The Smith Westerns
Nick Kuepfer, 2009

According to the band, “All people are welcome to become members of YACHT,” and to this end, the band is offering a free download of instrumental versions of its new album See Mystery Lights (out now on DFA). Grab the tracks from the ever-amazing Free Music Archive.

WhiteAfrican.com

Dori Hoffman- “Never Will Marry” The leaves are changing colour. I'm not a naturalist, or a botanist, so I can't tell you why. I am not a poet either, but for some reason I have no qualms dealing in metaphor. As my husband you used to say, "Flowers are the flowers that grow right here." We are what we are. And so I always get sad when the leaves are changing colour, as if it's all our losses made material. The greenery can't last. I never thought I would marry. I thought I would die alone. And then I met Sam under a cypress tree, and he was holding a bicycle innertube and I was holding a dead rabbit. How many times have I told this story? And then one day he died. The leaves are changing colour. [thanks, Jeremy - download whole EP here]

Marlaw - “Pipi” My sister tells me this is Tanzania's summer jam of 2009. This is the song buzzing from rickshaws, shanties, houses, transistor radios. It's the song you hear as you wolf down goat in Stone Town, as you surf the web in Arusha's internet cafe. I can't help but generalize, vaguely stereotype; I have never been to Tanzania, never crossed the Gibraltar (except crisscrossing, in Istanbul). I imagine Zanzibar in kodachrome and pixels, in the smell of cinnamon and nutmeg. And, now, I imagine people doing as I do - pointing into the air and mouthing "pi, pi" every time the chorus comes around. [can't find a shop]

Listen to “All Is Love” (from the Where The Wild Things Are soundtrack) on the Karen O and the Kids Myspace

(and listen to “Love Is All” (from the 1974 rock opera Butterfly Ball) by Ronnie James Dio here)

Why?
Trevor Basset, 2009

The New York Times examines Radiohead's decision to no longer release albums from a business perspective.

New York Magazine examines the career paths of middle-aged rappers as part of its fall preview.

The Quietus interviews Jello Biafra.

Independent Weekly interviews John Cook, author of the oral biography Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, The Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small, and includes a downloadable PDF excerpt of the first chapter of the book.

The book seems as much a history of Superchunk as a history of Merge.

There was initially going to be just a chapter on Superchunk, but I realized soon that it couldn't be that way. There was so much to talk about with them, and most of it fell in with the arc of how the label progressed and the way things were at the time—the things all bands dealt with, the way majors and indies were interacting, things like that.

CNN profiles Vampire Weekend and interviews frontman Ezra Koenig,

We Have Signal continues to stream taped live performances from Birmingham's Bottletree Cafe. Recent performances include Deerhunter, The Duke Spirit, and The Sword.

Pitchfork examines the social history of the MP3.

gdgt reports that the Rhapsody streaming music service will soon be available on the iPhone.

Win the book Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small plus three Superchunk and Portastatic albums in this week's Largehearted Boy contest.