Once again, we present Rock-Critically Correct, a feature in which the most recent issues of Rolling Stone, Blender, Vibe, and Spin are given a once-over by a writer who's contributed to many of those magazines, as well as a few others! In this installment, he looks at the new issue of Spin:
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For another week, Lil Wayne and Coldplay make up the album charts' 1-2 punch, with Tha Carter III taking the top spot (125,000 copies sold) and Coldplay serving as Wayne's best men (113,000 sold). According to Hits, Nas' untitled album is set to break this log jam next week, but I'll believe it when I see it.
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All the positive mind powers that come with being "clear" couldn't push Beck to a No. 1 debut on next week's album charts. With an estimated 80,000 copies sold, Beck's Danger Mouse-assisted Modern Guilt couldn't manage to get past the seemingly indestructible sales juggernauts of Coldplay, Lil Wayne, and the Camp Rock soundtrack. Coldplay and Weezy will likely fight it out for the top spot to the very end, with both discs selling somewhere in the 100-125,000 range. Those adorable Jonases and their cohorts will sllde into third with just under 100,000 sold; Kid Rock, who's still riding "All Summer Long," surges up another two spots this week to No. 5. The bottom half of the top ten starts with Now 28; Rihanna, G Unit, and the Mamma Mia! soundtrack will have quite the tuneful brawl as they fight for Nos. 7-9. John Mayer should take the final spot in the top ten, although he's likely too busy brainstorming his next viral video while rolling around in a big pile of money to care. [HITS Daily Double]
From time to time, we round up the all-important, all-summarizing last sentences of the biggest new-music reviews. This time around, we look at the critical reaction to Beck's rush-released collaboration with Danger Mouse, Modern Guilt, which hits stores tomorrow.
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As may you may have heard, Sonic Youth has decided to skip the traditional best-of route, instead getting famous friends like Mike D, Radiohead and Eddie Vedder to pick less familiar, more personal choices like "100%," "Kool Thing," and "Teen Age Riot." Only six of the fifteen older titles selected have never received a video treatment, and one of those is "Expressway To Yr Skull." This basically leaves "Stones," "Tuff Gnarl," "Rain On Tin," "Tom Violence" and "The World Looks Red" as genuinely surprising tracks to find on a SY comp, so thank you Allison Anders, Dave Eggers, Flea, Gus Van Sant, and Chloe Sevigny. Hits Are For Squares? Wouldn't a more accurate title have been Starpower? Let's attempt to deduce the curators' logic.
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MTV is reporting that the new Beck album may be stealth dropped, Raconteurs-style, sometime within the next month or so. The album would be the second Danger Mouse-produced album of 2008 to be rushed into release to avoid extended periods of leakage. (Sorry I made that sound more gross than necessary.) [MTV]
Beck shockingly confirms that the pop-bricolage libretto to Odelay was mostly random-function funny-talk. No word on the relative heartfelt-ness of his Mellow Gold-era lyrics, but you should probably snip "to have and to beefcake pantyhose" from your wedding vows just to be sure. [Guardian]
We try to be pretty sparing when it comes to posting mash-ups, because they get a little tiring after a while, and also because the genre seems to have fallen into a "this song's title is kind of the same as that song's title!" stylistic rut as of late. But we'll make an exception in the case of the Illuminoids' take on Beck's "Loser," which merges the song with Devo's "Mongoloid" and Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi Is Dead." We missed the song when it was up on Popbytes a few weeks ago, so we're grateful that the latest installment of the excellent NYUB podcast brought it our attention:
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A few months ago, Wired magazine ran a cover story on Beck that focused less on his songwriting and more on his music-distribution prowess. And damned if it didn't draw some of the angriest reader mail we've seen. From the new issue's "Rants + Raves" column:
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Welcome to this week's installment of "On the Shelf," our Monday look at selected new releases hitting stores on Tuesday. We've already gone over tomorrow's releases from The Killers and Evanescence; after the jump, we give new albums by Beck, The Decemberists, Sleepy Brown, and Chris Young a once-over.
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