Thanks to Prefix Magazine for this great capture of one of our favorite performances from SXSW this year. We were right in the mix of things - certainly a night to remember, check it out for yourself:

Spank Rock & Amanda Blank (SXSW 2007)

Unreleated: YACHT will be opening for LCD Soundsystem on their upcoming tour, we’ll be catching them when they swing through town.

Here are the Wisconsin concerts (and one in Chicago) we recommend you take in this week. Check them out below and let us know which ones you’ll be attending or ones you think should really make our list.

5/1 - The Robot Ate Me/Pale Young Gentleman - Cafe Montmartre, Madison
5/3 - Electric 6 - The Annex, Madison
5/3 - Jose Gonzalez - The Terrace, Madison
5/3 - Parts & Labor/Adult - Stonefly, Milwaukee
5/3 - Colin Hay - Miramar Theater, Milwaukee
5/5 - Norah Jones - Riverside Theater, Milwaukee
5/6 - LCD Soundsystem - The Metro, Chicago
5/6 - Electric 6 - Mad Planet, Milwaukee

+++++Please remember you can always find a list of upcoming shows in Milwaukee and Madison by visiting our shows page +++++

Having sorely missed Ted Leo & The Pharmacist recent stop in Madison that was supremely well received I was fortunate enough to be in Chicago when our paths crossed at the Metro.

Touring behind Living With The Living, Ted marched the near capacity crowd through an hour and a half’s worth of music. Being this was an early show (ending at 10PM) he joked near the end about how great that actually was for both audience and band, stating you have the best of both worlds of being able to go out or get some well deserved rest. I’m guessing I’m one of the few who went with the latter, as the performance itself was abounding with energy, sweat and moxie.

The last time I saw Ted was in this same city in a park for the Pitchfork Music Festival. It was outdoors and hot as hell. Ted had a nice microphone induced blood spot on his head that day and it was about as perfect of a rock show you could ask for at a music festival. We got that same rock and roll performance (sans the blood spot) last night at the Metro and, if anything, witnessed a more established and well-defined group on stage.

Not feeling those Living With The Living tracks yet? I’ll admit I wasn’t too high on them myself, but revisiting the album right now, after last nights show there are definitely some new favorites, which is exactly one of the things I wanted to take away from the show.

Check out this video for “Who Do You Love” as recorded for the DL:

Myspace: Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
MP3: Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - The Sons Of Cain
MP3: Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - Bomb.Repeat.Bomb
Video: Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - Bomb.Repeat.Bomb

Full day today as I get ready to head to Chicago for the next five days. Today, check out a “blast from the past” mp3. It was sometime in 2000, or perhaps early 2001, that my friend Justin gave me a mix CD he’d made featuring all sorts of great stuff that I’d heard for the first time (Daft Punk/The Herbaliser). The first track on that mix was “People Power In The Disco Hour,” a keyboard and beat driven number featured on Clinton’s Disco and the Halfway to Discontent.

Clinton consists of the duo behind Cornershop, Ben Ayres and Tjinder Singh, and that track in particular soundtracked many summer nights - most of them not sober. Seeing that the weekend is right around the corner, perhaps you can find an appropriate outlet to drop this track into your rotation.

“….Lean on the horn, there’s dobule parking on the dancefloor.”

Buy: Amazon (Used for $0.77!)
Myspace: Cornershop
MP3: Clinton - People Power In The Disco Hour

Three pretty great shows going on tonight in Madison, which one(s) are you attending?

4/26 - Ben Kweller - Orpheum Theatre, Madison
4/26 - Joseph Arthur - High Noon Saloon, Madison
4/26 - Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - UW Club 770, Madison

Update: Don’t forget about The Postmarks at Cafe Montmartre tonight as well!

You heard the new White Stripes single yet? We like.

Also: Checking in on Bright Eyes after the already famous tour kick off show in Milwaukee, Erik sent us a report from the Minneapolis show which sounds like it tour is progressing smoothly.

We were anxious to check out Jona Bechtolt’s latest incarnation as YACHT. We enjoyed The Blow, just like just about everyone else, especially the song “Parentheses.”

The cover art for YACHT’s upcoming record, I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real, along with the title had me expecting songs about dragons, warlocks and alchemy. Thankfully, that’s not the case. Instead, the album is full of infectious and danceable grooves. Bechtolt isn’t navigating uncharted waters with this album, instead he’s made a record that is as complete as it is fun.

It was a tough decision deciding what track to hit you with, I settled for “I Believe In You” - a chugging bass line and hand claps yield a Flaming Lips-esque mantra.

Completely unrelated to the track below, but is anyone else hearing a strong similarity between the track “Platinum” and LCD Soundsystem’s “Get Innocuous?”

I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real will be released on May 15th.

Update: Check out Marathonpacks for a different track.

Buy: Insound
Myspace: YACHT
MP3: YACHT - I Believe In You
MoB: The Blow - Parentheses

You find a good thing and you tend to absorb it as much as possible. After that, you usually go looking to find out where it came from or got started. That’s exactly what I did with the The Besnard Lakes. After completely immersing myself with The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse, I dug around until I found a copy of their first release, Vol. 1.

The sound is fuzzed out and more along the lines of Explosions in the Sky on some tracks. As for favorites, I haven’t been able to stop playing the song “Thomasina,” which I’ve shared with you below. If you haven’t checked out The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse, start there first, it’s one of the best records so far this year. After that, you’ll be searching out Vol. 1 just like I did.

Buy: Insound
MP3: The Besnard Lakes - Thomasina
MP3: The Besnard Lakes - And You Lied To Me
Myspace: The Besnard Lakes

Each Tuesday stop by Muzzle of Bees for our recommended purchases for the week. Here are the albums we suggest for the release date of April 24th:

Artist: Bill Callahan
Album: Woke On A Whaleheart
Label: Drag City
Myspace: Bill Callahan
MP3: Bill Callahan - Sycamore
MoB: Something new to be found with each listen, always a favorite of ours yet he manages, as he always does, to grow with each release. A must have! Check out his current cover story with Fader Magazine.

Artist: Dntel
Album: Dumb Luck
Label: Sub Pop
Myspace: Dntel
MP3: Dntel - Dumb Luck
MoB: “If what you’ve come to expect and appreciate from James isn’t enough, vocal contributions from Jenny Lewis, Edward Droste, and Conor Oberst combine to create the zenith of his recording catalogue to date.” Read the rest of our thoughts on Dumb Luck here.

Artist: Cornelius
Album: Sensuous
Label: Everloving
Myspace: Cornelius
MoB: I’m late in getting into these guys, but enjoying the hell out of this album. It’s the type of record that all my friends would love, even though they probably don’t know about it - that will change.

Download: eMusic
Buy: Insound

We continue to be amazed by The National’s upcoming album, Boxer (due May 22nd), and our week in New York next month got all the better when we heard that they will be opening for Arcade Fire when the two play Radio City Music Hall - yeah we’re pretty excited. In addition to that Muzzle of Bees will be welcoming The National and Shapes & Sizes to the High Noon Saloon on Saturday, June 9th.

Because we can’t keep all this excitement to ourselves, I wanted to repost The National’s Black Sessions from French radio which we originally posted in December of 2005. I never came across too much information about this show, but I do know it was recorded in Paris on April 29, 2005 and the audio is pretty high quality.

Here’s the track list:

1. All The Wine
2. Secret Meeting
3. Driver Suprise Me
4. Lit Up
5. Cherry Tree
6. Baby, We’ll Be Fine
7. Geese
8. City Middle
9. Looking for Astronauts
10. Mr November
11. Daughters of the Soho Riots
12. Abel
13. Wasp Net

Pre-Order Boxer at Insound
Myspace: The National
MP3: The National - Fake Empire

The Reminder is Feist’s follow up to Let It Die, an album still on my regularly played list.

After Let It Die came out, everyone expected her live show to be just like the album – quiet and reserved. Then they showed up at the show and, while she had some of those quiet and reserved moments, most of the show featured bigger, high energy, electric guitar filled version of the album songs. Great great great live show.

The Reminder demonstrates that breadth. It opens with Feist, in her most plaintive, aching tone, singing, “I’m sorry.” “So Sorry,” along with tracks like “The Park,” “The Water,” and “Intuition” show that she can still swing careful, delicate, intimate vocals.

Then there are high energy tracks – “I Feel It All,” “My Moon My Man” – that feel lifted right from her live show. She covers her bases with a few tracks that play to the middle, like the superb “1234.”

Feist has been catching a ton of press lately, like the recent NYTimes article. Everyone is predicting this will be the album that launches her “mainstream.” I’m not even sure what that means anymore? Do mainstream get a big record contract? Radio play? Does anyone listen to the radio?

The real truth is that Feist is big. The Reminder will make her bigger. Deservedly so.

The Reminder is out on May 1 on Cherrytree.

Myspace: Feist

(travis)