Music News

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The Foo Fighters have announced the title and tracklisting for their seventh full-length album, Wasting Light. The disc will be released on April 12th by Roswell/RCA and the disc’s first single “Rope” will be available starting on March 1st as a digital single and instant download with the iTunes pre-order of the disc. The album features production work from Butch Vig (who worked with Grohl on Nirvana’s Nevermind) and also reunited Grohl with Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic for select tracks.

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In other Foo news, yesterday the band celebrated Valentine’s Day by giving their fans a VHS-shot video for the song “White Limo” which features Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister as well as the band and Dave Grohl’s wife Jordyn. Even though V-day is technically over, you can still view that here. Seriously, we haven’t seen Lemmy handle an acting role this well since his memorable cameo in Airheads.

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Finally, in addition to the new album, Spitfire Pictures are also producing a documentary about the Foo Fighters which will be released simultaneously. It begins from their earlier days and finishes by documenting the recording process for Wasting Light, which was recorded in Dave Grohl’s garage using all analog tape and no computers… although thankfully the band have been using computers to update their MySpace page.

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Take a look at the full tracklisting for Wasting Light below.

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Blink-182, stop teasing us. Late last night drummer Travis Barker tweeted, “For those of you asking GIVE THE DRUMMER SOME is out March 15th and BLINK album is out THIS SUMMER!” Which goes against a statement he made in a video earlier this week saying the disc will be out at “the end of this year or next year.”

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Honestly this time line does make more sense considering that late last year Mark Hoppus wrote in a blog post that the group “want to deliver the record in April or May for release very soon afterward.” He also added, “I’d say we’re working with the better part of 10 or so songs at this point. It seems like the songs are both taking a step even further than we took on the last album, while also going back to the sound of some of the earlier albums.”

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Bruno Mars and Janelle Monae will embark on a co-headlining North American tour this spring. The pair will join forces for the “Hooligans In Wonderland” tour throughout May and June. Specific dates and cities for the tour will be announced soon.

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Fans of both artists will get the opportunity to snag pre-sale tickets and VIP ticket packages, info for which will be available tomorrow at brunomars.com and jmonae.com. Fans 0f Mars can pick between a meet & greet with the singer or early entry into the venue along with a membership in the official Bruno Mars fan club, which will launch later this spring. Fans of Monae can score a meet & greet with Janelle, a Best of Janelle digital EP, a signed poster and a commemorative laminate.

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Monae and Mars shared the stage this past weekend at the Grammys, along with B.o.B., in a special performance. Following the show, Monae tweeted, “I Love @BrunoMars & @bobatl! So much joy performing and sharing the moment with them!! Beautiful souls.” Mars wrote, “The best part about last night for me was Sharing the stage with my two good friends @JanelleMonae and @bobatl It was Truly an Honor.”

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Lady Gaga’s new single ‘Born This Way‘ may sound like Madonna but that doesn’t that fans aren’t gobbling it right up. The track, which Gaga released last Friday, will debut at Number One on the Billboard Hot 100 chart this week and has sold more than 450,000 downloads in its first three days.

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Yesterday Gaga tweeted, “BORN THIS WAY IS #1 ON BILLBOARD HOT 100! THANK YOU, I’m overwhelmed by your support.”

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According to Billboard, ‘Born This Way’ has secured over 4,600 plays on the Pop charts and the 450,000 downloads makes Gaga the fourth biggest debut among all digital tracks. The only tracks with higher debuts are Flo Rida’s ‘Right Round,’ which sold 636,000 in its first week, Black Eyed Peas‘ ‘Boom Boom Pow’ and Flo Rida’s ‘Low.’

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Gaga, who recently said she wrote this song in less than 10 minutes, apparently owes some songwriting credit to marijuana. In an interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, Gaga said, “I still smoke a lot of pot when I write music. So I’m not gonna, like, sugar coat it for ‘60 Minutes’ that I’m some, like, sober human being, ’cause I’m not.”

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Death Cab For Cutie have announced their new album, Codes and Keys, will be released on May 31st via Atlantic Records. This will be their seventh record.

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In a recent interview with BBC Radio 1’s Zane Lowe, guitarist Chris Walla revealed that the disc’s first single will likely be a track called “You Are a Tourist.” Walla also confirmed that the album is being mixed by My Bloody Valentine producer Alan Moulder– which is a first for the group as Walla generally produces and mixes all their songs. “It seemed like it was, one, the right batch of songs to do it with,” Walla said. “And, two, I was really feeling like in terms of this part of the process it felt like the right thing to do.”

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Bassist Nick Harmer spoke with Stereogum about the new disc back in December and discussed how the record is a slight departure from the usual Death Cab sound. Harmer responded to frontman Ben Gibbard’s earlier claims that this was not a guitar-based album by saying, “Oh, there are definitely guitars on this record. There are just less of them than before and we’re using them in different ways this time. Ben was really inspired by writing on acoustic guitar and on a piano, so often those parts become voices or keyboard lines, rather than guitar parts. We really experimented with piecing the songs together in different ways and using the studio differently, so this is a much less guitar-centric album than we’ve ever made before.”

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Harmer also noted, “The emotional spectrum feels much wider this time. The last record was much darker and was much more closely connected to what Ben had been going through in his life at the time. I think there is a lot more light in this record. Of course, Ben will always gravitate towards certain bittersweet material in his songs, but this record has a lot of expansive, soundscapey kinds of things. Thematically and musically, it’s just much more varied. We also have string sections on this record, which is very exciting for all of us. We’ve always wanted to hear that texture in our music, but it never really worked out before.”

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