50. Jon McClure, Reverend & The Makers
49. Carl Barat
48. Lethal Bizzle
47. Eva Spence, Rolo Tomassi
46. Matt Bellamy, Muse
45. Brian Fallon, The Gaslight Anthem
44. Gruff Rhys, Neon Neon
43. Karen O, Yeah Yeah Yeahs
42. Tom Vain – S.C.U.M.
41. Shunda K, Yo Majesty
40. Robert Plant
39. Robbie Furze, The Big Pink
38. Jason Pierce, Spiritualized
37. Brandon Flowers, The Killers
36. Frank Carter, Gallows
35. Little Boots
34. DJ Mujava
33. Josh Homme, Queens Of The Stone Age
32. Lovefoxxx, CSS
31. Rivers Cuomo, Weezer
30. Will Roan, Amazing Baby
29. Scarlett Johansson
28. Miles Kane, The Rascals/The Last Shadow Puppets
27. Yannis Philippakis, Foals
26. Nick McCabe, The Verve
25. Peter Gabriel
24. Zack de la Rocha, Rage Against The Machine
23. Jamie Reynolds, Klaxons
22. Jay Reatard
21. Damon Albarn
20. Dev Hynes, Lightspeed Champion
19. Florence Welch, Florence & The Machine
18. Ed MacFarlane, Friendly Fires
17. Santogold
16. Ezra Koenig, Vampire Weekend
15. Johnny Marr
14. Dave Sitek, TV On The Radio
13. Lil Wayne
12. Guy Garvey, Elbow
11. Pink Eyes, Fucked Up
10. Caroline McKay, Glasvegas
9. Liam Gallagher, Oasis
8. M.I.A.
7. Caleb Followill, Kings Of Leon
6. Ladyhawke
5. Sam Dust, Late Of The Pier
4. Alex Turner, Arctic Monkeys/The Last Shadow Puppets
3. Andrew VanWyngarden, MGMT
2. Jay-Z
1. Alice Glass, Crystal Castles

Alice Glass? Really? I guess Glastonbury just wasn't enough to push Hova into the top spot, although somehow I don't think dude's sweating this one.

That new Of Montreal album, Skeletal Lamping, is out today in a variety of whimsical formats. Pitchfork doesn't think much of it, giving it a 5.9/10 due in large part, it seems, to the album's unusual structure, in which some songs fragment into two or three distinct passages while others bleed into each other to create continuous suites. For me, that's not such an issue, and while I might not rate Skeletal Lamping as highly as Hissing Fauna when end-of-year list-making time rolls around, I'm still pretty enamored with it right now.

One thing's been bugging me though: there's an isolated vocal melody at 2:09 of "For Our Elegant Caste" (pitchfork: "one of the most annoying choruses of the year") that I swear is from some ELO number on the Xanadu soundtrack (I mean that as a compliment)—only, I can't find that melody anywhere. Am I just hallucinating? Or is it only kind of stylistically similar? (My hunch is that Georgie Fruit has at least watched Xanadu a time or two.)

Bonus: Stranger columnist Michaelangelo Matos gives the album a kinder consideration for Salon, despite the inevitable Flaming Lips comparison (I never made room for this argument in my review of their show, but here goes: Of Montreal > Flaming Lips [at least from the perspective of 2008]).

So, I went to this little Of Montreal show last weekend. There was a horse, a hanging, multiple set and costume changes, and something like 26 songs (not least of which was a cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit"). There was also just so much more than I could possibly fit into the paper. For instance, in addition to this parenthetical:

(Fruit's gender-bending, "queered out" personality could seem like crass tourism or sexual minstrelsy, if it weren't for the fact that Barnes ultimately seems so genuinely sympathetic.)

I also wanted to mention: On the flight to New York, Of Montreal my travel mate was checking the new issue of Blender's review of Skeletal Lamping. On the cover of that issue? Poster girl for sexual identity tourism in 2008, Katy Perry, a (former? lapsed? still?) evangelical pop starlet who cites Paris is Burning as her favorite film and can't shut up about how her heavily made-up persona is just one step away from drag queen. Just seemed like an odd, interesting coincidence.

Also! Of all the songs Of Montreal played that night, the one currently stuck on repeat for me is "So Begins Our Alabee." That sweeping, ascending moment that begins the first chorus just kills! And—this is weird—but the first time I really listened to the song, I completely misheard the line, "the aria is bleeding" as "the areola's bleeding"—in my defense, Barnes' aerial singing voice could easily jump over an "l" sound there, it's totally the kind of anatomical subject matter he fucks with, and the song's nominal subject is a newborn baby, who—and I know nothing about babies—could have been a difficult nurser, right? Right?

Skeletal Lamping is out, in an impressive array of formats, this Tuesday on Polyvinyl. Of Montreal play the Showbox Sodo (new website is wack, guys) on November 19th.

Via Sub Pop:

Late last week our friends in No Age taped a performance on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, to air later this month, on October 27th. Between the band’s rehearsal and when this taping was to take place, No Age’s guitarist Randy Randall was asked to wear something other than the Obama t-shirt he had on (which you can see and admire in the associated photo here – he looks good, right??). The folks working at the show explained that due to the Equal Time Rule, allowing No Age to perform on TV in an Obama t-shirt would force them to allow similar, equal time for that other, elderly fellow who is running in the upcoming Presidential election. So, after a whole lot of wrestling with his conscience and conversation about the situation, Randy decided to go on with the show, and having hand-written the words “Free Health Care” on the inside of his t-shirt, performed wearing it inside-out.

Read the whole story, including some clarification about the Equal Time Rule, a note from Randy Randall and a response from Arthur Magazine's Jay Babcock here.

Also, wouldn't "This is Not an Obama T-Shirt" have been a funnier way to go?

BUT! Stone at least has someone clever on his ad campaign. I don't recall what music featured on the first trailer for the film, but the newer ad, the one that aired last night after the debates on some channel or other, featured the Talking Heads' awesome "Once In a Lifetime," with David Byrne's befuddled, amnesiac lyrics, "And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife/and you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?" Maybe it's as obvious a shot as anything else, but buzzed after last night's debate, it seemed perfect.

(Also, this is as good a time as ever—except maybe during Decibel—to mention Carl Craig's epic, spaced-out re-edits of "Once in a Lifetime," "Specimen 1 & 2"—they don't seem to be anywhere on hypemachine or youtube, but they're more than worth seeking out elsewhere.)

...pretty much exactly like this:

Sarah Palin was the first name on TED NUGENT’s list to receive an advance copy of TED, WHITE & BLUE: THE NUGENT MANIFESTO, comprised of 16 chapters on how to fix America. This week, the multi-platinum guitar icon, best-selling author and outspoken activist sent the book—due October 6 via Regnery Publishing—to Palin with a note in praise of the vice presidential nominee’s “bold spirit.”

Dear Governor Palin, Please accept this copy of my new book, "TED WHITE & BLUE-The Nugent Manifesto" for you and your family. As a proud fellow American hunter, fisherman and lover of Alaska's soul cleansing magnificent Spirit of the Wild, we who live our American Dream by God, truth, logic, goodwill and decency, thank you for bringing such defiant common sense and self evident truth back to the GOP and politics. We wish you Godspeed for the best hunting and fishing season of your life and pray to God almighty that you bring your bold spirit to the White House. Godbless, American BloodBrothers, Ted Nugent and family

He came in 6th place last year, and that was as a write-in candidate. Now is the time, people. Somebody step up and give us a poet populist we can all get behind. Send part of "Joe Metro" as the sample poem. It's some of the best poetry written in the last few years about Seattle. Plus, it rhymes. Which is very populist.

When I saw the SoundScan charts this morning, I felt kind of bad for Slipknot. The masked metallers haven't been having the best string of luck recently, and now their album All Hope Is Gone was narrowly beaten out for the top spot on the album tally by LAX, the new album from tormented name-dropper the Game. How small of a margin did they lose by, you ask? Try 13 sales. Well, apaprently I wasn't the only one who felt bad about this: Slipknot, upon seeing this statistic, gathered up its brooding rage and did what any red-blooded American would do: They demanded a recount from the SoundScan folks. You can probably guess what happened next.

Yes, the SoundScan people found some 1,244 sales hiding within the bowels of their system, or maybe at a neglected Hot Topic somewhere in the 'burbs, and that was enough to give Slipknot the one-week win over the Game. All Hope Is Gone's final sales total is 239,516 to LAX's un-revised 238,382; whether or not the Game is going to further appeal his own SoundScan total is unknown at this point, but surely he's at least comforted by the fact that his first-week sales beat out those achieved by his former cronies in G-Unit earlier this summer.

Great, now the rockstars are acting like politicians.

Picking up on yesterday's "alternative" vs "indie" thread (with respects due to Michaelangelo Matos' fine Idolator post on the subject), allow me to direct your attention to the Stranger's Bumbershoot Guide, in which you'll find Monsters of Alt, a chart of the careers of Bumbershoot's '90s heavyweights—Superchunk, Beck, Stone Temple Pilots, and the Offspring. The piece props up the idea of "alt" that Matos (I think convincingly) rails against, that it's specific to the '90s. But hair-splitting aside, it's really just an excuse to make fun of Scott Weiland for being a junkie and Beck for being a Scientologist.

But, if we can get serious again for a moment, Stranger reader Paul Waldrop II writes in with some important corrections:

Errors of note conserning STP in your Article:

No. 4 was released in 1999 not '97.

You failed to mention their 2001 album "Shangri-La Dee Da"

Paul Waldrop
Instictional Designer

Sent from my iPhone

Thank you, Paul. Our sincere apologies to anyone who's ever listened to either of those albums, whenever they came out.

The thing is, "indie" isn't working anymore. If anything, it has more specific and limiting baggage than "alternative." Sure, you can ask how music that's supposed to be an alternative to the mainstream keeps that status once it goes mainstream, but calling something on a major label "indie" is some fourth-level-of-hell stage of kidding yourself, in a far more concrete way.

Go read the whole thing right now.

Bonus points: No Age, Alt or Indie?