Just the other night, a tidbit in the New Yorker about Harper Simon's self-titled debut caught my eye — mainly because the album was recorded with American Studios session alums Gene Chrisman and Mike Leech. What slipped my attention was the news that Simon was performing at the Hi-Tone Cafe tonight, after a month-long residency at Los Angeles' famed Largo nightclub.

The son of the iconic Paul Simon (and the subject matter of tunes such as "St. Judy's Comet" and, yes, "Graceland"), Harper updates Sweethearts of the Rodeo-era Byrds and Dylan's Nashville oeuvre with the help of legendary producer Bob Johnston, who manned the control board for Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, Nashville Skyline, Blonde on Blonde and John Wesley Harding; the Man in Black's Hello, I'm Johnny Cash; Leonard Cohen's Songs From a Room; and Simon & Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, and Bookends.

After Midtown label Goner Records dropped the King Khan & BBQ Show's self-titled debut album five years ago, plenty of locals jumped on board the party wagon helmed by this Berlin-meets-Montreal duo, currently in the midst of a relentless tour promoting the release of Invisible Girl, just released on In the Red Records.

Sure, King Khan and BBQ's pastiche of Little Richard-inspired falsetto runs anchored with punk rock sing-along choruses makes for a great reason to get out of the house tonight. However, my money's on tour openers Those Darlins, who came from nowhere (okay, Murfreesboro) and have recently exploded on the national scene, thanks to scorching appearances at the Scion Garage Fest and at SXSW and rave write-ups in Paste, the New Yorker and even Oprah Magazine. No strangers to Memphis, Jessi, Kelley and Nikki Darlin have volunteered their efforts for the Delta Girls Rock Camp and played countless gigs in town, most recently with the Magic Kids last April.

Rude, raucous and brilliant, off-the-cuff musicians, Those Darlins are the aural equivalent of the babysitter you wish you had when you were twelve — willing to teach you how to smoke, cuss and kiss, before loading you up on ice cream and shots of your folks' whiskey.

Download "Wild One," from their self-titled debut, here.

And don't miss tonight's show at the Hi-Tone. Admission is $10 and doors open at 9 p.m.

And so it finally ends. Remind me to choose a smaller number the next time a decade ends. Coming up in a few weeks: The Decade in Film, a collective affair with a very different format.

3.

I've listened to "Love And Theft" more in the last four months than I've listened to the supposedly sacred Time Out of Mind in the last four years. Casually profound and profoundly casual, this startling return to form reminds us that the key to Dylan's greatness has always lain less in the weighty pronouncements that got him dubbed the "Voice of a Generation" than in the warm, open tone of his music, the freeness of his vocals, and the consistent humor and wit of his lyrics. It is (Oh no! Here it comes!) his best record since Blood On the Tracks.

Song Sample: "Summer Days"

Oxford, Mississippi, bassist Laurie Stirratt, best known around these parts for her work with alt-country trailblazers the Hilltops and Blue Mountain, pictured above, is now cooking up a storm at Tallulah's Kitchen.

The New Orleans born, Mandeville-raised rocker-turned-chef is showing off her Louisiana roots via a rotating menu, which includes red beans and rice, chicken and sausage jambalaya, crawfish etouffee, and homemade Italian meatballs. The restaurant-within-a-restaurant — TK's shares a kitchen with Catfish One — is located at 2028 University Avenue, just a mile east of Oxford's town square.

Breaking into the Top 5 now, with only one more post to go. With albums 7-5 on the list and classic singles leaping from a couple of those albums, 2000 was a very good year.

6.

I admire most of Harvey's albums, and all of them up to this point. But Stories from the City, Stories From the Sea is the only one I love — probably because it's so full of affection itself. After years of tormented, severe, magnificent English blues-rock of her own imagining, Harvey crossed the Atlantic and made her love album: A woozy, breezy, blushing but endlessly rocking romantic ramble through Manhattan and Brooklyn. In truth, I hadn't listened to it front-to-back in a few years before pulling it out during a summer vacation road trip this year. And I was taken aback at how gloriously well it had held up.

Song Sample: "You Said Something"

Like his former cohort Judy Peiser, with whom he co-founded the Center for Southern Folklore, Ferris understands how to be a true folklorist: He disappears into the background and, with tape recorder and camera, documents his subjects in their natural light.

In this week's issue of the Flyer, Leonard Gill reviews Ferris' newest book, Give My Poor Heart Ease. As Gill notes, the Mississippi-born Ferris, founder of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at Ole Miss and the former chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, who currently works at the Center for the Study of the American South at UNC, will return to his former stomping grounds — the Center for Southern Folklore — for a booksigning at 7 p.m. tomorrow.

The book's title comes from a 21-minute film produced by Yale University Media Design Studio with the Center for Southern Folklore back in 1975. (View it at Folkstreams.net.)

Meanwhile, the book itself is chock full of revelations, such as this first-person narrative from Otha Turner in his prime:

"I can dance. I can sing, ride horses, chop cotton and plow, whoop and holler, cut somersets, do all that stuff. I got two acres and two-tenths of land. I bought it. Scurrying hard, my labor paid for it. I paid one thousand for the land and 150 dollars for the house. Paid three hundred dollars to move the house. And I rent twelve acres and a half of cotton land."

The first of the final three posts.

9.

Sri Lankan-born world citizen M.I.A. mashes up Western pop (Modern Lovers, Pixies, Duran Duran) with Third World rhythms on this follow-up to her ecstatic debut Arular. Where the earlier record was an intensely pleasurable, beatwise brass-ring grab, Kala is a more rattled, woozy sonic miasma. Fantasizing about a Third World stick-up of First World wealth as she demands (or does she?) that soulja boys the world over toss away their guns; losing her mind in the midst of putting "people on the map who never seen a map"; falling in love on a Darfur tour, rapping joyfully with Aborigine kids: No album this year took in more of the world or did so with such a playful, disorienting rush of ideas.

Song Sample: "World Town"

Goner Records' Alley Party, rescheduled after a rainy October, is on for Barbaro Alley (Main Street between Union and Gayoso) at 5:30 p.m. today.

It's free, it's outdoors, and the current weather couldn't be better — plus, who hasn't missed the enigmatic Harlan T. Bobo, who spent the last several months in France, slinging ice cream and awaiting the birth of his firstborn son, Nino Bobo?

On a side note, if you haven't caught the Magic Kids yet, here's a perfect opportunity to do so. See why the rest of the world — including Red Kross genius Steven McDonald, who traveled to Gonerfest to see 'em, along with the powers-that-be at eMusic, Matador Records and U.K. label Stiff Records — is going bonkers for the Kids' Phil Spector-meets-punkish pop pastiche.

I’ve chosen to implement a completely different strategy for determining my Pearl Jam list than my last one, however. With U2, I listened to every album for a refresher and then made my list after the fact. For Pearl Jam, I have listened to each album, in order, and ranked each song as they played. (To wit: “Once” was number-one on my list until I listened to “Alive,” and then it dropped to two, until I listened to “Why Go,” when it dropped to three, and so on.)

Pearl Jam recently released a new album, Backspacer. I haven’t listened to it yet, and it seemed mildly appropriate to work up a list based on everything that came before it. Consider this a snapshot of my Pearl Jam opinions the day before I buy their next.

A note about eligibility: Pearl Jam has something like an open-source relationship with their fans. They’re prolific and they release scads of material in non-traditional formats such as fan-club extras, soundtracks, tributes, EPs, singles, official bootlegs, etc. In light of this, I created a list that assumed no studio Pearl Jam song was off-limits. That’s not to say I’ve heard everything there is out there. But I made a fairly concerted effort to access as much as is commonly available. Many rarities were collected on the band’s Lost Dogs two-disker, and I highly recommend it to anybody who’s into Pearl Jam enough to still be reading the words I’m typing here.

I ruled ineligible all live versions, because I just ain't got that kind of time on my hands. This is Knowledge Bowl season, yaknow.

Pearl Jam Top 40 Songs:

With an unprecedented amount of concerts scheduled over the next four weeks, November is shaping up as Get Your Ass Off the Couch and Go Out Month. My bank account is already hurting just considering the expense, but check out these highlights from the calendar at the Hi-Tone Cafe:

On Thursday, Nov. 5th, a solo performance from Small Faces organist Ian McLagan, who, like Booker T. Jones, delivers soulful chords via a Hammond B3. On Saturday night, an appearance from R&B wildman Andre Williams (pictured above), who has somehow managed to outlive cohorts Ike Turner and Nathaniel Mayer. The return of Germany-Canada garage rock duo King Khan & BBQ on Nov. 10th. Japanese cuties Shonen Knife (Nov. 11th) and legendary New Zealanders the Axemen (Nov. 9th). The unlikely, yet oh-so-perfect pairing of Dexter Romweber and Charlie Louvin on Nov. 21st. And, last-but-not-least, homecoming gigs from the like of Harlan T. Bobo (Nov. 25th) and the Reigning Sound (Nov. 14th).

With upcoming Minglewood Hall dates by Neko Case, Son Volt, and Dan Auerbach (Nov. 4th, 17th, and 20th, respectively), this bests even the typical spring influx of touring acts heading to and from SXSW.