To their credit, Pitchfork compiled a more-or-less well done 25 worst album covers of the year list, but they're remiss in not recognizing the power of a well done album cover. Rather than complain, we're taking matters into our own hands and making a list of our own. If RIAA doomsayers are to be believed, the great sun of the era of the tangible album is being eclipsed by filesharing, iTunes, and the menacing iPod. Art should be more important today than ever, if for no other reason than to give internet savvy fans a reason (other than goodwill) to buy your record.
In this list, there will be no countdown, instead, categories.

Photography

Destroyer - Rubies

It's the patchy sunlight, the atmospheric lamp, the stacks of books, the quaint, lived-in feeling. It's Destroyer personified. (Miles)

Justin Timberlake - Futuresex/Lovesounds
If there was a "Most Improved" category, Justin would take it, hands down. Justified, though a solid record was a tacky purple morass that made Timberlake look more aging teen idol than budding pop star. As a photo, Futuresex is an American Apparel ad gone classy, way to go, dude! (Kevin)

Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
Original, sharp, and above all nostalgic: You're a little kid giving a last once-over to the house you were born in, everything is empty and the truck is waiting outside. (Kevin)

The Mars Volta - Amputechture
Miles gave me guff for this one. Whatever. Mars Volta put too much thought into their music: its masturbatory, trying, and self-congratulating. If their music was as good as this cover: simple, dramatic, strange, and calm, they might have found an actual working formula. (Kevin)

Six Organs of Admittance - The Sun Awakens
When your record's cover corresponds with its title, your ground gets shaky: are you making a joke? Are you trying to be clever? Unless you're Weird Al (Poodle Hat!), you're better off leaving it blank. In Six Organs' case, it's perfect: subtle, cathartic, and dark. The aesthetics stop the bad pun dead in its tracks. (Kevin)

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Etiquette
A perfectly ghostly, surreal and captivating illustration. Nothing says "bone-crushingly depressed" quite like a dinner party with an alligator. (Miles)

Islands - Return to the Sea
Contrary to what your eyes might be telling you, this is a painting. SHOCKING! What makes this cover, though, is the bold, modern typeface. It takes the force of the glacier and lets you know that damnit, Islands are forever. (Miles)

Cornelius - Sensuous
This shows exactly why font is important. A lot of album covers fail in what they're trying to execute because the band excludes their name, the result: Boring! In this case, the text makes the cover. So nice, he wrote it twice! (Kevin)

Tom Child (Calendar Editor)
Beirut - Gulag Orkestar
The picture reflects the same geographic mystery of the music—it could be anywhere really—but I like to imagine the car has pulled alongside the road just outside some unpronounceable town east of the Adriatic sea. It's been decades since the reactor meltdown, but there's still that tinge of magic in the air. These Baltic beauties will take you to their local bar, get you trashed, let you sing onstage with the gypsy band, and make you fall in love with them. In the morning, you'll board the train broken-hearted and missing your shoes. The perfect match of cover art with music.

Miles Clements (Intern)
Subtle - For Hero: For Fool
Subtle's striped-faced "Our Hero Yes" looks like he's about to pull off a military coup. The war medals let you know that he's accomplished. The flaming hair lets you know that he's a loose cannon. Either way: the perfect compliment to the band's abstract, psychedelic hip-hop.

Kevin Ferguson (Intern)
Genghis Tron - Dead Mountain Mouth
If I could have an enormous poster of this on my wall, I would. The bigger the better. Note the stones in front of the hut (that's fucking ON FIRE WITH CREEPY BIRDS HOVERING ABOVE): they read GT, which means that this cover was probably made with the band in mind.

Ellen Griley (Managing Editor)
Walkmen - Pussy Cats
I honestly hope that this is how the Walkmen write their songs. If it's not, then I can assure you and them that we would all be better off if they did. Visualize the possibilities, people. If what just popped into your heads isn't the definition of pure musical synergy, then I don't know what is. (Note: Miles wrote this for Ellen because she's super sick!)

Jennie Warren (Photo Editor)
J Dilla - The Shining
We have this music package that we have to put in our year end issue. I was searching for a cool 'urban' artist photo and came across J Dilla, whom I've never heard. But I do know the Pharcyde and A Tribe Called Quest. Shows how much i know bout hip and hop. Sad that he passed, but great album cover. I love the 70's reference mixed in with a touch of bling. And the gothic portrait in the gold frame is so good! Oh and the font is...hmmm...just yummy.

Chris disagrees whole-heartedly with my appreciation of Birds & Batteries, but I can't seem to shake my fascination with "Smoking the Filter." Delete the dance-ish tracks, and you have a song Richard Manuel (or actually, on second listen, probably Rick Danko) could've written (post-Band). Delete the vocals, and you have a pleasant instrumental electro track that's perfect for listening to on repeat all the live-long day. A must-listen for anyone stressed.

Also, when I caught these guys a few weeks back up at the Eagle Rock Sunday Night Bowling and Drinking Club, I couldn't stop from rubbing my feet together, as you do when you are a) sitting on the stage and b) filled with warm, fuzzy, wish-they-lived-here feelings. They're from San Francisco, but hopefully they'll be back soon.

So I'm a little late on this, but I went to go check out Cold War Kids at Detroit after the Weekly's Christmas party (on a stationary riverboat?) this past Saturday night.

It was the third time I've seen CWK at Detroit—and probably the last (I mean, really, at this rate, you kids can sell out the House of Blues... or bigger)—and, as always, it was... a good show.

Energetic. Interactive.

All that good stuff that's already been said about their live performance.

But the tightly packed-in crowd kind of lost its energy five or six songs into the set—and guess what? We didn't really deserve an encore.

(Apparently the band thought so, too.)

Anyway, the success story that is the Cold War Kids continues tonight at 11:30 p.m., when they'll be performing on CBS' the Late Show with David Letterman.

Yup.

Letterman.

Bikeride is BACK! New album, new shows, and an appearance on MOJO's March compilation (out in February). Let's check what the band has to say:

Well, we're happy to say we'll be participating in a Beatles Sargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band covers record for MOJO magazine. It's to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the greatest album ever made. We'll be doing "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite", probably Lennon's trippiest song ever, and a perfect time capsule for 1967. It will be out in MOJO's March issue which will also coincide with Bikeride's release of The Kiss. Look for it on stands at the beginning of February.

On that note, the release of The Kiss has been moved back to March 6 to accomodate our biggest distributor, Red Eye. You'll also be able to buy it at Best Buy, Amazon, iTunes and all the other big ones (except Tower, RIP). As soon as it's in out hands MySpacers will be able to get an early copy. We'll also be selling it at our February 10th show at Di Piazza's. For locals, Fingerprints will be stocking it early too. We'll let you know.

AS FOR TONIGHT: Shopping. Duh. But if you like free drinks, there's Pabsts for $0 from 10 to 11 p.m. tonight at Avalon.

If you missed Listen Now! last night at eVOCAL, SHAME ON YOU. The benefit show for the homeless—the first of hopefully many that will be thrown by VAVAK and the folks at Listen Skateboards—was a full-on 10 on the friendship-and-love-and-happiness scale. Everyone was so, so, so nice: eVOCAL co-owner Damet; cute-as-a-button jewelry designer Sheva; silkscreen artist Ryan Bryant; even the lovely Costa Mesa-by-way-of-Texas-and-before-that-South-Africa man behind the bar who, I'm guessing, is related to the eVOCAL's other co-owner Brett and served every drink with a smile and a "Cheers!"

The spot itself is all open space and DIY graffiti/skate zen—a gallery-meets-boutique that's the prototype for what more than a few of us (myself included) would probably like to open someday. VAVAK played. At the end of the evening Ray Barbee took stage, and holding it all together was the best, most awesomest, raise-your-hand-if-you-like-indie-rock DJ I've ever heard, and whose name I did not catch. : (

Why the Weekly hasn't yet featured eVOCAL, I'm not sure. But look for a story on the store's Thursday night open jams soon. And in the meantime, give the store a visit. Last night I scored an awesome set of four mugs (pictured above) and also these three nifty knit pictures (pictured below). Perfect knick-knacks for those of the laid-back, everything's-coming-up-moss-and-riverrock-and-orange-and-yellow-sunsets state of mind.

Last year, the heads of the Literary Journalism Program at UCI sent out an email regarding an internship opportunity with Rolling Stone. That tempted me for about two seconds. Then I realized that it was Rolling Stone and that MTV Networks was slated to turn the whole thing into some awful reality program. That's how I want to jumpstart my journalism career!

A year later and their mass-media-clusterfuck is here in the form of I'm From Rolling Stone.The surefire guilty pleasure (okay, probably not) of all us snarky music types, I'm From Rolling Stone chronicles the paths of six walking stereotypes...err...umm...music journalism hopefuls: Krishtine, Peter, Krystal, Colin, Tika and Russell. I'll let you figure out the stereotypes yourselves. Much more fun that way. Trust me.

Now, normally I'm not one to judge (ha!) but I absolutely need to get something out into the open here. In case you can't tell already, this show is complete bullshit. Watch the show's preview video and you'll see the interns getting hit on by Atmosphere, interviewing Snoop Dogg and eyeing their bylines on some brand new MacBooks. Welcome to the Real World. But even better than the preview clip are the interns' profiles that are linked above. Let's take a look at Colin's answer to what his favorite concert moment was:

No. At Lollapalooza, Mooney Suzuki's singer, Sammy James Jr., smashed his head against the guitar. Blood was dripping down his face, and he looked at me, took off his sunglasses and handed them to me. It felt like time slowed down, I was so stoked. That was the show that I really knew I wanted to do something that related to music for the rest of my life because I just really saw the power of a live show and the power that can hold.

Then there's Krishtine's involvement with Bay Area hip-hop mag Ruckus:

I'm not going to try to be big-headed about it, but I feel like the fact that we created our own publication really helped the Bay Area music community reach its potential, because people that didn't understand it through the music could pick up our magazine and see aesthetically and culturally, all the aspects that they wouldn't be able to see without physically being here.

Thank god Rolling Stone is still a bastion of good taste because I don't know what I'd do without it. But you know what? I think I'm just bitter. If I wore bandanas or had a mustache and swirly blond hair, I could've been on that show too. Bummer.

I'm From Rolling Stone will air Sundays at 10 P.M. on MTV beginning January 7th.

Due to what seemingly was a last minute venue change (and not bad reporting), the show info at the end of Ziegler's piece on McCluer this week was incorrect in the print edition. The correct info can be found online in the story here.

In case you're not a fan of what Greg Stacy or Chris Ziegler had to say about gift-giving this week, then here's a quick note to let you know about some nifty holiday gifts for those loved ones of yours. First up? Couch guitar straps.

New Fidelity man Dan Perkins designs the straps, and currently they've got a great-looking line of silkscreened straps for not-too-much: $34.99 gets you the one pictured, and also? They're vegan. Nice.

First, it was the break-up of Dead Moon, whom you might remember from Oliver Hall's CD review a few weeks back. And today, we learned of the unfortunate passing of Shocking Blue lead singer Mariska Veres, whose stunning voice you might remember from the original version of "Venus." The band also recorded "Love Buzz," which most Nirvana fans know and love. My personal favorite, however, is "Rock in the Sea." Please, don't hunt the internet for free downloads. Go out and buy a best of Shocking Blue. They deserve it.