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· "It's 3am and your children are safe and asleep..." Not Trent Reznor, though. Late Sunday, saw the release of a new Nine Inch Nails album, Ghost I-IV, online. A vocal critic of the music industry - and a recent record label free-agent - Reznor released the 36 new instrumental tunes as a digital-download only, available at Amazon MP3 and NIN.com. On his website, Reznor says that the tracks were recorded over "an intense ten week period last fall." He adds, "I'm very pleased with the result and the ability to present it directly to you without interference." Reznor had been teasing the release date on his site the last couple of weeks.
· Last fall, during rehearsals for the "VH1 Hip-Hop Honors" in New York, MTV News was interviewing Pharrell out in front of the venue when we ran into Chris Rock. He had just come from seeing Van Halen the night before and was desperately trying to convince Pharrell that if he ever wanted to know what pure rock 'n roll sounds like, he needed to go see Van Halen. Let's hope Pharrell got his chance, because TMZ is reporting that the remaining dates on the Van Halen tour have now been cancelled. Something about Eddie and "issues." (BTW, Chris Rock correctly remembered that VH's 5150 and Run DMC's Raising Hell were released on the same day). UPDATED: They're not cancelled, they're postponed. Um, and we corrected the proper VH album that came out in 1986!
· The Arcade Fire's Win and Will Butler, Regine Chassagne and Jeremy Gara played a free show at Stuart's Opera House in Nelsonville, Ohio, Sunday, in support of Barack Obama. They play another free show at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland Monday night. The band's publicist said that though the Arcade Fire is known as a Canadian band, "Win and Will were born and raised in the U.S. (and spent their formative years in Texas), Regine is a dual citizen whose dad served in Vietnam, and Jeremy Gara is just a really nice Canadian who likes playing music and is sick of explaining to Americans what universal health care means." So why aren't they playing in Texas?
· Winona Ryder is engaged to be married to Rilo Kiley guitarist Blake Sennett, thus shattering the dreams of an entire generation of musicians who probably started their bands thinking they had a shot. [via Stereogum]
UPDATE: Ryder's rep denies the rumors. We'll sort it out.