Life Without Keys

A few hours ago the heroes return that is the new Alice in Chains Album leaked, an impressively low 11 days before “official” release.

We have already covered the general quality of the album, an extraordinary return to form for the grunge behemoths of Seattle. Despite missing the Layen Staley jigsaw piece, the band has managed to complete the puzzle anyway with new lead singer DuVall.

Not quite a sound-alike, and not really a “lead” singer as far as Terry Date’s mixing of the album has judged him, DuVall’s power and raw awesomeness he gets from years of singing in a hardcore bank stands him in such good stead when harmonied with Cantrell’s half-folk, half-metal backup singing, that even old Alice fans, surely the hardest of all to win over, have pretty much accepted him as a worthy replacement.

The first track alone, All Secrets Known, will convince you that the fans are right – a staggering track of ethereal bent harmonies and snarling “Frogs” style riff will make you wonder if Staley did in fact “do an Elvis” and was at the recording session. Suddenly we remember how much we missed these boys, and how much we still miss Staley.

It’s a testament to how long it’s been since an Alice release when you consider this is the first of their albums that has had the opportunity to leak this way. In 1995 the internet was a little young for mass-availability of a new album ahead of schedule.Similarly, this album is the first to feature the marketing tools of a free download (A Looking in View) and a paid download single (Check my Brain) – and Velvet Hammer, the band’s present management, have done a damn fine job in collateralising the band’s release with In the Studio videos, an Electronic Press Kit that hit yesterday, video interviews, competitions and more.

While our pre-order of the album has been on the books for aty least a fortnight now, we might well have to accidentally hit “download” to hear it in the meantime.

Welcome to the 21st Century, Alice.

DOWNLOAD THE 2009 DOUG STANHOPE BOOTLEG HERE!

After what seems like an age, but is in fact only a year, Doug Stanhope graced the Leicester Square Theatre in London in the first week of September 2009. It was a welcome return after Stanhope decided to skip the usual financial H-Bomb referred to in some circles as the “Edinburgh Fringe”.

After a shaky start to the set, something that permeates most of his shows these days, Stanhope launched into three or four particularly strong ‘bits’ that will no doubt find their place in the new CD, and DVD offering.

Look out for venom against the modern perpetual habit of videoing everything on your mobile, an extended dark poetic riff on what sex with Doug Stanhope must be like these days, sniper sex, and the (literally) climactic “Blort” routine, destined, we suspect, for the ending of the new CD. A clever bit on George W Bush and the Queen, most likely destined for UK shores only, offers some new and counterintuitive but correct thinking on throwing stones whilst abiding in a glass house, and look out for the thinly disguised attack on Britain’s Got Talent too.

Whilst looking much older than in 2002 (compare his babyfaced energy in Word of Mouth, a mere 7 years ago), coughing like a madman and clearly unnecessarily down on himself after two rough sounding shows at Reading and Leeds Music festivals (with Jamie Kilstein, an up-and-comer who was Stanhope’s support act in the 2005 Austin Incident video Bootleg and an acerbic New York wit in his own right) Stanhope is nevertheless still a billion miles ahead of most stand-up comedy. If pressed, we can only name his equal in Louis CK, whose show in November in London we will also be covering (and hopefully someone will bootleg it for us again.) Apart from that, there is, as Bill Hicks would say, a “real big fucking drop-off” after those two.

A fan recording of the 3rd September exists and is available at this location for free download – the 68 minute set has been named (by Stanhope himself in the recording) “Doug Stanhope – Before Turning the Gun on Himself”. We will upload the raw .wav file as well in due course, in case anyone else can adjust the levels better than our resident “sound-idiot” – and naturally there will be a torrent with tracks divided up.

Enjoy the hate.

We reported a while ago the hilarious reviews surrounding Katie Price and Peter Andre’s A Whole New World which have effectively hijacked the Amazon page for the product.

Now more topical than ever thanks to the couple’s massive communal public meltdown, the CDs 80+ reviews, all scorning the genuinely awful qualities of this piece of aural self-destruction are probably set to balloon into many more jibes and mock-praise in the near future.

The UK Daily Telegraph has now gone one better than us, however, and compiled the ten best parody review hijacks on Amazon’s site (even quoting one by our guest writer Hypernation on Katie Price).

The Telegraph article is well worth a read. Particularly hilarious, and arguably the best ones, surround the insane offering of “Uranium” on Amazon (presumably to be delivered in the mail), closely followed by the always fully described “Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz”, which boasts an incredible 1,100 reviews. Guess how many are serious…We’ll give you a hint – the most popular one is a brillaint pastiche of the Edgar Allan Poe piece The Raven.

Right.

Happy Reading!