Seven seconds into the Jayhawks' ninth album – and first since 1995 to feature both founders, Gary Louris and Mark Olson – bear-hug harmonies envelop ringing guitars and strings: a striking echo of Tomorrow the Green Grass' shoulda-beena- hit, "Blue." Mockingbird Time is a cheeky title for a band of inspired borrowers: from the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo, from CSNY, and from themselves. But the Jayhawks made their mix a signature long ago; though they stretch out with surprising hooks, the tunes are branded like calves – soaring singalongs full of bad weather, emotional and meteorological. They're Minnesotan to the bone.

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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."