Saddle-Creek PACK

Maria Taylor
"Lynn Teeter Flower" CD

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The songs for "Lynn Teeter Flower", an album named after a family friend in Maria’s native Birmingham, Alabama, were written in between tours for "11:11". The collection reveals a woman settling very well into her role as a solo artist, peeling back some of the layers of the last album to reveal a more organic sound, one that resembled the hundreds of shows she had done all over the globe in support of "11:11" over the course of the last year. She began her new recording sessions with Spoon’s drummer Jim Eno in Austin, hopped over to Athens to record four more tracks with Now It’s Overhead’s Andy LeMaster (who worked on "11:11"), and then ended up in Memphis to work with Doug Easley (Cat Power, Pavement). The record sees contributions from Maria’s brother and sister – bassist Macey Taylor and keyboardist Kate Taylor, both of whom played in her live band, as well as Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst, who co-wrote and sings on “The Ballad of Sean Foley.”

Track List:
01 good start (MP3)
02 clean getaway
03 smile and wave
04 no stars
05 replay
06 small part of me
07 irish goodbye
08 my own fault
09 the ballad of sean foley
10 lost time (MP3)
11 lynn teeter flower
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Bright Eyes
"Four Winds" CD Single

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With the once revolving line-up of musicians settled on the three constants of Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott, Bright Eyes spent much of 2006 in the studio working on their follow-up to the acclaimed simultaneous releases Digital Ash in a Digital Urn and I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning. "Four Winds" is the first single from these sessions that took place in New York City, Los Angeles, Portland, OR, and Lincoln, NE featuring Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, M. Ward, and Janet Weiss of Sleater Kinney. "Four Winds", is presented here along with 5 exclusive B-sides not included.

Track List:
1. Four Winds (MP3)
2. Reinvent The Wheel
3. Smoke Without Fire
4. Stray Dog Freedom
5. Cartoon Blues
6. Tourist Trap (MP3)
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Bright Eyes
"Cassadaga" CD

(with bonus 3" CD!!"Susan Miller Rag")--Buy it here

If Wide Awake... was "the New York City album", then Cassadaga is "the America album", in which Oberst diaries his travels around the country and articulates his sense of history in the landscape. Should you have looked for them you'd have found them tucked away in various studios around the country. Recording for the first time outside of the Lincoln, NE studio belonging to Mogis, the Bright Eyes cast of players were busy in studios in Portland, OR, New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. The line up of Bright Eyes players includes Andy Lemaster (Now It's Overhead), Ben Kweller, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Janet Weiss (ex-Sleater Kinney), Jason Boesel (Rilo Kiley), John McEntire (Tortoise), M.Ward, Maria Taylor and Rachael Yamagata.

Cassadaga itself crops up in the same song. The town, a community for psychics in central Florida, is visited in order to "commune with the dead". This wandering spirit is crystalized in "I Must Belong Somewhere" a song which was already a staple of live shows by the end of the 2005. "Hot Knives" is particularly spirited, bringing to mind the true energy of a Bright Eyes show. Likewise, "Soul Singer In A Session Band" - a rousing paean to an oxymoronic profession - enlists all of the elements which make the Bright Eyes live band such a euphoric experience. "Make A Plan To Plan To Love Me" is Bright Eyes at their most playful; a straight-up love song, replete with girl group vocals and Burt Bacharach strings. Oberst, the fumbling guitarist whose impassioned prose tumbles out under stark stage spotlights, is still recognizable in every track, but the songs are rich with elaborate production, cinema-sized orchestration and, at times, sprawling, almost psychedelic, atmospherics.
Track List:
01 Clairaudients (Kill or Be Killed)
02 Four Winds (MP3)
03 If The Brakeman Turns My Way
04 Hot Knives
05 Make A Plan To Love Me
06 Soul Singer In A Session Band
07 Classic Cars
08 Middleman
09 Cleanse Song
10 No One Would Riot For Less (MP3)
11 Coat Check Dream Song
12 I Must Belong Somewhere
13 Lime Tree
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Cursive
"Happy Hollow" CD

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All was quiet in Camp Cursive for more than a year... And then, slowly at first, after much decompression and contemplation, they began to discuss and then assemble a new record as a freshly reconstituted four-piece--the longtime core of Tim Kasher (vocals, guitar), Matt Maginn (bass), Clint Schnase (drums) and Ted Stevens (guitar, vocals).

The band's reemergence finds them self-assured and assertive as ever. Rather than retread familiar artistic ground, Cursive has unfurled their most adventurous and accomplished work to date, Happy Hollow. Happy Hollow takes the scalpel to its small-town inhabitants and their stories, dredging up debates of intelligent design, blind devotion, homosexuality and patriotism--while calling out false virtue, righteous cant and sanctimonious liars -- to create a literate, impassioned and empirical look at organized religion arranged as 14 hymns for heathens.
Track List:
1. Opening The Hymnal / Babies
2. Dorothy At Forty (MP3)
3. Big Bang
4. Bad Sects (DOWNLOAD)
5. Flag And Family
6. Dorothy Dreams Of Tornados
7. Retreat!
8. The Sunks
9. At Conception
10. So-So Gigolo
11. Bad Science
12. Into The Fold
13. Rise Up! Rise Up!
14. Hymns For The Heathen