Stephen Malkmus

Even on dreary days like today, we can smell the old-hot-dog-and-rotting-garbage-breeze blowing in festival season this summer. At Coney Island, the Village Voice's 8th Annual Siren Music Festival on July 19 is one main events, with a decent line-up this year. Pitchfork alerts us that Indie rock god Stephen Malkmus (Pavement reunion, please!) and the Jicks, Canadian noise rockers Broken Social Scene and CMJ Music Festival darlings Parts & Labor and Dragons of Zynth will be playing, along with Beach House, Times New Viking, the Dodos, Annuals, the Helio Sequence, These Are Powers, Film School, and Jaguar Love.

Madonna turns 50 this year and whether one loves or hates her, one has to wonder how many listenable albums she has left. This is as much because every album represents another persona, another clone of the same DNA, as the fact that the woman is turning 50. Eventually, she's going to transform from a M.I.L.F. to a M.I.L.A.L.M. (Mom I'd Like to Act Like a Mom). When a quality version of the single "Four Minutes to Save the World," off her new album Hard Candy (due April 29th), was leaked onto the Internet last week, fans could be forgiven for cringing a bit at Madge's cool-as-a-cucumber delivery being drowned out by the "urban," brassy hip-hop beats. Was it Mommy telling us to turn the music down?  read more »

Former Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus got the In Treatment treatment from The Times' Pete Paphides in a podcast interview last week. In a discussion about his new album, Real Emotional Trash, and his work on the I'm Not There soundtrack, Mr. Paphides asked him, "What's the difference between the you we hear in the music and your actual self?" Mr. Malkmus, a California native, blames his New Yorker wife and our city's therapy industry on not being able to give a straight answer right away.

The reporter and musician giggle through most of their conversation:  read more »