"Take ya to the Tate Museum," sneers Rhett Miller on his band's eighth LP, begging a question: Why would Dallas twang rockers name-check a British tourist attraction — over a Clash-style guitar stomp, no less? It's because the Old 97's have always been Anglophiles, and 15 years into their career, they're past genre-tweaking — they're lifers writing for keeps. Bob Dylan may have recognized as much when he greenlighted Miller's inspired rewrite of "Desolation Row" (the carpe-diem warning "Champaign, Illinois"). But this multivolume project will still trigger honky-tonk mosh pits: See "A State of Texas," which suggests you can be true to your roots even when you've outgrown them.

“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."