As we were saying this morning, the SXSW musical flood has been slow to trickle in.  But as predicted the trickle tap has been opened up.  Check out below, courtesy of NPR, fine performances by buzz-bands Alt-J and Youth Lagoon.  Club Mercy is bringing Youth Lagoon to Soho on 4/18.

SXSW has been going on full-tilt in Texas this week, though that’s only just now becoming apparent.  The phases of SXSW have become pretty predictable from afar.  Leading up to the “festival,” there’s an ever-increasing barrage of blather about the approaching music-industry storm.  In that Phase I, PR horns are trumpeted and the scattershot schedules screened and screamed.  Phase II is veritable radio silence within the calm before the storm, owing to industry folks traveling, meeting up and participating in SXSW’s early prep and playout as the festival gets going.  Yesterday and today we have been moved into Phase III when the storm has unleashed resulting in  the musical levee breaking upstream.  Now trickles of reports have begun flowing in before the full flood overtakes the earth.  Phase IV will watch the waters rise and the inevitable flood occur over the next 2-4 weeks.  The reports, vignettes and hyperbole will wash over the earth following the industry’s return to their posts.  And there will be standing water, sun, malaria and ear-plague.  Something like that.

We have mixed feelings about SXSW.  What began primarily as a way for emerging/unheralded bands to gain exposure (especially artists playing Americana–as it was quaintly known back then) has morphed into something completely different.  Yes, new bands and artists can still gain some of the exposure they seek (though we will discuss another time:  at what cost?).  But you know you are wading in different waters within the  SXSW ecosystem when industry titans such as Green Day are playing the festival (how far they have traveled up and down the music mountain since we first caught them in the ‘hood at the Gilman Street Project).

As part of Phase III’s trickle, check out below one of our favorite, under-appreciated artists Josh Rouse performing his wise charmer A Lot Like Magic for Rhapsody’s Stripped Down By The River (with they sistah?) off his new album.  Rouse’s hat-trick of mid-2000s albums, Under The Cold Blue Stars, 1972 and Nashville, remain amongst our all-time favorites.  And now Rouse has a brand new album out entitled The Happiness Waltz, and which you can stream at his site HERE.  Just listen to the sumptuous first song Julie (Come Out Of The Rain) would you!   It’s typical Rouse:  understated beauty.  American Songwriter is also streaming the album and has an interview with the artist HERE.  Rouse is out on tour in support of the album, which will lead him to the West Coast in mid June.  Check out those tour dates HERE.

Animal Collective is on tour in support of their dense album Centipede Hz and recently were forced to cancel some shows due to health issues (laryngitis).  For those that missed cancelled shows and those that haven’t caught the band, The Creators Project has put up three of the band’s song performances recently at Terminal 5 in NYC.  Check the music and visual sensory overload below.  We can’t wait to catch them live.  The cancelled dates have been rescheduled and their tour continues.

Applesauce:

Moonjock:

Amanita:

One of our favorite UK bands, British Sea Power is back with a new album Machineries Of Joy to be released on April 1st on Rough Trade Records.  British Sea Power are a six-piece band variously originating from Cumbria, Yorkshire, Ealing and Shropshire and are currently based in East Sussex and on the Isle Of Skye.

The band’s singer/guitarist Yan explains about the new album:  “We’d like to think the album is warm and restorative. Various things are touched on in the words – Franciscan monks, ketamine, French female bodybuilders turned erotic movie stars. The world often seems a mad place at the moment. You can’t really be oblivious to that, but we’d like the record to be an antidote – a nice game of cards in pleasant company.”

British Sea Power has now released its cycling-centric official video for the fantastic, chugging title track from the new album.  Check it out below.  We love anything cycling, and the video captures well the spell of spinning through (and up) bucolic terrain and letting life flow past.  We love the down-tube shifters and vintage look, and the bicycle sculptures along the way.  Not sure about the angst instead of release/joy in the closing moments.  Still, a beauty in song and vision.  And remember:  help is [always] on the way.

Bring on the new album!  You can pre-order it HERE.

Oxford’s Stornoway has outdone itself with its brand new album Tales from Terra Firma.  We’ll have a full review of the album soon.  In the meantime you can stream the album over at Pop Matters HERE.  The album is a gem from stem to stern, but if you’re short on time make sure to check out the magnificence of track 8, The Ones We Hurt The Most, which will feature highly on our Best Songs of 2013 list.

We get so sick of the rock-n’-droll twang-with-Hallmark-lyrics that passes itself of as “country music” these days.  Let’s just call it for what it is: brain-dead crap pandering to the lowest common denominator. We won’t name names, but you and they know who the purveyors are. Hint: many appear regularly on the completely fraudulent “Country” Music Awards.  ‘Nuff said.

So it has been refreshing to hear some real country music from 26-year old Ashley Monroe (formerly of the Pistol Annies with Miranda Lambert) on her newly released debut album Like A Rose. Monroe’s songs tell well their tales that range in tenor from the lascivious all the way to the heartbroken.  And get this: the music is traditional, real country. Vince Gill produced the album well, and between the two of ’em, they got it right.

The song’s earthbound subjects range from 14-year-olds stealing pickup trucks, to coming-of-age struggles, to laments for losing out to the “other woman,” to the depths of out-of-wedlock pregnancy.  Monroe is garnering a lot of press in particular for the (calculating?) scene-stealer Give Me Weed Instead of Roses, on which Monroe looks past romantic, “teddy-bear” love in favor of whips and chains, whipped cream, whiskey and weed.  She’s to be forgiven if the song serves its obvious purpose in a post-Fifty Shades world:  as the gateway to the rest of her (more thoughtful) songs on the album.  Speaking of which, Monroe evidently co-wrote all the songs on the album, and is joined by Blake Shelton (please forgive her) on the joust-jesty You Ain’t Dolly (And You Ain’t Porter).

To get a better feel for Monroe and her music, you can go below and scroll over to the 37:00 minute mark of last night’s Tonight Show episode to watch Monroe perform the fine title track from the new album (never mind the bizarre commercial interruption–come on Jay, it’s the 21st century!).  We  knew from the moment we saw her vintage Gibson Hummingbird that she was legit.  Despite some glamor and glitz (who can blame her) Monroe and band acquit themselves well.  You can also watch some videos in which Monroe explains and performs some of the songs and can stream the entire album for a piece by plugging in your email address over at Monroe’s website HERE.  And if you can’t deal with the Tonight Show’s arcane video and lame commercial interruption, you can bypass it and at bottom watch another video vignette (via American Songwriter) of this legitimate country artist singing the title song.  Our hope for Monroe is that she sticks to the “real country” found on this album, and resists going the way of the CMA cabal.  Keep keepin’ it real (country) Ashley.  We’ll be listening.

Clem Snide’s Eef Barzelay continues to be one of America’s best songwriters.  Barzelay never fails to evoke emotional responses in his songs, ranging from tears to laughter, with intelligence and soul.  He’s written too many gems to mention quickly and so many that some have even gone unrecorded.  Take for example his song We Are Flowers.  Check out Barzelay’s 2010 Tiny Desk Concert below for NPR, but pay particular attention (or skip ahead to 9:00-13:30) to the understated and unrecorded mini-masterpiece We Are Flowers.

After We Are Flowers, check out Eef’s new song The Woods, which was made special for a BBC show and released on his Bandcamp in February.

Long live Eef!  While Eef’s been busy recording great fan-funded songs (see the second “HERE” ahead), we hope for the release this year of a formal full-band or multi-instrument album by Barzelay or Clem Snide.  Until then, check out these songs and look into the back catalog of this great singer-songwriter HERE or HERE.

Singer-songwriter Samantha Crain recently released a fine new album entitled Kid Face. Crain is Oklahoma-born and of Choctaw heritage, and she’s been garnering adulation from critics, fellow-artists and fans for quite some time.  Check Crain and her band performing her song Paint off of the new album for KDHX a few weeks ago.  You can watch other three other performances by Crain on KDHX HERE. 

Crain writes this about Paint:

“While on tour in Europe in the fall of 2011, I traveled alone and by train.  This rewarded me with cherished reflection and silence.  I began writing these lyrics while waiting in the Yatton Rail Station just between Bristol and Weston-super-Mare.  I was passing the time by peeling paint chips off of the declining shelter posts and began to feel detached from society.  It was as if I was an apparition, gently and quietly moving around the globe, observing but not participating.  After this feeling had come over me, I then became very excited, for this is what I had set out to become so many years ago, but then I became very downcast because it occurred to me; who loves a ghost?”

The song’s well-wrought lyrics are as follows:

“There where the paint had come off
That’s where I stopped
I looked at the flecks there
Then brushed them off
Thought “Hold to your host,
that was the most, the best you’ll find”

I’m trying not to disappear
Into the shadows
Into a tunnel that doesn’t end
Doesn’t know where to go
So where is that ghost?
That was the most, the best you’ll find

There’s a real problem here
I know
I’m almost young this year
Now that I’m older

I don’t want to be a cynic
It’s much too soon for that
Still it feels like something’s missing
And that’s a real drawback
So where is that host?
That was the most, the best I’ll find

There’s a real problem here
I know
I’m almost young this year
Now that I’m older

There’s a real problem here
I know
I’m almost young this year
Now that I’m older”

American Songwriter has a new interview with the intelligent, erudite and poetic Crain that you can view HERE.

Antony is a purist currently at the top of his game, though we’ll see what the future brings.  He’s a force of nature. Or un-nature, as you wish.  There can be no debate, however, that he sings with more heart and soul than many can muster.  In Paris this week, as a part of his series of concerts (with big band backing) at Salle Pleyel, Antony (again) collaborated with Lou Reed on a stirring rendition of Reed’s sweetly-adroit Candy Says.

On Sunday, honesty is never inappropriate, and as Reed sings: “Candy says I’ve come to hate my body, and all that it requires in this world.”  In that vein, who hasn’t swallowed whole the words, “If I could walk away from me.”  Check below as Reed reads it perfectly, and then Antony takes the song over at 7:17.  After Candy Says, watch Antony stake his claim on several other songs as one of the most affecting and effective artists of our generation.  All videos courtesy of the superb captures of LysWantTwo.

Also check out Antony’s marvelous cover of The Marvelette’s Someday, Someway:

And check out this revelatory cover of Leonard Cohen’s If It Be Your Will:

And second-to-last but not second-to-least, check out the audio (with vignettes) of the now-definitive cover of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive.

And finally, check out this hopeful version of Hope There’s Someone.