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.

Related
• Photos: Random Notes

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."