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Conor Oberst // Outer South Free Stream

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

Lately for some reason I’ve been on a Conor Oberst listening spree, and just like early Christmas morning, I got a treat with an unexpected free stream of him and his Mystic Valley Band’s upcoming May release entitled Outer South. Noticeably different than any of his past works (like letting other members take the helm with songwriting and lead singing), I’ll have to go through it more than once before rendering a verdict. Regardless, it’s not often that you see a band actively distributing new material way ahead of its scheduled release date — most of the time it’s leaked like in the case of Grizzly Bear and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs — so it’s reassuring that maybe the business model is changing in the music industry. We can only hope.

So if you got some free time and want to hear what the new Oberst sounds like, you can head over to Merge Records website and check it out. It’s only for a limited time, so better make it sooner than later.

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band // Nikorette (from Outer South)

Conor Oberst, Jim James, and M. Ward // At the Bottom of Everything (live)

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Sufjan Stevens // Older Stuff

Saturday, March 7th, 2009

The four years since Sufjan Stevens released his breathtakingly beautiful Illinois has seemed more like an eternity. Sure we’ve had the collection of discarded tracks from the Illinois session compiled together and put out as the 2006 The Avalanche release, but there have only been a trickle of new material since. After releasing “You Are the Blood”, a ten minute masterfully crafted electronic folk track which served as the most stellar song on the dense Dark Was the Night compilation, the fervor for a new LP from Mr. Stevens has reached critical mass.

At his current pace of output, Stevens is set to complete the “Fifty States” project at the rip age of 175, which if you’re Methuselah is OK, but if you’re a normal human being it’s another story. I’m not implying that he should rush material out that he’s not satisfied with, but after hearing “You Are the Blood” you can’t help but think he’s sitting on a gold mind of talent that the public deserves to get to listen to a little more regularly.

In the hunt to fill my Stevens addition, I’ve come across some oddball recordings he has made within the past nine years. “Lakes of Canada” is a live solo acoustic performance at Judson College made in 2003 – a couple of months after the release of Michigan. “I Can’t Even Lift My Head” and “Woman at the Well” are both from label compilations (a 2001 Asthmatic Kitty and a 2000 Blue Bunny Records release respectively). Rounding out some of Steven’s older stuff I was able to find is a cover of R.E.M.’s “This One I Love” recorded at a SXSW appearance in 2004. Enjoy!

Sufjan Stevens // Lakes of Canada

Sufjan Stevens // I Can’t Even Lift My Head

Sufjan Stevens // Woman at the Well

Sufjan Stevens // The One I Love (R.E.M. Cover)

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Mountain Goats // Older Stuff

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009


I have iTunes shuffle to thank for reintroducing me to my dense Mountain Goats collection. One of my favorite live recordings of John Darnielle was when he did an in studio session with freeform, listener-supported WFMU in 2000. Just two days after the release of one of my favorite Goats album The Coroner’s Gambit, the live session has tracks from that LP sprinkled throughout.

Recorded with a Panasonic RX-FT500 (or otherwise known as a 90s boombox), the WFMU tapes keep true to Darnielle’s patented style of recording he used for all LPs prior to Tallahassee. The vocals on the live tape are a little less clear, but surprisingly there is little presence of static that is typical of such lo-fi recording. Anyways, if you were like me and had forgotten the shear awesome of Darnielle and his songwriting, the tapes will reignite that flame. The following are a couple of tracks – you can download the complete session here.

The Mountain Goats // Going to Alaska

The Mountain Goats // Elijah

The Mountain Goats // Baboon

And I would be remiss to not include one of my favorite cover songs of all time:

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Jens Lekman // Older Stuff

Saturday, February 7th, 2009


Searching through the now defunct jenslekman.com right before he pulled the plug on his self-constructed site, I stumbled across some old recordings posted by him a good 3 1/2 years ago right when he first toured the US in promotion of his debut 2004 LP When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog. Meant at the time as a tour-only EP, USA October 2005 shows the origins of one of the wittiest songwriters of our generation.

Instrumentally stripped down, this EP feels more like intimate home recordings that were never planned to see the light of day than a touring album. Accompanied by only a piano in the Nagisa Ni te cover song “Me on the Beach” (sung in what sounds like fluent Japanese) shows a more serious side of Jens that is mostly shrouded under dense layers of situational humor and irony in his present work.
(more…)

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