Wow, you guys, it’s already the time of year when people start saying things like, “Omigod, can you believe it’s already November?!?! This year has just flown by!” I never say things like that because I simply cannot fucking believe how time just crawls and crawls and crawls, but whatever. At least we have a new Vampire Weekend single, right? Happy Thanksgiving.

This Month’s Most Notable News Stories

Kanye West and Lady Gaga Cancel “Fame Kills” Tour
Just a couple weeks after pulling his most idiotic stunt yet, interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for Best Female Video at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards to point out that, actually, Beyoncé probably should have won the award, and losing a pretty substantial number of the fans he still had left, word came that Kanye West and Lady Gaga had cancelled the “Fame Kills” tour that was planned to run from November through January. No official reason was ever given, but it seems unlikely that it wasn’t a direct result of the VMAs incident. I even like to think Lady Gaga pulled the plug on it herself, out of fear that public association with Kanye would be detrimental to her career (it would), which has been exploding of late. This has nothing to do with anything, but you guys should really watch her performance from Saturday Night Live a few weeks ago. Shit was bananas, and it’s becoming impossible not to like her.

Vampire Weekend Release New Single, “Horchata”
It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly two years since the official release of Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut, and considerably longer than that since much of the record leaked online as a file called Blue CD-R. It has, though, and it’s almost easy to forget what it was like when it first came out—all the arguing back and forth, about the changing nature of hype, about the perceived problems with a bunch of Ivy League-educated white kids appropriating the music of West Africa. For me, it was a perfect storm of a record: Unfathomably catchy, clever, fun, serious, stylish, considered, studied, danceable. How a person could listen to a song like “Walcott” and still find it in their cold, dead heart to write some stupid shit about the evils of cultural appropriation was and is beyond me. But get ready, y’all, ’cause it’s about to start up again. Their sophomore full-length, Contra, isn’t due out until early 2010, but on October 5th, they released the first single, “Horchata”, after it was discovered that a clock on their website was counting down until 2:30pm that afternoon, when… well, you get it. That’s when the single was released, and it is awesome, maintaining all those qualities I listed above, while adding slightly better production. You should listen to it, now and often.

Thom Yorke Debuts New Backing Band, Four New Songs
Man, writing about Vampire Weekend a second ago was really fun, on account of me, you know, actually liking them. So it’s with a heavy, heavy heart and a rapidly shrinking attention span that I will shift gears and talk one last time about this whole Thom Yorke all-star backing band thing. In late September, news broke that the Radiohead frontman had put together a band to help him play the songs that appeared on his solo debut, The Eraser, and some new material as well. The band, it turned out, consists of Radiohead producer and all-around big fucking deal Nigel Godrich, Beck drummer Joey Waronker, percussionist Mauro Refosco, and yes, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea. The band played its first show on October 2nd in Los Angeles, and their set included four, count ’em, four new songs, none of which have changed my opinion that Yorke is the single most overrated songwriter, nay human being, on the planet. Here’s one of ’em, lest you haven’t seen ’em yet.

Jawbreaker/Jets to Brazil Frontman Quietly Forms New Band, forgetters
And now back to stuff I care about. Do you guys know Jawbreaker? I assume you do, because I think very, very highly of you. If you don’t, though, here’s the deal: They were a Bay Area punk band that earned a wickedly devoted fanbase by being a punk band that was neither politically motivated nor about, like, farting and getting drunk like much of the Fat Wreck Chords stuff that was popular at the time. It was punk rock for romantics, and it was driven by singer/guitarist Blake Schwarzenbach’s lyrics, so beautiful and poignant that the Hold Steady’s Craig Finn would cite him as one of his favorite writers of all time. The band’s popularity grew to the point where they signed a major label deal that would see the release of one album, Dear You, before they called it quits. A few years later, Schwarzenbach returned with Jets to Brazil, a band that released one outstanding record, Orange Rhyming Dictionary, and two more of decreasing quality. It’s been six years since we last heard from him (other than the short-lived band Thorns of Life from 2008-2009), but he’s back again, with forgetters (lowercase f, just play along for now), a new three-piece that’s played a handful of shows and seems to be picking up steam. Check out a clip here, and stay tuned for more details here.

New Moon Soundtrack Released, Takes Top Spot on the Charts
After what seemed like years of speculation regarding the contents of the soundtrack to New Moon, the second movie in the Twilight series, it was revealed in late September that it would include some serious heavy-hitters from the world of indie rock: Grizzly Bear, Death Cab for Cutie, Bon Iver, St. Vincent, Thom Yorke, and Lykke Li among others—big names to some of us, sure, but relatively speaking not exactly the biggest unit-movers in the industry. It didn’t quite matter, though, when, despite leaking a few days before its original release date, it still managed to reach number one on the Billboard album chart—not in its first week, mind you, because of a certain Michael Bublé character, but in its second, which still ain’t bad. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must return to writing my Twilight fan fiction, thank you very much.

Trent Reznor Gets Married
Since I don’t care about the music Trent Reznor makes or doesn’t make, or swears he’s only going to make one last time before retiring for good or whatever, I don’t much care about his on-again-off-again Twitter account, and I don’t care much about his personal life, either. But he got married last month, to a woman named Mariqueen Maandig, who used to be in a band called West Indian Girl, which she quit when Reznor proposed. That’s all, really. I just thought you might like to know.

Michael Jackson’s This Is It Released, Song Co-Written by Paul Anka
I don’t know what the official company line is regarding Michael Jackson’s This Is It, but as much as the whole thing makes my skin crawl a little bit, for the obvious fact that it’s a project whose only goal is to cash in on the death of one of the most famous entertainers of all time, I still kinda want to see it. I won’t, though, because movies are expensive, and no one sends me promo copies of them like they do with records. I did hear the title track, when it was released a few weeks back. The original demo consisted of only piano and vocals, and it’s actually really great—Michael sounds interested and on point, and it’s a joy to hear him try to work out the melody and tone as he goes along. Of course, all that was ruined when, for the new version, lots of synthesized instruments were added to the mix and MJ’s stupid brothers got on board for backing vocals, basically rendering the entire thing unlistenable. Then it came out that Paul Anka actually co-wrote the song as a duet to be performed by him and Michael. It’s all been worked out though, you guys, so you totally shouldn’t worry about it. Anka’s now getting credit for his part in the track, and the rest of the talentless Jacksons stand to make a little less money now.

Morrissey Passes Out Onstage in England
It’s weird to write about news that’s still so fresh, but remember, people, this very column is going to be around for all of eternity on the world wide web, and in the year 3196, you think anyone’s gonna know that this happened just a couple days before the column was written and that you were sitting there like, “Jesus, I really don’t need to be reminded of this… it’s, like, barely off the first page of my RSS feed,” while rolling your eyes at me? No, they won’t, so bear with me, please. Moz passed out onstage in Swindon, England after saying to the crowd, “Good evening… probably,” and performing one song (“This Charming Man”). He was taken to an area hospital, where he stayed overnight before being discharged the following day. And I just realized there’s not really any information about what happened. He was back onstage performing a few nights later. Strange story. Hope he’s okay.

The 29th Annual CMJ Music Marathon Happened
You’ve probably read a million reviews of it already, most of which I assume made mention of the xx, who played a million shows. They’re neither as good as people are saying, nor as bad as other people are saying. Discuss.