In a just published New York Magazine story on Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johanssen’s new Break Up album, the following sentence appears in the second paragraph:

In the early weeks of January 2007, the pair met at an unassuming studio in Los Angeles and recorded Break Up, a collection of boy-meets-girl-girl-ruins-boy duets in the tradition of Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot, Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra, and Lou Reed and Nico.

And what tradition would that be? According to Yorn, the tradition of being cool. “Serge Gainsbourg, Brigitte Bardot—they’re cool, I love them … Brigitte Bardot … Scarlett Johansson! Just a total chain reaction,” he says in the interview. We would have gone with, “Serge Gainsbourg, Brigitte Bardot—their album was nuts and they boned … Brigitte Bardot … Scarlett Johansson! I had to at least try,” because that would’ve made more sense. But we don’t have ScarJo’s number either, so maybe we should shut up.

To read further on Gainsbourg’s sonic sexual exploits, check The FADER’s recent Reheater of his and Jane Birkin’s classic and just reissued Histoire de Melody Nelson.

The first mental images to come to the brain of the average Joe or Jane when mentioning Omaha, Nebraska, would likely be cornfields as far as the eye can see, Johnny Carson, steaks, a world zoo, Mutual of Omaha Insurance or tortured songsmith Conor Oberst. Now, if you happen upon a fan of the whacked out sub-genre of rock that I like to call surf Billy garage rock, Omaha conjures one prominent spector: the band that is Brimstone Howl.
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Elvis Costello is returning to the acoustic country-roots sound of 1986’s King of America, on his newest upcoming album Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, which will be released in early June. 
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This week’s edition of New Music Thursdays was curated by Notes From Middle America columnist Danny R. Phillips.

It’s a bit like running through razor blades then diving into a swimming pool full of rubbing alcohol when a band takes on groups like The Cure, Bloc Party, Jane’s Addiction, New Order and Franz Ferdinand: the chances of catastrophe and painful death are magnified by 47 million.
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