Jeff Tweedy is totally in service to The Queen here:  Rock ’n’ Roll Hall Of Famer Mavis Staples, 71, growls, cajoles, pleads, croons, testifies, rocks and stomps her way through 13 well thought out gems. Tweedy, as producer/instrumentalist/composer, picked out these tunes, serving Staples well in the process, making her…

Chances are, if a band has pilot or any word ending with ‘naut in their name, they like drugs, Carl Sagan and making weird music. Sorry to generalize, but it is just true and in this case it works. Three Mile Pilot prefer to take the subtle and weird way…

You can tell that Mark Olson is on a roll from the opening notes of the first track on his latest release, Many Colored Kite. With this release, Mark Olson has seemingly made peace with some of his demons—all painstakingly expressed on his last release, The Salvation Blues, and has…

This is an album that managed to grab your attention and not let go from the first note to the last? Frames, from Hanover, Germany have done just this with their album Mosaik. With only four members, Frames manage to create melancholic aural landscapes that truly speak to the listener…

Three years after their last release, Linkin Park returns with a different approach to the metal, rock and hip hop medley they are notorious for. Shuffling the songs on an album doesn’t always significantly affect things, but this is not the case on A Thousand Suns, the band’s newest endeavor.…

First, Ronnie Wood solos on the Kristofferson-penned title track. Then, The Killer duets with Kid Rock while Slash solos madly. After duets with Mic Jagger and Tim McGraw (boo!), Clapton and longtime Presley guitarist James Burton trade licks while Eric harmonizes. Duets with Sheryl Crow and Merle Haggard precede Ringo…

Prepubescent singing, sugary-sweet choruses and lyrics about teen relationships, do these things compose a substantial portion or your nightmares? If so, you should seek immediate medical attention, but seriously for metalheads everywhere the aforementioned traits are all too real and symptomatic of horrible music. This time around however, these three…

Imagine that you’re driving down a stretch of lonely desert highway in your convertible in the middle of the day with the sun beating down at its hardest. You reach for a CD and you throw it in the player, you don’t care what it is, you just want some…

You can insert your own sequel jokes about “electric boogaloo” or how “this time it’s personal” if you want, but the fact of the matter is Grinderman 2 is a fucking monster of reckless dirt rock, throwing heavy guitar fuzz in the face of relentless punk swagger and making the…

Enter Black Country Communion, and what exactly makes these guys so special? Well, they’re a supergroup, and one that doesn’t suck. These guys play a sort of blues inflected hard rock that’s usually so symptomatic of terrible music. However, even with these two things working against them this band manages…