Niki N. Phaser

Grunge survivors Pearl Jam have offered a gift to fans through their MySpace page. The song is called The Fixer and it’s the first single from their upcoming album, Backspacer, which is due for release this September. It will be a breath of fresh material amongst the string of reissues they are planning. Even before the premiere, it was known that The Fixer is going to be used for a Target commercial, directed by Cameron Crowe. He’s a good friend of the band and has worked with them before, on his 1992 grunge-era comedy Singles. He is also at the helm of some sort of documentary on the band, a 20 year anniversary retrospective. This new single might baffle some of Pearl Jam’s fans, as it has very little guitar heaviness on it or, in fact, none at all. It was the band’s intention to get more poppy on this one, but the results sound a bit like Counting Crows back in the 90′s. However, after their previous album, Pearl Jam, being so punchy, a change was rather expected.

Irish alternative trio Ash announced a while ago that they are done with making albums. They’ve also made public plans to release 26 singles, starting from september this year and going all the way to 2010, with a new song released every two weeks. They even gave us a preview taste with Return of White Rabitt. Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins actually talked about this method some time ago, but nothing was settled. Beyond this being important news for Ash fans, we have to wonder: is this the beginning of the singles revolution ? As we all know, the iTunes culture really made its mark on the industry, as increasingly more people prefer to download just certain tracks from an artist’s album. This is certainly one of the reasons why bands are no longer releasing simple cd’s, but also limited edition boxsets and DVD’s and bonus tracks and whatnot. The method adopted by Ash will surely offer equal spotlight to all new material and it might be very effective for a band that doesn’t make a lot from album sales. This could be the spark that ignites the singles takeover. On the other hand, it will take a long time for people to part ways with the traditional way of buying music – that unique moment when you open a cd for the first time and fear to even touch, as it is so pristine + the original artwork…

RETURN OF THE WHITE RABITT