We’ve still got a lot of work to do. In the name of love: recalling those that have served and those that have met injustice.

f

Photo: Maarten Deboer

Sara Watkins has heretofore flown frequently under the new-bluegrass banner as a part of the vaunted band Nickel Creek and otherwise. But with her impending new album, Young In All The Wrong Ways, Watkins seems to have forcefully branched out to include rock and pop realms. We were wowed last week when we witnessed Watkins wailing away on her winsome song Move Me on Prairie Home Companion. Watch below as Watkins is joined beautifully by the Steele Sisters (Jearlyn and Jevetta Steele), Rich Dworsky and the forcefully-perfect The Exchange Street Band. A powerful performance! Afterwards, you can check out the official video for the same sang and listen to another scintillating song, Without a Word, off of the new album. All of the above and below bodes incredibly well for Young In All The Wrong Ways.

Young In All The Wrong Ways will be released on July 1st on New West and you can pre-order it HERE.

We’ll be honest for a change. We don’t know diddly-richard about Oklahoma band Broncho, and we don’t have the time. But, as this song says: we “wanna drop their name.” Yesterday we discovered a well-conceived article on Talkhouse written by Broncho’s lead singer Ryan Lindsey (musicians pay attention: it DOES take all efforts and conceivable measures to connect and make it these days) in which Lindsey drew an Eames-diagram analogy to bands.  And that was enough for us to go down the Broncho hole and discover the catchy-as-chlamydia track Fantasy Boys below. And now the song’s been on repeat for 24 hours. Check Fantasy Boys out below in all its well-wrought melodic-fuzzyness coupled with its heavenly multi-tracked harmonies. Cocteau Twins meet Jesus & Mary Chain?  Regardless, we can’t get enough.

Broncho will soon release their new album Double Vanity on Dine Alone Records, and if Fantasy Boys is any indication, Broncho will soon take everyone for a ride. You can pre-order the new album HERE.  They also begin a tour tonight that will bring them through California in a week.  Check out the dates HERE.

As we’ve repeatedly written, “local” rap-rocker Anderson .Paak is rapidly rising through the ranks and his album Malibu is ascending, ummm, with a bullet.  Last night .Paak  and band The Free Nationals lit up the Fallon Show with Come Down, which included a scorching verse from T.I. (unfortunately, at T.I.’s Irving Plaza show last night following the Fallon taping, mayhem ensued when one person was killed and three wounded in a shooting–when will we learn people?).

Watch below as .Paak opens and closes on drums and throws preposterous verve throughout. Both .Paak and T.I. toss in some ridiculous dance moves to boot. And…standing ovation. Wow! .Paak is out on tour now, and HERE are the dates. Don’t you miss it! We can’t wait.

We’ve been anxiously awaiting new music from Feist.  But not like this.

It was disclosed yesterday on The Tragically Hip’s website that their frontman, Gord Downie, has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Despite that very sad news, Downie and the band will go out on one last tour of Canada this summer, despite the diagnosis. “This feels like the right thing to do now, for Gord, and for all of us … So we’re going to dig deep and try to make this our best tour yet.” The tour (dates can be seen HERE) will coincide with the release of the band’s latest album, Man Machine Poem.

Today, Feist posted the home-recorded cover of The Tragically Hip’s song Flamenco with the following tribute: “For Gord. We’ll all be there this summer to see you bring out the new songs with your singular guts and panache…. and the golden oldies that are so golden. All my respect, admiration and love, Leslie.”

The song and cover are beauty and the ache in Feist’s voice is palpable.  We wish miraculous remission for Downie and nothing but peace.  We won’t let it it diminish our super capacity to love.

We’ve been getting giddy geeking on the setlists for Radiohead’s opening tour dates (in addition to the incredible new(ish) songs, My Iron Lung, There There, 2+2=5, Airbag, Street Spirit, etc.) And then we saw Bryan Dessner’s (The National) posting (see at bottom) of last night’s Paris audience serenading the band off the stage after a stellar performance of Karma Police (see setlist below). Without further adieu, watch the full song and serenade (at the 4:28 mark) below via fan video.  The second video is merely a version taken closer to the stage (but sans serenade).  There will be beauty in song. We can’t wait till the next time we can catch the co-best-band (with The National) on the planet.

Setlist 5/24 Paris:

Burn the Witch
Daydreaming
Decks Dark
Desert Island Disk
Ful Stop
Airbag
Talk Show Host
Climbing Up the Walls
Morning Mr. Magpie
Nude
Identikit
The Numbers
Lotus Flower
The National Anthem
Reckoner
Idioteque
Everything in Its Right Place

Encore:
Give Up the Ghost
Bloom
Present Tense
2 + 2 = 5
Play Video
There There

Encore 2:
Bodysnatchers
Karma Police

5000 French people singing beautifully for Thom

A video posted by Bryce Dessner (@brycedessner) on May 25, 2016 at 5:03am PDT

Radiohead last night in Paris. Unbelievable. #idioteque

A video posted by Bryce Dessner (@brycedessner) on May 25, 2016 at 2:43am PDT

We’ve adored Australia’s Courtney Barnett for seeming eons now (proudly, we were early-adopters on MLK Day in 2014). On Saturday she had arguably her highest profile outing to date, appearing as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. Watch below to get a feel for Ms. Barnett’s rockier side (in addition to her stellar balladry, such as on Depreston, one of the top songs of all of 2015).

First up on our agenda is Pedestrian at Best on which Barnett strikes out for Nirvana, and then amplifies the effect with her Cobain-esque growls from the 3:15 mark on. Superb stuff. She also performed the rollicking, comedic Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go to the Party. Both songs are off her critically-acclaimed 2015 album Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit. Barnett is the real deal, and she remains one of the brighter new lyrical lights on the scene (worthwhile lyrics to both songs at bottom).

Pedestrian At Best:

“I love you, I hate you, I’m on the fence, it all depends
Whether I’m up or down, I’m on the mend, transcending all reality
I like you, despise you, admire you
What are we gonna do when everything all falls through?
I must confess, I’ve made a mess of what should be a small success
But I digress, at least I’ve tried my very best, I guess
This, that, the other, why even bother?
It won’t be with me on my deathbed, but I’ll still be in your head

Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you
Tell me I’m exceptional, I promise to exploit you
Give me all your money, and I’ll make some origami, honey
I think you’re a joke, but I don’t find you very funny

My internal monologue is saturated analog
It’s scratched and drifting, I’ve become attached to the idea
It’s all a shifting dream, bittersweet philosophy
I’ve got no idea how I even got here
I’m resentful, I’m having an existential time crisis
Want bliss, daylight savings won’t fix this mess
Under-worked and over-sexed, I must express my disinterest
The rats are back inside my head, what would Freud have said?

Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you
Tell me I’m exceptional, I promise to exploit you
Give me all your money, and I’ll make some origami, honey
I think you’re a joke, but I don’t find you very funny

I wanna wash out my head with turpentine, cyanide
I dislike this internal diatribe when I try to catch your eye
I hate seeing you cry in the kitchen
I don’t know why it affects me like this when you’re not even mine to consider
Erroneous, harmonious, I’m hardly sanctimonious
Dirty clothes, I suppose we all outgrow ourselves
I’m a fake, I’m a phoney, I’m awake, I’m alone
I’m homely, I’m a Scorpio

Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you
Tell me I’m exceptional, I promise to exploit you
Give me all your money, and I’ll make some origami, honey
I think you’re a joke, but I don’t find you very funny
Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you
Tell me I’m exceptional, I promise to exploit you
Give me all your money, and I’ll make some origami, honey
I think you’re a joke, but I don’t find you very funny”

Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party:

“You always get what you want
And you don’t even try
Your friends hate it when its always going your way
But I’m glad that you’ve got luck on your side
You’re saying definitely maybe
I’m saying probably no
You say “You sleep when you’re dead,” I’m scared I’ll die in my sleep
I guess that’s not a bad way to go

I wanna go out but I wanna stay home
I wanna go out but I wanna stay home

Why are you so eager to please?
I wear my heart on my sleeve
Gets harder in the winter, gotta be a fake or shiver
It takes a great deal out of me
Yes I like hearing your stories
But I’ve heard them all before
I’d rather stay in bed with the rain over my head
Than have to pick my brain up off of the floor

I wanna go out but I wanna stay home
I wanna go out but I wanna stay home”

We ain’t over it yet. We had missed this beautiful duet by John Fullbright and Chris Thile on Prairie Home Companion in honor of the late, great Merle Haggard.  Watch below as the duo affectingly cover Haggard’s Sometimes I Dream. Fullbright’s vocal is its rustically-evocative self, and Thile skips the pyrotechnics to match the mood on mandolin (watch his merciful and touching solo at 2:35).  Well played all around.

As the song goes, “There’s no magic way for me to get over you.” Indeed. RIP Merle Haggard.

Sometimes I Dream

“There’s no magic way for me to get over you
There’s not much I can say, not a thing left to do
Seldom I laugh and seldom I ever cry
But there’s times when I drink too much and times when I lie

Sometimes I hate myself and wish I could scream
Sometimes I give up on love but sometimes I dream

Sometimes I dream looking out through my window
Speeding through the night in a long limousine
There’s a curse on my heart and I’ll never love again
Forever a lonely man but sometimes I dream

Sometimes I dream looking out through my window
Speeding through the night in a long limousine
There’s a curse on my heart and I’ll never love again
Forever a lonely man but sometimes I dream”

Regrets, we’ve had a few more. We’ve never managed to catch the gifted singer-songwriter Andrew Bird live and couldn’t connect this go-’round either. To stave off any similar regrets watch the multi-talented Bird and great band on KCRW perform Capsized, a great break-up song off his recent album Are You Serious. This is an inspired version that sounds less like Bill Withers than the recorded version.

About the song (lyrics below), Bird wrote, “I wrote a version of the song 15 years ago but certain lines came following a breakup years ago where I kind of walked out of our apartment and wasn’t coming back. It was a Saturday night in Chicago. It was a strange time. I just felt like I had a target on my head.” And about the Jesus verse, Bird wrote, “‘Jesus Is A Dyin’ Bed-Maker‘ is a spiritual song from the 20’s by Charley Patton (listen at bottom). I was really struck by that line. A lot of those old spirituals have somewhat cryptic or violent imagery to it. The line is meant to be comforting, but it’s saying death is your only comfort. So it’s a pretty sorry attempt at comfort, I guess.”

While we’re at it, check out the additional KCRW performance of the driving, pizzicato Roma Fade (a song about meeting his wife and partially inspired by a drive on the 5 from LA to San Francisco–who does that? Stay on the 101!).

Go pick up Are You Serious HERE.  Bird will kick off another leg of his tour at Bumbershoot in early September.  Check out all the dates HERE.  No mo’ Cali, however.

Capsized:

“Now when you wake up
Night’s falling someone is by your side
Pull it together, darling you’re not alone

But when you break up
Sky’s falling, no one is on your side
Spoon dirty laundry, darling you’re all alone

And when you wake up, another sunrise
Another break up, this ship is capsized
And when you wake up, another sunrise
Another break up, this ship is capsized

Just keep your lamp on

Now he’s a dyin’ bed maker
He’s a dyin’ bed maker Jesus gonna make my…
It’s a holy ghost, holy ghost religion
It’s a holy ghost religion Jesus gonna make my…

And when you wake up, another sunrise
Another break up, this ship is capsized
And when you wake up, another sunrise
Another break up, this ship is capsized

And when you wake up
Night’s falling, someone is by your side
Pull it together, darling you’re not alone

But when you break up
Sky’s falling, no one is on your side
Spoon dirty laundry, darling you’re all alone
Spoon dirty laundry, darling you’re all alone
Spoon dirty laundry, darling you’re all alone

And when you wake up, another sunrise
Another break up, this ship is capsized”

As previously reported, after disappearing following their 2010 album Expo 86, Wolf Parade has thankfully rejoined and surprised with the announcement of new EP 4 and tour.  Watch below as the quartet made efficient use of their time on the Colbert Show and raged through a medley of C’est La Vie Way and Floating World off the new EP, first featuring Spencer Krug and then Dan Boeckner.  It’s great to have this talented band back and firing on all four cylinders.  Check the tour dates after the video and get your tickets HERE.

Wolf Parade 2016 Tour Dates:
05/21 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
05/24 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace
05/25 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace
05/26 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace
05/27 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace
05/28 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace
06/09 – Brooklyn, NY @ Northside Festival
06/14 – London, UK @ Scala
06/15 – London, UK @ Scala
06/16 – Helsinki, FI @ Tavastia
06/17-19 – Hilvarenbeek, NL @ Best Kept Secret Festival
06/17-19 – Aarhus, DK @ NorthSide Festival
06/17-19 – Westmeath, IE @ Body&Soul
07/07-10 – Halifax, NS @ Gridlock Festival
07/08 – Des Moines, IA @ 80/35 Festival
07/16 – Ottawa, ON @ Ottawa Bluesfest
07/22-24 – Oro-Medonte, ON @ WayHome Music & Arts Festival
07/29 – Montreal, QC @ Corona Theatre
07/30-31 – Montreal, QC @ Osheaga Festival
08/05-06 – Happy Vally, OR @ Pickathon Music Festival
08/07 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre
08/08 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre
08/27 – Los Angeles, CA @ FYF Fest
09/02-04 – Denver, CO @ Riot Fest Denver