Exclusive Album Stream: Mates of State's Richly Harmonic 'Mountaintops'

Mates of State

Glynis Arban

Click to listen to the Mates of State's album 'Mountaintops'

Husband-and-wife duo Mates of State are indie-pop veterans with a deep catalog of sophisticated, harmony-rich tunes. Mountaintops (Barsuk), the band's seventh full-length album, finds them going further than ever with electronic textures without sacrificing the warmth and classic melodicism of their earlier work. Mountaintops will hit stores on September 13th, but you can preview it in full now.

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter