First of all, Andrew Bird is playing with a bassist now. Why did no one tell me that? I’ll admit that I was a bit skeptical of this move at first. Part of the wonder of an Andrew Bird show has always been watching him create each song, layer by layer, right before your eyes. […]

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Mary Timony’s new album The Shapes We Make is soon to be released. It’s quite wonderful if you’re a fan of pop music in any form.
MP3: The Mary Timony Band - Sharpshooter
If I could, I would vote for the opening riff of Sharpshooter for president in 2008. That’s how much I love it. The rest […]

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Release the Stars is out 5/15 on Geffen.

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I had to do a little research before I was willing to accept these as real Eagle*Seagull songs. They’re a radical departure from the plunking piano pop of their first album, and I think those of you who remember it might agree. That said, when I found out that they’ve got a few of these […]

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New Ladybug Transistor album out June 5 on Merge. Until then, here’s a preview of it thanks to Optical Atlas.
MP3: Ladybug Transistor - Always on the Telephone
Funny that I just mentioned Grindhouse’s soundtrack, because until the vocals kick in, “Always on the Telephone” sounds like the kind of driving alone at night music Tarantino loves […]

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Today I re-read the Magnet interview with Cat Power (one of my go-to boredom cures) for about the seventh time. It must have provided me with some good female singer mojo, because I finally made sense of a nonsensical text I got the other day involving the words “Ivana,” “Myspace,” and “cover”: Ivana XL covered […]

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Those wacky Interpol kids decided to play a little bit of new material at a recent Canadian show. Here’s the first new song, “Pioneer.”

Thanks to Deaf Indie Elephants for the heads-up about the Youtube vids. You can catch the other new song, “The Heinrich Maneuver” over there.

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I had kind of lost track of You Say Party! We Say Die! until they went on tour with Thunderbirds Are Now! last year. Now that they’ve released their new album Lose All Time in Canada, they popped back on my radar again. The album’s a delight, and this song is one of the reasons […]

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