New Music, New Movie

The Smashing Pumpkins released the first song from their new venture Yesterday. It's called "A Song for A Son" and I have to say, it's pretty awesome. Something else that's awesome about it is that you can download it for free. You can head over to www.smashingpumpkins.com and listen to the new song and download it. I was going to embed the player here on the blog, but they've not set it up to allow resizing and I couldn't get it to look right on the sidebar.

I've talked before about how the new album is supposed to work. They're going to release each song, one at a time available for free on the website. Then ever four songs are going to be bundled into limited edition EPs. Then once all 44 songs have been released they're going to release a repackaged box set of all the songs. It'll probably be years before all this is done and knowing Billy and the Smashing Pumpkins, it may not even all pan out, but if it comes together and lives up to the promise, it should be pretty awesome.

Two of my other favorite bands also had big announcements this week. Coheed and Cambria announced their next album should be out in April and they're planning to tour next summer. I really would love to get to see them next year. Hopefully the stars will align and I'll have the chance.

Also, Our Lady Peace announced a series of shows where they'll be playing two of their best albums cover to cover over two nights. They're going to be doing Clumsy and Spiritual Machines. The only bad thing about these shows is that they are all in Canada (where the band is from). So we won't be getting to go to any of those. Hopefully they'll put together a DVD and release it later on.

Speaking of DVDs, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out yesterday. DeAnne picked it up when she was at Wal-Mart and we watched it last night. I'm still disappointed with the lack of back story on Voldemort but I think I liked the movie better this time around than I did when we saw it in the theater last summer. Two sequences stand out to me as being especially well done. One being the liquid luck induced series of events that sets up the end of the movie and the other, the sequence that begins with Harry and Dumbledore returning from the cave and continues through the end of the movie. I know the end is different from the book, but they did a wonderful job with it in the movie and to me it's still just as moving as the end of the book. Here's hoping next November and Deathly Hallows part 1 comes quickly.

Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

PS. I tried to find the Deathly Hallows trailer that's on the HBP DVD to put with this post but it looks like Warner Bros. is actively taking them down as they pop up. Probably because it's a "Ultimate Edition" exclusive. Oh well.