Today starting at 10 am Pacific time Wilco’s entire new album, “The Whole Love,” will be streaming for 24 hours at their website, Wilcoworld.net.  The album will be released on September 27th on their own, brand new label dBpm.  According to the band’s email, today’s streaming is “a reward for your labors, our labors, and those of our forefathers/mothers.”   Let’s see if it can labor off this flippin’ fog while it’s at it.

The Telegraph has a sweet interview with Guy Garvey of the great British band, Elbow, which ends with Garvey calling for “unbridled positivity” at their shows.  Amen brother!  We can’t wait to pass along all the positivity we can muster when the band plays the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco some time (schedule yet to be finalized) between September 3oth and October 2nd (Friday to Sunday).

Here’s an excellent excerpt from The Telegraph interview (emphasis added):

“This may be Elbow’s area of speciality: the equivocal anthem. The uplifting singalong coda and glass-half-full sentiments of their most celebrated song, One Day Like This, have made it a staple of ads and soundtracks…. In a BBC poll to find the public’s favourite Desert Island Discs, it was the highest-rated song of the past 10 years. “I’m dead proud of that. It feels as if we’ve added to the canon. That’s the goal. It’s like something [Elbow guitarist] Mark Potter said – ‘That’ll last longer than our gravestones.’ ” In a live setting, Elbow’s poetic ambiguity is transformed into something else. “You hear bands saying, ‘We’re gonna blow people away.’ I’ve never really liked that kind of confrontational thing. Its not, ‘We’ll show them what we’ve got.’ It’s, ‘Look what we can do together.’ “That’s the great thing about singalongs. It might not be very cool, but what the f— is cool? I spent years trying to be cool, and I’m not very good at it. So let’s just get stuck in with the unbridled positivity.””

In the meantime, to get you in the mood, check out the videos of Grounds for Divorce and One Day Like This from Festival V in 2009, followed by a BBC broadcast from this year’s Glastonbury Music Festival of the entire Elbow set (after the blather finishes at :46).  You can also go over to Absolute Radio and check out Elbow’s live session at St. Paul’s Cathedral that is streaming only until September 8th.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGqoB6oB4Ic

Before they played at the Santa Barbara Bowl, My Morning Jacket played a benefit concert for KCRW in front of a scant 250 people (including an enterprising friend of ours) at Village Studios in Santa Monica.  The whole concert is now available to watch below, courtesy of NPR.  Check out the setlist over at NPR.

One of our favorites of this or any other year, Destroyer, has delivered a new official video for their song, Savage Night at the Opera (from their Tops of 2011 album, “Kaputt”).  Check it out.  Makes us want to head to Vancouver and hang for a bit in Gastown and environs.

Destroyer – Savage Night at the Opera from Merge Records on Vimeo.

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks performed the previously unheard song, Surreal Teenagers, on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” Tuesday night.  The song is so obscure you can’t even find it on the new album released last week,  “Mirror Traffic.” Given the less poppy, more proggy, sound, we’re sure Beck gave it the boot from the album.  We can’t say we blame him (for once).  Different strokes, though.  Surreal Teenagers may be your Pumped Up Kicks, if you will.

We prefer the other song they did on Fallon before they played Surreal Teenagers, the “clean” (slow, snow job indeed) version of their prickly song, Senator.

Check ’em out.

News just in from TomWaits.com, you can stream the title song from Mr. Waits’ impending album, “Bad as Me,” below.  Vintage Waits, with the usual lyrical magic.  Our takeaway:  takes a sinner to know one.

Bad as Me

“You’re the head on the spear
You’re the nail on the cross
You’re the fly in my beer
You’re the key that got lost
You’re the letter from Jesus on the bathroom wall
You’re mother superior in only a bra
You’re the same kind of bad as me

I’m the hat on the bed
I’m the coffee instead
The fish or cut bait
I’m the detective up late
I’m the blood on the floor
The thunder and the roar
The boat that won’t sink
I just won’t sleep a wink
You’re the same kind of bad as me

No good you say
Well that’s good enough for me

You’re the wreath that caught fire
You’re the preach to the choir
You bite down on the sheet
But your teeth have been wired
You skid in the rain
You’re trying to shift
You’re grinding the gears
You’re trying to shift
And you’re the same kind of bad as me

They told me you were no good
I know you’ll take care of all my needs
You’re the same kind of bad as me

I’m the mattress in the back
I’m the old gunnysack
I’m the one with the gun
Most likely to run
I’m the car in the weeds
If you cut me I’ll bleed
You’re the same kind of bad as me
You’re the same kind of bad as me”

Tom Waits – Bad As Me by antirecords

On Monday night St. Vincent performed her new song Cruel on Letterman off of her new album “Strange Mercy.”  Check it out below.

That’s not your average pop fare.  Sort of smacks of Sufjan Stevens.  Say, St. Vincent isn’t just Sufjan playing dress-up is it?  After all, they’ve never been seen in one place together.  Oh, wait, never mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-_Z6c9Kg64

In support of their brilliant re-issuance of the previously-out-0f-print best albums of Mickey Newbury, Drag City Records recently provided the following accolades for Newbury from another of our favorites, Bill Callahan:

The last time we saw Bright Eyes was in April, the month of deadlines and imperatives.  The usual musical drifters, who normally co-sign for the minor chord caravans, were instead casted and recovering.  The die cast, in camera, we coasted south.  We crossed into the Inland Empire, defying our internal empirics, out-foxed by the Fox Theater and drawn by it’s blazing neon.  After the strangely-standard pre-show chat with Welch and Rawlings and a rousing set by Johnny and Jenny, out came the brilliant Bright Eyes.  And Conor and crew literally lit-up the Fox with death-and-taxes defying uplift, exceeding even our expectations from the solo sojourn.

Why this particularly configured congregation (Conor, Mike Mogis, Nate Walcott, drums, keyboards and horn players) brings out the best in Conor Oberst, we’ll leave for the musicographers to decipher.  Suffice it to say that at the Santa Barbara Bowl on September 25th there will be beauty and brightness.  There will be so much brightness that you will think at times that you’re listening to circa-70s Cars on a song or two.  Don’t miss it.

Below are more pictures from the April show, the set list, and a couple of videos to check out.  We’ll see you on the 25th.

All photos and videos by Lefort

While you were sleeping last night, or whatever else it was you were doing instead, Charles Bradley and the magnificent Menahan Street Band scorched and seared the stage at Soho.  Seriously, you’ll have to check with the fire department to see if Soho will be open for business tonight (checked: they’re open), the heat was turned up so high on stage.  Charles and Band put on one of the best performances of this or any other year.

Otis, James, Wilson–others have come and gone–but we haven’t cottoned to any previous live R&B rave-ups (well JB was pretty entertaining, but with a serious ‘tude) as much as the love-fest that Bradley and Band brought to Soho last night.  With regal revenants from Chess Records, Muscle Shoals and Stax Records seeming to slip and slap through the sound system, Bradley and the Menahans brought the musical gospel of soulful love.  There are others who are tapping into this old soul source anew (Sharon Jones, Amy RIP, etc.), but Bradley’s offering seems to our ears so much more authentic, heartfelt and lived-in.

If you haven’t read his heart-rending bio, suffice it to say that Charles Bradley has paid a life’s worth of dues (according to an interview with Josef Woodard in the Newspress, Bradley still lives in “the projects” in New York City with his mother and sister), but now at 62-years of age he’s been given a new lease on life (with options).  Thanks to Daptone Records and gifted  songwriter/guitarist Thomas “TNT” Brenneck (leader of the Menahans), this year Charles released his first album (the hardened “No Time for Dreaming”) and has since been taking the world by Irene in concert.

And so it was last night at Soho.  The Menahans came out and warmed the crowd up with a couple of soulful instrumentals, and it was clear that this was a top-shelf R&B band.  With duel-guitars, organ (manned by a fine Felix Pappalardi look-alike who also functioned as the MC), drums, bass, trumpet and trombone, the band filled Soho with a sweet soul sound.  And yet they did so with subtlety and restraint, not yielding to the temptation to needlessly bray and brawl like others that will go unmentioned.

And then Charles came out, and it was bedlam from the first sung note.  And the feeling was mutual.  When Bradley saw the large, adoring crowd he was overcome with emotion (he seemed in joyful tears a good portion of the night), and thanked the crowd repeatedly, vowing his love for them.  Charles and the Menahans proceeded to embroil the crowd in a great set of songs comprised predominantly of songs off the album, but also a couple of b-sides and a great cover of Neil Young’s Heart of Gold, which you can check below.  At the end of the 90-minute set, while the Menahans continued to smolder on the stage, Charles came down into the audience to express his gratitude by handing out hugs throughout the audience for a good 10-15 minutes.  If you weren’t careful, it could choke you up.  It’s rare to see that kind of grace and joy from musicians, and the gospel of love delivered so convincingly.

The next time you have an opportunity to see Charles Bradley and the Menahan Street Band, skip the sleep and the supper, and get ye to the show.  To quote Bradley:  “There is no more time for dreaming, just time for singing, dancing and loving.”  Amen.

And thanks to Club Mercy for yet another all-time event.

Check out The World (Is Going Up in Flames), Heart of Gold, and How Long below from Soho (we apologize for the sound).  And then make sure you venture over and buy his album HERE and check out the interwebs further for ever-accumulating video examples of the great Charles Bradley and the Menahan Street Band.