RecaPitulation: Shellshag, Thermals, Bishop Allen

"If I have learned one thing: LIFE is about choices!" Sarah Palin, generously using all-caps and exclamation points throughout her resignation speech.

Arty absurdists Shellshag just signed to Don Giovanni Records, which will be lucky to survive the duo’s no-holds-barred lo-fi lunacy. The two musicians might be a few cookies short of a baker’s dozen, so to speak, but they have it together enough to be able to formulate tour plans with new labelmates Screaming Females. The West Coast swing will start July 31 in Oakland and end August 15 in San Fran. Look for more Shagging on February 9, when they follow up their sold-out self-released debut, Destroy Me, I’m Yours, with a new album.

Till then, “Shut Up” and listen to one of their older songs:

Magnet finally clinched a new song from Absolutely Kosher oddities the Wrens, which the magazine has basically been stalking the past five months. Read the whole drama and hear the cacophonous new Kevi Wren demo, “Z,” right here. …

Largehearted Boy has beefed up his considerable array of Bonnaroo 2009 downloads - which already includes Of Montreal, the Mars Volta and dozens more artists - with sets from Tangiers Blues Band and Heartless Bastards. …

A.M. listening: Civil Civic’s “Less Unless,” which doesn’t have any words but nonetheless builds a compelling electro-rock narrative of sorts over its 4-minute stretch. (h/t The Needle Drop). …

Can the Pirate Bay really transform itself into a legit operation, a la Napster? Aversion has the latest. …

Another indie icon bites the dust? Punknews.org is suggesting that distribution giant Lumberjack Mordam - whose site ain’t working - has fallen like the mighty timber it was(/is?). If the news is true, it could be the biggest hit to the indie-rock world since Touch and Go ended distribution for its labels earlier this year. …

Paste has cobbled together “Thirteen Surprisingly Enjoyable Songs About the End of the World,” including the Thermals‘ “Here’s Your Future,” Bright Eyes‘ “Four Winds” and mo’. …

Alms for the poor: Bishop Allen is gifting the economically disadvantaged - or at least those averse to paying for music - with two tracks from their recently released Dead Oceans disc, Grrr … . RCRD LBL is hosting for download ”The Ancient Commonsense of Things,” a bouncy song that is way deeper than it sounds (the tune is based on G.K. Chesterton’s “Lunacy and Letters”); and the violin-infused “Dimmer” (we’ll leave it to you to decide whether focal lyric “I would choose the darkest horse/ That’s the horse I’d ride” is equally deep). And because we love you, here’s a third tune, “Shanghaied,” from the neo-Pavement posse’s 13-track release:

U.K. indie behemoth FatCat Records - purveyor of all things heady - will send four of its agents crawling across the pond in September. The Twilight Sad, We Were Promised Jetpacks, Frightened Rabbits and Brakesbrakesbrakes - the Glasgow shoegaze scene in sum, pretty much - will dance across the U.S. from September 13 in Morrison, Colorado, until the 29th in Orlando, Florida. The double-decker bus will also be chugging across the East Coast and Midwest, but minus the scared hares. The Sad will be trying to build momentum for the September 22 unveiling of Forget the Night Ahead, which they started to do here earlier this year opening for kindred spirits Mogwai. First single “I Became a Prostitute” will drift into stores in 7-inch and digital form on August 3 - although it’s already streamable on the band’s MySpace page. Troop leader James Graham was forthright about his expectations for the tune, telling Drowned in Sound, “Just the title alone will have scuppered any chance that little ditty ever had of getting played on the radio.” Take a few more licks of the new album below:

“Reflection of the Television”:

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An acoustic run-through of “Made to Disappear” by Graham and guitarist Andy MacFarlane, performed for a non-audience of random passersby:

The Fly - `Made To Disappear` FlyTV In The Courtyard on MUZU.