Are the Black Keys ready to supplant Wilco as America’s “best” rock band? The Keys also hail from a working-class Midwestern city (Akron, OH), and they’ve now been a band for almost a decade, which is about the time when Wilco went from good to downright great. Regardless, the casually swaggering Brothers is the Black Keys’ eighth album (not including the eye-opening Blakroc project of last year), and you’d be hard-pressed to find a band more comfortable with itself. Dig the way “Howlin’ for You” exists as both a fuzz-blues tune and (with that Diddley beat) as a total shake-yo’-ass imperative. The duo’s lineup gets them plenty of comparisons to the White Stripes, but they more closely resemble Dead Weather’s fat, low rumble (and mood) on “She’s Long Gone,” among others. As for greatness—that involves a band transcending its influences, which they get to on memorable songs like “I'm Not the One” and “Too Afraid to Love You,” reaching deep into blues mysticism to pull out something unique. (M.L. Thrope)

Ty Segall is shaping up to be one of those fractured-genius sorta rockers, in the style of his buddy Johnny Dwyer (of Thee Oh Sees). After dropping a debut slice of garage-brilliance, Lemons, last year on the great Goner imprint of Memphis, he promptly released an equally good (vinyl-only) duo album with pal Mikal Cronin called Reverse Shark Attack, as well as a few seven-inches and at least one split-cassette. He’s a regular Bert Campaneris of music formats. More important, he’s also already got his second full-length effort for Goner, Melted, and it’s an immediate candidate for album of the year. While it uses his familiar raw and reverby garage sound as a foundation, it’s clear that Segall’s ambitions are only bounded by the number of releases he can pump out. Lead-off track “Finger” begins softly before erupting into a slow, almost glammy march of menace. The following cut, “Caesar,” practically skips along in comparison, using a flicked acoustic guitar and a wryly disaffected vocal to strangely recall early-70s Stones. All of Melted goes like this: expertly played garage-fuzz with Segall’s awesome songwriting elevating every number out of style and into substance. Get to know this Bay Area kid, now! (James)

The new and third Band of Horses album is being jointly released by an odd trio of indie and major labels, but fans care about just one thing: those harmonies. Infinite Arms has them in spades, starting with the record’s opener, “Factory,” an otherwise mournful-seeming song to begin an album with. No matter—its sweeping strings help set the stage for an album of widescreen emotions and twilight melodies. The next tune, “Compliments,” opens with classic-sounding keyboards before Horseman Ben Bridwell opens up those full-bodied pipes of his—Bridwell’s voice and vocal arrangements essentially being the central principle of this group. Tempos change and emotions fluctuate, but that’s the constant here, whether on the Shins-like “On My Way Back Home” or the campfire-drama of the title track: sublime vocals in copious quantities. (Bosco)

The shadow of Beck hangs over the oddly titled Maniac Meat, the second album from Black Moth Super Rainbow frontman Tobacco. This is in part because Beck actually sings on two of the songs, “Fresh Hex” and “Grape Aerosmith.” But the weird-pop kingpin’s inspiration is felt throughout, with Tobacco impulsively following every idea that comes to him—tremolo a synth and clap hands on “Lick the Witch” before its big beat kicks in, for example. Odder still is the bizarre logic that he hits on more often than not, as with the sci-fi glam and grime of “Sweatmother” and “Overheater,” which suggests nothing less than Beck covering the T. Rex songbook on mushrooms. Don’t let the awful cover art put you off—Maniac Meat is a deep, gnarly listen. (Bosco)

Now that two of the members of this band have achieved fame (at least as measured in Pitchfork column inches) in The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, maybe more people will discover their previous and still-active band, The Depreciation Guild, which travels down a similar but far from identical dreampop/shoegaze path. Anyone who enjoys thickly layered washes of ethereal guitar wafting over big beats as winsome vocals float around the edges will find “November”—and many other tracks here—recalling the glory days of the genre, but with enough modern touches (the occasional electronic touches, a hint of a more urban beat on opener “My Chariot”) that it’s not just revivalism. (Steve)

To run through the background basics: Karen Elson is a stately redhead ex-model now married to Jack White. So you, me and the next guy probably all knew this record would arrive at some point. But while we may never know just how much of The Ghost Who Walks is Elson’s work and how much is owed to her multitalented husband (who produces and drums here), the hyperstylized album is a welcome entry in the haunted-lady-singer sweepstakes, which is to say that fans of Bat for Lashes and carefully detailed replications of American gothica owe the record a good long listen. A song like “The Truth Is in the Dirt,” with a dramatically note-perfect arrangement of guitar and organ, makes Elson sound like a veteran pop-savant, while “Stolen Roses” practically cries out for placement in Nick Cave’s songbook, with Elson exhaling her way through an accordion as well as tumbleweedy guitars. At first you may think “not bad,” but after a few songs you’ll forget your prejudices and begin thinking “surprisingly good”! (Bosco)

Welsh singer Cate Le Bon has the kind of pure, glassy voice that makes British folk icons like Vashti Bunyan and June Tabor sound so transcendent and timeless. But Le Bon, who got her start touring with Gruff Rhys, isn’t content with the kind of simple arrangements that her type of singing could easily carry. Instead, swirls of pattering electronics and wooshing psych guitar work their way into the mix, elevating plain folk to something much richer and more interesting, without sacrificing any of the ethereal mood. (Abby)

On the one hand, how could Ms. LaVette sound bad singing anything with that voice? She’s got a jagged but full-bodied rasp that makes Marianne Faithfull sound mellifluous in comparison, and she wields it with all the hard-won experience of the four-decade soul veteran that she is. On the other hand, she’s daring to tackle extremely well-known songs by some of the most revered figures in rock history: The Beatles, Animals, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, Moody Blues, Elton John, the Who, Traffic, Derek & the Dominos, etc. Well, there’s one misstep (“Maybe I’m Amazed” doesn’t worked slowed down and schmaltzed up), but many more successes—a funky, horn-driven “Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad,” the aching cry of “No Time to Live,” and a supremely empathetic “Salt of the Earth” that ditches the snideness of the original. Most of all, she finds depths in “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” that I doubt even Bernie Taupin knew were there, and—in concert—improbably but triumphantly turns “Love Reign o’er Me” into a smoldering soul ballad. You’ve got to hear this album! (Steve)

Unlikely and wonderful! Elisabeth Esselink, a.k.a. Solex, has been quiet lately as far as activity in the U.S. But back home in Dutch-persons-land, she’s been slowly assembling the parts to this collab with Jon Spencer and wife Cristina Martinez (Boss Hog), which we believe was made in back-and-forth fashion. If Amsterdam Throwdown wasn’t in fact made with all three in one studio though, you won’t notice: Solex’s playful Euro-beat-isms meld perfectly with Martinez-Spencer’s raunchier but no less playful jukin’-and-jivin’ blues-rock routine. Sly and slippery, the 15 funky pop nuggets here all bear their makers’ paw-prints: Spencer’s alley-cat-calls, Martinez’s den-mother authority and Esselink’s chirping vocals and synth work. Somehow, with so much going on, they kept the arrangements spare—check out the loose and tight “R Is for Ring-a-Ding” (featuring smart rapper-poet Mike Ladd) and the funk-forward “Fire Fire” for proof. (M.L. Thrope)

For once it’s okay to use the "supergroup" tag. Whether or not you know their work, Sir Richard Bishop (guitar, piano; Sun City Girls), Chris Corsano (drums) and Ben Chasny (guitar; Six Organs of Admittance) are all bad muthas of the highest water. For their first trio date as Rangda (being a Balinese demon-queen, we’ll credit the name to Bishop), these astral-traveling citizens of earth cut way the hell loose: “Waldorf Hysteria” launches False Flag in a detonation of free-rock guitar wizardry and multidirectional drumming, while the subsequent “Bull Lore” blends Sabbathesque dread with a blazing solo line that eventually elevates the entire six-minute piece to the top of some misty mountain. False Flag’s six songs alternate in that style: free-form freakouts of a fabulously furry nature trading off with more composed pieces, showing the true inside-outside brilliance of these three dude-kings. It’s no surprise that Bishop, Chasny and Corsano play so well together, but it feels like a revelation nonetheless. The closing “Plain of Jars” tracks at 15-minutes-plus, but it isn’t hard to imagine the song continuing on to the vanishing point. (M.L. Thrope)

Of all of Light in the Attic’s incredible reissues, this one deserves special distinction. The independent label worked with legendary Nashville songwriter (and distinguished actor) Kris Kristofferson to collect and curate the best of his unreleased demos from the 1960s and ‘70s—so technically this isn’t a “reissue.” Along with its 16 extraordinary, minimally arranged tracks (including “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Come Sundown,” and “Just the Other Side of Nowhere”), the album comes with extensive liner notes, including remembrances by Merle Haggard and Kinky Friedman and a long essay by Michael Simmons. To paraphrase the song “If You Don’t Like Hank Williams”: If you don’t like Kris Kristofferson, you can kiss my ass. (Abby)