Into the system

"We were trying to do a Phil Spector thing with as few instruments as possible," John Cale, the classically trained pianist and viola player of the Velvet Underground, once said of this record. It was no idle boast. Much of what we take for granted in rock would not exist without this New York band or its seminal debut, The Velvet Underground and Nico: the androgynous sexuality of glitter; punk's raw noir; the blackened-riff howl of grunge and noise rock. It is a record of fearless breadth and lyric depth. Singer-songwriter Lou Reed documented carnal desire and drug addiction with a pop wisdom he learned as a song-factory composer for Pickwick Records. Cale introduced the power of pulse and drone (from his work in early minimalism); guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen Tucker played with tribal force; Nico, a German vocalist briefly added to the band by manager Andy Warhol, brought an icy femininity to the heated ennui in Reed's songs. Rejected as nihilistic by the love crowd in '67, the Banana Album (so named for its Warhol-designed cover), is the most prophetic rock album ever made.

Many believe Rock & Roll was born on July 5th, 1954, at Sun Studios in Memphis. Elvis Presley, guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black were horsing around with "That's All Right," a tune by bluesman Arthur Crudup, when producer Sam Phillips stopped them and asked, "What are you doing?" "We don't know," they said. Phillips told them to "back up and do it again." The A side of Presley's first single (backed with a version of Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky"), "That's All Right" was issued by Sun, on July 19th. It may or may not be the first rock & roll record. But the man who would be King was officially on wax. Bridging black and white, country and blues, his sound was playful and revolutionary. As Presley biographer Peter Guralnick observed, "This is the most improbable story of all: In a tiny Memphis studio, in 1954 and 1955, Sam Phillips and Elvis Presley created rock & roll." Presley released four more singles on Sun — including definitive reinventions of Wynonie Harris' "Good Rockin' Tonight" and Junior Parker's "Mystery Train" — before moving on to immortality at RCA. It took more than twenty years for Presley's Sun output to be properly collected on this '76 LP — which has since been superseded by Sunrise, a double-CD chronicle of the King's beginnings at Sun, released in 1999.

Recorded in 1979 in London, which was then wrenched by surging unemployment and drug addiction, and released in America in January 1980, the dawn of an uncertain decade, London Calling is nineteen songs of apocalypse fueled by an unbending faith in rock & roll to beat back the darkness. Produced with no-surrender energy by legendary Sixties studio madman Guy Stevens, the Clash's third album sounds like a free-form radio broadcast from the end of the world, skidding from bleak punk ("London Calling") to rampaging ska ("Wrong 'Em Boyo") and disco resignation ("Lost in the Supermarket"). The album was made in dire straits, too. The band was heavily in debt; singer-guitarists Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, the Clash's Lennon and McCartney, wrote together in Jones' grandmother's flat, where he was living for lack of dough. But the Clash also cranked up the hope. The album ends with "Train in Vain," a rousing song of fidelity (originally unlisted on the back cover) that became the sound of triumph: the Clash's first Top Thirty single in the U.S.

Tracklist:

CD1:
1. Orchestral Intro
2. Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach (feat. the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)
3. White Flag (feat. Kano, Bashy and the Syrian National Orchestra For Arabic Music)
4. Rhinestone Eyes
5. Stylo (feat. Mos Def and Bobby Womack)
6. Superfast Jellyfish (feat. De La Soul and Gruff Rhys)
7. Empire Ants (feat. Little Dragon)
8. Glitter Freeze (feat. Mark E. Smith)
9. Some Kind of Nature (feat. Lou Reed)
10. On Melancholy Hill
11. Broken (feat. the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)
12. Sweepstakes (feat. Mos Def and the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)
13. Plastic Beach (feat. the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)
14. To Binge (feat. Little Dragon)
15. Cloud of Unknowing (feat. Bobby Womack)
16. Pirate Jet

CD2:
1. Last Living Souls
2. Kids With Guns (feat. Neneh Cherry)
3. O Green World
4. 19/2000 (feat. Miho Hatori)
5. Tomorrow Comes Today
6. DARE (feat. Roses Gabor and Shaun Ryder)
7. Dirty Harry (feat. Bootie Brown)
8. El Manana
9. November Has Come (feat. MF Doom)
10. Doncamatic (feat. Daley)
11. Punk
12. Fire Coming Out Of The Monkey’s Head
13. Don’t Get Lost In Heaven
14. Demon Days (feat. Bobby Womack)
15. Hong Kong (feat. Zeng Zhen)
16. Feel Good Inc (feat. De La Soul)
17. Clint Eastwood (feat. Kano and Bashy)
18. Clint Eastwood (feat. Snoop Dogg) (Bonus track)
19. Clint Eastwood (feat. Eslam Jawaad) (Bonus track)
20. Clint Eastwood (feat. Tinie Tempah) (Bonus track)

Tracklist:

1. Groove Me (Maximum Balloon / Theophilus London) (3:44)
2. Young Love (Maximum Balloon / Katrina Ford) (3:28)
3. Absence of Light (Maximum Balloon / Tunde Adebimpe) (3:52)
4. If You Return (Maximum Balloon / Little Dragon) (4:24)
5. Shakedown (Maximum Balloon / Kyp Malone) (3:34)
6. Communion (Maximum Balloon / Karen O) (4:17)
7. Tiger (Maximum Balloon / Aku Orraca-Tetteh) (3:35)
8. The Lesson (Maximum Balloon / Holly Miranda) (4:06)
9. Apartment Wrestling (Maximum Balloon / David Byrne) (3:39)
10. Pink Bricks (Maximum Balloon, Ambrosia Parsley / Ambrosia Nicole Parsley) (3:49)

Even dystopian rock dudes need to shake it sometimes. For his solo debut, Dave Sitek adds schwing to his smeared synths and swarming guitars, while an A list of New York voices rock midtempo goth-soul beats. TV on the Radio bandmates Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone are here, as is born-again disco diva Karen O, who gets Donna Summer-y on "Communion." For "Apartment Wrestling," Sitek enlists dance-rock OG David Byrne. It sounds like Talking Heads, as well it should.

Tracklist:

01. Before Destruction (3:17)
02. Is Love Forever? (2:07)
03. The Mystery Zone (4:59)
04. Who Makes Your Money (3:45)
05. Written In Reverse (4:19)
06. I Saw The Light (5:32)
07. Trouble Comes Running (3:06)
08. Goodnight Laura (2:29)
09. Out Go The Lights (4:37)
10. Got Nuffin (3:59)
11. Nobody Gets Me But You (4:57)

Britt Daniel is the best kind of minimalist: the kind with endless hooks in his pocket and endless tricks up his sleeve. On Transference he builds elliptical, indelible songs from off-kilter drum patterns, cheap organ squeals, vocal harmony shards, and zipgun-taut guitar riffs. There's a new-ish infatuation with trippy, dubby studio effects, and Daniel tosses them around like a high-strung Lee Perry. This is head music for folks who get bored quick.

Tracklist:

01. The End
02. Radioactive
03. Pyro
04. Mary
05. The Face
06. The Immortals
07. Back Down South
08. Beach Side
09. No Money
10. Pony Up
11. Birthday
12. Mi Amigo
13. Pickup Truck

In the run-up to Kings of Leon's fifth album, frontman Caleb Followill fretted publicly over his band's swelling popularity. Sorry, dude: That horse left the barn a while ago. The Kings' last album, 2008's Only by the Night, sold 6.5 million copies worldwide, they now headline arenas all over, and the Grammy-grabbing "Use Somebody" has been covered by everyone from Paramore to Trey Songz. If Wilco and My Morning Jacket are vying for the title of America's Radiohead, Kings of Leon have — Bono's honorary green card notwithstanding — become our U2. And the gigantic-sounding Come Around Sundown suggests that, Caleb's humble grumblings aside, they are thriving on it.

Tracklist:

1. Blue Blood Blues
2. Hustle And Cuss
3. The Difference Between Us
4. I'm Mad
5. Die By The Drop
6. I Can't Hear You
7. Gasoline
8. No Horse
9. Looking At The Invisible Man
10. Jawbreaker
11. Old Mary

The second album by the Dead Weather, Jack White's current singing-drummer gig and gothic-blues holiday, is a rock of action — nothing but action. There is barely room to breathe, much less sing along, in these vicious twists and blitzkrieg segues. "Blue Blood Blues" is a furious pileup of Jack Lawrence's grunting fuzz bass, Dean Fertita's abrasive skidding guitar and bizarre doo-wop vocal pepper, pushed around by White's mule-kick outbursts at his kit. "I'm Mad" zigzags between fire-dance delirium and drunken-Godzilla stomp, with jolts of abused synthesizer and vocalist Alison Mosshart's she-devil vengeance. Technically, these 11 tracks are songs, with titles and hooks. The effect, though, is more like a precisely arranged parade of spasms, blasted at you in a kind of aural IMAX. Last year's Horehound had the same feral air. But the moving parts on Sea of Cowards — the distortion on Fertita's guitar riffs in "Die by the Drop"; the clang of White's pie-plate-cymbal crashes in "Hustle and Cuss"; his and Mosshart's incantatory bursts and lost-soul harmonies — come faster, meaner and fatter. There are more single-worthy tunes on White's records with the Raconteurs; in the White Stripes, he prefers his blues with limits. But with this band, White lets himself go over the top. Don't be too cool to go along.

Tracklist:

1. Overcome (3:47)
2. Bread of Shame (3:56)
3. A Thousand Faces (4:54)
4. Suddenly (3:31)
5. Rain (3:27)
6. Away in Silence (4:40)
7. Fear (4:05)
8. On My Sleeve (4:14)
9. Full Circle (4:08)
10. Time (5:55)
11. Good Fight (3:55)
12. The Song You Sing (4:08)

Full Circle is the fourth album by the American rock band Creed, released on October 26, 2009, one day earlier than previously expected.[7] It is Creed's first release since their 2004 compilation album Greatest Hits, their first studio album since 2001's Weathered, and their first studio album to feature original bassist Brian Marshall in almost exactly a decade. The record was produced by Howard Benson. The album was completed on July 31, 2009, as announced by Scott Stapp. Four days later, the album cover was revealed through the band's official e-news.

The album is a departure from Creed's previous work and features heavier songs in drop tunings. There are also more guitar solos, as heard on the album, originally announced by Mark Tremonti on his Twitter page when he stated that he is "very proud of the solos on this record."

Tracklist

01. One Step Closer
02. From The Inside
03. No More Sorrow
04. Given Up
05. Lying From You
06. Hands Held High
07. Leave Out All The Rest
08. Numb
09. The Little Things Give You Away
10. Breaking The Habit
11. Shadow Of The Day
12. Crawling
13. In The End
14. Pushing Me Away
15. What I've Done
16. Numb/Encore (With Jay-Z)
17. Jigga What/Faint (With Jay-Z)
18. Bleed It Out

Tracklist:

01. The Requiem
02. The Radiance
03. Burning In The Skies
04. Empty Spaces
05. When They Come For Me
06. Robot Boy
07. Jornada Del Muerto
08. Waiting For The End
09. Blackout
10. Wretches And Kings
11. Wisdom, Justice, And Love
12. Iridescent
13. Fallout
14. The Catalyst
15. The Messenger