Hat tips to Radio Exile!

In a fit of audio masochism, Daniel Nester, author of How to Be Inappropriate, has compiled on his blog 25 cover versions of the Outfield's "Your Love." See if you can listen to them all and still remain a functioning member of society.

(Here's a remix that doesn't appear in Nester's rundown. I am merciless.)

ht: @dxferris via Twitter

Never you mind.

But we finally understand what makes "Leave!" by Northampton's VV Brown work.

Besides the '50s rock & roll doo-wopness of it, and a video that demolishes an old Tori Amos idea, it's the way the song's dynamics run up against the walls of each other and does funny things to your stomach.

The end of each verse, interestingly, goes up, uP, UP.

While the end of the chorus goes down.

Simple. Unusual.

Success!

VV Brown : "Leave! [Little Boots Mix]"

Tiny Vipers - "Dreamer" (via Subpop.com)

Cry on, crybabies.

Audion performs Mon. Nov. 16 at Triple Door with Pezzner (live) and the Knightriders DJ crew supporting. It's going to be an audio-visual spectacle unprecedented in the hallowed confines of that downtown dinner theater. (See video below for a brief taste.)

(Recommended by @GASLAMPKILLER via Twitter, so you know it's a thriller.)

If you feel like signing up for Fan Death's mailing list, they'll reward you by giving a free-but-strings-attached mp3 version of the song.

And for the first 40 seconds, all it does it echo the first 40 seconds of "A Day In the Life." Check out the evidence, my friends, and then join me in slapping Dave Grohl for being so lazy.

Thankfully (or not, in this case) the rest of the song does NOT sound exactly like any Beatles songs. It's just very mediocre.

Pitchfork reports today that Norwegian disco auteur Lindstrøm will be releasing a 40 minute long version of "Little Drummer Boy" to be sold as a bonus disc via Rough Trade for his forthcoming collaboration with singer Christabelle, Real Life is No Cool. Lindstrøm's longest track previously was the title cut of his Where You Go I Go Too EP, which clocked in at just shy of 29 minutes.

"Cigarette State":

"Alabama's grand/(the state, not the band)."

And "At The Corner Of Eyelove And Ewe":

"There will be moonlit rides by coach and horse/a fine hotel, some intercourse/and later on, a big divorce/oh how badly it shall end!"

Fulks also wrote the stinging "Roots Rock Weirdos" (a short preview here) which, somebody once pointed out, could be effectively converted to "Math Rock Beardos" by changing just 19 words ("1951" for "1991," etc.).

"Red Line Season"

These Arms Are Snakes play Vera tomorrow night with DD-MM-YYYY and Constant Lovers. What an excellent bill.

More on the extraordinary composer Warner Jepson here.

ht: @imprec via Twitter

Earlier this year, FlyLo posted the mysterious track on his MySpace page, then removed it. Thankfully, it is on YouTube, and you can hear it below, via Gorilla vs. Bear. It's a particularly murky bit of downbeat electronic heaviness with, of all things, a bit of V.I.C.'s dance-rap goof "Get Silly" thrown in at the end.

It has been confirmed that this untitled track is indeed a collaboration between the two downbeat sound scientists. Unfortunately, there are no plans to release the song or for the two to work together again.

(ht: Matt Hickey)

If Chris Walla + J. Robbins doesn't brighten your morning, then perhaps we can interest you in some Ben Gibbard + Jay Farrar x Jack Kerouac? Gibbard and Farrar have written a suite of songs to soundtrack a documentary, called One Fast Move Or I'm Gone, about the time Kerouac spent at Big Sur, in San Francisco, and in New York writing Big Sur—the lyrics are cribbed from Kerouac's writing, arranged by Farrar, and sung by Gibbard. You can hear "These Roads Don't Move at NPR and "The Void" via Stereogum.

The two used an image taken by Tom Chambers as their inspiration, then worked together to create sonic magic. You can see a video of the process and hear the song, "Mercury," here.

I love it and I think these two, who never met before this project, should work together more often. (Please?)

horchata:balaclava::keffir:keffiyeh

See what they did there?

Finally, I think people are getting caught on the obvious lyrical snags of this song and missing some really fun lyrical play happening deeper in the track—the way the lines repeat with small substitutions to come up with new meanings; the weirdly intimate imagery and dramatic tension of the couplet "With lips and teeth to ask how my day went/boots and fists to pound on the pavement"; the way all that organic matter comes pushing through the pavements and tool sheds of the workaday world just as the song hits its instrumentally overgrown climax (and, really, the whole song is about the tension between the workaday world—yes, even Vampire Weekends get the blues—and the dream of paradisaical escape...or at least it's about trying to choose between skiing and the beach for your winter break).

Also, I think the marimbas are cute.

It's lodged in my head because it comically and elegantly demonstrates that being a thug is politically radical (in its way) and that all political radicalism has an element of thuggery.

Watch this video while thinking about how much we love Camano Island kid. (And I love the Camano Island kid. I recognize that I'm romanticizing what will probably become a flesh-and-blood tragedy—but I can't help it. I love him.)