It's been a full two years since The Last Rock and Roll Band released an album and blew up. Since then, we've had sporadic acoustic shows, months of reported recording, one Internet single, and one of the two brothers departing active duty. Marah as we knew it ceased to exist.

But now we have a new Web single, and we have a release date. The new song is Waiting for a Devil. Music here. Lyrics here. Writes Dave:

I played a borrowed "high string" guitar and one of my brother's rusty old harmonicas i found in a road case. "Waiting for a Devil" is fashioned after some "old time religion" songs that I've grown to really love (Washington Phillips, The Anglin Brothers, Blind Willie & Kate McTell). I sang this song with Christine and she played the Fender Rhodes electric piano. Johnny Pisano played the upright bass and later played electric response lines through a plate reverb. Martin played his drum kit through an old tube amp (but don't blame Marty, i made him do it).

Of course, the forum version of this has a postscript from Dave.

PS-Sorry for being out of touch. Sorry for not posting on the message board much. Sorry for not playing in Pittsburgh more often. Sorry for years of mismanagement and underpromotion. Sorry for not being the biggest band on earth. Sorry for not being Kings of Leon. Sorry for not being 17th runner up on American Idol and selling 13 million albums (this morning). Sorry for being smashed that time you and your fiancee came out to see us in Dallas in front of 30 people. Anyway, miss you guys too, still love ya, see you soon.

And an e-mail version of this intentionally buries the best news for us. "Barring any unforeseen disaster, the new MARAH album called 'Life is a Problem' will be released on June 1st, 2010 and we just know you're gonna love it… Our goal this year is to play all over the globe and have fun bringing cool Rock n Roll music to cool people. See how nice?"

The only music I have in greater quantity than Marah's is Bruce's, and I miss the Kids in Philly real bad. Bring on June and bring on that album. If we've met any time in the last two years, you don't know how much I love this band. I'm glad to have a new reason to tell you about them.

P.S. The departed brother? Maybe the best pic ever of happy life after a rock band. On his kid's first birthday, taken by his cool blogger wife.

For the first time in seemingly Internet forever, Marah has a new song to download, Put 'Em in the Graveyard. It sounds muddy and unedited in a variety of ways but is better than radio silence, and I hope there's more to come. The title of this post comes from the promotional e-mail, and the passage below comes from the site (home of the download).

Considering it's been such a long time since we shared a song and dance together we wanna put this out there for y'all…something new to enjoy and discuss while we wait for the other shoe to drop. We also promise that your $contribution will not be blown in some smoky pub but will aid us greatly in bringing a lot more "unreleased" Marah music into the world this year. Think of the mix tape possibilities.

"Put 'em in the Graveyard" is not a "single" in the "Love is a Battlefield", "Shock The Monkey" kinda way, but merely a new song we are quietly and independently "making available" now due to the timely Halloweenish connotation of its title. Get it?

Lyric bests include Billy Ripken and Bonilla cards and a hater shoutout: Gimme a lily for all the Kids in Philly, penny the eyes of my old albatross / And see their dames are lying there right beside 'em when the circling vultures swoop down to their cross / Like endless lovers of a silent fraud, they're birds of a feather, by God … Put 'em in the Graveyard.

That would be the Dave Sheinin- and Patrick Cooper-loved Rain Delay from Let's Cut the Crap and Hook Up Later on Tonight. "Good evening from Veterans Stadium in South Philadelphia where, unfortunately, it's raining very hard and we're stuck in the dreaded pre-game rain delay. … We were going to hear our national anthem performed by those velvety-throated teen idol sensations Marah, but that seems unlikely now. Strangely though, they're still standing out there in the drenching downpour. Grinning! Boy, these cats are weird…" Marah on the death.

"I ain't never did no wrong…."

Jeremy gave the following preamble on Facebook, and I liked it: "I dutifully ignore most of these Facebook lists, in which you get tagged in someone else's and are therefore obligated to make your own, but this one sounded kinda fun. So the challenge is to list 15 albums that changed your life, most impacted you or whatever …  I'm limiting mine to officially released material only because otherwise this would be a list of 15 Bruce Springsteen recordings unavailable in stores." My list:

1. Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen
2. Darkness of the Edge of Town, Bruce Springsteen
3. Kids in Philly, Marah
4. A Legendary Performer Vol. 2, Elvis Presley
5. Gold, CCR
6. Tunnel of Love, Bruce Springsteen
7. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco
8. Summerteeth, Wilco
9. Pneumonia, Whiskeytown
10. Get Lifted, John Legend
11. Greatest Hits, John Denver
12. Joshua Tree, U2
13. My Aim Is True, Elvis Costello
14. Pet Sounds, Beach Boys
15. West Side Story soundtrack

If you want to fight, each one is easily explainable, and I know karate.

Most difficult cuts: Demolition, The River (but you know The River is fine without you), James Brown 20 All-Time Greatest Hits, Chronicle, The '59 Sound (I'm guessing it'll stick), Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Bill Withers Live at Carnegie Hall, Let's Cut the Crap and Hook Up Later on Tonight.

In a forum kind of way, by Serge. First, record, introduction.

After cigarette number 23 yesterday, my lungs and stuff just stopped clockin the smoke. My veins stopped trying to dilate and keep up with the action. My nose stopped trying to smell stuff. Except smoke. And the room was filled with it. Smoke, smoke, smoke,….the killer, the devil's mist, the whisping sky-snake of death. Smoke that many cigarettes before 3pm and they oughta send ya' a skull ring in the mail. You're tough. Nervous. Jittery and raw. If the smokes ran out, at times like this, people like us would knaw through the softer underside of our arms, gash at a main vein with our teeth, and slurp the nicotine right out of our own blood, as if it were the candy'd syrup in a wax straw….old school penny candy never dies.

Following day 2, ("I notice a record called the Ballad of Johnny Bench on the wall and that makes me smile even though it has to be bizzare"), days 3 and 4 ("Every little magic world needs a guy called Willie from Kentucky in it"), day 5 ("When Dylan dies, so will a thing…an indescribable thing, something even he had no idea was happening"), day 6 ("I wonder if I have a kid and name him Bronco Bielanko, if other kids will make fun of him?"), day 7 ("A distinct lack of vegetables over the past two plus weeks has led me to feel a bit scurvy-ish, which is probably not much of turn-on to you the reader, yet must be presented in the narrative in the spirit of Naturalism"), day 8 ("There was thunder roaring as I went to sleep last night though so I guess that means that despite the dreary weather, spring and then summer are indeed just a few storms away"), and hopefully more to come.

Serge writes: "… Bowling Green is a college town just south of Toledo. There is a main street that seems as if it were stolen from a very well-done theatre presentation of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD or NORMAN ROCKWELL: THE PLAY. All tiny shops and warm sluggish sunset, it is the perfect little town to hide in after your 17 year career as a mafia hitman has ended and you've testified in 3 RICO trials and are now game to be plopped by the FBI into a place where…..well, they just ain't ever gonna find you, man. Seriously. They ain't. Anyhow, I digress…."

Details on the 20,000 Streets Under the Sky pre-order are now available on the message board. Scroll down to Muskie Moon's lower comments.

Soda streaming on the Yep Roc site. I like.

They call me Soda cuz when I was a baby,

Like I'm scared of something, but Hannah, I ain't