AC/DC, “WAR MACHINE”
Alice in Chains, “Check My Brain”
Linkin Park, “What I’ve Done”
Metallica, “The Unforgiven III”
Nickelback, “Burn it to the Ground”

OK, first off: Nickelback?! Not only is that a terrible choice for a band nominee, it’s not even the best song from Dark Horse - though, of course, that isn’t saying a whole lot. The band’s sole purpose for existence is one attempt after another to make the mindless masses they call fans rock out with no particular direction or reason. Nominating Nickelback for Best Hard Rock Performance is like nominating the United States military’s use of napalm for Best Aim. Moving on.

Metallica’s “The Unforgiven III” is from a thrash metal album and yet is nominited for ‘hard rock.’ Also, the song was never released as a single and and Death Magnetic came out in September 2008, which would have fallen under last year’s Grammys. Whatever. Ignoring these absurdities, “Unforgiven” is a fucking terrible track off of a decent-at-best album. If they’re gonna stick with an outdated album, the least the NARAS could do is choose a track worth hearing from Death Magnetic - like “All Nightmare Long” or “My Apocalypse” (I know the song already won a Grammy last year for Best Metal Performance, but still…).

AC/DC shouldn’t be on this list at all. Yes, they’re a hard rock band but Black Ice was just a retread of everything they’ve done before - and done better. Therefore, it doesn’t matter what song you chose from it because they’re all sub-par. Next.

As for Linkin Park’s “What I’ve Done,” that’s an April 2007 single which should have been in 2008’s Grammys. It’s two years late! I don’t care if the Academy chose a live version from the band’s 2009 live album Road to Revolution which, to them, qualifies it for this year. It’s still a 2007 single. Maybe the NARAS confused “What I’ve Done” (which was used in “Transformers”) with 2009’s “New Divide” (used in “Transformers 2″). I get it, they’re both used in a Michael Bay movie and are, essentially, the same song in terms of structure: mainstream rock milquetoast minutiae.

Finally, there’s the supposedly reunited ‘Alice in Chains,’ something the Academy shoulda stayed as far away from as possible. I imagine Jerry Cantrell  got the band back together because he was spending his Dirt royalties faster than they were coming in. “Check My Brain” is excruciatingly dull in its execution. It’s painfully obvious that William DuVall just goes through the motions, more so than any hooker on the planet. He doesn’t even sound like he gives a shit when he sings “California’s all right/ Somebody check my brain.” I don’t either, so I’m glad we’re in agreement.

I’ll come clean immediately, because I may have misled you slightly: you can’t actually buy the Drive-By Truckers. But, wonderfully, you will be able to buy their new album, The Big To-Do, come March 16, and unless you’re blind in your ears or something, you’d be well-advised to do just that. As we’ve discussed before, the Truckers are some of the finest musickers currently musicking. Certainly better than Shaki$ha, or 30 Seconds to Panic!!!, or whatever ringtones you kids are listening to on buses these days. They deserve your precious legal tender, and also any illegal tender you might wish to contribute.

But I can see you need a little more convincing, you monstrous, insatiable boors. So here: courtesy of a widget I’ve borrowed from the Truckers’ website, I give you the very excellent Birthday Boy - the latest instalment in Mike Cooley’s twelve year run of writing precisely no bad songs. And it’s free. Completely free.

Are you happy now? Are you? Do you love me now!?!?

Every year I look at the nominations and winners, and I have the same thought, “It can’t get worse than last year.” Yet somehow it always does. The 2010 Grammys didn’t let me down - which is to say, they did. Instead of going item by item in an effort to prove, as I stated last August, that the NARAS doesn’t know shit about music, I will just dissect the few categories I find to be the most egregious offenders. I’ll include the nominees and winners, the latter of which will always be in caps.

And let me say that this won’t be the constant hate-fest that some of you might imagine it to be. Yes, I have many negative things to spew, but I also do have a few - very few - complementary items to throw out there for this year’s Awards. It’ll be fun, I promise.

Just found out that Toronto post-punk four piece Little Girls tackled and covered “10 Mile Stereo”, one of the gems off Beach House’s recent new phantasmagoric new album “Teen Dream”. The song is perfectly layered and faithfully covered, despite being dazed with Little Girls’ signature lo-fi/haunting sound, which makes 10 Mile Stereo feel like an even eerier experience.

[MP3] Little Girls - ‘10 Mile Stereo’ (Beach House cover)

In other related news, Little Girls will soon release a split 7″ with Norweigian garage-punks Pirate Love via Best Of Both Records. Allegedly it will come out before SXSW and will be limited to 300 copies. [via MBV Music]

A while ago, I concluded that if 2008 was considered by many a year outshined by band reunions, then 2009 is definitely the year of the super groups. Last year we got to hear some awesome new material by newly formed bands, whose members were super, duper musicians, hence the term super group (doh). There was Monsters of Folk (Conor Oberst, Jim James, Mike Mogis, M. Ward), The Dead Weather (Alison Mosshart, Dean Fertita, Jack Lawrence, Jack White), Tinted Windows (Taylor Hanson, James Iha, Adam Schlesinger, Bun E. Carlos) and, of course, the absolute surprise of the year - Them Crooked Vultures (John Paul Jones!, Josh Homme! and Dave Grohl!). It was, and still is as a matter of fact, one of the most ambitious projects of the decade, one  that reunited the old guard of heavy rock with the contemporary rocking avantgard.

Now, I used still for a very good reason. In a recent interview with stuff.co.nz the veteran vulture of the squad, John Paul Jones, promised a new TCV album will be up and at it by the end of 2010.

“We’ll do a second album this year,” he told Stuff. “By the end of summer, something like that.”

He added, “We’re all hard workers. In a way we need to do this for ourselves. Once we committed to it we worked as hard as a young band would, put the hours in. It’s got to be good – we’ve got reputations to uphold more than anything else.”

When asked when can fans expect their idols to return to their original bands,  Jones said they’d get them “eventually”.

“I haven’t really stolen them - it’s Dave’s baby, it’s his fault,” he said. “They’ll get them back - one day.”

Jones said he was excited to be part of the Vultures and admitted the band’s success had helped make up for Led Zeppelin fans disappointed by the lack of a full-scale reunion.

“(Zeppelin fans) have been disappointed a long time - they’re getting used to it … I think they’re enjoying (the Vultures). It doesn’t sound like Led Zeppelin but it’s got a similar sort of vibe. It’s a groovy, exciting rock band”

Chemistry, hard work and “people who know what they are doing” were the key elements to a successful rock act, Jones said.

“We’re all hard workers. In a way we need to do this, for ourselves. Once we committed to it we worked as hard as a young band would, put the hours in.

“It’s got to be good - we’ve got reputations to uphold more than anything else.”

We’ve expressed skepticism in the past concerning the extremely overdo new Strokes album, but it seems we’ve finally gotten solid word from the band itself that things are indeed stirring towards a bright future. If you happen to access the Strokes website at the moment, you’ll be greeted with a neat sign advising visitors that “recording” is indeed in progress. Finally glad to hear the NYC garage rockers aren’t slacking …too much.

The new album is being produced alongside Grammy-award winning music-master Joe Chiccarelli in New York and will be engineered by Gus Oberg. As a fun trivia, the band is recording at the Avatar Studios! Wouldn’t be too surprised to see the new album cover featuring blue cat-like avatars of the band members, playing ambient jungle music. Fancy that.

It seems last night’s television broadcast wasn’t entirely a musical fail fest *cough Grammys *cough. After American Dad had My Morning Jacket as guests for a feature episode, The Simpsons brought down Coldplay to the radioactive suburbs of Springfield, albeit for a short cameo.

Check out the video bellow which features a short sequence of last night’s Simpsons episode where Coldplay get featured trying to play their Grammy-winning “Viva La Vida” for Bart and Homer, but that’s just towards the end. The rest of the video sees Chris Martin in the Simpsons studio recording his voice overs, where he actually delivers some witty improves. Oh, and you also get to see which of the tambourine punch lines gets used in the final cut episode. Fascinating stuff for Chris Martin and Simpsons fans alike.

By the way, is it me or did the animators did a sloppy job with Martin’s caricature? Doesn’t look anything like him.

This how Victoria Legrand of Baltimore’s equally magical duo introduced the band’s Daytrotter set, in which they played Walk In The Park, Zebra, Take Care, Used To Be, all off Beach House’s recently released new album “Teen Dream.”

You can download and stream the whole set bellow or, alternatively, on the Daytrotter website, where you’ll also be able to read a very well articulated editorial on the band’s music.

[MP3] Beach House - ‘Walk In The Park’
[MP3] Beach House - ‘Zebra’
[MP3] Beach House - ‘Take Care’
[MP3] Beach House - ‘Used To Be’

It’s only the 1st of February, but we’ve already caught word of what’s likely the best news of the month.

Earlier this afternoon Pitchfork unveiled a very insightful chat with Broken Social Scene frontman Kevin Drew about the band’s upcoming new album, but more importantly key details regarding it, including a fixed release date. That’s right, after years and years of waiting and speculating, one of the most anticipated albums of 2010 will be upon us on May 4th via longtime label Arts & Crafts.

Their previous 2005 self-titled effort was simply stunning, but asides from some touring, albeit massive, and various solo exploits, Kevin Drew and co. have been a bit secretive when new material is concerned. Five years later, the yet to be titled new BSS album will feature, like on previous efforts, a very lengthy list of contributors like Leslie Feist, Stars’ Amy Millan and Evan Cranley, Metric’s Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw, Jason Collett, Do Make Say Think’s Ohad Benchetrit, John Crossingham, Marty Kinack, Julie Penner, Leon Kingstone, Lisa Lobsinger and a slew of other indie artists.

The album is still in mixing phase, and is being produced by post-rock icon John McEntire. Although the new album has been recorded together with a dazzling indie all stars cast, the band proper has now been downed to six core members - including singer-guitarist Kevin Drew, singer-bassist Brendan Canning, drummer Justin Peroff, guitarist Charles Spearin, and singer-guitarist Andrew Whiteman, along with the new addition to the band, rising talent Sam Goldberg also on guitar.

Best news in a long, long time. Remember - May 4th!

Here’s an excerpt for the Pitchfork chat with Drew, which you can read in its entirety here.

Pitchfork: Your last album came out five years ago but, considering the “Broken Social Scene Presents” albums from you and Brendan and the touring you guys did behind them, it’s almost like you never left.

Kevin Drew: That’s why the “Broken Social Scene Presents” records worked. After the tour for Broken Social Scene in 2006, it was a very confusing time. I know I say it a lot– it almost sounds like I use it as some marketing tool– but if there was any time when we were going to break up it was after that tour. Andrew [Whiteman] and Charles [Spearin] split. And Brendan [Canning] and Justin [Peroff] and I had to go out and find a new band and try to make this “Broken Social Scene Presents” thing work on the road. But we ended up with a great band and we found [guitarist] Sam Goldberg, who is now a full-time member. On this new record, Sam brings such a melodic sound– we call him “Stadium Sam,” he’s our stadium rock guy. And then, in 2008, Andrew and Charlie returned, and we ended up touring the world that whole year. That’s when this album’s core six-piece formed.

I love the self-titled record to death but it was difficult to make. But that point is so over for us. I don’t think we’ve ever really entered this territory of just feeling amazing about everything like it is right now.