- $5 Albums: All 1,000 albums for August | My Favorites | Don't Miss: American Music Club: Love Songs for Patriots
- News: Sufjan fall tour | Local Natives are crime fighters | Get new Matthew Smith CD at a discount. You'll love it. More info.
- Daytrotter (free music): Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr (seriously, check it) | Amos Lee
- Streaming: Ray LaMontagne and The Pariah Dogs: God Willin' & The Creek Don't Rise (buy it tomorrow, first album Trouble is only $5) | Lost In The Trees: All Alone In An Empty Room
- Rachael Maddux of Paste is "Knocking The Suburbs." Yeah, really. She's wrong, but still worth reading...
A new Arcade Fire record came out last week, and at this point it's a well-noted fact that it contains only a few scraps of the anthemic urgency for which the band, on its two previous albums, had become so well-loved. At the risk of coming off like One Of Those People Who Just Wishes They'd Make A Hundred Albums Like Funeral, I will admit: I missed the bombast, too. But only a little bit, and only until I realized what, exactly, was getting the band so worked up in those moments that they do, in fact, get so worked up. And then I just wished they'd never even bothered.
The Dead Weather played Letterman...
I couldn't not post "Wake Up" from the Arcade Fire YouTube/Vevo/Madison Square Garden concert. So good. A song for our time...
