You'll be seeing lots and lots of best/worst-of-the-decade lists between now and the end of the year, as various publications count down their highlights and lowlights of whatever you care to call the years between 2000 and 2009. Pitchfork is getting a jump on things with a list of its top 200 albums of the decade, unveiling numbers 151-200 today.

There's some Triangle content, with Mountain Goats (Durham resident John Darnielle's working handle) coming in at No. 176 with their 2002 masterwork "Tallahassee." And Durham-based Merge Records has the first two of what will no doubt be many slots in the countdown, at No. 159 (Destroyer) and 179 (Camera Obscura).

ADDENDUM (10/12/09): The Uncut 150.

Merge Records co-owners Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance are doing a series of bookstore readings for their new tome, which traces the history of the duo's two-decade-old record label -- including Thursday night at Raleigh's Quail Ridge Books. I'll be there to play a very small role, introducing them to start the program. I promise I'll be brief, so come on out. That's 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Quail Ridge, 3522 Wade Ave. in Raleigh.

ADDENDUM (9/18/09): How it went. 

Music-related books are a subject that's near and dear to my heart, and we have quite a confluence of book events coming up over the next few weeks. It starts tonight, and the schedule goes like this:

"The Girls Guide To Rocking" (7:00 tonight, Nightlight/Chapel Hill) -- Author Jessica Hopper will read from her book, a how-to guide on starting a band, aimed at girls ages 10 to 16; and then all-girl bands Pink Flag, Ghost Bees and Katie Stelmanis will play.

"A Fortunate Age" (3:30 p.m. Sept. 9, Bull's Head Bookshop, UNC-Chapel Hill; 7 p.m. Sept. 10, Regulator/Durham; 2 p.m. Sept. 11, McIntyre's/Pittsboro; 12:20 p.m. Sept. 12, NC Literary Festival, UNC-Chapel Hill) -- Various local reference points figure into Joanna Smith Rakoff's novel, including Merge Records. She'll give a whirlwind series of readings throughout the Triangle.

"Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues" (1:30 p.m. Sept. 13, NC Literary Festival, UNC-Chapel Hill; 7 p.m. Oct. 29, Regulator/Durham) -- The book's publication date isn't until November, but author Bill Ferris will give previews at these events.

"Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, The Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small" (7 p.m. Sept. 15, Regulator/Durham; 3:30 p.m. Sept. 17, Bull's Head Bookshop/Chapel Hill; 7:30 p.m. Sept. 17, Quail Ridge/Raleigh) -- Merge co-owners Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance will discuss the history of their record label, which celebrated its 20-year anniversary last month.

So to answer your first question about XX Merge: Nope, still no Arcade Fire, no-shows once again. And it still didn't matter because Saturday's fourth-night festivities once again featured an absolutely captivating act in the middle of the program.

This time, it was singer/songwriter M. Ward, who trades in spectral late-night ruminations that are long on atmosphere. Ward's latest wrinkle is to add the further dimensions of crushing volume and a rollicking backbeat, which sounds like a recipe for a mess. But the wonder of it was that Ward was just as evocative doing stomp-alongs, especially "Roll Over Beethoven" (which he's been covering for a while to other-worldly effect). Ward's She & Him partner Zooey Deschanel appeared onstage during the encore to run through the Beatles' "Birthday." She didn't do much beyond a few backup vocal flourishes, but it was a cool little star-power moment.

XX Merge concludes tonight with She & Him playing UNC-Chapel Hill's Memorial Hall, and one supposes that the aforementioned Arcade Fire could turn up there. But that's unlikely, and quite frankly unnecessary. XX Merge has been pretty great even without the label's biggest act, and I'm hugely bummed that I missed Lambchop the other night (by many accounts, the best set of the event). So now I've got even more incentive not to miss Lambchop's Nov. 13 show at Duke, on a bill with one of my all-time favorites.

ADDENDUM (7/29/09): Spin's take.

XX Merge, the celebration of local label Merge Records' 20-year anniversary, kicked off Wednesday night in Carrboro. Click through for a report, plus some back verbiage pertaining to the highlight of the evening.

There's been precious little good news about the record industry in recent years, which makes the story of local label Merge Records all the more heartwarming. The label is marking its 20-year anniversary this month with a series of events, some of which you can read about in a feature in Sunday's paper.

Even though Merge has made Billboard's top-10 more than once, it's still a small business where networking counts for something. Ivan Howard of Merge act Rosebuds recalls how his band wound up signed to Merge, via an interaction with co-owner Mac McCaughan.

"I had sent them a demo and got back the standard form letter: 'Thanks for your submission, we'll listen when we get a chance,'" says Howard. "Then Mac was looking for a band to open for a Portastatic show and said he liked the EP he had at the office, and he asked who was putting it out. 'I, uh, sent it to you to put out -- I hope,' I said. 'Let me talk to Laura [Ballance] and see what she thinks,' he said. That was all it took.

"Everything is what you make of it, and Merge allows bands to make their own way," Howard adds. "That can be good or bad, it all comes down to the choices you make. But they just support what you do, which can spoil you -- the fact that somebody actually believes in what you do and not just the money."

There's plenty more where that came from in the feature in Sunday's paper. Also, WUNC-TV is running a feature on Merge on its "North Carolina Now" program, Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. And you can take a listen to this recent NPR feature, or preview the upcoming Merge history book. 

ADDENDUM: Here's that WUNC-TV feature. 

In its early days, Merge Records had to depend on the kindness of its peers to survive -- most notably Chicago-based Touch and Go Records, which served as Merge's main distributor when the label was moving from seven-inch singles to full-length albums in the early '90s. Nearly two decades later, Durham-based Merge is one of the most prosperous and respected independent labels in the land. But Touch and Go has fallen on hard times. The label announced on Wednesday that it is closing its distribution operation, prompting the statement below from Merge co-owner Mac McCaughan.

Touch and Go basically allowed Merge to exist as something other than a singles label... We did our first full-length (the Superchunk "Tossing Seeds" comp) in 1992 because Corey [Rusk] agreed to take on Merge as a label under the Touch and Go umbrella. We've worked with Touch and Go since then -- 16 years -- and they are the most straight-up and ass-busting-for-music-they-love people we know.

It's a sad day for music, independent music and punk rock in particular, and the music business as we know it in the real world.

Back in the early 1990s, Mac McCaughan was a guy in a band who ran a small record label on the side. He's still got a band, Portastatic (and occasionally Superchunk). But that once-small label takes up a lot more time. By now, Merge Records is one of the most reputable record companies in America, working with some of the biggest names in the indie-rock universe. So steering that ship is a full-time job for McCaughan and Merge co-founder Laura Ballance.

"Laura and I have different things we do with Merge," McCaughan says. "For myself, a lot of it is making decisions, answering questions on the phone, e-mail -- like most jobs, you know. It also involves conceptualizing things. We don't tend to do things too far in advance, there's no five-year plan. But we do have to look into the future: What do we want next year to look like? Who's working on records now? Who will be done when and how do we space them out? What do we want to do that's bigger than individual releases?"

One of those larger projects is a 20-year-anniversary box set drawn from Merge's catalog, curated by a wide range of friends and peers including David Byrne, author Jonathan Lethem, comedian Zach Galifianakis and chef David Chang. Meantime, Portastatic will play Saturday in Raleigh, opening for Magnetic Fields.

For more, see this interview with McCaughan.

For all its impressive chart accomplishments of the past two years, Durham-based Merge Records has yet to win a Grammy Award (a milestone that another Triangle label, Haw River-based Yep Roc Records, achieved this year). But a Merge album did just win the Polaris Music Prize in Canada, given annually to the best Canadian full-length album as determined by an 11-judge panel. Caribou's 2007 Merge release "Andorra" is this year's winner, earning $20,000 (in Canadian dollars) for Caribou mastermind Dan Snaith.

Durham-based Merge Records, purveyors of music both exceedingly cool and exceedingly weird, will turn 20 years old in 2009. To mark the occasion, the label is releasing a massive box set that will be available by subscription only. "Score! Merge Records: The First 20 Years" will be a series of 14 "custom-curated compilations" drawn from the Merge catalog, picked by the likes of Peter Buck, film director Phil Morrison and David Byrne.

Pre-orders begin Sept. 8. Only enough discs will be manufactured to fill orders made through the end of this year, so this should be quite a collector's item.

(Via Pitchfork.)