“Is There a Ghost” is off of Band of Horses’ upcoming album, Cease to Begin. It’s super beautiful and all over the Internet. Band of Horses is touring in California in September. We hope they come to NYC soon.

From Cease to Begin:

“Is There a Ghost”

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New York Magazine published an interview with A. C. Newman right before Challengers was released. We completely missed it. If you did too, you can read it here.

A few days ago, we were in the gym on the treadmills. We run in packs, okay? And we saw on MTV of all places a music video. It was our girl, Feist! We don’t watch MTV anymore because it is boring, but we do like on-demand music videos on the Internet. So here is about 14 minutes of FeistTV.

1 2 3 4

You know we are suckers for mobs of people dancing. If only they were in a street!

Mushaboom

They dance in the street! Now we’re talking. Feist is so cute.

One Evening

We love the “Private Dancer” feel to the intro to this song. We also love that retro 70s AM groove.

My Moon, My Man

That video has a great energy. We especially love the part involving the strobe lights.

We were among the lucky few whom saw The New Pornographers last night play the second of two secret shows at the Bowery Ballroom. The NP gang seemed to be in pretty good spirits with lots of banter in between songs (especially AC — congrats). Well, except for Neko. The Bowery Ballroom sound crew struggled repeatedly to fix Neko Case’s ear monitor. Neko, you might have felt a little self-conscious, but we honestly can’t imagine why. You sang better than everyone in the room even without being able to hear the rest of the band. We love you.

Also we’d like to say how impressed we were by Kathryn Calder. Previously we’d had dismissed her as Knock-off Neko or, in our jealously, called her The Nepotistic Niece, but last night we were honestly impressed with her singing. Kat, the first time we saw you at the Brooklyn Bandshell almost two years ago, we resented you. We admit. We can be petty sometimes, but last night we could see how you had grown into a great performer.

Guys, despite the bitchy bloggers standing around us nay saying and critizing you for being just too damn good, but not good enough, we want to say we love you enthusiastically and we can’t wait to see you in October.

Now let’s talk about the raison d’etre for this post and yesterday.

We really love Challengers. We’ve had it for months and had a lot of time to listen to it. (Yes, we bought a copy of the album: you better do the same.) We think it’s great like we said before. We don’t care what Pitchfork says. Their review is only evidence of the growing irrelevance of Pitchfork. Pitchfork loves to build up their idols just to tear them down. The review isn’t even about the music. The review is about comparing The NPs to their collective past as a group and as individuals. The album is great. It has a lot of emotional movements that can’t be expressed with The NP energy turned up to 11. Rob, baby, you’re a 5.9 at best. Oh, and boring.

So we found this really cool discussion of Challenger on Matador’s website wherein AC Newman gives some interesting details about the album as a whole and each song.

From Challengers:

“Challengers”

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Oh yeah, Vampire Weekend opened for The NPs.

VW isn’t our style, but a lot of people really, really liked them. We were frankly surprised to see people singing along. We don’t assume we know everything about music, like some other music nerds (Rob). So, uh, good job Vampire Weekend.

From Vampire Weekend:

“Cap Cod Kwassa Kwassa”

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Finally, some jackass stole our camera. Our camera phone pictures are sad. Check out Gaelenh’s!

Ghastly City Sleep, who is poised to be The Next Big Band from Brooklyn, is an aptly named: their music is arresting and ethereal. “Ice Creaks”, for instance, slowly morphs from a soft, simple sound into an epic mountain of beautiful music.

Ghastly City Sleep is playing August 18th in Manhattan at the 6th St. Community Center (638 E. 6th St.). The show starts at 4pm. GCS will go on stage at 7:30 sharp. Admission is $8. You should check them out if you are in the city.

We haven’t been lucky enough to see them live yet, but we found some pictures of them performing.

From their eponymous album:

Ice Creaks

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