Here’s some video of the Jesus Lizard playing a show in 1991 in Dallas!

This one is one of my favorite Jesus Lizard songs:

From the amazing Yazoo Records:

THE BEST OF LOS JARDINEROS
Classic Recordings by Puerto Rico’s Legendary String Band Ensemble (1929-1932)
Yazoo 7018; Ordering Information

Los Jardineros is the greatest traditional Puerto Rican band that ever
recorded. Legendary for their brilliant musicianship, the recordings
made by this ensemble from 1929 to 1932 capture the rural jibaro style
and spirit in its heyday when it was most strong and vibrant. Their
original 78s pressed over 75 years ago are extremely rare collectors
items. Fans of early traditional music will be hearing them for the
first time and will find this release a revelation packed with unique,
top-notch performances. Drawn from an extensive body of work that
reveals the diversity of the early Puerto Rican music scene on the
island and in New York, The Best of Los Jardineros features plenas,
boleros, danzas, decimas, aguinaldos, fox trots and more - a
fascinating array of vocal and instrumental performances in the
traditional styles of the day. Contains 23 newly restored 78s which
feature, among an all-star line-up of singers and musicians, the top
Puerto Rican guitar, mandolin and cuatro players of the period - plus a
large format booklet insert with extensive notes, lyrics and graphics
printed in both English and Spanish.

I was listening to this earlier today and I LOVE it. Like the description says, there’s a variety of styles here, and the production is great. I haven’t had a chance to read the book yet (it’s not my CD, alas) but this is good music by some very very skilled folks. If you like old jazz and ragtime, or if you have even a passing interest in Cuban/Mexican/South American music, this is for you. Yazoo, incidentally, puts out incredible comps of old jazz, rural, pop, etc. music.

Go forth and purchase! I know I will.

VIA Yazoo Records 

Here, for your hearing delectation, is an AMAZING ANIMAL MIX.

This is a mix in which all the songs are either A) About and animal or B) Sung to an animal. No metaphors or euphamisms. I tried to be pretty strict, but there are a couple on there that, honestly, are only tangentially about animals, but are mostly just good songs.

If anybody has any good songs to add to it let me know, and I’ll make a part two!

Here’s the tracklist:

1. The 6ths - San Diego Zoo
2. Nina Nastasia - A Dog’s Life
3. El Perro Del Mar - Dog
4. Nick Drake - Black Eyed Dog
5. Bayless Rose - Black Dog Blues
6. Tommy Settlers And His Blues Moaner - Big Bed Bug (Bed Bug Blues)
7. Peggy Honeywell - bower bird
8. The Mountain Goats - Snow Owl
9. Nick Drake - Strange Meeting I / Bird Flew By
10. Iron & Wine - Bird Stealing Bread
11. Keren Ann - Spanish song bird
12. Gothic Archies - Crows
13. Tommy McCook - Ride Me Donkey
14. Pixies - Monkey Gone To Heaven
15. Belle & Sebastian - The Fox In The Snow
16. The Kinks - Phenomenal Cat
17. Devendra Banhart - Little Yellow Spider
18. London Sinfonietta; Charles Dutoit - Aquarium
19. Lilys - The Hermit Crab
20. Bricks - The Sturgeon

And, of course, if anybody objects to me posting a song my them or somebody they represent, let me know and I’ll remove it.

Enjoy!

Download after the jump.

(more…)

The debutante ball comparisons are inevitable – Lavender Diamond lead singer Becky Stark may be wearing orange, but there are newspaper articles, two-page photo spreads of debs in White, their coming-outs on the wall right outside the coat check, impossible to miss. Where’s the harm in a little indulgence? Here’s a group of starry-eyed Californians, songs like old brandy and new wheat, throwing down in the trash-elegant community hall of the weedy-tweediest stepcousin of Old New York Money, crooning for Manhattan and Brooklyn’s bloggy young music power set, and it all works like your great-great grandmother washing bonnets in the Chesapeake. The band, charmingly overdressed, sweats through their short suits in the chilly, dark room, and the music is pure joy. It’s hard to begrudge Lavender Diamond their crushing earnestness. To do them otherwise would seem improper.

For the esteemed, invite-only crowd, it was a taste of potential futures; maybe one day the barkeep will know her name, Elder-in Chief of Something Magazine, pomo-photo portrait above the sitting-room couch, dress-up game of what could be, should her upward trajectory pick up (or not slow down). To bask in streetlight-dappled stained-glass for a night isn’t much of a sin, when Indie Granddad Matador Records is furnishing the sweet fantasy. Lavender Diamond, splendidly friendly, played to the awkwardness of the situation, Stark drawing out stage banter to unbearable lengths. Or was the schtick only unbearable because the shaggy-dog story was about befriending a cab driver, an utterly touristic pursuit, anathaema to a the comportment of a true-blue self-aware New Yorker? Who but a total innocent would invite a Moroccan Psycho-Linguist cabbie up to their friends’ house for tea in the middle of the night? But this is the central conceit, it seems, of Lavender Diamond: catch the crowd unawares with our own unexpected sincerity, assault us with everything we run to the open bar to avoid.

Starks’s songs are very good, as hard to forget as piano-recital dirges and easy to hear, like Sandy Denny through a Victrola. Guitar, piano and drums serve as laundry-line to Starks’s powerful child-voice. Soaring verses, choruses underwater, crinkled reeflike around the blues. This is idealism, don’t forget, uncrushed even by the New Yorker walking out after a couple of songs, and why not? “I’d live in New York, if I were rich,” said Stark, to a crowd of the future-that. She throws in the bait and who but us hook in? She’s got us already, arms up to the ceiling, laughing into the wrong mic, pounding arrhythmic.

The “Peace Comic” distributed to every seat in the venue describes a young, idealistic band who, upon greeting a New York crowd with “peace has come,” is immediately met with cries of “War!” and “Poverty!” from the Intelligent Manhattanite contingent. The Los Angelean Comic-Book band is unused to this reply – California crowds apparently understand that peace has, indeed, come to the planet. When Stark produced the same banter, verbatim, at the show, the assembled New York Crowd simply applauded – no cries of injustice here. No one called bullshit on Lavender Diamonds’ sunbeamy hopefulness, because they’ve already called in upon themselves. There’s nothing critical in their show. This is a band basking in their sudden, inexplicable talent, in the supernatural voice of their singer, in the unholy timeliness of their sound. When Stark yells “You broke my heart” over and over and over again above pounding drums, it’s not complaint – it’s mantra, a rhinestone steamroller of polite voice-acting. A broken heart is something to be yelled at, pointed to, and Stark does it in an orange debutante’s gown.

~MP3~

Matador

More here.

Another record from a few years ago:  the soundtrack an imaginary film called “Mabuta no Ura” by Boris. This one isn’t really metal at all, and it’s not drone either, and for a band that likes really long songs there’s a lot of restraint here. Variety, too - Boris cover a lot of interesting ground in a bunch of short, shimmering songs. “Amber Bazaar” sounds like Muslimgauze, Duster-style spacerock takes over an a few tracks, and “Melting Guitar” is just that. It’s psych, but strictly modern psych. If this movie ever gets made, it’ll be filmed underwater.

Listen

Buy

So I really like The Mountain Goats. I get nerdy for John Darnielle (ref.) So how I missed The Extra Glens record (way back from 2002) is a little beyond me. I just picked up a copy this weekend at the awesome AKA Music in Philadelphia, and we listened to it on the way nack to NYC while a huge (at least, it seemed huge) blizzard tried to get me to drive my car off the road. I’m not saying this record will make you a better driver, but I refuse to attribute our survival tonight to pure chance.

As a side project (it’s Darnielle and Frank Bruno, frequent collaborator and member of Nothing Painted Blue), the Glenns sound a whole lot like the Goats - Darnielle’s up front, throwing it down lyrically, interesting arrangements behind him, though the Glenns are decidedly less sparse and rough than most of Darnielle’s output. The songs really seem measured and deliberate, and refreshingly poppy. Musically, Darnielle and Bruno are keeping it loose and fun - “Memories” sounds like JD channeling Bob Dylan behind a piano in a New Jersey hotel lounge. This is one of those records that a lot of Mountain Goats fans will probably love a whole lot as a break from protocol, and non-fans will get into if they ever hear it.

~MP3~

The Extra Glenns - Going to Marrakesh

More here.

Aside from the sorta unfortunate name, Lavender Diamond are pretty damn good. Yeah, I know the EP came out a while ago, but we’re revisiting it and it’s doing the job. Kind of like Espers (but less miserable) and MV & EE (not as drugged). In other words, like most every pale, stoned British 18-year old in an elf hat circa 1966. That’s ok.

They just signed to Rough Trade, and they’re planning to release a full album in the spring. Have some songs:

- MP3 -

Lavender Diamond - You Broke My Heart

Lavender Diamond - Rise in the Springtime

MV & EE - East Mountain Joint