This hit last week, but I’m still obsessing over it. I always assumed Arctic Monkeys would be difficult to cover because so much of the band’s appeal rests in Alex Turner’s cadence, but CHVRCHES do justice to Turner’s slinkiest riff to date with this ethereal interpretation. Or maybe it’s just that I could listen to Lauren Mayberry’s voice sing anything. Either way, more please.

Wow, the new Bleeding Rainbow is going to be amazing, if this first single is any indication. Much more aggressive than last year’s heavily MBV-influenced Yeah Right LP. I keep playing this over and over and cannot get enough. The new record, Interrupt, is out Tuesday via Kanine.

You think you’ve got game, and then you meet Drew Harkins and you throw the game away because you just can’t win.

Deerhunter, Monomania (4AD)

Pick your favorite review of this album:

a.) Monomania is a willfully inscrutable/abstruse nocturnal garage pastiche of shopworn indie standards, pieced together meticulously from a post-nothing fakebook, delivered with mesmerizing panache and terrorizing aplomb.

b.) Deerhunter’s Monomania re-imagined as a Phish setlist, the way that guy from Dirty Projectors did Black Flag:

Anti-Scale Mode -> Puke Racket, Pot Arpeggioz, Schlock & Choogle II, Churn/Thrust N’ Fey, Jam Progression -> Lawnmower Ratchet -> Omega Point, Denouement, Coy Spoon Acoustic Reprise

c.) When you get a tattoo on your shin, the majority of the work takes place on the fleshy haft of your lower leg. It’s mostly easy dermis for canvas, all smooth and humming along with the perfect amount of pinch, subtly reminding that you’re permanently defacing your skin.

The only actual pain comes when the needle bears down on the distal ends. A pitted feeling sucks your gut but passes quickly. Those couple moments when the point clicks over that little groove in the ridgeline is the real treat, because it’s just enough to make your privates tingle.

d.) The Black Lips dudes dubbed Monomania “transcend-fi” and I see no reason to reinvent the wheel.

e.) Yes, Bradford. It was great. And it was punk.

Queens of the Stone Age, …Like Clockwork (Matador)

“Some men are so macho they’ll get you pregnant just to kill a rabbit.” – Maureen Murphy

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De La Soul’s seminal debut, the witty and weird and wonderful 3 Feet High and Rising, was released 25 years ago. In honor of that quarter-century mark, De La Soul’s offering a free download of its entire catalog for 25 hours on the group’s website. The download bonanza will begin on Friday, Feb. 14 at 11 a.m. EST, and it’ll run through until Saturday at noon. (But what if I’m only halfway through downloading The Grind Date at noon on Saturday? What then, De La Soul? WHAT THEN?!)

De La Soul’s music hasn’t been offered on many free streaming sites and services due to licensing issues. Prince Paul likes buddy … but he likes sampling, too, and many of De La’s early work is built on samples that weren’t fully licensed.

“It’s about allowing our fans who have been looking and trying to get a hold of our music to have access to it,” Posdnuos tells Rolling Stone about releasing De La’s catalog. “It’s been too long where our fans haven’t had access to everything. This is our way of showing them how much we love them.”

That’s one hell of a V-Day gift, Plug One. Way better than a toaster. Way to make a girl feel special.

HOLY CRAP THERE’S A NEW OWLS SONG HOLY CRAP THERE’S A NEW OWLS SONG HOLY CRAP THERE’S A NEW OWLS SONG HOLY CRAP THERE’S A NEW OWLS SONG HOLY CRAP THERE’S A NEW OWLS SONG HOLY CRAP THERE’S A NEW OWLS SONG HOLY CRAP THERE’S A NEW OWLS SONG HOLY CRAP THERE’S A NEW OWLS SONG

Owls, of course, is a Kinsella brothers-led supergroup that released one record (a great one) 13 years ago. Its members have been busy with other projects — namely Owen, Joan of Arc, Make Believe, and Ghosts & Vodka. Polyvinyl releases Two next month; it’s already leaked another song, “I’m Suprised,” from the record.

Bloomed, released in 1994, was Richard Buckner’s first record, and his first great record. Unfortunately, it was released on an imprint of an unsympathetic major label that gave Buckner very little support in terms of promoting the record, leaving it to languish and die.

Twenty years later, Buckner, since bounced from the major-label circuit after a two-record stint with MCA, calls vaunted North Carolina indie label Merge home. In March, Merge reissues Bloomed as the third record of its Merge 25 series, which celebrates Merge’s 25th anniversary. (The first two: Lambchop’s Nixon and Superchunk’s Indoor Living, two of Merge’s finest releases.) The album will be remastered and released on CD and 180-gram vinyl. Both formats will include a bonus disc featuring radio sessions, live performances and original recordings of songs that appeared on future releases.

It’s the second time Bloomed has been reissued; Rykodisc re-released it in 1999.

In other Buckner news, the songwriter is soliciting dates for his series of living room shows, which wraps up its first run in Arizona next week.

“Basically, I’ll pull up to your house with an acoustic guitar, find a spot inside where I won’t knock anything over and play all of the hits that made me the hundredaire that I am today,” Buckner writes on his website. “The location of the shows is only known to those who purchase tickets.”

If you have a living room large enough to house one of America’s greatest living songwriters, you can see if Buckner’s looking to play your town by checking undertowmusic.com. (If he is, and you live in the Carolinas, and you book him, and you don’t tell me, I hate you.)

After the jump, some notes from Buckner, via Merge, on Bloomed.

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Slint’s landmark Spiderland, now 23 years old, will be reissued as a deluxe box set by Touch and Go in April.

No other band was as largely overlooked during its relatively brief lifespan as Slint, which posthumously became one of the most influential and far-reaching bands to emerge from the American underground the 1980s. The band broke up before the release of its magnum opus Spiderland, and couldn’t reap the rewards of its legacy: Innovative and iconoclastic, the group’s deft, extremist manipulations of volume, tempo and structure cast them as clear (though unwitting) progenitors of the post-rock movement that blossomed in the decades to come.

The box set includes the album, remastered from the original analog master tapes by Bob Weston and pressed on 180 gram vinyl, plus 14 previously unreleased demos, outtakes and live cuts. (The box set comes with a CD of all of the above, too.)

The box set also comes with a 104-page book replete with never-before-seen photos documenting Slint’s entire history, as well as lyrics to the songs on Spiderland and a forward by Will Oldham. (Most of Slint’s members spent at least a little time in Oldham’s Palace Music project, and Oldham took the album’s famous cover photo.) There’s also the brand-new, 90-minute documentary Breadcrumb Trail documentary about Slint and the making of Spiderland; it’s directed by Lance Bangs.

There are only 3,138 copies available, and a limited number of pre-ordered box sets will be signed by all four members of Slint. Pre-orders also include a T-shirt created from the re-discovered silk screen used to print Slint’s one and only tour shirt.

You can pre-order the box set here, and the tracklisting is below.

SIDE A
breadcrumb trail (remastered)
nosferatu man (remastered)
don, aman (remastered)

SIDE B
washer (remastered)
for dinner… (remastered)
good morning, captain (remastered)

SIDE C
Nosferatu Man (basement practice)
Washer (basement practice)
Good Morning, Captain (demo)

SIDE D
Pam (rough mix, Spiderland outtake)
Glenn (Spiderland outtake)
Todd’s Song (post-Spiderland song in progress)

SIDE E
Brian’s Song (post-Spiderland demo)
Cortez The Killer (live Chicago 1989)

SIDE F
Washer (4 track vocal demo)
Nosferatu Man (4 track vocal demo)
Pam (4 track vocal demo)
Good Morning, Captain (Evanston riff tape)
Nosferatu Man (Evanston riff tape)
Pam (Evanston riff tape)