The only real repeated songs were tunes off the new album The Whole Love. Otherwise, our show was filled with older songs (”The Lonely 1″), rarer songs (”A Magazine Called Sunset”) and lots of great stuff from A Ghost Is Born and Being There. A few of the other highlights were “Radio Cure,” “Art of Almost,” “One Sunday Morning,” and “At Least That’s What You Said.” You can see a full set list here.

Here’s a video of the night’s second song “Hell Is Chrome.”

This is from a season four episode of Live From Abbey Road. Ryan Adams is a frustratingly inconsistant artist, but “Oh My Sweet Carolina” is still one of his best songs from Heartbreaker, an album that will likely forever be the high watermark that — rightfully or not — he’ll have his new music compared to. Oh, and Laura Marling’s harmonies are pretty great too.

This is practically how I pictured this song in my head, only in my version there’s more making out. Next to a fire place. On top of a leopard skin rug. On a mountain. While Michael Brecker plays sax. On a motorcycle. In heaven. In 1992.

Still, joking aside, I think there is a great song buried within all this sheen.

Sometimes there are bands that I’ve heard of, and read things about, but never actually heard much of. This is the case with The Pop Group, a late 70s, early 80s post punk band that falls in the same wheelhouse as bands I already love like Joy Division, Gang of Four and Talking Heads. I kept seeing their name but strangely, it took another artist covering their work to finally get me to dig in and see what their all about.

On their recent tour, St. Vincent has been playing The Pop Group’s “She Is Beyond Good And Evil,” an all-out assault of guitar noise and seething and sexy, if not disturbing vocals. St. Vincent played this song last night on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, a ballsy move for the talk show crowd who just want to hear something off the new record. But for singer and guitarist Annie Clark, it’s a perfect song to cover.

Clark has perfected this juxtaposition between alluring image, silky voice and stunningly beautiful melodic arrangements with fucked up lyrics of pain, loneliness and violent thoughts. And her guitar work is both skillfully dexterous and intensely loud and explosive. I recently caught St. Vincent on this Strange Mercy tour at Washington D.C.’s 9:30 Club, where she showed off her sweet, witty side and her under-the-surface boiling turmoil that manifests itself with her bursts of guitar feedback and killer riffs. Mid-show, Clark busted out The Pop Group song and it enveloped the entire room with white hot distortion.

Clark showed early signs of this newer, rawer direction during this year’s Our Concert Could Be Your Life show, Clark and a rotating cast of great indie rock bands paid tribute to the previous generations of indie rock that were depicted in the exceptional Michael Azzerad book Our Band Could Be Your Life. There, Clark pulled out “Kerosene” by Big Black, a song that first made a lot of people rethink how Clark could own the stage.

Seeing St. Vincent cover The Pop Group sold me and made me want to finally dig out that band’s 1978 album, Y, and I’m glad I did. It’s a masterful and weird record mixing post punk and funk grooves with avant jazz and experimental noise. They’re brasher, noisier, more experimental and atonal than many of the bands from this era. And they play with angular melodies and off kilter rhythms that at times feel in the pocket and other times completely sprawl out into washes of noise. It’s great, great stuff, even if it IS over 30 years old.

“Accidentally typed “Punk Moon” instead of “Pink Moon.” Oh, Nick Drake, the world would have been so different.”

Which got me to reply:

How hasn’t there been a punk tribute to Nick Drake yet? We got the title right there! How do we make this happen?

Thanks to another friend, and former intern, I was tipped off to an amazing cover of Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” played by early ’90s indie rockers Sebadoh. Though a grainy old performance video from 1995, it was clearly a solid, powerful punk-ed out version of the iconic folk song. “Why didn’t they ever record this?” I wondered. But of course, things being the internet and all, I quickly found that they DID record a studio version of this song:

The song appeared on Sebadoh’s 1992 album Smash Your Head on the Punk Rock, a compilation album of songs from their Rocking the Forest EP and their Sebadoh vs. Helmet EP. The record served as the band’s Sub Pop debut. While I’m a big fan of Sebadoh, I’ll freely admit I haven’t heard everything, and mostly know their albums The Freed Man, Sebadoh III and Bubble And Scrape. Looks like I have some more homework to do. It’s always cool to find out something new from a band like this.

Wild Flag - Romance from Merge Records on Vimeo.

Wye Oak - Holy Holy from Merge Records on Vimeo.