After a quiet spring, second half of the year looks big

We haven't had a lot of news to report so far in 2009, other than the Better than Ezra career resurrection. But a whole slew of albums are set to come out by Christmas by a lot of your favorite artists. Among them:

* Third Eye Blind, Ursa Major - recently pushed back from June 23 to August 18.

* Our Lady Peace, Burn, Burn - out today, with a large Canadian tour and short US tour to follow. I've already got my tickets for the Atlanta date.

* Vertical Horizon, Burning the Days - out August 11.

* Alice in Chains, Black gives way to blue - out September 29, but the first single, "A Looking In View," is available now on iTunes (or listen to it below). First album without Layne Staley.


* Pearl Jam, Backspacer - out September 20. The band premiered a song off it on the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien last month.

* Collective Soul, Rabbit - out August 25. First single "Welcome All Again" just hit radio and is available on iTunes as well. Go here if you want to hear a clip of another song off the album, "Staring Down." After two self-released albums, this one's coming out on Roadrunner Records, more famous for metal bands and Nickelback.

Our Lady Peace are back

Our Lady Peace, for my money the best Canadian band of the last 20 years, are back with a new album Burn, Burn, out July 21. And in a development that is making 17-year-old Mr. Peepers' head explode, the first single, "All you did was save my life," was co-written by Raine Maida of OLP and Zac Maloy of the Nixons. Watch the video here (sorry kids, no embedding).

The band's doing a big Canadian festival tour this month, and a small US club tour in August (already got my tickets for the Atlanta date). For an interview with Maida, go here; he says the band is consciously trying to get back to its '90s sound, which probably isn't a terrible thing. I liked parts of their last album in '05 (particularly "Angels/Losing/Sleep"), but it wasn't stellar, and their last big hit, "Somewhere Out There," was a little too slick for some folks.

Here's something to discuss in the comments: when all's said and done, who will be remembered as the biggest Canadian band of the '90s, Barenaked Ladies or Our Lady Peace? And no, the Tragically Hip don't count because a) their first album was in '87 and b) nobody south of Ontario knows any of their songs.

** Thanks to reader The Josh Strayhorn Experience for the tip!

This week in solo albums...

* Spin.com has a stream of "Paralysis," the first single off Scott Weiland's second solo album, Happy in Galoshes, out Nov. 25.

* Raine Maida of Our Lady Peace has an album influenced by spoken-word poetry, The Hunters Lullaby, out now. It's self-produced, recorded on vintage equipment, and doesn't sound much like OLP at all. Our Lady Peace should have a new album out soon, according to this article. A new song was premiered at a festival in (you guessed it) Canada this summer.

* Matt Scannell of Vertical Horizon has put out a limited-release album with '80s shlockmeister Richard Marx. Vertical Horizon are expected to put out a new album later this year.

* Mark Kano of Athenaeum is still working on a solo album, his first recorded output since 2001 (we previously reported on this here). No word on release date yet.

* John Hampson of Nine Days (now an English teacher), is also working on a solo album. It might be out by the end of the year.

Expect a very post-grunge album from David Cook

American Idol winner David Cook tells LiveDaily he's been working with Ed Roland from Collective Soul, Raine Maida from Our Lady Peace and Zac Maloy of Nixons fame.
The album (due this fall) will be produced by Rob Cavallo, who has done a lot of work with Green Day, the Goo Goo Dolls, and L7, among others.
If the American Idol winner were to put out an album that sounded like the KROQ playlist in 1995, would that be a good thing or a bad thing? I mean, for me it would be a good thing, but what about the music industry as a whole?