During a trip to WNYC’s Soundcheck in anticipation of his Age Of Adz shows at Prospect Park, Sufjan Stevens performed “Pleasure Principle,” the final pretty bit of 25-minute Adz closer “Impossible Soul.” The National’s Bryce Dessner and two backup singers joined him.

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This is an off-year for Sufjan’s Xmas-album-release schedule, but the Dessner brothers of Bluzzbood, Ohio have helped bridge the gap this holiday season by leaking a couple of previously unheard yuletide treats via their guest DJ stint on the BBC 6. The leak of these Christ songs likely have Sufjan’s blessing because they are Christ songs, and the Dessners are his friend, and also because the Dessners appear on the tracks along with the other headline-notable, Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry. You can hear both “Silent Night” and “Barcarola” over at Consequence Of Sound. Apparently both come from sessions set to tape years ago.

When we posted about MusicNOW a couple weeks ago, I mentioned I first learned about the Ohio festival via a 2007 video of Sufjan Stevens’ moving take on “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.,” which he did with the assistance of Bryce Dessner. This year, on the last night of the event, Dessner accompanied Justin Vernon on guitar for a cover of Tom Petty’s “Crawling Back To You.” Member of yMusic handle the strings. Vernon’s arrangement adds a Minimalist flow and flourish to Petty’s original.

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Shaky YouTube video of Sufjan Stevens performing a haunting “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” at MusicNOW in Cincinnati is what first put the festival in the back of my mind. (That and the city’s historic Memorial Hall as an unmistakable backdrop.) The take is from 2007. Bryce Dessner, who sits in with Stevens in that clip, started the festival in 2006. (Right, it’s now in its fifth year.) Unlike most multi-day music happenings that attempt to roll quickly through abridged sets like well-oiled nostalgia machines, MusicNOW encourages collaboration and risk. This year’s three-day installment included a lot of that. It took place Tuesday (3/30) until last night (4/1) and included performances from Joanna Newsom, Robin Pecknold, St. Vincent, yMusic (performing a commission written by Annie Clark), the amazing saxophonist Colin Stetson (he gets weirdly black metal with his tones), and a solo Justin Vernon. Well, Vernon wasn’t exactly solo — he was joined by Bryce and Aaron Dessner. And Annie Clark. We couldn’t make it, but Chris Glass could. He has the beautiful photos to prove it. We’ve also video of Pecknold performing what sounds like a new song.

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A few weeks ago we posted an early take of “When You Were Born” (aka “When Yer Born”) from The Long Count. At the time, Aaron Dessner told us the track would eventually include Kim Deal singing on it. Now that we know the piece focuses on twins via the Dessners and the Deals, the Cincinnati Reds’ second back-to-back World Series victories in 1976 (the year the Dessners’ were born), Popul Vuh’s Mesoamerican “ball game” (aka “a reenactment of the creation of the universe,” according to The Long Count artist Matthew Ritchie), and that the project combines a recording of the 1976 World Series with the first two books of Popol Vuh, etc., the context of that track makes sense. (The Long Count‘s title comes from Mayan cosmology’s “vast, millennial calender,” which ends/starts again/resets on 12/12/12.) Last night the brothers Dessners’ collaboration with Ritchie opened at BAM and folks got to see how all of this worked off the page. If you weren’t there, take a look at the photos taken by Julieta Cervantes that find the Dessners, guest vocalists Matt Berninger, Shara Worden, and Kim and Kelley Deal and various other players performing on a stage and in front of projections designed/created by Ritchie. There are two remaining performances at 8PM on 10/30 and 10/31. Before the performance on Saturday — full-disclosure, etc. — I’m moderating a discussion at 6PM with the Dessners and Ritchie at BAM’s Hillman Attic Studio. You can get info about all of this at BAM. Here’s a preview in the form of “Bull Run,” (featuring Kelley Deal on vocals) recorded at the University of Illinois’ Krannert Cente last month.

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One last gargantuan batch of photos from an exhausting, exhaustive week of NYC showgoing. On Friday Jessica Amaya joined us at Doveman‘s record release party at the Elevated Hole, a Chelsea loft owned by the Yale English Dept. chair Michael Warner. The room was a perfect foil for Doveman’s candlelit Conformist material, along with guest performances by Sean Lennon, Bryce Dessner, Dawn Landes, Charlotte Kemp Muhl, Jennifer Charles, and Justin Bond. Afterward she trekked to Pianos for the Terrible Records showcase, featuring a performance by Acylics and DJ set by label co-head Chris Taylor, while I came back to Williamsburg for the xx and School Of Seven Bells at MHOW, and Chromeo at Brooklyn Bowl. Meanwhile Kyle Dean Reinford took his camera to the Matador/My Open Bar at the Suffolk for Cold Cave, Glasser, Harlem, Lemonade, Tanlines, and Ted Leo, along with sets from Pete & The Pirates and Kiss Kiss at the Beyond Race Party at Crash Mansion.

Saturday offered CMJ the chance to catch all those P4K-approved bands here for the week in one place, at Market Hotel for the Ryan Schreiber-curated Showpaper benefit with sets from Bear In Heaven, Delorean, Cold Cave, Cymbals Eat Guitars, Highlife, Javelin, Real Estate, Small Black, Smith Westerns, and Surfer Blood. Kyle closed his fest out there, while Jessica hit Brooklyn Vegan’s day party at Pianos for Pete & The Pirates, Local Natives, Dent May and his mangificent ukulele, JBM, Sharon Van Etten, an excellent set from The Moondoggies, and Surf City, before closing out her week at Bowery Ballroom with Rain Machine, Sharon Van Etten (again), Stricken City, Violens, Imaad Wasif, and Three And Nine. I stopped by Mercury for a great set of songs/short skits from Dum Dum Girls, so there’s that, too.

Mixed in you’ll find some familiar faces via Polaroid by Pooneh Ghana.

Thanks to Kyle and Jessica for their tireless photography. Looking forward to catching up on sleep the rest of the year.

Recently Sufjan revealed he’s “at a point where I no longer have a deep desire to share my music with anyone, having spent many years imparting my songs to the public.” Later that day, high-quality video of three mind-bending new Sufjan Stevens tunes took over all the websites you read. Add those to the pending release of his BQE boxset, a collab with Clogs, and the news he’s made an instrumental album with his stepdad (and Asthmatic Kitty co-founder) Lowell Brams and the National’s Bryce Dessner. For a man with such a way with them, sometimes it’s hard to take Sufjan at his word.

That brings us to last night’s show at MHOW (the last time we saw him he was tie-dyed; this time, just tie-d), the third of four NYC nights and his first at the Music Hall, a room he would say “really freaks me out, it’s like Bowery Ballroom on steroids.” It wasn’t the only time he confessed to be being freaked out, either; after opening with full band for the epic and expansive new torch song “Impossible Souls,” Sufjan sidled up to the upright piano for a solo “Concerning The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois” and stopped it three lines in, unable to read his lyric sheets in the dim, scene-setting blue stage lighting. “I haven’t sung this song in like a year-and-a-half,” he said, offering a money back guarantee and later joking “the darkness freaks me out; I know we’re killing the mood, but high production is so passé now. It’s all about keeping it real.” It was an abrupt hiccup in a night that was surprisingly full of them:

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This is the first available full piece of music from Bryce and Aaron Dessner and Matthew Ritchie’s BAM-commissioned The Long Count, which runs 10/28-31 at the 2009 Next Wave Festival. As the breathless BAM copy tells us:

In an inspired collision of creative worlds, three inexhaustibly original artists–brothers Bryce Dessner and Aaron Dessner of indie rock royalty The National and omnivorous visual art phenomenon Matthew Ritchie–combine talents to create a song-filled myth about the beginning of time. A feast of images, instrumentals, and songs thick with primordial mystery, The Long Count pairs Ritchie’s protean forms with a twelve-piece orchestra and the Dessners’ gothic mix of electric and orchestral sounds.

Guest vocals will be provided by the Deal sisters (twins rule, see), Shara Worden, and Matt Berninger, but “We Were Born” is a bit of vocal-free Reich-esque piano prettiness. The distorted guitar lift-off’s a nice touch.

UPDATE: It turns out the MP3 we posted yesterday was an early demo. Aaron Dessner passed along an updated version and let us know eventually the song will, in fact, include Kim Deal singing on it. For now, here’s this.

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The fear with any supertalent variety show like last night’s Dark Was The Night live event is that the appeal on paper will far outstrip the appeal of having your ass glued to a seat for four hours. And it was a very impressive piece of paper. But like the record that inspired it, last night’s concert somehow played even better in the execution. And like the record, it seemed people were playing for keeps, along with playing for charity, knocking out unforgettable moments all night — from seeing kindred spirits David Byrne and Dave Longstreth harmonize near the open to watching the assemblage of all-stars smile in awe as Sharon Jones hijacked and tore down the house with the closing “This Land Is Your Land” superjam. (That photo above is one of a few from that moment, in honor of Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday being celebrated over at a superconcert at MSG. It started as a staid strummer, and then Sharon happened.) We’ve got like a 100 photos (obvs), and video of that “This Land” superjam, and exhaustive accompanying notes for your mind’s eye:

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The National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner curated this one, and its contributor list reads like the contents of your iPod, including Arcade Fire, Beirut, Beach House, Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear, Andrew Bird, Antony, MMJ, Feist, Ben Gibbard, Spoon, Sufjan, Yeasayer, Yo La Tengo, the National, and a massive etc. All tracks are exclusives, and proceeds benefit the Red Hot Organization, “an international charity dedicated to raising funds and awareness for HIV and AIDS.” Dark Was The Night is out 2/17 on double CD (or triple LP) via 4AD.