Rather than thinking of it as 2011 being halfway over, I prefer to see it as we're all halfway to my birthday {December 24th if it's not on your calendar already}. To celebrate, and take stock of this year's releases thus far, I've put together a mix of my favorite songs of 2011 {so far}.

This year has brought some predictably great albums from friends such as Mountain Goats, Okkervil River, BOAT, Matt & Kim, Telekinesis, Bright Eyes. I feel like I've been waiting for a fresh batch of songs from Brown Recluse for years. I love every note they play and having a two hearty releases in one year {Panoptic Mirror Maze and Evening Tapestry} makes me overjoyed.

Other bands, like When I Was 12 and Dangerous Ponies, I am thankful for crossing paths with for the first time this year.

And then there are the folks that have left me wanting more more more (I'm looking at you Oregon Bike Trails and Forbidden Friends)! Huge thanks to You Aint No Picasso for bringing Oregon Bike Trails to my attention. OBT fellow, singer/songwriter Zach Yudin, from Santa Monica, Ca., is quite the mysterious dude - only having a cassette tape release earlier this year (hand painted, limited to 50!) and a couple other MP3s swirling around the web.

Forbidden Friends, a side project by Thermals frontman Hutch Harris (with Michael Lerner of Telekinesis on drums and fellow Thermals Kathy Foster and Westin Glass backing him up), is still in the 7" only phase, and needless to say I'm counting down to a full album of FF stuff.

In short, I can't recommend the below songs and full releases enough. To help convince you of their brilliance, I made a virtual mix cd!

The tracklisting of my {hopefully very convincing} mix cd is:

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As anticpated, our first show at STG's new Neptune Theater was nothing short of an absolute success. Between the vibe of the venue and the bands themselves, we just could not get enough -- so much so that we stayed on until the very end of the night, cheering our approval for both. Okkervil River saw fit to bring over an hour of some honest-to-goodness indie rock to the stage, with a set full of face-meltingly tight selections from both their current and back catalog; while crowd pleasers Titus Andronicus brought all the noise, sweat, and big guitar.screamalong five people could have possibly mustered.

Julianna Barwick:

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We couldn't be more excited for our inaugural show at the Neptune this Saturday -- because none other than the mighty Okkervil River will be taking the stage, and we're planning to be there front and center (with bells on).

The combination of one of our favorite bands and the newest, most anticipated room-opening since Columbia City Theater has us chomping at the bit and ticking off the hours until show time, as this will likely be 2011's biggest and brightest example of two great tastes that taste great together. Emotionally speaking, it's the chocolate in the peanut butter moment we've been waiting for since news of the Neptune's reduxing process came to the surface earlier this year. And not only will we have a night with OKR on the docket, which could be taking place in a dilapidated flophouse and still be capable of melting our faces off, ps -- but we'll be seeing them perform fresh off the incredibly successful release of I Am Very Far.

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It's the Spring Cleaning Edition of our almost-once-a-month-ly Crafternoon. And you're invited!

If you're not yet familiar, Crafternoons are a chunk of a few hours where we get together, work on crafts, and listen to unreleased / brand new albums while (very politely) taking over a local cafe. This time around we'll be at Porchlight on Capitol Hill on Sunday, May 15th from 1-3p, listening to two of our favorite May 2011 new releases: the debut album of Seattle's very own twee-core trio, Seapony (which doesn't release until May 31st), and the freshly pressed gorgeousness of Okkervil River's I Am Very Far, which drops this Tuesday on Jagjaguwar.

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There's so much Okkervil River goodness going on about the 'nets, we almost don't even know where to start. First off, the band is going on tour. TOUR. Glorious t-o-u-r, with a date at Seattle's newest old venue, The Neptune (out in the good ol' U-District). First, though, they'll be making some stops at SXSW and popping over to Europe right quick -- full tour dates are listed after the jump.

Speaking of, there hasn't been a ton of official word about the Neptune, short of the collective sigh of relief that went up when the city heard that STG would be taking it over. Rather than speculate, we caught up with Amanda Bedell to get the skinny on the show and on what was going on behind those famous doors:

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It's been a busy day for news on the internet -- it's finally legal to talk about the Head and the Heart's hookup with Sub Pop, we're due for a three hour mini-snowpocalypse, everyone's a-buzz about the show at the Fremont Abbey tonight, and John Roderick is organizing a tweetup somewhere in the depths of central Florida.

While we break the rest of it down for you in easily-digestible one-post chunks, here's two favorites out of our seventeen favorite things that happened today: Okkervil River and Telekinesis both have new material out, which we're streaming on repeat courtesy of The Internet. Both are about to drop new albums, both (fingers crossed on the former) are gearing up to tour in the near future, and both tracks make us squee! with excitement at what they're about to dish us next.

Exhibit A: Okkervil River last night on Jimmy Fallon.

Pictured above at MFNW 2010, Will and Patrick (and the rest of the crew, along with AC Newman and a few members of the Roots) brought the house down last night on Jimmy Fallon, where they played a new song called "Wake and Be Fine" off of I Am Very Far {due out in May on Jagjaguwar}. The song's indie.waltz backbone marries perfectly Will Sheff's urgent, melodic vocals for that hopeful, new-era anthematic sound we've come to expect from the ladies and gents of OKR. It was downright exciting! (Really. We were clapping at our desks.) Head on over to the Jagjaguwar site to catch "Wake and Be Fine" for yourself and live the joy with us.

Exhibit B: Telekinesis on NPR.

Okkervil River's new album won't be out until May, but we've only got about a month to go before Telekinesis gives us their latest effort. It's called 12 Desperate Straight Lines and by the sounds of today's track, "You Turn Clear in the Sun," it's gonna be good. You can listen to the song over at NPR's All Songs Considered blog, where Robin Hilton sums our thoughts (and fractured hearts) up beautifully:

My music library isn't for the faint of heart.  If your will to live isn't what it used to be, or you're prone to depressive episodes, then you should probably stay away from most of the admittedly gloomy songs and albums in my collection.

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It's safe to say here at Three Imaginary Girls that we go to a lot of shows. Sometimes, two (or three) in one night, if there's more than one must-see happening going on about town. And so it's no surprise that in 2010 alone, just on my own, I managed to go to shoot at least two shows a week on average, attended another two dozen-ish (or so) sans camera, plus several festivals, house parties and a handful of KEXP in-studios. We're talking everything from nights at the Sunset and Neumos to four days in Portland for MFNW, out locally for long weekends at Bumbershoot and Sasquatch, and down to SXSW and back again.

On any given night there are plenty of shows taking place, in rooms across Seattle and across the country, where boys and girls and instruments and fans all convene inside four walls to make, appreciate, and experience live music -- but not all of them are Shows. When I reference shows in this post, I'm talking about the nights that we collectively See A Show, the nights that remind me us why we live in Seattle in the first place. Seeing A Show has the ability to alter the fabric of our respective existence, to leave us forever changed -- full of those everything-I've-ever-done-led-to-this-exact-right-now kinds of moments.

With a history timeline at the ready via flickr sets and hastily scrawled notes from stage right, I give you some of my greatest moments of 2010 as an appendix to the ever-popular top albums of the year lists that have been popping up all over our radars.

First place:
Neil Young (solo) at the Paramount

This might be construed as an easy out for a list-topper, but it was by far the most stupidly amazing few hours I spent in a venue all year. Not only was I among the lucky few that got to hang and shoot from the soundboard, but I also had the privilege of being allowed to watch the set after shooting (sans camera gear) from the third-level mezzanine. It may as well have been a live reel of Young in his prime, for how good he sounded -- without a doubt one of the top ten shows of my life, probably in the history of Ever.

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at Marymoor Park

On a typical overcast Friday night, The National and Okkervil River melted the faces off of the crowd at Marymoor Park. We've got the photos to prove it!

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Day two at MFNW: also known as Friday, September 10th. With tons of shows all over the city to choose from, we chose to spend our imaginary day with the folks over at KEXP for a series of kick-ass in-studios, and to focus on the highly anticipated Okkervil River / Bobby Bare Jr. and Tallest Man On Earth / Cave Singers sets that night.

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Musicfest, Musicfest Northwest, M-F-N-Dubs, Baby SouthBy -- whatever you want to call it, this past weekend's slew of shows down in Portland were nothing short of an absolute blast. We ran rampant through the quadrants for four days straight, shooting every show we could get our hands on, swooning exponentially more as each night passed. Here's just a fraction of what went on for the first half of the fest, during Thursday's and Friday's sets.

The big knock-it-out-of-the-park set on Thursday was David Bazan / Rocky Votolato set over at the Doug Fir. After the stage was properly warmed up all day with KEXP in-studios from the likes of the Cave Singers and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Rocky took the spotlight (after what was likely a gorgous set by Joshua Morrison, that we hit town a little too late to catch) and the room over for a good forty minutes, with a set that pleased both rabid forever-fans and fringe-fans alike. There was something almost infectious about his performance, as he surpassed the standard singer/songwriter storyteller vibe and instead delivered each song with a repectful, earnest, homage-y vibe that struck the major chords of our very own indie-lovin' heartstrings.

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