Alkaline Trio – Agony & Irony
Alkaline Trio have long moved past the raw, drunken rants of their past and into a more polished, considered approach that adds more pop to their pop-punk attack. Even knowing that and despite the presence of quite a few catchy and enjoyable songs, their sixth full-length album Agony & Irony may be just a bit to slick and contented sounding to make the same impact fans of the band have come to rely on.

Earlimart – Hymn and Her
After taking three years to create 2007’s Mentor Tormentor, Earlimart whipped through Hymn and Her in a quick 12 months. But don’t expect such a speedy approach to replace quality songwriting; bandmates Aaron Espinoza and Ariana Murray have simply tightened their grip on lush, textured indie pop, which lends focus and mellow immediacy to this record.
 
 
G-Unit – T.O.S.: Terminate on Sight
Five years in the making, G-Unit’s sophomore release arrives just as the crew’s leader 50 Cent and former member Young Buck are going through a very public breakup. Five Buck tracks — all recorded before things went sour — appear on the final product, but you may also notice the Dr. Dre, Eminem, and Lil’ Kim collaborations that were once promised are absent. Even with the difficult birthing process, T.O.S. ends up strong album thanks to 50 and his henchmen — Lloyd Banks plus Tony Yayo – being in top form.

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Lily Allen is putting the finishing touches on the follow-up to Alright, Still. [NME.com]

It’s hard to tell which is the bigger story coming out of this weekend’s Glastonbury Festival: Amy Winehouse’s tussle with a fan who allegedly tried to grab her, or Jay-Z’s set-opening cover of Oasis’ “Wonderwall,” a cheeky nod to Noel Gallagher’s statement that it was “wrong” for a rap artist like Hova to headline the festival. [AOL.com, Spinner.com]

Matthew Dear, Carl Craig and Kelley Polar are among the artists paying tribute to David Bowie on Life Beyond Mars: Bowie Covered, which is available on iTunes now and will be released on disc July 14. [Rapster]

A cartoon about John Oates and his mustache (which will be voiced by Dave Attell)? We’re so there! [RollingStone.com]

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Earlimart took a casual approach to Mentor Tormentor, an intricate album whose creation spanned the course of three years. Songs were written at an unhurried pace while the group toured in support of their previous record, made the switch to a different record label, and pursued individual solo projects. So perhaps it’s strange that Earlimart’s follow-up, Hymn and Her, arrives just one year after Tormentor’s 2007 release. It’s the fastest turnaround of any Earlimart album, suggesting either a burst of inspiration or a slapdash, all-too-fast approach to songwriting. Fortunately, Hymn and Her features the same sun-baked slices of indie-pop that made Mentor Tormentor and Tremble & Tremble such appetizing fare. Bandmates Aaron Espinoza and Ariana Murray (now the group’s only two members) haven’t sacrificed quality for speed; they’ve simply shed their extra baggage, turning Earlimart from a multi-membered musical collective into a fast-working duo. As before, the new album places a big emphasis on sonic texture, but Espinoza also offers up some of his most straightforward pop melodies. Acoustic guitars chime over drum loops, keyboards bubble in the background, and harmonies thicken the melodies, yet Hymn and Her still sounds intimate, as if the bandmates have discovered how to funnel their densely populated songs into warm, mellow washes of sound. It’s ideal music for headphones, where the clever production can reveal all of its layers. At the same time, it’s hard to imagine a setting in which the relaxed chug of “Teeth” and “For The Birds” wouldn’t sound completely engaging.

The history of “Nottamun Town” (the song is sometimes listed as “Fair Nottamun Town”) is a fascinating one. An ancient British folk song, it was thought lost and forgotten in the U.K. when folklorist Cecil Sharp turned up a version by the Ritchie family in the Appalachians in 1917. Jean Ritchie has since recorded it in a couple of slightly different versions (both of which use Appalachian dulcimer and modal approaches), thus rescuing the song from extinction. It is a haunting, minor key ballad with surreal, riddle-like lyrics and a certain intangible feel of constant dread and menace, and yet has an almost whimsical sense of humor. The song itself builds on contradictions, where people look down to look up, where grey horses with green stripes are colored all black, where people talk all day but don’t utter a single word, where nothing will settle the dust even though it rains all day long. Although extremely descriptive, the lyrics to “Nottamun Town” are so elliptical that it is impossible to grasp firmly what the song might be about, but there is a certain apocalyptic sense about it, the feeling of a recent battle, of refugees on the road, of figures viewed through smoke and haze. The true meaning of the song is probably unknowable, but there are a couple of interesting theories about it.

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Can’t spring for a cross-Atlantic plane ticket to attend the Glastonbury Festival? Do the next best thing: download legal tracks from the Festival’s acts, courtesy of this free sampler. [Guardian.co.uk]

Following their Glastonbury performance, The Verve will offer a free download of “Mover” via Theverve.tv. Fans can also listen to material from The Verve’s upcoming album on MySpace. [NME.com]

Country singer Mindy McCready was arrested this week for violating the terms of her probation. [AOL.com]

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Jay-Z prepares to play his Pyramid Stage slot at the Glastonbury Festival tomorrow night, which has been deemed by the British press as “the most controversial” gig in the festival’s history. [NME.com]

Ace Frehley and Ramones bassist C.J. Ramone made cameos during Pearl Jam’s Wednesday night concert in New York, playing on their bands’ “Black Diamond” and “I Believe in Miracles” respectively. [Blabbermouth.net]

Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” will replace Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” at the top of Billboards Hot 100, making this the first time in 32 years that songs by Capitol Records artists have succeeded each other. Sylvers’ “Boogie Fever” and Wings’ “Silly Love Songs” did it first back in 1976. [Billboard.com]

R.I.P. jazz bassist Dave Carpenter, who passed from a heart attack on Tuesday. Along with playing in Peter Erskine’s Standards Trio, he also performed and recorded with Buddy Rich, Maynard Ferguson, Sadao Watanabe and Herbie Hancock among others. [Two for the Show Media press release]

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Nah und Fern (“Near and Far”) bundles Wolfgang Voigt’s four ambient techno albums as Gas originally issued on Mille Plateaux: Gas (1996), Zauberberg (1998), Königsforst (1999), Pop (2000). Released on Voigt’s Cologne-based Kompakt label, it is a four-disc set sold at the price of a double, featuring barely perceptible remastered sound (the point) and four artwork prints. This is as momentous as it gets in the small and otherwise discreet world of ambient techno. Kompakt also issued a double vinyl companion with side-long edits on three sides with an exclusive track on the fourth, and the Raster-Noton label is commemorating the occasion by prepping a 128-page book with a CD of previously unreleased Gas material.

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During 1991-92, the Caroline label released a pair of excellent debuts — hard-rocking but hooky records with whiny-voiced but guitar-gifted frontmen. Each of them showed how Generation X had digested the independent ethos of ’70s punk as well as a good deal of that decade’s hard-rock pyrotechnics.

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