Celebrating the new music holiday in Ithaca. 

The morality of illegal music downloading may be more complicated than we think.

Graham Corrigan gives The Sun his spin on Big Boi's newest release, Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty.

Matt Samet writes about Katy Perry's catchy new album, Teenage Dream.

Wesley Ambrecht reviews Ray Lamontagne's newest release, God Willin' and the Creek Don't Rise.

“Excuses”

The Morning Benders

Fresh off the reconstruction of The Shins, frontman James Mercer is set to release an album with DJ Danger Mouse (Brian Burton), the patient and mesmerizing producer behind The Grey Album and Gnarls Barkley.

Over Madonna’s 25-year career, it’s always been nearly impossible to separate her music from her image; the two reflect each other so much that it’s often difficult to discern which came first. This tendency worried me, as the garishly horrific — and eerily pornographic — cover to Hard Candy suggested that the singer’s new album would be an equally atrocious listening experience. Thankfully, Madonna — for the most part — breaks from her image-equals-music tradition, as Hard Candy is a relentlessly modern, savvy collection of hip-pop that gleams with sleek, silky R&B and disco influences.

The Kooks lead singer, Luke Pritchard, might have slipped into a bit of a depression over a girl, but resisting the uppers was a great decision. This broken heart has written an album full of depressing lyrics that, somehow, doesn’t dishearten the listener.

Delightfully boisterous, the Brooklyn-via-Philadelphia band Santogold focuses a dizzying array of reggae-dub, groovy surf rock and buoyant pop melodies into a truly promising debut album. Led by front-woman Santi White’s shape-shifting vocals and bandmate John Hill’s scorching synthesizer play, Santogold does not linger in any single genre of music for too long — a scheme that works to stellar effect.