Via House of Tomorrow comes word that the new Magnetic Fields release, entitled Distortion, will drop on January 15th, 2008. No details regarding a potential Volvo tie-in were mentioned. New single “I’m in a lonely way” is available now on iTunes.

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Sufjan talks with WNYC host David Garland about the music and the ideas behind his new instrumental composition “The BQE.”, which include the story of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, the consequences of urban planning, and hula hoops. (listen)

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Slate gushes over Jens Lekman today in a fanboy piece that is so self-deprecating and honest that it doesn’t seem to offend on any level, despite its reckless superlative-tossing (“Lekman is a fully realized pop genius, and each of his full-length records is its own masterpiece”). Focusing on Lekman’s lyrical gift of gab, author Stephen […]

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Something like 75% of Condé Nast’s most venerable publication’s readership – the always studious, perpetually thorough The New Yorker – doesn’t even live on the island they’re reading about. (Shit, I live worlds apart in Columbia, South Carolina and still can’t bring myself to cancel my subscription.) When it comes to art, music, theatre and […]

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My favorite Swede, Jens Lekman, recently stopped by the WNYC studios to chat and play a track from his new album, Night Falls over Kortedala, as well as a cover of Paul Simon, sans Chevy Chase?!. (From the new record: Friday Night at the Drive-in Bingo)

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The Catbird seat has done your homework and mocked your blog by compiling the projected nominees for the ever-predictable, year-end best-of lists. Everyone knows these lists are meaningless and arbitrary, but everyone seems to compile them anyway. So, if you’ve been lazy this year and want to make sure you’re catering to fleeting tastes of […]

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While the following words should’ve been an intertitle in that Van Hagar video where Eddie shows us he can wank off just as hard on the ivories, unfortunately they’re not: Riiight now, somewhere in the Stuyvesant Heights section of Brooklyn, a pandrogyne noise pioneer is cursing God and weeping uncontrollably – unsure if s/he can […]

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