Hey, Passion Pit fans, there's a new single up on the band's MySpace page. "The Reeling" is more downtempo than the group's other songs, and not as immediately catchy, but I have high hopes for the album. The Boston electro-pop quintet is releasing its debut full-length, "Manners," on May 26, and one imagines there will be more tunes appearing online.

Passion Pit plays the Paradise June 18. Tickets go on sale March 30 -- get them quick!

Hey Lily Allen lovers, you can listen to the cheeky British pop star's new album, "It's Not Me, It's You," out next Tuesday, on her MySpace page. I'm listening to it right now, and while so far it seems less lively than her first release, I'm just happy to be back in Lily's orbit. Check for a review of the album in Monday's paper.

(Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

In an extraordinary egotistical, self-important turn, I've decided that I'm going to use the next few lines to tell you about 5 things that I'm really enjoying right now. And then I'm going to tell you about one thing that I'm not really enjoying right now.

This is the sort of thing that would be cool if the comments in this blog were turned on: you guys could spend hours telling me how extraordinarily egotistical and self-important I am. And I would be able to relate. Anyway, if you have a serious gripe, please drop a line to mshaer@boston.com, and I'll make an informal comments section in a subsequent post. Keep it clean.

Listening constantly to: "Trompe-l'oeil," the great full-length debut from French-Canadian rock quartet Malajube. If you can stomach music in a foreign language (cough, cough), "Trompe" is a tour de force mash-up of sunny pop, grinding punk-tinged anthems, and hook-laden... well, OK. You get the point. Hoping these guys'll make it to Boston soon. There weren't many albums released this year as smart as "Trompe-l'oeil".

Conspiracy theory that I recently pulled out of thin air: Chan Marshall (above) was denied a Grammy nomination 'cause she's a little crazy. Maybe not so conspiratorial: apparently, the same thing has been happening to Robert Downey Jr. and the Oscars for years. Blogs are great for unsubstantiated rumors!

The new Shins album is really good. Get excited.

Also listening constantly to: the "Stranger Than Fiction" soundtrack. Britt Daniel (above), from Spoon, orchestrated the whole thing; if you close your eyes really hard, you can pretend it's the follow-up to "Gimme Fiction".

Watching over and over again: The new Bob Dylan video, which was first aired on Slate.

I don't think that the Annuals -- the new internet buzz-band of, like, the minute -- are any good. Oh man! Oh yeah! I went there.

An interesting music post from Joshua Glenn, by way of the Brainiac blog:

Way back in 2002, shortly after the Ideas section was launched, I interviewed Brookline native Jody Rosen -- now firmly entrenched in Brooklyn, he's a music critic for The Nation and for Slate -- about his then-new book, White Christmas, a fascinating account of how a Jewish songwriter composed what quickly became America's most popular Christmas song. And last year, in another Ideas item, I quoted Rosen's blistering response to an offhand remark that NYT columnist David Brooks made about French rap. I also followed his blog, The Anachronist, which was dedicated to early-early pop music, until he stopped updating it.

Now Rosen is back on my radar with the release of Jewface, a compilation of vaudeville-era Jewish novelty songs (songs largely written by Jewish composers, including Irving Berlin, published by Jewish-owned Tin Pan Alley music firms, and performed by Jewish vaudevillians before cheering Jewish audiences) -- from 1905-1922 that he has collected over the years on wax cylinders and 78s. (The label is Reboot Stereophonic.) This is minstrelsy, Jewish-style: or "coarse ethnic lampoon as ethnic in-group entertainment," as Rosen has put it.

In the preceding paragraph, I purposely left out the adjective between "a" and "compilation" because any adjective used here would have to be a thoroughly dialectical one. Like "Borat," this collection is creepy-yet-hilarious, fascinating-yet-depressing, great-yet-terrible. "Perhaps the Most Offensive Album Ever Made," trumpets the CD cover -- and a couple of the song titles alone -- "When Mose With His Nose Leads The Band," "Cohen Owes Me 97 Dollars" -- make one tend to agree. But like many cultural phenomena that attract and repel simultaneously, I find "Jewface" enchanting; I'm obsessed with it.

Decide for yourself: Take a listen to Ada Jones's 1908 tune "Under the Matzos Tree," here.