I'm all for moving on, but does it strike anyone else as a bit strange that Alice in Chains would send out a press release about their upcoming album, their first in over ten years, without mentioning Layne Staley even once? At best, it's a sort of sad, if also understandable—his death had to have been hard on the rest of the band. At worst, it's the kind of thing that makes the last paragraph after the jump, right before the tour dates, seem terribly disingenuous.

Intern Amanda Kersey spent her Saturday night at Prospect Park for the Dr. Dog/Phosphorescent show, and gentlemen, there's something she'd like to tell you.

Soft-spoken Matthew Houck of Phosphorescent, showed muscle at Saturday night's Prospect Park show, further flustering already tipsy young women in the crowd.

When Houck rolled up his sleeves during his set, which included songs from his most recent record, To Willie, my friends and I gaped at his brawny upper arms. As he soulfully sang tribute to Willie Nelson, we wondered, where are there more of these sensitive, toned men? So boys, tack a poster of Houck to the wall and lift some weights. We'll adore you for it.

Bonus points, presumably, for finding a way to reveal your toned upper-arms without resorting to rolling up the sleeves on your t-shirt like a teenage girl in gym class.

The NY Post is reporting that Simon Cowell has been offered $144 million to continue his role as lead judge on American Idol. There's no denying, obviously, that were he to leave the show, there would basically be no show, but this is sort of a lot of money. So as a service to the good people at Fox, I've put together a list of possible replacements for the famously grumpy Brit, should the two parties be unable to reach an agreement.

"Jens Lekman Contracts Swine Flu" is the most eye-catching headline we've come across in some time; here at the L, we're big fans of the pocket-sized Swedish singer-songwriter and sometime-inaudibly whistling DJ, and we wish him a speedy recovery. Partly we wish this to alleviate our guilt at finding this news bizarrely delightful; partly we wish this because, judging from his own droll account of being taken ill on an Air France flight back from South America, the song he eventually writes about this experience will be really, really good.

If the guy can make this out of the experience of slicing one's finger with a kitchen knife, we have high hopes for what he does with global pandemic.

"I'm Leaving You Because I Don't Want You to Contract Swine Flu"? "Someone to Share My Contagion With"? "Do You Remember the Riots in Gothenberg? I Don't, Because I Was in Quarantine at the Time"? Et cetera. Thoughts?

Ugh, you guys. Just, ugh. As if I didn't already like Stuart Murdoch enough. Check out this lede from a Times piece about the Belle and Sebastian frontman's unfairly maligned new project, God Save the Girl.

On a damp April night, Stuart Murdoch sat at the piano in his Glasgow West End apartment and struggled to finish another sad song. It’s not as easy as it once was. Now beautiful women distract him. Perched next to Murdoch was Catherine Ireton, a singer from Ireland who features prominently in Murdoch’s new project, a movie musical he hasn’t quite finished writing. She texted while Murdoch hummed a melody. His wife, Marisa Privitera, was curled up on a nearby couch. She bears a striking resemblance to the French New Wave actress Jean Seberg, Murdoch’s favorite screen heroine — a likeness that was hard to miss, since she sat under a poster of Godard’s “Breathless” that featured Seberg. Murdoch played a few notes, but then stopped abruptly.“Marisa, what are you doing?”

Privitera looked up guiltily from her laptop. “Oh, sorry, I was just Facebooking,” she said. “That probably can wait.”

Her husband sighed dramatically. “Yes, please wait if you don’t mind,” he said. “We can give you a shaker if you need something to do.”

That's what I'm gonna start saying to interns from now on.

The videos for songs off Kanye's latest album, 808s and Heartbreak, have been all over the place, and the latest is no exception. Javier Longobardo's anime-inspired CGI video for "Street Lights" is pretty, almost so pretty it could distract from the boring song, which builds just slowly enough to put you to sleep. And pretty as it is, it still looks like a half-finished video game or computerized action sequence. Like preceding clips for "Paranoid" (starring Rihanna), "Amazing" and "Heartless" (all of which are much better songs than "Street Lights"), the concept is interesting, but the execution totally half-assed. What I'm trying to say is, it might be cool in a designer video game kind of a way, but it's no "Love Lockdown". Am I right?

When I read this morning that after a huge increase in sales, both physical and digital, since his death on Thursday, it was being predicted that MIchael Jackson would return to the top of the charts when the week's numbers are released on Wednesday, I was all ready to do a post about it, then I decided it probably wasn't very surprising. A quick stop by the iTunes music store right now would tell you as much: seven of the top ten highest-selling tracks are by MJ, and seven of the ten best-selling full-lengths are as well, plus a whopping nine out of ten for the music video section.

But I'm sorta blown away by this piece over at Billboard, which says that Michael Jackson received a 1,735% boost in plays on terrestrial radio over the weekend. That is a lot of per cents.

In case you were wondering, here's a list of the ten songs that got the most plays. After the jump, of course.