Yesterday was the third or fourth release date I’d had for the new Metric record, but finally it was the correct one. Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? is pretty good, though it’s been a little while since I’d heard something with this degree of polished production. Thankfully, Emily Haines’ vocals are left pretty pure and unprocessed, they’re strong enough as is. She sounds a bit like Sarah Harmer in her phrasing and timbre, but trading in the folkiness for rock and roll attitude. Good stuff from these Toronto ex-pats. Exclaim! ran a cover story on Metric last month.

Dancing robots. Sure, they look like a lot of fun… but wait till they turn on you. From Ms Lonetree.

MyIE2 is a new web browser with all the features of current browsers, such as tabs, pop-up blocking, crazy customizability, but built off of Internet Explorer instead of Mozilla/Netscape. I still have to use IE for a few of my regular websites because they just don’t function right in Mozilla, so this looks like it could be handy for those. I love Mozilla, but it’s not the fastest browser on the market and it’s pretty memory-intensive. I doubt I’ll switch completely but it’ll be fun to have a new web-browsing toy to play with.

Another day, another release date I feel compelled to report on. Yo La Tengo will release a new EP, Today Is The Day, in October. It will feature a different version of the titular Summer Sun track and five other songs.

Update: The tracklisting is as follows –

“Today Is The Day”

“Styles Of The Times”

“Outsmartner”

“Needle Of Death” (Bert Jansch)

“Dr. Crash”

“Cherry Chapstick” (previously unreleased version)

Done Waiting bring word that Beth Orton will release a compilation of b-sides from Daybreaker. The Other Side Of Daybreak is out September 2 and sadly, after the snorefest that was Daybreaker, I can’t bring myself to get too excited about the cast-off material. But hey – her buddy Ryan Adams put out an odds-and-sods collection (Demolition) that was much better than the ‘proper’ album preceding it (Gold), so I might yet be surprised. If I ever get around to listening to it.

The Denver Post ran this article on the success of Matador Records recently. Nothing really illuminating, but it’s nice of them to notice. They also ran a companion piece about other indie labels of note. What, no props for Bloodshot? Links from Largehearted Boy.

While there is absolutely nothing official right now, it would not shock me to see Death Cab For Cutie in or around Toronto on or around mid-October promoting Transatlanticism. I hear things, what can I say.

That mysterious Neutral Milk Hotel release scheduled for August 19, entitled T-Shirt I mentioned a couple weeks back? You’ll never guess what it is. Never ever. Turns out… it’s a t-shirt. Yeah. Debate raged fast and furious on the Elephant 6 Town Hall on the matter.

More Eitzel/AMC reunion news. There’s something wrong with the world when I’m getting my indie rock scoops from Rolling Stone. So very very wrong.

np – various artists / The Bridge – A Tribute To Neil Young

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