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Vampire Weekend

Hear Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam's New Single, "When The Truth Is..."

New MusicWeston PaganoComment

Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam's forthcoming collaborative LP, I Had A Dream That You Were Mine, is shaping up to be one of our favorite records of the year and we're only three tracks deep.

The latest taste of the album due out September 23 via Glassnote is "When The Truth Is...", a swanky blend of bottle slide guitar, steady piano plinks, and a jarringly splendid marriage of Leithauser's pipes with those of a saxophone. Listen below.

Vampire Weekend's Rostam and The Walkmen's Hamilton Leithauser Combine On "A 1000 Times"

New MusicWeston PaganoComment

Damn, we've missed Hamilton Leithauser's voice.

The former Walkman has joined forces once again with now ex-Vampire Weekender Rostam Batmanglij to grace us with "A 1000 Times," a lovely tune that breaks right out of the gate with Leithauser's full register of glorious pleading howls. The potential energy is immediately palpable in the delicate opening few seconds that serve only to set the stage for a vocal main course that doesn't really let up once it starts.

The official debut of the newly-christened Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam duo, it's the first taste of what the latter told Pitchfork "might be one of the best records I make in my whole life." Rostam elaborated on Sirius XMU, explaining,

I always wanted to try to really capture [Leithauser’s] voice in a way I felt like maybe it had never been captured before, just in terms of how it was recorded, and also pushing him to really scream, because it’s interesting. His voice has this kind of choir boy aspect to it, but then when he screams, it’s like a little bit of the choir boy is still intact, and I think that’s a special blend of things. He sings in a way like no one else sings. So I kind of felt like it was my role as the producer, to bring that out of him. And I think ‘A 1000 Times’ is probably one of the best examples of that.

As long as he keeps belting like that, we're sold.

Listen to "A 1000 Times" here: https://hamiltonrostam.lnk.to/A1000Times Lyrics: I had a dream that you were mine I've had that dream a thousand times A thousand times, a thousand times I've had that dream a thousand times I left my room, on the west side I walked from noon, until the

A Very Transverso Holiday: 50 Songs for the Season

Music ListTransverso MediaComment

The holidays are a magical time of year, a time often evoked through the use of song. We at Transverso have decided to collect some of our favorite festive tunes into a playlist for you and yours to enjoy in the coming days, beginning with the original Christmas song, Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime."

These 50 seasonal tracks are sure to be the perfect soundtrack as you hang ornaments on your tree, bake cookies, or leave your young son at home without supervision in a crime-ridden Chicago suburb for an extended period of time.

Yeasayer's Anand Wilder Announces 'Break Line' Musical with Star-Studded Soundtrack, Releases First Single

Music News, New MusicWeston PaganoComment

Talk about an all-star cast: Yeasayer co-founder and multi-instrumentalist Anand Wilder and longtime friend and composer Maxwell Kardon have announced the completion of a new musical featuring fellow bandmates Ira Wolf Tuton and Chris Keating, James Richardson (MGMT), Christopher Powell and Ryan Kattner (Man Man), Rostam Batmanglij (Vampire Weekend, Discovery), K Ishibashi (Kishi Bashi, of Montreal, Jupiter One), Haley Dekle (Dirty Projectors), and more.

According to the press release, Break Line The Musical “harkens back to rock concept albums of the early 70′s,” exploring “the classic arc of lost love, betrayal, and pride,” and is based on “a labor conflict in a Western Pennsylvania coal town” that the duo’s fathers had discovered in “an old folk song taught in Quaker schools in the 1950s.”

Conceived six years ago, Wilder’s project began to take shape in between Yeasayer albums and is reminiscent of his band’s debut LP, with a lighter, springier version of All Hour Cymbals’ freakier folksy vibe. Taking inspiration from The Kinks and The Byrds, the musical puts a contemporary twist on a classic art form.

Ahead of Break Line’s release this July 15th on Secretly Canadian (July 14th, rest of the world via Mute), Wilder and Kardon have given us a small taste of what’s to come with ‘Wedding Day,’ a sleepy track that begins with children’s laughter and reversed guitar strums before Wilder’s croons raise the tempo into full-blown folk-pop festivity.


Originally published on The Music Ninja