Graham Parker has always been a spiky one. And now, after twenty-five years of service — and with no gold watch or multi-platinum parachute in sight — the old boy is plenty cranky. "I'll Never Play Jacksonville Again" could be a love letter to his booking agent, while the hapless incompetence Parker catalogs in "It Takes a Village Idiot" suggests he needs to find a better social crowd — or stop watching CNN. Only "Tough on Clothes" breaks from the pattern, sounding suspiciously like he's auditioning for the detergent market. The electric guitars still cut with precision, though, and Parker's voice — a cross between a switch-blade and barbed wire — allows him to imbue even the most tender moments ("Depend On Me," "Last Stop is Nowhere") with the threat of apocalypse just beyond the sunset.

“He Will Break Your Heart”

A lightly swinging Latin-influenced, almost cha-cha groove and close harmonies decorated Jerry Butler's early soul hit "He Will Break Your Heart," delivering a stately warning that his rival would never love his girl like he did. The melody came to Butler as he was driving on the highway from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Philadelphia with Curtis Mayfield, and as Butler told Rolling Stone, "I just sang the melody and Curtis put the chords to it." The song's premise, Butler added, "was something that I'd lived ...The lyric was an experience rather than a revelation. Whereas music is usually a revelation."