Hamilton Leithauser announces live album 'Live! at Cafe Carlyle' | NME
Hamilton Leithauser has announced the release of a new live album, featuring the recordings of his only live performances for 2020.
‘Live! at Cafe Carlyle’ is composed of 10 recordings from the five shows Leithauser played during his annual residency at the titular New York venue.
Per Setlist FM, it will feature covers of Big Thief‘s ‘Not’, Lana Del Rey‘s ‘The Greatest’ and Randy Newman‘s ‘Miami’. Leithauser performed the latter of those covers on a livestream for Sirius XM in April, updating the lyrics to be about life in lockdown. The bulk of the rest of the tracklist is composed of versions of tracks from his 2020 collaboration with Rostam, ‘The Loves of Your Life’.
To mark the release of ‘Live! at Cafe Carlyle’, Leithauser will host a ticketed livestream performance at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, New York on September 12. Tickets are available to purchase here.
In a post to Instagram announcing the release, Leithauser said he had found the tapes of the show a few months mid coronavirus isolation.
“The band was awesome, and it’s the closest thing to playing live I have right now, so it really was a fun thing to put together,” he wrote.
“I’ve only ever played most of these songs 4-5 times, so we were really still learning them that night. Playing live is such a big part of my life, and I don’t know when I’ll actually be able to do it again, so in the meantime, I hope this record might transport the listener for 30 minutes to a small, candle-lit cafe table in an overcrowded room while my band is ripping it up.”
‘Live! at Cafe Carlyle’ is set to be released on September 4 via Glassnote Records.
Leithauser performed outside a barn at his home, with help from his children on backing vocals, for a special Father’s Day edition of NPR’s Tiny Desk in June.
