Today's Hotness: Jim Guthrie, Carrie Brownstein, Mystery Jets

>> We received two separate email blasts today regarding the new act Human Highway, both of which, we might add, arrived after we already saw the "news" in our RSS reader. We put the word news in quotations because it was apparent from reading the item and the emails that the former was rather lazily cribbed from the latter. Normally we don't let this sort of writing get to us, but we found this particularly offensive because the press releases and the "news" both failed to mention what Human Highway principal Jim Guthrie accomplished prior to his 2004 solo set Now More Than Ever. In addition to releasing other very fine solo sets, Guthrie was one of the main fellows in the exceptional alt.country act Royal City [pictured above]. It's all at Wikipedia here; how quickly people forget. We had the pleasure of seeing Royal City topline a bill that also featured The Trouble With Sweeney in, oh, 2001 or so. We're posting a starkly beautiful Royal City track and a sublime Guthrie solo joint below, in case you are not familiar with the gentleman's work. Back to today's news: Guthrie has reunited with former Islands bandmate Nick Thorburn to form Human Highway, which will issue Moody Motorcyle Aug. 19 on Suicide Squeeze.

Royal City -- "And Miriam Took A Timbrel In Her Hand" -- Alone At The Microphone
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[buy Royal City records from Insound here]

Jim Guthrie -- "3 AM" -- Morning Noon Night
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[buy Morning Noon Night from Insound here]

>> Brief Remarks: 1) We only just yesterday added Carrie Brownstein's Monitor Mix NPR blog to our RSS reader, but the decision has already paid off. Revel in the following quote from this item: "Yesterday was Earth Day and I celebrated it by letting my dog sh*t on a lawn that is full of chemicals. When the owner came out to yell at me, I pointed to the excrement and said, "That is the only natural thing in your yard, Happy Earth Day." 2) We don't know what this is, but it is awesome. 3) Trivia: this woman was in our Music, Recording and Sound Design class at university in the mid-'90s. She was -- and likely still is -- very nice. 4) All your metadata are belong to Sony, according to Coolfer. 5) ExitFare has posted here a recent video from London-based quintet Mystery Jets, and the clip is an excellently absurd send-up of all the amazing new wave videos we watched incessantly on MTV in our youth.