– “While the band has taken a good deal of criticism for sounding ‘too average’ or ‘boring,’ the ill-suited sonic punch of Wincing the Night Away throws the singular strengths of their previous work into stark relief. More »
Welcome to On The Shelf, Idolator’s weekly look at new releases hitting your local record shops and digital-download outposts on Tuesday. The roster of new releases this week is more robust than in past weeks, although the number of big-ticket releases is pretty slim. After the jump, we look at new albums by Pretty Ricky, The Good The Bad And The Queen, Saliva, and The Shins.
Sunday’s Chicago Tribune piece on leaks of unreleased albums canvassed indie-label employees about their thoughts on leaks, including a rep from Sub Pop: “I don’t think we’re plagued with the same problems that major labels are as far as the dangers of leaking, nor do I… More »
The Shins’ new album, Wincing the Night Away, leaked last week, and this weekend was all about the Internet going nuts about it. Wincing, which comes out in late January, is a huge release for Sub Pop–with the Postal Service going dormant, the Shins are the label’s biggest active band. So review copies were kept to a minimum, and for the first time, Sub Pop watermarked the promotional CDs it did sent out.
Yet despite Sub Pop’s efforts, the album–in the form of low-bitrate MP3s–made its way around peer-to-peer sites and MP3 blogs.
Apparently, the new Shins album, Wincing The Night Away, has now become part of the Information Superhighway. You can read a review of one track, “A Comet Appears,” over at Prefix; you can listen to the song, as well, but alas, it’s a stream, not an MP3. More »
