Radiohead played a surprise set at this year’s Glastonbury music festival.  Check out the innovative full-concert video of the show comprised of an amalgam of fan videos cobbled together with mastered sound added.  This Interwebs thing just might take off some day.

Raphael Saadiq has been soulfully killing it since his days in the underrated Tony! Toni! Tone!, but he has gone on to break away from the R&B peloton with a revelatory solo career.  In March of this year he released yet another standard-setting album (his fourth), entitled “Stone Rollin’.”

From this album, Saadiq’s song Go to Hell takes us back to the great Soul Summer of ’71 and simply shouts summertime radio (good luck finding it on the dial though these days).  Saadiq takes Motown’s old soul and brightens its corners.  Tell your wife, husband, kids, grandparents and friends–soul is back courtesy of Saadiq.  Despite the song’s title this is no F-you (a la Cee-Lo), but instead a hard look in the mirror and an invitation to loving living.  Preach it, Raphael!  Check it out, and then the title track,  Stone Rollin’, below it.

Inspirational Verse from Go to Hell:

“Here’s the situation, yes the devil knows me well
See I’m trying to do my best not to go to hell!
I’m counting all my blessings, as I walk the narrow road,
Victory is near, that’s what I’ve been told!

I can feel it getting closer, closer every day
I wanna be a warrior of everything I say
There’s trials in the valley, take me upstream.
I need to feel this water falling down over me
Falling down over me!

I can see my name written across the sky,
Ravens started flying, I saw tears in their eyes.
There was fires in the mountains, and storms in the sea,
Winds in the valley, rushing into me.

Knock and it will open, seek and you’ll be fine,
You’re just a flower and the seed is your mind!
Clouds will bring us water, and the Sun will bring us heat
But we have the flower, moving from sea to sea.

Let love bring, us together,
Let love bring us together,
Let it bring us, let it bring us together!
Let love bring us together!

We need more love
We need more love in the world
Let it bring us, let it bring us together!

Somebody walk with me!
Somebody walk with me!
Somebody walk with me, walk with me quickly!

Let love bring us together!
Let love bring us together!”

When he’s on his game, Joseph Arthur is amongst our favorite songwriters.  His quartet of consecutive records put out last decade, consisting of Come to Where I’m From, Redemption’s Son, Our Shadows Will Remain, and Nuclear Daydream, set very lofty bars for Arthur to be measured against.  And the trouble is: sometimes he’s off his game.  It’s then that the world goes off-axis for us.

Thankfully, Joseph’s back full-on with a phenomenal new record entitled, “The Graduation Ceremony.” He can rock with the best of them, but he moves us most with his melancholy, heart-rending songs which are at times wrapped up in deceptively-upbeat musical cloaks.  The new album’s songs, Midwest and Love Never Asks You to Lie, are perfect examples of Arthur at his world-weary, wistful best.  Not all the songs off The Graduation Ceremony are as lyrically heavy as those two, but clearly Joseph’s feeding from the heartbreak muse on the new album.

We hail from the hail-ridden Midwest and its weight-of-the-world humidity summers.  So of course the first song we heard off the new album, Midwest, twisted us into nostalgic knots.  Listen in to this beauty, replete with Arthur’s multi-tracked harmonies, below the song lyrics.  And then check out a live-from-the-road version of the song.

“There’s nothing to do in the Midwest but dream
Like spiders on the walls of abandoned factories
Setting fire to the trash, dance beneath the fog
When the cops come we run like hell
Stealing from our souls born cheap out here
A dream that can’t compete up against the fear
Of never getting away
And there’s nothing to do in the Midwest but dream

There’s nothing to do in the Midwest but dream
Into the earth and out of the past
We plug in our guitars and begin to feed off the spirits in the air
Flying in our minds, the sound we try to hear
Is so many years from ever being defined
But there’s nothing to do in the Midwest but dream
But dream”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3IFFEH1lgw&feature=player_embedded#at=56

And also check out the recently released official video for Love Never Asks You to Lie, and then go buy The Graduation Ceremony at the banner down below the video.

“November twelfth and it is a nice night to pretend
That nothing will come at me like you did again
I could see it in your eyes and felt it in your touch
That you were as close to the truth as anything ever was

Heard you cry
Love never asks you to lie
Take off your evil disguise
I could see clear through your eyes

Western Union, Cadillacs, bankers and ice cream
Breaking windows, singing spirituals, ring like memories
At the graduation ceremony, setting our sights free
There is never gonna be another you and me

Heard you cry
Love never asks you to lie
Take off your evil disguise
I could see clear through your eyes

And they say it’s gonna shoot you
Shoot you down
When you walk around the corner
Of this ghost town
You know, they say it’s gonna shoot you
Shoot you down

Heard you cry
Love never asks you to lie
Take off your evil disguise
I could see clear through your eyes

Heard you cry
Love never asks you to lie
Take off your evil disguise
I could see clear through your eyes”

Gardens & Villa returned from the road to the welcoming arms of its loyal fans as headliners at Soho on Wednesday night, and delighted the sold-out audience with an energetic tribal-synth-pop extravaganza that was capped off by their rousing finale encore of Gary Numan’s 1979 uber-hit, Cars. The band will continue on tour in support of their new eponymous debut album on Secretly Canandian, which was produced by one of our favorite producers, Richard Swift (Damien Jurado, Mynabirds).

But for us the evening primarily revolved around Portland’s Hosannas and their musical magical realism tour.  We have been huge fans of this band since we first saw them at Muddy Waters and haven’t missed any of their Santa Barbara shows since.  They made our Best of 2010 lists in albums, songs and concerts, and we have written much about them on these pages.  The last two times they played here the band had been stripped down to the Brothers Laws in duo format, and while their songs and talent won out each time, we definitely missed the full band stylee of their first show here.  So we were greatly anticipating their opening slot at Soho on Wednesday, and the band did not disappoint.

The Soho floor was barely occupied when Hosannas began their set, but it wasn’t long before it was packed with a crowd intrigued to know who or what was making such stirring sounds.  With their off-center but stunning melodies, unique four-part harmony vocals, Brandon’s slashing guitar, Richard’s Zombies-updated keyboards, and the more majestic sound supplied by the additional members (Richard told us they had only played together for a scant six days!), Hosannas enthralled their fans and deservingly won many new converts this evening.  They opened with a great re-working of one of last year’s Best Songs of 2010, When We Were Young, and moved through other great songs such as People I Know and Onward With Bravery. Our only complaint was the brevity of the set, but acknowledge the opening-band limits.  Look for this band to make big musical waves in the years to come.

Hosannas will end this mini-tour with a show in Portland this Sunday and then head back into the studio with John Askew.  We can’t wait to hear the results.

In the meantime, the band was recently captured at Violitionist performing three songs, including Onward With Bravery, which you can check out below.

While in recovery this morning from an arresting night of live music (primarily as a result of Portland’s bound-to-triumph, full-band Hosannas, but also the returning local-heroes Gardens & Villa), we came across a perfect palliative courtesy of Pitchfork and 4AD. Check out  Iron and Wine performing on a recent 4AD Session below. Actually, it’s “just” leader Sam Beam (not the full band) performing five songs solo, which should appeal to those of you who prefer the earlier Iron and Wine 1.0 release (no doubt the same sort of crowd that would have booed the electric Dylan at Newport in ’65) as opposed to the 2.0 version that was heard on their most recent album, Kiss Each Other Clean, and featured on tour in support of that album.  As usual, Sam wins you over.  We were mainly left coveting sleep, a nylon-stringed guitar and a beard (literally; no wise-cracks), not necessarily in that order.

It’s been entirely too long since we had the fortune to catch the Avett Brothers live (Arlington, 2010).  A great vignette is provided below, courtesy of the CMT channel, which will feature the Avetts on tonight’s “Unplugged” show.  Check the Avetts performing Laundry Room off of last year’s luminary “I and Love and You.”

Ya gotta love these lines:

“Last night I dreamt the whole night long, I woke with a head full of songs
I spent the whole day, I wrote ‘em down, but it’s a shame
Tonight I’ll burn the lyrics, ’cause every chorus was your name.”

Comes now another new song from the soon-to-be-released new album (“Mirror Traffic“) from Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks.  Based on this new song (Tigers, which you can download HERE) and the previously released Senators, we are excited to hear Malkmus moving away from his recent prog-blues-jam-guitar-star malaise.  We assume credit has to be given (begrudgingly) to soulless dilettante Beck for doing his producer-job and pushing Malkmus back to doing what he does best:  writing songs with strong melodies and evocative/humorous/poignant lyrics.  Check out Tigers below.

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks–Tigers

[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/tigers.mp3|titles=tigers]

We had a busy week and weekend (is there one person out there who didn’t?), and when the moment came last night to make the go/no-go decision on attending Best Coast, it was exceedingly easy to throw in the towel and instead gather with family to watch the (miraculous) victory of the American women in the World Cup we’d recorded and the day’s (horrifying) stage of the Tour de France (vive le Hoogerland!).  All of which led to this morning’s serious regret-hangover and yet another visage of creeping age and its creepy mindset (undoubtedly exacerbated by our current novel, “The Astral” by Kate Christensen, and its age-nauseum purview).  Add to that the fog’s recurring gray-bar imprisonment, and you’ve got a recipe for a dreadful morning.

And so what could come on our car’s CD player this morning but Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3‘s great cover of Bob Dylan’s aging-appropriate Not Dark Yet. Once again music and the mystery were having their way with us.  With his jangly melodies, stirring vocals and quirky lyrics (“Balloon Man,” etc.), we have been huge fans of Hitchcock since his 1984 album, I Often Dream of Trains. The combination of Hitchcock and Dylan’s soulful song can stop you in (and leave blood on) your tracks.  And so we were. 

Check out the song’s lyrics, the studio version by Hitchcock and a live rendering below.

Not Dark Yet

Shadows are falling and I’ve been here all day
It’s too hot to sleep, time is running away
Feel like my soul has turned into steel
I’ve still got the scars that the sun didn’t heal
There’s not even room enough to be anywhere
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

Well, my sense of humanity has gone down the drain
Behind every beautiful thing there’s been some kind of pain
She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind
She put down in writing what was in her mind
I just don’t see why I should even care
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

Well, I’ve been to London and I’ve been to gay Paree
I’ve followed the river and I got to the sea
I’ve been down on the bottom of a world full of lies
I ain’t looking for nothing in anyone’s eyes
Sometimes my burden seems more than I can bear
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

I was born here and I’ll die here against my will
I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standing still
Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from
Don’t even hear a murmur of a prayer
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there

Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3–Not Dark Yet

[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/02-Not-Dark-Yet.mp3|titles=02 Not Dark Yet]

And then the always-uplifting Soweto Gospel Choir came counterpointing onto the player and burned the figurative fog off with an ebullient reading of Dylan’s Forever Young. And the world was set right yet again.  Check the song out below their picture.

Soweto Gospel Choir–Forever Young

[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/16-Forever-Young.mp3|titles=16 Forever Young]

Consider all of this just a long-winded encouragement to not give in to lethargy and to get up and out to attend the Gardens & Villa/Hosannas show this Wednesday at Soho.  Don’t give up the fight.

Though we’re waiting before declaring definitively, this Interwebs thing might catch on in a couple of years.  Providing the best support (we are a tad myopic) for this theory are the cathartic, awe-inspiring live musical performances that you can find thereon.  These videos/streams will oft-times leave your face hurting from smiling and your cares dramatically drained.  Check out a few such performances below.

Naturally, first up is Bob Marley giving us a slow, but incendiary live reading of his great No Woman, No Cry from 1979. Oh how we miss Mr. Marley and lament his premature departure.

And then we have The National‘s standard show-stopper, Mr. November (which has been known to induce labor).  Below is a particularly great version that reminds us there can be no better place to be on 9/11 this year than at the Hollywood Bowl when they will appear with Neko Case and Sharon Van Etten.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28DMYdfdDwM&feature=player_embedded

Next up is The Flaming Lips and their prize-winning performance of Race for the Prize in Japan.

Then we have My Morning Jacket delivering a revenantial Dondante from Okonokos.

And how could we leave out the best live band on the current planet (no contest), Radiohead. Check out the band killing its song, 15 Step, in Prague.

And then we head into the gleaming Glastonbury shows.  Pilgrimage; we need a pilgrimage.  For the last decade Glastonbury has drawn the best artists, the best audiences, and the best performances of any festival on the planet.  Don’t believe us?  Check these out.  We need to go to there.

Check out Radiohead from 2003 Glastonbury killing Paranoid Android.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIklhgI-m2s&feature=related

Then there’s this epic 2008 Glastonbury performance by Elbow of their life-affirming One Day Like This. Strings and audience attached.

And then we have the re-grouped Blur from 2009 Glastonbury, doing their great Tender. “Loves the greatest thing that we have, I’m waiting for that feeling to come!!”  And the crowd!!  Oh my.

And finally, for one of those goosebump, take-over-the-world moments that only live music can provide, check out Arcade Fire‘s set-ending mega-anthem, Wake Up, as done at the 2010 Reading Festival (once again, the Brit audiences out-perform their counterparts throughout the world).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OmMPaLmxKg&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

This is for the burgeoning indie music/geeks-who-also-love-sci-fi crossover crowd (you know who you are).  Check out the official video of Other Lives’ For 12 song.  And said crowd will also want to check out Hooray For Earth’s official video for their song True Loves (and then the Cyriak Harris-directed video by of the Cereal Spiller remix of the same song). And finally in the sci-fi music video realm, check out Chad VanGaalen’s official video for Peace on the Rise.