FN News Roundup: April 17, 2012

Dedicating this post to Levon Helm... our thoughts and love are with you and your family.

• After many hints, teases, singles, videos, and even a balloon launch, you can finally stream Jack White's new LP Blunderbuss a week in advance of its physical release. And in case you didn't grab a ticket to his upcoming Webster Hall show earlier today, the whole thing is going to be livestreamed. And directed by Gary Oldman. Who also happens to be Commissioner Gordon in movies sometimes (Pitchfork)


•  Hey, didja like "Flutes"? We sure did. But it turns out that that's not the first official single from Hot Chip's upcoming LP In Our Heads. That honor belongs to "Night And Day," which you can stream now all of its Prince-nudging goodness and pick up on 12" vinyl on June 4, 8 days before the full album drops.  Not to get unduly excited too early, but this new LP might be their best in history ever (Domino Records)


• Not content to chill out even after dazzling us New Yorkers with a 10-night residency, Björk has kicked off an eight-part Biophilia remix series this week. Check out the first entry, Current Value's "Crystalline" remix, after the jump. Very Nine Inch Nails-y (Purple)


• Van Halen is back! Again! They'll be playing the Izod Center in Joisey with Ky-Mani Marley (son of Bob) opening on July 13 - tickets are on sale on April 23 (BrooklynVegan)


• And oh hell yes, Ceremony actually WILL be playing with Screaming Females here in NYC, at Brooklyn's Warsaw as part of the Northside Fest on June 14! (Matador) 

Review: Van Halen @ TD Banknorth Garden

Van Halen, TD Banknorth Garden, Boston, MA - March 11, 2012
Review: Dave Bolton

A Different Kind of Truth; It Was Always Van Halen, Not Van Hagar

From the moment that the house lights went down and the opening riff from “Unchained” blasted out of the white speaker stacks, Van Halen hit the ground running.

The full-time return of Diamond Dave Lee Roth to the band that made him a household name in the late 1970’s and which propelled him into a patchy solo career after 1984 was a moment that many of us Van Halen fans believed that we would never see again. Even better was the news that there was to be a new LP and the first new recordings with DLR for 27 years.

A Different Kind of Truth was released in February and, to be fair, it is a Van Halen album. Gone are the numerous arena rock ballads that epitomized the Van Hagar version of the band and in their place are a set of catchy tunes that wouldn’t be out of place on the first incarnation of the Halen. Which is understandable as most of them are apparently old demos that had been sitting in Eddie’s cupboard since Diamond Dave decided that he was better off without the brothers backing him up.

That was then this is now. Not so much a best of both worlds but an erasing of Sammy Hagar and Gary Cherone from the set-list. This was a Van Halen gig, a family affair and one where the only non-VH was Diamond Dave himself after Wolfgang VH was drafted in to replace Michael Anthony on bass duties.
But on a Sunday night in front of an enthusiastic (and probably inebriated) Boston audience, the showman took to his tiny wooden dance floor and shuffled his shoes just enough to ensure that we all remembered why we fell in love with this rock band.