We’re starting the week with another five albums that are streaming for free on the web, and there’s plenty on offer –- faux Italian film soundtracks, speaker-immolating, bitcrushed digital meltdowns, neo-Wildean fop-pop, jazz-inflected hard-bitten Scots cynicism, and a Gang Gang Dance album that defies categorization entirely. Listen after the jump.
1. Good news for the summer of superheroes: Thor topped the weekend box office, bringing in $66 million in its opening weekend. It was followed by Fast Five ($32 million) and Jumping the Broom ($13.7 million). [via Movieline]
2. Def Leppard is planning to release an album of rock lullabies for babies aka, 12 “softer” versions of the band’s hit songs. [via NME]
3. Andy Warhol’s Sixteen Jackies — a 1964 painting from his well-known series of portraits of the First Lady — is expected to sell for $30 million when it goes up for auction tomorrow at Soethby’s in New York. [via Artdaily]
4. Paula Abdul will join Cheryl Cole, L.A. Reid, and Simon Cowell as a judge on The X Factor this fall. Says Cowell: “This show would never have been the same without Paula and I can’t believe I am saying this – I have missed her a lot, and I am thrilled she’s on the show.” [via Deadline]
5. Listen to Jack White’s latest collaboration with Danger Mouse and Arcade Fire and Cyndi Lauper perform “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” at New Orleans Jazzfest.
Bonus link: A montage of memorable movie sandwiches
Word on the internet this week is that a leaked version of David Bowie’s lost 2001 record Toy has slipped out into the wild and is now doing the round on file-sharing sites. Toy is one of many albums over the course of musical history that for one reason or another got delayed, shelved or otherwise waylaid. There’s often a mythology that grows up around such albums, and although the story can sometimes outweigh the actual music – after all, often albums get canned for a reason — there are some that warrant the attention they attract. Here’s our pick of 10 of music’s best lost records — or the ones that sound like they would be the best, if only we could hear them…
So, we took out The White Stripes with yesterday’s trash, and already, Jack White has announced he’s teaming up with Danger Mouse for some crazy Jack White collaboration project we’d pretty much expect from someone like Jack White. His label, Third Man, is also as busy as ever churning out bizarre singles (featuring anamatronic monkey-musicians!). And all we can think is: but what about Meg White, everyone’s favorite “minimalist” female drummer who was definitely not just “kind of there?”
Meggles, it’s crunch time. Hate to tell you, but you’re the favorite member of this duo to be voted “Most Likely To Fall Off The Face Of The Earth.” After the jump, take a look at some of the next moves we’ve thought up for you — it’ll be for your own good.
We’re not really sure why Cee-Lo decided to release “The Ol’ Sauseej,” a parody of Broken Bells’ “The Ghost Inside” that pays homage to both kinds of sausage. Maybe it’s some sort of inside joke with Danger Mouse from their Gnarls Barkley days? But regardless of the back story, we’re glad that he did, because the resulting track is kind of awesome. Download it for free here, and let us know what you think in the comments. [via Some Kind of Awesome]
Following the huge viral success of his single “Fuck You!,” Cee Lo Green is poised for the next step toward superstardom with his third solo album, The Lady Killer.
The Atlanta soul singer has been in the spotlight many times, from his early work with Goodie Mob to collaborations with everyone from Outkast to TLC — and most notably, topping the charts with Gnarls Barkley, his project with Danger Mouse — but with The Lady Killer, Green is set to finally have his name on everybody’s lips, instead of just having his voice in their ears.
Featuring an all-star cast of vocalists, the multimedia collaboration between David Lynch, Danger Mouse, and Sparklehorse finally receives an official release today.
Guests on the album include the Flaming Lips, Super Furry Animals singer Gruff Rhys, Julian Casablancas, Iggy Pop, and Danger Mouse’s Broken Bells bandmate James Mercer. Lynch himself sings on two tracks, as well as contributing dozens of haunting photographs for a companion book available in the deluxe edition.
While the album was originally ready to go last year, label issues caused indefinite delays regarding when, or if, it would finally appear. Its release this week is bittersweet, as it now serves as an epitaph for one of its contributors, Vic Chesnutt, as well as one of its masterminds, Mark Linkous (aka Sparklehorse), both of whom took their own lives since the music’s initial appearance in 2009.
Like many great artists, Sparklehorse mastermind Mark Linkous led a troubled life. His struggle with drugs and personal demons led him to a near-death overdose experience while on tour with Radiohead in 1996. However, it also drove him to explore deep creative recesses, and saw him collaborate with a plethora of modern music’s finest, including the Flaming Lips, PJ Harvey, Tom Waits, Vic Chesnutt, Danger Mouse, David Lynch, Iggy Pop, and Radiohead themselves.
Over the weekend, however, Linkous lost his inner battles, taking his own life in an alleyway in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was 47. The artist was in the process of relocating to the area, where his frequent collaborator, Scott Minor, is based, and was reportedly putting the finishing touches on a new album, the follow-up to 2006′s Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain
Danger Mouse and James Mercer of The Shins have kept their collaboration project Broken Bells under such tight wraps that we admit to a little puzzlement after hearing the full album leak this week, over two months before the album’s March 9 release date. We have to wonder about the state of contemporary music in the internet age: pre-leak, then a leak, then a post-leak, then a review of the leak, then the actual release, then the review of the release, plus several hit remixes to follow. At this rate Grizzly Bear will be on Delilah by next Tuesday. But we digress! Broken Bells sounds pretty good so far: toe-tapping, electronically-backed, fuzzy vocals evoking 2004′s biggest indie hit. Click through to weigh in on new track “The High Road.”
Vic Chesnutt died on Christmas Day. And if he had to go so damn early, so damn cruelly, and so damn needlessly, there may have been no better day for him to do so. Dying while much of the world was celebrating the birth of a prophet could not have been more poetic. And Vic Chesnutt was sheer poetry.
Naturally, there’s nothing poetic about the facts behind Chesnutt’s death. A 45-year-old man at the height of his career, he was so in despair over ever-mounting medical bills that he opted for an overdose of prescription pills rather than face even one more day battling the healthcare industry. And despite the reported passing of some so-called reform, it’s unlikely he’d ever have been spared. Nor will many of the millions of others who face catastrophic illness, whether they have insurance or not.
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