This new track comes courtesy of the lovely folks behind the absolutely, mind-bogglingly, gasp-inducing, jaw-dropping Lifted Brow “Fake Bookshelf” project. You remember? The one where a slew of brilliant and talented folks created 107 new stories, songs, and comics, all based on the titles on a fake bookshelf? The one that’s now complete, and comes as a 300-page book and two hourlong CDs? It’s shipping in January, and at only $25 US, is practically a steal. GO BUY TLB4 RIGHT NOW. If ever there was a time to “support the arts,” it is now, and this is, without question, the way to do it.

Here’s just a tiny slice of the contributor list:

Book Contributors:

• Sheila Heti
• Jeffrey Brown
• Carey Mercer & Sydney Vermont
• Sam Lipsyte
• Spencer Krug
• Tao Lin
• Chris Bachelder
• Jonathan Meiburg
• Rick Moody
• BOTH Jordan and Sean of the world-famous Said The Gramophone
• Plus many, many, many, many more…

CD Contributors:

• SSLYBY (obvs!)
• No Kids
• Neil Gaiman/Claudia Gonson
• Get Him Eat Him
• Dan Deacon
• Frightened Rabbit
• The Wrens
• The Capstan Shafts
• And lots, lots, lots, lots more…

I’m serious, folks– GO BUY TLB4 RIGHT NOW!

Matador has released a track from the upcoming (1/20) AC Newman album, Get Guilty:

The track is the opener from Matador’s awesome Intended Play Sampler Fall ‘08 mix, which you can download as a zip file with artwork here. The mix also features a track from that forthcoming Belle & Sebastian BBC thing, stuff from recent releases (Shearwater, Fucked Up, TNV), and a new “Condo Fucks” track, from their “future release” “Fuckbook.”

I’ve been keeping up with Fulton Lights as he wanders throughout Europe. Apparently, while over there, he only just found out that his friend Nihiti, over here, remixed one of the tracks from his older album, the FL self-titled release, like, a year ago. So here it is, Nihiti’s Fennesz-y take on Fulton Lights’ “Thank God For The Evening News:”

Far-out minimalist genius Terry Riley is doing a special performance next month (Nov. 8), sponsored by Bang On A Can, at Le Poisson Rouge. It’s a piece called “Autodreamographical Tales,” in which Terry reads his dreams over music performed by himself and the Bang on a Can All-Stars. You can get a sampling of the oddball material right here.

And speaking of weirdness, my man Raf emailed me this morning to tell me that he had just picked up I May Be Gone For a Long, Long Time, the new LP by experimental musician Caethua (RIYL “a collaboration between Judee Sill and Jandek”). And, remember how I explained that sometimes, to keep costs down, labels will re-use older record sleeves, flipped inside-out, for new releases? Well, Raf’s copy of the Caethua record came in an inverted sleeve for Destroyer’s freaking Streethawk: A Seduction. Knowing that there were only 300 copies of Streethawk ever pressed, it doesn’t seem strange that there may be leftover empty sleeves laying around to be re-used. But what does seem strange is that they would be lying around for almost 10 years before anyone re-used them. So what am I getting at? Well, this is pure speculation, but to me, this seems like evidence that Streethawk has secretly, quietly, been repressed and should be announced at some near-future date.

But I REITERATE: this is all heresay; I’m not ebaying my original copy just yet.

The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne has an Epiphone double-neck with the bottom, 6-string neck replaced by a 5-button Guitar Hero neck hooked up to some sort of oscillator. Pretty Po-Mo, silly, and wholly appropriate for Wayne Coyne to be using. Check out the video (just skip to about the 2 minute mark).

On Tuesday afternoon Oxford Collapse, a Brooklyn band whose burly songs try to bridge post-punk and arena-rock, looked into its audience between songs and asked, “Anybody need time out to blog?”

Two nights ago, I caught a short, sweet set from my favourite Haligonian, Joel Plaskett. It was just him, his guitar, his brokedick keyboard, his buddy Peter Elkas, and 29½ appreciative fans. But this ain’t a show review; I’m bringing this up because Joel announced that he’s got a new record coming out soon (it’s being mixed right now), and it’s a “triple-album.” But don’t misunderstand; it’s not 3 albums, JP’s just being cutesy: every song title is just triplicate (”Pine Pine Pine,” “True True True,” “Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’,” etc.) is all.

Here’s the opening medley from 2005’s La De Da, a record that has, over the years, snuck up and become one of my favorites.

(In addition to “Happen Now,” JP also played Light Of The Moon, which was wholly unexpected and blew my mind.)

I’ve made it clear time and again that when my friends over at Popsheep talk, I listen. And once again, I’m glad I do, as David just turned the spotlight on his fellow San Diegan Wavves. Remember how much we all love bands like Times New Viking and The Capstan Shafts of late? That just goes to show that we listeners have a real taste for great pop songs what sound like they’re blasting out of an old, broken clock radio. Wavves does that, and with that sunny sensibility that only a trueSouthern-Californian can muster up.

He’s got about 10 trillion releases, but the ones you’ll want to grab are probably the Wavves (two v’s) album coming soon on Woodsist, and the Wavvves (three v’s) LP from DeStijl coming next year.

So I was poking around CMJ Sched.Org to see if there were any shows I wanted to see, and I found myself semi-stunned: I saw that Mississipian tunesmith Dent May is playing at Le Poisson Rouge on October 22nd. It seemed strange only because I was under the impression that he was just one of my lucky Myspace finds, as he was when I wrote about him back in January. That right there was my mistake, because things have changed in these last 10 months: Dent has been signed to Paw Tracks, and they’re releasing his full-length in February.

I was wondering when the hell this next record was gonna come out, and after a very, very long wait, it’s here: States Rights has finally put out Jib Kidder’s totally insane All On Y’all. Cut-and-pasted gamelan-crunk never sounded so good. Buy it on 12″ (States Rights’ first vinyl release!) and you’ll also get a free CD copy and a wheatpaste-poster.

I’ve been meaning to mention this one for awhile: Hidden Agenda has put together a near-complete collection of Unbunny rarities, to be released on the 28th. It’s called Sensory Underload: Uncertain Trks 1996-2008 and collects tracks from a variety of sources, including the very old Book and Roll and Nervous Plants EPs. Here’s an mp3, the alternate “loud” version of “Water and the Spanish Tongue” (the original, “quiet” version appears on Black Strawberries, one of my favorite albums of all time).

Ryland Bouchard, ofttimes known as The Robot Ate Me, has put together an amazingly cool new project called Seeds. Limited to 500 copies, and not available in stores, it’s a box-set of 4 colored 7-inches, an illustrated book, engraved/numbered wooden box, hand silkscreened T-shirt, carrying bag, CD version, CD collecting b-sides and outtakes, dvd, hand silkscreened poster, plus other miscellaneous items. Now that’s what I call MULTI-media, dang. Today is last day to pre-order it for $100; after this, it’s goin’ up to $125.

Catbird Records Notes: A few weeks back, Forest Fire sat down with Uncensored Interview for a chat. You can check out all the clips right here.

Fulton Lights continues to trek across Europe; the latest tour diary is here. And a few new dates have been added (throw some shrimp on the barbie, Australia; he’s coming your way in January):

18 October–Frankfurt-am-Main @ Hinah House
23 October–Amsterdam, NL @ SKEK
24/25/26 October–Belgium @ TBA
1 November–Paris, FR @ Abracadabar
5 November–Paris, FR @ Live on Planet Claire radio 91.3FM
15 November (afternoon)–Athens, GR @ Live/DJ’ing on VMRadio.gr
15 November (evening)–Athens, GR @ An Club w/dalek
18 January–Melbourne, AUS @ Bar Open

Enjoy the just-posted October Mix! If you’re a cool person, you probably enjoyed the October Mix around this time last year, too.

It’s retro power pop day here at Catbird HQ today, soundtracked in part by the splended s/t album from Gentleman Jesse & His Men, the best blatant 70’s power pop copping since the beloved and tragic Exploding Hearts.

Also in rotation today is the new Stiff Records release from Wreckless Eric (”Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby“). Big thanks to Ben for sending that one over.