Each week, Playlist’s Glenn Peoples looks at special tracks offered by the iTunes Music Store and other select online music merchants. Here are the selections for the week of May 17th.
Oasis is back for another album and a U.S. tour, and there’s an iTunes exclusive of the single “Lyla” as well. It’s from the album Don’t Believe the Truth, which will be out on May 31st.
Robert Plant has a new album with his band The Strange Sensations that’s actually quite good. People will always want to hear Plant play Led Zeppelin tunes, though, so they’ll surely like their six-song iTunes Sessions EP. It includes “Black Dog,” “When the Levee Breaks” and “The Enchanter.”
It’s a big week for pre-release singles at iTunes: Fountains of Wayne’s “Maureen,” Juvenile’s “Sets Go Up” and Jason Mraz’s “Wordplay.” (Juvenile’s single is also available at Napster, MSN and Rhapsody.)
iTunes has a special version of Natalie’s self titled album that has a non-album track: the “>Breakbeat Mix of “Goin’ Crazy.” Fortunately it’s not bundled with the rest of the album, so you can download just that one song.
For its free download of the week, iTunes chose Kyle Riabko’s “>“Do You Right.” The kid is signed to Columbia Records and released Before I Speak last month. “Do You Right” is an impressive bit of soulful pop music. Think Maroon 5 Jr. but with a better soul and R&B record collection.
New to Rhapsody are a few Blue Note albums by jazz great Grant Green ( For the Funk of It , Mellow Madness , Ain’t It Funky Now ), Translucent Flashbacks by Spacemen 3 (a precursor to Spiritualized) and Keane’s exclusive Rolling Stone Original EP. Also, the album You’re Speaking My Language by Juliette & The Licks was on the Rhapsody main page yesterday. You may have heard of this band — the singer is none other than actress Juliette Lewis.
Indie rock fans always like a diamond in the rough, so here’s one of my favorite EPs of 2002 that was just added to Rhapsody: White Sleeves by Deathray. The Sacramento band has former members of Cake but sound nothing like them. Their debut full-length came out on Hollywood and went absolutely nowhere even though it’s a mighty catchy album.
Though it won’t be in stores until May 31st, Bleep.com has the debut album by the latest in a long line of next-big-thing bands, Maximo Park. A Certain Trigger has got some very good press behind it and people who look to the U.K. charts for guidance will want to give this a listen.
Calabash Music’s free download is currently “Chatma” by Tinariwen, a great group from the southern Sahara desert.
The debut of the inexpensive Yahoo! Music subscription service has brought one new development. MSN Music has a promotion running until July 10th: buy one song and get five free.