Hannah Montana

• Scarlett Johansson On Waits Album, Bowie
• The Police Plot Final Tour
• 1988: The Year Hip-Hop Exploded
• On the Charts: Jack Johnson, Sheryl Crow
• Breaking: Crystal Castles
• Moby Offers Free Mix of New LP
• New Fest Features DMB, Mayer, Snoop
• News Ticker: Lil Wayne, Shakira, Thom Yorke

Top stories from the last three days:

• On Tour: Radiohead, Kanye West, Mars Volta
• Beck Reflects on “Odelay”
• STP Reunion Confirmed for Ohio Fest
• Jackson Celebrates “Thriller” Anniversary
• Winehouse, Hancock Win at Grammys
• Behind the Scenes at Grammys
• Neil Young: “Music Can Still Save”

Scroll down for full news stories, commentary and much more in Rock Daily.

Since forming in 2004, Alice Glass and Ethan Kath of Crystal Castles have taken their 21st-century noise-dance experiments and honed them into bursts of raw, glitchy energy that blow minds and dancing feet. For more about Toronto’s latest great musical export, click here.

[Photo: Ren Rex]

1988 was arguably hip-hop’s biggest year, featuring a stack of seminal releases from some of the game’s most important MCs that helped mutate rap (and all of pop music) into something entirely new. For the complete guide to all the best ‘88 albums from the likes of Public Enemy, Run-DMC, N.W.A and others, click here.

Class Act
Opening for Blonde Redhead and the Raveonettes at a recent New York show, School of Seven Bells, founded by ex-Secret Machines guitarist Ben Curtis and featuring twin-sister singers Alejandra and Claudia Deheza, slipped easily between epochs — medieval polyphony, laptop sorcery, the rhythmic turmoil of Public Image Ltd.’s 1981 album, Flowers of Romance — with smart hooks and the Dehezas’ alluring vocals, liberally greased with reverb. The group’s 2007 EP, Face to Face on High Places (Radium/Table of the Elements), is as addictive to look at — twelve-inch clear vinyl with a laser-etched image on one side — as it is to play.
[Photo: Amanda Merten]

• Amplive’s remixed version of Radiohead’s In Rainbows has finally gotten the green light from the Oxford quintet after the band initially denied its release. Rainy Dayz is available for free download here.

• Oklahoma State University has surrendered the names of eleven students who illegally downloaded music to the RIAA in compliance with a court order issued after the RIAA sued several universities.

• Fat Boy Slim and Underworld have been tapped to headline this year’s O2 Wireless Festival, taking place in London on July 5th.

• The Eagles will headline the third day (May 2nd) of the country music-filled Stagecoach Festival in Indio, California. The fest also features Rascal Flatts, Carrie Underwood and Big & Rich.

Be Kind Rewind, The Whitest Kids U Know and a guide to cursing in sixty-nine languages are among the highlights of the new version of the Rolling Stone Top 10. For the complete list of everything Rolling Stone’s editors are currently obsessed with, click here.

[Photo: Courtesy New Line Cinema]

Moby’s new album Last Night doesn’t come out until April 1st (no fooling!), but he’s providing a taste of the new project via a free DJ mix. The diminutive dance maven has teamed up with online music site RCRD LBL to serve up a gratis download of an eight minute dance mash-up of highlights from the upcoming record. Last Night, a dance-focused four-on-the-floor album, represents something of a return to form for Moby, whose last two albums have been relatively laid back affairs. To get a taste of what’s to come from the mind of Moby, click here.

After eight weeks of miserable audition episodes filled with sobbing contestants and sappy judges, American Idol got mean last night as 164 hopefuls hit L.A. for Hollywood Week. The rules had changed: singers performed three times and were allowed to play instruments, though the ability to strum or drum whilst singing didn’t prove an asset for most. So who got cut? Abstinent teenager Amy Flynn, car-crash victim Kayla Hatfield and beauty queen Brooke Helvie. Who won big? Bryan Adams, who had his songs performed every five minutes, and these five folks:

5. Emo car-dweller Josiah Leming is far more charming screeching like Mika than warbling like Brandon Flowers.

4. Pleasant surprise David Hernandez didn’t get any airtime during auditions, but works the stage better than some nameless Grammy-nominated artists.

3. Simon’s complaint about rock & roll nurse Amanda Overmyer is that she’s predictable. Predictably awesome, that is.

2. Tattooed Irishwoman Carly Smithson tackles Heart’s “Alone,” the song that made Season Four winner Carrie Underwood.

1. David Archuleta slays ‘em with Bryan Adams’ “Heaven,” a song that came out nine years before he was born.

Last year Scarlett Johansson and TV On The Radio’s Dave Sitek took a road trip from Los Angeles to Lafayette, Louisiana with a unique mission: to record an entire album of Tom Waits covers. Actress Johansson, who has been singing since she was little but doesn’t consider herself a songwriter, was offered a record deal a while back – but delayed recording until she could come up with the right songs to cover. “I wanted to do ‘Never Talk To Strangers,’ a duet between Bette Midler and Tom Waits,” Johansson said yesterday at a mid-town press conference. “People were like, ‘You’re going to do a Tom Waits song with a bunch of Cole Porter songs? That’s kind of strange.’ It turned into ‘Hmm, maybe a few more Tom Waits songs. Actually, I’ll do a whole album of Tom Waits songs.’”

Cut over five weeks at Dockside Studios in Maurice Louisiana, Anywhere I Lay My Head features ten Waits covers along with “Song For Jo,” an original composition by Johansson and Sitek. The vast majority of the songs comes from the later part of Waits’ career, with only two songs pre-dating 1985’s Rain Dogs. Sitek says his role in the process was to create what he calls “cough medicine tinker-bell vibe.” The Waits covers bear nearly no resemblance to the originals short of the lyrics. The ambient music Sitek created features a church organ, a brass section, drum machines, a musical box, Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on guitar and even the sounds of the cicadas that infested the studio. Sitek comparted Johansson’s baritone voice to Debbie Harry.
Days before recording began, Johansson found herself sitting next to David Bowie at a party. “He said, ‘Hey, I hear you’re working with Dave Sitek,’” Johansson says. “I said, ‘Yeah, I’m super excited.’ In my mind I was thinking ‘If you get a chance come down to Louisiana, we’ll be down there for five weeks.’” Bowie never made it down, but while Scarlett was filming a movie in Spain Sitek called her to say Bowie had just dropped by during mixing and cut vocals for “Falling Down” and “Fannin’ Street.” “It was the best phone call I ever got,” Johansson says.

No live shows are planned to support the record, but Johansson hopes that will change. “It would be sad to not get everybody together, whether it’s at a festival or somewhere fun,” she says. “I think to be in a environment that’s user friendly and get everybody together and do some of the songs live would be great. There are no plans now, but it would be a shame not to.”

What does Tom Waits himself think of the record? “I’ve heard through friends that he’s very pleased with it and excited about it,” Jonansson says. “I didn’t want to go into it without his blessing. I sent him some of the early, early recordings that we did and he was like ‘Go ahead, go forth with it.’”
Track Listing:

1. “Fawn”
2. “Town With No Cheer”
3. “Falling Down”
4. “Anywhere I Lay My Head”
5. “Fannin’ Street”
6. “Song for Jo”
7. “Green Grass”
8. “I Wish I Was in New Orleans”
9. “I Don’t Want to Grow Up”
10. “No One Knows I’m Gone”
11. “Who Are You?”

[Photo: Getty]