Cains & Abels - “Run Run Run (Demo)” You found a payphone. The quarter was already in your hand. You pushed inside and the payphone's door swung back and hit you square between the shoulder-blades. The asphalt was lit up like a football pitch. You slipped your coin into the machine and dialed, and the receiver's cord lay braided at your chest. The ringing was the sound a gentle animal makes. You closed your eyes and listened. A click crackled down the line. A voice crackled down the line. It said: “Hello?”

Your eyes were still closed. “It's me,” you said. You found you were smiling.

[Buy previous albums / Cains & Abels are on a short tour now: Chicago, Bloomington, Akron, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Brooklyn]

Original art by Johnnie Cluney

Go forth and download the new Daytrotter session from MBV-favorite Sharon Van Etten, and while you’re at it, make a note that her amazing 2009 album, Because I Was In Love, is back in print on vinyl as of next week.

Free Energy - “Free Energy” Free Energy are all about the type of rock and roll that sounds like a promise of a better life to come. Fun is around the corner! Freedom is imminent! Optimistic anticipation, wrapped up in sweet hooks and driving grooves. “Free Energy,” the song, works well as a statement of purpose. It sounds like the world coming alive with excitement and meaning, if just because you will it to be that way. It’s a song about escape, but as much as these guys talk about the big city, this is more about getting away from feeling trapped by circumstance and hesitation, and saying “Hey, it’s our time. Let’s go!” There’s always a welcome place in the world for rock tunes like this.

Buy it from Amazon.

Remembrances of Alex Chilton by Ben Greenman, the Guardian, the Memphis Commercial-Appeal, Arts Beat, Entertainment Weekly, and Greg Kot.

This 2010 Pavement tour page includes links to mp3 and bittorrent lossless downloads of the band's reunion shows.

Flavorwire lists 10 music critics you should follow on Twitter.

Consequence of Sound interviews Cymbals Eat Guitars frontman Joseph D'Agostino.

Drowned in Sound shares a collection of indie rock love songs interpreted as posters.

IFC interviews Carrie Brownstein about her acting career and writing about music.

You had not one but four stories in the "Best Music Writing" anthology that Greil Marcus put together. How'd you transition so smoothly from playing music to writing about it?

I think a common thread in my life before I was in a band and when I was young was that writing always was something that was important to me. I'm a huge reader. And during my time in Sleater-Kinney, I was always the one asked to provide the added commentary or analysis. Occasionally, publications would ask me to write something, like a tour diary, and that led to essays. When the band ended, I felt like I wanted to pursue that more wholeheartedly. It might from the outside seem like the band ended and then I picked up a pen and started writing for NPR, but it's something that I've worked on for a lot of years.

Paste has posted an hour-by-hour guide to SXSW Music 2010.

The Guardian profiles the record label 4AD.

Aurgasm interviews Rasmus Stoldberg of Efterklang.

NPR's SXSW coverage includes recorded streams of shows by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, Broken Bells, the Walkmen, and much more.

High Places – “The Longest Shadows”

The Black Swans – “Language Tenor”
From the forthcoming Words Are Stupid LP, a limited-edition (200) St. Ives pressing slated for release on 4/28. It comes packaged with “one of 200 photographs of the same 40 poses from 5 photographers in a field of concrete corn framed in a silk-screened cock-and-balls drawing.“