Check out below The Kansas Bible Company performing their song The Desert She Screams (via American Songwriter).  We love anything Kansas (though the band isn’t).  Keep your eyes on these midwest (mideast?) boys.

It’s Christmas Eve.  So.  Watch/ listen to Sufjan Stevens singing two of the more appropriate songs (repeated as necessary, for emphasis) for the next 24 hours (and forever).  And to all a goodnight.  Peace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZoKWoCxNXg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V94ISXp0rUI&feature=em-uploademail

Gomez is one of those bands whose live performances always transcend their recordings.  By a country mile.  Or two.  They need to get that fixed.  Their 2011 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival set was surprisingly one of the absolute highlights of HSBF that year (and amongst superb sets from Elbow, Broken Social Scene, Bright Eyes and others).  Check out below band members Ben Ottewell and Ian Ball performing Equalize off of their most recent (2011) album Whatever’s On Your Mind for Sideshow Alley in Australia.  G’Day!

In all (and repeated) candor, we think the lad dubbed The Tallest Man on Earth has received too much unjustified raving from critics.  It has seemed wrongly un-critical and hypocritical, if you will.  Based on his most recent release below, it turns out TTMOE might just want to skip the pretense of thinly-veiled songwriting, cut out the middle-man and only perform cover songs.  Because it’s hard to mess up beauties like Damien Jurado’s Working Titles, one of our Best Songs of 2012 (still to come).  Check out TTMOE below with his wife Idiot Wind’s Amanda Hollingby Matsson.  Working Titles is a song from Jurado’s 2012 album, Maraqopa (also one of our Best Albums of 2012).  After the cover, check out Jurado’s fine take.  The lyrics are at bottom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8gwPVsS1TE&feature=em-uploademail

Working Titles:

“You could mess up my life in a poem
Have me divorced by the time of the chorus
There’s no need to change any sentence
When you always decide where I go next

Many nights you would hide from the audience
When they were not in tune with your progress
In the end you’re a fool like the journalist
Who turns what you sing into business

You could use to be more like a hero
A darker shade of damage distortion
Wearing death like a cape or a costume
Cut your ties and leave town when you want to

Killing time ’til I pass through the chamber
Or the room you keep my replacement
so fed up, still you’re starving on paper
You’re no him, but he’s you, only better

Leave me an exit to damage
I could use a ledge to jump off of
I wasn’t lying when I said this was over
I have questions that lead to more questions

Running time that will cut off my fingers
You wrote about me on every new record
And I’ll show up in a title of your song
I only hope somebody requests it

What’s it like for you in Washington
I’ve only seen photos of Washington
I’ll never know

Leave me Manhattan, I want the evergreens
Write me a song I can sing in my sleep
As sure as the rain that will fall where you stand
I want you and the skyline, these are my demands

What’s it like for you in Washington
I’ve only seen photos of Washington
I’ll never know, know”

Joe Strummer passed away exactly ten years ago to the day today.  What better tribute than the video below of The Clash on the Tom Snyder Show from 1981, which was featured in one of our earliest posts on The Lefort Report and which you can read HERE.  He was one of the best of all time, with a heart of gold.  We miss ye Joe, and can’t wait to see that left leg jammin’ in the bye and bye.

We just can’t shut up about Sufjan Stevens and his recent Christmess Sing-A-Long.  Stevens is closing out his tour with a two-night stand at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC, which ends tonight.  Check out below a few stellar songs from last night’s first show at the Bowery.  Thanks to LysWantTwo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tui1xMOZmTk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNT2u9enD2E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf_49h-Ls_k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owk0b9Y1I9c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z_waENi9d8

Mayan, shmayan.  Check out (and download) below Giant Giant Sand and the gifted Howe Gelb’s tangential take on this end-of-the-world nonsense in their song, Not The End of The World.  The piano-based track is an alternate take (featuring both Gelb and Lonna Kelley) from the band’s great recent album Tucson (Deluxe Edition), which Edition includes 27 (!) songs  including different versions of eight songs from the album.  One of the biggest and best surprises of the concert year was the phenomenal set put on by Gelb and Giant Giant Sand at this year’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.  Gelb and band are masters of manifold music genres, varying from Latino sounds, to blistering rock, to piano jazz at the drop of a sombrero.  It was a tour de force.  Superb.  Check out the sublime Not the End of the World (and listen to some of their other songs), and then go buy Tucson HERE.

We’re here to tell you:  no one can top Sufjan Stevens when it comes to Christmas concerts.  Stevens, Rosie Thomas and crew simply sleighed on their recent tour in support of his new Christmas box-set, Silver & Gold.  Another group putting on a Christmas concert (for the 10th year in a row apparently) is the mega-group out of Dallas, The Polyphonic Spree.  They are currently touring in support of a new album entitled Holidaydream.  While on tour, the troupe packed into NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert space with horns, scads of female singers and assorted other paraphernalia.  Check out their three-song set below.  What (cult?) leader Tim DeLaughter lacks vocally, he more than makes up for with vigor and vim.  The set list is below.

Set List:

Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
The Christmas Song
Silver Bells

And now for something completely different from Ben Gibbard (Death Cab, Postal Service) amongst this holiday season.  Gone was the solo acoustic guitar last night when Gibbard performed with Los Angeles mariachi troupe Trio Ellas (huh? there’s about tres trios here!).  Gibbard rearranged Something’s Rattling from the singer’s solo album, Former Lives, and though the performance goes on a bit too long, we love the comparative daring-do by Gibbard and the ensemble delivery.  Bravo!

John Roderick has, as a part of the The Long Winters, written some of our favorite songs and released some of the most resilient albums of indie-pop in the annals (including the “lost” masterpiece, When I Pretend to Fall–more on that soon).  Roderick is also one of the funnier folks around, as heard on his various podcast shows, including with Merlin Mann on the Roderick On the Line podcast (thanks to Tad Wagner for that hint).  Roderick and musician Jonathan Coulton recently released a new holiday album of originals dubbed One Christmas at a Time.  Check out Mr. Roderick below solo on a song from the album entitled The Week Between (lolling between pathos and bathos).  Nicely done.