Tonight is one of those murderously complicated music-going decisions that turns out to be much easier than you thought thanks to circumstances beyond your control. Through the miracle of self-release to indie-distriubtion, it’s likely that both headliners will probably have the honor of having the same album showing up on 2007 and 2008 year-end:

• In one corner, Upper East Side Ivy meets Kwassa Kwassa and wraps it around Western Euro classicism and turns up with infectious pop songs. Vampire Weekend seem to have catapulted from a CD-R band to SNL musical guest status in no time flat. While I disagree with them about the utility of the oxford comma, with the release of their official full-length eponymous disc this winter, I have forgiven them that point and fallen happily under their spell. The lineup is further sweetened by the presence of YACHT, Jona Bechtolt’s (flickr-blockr and macbook air envelope case inventor) solo glitchrock performance art spectacle. $10, 8pm [neumos]
• Bon Iver is what happens when Justin Vernon packed up his possessions and song ideas and spent a snowy winter isolated in a cabin near a Wisconsin artist colony. For Emma, Forever Ago is now out on Jagjaguwar and it is a work of solitary, haunting, yet accessible layered beauty. Stark and mostly acoustic, it is the perfect album for sitting on a train, reading a novel by Per Petterson in the rain. (Or maybe this is just me. Your ideal transport and reading material may vary, but the songs are fantastic either way.) With Phosphorescent, who, the last time I saw him/them played an entire set built of masterful loops with a creepy doll watching the audience the whole time. $10, 8pm [nectar]

Damn geography, time, and space for not allowing it to be possible to see both of these shows. But the choice is probably not so complicated. Vampire Weekend is sold out, Bon Iver isn’t quite yet. You do the math.