Low has been out regaling the cognoscenti with performances from their new, Jeff Tweedy-produced album The Invisible Way on Sub Pop.  And we are the lowly beneficiaries of these performance’s heights.  Check out Low performing songs from the new album, a cover or two (of course) and others for The Line of Best Fit and A.V. Club below.  And if you go to La Blogotheque (votre code ci-dessous est merde, monsieurs et madames!) HERE, you can watch a stellar 30+ minute set by the band.  Superb stuff.

Low plays “Holy Ghost” live at Saki

You can watch more many performances by Low for A.V. Club HERE.

Last night former “math-rock”-scions-turned-anthem-rockers Pinback showed up on Jimmy Fallon to play Proceed to Memory off of their stellar recent album Information Retrieved. Water! Fire! Rain! Hail!

In recent days, much has been rightly said and written regarding Jason Molina’s passing this past Saturday at the too-young age of 39.  Adding to those tributes is the The Avett Brothers’ appropriately-somber cover below of Molina’s song Hammer Down.  “Hammer down, heaven bound.”  RIP Jason. If you want to read/listen to more of Molina’s songs and effect, Drowned In Sound has two of the better pieces to start with HERE and HERE.  The song’s telling lyrics are below the video.

Hammer Down:

“Hammer down, heaven bound
Hammer down, heaven bound

I saw the light
On the old gray town
Sometimes I forget that I’ve always been sick
And I don’t have the will to keep fighting

Hammer down, heaven bound
Hammer down, heaven bound

Hammer down, heaven bound
Hammer down, heaven bound

When its been my ghost and the empty road
I think the stars are just the neon lights
Shining through the dance floor
Shining through the dance floor
Of heaven on a Saturday night
And I saw the light
I saw the light

Hammer down, heaven bound
Hammer down, heaven bound”

You’ll forgive us, but it’s Clem Snide (Eef Barzelay) Week this week at Chez Lefort.  Comes now the discovery (we’re a bit slow) of the vignette below in which Barzelay covers one of our all-time favorite Neil Young songs, Barstool Blues (off of the comparatively obscure Zuma album).  Despite a cold and a cough, Barzelay does the lofty song proud, inflecting new heart and soul.

Just last week we openly clamored for a new album from the great Clem Snide.  We’re pretty sure Eef Barzelay and the snide ones were just waiting for our prompting to announce their impending new Spring album, Songs For Mary.  Evidence comes our way below in the form of the just released official video for new song All Good Hearts.  According to Clem/Eef, the song is: “Song number 3 from Songs for Mary which is the new Clem Snide record and is to be released in the spring of 2013. The song was written by Eef Barzelay and he also made the video. Jared Reynolds plays the bass. The Funmaker plays the drums.”

“Spoiler” alert: the video is a mostly-disturbing, visual non sequitur (at least in our pea brains).  Or it’s a rehash of the trite old relationships-as-political-conflicts motif.  Either way, you would not do wrong to skip the viewing and just look outside your window while listening to yet another beauty-in-song from Eef Barzelay/Clem Snide.

Black Francis (aka Frank Black, aka the driving force behind the game-changing Pixies of yore) is returning to Santa Barbara on March 27th  to play Soho with his collaborative pal Reid Paley.   Check Francis out below performing the still-wondrous Wave of Mutilation.  After, check out Francis and Paley giving a nod to velvet nightmares in Another Velvet Nightmare, all courtesy of WNRN of Charlottesville, Virginia.

Both songs seem an (unintentional) tribute to the weekend’s cry-an-ocean passing of Jason Molina (“You’ll think I’m dead, but I sail away”–we’ll hope Jason’s somewhere else in an amphibious vehicle; and “This drunkard cannot drink”).  RIP Jason.

Get your tickets for Black Francis‘ Soho show HERE.

We were thrilled to learn (as predicted) this morning that Thom Yorke and his Atoms For Peace will return to the Santa Barbara Bowl on October 17th for one of only six US shows (announced thus far) in the fall.  Santa Barbara is Yorke-town!

The Band’s beloved Levon Helm passed away last April at the age of 71.  Thereafter the airwaves were jammed with tributes by musicians around the world, and it was heartening to see.  Amongst others, My Morning Jacket, Roger Waters, Gregg Allman, Ray LaMontagne and G.E. Smith got together for a concert tribute to Levon.

Check out below (via Rolling Stone) a revelatory rehearsal performance of The Band’s It Makes No Difference . While nothing will erase our fond memories of The Band performing the song at the Santa Barbara Bowl in 1976 (with the incomparable Rick Danko leading the way), My Morning Jacket delivers a superb version of the song below.

A resulting album, Love for Levon: A Benefit to Save the Barn will be released tomorrow.

Rolling Stone’s embedded player below is acting up, so you’ll either have to click on it and watch in Full Screen mode or go to Rolling Stone HERE to watch.

Last fall, one of our most highly-anticipated shows had been World Party’s show in Santa Barbara.  Over the years, leader Karl Wallinger has put together some of our favorite songs (Ship of Fools, All Come True) and albums (Private Revolution) of any era.  Wallinger had been a part of the fantastic Irish band The Waterboys back in the day, but then left Mike Scott’s band to rock on his own in more of a Stones/Beatles-motif.  Wallinger put out a series of successful albums in the 80s and thereafter took intermittent extended breaks and odd-jobs.  We were saddened to learn that Wallinger had suffered an aneurysm in 2001 that left him unable to speak.  After an extended recovery, World Party began playing live shows again in earnest in the late 2000s and released the massive anthology Arkeology last year to deserved critical acclaim.

Unfortunately, Wallinger was ill in November, and World Party cancelled their Santa Barbara show (not surprisingly, wanting to preserve strength for mega-market LA).  Such is the allure of the band, that several we know caravaned down to the Troubadour in LA, followed by rave reviews.  To see why, check out the stripped down World Party performing the intelligent, exemplary Is It Like Today? for KEXP in November, but just released today.  Beauty.  How did it come to this?  Indeed.  After you can check out the full performance on KEXP, which includes the additional song Put The Message In The Box.