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Band of Joy | ALBUM REVIEW

Robert Plant's 2007 album with pop-bluegrass songbird Alison Krauss, Raising Sand, did something 25 years of solo records never quite managed: It fully transformed him from former Led Zeppelin golden god into a roots singer. Plant had...
September 14, 2010 12:00 AM ET
TAB at the TAB | ALBUM REVIEW

The septet Trey Anastasio tours with between Phish gigs are about as chops-heavy as his regular band, as this Atlanta gig shows. Anastasio's guitar rips (natch), and the horn section adds nice R&B color. But the reggae-fied...
September 13, 2010 4:00 PM ET
The Guitar Song | ALBUM REVIEW

Jamey Johnson's fourth album opens in a bar, the singer talking to a workingman. When Johnson offers him a drink, the guy orders a double, then puts the singer's problems in perspective. "It may be lonely at...
September 13, 2010 3:45 PM ET
Fields | ALBUM REVIEW

The folk pop of Swedish-Argentine singer José González is seductive, especially his covers: See his gorgeous take on the Knife's "Heartbeats." But the music he makes with his old band is doubly so. Mostly dormant since 1999,...
September 13, 2010 3:30 PM ET
Kaleidoscope Heart | ALBUM REVIEW

"I've got a thick tongue," sings 30-year-old Sara Bareilles on "Gonna Get Over You," a playfully sexy bit of doo-wop pop. It's the high point on the follow-up to 2007's Little Voice and its megahit, "Love Song."...
September 7, 2010 12:00 AM ET
Familial | ALBUM REVIEW

Jonny Greenwood writes orchestral scores; Thom Yorke programs glitch beats. Drummer Phil Selway, evidently, spends his time off from Radiohead as a closet art-folkie. His debut reveals a delicate high-tenor voice (akin to Yorke's but less tortured),...
August 31, 2010 12:00 AM ET
Familial | ALBUM REVIEW

Jonny Greenwood writes orchestral scores; Thom Yorke programs glitch beats. Drummer Phil Selway, evidently, spends his time off from Radiohead as a closet art-folkie. His debut reveals a delicate high-tenor voice (akin to Yorke's but less tortured),...
August 31, 2010 12:00 AM ET
The Orchard | ALBUM REVIEW

"A mother so cold and gray/And though she gives you one, she takes one away," sings Wes Miles in "Massachusetts," clearly referring to the ocean that claimed bandmate John Ryan Pike prior to...
August 24, 2010 12:00 AM ET
Fidelity! | ALBUM REVIEW

"I found my perfect lover, but he's only half my age," sings Chrissie Hynde on Fidelity!, a collaboration with JP Jones, a Welshman who is indeed half her age but not her lover. From an old rock...
August 23, 2010 12:00 AM ET
Pauper's Field | ALBUM REVIEW

Raised by a country songwriter dad amid old-school guitarists in Shreveport, Louisiana, 20-year-old Dylan LeBlanc can't help but let his roots show on his debut, with brooding songs built around pedal steel and fingerpicked acoustics. He's got...
August 23, 2010 12:00 AM ET
"Imagine" | SONG REVIEW

"Imagine there's no heaven/It was easy when I tried," sings Antony in his startling warble, reshaping John Lennon's melody amid spare guitars. Then he sends that falsetto "you" into the sky like a white dove. An unlikely,...
August 19, 2010 12:00 PM ET
God Willin' & the Creek Don't Rise | ALBUM REVIEW

For a folkie, Ray LaMontagne has always had a deep groove sense. But it's a hot surprise to hear him open his fourth LP with a Meters-style funk grind ("Repo Man"). His band freshens up his sound...
August 16, 2010 12:00 AM ET
No Better Than This | ALBUM REVIEW

John Mellencamp's 25th album, No Better Than This, continues the thread of American archaeology that he began on Trouble No More, a self-produced 2003 set of traditional songs and covers. But where Trouble was a first brush...
August 16, 2010 12:00 AM ET
"Mine" | SONG REVIEW

Yes, we know: It's tough watching the kids grow up. And here's Taylor Swift, once the voice of heartbroken fifteen year olds everywhere now singing about living in sin with a college dude, imagining "a drawer of...
August 11, 2010 12:00 PM ET
Arcade Fire Go Big at Madison Square Garden | ARTICLE

A few years back, U2 used Arcade Fire's recording of "Wake Up" to pump up arena crowds before they hit the stage. Last night, indie rock's number-one overachievers had the chutzpah to headline one of the world's...
August 5, 2010 9:25 AM ET
"Wake Up Everybody" | SONG REVIEW

"Wake Up Everybody" turns back the clock in all the right ways: The lead single from Legend's album with the Roots is a sparkling cover of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes' 1975 hit. Over string-drenched retro-funk,...
August 3, 2010 12:30 PM ET
Between the Sounds | ALBUM REVIEW

With the deaths of Big Star's Alex Chilton and Andy Hummel, it's been a bad year for fans of Seventies power pop. Some small good news: this taut 10-song debut. Leader Josh Lattanzi has played with Fountains...
August 2, 2010 3:08 PM ET
Pigeons | ALBUM REVIEW

Here We Go Magic began as a dreamy bedroom chamber-folk experiment, but on their second release, leader Luke Temple emerges with a full-on band, unfurling rich harmonies and sharp-elbowed melodies over Peter Hale's antsy, inventive drumming. The...
August 2, 2010 3:04 PM ET
An Airplane Carried Me to Bed | ALBUM REVIEW

"I was 22, alone with nothing to do," sings Adam Young on "I Live Alone." That's roughly the story of Sky Sailing, which preceded his other one-man band, the multiplatinum Owl City. The latter resembled the Postal...
August 2, 2010 2:57 PM ET
Foundling | ALBUM REVIEW

'Head spinning, mouth open,' sings tonsured Englishman David Gray on the tipsy 'Only the Wine,' the lead track of his handsomely tousled ninth LP. It's a promising start from a guy whose tastefulness too often trumps the...
August 2, 2010 12:00 AM ET