Spring Music Preview: Fifty Must-Hear Albums

Wilco
Sky Blue Sky
Out May 15th
Key track: " What Light"

This is how Wilco made their sixth studio album, Sky Blue Sky, according to the band's leader, singer-guitarist-songwriter Jeff Tweedy: "Six people in a room, playing one song all day for six or seven hours, and everyone reaching a consensus on how it should sound." Tweedy laughs, marveling at that simplicity and how long it took him to get it. "After so many configurations of the band, I guess one of them's bound to get it right."

Tweedy is quick to point out he doesn't want to be negative about earlier lineups, but Sky Blue Sky -- released by Nonesuch on May 15th -- is the work that he claims he wanted all along. "I always liked the Band as a model -- a bunch of guys sitting around with a typewriter, drinking coffee, writing. That seemed the most fun -- a collective thing. And somehow we ended up being that."

Bassist John Stirratt, the only other survivor of the original Wilco from the band's 1995 debut, A.M., puts it another way: "This was definitely the most civilized record Wilco has ever made."

Its twelve songs are also a startling turnaround from the scarring distortion of Wilco's commercial breakthrough, 2002's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and 2004's follow-up, A Ghost Is Born. There is a vocal clarity and wide-open space to Sky Blue Sky -- in the tender lysergic whirl of "Either Way" and the mix of Dixie-soul balladry and Badfinger-style pop crunch in "Hate It Here" -- that echoes the Grateful Dead's honing of their early acid rock into the warm detail of 1970's Workingman's Dead.

Drummer Glenn Kotche credits guitarist Nels Cline, who joined in 2004 after the release of A Ghost Is Born, with bringing some of that psychedelic sparkle. "People think Nels is this avant-garde guitarist stuck on Jazz Island," Kotche says. "But he loves Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds."

Tweedy, in turn, says the mix of Pacific-sunset romance and freak-out funk in "You Are My Face" was partly inspired by the lone eponymous album by an early-Seventies California band, Relatively Clean Rivers. "It's pretty fucking obscure," Tweedy says. "It sounds like the Dead, but it also has these hip-hop beats, years before there was such a thing. I was digging that record a lot while we were messing with the groove in that song."

Tweedy, Stirratt, Kotche, Cline, guitar-keyboard player Pat Sansone and keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen rehearsed and recorded Sky Blue Sky at Wilco's studio in Chicago, the Loft, starting in August 2005. The band worked in two- and three-week spurts. "We would make these minirecords," Stirratt says, "working on things that tended to sound alike." Wilco also tested a few songs onstage, like the jaunty "Walken," while touring between sessions. But Tweedy's guiding principle for Sky Blue Sky was something he mentioned to Stirratt during recording -- "about being able to put a song in your pocket," the bassist recalls, "and take it with you."

"I got nervous about the technology on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," Tweedy confesses. "If you need a certain amp or pedal to make a song what it is, it isn't a song."

But Tweedy is also a different songwriter now. "I went through some well-documented miserable times," he admits, referring to the personnel dramas and record-label tumult at the time of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and his 2004 spell in rehab to beat an addiction to prescription medicine. "When you're in a place with a lot of denial, it's hard to be direct about yourself. You need to encode things, because you're hiding a lot."

On Sky Blue Sky, he says, "I had no interest in being complex" -- which explains the optimism right up front in the final songs, "What Light" and "On and On and On." "I'm more hopeful than I used to be," Tweedy insists. "It's just easier to hear now -- there's less static." (DAVID FRICKE)

Linkin Park
Minutes to Midnight
Out May 15th

For their ambitious, rocking third disc, Minutes to Midnight, Linkin Park made the bold decision to abandon the rap-rock style they helped usher into the mainstream. "It's already been done," says singer Chester Bennington, whose band brought in Rick Rubin to help find a new sound. (Co-frontman Mike Shinoda shares the producing credit.) "[Rubin] was the first person on our list of people we wanted to work with," says Bennington. "He seemed really into shaking things up." At Rubin's suggestion, the band, which typically writes in the studio, arrived with more than 100 songs sketched out and used studio time to structure and arrange them. "It was very tedious," says Bennington. "But in the end we walked away with a record we can live with." The twelve resulting songs include the string-heavy ballads "Leave Out All the Rest" and "Shadow of the Day," as well as more textured cuts like "The Little Things You Give Away," featuring glitchy, syncopated beats. The latter track's lyrics ("The levees are broken. . . . Six feet under water") suggest a Hurricane Katrina connection, but Bennington prefers not to divulge too much. "We're at an age where we're paying attention to politics," he says. "But we don't want to preach." (KEVIN O'DONNELL)
[ Click here for an expanded Q&A with Chester Bennington]

Rufus Wainwright
Release the Stars
Out May 15th

After Wainwright laid down a few jangly cuts in Brooklyn, he headed off to Berlin to record the rest of his "bare-bones, confessional" masterpiece. Though the record has somber moments ("Not Ready to Love"), Wainwright veers into Wagnerian grandiosity ("Do I Disappoint You"), incredible vocal acrobatics ("Slideshow"), a sweet waltz ("Tiergarten") and a good old NC-17-rated pop gem ("Between My Legs"). "The big stuff is offset by very delicate moments and, thus, looks even bigger," says Wainwright. "This album is the culmination of all of my work."

Three 6 Mafia
Last 2 Walk
Out May 22nd

"We didn't try to change the sound too much from before," says DJ Paul -- whose Memphis duo won an Oscar last year. "You know: gangsta gutter ghetto music." Though Paul and his partner, Juicy J, produced the record themselves, they got help from guest MCs like Lil Jon, Lyfe Jennings and Chamillionaire, who appears on the first single, "Doe Boy Fresh." But Paul says he'd still like to add one more guest: Good Charlotte. "They're friends," he says. "We hang out all the time."

Maroon 5
It Won't Be Soon Before Long
Out May 22nd
Key track: " Makes Me Wonder"

"We were really overwhelmed by our influences when we started the record," says Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine of the follow-up to the L.A. band's multiplatinum 2002 debut. "We had to edit songs so [the ones that sound like] Prince and the Talking Heads wouldn't stand out." Even so, the album is a blast of Eighties-style pop. "Can't Stop" has a reggae breakdown that's pure Police, and "Makes Me Wonder" recalls Michael Jackson. "There are more hyperactive, fast-paced songs than on our first record," says Levine. "I think it's better."

R. Kelly
Double Up
Out May 29th

R. Kelly had originally intended his latest album to be a collection of R&B "baby-making music" -- with the apt title Making Babies -- but after scoring hits with Young Jeezy and Snoop Dogg, he changed course. "I started getting calls from a lot of rappers, so I felt like the wind just changed for me," Kelly says. "I decided the album was going to be seventy percent hip-hop, thirty percent R&B. I felt like dancing and having a good time and going to the club on this album." The resulting disc is packed with guest stars, including Yung Joc, Jeezy, Snoop, T.I., Pharrell and Twista. "It's like the all-star game -- it's as intense as the other games are, but all the celebrities are there, and you're just having fun," he says. The album will also include five ballads and midtempo tracks: "I still have my vintage R. Kelly -- I have to give my fans the things that made me who I am." Kelly has also completed an additional twenty-two chapters of his bizarre R&B soap opera Trapped in the Closet and will release the first eleven on DVD this summer. "As long as the world turns, there will be another chapter," Kelly says. "It's funny, and then it goes back to serious. It's going to blow your mind, man."

Satellite Party
Ultra Payloaded
Out May 29th
Key track: " Wish Upon a Dogstar"

"Jane's Addiction quit and Lollapalooza went down the same week [in 2004]," says Perry Farrell, who formed his new band (with Extreme's Nuno Bettencourt on guitar) in 2005. "My void was enormous." But out of the dumps grew the upbeat Ultra Payloaded, a spaced-out mix of headbanging rock and trippy electronica. Fergie, Thievery Corporation and Flea guest on the disc. "All my aspirations are coming true," says Farrell. "I'm working with amazing musicians to transform the world."

Velvet Revolver
Libertad
Out May 29th

Velvet Revolver's 2004 debut album was an immediate, chart-topping hit, but Scott Weiland wasn't anxious to repeat Contraband's straight-ahead hard-rock formula. Instead, the band's second disc is layered with melody, slippery funk and wild effects, plus Slash's trademark guitar. "It has texture and depth," Weiland says. "This is the kind of record I wanted to make."