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)

Last night I drove to Milwaukee to catch Bright Eyes for the first time. I’ve enjoyed, though not loved, his recently released album, Cassadaga, which has yet to hit me in a way like his I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning or Digital Ash in a Digital Urn did back in 05.

With strong and well received opening sets by Oakley Hall & McCarthy Trenching, the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee once again found itself sold out and full of enthusiastic fans waiting for the full-band Bright Eyes treatment.

Preparing themselves for their upcoming tour, the band spent the previous two days in Milwaukee using the Pabst as their rehearsal space for ironing out all the intricacies of their production. Nonetheless, you always have to walk into the first show of a tour expecting some gaffs and things to not always go as planned, however last night’s performance contained more than a few such instances.

Because this was my first time seeing Bright Eyes, it was hard for me to discern last night’s performance/antics from a typical show. There was a lot of chatter by Conor between songs, mostly him praising the aforementioned opening acts, which he continued to do multiple times to the point of annoyance. At some point he decided to give his guitars to the crowd after each song, prompting his stage hand and manager into the crowd to retrieve the instruments constantly. For the encore he made two attempts at stage diving into the crowd and again needed to be retrieved by management/security. This happened after an altogether frightening fall from the orchestral area which for a moment looked much more serious than it eventually appeared to be.

Outside of the antics and chatter the songs themselves were exactly what the crowd was looking for and were overwhelmingly received (minus the missed lyrics and chord changes). Unfortunately, the distractions, banter, and hijinks greatly outweighed the bright spots in the performance. Here’s hoping that the rest of the tour goes off a little better than last night.

Update: Other reviews from Mirr World and TimeDoor are now up.

Myspace: Bright Eyes
MP3: Bright Eyes – Four Winds
MP3: Bright Eyes – No Riot

Here are the Wisconsin concerts 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.

4/25 – Antibalas – High Noon Saloon, Madison
4/26 – Antibalas – Pabst Theater, Milwaukee
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
4/28 – The 1900s/Selfish Gene – Orpheum Stage Door, Madison
4/28 – Haymarket Riot/Mt St Helens/Oceans – UW Club 770, Madison

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