Elvis Costello - Secret, Profane & Sugarcane
Elvis Costello has spent the back half of his career flitting from style to style, recording everything from opera to R&B, but he avoided the country-folk of 1986’s King of America until 2009, when he teamed up with America producer (and fellow Coward Brother) T Bone Burnett for Secret, Profane & Sugarcane. By its very definition, country-folk seems straightforward, but the only thing simple about Secret is the speed of its recording. Costello and Burnett assembled an all-star acoustic string band — featuring Jerry Douglas on Dobro, Dennis Crouch on bass, Stuart Duncan on fiddle and banjo, and Jim Lauderdale on vocal harmonies — and cut the album in just three days, its swiftness similar to its knocked-out predecessor Momofuku.

Dave Matthews Band - Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King
Tragedy has a way of putting everything into perspective, a truism that’s brought into sharp relief by the Dave Matthews Band. LeRoi Moore, the group’s saxophonist, died in an ATV accident in 2008, something that shook the DMB to their core and they’ve responded as any working band does: by carrying on, playing gigs — including one on the day of his passing — and finishing the album they were recording at the time of his death, turning Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King into a tribute to their fallen comrade. By saluting his spirit, DMB wind up returning to their roots, jettisoning any of the well-manicured crossover pop of Stand Up and reviving the loose-limbed jams that were their ’90s specialty, a sound they’ve largely abandoned — at least on record — since 1998’s Before These Crowded Streets.

Iggy Pop - Preliminaires
The timing of Iggy Pop’s album Preliminaires is probably a product of coincidence and fate rather than careful planning, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that just a few months after the unexpected death of Ron Asheton put the Stooges into limbo (at least for a while), Iggy has released an album that almost entirely avoids the issue of rock & roll. In a publicity piece for Preliminaires, Iggy wrote “I just got sick of listening to idiot thugs with guitars,” and the man whose music helped inspire so many of those thugs keeps a wary distance from electric guitars on most on this album.

Rancid - Let the Dominoes Fall
Rancid’s seventh album, 2009’s Let the Dominos Fall, was released a full six years after Indestructible. In that time much changed in the world (and the band swapped drummers, with Branden Steineckert stepping in for Brent Reed) but not a whole lot changed with the band’s sound. Sure, there were a few cosmetic differences here and there but the fire, spirit, and strength the band exhibited since their debut in the early ’90s hasn’t faded at all. The first four songs on the album showcase everything that’s right about the band.

Neil Young - Neil Young Archives, Vol. 1: 1963-1972
Any project in the works for two decades is bound to generate its fair share of myths and so it is with Neil Young’s Archives, a series of a multi-disc box sets chronicling Young’s history. Originally envisioned in the late ’80s as a Decade II, the project quickly mutated into a monster covering every little corner of Neil’s career. With its escalation came delays, so many that it sometimes seemed that the project never really existed; it was just a shared fantasy between Neil and his faithful. During that long, long wait, fans held tight to the idea that Archives was a clearinghouse of rarities similar to Bob Dylan’s The Bootleg Series, a treasure trove of unreleased songs and epochal live performances that would trump whatever bootleggers had to offer. While rare and unheard music is certainly a key part of Archives, particularly on the first disc covering the pre-history of 1963-1965, viewing this project as merely a CD box set is wildly misleading. Neil Young has designed Archives as nothing less than an immersive multimedia autobiography, an interactive experience where the music, text, video, and pictures feed off each other, creating a virtual journey through Neil’s past.

Ryan Bingham/The Dead Horses - Roadhouse Sun
Blank Dogs - Under and Under
Jeff Buckley - Grace: Live Around the World
Marshall Crenshaw - Jaggedland
Crosby, Stills & Nash - Demos
Da Zoo - Da’ Zoo
Ronnie Earl - Living in the Light
Eels - Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire
Walter Egan - Wild Exhibitions
Emery - …In Shallow Seas We Sail
Franz Ferdinand - Blood
Hoots and Hellmouth - The Holy Open Secret
Freddie Hubbard - Without a Song: Live in Europe 1969
J Dilla - Jay Stay Paid
Julie London - Sings the Choicest of Cole Porter
The Meatmen - Cover the Earth
Paolo Nutini - Sunny Side Up
Willy Porter - How to Rob a Bank
Louis Prima - Hey Boy! Hey Girl!/Swingin’ Pretty
Jerry Reed - When You’re Hot 1967-1983
Duke Robillard - Stomp! The Blues Tonight
Perry Robinson - Two Voices in the Desert
Sad Day for Puppets - Unknown Colors
Frank Sinatra - Classic Sinatra II
The Sounds - Crossing the Rubicon
Taking Back Sunday - New Again
311 - Uplifter
Unladylike - Unladylike Radio
Various Artists - Music from the Original Soundtrack and More: Woodstock