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February 2010

The Clientele visit BaebleMusic’s Guest Apartment

Alasdair MacLean recently visited BaebleMusic’s Guest Apartment in NYC to perform a few songs for you! The band is currently on tour state-side in support of Bonfires on the Heath. Don’t miss them!

02-26 Birmingham, AL Bottletree
02-27 Baton Rouge, LA Spanish Moon
02-28 Dallas, TX Granada Theater
03-01 Austin, TX The Mohawk
03-02 Marfa, TX Marfa Book Co.
03-04 San Diego, CA The Casbah
03-05 Los Angeles, CA Spaceland
03-06 Los Angeles, CA Spaceland
03-07 Visalia, CA The Cellar Door
03-09 San Francisco, CA Great American Music Hall
03-11 Portland, OR Doug Fir
03-12 Seattle, WA Tractor Tavern
03-15 Minneapolis, MN Cedar Cultural Center
03-16 Madison, WI High Noon Saloon
03-17 Chicago, IL Lincoln Hall
03-18 Ann Arbor, MI Blind Pig
03-19 Toronto, ON Canada The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern
03-20 Montreal, QC Canada Il Motore
03-21 Allston, MA Great Scott
03-23 New York, NY Bowery Ballroom

Tall Dwarfs records on sale for $6 !

The fantastic Tall Dwarfs records Weeville and Fork Songs are on sale for six bucks each from our good friends at Cloud Recordings, with 100% of the proceeds going to benefit Chris Knox in his recover from last year’s stroke.

And don’t forget to pick up Stroke: Songs for Chris Knox in record stores now.

Occupational Hazard: the Release Date edition

Christina & Mac both decided to celebrate today with their Shout Out Louds' t-shirts!

Shout Out Louds’ Work is in stores today on CD, LP and digital download!

Visit the Merge store to order Work along with our other February 23rd releases: Stroke: Songs for Chris Knox and She & Him’s “In the Sun” 7″!

Spoon is KCRW’s 1000th “Top Tune!”

from KCRW.com

The 1000th song offered by KCRW’s “Today’s Top Tune” is a special live track from Spoon. While in the studio for a recent Morning Becomes Eclectic session in support of their new record Transference, they recorded, “Something to Look Forward to,” a song they rarely play live from their album Kill the Moonlight. They played it live for the first time in 5 years the night before the session.

Download this unique version of “Something to Look Forward to” and sign up for KCRW’s “Today’s Top Tune” podcast for free songs chosen daily from KCRW’s all Music Channel.

New Caribou video for “Odessa!”

Portastatic on “The Spark” with Tift Merritt

From the Portastatic Blog:

Local gal made good (and now living in the big city) Tift Merritt was back in NC recently and was kind enough to have me on her interview show The Spark, which she records for Marfa Public Radio…we talked about writing songs and listening to songs and record covers and all kinds of things, check it out here!

Zach Galifianakis SCORE! video at The AV Club

As a gentle reminder of the limited number of SCORE! 20 Years of Merge Records box sets available in the Merge store, The Onion AV Club is streaming the Zach Galifianakis video from his curated compilation for one week only. Watch the video now.

Visit the Merge store for more information about what is included in SCORE! 20 Years of Merge Records, and order your box set today before they are gone forever! All proceeds will benefit charities chosen by the 14 curators.

Stephin Merritt talks about love songs; download free MP3 of “The Book of Love”

AVC: What are some of the big clichés you try to avoid in writing about this subject?

SM: I don’t think there are any clichés I try to avoid. As soon as I spot a cliché, I go for it. I feel like clichés are the most useful thing in songwriting. They’re the tool on which you build all the rest of the song. Clichés that other people should try to avoid, I suppose, are rhyming “dance” with “romance,” or putting the word “love” at the end of a line and having to rhyme it. That’s about it. If you want to write a love song, you need to not try to write it for a particular person in a particular situation. It needs to be vague, otherwise you’re going to fall into trap after trap of trying to rhyme with somebody’s name. Keep it vague. That’s the T-shirt from this article.

Read the interview at the Onion AV Club and pre-order your limited-edition vinyl 69 Love Songs box set in the Merge store now. Orders of the box set will ship on or around the April 20 release date.

And, as a special preview, download the newly re-mastered for vinyl MP3 of “The Book of Love!”

Strange Powers – Stephin Merritt & the Magnetic Fields

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Watch the trailer for Strange Powers, a Magnetic Fields documentary 10 years in the making!

The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs is now available as a limited-edition vinyl box set which includes all 69 love songs re-mastered for vinyl on six 10” records and housed in a super-sized 69 Love Songs box, along with a 10” version of the original booklet featuring liner notes written by Lemony Snicket author Daniel Handler. Pre-order your box set now at a special low price in the Merge store.

Spoon on ABC Amplified

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