Brian Eno Visited The Colbert Report Last Night, Teamed Up With Michael Stipe (!!)

Maybe it's just me, but late-night talk show guest bookings have been getting increasingly more kickass as of late, especially on the musical side of things. Stephen Colbert continued that trend last night when he invited the Legendary (capital L completely necessary) art-rock musician/producer Brian Eno on The Colbert Report to pretty much just talk about how cool he is and plug his generative video art project "77 Million Paintings."

Following the interview, Colbert took a moment to eulogize another set of great musicians, "The R.E.M.s" (we've mentioned them a few times lately) before inviting Eno and Michael Stipe (!) back on for an a cappella version of Bill Withers' "Lean On Me." Yep, that happened. Check out the interview and the signoff after the jump!

Stream R.E.M.'s "'Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982–2011" On NPR

Seminal alt/college rock pioneers R.E.M. recently ended an outstanding career that lasted longer than I've been alive, but not before announcing a parting gift for everyone they'd touched over the years: their final compilation/retrospective album Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982–2011. And once again, NPR has come through with an exclusive stream of the album in advance of its November 15 release.

Check it out over here. As NPR themselves note, the best way to really experience R.E.M. is through the original albums as the compilation format is inherently designed to hit the high / most popular points without context, but nonetheless Part Lies... serves as a decent primer and a spur for any new fans to go back and explore R.E.M.'s catalog.

R.E.M. Release Two Short Films For Final Single "We All Go Back To Where We Belong"

Last week we caught a stream of the final R.E.M. single (ever), and now former frontman Michael Stipe has teamed up with director Dominic DeJoseph to unveil two new short films (yeah, videos) to accompany the track. 

The videos feature actress Kirsten Dunst and artsist John Giorno in black and white. Dunst makes some rather appropriately moving and evocative expressions along with the wistful track like she's holding back tears, while Giorno just kind of... stares blankly ahead for most of it before breaking character at the end and smiling sweetly. Good stuff.

Check 'em out below.

Stream R.E.M.'s Final Single, "We All Go Back To Where We Belong"

Damn. It's still extremely eerie to us that alt-rock legends R.E.M. have disbanded, and that news is now all too real in the form of their last single ever recorded, "We All Go Back To Where We Belong." It's streaming over at Rolling Stone and will appear on their career retrospective Part Lies, Part Truth, Part Heart, Part Garbage: 1982-2011 on November 15. 

It's a short track and exudes a palpable sense of finality, closing the door on a band that's been around longer than I've been alive. Check it out and get all depressed on this rainy NYC morning. 

Download R.E.M.'s "Cassette Set" 1981 Demo Tape

Image via The Power of Independent Trucking

Whoa. Seems like a lot of interesting surprises are coming to light in the wake of R.E.M.'s recent breakup - first, a compilation consisting of cuts from the past 29 years of the band's career, and now the extremely rare Cassette Set from the band's pre-Murmur days. 

Recorded in April 1981, the set consists of multiple early takes of "Sitting Still," "Radio Free Europe," and "White Tornado," and is available for download in lossless FLAC format from The Power of Independent Trucking - where you'll also find a LOT more info on the history behind the tape. Considering that it was previously only released to 300 journalists over 30 years ago, this is definitely worth a listen for any R.E.M. fan.

Review: Radiohead @ Roseland Ballroom, 9/28

Radiohead fans are an admittedly strange group of people. We can spend hours dissecting songs for hidden meanings, spin convoluted connections between their albums (ahem, Binary Theory), and hunt down rumors and semi-confirmations and sudden confirmations of upcoming shows, songs, albums - clues which oftentimes don't solidify until days before they happen.

These honest idiosyncrasies have a very common source: every die-hard Radiohead fan has at some point developed a very honest and personal bond with the band's music at different points in their 26-year history. I've already shared the origins of my Radiohead fanaticism over here, and in meeting other fans have found that this level of passion is a common thread regardless of when or how it came about.

Needless to say, standing in a room packed with people who wore this bond on their sleeves (literally too, given the number of people sporting Radiohead tshirts) is a total fucking trip. Especially since this room - Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan's Midtown West - was where millions of fans in NYC and all over the world WANTED to be, but comparatively few made it in. Radiohead had just days before announced a two-night stay at Roseland as their first club performances in what felt like an eternity, and after crushing defeats at the hands of both the W.A.S.T.E. presale and my old nemesis Ticketbastard, I'd given up hope of getting in before - due to very odd but fortunate circumstances - a good friend of mine had one of those golden tickets available for me.

R.E.M.'s Upcoming Compilation Gets A Tracklist, With 3 New Songs Revealed

Ah, well that didn't take long. R.E.M. announced their split and confirmed news of another upcoming compilation late last week, and in light of the fact that the tracklist had yet to be revealed, we asked you what you'd like to see make the cut (thanks Mike). As of this morning, we have confirmation on what said compilation - Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011 - will actually feature.

The release is comprised of 40 tracks across two discs, and three of those tracks are unreleased material recorded after the sessions that produced their last (literally) studio album Collapse Into Now: "A Month of Saturdays," "We All Go Back To Where We Belong," and "Hallelujah." The full tracklist is after the jump, along with the video for the 17th track on Disc 1, "Orange Crush." How do you feel it turned out?

R.E.M. To Put Out A Final Greatest Hits Compilation

Along with the rest of the music world, we were definitely taken aback when alt-rock mainstays R.E.M. announced their split after 31 years as a band. We actually have never known a world where R.E.M. hasn't been a band, so we all have a lot of memories tied to their earlier work as we were growing up.

It seems the timing now makes a bit more sense, though, as their publicist has confirmed that the band will be releasing a post-mortem greatest hits compilation entitled Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011 to be released on November 15 after fans noticed that an Amazon page for the album popped up. The compilation will also feature new songs recorded following the sessions for their last (ever) proper studio album, this year's Collapse Into Now.

There's no track list currently available, but there's no doubt in my mind that one of my personal favorites, "Man On The Moon," will show up. What other songs do you think will be included?

Stream R.E.M.'s "Life's Rich Pageant" 25th Anniversary Edition

Athens, GA rock stalwarts / probably immortals R.E.M. have left an indelible mark on music for the past 30 years with 15 albums under their belt, including this year's Collapse Into Now. But even though they're still going strong, we have a great opportunity to look back at their storied history with next week's 25th anniversary reissue (wow) of their third album, Life's Rich Pageant, which is now available to stream exclusively at Spin.com.

As our friends at Slicing Up Eyeballs report, the reissue comes with a remastered version of the 1986 album along with a 19-track bonus disc entitled The Athens Demos. As that name implies, that disc has early cuts of all of the tracks off of Life's Rich Pageant, plus early versions of songs that would appear on later albums - for example, "March Song (King of Birds)," which would appear in its final form as "King of Birds" on Life's followup Document the next year. R.E.M. superfans will be especially happy with the inclusion of the demo for the heavily-bootlegged track "Wait."

Check it out in full over at Spin, and enjoy the video for "Fall on Me" below!

R.E.M. Streaming Latest Vid from Collapse Into Now film series on Youtube

For the the rest of today, R.E.M. will stream the next installment in their Collapse Into Now Film Project, which is a companion piece to their latest album, Collapse Into Now .

Watch "Everyday Is Yours To Win" here.