Click to listen to Deer Tick's 'Main Street'

If Deer Tick's first couple of albums got the Rhode Island band branded as an alt-country act, their latest is a drunk leaning into your face and yelling, "You don't know me, man!" On a set of howling rockers, frontman John McCauley pulls a genre jailbreak as impressive as the time that Ryan Adams ditched Whiskeytown to pledge his love for Morrissey and electric Dylan. Gang-holler choruses recall guitarist Ian O'Neil's last band, Titus Andronicus; "Main Street" nods to a classic Rolling Stones album. But the unlisted cover of Paul Westerberg's "Mr. Cigarette" suggests the set's true patron saint: a punk-rock singer- songwriter who does as he damn well pleases.

Related
• Deer Tick Rock to Raise Awareness for 'Occupy Wall Street'
• Deer Tick Perform 'Main Street' on 'Letterman'

“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."