Brit super-band Elbow has today released its subtly-affecting official video for My Sad Captains from their fantastic new album, The Take Off And Landing of Everything.  Watch below and listen for the horns heralding one of the outstanding “One Day Like This“ moments on the new album (the other being New York Morning), with its building handclaps and Shakespearean allusions.  What a waste of perfect time indeed.  Here’s to all our pals of yore and ‘morrow!

Before headlining (yet again) at the Glastonbury Festival in June, the band is coming to America next month (see tour dates at bottom) for a scant twelve dates, and we can’t wait to catch them on that special day, May 28th, at The Wiltern in LA, and hear Guy Garvey sonorously deliver My Sad Captains.  Without doubt the show will be one of the highlights of this concert year.  We only pass this way once.

The song’s lyrics follow the video.

The regrouped and revamped Pixies have a new album out (Indy Cindy, their first in 20 years) and have been out on tour in support (having played both weekends of Corpchella to generally rave reviews, and managing to visit the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur in between).  Been a long dang time since our minds and viruses were blown by the band in 1989 on the Doolittle tour.

We have only heard a couple of songs off the new album and, Frankly, have not been overly impressed.  Until today.  We will now have to revisit and listen more closely to Indy Cindy.  This morning the band showed up on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic and played, amongst others, new song Greens and Blues, together with one of their hallmarks, Monkey Gone to Heaven.  As you can see below, Greens and Blues comes off very well here and Monkey Gone to Heaven is, well, gigantic (God is Seven!!).  You can listen/watch the entire Morning Becomes Eclectic session HERE.

To stream Indy Cindy, go over to The Guardian HERE.

Neil Young will on May 27th release his new album of cover songs entitled A Letter Home, which was “reproduced” by Jack White and Young.  Check out Young below performing Bert Jansch’s song Needle of Death in a refurbished 1947 Voice-o-Graph vinyl recording booth at White’s Third Man Records in Nashville. Needle of Death’s inspiration for Young’s superb On The Beach song Ambulance Blues is obvious (listen to it at bottom).  Young told Rolling Stone back in 1992:

“I was especially taken by Needle Of Death, such a beautiful and angry song. That guy was so good… And years later, on On The Beach, I wrote the melody of Ambulance Blues by styling the guitar part completely on Needle Of Death. I wasn’t even aware of it, and someone else drew my attention to it.”

Here is a list of the cover songs on the new album:

1. Changes (Phil Ochs)
2. Girl From The North Country (Bob Dylan)
3. Needle of Death (Bert Jansch)
4. Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot)
5. Crazy (Willie Nelson)
6. Reason To Believe (Tim Hardin)
7. On The Road Again (Willie Nelson)
8. If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot)
9. Since I Met You Baby (Ivory Joe Hunter)
10. My Hometown (Bruce Springsteen)
11. I Wonder If I Care As Much (Everly Brothers)

Let’s face facts.  Coldplay will, in most respects, always be the little brother to U2, Radiohead and others (Travis, perhaps) from the UK music scene.  Don’t get us wrong, Chris Martin and cohorts have written some beautiful, impossibly-catchy songs over the last decade plus, and certainly can put on a big-top live show.  But Coldplay is never going to be high on the list of the most-inventive, most-influential outfits (at least compared with the aforesaid bands).  To wit, the band will next month release new album Ghost Stories.  We’ve all heard the first tracks from the album, Midnight and Magic, and we at Chez Lefort were soundly unimpressed by the songs and even more concerned than normal about the artistic vitality of the band’s new album.

Thankfully the band has today shared another, better song entitled Oceans via a live performance for BBC Radio 1, which you can listen to/watch below.   The song is particularly compelling given Martin’s recent high-profile split with wife Gwyneth Paltrow.  Check out Martin below singing about a failing relationship amid spare, tasteful backup by the band.  His pain is palpable (Paltrowble?).

The band also announced today the release of Coldplay: Ghost Stories, a 60-minute special that will be broadcast on NBC on Sunday, May 18th that will mesh live video with “360-degree imagery.”

Check out Oceans below.

As we’ve been regularly mentioning, the great Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz, et. al) is poised to release his solo debut Everyday Robots next week.  We’ve heard a good portion of the new “cathartic” album, and it is, as we have come to expect from Albarn, a melodic, massively-affecting meisterwork.  Today Albarn has dropped his official video for the magnificent Heavy Seas of Love collaboration with Brian Eno.  We were a little slow and only yesterday posted last week’s Song of the Week, but we can’t stop listening to Heavy Seas of Love so let’s just call it now:  Heavy Seas of Love is our Song of the Week this week.  Check out below the charming and crafty iPad-created video below with its jumble of of journeyings.  Afterwards, go over and stream Everyday Robots via iTunes Radio.  It will surely vie for Best Album of 2014.

What a long, strange trip it’s been at Chez Lefort these last few weeks.  It’s enough to make ya wanna Shriek.  Speaking of which, Baltimore’s Wye Oak is set to release their new album, Shriek, on April 29th on Merge.  The band had a major breakthrough in 2011 with their Civilian album, which featured and capitalized on the rousing guitar-play of leader Jenn Wasner.  We were initially shocked that Shriek eschews Wasner’s guitar-work to focus on synths and bass, but repeated listens reveal that the broader palette has paid off soundly for the band.  Along the way Wasner takes on the vocal mien of many of the great female vocalists to great effect (check out the closing trilogy of the Kate Bush-like Paradise, followed by the decidedly Joni Mitchell-y I Know The Law, capped off by the pop brilliance of Logic of Color).

The first sample we heard from the album came in the way of the first official video from the album for the ebullient marching-mode of track Tower, which you can watch below in all of its painterly, Mary Poppins-y glory.  We’ve since sampled the album in its entirety, and can tell you it is a superbly deep and rewarding album.  To get a feel, you can now stream it over at NPR until the 28th.  If you do nothing else with the stream, put the melodic-beauty Logic of Color (track 10) on repeat.  It was our Song of the Week last week and helped pull us through.

Get ready to Shriek.  The album’s tracklist is below the video and you can pre-order it HERE.

Shriek Tracklist:
1. Before
2. Shriek
3. The Tower
4. Glory
5. Sick Talk
6. Schools Of Eyes
7. Despicable Animal
8. Paradise
9. I Know The Law
10. Logic Of Color

During the week between the Corpchella weekends, the usual media-fest has unfurled.  Last night Broken Bells (The Shins’ James Mercer and Danger Mouse) appeared on Conan and performed Control from their recent album After The Disco.  Check out below as the band performs Control, which could be a Brit synth-pop-soul song from the likes of ABC/Thompson Twins, but minus the synths and with much-needed horn-section embellishment.  As great as they are as songwriters/producers/players, the boys might want to lose a little more control on stage.

In case you missed it, one of our favorite bands, the Central Coast’s own Buellton, plays Soho tonight in support of their sensational new album, Silent Partner.  The band has also just announced they have inventively teamed with great local brewers Telegraph Brewing to release Silent Partner as a digital download with bottles of Telegraph’s saison-style ale (see label below) beginning May 1st.  Beerton anyone?  Get your tickets for the Soho show HERE.  And make sure you pick up Silent Partner and craft-beer at your local Telegraph distributor or separately the old-fashioned (sorta) way HERE.

Last weekend a host of Irish artists and musicians performed in London’s Royal Albert Hall to commemorate Irish President Michael D. Higgins‘ historic visit (the first official visit of an Irish President) to the UK.  The event was dubbed Ceiliúradh (celebration).

Watch below first as the great Glen Hansard performs Parting Glass in Myles O’Reilly’s (Arbitus Yarns) short video of the event’s rehearsal and celebration.

Next up watch the entire gang (including Hansard, Lisa Hannigan, Elvis Costello and a host of other fine musicians) perform the modern Irish anthem The Auld Triangle.   The song was made famous by The Dubliners and attributed to Irish writer Brendan Behan about the occurrences in a prison (actually Mountjoy Prison where Behan had once been ensconced for his IRA activities) and the triangle’s beating on the day a convict is set to be executed. The triangle in the title evidently refers to the large metal triangle which was beaten daily in Mountjoy Prison to wake the inmates.  The triangle still hangs in the prison at the center where the wings meet on a metal gate.  The beauty/irony of the song’s performance (near the “Royal canal”) is not lost on the joyous crowd.

After, watch Hansard, Hannigan and John Sheahan perform Hansard’s Oscar-winning song Falling Slowly.

And finally, watch President Higgins’ speech.  And give thanks.

Arcade Fire headlined and closed out Corpchella last night.  We admit we’ve been partially nonplussed by their album Reflektor, which comprised the large majority of their set at Corpchella.  But live those songs take on a less-produced power, and the band also piled on some “golden oldies,” including Keep The Car Running, Tunnels, Power Out, Rebellion, and of course closing with the all-time finisher Wake Up (out in the audience with The Preservation Jazz Hall Band in step).   And there were cameos, including Blondie’s Debbie Harry’s appearance to help the band cover Blondie’s seminal Heart of Glass and an epic version of Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains).

Check out a replay of their entire set below (with the setlist listed after with embedded song times):

Arcade Fire’s fantastic headlining set at Coachella Festival 2014, weekend 1. April 13, 2014. Setlist:
0:00 intro music (Reflektor backwards) + Mirror man introducing.
1:03 Reflektor
7:57 Flashbulb Eyes
11:07 Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
15:20 Rebellion (Lies)
21:30 Joan of Arc
26:13 The Suburbs
31:55 The Suburbs (Continued)
33:18 Ready to Start
37:57 Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
43:33 No Cars Go
49:31 Keep the Car Running
53:17 Afterlife (w/ ‘My Body Is a Cage’ intro and New Order’s “Temptation” snippet)
59:39 It’s Never Over (Oh Orpheus)
1:06:58 Heart of Glass w/ Debbie Harry (Blondie)
1:10:49 Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) w/ Debbie Harry (Blondie)
1:16:15 Normal Person
1:20:18 Here Comes the Night Time
1:27:29 Wake Up
1:33:14 The band w/ Preservation Hall Jazz Ban