The Portland-based band, Unknown Mortal Orchestra (signed to Fat Possum Records), has been building a bounteous buzz in recent months.  They say that imitation is the sincerest [form of] flattery.  As you can hear/see in the first half of the new video below for their song Ffunny Ffrends, on this song Unknown Mortal Orchestra have majored in Grizzly Bear imitation with a minor in Flaming Lips flattery.  Who can blame them?  If you have to copy someone…. Fortunately, the band breaks beyond mere imitation in the second half of the song, and we hear a fuzzier vocal and lead guitar playing that draw distinctions from the influences.  And the video further below (for their song How Can You Luv Me) gives further credence to their differentiation.  This is a young band (check the moppet drummer ferheavensake!), and only time will tell their true worth.    But Unknown Mortal Orchestra sounds and looks like it has unknown mortal talent.  They are currently on tour with another buzz-band (that we like), Yuck. Check ’em out.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra – ‘Ffunny Ffrends’ from Bowlegs on Vimeo.

Yourstru.ly Presents: UMO “How Can You Luv Me” from Yours Truly on Vimeo.

Beirut’s Zach Condon joined The National at the Paleo Music Festival in Switzerland recently.  Friends of ours attended and were wowed.  Naturally–it’s The National.  Check out their collaboration on Fake Empire below, with the entire set also being available (courtesy of music induced euphoria).

A lot of ink and pixels have been and will be spread before your eyeballs, all attempting to make sense of Amy’s departure.  Good luck with that.  We’re still stuck at Ian and Kurt.

27 is M.I.A. in action while missing the gone-too-soon.  Not for the faint of heart, and not the soundtrack that comes immediately to mind. But the violin sells it for now.  The teachable moment lingers still though.

“said your all mouth and no brains
all rock stars go to heaven
you said you’ll be dead at 27
when we drunk in a English tavern
the owner poured you the Bourbon
and you drunk your self so rotten
he got so rich he bought a Bentley
and moved himself to Devon

you started dirty dancing
and you bar tended a dozen
i took you to the clinic
to get you clean but you couldn’t
said in 2 days ur 27 and and ur destiny was comin
and ur papa passed so sudden
and left you with lil somin

you blew that money on a mountain of drugs
and staged your self a bedin
a month later when i popped in
you’re still high but the winter set in
i bought you a coffee and a muffin
and you quoted me some Lenin
i wished i was that clever
but thats what kept me coming
your friendship did mean somin
but you left me for nothin
when i left, you befriended a rope
and i found you both were hanging.”

M.I.A.–27

27 by _M_I_A_

Emmylou Harris performed New Orleans off her new album, “Hard Bargain” on The Jimmy Fallon Show this week.  Check Emmylou rallying cry rocker for a post-Katrina New Orleans.  “It takes more than a hurricane to empty out the Ponchatrain!”

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros performed Janglin’ on Conan Monday night.  We were surprised they didn’t play a new song off of their impending new album, but at least they threw some twists and turns into the arrangement of Janglin’. Check out it below (courtesy of Audio Perv).

The U2 duo stopped by Letterman Monday night to play an acoustic version of Stuck In A Moment.  Bono’s voice seems on the whole to just get better and better.  And Edge provides his usual prodigious harmonies.  And Paul Shaffer just can’t help himself and embellishes with some organ towards the end of the song.  It’s momentous.  Check it out.

Wye Oak’s “Civilian” is on our list of Best Albums (So Far) of 2011.  Check ’em playing Holy Holy off of Civilian on the Fallon Show Monday night.  Pay particular attention to Andy Stack’s drum-and-keyboard attack.  Give that lad another hand.

We are going to Glastonbury in 2013*.  We have a new quest.  Thanks to the under-appreciated Palladia Channel, we have watched the highlights from every Glastonbury show since 2004.  It just gets better and better.  All bands kick it up five or ten notches for Glastonbury, and we have never seen better audiences to add fuel to the bands’ fires.  Whether it’s Blur, Radiohead or Arcade Fire, the results are the same. Year in, year out.

This year was no exception.  Radiohead and Pulp made surprise appearances, but the biggest surprise for us was Coldplay’s headlining set.  We had, we now admit, grown weary of Coldplay and their omnipresent songs.  For some time we’ve considered them a substandard U2/Radiohead combo.  But their Glastonbury performance provided a powerful dose of reality and showed how wrong we can be.  This band’s songs are filled with masterful melodies, and they are instinctual musicians that enliven and animate their songs in concert.  The new songs they played at Glastonbury bode well for their impending new album.  On paper their lyrics can seem somewhat insipid, but sung live and backed by the 175,000-member Glastonbury choir/audience they pack a powerful punch.

Check out three different video versions below of Coldplay playing Fix You. It’ll warm the cockles of your heart (whatever that means; it just seems apropos given Glastonbury’s southwest England locale).

Who knows, tears may stream down your face as you watch.  And you may be fixed for a time.

*We’d attend next year, but the organizers are passing given the Summer Olympics in England.  So we’ll have to wait until 2013.

We loved Superchunk in the early 90s (our fave being their classic album, “Foolish,” and the ensuing Slim‘s shows in San Francisco in support).  Now they’re back and sporting a new video for their song Learned to Surf (courtesy of Pitchfork.tv).  The video is an amalgam of live-in-Brazil concert footage from 1998 and earlier this year.  Check it out.

Saturday night we found ourselves with the necessary flu to safely justify a classic couch-flop, remote-control-driven, DVR extravaganza.  And so we went straight to VH1’s recent Storytellers episode featuring My Morning Jacket.  Simply put this is amongst a handful of the best musical performances ever captured on television.  Jim James (reluctantly) provides the narrative backdrop to the songs and comes off as an intelligent and gifted soul (especially touching is when he briefly loses it while introducing Dondante).  And of course his vocals scintillate throughout.

But what really captivates during the episode (and what had been somewhat lost in the sound-mix at their recent Santa Barbara Bowl show) is the mesmerizing, multi-instrumental playing of Carl Broemel. Broemel is that rare musical breed who is poly-proficient and yet plays sparely and soul-piercingly.   Check out Carl’s pedal steel playing on Golden below (the music begins at 3:45), and on Moving Away and Wonderful (elsewhere at Storytellers), his lead guitar thr0ughout (but in particular on Dondante and One Big Holiday), and his sax playing on Dondante. And the other members also provide perfect support.  Flu or not, the episode is highly recommended.  By the end of the viewing we were virtually healed.