LHB’s Shorties (Rhett Miller, of Montreal and More)

Paste interviews singer-songwriter Rhett Miller.

Paste: You write songs about people like David Foster Wallace, and you make references to authors like Kafka in “Our Love,” and Don DeLillo in “World Inside The World.” Do you have literary ambitions as well as musical ones?

Miller: I do. I've got a short story that's out in a new book right now. I'm putting that on the back burner because I figured out that I have tendency to be unfocused. I'm scatterbrained. I'll say, “Well, I've got this going now, let's do something else,” and I really have to focus on the music for right now. In a couple of years, two to five years, I would like to really take a year off and do what Joe Pernice of the Pernice Brothers is doing right now and go just write a fucking novel. Just sit down and do it. Stop talking about writing. The tough thing is is that people pay me to do music, so that's nice. I have two kids, and they insist on eating every fucking day. And I've written so many songs that it comes very naturally to me, whereas when I sit down to write, the demons in my head that say, “You're not good enough,” and all those things that everyone I know who writes or creates has to shout down, they get really loud when I try to write fiction. And it's tough. I do have literary aspirations. I'm just going to put them off for a little while.

The 2009 Bonnaroo show downloads page has been updated with sets by Neko Case, Todd Snider, Lovell Sisters, and of Montreal.

Don't forget that MBV maintains A Guide to Upcoming Music Releases

of Montreal frontman Kevin Barnes discusses Woody Allen films with The Quietus.

IGN interviews Frank Black.

Scientific American explains the physiological and psychological reasons why music moves us.

The Guardian reports that Jack White's record label has started a subscription service.

At NPR Music, Julie Doiron plays a "tiny desk concert."

- David Gutowski