to be an antidote [to the world’s craziness] – a nice game of cards in pleasant company.”  Well cut ’em, and we’ll deal.  Check out below a radio-edit of the title track off the new album, followed by the album’s tracklist.  The title track continues BSP’s long history of strong songs.  You can pre-order the album here.

Machineries Of Joy Tracklist:

1. Machineries Of Joy
2. K Hole
3. Hail Holy Queen
4. Loving Animals
5. What You Need The Most
6. Monsters Of Sunderland
7. Spring Has Sprung
8. Radio Goddard
9. A Light Above Ascending
10. When A Warm Wind Blows Through The Grass

Regrets?  We’ve got one more. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are out on tour in support of their superb new album Push The Sky Away, and will play the Henry Fonda on February 21st.  The bad news: of course the show’s sold out.  The good news: Cave and the band will webcast the show courtesy of RockFeedBack.  Regular rave reviews of their shows continue to roll in, and we intend to be web-side when the webcast goes live. Check out the announcement below and go HERE on the 21st to watch the show. After, check out the lyric video for the band’s song sub-jubilant song Jubilee Street off of the new album.  Another great one from Cave.

Solange Knowles (where have we heard that name before, hmmm?) has slowly swayed into our melange.  Check out Solange and her collaborator Dev Hynes (Lightspeed Champion, on acoustic guitar) performing her song Bad Girls below.  Watch as their Black Cab Session revs up during the song’s first half before Solange kicks in on all cylinders during the second half of the fare.  Her True EP appeared last year on Grizzly Bear member Chris Taylor’s Terrible label, thereby adding some indie-cred to her  mix and setting her apart a bit from her sister, What’s-Her-Name.  After the Black Cab, watch the official video for Losing You off of  True.

We have been going on a bit and repeatedly about the phenomenal new Frightened Rabbit album Pedestrian Verse. We haven’t heard a wrong note yet.  Check out songwriter Scott Hutchison, with strong harmonic accompaniment, performing one of the album’s strong songs, Backyard Skulls, unplugged for a Best Fit Session.  About the song, Hutchison recently said “this song was inspired by a novel by the Scottish writer Chris Brookmyre.  In his 2011 book Where The Bodies Are Buried, the detectives use aerial images to hunt for undiscovered bodies. I took this idea and threaded it into a song about unpleasant secrets in a more general sense. Infidelity, mistakes, wrong-doings. These things are never really gone, no matter how far down you bury them.” Make no mistakes about it, this performance has no wrong-doings.  Superb stuff.  The song’s well-wrought lyrics follow the video.

Backyard Skulls:

“All our secrets are smothered by dirt
Underneath paving stones
Lying, waiting to be told
Some remain hidden, some get found
Like a long lost soul
Like a skull beneath the ground
Backyard skulls
Deep beneath the ground
Those backyard skulls
Are not deep enough to never be found
Here lies the first time that I was wrong
And yet there’s still no sign
No exes mark the spot
Of the ancient encounters
With foreign skin, all but perished by now
But you can’t erase the grin from those
Backyard skulls
Deep beneath the ground
Those backyard skulls
Are not deep enough to never be found
Through patio doors
Lies century upon century
Of skulls untold
Hushed as suburban adultery
Below our homes
Underneath the lawns we keep
White silent skulls
Are smiling at the hypocrisy
Backyard skulls
Deep beneath the ground
Those backyard skulls
Are not deep enough to never be found”

We’ve finally updated Concerts In The Realm which you can check out HERE.  New notables include Band of Horses with Jake Bugg at the Ventura Theater on April 18th and Sigur Ros at the Santa Barbara Bowl on April 19th.  That’s a particularly great one-two.

Following on the heals of The Postal Service’s announced re-grouping and tour (we find it hard to believe they’ll play on a Saturday at Coachella given the recent US Postal Service announcement), the band will soon (on April 9th) release their 10th Anniversary Deluxe Reissue of Give Up.   Today the band released a new song entitled A Tattered Line of String.  More pop magic from the Postal ones.  Check it out.

Jim James is making a motion for your undivided attention.  James has released his first solo album, the ravishing Regions Of Light And Sound Of God, and has just today released the official video for the album’s first single, A New Life.  The song and video begin spare, and the song doesn’t start chugging along doo-wop-stylee until after the 1:20 mark.   There’s all sorts of mischief and imagery going on in the video and song.  Gone is the MMJ bear, replaced with a bison’s head.  In are the hermaphroditic dancers and a woman sprinting through door frames in an open field.  We got this.  Duh!

In many ways Sufjan Stevens kicked off and made our Christmas season this year.  His Silver & Gold box set and tour-spin through Hollywood were just what we needed to help get in the spirit and start living in-step.  The title track was one of the highlights of the both the box set and the live show, and simply laid out some simple truths.   And now Stevens has released an even simpler version–his original, solo demo of the song in which he accompanies himself on solo guitar.  Unadorned wisdom of the ages.  Listen below.

By now we’ve all heard a thousand and one covers of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.  The Man himself, Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright, Shrek…take your pick.  The best have done it justice.  Let’s be honest:  the song is so perfect, it’s nearly impossible to screw it up.  Leave it then to Amanda Palmer to serve up one of the most affecting versions we’ve heard.  She prefaces her performance by explaining it was intended to be performed for her friend Anthony who was undergoing cancer treatment, but then explains that Anthony was unable to attend the performance because of his illness.  And then Palmer, herself afflicted with the flu, lays the song out in a gripping performance that hits all the right notes.  We know some who have lost loved ones in recent days.  May this broken hallelujah provide some comfort and consolation.

One of our favorite bands, Dawes, has completed its next studio album, Stories Don’t End, which will be released on April 9th.  Stream the first single off the album, From A Window Seat, below via the lyric video.  As you’ll hear, the song bodes well for the album, which follows their fantastic 2011 album Nothing is Wrong.  The album’s tracklist follows the video.

1. Just Beneath The Surface
2. From A Window Seat
3. Just My Luck
4. Someone Will
5. Most People
6. Something In Common
7. Hey Lover
8. Bear Witness
9. Stories Don’t End
10. From The Right Angle
11. Side Effects
12. Just Beneath The Surface (Reprise