As an unkempt, self-contained septet conquering country's clean-cut, studio-musician world, Zac Brown Band are easy to root for. But the band's third LP, Uncaged, sounds, well, caged: plenty of polite back-porch bluegrass picking, antiseptic mountain harmonies, a pair of lowcalorie attempts at Caribbean lilt with mushily sentimental lyrics about drifting like the river and the wind.

Listen to "Colder Weather":

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• Photos: Random Notes

“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?"