The National were everywhere this past week in support of their just-released album Sleep Well Beast. They performed the entire album live for NPR, performed Day I Die on Colbert, and most recently four songs on CBS This Morning. Watch below as the band performs those songs live on CBS This Morning, presented in the album’s order below. The System Sleeps In Total Darkness is one of the best songs they’ve ever released, and live it is both nuanced (those background, Brian Wilson-influenced vocals) and incendiary (Aaron Dessner’s ravaging guitar solo, Matt Berninger’s vocal fervor, and Bryan Devendorf’s drumming–wow!).

Pick up the critically-acclaimed Sleep Well Beast HERE or buy/stream it HERE.

The National showed up on Colbert’s Late Show last night to perform their impressive new song Day I Die (off of new album Sleep Well Beast, which was just released today). We’ve been digesting the new album for a while and can happily say (full review, soon come) that the band does not disappoint.

Check out the very lively Day I Die performance below, which features guitar hooks aplenty delivered by an enlarged band, including a posse of percussionists and regular touring members Benjamin Lanz and Kyle Resnick, along with Arone Dyer (of Buke and Gase) who adds vocals on the new album. Check it out and go buy/stream Sleep Well Beast HERE. Day I Die’s lyrics are at bottom.

Day I Die:

I don’t need you. I don’t need you.
Besides I barely ever see you anymore,
and when I do it feels like you’re only halfway there.
Young mothers love me, even ghosts of girlfriends
call from Cleveland—they will meet me
any time and anywhere.

The day I die, day I die, where will we be?
The day I die, day I die, where will we be?

Don’t do this, I don’t do this to you.
And don’t expect me to enjoy it.
Because I really don’t have the courage not to turn the volume up
inside my ears. For years I used to put my head inside
the speakers in the hallway
when you’d get too high and talk forever.

The day I die, day I die, where will we be?
The day I die, day I die, where will we be?
The day I die, day I die, where will we be?
The day I die, day I die, where will we be?

I get little punchy with the vodka just like my great uncle Valentine Jester did
when he had to deal with those people like you who made no goddam common sense.
I’d rather walk all the way home right now than to spend one more second in this place.
I’m exactly like you Valentine. Just come outside and leave with me.

Let’s just get high enough to see our problems.
Let’s just get high enough to see our father’s houses.

The day I die, day I die, where will we be?
The day I die, day I die, where will we be?
The day I die, day I die, where will we be?
The day I die, day I die, where will we be?

Here comes The Nationalization of 2017. The National will release their great new album Sleep Well Beast on Friday of this week on 4AD. As lead-up to the album’s release, the band yesterday performed the entirety of Sleep Well Best live in Philadelphia for WXPN’s World Cafe and NPR Music. Go check out the impressive performances HERE while you can.

As you will hear, many of the new album’s songs benefit from their enhanced live treatment. The album’s best song, The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness, is taken to even greater heights live with the added harmony vocals of Arone Dyer (Buke and Gase) and the even-more ferocious guitar solo (which reminds of Jeff “Skunk” Baxter’s searing guitar solos for Steely Dan on their first two albums, Can’t Buy a Thrill and Countdown to Ecstacy–our highest praise possible). The desultory Walk It Back finishes with an unexpected flourish live. Berninger appropriately attacks the vocal on Turtleneck, and I’ll Still Destroy You accomplishes its aim with its dynamics and the dueling guitars in the latter part of the song. Dark Side of the Gym remains one of our favorites and benefits from its scaled-down sound here. And for good measure the NPR set ends with a few songs “from 10 years ago.” Fake Empire and Terrible Love close with a devastating one-two punch.

The band will also appear on the Colbert Show tomorrow (Thursday) night so set your DVRs.

Bring on Sleep Well Beast.

On September 8th long-time faves The National will release their new album Sleep Well Best on 4AD. We’ve already heard/seen the first three songs: The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness, Guilty Party, and CCarin at the Liquor Store (seriously, that “dead John Cheever” bit–huh?).

Now the band has released the fourth song off the album, Day I Die, via the song’s official video. The video was directed by Casey Reas who had this to say about the video in a press release: “Graham MacIndoe captured 18 time-lapse photo series during rehearsals at Le Centquatre in June 2017 in Paris. Hours of rehearsal are compressed into a few minutes. Over 5,000 of these photographs were brought together to create the final video. I wrote custom software to collage multiple photographs together and to compile them into videos. A flickering color layer abstracted from broadcast television signals augments the black and white footage. The images are played back at 12fps, near the threshold of the persistence of vision.”

Check the video out below. Day I Die is classic The National, replete with references to “great uncle Valentine Jester,” who may or may not be someone’s re-imagined great uncle or a pseudonym therefor, and how does uncle relate to the departed daughter Val Jester who appeared on Alligator. Mere conjecture about a jester’s Jester. The song’s lyrics are at bottom.

For those wanting to get a better feel for the new songs performed live, on September 5th World Cafe and NPR Music will host a First Listen Live performance which can be streamed HERE.

The band will venture out on in September on a nearly sold-out worldwide tour. The band announced today that a “Sunday matinee” (huh? how can that be for this band who performs best in total darkness) has been added at the Greek Theater in Berkeley on October 15th.  Tickets on sale for the latter this Thursday.

You can pre-order Sleep Well Beast HERE.

Day I Die

“I don’t need you. I don’t need you.
Besides I barely ever see you anymore,
and when I do it feels like you’re only halfway there.
Young mothers love me, even ghosts of girlfriends
call from Cleveland—they will meet me
any time and anywhere.

The day I die, day I die, where will we be?
The day I die, day I die, where will we be?

Don’t do this, I don’t do this to you.
And don’t expect me to enjoy it.
Because I really don’t have the courage not to turn the volume up
inside my ears. For years I used to put my head inside
the speakers in the hallway
when you’d get too high and talk forever.

The day I die, day I die, where will we be?
The day I die, day I die, where will we be?
The day I die, day I die, where will we be?
The day I die, day I die, where will we be?

I get a little punchy with the vodka just like my great uncle Valentine Jester did
when he had to deal with those people like you who made no goddam common sense.
I’d rather walk all the way home right now than to spend one more second in this place.
I’m exactly like you Valentine. Just come outside and leave with me.

Let’s just get high enough to see our problems.
Let’s just get high enough to see our father’s houses.

The day I die, day I die, where will we be?
The day I die, day I die, where will we be?
The day I die, day I die, where will we be?
The day I die, day I die, where will we be?”

Fantastic Canadian band Destroyer has announced it will release new album ken on October 20th on Merge Records.  News of a new Destroyer album is cause enough for celebration, but the relative quickness of its release also puts to rest concern that leader (and raison d’être) Dan Bejar will be taking more and more time between each new album to set things right. Reversing a trend that has seen three and four-year gaps between albums, ken will be released a scant two years since the fantastic Poison Season alighted.

To give a feel for the new album, Destroyer has released the lyric video below for their beautiful, but foreboding new song Sky’s Grey. We will have to see about the overall tenor of the album, but Sky’s Grey can’t help but remind us of the phenomenal (and phenomenally-underappreciated-by-Americans) Brit band Prefab Sprout. To our ears Sky’s Grey is somewhat an amalgam of Prefab Sprout’s quintessential Two Wheels Good album (listen to tracks at bottom). While Destroyer’s outstanding album Kaputt seemed an homage to Steely Dan/Bryan Ferry and Poison Season seemed dedicated to Bowie/Springsteen, Sky’s Grey may reveal that Bejar reveres Prefab Sprout. Check it out below and compare to the Prefab Sprout samples at bottom.

Sky’s Grey strikes us as foreboding commentary about the current American administration and its “base”: “Bombs in the city, plays in the sticks,” and “Come one, come all, dear young revolutionary capitalists, the groom’s in the gutter, the bride just pissed herself, I’ve been working on the new Oliver Twist.” Regardless, the song plays well to the base in our environs.

“Sometime last year, I discovered that the original name for ‘The Wild Ones’ (one of the great English-language ballads of the last 100 years or so) was ‘Ken’. I had an epiphany, I was physically struck by this information. In an attempt to hold on to this feeling, I decided to lift the original title of that song and use it for my own purposes. It’s unclear to me what that purpose is, or what the connection is. I was not thinking about Suede when making this record. I was thinking about the last few years of the Thatcher era. Those were the years when music first really came at me like a sickness, I had it bad. Maybe ‘The Wild Ones’ speaks to that feeling, probably why Suede made no sense in America. I think ‘ken’ also means ‘to know.’”

You can pre-order ken HERE.

S. Carey is the gifted multi-instrumentalist/songwriter cohort of Justin Vernon in Bon Iver. We have been Carey fans since his fantastic first solo album in 2010. Since then Carey has ever-added to the Bon Iver largesse while releasing his own superb recordings, including 2015’s Supermoon EP and his much-lauded 2014 album Range Of Light.

Carey has now released new song Brassy Sun, which he recorded for Will Arnett’s series Flaked on Netflix. In contrast to the TV series’ comedy, Brassy Sun is a song sung blue that is contemplative and questioning and framed in a rending melody. We hear echoes of Vernon, the Dessner Twins and Sufjan Stevens wrapped up in one. We love everything about it, but especially the harmonies on the “Where have I been?” refrain. We look forward to next year’s forecasted solo album.  Listen to Brassy Sun below.

This coming Friday Iron & Wine will release its highly-anticipated new album, Beast Epic, on Sub Pop Record. On Saturday the band (leader Sam Beam on vocals/guitar, Sebastian Steinberg on bass, Teddy Rankin-Parker on cello and two fantastic female backup vocalists on percussion and keys) performed three stellar songs on CBS This Morning. The performances and songs on the upcoming album lend further support for our belief Sam Beam is one of our best songwriters, performers and lyricists of all time.

Watch below as the band gives pristine performances of the eloquent Call It Dreaming and Thomas County Law off Beast Epic, followed by 2002 deep cut Call Your Boys. You can pick up the unbeastly Beast Epic HERE.

Iron & Wine will head out on tour this weekend in support of Beast Epic, eventually making their way to California in October. Check out the dates and get tickets HERE.

We’ve loved the weighty-waif Julien Baker for quite some time (since her Sprained Ankle first alighted). She’s about to release her second album entitled Turn Out the Lights. Baker today shared her first new song Appointments from the album (lyrics at bottom), and we are fully appointed and at attention. Listen in below. As frequently heard from Baker, the song is confessional and revealingly raven, but with a corona-glimmer escaping the total eclipse. The new album will be released on October 27th courtesy of Matador Records. This is a bigger sound than we have heard from Baker. And thank God for that. Go big or….go to your other appointment.

You can pre-order Turn Out The Lights HERE.

“I’m staying in tonight
I won’t stop you from leaving
I know that I’m not what you wanted
Am I?

Wanted someone who I used to be like
Now you think I’m not trying
Well, don’t argue it’s not worth the effort to lie
You don’t want to bring it up
And I already know how we look
You don’t have to remind me so much
How I disappoint you
It’s just that I talked to somebody again
That knows how to help me get better
Until then I should just try not to miss anymore
Appointments

I think if I ruin this
That I know I can live with it
Nothing turns out like I pictured it
Maybe the emptiness is just a lesson in canvases
I think if I fail again
That I know you’re still listening
Maybe it’s all gonna turn out alright
And I know that it’s not, but I have to believe that it is

And when I tell you that you that it is
Oh, it’s not for my benefit
Maybe it’s all gonna turn out alright
Oh, I know that it’s not, but I have to believe that it is”

The far better part of America has been shaken to the core by the hatred, rascism and violence exhibited in Charlottesville last weekend. In its wake, Wilco today released the plaintive track All Lives You Say? with all proceeds from the song to go to the Southern Poverty Law Center in the memory of Jeff Tweedy’s father Robert L. Tweedy, who passed away earlier this month.

Tweedy said:

“My dad was named after a Civil War general, and he voted for Barack Obama twice,” Tweedy says in a statement. “He used to say ‘If you know better, you can do better.’ America — we know better. We can do better.” Amen.

Listen below and go donate to this good cause at Bandcamp. Done and done. Peace. Lyrics at bottom.

“All lives, all lives you say
I can see you are afraid
Your skin is so thin
Your heart has escaped
All lives, all lives you say

You were born at the end of a noose
What was up came down with your blues
But you don’t know how to sing anything anyway
So all lives, all lives you say

My mind, my mind is gone
It’s too hard for me to know when I’m wrong
This is the last dying gasp of a deadly lung
Turning blue on a lawn in the sun”