The Walkmen lost me after 2002’s Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone. I liked Bows & Arrows well enough, but it was definitely lacking that certain je ne sais quoi, and so my interest in the band tapered off pretty rapidly. But do I like what I’ve heard thus far from their new one, You & Me (full album stream here), and you have to appreciate their gesture of offering a special $5 Amie St. download of the album, with all proceeds going to benefit the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

This has been kinda hush-hush, but my friend Hunter, he of SF’s Gold Robot Records, just put out (as in, today) a brand-spanking-new limited edition Bonnie Prince Billy 7-inch. Notes For Future Lovers b/w Donde Esta Prufrock is a limited-edition of 500 on translucent blue vinyl. It’s $5. And it’s gonna sell out fast once word spreads, so get on it.

The Lord Dog Bird’s s/t disc is out next week. It’s the solo side project of Wilderness guitarist Colin McCann, and the album’s closer has the honor of being my on-repeat-all-afternoon-song today.

The scene: My friend Avi is in Stockholm, in a record shop, flipping through the dusty old vinyl. He pulls out a mysterious record and his face lights up. Avi, as many people know, is wild about Scandinavian music (he runs the website ItsATrap.Com, after all). But what most people don’t know is that Avi is also nuts for Trucker Country from the ’70s. So when he found this record — Viking Truckers’ Love On The Road, you know his life suddenly felt complete.

It really is insane, btw. It’s like “Eastbound and Down” covered by Abba, while a kidnapped Scotsman nervously plays along on his bagpipes because a wild-eyed faux-hillbilly Nordic in a satin cowboy shirt has a Winchester pointed at his temple.

(See also: Hummin’ Cummins)

Condemned To Rock N’ Roll ponders MP3 Blogs vs. Music Blogs: Different Purposes?

To which Raptoravatar responds:

MP3 Blogs = Copy & Paste The Band Bio From The Press Kit

Music Blogs = restate 40%-60% of said bio, add 2-5 puns, snark as needed, add insightful comment if you are feeling frisky

That being said, ahem. Brooklyn underdogs Oxford Collapse have a new record called BITS; their second for Sub Pop (and fourth overall). They’ve always had a distinctly ’80s college-rock vibe, and an obvious infatuation with the old school SST sound, but on the new record, their sound gets a bit thicker; a bit more fleshed out. I guess you could say they’ve let the restraining walls of their sound collapse, and are now starting to explore a wider range. I like this new material, although I secretly hope they don’t stray *too far* from their core sound, lest they get drafted into the “What The Hell Have You Done To Your Music?!? Club” recently founded by My Morning Jacket.

eMusic, indie fans’ hands-down favorite digital service, kicks off their ambitious new redesign effort today. The main focus is on specific album pages, which now are much larger, and feature new supplemental content contextually pulled from Youtube, Flickr, and Wikipedia. There’s also better integration for SocNet posting for sites like Facebook, Digg, and Twitter, and updated AJAXy functionality to allow smoother, faster interaction on the page. Updates throughout the rest of the site are to trickle in soon.

Forgoing the physical release for just digital has been done. The “Radiohead” model is no longer newsworthy. You packaged your CD free with Britain’s Mail On Sunday newspaper? No one cares. So what’s an artist to do these days to grab your attention? How about releasing a single mp3 containing three-quarters of an hour’s worth of music? For 49 cents. That’s what Paul Westerberg just did. Of course, it helps to be a legendary musician… this would have passed right under everyone’s radar if it was done by a no-name artist (or if it was done by quasi-schizo rocker-cum-blog-oversharer Ryan Adams).

But it’s a pretty cool idea! Besides featuring a wide selection of new(ish) Westerberg material, the track is also apparently interspersed with random 1-2 second sound clips, and has a peppering of covers thrown in, to boot. Sort of like a music podcast, but more interesting for being wholly original.

So go grab it already; aren’t you curious? Only 49 cents!

And words of advice to the next artist who’s thinking about doing this: no one will care. Think of something else.

Dischord quietly released its entire discography as 320k MP3 downloads this week. There are a few ways to use the Dischord Download Store: You can buy albums on vinyl and a get free download, you can buy pretty much any album as a download for the set price of $7, or you can buy a block of “Digital Credits,” 15 for $10. The credits system was “chose[n] … to avoid the the gratuitous surcharges that make credit card companies rich… [and because] we also thought a credit system would encourage people to experiment with various tracks from different artists.”

Here are some Catbird picks for you to use up those credits:

Beauty Pill – Cigarette Girl From The Future
Ex- Smart Went Crazy guys’ 2001 debut EP

Dag Nasty – Can I Say and Wig Out at Denko’s
From ‘86 and ‘87, two softcore hardcore gems from a band that was “emo” back when “emo” didn’t mean “terrible”

Minor Threat – Complete Discography and Fugazi – Thirteen Songs
Duh.

Yeah, that’s right: Forest Fire are playing their first show since the release of their wildly successful new Catbird full-length Survival (which you can download for FREE here if you’re a cheapskate). Swing by Southpaw in Brooklyn tonight to catch FF, Susu and The Kiss Off. And in case you were wondering what everybody’s been saying about the new album? Here you go:

As of 4:10PM Eastern Standard Time, July 17, 2008, every band you can possibly imagine is now scheduled to play at one or more gigantic music festivals which are scheduled to take place somewhere in your vicinity at some point in the next 3 months. More details as they emerge.