Largehearted Boy's Interesting CD Releases This Week

editor's note: Black Lips & Kanye West. That's all...

DOWNLOAD: Ani DiFranco - Both Hands (brand new studio version) (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Oakley Hall - No Dreams (MP3)

Whenever I hear the phrase "women doing it for themselves," I immediately think of Ani DiFranco. Her DIY ethic combined with her considerable songwriting skills (not to mention her artistic integrity) has made her one of my favorite singer-songwriters. This week she releases Canon, a two-CD career retrospective spanning her 19 albums.

Other albums I can wholly recommend include singer-songwriter Joe Henry's Civilians, Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, Film School's Hideout, former Delgado's member Emma Pollock's Watch The Fireworks, Mono's Gone: A Collection of EP's 2000-2007, Oakley Hall's I'll Follow You, Pinback's Autumn Of The Seraphs, and especially Vic Chesnutt's North Star Deserter. A lot of these albums can be heard in their entirety this week at AOL.

Holiday discs are starting to appear on the release lists, this week's entries include Joan Osborne's Christmas Means Love and Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Christmas Rock Classics, and the disc that most interests me, Monster Ballads: Xmas. I doubt if any of these discs will become one of my favorite holiday albums, but it's never too early to start building that holiday mix CD (mine doubles as an Xmas card).

Notable reissues this week include Cloud Cult's Advice from the Happy Hippopotamus, the three-disc limited edition of Pink Floyd: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, June Panic's Songs from Purgatory, Young Marble Giants: Colossal Youth (worthwhile for the bonus tracks alone), and yet another reissue of Elvis Costello: My Aim Is True, this one complete with a 1977 performance.

Have I left anything noteworthy off the list? What new music releases can you recommend this week? What should I avoid?