September 30, 2006

Free Range Music: The Hold Steady, Decemberists, Sean Lennon

The Hold Steady -- Boys And Girls In AmericaIt's weekend album streams galore! Seriously, stay in on a beautiful day and listen to indie rock! Unless you are in Boston and coming to our NEMO panel this afternoon! Exclamation point!

Regular readers may have noticed that we didn't get around to our weekly injection of Free Range Music earlier week. It's just been a little bonkers around here with shows -- two a week is about 100% more than we are used to, and we still plan on taking in a couple more tonight. We've got reviews of the Mobius Band and Yo La Tengo shows in the works -- for a sneak peek you can check out the pictures we shot here and here. But anyway, we wanted to get on the proverbial Free Range Music stick because a lot of great records became available in cascading ones and zeroes this week, not the least of which is this late Friday find via Stereogum, Vagrant Records' listening party for The Hold Steady's virtually unleakable Boys And Girls In America. The record sounds awesome. Really, goosebumps-on-the-arms good as the first song kicks in, we're on the fourth track now and it is a barnburner. Holy twin guitar leads, Batman! But that is far from all. Below we link to pre-release streams of the forthcoming Decemberists, Sean Lennon and Portastatic records, via Stereogum, BrooklynVegan and Merge respectively.

The Decemberists -- The Crane Wife -- Capitol [buy]
The Hold Steady -- Boys And Girls In America -- Vagrant [buy]
Sean Lennon -- Friendly Fire -- Capitol [buy]
Portastatic -- Be Still Please -- Merge [buy]

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