​If you desire relentlessly goofy, profoundly surreal live entertainment this fine Wednesday evening, might I suggest you follow your nose to the banks of the Gowanus Canal and avail yourself of, yes, the Bell House's Flight of the Conchords Sing-Along, which will focus on season one (no "Carol Brown," damn) and feature trivia, a David Bowie impersonation contest, "a Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenocerous audience freestyle battle," a "Doggy Bounce Dance-Off," and a live performance by FOTC tribute band the Mutha'uckas, who apparently exist.Also a pretty lady will be handed a kebab, a gesture she will most likely not understand. This sounds ridiculous. You should go. Here are the five songs you oughta know if you do.

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​In retrospect, this one was not unforeseeable, given that last night's lineup at the Bell House was headlined by Bert Jansch, a not infrequent Neil Young tour partner and buddy, and supported by the Pegi Young Band, which of course is fronted by Young's wife. Brooklyn Vegan even touted the rumor in advance. Still, pretty exciting that Young came out and did the whole set with his wife's band. Video below, though honestly, we're not even sure which one's Neil (the guy on the left, right? They all look the same!):

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​Tonight is going to be unpleasant politically. Watching the results in real time on television/the Internet is going to do nothing for your health, your soul, your complexion, your ever-diminishing sense of childlike wonder. I hereby recommend you go out instead, to the Bell House, where Jonathan Richman, whose sense of childlike wonder has not diminished in 35+ years, will distract and soothe and quite frankly delight you, as he has done so many times before. He will sing "Springtime in New York," and you will forget that it isn't; he will sing "I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar" with multiple breaks to recreate said dancing, and you will join the crowd in hooting uproariously and forgetting all about Russ Feingold or whoever. Here, in fact, is Jonathan on the Late Night With Jimmy Fallon set, doing "Lesbian Bar" with extra-long dance interludes:

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He'll cut you. Pics by Richard, more below.

​Van Dyke Parks/Clare and the Reasons
The Bell House
Saturday, October 2

Better Than: A full-semester course in American Studies.

"For whom the bell tolls," announced Van Dyke Parks as he sauntered over to the upright piano he manned for an evening as richly encoded with allusions as that first tossed-off remark. A pretty amazing album akin to, say, electric saxophonist Eddie Harris' The Reason Why I'm Talking Shit could/should be cobbled together from Parks' free-associative song introductions. "This is just far enough away from the progress of profit to maybe mean a god damn," he said by way of introducing "Orange Crate Art," title track to his 1995 album with Brian Wilson ("Heroes and Villains" arrived later). "Because there's something to be said for supreme irrelevance," he added. "And yet the song is the most portable piece of cultural goods that we have. It's the thing that we don't have to carry with us when we leave. It contains the memory, and melody. It's wonderful."

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Best Bar Mitzvah ever.

​The Hood Internet
Bell House
Friday, July 2

The scene at the Bell House Friday night could've easily been mistaken for a totally rad Bar Mitzvah: A dance floor filled with boys and girls not touching, but rather dancing in circles around each other (some were even shoeless) to songs like "Whoomp! (There It Is)" and Soulja Boy, a well-lit atmosphere with neon-blue party lights and lots and lots of punch. And by punch, I mean alcohol. That's just the sort of get-down-with-yourself-and-wile-out-like-you're-still-that-prepubescent-kid-who-doesn't-give-a-fuck-what-anyone-thinks-of-his-dancing vibe that the Hood Internet tends to provide.

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The National
The Bell House
Thursday, March 11

"We're gonna play a couple of new songs...flawlessly," National frontman Matt Berninger laughed, standing onstage at the Bell House last night for the first of two short-notice, "secret" shows in Brooklyn this week. Which they did. The kicker, of course, was when Berninger proceeded to forget an entire verse to 2007's radio-friendly "Start a War." "What? It's an old song," he said nervously, glass of wine in hand. Kinda. After 2007's Boxer debuted to nearly unanimous critical praise, the National toured the album, and then dabbled in various projects (Dark Was The Night; a performance collaboration at BAM) that only served to drum up anticipation for new material. A week ago, the band finally announced their first new album in three years--High Violet, out in May--debuted one of the songs from it ("Terrible Love") in a casual performance on late night television, and announced two shows at a 350 max capacity venue in Brooklyn that sold out in less than a minute. The crowd knew what they were getting into: mostly new material from Violet, with a few of the last two albums' essential moments dropped between. In total, 11 new songs were played, eight of which had never been played in concert before.

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Beach House
Bell House
Tuesday, January 26

Susan Sarandon didn't pop onstage to spank a pig; no one shouted "9.0!" Very disappointing. Beach House's CD-release party ("I hope you find release," quips guitarist Alex Scally, who later adds that he hopes "we're having a peaceful time") is a demure, sleepy affair, a slowly breaking wave of very pretty drone-folk with songs I can't for the life of me distinguish from one another, enlivened somewhat by singer/organist Victoria Legrand (whom we chat with here), who bellows in a solid, sultry, smoky alto with just a touch of Kim Gordon abrasion and a mercifully lack of wacky/precocious affectation. Plus her stage banter is agreeably loopy:

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Charlotte Gainsbourg
Bell House
Tuesday, January 19

Last night at the Bell House was Charlotte Gainsbourg's first live solo show "literally ever," in the words of her publicist, and the experience was a little like watching a rare Shoebill Stork at the zoo. We stared at her curiously, she sort of looked back, and after about 20 minutes, both spectacle and spectator realized this was all the other was going to do. This is not to say this was a bad way to spend an evening, by any means--monitoring Massachusetts Senate race results, anyone?--but we were not there to be regaled, we were there to investigate.

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