Jam of the Day – Watch Out for Monsters

Watch out! There are all kinds of monsters lurking about today:

(Where the Wild Things Are trailer; this excerpt of Dave Eggers’ new novel edition of the screenplay that he wrote with director Spike Jonze of the Sendak classic is pretty great too)

(random video; the scariness of these monsters goes down by about 20 points because of the Blink-182 soundtrack, for sure)

Monsters of Folk – Ahead of the Curve:

But wait, what are those sweet sounds I hear? These last ones don’t seem to be monsters at all..

Oh that’s right, it’s because they’re Monsters of Folk! The “supergroup” Monsters of Folk, which consists of Coner Oberst and Mike Mogis of Bright Eyes, Jim James of My Morning Jacket (performing here as Yim Yames), and M. Ward (most recently performing as part of She & Him with Zooey Deschanel), apparently doesn’t like to be called a “supergroup” (but will accept super group as a moniker). And admittedly, after a listen to the whole album, Monsters of Folk, which was released today, I wouldn’t necessarily categorize the project as “super” whether there’s a space in between the words or not. But still, there are a lot of solid tracks here, especially the track above, “Ahead of the Curve,” which is probably my favorite on the album (hence Jam of the Day status). Other standouts are the opener, “Dear God (sincerely M.O.F.),” and “Temezcal.”

Monsters of Folk perform on Conan tonight, and you can listen to the entire new record on their myspace page. Don’t be scared, it’s just folk.

-Drew