In my effort to postpone my trip to work and seek redemption for the quite disappointing Conor Oberst release yesterday, I found myself googling for news of the upcoming record from Conor Oberst, Jim James, & Matt Ward. I didn’t find anything, but I did manage to track down high quality recordings from a show they all played back in Winter ’04. The discovery sort of made me the happiest girl ever this morning. Best bus ride ever.

You can find the download here.

There are so many wonderful gems, including a cover of Willie Nelson’s “Always on My Mind”.

While we’re on the subject of cool tunes, I was also recently turned on to a great compilation, Dark Was The Night. Standout tracks:

• “Big Red Machine” - Justin Vernon & Aaron Dessner
• “El Caporal” - MMJ
• “Hey Snow White” - The New Pornographers
• “So Far Around the Bend” - The National
• “You are the Blood” - Sufjan Stevens (quite unexpected sound from him)
• “Giant of Illinois” - Andrew Bird (a song I already know and love)

Well, lookie here. They have a widget for me to share up to 3 tracks:

In other news, I got my $100 for being at AKQA for a year (official day is May 19). I had to find a new person to go to NIN with me. Luckily, Jason is a fan. Apparently, it became uncool to like NIN in recent years. Lucky for me, I missed that memo. And, I have every intention of participating in the upcoming Cannes Lions 48-hour contest. Sadly, that means I have one less weekend to work on my blog. I feel it’s very close, though. I’m just sort of dreading testing it in IE, which needs to happen soon-ish.