Sonic Youth have always had a classier side, but they usually show it on avant-noise collaborations with guys like John Cage or Steve Reich. On his fourth solo disc, SY main man Thurston Moore pursues a softer sort of refinement. Produced by Beck, this is string-laden, serenely pretty chamber folk that can be politely ruminative or drone like Sonic Youth doing an unplugged set. On "Circulation," Moore brings front-porch thunder in an ode to playing old records, as if the new setting has him rediscovering music itself.

Listen to "Circulation":

100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, Number 34: Thurston Moore

“Helen Wheels”

A rollicking good-time hard rocker, "Helen Wheels" was not about a woman but about Paul McCartney's Land Rover, the anthemic chorus voicing the vehicle's reckless joy as "she" took to the road. The song was added to the U.S. version of Band on the Run but was issued only as a single in McCartney's native U.K. "I like that because it's a British road song and there's not many of those around," said McCartney. "It's always Route 66. But Carlisle? How many songs have got Carlisle in them?"