Nick Cave has once again come through tumult and tribulation, and remains a triumphant live performer. Don’t believe us?  Just watch Cave’s smoldering performance below of muse-homage Rings of Saturn (worthy lyrics below) off of his haunted and haunting album Skeleton Tree. Cave and his Bad Seeds are out on tour now, and you can check the dates and get tickets HERE (including impending dates this month in Cali).  Don’t you miss it.  He’s one of the greatest ever to grace a stage.

Rings of Saturn:

“Upside down and inside out and on all eights
You’re like a funnel-web
Like a black fly on the ceiling
Skinny, white haunches high in the sky
And a black oily gash crawling backwards across the carpet to smash all over everything
Wet, black fur against the sun going down
Over the shops and the cars and the crowds in the town

And this is the moment, this is exactly where she is born to be
Now this is what she does and this is what she is
And this is the moment, this is exactly where she is born to be
This is what she does and this is what she is

Her eyes that look at me through a rainy hair
Two round holes where the air buckles and rushes in
Her body, moon blue, was a jellyfish
And I’m breathing deep and I’m there and I’m also not there
And spurting ink over the sheets but she remains, completely unexplained
Or maybe I’m just too tongue-tied to drink it up and swallow back the pain
I thought slavery had been abolished
How come it’s gone and reared its ugly head again?

And this is the moment, this is exactly what she is born to be
And this is what she does and this is what she is
And this is the moment, this is exactly what she is born to be
This is what she is and this is what she does
And this is the moment, this is exactly what she is born to be
And this is what she does and this is what she is
And this is the moment, this is exactly what she is born to be
Then this is what she does and this is what she is

And now she’s jumping up with her leaping brain
Stepping over heaps of sleeping children
Disappearing and further up and spinning out again
Up and further up she goes, up and out of the bed
Up and out of the bed and down the hall where she stops for moment and turns and says
“Are you still here?”
And then reaches high and dangles herself like a child’s dream from the rings of Saturn”

The past twelve months have been halcyon music days for West Coast fans of Iron & Wine and its leader Sam Beam. During that time, Beam has passed through these parts performing live at least three times, once with Jesca Hoop in support of their mesmerizing Love Letter for Fire album, and twice while getting back-to-basics with stirring solo outings. And Beam hasn’t otherwise just been lolling around, having managed to release a covers album with Band of Horse’s Ben Bridwell and release additional Archive recordings. And if that weren’t enough, we now know Beam has been laboring on a proper new Iron & Wine album, entitled Beast Epic, that will be released on Sub Pop on August 25th (the ensemble’s first since 2013’s fine Ghost On Ghost album). To give a feel for the new beast, Iron & Wine has given us the album’s Call It Dreaming single in the form of a heart-and-blood-warming video directed by J. Austin Wilson. Check it out below, followed by the new album’s tracklist, the band’s announced tour dates (with some great openers) and Call It Dreaming’s lyrics. We can’t wait for Beast Epic!

You can pre-order the new album HERE.

Beam shared a rare missive regarding the new album:

“I must confess that I’ve always shied away from album introductions citing the usual “dancing to architecture” cop out. Speaking to their own work is uncomfortable for many artists, but I’ve made a new album called Beast Epic which is important to me and I wanted to take a moment to talk about why. I’ve been releasing music for about fifteen years now and I feel very blessed to have put out five other full lengths, many EPs and singles, a few collaborations with people much more talented than myself, and made contributions to numerous movie scores and soundtracks. This is my sixth collection of new Iron & Wine material and I’m happy to say that it’s my fourth for Sub Pop Records.

It’s a warm and serendipitous time to be reuniting with my Seattle friends because I feel there’s a certain kinship between this new collection of songs and my earliest material, which Sub Pop was kind enough to release. In hindsight, both The Creek Drank the Cradle (2002) and Our Endless Numbered Days (2004) epitomize a reflective and confessional songwriting style (although done with my own ferocious commitment to understatement, of course.) I have been and always will be fascinated by the way time asserts itself on our bodies and our hearts. The ferris wheel keeps spinning and we’re constantly approaching, leaving or returning to something totally unexpected or startlingly familiar. The rite of passage is an image I’ve returned to often because I feel we’re all constantly in some stage of transition. Beast Epic is saturated with this idea but in a different way simply because each time I return to the theme I’ve collected new experiences to draw from. Where the older songs painted a picture of youth moving wide-eyed into adulthood’s violent pleasures and disappointments, this collection speaks to the beauty and pain of growing up after you’ve already grown up. For me, that experience has been more generous in its gifts and darker in its tragedies.

The sound of Beast Epic harks back to previous work, in a way, as well. By employing the old discipline of recording everything live and doing minimal overdubbing, I feel like it wears both its achievements and its imperfections on its sleeve. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed experimenting with different genres, sonics and songwriting styles and all that traveled distance is evident in the feel and the arrangements here, but the muscles seemed to have relaxed and been allowed to effortlessly do what they do best.

I’ve been fortunate to get to play with some very talented musicians over the years who are both uniquely intuitive and also expressive in exciting ways. This group was no different. We spent about two weeks recording and mixing but mostly laughing at The Loft in Chicago.

To be honest, I’ve named this record BEAST EPIC mostly because it sounds really fucking cool! However, with that said and perhaps to be completely honest, “a story where animals talk and act like people” sounds like the perfect description for the life of any of us. If not that, then it’s at least perfect for any group of songs I’ve ever tried to make. I hope you enjoy it.”

Tracklist:

01 “Claim Your Ghost”
02 “Thomas County Law”
03 “Bitter Truth”
04 “Song In Stone”
05 “Summer Clouds”
06 “Call It Dreaming”
07 “About A Bruise”
08 “Last Night”
09 “Right For Sky”
10 “The Truest Stars We Know”
11 “Our Light Miles”
12 “Heart Walk Anywhere” (Deluxe Edition Track)
13 “Kicking The Old Rain (Deluxe Edition Track)
14 “About A Bruise (Demo)” (Deluxe Edition Track)
15 “Claim Your Ghost (Demo)” (Deluxe Edition Track)
16 “Summer Clouds (Demo)” (Deluxe Edition Track)

Call It Dreaming:

“Say it’s here where our pieces fall in place
Any rain softly kisses us on the face
Anywhere means we’re running
We can sleep and see ’em coming
Where we drift and call it dreaming
We can weep and call it singing

Where we pray when our hearts are strong enough
We can bow ’cause our music’s warmer than blood
Where we see enough to follow
We can hear when we are hollow
Where we keep the light we’re given
We can lose and call it living

Where the sun isn’t only sinking fast
Every night knows how long it’s supposed to last
Where the time of our lives is all we have
And we get a chance to say
Before we ease away
For all the love you’ve left behind
You can have mine

Say it’s here where our pieces fall in place
We can fear ’cause the feeling’s fine to betray
Where our water isn’t hidden
We can burn and be forgiven
Where our hands hurt from healing
We can laugh without a reason

‘Cause the sun isn’t only sinking fast
Every moon in our bodies make shining glass
Where the time of our lives is all we have
And we get a chance to say
Before we ease away
For all the love you’ve left behind
You can have mine”

Feist is seemingly everywhere these days. After completing one leg of her tour (including an outstanding three-date residency in LA at the Palace Theater) in support of her latest album, the preeminent Pleasure, she is now out on the next leg of her tour in North America. And when she’s not performing alone, she’s finding the time to convene with her Broken Social Scene pals on stage at various festivals (watch joyous Field Trip collabs at bottom). And last night, she took time to appear on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show (her first TV appearance since releasing Pleasure) to perform the scintillating song Century off the album. Watch the performance below in which Feist is surrounded by her band and joined by Colbert (subbing for the record’s contributor, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp) for the song’s spoken-word interlude. Feist rages through the song in fine fettle, only breaking briefly after looking over at Colbert. If you haven’t seen her current tour, get on it.  The announced dates are below the video.

Tour Dates:
06/07 – Washington, DC @ Lincoln Theater
06/08 – Washington, DC @ Lincoln Theater
06/10 – New York, NY @ Town Hall
06/11 – New York, NY @ Town Hall
06/12 – New York, NY @ Town Hall
06/14 – Chicago, IL @ The Vic
06/15 – Chicago, IL @ The Vic
06/17 – Eau Claire, WI @ Eaux Claires Festival
06/30 – Saskatoon, SK @ Saskatchewan Jazz Festival
07/02 – Ottawa, ON @ Ottawa Jazz Festival
07/04 – Montreal, QC @ Festival International de Jazz de Montreal
07/09 – Winnipeg, MB @ Winnipeg Folk Fest
07/19 – Paris, FR @ Olympia
07/20 – Mainz, DE @ Zitadelle Open Air
07/22 – Wiesen, AT @ Out of the Woods Festival
07/24 – Berlin, DE @ Tempodrom
07/27 – London, UK @ O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire
07/28 – London, UK @ O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire
07/29 – London, UK @ O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire
07/31 – Milan, IT @ Teatro Dell’Arte
08/02 – Munich, DE @ Circus Krone
08/04 – Katowice, PL @ OFF Festival
08/05 – Luhmuhlen, DE @ A Summer’s Tale
08/07 – Trakai, LV @ Trakai Island Castle
08/10 – Oslo, NO @ Oya Festival
08/11 – Gotenburg, SE @ Way Out West Festival
08/12 – Copenhagen, DK @ Haven Festival
08/14 – Brussels, BE @ Brussels Summer Festival
08/18 – Biddinghuizen, NL @ Lowlands Festival
08/19 – Winterthur, CH @ Winterthurer Musicfestwochen

Artwork by Tad Wagner*

Following their mesmerizing show on Saturday at the Bootleg Theater, Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner tweeted that the show was the “Best LA show ever thanks to all who made it happen out west.” Having never seen them live, we can’t gauge the historicity of Wagner’s tweet. But we can tell you that the show was one of our favorite shows of this or any other year. 

Like many in the capacity audience, we’ve revelated off of Lambchop’s potent albums for nearly 20 years, including recently with the colossal increase of last year’s astonishing FLOTUS. Given that discography and their rare visits to the western coast, the audience’s anticipation was alpine at the Bootleg.

Wagner and band ambled onto stage and opened with the life-examining Writer and thereafter focused almost exclusively on FLOTUS’ songs (minus the album’s title-song). Fortunate us. While many might have wanted to hear more older nuggets from the band’s rich discography, no one could fault Wagner for flashing foremost his late-career pivot into FLOTUS’ electronic/vocoder-based sounds and vocals. Who else this deep into their musical career has risked such a quantum leap and arguably dropped the best album of their career?

On this leg of their tour, Lambchop’s chopped and augmented crew featured Wagner, long-time members Tony Crow (on keyboards and quips) and Matt (“Big Hands”) Swanson (on nimble bass), and Wye Oak’s wunderkind drummer/effecter, Andy Stack. For his part, Wagner mostly stood at microphone with his left hand tapping his vocal processor that roosted atop a vintage suitcase, while shuffling well-used lyric sheets onto the suitcase (his “paperprompter”?). The juxtaposition of modern electronics and antiquarian props perfectly aped the FLOTUS gestalt. With his right leg forward, slightly-crouched and rocking back-to-front, Wagner alternated between auto-croon and seething intensity, all to great effect.

Highlights of the set included a redacted take on The Hustle with Wagner strapping on his hollow-body and hollowing out hearts with his poignant ode to long-lived love, as capped off by Crow’s piano coloratura.  In Care Of 8675309, possibly THE best song of 2016, was alone worth the price of admission. Pushed to mid-set, the sagacious song again featured Wagner scratching out rhythm guitar and schooling with his alternately sweet and fiercely-vivid processed vocals. Nothing better. More up-tempo numbers included the funkified JFK (its “talk too much” refrain reminding of this song from Mary Margaret O’Hara), Old Masters and Relatives No. 2.  Only a few older songs made the setlist, but 2002’s The New Cobweb Summer was jazz-inflected and highly-affecting. And Poor Bastard (“from the Posterchild days” said Wagner) and encore-closer My Blue Wave served as stunning reminders of the emotional wreckage that Wagner can wrangle from well-chosen words.

The Bootleg was the last show of their U.S. tour before they had back to their seemingly-preferred Europe for festivals and seasonals. We hope they will soon look west and return near-term to California. When they do, don’t you miss ’em.

*First in a series of concert review artwork by the supremely talented (other) Mr. Wagner.

Seems like Fridays are the new blockbuster reveal-days in the music industry. Following a tumultuous Thursday, two of the biggest names in music, Radiohead and Arcade Fire, have today released official videos for new(ish) songs. Heard of ’em? Entire Amazon Clouds are bursting with bytes of bravos for both these beloved bands.

So we will desist, except to say that Arcade Fire’s new big-budget video and announced big-arena tour smack of big-business to us (and more power to ’em, but at least Radiohead had the grace to tour some smaller venues such as the Santa Barbara Bowl). That’s no comment on the new song, which as usual swings for the fences and touches all the bases of their anthem-ish tendencies. But time will tell if Everything Now and its other tracks are merely overwrought and under-thought Reflektor fodder or something resembling their masterful albums The Suburbs or Funeral. Leader Win Butler has said about the new release: “There’s sort of an everything-nowness to life, I feel like almost every event and everything that happens surrounds you on all sides. It’s trying to capture some of the experiences of being alive now in all its flaws and all its glory.” Fingers-crossed for deliverance Win, but for now we’re sticking with our Song of the Week from Broken Social Scene.

As for Radiohead, they have released a new video for I Promise, an unreleased OK Computer-era song from their upcoming OK Computer 20th Anniversary reissue OKNOTOK.  There’s much to love about this song (featuring Thom Yorke’s ever-stunning vocalese), which track had to have been left off of the original OK Computer release because it just wasn’t experimental/exploratory enough to mesh with the likes of Airbag, Paranoid Android, etc. It’s a beauty nonetheless.

Broken Social Scene has built its distinguished discography on incantatory anthems in which elliptical mantras are meshed with inspirational music and humanizing vocals that can simply take you into the sky (see Anthems for a 17 Year Old Girl, 7/4 (Shoreline), World Sick, etc.). And no matter how cryptic the cant, you nonetheless “get it” in these anthems. As the Jamaicans say: ‘dem who feels it, knows it.”

Today the band has gifted us yet another mantra-laden beauty in new song Skyline, which reruns these lyrics to the song’s powerful ending: “Skyline waits for the world/ skyline waits for the fall/ But you shouldn’t have come at all/ Because I know/ You’re never gonna be, no you’re never gonna be that word/You shouldn’t have come at all.” Propelling the words are drums, horns and pointed and pointillist guitar to go with Kevin Drew’s multi-tracked vocals (abetted by Feist). Check it out below.

Skyline is the third song revealed off of the band’s upcoming album Hug of Thunder (to be released on July 7th), adding to the album’s Feistian title track and another Song of the Week, Halfway Home.

If you’re not a Spotifyer, then go HERE to otherwise stream Skyline or pre-order Hug of Thunder.

Photo credit: Norman Wong.

Given the given name of Aldous, we were leaning towards Huxley or some other chap. Nope. Aldous Harding is a decidedly female New Zealander whose just-released album Party (on 4AD) was produced by the talented John Parish (PJ Harvey, Eels, M. Ward, Perfume Genius,Tom Brosseau). Our first introduction to Harding comes via the recent official video for her beguiling, Lorde-blessed song Imagining My Man, which you can watch below. The song opens with Cat Power/The National piano tones before introducing Harding’s exquisite (Kate Bush-like) vocals, then backing vocals by Perfume Genius’ busy-boy Mike Hadreas, and some Wall-esque kid-group screams of “Hey!!” and “Yes!!” And oh the mournful sax in the coda. So very good.

Go to the pickup-Party HERE.

Harding is out on tour and you can see all the dates (including a visit to Cali in June) HERE.

Words cannot express….but music can. Despite Monday night’s heartbreaking events in Manchester, the Broken Social Scene show had to go on in Manchester last night. For the sake of Manchester. And on the first night of their European tour the band even managed to add to its grand numbers Manchester’s own Johnny Marr on guitar. With all the effected teenagers at the Ariana Grande show, Broken Social Scene opened appropriately with an elegiac performance of Anthems for a 17 Year-Old Girl that added gravitas beyond our normal takeaway from the anthem. And rightly so.

Watch the affecting performance below. Our prayers and best wishes to all affected by this nightmare.

We are constantly confused by band names that seem purposely designed to hurt a band’s marketing efforts and popularity. Over the past decade-plus we’ve endured all possible variations of band names featuring the F-bomb (F-ed Up, etc., ad nauseum–at least Jenny Lewis used an acronym for NAF). While we’re certainly not petulant prudences, we don’t understand why bands intentionally handicap their possible broader acceptance with such names. It’s not as if these names shock the general public. While Cigarettes After Sex is a comparatively tame name, it’s still TMI, is (if you will) a mouthful (six syllables–hello? The Beatles? The Clash? Rolling Stones? U2? Blur?), and we detest cigarettes. Despite the name games, this Brooklyn band’s music is so compelling we have no choice but to recommend them to you.

Though the band has been bubbling under for quite some time, CAS began to get more attention in 2015 via their YouTube offerings. Smartly, Partisan Records then signed them and will release their self-titled debut album on June 9th.

We hadn’t given them much ear until we heard what we thought was a new Lana Del Rey song. But no, instead it was the androgynous vocal of CAS’ leader Greg Gonzalez. Sounding like a mash-up of Interpol interpreting Smiths songs with Lana Del Sandoval on vocals, CAS’s highly-romantic songs wash over you and enthrall with stirring melodies and evocative lyrics:

“Kisses on the foreheads of the lovers wrapped in your arms
You’ve been hiding them in hollowed out pianos left in the dark…”

To get a feel for the upcoming album, check out below the just-released Each Time You Fall In Love followed by Apocalypse. Both have been on repeat ever since we first heard the latter.

You can pre-order CAS debut album HERE.

The band is heading to Europe to tour in a few weeks and will hit the West Coast in September.  Get the dates and tickets HERE.