The Antlers, are set to release their next album Familiars on June 16th in the UK (via Transgressive) and June 17th in the U.S. (via Anti-).  It’s the band’s first album since 2011′s brilliant Burst Apart. We’ve already been graced by The Antlers song and video Palace.  Now comes the band’s second cut from the new album, Hotel.  Check it out below.  Once again there will be harrowing and humbling horns to haunt you.  Just like we like it.   You can pre-order the new album, one of our most highly anticipated albums of 2014, HERE.

Given how many cover songs Bruce Springsteen has been performing on his current tour (some of them brazen panderings to local fans–see his cover in Perth of AC/DC’s Highway to Hell), it’s only right that someone should turn the tables on him.  The A.V. Club has a new video series entitled Pioneering, and the shining Sharon Van Etten has now returned the favor and paid homage to fellow New Jersey native Bruce Springsteen.  Check out below her signature cover of Springsteen’s Drive All Night at the legendary Stone Pony in Asbury Park.  Afterwards, check out the interview (by the endearing and bountiful Eef Barzelay) of Van Etten regarding Springsteen.  Van Etten has been on fire (a subtle cover song request for SVE) of late, releasing superb new songs from her impending self-produced album, Are We There (which will be released May 27th).  It’s one of our most highly anticipated albums of 2014.  Go pre-order Are We There HERE.

Photo by Lucas Hodge.

We have recently played hot and cold with Coldplay.  After initially being nonplussed by most of the songs off of their impending new album, Ghost Stories, we have since felt a global Coldplay warming (this performance helped the most).   We melted more last night when they performed on SNL and brought two new songs to life.  This, combined with Magic having now been beat into our brains (it now sounds more simplistically-genius than strictly-insipid), leaves us feeling more encouraged about Coldplay’s new offerings.  Time will tell the ultimate placing of these songs and album in their discography.

Check out below the band on SNL performing the languid and spare Magic, followed by the more kinetic and anthemic A Sky Full of Stars (which the band co-wrote with Avicii).

On May 18th, the night before Ghost Stories’ release, the band will have a hour special on NBC called Coldplay: Ghost Stories.

It was but one week ago that the Santa Barbara Bowl was finally Nationalized.  Good swaths of The National’s “Show of the Year” at the Bowl last Friday continue to trickle through our cerebellum (“It takes a lot of pain to pick me up, It takes a lot of rain in the cup”).  This is a good thing.  One week later, the CBC’s Studio Q has shared videos of The National making their record-setting sixth visit to CBC’s Studio Q.  While there, the band performed their songs Lean (from the Hunger Games: Catching Fire soundtrack) and Hard to Find from their Best Album of 2013 Trouble Will Find Me.  Enjoy and trickle on.  Those that disagree?  Well, “they can all just kiss off into the air.”

We’re suckers for humanity. We could write a terabyte or two about Bruce Springsteen and all that he has given to his fans and the world.  Yes, admittedly, he’s taken a deserved amount too (we ain’t beginners y’all).  But we caught this vignette below and think it speaks volumes of the musician and human that is Bruce Springsteen.  Watch below at minute 3:48 or so as Springsteen brings a young fan onstage to dance with him during Dancing In the Dark (yes, a la Courtney Cox in the song’s official video).  And then watch as Springsteen hoists the kid on his shoulders (at 4:13).  And then magic ensues at 5:06.  As Dave Letterman says:  “That’s all ya need right there!” We are suckers for the heart of Bruce Springsteen.  That there?  That’s entertainment writ large.

We’ve been falling all ourselves praising the first song (Taking Chances) released by Sharon Van Etten off of her impending album, Are We There, (coming on May 27th on Jagjaguwar)  and the official video therefor.

Today Van Etten released another portentous song off the album, Every Time The Sun Comes Up. We love it in all its emotional honesty and humor.  Van Etten had this to say about the new song to The New York Times:

“On a lark, she’d played her band a demo of her singing the chorus. Van Etten didn’t think much of the song, a wry, country-inflected sing-along, but “at that time of day when we’d already spent eight hours in the studio and I’d checked in with everybody, asking, ‘Are you really tired, don’t you want to go home,’ everyone kept saying, ‘Let’s go back to that song,’ I was like, ‘Have you lost your mind?’” She lets out a long laugh. “I ended up just narrating,” she says. “I’m doing the vocals inside the control room while they play in the studio itself, and just pointing at people. Each verse is about someone else in that room. And everyone was laughing and saying, ‘you have to keep those lyrics.’”

Check it out below and pre-order the new album in vinyl and CD formats HERE or digitally HERE, HERE, and at your local record store.  The tracklist and SVE’s impending tour dates are at bottom.

In addition, The New Yorker will soon release an article on Van Etten, and after the new song you can watch SVE singing yet another new song and being interviewed in her West Village NYC apartment.

Are We There:

1 Afraid of Nothing
2 Taking Chances
3 Your Love Is Killing Me
4 Our Love
5 Tarifa
6 I Love You But I’m Lost
7 You Know Me Well
8 Break Me
9 Nothing Will Change
10 I Know
11 Every Time the Sun Comes Up

Tour Dates:

Thu. May 8 – Northampton, MA @ Iron Horse Music Hall
Fri. May 9 – Hudson, NY @ Helsinki Hudson
Sat. May 10 – Providence, RI @ Columbus Theatre
Sun. May 11 – Hamden, CT @ Ballroom at the Outer Space
Sun. May 25 – Brussels, BE @ Botanique Grand Salon (Nuits Botanique)
Wed. May 28 – Paris, FR @ Café de la Danse
Fri. May 30 – Barcelona, ES @ Primavera Sound
Sun. June 1 – Koln, DE @ Studio 672
Mon. June 2 – Berlin, DE @ Privatclub
Tue. June 3 – Amsterdam, NL @ Bitterzoet
Thu. June 5 – London, UK @ KOKO
Wed. June 11 – Boston, MA @ Sinclair
Thu. June 12 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall at Williamsburg (Northside Festival)
Fri. June 13 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
Sat. June 14 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
Tue. June 17 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
Wed. June 18 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
Thu. June 19 – Millvale, PA @ Mr. Small’s
Fri. June 20 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Ballroom
Sat. June 21 – Nashville, TN @ Exit In
Tue. June 24 – Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater
Wed. June 25 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge
Sat. June 28 – Los Angeles, CA @ El Rey Theatre
Sun. June 29 – San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
Mon. June 30 – San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
Wed. July 2 – Portland, OR @ Doug Fir
Thu. July 3 – Portland, OR @ Doug Fir
Sat. July 5 – George, WA @ Sasquatch Festival
Sun. July 6 – Vancouver, BC @ Rickshaw Theatre
Tue. July 8 – Calgary, AB @ Republik
Wed. July 9 – Edmonton, AB @ Starlite Room
Mon. July 14 – Fargo, ND @ Aquarium
Wed. July 16 – Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
Thu. July 17 – Madison, WI @ University of Wisconsin
Fri. July 18 – Chicago, IL @ Pitchfork Music Festival

Sylvan Esso has sauntered ever so deeply into our consciousness this year.  Their debut album will hit on May 13th via Partisan Records.  In advance of that release comes the band’s new official video for Play It Right (originally a comparatively-hushed folker from singer Amelia Randall Meath‘s other band, Mountain Man).   Now comes the application of some sylvan gas to the tune, resulting in its renewal as a dynamic dance number (to go with their similarly dance-inducing Coffee video).  Cohort Nick Sanborn (also of the mega-talented Megafaun) has added proper electronic effervescence to this version, resulting in the involuntary movements you will see (and feel) from Meath and Sanborn in the new video.  Check it out.

Whoa, guess we’ve been preoccupied and missed out.  Last Thursday the killing Kendrick Lamar appeared on The Tonight Show with Alicia Keys and Johnny Marr to perform their collaborative It’s On Again from the Amazing Spider-Man 2 soundtrack (which also features, interestingly, the phantastic Phosphorescent).   If you do nothing else, watch Lamar rule in the first 1:01 of the video below.  And Ms. Keys and Mr. Marr are all fine and good too.  After, check out the high-production-values (there’s a shocker) official video for the song.

It’s been a banner concert season, capped off Friday night by our fourth show by The National in the last eight months.  We’ve written ceaselessly about this band, their Best Album of 2013 Trouble Will Find Me, and their live shows (which you can read about HERE and HERE).  So we won’t bore with another long praise-screed.  Suffice it to say that we believe them to be America’s best live band (and possibly the world’s best, due deference to Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Elbow and U2).  And that on Friday night they came to the hallowed Santa Barbara Bowl and measured up well against the greats (Marley, The Band, Mitchell, Radiohead, etc.) that have graced these grounds.

Portugal the Man opened and delivered a mesmerizing set of songs warranting much closer scrutiny by yours truly.  We were pleasantly surprised to see a good turnout for the band and most of those in attendance knowing every word to every song of the band’s (one minor complaint would be the leader’s constant mid-song gaze at the stage while tuning his guitar–doesn’t exactly propel things in a live setting)

And then it was time for The National.  And they came out and did what they always d0: lift the world’s weight and make all right again with their healing music.  We will confess that we had concerns following our viewing of the band last month at the Shrine Auditorium.  There, the cavernous venue and an opening film (Tom Berninger’s captivating documentary Mistaken For Strangers) combined to seemingly sap the life entirely from the crowd and partly from the band.  But Friday night was another matter all together.  Bands just can’t help themselves at the Santa Barbara Bowl, and The National continued that legacy.  And this Bowl crowd came ready to sing and sway.  We had been praying for rain all week, certain that the rare event would help to motivate the crowd and band.  And it was so when, while the band was sailing along during their set, the skies opened up (especially the downpour during Slow Show and amidst the oh-so-apropos England) and righteously baptized the proceedings.  From then on the audience gathered resolve with the rain, and there was no turning back, with all on their feet and firmly focused.  Song highlights from the show included Conversation 16, Afraid of Everyone, All the Wine, the rare Santa Clara (the song’s first performance in 2014), Bloodbuzz Ohio, England (as always, but particularly with this rain–a runner was definitely sent–if you haven’t seen, check out the video at the bottom of this post), and the now-standard, scintillating encore-trilogy of Mr. November, Terrible Love and the acoustic/acapella Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks (as depicted above).  As he almost always does, singer Matt Berninger raged out into the crowd during the encore and walked the ancient walls to the crowd’s delight.  No band ends their shows as strongly as this one ’cause they’re “desperate to entertain.”  Nothing better.

Check out our photos (with two panoramics from Tad Wagner) below, along with the full setlist at bottom (you can see they were sadly forced to omit the rarely-performed City Middle)

One of our favorite recent discoveries is Australian artist Courtney Barnett.  After wrapping up roundly-praised performances at Corpchella last week, Barnett will heading out on the road for more shows (see list at bottom).  In between all the comings and goings, last night Barnett made her US television debut on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon and performed the scintillating single Avant Gardener off her critically-acclaimed album, The Double EP: A Sea Of Split Peas (Mom + Pop Music).  Check it out below.  As we’ve said before, we love Barnett’s deadpan delivery and lyrics that elevate everyday events into epiphanic epigrams.  All of which shines through on Fallon.

North American Tour Dates /

06.10.14 – Headliners Music Hall – Louisville, KY *
06.11.14 – Exit In – Nashville, TN *
06.12.14 – Georgia Theatre – Athens, GA *
06.14.14 – Music Hall Of Williamsburg – Northside Festival – Brooklyn, NY
06.17.14 – Bowery Ballroom – New York, NY
06.18.14 – The Sinclair – Cambridge, MA
06.19.14 – Firefly Festival – Dover, DE
06.20.14 – NXNE Festival – Toronto, ON
06.24.14 – Varsity Theater – Minneapolis, MN
07.01.14 – Larimer Lounge – Denver, CO
07.02.14 – Urban Lounge – Salt Lake City, UT
07.04.14 – Fortune Sound Club – Vancouver, BC
07.05.14 – Sasquatch Festival – George, WA
08.01.14 – 08.03.14 – Pickathon Festival – Happy Valley, OR
08.01.14 – 08.03.14 – Lollapalooza – Chicago, IL
08.01.14 – 08.03.14 – Osheaga Festival – Montreal, QC
08.08.14 – 08.10.14 – Outside Lands Festival – San Francisco, CA

* w/ Phosphorescent