Doug Paisley has been kicking the tail of that other (unrelated) Paisley poseur in the songwriting department (we’ll give Brad the guitar-playing nod for now).   Paisley’s released two well-regarded albums, including last year’s fine “Constant Companion” (see photo above).

There’s nothing too fancy here; just malingering melodies supporting evocative, carefully-tended lyrics delivered via matter-of-fact, well-sung vocals.  Sometimes you can tell the worth of a musician by the attention paid by fellow musicians.  In Paisley’s case, he’s drawn the attention of the fabulous Feist and legend Garth Hudson of The Band, along with other fine musicians who supported him on Constant Companion.  Check out a few of his songs below.  Up first is What I Saw.

Doug Paisley–What I Saw

[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/11-What-I-Saw.mp3|titles=11 What I Saw]

Right off in this song we hear an opening homage to Neil Young, circa “Comes a Time” or “Harvest Moon.”  And then we get Paisley’s seemingly simple story and delivery, as elevated by Feist’s angelic choral vocals and Garth Hudson’s organic organ accompaniment.

“Fell out of love, wandered around

Wore out my shoes, went to the town

Wouldn’t you know, well I couldn’t get back

Train that I took was torn from the tracks

Did you see what I saw?

Could it be that I’ve lost

A way to go on and a reason to go

And all that I see is all that I know

Sad as I feel, a lonesome room (on the video version below: “Sad as I fear, the monkey in me”)

Banishing words heckle the gloom (video version:  “I’m looking at you, looking at me”)

I’m up on the hill, and I look to the sea

Ship on the shore is waiting for me.

Did you see what I saw?

Could it be that I’ve lost

A way to go on and a reason to go

And all that I see is all that I know”

Here’s the song done live, providing even more reason to love the violin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL59aJ-GGSg&feature=related

Also check out No One But You and, with a further tip of the influence hat to Neil Young, Paisley’s cover of Young’s Out on the Weekend.

Doug Paisley–No One But You

[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/noq025.mp3|titles=noq025]

Doug Paisley–Out on the Weekend

[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/01-Out-On-The-Weekend.mp3|titles=01 Out On The Weekend]

There have been some great musical performances in the past few days on the late night talk shows.  First up is Iron & Wine from the Tonight Show.  The band gave a stunning performance of their song, Tree By The River, replete with female back-up singers, piano, mandolin, and clarinet.  We love this band.

Next up is the cover-happy Bon Iver from the Jimmy Fallon Show.  The band begins with Donny Hathaway’s A Song for You, before segueing into Bonnie Raitt’s I Can’t Make You Love Me, coupled with a bit of Nick Of Time.  We would have preferred their clarion new song, Calgary. But make no mistake:  the boy can sing and create a mood like few others.

In stark contrast to Bon Iver’s smooth delivery, check out the powerful Joy Formidable from Wales, performing their song Whirring on Conan.  The group starts mid-tempo, but steadily builds to an energetic, thunderous closing capped off by the bass player devolving into some sort of performance-art headstand that may end up being the butt of some jokes.  But before that end, there was some impressive and passionate playing and singing.  We were pleasantly surprised that this is a band living up to the hype.  Definitely a band to keep an eye on.

Also making the talk shows were L.A’s Foster the People on Jimmy Kimmel performing their uber-catchy songs Pumped Up Kicks and Helena Beat.  The band just released their debut album, “Torches,” this week. Check them out.

And last, but not least, Yeasayer was on Conan the other day.  The Brooklyn band debuted a new song, The Devil and The Deed, a raucously rhythmic layout, and which they plan to record and release in the near future.  Check it out.

Let’s see, we love Radiohead.  Check.  And we love Toots and the Maytals.  Check.  How good would it be if the two were combined??  Checkmate!

Check it out.  And then check out a few other great videos by the always uplifting (even when “Let Down”) Toots and the Maytals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjAKDzh3E0o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_St8Kbo4uwU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rb13ksYO0s&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=AVGxdCwVVULXc_UI1UM3mDiMbO0GKPslxY

The cognoscenti know. Richard Buckner is the real deal.  We’ve loved Buckner’s work from the beginning.  If you haven’t heard it, we highly recommend you pick up Buckner’s album, “Devotion + Doubt,” which is one of the all-time greats (listen to Lil Wallet Picture from that album, way below).

The cognizant have been waiting since 2006 for a new album release from one of America’s best.  Comes now “Our Blood,” which Merge Records will release on August 2nd.  There’s a reason or two it took so long for “Our Blood” to be finished and released.  Read about it below from Merge’s press release.

“First, there was the score to a film that never happened. Then there was a brief brush with the law over a headless corpse in a burned-out car that had all eyes in Buckner’s small hometown in upstate New York turned toward him and his long-suffering truck. Shortly after a move to a safer, less popular corpse dumping ground, the death of his tape machine led to yet another reboot. After Richard called in pedal steel and percussion players and put new mixes on his laptop, his new “safer” place was burglarized. Goodbye, laptop.

Buckner says: “Eventually, the recording machine was resuscitated and some of the material was recovered. Cracks were patched. Parts were redundantly re-invented. Commas were moved. Insinuations were re-insinuated until the last percussive breaths of those final OCD utterances were expelled like the final heaves of bile, wept-out long after the climactic drama had faded to a somber, blurry moment of truth and voilà!, the record was done, or, let us be clear, abandoned like the charred shell of a car with a nice stereo.””

Listen to Traitor, the phenomenal first song off of “Our Blood” below and download it HERE.  Traitor is so good that Our Blood has to be one of our most highly anticipated releases of the year.

Check in HERE to read Buckner on “Our Love” generally and Traitor specifically.

Richard Buckner–Traitor

[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/traitor.mp3|titles=traitor]

And check out one of Buckner’s all-time greats, Surprise, AZ (as covered by Cynthia G. Mason from The 2005 Believer Magazine Music Issue). The song sings first of a man (woman, as covered?) traveling home with his mother after the funeral of his father, her estranged husband.  A relationship and a separation are sung, and he adds, “I think about him still/When I see you all alone.”  But his mother counters with memories of her son’s lost lover — the woman her son met when he was 23, who “let me down so far/I never quite made it back.”  A son and mother share their memories of lost love.  If you’re not affected by this song and its storylines, you simply have no soul.

Richard Buckner–Surprise, AZ

[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/09-Surprise-AZ-11.mp3|titles=09 Surprise, AZ 1]

And finally, below is Buckner’s moving Lil Wallet Picture. Buckner knows how to grab you by the ventricles.  Fourteen years later we’re still blown away by this song.

Richard Buckner–Lil Wallet Picture

[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/12-Lil-Wallet-Picture-1.mp3|titles=12 Lil Wallet Picture 1]

“Underspent
and too young too
I stumbled onto a picture of you
you wild bitter tale
all cherry oak and tears
as the branches looked in
the summer is done
and we are too, dear
pull back the drape
and let the silent light in
soon I’ll be on that highway

And damn this stretch of 99
that takes so many lives
one of them was mine

Hand me that lil wallet picture
1985
one more time

the lights of the street
where I’d walk to you at night
were so blindly lit
yeah, there were four little flames
his, mine, and yours,
and the torch in the attic
i woke up late
and kissed you awake
and as you packed up your load,
there was one last look
and then the U-haul broke free
now the ditches are flooded over the backroads

And damn this stretch of 99 that takes so many lives
one of them was mine

hand me that lil wallet picture
1985
one more time
underspent
and too young too
i stumbled onto a picture of you”

Death Cab for Cutie performed “You are a Tourist,” the first single off their impending new album, “Codes and Keys,” which will be released on May 31st, on The Jimmy Fallon Show.  How’s that for a run-on sentence, Teach?

Check it out below.

Bon Iver took the indie world by storm a few short years ago.  Since then they’ve issued the “Blood Bank” EP and deferred a sophomore album release, while spending some quality time collaborating incessantly with the likes of St. Vincent, Feist and, more recently, GAYNGS.

Comes now Calgary, the first sampling of their forthcoming, eponymously-titled sophomore album that is due out June 21 on JagJaguar.  The song starts off with Justin Vernon’s (Peter) Gabriel-esque vocals in synth and guitar wash a la “For Emma.”  But then the song gradually accelerates, taking flight at 1:52.  And at and beyond 2:34 there is euphoria in sound.  Complexity and drums that drive.  And the lyrics entice (particularly the first and last stanzas).  “Don’t you cherish me to sleep.”  Indeed.

Though just one song, Calgary confirms the rumors seeping out that Vernon brought in an orchestra for the album and that he had filled the new album with layers and layers of instruments and complexity, taking the band’s sound to an entirely new level.

Judging from Calgary, Bon Iver chose to evolve rather than merely recreate “For Emma.”  Sounds to our ears a very positive step.

You can check it out below and download it HERE.

Bon Iver–Calgary

[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Bon-Iver-Calgary.mp3|titles=Bon Iver — Calgary]

“don’t you cherish me to sleep
never keep your eyelids clipped
hold me for the pops and clicks
I was only for the father’s crib

hair, old, long along
your neck onto your shoulder blades
always keep that message taped
cross your breasts you won’t erase
I was only for your very space

hip, under nothing
propped up by your other one, face ‘way from the sun
just have to keep a dialogue
teach our bodies: haunt the cause
I was only trying to spell a loss

joy, it’s all founded
pincher with the skin inside
you pinned me with your black sphere eyes
you know that all the rope’s untied
I was only for to die beside

so itʼs storming on the lake
little waves our bodies break

there’s a fire going out,
but there’s really nothing to the south

swollen orange and light let through
your one piece swimmer stuck to you

sold, I’m Ever
open ears and open eyes
wake up to your starboard bride
who goes in and then stays inside
oh the demons come, they can subside”

We encourage you to head down to LA’s Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) to check out the current exhibit of street art featuring the likes of Banksy, Shepard Fairey and a host of other great street artists.  The exhibit is up until August 8th.

MOCA’s press release is set forth below.

“The Museum of Contemporary Art presents Art in the Streets, the first major U.S. museum exhibition of the history of graffiti and street art. The exhibition will trace the development of graffiti and street art from the 1970s to the global movement it has become today, concentrating on key cities where a unique visual language or attitude has evolved. Following MOCA’s presentation, the exhibition will travel to the Brooklyn Museum, where it will be on view March 30–July 8, 2012.

Art in the Streets will showcase installations by 50 of the most dynamic artists from the graffiti and street art community, including Fab 5 Freddy (New York), Lee Quiñones (New York), Futura (New York), Margaret Kilgallen (San Francisco), Swoon (New York), Shepard Fairey (Los Angeles), Os Gemeos (São Paulo), and JR (Paris). MOCA’s exhibition will emphasize Los Angeles’s role in the evolution of graffiti and street art, with special sections dedicated to cholo graffiti and Dogtown skateboard culture. The exhibition will feature projects by influential local artists such as Craig R. Stecyk III, Chaz Bojórquez, Mister Cartoon, RETNA, SABER, REVOK, and RISK.

A special emphasis will be placed on photographers and filmmakers who documented graffiti and street art culture including Martha Cooper, Henry Chalfant, James Prigoff, Steve Grody, Gusmano Cesaretti, Estevan Oriol, Ed Templeton, Larry Clark, Terry Richardson, and Spike Jonze. A comprehensive timeline illustrated with artwork, photography, video, and ephemera will provide further historical context for the exhibition.

Art in the Streets will feature several shows within the show. There will be a special section dedicated to the Fun Gallery, which connected New York graffiti artists with the downtown art community in the early 1980s. Co-curated by gallery founder Patti Astor, the Fun Gallery installation will feature the work of Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the graffiti artists who shaped the gallery’s history. A section dedicated to the seminal film Wild Style (1983), co-curated by the film’s director Charlie Ahearn, will document its influence on the global dissemination of graffiti and hip-hop culture. The exhibition will also feature a memorial presentation of Battle Station, a rarely seen work by legendary artist and theorist RAMMELLZEE, and a display of graffiti black books and other historic works from the Martin Wong Collection presented in collaboration with the Museum of the City of New York. A highlight of the exhibition will be a Los Angeles version of Street Market, a re-creation of an urban street complete with overturned trucks by Todd James, Barry McGee, and Steve Powers.

The exhibition will open with a skate ramp designed by pro-skater Lance Mountain and artist Geoff McFetridge. Skate demonstrations by the Nike SB skate team will be held onsite for the duration of the exhibition.

“Art in the Streets will be the first exhibition to position the work of the most influential artists to emerge from street culture in the context of contemporary art history,” said MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch.

“This quintessentially urban and dynamic partnership between the Brooklyn Museum and MOCA began with the 2005 Brooklyn-organized exhibition of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the consummate American street artist of his generation; continued with the MOCA-organized ©MURAKAMI in 2007, defining critical elements of worldwide street art; and now culminates with a groundbreaking exhibition devoted entirely to street art and graffiti,” said Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman. “The partnership has, in itself, provided a major record of public art over the past half century.”

Art in the Streets is organized by Jeffrey Deitch and associate curators Roger Gastman and Aaron Rose. Gastman is the author of The History of American Graffiti, which will be released in April 2011, and was a consulting producer on the film Exit Through The Gift Shop. Rose curated the exhibition Beautiful Losers and directed the related documentary film. Ethel Seno, editor of Trespass: A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art, is the curatorial coordinator of the exhibition. The Brooklyn Museum’s presentation will be organized by Managing Curator of Exhibitions Sharon Matt Atkins.”

Related to the Art in the Street exhibit, we were chagrined to learn that we had missed an opportunity to attend the Cave of Forgotten Dreams event on April 23rd at the Natural History Museum which was the closing event of the Cinefamily’s street art film series and which featured a live discussion with director Werner Herzog and musical performances by Nite Jewel, Islands, White Magic, and  Dntel (aka Jimmy Tamborello of Postal Service).  Tamborello hailed originally from Santa Barbara and records and DJs under the Dntel moniker.  Dntel has recently released a couple of fine new EPs, “After Parties 1” and “After Parties 2.”

Check out a couple of Dntel’s great new tracks below.

Dntel–After Parties

[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/01-After-Parties.mp3|titles=01 After Parties]

Dntel–Flares

[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/01-Flares.mp3|titles=01 Flares]

And finally here’s a fine new offering from Banksy inspired by recent riots in England prompted by the opening of a Tesco store in Stokes Croft, Bristol.  The poster of a lit petrol bomb emblazoned with Tesco’s ‘value’ logo will be sold to raise funds for the local community groups opposed to the Tesco store.

The Mountain Goats are coming to Soho on June 24th, and we couldn’t be happier.  Leader John Darnielle and crew have contributed treasure troves of tremulous tones and tales over the past two decades, and in the process have earned the respect and adoration of fans and critics alike.  The band (including Peter Hughes and funny-man drummer Jon Wurster) is currently on tour in support of their recently released album, “All Eternals Deck,” on Merge Records.  Having been obsessively overtaken by their oeuvre , and having heard bootlegs (courtesy of nyctaper) of their recent shows, we predict their show at Soho will be one of the highlights of the musical summer in Santa Barbara.  You can pick up tickets over at Club Mercy.

We’ll write more about the Mountain Goats’ discography in the coming weeks, but in the meantime check out one of our favorite songs off the new album, Never Quite Free.  On its surface, Never Quite Free seems to limn comfort and assurance in an anthem-like setting.  But the song’s title and foreboding allusions to the inevitable disruption of that comfort (“but hear his breath come through his teeth”) provide a more complex gestalt.  Darnielle is thankfully not prone to fairy-tale endings, which is understandable given the complexities and intermittent murk of this life.  And ambiguity provides possible rewards for all, no matter the writer’s intent or lack thereof.  Regardless, it’s a stunningly good song.

The Mountain Goats–Never Quite Free

[audio:https://www.thelefortreport.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/12-Never-Quite-Free.mp3|titles=12 – Never Quite Free]“It’s so good to learn that right outside your window
there’s only friendly fields and open roads
you’ll sleep better when you think
you’ve stepped back from the brink
found some peace inside yourself
laid down your heavy load

it gets alright
to dream at night
believe in solid skies and slate blue earth below
but when you see him, you’ll know

it’s okay to find the faith to saunter forward
with no fear of shadows spreading where you stand
and you’ll breathe easier just knowing that the worst is all behind you
and the waves that tossed the raft all night
have set you on dry land
it gets okay to praise the day
believe in sheltering skies and stable earth beneath
but hear his breath come through his teeth

walk by faith
tell no one what you see

it’s so good to learn that from right here the view goes on forever
and you’ll never want for comfort
and you’ll never be alone
see the sunset turning red
let all be quiet in your head
and look about
all the stars are coming out
they shine like steel swords
wish me well where i go
but when you see me, you’ll know”

Bill Callahan is coming to Soho on Friday, June 17th (courtesy of Club Mercy) in support of his fine new album, “Apocalypse,” on Drag City.  We highly recommend you get to Soho and catch Callahan, who is one of our more prolific and profound (though subtly so) songwriters.  We’ve loved Callahan’s writing and delivery for a long, long time in his various permutations (particularly on Smog, but also solo).

Now comes the first song and video off the new album:  Riding for the Feeling (lyrics below the video). The song is a languid, spare beauty.  The video features a graphic ski jumper in flight above a mountain range with no gravity or gravitas in sight.  The lyrics and video suggest that nothing of this world can bring this jumper down.  We love the concept of “riding for the feeling,” whether because it’s a glorious day in which you can do no wrong (“riding without a chain,” as cyclists say), or whether you just need to let fly and end some analysis-paralysis, or whether you feel temporarily dead to the world and need to ride to regain some feeling and lift.  All are possible.  Don’t give up on the ride.

“It’s never easy to say goodbye
To the faces
So rarely do we see another one
So close and so long

I asked the room if I’d said enough
No one really answered
They just said, “Don’t go, don’t go”
Well all this leaving is never ending

I kept hoping for one more question
Or for someone to say,
“Who do you think you are?”
So I could tell them

With intensity, the drop evaporates by law
In conclusion, leaving is easy
When you’ve got some place you need to be
I’m giving up this gig for another season

With the TV on mute
I’m listening back to the tapes
On the hotel bed
My my my apocalypse

I realized I had said very little about ways or wheels
Or riding for the feeling
Riding for the feeling
Is the fastest way to reach the shore

On water or land
Riding for the feeling

What if I had stood there at the end
And said again and again and again and again and again
An answer to every question
Riding for the feeling”