By Jason Stonerook

A Badly Broken Code by Dessa
“I came to write a letter/ But my pen was full of hymns,” raps Dessa, a member of the Minneapolis hip-hop collective Doomtree. This is one philosophy major who knows what to do with her degree. As righteous as Ani DiFranco, as tough as Eminem, as lilting as Janet Jackson, and as scrappy and nimble as Maggie Fitzgerald, Dessa can reference Billie Holliday, the Ninja Turtles, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez without missing a beat. Featuring inventive production, impeccable flow, and surprising harmonies, this dense, soulful album is simply beautiful. If you listen to hip-hop, you need this record; if you don’t, start here.

The Big To-Do by Drive-By Truckers
Perhaps America’s best rock band, this Georgia group infuses its work with grungy Neil Young/Lynyrd Skynyrd guitar riffs and stories that would suit Flannery O’Connor just fine. The characters in these songs are on four day benders, literally falling from grace and crossing all the lines Johnny Cash tried to walk, but given the Great Recession and its accompanying cynicism, not even the-forces-that-be give a dang anymore. “Eyes Like Glue” concludes the album with an uneasy and devastating reflection on the American Dream. This record better be blasting out of every pick-up with its windows down this summer.

I Speak Because I Can by Laura Marling
One part Joni, one part Sinead, twenty-year-old Laura Marling’s second album is a brooding, poetic work of English folk. “Devil’s Spoke” – which wonders if the tree that falls in the forest observes her – feels ripped out of Led Zeppelin III. Throughout the album, Marling chronicles a harsh world that draws monsters out of men who then lash out at their daughters, lovers, and mothers. Marling knows her search for inner strength and insistence upon compassion is a story as old as civilization, so she gives the final words to Penelope, who vents for all the Ladies of the Canon.

Broken Bells by Broken Bells
Gnarls Barkley producer Danger Mouse teams with James Mercer, lead singer of indie band the Shins, for an album that portrays yesteryear’s Obama volunteer as today’s version of Benjamin Braddock – a vacant-eyed college graduate uninterested in plastics who’s just fled the church to find himself sitting in the back of the bus, wondering what’s next. (“I was lost then and I am lost now/ And I doubt I’ll ever know which way to go.”) By evoking the sanitized psychedelia of late 60s soft pop, Broken Bells implies we’re still riding that bus, although, admittedly, Benjamin’s a rather witless passenger.

CLASSIC REVIEW:

#1 Record by Big Star (1972)
On the day Davy Crockett died, we also lost another Tennessee hero, Alex Chilton, the mastermind behind Big Star, whose Byrdsian jangle pop influenced Tom Petty, R.E.M., and the Replacements. Due to a handful of bad breaks, few know the group recorded two rock classics: Radio City, and my favorite, (their debut,) #1 Record. “Feel” and “In the Street,” (which Cheap Trick covered for the theme of That 70s Show) are power pop treasures, but the ballad “Thirteen” epitomizes the band: Its honest, innocent depiction of teenage heartache links Lennon-McCartney to Taylor Swift and puts emo’s whining boys to shame.

Jason Stonerook is the author of Rock ‘N’ Politics: A State of the Union Address. Line Score: 3-4, 0-2, 6. Rebounds 4. Assists 0. Turnovers 2.