Album

"Comedown Machine" will release March 26. If that doesn't mean anything to you, consider this: It'll be the fifth record from The Strokes. The name of the album and an image of its cover were discovered serendipitously yesterday by a Reddit user. The user was working with the band's website code, and after some time, he found the code of the album cover, making the refreshingly simple cover art visible. The Strokes may have wanted to keep details of the album cover a secret, but they did release the first track on Soundcloud.

 **1/2 (out of four) The National have staked out a reputation as some of America's preeminent sad indie rock bros, an impression they've nurtured through being the kind of band that wears dark colors and records videos of themselves looking incredibly serious. The group also has, particularly following 2010's “High Violet,” risen to the status of being one of the country's best, most beloved rock bands, placing them in an awkward position: The sad indie rock bro makes an uncomfortable rock star.

NME.com reports:  Madonna has revealed the tracklisting of her forthcoming new album 'MDNA'. Get the full story at NME.com .

***1/2 (out of four) Daft Punk has always made music that contemplates our relationship with technology, and much of what they foresaw has happened: Our loves are digital (i.e. OkCupid) and so is our music (i.e. Skrillex). The French electronic duo has become one of the most influential musical acts of its generation while limitless amazement about the future has mostly receded in favor of a digital culture interested in re-blogging random scraps of our past - say, a “Soul Train” video tweaked for a modern audience, as was done recently with DP's single “Get Lucky.” In that...

Chicago's classically trained hip-hop/blues-rock band Kids These Days released their very solid debut album, "Traphouse Rock," a few weeks back. Demonstrating some of their holiday generosity, they have made the album available for free download. Kids These days is a group of seven young musicians from the city whose music sounds impossible to pigeonhole by genre, but not too pretentious to be accessible. The group is known for their epic live performances, which begin to carry their feel to the studio on the debut.

Ben Folds Five will be releasing a new album later this fall for the first time in 13 years. "The Sound Of The Life Of The Mind" is scheduled to be released Sept. 18, followed by a world tour, according to a news release. The closest the tour will come to Chicago (after performing at Old St. Pat's Block Party last month) is Detroit on Oct. 2. The full listing of tour dates can be found here . The album was created in conjunction with PledgeMusic, a donation website similar to Kickstarter, and a portion of the album's sales will go to the Music Education and Music Therapy...

In about a week-and-a-half I'll post yesterday's very fun interview with"Celeste and Jesse Forever"star/co-writer Rashida Jones. For now, here's a snippet from the conversation that has nothing to do with the movie (opening Aug. 10) or anything else - just an enjoyable discussion about music with someone who, in my opinion, has quite good taste. Photographer Lenny Gilmore (to me): Did you listen to that new Passion Pit album? Me: Yeah, it's good. Rashida Jones: Passion fruit, what?

*** (out of four) Drake's inspired, you guys. The patron saint of the genre I like to call #promkingrap (tales of woe and world domination, live from the popular kid from your high school) has returned and boy, is he out for blood. It's the first album in awhile that isn't afraid to be introspective all the way through, not just tucked in between faux-Ali boast raps. The album cuts like "Underground Kings" actually exist for a reason, and the whole piece is better for their inclusion.

The return of Fall Out Boy is something the world's 20-somethings have been waiting for and counting on in these hard times, with no music melancholy and self-pitying enough to quell all our feelings, no one to be our No. 1 with a bullet. Fear not, milennials! Fall Out Boy has indeed returned, releasing a new song, promising a new album and tour and an "intimate show" Monday night in Chicago at Subterranean, according to a press release. That's right, Feb. 4. We'd suggest get your tickets ASAP, but it sold out in minutes already.

Annual grumble: The Grammys refuse to nominate anything that's not already widely popular. Why? Why?!! OK, now that that's out of my system, I still have plenty of favorites and artists I root against, aside from the built-in interest of the show's many performances (the reason most people tune in to begin with). Here are 10 things I'd like to see this Sunday, none of them involving Chris Brown. 1.    Frank Ocean wins Best New Artist What a stunning spectrum of quality in this category: Ocean's brilliant “Channel Orange” should make him...

***1/2 (out of four) The perpetually delayed release of French Montana's debut full-length “Excuse My French” has become a running joke among rap fans. Yet while it's amazing the record is finally here, it's a borderline miracle that “French” is actually awesome. Like his fellow torchbearer of contemporary New York hip-hop A$AP Rocky, French Montana is not a particularly memorable rapper, nor one who has many ties to any local sound. His voice is unremarkably gravelly, his delivery is blocky and his lyrics stick to the obvious.

 *** (out of four) Darius Rucker's demeanor just feels comfortable. You can guess right away this guy is a dad. That breezy, worn-in feeling was the kind of thing that made his band Hootie and the Blowfish an object of ridicule at times, but it's an asset for Rucker as an artist making country music--a genre that often celebrates the familiar. Case in point: The breakout single from Rucker's third solo country album, “True Believers,” is the Bob Dylan/Old Crow Medicine Show cover “Wagon Wheel.” It's a well-known song, but Rucker...

Immediately when the Riot Fest lineup was announced Wednesday night, many noted how this year's bash (Sept. 13-15 in Humboldt Park) ranks among the summer's best music fests. It's easily better than the underwhelming Lolla lineup and deserves to be discussed against an unusually strong Pitchfork roster. Here are 15 reasons (in alphabetical order) this year's Riot Fest roster, well, rocks. AFI You might know them from the hit "Girl's Not Grey," but this Cali band has a solid arsenal of catchy, melodic alterna-punk.

** (out of four) We gravitate toward pop stars for many reasons: They provide unmistakable glamor,  a worldview so unique it offers an escape and, sometimes, large-scale public drama. Perhaps most fundamentally, pop music gives us the illusion that its creator has tapped into some great cosmic secret only expressible in song. Former child star and current grown-up star Demi Lovato offers none of these things. She doesn't provide a concrete idea we can all latch onto, nor does she even give us a blank slate onto...

 ***1/2 (out of four) Of course Vampire Weekend, those finely dressed Ivy Leaguers, were going to get the preciously assembled, wryly observant indie-pop thing right. Anything less would have been a betrayal of their promise when they first buttoned up their cardigans and told us to think of them as the band with the buttoned-up cardigans. Even as the band put out two extremely good albums that offered as much in the way of piercing emotional insight as in slyly deprecatory cultural references, there was no escaping the gimmick...

** (out of four) Generally, people hesitate to make big, emotional statements because doing so is risky: Strike the right note and those feelings resonate with everyone, but do it wrong and you might end up looking stupid for caring so much. Lady Antebellum has always walked this line closely, and the group's best songs manage to flip those moments that could be maudlin or pathetic in the wrong hands - wanting to call an ex in the middle of the night, for instance - into massive, universal anthems.

Cody Chesnutt believes in taking his time. He earned widespread critical praise for his first album, the lo-fi, double disc “The Headphone Masterpiece” in 2002, when Chesnutt also lent his voice to the Roots' “The Seed 2.0”--a remake of a track featured on “Masterpiece.” Then, well … not much happened for a while. Short of an EP release in 2010, Chesnutt mostly vanished from the musical map. A marriage, two children and a decade later, he released his full-length follow-up, the livelier “Landing on a Hundred,” in late 2012.

Sometimes the predictable revolving door of lousy pop culture deserves the eye rolls it generates. Unless you totally loved the latest “Die Hard” sequel? In many ways, though, the first three months of 2013's entertainment offerings have been consistently surprising and frequently awesome. Why? These 13 reasons. The best movie of the year so far stars Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens No, “Spring Breakers” didn't come from the team that makes Adam Sandler's annual garbage, but there was little reason to believe writer-director Harmony...

*** (out of four) Some of the best songs on British singer-songwriter Charli XCX's debut album, “True Romance,” have been floating around on the Internet for a couple of years, but, if anything, they seem more relevant than ever. There's a very conceivable future in which this brand of washed out, distorted electronic music is all over pop radio, and gifted songwriter Charli XCX seems like a solid candidate to make that happen. In fact, Charli XCX's collab with Swedish duo Icona Pop, “I Love It” has already been creeping up the charts.

 * (out of four) In recent years, the Flaming Lips have worked hard to sacrifice the maximum amount of their once-abundant goodwill by making their music synonymous with weird stunt releases and overwrought visual accompaniments. In the sense that the band's latest album, “The Terror,” doesn't arrive encased in a neon-painted ostrich egg or recorded as a transcription of a brain wave or delivered via submarine, it's a success. “The Terror” puts focus on the band's music and thoroughly explores its central theme.