Name: Silk Flowers
From: New York, New York
Story: No Age bros know weird
Sound: Fuzzy, muffled, proto-electro gloom

When Dean Spunt from No Age says, of Silk Flowers, "they're probably the weirdest band I know," it's not hyperbole out to hype a record he's putting out on his own Post Present Medium label. Because Silk Flowers are a weird band.

It starts with Aviram Cohen's weird singing; an affected, self-parodying baritone moan that sounds like a stand-up comedian doing a mocking impersonation of Scott Walker. Drawing from the proto-electro dissonance of '70s pioneers Suicide or nasty early-'80s provocateurs Throbbing Gristle, the music matching Cohen's comic crooning is full of clunky, lumpen drum-machine think and eerie synthesizer sound.

Recorded by Fred Thomas —the longtime frontman of indie-pop outfit Saturday Looks Good to Me who, this year, reinvented himself as experimentalist with his City Center project— the album has a fuzzy, muffled, no-fidelity sound. In fact, it sounds a lot like Ariel Pink's warped, wobbly take on archaic analogue sound.

Since forming in New York last year, Silk Flowers have opened up shows for Animal Collective, Crystal Stilts, Blank Dogs, Grouper and High Places, and have toured with their label-bosses, No Age, themselves. Post Present Medium has just released Silk Flowers' debut, self-titled LP, and the band will be taking their weird music onto the road in support of such. Dates, and single "Flash of Light," below.

• Listen: Silk Flowers, "Flash of Light"

Silk Stalkings
July 18: New York, NY - Cake Shop
July 29: New York, NY - Home Sweet Home
August 1: Long Island City Queens, NY - Sculpture Center
August 15: Chicago, IL - Golden Age Records
August 15: Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle
August 16: Los Angeles, CA - The Echo
August 17: San Francisco, CA - The Knockout
August 20: Portland, OR - Backspace

The Year: 1997
The Album: Elliott Smith, Either/Or
Who It Influenced: Bright Eyes, Death Cab for Cutie, The Decemberists, Grizzly Bear, José González, Jeff Hanson

12 years after Either/Or was released —and six years after Elliott Smith died young and left a scarred, abused, beaten-down corpse— and the magnum opus for Portland's most famous songwriting son has a definite ghostly tinge. To discover it now, either anew or all over again, is to hear an album whispered as if from beyond the grave.

Yet, as someone old enough to have bought Either/Or upon its 1997 release, I remember it when the album was not a veritable death-poem, but a record fresh and alive, filled with tender, melodic, romantic songs that made their author's misery seem inspiring. Death Cab for Cutie beefcake Ben Gibbard told me, in 2001: “I remember the summer of '97 as the summer of Either/Or, because that's all that anyone I knew was listening to.”

It's hard, a dozen years, one Oscars telecast, one (possible) suicide, and two posthumous albums later, to divorce the art from the artist. But, doing so reveals a near-perfect pop-record merely made by someone with problems.

Smith's hushed lullabies may be riddled with heartache and depression, abuse and self-loathing, addiction and optimism, but they're also pure, simple, defiant, and weirdly beautiful. Smith's knack for hooks and gift for melody would come to bold fruition on later albums, but here he's so low-key it somehow gets overlooked. More than some cry-for-help, Either/Or is an album of timeless simplicity, one bound to strike a chord with lovelorned loners for years to come.

• Full review: Elliott Smith, Either/Or
• Top 10 Kill Rock Stars Albums

Photo © Autumn DeWilde

When turgid corporate-rock embarrassments Nickelback started cleaning up Canada's Grammy-equivalent, the Juno Awards, in the '00s, something needed to be done. Taking inspiration from the UK's long-running Mercury Music Prize, in 2006, a crew of enterprising Canadians established the Polaris Music Prize; an award given to the best Canadian album based on artistic merit alone.

Putting their money with their mouths were, the Polaris peeps handed over their first-ever oversize-novelty-cheque ($20,000 cash!) to Final Fantasy's wondrous He Poos Clouds. With the Prize having grown in size and scope since then, the 2009 'Shortlist' nominees have been revealed, setting a field of 10 to be in the running for that fat wad of filthy lucre.

2009's field is headlined by Metric's shiny radio-pop pleaser Fantasies, Chad VanGaalen's junkyard death poem Soft Airplane, Great Lake Swimmers' alt-country oil painting Lost Channels, F**ked Up's noxious hardcore mess The Chemistry of Common Life, the Jeff Buckley-ish balladry of '07 winner Patrick Watson's Wooden Arms, and Somali ex-pat rapper K'Naan's major-label debut, Troubadour.

Arcade Fire-wannabes Hey Rosetta! already won the fan-voted fake Polaris, the 'Verge,' last year for Into Your Lungs (and around in your heart and on through your blood), and they're definite contenders to add more cash to their band coffers. There's also albums by people named Elliott Brood, Joel Haskett, and Malajube, who you probably have to be Canadian to have heard of.

Taking a look at the 40-strong 'Long List' that the Short List was whittled down from reveals that voters, for reasons known only to themselves ignored albums by Japandroids, Land of Talk, Women, and Wolf Parade. Not to mention Handsome Furs' secretly great and wildly-underrated Face Control, the work of Wolf Parade co-songsmith, Dan Boeckner.

The winner will be unveiled at a gala ceremony on September 21. Let's hope the winner's name is VanGaalen.

• Interview: Chad VanGaalen
• Interview: Metric
• Introducing: Japandroids
• Interview: Land of Talk
• Interview: Women

When Lou Barlow released his first "proper" solo album, Emoh, in 2005, he told me it was a "completion of a journey." Barlow had made piles of ostensibly-solo albums as Sentridoh and Sebadoh in the early-'90s, and issued the ultra-scarce live set Lou Barlow Plays Waterfront in '95, but, years removed from those hyper-prolific days, he stood behind a stand-alone, high-fidelity album with his own name on it.

Completing this "journey" lead Barlow back to something that, in 2005, was completely unexpected: the Dinosaur Jr reformation. "It just feels perfect, to me, like it’s some written-in-the-stars thing," Barlow said, of the band he was controversially kicked out of getting back together.

In the four years since, Dinosaur Jr's born-agan status has gone from unlikely to unbelievable; their latest LP, Farm, their best since, like, 1993's Where You Been.

When not knocking out insanely-loud bass for Dinosaur Jr, Barlow's found time to polish off another album of sad, solo songs. Goodnight Unknown will be released, by Merge Records, on October 6.

In support of such, Barlow will marry his two musical extremes on one long tour. Across six weeks of Dinosaur Jr shows, Barlow will be the opening act; playing his solo songs along with backing-band The Missingmen. It'll be one long Rocktober, then, for Barlow.

Goodnight Unknown Track List:
1. "Sharing"
2. "Goodnight Unknown"
3. "Too Much Freedom"
4. "Faith in Your Heartbeat"
5. "The One I Call"
6. "The Right"
7. "Gravitate"
8. "I'm Thinking..."
9. "One Machine, One Long Fight"
10. "Praise"
11. "Take Advantage"
12. "Modesty"
13. "Don't Apologize"
14. "One Note Tone"

Laughin' Lou Barlow's Double-Duty Tourin':
September 30: Toronto, ON - Phoenix Concert Theatre
October 1: Montreal, QUE - Pop Montreal Festival
October 2: Cambridge, MA - Middle East
October 3: Cambridge, MA - Middle East
October 4: Clifton Park, NY - Northern Lights
October 7: New Haven, CT - Toad's Place
October 8: Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
October 9: Philadelphia, PA - Theatre of the Living Arts
October 10: Columbus, OH - Newport Music Hall
October 11: Pontiac, MI - The Crofoot
October 13: Madison, WI - The Majestic Theatre
October 14: St. Louis, MO - The Pageant
October 15: Chicago, IL - Vic Theatre
October 16: Louisville, KY - Headliner's Music Hall
October 17: Atlanta, GA - Variety Playhouse
October 26: Kansas City, MO - The Beaumont Club
October 27: Omaha, NE - Slowdown
October 29: Boulder, CO - Boulder Theater
October 30: Fort Collins, CO - Aggie Theatre
November 3: Tempe, AZ - Marquee Theatre
November 4: Solana Beach, CA - Belly Up Tavern
November 6: San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
November 7: Portland, OR - Wonder Ballroom

Last month, I dropped the details of Vivian Girls' forthcoming sophomore set, Everything Goes Wrong. With its September 8 release-date looming ever-closer, the spunky New York trio have unveiled a long, long run of shows to take them there and beyond.

With spots at the Pitchfork Music Festival, Way Out West, and Bumbershoot, and shows in Mexico, Japan, and Australia all on the horizon, it's go to be a busy Summer/Fall/Southern-Hemispheric-Spring for the VGs. Full slate of dates roll out below.

Girls All Over the World:
July 9: Mexico City, MX - El Almacén
July 16: Toronto, ON - Phoenix Theater
July 19: Chicago, IL - Pitchfork Music Festival
July 31: New York, NY - Whitney Museum
August 14: Goteberg, Sweden - Way Out West Festival
August 15: Helsinki, Finland - Flow Festival
August 25: New York, NY - Death By Audio
August 26: Philadelphia, PA - The Barbary
August 27: Pittsburgh, PA - Andy Warhol Museum
August 28: Columbus, OH - Summit
August 29: Champaign, IL - Cowboy Monkey
August 30: Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle
August 31: Minneapolis, MN - 7th St Entry
September 1: Fargo, ND - The Aquarium
September 4: Missoula, MT - Union Hall
September 6: Seattle, WA - Bumbershoot Festival
September 7: Portland, OR - TBA
September 9: San Francisco, CA - Rickshaw Stop
September 11: Los Angeles, CA - The Echo
September 18: Kyoto, Japan - Metro
September 19: Nagoya, Japan - KD Japon
September 20: Tokyo, Japan - Shibuya Seco
September 22: Tokyo, Japan - Shibuya o-nest
September 25: Sydney, Australia - Spectrum
September 26: Melbourne, Australia - Roxanne
September 27: Hobart, Australia - Brisbane Hotel
September 30: Melbourne, Australia - Northcote Social Club
October 1: Adelaide, Australia - Metro Hotel
October 2: Brisbane, Australia - Step Inn
October 9: Honolulu, HI - Loft Gallery and Lounge

Name: The Horse's Ha
From: Chicago, Illinois
Story: To the piano-bar born
Sound: Nancy & Lee

Once upon a Chicago night, a pair of star-cross'd Thrill Jockey alumni met. Janet Beveridge Bean —veteran of ragged-rock outfit Eleventh Dream Day and cowgirl sweethearts Freakwater— and James Elkington —the English ex-pat who fronted soft-pop outfit The Zincs— struck up a conversation that almost immediately took an interesting turn. When the subject turned to playing in tasteful piano-bars for large sums of money, an idea soon came up: they would play in tasteful piano-bars for large sums of money.

After working up a set of standards, Bean and Elkington soon abandoned those, and, then, abandoned their piano-bar dreams. Instead, they penned their own songs, and became a (sort of) band. One who, now, comes with the name The Horse's Ha.

Their debut LP as The Horse's Ha, Of the Cathmawr Yards (both band and album titles are references to infamous Welsh poet Dylan Thomas), is a set of duets matching Elkington's dapper baritone with Bean's honeyed voice. Evoking such beauty-and-the-beast pairings as Nancy & Lee and Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan, it's an album twangy, atmospheric, and vaguely mysterious; a moody, moonlit take on urbane country that's, frankly (and thankfully), far too spooky a soundtrack for some rarefied wine bar.

• Listen: The Horse's Ha, "Asleep in a Waterfall"
• Listen: The Horse's Ha, "The Piss Choir"

The Horse's Rides
July 3: Chicago, IL - Schuba's
July 27: Pittsburgh, PA - Thunderbird Cafe
July 28: Arlington, VA - IOTA
July 29: Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda
July 30: Brooklyn, NY - Bruar Falls
July 31: Brooklyn, NY - The Bell House
August 1: New York, NY - Mercury Lounge
August 2: Cleveland, OH - Beachland Tavern
September 19: Champaign, IL - Pygmalion Festival

Photo © James Elkington

The Year: 1989
The Album: Galaxie 500, On Fire
Who It Influenced: Low, The Clientele, British Sea Power, Beach House, Xiu Xiu, Deerhunter/Atlas Sound

This week, indie legends Galaxie 500 announced their three magnificent, magical albums —1988's Today, 1989's On Fire, and 1990's This Is Our Music— were being fancily reissued (for the first time ever!) at the newly-established Galaxie 500 web-store.

One of the great cult acts in alternative music history, Galaxie 500 were only around for four years, but crafted a perfectly self-contained discography of near-perfect albums. All recorded by producer/svengali/bong-enthusiast Kramer, the albums find the trio tentatively stepping through a sweet, swirling, psychedelic haze; a melancholy pop-band lost in a daydreamy sound steeped in the Modern Lovers, Velvet Underground, Television, and The Feelies.

In his refreshingly frank memoir, Black Postcards, Galaxie 500 frontman Dean Wareham, in a punk-rock way, peels away the mythologies of music-making, and revels in its mundanities. Knowing, then, that Wareham wrote lyrics whilst watching Kojak, or about a Star Trek episode, or about a bad house-party the band was dragged to should, then, make Galaxie 500's music seem less mysterious, less wondrous, less otherworldly.

But listening to On Fire is a special experience; one that circumvents those parts of your mind. Every time I hear the band slip into "Decomposing Trees" —Naomi Yang's bass warm like a hug, Wareham's guitar milling like clouds, his voice falling like a sullen, lazy rainshower— it's vivid and evocative; music that drowns the dreary narrative of conscious thought in tumbles of emotion and swirls of kaleidoscopic visions.

• Full review: Galaxie 500, On Fire
• Interview: Dean Wareham

Indie-rock colossus Modest Mouse started off making limited-edition singles for Northwest labels like Up and K, and, recently, they've been returning to those roots. After recently releasing the "Satellite Skin" 7" (initially intended for Record Store Day, though it arrived a little later than that), just this past week Modest Mouse issued another 45: "Autumn Beds" b/w "Whale Song."

In celebration of such, Isaac Brock and crew are doing something almost as old-timey as pressing up a phonographic record: touring! Modest Mouse's traveling roadshow will roll through North America in Late August, Early September, though, this time, without the added old-man bonus of legendary Smiths six-stringer Johnny Marr on guitar.

They Paid for Gas to Drive Around:
August 17: Halifax, Nova Scotia - Forum Multipurpose Room
August 19: Montreal, PQ - Metropolis
August 20: Kingston, ON - Ale House
August 21: Toronto, ON - Sound Academy
August 24: Columbus, OH - Lifestyle Pavilion
August 25: Chicago, IL - Aragon Ballroom
August 28: San Diego, CA - Street Scene
August 30: San Francisco, CA - Outside Lands
September 1: Salt Lake City, UT - In the Venue
September 2: Denver, CO - Fillmore Auditorium
September 3: Billings, MT - Alberta Blair Theater
September 4: Missoula, MT - Wilma Theater
September 5: Spokane, WA - Knitting Factory
September 7: Seattle, WA - Bumbershoot

Last year, when I interviewed Spiral Stairs —AKA Scott Kannberg, the founding guitarist of slacker kingpins Pavement— he told me that he had his first-ever 'solo' record close to finished up.

Seven months later, and Matador Records have finally announced the looming release of The Real Feel on October 20. After releasing two albums under the name Preston School of Industry, it marks Kannberg's first release under his own assumed name.

Recorded with the members of power-pop perennials The Posies and including a guest spot from Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene, Kannberg calls The Real Feel his "Shoot Out the Lights"; a chronicle of his divorce patterned after Richard & Linda Thompson's breakup classic.

The first taste of the album, "Maltese Terrier," is waiting for you below...

• Listen: Spiral Stairs, "Maltese Terrier"

Today marks the sneaky release of a brand new EP for ever-popular Austin rockers Spoon. Late last week, word leaked out from Merge Records that a new, three-track work from Spoon would be rushed out with no promotional lead-up.

Spoon's first new material since 2007's much-acclaimed, Top 10(!) LP Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Got Nuffin kicks off with its slinky title-track, and ushers in the beginning of a flood of new material.

In early July, Spoon have taken command of Stubbs Ampitheater in their hometown of Austin for three nights. Handpicking the supports for each night and turning it into a mini festival, SPOONX3, the band will unleash new material from their forthcoming album. Of which I'm guessing "Got Nuffin" is the first taste.

SPOONX3
July 9: Spoon, ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears
July 10: Spoon, Low, Dale Watson
July 11: Spoon, Atlas Sound, the Strange Boys