The New Music Report’s Christian Rock! kicks off this week with Regina Spektor, who scored her highest chart debut with her new third album, Far. The New Yorker via Moscow is a classically trained pianist as well as an appealing weirdo, like Fiona Apple and Bjürk combined, says Christian Hoard. Her vocal hiccups (there’s even a dolphin impression on the record) can be indulgent, but she has pop songwriting gifts. Spektor’s confessionals grab you by the lapels without getting maudlin or overly emotional. Hoard says Far is a brightly produced album, but it’s also pretty straightforward, featuring piano, strings, percussion and keyboards. This time around Spektor’s lyris are deep and open — she’s sad on “Laughing With” but also whimsical on “Dance Anthem of the 80’s” where she wanders around the city with her slip showing. Hoard says he’s a fan because Spektor doesn’t try like she’s trying hard. (more…)

Christian Rock! kicks off this week’s New Music Report with the latest from Todd Snider. Rolling Stone’s Christian Hoard says Snider’s “America’s Favorite Pastime” is definitely the best song written about the no-hitter pitched by Doc Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1970 while he was on acid. It’s a track on Snider’s new album The Excitement Plan, a record stocked with detailed story songs and the bluesy countrified folk of his earlier records. Most characters on the album are down on their luck, and one admits to murder on “Unorganized Crime.” And while Hoard admits Snider’s everyguy vibe may be a bit of a shtick, he says the rocker gets a lot out of the persona, including some awesome lines: “I’m broke as the 10 Commandments, and sometimes I’m harder to follow.”

The New Music Report is pleased to welcome a special guest host for this week’s guide to the best fresh releases: American Idol winner and “Tattoo” singer Jordin Sparks.

Up first, Sparks praises Will.i.am’s production on the Black Eyed Peas’ brand-new Number One album The E.N.D. “It’s been way too long without the Black Eyed Peas,” she says, admitting her latest obsession is the group’s throbbing banger “Boom Boom Pow.”

Sparks also shouts out the Jonas Brothers’ Lines, Vines and Trying Times, and draws attention to the track “Don’t Charge Me With the Crime,” which includes a cameo by Common. “The Jonas Brothers … Common — would anybody ever think that? I don’t know,” she says. Full disclosure: Sparks is going on tour with Jonas Brothers and says she’s looking forward to hearing their latest and songs from their first and second albums all summer long.

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Rolling Stone’s Kevin O’Donnell breaks down two of the year’s best indie records in this week’s New Music Report: the Low Anthem’s Oh My God, Charlie Darwin and the Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca. What do the bands have in common? They’re both Ivy League-educated and RS Breaking artists (Dirty Projectors are featured in the new issue, as well as here).

Providence-based the Low Anthem fill their second album with folk and Americana tracks stocked with plenty of harmonium and banjos. “The Horizon Is A Beltway” is a standout on Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, which earned a three-star review. (more…)

In this week’s installment of our “Christian Rock” Webcast, Rolling Stone’s Christian Hoard has his ear glued to Sonic Youth’s fierce sixteenth album The Eternal, the New York band’s first LP for indie label Matador Records. “This is basically a noisy rock & roll record,” Hoard says. “The Cliff’s Notes summary is that it’s a return to heavier, messier stuff after a few albums that were more songful and more reigned in than we’ve come to expect from Sonic Youth.”

Hoard also compares The Eternal to “a Baskin-Robbins of guitar flavors: There are lots of them and many of them are tasty.” Among the highlights are the Thurston Moore-sung ballad “Antenna,” Kim Gordon’s catchy “Malibu Gas Station” and “Walkin’ Blues,” perhaps guitarist Lee Renaldo’s best song in years. (more…)

In this week’s look at rock’s biggest releases, Rolling Stone’s Caryn Ganz breaks down new albums from Marilyn Manson and Phoenix. Manson may have mastered the art of shock rock in the Nineties, when he was blamed for everything from Columbine to the general decline of Western Civilization, but horrifying the masses is a much tougher job at a time when extreme sex and violence are a mere click away, 24 hours a day. So the rocker’s latest effort, seventh album The High End of Low, falls short lyrically (lines like “You’re as pretty as a swastika” just don’t have the same bite anymore), but finds success in an unlikely place: ballads like the blues-tinged “Four Rusted Horses.”

French rockers Phoenix scored a nice slot on Saturday Night Live this past season, and with good reason: their new disc Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix imagines what it’d be like if the Strokes discovered disco (and this is a good thing). (more…)

In the latest installment of Christian Rock, contributing editor Christian Hoard talks up Wussy, a Cincinnati quartet with a weak name but powerful indie hooks. A listen to “Death By Misadventure” confirms Hoard’s observation that the Ohio band produces tunes that are “funny and sardonic and really pretty in spots.” Added bonus: Wussy feature former Ass Ponys singer Chuck Cleaver and, as Hoard says, “Sound like what X would have sounded like if they were an aging Midwestern indie band instead of an L.A. punk band.” (more…)

Rolling Stone editor Kevin O’Donnell takes a close look at two reviews in our latest issue (Green Day Fights On) in this week’s New Music Report. First up is Steve Earle, whose 13th studio album, Townes, is a tribute to his songwriting hero, Townes Van Zandt. Listen to “Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold,” which features Earles son, Justin Townes, in our video. The covers album scored three and a half stars, and Will Hermes notes “Mudd” is the “sound of a torch being passed again.”

Also, Black Mother Super Rainbow team with Flaming Lips producer Dave Fridmann for the space-rockers’ new album, Eating Us. We’ve got a look at the video for “Dark Bubbles,” one of the key tracks in Hermes’ three-star review. (more…)

In this edition of Christian Rock — contributing editor Christian Hoard’s weekly pick in the New Music Report — Hoard chats about English garage-pop band Art Brut, a group led by hilarious goofball Eddie Argos. The first single from their third album, Art Brut Vs. Satan, is called “Alcoholics Unanimous,” and it tackles one of Argos’ favorite subjects: drinking (the band’s first album included a song where he admitted his fantasy of swilling Hennessey with Morrissey).

While the British rockers slipped a bit on their last album, they’re back in form on this new LP, and Argos is still penning delightfully detailed lyrics. On the endearing “DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshakes,” Argos sings about a 28-year-old guy who pines after a woman in his comic-book shop and finds solace in the aforementioned pleasures. The album was recorded in two weeks and produced by Pixies’ Frank Black, and while the band’s sound hasn’t changed significantly — it’s still a boozy post-punk mix — the songs are damn catchy. (more…)

Welcome to “Christian Rock,” Rolling Stone contributing editor Christian Hoard’s weekly music pick and the newest addition to our weekly New Music Report podcast. This week, Hoard’s high on Portland punks the Thermals, showing off a bit of the video for “Now We Can See,” the title track from the band’s fourth album. The record is supposedly written from perspective of a corpse, but Hoard says some of the lyrics seem to be just about getting wasted and playing punk rock, though the concept is strongest on opener “When I Died.” Hoard admits to preferring the trio’s previous album, The Body, the Blood, the Machine, but notes Now We Can See is more melodic, and amps up the band’s magical blend angst and euphoria. For more on the Thermals’ album, check out our interview with singer-guitarist Hutch Harris. (more…)

Rolling Stone contributing editor Christian Hoard spent some quality time at Spring Break with Asher Roth, so he can attest to the twentysomething “I Love College” rapper’s ability to rhyme (check out a gallery of Roth’s nonstop party in Florida.) Roth’s debut Asleep in the Bread Aisle leads this week’s New Music Report, and Hoard breaks down what most people know about the Pennsylvania native: he’s white, he likes weed and he sounds a bit like that other white rapper who has an album coming out this Spring. But there’s more to Roth that booze and babes. (more…)

In this week’s New Music Report, Rolling Stone contributing editor Christian Hoard takes a straight-up look at two of the week’s fresh releases from Silversun Pickups and the Boy Least Likely To. First up, Swoon, the second album by the Pickups, a West Coast shoegaze band that isn’t afraid to wear its Smashing Pumpkins love on its sleeve. On Swoon, they ramp up the influence of the Pumpkins’ “neopsychedelic convulsions,” as David Fricke put it in his three-and-a-half-star review, as well as British band Ride. Fricke also mentions how the Pickups’ song “Panic Switch” has an uncanny resemblance to a 1968 Iron Butterfly song, leaving Hoard to question whether that is a good thing. (more…)

In this week’s New Music Report, Rolling Stone’s Kevin O’Donnell takes a look at Metric’s new album Fantasies, and the band provides some insight into the writing of single “Gimme Sympathy” in a video interview. Metric’s Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw recently popped in the RS offices to perform acoustic versions of tracks off Fantasies, the quartet’s first album in four years. In Rolling Stone’s three-and-a-half star review of the LP, contributing editor Christian Hoard writes, “Emily Haines delivers big refrains and spiky hooks, cooing about love on ‘Sick Muse’ and going dark on ‘Help I’m Alive,’ a throbbing, Garbage-esque single that’s bound to be played in any number of dingy indie-rock bars.”

Also in the New Music Report: the new album by Doves, Kingdom of Rust. (more…)

In this week’s New Music Report, Rolling Stone contributing editor Christian Hoard takes us in-depth into the Reviews section of the new, Lil Wayne-fronted issue of RS. Prince’s three-disc Target exclusive, featuring LOtUSFLOW3R, MPLSoUND and protégée Bria Valente’s Elixer, is in the spotlight, with the Purple Rain great releasing a package that is “excessive and uneven, of course, but it’s also intermittently brilliant and a real bargain.” (Target is selling the collection for only $11.98.) At it’s best, the songs sound like 1999 or Controversy B sides, but at its worst, especially in the case of Valente’s Elixer, the tracks are just “generic pop ballads.” (more…)

Rather than talk about new albums in this week’s New Music Report, Rolling Stone is bringing you a collection of live footage from some of the new bands and fresh songs we caught at South By Southwest. Check out the video above to get a glimpse of Juliette Lewis’ new bluesy rock outfit, Juliette & the New Romantiques, as well as San Fran psych-rockers Sleepy Sun, San Diego garage crew the Soft Pack and L.A. fuzz enthusiasts Silversun Pickups.

Check out all our SXSW reports and videos — including dispatches from Jane’s Addiction, Metallica, the Decemberists and Kanye West showcases. And don’t miss our SXSW gallery, which includes the hottest live shots straight from Austin.