Hey everyone! It’s hard to believe, but this is our 400th post here at WiAC. Kind of crazy, I know. And I couldn’t think of better news to grace this very historic post (not really), than the news that Josh Ritter just released a free song on his website – a cover of an old Hedy West song called “500 Miles” (no, not that 500 Miles). It’s pretty lo-fi, very pretty, and features Dawn Landes on vocals. Check it out:

Link: Josh Ritter & Dawn Landes – 500 Miles (Hedy West cover)

And because just a single link didn’t seem like a sufficient milestone post, here’s a few other Josh Ritter covers that I happen to love. Thanks for reading guys! Hope to see you all in 400 more!*

mp3: Josh Ritter – Blame It On The Tetons (Modest Mouse cover)

mp3: Josh Ritter – Mexican Home (John Prine cover)

mp3: Josh Ritter – Moon River (Johnny Mercer/Henry Mancini cover)

mp3: Josh Ritter & Sarah Harmer – Long May You Run (Neil Young cover)

mp3: Josh Ritter – Chelsea Hotel No. 2 (Leonard Cohen cover)

mp3: Josh Ritter – Daddy’s Little Pumpkin (John Prine cover) – live

mp3: Josh Ritter – The River (Bruce Springsteen cover) – live

mp3: Josh Ritter & Blake Hazard – Tonight You Belong to Me (Billy Rose/Lee David cover)

mp3: Bridget Matros & Josh Ritter – Angel From Montgomery (John Prine cover)

*actually “hope to see you” is pretty loose for “hope you’re still reading this little blog on the internet anonymously” – but that sounds a lot less pleasant…

Well this is exciting: Mason Jennings released a live album two weeks ago AND I HAD NO IDEA. On Sunday I happened to notice a friend’s facebook status about how much he was enjoying “Mason’s new album” and I was like “huh?” So I looked, and there it was – Mason Jennings, Live at First Ave. So naturally I bought it and gave it a giddily thorough listening.

It leans heavily on his newest material (all but one track from Blood of Man shows up here), and much older material (like songs from ‘98 to ‘04). In fact, a beefed-up “Be Here Now” is the only song to show up at all from Mason’s two records between 2004’s Use Your Voice and last year’s Blood of Man. This isn’t too surprising, since he’s playing with the same band he toured with after Use Your Voice: Chris Morrissey and Brian Mcleod (this is the unbeatable incarnation of Mason’s band that was documented on the Use Your Van DVD – a personal favorite). Of the new stuff, it’s genuinely great to hear full-band versions of these more rockin’ tunes, especially songs like “City of Ghosts” and “Lonely Road”. “The Field” is perfect (that song is flat-out made to be played live), and it’s a revelation to hear “Sing Out” without that awful Incubus-like distortion that mars the studio version. I could have traded in some of the newer songs for some older favorites (“Jackson Square” or “The Mountain” perhaps?) – but that’s a small qualm, especially since there are some other great surprises on here. First of all, we finally get a recorded version of “Lonely Computer Screen”, a great song that originally showed up on the aforementioned Use Your Van DVD, and has since disappeared (oddly Mason introduces it here as “never been played live”… maybe he meant since 2004?). Then two really old songs show up, “Born” and “Grow Old With Me” – two favorites of mine from Mason’s old Cave bootlegs that are floating around the internet. To get a taste of how Mason’s live sound has changed over the last 12 years or so, here’s one of those Cave recordings of “Grow Old With Me” along with the version from Live at First Ave.:

mp3: Mason Jennings – Grow Old With Me (live at The Cave circa 1999)
Live bootleg

mp3: Mason Jennings – Grow Old With Me (live at First Ave. 2010)
from the album Live at First Ave. (buy it here)

The disc ends with a bang with “Blood of Man”, “Rebecca Deville” and “Godless” (so great). Sadly, there’s not a ton of improvisation throughout the show – aside from a little slide guitar over some songs and an amazing breakdown on “Blood of Man”, most of these songs sound a lot like their studio versions. But I might just be picking that out because I’ve been listening to a lot of live Zeppelin lately, so take that for what it’s worth. Overall the album is a ton of fun, and a great addition to any Mason fan’s collection.

NOW THE REALLY EXCITING NEWS: Mason’s releasing another new record later this month! It’s going to consist of older material re-recorded by Mason with just his voice and guitar, a la 2002’s Simple Life (one of my all-time favorite Mason records). It’s going to be called The Flood, and it’s going to be awesome. Just wait. You can read some more background on Mason’s website, then check out these old recordings from The Cave around ‘99 or so. It’s a good bet the first song will show up on the album (duh), but the next two are just hopeful on my part…

mp3: Mason Jennings – The Flood (live at The Cave circa 1999)
Live bootleg

mp3: Mason Jennings – Bhikku (live at The Cave circa 1999)
Live bootleg

mp3: Mason Jennings – Flight Path (live at The Cave circa 1999)
Live bootleg

I’ve been really loving this new site called Shuffler.fm the past week or two. It’s kind of like Pandora, but instead of your music tastes going into an algorithm that predicts what you might like, it’s just keyed into various music blogs and spits out songs based on the genre you plug in – kind of like walking into a world-wide-web-sized independent record store. It’s way more random than most internet radio, and a whole lot of fun.

It definitely has some kinks to work out (the same Gillian Welch song came up for me 5 times in one sitting), but overall I’m really loving it. So I made a mix. About half of the songs below I found via Shuffler – either by groups I’d never heard of before (The Vaccines), or by groups I’d heard of but hadn’t given a chance yet (The Roadside Graves – holy cow, look for more on them soon). The rest is just some stuff I’ve been enjoying lately. Take a listen, then go try out Shuffler.fm for yourself.

mp3: The Vaccines – If You Wanna

mp3: Clean Equations – Buried Translations

mp3: First Aid Kit – Hard Believer

mp3: Icarus Himself – Digging Holes

mp3: Dax Riggs – Say Goodnight To The World

mp3: Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s – New York City Hotel Blues

mp3: Joey Kneiser – Adelina

mp3: Justin Townes Earle – Harlem River Blues

mp3: Abner Trio – You’re Gorgeous, Believe It!

mp3: The Roadside Graves – Liv Tyler

Hurricane Bells are following up last year’s album, Tonight is the Ghost, with a new 5-song EP called Down Comes the Rain – made up of two new songs and three covers. Like Tonight is the Ghost, Steve Schiltz wrote and recorded the whole thing in his Brooklyn apartment, but this time he’s assisted on vocals by Ashen Keilyn (of Scout) and will be releasing the EP on his very own Invisible Brigades label. Of the new songs I particularly like “The Waiting Song”, a jangly little number that manages to sound quintessentially Hurricane Bells-y, even with just one album to their name. In addition, the covers of East River Pipe’s “Make a Deal with the City” and Blue October’s “Into the Ocean” are both very good. Other new song “The Deep End” is enjoyable, and his duet with Keilyn on a cover of The Shirelles’ “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” is a quaint closer.

Stream the whole thing for free on the Hurricane Bells’ website – and if you pre-order the EP over there, you’ll also get a free remix EP called Ghost Stories, featuring remixes of four songs from Tonight is the Ghost and “Monster”, the track Hurricane Bells contributed to the soundtrack of that one movie you loved.

mp3: Hurricane Bells – The Waiting Song
from the album Tonight Is The Ghost (pre-order it here)

Here’s a fun remix of one of my favorite acts at Lollapalooza – and it’s a perfect tune to send us into the weekend. Also, you can grab Edward Sharpe’s album Up From Below over at Amazon for just $2.99 all weekend. So do that.

mp3: Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros – Janglin (RAC remix)
originally from the album Up From Below (buy it here)

As a bonus, here’s another RAC remix that I love:

mp3: Mates of State – Now (RAC remix)
from the album Re-arranged: Remixes Volume 1 (buy it here)

My blogging habits may suggest otherwise, but my summer has hardly been devoid of music. With the amount of incredible music surfacing this summer, no one should be wanting. A favorite find of the summer for me has been Will Stratton, who was introduced to me through a very special ‘birthday mix’ given to me by my friend Hillary. (The mix also came with a six-pack of coke. Pretty much ideal.)

Will Stratton pretty much has every good thing going for him right now. This 23-year old singer-songwriter has ‘functioned under the wing of Sufjan Stevens” and is a “self-professed disciple” of Nick Drake. These influences, most prominently Drake, are apparent in his music, but I loath to just throw Stratton into a ’sounds like’ category. Far from just mimicking the style and sounds of Drake, Stratton is exactly what made these musicians so beloved, an expert lyricist with the prodigious musical skill to back it all up. His latest album, New Vanguard Blues, was just released last month and its a promising candidate for anyone’s year-end list.

mp3: Will Stratton – Katydid
from the album What the Night Said (buy it here)

mp3: Will Stratton – Bluebells
from the album New Vanguard Blues (buy it here)

I have been adoring Sufjan Stevens’ recent All Delighted People EP – it’s 60-minutes of beautiful music that is both completely new and unmistakably Sufjan. He’s tinkering more with electronic instruments and drum machines, and his recent turn at symphonic scoring shines through brilliantly on several of the songs (see “Djohariah” and the title-track). My absolute favorite track is probably “From the Mouth of Gabriel”, one of the shorter songs on the record that somehow utilizes electronic glitching, swirling woodwind orchestration that calls to mind Jonsi’s recent LP, and stunningly gorgeous choral arrangements – all in just about 4 minutes.

mp3: Sufjan Stevens – From The Mouth Of Gabriel
from the All Delighted People EP (buy it here)

But as much as I’ve been loving this taste of what Sufjan’s been up to, I’ll admit that I’ve thought it curious that some of the strongest songs from last year’s tour didn’t show up – songs like “There’s Too Much Love”, “Age of Adz”, and “Impossible Soul”. I’ve been fairly confident they’ll show up in one form or another soon… but I wasn’t sure if it would be on a proper album, another EP, or some other internet-assisted way. Well, now we know: Sufjan’s got a new record! Woot!

It’s called “The Age of Adz” (pronounced Odds), loosely named after the apocalyptic paintings of the eccentric Louisianan artist Royal Robertson (1930-1997), and it’s coming October 12th. While Robertson seems to be the inspiration for the general tone of the album (that’s his work on the cover), it’s not based on him per say – or on any other specific theme for that matter. According to Asthmatic Kitty:

This new album (is not) built around any conceptual underpinning (no odes to states, astrology, or urban expressways).

So a state-project this is not. Additionally:

We can say it shows an extensive use of electronics (banjos and acoustic guitars give way to drum machines and analog synthesizers), and an obsession with cosmic fantasies (space, heaven, aliens, love), to create an explicit pop-song extravaganza, augmented by heavy orchestration, and maybe even a few danceable moments. Enjoy Your Rabbit meets the BQE. But with songs. Verse, chorus, bridge, backbeat. Gated reverb. Space echo. Get your boogey on.

This is very very exciting. Read more about it at Asthmatic Kitty’s website. Here’s the tracklist:

1 “Futile Devices”
2 “Too Much”
3 “Age of Adz”
4 “I Walked”
5 “Now That I’m Older”
6 “Get Real Get Right”
7 “Bad Communication”
8 “Vesuvius”
9 “All for Myself”
10 “I Want To Be Well”
11 “Impossible Soul”

UPDATE: And here’s our first taste off The Age of Adz - the electro-thumping “I Walked”. I like it. Take a listen.

mp3: Sufjan Stevens – I Walked
from the album The Age of Adz (pre-order it here)

I stumbled on this last week and I’ve really been loving it. Incredible Yacht Control is the creative moniker of Bret Vogel, who wrote and played just about everything on his recent album, Ordinary Boys, which he describes as:

Kind of a concept album. Meant to give the feeling of being stuck inside the brain of an agoraphobic retail employee on a Monday morning before coffee.

The song I’ve been loving comes toward the end of the overstuffed album (track 18 of 19) – and it’s called “Ghost to Agent 4”. Listen below, then grab the whole thing at his Bandcamp page. Enjoy.

mp3: Incredible Yacht Control – Ghost to Agent 4
from the album Ordinary Boys (buy it here)

Well today’s the day, and just as the prophets foretold, it came like a thief in the night. We’ve been waiting for over a year to hear recorded versions of the songs Sufjan Stevens played on that brief midwestern tour, and today we finally can. At least some of them, anyway. This morning, he released the All Delighted People EP via his Bandcamp page – 8 songs/60 minutes that you can stream for free or purchase for just $5. According to Bandcamp:

All Delighted People is built around two different versions of Sufjan’s long-form epic ballad “All Delighted People,” a dramatic homage to the Apocalypse, existential ennui, and Paul Simon’s “Sounds of Silence.” Sounds delightful, yes! The song was originally workshopped on Sufjan’s previous tour in the fall of 2009. Other songs on the EP include the 17-minute guitar jam-for-single-mothers “Djohariah,” and the gothic piano ballad “The Owl and the Tanager,” a live-show mainstay (and Debbie Downer if you ask us; what’s it doing on a “Delighted” EP?).

According to the Asthmatic Kitty website, it’ll be released digitally on iTunes/Amazon/etc. on Monday, and physically sometime in December (hopefully). Cool? Very cool.

Suddenly this makes a lot more sense.

Link: Listen/buy the All Delighted People EP on Sufjan Stevens’ bandcamp page

Whoops! I just fell in love with this song!

I know I might be a little behind getting on Laura Marling’s bandwagon, but I’m just discovering what a ridiculous talent she actually is. This song kind of sums it all up pretty perfectly – her amazing lyrics, her silvery voice, her fantastic accompaniment (provided by the blazing Mumford & Sons). It all sounds very familiar, almost cozy – but in a completely brilliant way. Just listen and you’ll see what I mean.

mp3: Laura Marling – Goodbye England (Covered In Snow)
from the album I Speak Because I Can (buy it here)

My absolute favorite part starts with these beautiful lines and ends in a swelling crescendo:

I wrote my name in your book, only God knows why,

and I bet you that he cracked a smile,

and I’m clearing all the crap out of my room,

trying desperately to figure out what it is that makes me blue,

and I wrote an epic letter to you,

and it’s 22-pages front and back but it’s too good to be used,

and I tried to be a girl who likes to be used,

I’m too good for that, there’s a mind under this hat,

and I called them all and told them I’ve got to move.