The Family Jams is a documentary by Kevin Barker that follows Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, and Vetiver on their 2004 tour.

Amadou & Mariam - “Sabali” A soft and sunlit story of a water ship operator, headed home with a full tank for the whole planet. An ocean-sized tank, made of just enough membrane to carry from one planet to another, plus a small gravity gun. A small quarters for resting and navigation controls, and some mild amusements. Passing radio signals and a canvas-sized viewscreen to look at old masters. The operator, an ensign in the navy, spends most of the days (sun times) reading aloud to the ocean and sometimes illicitly dabbling toes in the water. Most of the nights (shade times) imagining how much the world will be the same and trying to hold back from eating all the desserts in storage. [Buy]

Thee Oh Sees - “Soda St. #1”

I live on Soda St.! Apartment 1! Come the fuck inside! [MySpace]

Busta Rhymes 3-color print, with Glo ink
Designed by Erik Petersen. Edition of 250. 15″ x 15″
Buy it here

In the past year, Haunted House has done shows with No Age, Ariel Pink, Clipd Beaks, Dirty Projectors, Titus Andronicus, Abe Vigoda, and Vampire Hands. They also recorded 3 albums, Ravage Through The Bum’s Hair, Lesh Is More, and Guess Who’s Not Coming To Dinner, that will all see release in 2009. And I suspect that the only reason they’re not yet signed to a shit-hot label with string of hard-to-find vinyl is because they live in Minneapolis and not Brooklyn.

Our latest Listen@MBV full-album stream is the new record from Hank, a Toronto-based band led by songwriter Cab Williamson. The Luck of the Singers is their first album in four years and though it took nearly as long to write and record, its sound is rather immediate and un-fussy. As on their acclaimed previous record How To Prosper in the Coming Bad Years, the songs have a distinct out-of-time quality that uproots the music from chronology, and leaves much of the material sounding as though it could be an authentic artifact from any year from the past five decades. Williamson’s deep, droll voice and witty lyrics anchor most of the songs, but he’s often joined by the lovely voices of his female bandmates, whose high, pretty tones complement and balance out his hyper-masculine style. The Luck of the Singers is stylisticly varied, but aesthetically consistent, and so it’s very much the sort of record that’s best heard in one sitting. We hope you enjoy it!