Largehearted Boy has a roundup of lists of best music of the 2000s.  I don’t think I can write about all these lists as they come out and to be sure just about every publication will have one, irregardless if the decade actually ends in 2010 and began in 2001.

I might be alone in saying this, but Eric Johnson and the rest of The Fruit Bats have crafted one of the best albums of 2009.  They also performed the song for Craig Ferguson (quickly becoming the best late night host) last Friday and somehow I missed it.

Also: West Coast Tour in January! Dates here: www.fruitbatsmusic.com . Presale here: https://tix.concertmaps.com The band expects Seattle and Portland to be sellouts, so if you live there, ahem, it’s best to get tickets sooner rather than later.

November 9th will mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  The short (six-songs) U2 concert that took place at the Brandenburg Gate yesterday ran into some trouble after — no lie — a huge wall was constructed to keep non-ticket holders from watching the free concert.

Controversy aside, Jay-Z does little but his presence adds a certain amount of swagger to this already swaggering song.  It’s easy to hate on U2 — the conventional argument is that the band hasn’t done anything worthwhile in nearly 1.5 decades.  But that’s bound to happen to any band that’s been together and still playing after 30 years.  It’s impossible, I say, to watch the above clip and not get goose-pimples, to not marvel at just how huge U2 and Jay-Z are as cultural ambassadors.

Let’s get this day started shall we?  Like Craig Ferguson said, Black Joe Lewis & The Honey Bears are from Austin, TX but in reality it’s like they’ve come to us from a distant time when James Brown was on the prowl.  A funky soul revival and we are all better off for it.

It would take a lot for me to ever hate on Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo, an indication how how excellent both The Blue Album and Pinkerton are.  But as I was debating with a friend over the weekend, it feels like Rivers Cuomo has never grown up emotionally or been too emotionally invested in song writing since Pinkerton. 

Pitchfork confirms this with their lambasting of Weezer’s new LP Raditude.  The album ”doesn’t have that stench of minimal calculation on it; if anything, it’s as earnest as the famously confessional Pinkerton, just written by someone whose age doesn’t match his POV. But the record’s teen-boy empowerment message doesn’t have much to offer anyone over 13 years old. Perhaps the proper fictional character to reference isn’t Peter Pan, but Matthew McConaughey’s Wooderson from Dazed and Confused– we all get older, Rivers Cuomo stays the same age.”  Ouch!

“I think the band decided to take a break not because we wanted to stop making music, but because we thought the world needed to take a break from us. This greatest hits record — that’s the end of something, you know. It’s time to move on into this next chapter or another phase. Maybe it will be different in whatever way. I don’t know,” Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl to CNN. 

There’s really not much more the band could do and honestly, Grohl’s been going non-stop for the past 20-years, so I think he deserves a little down time.

There list is very, very, lilly white, and hence easily debatable.  But it’s a much more interesting list of records than say, Pitchfork’s or Uncut’s lists for the best albums of the decade.  I’m glad I can count on Paste Magazine to thow in some underrated favorites from The Jayhawk’s, Loretta Lynn, Gentleman Jesse, Drive By Truckers, Over the Rhine, The Avett Brothers, and Gillian Welch. 

Also: Paste’s Top 50 Movies of the Decade is worth a gander just so you can argue with yourself over the inclusion/placement of certain movies.

We knew Spoon was in the studio working on a follow-up to 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, but we’re a bit surprised by the announcement that the new album will be ready for January 2010. 

As P4K reports, the forthcoming Spoon album, Transference, features four songs we’ve heard before alongside seven more we haven’t even heard yet (but are hoping to when Spoon drops by the Crystal Ballroom in Portland on December 11).

Transference is due 1/26 in North America via Merge.  Tracklist follows:

01 “Before Destruction”
02 “Is Love Forever?”
03 “The Mystery Zone”
04 “Who Makes Your Money”
05 “Written In Reverse”
06 “I Saw The Light”
07 “Trouble Comes Running”
08 “Goodnight Laura”
09 “Out Go The Lights”
10 “Got Nuffin”
11 “Nobody Gets Me But You”

We’ll update with Mp3s once we get a chance to.

Holy fucklobsters, in full make-up no less.  I thought Pearl Jam’s cover was pretty awesome, but this may take the cake.  For those of you wondering who Monsters of Folk are, the group comprises the very classy M. Ward, Jim James, Connor Oberst and Mike Mogis.

This is from the Monsters of Folk show in Louisville on Halloween and dang I am jealous of everyone in attendance.  I mean, they dressed up like KISS for crying out loud.  [via]

Video of the great jazz guitarist from 1939.  Also?  What the hell is a bass fiddle?  I don’t know, but I think I want to learn to play one.

“The story is told through seven songs, each a brief glimpse into the world of our protagonist on his journey from bored night watchman to twisted, horrific cannibal. These glimpses are often poetic and obtuse, only obliquely fitting the narrative structure, so my recap / review is only one perspective on how to interpret these songs. No matter how you interpret them, though, they add up to a pretty chilling scifi horror narrative.”

I’m stupified as to how John Vanderslice and The Mountain Goats (John Darnielle) released a seven-song EP with a horror/sci-fi bent to it (the central thrust of the album concern organ harvesting colonies on the moon) and I just found out about it today.  Turns out it was a tour-only affair on vinyl and is no longer available, though with half an effort you can surely find it.

Love this cover of Devo’s “Whip It.”  Love the authentic costumes.  However, the best part is the band mimicking Devo’s robotic dance moves.

As Rap Radar points out, Jimmy Kimmel had Ghostface Killah on the other day to tell a Halloween “Ghostface” story. The story doesn’t have much to do with ghosts, (it wasn’t even that scary taking place in Vermont and all) but it is definitely something hear.

As a side note, Ghostface’s new album is quite different for him, but in a good way.  What can I say, the man can do R&B pretty well.