Wilco is encouraging everyone who is eligible to vote in this November's all-important US Presidential election to register now and head out to the polls on Tuesday, November 4. For anyone who pledge to do so, the band is offering a free download of a beautiful, live rendition of Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released," recorded in concert with Fleet Foxes this summer. Wilco has also signed on to perform this October at the 22nd annual Bridge School benefit concert organized by Neil Young, with whom Wilco will tour this winter.

Glenn Kotche joins Kronos Quartet at the Ravinia Festival's Martin Theatre in Highland Park Wednesday night for the Chicago premiere of Anomaly, a piece he wrote for the Quartet. Also included on the program from Kronos are a number of Chicago premieres, including that of John Adams's Fellow Traveler. The Chicago Sun-Times recommends the event, calling the Kotche-Kronos pairing "a collaboration waiting to happen," given the group's ever-adventurous search for new works outside the typical string-quartet mold and the drummer's own diverse musical interests.

Wilco and The Black Keys were among the highlights of the Outside Lands Festival this past weekend, with tens of thousands of music fans flooding San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. SPIN captured two songs from The Black Keys' opening-night performance on video. The San Jose Mercury News writes of Wilco's set: "Guitarist Nels Cline is a monster, and this lineup brilliantly balances the gentle, reassuring music Jeff Tweedy could make with his eyes closed and the challenging, difficult elements that have endeared Wilco to critics and urban hipsters."

Wilco continues its US summer tour through the end of this week, playing its final Stateside gig of the tour at the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on Sunday. This past Monday, Wilco performed at the Red Butte Garden, which the Salt Lake Tribune calls "one of the best—if not the best—show of the summer." The band has also announced a string of dates this December supporting rocker Neil Young in Canada and the US.

It was a remarkable week for Wilco shows, with two stand-outs coming from nearly three-hour sets each at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts, on Tuesday, and Brooklyn's McCarren Park Pool the following night. The Boston Globe says the crowd at Tanglewood witnessed "a pitch-perfect tangle of earthy comforts and perilous adventure, during a stellar set from the planet's most radical roots band ... a phenomenally dynamic machine." The New York Press says the Brooklyn set showed that the band's evolution from alt.country pioneers "has brought us one of the best rock bands alive today."

Kronos Quartet returns to Tanglewood this Thursday, coincidentally just two days after label mates Wilco. Highlights of the program include works by Sigur Rós, John Zorn, and Steve Reich. The Boston Globe's David Weininger spoke with Kronos's David Harrington about the Quartet's vital role in the creation of new music and asserts: "They essentially created their own avant-garde." Weininger concludes: "Harrington's musical curiosity remains undimmed after 35 years."

After performing at the Virgin Mobile Fest in Baltimore this weekend, Wilco gears up for its performance at Tanglewood in Western Massachusetts tomorrow night. The Daily Gazette out of Schnectady, New York, more than an hour away, says "Wilco is worth the trip." Next to a sold-out show at Brooklyn's McCarren Park Pool. With all the travel, Wilco is also making an effort to reduce its environmental impact with a new ride-sharing initiative. Also, label mate David Byrne has his own ideas for reducing congestion, promoting bike use.

The Black Keys played the opening day of Lollapalooza in Chicago on Friday in a set that Time Out Chicago reports featured the band's signature "folky-blues, [which] breaks into blown-out acid riffage." Metromix Chicago says that hometown band Wilco's Saturday set showed that the city "has a lot to thank Wilco for." Over the next two weeks, each band will make its way to Brooklyn's popular McCarren Park Pool, which, as the New York Times reports, will transition back to its original use after this summer's shows.

Kronos Quartet Artistic Administrator Sidney Chen recently spoke with the Future of Music Coalition for a podcast, in which he discusses the role the internet has played in the life of Kronos. From allowing for greater connectivity with existing fans and accessing new audiences via social networks and blogs, to opening the Quartet to new sounds and even new collaborations, the freedom and openness of the internet has had a significant impact on the group. "Having an open internet has provided inspiration to Kronos," says Chen. "We don't hear the world in a boundaried way, and the internet has allowed us to remove a lot of those boundaries."

While Wilco's next scheduled tour date is a couple months away, folks are still talking about the band's May 14 show that took over the streets of downtown Lawrence, Kansas. The venue was a makeshift stage set up where 10th Street meets New Hampshire, and JamBase's Nathan Rodriguez writes that it was a "cause for celebration" among the locals.

Wilco set in for a three-night residency at the The Pageant in St. Louis starting last Thursday. The sold-out shows marked the last tour dates from the band till the end of July, and, reports Daniel Durchholz in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "Thursday's set dipped deep into Wilco's catalog and demonstrated the emotional depth and musical breadth of one of America's great bands."