Twenty years after John Darnielle began recording albums on a boombox, his head is still exploding with words. The Mountain Goats' latest shows Darnielle's folk rock growing more diverse, swelled with strings and choral harmonizing. "High Hawk Season" sounds like Fleet Foxes reimagined as a New York street gang with lit Ph.D.s. Darnielle's lyrics here are more impressionistic, but his wordplay is always suffused with emotion. When he sings "these bite marks deep in my arteries" on "Damn These Vampires," he seems to be cursing pop culture's hold on him — and savoring it, too.

Listen to "Damn These Vampires":  
Gallery: Random Notes, Rock's Hottest Photos

“1999”

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.