We’ve raved (slightly asterisked) before about her videos.  Check out a brand new live video of Lana Del Rey performing Blue Jeans accompanied only by solo electric guitar.  Asterisk hereby removed.

She will play the Troubadour in LA on December 7th (her only scheduled West Coast show this year).

Check it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zneaWRLUS8o&feature=player_embedded#!

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks are out on tour in support of their new album, “Mirror Ball.” Check them out below performing one of our all-time favorite Malkmus songs, Church on White, written by Malkmus (who attended nearby Cate School in Carpinteria) about a friend’s death over a decade ago.

Speaking of which, Man of Steele–R.I.P. Five years later and we still miss you, brother.

“Bleed the pot
When you’re hot you’re hot
And when enough is enough
Do the fakers drop out?
Promise me
You will always be
Too awake to be famous
Too wired to be safe
But all you really wanted
Was everything
Plus everything
And the truth
I only poured you
Half a life

Carry on
It’s a marathon
Take me off the list
I don’t want to be missed
Carrion
Its what we all become
From small minds and tall trees
Away from the action
But all you ever wanted
Was everything
And everything
Plus the truth
I only poured you
Half a life
Half a life

I only poured you half a lie”

While we remain immensely ensconced in our Elbow infatuation, we were reminded of the band’s 2008 official video for its uber-uplifting and standard set-ending song, One Day Like This. Check it out below, and make the best use of your day.  Below that is the same song done live with the BBC Concert Orchestra and Choir Chantage.

As mentioned previously Gomez gummed up our minds with their sticky set at Hardly Strictly last weekend.  Check ’em out performing Whatever’s On Your Mind at HSBF.

And after is the official video for this sweet song from their great new identically-titled album.  And then check the band performing their vivacious song, Options, on The David Letterman Show.

Whatever’s On Your Mind from Gomez on Vimeo.

“Options” on Letterman from Gomez on Vimeo.

In addition to Elbow, one of our most highly anticipated acts at HSBF was the ridiculously gifted singer-songwriter, Cass McCombs.  McComb’s “Wits End” album was a dark, chamber-ish endeavor that has shown up on a lot of Top 10 lists this year.  He’s set to release yet another album, on November 7th entitled “The Humor Risk” on Domino Records. According to Domino’s press release, the new album is “an attempt at laughter instead of confusion, chaos instead of morality, or, as fellow Northern Californian Jack London said, “I would rather be ashes than dust!” Musically, it is more rhythm-based, tempos swifter to nearly rocking, than the sparse Wit’s End.”

McCombs and band delivered en exemplary set of music at HSBF, appreciated for its subtlety and restraint that perfectly accented the magnificent melodies and plush playing.  Check out some videos below from HSBF, including his great Not the Way, and the uber-catchy song, County Line (though, apologies, we missed the beginning again).

As we mentioned the other day, the highlight of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival was the British band Elbow.  They had us and the entire crowd in the palms of their hands, and great hands they were.  They are a powerful band led by the Bono-charismatic Guy Garvey (though a bit more humble than his Bononess).  Check out the only video (of Grounds for Divorce) we managed to film instead of enjoying the awe (selfish us).  And then check out some great photos of Guy and the band by Amy Halverson, and the swept-away crowd, below.    And finally, at the very bottom is the setlist from their set.

All photos by Amy Halverson

Setlist

1. The Birds
2. The Bones of You
3. Mirrorball
4. Neat Little Rows
5. Grounds for Divorce
6. The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver
7. Lippy Kids
8. Open Arms
9. One Day Like This

Yeah, we’re the late show on this.  But a couple weeks ago we finally finished Keith Richards’ immensely entertaining and illuminating memoir, “Life.”

The following were amongst our favorite passages (emphasis added):

Richards on touring:

“The grind is the traveling, the hotel food, whatever.  It’s a hard drill sometimes. But once I the stage, all of that miraculously goes away. Thee grind is never the stage performance.  I can play the same song again and again, year after year.  When Jumping Jack Flash comes up again it’s never a repetition, always a variation.  Always.  I would never play a song again once I thought it was dead.  We couldn’t just churn it out.  The real release is getting on stage.  Once we’re up there doing it, it’s sheer fun and joy. Some long-distance stamina, of course, is needed. And the only way I can sustain the impetus over the long course we do is by feeding off the energy that we get back from the audience. That’s my fuel.  All I’ve got is this burning energy, especially when I’ve got a guitar in my hands.  I get an incredible raging glee when they get out of their seats. Yeah, come one, let it go.  Give me some energy and I’ll give you back double. It’s almost like some enormous dynamo or generator.  It’s indescribable.  I start to rely on it; I use their energy to keep myself going.  If the place was empty, I wouldn’t be able to do it.  Mick does about ten miles.  I do about five miles with a guitar around my neck, every show.  We couldn’t do that without their energy, we just wouldn’t even dream of it.  And they make us want to give our best. We’ll go for things that we don’t have to.  It happens every night we go on.  One minute we’re just hanging with the guys and oh, what’s the first song?…, and suddenly we’re up there. It’s not that it’s a surprise, because that’s the whole reason to be there. But my whole physical being goes up a couple of notches.  “Ladies and gentlemen, the Rolling Stones.”  I’ve heard that for forty-odd years, but the minute I’m out there and hit that first note, whatever it is, it’s like was driving a Datsun and suddenly it’s a Ferrari.  At that first chord I play, I can hear the way Charlie’s going to hit into it and the way Darryl’s going to play into that.  It’s like sitting on top of a rocket.”

Richards on the negative effects of “improved” recording technology:

“Very soon after Exile, so much technology came in that even the smartest engineer in the world didn’t know what was really going on.  How come I could get a drum sound back in Denmark Street with one microphone, and now with fifteen microphones I get a drum sound that’s like someone shitting on a tin roof? Everybody got carried away with technology and slowly they’re swimming back. In classical music, they’re rerecording everything they rerecorded digitally in the ’80s and ’90s because it just doesn’t come up to scratch.  I always felt that I was actually fighting technology, that it was no help at all.  And that’s why it would take so long to do things.  [Producer] Fraboni has been though all of that, that notion that if you didn’t have fifteen microphones on a drum kit, you didn’t know what you were doing.  Then the bass player would be battened off, so they were all in their little pigeonholes and cubicles.  And you’re playing this enormous room and not using any of it.  This idea of separation is the total antithesis of rock and roll, which is a bunch of guys in a room making a sound and just capturing it.  It’s the sound they make together, not separated.  This mythical bullshit about stereo and high tech and Dolby, it’s just totally against the whole grain of what music should be.

Nobody had the balls to dismantle it.  And I started to think, what was it that turned me on to doing this?  It was these guys that made records in one room with three microphones.  They weren’t recording every little snitch of the drums or bass.  They were recording the room.  You can’t get these indefinable things by stripping it apart.  The enthusiasm, the spirit, the soul, whatever you want to call it, where’s the microphone for that? The records could have been a lot better in the ’80s if we’d cottoned on to that earlier and not been led by the nose of technology.”

Richards on Tom Waits:

“Tom Waits was an early collaborator…He’s a one-off lovely guy and one the most original writers.”

Tom Waits on the first time he met and played with Richards:

“We were doing Rain Dogs….  He played on three songs on that record:  “Union Square,” we sang on “Blind Love” together, and on “Big Black Mariah” he played a great rhythm part.  It really lifted the record up for me. I didn’t care how it sold at all.  As far as I was concerned it had already sold.”

Tom Waits on the Wingless Angels recording (recorded in part outside live in Jamaica):

“One of my favorite things that he did is Wingless Angels.  That completely slayed me.  Because the first thing you hear is the crickets, and you realize you’re outside.  And his contribution to capturing the sounds on that record just feels a lot like Keith.  Maybe more like Keith than I had contact with when we got together.  He’s like a common laborer in a lot of ways.  He’s like a swabby.  Like a sailor.  I found some things they say about music that seemed to apply to Keith. You know, in the old days they said that the sound of the guitar could cure gout and epilepsy, sciatica and migraines. I think that nowadays there seems to be a deficit of wonder.  And Keith seems to still wonder about this stuff.  He will stop and hold his guitar up and just stare at it for a while.  Just be rather mystified by it.  Like all the great things in the world, women and religion and the sky … you wonder about it, and you don’t stop wondering about it.“

Recent formidable visitors to Santa Barbara, Joy Formidable, brought the joy to the David Letterman Show last night and whipped out a winning Whirring. Check it out courtesy of the Audio Perv.

And Jane’s Addiction played The Jimmy Kimmel Show last night.  JA will soon release its new album, “The Great Escape Artist,” and they performed new song Irresistible Force on Kimmel. It takes flight at the chorus.  Check it below, and after check the chestnut, Stop, off of 1990’s Ritual de lo Habitual.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFRTS2y9iMg&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qg6iyuESf7Q

And finally, Lykke Li played on Carson Daly (via the El Rey Theater) on Tuesday, doing her great song, Rich Kids’ Blues. Check it out again courtesy of the Audio Perv.

Prior to last Tuesday, when it came to Jessica Lea Mayfield, we had only heard one or two songs off of  her twangier first album, “With Blasphemy So Heartfelt.”  And then we stumbled upon her pop-perfect 2011 album, “Tell Me,“ with its more varied sounds.  And since last week it’s been hard to listen to anything else.  Produced by Dan Auerbach (of The Black Keys), “Tell Me” has vaulted into our Best of 2011 list and shows no signs of being removed.  It’s a stunner from stem to stern.  Mayfield molds great melodies and pens penetrating lyrics, and then delivers them with laconic vocals that remind us of Lucinda Williams coupled with Neko Case.  The 22-year old Mayfield has been performing live since she was eight years old, and you gather that when you catch her slight swagger live.  She’s earned it.

Speaking of her performing live, we had the good fortune to catch her simmering set at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass this past Sunday.  Mayfield’s languorous vocals played perfectly against her tasteful backing band, which included kinetic referee-guitarist Richie Kirkpatrick, drummer Scott Hartlaub and brother David Mayfield on bass.

For a good flavor for Jessica check her out below at Hardly Strictly performing two songs off the new album, and then “For Today” off of her first album.  Our apologies for the sound on Blue Skies Again–we’ll get that figured out one of these years.  And after, check out some other great videos of Mayfield in action.

First up is her moving new song, Sometimes at Night, with its rock-bottom tones and tales.  Unfortunately, we missed capturing the opening stanza, which includes one of our favorite sordid lines: “I broke the little cabana boy’s heart, to let you fondle me in the dark; one of those city outdoor motels, in your bed swore I never would tell.”  You can catch the entire song in the penultimate video way below.

Next up after the darkness of Sometimes at Night is the sunny uplift of her powerful pop song, Blue Skies Again.  If there were any rhyme or reason remaining for radio, Blue Skies Again would be a No. 1 hit across this land.  We love the following stanzas in particular:

“This heart of mine
Is ready for the spring
Open up my window
Winter bird, take wing

Suddenly I can see blue skies again
Beauty says nothing less than our hearts will mend
I promise you… they do”

And check out her performance of the older kiss-off song, For Today, from her first album, including these great lines:

“I could care less about you
Care less about you
And I love the sound of you walking away
And I can see clearer and I’m getting closer
To finding out just who I am without you in the way
So hold me
But only for today”

Moving on, check out Mayfield and Seth Avett of The Avett Brothers singing Is This Love? off her first album.

And then check out Mayfield’s solo acoustic performance of the great Run Myself Into the Ground off of the new album.

And then check out two phenomenal HD videos of Jessica and band on KEXP performing Kiss Me Again and Sometimes at Night (including that great cabana-boy opening stanza we missed in our video above). So very good.  Filmed at Lance Armstrong’s Mellow Johnny Bike Shop in Austin during this year’s SXSW.

And finally, watch Jessica’s network TV debut earlier this year on The Letterman Show, rocking Our Hearts Are Wrong with band and Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys.