Sufjan at the Allen Room

I saw Sufjan Stevens' late show at the new Allen Room at Lincoln Center on Saturday night. The room itself and the sound were incredible. Sufjan had a band of 16, dressed all in black, and everything they played was from Illinois or Seven Swans. It was pretty unforgetable.

Here's the new Built To Spill track - Goin' Against Your Mind. I find it to be awesome.

Some stuff I've been listening to a lot lately

Tapes 'n Tapes - Omaha
Tapes 'n Tapes - Insistor
Final Fantasy - This Modern Love (Bloc Party cover): go here, click to listen.
Final Fantasy - Peach, Plum, Pear (Joanna Newsom cover): go here, same deal.
Final Fantasy - Please Please Please (Fiona Apple cover): on his myspace.
Death From Above 1979 - Black History Month (Girl On Girl Featuring Final Fantasy Revision): here.
Belle & Sebatian - Gigantic (Pixies cover): go to Jake's blog to hear it.
Xiu Xiu - Gigantic (Pixies cover): here.
Page France - Orange
Explosions in the Sky - Once More to the Afterlife: here.
Wolf Parade - You Are A Runner And I Am My Father's Son.

The site that a lot of those songs are on, http://hype.non-standard.net, is surprisingly good. They refer to it as an "audio blog aggregator. "

Some hip holiday songs for Jen and the rest of you.

Sufjan Stevens - Come On Let's Boogey To The Elf Dance!

Bright Eyes - God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

The Boy Least Likely To - Little Donkey

Arcade Fire - Jinglebell Rock

The Walkmen - Christmas Party

Flaming Lips - A Change At Christmas (Say It Isn't So)

Math and Physics Club - A Marshmellow World

Decembs jump to the majors, leaked Mogwai

Sorry about the non-integrated links, my computer's being difficult. But betterjanky post than no post, amirite? So first off, The Decemberists have just announced to Pitchfork that they've switched from Kill Rock Stars (Xiu Xiu, Deerhoof) to Capitol Records (Radiohead, REM). Neither The Decemberists' site nor the Capitol site says anything about the switch yet. I'm cool with it, as long as they don't do a Death Cab and produce a fairly crappy album as their first try on a major. But I think that Plans' lameness was sort of inevitable at that point, anyway. (The Pitchfork article:
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/news/05-12/12.shtml)
Also notice that he's gotten Carson Ellis knocked up(!).

http://www.stereogum.com/Mogwai%20-%20Glasgow%20Mega-Snake.mp3
Mogwai - Glasgow Media Snake
Stereogum posted a leaked song from Mogwai's upcoming album. It's loud and crackly and I like it.

http://travis.ography.co.uk/other_audio/travis/beautiful_occupation_
20050611.mp3
Travis - The Beautiful Occupation
Speaking of awesome Scottish bands, I have been listening to Travis a lot lately.

http://locker.uky.edu/~mcjord2/Elliott%20Smith%20-%20Stickman.mp3
Elliott Smith - Stickman
Here's the "new"est Elliott Smith track to emerge from wherever. It's waaay good.

Music Recommending

For getting into new bands, I've recently started using Indie Pop Radio and Pandora (at Casey's suggestion). Pandora is super cool - you put in a few bands, and it streams songs by similar bands.

Mates of State just signed to Barsuk! How exciting. You can watch a couple of their videos here. I especially like both "Goods (All In Your Head)" vids.

Slowdance Records (home of The Velvet Teen) is offering $3 packs of 6 posters so that they can clean out their offices. Sweet.

The Weird Sisters

I just saw the new Harry Potter movie this Friday, and I'd say it was worth it. There were only a few shots of The Weird Sisters (the band playing at the prom, featuring Jarvis Cocker of Pulp and Johnny and Phil of Radiohead), but if you wanted to download the three songs, they're hosted here.

My goal for today is to get tickets to a show before the end of 2005 (everything I want to see is 16+).

Page France, NMH

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Hey, Thanksgiving is this weekend, so maybe my hip second-cousins-in-law (one of them knows the chick from Math & Physics Club!)will tell me about some new band.

So apparently Jeff Mangum showed up at an Elf Power show a few days ago. Speaking of which, Pitchfork finally got around to reviewing In The Aeroplane Over The Sea this September.

I've been digging Page France. You can stream 6 songs from the new album Hello, Dear Wind at their purevolume site.

The new Belle & Sebastian is coming out on Feb. 7, and I am SO. Excited.