Around 2006, prolific, hard-drugging singer-songwriter Ryan Adams cleaned up and began spitting out even more music. III/IV is 21 songs from 2007's Easy Tiger sessions, supplanting that album's wired folk rock with a blend of punk head rush, New Wave twitch, metal crunch and hippie noodling. "The Crystal Skull" is Morrissey with a girlfriend; "Ultraviolet Light" posits Ian Curtis fronting the Byrds. Does it cohere? Please. Just tighten your scarf and savor the storm.

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“IRM”

Fashioned to mimic the sound of a magnetic resonance imaging or MRI, "IRM" (the French designation for the brain scan) grew out of Gainsbourg’s love of the sound of the clickety-clack of medical machinery. The IRM album project also marked the fulfillment of two goals for the singer: to document a traumatic experience, and to record an album with Beck. Though her co-creator and producer didn’t necessarily know the details of her water-skiing accident and resulting cerebral hemorrhage (which lead to the IRM of the song's title), he somehow knew how to handle the material. "Beck had a way of guessing what I was thinking and feeling without me telling him," said Gainsbourg. "We never discussed these things explicitly."