New music

• Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse and David Lynch, full album stream of Dark Night of the Soul (July 13th), NPR
  
• Of Montreal, “Coquet Coquette,” False Priest (Sept 14th), TwentyFourBit
• Punch Brothers, “Packt Like Sardines In a Crush’d Tin Box” (Radiohead cover), bonus track from Antifogmatic (out now), TwentyFourBit
• Cloud Cult, "Running with the Wolves," Light Chasers (Sept. 14th), Knox Road
• Brandon Flowers (of the Killers), "Crossfire," Flamingos (TBD), Product Shop NYC
• Jenny and Johnny, "Scissor Runner," We're Having Fun Now (Aug 31st), Hailing the Photon Gods
  

This week's late night TV lineup

Leno

• Fri - Punch Brothers

Fallon

• Wed - Mumford & Sons
• Thurs - Kings OF Convenience

Carson

• Mon - Fanfarlo
• Tues - The Ravonettes
• Thurs - Los Campesinos!
• Fri - Phoenix

Letterman

• Mon - Tokyo Police Club
• Wed - The New Pornographers

Craig Ferguson

• Tues - Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings
• Fri - Dr. Dog
  

New Radiohead by year's end??

Read it for yourself here.

New music

• The Roots, full album stream of How I Got Over (June 22nd), Pfork
  
• James Mercer (of the Shins and Broken Bells), "Journey Through the Past" (Neil Young cover), 180° South soundtrack (out today), Pfork
• Amanda Palmer (of the Dresden Dolls), "Idioteque" (Radiohead cover), Amanda Palmer performs the popular hits of Radiohead with her magical ukulele (July), I am fuel
• Black Lips, "Before You Judge Me," from the Adult Swim Singles Program, Pfork

This week's late night TV lineup

Letterman

• Fri - Jay-Z and Eminem

Kimmel

• Fri - Sublime w/Rome

Leno

• Thurs - Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings

Fallon

• Tues - Herbie Hancock
  
• Thurs - MGMT

This week's late night TV lineup

Kimmel

• Thurs - Broken Bells

Leno

• Mon - Cee Lo
• Wed - Matisyahu
• Thurs - Punch Brothers

Fallon

• Tues - Broken Social Scene
• Wed - The Gaslight Anthem
• Thurs - Blitzen Trappen
• Fri - The Roots featuring Yim Yames (aka Jim James of My Morning Jacket)

Carson

• Mon - Citizen Cope
• Tues - La Roux
• Thurs - She & Him
• Fri - The xx

Letterman

• Thurs - Deer Tick
• 
  

This week's late night TV lineup

SNL - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Kimmel

• Wed - Massive Attack

Leno

• Fri - Against Me!

Fallon

• Tues - Circa Survive
• Wed - Phish

Carson

• Tues - Surfer Blood
• Wed - The Living Sisters
  
• Fri - Circa Survive

Craig Ferguson

• Thurs - Damian Marley & Nas

The National - Electric Factory (6/4/10)

Even under less than ideal conditions, the National still impressed in concert. It wasn't an easy night though...

• Traffic - The combination of it being a Friday afternoon with both the Flyers and Phillies having home games made the traffic in Philly pretty much miserable.
• Venue - My first time at this venue, which is basically a warehouse. Those who want to enjoy a show with an adult beverage in hand are limited to the upstairs (with very few views of the stage) or the right-side of the stage downstairs (with sub-par acoustics). Not sure if that's by design or because of some silly ABC law, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to herd those willing to hand over more of their $$ into two undesirable areas of the venue.
  
• Crowd - Somehow, we ended up surrounded by a bunch of ass hats who were more interested in boozing and talking than the concert itself. Essentially, they paid a $25-35 cover to get into the Electric Factory bar with the National providing the background music. Another reason to refrain from the over-21 areas next time.

Enough of being Debbie Downer. The band was much more engaging (with each other and the crowd) than the other times I've seen them. Singer Matt Berninger puts so much of himself into some songs that he looks like he's on the verge of a full-blown seizure - I honestly don't know how he does it on a nightly basis and is still sane. The setlist was a solid 22 songs - I believe all but one ("Cherry Tree") being from Alligator, Boxer or High Violet. It looked like "Fake Empire" was supposed to close the main set, but Berninger called an audible of sorts as the rest of the band was putting down their instruments and they instead closed with "Mr. November." I'd assume that this was meant to be their encore closer, because "About Today" ended the show kinda awkwardly.

All things considered it was a good night of music (with the Flyers and Phils chalking up W's to boot). LBJ scored a pair of free tickets to the Saturday show in a radio station raffle too, which by his account was a more pleasurable experience than Friday. Oh well, you can't with them all...

I'll do what I want but irresponsibly

From last year's Austin City Limits concert/taping, but they replayed it a few weeks ago. Not only are these guys great musicians, they're bad-ass performers too. Watching this fires me up...



Saw PJ and Band of Horses at the ridiculously named Jiffy Lube Live (formerly Nissan Pavilion) last month with the LOML. Chalk up another fantastic concert by Pearl Jam.

This week's late night TV lineup

SNL - Alicia Keys

Kimmel

• Tues - Stone Temple Pilots

Leno

• Thurs - Snoop Dogg
• Fri - Nas and Damien Marley

Fallon

• Thurs - Phish

Carson Daly

• Wed - Black Lips
• Fri - Doves

Letterman

• Tues - Band of Horses
• Fri - Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings