We previously wrote about Toronto’s The Wooden Sky and their five-part series of live performance videos shot in the Grace On A Hill church in Toronto, all as directed by Scott Cudmore.  The band has now released “Part Two” of the series in which the band performs another beauty, Child of the Valley, off of their new album.

For the tiny number (yeah, right) of iPad owners out there, you can watch The Shins live courtsey of NPR Music at 7 pm Pacific tonight.  Tonight’s show at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City will undoubtedly feature songs from their impending album Port of Morrow.

The live concert will be streamed tonight only in the new NPR Music iPad app.  The free app can be downloaded in the iTunes app store.  If you are amongst the unwashed without an iPad, you can watch the show tomorrow on NPR’s website.  Read all about it HERE.

Sharon Van Etten has just released the official video for her fine new song, Leonard, off her recently released album, Tramp.    Check it out below (via LATimes.com).  We can’t wait to see her on March 20th at the Avalon in LA.

Up and coming band, Milagres (who we’ve written about before), is coming to Muddy Waters on March 21st, courtesy of Club Mercy.  The band is featured in NPR’s most recent Tiny Desk Concert.  Take some time to check them out (max of 12 minutes).  It’s well worth it.  And then get ye to Muddy Waters.  Leader, Kyle Wilson and the band gradually insinuate their way into your ears, not unlike the effect of Guy Garvey and Elbow.  Check out the Tiny Desk Concert below as the band plays Hard To Stay, Halfway and their popular Glowing Mouth (the title track of their most recent album).

Further to our recent posts about Bruce Springsteen appearances during Fallon’s Springsteen Week last week, you can stream the new Bruce Springsteen album, Wrecking Ball, below.  The album will be fully released tomorrow, so check it out while you can.  Our favorite:  Rocky Ground for its new elements (for Springsteen).  But in addition the hymnal horns within the album add heft and hue.

The Mynabirds are coming to Soho in Santa Barbara on March 11th in advance of the release of their sophomore album Generals on June 5th on Saddle Creek.  The band’s 2010′s debut, What We Lose in the Fire We Gain in the Flood, appeared in our Best Albums of 2010 list.  Since then lead singer-songwriter Laura Burhenn has been busy as a member of Bright Eyes’ touring band.  On the new album, Burhenn has again teamed up with winningly ascendant producer Richard Swift.  We’re advised that Generals is “filled with armies of stomps and claps, sweeping full spectrum orchestrations, and moments that range from intensely personal pleas to shout-out-loud protests with teeth.”  You can download and check out the propulsive title track below.  It’s a rocker with a vengeance.  Get your black boots and war paint on and head down to Soho on March 11th (tickets over at Club Mercy) to see the band, along with Portland’s Y La Bamba (stream their compelling new Steve Berlin-produced album, Court the Storm, below), and fellow Saddle Creek artist, Big Harp.

The mercurial Jack White was the musical guest on SNL last night, and he performed Love Interruption (with an all-female band) and Sixteen Saltines (with an all-male band) from his impending “solo” album, Blunderbuss.  You can’t say he isn’t egalitarian.  Like many, we love White’s oft-searing guitar playing, which can be found aplenty in Sixteen Saltines (but with some interesting effect twists).

Love Interruption:

Sixteen Saltines:

We know there are Springsteen haters out there. We are not amongst them.  After being completely won over by his Born to Run tour when it came through Santa Barbara (at Robertson Gym) in 1975, we have been huge fans of Springsteen throughout the years.  Sure there have been some questionable moves and moments (and some repeated themes) mixed in with the brilliance, but at day’s end he’s only human, and there can be no denying that Springsteen has a heart of gold and has made some gospel music for these ages.  Ireland has U2, and we’ve thankfully got Bruce. Yeah, he may not be your current hipster-slacker fave, but these times call for reason and humility, which Springsteen has never lacked.  So now, just when we need it most, Springsteen has penned invaluable songs and a new album as gifts and galvanizing rallying points for this needlessly polarized nation (Limbaugh: lest you shape up, boy, you are going straight to hell).  In these songs Springsteen seeks merely to implore us to remember and rally around the historical essence of this nation:  compared to other powers, we have always taken great pains to care for our own.  Will we still do that, or will the dividers and special interests take over?  Time will tell, but Springsteen isn’t waiting around to find out. Paramount amongst the new songs off his new album are We Take Care of Our Own and Wrecking Ball, both of which were performed on the Jimmy Fallon Show, kicking off Bruce Springsteen Week on Monday night (in honor of Springsteen’s new album, Wrecking Ball, which hits this week).  Jimmy Fallon has, through his repeated emphasis of and homages to great music, become our favorite late-night host (due respect to Dave and Kimmel).

SHORTCUT:  If you’re stretched for time, just watch the two songs immediately below and the last one at the very bottom.

Check out Bruce and the band (including Tom Morello) below as they perform We Take Care of Our Own and Wrecking Ball.  Suffice it to say, after watching these performances, we were wrecked.

And then last night (on Fallon’s birthday) Springsteen capped off the week by showing up again, and Bruce and Fallon (again doffing his impressive Neil Young impersonation) covered LMFAO’s Sexy And I Know It.  Then Bruce and the E Street Band performed new songs Death To My Hometown and Jack Of All Trades.  The Roots then joined Springsteen, Tom Morello, the E Street Band and Fallon (on cowbell, natch) for a full rave-up of the rousing chestnut, The E Street Shuffle (“Everybody form a line!!!”).  Great stuff below, courtesy of the Audio Perv.

Check out Iron and Wine performing a rocking-blues Freedom Hangs Like Heaven (from their EP Woman King) at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia via RadioVA.  The song lyrics follow.

“Mary, carry your babe
Bound up tight like lips around a whimper
Your fingers over my face
Blind eyed Samson driven to the temple
And night birds digging until dawn
Freedom hangs like heaven over everyone
Ain’t nobody knows what the newborn holds
But his mama says he’ll walk on water
And wander back home

Mary, carry your shame
Well past all those eyes across the avenue
Fish heads running from rain
You know i’ll do anything you want me to
Lamp oil lovers may say
“freedom hangs like heaven over everyone”
Ain’t nobody knows what the newborn holds
But his papa’s going to hide shaking gristle
And shaking like bone

Mary, carry my name
Hoof marks hacked up all i had to offer you
Looked all over this place
Lost your portrait lately when the winter blew
In like herod and them
Freedom hangs like heaven over everyone
Ain’t nobody knows what the newborn holds
But a dollar says he’ll lick that devil
And do it alone”

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks played Monday at Soho in Santa Barbara in support of their new album, Mirror Traffic, brought to us by the indie-music maestros at Club Mercy.   Mirror Traffic is the Jicks’ best album in recent memory, and so expectations were high for the show.  After years of superb live shows in support of their earlier albums, we had been sorely disappointed by their last show at Soho in support of 2008’s Real [Emotional] Trash.  Aptly named, we ultimately said.  What had evolved from Pavement as intelligent, quirky and melodic music accompanied by clever and challenging lyrics had devolved by 2008 into long-winded, prog-blues jams and uninspiring guitar-noodling by Malkmus at Soho that year.  Then came the Pavement reunion and their tour de force show at the Fox Theater in Pomona in April 2010.  And all was right again.  But we were concerned when we learned that Beck would helm the new Jicks album as its producer.  But Beck correctly steered Malkmus back to shortened and melody-favoring songs on Mirror Traffic without the prog-jam trappings of the last album.  And so with the strong new album in hand we were keyed up for this night’s set at Soho.

After opening band Nurses gave us an interesting mix of songs and complexities in their set, Malkmus and the Jicks sauntered onto the Soho stage, Malkmus doffing a red-glitter ballcap and nimble bassist, Joanna Bolme, working a working-class/prison-garb onesy (beguiling to many of the male workers/prisoners in the audience nonetheless).  Utility infielder, Mike Clark, on keys, guitar and vocals, and great replacement drummer, Jake Morris, rounded out the band.

Their set opened with Tiger from the new album and, like many of the Jicks’ songs, it is filled with complex chords, stop-starts, tempo-tantrums (all of which smacks of rock-jazz) and nearly-indecipherable, Scrabbled lyrics.  Such are Malkmus and the Jicks, and we love ’em when they’re on.  We have a love-hate relationship with Malkmus’s guitar-playing.  Most of the time it’s accomplished, challenging and riveting, but at other times when Malkmus seems unmotivated or un-mused, he sputters and spews before giving up the ghost.  We heard both this night.

The band moved from Tigers to the comparatively simple crowd-pleaser, The Hook, off their fine first album.  But then it was back to the fervent rock-jazz complexities of Spazz, Share the Red, and Forever 28 (the latter with its charming chorus-chant, “this just might hurt!”), before they slowed it down for the sweetly-sung Asking Price.  The Jicks then kicked matters back up with the Pavement-esque and poignant Stick Figures in Love, before playing another “hit,” Jenny and the Ess-Dog.  After a few more obscure new and old songs, the band elected to play their new singalong charmer, Senator, before ending the set with a couple of longer songs, Animal Midnight (off of Pig Lib) and the unreleased, circumambulating rock-jam, Surreal Teenagers.

After some solid prodding from the audience, the band returned for an encore that started off with the familiar Vanessa from Queens.  And then the unthinkable happened.  Adding to a disturbing new trend amongst “indie-rock” bands in which they waste time covering heinous 70s “hits,” the almighty Malkmus lowered himself to cover (albeit energetically) the horrific and hoary 1976 Boston song, Peace of Mind.  While many in the audience were enamored (it’s called “pandering,” Stephen, and it isn’t pretty), we tapped our foot and awaited an improved finish.  Unfortunately one sensed the life had gone out of the band, and next was a desultory Velvet Underground cover (What Goes On) that segued into a daft jam that ultimately ended with the band throwing in the towel and resorting to a singing of the chorus to the Doors’ The End.  The end of everything.  Indeed.

On the whole, the band played with verve and sounded far better than in support of Real Trash.  And the new Mirror Traffic songs definitely helped the cause this night.  It obviously was no help that the band seemed tired (“we just came from Vegas,” explained Bolme) and were anxiously awaiting the following night’s tour-ending show in San Francisco.  Matters would be helped immensely if the Jicks would cede their setlist to someone else (a manager, a parent, anyone really).  Then perhaps heinous covers and lesser obscurities could be supplanted by more deserving songs (e.g., where were their best songs this night:  Church On White, Trojan Curfew, Ramp of Death, Freeze the Saints, etc.?).  Still, Malkmus has written some of the best songs in the American oeuvre, and he and the Jicks can play with incredible aplomb, so we’ll cut the slackers some more slack.  Until next time.  But then the jick’s up.