by SHANE SINNOTT

I love it when musicians write good blogs.

As your trusted scavenger of the net for music-related links, it’s über-relevant to my purposes when something’s coming from the horse’s mouth, you know? I’ve been spending a lot of time at Deerhunter’s blog lately, and it rules (deerhuntertheband.blogspot.com). The self-described “ambient punk” band from Atlanta, known for their weirdness and intense live shows, has a blog maintained primarily by lead singer Bradford Cox, who posts a shitload of material. The highlights are his mixes created under the “Atlas Sound” moniker, hour-long tracks complete with detailed notes, ranging from obscure bootlegs to stuff by Swell Maps and Throbbing Gristle. You can get the latest one here: tinyurl.com/36d8tr. He also posts lots of covers, the majority of which are recorded according to requests—the list they’re working with is here: tinyurl.com/3dx6dj. My favourite so far is “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” (Neil Young covered by Psychic TV), which is here: tinyurl.com/2kw2ty. Mr. Cox is also generous with the Deerhunter material, putting up MP3s of early seven-inches in their entirety. The one I’m digging right now is this version of “Adorno” from the band’s first seven-inch—bliss occurs at 2:38 into it: (tinyurl.com/34t3vg).

Not to be outdone, fellow Atlantans the Black Lips have just started a blog of their own— first post: “I was reading Deerhunter’s blog today and I thought it sucked and so I decided to start our own (welcome to the future)”—which is here: theblacklips.blogspot.com. The garage rockers aren’t going at it with the same gusto as Deerhunter (who, incidentally, have posted some early Black Lips material on their blog), but that’s probably because they’re too busy being all over the place. At vbs.tv, you can see footage of their recent trip to Israel & Palestine, and a live version of “Cold Hands” recorded over there is available here: tinyurl.com/2jj8sa. For good measure, here’s a live version of “Katrina,” my favourite track from their forthcoming album, Good Bad, Not Evil, available on Sept. 11: tinyurl.com/3xzlcw.