The first time we heard the name A Fine Frenzy, the stage name of Alison Sudol, we quite honestly saw covering her as a way to see the Rufus Wainwright/Neko Case show at the Mann over the summer. What we didn't expect was for her to be, positively, the best act of the night. Alison and her gorgeous piano-driven pop have gotten quite popular since August: her song "You Picked Me," the complicated 5/8-time love......

Friday night marked my third time seeing The New Pornographers, and as I've come to expect, they totally rocked the house. After a fantastic set by Immaculate Machine and a really solid set by Emma Pollock (whose album, Watch the Fireworks, has been on pretty frequent rotation on my work computer), they took the stage, ready to perform to a sold-out crowd at The Trocadero. Despite the more quiet, low-key feel of Challengers, the......

I arrived at the Mann last Friday with nothing but the highest of expectations, and I left positively annoyed. It wasn't because of the weather (there was a thunderstorm between A Fine Frenzy and Neko Case's sets, but I loved it). It wasn't because of the audience (although there were plenty of obnoxious people there). Those are things that you get annoyed with, and then get over. First annoyance: we arrived at the Mann at......

Alison Sudol, better known on stage as A Fine Frenzy, is more than just a pretty face: she's also a musician with both a level of talent and a musical maturity well beyond her twenty-two years. You can classify her music as "alternative," we suppose – but it's definitely not your little sister's brand of alternative. Her single "You Picked Me," a gorgeous, sincere love song written in an unconventional 6/8 time signature, is the......

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Torontoist immediately wins our heart by using the word "Jackass" in a headline. In fact, we love their use of it so much that we're going to use it as much as possible throughout this post. For example, it looks like there are Toronto-area jackasses besides those who misuse the sidewalk: look at the crap on sale on Toronto's craigslist. But it looks like Toronto doesn't contain the kind of jackasses who pee in public......

T-minus-five days till we officially start work, and yet here we are, 3:30 in the morning and still blogging. We're going to try to get on a better sleep schedule, but meanwhile, here's some of what you missed on our sister sites since last we met! DCist: Tiger, Tiger, burning bright... Austinist has more MP3s. We love Austinist. Parisist: We don't read or speak French, but hey, it's a video, so we're passing it along!......

Best of the week is compiled and edited by Seattlest's Dan Gonsiorowski. Gothamist posts on the capture of a NYC perv thanks to Little Brother and a camera phone. They also scour the city for vodka martinis and Shamrock shakes and spot the friend from the Wonder Years at a city law firm. New York police think that Littlejohn is their man. Houstonist is no stranger to megachurches or stripmalls or mega-strip-churchmalls. The children of......

The New Pornographers bring Twin Cinema and the sketchy Neko Case to the Trocadero tonight for one of those rock concert things. No word on whether or not David Cross will be there to boo Case. (Go read the latest issue of MAGNET, kids.) The band is touring behind their excellent new album, Twin Cinema, arguably the band's best in their short career as a group. Dan Bejar, New Pornographer member who writes a few......