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The interesting one to watch here (obviously) is Wincing the Night Away because it leaked months ago and it seems that everyone I know who cares at all has been listening to and enjoying The Shins' latest for quite some time. Will they go out and buy it anyway? Somebody should ask The Decemberists.

Rob Crow wears many hats. One is pictured on the album cover. But others are of a more metaphorical nature. What I'm saying, man, is that he plays music with a lot of people. My favorite is Pinback, but if you want a complete list you can check out his Wikipedia entry and then start feeling really shitty about how many hours there are in the day and how many of them you waste driving to work or something while Rob Crow seems to never even sleep and cranks out record after record. I've been playign "Up" a lot on the air.

It's been relatively quiet on the blog front about David Vandervelde. I say that because while he's getting a bit of ink, it's not nearly as much as he deserves for a record I think people will really sink their teeth into. Expect more of the 2nd and 3rd tier music blogs (I consider myself 8th tier) to pick up the slack and really hammer this guy when they all come to the realization there is more to life than Arcade Fire.

Labels: David_Vandervelde, Rob_Crow, The_Shins

Stereogum and GVB are already all over this guy, but nowhere in the musicblogging manual does it state that I can't add my voice to the choir. So here goes:

David Vandervelde. The kid definitely has some chops. The word is that he recorded almost every note of these songs by himself, with the same equipment that yielded Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The sound? Well, it's always better to just hear for yourself and the links above have some tunes, as does his myspace page ("Nothin' No" is my favorite). But if you held a gun to my head and asked me to describe it I'd say it sounds like what some of the greats had in mind when they recorded some of the great songs that just don't sound quite fleshed out enough when set side by side with modern recordings. It's throwback, done modern. It's REALLY COOL.