Hey, everyone! Lots of stuff for you, this week. As you might have noticed, I’m steadily working my way through the mailbag. There’s lots more great stuff in there, which I hope you’ll see in the next few days. The really good, slightly-longer-term news is that my dissertation now has a planned submission date. So, one day – in the not-too-distant future – I’ll be able to spend lots more time developing some of these tidbits into articles. But until that day comes, I leave you with the best of this week’s bookmarks…
First up, Rolling Stone gives us the great news that R.E.M.’s follow-up to Accelerate is finished: [link]
Also, it seems that Wyclef Jean is running for President of Haiti: [link]
Finally, Twilight fans will have something to move on to… Nick Cave to remake The Crow: [link]
Two great entries in NPR’s First Listen Series (limited time!): The Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs and Lost in the Trees’ All Alone in an Empty House.
The Mountain Goats and The Extra Lens (John Darnielle / Franklin Bruno) sign to Merge, and Pitchfork throws in a nice, free mp3 for us: [link]
Have a listen to Jens Lekman’s excellent “The End of the World is Bigger than Love:” [link]
Here’s a nice Beck/Devendra Banhart track called “Life During Wartime:” [link]
And now, some videos:
Jónsi’s video for “Animal Arithmetic” is out:
Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes) and Joanna Newsom covered a Kid Rock/Sheryl Crow duet. (Man, there’s all kinds of weird in that sentence…) More on Stereogum:
From the awesome folks at La Blogotheque comes Wilco and “Bull Black Nova:” [link]
Wilco | Bull Black Nova | A Take Away Show | Unreleased from A Story Told Well on Vimeo.
Interesting article by NPR’s Marc Hirsh on Talking Heads’ Documentary Stop Making Sense. Which leads us to this great version of “Life During Wartime” – in which, it should be noted, David Byrne makes Michael Stipe look like a perfectly pedestrian dancer by comparison:
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That’s about it for this time! I’ll leave you with this week’s random video – a lovely, live performance of “Unravel” by Björk. See you next time!