Rock

Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews the self-titled debut album from the band Vampire Weekend. The quartet has drawn praise — and pointed criticism — for its hooky, globally influenced pop.

Pop-rock singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow joins Terry Gross in the Fresh Air studios for an interview and live performance. Detours, her new album, is the most politically and personally outspoken record of her career.

Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews the New York City rock group The Magnetic Fields' eighth album, Distortion. Front man and producer Stephin Merritt uses feedback between instruments to create distorted white noise — hence the album's title.

Old friends Mick Jones, former lead guitarist of The Clash, and Tony James, once of the Billy Idol-fronted Generation X, have teamed up in a band called Carbon/Silicon. They've been giving away songs for free on their Web site, but their new album, The Last Post, is an official hard-copy CD.

When British musician and record producer Martin Atkins visited Beijing in 2006, he wasn't sure what kind of music scene he'd find. As it turned out, the sounds emerging from the Chinese underground were surprisingly familiar. Milo Miles reports.

Some call them garage-rockers, but the Fleshtones, who actually got their start in a Queens basement, don't stop there. They add in overtones of R&B, rockabilly and even surf to create a sound they like to call "Super Rock." Fresh Air's rock critic takes a good look at their latest album, Take a Good Look.

Hamburg-born Astrid Kirchherr met the Beatles in 1960, before they were famous. She took some of the earliest photographs of the group and was engaged to Stuart Sutcliffe, the Beatles' original bassist, before he died of a brain hemorrhage in 1962.

Rock historian Ed Ward remembers the sound of San Francisco in the '60s, from the early days of countercultural upheaval through the Summer of Love in 1967. It's all lavishly documented in Love is the Song We Sing, a new four-disc set from Rhino Records.

Nils Lofgren, best known as guitarist with Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, also played for Neil Young and Crazy Horse early in that band's career. He's also had a notable solo career — and he founded the mid-1970s band Grin. There are several reissues of Lofgren's work: Grin's 1+1 and All Out (now available on a double-album set), plus the solo discs Nils Lofgren and Back It Up.

Drummer Levon Helm once backed Bob Dylan and sang with Van Morrison. Now, 30 years after The Band split up — and 10 years after he was diagnosed with throat cancer — Helm is putting out a solo album. The Washington Post has called Dirt Farmer "an exquisitely unvarnished monument to Americana from a man whose keening, lyrical vocals have become synonymous with it."

Obligatory Villagers, the new jazz- and cabaret-inflected album from singer-songwriter Nellie McKay, features sassy tracks that touch on topics as diverse as feminism and zombies.

McKay, a sometime actress and stand-up comedian, made a splash in 2004 with a debut CD called Get Away From Me — a play on the title of Norah Jones' album Come Away With Me.

Last year, she co-starred in a revival of Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera alongside Alan Cumming and Cyndi Lauper.

McKay joins Terry Gross for a Fresh Air concert and conversation.

Writer-director Todd Haynes is responsible for an eclectic array of films, from the elegantly bio-paranoia drama Safe to the glam-rock celebration Velvet Goldmine and the Douglas Sirk homage Far From Heaven.

His latest experiment: I'm Not There, a kind of fantasia on the public personas of Bob Dylan. Six different actors — including Cate Blanchett — play the famously protean singer.

Jerry Williams, Jr. has been calling himself Swamp Dogg for close to 40 years, but his career goes back even longer than that. He's one of America's most eccentric musicians, and today rock historian Ed Ward tries to get a handle on the many faces of a songwriter, producer and performer who's made a career out of popping up where you least expect him.

Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant and bluegrass star Alison Krauss teamed up recently for a joint album, Raising Sand.

Critic Ken Tucker has a review.

Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews the new soundtrack album for the Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There. The movie does not open until November 21, but the 2-disc soundtrack is already available. It features 34 Dylan songs covered by artists including My Morning Jacket and Sonic Youth.

Fiery Furnaces' fifth album, Widow City, is the band's most accessible so far, says Ken Tucker. The band's musical landscape is simultaneously disorienting and inviting, peculiar and witty.

Magic, Bruce Springsteen's first studio album with the E Street Band in five years, came out earlier this month. The event has occasioned at least a pair of network-TV appearances — including a live morning concert on NBC's Today show and a mortifying 60 Minutes interview.

Fresh Air rock critic Ken Tucker says Springsteen's approach to promoting the album — and the way the news media are receiving it — says something about both the state of the media (precarious) and Springsteen's place in American pop culture.

Rock historian Ed Ward reviews the new classic rock box set Rockin' Bones: 1950s Punk and Rockabilly. Hits from Elvis, Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee light up this 101-track, four-disc collection produced by Rhino Records

Fresh Air's rock critic reviews Is It News, the new album from Texas blues musician Doyle Bramhall. He's had two previous discs, but this is the first collection where the songs are all his own.

The singer, songwriter and drummer has played in his own band, the Chessmen, and with a host of Texas music titans from Stevie Ray Vaughan to Marcia Ball.