New Mix: Ryan Adams, Jamie xx, The Civil Wars’ Joy Williams, More

VPM | By Robin Hilton and Bob Boilen

Published March 31, 2015 at 4:40 PM EDT

Updated February 20, 2024

Clockwise from upper left: Ryan Adams, Jamie xx, Joy Williams, Eskimeaux

On All Songs Considered this week, we hear two songs by familiar musicians, one stripped down to his essence and one in a brand new context. Ryan Adams is at his best live, playing solo acoustic hits, with lots of comical chatter. The prolific singer and songwriter has a massive live album coming out with 42 songs recorded at Carnegie Hall. From that collection, we’ve got Adams’ rock anthem “New York, New York,” slowed waaaay down for solo piano (along with his seemingly random oratory on the film Terminator 2). The intense folk duo The Civil Wars broke up intensely around the release of its second album; that group’s Joy Williams just announced her first solo album, and offers up a single, “Woman (Oh Mama),” that introduces a fresh pop sound.

Also on thee show, Jamie xx, founder of the deeply meditative pop band The xx, serves up club beats on a new cut from his debut solo album In Colour. We also have a quartet of discoveries: Eskimeaux, of Brooklyn art collective The Epoch, a colorful new single by Canadian songwriter Gianna Lauren infectious pop track from Midwest rockers Twinsmith and Florida songwriter Christopher Paul Stelling brings his incredible finger picking from the road to the studio.

But first, we give one last nod to the South By Southwest music festivals’ biggest legacy: head colds.

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Robin Hilton

Robin Hilton is the Senior Podcast Producer for NPR Music and hosts the New Music Friday episodes of All Songs Considered. He is also a composer and multi-instrumentalist whose original scores have appeared in podcasts, films, radio programs and other works. He arranged and performed the theme for NPR's Weekend All Things Considered and composed and performed its elections coverage theme. You can hear more of his music here.

Prior to joining NPR in 2000, Hilton co-founded Small Good Thing Productions, a non-profit production company for independent film, radio and music in Athens, Georgia.

Hilton lived and worked in Japan as an interpreter for the government, and taught English as a second language to junior high school students.

From 1989 to 1996, Hilton worked for NPR member stations KANU and WUGA as a senior producer and assistant news director and was a long-time contributing reporter to NPR's daily news programs All Things Considered and Morning Edition.

Along the way, Hilton worked as an emergency room orderly, a blackjack dealer and a fruitcake factory assembly lineman.

See stories by Robin Hilton