You know, I could give two shits about what, if anything, is going on with Radiohead, but I figured posting about the announcement of this In Rainbows thing, hoax or not, would be an interesting experiment for the old referrer logs. Let’s see.

I’ve known for years now that you can always count on the Oxford American for a fantastic Annual Music Issue, but I’ve only just noticed (thanks to Derek) how much of said issue they actually offer up online these days. I just read a great Bill Wasik piece from the issue, ostensibly about that band Annuals, but which reads, for me, more like an elegy for the “Indie Rock” as I’ve always known it.

Let me put it this way: if “Indie Rock” was a person, it would currently be a dead, rotting corpse, having wheezily coughed out it’s last, cigarette-smoky breath after waking up hungover just after noon several years ago*. The thing we’re looking at as “Indie Rock” these days is a kind of reanimated walking zombie, pumped full of cyborg technology, it’s face sadly, garishly painted in an attempt to hide the rot. Tirelessly, it marches down our streets, mindlessly, ceaselessy farting out an unending stream of tunes that are never good enough to be “good,” nor bad enough to be “bad,” but are nonetheless perfectly suited to numb our overstimulated brains as we ride the train to work or stare for hours at the pixellated walls of our computer screens. If what JL said is true, and “life” is what happens to us while we’re “making other plans,” then I’d say never before in history have peoples’ “lives” been so “filled” with “music.” Kept unobtrusive and in the background, it’s the perfect soundtrack for those times when we need to keep focused on something (if not anything) else. To quote The Onion:

“I can download Starbucks music on my iPhone while ordering a latte and talking on a conference call? Wow, I’ve hit the douchebag trifecta!”

(*it probably looked a lot like Paul Westerberg)

I just recently made some progress through the latest enormo backlog of links I had collected, so thus, I present some standouts:

This track is actually one that I’ve been listening to for months but have just neglected to mention; It’s by some Swedes called Al, Marc, & Sandy (no PB&J jokes, PLEASE), and it’s called “Julie Bell,” and no, I don’t know if it’s about Boris Vallejo’s partner. But it is a damn good song, and it actually reminds me of another Swedish band (that I adored), namely Lesser Matters-era Radio Dept. It’s pomp and grandeur and joy glorious joy, all on a budget:

::: Al, Marc, & Sandy – Julie Bell :::

A bedroom taper from Milwaukee called The Archivist (and whose URL, if you squint, looks a bit like “I AM THE ANTICHRIST”) sent me a link to his free EP [download], and it’s good. Soft, gentle, and lovely– he’s nailed it.

::: The Archivist – Signs & Symbols :::

And WTF, straight out of Greenville, Illinois, comes this dude Nate Henricks and I’m listening to his tracks on Myspace and suddenly I’m all like, “whoa, I really like these.” It’s some great experimental-y lo-fi pop, up there with Havergal, Half-Handed Cloud, and my boy Jib Kidder’s pre-crunk stuff.

::: Nate Henricks – Selfish Sparrow’s Old Song :::
::: Nate Henricks – Flying Fish :::

I can’t decide if there’s a “Sunderland Sound,” or just a “Field Music” sound, but either way, I know that sound, and I’m happy that Field Music offshoot School Of Language remains in that groove.

::: School Of Language – Rockist Pt. 1 :::

And there’s something about this band The Luyas that rubbed me right, and I suspect it’s the fact that they use a French Horn as a principal instrument.

::: The Luyas – Flickering Lights :::

The Amazon MP3 Store finally launched today. DRM-free MP3’s at 89¢. Hypebot has the details.

Who’d a thunk it? Tullycraft have written a new really Tullycrafty song!

Actually, they’ve written a whole new really Tullycrafty album, called Every Scene Needs A Center, which’ll be out on Magic Marker next month.

And I’ve noticed that, all at once, a number of places have begun examining the question, “Are Blogs The Next Record Labels?” See: Chicago Reader, Wired, and Hypebot.

The Times Freakonomics Blog just posted a long piece on “the future of music,” featuring input from a number of industry folks.

Related-ish: Stylus posted a piece about indies going digital (I can’t believe the article doesn’t even mention Tunecore).

What I’m thinking, and I know it doesn’t seem very likely *right now*, but I am starting to believe that the only possible logical future for music will a subscription service (done correctly). Once broadband Wi-Fi/Wimax enabled devices become the norm, and you can access the music anytime, anywhere, that’s what’ll do it. Years ago, when Steve Jobs said “People want to own their music,” it was true. But I think it’s less and less true every day. I mean, let’s consider what Steve might have possibly meant with that statement:

Did he mean that people want to be able to use their music where and when they want to, without restriction? Because, if you had a broadband, portable wireless device, that could, anytime/anywhere, access a library of practically any song you could want (and that could be supplemented with local files of any music that’s somehow not in the library), that would take care of that, wouldn’t it?

Did he mean that people want to pay for their music once, and not have it “disappear” if they didn’t pay their bill each month? Think about this: how many people do you know that drop HUNDREDS of dollars every month on their cell phone service, internet service, cable service? How about the electric bill? Water bill? Gas for the car? You’d think people would only want to have to pay for a car once, and not have to pay all that money on gas every month just to keep it going, huh? It just seems to me like a monthly “music bill” is something that people could easily get used to and start sucking up. It’s just a bit of an alien concept right now, I think.

But, in the end, maybe Steve meant that people have a personal connection to music; maybe he was thinking back to some beloved old, dog-eared Beatles vinyl albums he had at home, that he’d hung onto for years, and that were very important artifacts for him. I can understand that, believe me, I can understand that. Sadly though, there’s an entire generation now who will *never* understand that– it’s just not like that for a lot of people any more. Most of their music amounts to nothing more than a directory of digital files sitting on a hard drive, and how much attachment can a person have to that?

Is this what the world has come to? The US dollar equivalent to the CANADIAN dollar, and theremin-playing robots fashioned from floor lamps covering Gnarls Barkley songs?

Frightened Rabbit’s first release for Fat Cat, a 7-inch for “Be Less Rude b/w The Greys” is due out on November 5th. They’ve also got a bunch of US show dates coming up, including a bunch of dates as openers for Pinback (way to go, FR!).

Frightened Rabbit Fall ‘07 US Dates:

10/12 – Death By Audio – Brooklyn, NY
10/15 – Empty Bottle – Chicago, IL
10/16 – Pabst Theatre* – Milwaukee, WI
10/17 – Fineline Music Cafe* – Minneapolis, MN
10/18 – Slowdown* – Omaha, NE
10/19 – Gothic Theatre* – Englewood, CO
10/20 – The Depot* – SLC, UT
10/22 – Showbox* – Seattle, WA
10/23 – Viking Union* – Bellingham, WA
10/24 – Roseland Theatre* – Portland, OR
10/25 – Bimbos* – SF, CA
10/26 – Bimbos* – SF, CA
10/28 – The Wiltern* – LA, CA
10/30 – Solar Culture Gallery – Tucson, AZ
11/1 – Emo’s Jr – Austin, TX
11/3 – Spanish Moon – Baton Rouge, LA
11/5 – Drunken Unicorn – Hotlanta, GA
11/6 – Local 506 – Chapel Hill, NC
11/8 – Theatre of Living Arts (w/ Mum) – Philly, PA
11/9 – Pianos – NYC, NY
11/11 – Great Scott – Allston, MA
[* w/ Pinback ]

Even though we put out a moratorium on the word “S*fjan” around Catbird HQ, I can’t resist this opportunity to gaze into the crystal ball and tell you what you’re going to see all over the blogs and Pitchfork in just 6 short weeks, it’ll be something like this: “ZOMG SUFJAN JUST PERFORMED TEH BQE IT WAS AWSOME” x 1,000 posts (although the Pitchfork one will probably be something like, “ZOMG SUFJAN JUST GOT BRADFORD COX OF DEERHUNTER PREGNANT WHILE PERFORMING TEH BQE, PLUS ZOMG MAYBE HE STOLE DAN DEACON’S GREEN SKULL!!!!”) And I tell you, I would be VERY surprised if the BQE thing didn’t ultimately get released by Asthmatic Kitty as a CD/DVD. If none of this stuff comes to pass, I’m returning this crystal ball to the Montgomery Ward ASAP.

Jeff Hanson’s new album, Madam Owl, is due out this winter on Kill Rock Stars. And since I’m in a betting mood, I’ll bet you that I will like it very much.

There’s a new Saturday Looks Good To Me record out on K Recs next month, called Fill Up The Room. Furthermore, there is an mp3:

We are now sold out of the Clear Tigers EP. And in only 48 hours– that’s a new record! (”record” as in “Guiness Book,” not as in “on your turntable.)

And thanks to Paper Thin Walls, UGO, Josh Spear dot com, LHB and Tiny Showcase for writing about the disc.

I don’t know if you realized it or not, but about 2 months ago, I introduced you to your new favorite band. Did you catch that? Well, what about that Catbird Records Podcast that I posted at the tail end of last month? You listened to it, and you really LOVED Track 2, and then you went and looked at the tracklist, but alas, the songlisting simply said “…from CBR 011, coming Sept. 2007.” But see, now the song’s listed. Because CBR 011 is here.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present CBR 011: Clear Tigers’ new 4-song EP.

I know everyone’s going to love Clear Tigers. I know this because I loved the songs instantly, the very first time I heard them. I know this because after I posted about CT a few months back, I immediately started getting emails from people thanking me for turning them onto the band. I know this because we’ve sold 2/3 of our run of this new EP in less than 24 hours. Yes folks, they are going really damn fast.

It’s a 4-song EP, in a hand-screened Mini-7″ style sleeve. It’s an edition of 200, and it’s only 3 bucks.

Do as Largeheartedboy challenges in his post today; listen to the stream of “Igloo,” and then try to resist ordering the disc.

::: Clear Tigers – Igloo :::