#30: Fishboy – Classic Creeps MP3: Fishboy – Aaron the Afterthought Astronaut I don’t know which I find more impressive: that this album effortlessly weaves witticisms through incredible melody or that the entire album tells a complexly involved story. It’s easy to be dismissive of some pop records, but labels like “simplistic” just don’t stick [...]

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2011 was (another) odd year for music. It felt like the average quality of albums was raised a bit, but nothing really stood out as a life-changing album or single of the year. Still, there was a lot of great music to be heard. Here’s fifty of my favorite tracks from the year, ranging from [...]

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The Decemberists’ Long Live the King EP, six songs left over from The King Is Dead sessions, is out November 1. Check out our first listen to the EP over at Paste. It’s a great narrative folk song that catches the Decemberists once again at their best. Stream the Decemberists’ new song at Paste

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The Decemberists’ new video was inspired by David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. If I didn’t have a high stack of books to read I’d go pick up a copy and read it today. JUST KIDDING. Nobody can read that book in a day. Colin had this to say about it: I wrote “Calamity Song” shortly [...]

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I was bummed that I had to miss both the Decemberists’ and New Pornographers’ shows last night. I did, however, find this video of the Decemberists covering the Fruit Bats’ song “When You Love Somebody” from a week or so ago. MP3: the Decemberists – When You Love Somebody (Fruit Bats) Of course this is [...]

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What an incredible video. It’s beautiful and — somewhat surprisingly — completely serious. When “Why We Fight” popped up as a Decemberists song, I was a bit confused: weren’t they the group who had written a few good anti-war songs not too long ago? There are, of course, some things worth fighting for, as the [...]

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So it turns out that I really enjoy putting together these covers archives. It gives me a chance to rediscover the depth of influences of some of my favorite bands and — in cases like this — rediscover how great the band is. I used to be a HUGE Decemberists junkie. I’m still a fan, [...]

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