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.

Peter Matthew Bauer – Liberation!

Silver lining to favorite band (maybe) breaking up: solo projects.

Two years following Heaven, allegedly their final album, we’re gifted with three releases from former members of the The Walkmen. Walter Martin’s We’re All Young Together came out in May, followed by Hamilton Leithauser’s Black Hours in June. The frontman’s solo album is already one of the best things I’ve heard this year, soaring with a lot of the passion and eyes-shut streelamp intensity that made the last few group recordings so timeless.

And today, all day, get a KCRW album preview of Peter Matthew Bauer’s Liberation!

Like Hours, Bauer’s record swirls up some of that Walkmen mystery, but he strums along at a boozier pace, as if all the answers can be found flickering in Jersey neon.

Ten years of The Walkmen was a wonderful journey. If that book is indeed closed, I’m glad we’ll have three separate travelers to script new beginnings and chart new destinations.

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.