Venerable pop music critic Ann Powers will be leaving the LA Times in early March, Fishbowl LA reports, and will soon be taking on a position with NPR Music.

Powers replaced longtime LA Times critic Robert Hilburn in 2006, after stints at the Village Voice, the  New York Times, Blender, and Seattle's Experience Music Project. An outspoken feminist, though almost never a reactionary one, she has also co-edited Da Capo's "Best Music Writing 2010" collection, co-written the book "Piece By Piece" with Tori Amos, and will soon pen a booklength study of Kate Bush's "The Dreaming" for Continuum's 33 1/3 imprint.

A staff memo from Times assistant managing editor Sallie Hofmeister reveals that Powers, who left LA for Alabama last year, will nonetheless continue to contribute to the paper.

A wealth of digital music news has been flooding the wires today, with the most notable being Radiohead’s sudden decision to release its 8th studio album, “The King of Limbs,” a day early. The band just announced the record’s digital-only release date of Saturday four days ago, but apparently decided that even that wait-time was too long. Thus far the album is only available at the band’s website, and there have been remarkably few reports of traffic crashing the site. (The band’s fansite editor wasn’t so lucky earlier this week.) 

Sony’s Qriocity music streaming service saw its U.S. launch yesterday for PCs, Macs, HDTVs, Blu-ray players and Playstation 3 consoles. It remains to be seen how the service will fare against immediate competitors like Internet radio providers Pandora and Slacker: Qriocity has a much larger catalog – 6 million songs versus less than 4 million for Slacker and just under one million for Pandora – though its present lack of availability on mobile devices could hurt. (In an interview last November, Pandora CEO Tim Westergren told me that half of all Pandora usage occurs on mobile devices.)

Off in more speculative territory, ZDNet’s All Things Microsoft blog takes stock of the curious lack of Zune-related offerings (or company mentions thereof) from the Land of Gates, and ponders if the company is killing off its beleaguered music platform. Microsoft denies this, though considering its recent dealings with Nokia -- which just killed off its own Ovi music streaming service last month, and is switching to a Windows OS -- it seems that at least a rebranding could be in the cards.

Even further off in rumor land, bloggers are still parsing the statements made to the Guardian by Motorola mobility CEO Sanjay Jha, which seem to indicate that the long-discussed Google music project does, in fact, exist. Nothing he said gives any indication as to what it might look like, or when it could launch. But since when has lack of concrete information ever stopped anyone?

Appearing last night at the Troubadour in support of her new album, "Mondo Amore," out last week on Razor & Tie, Nicole Atkins said she expected to see "the ghosts of John Lennon and Harry Nilsson," who famously were booted out of the storied club back in 1974 for drunken behavior.

You’ve got to hand it to the native of Asbury Park, NJ — Bruce Springsteen country — for knowing her musical history, having been exposed to her parents early ’60s record collection and being more inclined toward Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash than the Boss in her songwriting.

At first, the range of her vocals is simply astounding, morphing from the girl group soar of the Ronettes to throaty Joplinesque phrasing to Chrissie Hynde’s crisp snarl to Dolly Parton’s kittenish soprano. And then there are those Edith Piaf overtones. (A friend felt she evoked Brandi Carlile, also known for her genre-less music that borrows equally from pop, rock, country and alternative.)

I have no idea what the new album sounds like, but from what I’ve read, her recordings don’t do justice to the real thing. She mixed her set evenly with songs from the new disc — including the slow-burn lament of "War is Hell" and the more ampted-up heartbreak of "Cry Cry Cry" — as well as some tasty tracks from her album debut on Columbia, "Neptune City" (2007), such as the atmospheric title tune, which reveals her appreciation for the music of composer Angelo Badalamenti, and the Beatlesque "Party’s Over."

Today saw good news and bad news for late-1990s music monoliths, as the once-indispensible book and music chain Borders filed for Chapter 11, while the 37th edition of the seemingly unkillable “NOW That’s What I Call Music!” hits-compilation series nabbed the top spot on the charts, with the first six-figure sales week of 2011.

The “NOW” compilations, launched in the U.S. in late 1998, were very much products of the era, when CD singles were extremely marginal as consumer commodities. (Indeed, a mere month after “NOW” first launched, the Billboard Hot 100 began to include radio airplay in its accounting of the week’s hot songs, instead of merely tracking singles sales.) Even though singles-oriented artists like Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys ruled the airwaves, the recorded music market was still overwhelmingly album-driven, and the “NOW” series offered casual fans a way to sample the biggest radio hits of the day without plunking down $18 each for full-length records that might have only contained a solitary hit.

In an iTunes world, the collections seem like something of a relic. (Last year even saw critic Nathan Rabin begin to take historical stock of the series with his consistently hilarious “THEN That’s What They Called Music!” columns.) Almost every song on the present compilation has been available for individual download for some time, with buyers able to preview and purchase only the songs they want.

The series’ continued success could indicate that consumers still crave a more traditionally curated experience, or it could be seen as a reminder that however badly physical album sales may be suffering, there’s still a healthy percentage of record-buyers who don’t purchase their music digitally. (For comparison, “NOW” presently sits at No. 24 on the iTunes album charts, and No. 60 on Amazon’s digital album chart.) 

When given an attractive product, it seems traditional album-buyers can still show up in large numbers. The problem, then, is where they can still actually show up to buy it.

 

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Fifty four years ago, Columbia released an album called "Dave Digs Disney," featuring Dave Brubeck’s classic quartet that included the dulcet tones of alto saxophonist Paul Desmond. So it’s a wonder, then, that Brubeck’s performance on the just-released Volume 1 of the Disney Jazz series’ "Everybody Wants to Be a Cat," recorded by the pianist at age 90, is an improvement on the original.

Brubeck’s playing on "Someday My Prince Will Come" (from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs") is wistful, balladic and, finally, swinging — executed with a young man’s bouncy lilt. In fact, Brubeck is featured twice on the collection, providing sensitive accompaniment to vocalist Roberta Gambarini on "Alice in Wonderland."

As all-star compilations go, this is both thematically satisfying and cohesive in its sophistication. Esperanza Spalding, fresh off her surprising Grammy win as the year’s best new artist, gives "Chim Chim Cher-ee," a rueful beauty with her slow-burn scat singing and gorgeous bass lines, with Gil Goldstein’s accordion recalling the Paris of "The Aristocats" more than the London of "Mary Poppins."

The Internet may be the greatest tool for the dissemination of music since the invention of radio, but it’s also just as useful for loudly and angrily proclaiming one’s own ignorance of particular musical acts, as several teapot tempests over last night’s Grammy Awards surprises illustrated.

The minute Esperanza Spalding’s name was announced for best new artist, in place of teen idol Justin Bieber, it was obvious the latter's fans weren’t going to take this surprise loss with the proper restraint. Within minutes, the respected young jazz bassist-vocalist’s Wikipedia page was rife with commentary, ranging from the all-caps rant “WHO THE HECK ARE YOU ANYWAY?” at the top of the page, to a subtler addition lower down: “Spalding won the 2011 Grammy for best new artist even though no one has ever heard of her! Hooray!” A more clever later alteration rendered her name as “Esperanza Justin Spalding.” 

Confusion over Spalding’s win may be a bit understandable, as contemporary jazz sits quite far afield from music’s mainstream. But the Arcade Fire’s win for album of the year (“The Suburbs”) sparked just as much befuddled outrage – even though the group had recently scored a No. 1 album, headlined nearly every major festival, and even licensed a song for the Super Bowl. An entire new blog, whoisarcadefire.tumblr.com, sprung up to deftly document the fracas as it played out on Twitter and Facebook. Containing such gems as “who are the Suburbs?” and “Arcadia Fire, WTF are they?” the site’s prime find is a Tweet from '80s musicvideo vixen Tawny Kitaen, who wrote: “Ok I’m not THAT old but who’s Arcade Fire? And worse, who the HELL thinks they’re good?”

The band may have conquered the Grammys, but getting onto Tawny Kitaen’s radar, well, that’s a different story all together.

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Recent No. 1 record-holders the Decemberists played L.A.'s Wiltern Theater over the weekend, and the veteran indie band now seem to be firmly ensconced in marquee headliner territory. As Matt Kivel writes, the 2,200-capacity theater "can now be considered an intimate venue for witnessing a Decemberists concert."

Read the full review here.