It’s stream-time and we’re alerting you to the two best albums currently available for listening until next week when they are officially released.

Paramount amongst the current streams is Lost in The Dreams, the new album from Philadelphia’s The War On Drugs.  With every release leader/songwriter Adam Granduciel and associates have upped the musical ante, and especially on their last album, Slave Ambient , which was one of our Best Albums of 2011.  As previously warned, the band will soon release Lost In The Dreams, which you can stream at NPR HERE.  As you will hear, Granduciel and the group have done it again.  For those who love/loved Dire Straits, Boys of Summer-Don Henley and Bruce Springsteen, The War On Drugs have taken those influences and made them their own.  These are long songs that subtly build and build.  And then they build some more before resolving.  Come along and join the 21st century with The War On Drugs.

Next up is Broken Social Scene’s main-man Kevin Drew and his new album Darlings.  One of our favorite bands, Broken Social Scene (which has included Feist and Emily Haines from Metric, not to mention mainstay Brendan Canning) has made some difficult but extremely rewarding albums.  As you will hear on Darlings, Drew has stepped out of BSS mode a bit by simplifying and stripping down the new songs to their essence and delivering them comparatively unadorned (including as compared to his outstanding 2007 solo debut album Spirit If…).  The musical rewards resulting from Drew’s efforts on Darlings are rich indeed.  You can listen to it now over at NPR HERE.

Converse has underwritten one more pastiche in their Three Artists, One Song series.  The Clash’s Mick Jones and Paul Simonon have combined with soulsinger Frank Ocean, Diplo and the West Los Angeles Children’s Choir on a great new song entitled Hero.   The track features Ocean’s ’60s soul-croon on top of Diplo’s mix, flavored with the vocals and shimmering/cutting instruments of Jones and Simonon, all as leavened by the sweet sound of the West Los Angeles Children’s Choir.  Superb.  Check it out below.

As hard as it is to believe, America’s best live band, The National, made their first appearance on SNL last night (they have been leading indie-rock and have lived for a decade just across the river in Brooklyn ferheavensake).  Check out their standard, scintillating performances below on Graceless and I Need My Girl from our Best Album of 2013, Trouble Will Find Me.  In addition to some of the best lyrics written in the past year, Graceless features the Dessner twins’ ferocious wall-of-guitar attack to go with Matt Berninger’s emotional, graceless vocal.  In contrast I Need My Girl is appropriately sedate (following Aaron Dessner’s opening headstock-smash guitar effects).  The song is driven by the magnificent, mesmerizingly-metronomic drumming of Bryan Devendorf, which perfectly frames Berninger’s vocals and allows the song’s lyrics to rightly take center stage.

The National play the Santa Barbara Bowl on April 25th and tickets are still available HERE.

As a bonus, check out a particularly-affecting and effective acoustic (with horns) version of the latter song that we featured last October.

Graceless:

I Need My Girl:

We went down the rabbit-hole this week, revisiting Curtis Mayfield’s underrated Superfly soundtrack, Bob Marley’s obscure Tuff Gong catalog and, finally, Marvin Gaye’s back-catalog.  All stupendous.  The song that got stuck on repeat, however, was Gaye’s Trouble Man, taken from the 1972 film’s soundtrack.  We love everything about Gaye, but this (eponymous, it turns out) song in particular.  His soulful scat interlude at 2:12 forward is all-time.  Marvin, you are sorely, sorely missed.  See you on the otherside.

Critically-acclaimed Brit-band Wild Beasts showed up on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic yesterday in support of their most recent album, Present Tense.  As mentioned in their interview with MBE, this album was given more time to gestate than prior records.  The band, Hayden Thorpe (vocals, guitar, bass, keys), Tom Fleming (vocals, guitar, bass, keys), Chris Talbot (drums) and Ben Little (guitar, keys) took a full year from touring to created and record the album.  To get a feel check out their ’80s synth-pop-esque performance below of track Wanderlust.  It’s a builder, and sounds like a great mix of ABC, Soft Cell, and Ultravox, and the vocals of Orange Juice.  If you want to hear the remainder of their session, go over to KCRW HERE.

After, you can watch the official video for Wanderlust and listen to another strong song (Sweet Spot) off of Present Tense.

The Avett Brothers are again out on the road in support of their most recent album (the critically-acclaimed Magpie and the Dandelion), and last night they performed on  The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (still love the Leno-less lilt of that!).   Watch below as the band performed Skin and Bones (with its Night They Drove Old Dixie Down pulse and feel), and received deserved praise from Fallon.  The Tonight Show also debuted the band’s new video for their forlorn, yet hopeful, Morning Song.   You can watch it at bottom.  Beauty in song and image, right there.  Turns out the video was produced by fan Judd Apatow.   Superb stuff from one of America’s best bands.

Lou Reed would have turned 72 years old last Sunday, March 2nd, 2014.   One of our favorites, the ever-beguiling Jonathan Richman, was the special guest on Radio Valencia’s Wax! Crackle! Pop! show.  Go over to W!C!P! and listen as Richman enthralls listeners for two hours on Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground with music, stories and observations.  One great about other greats.

We were thrilled to learn that one of our favorite artists, Sharon Van Etten, will release her next album, Are We There, on May 27th on Jagjaguwar.  Today Van Etten released the album’s first single, the superbly stentorian Taking Chances.  Those concerned that Are We There  might not live up to her last, Aaron Dessner-produced album (the tremendous Tramp) will be relieved and positively-stunned by Taking Chances.  The new album was written and self-produced by Van Etten, and the perfect production on Taking Chances sets the bar very high and bodes incredibly well for the new album.   Listen below to the song’s big, dynamic sound, including Van Etten’s immaculate vocals, reverbed guitar and melodica-esque keyboards.  And woodblock.  Van Etten is one of the greats, and Taking Chances is our favorite song of 2014 so far.

More woodblock!

You can pre-order the new album in vinyl and CD formats HERE or digitally HERE, HERE, and at your local record store.  The tracklist follows the song, followed by Van Etten’s impending tour dates.

We are there!

Are We There:

1 Afraid of Nothing
2 Taking Chances
3 Your Love Is Killing Me
4 Our Love
5 Tarifa
6 I Love You But I’m Lost
7 You Know Me Well
8 Break Me
9 Nothing Will Change
10 I Know
11 Every Time the Sun Comes Up

Tour Dates:

Thu. May 8 – Northampton, MA @ Iron Horse Music Hall
Fri. May 9 – Hudson, NY @ Helsinki Hudson
Sat. May 10 – Providence, RI @ Columbus Theatre
Sun. May 11 – Hamden, CT @ Ballroom at the Outer Space
Sun. May 25 – Brussels, BE @ Botanique Grand Salon (Nuits Botanique)
Wed. May 28 – Paris, FR @ Café de la Danse
Fri. May 30 – Barcelona, ES @ Primavera Sound
Sun. June 1 – Koln, DE @ Studio 672
Mon. June 2 – Berlin, DE @ Privatclub
Tue. June 3 – Amsterdam, NL @ Bitterzoet
Thu. June 5 – London, UK @ KOKO
Wed. June 11 – Boston, MA @ Sinclair
Thu. June 12 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall at Williamsburg (Northside Festival)
Fri. June 13 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
Sat. June 14 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
Tue. June 17 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
Wed. June 18 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
Thu. June 19 – Millvale, PA @ Mr. Small’s
Fri. June 20 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Ballroom
Sat. June 21 – Nashville, TN @ Exit In
Tue. June 24 – Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater
Wed. June 25 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge
Sat. June 28 – Los Angeles, CA @ El Rey Theatre
Sun. June 29 – San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
Mon. June 30 – San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
Wed. July 2 – Portland, OR @ Doug Fir
Thu. July 3 – Portland, OR @ Doug Fir
Sat. July 5 – George, WA @ Sasquatch Festival
Sun. July 6 – Vancouver, BC @ Rickshaw Theatre
Tue. July 8 – Calgary, AB @ Republik
Wed. July 9 – Edmonton, AB @ Starlite Room
Mon. July 14 – Fargo, ND @ Aquarium
Wed. July 16 – Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
Thu. July 17 – Madison, WI @ University of Wisconsin
Fri. July 18 – Chicago, IL @ Pitchfork Music Festival

y 18 – Chicago, IL @ Pitchfork Music Festival

One of the greatest songwriters of all time, Randy Newman showed up on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last night and regaled effortlessly.   Just to get in the face of the NYC audience, Newman and The Roots performed a searing-guitar and horns-laden version of I Love L.A..   Then, as a web-exclusive, Newman performed a saxed-up version of My Life is Good.  Newman is out supporting his latest album, Live in London.   Check out the superb performances below, followed by the interview.  An American treasure.

Seth Meyers’ “favorite rock band,” The Hold Steady, were on Meyers’ Late Night last night.  Watch below as the band performed Spinners off of their impending album, Teeth Dreams.  What we’ve heard of the new album has sounded a little too arena-glossy for us (compared in particular to their phenomenal last record Heaven Is Whenever).  So we were happy to see the band perform last night with the production turned down and Craig Finn’s vocals turned up with the raging guitar work.  The band is holding steady, for the prairie regulars.