Welcome back to another edition of our regular Monday stream-a-thon, wherein we hunt down the best and/or most notable records streaming for free over the Internet. There’s plenty of interesting music to be heard this week — first and foremost, there’s the arrival of the Alabama Shakes album, along with a bunch of b-sides and rarities from Arctic Monkeys, Robert Pollard’s bazillionth solo album, a collaboration between Quantic and Alice Russell, and the original cast recording of the Newsies musical. Click through and listen to your heart’s content!
Alabama Shakes — Boys & Girls
We mentioned this earlier today, but the debut album by Flavorpill faves Alabama Shakes is streaming at NPR right now. Get a piece of the action here.
Arctic Monkeys — Early Rarities
Arctic Monkeys completists will be rejoicing at the appearance of a compilation of the band’s early b-sides and unreleased tracks on the web over the weekend. The collection dates back to the band’s earliest days as a “MySpace sensation” (remember MySpace?), and the songs have a suitably ragged charm — there’s an early version of “Who the Fuck are Arctic Monkeys?,” along with 14 other early examples of Alex Turner’s strongly accented and highly literate songwriting. Hear them at Some Kind of Awesome.
Robert Pollard — Mouseman Cloud
The ever-prolific Robert Pollard is back this month with his 18th solo album in 16 years (and that’s not including all the Guided By Voices albums, collaborations, EPs, etc.) With such an epic songwriting output, it’s a miracle that Pollard’s been able to maintain any sort of quality control, but Mouseman Cloud is as consistent as ever. Hear it via AOL’s Spinner blog.
Quantic & Alice Russell — Look Around the Corner
British producer Quantic and compatriot Alice Russell have quite the history together — he’s produced several of her tracks, and she’s lent vocals to several of his. Look Around the Corner is their first full-length album together, and it’s the sort of orchestral neo-soul that’s done awfully well over the last few years. It makes fine listening for a quiet Monday afternoon — check it out here.
Various Artists — Newsies (Original Cast Recording)
This particular Flavorpill writer’s very first job was as a newspaper boy, so the idea of a Broadway musical based on Disney’s 1992 musical film Newsies sounds pretty fine, actually. Although we’re very much looking forward to seeing the show, we haven’t had a chance to do so yet — but in the meantime, the original cast recording, which is due for release via iTunes next week, is streaming this week via WNYC. Result! Check it out here.