Alternative title: Occupy Nashville. Todd Snider's latest is the sharpest musical response yet to the excesses of the one percent: hilarious, infuriated broadsides about economic injustice delivered in Snider's stoner drawl over twangy roots rock. "In the Beginning" is a retelling of the Genesis story as a parable of the economic downturn; "New York Banker" laments that "good things happen to bad people"; "Precious Little Miracles" is jazzy lullaby crooned to the young people: "Your school is a joke and you'll always be poor.... Is that what all you crazy kids are so upset for?" Our Great Recession has found its dust-bowl balladeer.

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• Photos: Random Notes

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.