Having come of age listening to and enlisting in the fandom of the band Joy Division, we couldn’t help but love Interpol from the moment they first entered our conscience.  We’ll write more about this great band another time, but unearthing the videos below of their semi-obscure song, The Specialist, has caused us regret again.  We thoroughly regret skipping their show last year in Santa Barbara and not driving down to LA ages ago to catch one of their prior tours.  We haven’t seen them live, but our motivation to see them is on high-alert after re-visiting this fine song off 2003’s “The Black EP.”  Check out the band performing The Specialist in Dallas in 2003 (for effect) and then the studio version of the song (for the sublime sound).  The drums and bass alone are worthy of wow, and then the staccato guitar simmers and slays.

Sometimes we just relent and wallow in the wretched gray that won’t relent here on the coast.  And frequently we give up to a sorrowful soundtrack that ultimately provides comfort and catharsis.  Oupa’s songs provide that soundtrack this morning.

Oupa is the soft-side project of Daniel Blumberg of the un-yucky band, Yuck, and its first album, “Forget,” was released this past week on Fat Possum.  Check out the official videos of Oupa’s songs, Windows and Physical, below.  We particularly like the effects in the Windows video and the harmonies that wash in at 2:53.  No musical ground is being broken here, but there’s beauty to be found in this minor-chord melancholy.

Oupa – Windows from Boiled Egg on Vimeo.

Oupa – Physical from Boiled Egg on Vimeo.

The New York Times is exclusively featuring the new video for the new Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks song No One Is (As I Are Am) in advance of the release of their new album (“Mirror Traffic”) on Tuesday.

In the Times blurb accompanying the video we learn that Bobbie Gentry’s Ode to Billie Joe inspired the song:

“So if the song in the … video, called “No One Is (As I Are Am),” seems to evoke Bobbie Gentry’s dusty Delta ballad “Ode to Billie Joe,” it’s no coincidence: that’s the tune Mr. Malkmus cited as his sonic inspiration for the track. (Though lyrics like “I cannot even do one sit-up, sit-ups are so bourgeoisie” are purely his invention.)

As for what gave rise to the video itself, that remains as mysterious as the unknown item Billy Joe MacAllister threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge in Ms. Gentry’s song. But we are told that, among the adorable children seen running around at the end of the clip, are Mr. Malkmus’s own offspring. So at least things worked out better for him.”

Check out the video HERE.  We love the song’s laconic vibe and especially when the horns kick in at 1:56.  Beck should stick to producing.

Honestly, we had not heard of Diego Garcia or his album, “Laura,” until yesterday.  And now we can’t stop listening.  We’re especially enamored with the acoustic performance below of  You Were Never There on KCRW this summer, but also that same song done full-band stylee at the Standard Hotel in NYC.

Garcia’s parents are Argentine, but he was raised in the United States.  Fittingly then, Garcia combines nylon-stringed Latin sounds with English-lyric romanticism.  Thematically, “Laura” is a nine-song reflection on a love that begins where a couple has split up (Garcia is now married to said love).  Musically, we at times hear Lloyd Cole and at others Harry Nilsson (along with a tinge of B.J. Thomas, circa Butch Cassidy).  Those influences say it all right there.  Sold.

Check out the two videos of You Were Never There, and then his performance of the very Nilsonn/Thomas-esque Separate Lives from his show on the roof of the uber-hip Standard Hotel in downtown LA (what’s up with the Standard standard?).  And you can view the entire KCRW show HERE.

Finally, Radiohead has put up on YouTube their stunningly rendered From the Basement performance of their album of the year, “The King of Limbs” (plus songs Staircase and The Daily Mail).  If there were any doubts as to the best live band on the planet, they’ve been put to rest.  Check it out soon, as it will be available for a limited time only.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=192MiKNk03c

Check out Bon Iver’s official video for their hopeful but helpless song Holocene, one of our top songs of the 2011. Director Nabil Elderkin fittingly filmed the video in Iceland.  Blow it up big while viewing.  There will be magnificence in our insignificance.

Band leader/songwriter Justin Vernon has said this about the song:  “Holocene is a bar in Portland, Ore., but it’s also the name of a geologic era, an epoch if you will. It’s a good example of how all the songs are all meant to come together as this idea that places are times and people are places and times are… people?  They can all be different and the same at the same time. Most of our lives feel like these epochs. That’s kind of what that song’s about. “Once I knew I was not magnificent.” Our lives feel like these epochs, but really we are dust in the wind. But I think there’s a significance in that insignificance that I was trying to look at in that song.”

BON IVER “Holocene” from nabil elderkin on Vimeo.

Many/most of you have seen videos of the great trials bike rider Danny Macaskill doing his crazy tricks.  Just last week a new video was released featuring Macaskill doing his crazy thing in the Scottish countryside with the song, The Wolves, by Ben Howard as soundtrack. Ya gotta love the rope and railroad tricks.  The Wolves will be featured in Howard’s first album, “Every Kingdom” to be released in October.  This video will undoubtedly skyrocket Howard’s musical career.

Check out the new Macaskill video and, in case you’re one of the few on the planet that hasn’t seen it, below that check out Macaskill’s video that put him on the map featuring the Band of Horses’ phenomenal song, The Funeral.

And here are the innaresting lyrics to Howard’s song.

“Falling from high places, falling through lost spaces,
Now that we’re lonely, now that there’s nowhere to go.
Watching from both sides, these clock towers burning up,
I lost my time here, i lost my patience with it all.

And we lost faith, in the arms of love.

Where you been hiding lately, where you been hiding from the news?
Because we’ve been fighting lately, we’ve been fighting with the wolves.
With the wolves.
Red tongues and hands.

Falling from high places, falling through lost spaces,
Now that we’re lonely, now that we’re so far from home.
Watching from both sides, these towers been tumbling down,
I lost my mind here, I lost my patience with the lord.

And we lost faith, oh in the arms of love

Where you been hiding lately, where you been hiding from the news?
Because we’ve been fighting lately, we’ve been fighting with the wolves.
With the wolves.
Red tongues and hands.

We lost faith, in the arms of love.”

We unearthed yet another performance pocket.  And we figured out where former KCRW maestro, Nic Harcourt, has alighted post-KCRW.  Both can be found At: Guitar Center.  Harcourt puts out podcasts from these sessions and various videos are archived.  Nothing too cutting edge, but some compelling performances nonetheless.

Check out Guitar Center sessions by Daniel Lanois and Black Dub, Peter Gabriel and Jane’s Addiction.

These days there are powerful performances pocketed within the vast interstitial weave of the interweb.  One pocket that we keep reaching into and coming out gold-pieces is Radio K, the fab, student-run radio station out of the University of Minnesota.  We particularly grift to the gold to be found in Radio K’s In-Studio Performances.

Most recently, Radio K caught Montreal’s Handsome Furs delivering with palpable verve in-studio, including gratuitous laser effects.  The Furs are the married team of Dan Boeckner (formerly of the worthy Wolf Parade) on vocals and guitar and Alexei Perry on synths and beats.  We were introduced to the Handsome ones by the late, great Kenny Harbaugh (and his Sub Pop pals) in the form of the (highly recommended) 2007 record, “Plague Park.” We’ve been hooked since.  The Furs have just released a new album “Sound Kapital” on Sub Pop and recently hit Radio K in support.

Check out a couple of Radio K’s Handsome captures below, buy the new album, and then catch the un-psychedelic Furs when they came to Cali between September 1st and 4th (at the Echo Plex in LA on the 2nd and Slim’s in SF on the 3rd).  We particularly like the energy that the band brings to the In-Studio on Bury Me Standing (of course there are added loops and backing tracks that embellish the sound, but the duo compels nonetheless).  And their performance of the song What About Us? brings the question to life.  Check in particular the song-within-a-song chorus that begins at 2:43.  Come on and break our hearts indeed.    

Live on Radio K: Handsome Furs – “Bury Me Standing” from Radio K on Vimeo.

And here’s What About Us?:

Live on Radio K: Handsome Furs – “What About Us?” from Radio K on Vimeo.

NPR is now streaming the new Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks record “Mirror Traffic.”  Based on the tracks released to date and our first listen, the new record will end up high on our Top 10 of 2011 list and is a return to from by the magnificent Malkmus.  Check it out.