Rock

Fresh Air's rock critic reviews Revival, the new solo album from the onetime Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman.

Fogerty is a noted songwriter, responsible for the standard "Proud Mary" and nine other Top 10 singles for CCR between 1969 and 1971 alone. The band split in 1972.

Revival, due out Oct. 2, carries 12 new originals from the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Famer.

Fresh Air's rock critic reviews The Con, the fifth album from Canadian duo Tegan and Sara.

The Calgary natives — they're twins, named Tegan and Sara Quin — have seen their music used to score a number of American TV shows, including Grey's Anatomy, The L Word and Medium.

Fresh Air's music critic Milo Miles considers the work of the art-punk band Sonic Youth; the group's 1988 album Daydream Nation has just been reissued in a deluxe double-CD edition.

During his heyday in the early 1970s, shock-rock icon Alice Cooper dressed like a ghoul with a gaunt face and mascara-streaked eyes. His hits included "I'm Eighteen," "School's Out" and "Welcome to My Nightmare." In a memoir — Alice Cooper: Golf Monster, he recounts how he used his obsession with golf to overcome his addiction to alcohol.

This interview was originally broadcast on May 17, 2007.

British blue-eyed soul singer Nick Lowe played London's pub scene in the '70s in the band Brinsley Schwarz, produced five albums for Elvis Costello, and played with Ry Cooder and Jon Hiatt in Little Village. Now he's back with a solo album, his ninth, called At My Age, and he joins Terry Gross for an interview and an in-studio performance.

British singer-songwriter Bryan Ferry is probably best known as the frontman for Roxy Music, the experimental synth-pop band he founded in 1971.

But over the years, in between his Roxy music, he's recorded albums devoted to songwriters he admires.

The latest? It features his takes on tunes from "Simple Twist of Fate" to "Make You Feel My Love," and it's called Dylanesque.

Singer Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, who helped bridge '50s doo-wop and '60s rock 'n' roll, are celebrated in a new four-CD box set called Jersey Beat. The group released two dozen Top 40 hits, including "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Sherry" and "Walk Like a Man." Jersey Boys, the Tony Award winning Broadway musical, is based on the lives of the Four Seasons.

Rock historian Ed Ward profiles songwriter Doc Pomus, the Brooklyn-born blues singer and songwriter who died in 1991. Born Jerome Solon Felder, he survived a childhood case of polio and went on to write hits for Ray Charles and Elvis Presley, among others. His songs include "Lonely Avenue," "Viva Las Vegas" and "Save the Last Dance for Me."

British musician Jarvis Cocker founded the band Pulp at age 15; he made international headlines in 1996, when he stormed the stage in protest at a Michael Jackson concert at the BRIT awards in London. Lately he's been reunited with his father, who left the family when he was a child, denounced American Idol-style TV talent shows, and released a solo album, called simply Jarvis.

Fresh Air's rock critic takes a listen to the 21st solo album from the former Beatle.

McCartney, who turned 65 today, launched Memory Almost Full with a free concert in London earlier this month — back when he was 64. It's an occasionally reflective life-and-loves disc that ranges from an upbeat dance-party opener to a farewell-to-love track.

A concert and conversation with Los Straitjackets, the Nashville-based indie-rock band that's made a name performing surf-rock classics from behind Mexican wrestling masks.

The group's latest album, Rock en Espanol, Vol. 1, features Spanish language versions of rock 'n' roll hits from the 1960s.

Tracks include "De Dia y de Noche" ("All Day and All Night"), popularized by the Kinks, "La Hiedra Venenosa" ("Poison Ivy"), made famous by the Coasters, and many more.

This interview first aired on June 11, 2007.

Husband-and-wife team Win Butler and Regine Chassagne lead the band Arcade Fire, an art-rock outfit that hails from Montreal.

The seven-member band, which deploys everything from piano, sax and violin to dobro, harpsichord and hurdy-gurdy, has two albums to its credit: Neon Bible and 2004's Funeral.

Critic David Bianculli is a big Beatles fan, and to pay homage to the 40th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, he turns to other homages: On today's Fresh Air, Bianculli reaches into his record collection and pulls out favorite cover versions of the songs from the album.

Anchors & Anvils is the jazzy, torchy, after-a-breakup second album by singer, actress and stand-up bassist Amy LaVere. Jim Dickinson, who's worked with Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and the Replacements, produced the disc.

Since she began her recording career in the '70s, Patti Smith has never been shy about recording covers of her favorite songs, such as Van Morrison's "Gloria." Now she's released an album consisting entirely of other people's songs — a dozen covers, originally recorded by acts as diverse as the Doors, Nirvana and the Rolling Stones, under the simple title Twelve.

Koko Taylor long ago earned her title of "Queen of the Blues." In the mid-sixties, she came to Chicago from a sharecropper farm in Tennessee. There, she was discovered by the celebrated songwriter and performer Willie Dixon, who provided her with her crossover hit, "Wang Dang Doodle".

In 1975, after her record company went out of business, she signed with Alligator Records — and critic Milo Miles says Old School, her new album on that label, embodies Alligator's straightforward, hard-rocking blues style.

Singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka, who marks his 50th anniversary in the music business this year, helped create what's known as the Brill Building sound in the late '50s and early '60s. He's been inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame, but he got his start as a classical pianist. He joins Terry Gross to talk about his life as a performer — and about The Definitive Collection, a career-spanning greatest-hits compendium.

Fountains of Wayne, the band led by songwriters Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood, has a new album called Traffic and Weather, their first collection of new songs in four years.

With his band the MGs, Booker T. Jones created the classic instrumental "Green Onions." But they were also the studio band for Stax Records, making music with soul artists such as Otis Redding, Ray Charles and Wilson Pickett. A new two-CD box set features Stax highlights and Booker T. is now back on tour.