Born in the New York post-punk squalor that mothered pals Sonic Youth, Swans make their grandest statement yet for their 30th birthday. There are muses old (vocalist Jarboe) and new (Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O, singing the haunted folk prayer "Song for a Warrior"). But guitar noise is leader Michael Gira's reigning mistress: See the roaring 32-minute title track – a season in hell, and then some.

Listen to 'The Seer':

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.