Rock

The twin sisters from Canada depart from their indie singer-songwriter roots with their latest album. The music on Heartthrob is often loaded with a carefully articulated sense of doubt that Tegan and Sara suggest needs to be shaken off through a triumph of the pop-music will.

The icon's new album plays like a collection of discreet singles, with each performed in a different style, genre and mood. In this way, the album isn't a return to form, in part because David Bowie never took one form to begin with.

The debut album from the New York trio Guards is big on atmospherics, but also features a grandness of intent that connects the group to acts as varied as U2, Arcade Fire and The Beach Boys

The singer-songwriter often writes songs about his complex relationships with women. On his new Electric, Thompson is still coming to terms with the sources of his frustrations which out to give him material for many years to come.

The indie-rock favorite's new album, Fade, demonstrates that the group is all grown up but not at all study. The album's music and words add up to our affirmation of life and living.

In the early 1960s, Joe Barry combined Cajun and country music into a whole new sound. In honor of a new anthology of Barry's music titled A Fool to Care, critic Ed Ward tells the forgotten musician's story.

In his new film, Sopranos creator David Chase tells a coming-of-age story about Jersey boys in the 1960s who dream of riding the wave of the British invasion all the way to stardom. Chase teams up with Steven Van Zandt -- of the E Street Band and The Sopranos -- to make the movie's music rock.

From the inescapable "Call Me Maybe" to Fiona Apple's intricate word puzzles to the strikingly gorgeous return of Iris DeMent, the Fresh Air critic counts down hiss favorite albums and musical moments of the year.

A new documentary on PBS about the making of the Beatles' 1967 film Magical Mystery Tour features outtakes from the original and new interviews with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. TV critic David Bianculli call the film "wonderfully thorough."

One of the great fantasies of the hippie era was that new combinations of music would emerge from the experimentation that was going on. Still, very few lived it. Ed Ward says The Insect Trust was one of the exceptions.

James Bond and The Rolling Stones both turn 50 this year. As critic John Powers points out, both may have been born in response to a dying British Empire, but their evolving legacies have reflected the times through which these brands have lived.

Six feet tall, weighing in at 400 pounds and in his 40s when stardom hit him, Big Joe Turner is behind a load of rock 'n' roll hits. His hardest-hitting singles have been collected on a new compilation, titled Big Joe Turner Rocks.

Ed Ward connects the dots of the British band's eight studio albums, which were just collected in a box set.

The band's new Call Me Sylvia is as raucous as its debut, though it's slightly more self-conscious.

Waging Heavy Peace is about his music, raising two sons with special needs, and his own medical conditions, which have included polio, epilepsy and a brain aneurysm.

Ken Tucker says that Charmer is a song cycle about getting rid of a cynical frame of mind; about distancing yourself from people who are dragging you down.

Critic Ken Tucker says that some songs on Tempest should less like concentrated efforts than outpourings of rambling thoughts; others are as precisely crafted as any Bob Dylan has written.

Despite its title, When I'm President isn't as political as Hunter's past couple of solo albums. Critic Ken Tucker says Hunter reachers back into rock's past while linking it firmly to the present.

The members of Shoes have cobbled together albums like stubborn craftsmen who know that their trade is at once outmoded and valuable. Ken Tucker says Ignition retains the same pop-rock rigor heard in the band's 1970s records.

There are lots of stories about the band that got away. For rock historian Ed Ward, one of those groups has always been Autosalvage, a New York quartet who made one album and then stopped playing.