SOUNDGARDEN Live on I-5 [A&M] ARCHIVAL Whether you’re in a marriage or a band, breaking up is hard to do—and lots of business gets left unfinished. Grunge powerhouse Soundgarden recorded several shows on the West Coast leg of its 1996 tour with an eye toward compiling its first-ever live album, but when the group announced its breakup the following April those plans were abandoned. With Soundgarden’s recent reunion, this lost fragment... 

VARIOUS ARTISTS The Music Inside: A Collaboration Dedicated to Waylon Jennings, Volume I [Scatter/Big Machine] TRIBUTE There’s a very good reason most tribute albums are lousy: The majority of them are collections of disparate tracks, each recorded by a completely different team of artists, musicians and producers. That almost always results in a lack of cohesion, even given the unifying factor provided by the songs. The Music Inside is a convincing... 

GRATEFUL DEAD Road Trips, Vol. 4 No. 2: April Fools’ ’88 [Rhino] BOX SET After years of struggles with drug abuse and poor health, Grateful Dead guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia slipped into a diabetic coma for five days in July 1986. When he awoke, he found that he had to re-learn how to play guitar, a process that took months. In 1989, during the making of the Dead’s final studio album, Built to Last, he relapsed into drug abuse and continued... 

THE WHITE BUFFALO Prepare for Black & Blue [Rough Shod] Take this EP’s title at face value: These are rough-and-tumble tales of damaged relationships, drinking and blood spilled. While “Love Song #2” is indeed a love song, it’s one that’s twisted up with drunken fights, an absent lover and the loneliness of the road. “Black & Blue” contrasts its gentle acoustic setting with a vivid portrait of a volatile relationship, while “In... 

CAGE THE ELEPHANT Thank You, Happy Birthday [Jive] With just two albums under its belt, Kentucky’s Cage the Elephant has transformed itself from a Lou Reed-meets-Red Hot Chili Peppers funk-punk outfit into something a bit darker. Trading away vocalist Matt Shultz’s previous raps for jarring screams will probably result in the band being less of a frat-house favorite, but it should also make it clear that this is a lead singer to keep an eye on.... 

BRITISH SEA POWER Valhalla Dancehall [Rough Trade] British Sea Power is known for big ideas and an even bigger sound. On their first three albums, these wily Brits transformed themselves from artsy thrashers into U2-grade stadium-rock flag wavers. That the group was nowhere near popular or accessible enough to play stadiums made the whole thing all the more confusing—and intriguing. Then came its fourth album, Man of Aran, a largely instrumental... 

MARCUS MILLER A Night in Monte-Carlo [Concord Jazz] With a playing style that glides effortlessly among jazz, R&B and funk, bassist Marcus Miller has long been in demand as a sideman. But he shines brightest when he’s the man up front, as on this live collaboration with the Monte- Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra. Joined by an inspired cast of musicians including trumpeter Roy Hargrove, singer and guitarist Raul Midón and turntablist DJ Logic,... 

HAYES CARLL KMAG YOYO (& Other American Stories) [Lost Highway] Alt-country rising star Hayes Carll crackles with road warrior enlightenment and follows his heart with damn-the-torpedoes political impropriety. KMAG YOYO (a military acronym for “Kiss My Ass Guys, You’re On Your Own”) finds the Texas native wearing many of his influences on his sleeve. “Stomp and Holler” could easily be this century’s “Highway 61 Revisited” for its... 

TODD SNIDER Live: The Storyteller [Aimless] “If everything goes particularly well this evening, we can all expect a 90-minute distraction from our impending doom,” proclaims Todd Snider, near the start of this rollicking, talk-heavy two-CD live set. The sentiment captures perfectly Snider’s offhand way of couching life’s hard truths in snappy, sharp-witted lines and images. The Nashville veteran’s studio albums have earned a first-rate reputation—comparisons... 

TENNIS Cape Dory [Fat Possum] The debut album by husband-and-wife duo Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley is a surf-pop treasure spawned by an eight-month sailing journey up the East Coast. Everything goes swimmingly on the surface of Cape Dory (named after the boat’s manufacturer), but a stream of melancholy lurks beneath the waves. The best songs are like wistful glances back towards the shore: “Marathon” rides along on a terrific bass line and... 

JOHN VANDERSLICE White Wilderness [Dead Oceans] There’s always been an orchestral sensibility to John Vanderslice’s music. This time he makes it official by teaming with San Francisco’s Magik*Magik Orchestra on nine new tunes featuring Minna Choi’s subtle, skillful arrangements of strings, horns, woodwinds and more traditional rock toys like piano and pedal steel guitar. Sleek strings race crosswise across the contrapuntal groaning of wind... 

WIRE Red Barked Tree [Pink Flag] Wire’s angular omnipresence has long lurked in the deep corners of the English rock psyche. Morphing from the most art-damaged of the early punks to the most punk-damaged of the post-punk art-rockers, the band has spent 30 years off and on watching half-shed shards of its DNA pop up at intervals, and now even their descendants in the Feelies or the Pixies are old enough to go on reunion tours. While crashers like... 

DAVID LOWERY The Palace Guards [429 Records/Savoy] It’s taken San Antonio’s David Lowery nearly three decades to succumb to the urge of recording a solo album, although he was always the dominant creative force in his bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker. As it stands, close your eyes and The Palace Guards morphs into a very good Cracker album. The nine songs here veer between country cornpone and blazing rock, with Lowery’s signature wit... 

THE DIRTBOMBS Party Store [In the Red] Garage rock and soul are both unavoidable influences for any Detroit band reared on the local drinking water. The Dirtbombs love their Motown and Stooges, but they also know the city didn’t stop producing good music in the ’70s. Here the band explores a more obscure era of hometown history, covering a series of innovative techno singles from the ’80s and ’90s. The originals were recorded with drum machines... 

DESTROYER Kaputt [Merge] Dan Bejar has done lo-fi, he’s tried symphonic and now he goes for a super-glossy hi-fi sound on the latest from his band Destroyer. Kaputt is like the soundtrack for a Bryan Ferry biopic from an alternate reality—full of atmospheric synthesizers, effects-treated guitars, crisp drums and sleek, airless bass. The alto saxophone meandering through some of the songs is also part of the wistful mood of the record—all late... 

THE GADDABOUTS The Gaddabouts [Racecarlotta] While it’s only natural to mistake the Gaddabouts’ self-titled debut for another Edie Brickell album—perhaps a companion piece to the eponymous effort she released in January—that assumption misses the mark. This is an all-star assemblage, with Brickell being but one of the headliners alongside veteran drummer Steve Gadd, Who bassist Pino Palladino and British guitarist Andy Fairweather-Low. Gadd,... 

GANG OF FOUR Content [Yep Roc] Gang of Four roared out of the chute more than three decades ago with Entertainment!, one of the post-punk era’s finest albums. A prime influence on the alternative-rock crowd, the British quartet framed punk’s subversive spirit in jagged rhythms and shards of staccato riffs. Remarkably, the group’s first album of new material since reuniting in 2004 picks up right where its early work left off. Armed with sturdy... 

CARRIE RODRIGUEZ AND BEN KYLE We Still Love Our Country [Ninth Street Opus] Carrie Rodriguez, who began her career as part of a duo with Chip Taylor, finds a new collaborator on this duets album with Ben Kyle from the Minneapolis band Romantica. On this eight-song set the two travel some familiar Americana territory, covering Townes Van Zandt (“If I Needed You”), John Prine (“Unwed Fathers”), George Jones (“You’re Still On My Mind”)... 

JOE LOVANO/US FIVE Bird Songs [Blue Note] When Joe Lovano decided to record an album interpreting the songs of Charlie Parker, he knew the best approach he could take was to not pretend to be Parker himself. And why should he? Lovano has been one of the most consistently inventive saxophonists in jazz for more than two decades. The melodies and chordal shifts may be as familiar as bebop itself, but Bird Songs sounds and feels like what it is: a Joe... 

NICOLE ATKINS Mondo Amore [Razor & Tie] Four years ago in “Brooklyn’s On Fire!” Nicole Atkins sang about a city in flames while sounding too wrapped up in a magical, boy-crazy dream to really care. Her second album fast-forwards to a point where love-induced blindness has lost some of its power and where a conflict has arisen between our need to move on and our desire to keep what’s in front of us. When Atkins isn’t sticking up for... 

TALIB KWELI Gutter Rainbows [Javotti Media/3D] The latest from Talib Kweli is largely a DIY affair: The rapper recorded and released it outside the major-label system, and no big-name producers or big-shot guests were involved. It’s just Kweli with a handful of collaborators, dropping rhymes that veer toward the socially conscious over neo-soul beats. In other words, it’s not all that different from what the New York MC has been doing all along.... 

PJ HARVEY Let England Shake [Vagrant] After years of making love songs sound like declarations of war, PJ Harvey is flipping the script. Let England Shake is a blunt indictment of her country’s past and present militarism, and while the lyrics range from mournful to venomous, the music is steady and restrained. Part of that is due to instrumentation: Harvey wrote these songs on autoharp, an instrument that doesn’t exactly lend itself to hardcore... 

RADIOHEAD The King of Limbs [TBD Records] There are two Radioheads, and there have been for some time now. One is a five-piece rock band from Oxfordshire, England, that is responsible for relatively straightforward modern classics like “Creep” and “Karma Police.” The other is a six-piece studio collective (including producer Nigel Godrich, an essential part of the team since 1997’s landmark OK Computer) that assembles complex, surreal sonic... 

BOB REA Ragged Choir bobreamusic.com Rea’s songs can come across ragged at times, but they’re also very easy to like. An old school raconteur with a stylistic similarity to the likes of Guy Clark, Waylon Jennings and Rodney Crowell, Rea demonstrates a surefooted take on the Everyman perspective.  Read More →

MICK RHODES ’Til I Am Dust myspace.com/mickrhodesmusic Mick Rhodes jumps genres like a kangaroo navigating the Outback, yet consistently cranks out great tunes. Whether it’s the pop spark of “Back to the 909,” the Americana revelry of “It’s Too Late” or the backwoods stomp of “Brown and Blue,” Rhodes rocks with conviction.  Read More →

KEVENS We Are One kevens.com Reggae has splintered into several subgenres over the years, but Kevens takes a traditional tack that would likely find Bob Marley nodding his approval. Opening track “HalleluJAH” echoes Marley’s spiritual side, while songs like “Open Your Eyes and “Breakdown the Walls” offer further affirmation. Kevens maintains a rock steady rhythm throughout.  Read More →

BIRDSONG AT MORNING Annals of My Glass House birdsongatmorning.com A lovely compendium combining Birdsong At Morning’s four EPs, Annals of My Glass House finds the chamber folk trio gently ruminating on matters of the heart. Nick Drake’s influence is obvious, but hushed covers of Blondie’s “Dreaming” and the Rolling Stones’ “Moonlight Mile” also prove revelatory.  Read More →

AUDITORIUM Be Brave auditoriummusic.com You’d expect a musician who brands himself Auditorium to go for theatrics, but the man behind this curtain, Spencer Berger, keeps the drama to a minimum. There’s delicacy in his deft approach, with his sweeping vocals and ornate acoustic settings rekindling memories of Mike Love and the Beach Boys.  Read More →

PATRICK WILLIAMS Aurora patrickwilliamsmusic.com While known mainly as a film and television composer, Grammy and Emmy winner and Oscar nominee Patrick Williams is also an accomplished jazz arranger whose work with Frank Sinatra, Tom Scott and clarinetist Eddie Daniels has earned him acclaim throughout his 50-year career. Aurora reunites Williams with Scott and Daniels and also includes other ace players like Hubert Laws, Arturo Sandoval, Chuck Findley... 

TIM LEE 3 Raucous Americanus timleethree.com After winning over rock fans in Let’s Active and the dubiously dubbed Windbreakers, Tim Lee has been soaking up the sounds of the South while touring what he and his wife, bass player Susan Bauer Lee, call the “pulled pork circuit.” The accurately titled, sprawling double disc Raucous Americanus emphasizes the gritty, no-nonsense MO that’s become the Tim Lee 3’s stock in trade. With drummer Matt... 

DARDEN SMITH Marathon dardensmith.com While Darden Smith’s Austin upbringing might lead some to tag him as just another Texas troubadour, his recent efforts have shown some distance from his homegrown roots. While he is known to dabble in pop, Marathon reflects a darker side to his musical persona, given a set of songs united by a sense of hushed introspection. The album maintains a consistent conceptual feel that connects the steadfast sway of... 

BRIAN RAY This Way Up brianray.com Although Brian Ray honed his chops backing Etta James, Smokey Robinson and French heartthrob Johnny Hallyday, since 2002 he has been perhaps best known as a member of Paul McCartney’s backing band. Not surprisingly, Ray’s second solo effort reflects a pop sensibility honed by experience and enhanced by long-term exposure to McCartney. Yet his fondness for big beats, vibrant hooks and catchy choruses doesn’t... 

MINI MANSIONS Mini Mansions minimansionsmusic.com Mini Mansions’ ambitious and complex sound draws equally from pop and prog-rock. Their appealing melodies aim for accessibility, and radiant textures and breezy harmonies make Mini Mansions feel spacious. At times the L.A.-based band’s members seem intent on proving their skill at shaping soundscapes, especially on songs like “Monk” and “The Room Outside.” That comes with the territory,... 

THE JIGSAW SEEN Bananas Foster thejigsawseen.com Given to elaborate arrangements that incorporate a staunchly retro feel, the Jigsaw Seen remains one of the more accomplished power-pop outfits to have emerged from L.A.’s 1980s paisley underground. Their music veers from exuberant and embracing to precious and precocious, giving songs like “David Hart’s Name of Song,” “Fruitbasket Upset” and “Melancholy Morning” a consistent sound that’s... 

KATE JACOBS Home Game katejacobsmusic.com Kate Jacobs’ sly, childlike vocals generally tread the divide between innocence and whimsy, but Home Game finds her cloaked in a blanket of domesticity. With two toddlers keeping her occupied, she sings of being drawn to the hearth although tempted by the tug of the road. The sentiments are simple, but Jacobs’ alluring delivery makes even the wistfully dreamy “Time for Bed” seem like a sumptuous delight.... 

GARY HUSBAND Dirty & Beautiful Volume 1 garyhusband.com Drummer and keyboardist Gary Husband’s résumé is peppered with albums by famous musicians, Jeff Beck, Jack Bruce, Robin Trower and John McLaughlin among them. Several notables contribute here—McLaughlin, Trower, Steve Hackett and Allan Holdsworth included—but Dirty & Beautiful isn’t a mere exercise in superstar indulgence. Rather, it’s a showcase for Husband’s talents as... 

JEFF FINLIN The Tao of Motor Oil jefffinlin.com Singer and songwriter Jeff Finlin’s latest offering is a study in tone and temperament, ranging from the sobering pronouncements of “Barefoot in the Snow,” “Hands Off the Wheel” and “La Luna” to the steadfastly determined “East by West” and “Stones Must Roll.” The Tao of Motor Oil (a title Finlin said refers to his hope for a smoothly running life) maintains an unwavering resolve... 

STACIE COLLINS Sometimes Ya Gotta… staciecollins.com Stacie Collins represents a refreshing break from the shy, retiring types that seem to dominate Austin and Nashville these days. Opening track “Hey Mister” emphasizes that point by tossing out the typecasting so prevalent in commercial country music these days. “Hey mister, listen to the radio playin’/Another shooting star/But they ain’t got a damn thing to say.” Collins isn’t so... 

ERIC BRACE & PETER COOPER Master Sessions redbeetrecords.com Inspired by a shared admiration for a pair of iconic instrumentalists—Dobro legend Mike Auldridge and pedal steel master Lloyd Green—Peter Cooper and Last Train Home’s Eric Brace opted to celebrate their legacies by actually enlisting these veteran virtuosos themselves. With additional support from Nashville’s finest session players, the performances are flawless—and the material... 

BLEU Four bleutopia.com Bleu—also known as singer, songwriter and instrumentalist William James McAuley III—boasts a power-pop sound that embraces rousing anthems, outsized arrangements and the kind of insistent singalongs that might give the E Street Band a run for their money. After taking honors in Boston’s annual Battle of the Bands competition, McAuley joined L.E.O., a group that shared members with Chicago, Hanson and Jellyfish while... 

Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him)? [Lorber Films] DVD Harry Nilsson was a one-of-a-kind character: an immensely talented songwriter whose biggest hits were covers; an ebullient soul fueled by a terror of abandonment; an ambitious striver who seemed determined to wreck his career; a man with the voice of an angel and a devilish sense of humor; a lover of life who often appeared to have a death wish; a onetime multimillionaire... 

ROCK BAND 3 [Harmonix] GUITAR HERO: WARRIORS OF ROCK [Activision] VIDEO GAMES The music game genre has grown crowded quickly over the last few years, but the essential battle at its core remains that between the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises. The latest iteration of each demonstrates the very different ways in which the games have evolved. The Guitar Hero series is on its sixth major incarnation, not counting seemingly endless variants like... 

GUITAR HERO: WARRIORS OF ROCK [Activision] ROCK BAND 3 [Harmonix] VIDEO GAMES The music game genre has grown crowded quickly over the last few years, but the essential battle at its core remains that between the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises. The latest iteration of each demonstrates the very different ways in which the games have evolved. The Guitar Hero series is on its sixth major incarnation, not counting seemingly endless variants like... 

JIMI HENDRIX West Coast Seattle Boy: The Jimi Hendrix Anthology [Experience Hendrix/Sony Legacy] BOX SET At some point the world resigned itself to the idea that every scrap of tape left behind by musical giants like Miles Davis and John Coltrane was worth hearing—that every alternate version was at least a little revealing, and even a seconds-long take that broke down before getting started offered a glimpse into the creative process. It’s... 

CAREY OTT Human Heart [DiscoverRock.com] On his second full-length solo album, Ott again displays the understated melodicism of his previous work as well as a winsome voice reminiscent of Freedy Johnston. On the punchy “Wish I Could,” Ott voices his eternal optimism with pithy lines like “I want to talk and communicate with everyone.” That theme continues on the oughta-be-a-hit “Be Honest,” where he croons, “A little more courtesy, empathy/All... 

KAT MASLICH-BODE The Road Of 6 [Mishara Music] A decade ago, Kat Maslich-Bode (then just Maslich) was half of the buzzed-about Los Angeles-based acoustic duo eastmountainsouth with Peter Bradley Adams. They released an album and toured with folks like Lucinda Williams and Nelly Furtado before breaking up in 2004. The alluring EP The Road of 6 is the at-long-last solo debut for the now Nashville-based singer-songwriter. The opening track, “March,”... 

VIOLENS Amoral [Friendly Fire/Static Recital] Producer and multi-instrumentalist Jorge Elbrecht digs everything from black metal and hardcore punk to ’90s dance music, but he has the ’80s on the brain with Amoral, the debut album from his Brooklyn trio Violens. Elbrecht’s is a different sort of nostalgia. Rather than referencing indie-rock faves like New Order or Gary Numan, he aims for the high-gloss Top 40 pop of the decade’s latter half;... 

THE STRING CHEESE INCIDENT Rhythm of the Road, Vol. One: Incident in Atlanta [SCI Fidelity] This 2000 show in Atlanta has achieved legendary status among String Cheese Incident fans, capturing a moment at which the veteran jam band reached a new plateau as a performing unit. And what a treat it is for Cheeseheads: over three hours of the group’s trademark stew of bluegrass, funk and jazz with oodles of interplay among the members. The group quickly... 

THE VOLEBEATS The Volebeats [Rainbow Quartz] The Volebeats have been putting records out sporadically and without much fanfare since 1989 without attracting a great deal of attention. The band has displayed an unwavering adherence to a ’60s British Invasion sound, particularly in its R&B permutations (the Stones’ Out of Our Heads would be an appropriate touchstone), strained through a country sensibility and throwing in various dollops of... 

SOUTHERN CULTURE ON THE SKIDS The Kudzu Ranch [Kudzu] Southern Culture on the Skids has been providing its own particular perspective on the lowbrow side of the South for more than two decades now, from dirt-track dates to banana pudding, all set to a raucous, party-ready amalgam of rockabilly, blues, surf music and whatever else crosses its members’ minds. The band’s 13th album is a brisk race through hick-rock character sketch (“My Neighbor...