Morning Shorts

If you're in SF tonight, we hope you check out an all-star tribute to Big Star at the venerable 12 Galaxies, featuring Mark Eitzel, Jon Auer of the Posies, Oranger, Tim Mitchell, and pop-underground hero Chris Von Sneidern. Please make some suggestions for an appropriate Big Star song for Mr. Eitzel to peform in the comments. Our pick: Third's "Stroke It Noel" ("They say we're lazy men/Drinkin' our white wine/We could go right insane/'Cause we can buy the time/Oh, keep an eye/On the sky/Will they come/Oh the bombs...")
(via San Francisco Party Party)

iff favorites Clem Snide, along with Superchunk and The Upper Crust, will play "The Daily Show presents 'Ten F#@king Years (The Concert)" at NYC's Irving Plaza November 16th (via Brooklyn Vegan)

PopMatters loves the new Xiu Xiu, giving it an 8 and declaring, "The Air Force is, without a doubt, Xiu Xiu’s best album and grandest statement. Continuing to sabotage otherwise-perfect pop numbers, here the sabotages in question make the Xiu Xiu experience all the more compelling, instead of distracting." We haven't heard this yet, but are hoping to grab it this weekend. Pitchfork agrees exactly, also awarding an 8 (.0).

A couple who loves Mirah and each other have gotten matching tattoos, each with part of the lyric "let's go sit under the apple tree"...for their sake we hope it's the love of a lifetime.

MP3: Xiu Xiu - Boy Soprano (from The Air Force)

Morning Shorts

• Jens Lekman offers his personal end-of-summer mix of songs as a single 36mb mp3 download, including America and Ennico Morricone (via Pitchfork)
• The NYC restaurant I'm dying to dine at, Mo Pitkin's House of Satisfaction, is holding their first anniversary shindig tonight, featuring buckets o' talent including Laura Cantrell and comedians Eugene Mirman and Todd Levin (of the longtime net great tremble). iff strongly encourages NY denizens to go, nosh some deep fried mac 'n cheese and matzoh ball soup, and report back.
• Insanely great session-site Daytrotter posts a new Bonnie "Prince" Billy four-song set, along with Oldham banter. On "New Partner", he writes:
  

  One of the most requested songs that I get to play, it wasn’t until this trip that I started to understand, from inside, why this is. To me, this was an exercise in writing. It takes parts of Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box,” the Rolling Stones’ “Get Off of My Cloud,” both Willie’s and Elvis’s versions of “You Were Always On My Mind,” and the song “Tony” by D.C. Powers, as performed by Johnny Cash. On this trip, I understood it to be, somewhat disturbingly, about not not loving someone who you are not with.”

• Psycho Daises reviews Burn to Shine-Portland, calls Mirah's "The Light" "the oddest and most surprising performance on this disc, and one of the best."
• UK blogger Highway Five posts some excellent Mark Eitzel/American Music Club links, among them a recent Eitzel podcast, and incredibly, the entirety of AMC's classic Everclear for legit download. Eitzel recently posted a message to the Undertow boards on his new band, All the Lost Achors of the Pacific, who performed with him last week in SF.
• Punk-o-matic! DIY. (via DailyKos)

MP3: Laura Cantrell, "Letters" (Lucinda Williams cover)
MP3: Laura Cantrell, "Hong Kong Blues" (Hoagy Carmichael cover)

Burnin' for You

The latest entry in the Burn to Shine series is out, and this time the house-burnin' is taking place in the musical hotbed of Portland, OR. For those unfamiliar, Burn to Shine is being produced by Fugazi's Brendan Canty. They travel from town to town, finding doomed houses, assembling a lineup from the local music scene, and shooting the acts doing a single song each in the living room before the whole thing is burned down.

The new edition features such luminaries as The Decemberists, Quasi, and The Thermals, but the highlight for this blog is Mirah, doing an as yet undetermined song. Mirah has long been one of the most underappreciated songwriters we've got, mixing chops, intimacy, eclectic, inventive arrangements, a coy sexy-as-all-get-out voice and most of all, teriffic songs.

K Records is also reporting on an an exciting new Mirah release, Joyride:Remixes, due November 21. Who's involved?

The remix chewing up and spitting out is accomplished by folks close up and far away, including Khaela Maricich (the Blow), Phil Elverum (Mt. Eerie), Guy Sigsworth (has remixed Madonna, Bjork and etc.), screamclub, Jona Bechtolt(YACHT) and Melanie Valera (Tender Forever). For the vinyl-loving, it fits nicely on a double album. The music is hot, sweet and teeming with rhythmic divinity. Turn it up and dance it off.

The first track to come out, which K kindly makes available as a free download, is hooliganship's remix of C'mon Miracle highlight "The Light". On the original, an unadorned voice/guitar verse erupts into a rollicking distorted-drum-machine chorus. The remix takes what makes the chorus great and expands it to song-length, beefing things up with fuller beats and fat casio lines.

MP3: Mirah - The Light (remixed by hooliganship - from Joyride: Remixes)
MP3: Mirah - Cold Cold Water
MP3: Mirah - Sweepstakes Prize