Catching up: Ben Folds’ new album

Awesome piano-popster Ben Folds has (finally) got another (proper) album coming out, entitled Way To Normal, which will see release in the US on 30th September (and a day earlier in the UK. Ha!).

Ben’s MySpace features two songs from the new album; the brilliant “Hiroshima” (about falling off stage at the beginning of a concert), and the possibly even-more-brilliant “The Bitch Went Nuts”, which chronicles an ill-advised date with a militant left-wing conspiracy nut who, whose somewhat-”nuts” behaviour in seeing everyone as an evil conservative, means that when the narrator “close[s his] eyes / [he]‘ll be fucking Jimmy Carter”.

That line alone puts it up on the level of that other Folds song with “bitch” in the title.

Download “The Bitch Went Nuts” (MySpace rip)

Tour tickets presale and iTunes preorder

Be Your Own Pet split :(

Yes, Nashville punk foursome Be Your Own Pet are splitting up, according to this message on their website…

“To all of our fans, we are sad to bring you the news that our upcoming shows in the UK are going to be our last as a band. We thank you for all your love and support these past few years. It’s been a blast, but the time has come for the four of us to go our separate ways.”

Whatever happened to promising young bands actually having careers, man? And why couldn’t the Pigeon Detectives have called it quits early on too?

Download “The Kelly Affair”

The remaining UK dates are as follows….

22 August: Reading Festival – Reading, UK 23 August: Leeds Festival – West Yorkshire, UK 25 August: Carling Academy 2 – Liverpool, UK 26 August: Dingwalls – London, UK

The Streets and Muse collaboration leaks

Following in the tradition of Run DMC & Aerosmith, and Public Enemy & Anthrax (but, luckily, sounding nothing like either Limp Bizkit or Linkin Park), The Streets and Muse have teamed up for a rock/rap collaboration, apparently recorded during a “jam session” last year (and leaked this morning) annnnd…well, it kinda sounds like it. Keep with it ’til the first chorus, though, and then it starts sounding less like Muse and Mike Skinner dicking about in the studio, and more like an English Rage Against The Machine. It’s pretty cool.

Download Muse & The Streets – “Who Knows Who”