This is the sort of near-autumn Thursday that either makes the music fan delight in the plentiful bounty ahead of him, or sit in the corner twitching in agony and occasionally banging his head against the wall at the thought of choosing between the embarrassment of riches playing near-simultaneously:

• I listen to Wolf Parade and the back-to-back “Dear Sons and Daughters of Holy Ghosts” and “I’ll Believe in Anything” on Apologies to the Queen Mary left me pretty confident that I’m a Spencer guy. This was reenforced even more with Sunset Rubdown’s Shut Up I Am Dreaming. Then Dan Boeckner’s side project, Handsome Furs, went and released Plague Park and I have to reconsider everything I thought I knew about my songwriter affections. I will probably have to settle for loving them both equally. Also on the bill: Johnny and the Moon, a side project of current Wolf Parader and former member of Make Up the Breakdown-era Hot Hot Heat Dante DeCaro, that could further upset my nonexistent ranking system. [crocodile]
• I’ve seen Peter Bjorn and John a couple times this year and am not surprised that they proved unstoppable [spbj]. They are endearing performers [mb] and I don’t care how many commercials or teen drama soundtracks their songs show up in — Writer’s Block generally and “Objects of My Affection” specifically will always have a place in my heart. (they’re also selling records while you eat pizza and drink beer or juice tonight at Sonic Boom’s General Store. Cute overload. [lineout]) With the Clientele, Marisa Nadler [showbox]
• A second night of epic, slowcore, indie from Low [tripledoor]
• Wayne Coyne gets friends from opening bands to dress up in furry costumes. He passes laser pointers out to the audience for spectacular visual effects. He descends from the sky in a floating plastic ball and rolls above the crowds on the Indio Polo Field. He douses himself with blood while wearing a white suit. He sings songs about death and Japanese girls trained to save us from evil robots. By the end of a Flaming Lips show you just want to hug all the strangers in the room and gain just a little bit of hope that the world just might not be going completely to hell in a handbasket. Yes, the Flaming Lips are in town tonight, too. [paramount]
• The Decibel Festival kicks off with Diplo, Switch, and Simian Mobile Disco. [neumos]

If you hadn’t guessed, I fall in to the twitching-in-the-corner school of decisionmaking and my skull is already starting to ache from all of the knocking against the wall and cursing the town’s promoters for not thinking to maybe have booked at least one of these shows on Friday or Saturday or even Sunday.