Last night David Letterman had The Flaming Lips (with Sean Lennon, John’s son) to perform Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.  True to form, the Lips’ performance featured Wayne Coyne’s usual stage ensemble and confetti.  Letterman has this week been commemorating the 50th anniversary of The Beatles first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.  Tonight it’s rumored that Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr will perform.

We love everything about Leslie Feist.  And we love just about everything about M. Ward (we’ll skip the Him part).  Combine the two and you’ve got a recipe for musical magic.  Watch below as Feist covers M. Ward’s superb song Post-War (avec gratuitous, scary performance art).  Superb melange.  We can’t wait for Feist’s next album and tour, hopefully this year.

We were originally sucked into the beauty of Perfume Genius by The National’s live performances last year of that group’s superb song Learning.  Now comes the release of The National’s stellar studio recording of Learning as a bonus track to their newly-released single I Need My Girl.  Both tracks are available for download HERE.   You can listen to their recording of Learning below.

But we can also finally report the fantastic news that The National will perform at our hallowed Santa Barbara Bowl on April 25th.  Tickets go on sale on Saturday HERE.  It will be the Best Concert of 2014.  So you just might want to be there.

While we recover from the news that she won’t be playing anywhere in California OTHER than that damned Coachella, Neko Case has been appearing recently on the likes of Conan and Prairie Home Companion.

Below, first watch Ms. Case and her rousing performance last night on Conan of Ragtime (from her The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, one of our Top Albums of 2013). We love this version and the full-band, superb support of Calexico (along with her tour band).  It’s a gem, with Ms. Case decked out in skeleton pants (clearly she’s ready for Coachella).

Afterwards, listen to her performances this past weekend (via the embedded widget) of the ever-fantastic American treasure, Prairie Home Companion.  If you don’t have time to listen to the entirety of this highly entertaining show, you can find Ms. Case’s participation at the times indicated above the PHC widget.

• 00:55:00 Garrison Keillor talks with Neko Case
• 00:56:15 Neko Case performs City Swans
• 01:00:18 Neko Case performs Calling Cards
• 01:42:30 GK talks with Neko Case
• 01:43:00 Neko Case performs Night Still Comes
• 01:47:14 Neko Case performs Bracing for Sunday

In case you were on Mars at the time, Kendrick Lamar stole the Grammy Awards broadcast with his performance during Imagine Dragons’ presentation of its top-selling song Radioactive.  And, oops, he (they) did it again on Saturday Night Live. Watch below (with far better sound than at the Grammys). Speaking of imagining, can you imagine how sick Imagine Dragons are of performing this simplistic song and banging those gongs?  The mind boggles and melts, radioactivity or not.

It’s a rare day these days in California–rain is coming as we write.  Good news, even we would say.  But all we can think about this morn is Sam Baker’s song The Tattooed Woman.  Baker is one of our best lyricists, his songs telling keenly observed and eloquently articulated character studies that sail or rend your heart and mind.  The Tattooed Woman is no exception.  Taken from his superb album Say Grace (one of our Top 15 Albums of 2013), Baker sings in the song of a disconsolate woman and her uneasy lover and his foreboding forecast (of rain, trouble, something terribly tenebrous).  It gets under your skin…like a tattoo.  Watch below as Baker, Carrie Elkin and Chip Dolan performed the song last September at In The Woods in the Netherlands.

Rain is coming, that’s how it feels.

The song’s lyrics follow the video.

To see another side of Baker’s songs, watch/listen to his heartwarming song Isn’t Love Great at bottom.

t h e t a t t o o e d w o m a n

the tattooed woman
she sleeps in my bed
the ink is dry
the dogs are fed
the moon is safe
her face is red
the tattooed woman
she sleeps in my bed
her hair is black
her skin is white
she’s pulled the sheets around her tight
i wish i had the right
to comfort her as a husband might
rain is coming
that’s how it feels
now i lay me down to sleep
the lord out wandering with his sheep
there’s oh so many souls to keep
now i lay me down to sleep
rain is coming
that’s how it feels

Arcade Fire (heard of ’em?) are touring through the southern hemisphere right now and recently showed up on Australian radio station Triple J to perform some songs live. Chief among those songs was Normal Person (off of the new-ish Reflektor), which you can watch below.  This is the band at their best, minus the Reflektor production trappings.  Don’t believe us?  Even Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman agrees.  You can listen to the full Triple J session and other Reflektor and non-Reflektor song performances after.

Why it was just the other day we were remarking how St. Vincent had made good progress in humanizing her replicant se’f (see her sweet soccer-kick instruction video at bottom).  Now comes the video for Digital Witness, the first official video from her impending self-titled LP (due out on Feb. 25 via Loma Vista).  As you will see, in the video Automaton Annie (Clark) returns to her robotic ways.  Having said that, we like the influence of David Byrne (her ongoing collaborationist) on St. Vincent’s music and hair.  The song grabbed us immediately with its Talking Heads meets Eleanor Friedberger melange.

You can pre-order St. Vincent HERE.

Broken Bells (the Shins’ James Mercer and Danger Mouse) will soon release their second album After The Disco, and appeared on the Jimmy Kimmel Show last night in support.  Watch below as the band first performs Holding On To Life.   Check out the (intentional?) Bee Gees-esque chorus and the Arcade Fire-ish bridge on the song.  The group also performed the title song  After The Disco, in the process furthering our conspiracy-theory that the new album is conceptually about the Bee Gees and the disco era which they wrought.  Lived through that, and alive to tell–can still smell the cologne clouds and feel the slimy polyester.  Movin’ on, people.  If you want to hear the entire new album it is streaming this week HERE.

We’ve been hospitable to NYC band Hospitality on these pages for a couple of years, and in June 2012 managed to catch their compelling opening set (for Electric Guest) at Velvet Jones amidst an inhospitably small crowd.  A shame.  Today the band has released its second album, Trouble, on Merge Records.  Coincidentally, the band has also released (via Stereogum) their official video for new track Going Out (featuring none other than indie-hall-of-famers Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips).  While the video is enjoyable, the song and its sultry groove are the stars of the production (and particularly when it takes flight at the 2:39 mark). Watch/listen below.  You can also go HERE to stream and buy Trouble.  We like what we hear.