Hamilton Leithauser – I Need a Lover

A little more awesome to carry you into the end of the work week.

That’s Hamilton Leithauser covering John Cougar’s “I Need a Lover” for the AV Club’s Undercover series. Somewhere someone has already analyzed my brain (and, more significantly, the brains of like-minded individuals such as the geniuses who dreamed up this project and its predecessors) to figure out exactly what makes a good cover so appealing. And one day when I have a few more minutes of spare internet time, I’ll look into it. The science of karaoke bar success. Or something.

Meanwhile, I’ll also enjoy the fact that the intro to this video segment features Maritime’s “Someone Has To Die.” Happy Thursday.

You and Me and Everybody Else

If I had a voice like Hamilton Leithauser…

I’d sing in the shower so that my neighbors could hear. I’d find a way to lead a rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at AT&T. I’d stop arguments and mediate conflicts through focused crooning. I’d stop relegating my karaoke efforts to private underground closets in Japantown and start queuing up at The Mint.

“11 O’clock Friday Night” at 11 O’clock Saturday night

And I’d be excused for boning San Francisco in favor of tour support for Ray LaMontagne.

That happened in April. Since then, the album came out, the gig at The Chapel was rescheduled, and all was forgiven.

Saturday’s show didn’t sell out until the early afternoon, apparently, which would seem to suggest that maybe some fans still held a grudge. And I had to persuade at least one of them, MH, that it’d be worth it. He got his ticket at 1:00 PM. But by the time the opener, LA’s Avid Dancer, finished their brief (five-song?) set, the dancefloor was packed.

2014: First Half Favorites

I haven’t relapsed into Top 5 lists or controversy-laden ranking debates. At least not yet. But I still can’t help compiling anything that falls under a Favorite Anything category. So whether or not our mixtape exchanges and Soundcloud recommendations steamroll into anything remotely similar to the old Idle Time year-end best-ofs, I wanted to gather up ten of my favorite albums from 2014’s first half. Listed alphabetically, for now.

Ava Luna
Electric Balloon
Western Vinyl

A decade-plus since east coast bands like Radio 4 and Q And Not U punked up disco, Brooklyn’s Ava Luna are doing the same with jazz and soul. I heard three different tracks off this album via three separate outlets, and was later surprised that they were not only by the same band, but also on the same record. Just the right amount of multiple personality disorder to make up an individual party disc.

Hamilton’s Black Hours

If rumors of The Walkmen’s demise are true, at least they left us in Heaven. 

Of course… I can think of at least one other outfit that had a nice ten-year stretch from 2002-2012, then seemed to call it quits, but is now starting to emerge in 2014 in fits and starts, so…

Walkmen frontman Hamilton Leithauser’s solo offering, Black Hours, comes out May 6. The first single, featuring an assist from Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij, is already rattling windows on my morning commute.

Other collaborators on the album include members of The Shins, Dirty Projectors, and the don’t-believe-they’re-gone Walkmen. What will be gone, very quickly I suspect, are tickets to Leithauser’s May 7 show at The Chapel. Snatch ’em up.