Let's talk about the drummer a minute. Bryan Devendorf's the name. He plays in the National, who do brooding Leonard Cohen-Nick Cave-style melancholy, except he's not brushing the drums elegantly, he's pounding, yet he amps up the piano, strings and guitar. He's a huge part of the reason the National built up a global reputation with their excellent 2005 album, Alligator, and on Boxer he's even louder, hence better. The songs are subtler, statelier, with Matt Berninger's baritone exuding lonesome warmth. "Slow Show" and "Mistaken for Strangers" are standouts, while "Racing Like a Pro" imitates the last thing about Leonard Cohen any normal band would try — his guitar playing — with typically powerful results. In "Apartment Story," when Berninger murmurs, "We'll stay inside till somebody finds us," it's both romantic and terrifying, and the drums kick it all the way home.

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.