As if to make up for Scarlett Johansson's Waitsian waste of space, Zooey Deschanel's album with M. Ward under the name She & Him is an absolute delight of summery pop. I've been listening to Volume 1 quite a lot recently, and I'm even happier to find that Aqarium Drunkard has a live set from this year's Newport Folk Festival available to download.

So it's true: not all actors should avoid the recording studio. Helps when you have someone as good as M. Ward behind you, mind...

Calexico's new album Carried To Dust is due on September 9th on Touch and Go records.  A taster can be found here: Two Silver Trees

From what I've read so far, and listening to this track, it's sounding good, and a move back to something more like their core sound than Garden Ruin's more mainstream sound (mainstream in a very relative way, obviously!).

I've got my tickets to see them at The Forum in October - they must be getting close to being the band I've seen the most, and I've yet to be disappointed...

New albums are due later this year from Giant Sand and Lambchop, too, so all in all it's a good year for alt-country/americana/whatever-the-hell-it-is... (no, I've never been able to answer the question "what kind of music do they make" about any of these bands!)

Bonus tracks:

Lambchop's "Slipped Dissolved And Loosed"

For a free download of Giant Sand's "Increment of Love" go to http://www.yeproc.com/stash, sign in (or sign up, all you need is an email address!), and enter the code PROVISIONS.

Two different bands, two different sets, two very different atmospheres...

On Friday night V and I, and a couple of our friends, went to see Bon Jovi at Twickenham Stadium.  As you'd hope, it was very much a greatest hits set, kicking off with Living on a Prayer, and containing almost everything from the Crossroads greatest hits album.

Bon Jovi photo by beckygarratt

I couldn't say I was a huge fan; I know the obvious hits, and since V is a fan I'm getting to know more of the album tracks, but I could sing along with at least the choruses on easily more than half the set, so I was quite happy!

Even though I far prefer Springsteen as an artist, I'd have to admit that I enjoyed Bon Jovi's show even more that I did Bruce's last month at the Emirates: the sound was better, the stage set better and more interesting, and the setlist itself was better (even though I think Magic is a better E-Street album than any he's done for many years, it all seems a bit Bruce-by-numbers to me - give me the early stuff any day!).

And then there was last night.

Lou Reed.

Performing Berlin, in its entirety, at the Royal Albert Hall.

Slated on its release, Berlin has proved to be Reed's masterpiece, and its live performance lived up to every expectation I had.  I had wondered if it would be as moving and harrowing live as it is on record, and the sense of release after the cathartic ending of Sad Song let me know that it had been...  the rest of the audience seemed to agree with me: the performance earned a standing ovation.

At first I thought the sound was a bit on the politely-quiet side, but when the full band played that certainly wasn't the case.  Behind the band was a simple set (with greenish walls!), onto which was projected images and films to complement the music - so I now know what Caroline looks like.

Reed was joined by a huge band that included a 12-piece choir, 8-piece orchestra, his current touring band, and some faces from the past: Michael Rathke and Steve Hunter on guitar, Rob Wasserman on upright bass, Fernando Saunders on a selection of bass, and Tony "Thunder" Smith on drums.  Steve Bernstien and Jane Scarpantoni provided keyboards and backing vocals.

Berlin took about an hour to perform, and after a short break the band came back for an encore of Satellite of Love, Rock and Roll, and his new song The Power of the Heart (which can be downloaded over here).

Got to get the DVD when it comes out!

Lou Reed photo by joshkritter

I've found a torrent of the show I was at on Dime (now I've managed to get my login back!) here.

On Wednesday V and I went to see The Feeling at Shepherds Bush Empire - one of my favourite venues in London.  Let's be honest: given my music preferences (Neil, Tom, and so on), this was more for V than for me (q.v. Bon Jovi @ Twickenham later this year!).  However, I must admit to a guilty-pleasure-like enjoyment of the band.  Sod it, it's not a guilty pleasure, they play unashamedly derivative pop, and why the hell not?  Ok, they always make me think of 70s west coast rock, Queen, early 80s rock, and so on, but then Oasis did the same thing with the 60s (and especially the Beatles, of course) and for some reason they were more acceptable to like.

Anyway, I'm rambling.

The support was a band called Palladium.  They were ok - I'll probably have a listen when they get their album out (May, they said) - and were frighteningly young and skinny, but that's probably just my age and weight being envious...  The keyboard player suffered the age-old curse of keyboard players, of how do you play a static instrument and still jump around in a cool manner?  (The answer being that you don't, of course).  Their set had the same sort of influences as The Feeling - Huey Lewis came to mind a couple of times - and played perfectly adequate pop...  They were also very keen on getting us to sign up for their mailing list when we were leaving.  I get quite enough spam already, thanks!

The Feeling played pretty much all of the tracks from both albums, and threw in a cover of Electric Dreams during the main set (we left before the encore to beat the crowd).  To be honest, they were better than I expected them to be - the band are very tight, I like their songs, basically it was just a thoroughly enjoyable set.  In many ways they're a band who are far easier to like than to admire, which makes for easier listening than a lot of the other bands I like!