Last year artist Travis Aulsebrook, under the moniker Hudson, landed himself on the top ten list music video for 2011 with the fantastic stop motion, Dropbear directed video for “Against The Grain”. A video is nothing without a track for it to be built around and Hudson has proven that he has the ability to write more than one great. His Open Up Slowly EP was packed with textures and imagery in spades and now we’re getting a taste from the new track “One & One” which is a beautiful slowly building track with just the right amount of twang in Ausebrook’s voice to be quite inviting but not so much that it’s off putting.

I’m anxious to hear whether this track is a part of a new album that we might be seeing from Hudson this year.

Hudson – “One & One”

Feistodon is the 7″ split EP that’s being released for Record Store Day which features Mastodon covering Fiest’s “A Commotion” from here 2012 release Metal and Feist covering Mastodon’s “Black Tongue” from their 2012 release The Hunter. Listen to both cover tracks below as well as the originals to compare them to.

It’s a pretty remarkable feat by both acts to transform the other’s into a viable cover song that sounds like it could have been written by them.

Bad Veins first caught my eye when they opened for Frightened Rabbit a while back. Since then the band’s debut self-titled album has been a go to LP for when I don’t know what I feel like listening to. Because of the success of the first album I’ve been waiting with eager anticipation for the release of the follow up album called The Mess We’ve Made. Today we have first sight and sound from that album.

“Dancing On TV” is the first single from the album which has received a video before an audio release. Watch the American Bandstand inspired video below.

Bad Veins – “Benefits of Lying (With Your Friend)”

The Mess We’ve Made is out April 24th via Modern Outsider Records.
(Via Consequence of Sound)

Collaboration between director Cameron Crowe and Sigur Rós is nothing new. Crowe used the band as an exclusive musical source on the Tom Cruise film Vanilla Sky and has once again turned to Icelandic songwriter Jónsi to write the musical score for the upcoming film We Bought A Zoo. During the filming Crowe says that each actor and crew member was given a copy of the Sigur Rós documentary Heima, they all watched it together and the actors even listened to the music during their down time. On the last day of filming Crowe reached out to Jónsi to see if there was any interest on his end in composing the score, he replied with “characteristic enthusiasm”.

The Matt Damon & Scarlett Johansson film is based on the Benjamin Mee memoir about a father that spends his retirement money to purchase a run down zoo and renovate it.

Stream the track and read the full story at NPR.

I can already tell you what Fred’s going to say when he sees this video, “Friggin’ dog people”. There, now that that’s out of the way let’s proceed.

“It’s Real” is one of the jangle pop tracks that is featured on the band’s sophomore album Days which came out on Oct. 18th via Domino. The video truly adds to the already heavy allure of the track and the album as a whole.

Real Estate – “It’s Real”

Right on the heels of having a new baby, The Mountain Goats frontman John Darneille has also released a new solo track in a grand lo-fi manner. It sounds like Darnielle snuck off from fatherly duties and locked himself in a closet to get this one recorded on a 4-track. Someone was apparently locked in the closet with him though as you’ll hear at the end.

The track was posted onto Darnielle’s Twitter last night and says that’s there’s more where that came from.

The Mountain Goats – “Thucydides-II-58″

It’s always nice to get a surprise announcement about a free EP from one of your favorite bands so that’s what we have for you today. This 3-track EP features “Scottish Wind” which Scott and brother Grant performed and acoustic version of at RoskNess earlier this year while the other two tracks feature some guest vocalists in Camera Obscura frontwoman Tracyanne Campbell and Scottish music legend Archie Fisher.

If for some reason you are reluctant to provide your email address to the band in return for this EP you can preview it over at Drowned In Sound.

Frightened Rabbit – “Scottish Winds”

Dierks Bentley – “Wish You Were Here” (Pink Floyd Cover)

Here is how the week has unfolded so far and who’s next

Monday – The Shins performing “Breathe” from Dark Side Of The Moon
Tuesday – Foo Fighters w/ Roger Waters performing “In The Flesh?” from The Wall
Wednesday – MGMT performing “Lucifer Sam” from Piper At The Gates of Dawn
Thursday – Dierks Bentley performing “Wish You Were Here” from Wish You Were Here
Friday – Pearl Jam performing “Mother” The Wall

It’s been a bit confusing over the last few months as slots are filled on the two Jeff Buckley bio pics that are in the works. As we mentioned a few months ago, Penn Badgley from Gossip Girl has been cast to play the star role in the unofficial bio which is based on the days leading up to Buckley’s appearance at father Tim’s tribute concert.

Now concerning the official, Mary Guibert sanctioned bio pic. Reeve Carney is being cast to play the leading role. Carney is currently staring as Spider-Man on Broadway’s Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark and has appeared in a few films during his career, so he should be able to act pretty decently. He also fronts the rock back Carney along with brother Zane, so he should have some chops.

I personally think that this is way better casting than Badgley. In certain pictures Carney has uncanny similarities to Buckley and the voice isn’t really that far off either. Considering that the Badgley film doesn’t have the rights to any of Buckley’s songs I guess they don’t need to worry about him being able to sing at all.

Jeff Buckley – “Mama, You Been On My Mind”

Listen Before You Buy came up with this idea of a weekly mixtape battle between music blogs. The winners move on to a round robin that will eventually have only one winner. Both of the mixes are anonymous and the blogs have about 24 hours to come up with their mixtape.  So far, the themes have been: Notebooks, Obsession, Clouds, Work, Defeat, and Lights.  The previous loser chose the hardest theme thus far, “Wanderlust.” Our mixtape was supposed to be featured this week and voted on along with SpcPck but unfortunately our competition did not come up with his mixtape because “my comp. stopped working last night” and “you would have won regardless of my meek effort and musical knowledge” so we won by default. We like to think we would have won anyways so get ready to vote in the next round. Still putting forth the effort and time, we would still like to share our mixtape with you if you just feel like listening to it on a Sunday afternoon while cleaning or in your cubicle on Monday. Patrick quickly talked with Other Lives singer, Jesse Tabish, at Dada in Dallas the other day at their show with The Rosebuds. He asked him what song of theirs would be a good for our “Wanderlust” theme and he told him “Landforms.”