More Top Stories: Brandon Flowers, Ryan Adams, Dr. Dre
Brandon Flowers will take his solo album Flamingo on the road in the weeks prior to its September 14th release with five August shows in major markets. The gigs mark Flowers’ first as a solo artist apart from the Killers. [Consequence of Sound]
The xx’s debut album xx has been listed as the 5/2 favorite to win this year’s Mercury Prize, which honors the year’s best British album. Paul Weller’s Wake Up the Nation, Laura Marling’s I Speak Because I Can and Dizzee Rascal’s Tongue N Cheek are among the 12 albums nominated for the annual prize, which has previously been awarded to classic albums like Primal Scream’s Screamadelica, Portishead’s Dummy and Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever People Say I Am, I’m Not. The winner of the £20,000 prize will be announced September 7th. [BBC]
Days after Pete Wentz revealed the mystery singer of his Black Cards side project, fellow Fall Out Boy Patrick Stump offered up more details about his own solo album. “It’s basically an r&b album but as they say ‘Talking about music is like dancing about architecture…’ You’ll have to just hear yourself,” Stump tweeted, adding that the album is almost done. “I’m going to disappear back to the studio but stay tuned…patience will be rewarded. I guarantee no Chinese Democracy.” [Twitter]
After spending 2009 and the majority of this year away from music, the ultra-prolific Ryan Adams is back in the studio working on a pair of new albums. In Los Angeles, Adams is working on a solo album with “songs based around my acoustic with some stark drums/bass/piano”; two weeks later, Adams will head to New York to work on a collection of tracks he describes as “Cold Roses evil twin minus the noodling vibe but now sound like some weird extension of Love Is Hell. As Rolling Stone previously reported, Adams recently released his previously unissued unreleased 2005 solo album Blackhole and Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, III/IV. [Facebook]
The rollout towards Dr. Dre’s long-delayed Detox, “definitely” arriving in 2010, begins: Check out Dre’s commercial for HP laptops equipped with Dre’s Beats Audio programming, featuring a polished version of the Detox single “Under Pressure.” [YouTube]
Former castmates of the Four Seasons-inspired Broadway musical Jersey Boys have countersued Frankie Valli after the singer initially sued in an attempt to prevent them from performing the Four Seasons’ songs live outside the context of the musical. In the countersuit, “The Boys in Concert” claim Valli is “motivated by petty vindictiveness and malice” and is “using bully tactics better suited for the schoolyard” in his lawsuit, which claimed the Boys stepped on copyrighted logos and stole songs for their own tour away from Jersey Boys. [Hollywood Reporter]