Brandon Young is the drummer for SoCal-based band Delta Spirit and he called me from a hotel room in Pittsburgh to talk about wine drinking, slow burning and the other sundry topics that arise when one is kind of a rock star. Delta Spirit is currently rounding out the tour behind their second studio LP History from Below and recently released EP The Waits Room. “The shows have been really awesome,” Young says. “We’re a little tired here and there. The bands we’re on tour with, Darker My Love and The Fling, are awesome. We’re all getting along and hanging out, trying not to drink too much and to eat healthy.”

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In the late ’60s, The Band holed up in a house named Big Pink in West Saugerties, in upstate New York. Fresh off of backing Dylan’s infamous 1966 tour (as The Hawks), the group rented a house in upstate New York and wrote the music that became their debut album, the aptly titled Music from Big Pink. Dylan later joined the group after a serious motorcycle accident and they recorded a series of widely bootlegged demos which later became The Basement Tapes.

Below is the first footage I’ve ever seen of The Band actually playing in the now mystified house. Looking pretty young, the group rips through a very loose ‘King Harvest’. A live version of ‘Long Black Veil’ is tacked on to the end of the video for bonus fun.

The National released a video for an alternate version of “Terrible Love”, part of an expanded edition of 2010’s High Violet, set for a November 22nd release on 4AD.

The video, directed by frontman Matt Berringer’s brother Tom, features tons of behind-the-scenes footage from their 2010 tour, including their European festival stops and their performance at a Madison, WI rally for President Obama (including security pat-downs by Secret Service).

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The Flaming Lips frontman used his own blood to create a new poster.

Seriously.

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Deerhunter’s latest full-length effort, Halcyon Digest, is a softer album with less rockers than you’d expect. Does that mean you shouldn’t check it out? No, but it does mean that Microcastle still crushes it in my book.

Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy produced legendary Mavis Staples’ new album, You Are Not Alone. The title track is an especially beautiful showcase of Tweedy’s songwriting abilities and the two recently teamed up to perform it on the Colbert Report.

Anyone else like Department of Eagles over Grizzly Bear? Yeah, I know it’s practically splitting hairs, but whenever I listen to DoE tunes I can’t help but find myself saying – “damn, why didn’t they take this energy to Grizzly Bear?” No matter where you net out, fans of both groups should enjoy Department of Eagles: Archives 2003-2006, full of previously unreleased tracks.

Let’s face it, young love in modern America is shit. It’s a toxic brew of naïve experimentation and nasty societal biases that can determine whether someone ends up a bitter curmudgeon or a happy-go-lucky rainbow-puker. Not to mention the worst part, that there’s no easy out- you’re either in the game or getting dinged by flying wreckage in the stands. So, as all things paradoxically personal and widely relatable tend to be, early relationships and their aftermath are abundant in all sorts of art, particularly music.

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The thirst quenchers outdid themselves this time, calling on rapper David Banner to write and produce an original song for their new “Evolve” commercial series. Banner in turn tapped former BLACKstreet alum Kermit Quinn for lead vocals on the retro-R&B flavored cut.

MP3:

To be honest, Philip Selway never seemed too comfortable in the drummer’s seat. His live technique is close to trance-like it’s so off-putting, with his bright bald head aimed straight into the audience’s eyes while his arms thwack at seemingly memorized kit positions. He hits the parts superbly, does the solos, occasionally brings a fill, but he just never managed to cultivate a presence on par with, well, any other given member of his main-band-which-shall-not-be-named. So where Yorke’s The Eraser and Jonny Greenwood’s soundtracks don’t fall far from the transceiver-craniumed tree, it’s no surprise that the Selway solo outing, Familial, is more able to successfully distance itself from his larger project’s near-mythic narrative.

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And it’s free. Put together from fan video footage and official audio from Radiohead’s own master recordings, it covers an August 29th, 2009 set in Prague. Watch the whole thing on YouTube.