[News] Curren$y Surprise Drops ' The Muscle Car Chronicles'

Curren$y is keeping himself busy and yesterday surprise released his latest project: The Muscle Car Chronicles via Damon Dash's BluRoc label. As Pitchfork points out the nine track release was recorded back in 2010 and includes vocals from Curren$y himself with music provided by Sean O'Connell, Robert E. Corrigan Jr., and former drummer of the Mars Volta, Thomas Pridgen. Give the track "Soundbombing" a listen below which leaked last year.

[News] Bonnaroo 2012 Lineup Announced

After a fantastic 10th year for Bonnaroo 2011, the festival is back for year number 11 and ready to rock your face off from June 7-10, 2012. This year's festival lineup is packed to the brim with a ton eclectic artists including: Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Phish, Bon Iver, The Shins, The Avett Brothers, Skrillex, Aziz Ansari, Childish Gambino, Alice Cooper, Fiest, Black Star, tUnE-yArDs, Bad Brains and more. Additionally, The Beach Boys will be performing as part of their 50th Anniversary Tour. The final lineup for Bonnaroo will total over 125 bands and over 20 comedians performing on 13 stages during the four-day fest. So far they've released a nice chunk of the lineup, but we can excpect more to be revealed over the coming weeks.

Tickets for the festival go on sale this Saturday, February 18th at 12pm EST over on Bonnaroo.com.

You can watch ESPN's John Anderson announce the lineup below and peep the full list of the first chunk of the lineup after the jump.

2012 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival Confirmed Artists:
 
Radiohead
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Phish
The Beach Boys Featuring Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston and David
Marks
Bon Iver
The Avett Brothers
The Shins
Foster The People
Skrillex
Aziz Ansari
Dispatch
Feist
The Roots
Alice Cooper
SuperJam
Black Star
The Word featuring John Medeski, Robert Randolph and North Mississippi Allstars
Ludacris
Ben Folds Five
Flogging Molly
Spectrum Road featuring Cindy Blackman Santana, Jack Bruce, John Medeski, and Vernon Reid
Mac Miller
Childish Gambino
Major Lazer
tUnE-yArDs
Afrocubism
Flying Lotus
Umphrey's McGee
Little Dragon
St. Vincent
City and Colour
The Civil Wars
Young The Giant
Two Door Cinema Club
Punch Brothers
NEEDTOBREATHE
Fitz & The Tantrums
Bad Brains
Yelawolf
Dawes
Battles
Danny Brown
The Black Lips
SBTRKT
Phantogram
Kendrick Lamar
Charles Bradley and his Extraordinaires
The Kooks
The Joy Formidable
The Antlers
Kathleen Edwards
Mimosa
Kurt Vile & The Violators
Alabama Shakes
Das Racist
Delta Spirit
Gary Clark Jr.
Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk
Laura Marling
Trampled by Turtles
Mogwai
The War On Drugs
Ben Howard
Grouplove
Blind Pilot
ALO
The Devil Makes Three
White Denim
EMA
Here We Go Magic
K-Flay
The Lonely Forest
Mariachi El Bronx
Big Freedia
Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.
The Soul Rebels
Kvelertak
SOJA
Steven Bernstein's MTO Allstars Plays Sly
Big Gigantic
Sarah Jarosz
Orgone
Darondo
Fruit Bats
Moon Taxi
 
More artists to be announced soon.

[Recap] The 54th Annual Grammy Awards: Pleasantly Boring

Credit: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles TimesLast night we witnessed a very safe ceremony for the 54th Annual Grammy Awards. The fact that I'm not as outraged about the performances and the results as I normally am has had me stewing on this all night and all morning. I'm always the one in my circle that cheers on The Recording Academy to make better decisions so they can be both relevant while not getting too caught up in The Long Tail looking for the year's very best, so why can't I feel better about last night's ceremony?  I want to say they're finally coming around, but why did the whole ordeal make me feel so "meh" afterwards?

The only two real "shockers" of the night in terms of awards were Skrillex and Bon Iver. Yes, Skrillex took home three awards for Best Dance/Electronic Album, Best Dance Recording and Best Remix during the pre-show so haters can put a Grammy in it for now. At least he didn't win Best New Artist so the rest of the world could start cracking Bonny Bear jokes after Bon Iver's second win of the night (the other was Best Alternative Music Album). Also, "Thanks for the sweet hookup", Justin Vernon? Really? Glad we know you didn't come with a prepared speech. Oh, and I don't understand how Bon Iver is a "New Artist" either. Supposedly if they've never won a Grammy before then technically they're still "new"? Okay....

The big winners of the night were Adele with six awards and Foo Fighters with five. Both also killed it during their perfromances. Anyone who wants to question how Adele managed to snatch up so many awards just needs to watch her as she destroyed "Rolling In The Deep" for the zillionth time. As for Foos, they rocked "Walk" most excellently. I could have done without the deadmau5 live remix thing they failed to pull off though. Probably one of my favorite quotes from the night was from Davie Grohl after Foos won Best Rock Album:

"To me this award means a lot because it shows that the human element of making music is what's most important. Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning your craft , that's the most important thing for people to do. It's not about being perfect, it's not about sounding absolutely correct, it's not about what goes on in a computer. It's about what goes on in here *points to heart* and it's about what goes on in here *points to head*".

Most of the other performances were pretty solid, minus maybe whatever the heck Nicki Minaj was trying to prove to everyone during her new single, "Roman Holiday". I think someone may be butthurt that she can't come off as cracked out as Lady Gaga. Either way, I wasn't a fan before last night and she certainly did not win me over after the short film and all the "Look at me! I'm so crazy!" The Beach Boys gave me "Good Vibrations". Paul McCartney gave The Recording Academy some Kisses On The Bottom so he got to perform twice, only to find out that America's youth doesn't know who the heck he is (yes, seriously). Jennifer Hudson's tribute to Whitney Houston made me hate her less for being in all those Weight Watchers commericals in addition to it finally sinking in that Whitney is really gone.

Also, can we talk for a second about Chris Brown? I can try to get over (and fail miserably) that even though he beat the snot out of Rihanna that he still got to perform and that he also won a Grammy last night. What I can't get over, is the outcry from #TeamBreezy that stupidly announced that they would let Brown "beat on them anytime". SERIOUSLY? Is this what we've become, the internet? Face. Palm.

At any rate, The Recording Academy must have done something right, considering last night's show ranked at #2 in all-time ratings with 39 million viewers. What did you think of last night's show?

In case you missed out, The Audio Perv has all the performances for you to check out. You can also check out a full listing of last night's winners over on The Grammy's website.

[News] 1,2,3 Announce U.S. Tour Dates

Underrated Pittsburgh rocker duo 1,2,3 have had an excellent year, having released their debut LP New Heaven last year and releasing the free EP Dreamland, Pt. 1 last month. Despite their fantastic releases, the pair haven't recevied as much attention as they deserve. But, with the announcement of a headlining U.S. tour, the Steel City rockers hope to change that. Starting on February 25th, the band will perform in 22 cities, including a performance at this year's SXSW. Take a look at all of their tour dates after the jump.

1,2,3 2012 Tour Dates:

2/25 Be Here Now – Muncie, IN
3/3 Great Scott – Boston, MA
3/4 Mohawk Place – Buffalo, NY
3/6 Beachland Tavern – Cleveland, OH
3/7 Pike Room – Pontiac, MI
3/8 Empty Bottle – Chicago, IL
3/9 Der Rathskeller – Madison, WI
3/10 7th. St. Entry – Minneapolis, MN
3/11 Cactus Club – Milwaukee, WI
3/12 The Gramophone – St. Louis, MO
3/14-3/18 SXSW
3/20 Bootleg Theater – Los Angeles, CA
3/21 Muddy Waters – Santa Barbara, CA
3/22 Bottom of the Hill – San Francisco, CA
3/23 Sophia’s – Davis, CA
3/25 High Dive – Seattle, WA
3/26 Doug Fir – Portland, OR
3/28 Larimer Lounge – Denver, CO
4/10 Knitting Factory – Brooklyn, NY
4/11 Mercury Lounge – New York, NY
4/12 Kung Fy Necktie – Philadelphia, PA
4/13 Red Palace – Washington, DC

[News] Sigur Rós Announce Live Return at Bestival, UK

Bestival takes place on the Isle of Wight a little late in the Festival season on September 6th to 9th and with the line-up announcement came one very, very nice surprise. Sigur Rós. The band haven't performed live since 2008 and with the announcement the band took to their official website and added;  "we'll be announcing more tour dates soon."

Along with Sigur Rós other bands on the bill include The xx, Warpaint, Justice, De La Soul, Major Lazer, Orbital, Little Dragon, Four Tet, Caribou and a load more. For the full line-up jump on over to the very cool looking website here.

[News] Blacklisters Announce March Tour

Those Leeds noisemakers known as Blacklisters (we introduced you to them not too long ago) have just announced a little March tour to build momentum to the release of their debut album which is coming out in April. Peep the dates below and give a listen to "Trickfuck" taken from the new album too.

Blacklisters March Tourdates: 

Friday 16th - Birminham, The Rainbow

Saturday 17th - London, The Wilmington

Wednesday 21st - Glasgow, Bloc - Free entry

Thursday 22nd - York, Stereo

Friday 23rd - Hartlepool, The Clarendon 

Saturday 24th - Leeds, The Library

Tickets can be purchased over here.

[News] Sleigh Bells To Perform on Saturday Night Live

With Sleigh Bells teasing a few songs from their forthcoming LP Reign of Terror the duo have now been booked for Saturday Night Live! The show will air on the 18th of February and they'll perform lead single "Comeback Kid" and the album track "End of the Line". As a result of the booking they have had to reschedule two tour dates: the February 16 show in Washington which is now set for March 26th and the February 18 show in Toronto have been rescheduled for March 27th.

Reign of Terror is set to drop in a few weeks on the 2st of February via Mom+Pop. 

[News] Gorillaz Team Up With Andre 3000 and James Murphy For New Track

At the start of the month Murdoch of Gorillaz released a statement talking of a new track for Converse's 'Three Artists, One Song' series and that the group would release something that'd "knock everything else Gorillaz have done out of the park." It also mentioned that the track would have two mystery guests but until now it's been all speculation. The band has just announced that the track will feature Andre 3000 and James Murphy! It was revealed this morning, through a tweet from Murdoc Niccals' Twitter page that read: "Oh is that?….YES! It is..It’s… Andre ‘Outkast’ 3000 and James Murphy. Mr. LCD Soundsystem. Alongside Gorillaz! Wow! What a line-up!" It's looking like the track will be available on the 23rd of Feb over on www.Converse.com. Excited?

UPDATE: We've thrown in Murdoc's annoncement earlier. Enjoy!