by SHANE SINNOTT

Oh, glorious day! The new Silver Jews record, one of the more anticipated releases this year, has leaked! A few weeks ago, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea became available in its entirety, a full three months before its scheduled release date, June 17. How these things are getting out so early, I dunno, but let’s assume that they’re not running the tightest ship over at Drag City, the band’s longtime label. Or perhaps the theory is that if your album doesn’t suck, it’s actually a good thing to have it available on the Internet for free, as it builds anticipation for a worthwhile product. Record labels’ relentless pursuit of leaks of garbage acts like Lenny Kravitz or Feist only highlights that try-before-you-buy is going to hurt you when what you’re selling isn’t good. In fact, I propose that an act’s quality can be measured in inverse proportion to how many album sales they lose (or claim they lose) due to downloading. But anyway, the first song on the new Silver Jews record is a grower, called “What Is Not but Could Be If,” and it’s available at tinyurl.com/3dybzh (and another track, “Suffering Jukebox,” is at tinyurl.com/2hgk8x).

In not-good band news, perennial douchebags Radiohead have announced that a best-of collection will be released on June 2, in the format of either two CDs or four records or some online thing, and probably any other format they can think of to line their pockets with. The fact that they presented their download release of In Rainbows, a shameless promotion cum cash-grab, as an anti-corporate innovation still gets my goat. I propose that we link to as many songs as possible from the upcoming greatest-hits package here, in order to reduce album sales. Okay—“Just” is at tinyurl.com/2on4mk, and “Paranoid Android” at tinyurl.com/3dmvag. Shit, that’s all I could find after half an hour. I guess they’re putting in the effort to make sure their songs aren’t available for free—heaven forbid we cut into the profit to be made by re-releasing old songs in new packaging. Curse you, Radiohead.