Music

We're only at the beginning of May and 2011 has already seen its fair share of fantastic new music whether it be super huge bands like Radiohead or the Foo Fighters, new bands like Middle Brother, or even old bands you never thought would get back together like The Cars. Thankfully this isn't a best of seven series or anything and we still have seven months ahead for even more goodness, but it's worth noting this month is especially strong. When Okkervil River's magnificent I Am Very Far hits shelves next week it will be joined by another really great album, Wild Beasts' Smother. I also say this coming from an extreme place of power in the sense that I've already listened to the album and I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night.

The follow up to 2009's Two Dancers, and the bands third full length sees the four piece extending the formula that has worked so well thus far, exemplified with the new album's wonderful single "Albatross". We'll try and get a review up soon enough but for now just enjoy the stream in all its legal authorized glory.  [via the guardian]

The list of things that are worth a twenty four year wait is pretty minimal. Of course the list would include sex, going to Benihana, a Who's The Boss? movie and a new album from the band that definitively proved being a rock star can land you a ridiculously hot girlfriend. Fans of the new wave legends will be pleasantly surprised to hear the latest addition to The Cars discography, Moves Like This, which is set for a May 10th release, picks up right where 1987's Door To Door left off, at a synth party. Thanks to Rolling Stone you can now preview the album in it's entirety for the next week, and while I may only be halfway through my first go around I can firmly declare so far so good. And yes, there will be hand claps.

Click this awesome link to open up a new window with the stream, then party like its 1985. Wait, what are you doing? Where's your monocle? Everyone wore a monocle in 1985, haven't you ever read a science book?

At midnight last night the lineup for this year's twentieth anniversary of Lollapalooza was announced. Heading up the shenanigans in Chicago's Grant Park August 5th-7th will be SHA favorites My Morning Jacket and the Foo Fighters along with Muse, Coldplay and Eminem. Add to that some Deadmau5, A Perfect Circle and Cee-Lo Green and you've got the first two lines covered. Digging further in to the well of bands we enjoy you'll find Ween, Bright Eyes, The Cars, Arctic Monkeys , Local Natives, Delta Spirit, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals and more. As always Perry Ferrell and company even have the breaking indie bands slots for Foster The People, Dale Earnhart Jr. Jr., The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Smith Westerns, Tennis, and quite a few other bands I know little or nothing about.

Of course what fun would Lollapalooza be without the mania that is Perry's. Holding down the dance front will be Girl Talk, Pretty Lights and Kid Cudi among others. Early bird tickets have already sold out but three day passes are still currently available for $215 plus the fun tax. The full lineup in alphabetical order is listed after the jump courtesy of those handsome gentleman holding down the fort over at Hidden Track.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's the cover art for Eddie Vedder's upcoming solo album Ukulele Songs and it doesn't have a ukulele on it! Take that literalists! What? Too much? But look at all of those sentences that don't end with periods! That has to account for something right? No? Fine, I wasn't going to invite you anyway.

The sixteen song set that will undoubtedly feature some ukulele, unlike the Jason deCaires Taylor designed cover above, doesn't hit shelves until May 31st so all you out there in Eddie nation will have plenty of time to contemplate the meaning of a man underwater at a desk with a typewriter. The artist figures it as such:

The Lost Correspondent depicts a man sitting at a desk with a typewriter. The desk is covered with a collection of newspaper articles and cuttings that date back to the 1970s. Many of these have political significance, a number detail Grenada’s alignment with Cuba in the period immediately prior to the revolution. The work informs the rapid changes in communication between generations. Taking the form of a traditional correspondent, the lone figure becomes little more than a relic, a fossil in a lost world.

Weird, I was pretty certain it was just a deleted scene from Titanic.  [via antiquiet]