by SHANE SINNOTT

It came to my attention this week that Conor Oberst, the fellow behind Bright Eyes, will release a “solo” album Aug. 5 on Merge. Boldly, they are trying to bill it as the first Conor Oberst solo album in 13 years, which anyone who’s listened to the first handful of Bright Eyes albums will know is hooey, given that those consisted mainly of the primitive wailings of a 22-year-old with a four-track. In any case, Oberst has released a track called “Danny Callahan” to the world, which you can get at tinyurl.com/6d6mut. He also has the full album, which was recorded in Tepoztlan, Mexico, streaming on his Web site—go to www.conoroberst.com/album. And if you’re at all bamboozled by the hype into thinking there is a rareness in the album being solo, just listen to “It’s Cool, We Can Still Be Friends,” an early Bright Eyes (i.e. Oberst “non-solo”) track at tinyurl.com/6394qq.

In filesharing news, a just-announced proposal by the U.K. government will attempt to drastically reduce copyright anarchy (sorry) by taking a 30-pound-a-year levy from users in exchange for carte blanche music downloading. How it will work is, if you so choose, you can pay the levy and then be immune from any kind of prosecution for music piracy—you will sleep the sound sleep of the non-pirate. The music industry will then divvy the levy up according to artists’ popularity, or perhaps by a scrambling of fat, suited CEOs towards a pile of cash dumped at the centre of a boardroom table. Either way, the idea is some of it gets back to the music makers. The government’s other plan is to send out about 12,000 letters to people who download a lot, asking them to stop, which sounds like a huge waste of time. You can read more here: tinyurl.com/5cpsqa.

Finally, Brendan Canning’s new record came out last week, sort of the other half to the Broken Social Scene partner Kevin Drew’s Spirit If... There’s a track, “Hit the Wall,” at tinyurl.com/6m3plt.