We have been enamored with the “band” Mountain Man for quite some time, and today we were reminded why when we ran across this performance of Holy Father on LaundroMatinee. These Mountain Mens can sing!!   Check it out.  A joyous, belated Sunday to you.  And afterwards, check out the phenomenal Play It Right. They play it right.

Mountain Man – Holy Father from LaundroMatinee on Vimeo.

Here’s Play It Right.

Mountain Man – Play It Right from LaundroMatinee on Vimeo.

Friday night Feist played a secret show at the Del Monte Playhouse in Venice.  Amongst others, Feist previewed some songs from her impending album, “Metals.” Check out a few vignettes of the show below, including new single, How Come You Never Go There, along with another new song, A Commotion, and a newly configured Mushaboom.

Enigmatic Portland band, Glass Candy, plays Soho tonight with openers Chromatics.  Glass Candy is the duo of Ida No and Johnny Jewel, and they clearly don’t play by the normal promotion rules.  You can barely find any meaningful info about them on the entire interwebs.  About all we could unearth is that they’ve just (re)released two songs, Beautiful Object and Warm in the Winter.  Oh, and a video or two (see one way below).  Both songs have a retro electro-disco backbone to them, with Beautiful Object reminding us of Destroyer’s recent retro-sound in Kaputt, but with Blondie on vocals.  It’s melodically insidious and has been on repeat at Chez Lefort since we first heard it.  Warm in the Winter starts out with a Where the Streets Have No Name-esque intro before shifting into love-rave mode that’s bound to get you moving live. Check out these songs and video below.

Beautiful Object

“In love’s golden ocean
No emotion
Fake a smile for charity
Cry in trauma for the drama
Oh no
Real love a golden rarity
Beautiful object
Ooh
I hang them from the walls and ceiling
What more can I do
I want to put my hands deep into feeling
Hands only get so far
Depth for me is just a possibility
And all my misguided desire
Will freeze me deep with pent-up hostility
What’s the meaning of the mask
You can’t be asked
Oh oh
Is life a social fiction?
Not to see but be seen
Oh no
Now that’s a ghost’s ambition
Beautiful object
Ooh
As if a pretty face is so revealing
Hey what I can do
If what I’ve got isn’t as appealing
Beautiful object
Ooh
Soul is sold to portray a perfection
A beautiful object true
It’s just a parody of a person”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-g4QxTndRk&feature=player_embedded

And then there’s Warm in the Winter:

“Love is in the air… love is in the air
We’re warm in the winter
Sunny on the inside
Love is in the air
I’m crazy like a monkey
Ee ee / Oo oo!
Happy like a new year
Yeah yeah / Woo hoo!
That’s right everybody
This is Glass Candy
Making our way around the world
Searching out a face-to-face with you
One more time
Looking for a heart-to-heart
Whenever you’re ready
We want you to know
If ever you should look in the mirror
And wonder who it is that you are
And wonder what it is that you came for
Well… I know the answer
You’re beautiful
You came from heaven
You came down to this place
To fill out the dark corners
With your everlasting light
And that’s why… I love you
We love you
C’mon shout / Hey shout
Shout
Yeah you
I love you
We love you”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX922LVpULM&feature=player_embedded

Today starting at 10 am Pacific time Wilco’s entire new album, “The Whole Love,” will be streaming for 24 hours at their website, Wilcoworld.net.  The album will be released on September 27th on their own, brand new label dBpm.  According to the band’s email, today’s streaming is “a reward for your labors, our labors, and those of our forefathers/mothers.”   Let’s see if it can labor off this flippin’ fog while it’s at it.

The Telegraph has a sweet interview with Guy Garvey of the great British band, Elbow, which ends with Garvey calling for “unbridled positivity” at their shows.  Amen brother!  We can’t wait to pass along all the positivity we can muster when the band plays the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco some time (schedule yet to be finalized) between September 3oth and October 2nd (Friday to Sunday).

Here’s an excellent excerpt from The Telegraph interview (emphasis added):

“This may be Elbow’s area of speciality: the equivocal anthem. The uplifting singalong coda and glass-half-full sentiments of their most celebrated song, One Day Like This, have made it a staple of ads and soundtracks…. In a BBC poll to find the public’s favourite Desert Island Discs, it was the highest-rated song of the past 10 years. “I’m dead proud of that. It feels as if we’ve added to the canon. That’s the goal. It’s like something [Elbow guitarist] Mark Potter said – ‘That’ll last longer than our gravestones.’ ” In a live setting, Elbow’s poetic ambiguity is transformed into something else. “You hear bands saying, ‘We’re gonna blow people away.’ I’ve never really liked that kind of confrontational thing. Its not, ‘We’ll show them what we’ve got.’ It’s, ‘Look what we can do together.’ “That’s the great thing about singalongs. It might not be very cool, but what the f— is cool? I spent years trying to be cool, and I’m not very good at it. So let’s just get stuck in with the unbridled positivity.””

In the meantime, to get you in the mood, check out the videos of Grounds for Divorce and One Day Like This from Festival V in 2009, followed by a BBC broadcast from this year’s Glastonbury Music Festival of the entire Elbow set (after the blather finishes at :46).  You can also go over to Absolute Radio and check out Elbow’s live session at St. Paul’s Cathedral that is streaming only until September 8th.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGqoB6oB4Ic

Before they played at the Santa Barbara Bowl, My Morning Jacket played a benefit concert for KCRW in front of a scant 250 people (including an enterprising friend of ours) at Village Studios in Santa Monica.  The whole concert is now available to watch below, courtesy of NPR.  Check out the setlist over at NPR.

One of our favorites of this or any other year, Destroyer, has delivered a new official video for their song, Savage Night at the Opera (from their Tops of 2011 album, “Kaputt”).  Check it out.  Makes us want to head to Vancouver and hang for a bit in Gastown and environs.

Destroyer – Savage Night at the Opera from Merge Records on Vimeo.

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks performed the previously unheard song, Surreal Teenagers, on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” Tuesday night.  The song is so obscure you can’t even find it on the new album released last week,  “Mirror Traffic.” Given the less poppy, more proggy, sound, we’re sure Beck gave it the boot from the album.  We can’t say we blame him (for once).  Different strokes, though.  Surreal Teenagers may be your Pumped Up Kicks, if you will.

We prefer the other song they did on Fallon before they played Surreal Teenagers, the “clean” (slow, snow job indeed) version of their prickly song, Senator.

Check ’em out.

News just in from TomWaits.com, you can stream the title song from Mr. Waits’ impending album, “Bad as Me,” below.  Vintage Waits, with the usual lyrical magic.  Our takeaway:  takes a sinner to know one.

Bad as Me

“You’re the head on the spear
You’re the nail on the cross
You’re the fly in my beer
You’re the key that got lost
You’re the letter from Jesus on the bathroom wall
You’re mother superior in only a bra
You’re the same kind of bad as me

I’m the hat on the bed
I’m the coffee instead
The fish or cut bait
I’m the detective up late
I’m the blood on the floor
The thunder and the roar
The boat that won’t sink
I just won’t sleep a wink
You’re the same kind of bad as me

No good you say
Well that’s good enough for me

You’re the wreath that caught fire
You’re the preach to the choir
You bite down on the sheet
But your teeth have been wired
You skid in the rain
You’re trying to shift
You’re grinding the gears
You’re trying to shift
And you’re the same kind of bad as me

They told me you were no good
I know you’ll take care of all my needs
You’re the same kind of bad as me

I’m the mattress in the back
I’m the old gunnysack
I’m the one with the gun
Most likely to run
I’m the car in the weeds
If you cut me I’ll bleed
You’re the same kind of bad as me
You’re the same kind of bad as me”

Tom Waits – Bad As Me by antirecords