East Coast/Big Sur jangle-rockers Woods have in recent years provided some of the most ebullient and brilliant ear-candy to grace the Lefort Jukebox.  Our infatuation with the band and its chiming, Beach Boys-limning sounds began in 2011 with their stirring live set at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.  It wasn’t long thereafter that their stupendous 2012 song Cali In A Cup (a place we’re particularly partial to) caught our ears.  Most recently, we’ve been enamored with their latest album, With Light And With Love, and the summery songs thereon (but especially Tambourine Light).  Now comes yet another great track (New Light) off the album and the newly-released official video for the song, which you can check out below.  The delightful animated video is based on some of bandleader Jeremy Earl’s drawings. With Light And With Love is out now via Woodsist.

Woods is also out on an international tour this summer.  You can check out the tour dates at bottom and buy tickets HERE.

Tour Dates:

07-27 Chicago, IL – Wicker Park Festival
07-28 Minneapolis, MN – 7th Street Entry
07-31 Seattle, WA – Neumos **^
08-01 Vancouver, British Columbia – The Fox Cabaret **
08-02 Portland, OR – Pickathon
08-03 Portland, OR – Pickathon
08-05 Big Sur, CA – Woodsist Festival Big Sur *SOLD OUT*
08-09 San Francisco, CA – Brick and Mortar / Official Outside Lands Afterparty ** / ***
08-10 San Francisco, CA – Outside Lands *SOLD OUT*
08-12 Visalia, CA – Cellar Door ***
08-14 San Diego, CA – Casbah w/ Little Wings ***
08-16 Pioneertown, CA – Woodsist Festival Pioneertown ***
08-17 Phoenix, AZ – Crescent Ballroom ***
08-19 Marfa, TX – El Cosmico
08-20 Austin, TX – Holy Mountain
08-21 Baton Rouge, LA – Spanish Moon
08-22 Chattanooga, TN – Sluggo’s

08-30 Birmingham, England – Moseley Folk Festival
08-31 Dorset, England – End Of The Road
09-02 London, England – Dingwalls ****
09-03 Amsterdam, Netherlands – Paradiso
09-04 Groningen, Netherlands – Vera
09-05 Vlieland, Netherlands – Into the Great Wide Open
09-06 Brussels, Belgium – Atelier 210
09-07 Strasbourg, France – Troc Café
09-08 Zurich, Switzerland – El Lokal
09-09 Lausanne, Switzerland – Le Romandie
09-10 Biarritz, France – L’atabal
09-12 Valada, Portugal – Reverence Festival
09-13 Madrid, Spain – El Sol
09-14 Barcelona, Spain – Caprichos de Apolo
09-15 Toulouse, France – La Dynamo
09-16 Paris, France – Eldorado Festival
09-18 Bergen, Norway – Phonofestivalen
09-19 Angers, France – Austin Psych Fest / Levitation
09-20 Belgium, Leffinge – Leffingeleuren
09-21 Tilburg, Netherlands – Incubate
09-22 Bristol, England – The Lantern
09-23 Dublin, Ireland – Button Factory
09-24 Belfast, Ireland – McHughs
09-25 Glasgow, Scotland – Broadcast
09-26 Newcastle, England – Think Thank
09-27 Liverpool, England – Liverpool Psych Fest

10-24 New York, NY – NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts w/ Joshua Light Show

** with Steve Gunn
^ with Foxygen
*** with Skygreen Leopards
**** with Marissa Nadler

Sharon Van Etten and her Best Album of 2014 contender, Are We There, have been garnering deserved adulation around the globe.  And last night the artist and band hit another big-top moment when they made their Late Show with David Letterman debut.  Check out Van Etten and superb band below all spruced up and delivering Every Time The Sun Comes Up with confident aplomb.  On this album-closing song Van Etten seems to attempt to leaven the heaviness of Are We There with lighter, off-the-cuff lyrics (such as the bleeped “I wash your dishes, but I still [merde] in your bathroom.”).  Delivered with her confidently powerful and inventive vocals, however, Van Etten masks well the flippant, smirking nature of the song’s lyrics (for an unmasking, see Van Etten’s miming during the KEXP performance of the song below).  Watch the performance on Letterman below, followed by the song’s official video (which we somehow missed when released in May).  And do yourselves a favor and pick up Are We There.

At bottom (though it may deserve to be on top), check out SVE’s full session on KEXP on which she performs Taking Chances, the terrific Tarifa, Break Me, and Every Time The Sun Comes Up.

Last month Spoon rocked the rock world by dropping their first magnificent song, I Pay The Rent (one of our favorites of the early summer), from their impending new album They Want My Soul.  This week the band has redoubled its effort with two new soulful releases designed to knife into your life and demand you fork over the payment.  We are in!  Earlier this week Spoon debuted its official video for the new album’s lead single, Do You.  Check it out first below (and watch out for frightening King Kids).  As a follow-up, leader Britt Daniel and the band then released the audio of spare, synth-and-harp-enhanced rocker, Inside Out, which you can listen to at bottom.  All three releases off the album are highwater marks for this summer’s music, and bode incredibly well for They Want My Soul (which has quickly become one of our most highly anticipated releases of 2014).  You can pre-order it from the band directly HERE.

Last week the incomparable Jenny Lewis gave us the superb second sample (Just One of the Guys–our Song of the Week) off her impending new album, The Voyager.  The Voyager is her first solo album since 2008’s stupendous Acid Tongue.  Despite a stellar discography, The Voyager may well be one of her best albums to date, with outstanding, personal songwriting that is riddled with miraculously-memorable melodies.  Lewis brought in Ryan Adams and Mike Viola to produce the album, together with a host of talented musical help.  Do yourselves a favor and go listen to the whole album streaming over at NPR HERE.

And in case you missed it, listen to the telling title track below.  The Voyager will be released next week on Warner Bros. and you can pre-order it HERE.

Simply put, Jenny Lewis is an indie-pop genius of significant substance.  As a part of the justly-revered Rilo Kiley, and Jenny & Johnny and in other get-ups, she’s crafted one of the best discographies in modern rock ‘n roll.   Lewis has been away for awhile in the Postal Service and elsewhere, but is finally returning with a new album entitled The Voyager.  After hearing/watching the video below for new song Just One of the Guys, we can’t wait for the new album’s release.  Listen and watch below as Lewis performs yet another deceptively bright-sounding, melodic-gem while being “air-backed” by the likes of nobodies Anne Hathaway, Kristen Stewart, and Brie Larson.   Cute video, even better song.  It’s our Song of the Week and bodes incredibly well for The Voyager, which will be released on July 29th on Warner Bros.  The song’s worthwhile, heavy lyrics follow the video.

Just One Of The Guys:

“All our friends, they’re gettin’ on
But the girls are still staying young.
If I get caught being rude in a conversation
With a child bride on her summer vacation.
No matter how hard I try to be just one of the guys
There’s a little something inside that won’t let me.
No matter how hard I try to have an open mind
There’s a little voice inside that prevents me.
how I live. it got me here
Locked in this bathroom full of tears.
And I have begged for you and I have borrowed
But I’ve been the only sister to my own sorrow
No matter how hard I try to be just one of the guys
There’s a little something inside that won’t let me.
No matter how hard I try to have an open mind
There’s a little clock inside that keeps ticking
There’s only one difference between you and me
When I look at myself, all I can see
I’m just another lady without a baby
No matter how hard I try to be just one of the guys
There’s a little something inside that won’t let me.
No matter how hard I try to have an open mind
There’s a little cop inside that prevents
I’m not gonna break for you
I’m not gonna pray for you
I’m not gonna pay for you
that’s not what ladies do
oh when you break
when you break
oh when you break
oh when you break.”

We were thrilled in June when the New Pornographers released our Song-of-the-Week, the title track from their soon-come album Brill Bruisers.   Now comes our second taste from the album, Dan Bejar’s driving War On The East Coast, along with a video directed by Thom Glunt.  About the video, the band’s A.C. Newman said, “We were going for some mid-nineties second-tier Britpop attitude. In the past, I’ve never really wanted to be in the video. But with this, we wanted to have fun and fully be IN the video.” Check it out below and get ready for Brill Bruisers.  We can’t wait.

Avi Buffalo was covered in one of the first concert reviews to appear on The Lefort Report back in 2010.  So, in addition to the band being phenomenally talented, we have a soft spot for these Long Beach denizens.  Leader Avi Zahner-Isenberg has been off honing and exhibiting his enfant-terrible instrumental skills these past few years, but the band will soon (finally) release their sophomore album, At Best Cuckold.   In advance of the album, the band has released the new video for the first single off of the album, So What.  Watch it below in which Avi dreams/wanders across varied terrains (including the Oceano dunes?) in the thrall of a ravishing brunette.  Check it out below.  Another jangle-gem from Avi Buffalo that bodes well for the new album on Sub Pop.

Two of our favorite singer-songwriters, Sharon Van Etten and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, collaborated last night when Vernon joined Van Etten and her band in Minneapolis to perform Love More and Every Time The Sun Comes Up.  Check out the heavenly harmonies and Vernon’s infallible falsetto in particular on Love More.  That’s beauty.  Right there.

While we were away, Glastonbury happened.  Regrets, we’ve had a few more (though we’ll take Pietrasanta this time ’round).  Amongst other things, Glastonbury means: Elbow at its best.  The Manchester band has made its mark via and on Glastonbury (headlining spectacularly on several occasions).  From this year’s Elbow set at Glasto (which was saved by their stage crew after a lightning storm), watch below as Elbow performs New York City Morning, one of the many highlights from their show at the Wiltern in LA in May.  Check it out, and get ye to Glastonbury next year.  For another great glimpse of Elbow at festival, check out at bottom their performance of Flyboy/Blue Lunette at the Radio1/BBC Three stage at T in the Park 2014.  Summertime in England.

Speaking of Sharon Van Etten…. On our recent hiatus, we realized we had let ten music-less days slip by.  Unimaginable.  And we hadn’t missed it at all.  But with the omnipresent Kanye, Iggy, bla, bla, bla, of the music blogosphere, it’s not hard to grasp the cumulative effect on the ears and the need for a music fast.  At the end of that 10-day period, however, we hopped a TGV north and, to help pass the kilometers, we threw on the headphones.  Sharon Van Etten randomly came on, and we were immediately transported by the songs on her phenomenal recent album, Are We There (easily one of the Best Albums of 2014).

Only then did we again recall the import of great music in our lives, especially where soundtrack and life coalesce and enhance each other.  Sitting with the ones we love (sur la vitesse), as the sunflowers, lavender and white-cow clusters blurred by, Van Etten sang (on Our Love) “I’m a sinner and I have sinned…it’s our love, it’s our love, it’s our love, it’s our love,” all to a warped melodic slant on The Lion Sleeps Tonight “weem-o-way” chorus (to our ears anyway).  Somehow our TGV mise-en-scène was enhanced greatly by the SVE soundtrack.  Each takes his own.

Coincidentally, Van Etten has today released the official video for Our Love, which you can watch below.  As conducted by Karen Collins, the video is…well…lovely.  Though we regretfully missed her recent California shows, Van Etten remains on tour and the remaining dates (through December) can be found HERE.