What’s that? I missed the Band Of Horses-wagon and can only get on the backlash wagon? Alas, that’s what I get for waiting a little too long to get a copy of Everything All The Time, even though it just came out over a month ago… Anyway.

With their distinctly twang-friendly sound and Ben Bridwell’s affecting holler, comparisons to the similarly bearded My Morning Jacket are natural, but while the Kentuckians have much more rock in their diet and ride Jim James voice into orbit, Band Of Horses are content to aim for the troposphere and maybe examine their feet rather than put them on the stage monitors for that big guitar solo. But that’s not to say that Everything All The Time doesn’t have it’s big loud moments – there’s more than a few. It’s just that even with those thrown into the mix, the overall feel of the album is of delicate, shimmering introspection. Around the start of the year, Band Of Horses were pegged by many as one of the breakout bands of the year – if Metacritic is any indicator, they haven’t necessarily set the critical world ablaze but they have produced a damn fine record that should more than prove them worthy of whatever expectations anyone might have had.

Band Of Horses are at Lee’s Palace on June 13 with Mt Egypt and The Can’t See. Their official website is undergoing renovations and shunts you to their page at SubPop, so you might be better off heading to MySpace to interact with them. The officially-released MP3 for the album is for “The Funeral”, presented here in album, demo and video form. And So Much Silence has helpfully encoded the band’s recent radio session for hometown station KEXP, which features yet another version of “The Funeral”. Collect them all!

MP3: Band Of Horses – “The Funeral”
MP3: Band Of Horses – “The Funeral” (demo)
Video: Band Of Horses – “The Funeral” (MOV)

PopMatters talks to Mike Cooley of Drive-By Truckers while The Star draws the Jason Isbell card

Billboard talks to Roger Miller about the extensive promotional activities surrounding the release of Mission Of Burma’s new album, The Obliterati, out May 23, as well as the new documentary about the band’s improbable reunion, Not a Photograph: The Mission of Burma Story. Most notable is the Obliterati.net website which allows you to preview tracks from the new album as well as play with the band’s wiki. There’s also now an official MP3 to download:

MP3: Mission Of Burma – “2wice”

It’s funny – for a while a few years back, it seemed you couldn’t swing a stick in this town without hitting some up-and-coming young female singer-songwriter type. Not that I’m complaining, I often like that stuff, but it seemed like there were more than you might normally expect. Now, it seems, they’re all ditching the acoustic guitar thing and forming attitudinal rock bands. Huh. Last year, Martina Sorbara went electro with Dragonette (listen at MySpace) and now Chart reports Emm Gryner is taking some time off from making covers albums to rock it out with Shudder To Think’s Nathan Larson and Kevin March in Hot One (listen at MySpace). Mocking Music, a big Gryner fan, is not impressed and frankly, what I’ve heard seems a little silly to me as well. But the important thing is that they’re having fun, right? I think. Their self-titled debut is out July 4.

Of course, sometimes they go the other way. Case in point – Chart talks to Emily Haines about putting her rock band Metric on the shelf for a bit to put out her singer-songwriter-y solo record Knives Don’t Have Your Back on September 26.

Mike Doughty, who has apparently given up the whole “only going by my first initial” thing, is at Lee’s Palace on June 9, tickets $20.

At long last, volume three of Scott Pilgrim’s epic adventures, Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness, will be released on May 24, barring catastrophe at the printers. But if you can’t wait that long (and why not? It’s already been delayed half a year), swing by your local comic store on May 6 for Free Comic Book Day and grab a copy of the free Scott Pilgrim comic that Oni Press is putting out for the occasion.

Is there anything better than paying one’s income taxes for the year? Yes, actually. Pretty much anything.

np – Asobi Seksu / Citrus