Remember when bands cared about albums as an art form? Instead of slapping together a dozen tracks because, hey, they'll just end up on everyone's iPod shuffle anyway, musicians considered how their songs might congeal as a whole or form some sort of dramatic arc. Allow Grizzly Bear to reintroduce you to...

Elvis Costello's frequent collaborator T-Bone Burnett produced Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, an Americana-inflected album working with country and folk traditions for images of sawdust floors set to mandolin and fiddle. Costello intended one song, "Complicated Shadows," for Johnny Cash, but the Man in Black died before recording...

Dubbed the "Anti-Beatles," the Monks were formed in 1964 by five American G.I.'s stationed in Germany. 1966 saw the release of Black Monk Time followed by a quick slip into obscurity, their garage-psych-punk and chant call and response vocals remembered mostly by obsessive collector weirdos. Luckily, most of those weirdos started bands of their own. And the 35-page liner notes that accompany this lovingly...

Brown Deer native Brian Reith has moved to Tennessee, but raps with such sweet soul that his hometown should be proud. Fellow white R&B crooners such as Justin Timberlake and Robin Thicke may want to watch their backs for B.'s honeyed tenor. Alongside his religious and social concerns, Reith excels...

The strength of great songs can be measured by how well they stand being reinterpreted, especially in ways that might not have occurred to their authors. Could Robert Fripp have imagined his prog rock epic, "In the Court of the Crimson King," as a post-bop instrumental, opening an album of jazz renderings of music by King Crimson?