We’d seen hints of it, but last night the Jimmy Fallon Show featured a video of U2 performing (with Fallon MC-ing) in an NYC subway (initially undetected).  Edge’s underrated harmonies were, as usual, a highlight in the subway.

As you may recall, U2 was scheduled to do a week-long residency on The Tonight Show in November, but had to cancel after Bono’s horrendous cycling accident in Central Park (see the Fallon/Bono skit at bottom).  The band completely dominated last night’s show, which included studio performances of Song For Someone from their latest album, Songs of Innocence, along with Beautiful Day and Angel of Harlem with The Roots (“Go tuba!”).  Tour de force!

We know it ain’t hip, but we still love this band.

Check it all out below.

Though we’ve heard/seen them perform it before, there’s not a bad time to hear/watch First Aid Kit cover Simon & Garfunkel’s America as they did, again, on the Letterman Show last night. Heavenly. Harmonies.

As previously announced here, Sharon Van Etten will soon release a new EP entitled I Don’t Want To Let You Down.  Van Etten has now released another track from the EP, Just Like Blood.  While her frank lyrics always shatter or lift, it is her vocalese that startles with its evocative other-worldliness.  Listen below as Van Etten tells her tale in tongues and carves with blood-letting vocal lines.

We would pay good money just to hear her sing Jabberwocky (AKA any song by Cocteau Twins).  Just Like Blood is a superb addition to her outstanding discography.

I Don’t Want To Let You Down will be released on June 9th on Jagjaguwar and is available for pre-order HERE.

Don’t Want to Let You Down EP Songlist:
01. I Don’t Want to Let You Down
02. Just Like Blood
03. I Always Fall Apart
04. Pay My Debts
05. Tell Me (Live)

The serious lads that are Son Lux will be releasing their new album, Bones, on June 23rd.  To coincide with the album’s first single, Change Is Everything, the band has released the song’s video made by The Made Shop.  The video combines pointillism and string into a mesmerizing visual that meshes superbly with the shimmering song. Check it out below.

Bones is out on June 23rd on Glassnote and you can order it HERE.

Photo: Shervin Lainez

Put simply, Freedy Johnston is one of our most gifted living songwriters.  We previously spilled a couple thousand words to that effect HERE.  In his songs, Johnston evokes whole worlds and stories with bare-necessity lines delivered in powerful melodies. Johnston’s albums Can You Fly and This Perfect World remain amongst the best albums ever delivered, and there have been gems ever since from Freedy.  Johnston has now announced his imminent new, Kickstarter-financed album Neon Repairman.   Based on the powerful title track alone, we can’t wait for its arrival.

Neon Repairman is an obvious tribute to Jimmy Webb’s winsome Wichita Lineman (which Johnston has previously covered well).  About the song, Johnston recently told The Journal News: “All that was done purposefully.  It was like, sorry Jimmy Webb, I needed to use your song as a template. I sort of traced over it.  We were outside The Saxon Pub … and I said [to a friend], man, there must be a lot of neon repairmen in this town, and [the friend] says ‘That’s cool, you ought to write a song about a neon repairman.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I gotta do that.’  But I didn’t know how to finish it. … Then I realized it was kind of Wichita Lineman-like.  So I wrote out Wichita Lineman on one side of a piece of paper, on a legal pad. … I put in the lines I had next to the corresponding lines of Wichita Lineman.  It was sort of a device to finish the song.  I emailed [Jimmy Webb about the song].  [Webb] was a total Oklahoma gentleman [and called it] ‘a great song.'”  You can the homage clearly in one of the new song’s lines lifted from Wichita Lineman: “And I need you more than want you, as the story goes.”

Check the song out below.  It’s an evocative beauty that bodes incredibly well for the impending album (the songlist of which is at bottom).  You can pre-order Neon Repairman HERE.  In addition, Johnston will play the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara on August 15th.

Songlist:

1 “Neon Repairman”
2 “Baby, Baby Come Home”
3 “TV in My Arms”
4 “Summer Clothes”
5 “By the Broke Streetlight”
6 “The First to Leave the World, Is the First to See the World”
7 “Angeline”
8 “The Sentimental Heart”
9 “Her Hair Is Blowing in the Wind of Another Planet”
10 “A Little Bit of Somethin’ Wrong”

Blur has been making the rounds in support of their new album The Magic Whip.  They showed up on The Tonight Show last week and made their first American TV performance in 15 years, performing a ravishing version of Ong Ong, off the new album (watch that performance at bottom).

Today, however, The Tonight Show released an outstanding bonus:  Blur with J-Fal backstage in the green room performing a rousing version of Blur’s great chestnut, Tender.  Watch below as Fallon flashes his falsetto and Blur and ensemble lift the song WAY up.  At song’s end Damon Albarn and ensemble commend Fallon with rounds of “jolly good!”

We couldn’t agree more.  That’s entertainment!

If we had a dollar for every mind-waste, soul-depriving “party” endured during our lives, we’d be on easy(er) street. Been there/are there?  If so, then Here‘s your new jam.  Check out the first track from 18-year-old, newly-signed Def Jam artist, Alessia (Caracciolo), from Ontario, Canada.  Here is an honest appraisal and anthem for the party-pooper in all of us.  Like it was written in our souls from us to you.

As Alessia told The FADER, Here is a song “for all the antisocial, awkward, and miserable party-goers of the world.  This one time I went to a party and while there, I realized how much I hated it, along with every other party I had ever gone to. We wrote about it the next day.”  Check the full, worthy lyrics (emphasis added) below.

Here samples Isaac Hayes’ Help Me Love  and then makes way for Alessia’s magnificent message-making.  Wisdom beyond her years.  We love everything about it and can’t wait for more from Alessia.

Lyrics:

“‘I guess right now you’ve got the last laugh’ [Issac Hayes]

I’m sorry if I seem uninterested
Oh I’m not listenin’, oh I’m indifferent
Truly I ain’t got no business here
But since my friends are here, I just came to kick it
But really I would rather be at home all by myself
Not in this room with people who don’t even care about my well being
I don’t dance, don’t ask, I don’t need a boyfriend
So you can, go back, please enjoy your party
I’ll be here, somewhere in the corner
Under clouds of marijuana with this boy who’s hard
And I can hardly hear
Over this music I don’t listen to
And I don’t wanna get with you
So tell my friends that I’ll be over here

[Chorus]
Oh here, oh here
Oh I asked myself, what am I doin’ here?
Oh here, oh here
And I can’t wait ’til we can break up out of here

Excuse me if I seem a little unimpressed with this
An antisocial pessimist, but usually I don’t mess with this
And I know you mean only the best and your
Intentions aren’t to bother me, but honestly I’d rather be
Somewhere with my people, we can kick it and just listen to
Some music with a message, like we usually do
And we’ll discuss our big dreams, how we plan, to take over the planet
So pardon my manners, I hope you understand that I’ll be here
Not there in the kitchen
With the girl who’s always gossipin’ about her friends
Oh tell them I’ll be here
Right next to the boy who’s throwin’ up
Cause he can’t take what’s in his cup no more
Oh God why am I here?

[Chorus]

Hours later congregatin’ next to the refrigerator
Some girl’s talkin’ ’bout a hater, she ain’t got none
How did it ever come to this? I should’ve never come to this
So holla at me, I’ll be in the car when you’re done
I’m stand-offish, don’t want what you’re offerin’
And I’m done talkin’, awfully sad it had to be that way
So tell my people when they’re ready that I’m ready
And I’m standin’ by the TV with my beanie low
Yo I’ll be over here”

Modest Mouse has unleashed an immodest media assault in support of its fantastic new album, Strangers To Ourselves, appearing on CBS This Morning, The Tonight Show and others.  Last night the band appeared on Jimmy Kimmel and raged through fervent versions of The Ground Walks, With Time In A Box and Wicked Campaign off the new album.  Isaac Brock’s eyes tell the story:  it’s life during environmental wartime, and you better hold on.  Great stuff from the always-reliable indie-rockers.  Check ’em out below.

Until we finally gave his music its due attention a few years back, we couldn’t fully comprehend the depth, beauty, sagaciousness and humility in the music of Sweden’s Jose González, whether solo or as a part of his fine ensemble Junip (watch a live sample of the latter below). You too might need some more time and a good introduction to González too. We can’t think of a better intro, with his ever-present nylon-stringed guitar and international backers, than the Tiny Desk Concert released today by NPR.  Throughout his oeuvre, González  asks (and attempts to answer) big questions and calmly cajoles the listener to contemplate bigger issues.  Put another way:  you probably won’t hear González’s songs covered on Modern Country Radio.

His latest album, Vestiges & Claws, continues his superb string of recent solo and Junip albums, and is a must for your collection.  Watch below as González and fine supporters perform three gems of the new album, including With The Ink of A Ghost (see the worthy lyrics at bottom), which González recently dubbed his favorite song.  On this song, in particular, the ensemble delivers superb harmonies (at times realizing the unrealized promise of the Fleet Foxes, at others sounding like the finest touchstone, Simon & Garfunkel).  They close with one of our favorite songs of 2015 so far, Every Age.  It’s all not-so-simply mesmerizing.

González is currently out on a sold out tour including tonight and tomorrow in Los Angeles.

Set List:

Open Book 0:00
With The Ink Of A Ghost 3:03
Every Age 8:49

“Idle as it seemed
Trudging through the mist
Following the creeks
Erasing dim lines on the list

Eager to arrive
Leaving footprints in the clay
Reading rocks and vines
Telling indigo from grey
Telling indigo from grey

Scattered rays of light
On dust grains in the air
All berries in the tree
Earn a steady flare

Among the mirrors of the scene
Some appear frail and incomplete
In a vast field of bales she runs
From the deepest valley past the sun

Opening up the vault
To find spinning tops in play
Embedded nested yarn
Diverting from the gates

But once the faint elusive moans
Evaporate in the morning light
All deserted yearnings come to life
Surface from the dark to realize
How in a vast field she runs
From the deepest valley past the sun

All this time
Witness to the changing tides
All the while
Finding ways how to make sense of all the lights
To shake the winds
To shake the currents and the rigid hives we’re living in
All this time
Witness to the changing tides

Idle as a wave
Moving out at sea
Cruising without sound
Molding what’s to be
Serene between the trails
Serene with the time and ink of a ghost”