Kicking off his solo debut, Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke immediately announces that he wants to 'cut ties to the past and wave it goodbye.' For the rest of The Boxer, Kele makes good on that promise: Produced by Spank Rock collaborator XXXChange, The Boxer slices off the tightly wound post-punk of Kele's day-to-day band and goes full-on electronic, creating a few moments of dancehall bliss — notably with the rubbery, fuzzed-out bass line on 'Tenderoni' and the arena-filling choruses soaring through 'Everything You Wanted.' As for the rest of The Boxer, artiness trumps hip-shaking soul on too many cuts — although the gentle croon and gurgling synths of nondanceable songs like 'All the Things I Could Never Say' make for nice dinner music.

“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?"