- The Tony Awards ceremony, hosted delightfully last night by Sara Bareilles and Josh Groban, featured performances from nominated musicals like Frozen, Mean Girls, eventual Best Musical-winner The Band’s Visit, Spongebob Squarepants: The Musical, and My Fair Lady, plus a special performance by the Marjory Stoneman Douglas drama department, intro and outro songs by the hosts, and a performance from ‘Broadway star’ Bruce Springsteen. TV Line has a round-up of all the videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8x6i4xeNvG0
- When you think of surprise releases, they usually come from household names like Beyonce, Kanye, Radiohead, Drake, and U2, or even lesser-known acts like Wilco or J. Cole. Well on Friday, singer-songwriter M. Ward surprise-released an album called What a Wonderful Industry. I’m not trying to shade M. Ward here, he’s a great artist, and the album, all about his life in the music business, is pretty good, too. I’m just saying maybe we’ve reached surprise-album-release over-saturation? I don’t know.
- Hannah Peel sat in on Guy Garvey’s Finest Hour on BBC Radio, and the Irish singer’s session is online right now. It’s fun; listen.
- Here’s a pair of (Jersey boy) Anthony Bourdain music-related memorials: NPR’s got his picks from when he was on their “Top Five” in 2007, and Spin re-posted a 2007 essay he wrote on the music/drug/restaurant scene in New York in 1977.
- I’m not exactly clear on what PEOPLE is, mostly because everything on the website is written in that vague, pretentious tone that lacks any sort of decisiveness, but Stereogum describes it as “an artist collective…with a festival component” and “a new website with a ton of music you can listen to right now.” The site seems to be coordinated by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and The National’s Dessner brothers, who have collaborated on a new EP under the name Big Red Machine, available on the site now.
- Lord Huron’s latest, Vide Noir, came out in April of this year, and the band has just released a music video for one of the non-single album tracks, “When the Night Is Over.”
Header image courtesy of Philly Mag.