Ken Tucker

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.

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.