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May 26, 2009
Shorties (Grizzly Bear, Art Brut, and more)
Pitchfork gives the new Grizzly Bear album, Veckatimest, a 9.0.
Yeah, Veckatimest sounds worked-over, but in the best of ways; carefully embellished, stripped bare when applicable, full of the joy of sounds colliding with other sounds. Grizzly Bear was once Ed Droste's band, but no longer; it's a family affair, and only four guys so completely serious about music-making could come together to make an album this labor-intensive sound so airy, so natural.
The 12-track album is on sale at Amazon MP3 for $3.99.
Drowned in Sound also reviews the album.
The whole thing is, at times, a little like being trapped inside a ‘real world’ version of Secret Of Mana (if you’re too young to know what a SNES was, lookie here) – all shimmers and sweeps alongside percussion that never unnecessarily intrudes, ethereality expressed via studied execution.
DOA also reviews the album.
Time Out Dubai interviews Art Brut frontman Eddie Argos.
The A.V. Club lists 13 "book-to-film adaptations that the author hated."
Supermodel Kate Moss is working on a novel.
The Bat Segundo Show literary podcast features new episodes featuring interviews with authors Sarah Waters and Arthur Phillips.
PopMatters reposts a 2006 interview with the recently departed Jay Bennett.
Drowned in Sound interviews former Grandaddy frontman Jason Lytle about his solo career.
This week Five Chapters features serialized short fiction by Jeffrey Rotter.
Filmmaker John Sayles talks to the Los Angeles Times about his other life as an author.
"I write a book every 15 years, and by the time I have another one done, I really don't know anybody in the business," he says. "It's just not my world." When he finished "Some Time in the Sun" -- of which he's immensely proud -- he had no illusions: "There's no way a publisher is going to be influenced just by somebody mentioning my name. They'll check out the numbers of the latest title."
Indie 30 is a new music blog featuring weekly top 30 song lists and much more.
The National Post interviews author Nathan Sellyn.
The Independent and Cleveland Plain-Dealer review Ayelet Waldman's essay collection, Bad Mother.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune profiles a 12 year-old music blogger.
Field Middle School student Max Timander, 12, has taken blogging's egalitarian spirit to a new height, despite his lack thereof. He runs areyourockin.com, a reviewer-centric rock blog covering a smart mix of hot albums (the new Green Day "is so addicting," he says) and "retro" discs -- by early-'00s acts such as the White Stripes and David Gray.
This week's Largehearted Boy contest gives away six new classic short story collections, including books by Herman Melville, Dostoyevsky, Willa Cather, Stephen Crane, Oscar Wilde, and Leo Tolstoy.
Follow me on Twitter for links that don't make the daily "Shorties" columns.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Online "best of 2008" music lists
Online "best of 2008" book lists
daily mp3 downloads
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from this week's CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists
tags: music books popculture indie news
