It’s been a great week for music on the talk shows, and nowhere better than on The Jimmy Fallon Show. Last night Iron & Wine closed out the week on Fallon in support of their new album Ghost on Ghost. Check out below as Sam Beam and his large band gallop through new song Grace for Saints and Ramblers.  After, check out the web-exclusive Grass Widows, also off the new album.  We prefer the latter, which is well within the Wine’s wheelhouse (versus Beam’s somewhat shambolic vocal on the first). We trust Sam’ll get that ironed out in due time.

Iron & Wine open their tour with a May 11th performance at the Bottle Rocket Festival in Napa.  No other Cali dates are scheduled as of now.  The band’s tour dates (with The Secret Sisters opening) follow at bottom.

Tour Dates:

05/11 – Napa, CA @ Bottle Rock Festival
05/13 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Carnegie Music Hall of Homestead *
05/14 – New York, NY @ Beacon Theatre *
05/15 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer *
05/16 – Richmond, VA @ Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens *
05/17 – Boston, MA @ Berklee Performance Center *
05/18 – Portland, ME @ State Theatre *
05/19 – Port Chester, NY @ The Capitol Theatre *
05/29 – Dublin, IE @ Olympia Theatre *
05/30 – Manchester, UK @ Opera House *
05/31 – London, UK @ The Barbican *
06/01 – Paris, FR @ La Cigale *
06/02 – Utrecht, NL @ Vredenburg *
06/03 – Brussels, BE @ Cirque Royal *
06/05 – Berlin, DE @ Admiralspalast *

* = w/ The Secret Sisters

There are some phenomenal American bands currently on the “indie” scene.  Wilco, Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear, My Morning Jacket, Bright Eyes,The Walkmen, Band of Horses, Like Pioneers, Buellton, etc.  That said, national treasures The National returned to television last night on the Jimmy Fallon Show and reasserted their claim as the best American band on the scene, and particularly live.  The original-Brooklyn band will soon release their sixth studio album, Trouble Will Find Me, and are hitting the tour trail soon in support.  We can’t wait to catch them at the Greek Theater in LA in August.  It’s gonna be a hot August night.

In addition to the new album and tour, The National will also soon release a new documentary film by Tom Berninger (Matt’s younger brother), Mistaken for Strangers, and will put on their annual music festival, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.

But last night the band was on a mission on Fallon.  Check them out below as they played two new songs off the new album:  Sea of Love and a web-only rendering of I Need My Girl.   Their live dynamic is vividly seen on Sea of Love, which started out great and ramped up from there (watch at 2:20 and 3:14 and thereafter, as the band continuously lifted the love swell).  Oh my.  Check ’em both below.

Trouble Will Find Me will be released on May 21st on 4AD, and will include contributions by the likes of such Brooklyn neighbors as Sufjan Stevens, Sharon Van Etten and Annie Clark (St. Vincent).  You can pre-order the new album HERE.

As we’ve already written about, saxophonist Colin Stetson has released the last, and possibly best, segment of his New History Warfare project.  You can go to NPR now and stream the album titled To See More Light in it’s entirety.

To See More Light is a wonder of technical prowess within wondrously evocative soundscapes,  which at times is aided and abetted by Justin Vernon’s (Bon Iver) vocals and other assists.  Depending on your mood, the album may leave you joyous, tearful, fearful or speaking in tongues.  Likely all of the above.  Turn off the alternative entertainment, put this album on, and be transported to an alternative universe.  In a good way.  Our favorite tracks:  What Are They Doing In Heaven Today, To See More Light, And In Truth, Who The Waves Are Roaring For, and Among The Sef.

Speaking of Among The Sef, last week Stetson released the official video for the song viewable below. Given the current migration of blue (primarily) whales off of our Central California Coast, the video is particularly apt.  Music and video match perfectly to help convey the mystery and manifold shades of the ocean, the whales and las bufadoras.  Check out the video below, go over to NPR (at the link above) and then go buy To See More Light HERE.  And if you’re on the Cali Coast, go check out the whales.

Colin Stetson – Among the Sef from Constellation Records on Vimeo.

Phoenix showed up at KCRW last Wednesday courtesy of Corpchella and performed Trying To Be Cool/Drakkar Noir and others off their new album Bankrupt!  Check ’em out below and go HERE to listen/watch the full session.

Colombian band, Bomba Estereo, has been blowing up big and continuing to provide musical sunshine since we first heard them a few years back.  Their 2009 song Fuego was one of the Best Songs of 2010 (we’re a little slow).  Mixing traditional Latin/Caribbean rhythms with rock and reggae and other worthy world-music elements, they have always lifted us out of the foggy pit.

The band has continued to add complexity to their mix as is borne out on their fantastic new album Elegancia Tropical.   To get a feel, check out their performances below on KEXP while in Seattle earlier this month.  First up is the fantastically frenetic Bailar Conmigo (with its Nigerian juju-esque guitar), followed by more greatness.   This band can do no wrong.  If you like what you hear below, the full session, with interview segments, is at bottom.

We’ve been singing Phosophorescent’s praises for a long time.  Leader Matthew Houck and band, backed by full string section, appeared on the Jimmy Fallon Show last night and did supreme justice to the single Song For Zula off its bar-setting album, Muchacho.  Houck’s songs and vocals have always laid us out, gutted in a gutter in Gomorrah.  Few have conveyed desolation so well.  And though Houck’s vocals still convey on the new album, we hear a shift in tone and some loftier assessments and aspirations.  Check their outstanding performance out below (the song’s quotable lyrics are at bottom).  As the old folks say:  that’s what we’re talking about, right there.  And ferheavenssake, go buy Muchacho HERE.

Song for Zula:

“Some say love is a burning thing
That it makes a fiery ring
Oh but I know love as a fading thing
Just as fickle as a feather in a stream
See, honey, I saw love. You see, it came to me
It put its face up to my face so I could see
Yeah then I saw love disfigure me
Into something I am not recognizing

See, the cage, it called. I said, “Come on in”
I will not open myself up this way again
Nor lay my face to the soil, nor my teeth to the sand
I will not lay like this for days now upon end
You will not see me fall, nor see me struggle to stand
To be acknowledged by some touch from his gnarled hands
You see, the cage, it called. I said, “Come on in”
I will not open myself up this way again

You see, the moon is bright in that treetop night
I see the shadows that we cast in the cold, clean light
My feet are gold. My heart is white
And we race out on the desert plains all night
See, honey, I am not some broken thing
I do not lay here in the dark waiting for thee
No my heart is gold. My feet are light
And I am racing out on the desert plains all night

So some say love is a burning thing
That it makes a fiery ring
Oh but I know love as a caging thing
Just a killer come to call from some awful dream
O and all you folks, you come to see
You just stand there in the glass looking at me
But my heart is wild. And my bones are steam
And I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free”

Photo by Richard Dumas

We love all good music, and as a result, you may experience some whip-saw while winding along the Lefort way.  We will vacillate between good folk, rock, country, punk, R&B, gospel, EDM, classical, reggae and etc.  For example, in the last few days we’ve been focused on some quieter sounds.  But we couldn’t hold back London’s The Savages any longer.

Despite day-time slots at Coachella, the word from Hades was that The Savages’ live, post-punk performances had eclipsed the raving rumors emanating from across the Pond.  Without further adieu, check out The Savages and their brainy, superbly-muscular attack below.  Though the band savages as a whole, we particularly love Gemma Thomson’s complex guitar attack and the intelligence/intensity of singer Jehnny Beth.

First up is their new, official video for song Shut Up.  After check out the opening song from their debut (debut!) live show in London in January 2012.  At bottom is a stream of their song She Will. We think you’ll agree this is a new band to be reckoned with and one which adds to the promise of the female, post-punk pioneers in Britain that came before them (Siouxie Sioux, The Slits, The Raincoats, etc.).  Their debut album Silence Yourself is out May 7th in the US on Matador Records.  After you see and hear the evidence below, go pre-order their new album HERE.

We are big fans of Afie Jurvanen’s underrated Bahamas band, and have repeatedly praised Jurvanen and the “band” for their compositions, cavalcade of guitar-skills and concert performances.  Sometimes it takes the big names to garner the proper attention.  Hence today’s comely collaboration of Bahamas with fellow-Canadian k.d. lang on beautifully-restrained harmony vocals on Bahamas’ song Lost in the Light (from Bahamas’ brilliant Barchords album). Check it out below courtesy of QTV.

One of the better American teen rock anthems from the ’70s was Cheap Trick’s Surrender.  Surrender was a song that all could get behind:  jocks, aggies, surfers, cruisers, poets, nerds, etc.   A bigger citizen-slice glommed on because the lyrics gave voice to teens’ then-universal apprehension/distrust of their parents (oddly, this apprehension/distrust evaporated when we became parents and has not been observed since–what’s that you say?).

So imagine our delight when we stumbled upon the latest episode of A.V. Undercover in which Scotland’s fab Frightened Rabbit took on the song.  Check their performance below, which starts out a little awkward, but ends strong (kinda like a teen).  Check out the original after the cover version below.

To bring this home, Cheap Trick headlines the Santa Barbara Bowl on Sunday, June 9th.

Frightened Rabbit covers Cheap Trick