If you need any proof of the lockstepping ways of today’s music critics, just check out the top of Idolator’s Pop 07 poll and compare it to Pazz & Jop at the Village Voice, the old dinosaur Idolator’s poll was designed to defeat — or at least challenge — in its inaugural edition last year, when they called it Jackin’ Pop. If you hadn’t been told who was the flashy young upstart and who was the venerable old coot, could you tell the difference?

Idolator Pop 07 Album Top 10 (surveyed from 452 critics/voters):

1. LCD Soundsystem — Sound of Silver
2. M.I.A. — Kala
3. Radiohead — In Rainbows
4. Arcade Fire — Neon Bible
5. Amy Winehouse — Back to Black
6. Spoon — Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
7. The National — Boxer
8. Kanye West — Graduation
9. Panda Bear — Person Pitch
10. Of Montreal — Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

Pazz & Jop Album Top Ten (surveyed from 577 critics/voters):

1. LCD Soundsystem — Sounds of Silver
2. Radiohead — In Rainbows
3. M.I.A. — Kala
4. Amy Winehouse — Back to Black
5. Arcade Fire — Neon Bible
6. Kanye West — Graduation
7. Spoon — Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
8. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss — Raising Sand
9. Bruce Springsteen — Magic
10. The National — Boxer

Only the bottom of the top 10 gives a little hint at Idolator’s younger crowd. I started to do some math regarding the finer points of the two polls, but I hate math so I’m happy to report that someone did it for me. It’ll likely hurt your brain, following along with all this parsing and delineating. I recommend stepping away from your computer after three minutes of analysis and then staring out the window nearest you, which with hope will show at least one scrap of nature.

–Margaret Wappler

Photo: LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, the undisputed king? Credit: Robert Lachman/Los Angeles Times

On what he hopes to accomplish with the money he raises at his StaplesCenter shows, which start tonight:

“We’d like to do 10 million [dollars] in a weekend. It’s for fire victims, and then I would like to start an endowment for the future of California firefighting, and use the interest to get them something every year – a fire truck, something they can wear, whatever will make their job easier. I got a buddy at home who’s a firefighter, and I took him out to
California with me [recently], and he looked around and said, there’s no way to control fires here. It’s crazy!”

Unless you’re in Warrant or Def Leppard (or you’re Liz Phair), rarely does a songwriter get to indulge the part of one’s psyche that inspires lyrics like “I’m going to beat off … all my demons.” But local sad-eyed folkie Charlie Wadhams, a veteran of the Gary Jules/Mia Doi Todd/Tom Brosseau axis of pearl-buttoned singer-songwritery, got to flex some not-often-used double-entendre skills in his contributions to the “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” soundtrack: the spaghetti-western kiss-off “Guilty as Charged” and the Sonny-and-Cher baiting “Let’s Duet.” Here, we duet with him in conversation.

How does one get into the business of writing for “Dewey Cox”?

I was finishing a record with Mike Andrews, who scored “Walk Hard,” and he told me that they still needed a load of songs written. They didn’t give me a lot of pointers. When I gave them “Guilty as Charged,” I didn’t even realize the movie was a comedy.

On “Let’s Duet,” was it hard to mock the cliché of the pop duet while also writing a functional song?

I wanted to write a duet that still worked as a serious song. The first two versions were pretty tame, but they kept coming back and saying they wanted it way nastier and more sexual, and finally I got the message and wrote that first line “In my dreams you’re blowing me … some kisses.” I tried to think of every line like that I could.

You wrote it with [famously hirsute local singer-songwriter] Benji Hughes, it’d be amazing to see the two of you sing that together.

I was really hoping that song would get nominated for an Oscar so me an Benji could perform it. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Benji in person, but people look at him and don’t realize he’s a master of the craft.

Writing songs like that and “Guilty as Charged” must have made you feel like AC/DC or Motley Crue or something, getting to be completely alpha male in song.

I could never do that in my own music, it’d come off as a total joke, so to live through “Dewey Cox” was a blast. There’s a bunch of songs that didn’t make that I hope will be on the DVD.

You’ve spent some serious time on the local songwriting scene. At what point in your career were you walking hardest?

When I had to step up and try to write like Dewey Cox. I’ve only written sweet love songs as long as I can remember, so to hike up my pants and write tough, that was the hardest I’d walked.

–August Brown

Wadhams’ album “Free Up Your Schedule” is out now. Photo by Laura Heffington.

Grizzly Bear will be sharing a bill with the L.A. Phil on March 1 at Disney Hall. They will not be playing together, but instead will divide the program: L.A. Phil opens and Grizzly Bear headlines?!

A more inspired double bill can scarcely be imagined. Los Grizzlies exemplify the best of the chamber music sensibility in D.I.Y. indie rock. The Philharmonic’s share of the program will include pieces jointly agreed upon by the band and the orchestra, while the group’s will include material from its lush 2006 opus, “Yellow House.” Tickets go on sale next Saturday, Feb. 2.

That album landed on many Top 10 lists for that year and was my No. 1 choice. Few albums set me back in gobsmacked wonder as much as this one did. I met Grizzly Daniel Rossen last year when the band opened for Feist, and I told him so. He was openly embarrassed. Such is ursine humility.

– Casey Dolan

Catherine Wheel frontman Rob Dickinson, whose solo album

"Fresh Wine for the Horses" got buried in the implosion of Sanctuary Records,

will get another chance with it in 2008. Dickinson says Universal will release the album

"with some new songs plus some re-recorded Catherine Wheel nuggets in a freshened

package." Good news for Dickinson’s faithful, and any new fans his former band

might have won by its appearance on Rhino’s "Brit Box" boxed set.

Dickinson [pictured during his appearance at Coachella in 2006] plays tonight at the

Viper Room on a busy night for concert-going. See below …

Highlights for Thursday, Jan. 24

MySpace sensation Ingrid Michaelson

plays to a sold-out room at the Troubadour. … The indie music series at the Orange

County Performing Artscenter’s Samueli Theatre kicks off tonight with double-barreled

sweetness: Peter Bjorn and John, along

with Sea Wolf. … Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s show at

the Key Club is sold out too. … Taleb Kweli

starts a string of local shows at the Grove, while at the Silverlake Lounge, it’s Dead

Ponies and Savages. … The Airborne Toxic Event

continues its residency at Spaceland, where it’s been packed the last couple Thursdays.

… And at a KROQ-FM Locals Only show at the Roxy, Glacier Hiking is among the openers for

hard rockers A.I. Speaking of A.I., I don’t

think I ever posted the band’s cool video for the song "Hey Now!" Vintage

Sunset Strip rock …

Garth Brooks on not raising another Miley Cyrus:

“My youngest daughter wants to follow in Trisha’s footsteps. [Ed. note: that’s singer supreme Trisha Yearwood, Garth’s main squeeze, for those of you who didn’t notice the nuptials a few years back.] She really wants it so bad she can taste it. So did I. When I was eighteen, they had a thing called Opryland USA and it would go thru the nation and pick 11 people . [Ed. note: Brooks seems to be referring to a regional contest sponsored by the Grand Old Opry called the Opry Talent Search.] I drove into Oklahoma City and played, went back home and a month later I got a letter and listed the fourteen players and I was one of them. But mom and dad said, you can’t go to that. That’s your summer, you gotta make money here to go back to school! It broke my heart but they were right. All I can do is look back and say, I’m where I’m at, and so some right choices must have been made. Same thing with my youngest. [Ed. note: C’mon Garth, give little Allie a chance!]

For a couple nervous minutes at the Troubadour on Wednesday night, Gallows’ singer Frank Carter looked like he was going to stage-dive from the upstairs balcony. It’s likely been done a few times in the Troubadour’s history, but it’s surely impossible to do well, even for the redheaded firecracker who fronts the most promising punk band since the Blood Brothers called it quits. Fortunately for his vertebrae, he was only feigning it, and he stuck to climbing the lighting rigs and shrieking bloody murder while his band updated the ‘77 playbook with Oi! shouts, math-rock breakdowns and snaking call-and-response surf metal licks. L.A.’s quite great “new punk” scene at the Smell (No Age, Health, Abe Vigoda, Mika Miko, etc.) has earned scads of deserved press, but it was exhilarating in its own right to see the London-based Gallows strip the art school pretensions down to punk’s spit-and-vinegar essence while still elaborating on hardcore formulas. Also, they do the second-best (behind Dirty Projectors) Black Flag cover going these days. Expect these kids to get much, much bigger.

–August Brown

We got news a few minutes ago that Scarlett Johansson’s first album will arrive with the May flowers. Now, many famous thespians lament that the media don’t take these endeavors seriously, but we think it’s perfectly fine if actors want to flirt with being rock stars, chanteuses, country badasses or whatever else. But we’re also allowed to be skeptical. Don Johnson, Corey Feldman, Paris Hilton, William Shatner and dozens of others have made us this way. It also, frankly, reeks of fame-hogging. Share the wealth — literally! Anyway, here’s the press release:

“Scarlett Johansson will release her debut album, Anywhere I Lay My Head, on Atco Records, an imprint of Warner Music Group’s Rhino Entertainment, on May 20. The inspired album features 10 Tom Waits songs and includes one original track. Collaborating with TV on the Radio producer David Sitek, Johansson is also joined by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner, Sean Antanaitis from Celebration, as well as others. Johansson spent five weeks last spring recording in Louisiana at Dockside Studios.”

Despite our teases, we’re keeping an open mind on this one. Lucky for Scarlett, we still watch “Ghost World” on an annual basis. Here’s hoping she can summon a little more presence than she did singing along with the Jesus and Mary Chain at Coachella last year, where her wispy vocals apparently disappeared into the admittedly powerful hive of guitars. So, Wendy O. Williams she ain’t, but maybe she can work some kind of femme-hobo spirit covering those Waits tracks.

More soon on celebs and records…

– Margaret Wappler

[Photo: Scarlett Johansson performs with Jim Reid, lead singer of Jesus and Mary Chain. Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times]

The big Will Call news this week came from Goldenvoice, which announced the lineup for the 2008 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, to be held April 25-27 at the Empire Polo Fields in Indio. It’s an interesting crop blooming in the desert this year with surprises right up to the top of the bill, which includes surfer-singer Jack Johnson, a reunited Portishead, and Pink Floyd visionary Roger Waters, who’ll be playing “Dark Side of the Moon” in its entirety.

Surprised by one or two of the headliners and interested in discussing it? Want to know who else is playing the festival??? Go here for the complete lineup and a lively thread on the topic.

In other news, it was a decent week. Bittersweet songstress Cat Power will be playing the Wiltern on Feb. 29 (tickets on sale Saturday). Brooklyn indie rockers Grizzly Bear will be teaming up with the L.A. Philharmonic for a March 1 show at Walt Disney Concert Hall (tickets on sale next Saturday, Feb. 2). And dance-rock acts MSTRKRFT and Z-Trip will be performing with LA Riots and DJ Diabetic at the Music Box at the Fonda on April 18 (tickets on sale Saturday).

Hip-hop fans will be happy to note the Paid Dues concert featuring Book Camp Clik, Sage Francis, Living Legends and Hieroglyphics at the San Bernadino NOS Events Center on March 22, and that Common will be playing the House of Blues West Hollywood on Feb. 12 and Anaheim on Feb. 13 (tickets to both shows go on sale Saturday).

The winner this week? Clearly, it’ s Jack Johnson. (Headlining Coachella’s first night? Seriously, whose board did he wax to attain that honor?) But in the interest of simplicity, let’s give it to the whole of Coachella 2008 for that curveball of a lineup.

–Liam Gowing

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that tickets for Grizzly Bear’s show with the L.A. Philharmonic (March 1 at Walt Disney Concert Hall) would go on sale this Saturday. In fact, tickets for the show will go on sale next Saturday, Feb. 2.

In the ranks of overwrought music writing that have appeared in the Village Voice, Garrett Kamps is a god among fanboys. His recent review of Cat Power’s flawed but arresting “Jukebox” covers record is especially troubling. It’s not so much the rank misogyny or his John Yoo-level torturing of the em dash that really derails this review, but the fact that he doesn’t seem to know what, exactly, a “cougar” is. Given our close approximation to Orange County, we know all too well. Cougars are sexually aggressive women on the far side of 40 peddling consequence-free hookups to inexperienced young men who will relay the tales in hushed, reverent tones over Halo 3 tournaments with their friends. Does that sound like an apt description of Cat Power (a.k.a. Chan Marshall), who once wrote a song about Patti Smith’s children and her own abortion? Or the one who wrote one of 2006’s most generous, uplifting Southern soul albums, “The Greatest?”

If Kamps is truly hunting for cougars, we can suggest a few better places for him to start trolling.

– August Brown

[Cougar photo by Christine Cotter / Los Angeles Times. Chan Marshall photo by Stefano Giovannini / Beggars Group LTD via Bloomberg News]

An earlier version of this blog incorrectly referred to John Yoo as John Wu. And that was all Margaret’s fault and not August’s, so she will be buying him a latte something-or-another later today. Maybe.