The swelling, souled out, retro quasi-retro pop croon of Benjy Ferree’s “Fear,” from the forthcoming album, Come Back to the Five and Dime, Bobby Dee, Bobby Dee. The reason there’s no mp3 here is because Domino asks that you go here and submit your email address first. So go do that, like, immediately.

Francois Virot - “Cascade Kisses”

Chad VanGaalen’s Soft Airplane came out back in September, but I haven’t seen much online action for it, which is a shame, since it’s just as good as his previous efforts, Skelliconnection and Infiniheart.

Sally Crewe, recipient of my fawning praise for 2003’s Drive It Like You Stole It has a new record coming out in January, called Your Nearest Exit May Be Behind You (check out some tracks at Myspace). Oh, and also? Crewe has recruited Tommy Keene to handle bass duites when she and the Sudden Moves play a string of dates opening for The Wedding Present in the UK next month.

Attention music nerds old like me: I’m reminding you that Merge’s reissue of Polvo’s Celebrate the New Dark Age is now out (on 180g vinyl, no less). Those memories of ‘94 are flooding back.

I know you’re skeptical, but ace stroker Fab Moretti’s new Little Joy project is not half-bad. Check out the vid just posted over at Pissfork:

Dean (who I’m going to pretend to be on a first-name basis with), aka the oh-so-often-mentioned-here Capstan Shafts, just sent over a link to his 9,686th release, which is free for immediate download over at Archive.Org. This one’s titled Cretin Flowers (which in my head makes me sing “ ♫ When you were dumb, you were the king of Cretin Flowers ♫ ”) and features 6 tracks of totally perfect lo-fi pop.

I realize that the price (about $75 US) may put some of you off, but remember: this is a work of fine art, and besides, all you Destroyer fans routinely pay twice that amount for Destroyer LPs on Ebay.

Post-Election Day 2008 is the complete opposite of Post-Election Day 2004. It stands to reason that I should do the opposite of what I did in 2004.

So from now until 12am EST, the entirety of the Catbird Records catalog is available for free download. Most of these releases have been sold-out and unavailable for quite some time, and I assure you that I am yanking them at midnight– so download early and download often.

Catbird Records has really been blessed, by repeatedly getting the chance to work with some of the most amazing artists out there. I hope you discover a new artist to love, a new song to put on repeat, or even just new background music for your daily commute. And thanks for voting yesterday.

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.”

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.