The Week in Music: Spring Music Preview, ‘Sucker Punch’ and More
Plus: The 25 boldest career moves in rock history, ‘The Book of Mormon’ and Blink-182 discuss their new album
By Matthew Perpetua
This week Rolling Stone looked ahead with our Spring Music Preview, checking in with 30 artists including Lady Gaga, Foo Fighters, Lil Wayne, TV on the Radio and Paul Simon about their upcoming albums, plus streams from many of these new records. We also have extended interviews with Death Cab For Cutie and Bon Iver about their forthcoming discs, and talked to Blink-182 about their first album since 2003.
In other music news, we caught up with Lou Barlow about his plans to record new music with Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr., interviewed Chris Cornell about his solo tour and the next Soundgarden album, talked to Sucker Punch director Zack Snyder about his movie’s hot soundtrack and went behind the scenes at Duran Duran’s big concert in Los Angeles with special guests Beth Ditto, Gerard Way and Kelis.
We also wondered why Radiohead fans are convinced that the band will release a sequel to The King of Limbs, listed off the ways musicians are raising money for relief effors in Japan, analyzed this week’s pop charts and looked back on this week in rock history. Plus, singer-songwriter Todd Snider came to our office to play some songs, synth-rock band Cold Cave was named our latest Band to Watch and as always, we reviewed all the week’s biggest new releases.
On the pop culture front, Peter Travers wrote rave reviews of HBO’s new miniseries Mildred Pierce and Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Broadway show The Book of Mormon. Travers also paid tribute to the late Elizabeth Taylor and panned Sucker Punch, which he says is too watered-down and makes no sense. We also talked to Treme star Wendell Pierce about the show’s second season and the music of New Orleans, counted down the seven best musical moments in Mad Men and commented on Motown night and Casey Abrams’ close call in this week’s episodes of American Idol.
