Karl 
YO LA TENGO: James McNew tells Pitchfork that there will be a new album of songs that are “by our standards, short and upbeat” coming in September. In the meantime, Yo La Tengo Is Mudering The Classics, a collection of covers from their infamous WFMU pledge drive gigs (scroll down here for the track listing), was not highly rated on the Pitchfork, though the reviewer had to admit that their take on Archie Bell & the Drells' “Tighten Up” is pretty darn good, and that when a young caller named Lela sings “Route 66” over the phone while the band plays softly in the background, it's “so genuinely sweet that the band's uncertaintly over the chord sequence doesn't much matter.” BONUS: Here are two non-WFMU covers — “Somebody's Baby” (Jackson Browne) and “Little Honda” (The Beach Boys).
NEW RELEASES this week include full albums from Pearl Jam, Neil Young, Wolfmother, The Charlatans, World Party and more are streaming at AOL Music. The Posies' Jon Auer releases the long delayed Songs from the Year of Our Demise. The BellRays have a new album of rock 'n' soul. DeVotchKa has a covers EP, including “Venus In Furs.” The Black Keys have an EP of Junior Kimbrough covers.
SID 'N' SUSIE: In an article that name-checks the Paisley Underground of the early 80s, Susanna Hoffs and Matthew Sweet talk to Jim DeRogatis about making the Sid 'N' Susie covers album and the round trip from indie to the majors and back. You can stream a few covers, if you haven't already.
COVERS: As there seem to be a lot of covers in the news, I note that Retrocrush is slowly unveiling a list of “100 Best Cover Songs.” Berkeley Place has posted an A-Z of live covers, which you can stream from the Hype Machine.
TOM VERLAINE talks to Rolling Stone about his two new albums: the rocker Songs and Other Things and the instrumental collection Around. You can stream the rocker from Thrill Jockey.
GNARLS BARKLEY, whose “Crazy” has spent four weeks topping the UK singles chart (the first song to debut at the top solely on the basis of download sales) is growing quickly on US radio, and at stations catering to such disparate genres as R&B and modern rock. Given the covers theme today, here's the band reworking “Crazy” as a ballad on Top of the Pops, and it's just as cool in its own way. And since it's Twofer Tuesday you can see them perform “Crazy” at their first live gig (albeit with completely distorted audio) — a secret show at the Roxy in L.A.
RADIOHEAD will not have their next album ready this year, but will be road-testing the new material this summer.
JOSH RITTER: The Americana/roots rocker's new disc, The Animal Years, is a bit political, but he's more inspired by Mark Twain than Steve Earle. You can hear some of it via MySpace.
ALOHA: The indie-prog quartet never has been ashamed that its influences are more Steely Dan than Rolling Stones: “If you're going to play in a band for seven years, whatever you're doing is going to go in and out of favor,” said singer/guitarist Tony Cavallario. “We're into '70s songwriters, prog-rock and experimental stuff, but we come from a punk background.” The Denver Post has two free MP3s for you, too.
THE WRENS are working on a new album, remastering the Abbott 1135 EP and is planning on posting old material and unreleased tracks on its Web site later this year.
JOHNNY CASH'S FINAL SONG will appear on a train-themed Cash album due on the Fourth of July. A trove of sparse solo recordings Cash made in the 1970s will be released May 23rd.
GARY GLITTER: The disgraced British rocker's appeal of his conviction for child molestation will be heard next month by The People's Supreme Court of Appeals in Ho Chi Minh City. Presumably by the Communist version of Judge Wapner.
TOM-KAT UPDATE: As Paramount prepares to release Mission: Impossible III this weekend, there are signs Cruise may have to work a lot harder to secure his most loyal fans: women. The studio is targeting women with ads that play up the movie's romance between Mr. Cruise and actress Michelle Monaghan and his virile defense of imperiled co-star Keri Russell.
BRITNEY SPEARS is frustrating her agents at William Morris as she bounces between pursuing an acting career, her music career and a second pregnancy.
DO RICH ARTISTS MAKE BAD ART? Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones examines whether artists can thrive after overnight success: “Dalí and Warhol both lost the spark of brilliance as money became central to their lives. At least in Warhol's case there was a pertinence, even a kind of martyrdom, to his immersion in the dollar sign, the ultimate Pop icon. When you become as rich as this, being as rich as this becomes your story. If you don't make art about being a multimillionaire, you are being dishonest. If you do, you can hardly claim the universality of great art.”
ANNA NICOLE SMITH won her Supreme Court case, which will allow her to purse her claims to money from the estate of the late oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall.
AMERICAN IDOL almost never made it onto US television, yet another tribute to the genius of of US showbiz execs.
LOST star Michelle Rodriguez is out of jail and free to resume getting down with hot girl-on-girl action in various gay nightclubs. NTTAWWT. And it might even explain why she chose 65 hours of Caged Heat over community service.
LINDSAY LOHAN walked in on her 37-year-old producer “friend” Brett Ratner and the model girlfriend she didn't know about. Awkward. Egotastic wants you to raise your hand if you want to see Lindsay Lohan fight a Romanian Victoria's Secret model.
SIENNA MILLER, having slimmed down to play Edie Sedgwick in Factory Girl, is popping £200-a-pack herbal capsules to increase her bustline. I'm sure that's going to work.
MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY and PENELOPE CRUZ are ditching their swanky Hollywood lifestyle for a mobile home holiday. Which is a great idea, unless they stop in Vegas.
RETURN OF THE SON OF THE REMAKES: Poseidon is just the beginning of a remake tsunami.
DAVID COPPERFIELD was held up at gunpoint after a show in Florida, but the handgun-toting suspects got nothing from the magician. Copperfield pulled out all of his pockets for the thieves to see he had nothing, even though he had a cellphone, passport and wallet stuffed in them.
FILMS OF INFAMY? Author David Thomson liked United 93, but thinks a greater movie would show the courage of the terrorists and claims: “The history of terrorism — and it includes the independence of this country — is that in the end you have to understand the grievance of the aggrieved, whether you agree with it or not. That film has still to come.” Leaving aside that 1776 was a revolutionary — and perhaps civil — war (which would make the Founding Fathers “insurgents” by today's journo-jargon), if Thomson has examples of Washington or Adams blowing up civilians, or sawing their heads off, he should have given them. As for understanding the enemy, let's hear from BBC correspondent Frank Gardner: “For the past few years I had tried hard to explain the complexities of the Middle East and the thinking behind the Al-Qaeda phenomenon to western and international audiences. And this was my reward? A bunch of bullets in the guts from men who had convinced themselves they were killing in the cause of Islam. It just did not seem right.”
JESSICA ALBA has been tapped to host the MTV Movie Awards; Leather Chaps Not Yet Confirmed.
IRAQ: Bill Roggio reviews the latest government reports, which suggest that terrorists view Iraq as a potential safe haven, but al-Qaeda operational commanders in Iraq are increasingly vexed by the continued loss of popular support, which they attribute to the willingness of Sunnis to participate in the political process. CBS's David Price, who just returned from a five-day trip entertaining some 22,000 troops in Iraq and Kuwait was surprised by the high morale: “My job was to try to cheer the soldiers up. But in most cases, they didn't need it. … It was an amazing experience. I went to Iraq looking to raise morale. But in the end, it was the soldiers who had done that for me.” CNN's Lou Dobbs paid tribute to Army Reserve Specialist Jeremy Church, the first Army Reservist to receive the Silver Star in this war. In fact, he received that award over a year ago, but Dobbs did better than the rest of the major media. At the Editor & Publisher site, Bruce Kesler suggests the media needs to send more “troops” to cover the war.
IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION: A report from Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the White House-appointed special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, lists the successes and failures of reconstruction to date. Most of the US coverage focuses on the failures, but the CBC lists some of the successes: Three-quarters of all health-care projects planned for the country have been finished, though “progress has been significantly diminished by security and management problems;” more than 90 per cent of school repair or rebuilding projects are done, and more than 47,000 teachers have been trained; contractors have built hundreds of police stations and dozens of firehouses; millions more Iraqis are able to communicate using cellphones compared to access levels before the invasion; electricity is available to more Iraqis living outside the capital of Baghdad than before the war, though power is less available within Baghdad; oil and gas production have seen a slight improvement, though insurgent attacks continue to menace refining and distribution sites; and about 80 per cent of projects aimed at fixing Iraq's ports, railways, roads, bridges and airports have been completed. However, transportation is still being impeded by stringent security measures. Bowen's office also acknowledges that access to drinking water has increased since 2003. As to the oil issue, Iraq's acting oil minister has revealed plans to boost exports to 2 million barrels per day by year-end, while waiting for a new investment law that would boost foreign investment in the energy infrastructure.
SQUIRREL-BLOGGING: After Max the dog killed a squirrel, a MySpace blogger wonders about what might have been. Oh, that water-skiing squirrel is funny.
WATER BUFFALO join the Brazilian Army, contending with diamond smugglers, cocaine traffickers, clashes between loggers and Indians, and Colombian guerrillas.
THE LEGENDARY “RETURNED SWORD” TORTOISE, reported as long as 1.9 meters, hides in Hoan Kiem lake during Vietnam's 10th Communist Party Congress. Can you blame him?
STARLINGS can learn a sophisticated rule of grammar, adding to the extensive list of things Noam Chomsky has gotten wrong.
THE DEATH ADDER, it turns out, is aptly named and does not make a good pet.
