Brad Mehldau has released "Colorbars," featuring singer/mandolinist Chris Thile, the latest track from Ride into the Sun, his upcoming songbook record of music by the late singer, songwriter, and guitarist Elliott Smith. You can watch the video made during its recording, directed by Matthew Edginton, here:

Featured musicians on Ride into the Sun include Thile; singer/guitarist Daniel Rossen of Grizzly Bear; bassists Felix Moseholm (Brad Mehldau Trio, Samara Joy) and John Davis (who also engineered and mixed the album); drummer Matt Chamberlain (Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Randy Newman); and a chamber orchestra led by Dan Coleman, who also conducted on Mehldau’s 2010 album Highway Rider. Mehldau makes his late-night television debut with a performance of "Colorbars" on Jimmy Kimmel Live! with Thile, Moseholm, and Chamberlain on ABC tonight.

Ride into the Sun’s ten Elliott Smith songs are complemented by four Mehldau compositions that he says are “inspired by, and reflect, Smith’s oeuvre.” Also included are interpretations of Big Star’s “Thirteen,” which Smith also covered, and “Sunday” by Nick Drake, who Mehldau says, “I look at in some ways as sort of Smith’s visionary grandfather.”

"Chris Thile is someone that I've had a musical relationship with now for a little more than a decade," Mehldau says. "When I'm playing with him, I just feel that we're very close in rhythm and there's this wonderful simpatico. And Chris loves Elliott's music as much as I do, and he knows it really well.

"The title of the record is Ride into the Sun, and that is a beautiful point in the lyrics of 'Colorbars," he explains. "Elliott Smith says in the original song, 'Everyone wants me to ride into the sun.' When I listen to music, I have the feeling that I can be in communion with somebody who's no longer in this earthly realm. Like he is here, you know? And as far as riding into the sun, it's maybe more of a perpetual riding into the sun with him. It's something mystical there."