LCD Soundsystem

Is there any band in this indie world that is not putting out an album this year? All the big guns, and the new littler but just as important guns, are announcing new albums to be released this year. All of us amateur music critics will have a pretty tough time compiling best of the year lists once the year ends if more bands keep announcing 2010 album release dates.

In the past few weeks alone, Broken Social Scene, The Hold Steady, The National and LCD Soundsystem have all recently announced albums with May release dates. I cannot believe all that music awesomeness will be occurring within the span of a few Tuesdays. Our pocket money will surely be hurting in June.

But, seriously. What in the world is going on in May? Is there something these guys know that we don't? Will June bring a sort of indie apocalypse, or an actual apocalypse, for that matter? We'll have to wait and see, I guess. In the meantime we can all eagerly anticipate the arrival of too much exciting music.

The Hold Steady

The Hold Steady are set to embark on a Spring tour after a major lineup change.

Keyboardist Franz Nicolay -- the curly-cue-mustachioed, amped-up, vaudevillian entertainer dude of the band -- has left The Hold Steady to pursue numerous other ventures.

Without Nicolay the band will lack his kitschy appeal and dapper vests, but they will chug on. The Hold Steady tour and tour and tour some more, and they will continue to do so without Nicolay aboard the bus.

Frontman Craig Finn and his remaining bandmates have planned a Spring tour of these Northeastern parts of the U.S., and a date at Cleveland's own Beachland Ballroom is set for April 13, so be sure to see this entertaining group of guys live.

They may be a bandmate down, but they are still The Hold Steady: the raging, powerhouse band led by a guy named Finn (no relation to myself I don't think but I'm happy to share my surname with a rock star).