Anyone who has seen The Smart Brothers live knows that the duo put on an incredibly entertaining and theatrical show. The San Diego duo work the crowd like Vaudevillian performers, tossing instruments back and forth, winking at the audience, and hearkening back to a bygone era in a way that belies their youthful appearance. The band’s limitless energy and charisma can make it easy to forget that the soggy-bottomed boys also excel at tender ballads.
Just as the solemn “Heaven’s Gate” and “Lullaby” were highlights of their impressive self-titled debut, the new video for “The Best I Ever Had”—the first single from their upcoming sophomore album—proves that The Smart Brothers are at their most affecting when they downshift into more somber territory. With its Morricone-esque lead riff and sepia hues, the video is a nice display of the Brothers’ introspective side. Or, at least as introspective as one can be while wearing a fake mustache.
The endlessly nomadic troubadours can currently be found playing a plethora of dates across the country, including a CD release show at Lestat’s Coffee House in June. Do the smart thing and go catch them live.
Portland-based barn burners The Builders And The Butchers are set to unveil their new album, entitled Salvation Is A Deep Dark Well, on June 30th.
The follow-up to their self-titled debut will be released through Gigantic Records, and will house eleven tracks, many of which were presumably played during the band’s red-hot Casbah performance in February. If that show was any indication, the new record will have you writhing on the floor and speaking in tongues in no time.
Judging from Salvation‘s track list, the album will contain all of the back-woodsy, apocalyptic, foot-stomping folk voodoo that you’ve come to expect from The Builders And The Butchers. The band will be complimenting the record with a full US tour, the dates for which have yet to be announced, but we’re guessing there will be a San Diego stop in there somewhere.
The setting at the Copley Symphony Hall is not unlike Leonard Cohen himself. With its stained-glass windows and walls of intricately sculpted marble, the building seems as though it should house sermons rather than symphonies. But at the center of the basilican architecture lies the stage itself, lit in smokey reds and swanky purples that would feel more at home in a brothel than a cathedral. The juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane has long been a tenet of Cohen’s distinguished career, which has been as defined by prayer songs like “If It Be Your Will†as it has by the lurid recounting of trysts with Janis Joplin.
The Fader has a revealing cover story on Bat For Lashes, where the perpetually disrobed Natasha Khan discusses some of the elements comprising her hypnotic new album, Two Suns:
“Every time I get close, his heart vibrates, gets stronger and we get blinded by it,†Khan says. “So I try and make him a cloak made of rainbow colors to refract the light so we can be close, but every time we do, the suns in our chests set fire to everything. In the end, the two suns burning so hotly creates a third thing, a perfect white diamond that flings into space and we become two planets constantly orbiting, basking in each others light, always separated, but there is that diamond that remains.†This cosmic talk is all metaphor of course, cloaking the timeless themes that dominate Two Suns, as well as Khan’s experience making it: journey, love, struggle and resolution.”
The first single off of Two Suns, “Daniel”, has been getting a lot of play lately, thanks to a cool video and some intriguing cover art which further documents Khan’s glorious distaste for clothing.
You can watch the video for “Daniel” after the jump.
The Avett Brothers are obviously readers of Owl&Bear. Just last week I lamented the fact that the band would not be stopping in San Diego on their upcoming tour and, lo, it turns out that the band will be playing at Solana Beach’s Belly Up Tavern on May 10th.
We’d like to thank the Avett Brothers: not just for reading our blog—as they surely do every day—but, more importantly, for doing whatever we ask of them. Of course, there is the slim possibility that this show has been lined up for a while now, and that I just forgot to thoroughly research the matter before writing a half-cocked story about it and grossly misinforming the public.
But no, I don’t like that version of reality, so I’ll stick to the one I made up. Head out to the Belly Up on May 10th and help us thank the Avett Brothers in person. And finally, just in case I do have special powers of influence over musicians: I sure would like it if Tom Waits played a show at my house.
