You, reader, might be experiencing National exhaustion on these pages.  We endeavor on in our ardor.  We continue to look forward to their consecutive hat-trick of shows in California in August and continue to encourage all to catch the band live along the way.  In case you won’t or to get you prepped, (up until a few moments ago) you can currently could have watched below The National’s entire 90-minute set yesterday at Bonnaroo.  The video featured superb sound and vision by the band and producers.  The strong setlist is below the video.  In addition to some surprising song arrangements, singer Matt Berninger was obviously comfortable on stage, engaging in repeated comedic banter with the crowd.  And Brooklyn neighbor St. Vincent (with Blondie-blonde hair) joined the band for This Is the Last Time.  It was also good to see that new songs Humiliation and Graceless have taken their rightful place in the set with some of the band’s older greats.  Hopefully Bonnaroo or The National will make the broadcast available again.  If not, you can at least check out an interview by Fuse with Berninger and Dressner at bottom.  We look forward to August.

Setlist:

I Should Live In Salt
Don’t Swallow the Cap
Mistaken for Strangers
Bloodbuzz Ohio
This is the Last Time
(with St. Vincent)
Sea of Love
Afraid of Everyone
Anyone’s Ghost
Conversation 16
Squalor Victoria
I Need My Girl
Abel
Apartment Story
England
Humiliation
Graceless
Fake Empire
Mr. November
Terrible Love

At last year’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, Howe Gelb’s Giant Giant Sand performed one of the best sets of the entire weekend.  To get a feel, check out the just-released Giant Giant Sand performances below recorded a week after HSB at KEXP.  The versatility and touch of Gelb and the gang was/is astonishing.  Watch as they flow mightily between country, rock, latino-folk and, yes, straight jazz.  Gelb is a national treasure that deserves more of a following.

Phosphorescent, the brain-child of Matthew Houck, has one of the frontrunners for album of the year with its Muchacho. We’ve been partial to the band since we first heard their seminal song Cocaine Lights, and it’s rewarding to see the “band” fulfilling that promise.  Muchacho is manned with well-wrought songs embellished with much instrumentation.  But, as usual, the heart of these matters lies in the basic songlines and the delivery of the singer.  Watch below as Houck performs three songs from Muchacho in the raw (including Song of the Year candidate Song For Zula) for Line of Best Fit and French mag Le Cargo.  The lyrics alone can take your short breath away.  Matched with Houck’s world-weary delivery, these songs can truly rend.

You say, “Oh, you’ll spin this heartache into gold”
And I suppose but it rips my heart out don’t you know.

Watch Houck perform Down To Go for Le Cargo HERE.

The Bonnaroo time, and Wilco’s set will stream live at 6:30 Central (4:30 Pacific) today. You can watch it (and a whole lotta others) below.

Video streaming by Ustream

We bring you the second installment of Jeune Lefort’s weekly Electronic-ish Friday:

Today’s artist is:  Mount Kimbie.  (No that’s really their name, Lefort. –Jeune Lefort) [Lefort:  Dang, thought that was a new yoga-position/dance-craze amongst female cognoscenti.]

Mount Kimbie’s new sophomore album Cold Spring Fault Less Youth  [Lefort: Very Montecito-y) was released on May 27th and is already receiving rave reviews across the board and many “Album of the Month” accolades.  Mount Kimbie is an electronic duo made up of Dominic Maker and Kai Campos coming out of Brighton and Cornwall, respectively.  Their first album Crooks and Lovers exploded in 2010 and earned them tons of “Best of 2010” listings.

The stand-out track off the new album is Home Recording.  Home Recording might be the most Lefort Report-compatible track off the album. A beautiful and slow lead gradually builds with drums and sounds to create a soothing and peaceful sound before the lyrics start and continue to mesmerize.

Both of Mount Kimbie’s albums feature many field recordings, but on Cold Spring Fault Less Youth these sounds have been tweaked and stretched to create a much more “live” sound.  The first single off the album is Made To Stray which features multiple field recordings to aid in the build of the slightly-jarring, militaristic beat.  The track is then layered with synths and eventually vocals to create the fantastic whole.  “Made to stray around rough coasts, when grace is close to home;” and close to Lefort’s home they will be when they play the Echoplex in LA this coming Tuesday.  For Bay Area mounters, they play The Independent on Monday, June 17th.

Next, even more obviously electronic than the previous track and a solid entry in the “post-dubstep” genre that Mount Kimbie seems to take inspiration from is Sullen Ground.  The track employs a heavier bass line and more field recordings to create this eerie song.  The lyrics say that they’ve “Been working real hard on this read through,” and the results of that hard work are impressive. Have a listen:

Hope you’ve enjoyed Electronic-ish Friday No. 2. See you in 7 days.

Long-time favorite Joseph Arthur has a fantastic new album out entitled The Ballad Of Boogie Christ.  Check out Arthur and bandmate Bill Dobrow immediately below performing Currency of Love, the opening track from the album.  The new album was written over a half-decade and is based on a single narrative thread:  The Ballad of Boogie Christ, described by Arthur as “a fictionalized character loosely based on my own journey.”  After the first video, check out several others from the new album.  We love what we’re hearing:  the usual brilliant songwriting and heart-rending lyrics from one of our best singer-songwriters.  For any faithers (and all others) out there wanting to hear honestly-rendered songs conveying both the struggle and ebullience to be found in one’s belief and in this world, this one’s for you. Watch/listen below and then go buy the album HERE.

Further about  the album, according to JA’s website:

“The album begins with the surprising orchestral pop of “Currency of Love”, on which Arthur unveils a passionate croon unlike any vocal performance he’s ever given. From there, Boogie Christ offers epic affirmations on overcoming addiction (the seven-minute closer “All the Old Heroes”), anthems of open-hearted solidarity (“Wait for Your Lights”, “It’s OK To Be Young/Gone”) and the kinds of slow-burning narratives (“Famous Friends Along the Coast”, “I Used To Know How to Walk on Water” and a reimagined, hymn-like version of his standout, “I Miss the Zoo”) that have won Arthur a legion of fans around the globe.

Songs like “Black Flowers”, “I Used To Know How to Walk on Water” and the title cut were recorded several years ago with help from the Band’s legendary keyboardist Garth Hudson and bassist Catherine Popper (Ryan Adams, Jack White), while newer additions to the track list such as “Currency of Love” and “Saint of Impossible Causes” were crafted in Los Angeles with assistance from Chris Seefried (Fitz & the Tantrums, Lana Del Rey). Among the other guests on Boogie Christ are Ben Harper (Arthur’s bandmate in Fistful of Mercy), session drummer extraordinaire Jim Keltner, Joan As Policewoman leader Joan Wasser and composer Paul Cantelon (Oliver Stone’s W., Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell & the Butterfly).”

Arthur is out on tour and plays LA’s Troubadour on June 20th.  Current tour dates are listed at bottom.

TOUR DATES:
06/13/13 New York, NY Bowery Ballroom
06/15/13 Chicago Lincoln Hall
06/17/13 Seattle The Triple Door
06/19/13 San Francisco The Chapel
06/20/13 Los Angeles, CA Troubadour
06/22/13 Austin, TX The Parish
06/25/13 Philadelphia World Cafe Live
06/26/13 Annapolis, MD Rams Head On Stage

In case you missed it, check out below a few snippets of Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich DJ-ing for KCRW last week. Watch an animated Yorke discuss his video-dance coming-out on Lotus Flower and while air-drumming on a Joe Jackson chestnut remixed. You can go HERE to listen to the entire session.

Elvis Costello and Mumford & Sons came together for One’s Protest Songs to cover Bruce Springsteen’s The Ghost of Tom Joad (which, according to One, Springsteen named after the main character from John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, and which “he hoped the song would personify or represent the voices of the hopeless, disenfranchised, and invisible as the book was said to do in the 1930”).  Check it out below, and the medley segment at end.  After, watch a video explaining One, which was co-founded by some dude named Bono.  Let’s hear it for the downtrodden!  Gospel, right there.  The Mumford banjo-dude in denim cut-offs, fay vest and trucker hat is a little much to have to pan over, but hey nonetheless:  gospel.

As we’ve written before, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. is a fantastically talented Detroit band led by Daniel Zott and Joshua Epstein.  And they have been earning hearts all along the way.  Check out their blatant commercial-crossover track If You Didn’t See Me (Then You Weren’t On The Dance Floor) (according to the band, originally entitled Too Fat For Love).  The difference between this song and other (more-crass) crossover attempts is that, as we’ve seen repeatedly, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. have talent and musicality for days.  Check out the songwriting, vocals, the bass, the drums, the….yes, dancing!  Oh my.  At times it reminds of Flaming Lips, but these gents can actually sing.  The song is from their EP Patterns, which was released on Record Store Day.

After, check out the band’s web-exclusive performance on Conan of new song War Zone off their impending new album.  Sounds a bit like Vampire Weekend, but we haven’t heard VW hit those vocal notes before and particularly live.  Sweet stuff.

Below War Zone, check out the studio version of If You Didn’t See Me (Then You Weren’t On the Dancefloor) with its George Harrison-infused acoustic intro. Great stuff.  And after, check out the band-endorsed DatA remix of the song.

If you like what you hear and have flexibility, the band will be performing for FREE this Friday at 1:oopm for Warner Bros. in LA.  Info can be found HERE.  If you have more modest flexibility, the show will also be shown on YouTube.