Put simply, Freedy Johnston is one of our most gifted living songwriters.  We previously spilled a couple thousand words to that effect HERE.  In his songs, Johnston evokes whole worlds and stories with bare-necessity lines delivered in powerful melodies. Johnston’s albums Can You Fly and This Perfect World remain amongst the best albums ever delivered, and there have been gems ever since from Freedy.  Johnston has now announced his imminent new, Kickstarter-financed album Neon Repairman.   Based on the powerful title track alone, we can’t wait for its arrival.

Neon Repairman is an obvious tribute to Jimmy Webb’s winsome Wichita Lineman (which Johnston has previously covered well).  About the song, Johnston recently told The Journal News: “All that was done purposefully.  It was like, sorry Jimmy Webb, I needed to use your song as a template. I sort of traced over it.  We were outside The Saxon Pub … and I said [to a friend], man, there must be a lot of neon repairmen in this town, and [the friend] says ‘That’s cool, you ought to write a song about a neon repairman.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I gotta do that.’  But I didn’t know how to finish it. … Then I realized it was kind of Wichita Lineman-like.  So I wrote out Wichita Lineman on one side of a piece of paper, on a legal pad. … I put in the lines I had next to the corresponding lines of Wichita Lineman.  It was sort of a device to finish the song.  I emailed [Jimmy Webb about the song].  [Webb] was a total Oklahoma gentleman [and called it] ‘a great song.'”  You can the homage clearly in one of the new song’s lines lifted from Wichita Lineman: “And I need you more than want you, as the story goes.”

Check the song out below.  It’s an evocative beauty that bodes incredibly well for the impending album (the songlist of which is at bottom).  You can pre-order Neon Repairman HERE.  In addition, Johnston will play the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara on August 15th.

Songlist:

1 “Neon Repairman”
2 “Baby, Baby Come Home”
3 “TV in My Arms”
4 “Summer Clothes”
5 “By the Broke Streetlight”
6 “The First to Leave the World, Is the First to See the World”
7 “Angeline”
8 “The Sentimental Heart”
9 “Her Hair Is Blowing in the Wind of Another Planet”
10 “A Little Bit of Somethin’ Wrong”

Blur has been making the rounds in support of their new album The Magic Whip.  They showed up on The Tonight Show last week and made their first American TV performance in 15 years, performing a ravishing version of Ong Ong, off the new album (watch that performance at bottom).

Today, however, The Tonight Show released an outstanding bonus:  Blur with J-Fal backstage in the green room performing a rousing version of Blur’s great chestnut, Tender.  Watch below as Fallon flashes his falsetto and Blur and ensemble lift the song WAY up.  At song’s end Damon Albarn and ensemble commend Fallon with rounds of “jolly good!”

We couldn’t agree more.  That’s entertainment!

If we had a dollar for every mind-waste, soul-depriving “party” endured during our lives, we’d be on easy(er) street. Been there/are there?  If so, then Here‘s your new jam.  Check out the first track from 18-year-old, newly-signed Def Jam artist, Alessia (Caracciolo), from Ontario, Canada.  Here is an honest appraisal and anthem for the party-pooper in all of us.  Like it was written in our souls from us to you.

As Alessia told The FADER, Here is a song “for all the antisocial, awkward, and miserable party-goers of the world.  This one time I went to a party and while there, I realized how much I hated it, along with every other party I had ever gone to. We wrote about it the next day.”  Check the full, worthy lyrics (emphasis added) below.

Here samples Isaac Hayes’ Help Me Love  and then makes way for Alessia’s magnificent message-making.  Wisdom beyond her years.  We love everything about it and can’t wait for more from Alessia.

Lyrics:

“‘I guess right now you’ve got the last laugh’ [Issac Hayes]

I’m sorry if I seem uninterested
Oh I’m not listenin’, oh I’m indifferent
Truly I ain’t got no business here
But since my friends are here, I just came to kick it
But really I would rather be at home all by myself
Not in this room with people who don’t even care about my well being
I don’t dance, don’t ask, I don’t need a boyfriend
So you can, go back, please enjoy your party
I’ll be here, somewhere in the corner
Under clouds of marijuana with this boy who’s hard
And I can hardly hear
Over this music I don’t listen to
And I don’t wanna get with you
So tell my friends that I’ll be over here

[Chorus]
Oh here, oh here
Oh I asked myself, what am I doin’ here?
Oh here, oh here
And I can’t wait ’til we can break up out of here

Excuse me if I seem a little unimpressed with this
An antisocial pessimist, but usually I don’t mess with this
And I know you mean only the best and your
Intentions aren’t to bother me, but honestly I’d rather be
Somewhere with my people, we can kick it and just listen to
Some music with a message, like we usually do
And we’ll discuss our big dreams, how we plan, to take over the planet
So pardon my manners, I hope you understand that I’ll be here
Not there in the kitchen
With the girl who’s always gossipin’ about her friends
Oh tell them I’ll be here
Right next to the boy who’s throwin’ up
Cause he can’t take what’s in his cup no more
Oh God why am I here?

[Chorus]

Hours later congregatin’ next to the refrigerator
Some girl’s talkin’ ’bout a hater, she ain’t got none
How did it ever come to this? I should’ve never come to this
So holla at me, I’ll be in the car when you’re done
I’m stand-offish, don’t want what you’re offerin’
And I’m done talkin’, awfully sad it had to be that way
So tell my people when they’re ready that I’m ready
And I’m standin’ by the TV with my beanie low
Yo I’ll be over here”