This year, Halloween in London provided for a truly haunting pairing. That's haunting in the "beautiful! goosebumps!" sense and not the poltergeist one, and it's entirely due to the much-hyped union of the London Symphony Orchestra with Grizzly Bear at the Barbican Centre.

For a band characterized by their fusion of bluegrass, country, and down and dirty punk rock, Nashville's Ryman Auditorium -- former home to the Grand Ole Opry and hallowed ground for country music -- is both a perfect fit and an unlikely proving ground for the Avett Brothers.

A good 24 hours before Phish hit the stage for their Halloween show -- the second of Festival 8's three-night stand at Indio, California's Empire Polo Club -- the rumors were flying fast and furious as fans tried to guess which full album the band might cover.

Eddie Vedder is a liar.

At the start of Pearl Jam's four-night stand at the Philadelphia Spectrum -- the last concerts ever at the historic arena, which is destined for demolition -- the singer pledged to the audience, "By Saturday night we're gonna try to play every song we know."

On paper, flame-haired 23-year-old Brit Florence Welch seems just one of a dozen would-be divas to wash up on our shores this year. Fortunately for her, and for all of us, Welch’s charms are not best experienced on paper. Rather, they are best experienced in the cozyish 550-capacity Bowery Ballroom on Manhattan’s Lower East Side on a grimly rainy Tuesday in October.

DIY icons Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance of Superchunk dropped by New York City's Housing Works Bookstore Friday for a reading from Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label that Got Big and Stayed Small, a new oral history about their revered 20-year-old label.

Tegan and Sara's new album is all about interpersonal tug-of-wars -- the occasionally opposing forces of remaining true to oneself and another -- but there was no doubt Sunday night that the band and their fans were all pulling in the same direction.

How's this for a great concept: The words of legendary Beat poet Jack Kerouac set to song by a pining indie-pop prince and an alt-Americana forefather. And when Ben Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie, The Postal Service) and Jay Farrar (Son Volt, Uncle Tupelo) came together at Los Angeles' El Rey Theatre on Friday night, their performance felt about as organic as the text that inspired it.

An hour into David Gray's show Friday night at Boston's Citi Wang Theatre, there was a nice surprise: Despite the heavy flow of chilled Chardonnay, there hadn't been a single audience call-out for "Babylon," Gray's ubiquitous hit from 2000 that catapulted the British singer/songwriter to international acclaim.