Terrence Howard, occasional MOTH and reliably excellent actor, is venturing onto the treacherous ground of actor-singers. Howard opened up to the Times, describing his career path as a struggling singer-songwriter. He lists his influences as Don McLean, Jim Croce, and Barry Manilow: a triptych of soft-rock sensitive types. But if what we’re seeing so far is any indication, he may need a more robust icon by the time the album hits stores.

The actor-musician crossover is rarely a good idea—except in the case of Ms. Deschanel, of course—and we have our doubts. Apparently Vulture shares them, since they’re preemptively calling the album “something special.” Only, not in a good way.

One way or another, he’s about to get more seething internet ink than he’ll know what to do with.

After the jump, get a peek at Howard’s live show»

After a half-dozen pay-what-you-like internet releases, it hardly qualifies as news anymore. But when the album comes from two 70s vets, each with a long, legendary track record, it gets a little closer to newsworthiness.

The duo is David Byrne (occasional MOTH) and Brian Eno (an ambient pioneer and, most recently, the producer of Coldplay’s Viva La Vida), and the new album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, is a career highlight for each.

More importantly, the album has been put up Radiohead-style as an offering to the internet and the nascent New Record Industry. Unlike the others, this one’s offered as an embedded stream and we’ve posted it below, meaning it won’t be taking up space on your hard drive, but you can click through any time you want to hear it.

Stream the album and read our take on it»

The world of songwriters can get pretty craggy, especially around the hazy, irony-crusted period known as the seventies. There are mystic troubadors, the emoters and all manner of guitar-addled gurus, but the best of the crop have always been the cynics. From Costello to Zevon, they were the ones who saw the decade from a fashionable remove, always staying one step ahead of critics and, for the most part, the listening public.

Randy Newman, the grand old curmudgeon of the cynics, has taken a break from his film work to put out his first album in nearly a decade. Of course, it’s fairly standard late-career business—impeccably professional but lacking some of his earlier bite—but that shouldn’t stop you from taking another stroll through Newman’s gallery of sycophants, sloths, and generally bad people. For newcomers, we’d recommend a different starting point, but if you already know the man, it’s nice to see him get comfortable.

TV on DVD has always been a mixed blessing—we’re looking at you, 24—but when it comes to foreign shows, DVD can be the difference between a pop culture touchstone and a pop culture footnote. For instance…

Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s seminal BBC sitcom Spaced is finally getting DVD treatment after a long stay in legal limbo. Pegg’s better known for his recent pop culture-saturated movies Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but his lovingly referential style started here. And the show’s list of fans is impressive, with Quentin Tarantino, Patton Oswald, Diablo Cody and Matt Stone (of South Park) all stopping by to provide a commentary track.

As for how they saw it so early…they must have British friends with VCRs.

It looks like Pittsburgh’s finest loop digger is back again.

After making a smash two summers back with his first album Night Ripper, Girl Talk has released another semi-legal collection of pasted-together hooks and old school beats. And for this one, titled Feed the Animals, he’s decided to pull a Radiohead, making it available online for whatever his fans want to pay.

More on Feed the Animals»

The New York Times clued us into the recent sale of Soul Train from its founder, the wise and esteemed Don Cornelius, to MadVision Entertainment a fresh-faced upstart.

While this must have netted the Don a pretty penny, we’re more interested in what it means for the show’s archives, a time capsule of some of the best funk and soul of the 70s, along with some of the worst jumpsuits. From the Jackson 5 (above) to Stevie Wonder and Sly & the Family Stone, we can’t think of another 70s television artifact that deserves DVD canonization more.

As always, Kempt wishes you love, peace, and soul.

We’ve been fans of the Daytrotter folks for some time, and in return, they’ve been steadily working through our favorite bands.

This time, they’ve tracked down indie stalwarts Spoon for a stripped-down set recorded in Daytrotter HQ in central Iowa. The songs are culled from Spoon’s decade-plus career (including one cut from the eleven-year-old Soft Effects EP), along with a Paul Simon cover that manages to fit right in. Of course, Simon is the musical inspiration du jour, so it’s interesting to hear what the old guard makes of him. Apparently, it sounds a lot like Spoon.

Daytrotter Sessions

After making their name with a hell of an album a few years back, The Walkmen have gotten a lot more low-key. They started out as O.C.-bound prepsters, but they always seemed more comfortable with drunken walks home than coke-fueled house parties.

So it’s fitting that they’d turn in an EP of Leonard Cohen covers from a ramshackle studio in the middle of Iowa.

Hear the Walkmen’s take on the distinguished Mr. Cohen»

From Hard Day’s Night to Top of the Pops (R.I.P.), the Brits have always had a knack for filming music. Their latest good idea is the Black Cab Sessions, a web video series filmed from the back of a London cab.

The pay for the gig is the price of a cab ride, flagged down on the day of the shoot. The cabbie introduces the band, or often enough, just the frontman. (The cabs aren’t big, after all.) The songs are all recorded in one take, usually on the way from the hotel to the venue, so the sessions have an immediacy and intimacy that’s increasingly rare in music. The camera periodically pans across the street for a little incidental London scenery, just so you don’t forget where you are.

More on the Black Cab Sessions»

The word “effortless” gets tossed around a lot, but when you’re putting out a TV show from your basement, you’ve probably earned it. Producer/mastermind Nigel Godrich (the genius behind Radiohead’s OK Computer) has been doing just that for most of 2007, and after a year of limbo they’re finally making it to the small screen.

Godrich started putting episodes on his website more than a year ago »

Back before they turned into the geriatric juggernaut that seems to be on a never-ending world tour, the Rolling Stones were the coolest rock band in the universe. In 1969, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and the gang crisscrossed the country in support of their album Beggar’s Banquet, culminating in the infamous free concert at Altamont in Northern California where Hell’s Angels killed a member of the audience.

Photographer Ethan Russell was with them every step of the way »

When it’s this wintry outside, the best thing to do is grab your girl and a bottle of the good stuff and just stay home for once with some great tunes. Thankfully three of the most stylish men in music—two living and one, alas, dead—have obliged with a trio of need-to-hear new box sets: Elvis Costello (pictured), Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke and Nick Drake, who overdosed in 1974.

Continue reading Box-Ing Day

Michael Caine is one of the most stylish men in cinema, so it figures that he has good taste in music. The English actor, who’s won two Oscars and was knighted by the Queen in 2000, recently issued a saccharine compilation CD in the UK of his favorite mellow tunes, called Cained; the disc, which contains everything from Nina Simone to Doctor Rockit, is now available on Amazon as an import.

Apparently the project came about after Caine mentioned to his fellow Commander of the British Empire Sir Elton John that he frequently makes mixed tapes for friends like Sir Sean Connery, Sir Roger Moore and Baron Lloyd-Weber. With the penchant the design cabal has for seizing on anything this coolly quirky, you can count on Cained providing the soundtrack to more than one event during that men’s fashion week everyone’s babbling about.

Stylish Swedish garage punks The Hives have traded in their Vegas lounge act look and are channeling Thom Browne for their latest effort, The Black and White Album. We call it a marked improvement, especially as they’ve eschewed Browne’s signature high-water trouserings. The crested boating blazers and striped school ties worn to good effect on the album cover and in the video for the first single, “Tick Tick Boom” are straight out of Browne’s much-ballyhooed Black Fleece collection for Brooks Brothers. And though he’s hardly the first designer to employ such motifs…