by SHANE SINNOTT

This week, with much excitement and requisite gusto, I tracked down a song from the upcoming Spiritualized album, Songs in A & E, which is set for release at the end of May. Of this first new record in five years, frontman Jason Pierce is telling reporters, “It’s the work of the devil—with a little help from me.” Mr. Spaceman certainly has experience to draw from: two years ago, he almost died from a by-all-accounts crazy bout of double pneumonia (WTF?). The only thing available from the album so far is a rip for BBC Radio of the song “Soul on Fire,” which you can get at tinyurl.com/38f2bo. Pierce continues the band’s glacial slide towards towards gospel over the last 15 years, and he hasn’t lost his knack for the bittersweet. “Freedom is just another word/when you’ve no one left to hurt,” he sings. Ah, destroyed love!

There was a big fuss last week when it seemed like the forthcoming Girl Talk album, entitled Wild Peace IV: Feed the Animals, Raise the Dead (again, WTF?), had leaked. Alas, it turned out the leak was fake, prompting Gregg Gillis to write a note on his MySpace blog. “Someone posted a fake ‘leak’ of my upcoming album. I was not involved in this at all. The music posted had nothing to do with me.” Anyway, none of this would be particularly interesting save for the fact that the whole thing was unintentional—some files were mislabelled as a joke amongst friends. The fakes were by an artist named Speaky, an accounting major at West Chester University, who describes himself on his MySpace blog like so: “I like to take samples from my favourite songs and mash them together into one ultimate super smash musical mix of the universe.” Go figure. His site’s at tinyurl.com/2r3qdo, where you can listen to what are basically shittier versions of Girl Talk tracks.

It would have been fascinating if the fake hadn’t been found out so quickly. I’m curious if Girl Talk fans would have argued for the new album, or still deemed it crap. We’ll never know. Here’s a real track, called “Friday Night”: tinyurl.com/33fy8y.