The Decemberists - The Crane Wife

Happy New Year, all! I come this week with praise of The Decemberists' "The Crane Wife" album. I got it bundled with Sufjan Steven's "Songs For Christmas" (also very awesome) off Amazon.com. "The Crane Wife" is thoroughly awesome. Each track just gets better and better. My favorite track, by far, is "The Island: Come & See/The Landlord's Daughter/You'll Not Feel The Drowning". Unfortunately, the file is to large to post here, but "Yankee Bayonet" is also a rad tune.

Pandora Radio

From Wikipedia:

Pandora is an automated music recommendation and Internet radio service created by The Music Genome Project. Users enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar. Users provide feedback on the individual song choices — approval or disapproval — which Pandora takes into account for future selections.

Pandora Radio is awesome. I currently have three stations, a James Figurine station, and Iron & Wine station, and a The Hives station. All three have suggested great stuff.

The Hives - The Black and White Album

I had never heard of The Hives before this album, but I really love it. The high energy garage rock is really addicting and makes you what to bang your head and jump around like a punk rocker.

Check out The Black and White Album on iTunes

Iron and Wine

From Pitchfork Media:

Sam Beam's first two full-lengths under the name Iron & Wine were bare-bones, hushed affairs full of rich imagery, whispery falsettos, rhythmic finger-picking, and not much else. In the time since, Beam has gradually moved in other directions, expanding his palette on both the excellent Woman King EP-- which featured more percussion and fleshed-out arrangements-- and 2005's full-band collaboration with Calexico, In the Reins.

Beam has also toured with a group of musicians for some time now, so it makes sense that his new album would complete his gradual journey away from lo-fi home recordings. The album even teases you at its start-- it begins with a snatch of scratchy black-and-white guitar and percussion before jumping to Technicolor when the bass and drums dive in. The rest of opener "Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car" is surprising as well, at once sleek and full of clattering Americana signifiers like steel guitar, acoustic slide guitar, and tack piano. - Read more

Iron & Wine is really a great band and I completely agree with Pitchfork's assessment of their...er, his latest album. I really recommend checking them out.

Update: Interview and in-studio performance on World Cafe