Alex Nahas and Nick Smeraski of Bright Brown bring an ideal soundtrack to the crisp, autumn air. The brooding Brooklyn duo layers humming vocals, a Chapman Stick, keyboards, soft percussion, and a little acoustic guitar. Sounds range from sparse and repetitive like a piece for avant-garde dance to expansive and melodic like the theme from a western where everyone dies in the same pool of blood. Nahas cut his teeth as a founder of the post-rock band Laughingstock. Fans of Brian Eno, Nick Drake, and John Cale should check these guys out. – WSP

Having grown tired of hearing everyone and anyone with access to a home digital "recording studio" pump out often lifeless collections of songs, this past July the three members of Grandfather sold off all of their home recording equipment and headed to Chicago to make their album "Why I’d Try" – with the help of wizard of analog recording himself, engineer Steve Albini. The band, that plays an intense brand of (non-instrumental) post-rock that often escalates to post-punk peaks, is offering a free digital download of the product of this collaboration here. Check them out live at Union Pool on 11.20. – Read an in depth review of their CD on Dave Cromwell’s blog.

Asobi Seksu has announced the release of their 4th full length, "Fluorescence", available February 14th in UK/Europe and 15th in North America on CD. After the all acoustic experience of the album "Mirror Shades" (which admittedly raised a few eyebrows), the band returns to their natural shoegazing habitat, with rather satisfying results – you can make up your own mind downloading a free track from the upcoming album here.

Cowboys, dude… I mean, if you get the whole cowboy hero thing right, that’s extremely awesome. These adventurous dudes traveling through the desert fighting for a better tomorrow (or maybe to actually survive until tomorrow), smoking a hand rolled cigarette in front of the fire, adjusting their cowboy hats and casually eating beans from the frying pan… what’s cooler, more iconic than that? Sergio Leone got that right, and so do Woodsy Pride, a Brooklyn based trio that plays some kind of haunted Western music with the songwriting skill of Neil Young and the maudit intensity of Nick Cave. These guys make me want to get a horse and a gun and head West – somewhere along the route, a gorgeous lady is waiting  for me to save her. Woodsy Pride just released their debut EP on All Hands Electric with a show at Matchless on 11.01.

Very interesting show at Pianos on November 17 with our current CD of the month Hooray for Earth and Mon Khmer, who were one of our Artist of the month some time last year. For a review of the first band see here. Mon Khmer sound a little bit like Broken Social Scene with better songs – almost like a "perfected" version of the Canadian collective, that tended to compensate a certain songwriting weakness with mind blowing production values. The NYC based group might not have reached the level of complex refinement of BSS’ records, but it definitely navigates very similar waters, inhabited by post-rock influences, textural arrangements, and sober creativity. They should play/tour with our friends The Mobius Band!

‘Washington D.C.’s very own Alvin Risk takes the stage Saturday, November 13th, at U Street Music Hall, for the release of his debut EP The Making Of. Part glow-fi dance party, part electronic opera, The Making Of is a sketchbook into the promising future of the next transformative figure in post-rock music.’ Also on the bill is the gorgeous lush electro artist Painted Face, and Brian Billion, U Street’s resident DJ. It’s gonna be epic. Preview Risk’s EP on Soundcloud.

Only Son is Jack Dishel’s solo project. The former guitarist for the Moldy Peaches is about to release his second album, Searchlight, on Jan 18. He just unveiled a video for the beatlesque song "Magic" directed by Adria Petty. Only Son is playing at Rockwood Music Hall (Stage 2) at midnight next Friday, Nov 19th,

Superhumanoids are definitely an LA band to keep an ear on – these guys play a sophisticated electro pop with beautiful airy melodies and interesting/intricate arrangements. Check them out tonight (11.09) at Trobadour before they embark for a UK tour. We love the video by the way!

We’ve always been fans of Chris Garneau‘s sparse, mellow and theatrical songwriting. The half mechanical, half poetic world of marionettes fits perfectly Chris’ songwriting style, based on plodding piano parts, ticking percussions, string driven openings, and his unmistakable vocal style. A crew of 30 worked on this video, including director Ryan Gibeau and Michael Leach, arguably NYC’s most skilled and experienced marionette puppeteer, who handled the main puppet through the videos many challenges.

I can SO visualize the day when the Gross Relations crew sat down at a pub to discuss ideas about their upcoming music video and somebody came up with this: "Dudes, I have an idea: we should just shoot a video about what we are doing right now! A video of us, our own faces, gulping down whiskey and getting progressively wasted, that’s gonna rule!". As a matter of fact the concept works well not only with the song’s title (Fuzzy Timelines) but also with the band’s lo-fi crooked musical aesthetics. Gross Relations is about to release a 7" of this song, pre-order it at Insound here.

On November 9 (tonight) Brooklyn Bowl will host the 2nd annual Silver Sound Music Video Film Festival + Band Battle. The evening will begin at 7pm with opening act Dinosaur Feathers, last year’s Band Battle victors, with the Festival itself commencing at 8pm hosted by Candy Slice.

This year’s competitors include a lot of NYC based artists: Beyondo (in the picture, the solo project of a member of Antibalas) Stereogum’s favorite Ego Puppets, Great Elk, Lisa Jaeggi, Lucius (recently highlighted by NYTimes as one of their picks for 2010 CMJ bands to watch for).

Among the 21 music videos being shown, there will be offerings from popular Brooklyn Bands Savior Adore, Surfer Blood, Wakey Wakey, and Lacrymosa.

With a name more appropriate for a Roman general, Lucius is actually the project of peaceful and talented songstresses Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, of Bostonian origins. Their delicate voices draw gentle harmonized lullabies accompanied by sparse arrangements of acoustic guitars and occasional piano and simple percussions. The duo has just completed an east coast tour synchronized with a residency at Rockwood Music Hall, and will perform tonight (11.09) at Brooklyn Bowl within the MVFilmFest (see blog entry underneath this one).