This years installment of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass will be taking place October 1st, 2nd and 3rd and will feature the now typically anticipated dizzying array of talent. Hardly Strictly staples like Steve Earle, Buddy Miller, Emmylou Harris and Del McCoury will take the stage alongside relative newbies like the Avett Brothers, Lucero and Jenny and Johnny. It is always an interesting lineup and it’s all free, (minus the plane ticket, food and nightly accomodations of course). One of these years. Definitely have to go one of these years. Here’s an unrelated Buddy Miller performance.

MGMT keep the creepiness going with their latest. Nice way to wind down my Monday after a week long vacation. I may need to go back and give their latest another couple listens.

NPR’s First Listen might be my favorite thing right now. They select three or four upcoming albums at a time and stream them in their entirety for the week leading up to their release. So far I’ve gotten to preview several of my most anticipated releases this year, always deciding that yes, this is a way I want to spend my money. One of my most anticipated albums of 2010 is the new project from Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis and her boyfriend Johnathan Rice – they’re keeping it simple and just calling the act Jenny & Johnny, but I don’t care what they call it, I just want to hear it. Jenny and Johnathan have been working together for several years, actually, touring together on each other’s records, and Johnathan is actually a pretty solid presence on Jenny’s 2008 release Acid Tongue.

So this feels like a natural progression for them, but it’s also really different sonically from most of her solo-credited work. It’s really upbeat and poppy, a very beach-friendly, sunny summer album, but with Jenny’s characteristically layered lyrics giving the songs a bit more of an edge than you at first expect (I think Johnny cowrote the lyrics, so I’m not meaning to leave him out; I just know Jenny’s style better and can see it here even more strongly, somehow, than in some of her solo work, where she was experimenting with different musical styles more than with lyrical depth). Basically if you like Best Coast‘s sound but think the songwriting is a little on the simplistic side (no disrespect, I honestly love Best Coast), then pick up I’m Having Fun Now when it comes out on August 31st. Well, you can give it a listen below first.

I found this at Andrew Sullivans The Daily Dish while bouncing around tonight and found the design and music to be quite creative. It’s called “Between Bears” by Eran Hilleli and seems to be a graduation project for an Israeli art school.

Between Bears from Eran Hilleli on Vimeo.

It took me a few times through Arcade Fire’s new album The Suburbs to really latch on to it, but now that I have, it’s easily emerged as one of my favorite albums of the year so far, and I’ll be shocked if it’s not in my top five come the end of the year. The Canadian ensemble hit The Daily Show With Jon Stewart promoting the album, and here they are performing “Ready to Start” and “Month of May.” I wish they’d done one with Regine on lead vocals, but hey, can’t have everything. There’s some cute interaction between Stewart and Win Butler at the beginning of “Month of May,” too.

via Pitchfork

Kathryn Calder is probably better known as the other female singer in The New Pornographers, the one who isn’t Neko Case. She’s the one who performs Neko’s parts on tours when Neko can’t be there, but she’s been given plenty of her own to do on the past couple of records, and it’s been great to see her come into her own. She’s also part of the band Immaculate Machine, and next week Kathryn is releasing her first solo album, entitled Are You My Mother? Well, to be completely accurate, Are You My Mother? releases on CD next Tuesday, August 10th, but it’s been available from digital outlets like iTunes and Amazon.com MP3 for about a month. I picked it up immediately, and I’m quite taken with it – it doesn’t have the wide-ranging quirk factor of The New Pornographers or the raw power of some of the other big releases out this year, but Kathryn’s voice is superb and she’s crafted a set of beautifully simple songs with unusual instrumentation (a lot of warm piano and clapping rather than normal percussion), yet with an easy willingness to drop in an epic section here and there that raises the ante and makes you pay attention more than you otherwise might.

The first single from the album, “Slip Away,” got a music video yesterday, a charmingly twee cut-paper animated affair that culminates in disco spaceship bunnies. Yeah, you read that right. I’m not entirely sure what about “Slip Away” suggests science fiction, but I’m not entirely sure I care, either, because disco spaceship bunnies kind of speak for themselves. In any case, it’s a lovely, understated song that captures both the minimalist and the layered sides of the album quite well.

Links:
MySpace
Amazon MP3 (available now)
Amazon CD (available 8/10)
Twitter

Yet another reason to find the X-Games enjoyable… From Hipsters United:

‘Billy Corgan performed two songs at the Los Angeles ESPN X-Games invitation-only party on Saturday night. Corgan took the stage alongside LA supergroup Camp Freddy, singing a cover of Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” as well as the Smashing Pumpkins’ tour staple “Bullet with Butterfly Wings.” Camp Freddy features Dave Navarro and Billy Morrison (The Cult) on guitar, Matt Sorum (Velvet Revolver, Guns ‘N’ Roses) on drums, Donovan Leitch (son of folk singer Donovan) on vocals, and Chris Chaney (Jane’s Addiction) on bass. The performance marked Camp Freddy’s sixth in a row at the annual event.’