The phenomenally talented band Dawes is out on tour right now, and you should do everything in your power to catch them while you can. They are in their prime element live and one of the best in the business to grace a stage. We caught them at the start of their current tour at the usually-staid Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara, and they managed, against all odds and history, to (get this) pull the Lobero crowd out of their chairs and rushing the stage. Seriously. Cardiacs, all around. Live they exhibit versatility and panache, and always manage to connect with their audience. The band has been reconfigured since their last tour and now features guitarist Trevor Meanere. At the Lobero, Meanere managed to remind us of Wilco’s Nels Cline and possibly eclipse him (highest compliments intended). And bassist Wylie Gelber always impresses with his deft walks. But it’s always the songwriting, interplay and harmonies of the Brothers Goldsmith (bandleader/songwriter Taylor and mega-talented drummer/harmonist Griffin) that regale so well.

To get a glimpse of Dawes live, check out below last night’s performance on Colbert of Roll with the Punches (off their most-recent, critically-acclaimed album We’re All Gonna Die). As we were saying, don’t miss ’em.

If you need more convincing afterwards, check out their performance of much-loved, singalong anthem When My Time Comes on PBS’ Front and Center.

One of our all-time faves and easily at the top of America’s best bands, Spoon, appeared on Jimmy Kimmel last night and performed the flam-batious new song Hot Thoughts, the title track to their imminent new album. Watch below as the band shralps and swaggers through the song. In honor of International Women’s Day, each band member showed a spoonful of red in their outfits. Check it out below. We love the moment at 1:42 when 23-year veteran Britt Daniel is overcome by the crowd’s reaction and breaks into a smile. Great to see this veteran band still in ascendancy.

We continue, unsurprisingly, to discover great music coming from across the proverbial pond. Loyle Carner (given initially as Benjamin Coyle-Larner), is a 21-year old British rap/soul music artist from South London doing his best to transcend rap music’s stereotypical drugs, guns and Rosies. On his new album, Yesterday’s Gone, Carner instead regularly lifts up his family, imagines having a little sister (Florence), laments the load of responsibility and bread-winning (Ain’t Nothing Changed), pays tribute to musical fore-bearers (No CD), and grapples with faith and father figures (The Isle of Arran). Throughout Carner caps his craft with stupendous wordplay and musical aplomb.

Check out a few of Loyle Carner’s songs below via their official videos. While our favorite track is the jazz-smoke of Ain’t Nothing Changed, in honor of International Women’s Day, we’ll lead with Florence (his imagined little sister).

In other good news, Carner is set to tour the Continent, Australia, and (for the first time) the U.S., and will make his California debut in mid-May in LA and San Francisco. You can see the dates above and HERE, and we’ll see you there!

You can pick up Yesterday’s Gone HERE.

We had been looking for an excuse to again sing the praises of the up-and-coming Phoebe Bridgers’ stunning new song Smoke Signals. We found the song in early January and listened to it on repeat for weeks thereafter. Which might explain why we overlooked Bridgers’ subsequent release of the song’s official video (with lyrics). With that perfect excuse, please listen to our Favorite Song of 2017 (so far) by watching the video below. The phenomenal craft exhibited in the song belies Bridgers’ youthfulness (she’s 22-ish) and bodes incredibly well for her future. We can’t wait to listen to her grow.

As many Wall Street tycoons and other rapscallion scions have discovered, sometimes it pays for enterprises to spin off their assets. Such is definitely the case with the much-vaunted musical enterprise The Walkmen. Since The Walkmen went on hiatus a few years back, the band’s singer Hamilton Leithauser has released three critically-acclaimed albums (the most recent with Rostam Batmanglij, formerly of Vampire Weekend, entitled I Had A Dream That You Were Mine).

Speaking of The Walkmen and three solo albums, another stalwart member/songwriter of the band, Walter Martin, released a much-loved children’s album, We’re All Young Together, in 2014. Following We’re All Young Together, Martin released another critically-hailed solo album, Arts & Leisure in 2015. And now comes the matching third album. Martin will release in May (on Cinco de Mayo) another children’s record entitled My Kinda Music. In a press release regarding the new album, Martin said: “I’ll never forget being a kid listening to Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon Days on long family car trips. I’d be lying in the nauseating back seat of our minivan transfixed by the warmth and humor of his stories. And up in the front my parents would be experiencing the exact same thing. My goal with this album is to induce that same kind of wonderful family hypnosis.”

To give a feel, Martin has just released a single from the upcoming album entitled Hey Matt, which features the busy, ever-surprising Matt Berninger of The National. On the song Berninger provides tongue-in-cheek singing coaching to Martin: “And Walt, don’t waste your time, singing about love and lonely nights, ‘cause no one’s gonna pay a dime, or stand in line to hear you whine.” Later in the song, Martin takes Berninger down a notch by revealing that his first choice to duet on the song was Randy Newman, who did not respond to Martin’s inquiry. More’s the better as Berninger nails it with panache. Check the cut out below in all its upbeat, breezy and tutorial glory. We love it. Viva la Walkmen spin-offs!

The big Spoon is back with their second track from their impending new album, Hot Thoughts, (out March 17th on Matador). Following on the heels of last month’s title track Hot Thoughts, the band is back with the banging Can I Sit Next to You (in the form of its official video below). We haven’t been able to parse the visuals yet, but the song is classic Spoon  with its flagrant guitar-attack augmented with rousing, Radiohead-y synths/strings that would not seem out of place on a 007 film soundtrack. They have also announced some new tour dates (including March 6th at the Observatory in Santa Ana), which you can see at bottom. Get tickets HERE.

The band’s press release points out that: “If the new Spoon single ‘Can I Sit Next to You’ feels eerily familiar, like something that’s been playing in the background of your life for the last few months, there’s actually a good chance it has: For the last few months, a campaign of subliminal placements of ‘Can I Sit Next to You’ has seen the unreleased, unidentifiable track being played at various clubs and venues, as American Airlines boarding music, even by the house bands of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

Tour Dates
02-27 London, England – 100 Club
03-06 Santa Ana, CA – The Observatory
03-14-16 Austin, TX – The Main (SXSW Residency)
03-23 Sydney, Australia – Metro Theatre
03-25 Thornbury, Australia – The Croxton Bandroom
04-27 Mobile, AL – Soul Kitchen
04-28 Oxford, MS – The Lyric
04-29 Baton Rouge, LA – Varsity Theatre
05-01 Tampa, FL – The Ritz Ybor
05-02 Lake Buena Vista, FL – House of Blues
05-03 Athens, GA – Georgia theater
05-05 Charleston, SC – Music Farm
05-07 Raleigh, NC – The Ritz
05-09 Knoxville, TN – The Mill & Mine
05-11 Columbus, OH – Newport Music Hall
06-17 Berlin, Germany – Festaal Kreuzberg
06-18 Mannheim, Germany – Maifeld Derby Festival
06-19 Munich, Germany – Technikum
06-27 Manchester, England – Gorilla
06-28 Glasgow, Scotland – The Arts School
06-30 London, England – O2 Forum
07-07 Madrid, Spain – Mad Cool Festival
07-08 Lisbon, Portugal – NOS Alive
07-14 Louisville, KY – Forecastle Festival
07-15 Birmingham, AL – Sloss Festival
07-28 New York, NY – Panorama Festival
07-30 Columbia, MD – Merriweather Post Pavilion
08-06 Hollywood, CA – Hollywood Bowl
08-08 Aspen, CO – Belly Up Aspen
08-09 Bellvue, CO – Mishawaka Amphitheatre

Ryan Adams is in the middle of a major resurgence. Fresh off of a hugely successful tour last year, Adams is back with a riveting new album entitled Prisoner. Last night Adams and band showed up on The Tonight Show to play the lead single from the new album, Do You Still Love Me? Watch below as Adams and mates soundly nailed the song, with a slicing guitar attack (but with lots of tasteful space within). Afterwards, watch as Adams also lit up new song To Be Without You (with its Allman Brothers-esque duel-guitars). Adams has just announced his impending world tour, with new North American dates featuring Jennie Lewis (including Santa Barbara’s Granada Theater on June 1st). Check out the tour dates and get tickets HERE. Lewis has recently been recording new songs with Adams so there’s bound to be some great cross-pollination during the tour.

We recently unearthed Australia’s Middle Kids.  Yep, we’re a little slow ’round here. Last night they sped up their American exposure by making their American TV debut on Conan, performing their scintillating song, Edge of Town. Check out their riveting performance below. We love the band’s effervescent energy and Hannah Joy’s evocative vocals and delivery! The band has also released a new eponymously-entitled EP that’s riddled with brawn and craft, and which you can listen to below.

They play the Barboza in Seattle on February 21st (next Tuesday) and The Echo on February 25th, and we still can’t wait! Check out their American dates and get tickets HERE.

The Middle Kids EP is out Feb. 17th on Domino. You can pre-order it HERE.

We have been powerfully Paaked in the past year. Dot Paak, that is. Anderson .Paak has taken the music world by storm this past year, earning fans, accolades, Grammy nominations, and NBA All-Star pals along the way. Now .Paak is back to release a new gospel-ized rendition of his hit Come Down entitled In The Come Down Gospel. Check out the video below, which features friends and family (sister Camille and son Soul) from .Paak’s hometown of Oxnard.

We’ve been waiting for a good opportunity (video release, eh lads?) to sing the praises of our No. 1 Best Song of 2016, Finally, by the ridiculously underrated and underappreciated Cymbals Eat Guitars. Today the band has provided that golden opportunity by releasing the demo of Finally on Bandcamp. The demo is part of Bandcamp’s campaign to donate proceeds from today’s purchases on Bandcamp to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The band will be donating proceeds to The Urban Justice Center.

Here is CEG’s statement about this effort:

“Bandcamp has announced that today, Friday, Feb 3, they will be donating 100% of their proceeds from sales to the ACLU, an organization that is more important and in need of support than ever before. For our part, we’re offering the demo version of our song “Finally” as a Bandcamp exclusive, and we’ll be donating 100% of our proceeds from the track to The Urban Justice Center, another crucially important organization on the front lines of protecting New York City’s most vulnerable residents. Please consider buying this track…it’s pay-what-you-want, and no amount is insignificant.  Love, CEG”  

Finally is a love song for the ages and immediately jumped us as the opening track of their sensational 2016 album Pretty Years (our No. 2 Best Album of 2016–list soon come). Comparing the two fascinating versions of the song below (first the demo and then the recorded version), you can hear the upside of John Congleton’s impeccable production (which is borne out throughout Pretty Years). While the demo adds contextual weight and thrash to the proceedings. the album version’s skyscraper sound lifts and brandishes well the song’s awe-inspiring crests and falls (see lyrics at bottom).

In addition to their incredibly well-crafted recordings, Cymbals Eat Guitars is simply en fuego live. We could not believe that gifted singer Joseph D’Agostino and the band could nail Finally so perfectly live, but they did so and with added passion and panache when we caught their fantastic show at the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco last October. To see for yourself, the band is headed out on tour in Europe soon, followed by a leg opening for The Pixies. You can check the dates HERE.

Their incredible album Pretty Years is out now on Sinderlyn.

Above photo: Shervin Lainez

Finally:

“Let in the empty wind
Full of holes
I’m an instrument
If this is infinite
The center is everything

Dilated and smiling
See lives from the outside
Look up
Snow is falling again

A pretty painted house
In a shitty part of town
You settle down

Used to light up a room
Then again maybe that ain’t true
Wanna light up the night
Refineries and Christmas lights

My love is a mantra
When I speak it, it weakens
I’ll just squeeze your hand three times

If it’s infinite repeats
I’ll take the blizzard of ’16
I’m ready now

Try to take it all with me
But we forget finally”