After a hiatus, Atlanta’s Deerhunter will soon release their new album, Fading Frontier, on October 16th on 4AD.  Fading Frontier is the the band’s seventh studio album and was made by founding members Bradford Cox, Lockett Pundt and Moses Archuleta, together with bassist Josh McKay. Based on the two songs released below, the new album may well be their most accessible and straightforward to date.

To get a feel for the new album, the band has released this week’s bountiful Breaker (on which Cox and Pundt share lead vocals–a first for the band–as reflected in the video below) and the earlier funkified Snakeskin. Check both songs’ official videos below.  Cox was hit by a car and hospitalized last year so Breaker’s lyrics truly resonate:  “Jack-knifed, On the side-street crossing, I’m still alive (and that’s something).” Breaker’s full yrics are at bottom.

Both songs bode incredibly well for Fading Frontier, which you can pre-order HERE.

Breaker:

Christ, or credit?
What’s the prize?
What’s the edit?
I’m alive
I don’t credit the source
I just drive
And then the fog rolls in
And then they’re bright..
My enemies
They’re just trying..
Trying to kill me

(Chorus)
Breaking the waves
I can’t ignore (I tried)
The ocean is strong
I cannot stem the tide
Breaking the waves
I can’t ignore (I tried)
I can’t seem to stem
The tide no
I tried
I tried

Drive me two times
I’ve got the time
And it’s been too long
Since I’ve been
Driving all night
On the back road’s winding
Under the stars
That are slowly dying
(oh no)

Breaking the waves
I can’t ignore (I tried)
The ocean is strong
I cannot stem the tide
Breaking the waves
I can’t ignore (I tried)
I can’t seem to stem
The tide no more no
I tried
I tried

(musical bridge)

Jack-knifed
On the side-street crossing
I’m still alive
(and that’s something)
And when I die
There will be nothing….to say
Except I tried
Not to waste another day
Trying to stem the tide

Two of our all-time time favorites, Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch are back in a big way today, this time in the guise of the Dave Rawlings Machine via their Nashville Obsolete album released today.  For the uninitiated, Rawlings and Welch have been putting out soul-rending music together (primarily under the “Gillian Welch” moniker) since 1996.  But a couple years ago, they leaned to the Rawlings side of the equation and released a well-received album under the Dave Rawlings Machine brand.  They’ve now returned with second album Nashville Obsolete, aided and abetted by Willie Watson on guitar/vocals and Paul Kowert on bass, with appearances by Brittany Haas on fiddle and Jordan Tice on mandolin.

To get a feel for their new album, go HERE to listen to fantastic song The Weekend off the new album. With the newly-added strings (to go with Rawlings’ usual guitar brilliance), the song feels a bit like Neil Young circa-Harvest (with Jack Nitzsche at the production helm, but minus some bombast).  And that’s a high compliment in our book.

About Nashville Obsolete Welch told the Wall Street Journal:  “In addition to the kind of 1930s/Depression/Dust Bowl thing we’ve always had going on, there’s a pretty strong 1970s thing going on, too.  We would be the first to admit [the first DRM album, A Friend of a Friend] was kind of cobbled together.” Rawlings added: “There’s an easy way for me to look at this as the first record that we’ve made, really–the first ‘Machine’ record.”

Go get the good goods over at Acony Records HERE.  You will not be disappointed.

After not headlining in Santa Barbara for a decade or more, the duo will perform at the Lobero Theater on October 1st (as “Gillian Welch“) and October 18th (as “Dave Rawlings Machine“).  We can’t wait.  Their entire tour schedule is set forth below.

Dave Rawlings Machine Tour:

Taylor Swift has been gushing since she first heard about Ryan Adams’ full-length cover album of Swift’s 1989.  Today we get the first sample, Bad Blood, which you can listen to below.  Adams’ 1989 will be released next Monday.  As usual whenever Adams applies his art to covers, the results are stellar.  Slowed down and softened, we love the keyboards-dominated sounds and delivery.  Check it out below, as presented by Zane Lowe on Beats 1 Radio earlier today.

Unbeknownst to us, Thom Yorke (Radiohead) has a fashion fetish for clothing label Rag & Bone.  He’s previously crafted music for their fashion events (see last fall’s soundtrack at bottom), and he’s at it again.  Listen below to a new eight-minute, wordless (not vocal-less) song entitled Villain that Yorke has contributed to this year’s Rag & Bone New York Fashion Week show.  Yorke recorded the track with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus (a collective comprised of students selected from over 200 schools in New York City), who prove to be a phenomenal ghost-chorus.  Listen to this eerie, ever-compelling track below.  Or go over to Fashionista and watch the Rag & Bone runway show with Villain soundtrack.  Suffice it to say, it’s an atmospheric villain.

It took a good amount of time to get them through our thick ears, but Craig Finn and The Hold Steady finally gave us so many chances to “get” their literate, character-study rock and roll that we finally…”got” them (we wrote about that “get” HERE).

Last Friday (on 9/11) singer-songwriter Finn released a new solo album, Faith In The Future, that kicks off superbly with track Maggie I’ve Been Searching for Our Son.  Check the just-released official video below.  We love everything about the recorded version, including the chugging synth and keys, the live-wire guitar and the ghost-chorus relay.  But as usual we particularly marvel at Finn’s well-wrought lyrics, which frequently mine the Springsteen vein (but with perhaps more attention paid to the poetry-Geiger). Finn (raised a Catholic) has said this about the song: “It’s partially because it affects my worldview. I wasn’t raised in a super-strict Catholic house. But we spent enough time in church and also going to all the [Sunday school] classes. So that’s kind of how you learn. By turning you over to the church, that’s one way your parents attempt to teach you morality. So it affects a lot of things in the way I think. In this case, I’m obviously playing with the idea of the son being Christ and the son being someone’s actual son. I thought that song was about someone wrapping up their life and trying to get some closure on things. A lot of this album was written in the time when my mother passed away two years ago.  I keep saying that none of the songs directly address that loss, but the first line of the record is, ‘There’s a darkness in my body’ [from “Maggie, I’ve Been Searching For Our Son]. So I was somewhat thinking about mortality there and leaving this Earth on a good place.  The song is about someone at the end of their time on earth, looking back on their life, but also trying to wrap up a few loose ends.”   Maggie I’ve Been Searching for Our Son’s worthy lyrics are at bottom, though you can start with these excerpts:

“If you’re down and out.
If you still have any doubts.
If you doubt that there’s a savior yet to come.

Stop doing what you’re doing.
Close your eyes and keep on breathing
And slowly turn your face up to the sun….

There’s a darkness in my body.
And I think I might be ready.

If you’re stuck down South
If you still have any doubts.
If you doubt that there’s a heaven yet to come….”

For a great glimpse of the song’s lived-in poetics, watch at bottom as Finn perform’s the song solo and unplugged for KEXP recently.   Go HERE to watch the entire KEXP session.

Faith in the Future is out now on Partisan Records, and is highly recommended.  Go pick it up HERE.

Maggie I’m Still Searching For Our Son:

“There’s a darkness in my body
And I think I might be ready.
Maggie I’ve been searching for our son.
There’s a big hole in my thinking.
Lately I’ve been seeing things.
Maggie I’m still searching for our son.

If you’re down and out.
If you still have any doubts.
If you doubt that there’s a savior yet to come.

Stop doing what you’re doing.
Close your eyes and keep on breathing
And slowly turn your face up to the sun.

It was warm in Arizona.
It was cold in Colorado.
Maggie I’ve been searching for our son.
There were crosses on the altar.
There was gold in El Dorado.
Maggie I’ve got blisters on my thumbs.

If you’re all strung out.
If you still have any doubts.
If you doubt that there’s a rapture yet to come.

Hey, pick up the paper
See the stories and the pictures.
A kid went to the movies with a gun.

There’s a house out in the desert.
And I lived there with some people.
Maggie that guy said he was our savior.
But once he took our women
And turned us into his soldiers.
He hit a patch of radical behavior.
And the ATF were belligerent.
There were handcuffed girls with barely any clothes.

There was power in their numbers.
There was silver in their holsters.
And the trucks as they rolled slowly up the road.

There’s a darkness in my body.
And I think I might be ready.

If you’re stuck down South
If you still have any doubts.
If you doubt that there’s a heaven yet to come.

There’s a darkness in my body
And I think I might be ready.
Maggie I’ve been searching for our son.
Maggie I’ve been searching for our son.”

Save one massive musical mistake this week (“country” singer, rhymes with “teeth”), Stephen Colbert had a good first week musically, capped off by Kendrick Lamar’s monstrously great performance on Wednesday.  And last night after some speculation (would it be Vampire Weekend, Pavement, etc.?), Colbert brought out Paul Simon (and members of his touring band) to perform Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard under the guise of Troubled Waters (“the world’s preeminent Paul Simon tribute band”).  Watch below as Colbert explains his “dream” of providing the whistling on Simon’s 1972 hit, and then watch as Colbert proceeds to dance and karaoke along in song.  All good fun, particularly as leavening to some of the heavier moments of the first Colbert week (the Joe Biden interviews were superb). But a man has to know his limits….  So when is Kendrick coming back?

In a web-exclusive, Simon then closed out the show by performing his salient song American Tune (lyrics at bottom) on 9/11.  In a time of trouble (worldwide immigration) and woe (reminding of Biden’s loss and good words), the song was a great cap to Colbert’s first week.  Though he may no longer have the vocal or guitar chops of yore, Simon remains one of the greatest songwriters of all-time and does the song perfect justice below.

American Tune

“Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and I’ve often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
Oh, but I’m all right, I’m all right
I’m just weary to my bones
Still, you don’t expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
Or driven to its knees
Oh, but it’s all right, it’s all right
For lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
We’re traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what’s gone wrong

And I dreamed I was dying
And I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

Oh, we come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age’s most uncertain hour
And sing an American tune
Oh, it’s all right, it’s all right
It’s all right, it’s all right
You can’t be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day
And I’m trying to get some rest
That’s all I’m trying to get some rest”

When Stephen Colbert closed out the Colbert Report he did it in style with an incendiary musical performance by King Kendrick (Lamar).  After a feelgood cover of Sly Stone’s Everyday People by a large entourage on Monday’s opening night of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Colbert got down to serious musical work by having Lamar as his first proper musical guest.  And Kendrick delivered the goods with a tour-de-force performance of a mind-blowing medley of tracks off To Pimp a Butterfly.  The medley consisted of Wesley’s Theory, Momma, King Kunta, and U, the latter featuring an added verse.

Check it out below.  Kendrick was once again backed by a full band that included the talented Thundercat and Bilal.

With these two Colbert performances, Lamar has locked up 2015’s Best Musical Performance on TV award.  Game over.  As Colbert said: “That was beautiful.”

Two days in, Colbert hasn’t missed a musical beat.  But we’ll just see about the rest of the week (how you can follow Kendrick Lamar with a “country” star and a Paul Simon cover band, we can’t imagine).  But hey, Colbert’s the one with the Big IQ so….

After the performance check out the mutual love society evinced on Twitter.

I suddenly have enormous affection for Kendrick Lamar. #LSSC https://t.co/LfdeoD187w

— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) September 10, 2015

At last–some great new music!  Today Julia Holter dropped her new video for savory song Sea Calls Me Home off of her impending album Have You In My Wilderness, one of our most highly anticipated albums this season.  Like prior song/video Feel Free,  Sea Calls Me Home draws you in immediately with its complex, but comforting, melodies and searching lyrics (see below video).  More so than the songs themselves, the videos seem to speak to everyday consolations (a pet or the salty escape of a familiar ocean-scape) that can help point us back “home” as we wonder [sic] about this world.

With its harpsichords, bass-tones and heavenly harmonies, Sea Calls Me Home recalls the shimmering Beach Boys’ compositions circa Holland (high praise in our book–highly recommended to the uninitiated). Later in the song, whimsical whistling is unhinged by honking horns and strutting strings that lead into the cove of the treacly coda: “I hear small words from the shore, no recognized pattern.”  We may not find what we’re looking for, but the familiar may provide the framework needed to reach and resolve.  A masterful use of 2:57 in song.  Brava!

Check the song/video (with its California sea-scenes) out below, and go HERE to pre-order Ms. Holter’s Have You In My Wilderness. You won’t regret it.

Sea Calls Me Home

“I don’t need no one to follow, feathers full
Get up early just to charm unawakened souls
when the sea called me home

I can’t swim. It’s lucidity. So clear!

It’s no wonder they’re shipping all my clothes
Wear the fog, I’ll forget the rules I’ve known
Look in cloud’s mirror,
when the sea calls me home

I can’t swim. It’s lucidity. So clear!

I hear small words from the shore
No recognized pattern”

Photo above by: Tonje Thilesen

There’s been a brief lull in music-dom’s geyser, so we’ve hearkened back to our first introduction to Bjork via the Sugarcubes’ fantastic performance of all-time favorite song Birthday on Saturday Night Live in 1988 (the studio version/official-video for the song is at bottom).  Oh how that girl/woman can sing (Bjork turns 50 years old in a couple months).   And then, in contrast with the uber-seriousness of those Sugarcubes, watch Kristen Wiig’s hilarious send-up of Bjork on SNL a decade later following the tragic Icelandic Recession. “How is your skeleton?”  Indeed.  How does Seth Meyers not break?  Impressive, and entirely too funny.  OK, that’s enough nostalgia for a while.  Back to the matters at hand.

We have been remiss.  Earlier this week Vince Staples combined with Jhené Aiko and the always-additive Roots on Fallon’s Tonight Show to perform song Lemme Know.  The magnetic performance of Lemme Know lends further support to the critical acclaim generated for Staples’ debut album, Summertime ’06.   We couldn’t take our eyes off the performance, which to our simple and old ears, kept evoking Harry Nilsson’s Coconut (after it gets going from 3:00 on).  Let ’em know Vince.