Back in March, Carey Mer­cer was fea­tured on Phon­ing It In, a weekly radio pro­gram on WMBR Cam­bridge and WBSR Prov­i­dence, in which musi­cal guests lit­er­ally per­form over the phone. Mer­cer did some old Frog Eyes mate­r­ial, three new (pre­sum­ably) Frog Eyes songs (“Ambas­sador,” “Car­a­van Break­ers,” and “Future Fortress”), and a song from the upcom­ing debut of his Bejar/Krug col­lab, Swan Lake (“The Par­ti­san But He’s Got To Know”). The sound qual­ity is under­stand­ably awful, but you can think of it as charm­ing if you want.

The Phon­ing It In blog is worth sub­scrib­ing to, as the show fea­tures some inter­est­ing per­for­mances. Hard­core Frog Eyes fans will also want to check out don’t laugh don’t choke, a fan­tas­tic resource with news, bootlegs, a forum, and more.

Update: This post has been ren­dered obso­lete as a result of the named tracks being removed from Swan Lake’s MySpace. Keep an eye on it though, as they are likely to return.

The inces­tu­ous Cana­dian music scene is dan­ger­ously approach­ing crit­i­cal mass with its lat­est col­lab­o­ra­tion, one between lit-rock pow­er­houses Dan Bejar of Destroyer/New Pornos and Carey Mer­cer of Frog Eyes. They’ve even let their lit­tle brother Spencer Krug (Frog Eyes/Wolf Parade) tag along! Novem­ber 21 will see the release of Swan Lake’s debut LP Beast Moans on Jag­jaguwar records, sneak­ing in just before 2007 to ensure prime place­ment on everyone’s year-end lists. The first pro­mo­tional track, “All Fires,” has been float­ing around for a while now, and just today two more songs, “The Par­ti­san But He’s Got To Know” and “The Free­dom,” appeared on the band’s MySpace profile.