Mean as a rattlesnake and loaded with twice as much venom, Heavy Trash's Going Way Out With Heavy Trash is, hands down, the best rockabilly album in ages. The product of the diseased imaginations of Jon Spencer, he of Blues Explosion and Pussy Galore fame, and Speedball Baby guitar demon Matt Verta-Ray, Heavy Trash (photo at right by Ali Smith) explodes out of the speakers with a ferocious, red-hot, vintage '50s-inspired rock 'n' roll swagger on its latest album.

"We Were Kings" is a fuzz-toned rave-up of Biblical proportions, while "Crazy Pritty Baby" and "Kissy Baby" are ripped straight from the jukeboxes of your parents' malt shop. And there's enough sweaty garage-rock rebellion in tracks like the rootsy "Outside Chance" and "I Want Oblivion" to start a riot. If you like Link Wray and other '50s rock 'n' rollers such as Charlie Feathers, you should get to know Heavy Trash.

In a recent e-mail chat with Verta-Ray (the full version of which will soon be posted at www.goldminemag.com) he talked about some of his '50s rock 'n' roll heroes. When asked if he thought Heavy Trash's deconstruction of vintage rock 'n' roll tropes was honoring past masters, Verta-Ray said, "I think Link Wray is my absolute favorite guitarist and Sun Records is my favorite studio/legacy, so it's not surprising that those things are in every cell of our makeup. I'm not conscious of honoring them, but sometimes putting oneself in the kind of head that those might have been operating in can give clues and 'messages' from the past while work is going on."

Verta-Ray's enthusiasm for vintage rock 'n' roll is contagious. He, and Spencer, believe acts like Charlie Feathers and Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll trio got a raw deal as far as public acclaim is concerned. And Verta-Ray is excited about how rockabilly is taking off in, of all places, Italy. Read www.goldminemag.com for more on this fantastic combo.

For more on Heavy Trash, visit www.yeproc.com or www.heavytrash.net/.

On the plane on the way to Goldmine's National Record Show at the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame a few weeks back, I struck up a conversation about music with an interesting woman who was on her way to Cleveland to go to some sort of Yiddish Festival (I'm not making that up).
I told her about the magazine, and we talked about all the great rock and folk acts of the '60s. She was really into Carole King and the Mamas and the Papas and other artists of that era. And then, our talk turned to the music of today, which she basically dismissed as crap.
Though I'm the editor of a magazine that is classified as a "classic rock" publication, I enjoy modern stuff just as much, and so, I disagreed, as I always do in such matters, because I don't buy that line of thinking (Every era has its great music; this one's will be recognized someday). And yet, when put on the spot, I couldn't really come up with a really convincing rebuttal.
Now, I'm not here to tell you that the music industry is in great shape, because it's not. But, I'm not ready to give it last rites either.
Having had time to think since that day, I've come up with five groups who continue to push the envelope with challenging, original music that has all it takes to stand the test of time and still has something new to offer. Here goes nothing:

Wilco
Not a whole lot of alt.-country acts have really done anything incredibly original with their careers. That's not to say they haven't produced memorable music, it's just that experimentation is something the genre avoids like the plague. Wilco is the exception.
With each release, Jeff Tweedy and company take alt.-country to places nobody ever thought it would ever dare to go. The double album Being There, released in 1996, hinted at genius. The '60s pop infused Summerteeth confirmed it, and then came 2002's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Undoubtedly the decade's finest album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot runs the gamut of sunny pop-rock ("Heavy Metal Drummer" and "I'm the Man Who Loves You"), moody meditations ("Ashes of American Flags" and "Poor Places") and exquisite songcraft ("Jesus, Etc.," "War on War" and "Kamera"). It's strange and unique, yet for all of its experimental tendencies, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is also timeless, heartbreaking and a real, honest-to-gooddness work of art.
Radio, as it's done for years, ignored it, but Internet buzz created a groundswell of support just as Wilco's record label was dropping the band. Big mistake. Subsequent releases A Ghost Is Born, which features some stellar guitar soloing from Tweedy, and the band's latest, Sky Blue Sky, have garnered critical acclaim from all points and strong sales in time when nobody's buying records.

The Flaming Lips
Hands down, the Flaming Lips have the best live show on earth. I went to see them at a festival last summer and the experience was incredibly surreal, life-affirming and fun. On one side of the stage were girls, plucked from the festival grounds during the day evidently, dressed up as martians; on the other were guys in Santa Claus outfits. And that's not all.
Under a torrential downpour of colorful streamers and balloons, frontman Wayne Coyne walked out into the crowd in a bubble as what seemed like hundreds of exercise balls were bouncing through the air.
Lest you think that the Lips are all showmanship and no substance, put on their headphone masterpieces Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots and The Soft Bulletin. Mind-blowing psychedelia, electronica and lush pop pour out in a flood of colors. Coyne's lyrics are a celebration of life, but he's no Pollyanna. He's somehow able to straddle the line between the dark and the light and go off to examine deeply either territory without completely succumbing to whatever dangers are hidden in the blackness. Meaningful and intelligent, this is party music for aliens, and human beings who haven't been cowed into accepting the futility of modern living. There's never been another band like this, and in all likelihood, there never will be.

Sigur Ros
Impossible to place in any sort of genre ghetto, Iceland's Sigur Ros combines the soaring complexity of classical music, the devastating weight of heavy metal, the noisy crescendos of shoegazer rock and ethereal soundscapes — not to mention the aural Northern Lights emitted by lead singer Jonsi's  gorgeous falsetto — to create the most emotionally powerful music of our age.
Cinematic in its scope, with a built-in sense of mystery — due to the band members' publicity-shy stance and an album simply titled (  ) —  Sigur Ros is not just a musical entity; it's an audio-visual experience. With little if no dialog, a Sigur Ros video is able to convey stories of lost youth, child-like innocence, undefinable menace and unabashed joy with beautiful, breathtaking imagery, the unscripted actions of its actors — usually Icelandic children or the elderly — and artful camera work.
It's been said of a lot of bands that they will change your life. With most, it's pure hyperbole, but Sigur Ros is that band.

White Stripes
Forget the confusion over Jack and Meg's actual relationship (most of us already have). Forget their crazy color schemes. Jack White is an insanely talented guitar player and the way they mesh vintage, hellhound blues, garage-rock and punk into a sweaty, minimalist fury of rock that erupts in tracks like "Seven Nation Army," "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" and "Ball and Biscuit." And then there's the Stripes' softer, child-like side that emerges in "We're Going to be Friends."
There's raunchiness and unspoiled innocence rubbing up against each other in every White Stripes album, and there's pure violence in White's playing, mixed with gentle finger-picking where appropriate. Able to swing from hot-wired rock to traditional song forms in the blink of an eye, Jack and Meg are a dynamic duo that seem to have preternatural musical instincts. Or at least Jack does. It's hard to tell what's going on with Meg, besides providing a solid beat for Jack's guitar tantrums.
And the White Stripes don't just suck up to their heroes; they set fire to their effigies. As respectful as they are to what's come before them, and they are, the White Stripes certainly aren't content to simply mimic them like some bar band playing covers for beer-addled apes.
Not only that but Jack White did the world a huge favor and helped revive the career of one Loretta Lynn. Their collaboration resulted in one of the best albums of the decade. And that ought to count for something.

Ryan Adams
"Prolific" is one word used to describe Ryan Adams. "Petulant" is another. But, there is no denying the man's ability to craft a song.
Whether he's immersing himself in sepia-toned country with Whiskeytown (his former alt.-country project) or honky-tonking with his latest backing band, the Cardinals, or selling you slick pop-rock candy from that five-and-dime store head of his, Adams' tremendous knack for penning angst-ridden, heartbreaking, memorable songs that stick in your mind forever.
Weaned on the country of George Jones, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn, Adams has shuffled off the alt-.country tag a time or two, just to prove he's more than just some yokel from the sticks. But he always returns to his roots, and when the prodigal son does, he seems to come back more determined than ever to make something lasting and eternal.
He released three albums in 2005 alone, and all of them were stellar. How many songwriters are able to do that? Plus, he has the blessing of Elton John. Enough said.

Anybody familiar with the codeine-laced, slo-core noise of Medicine should recognize the name Brad Laner. His first solo album, Neighbor Singing, is coming out Nov. 6 on the Hometapes label, one of the best indies around.

Media types were given access to the wistful new track "June Gloom," and it somehow manages to marry Beach Boys' California pop with the spacey, effects-laden mayhem of My Bloody Valentine and the lush, electronic, bedroom-recording intimacy of much of the Hometapes roster.

Produced by Laner (photo at right by Ye Rin Mok) and Thom Monahan (Lavender Diamond, Brightblack Morning Light), Neighbor Singing should help people forget that Laner once was shanghi-ed into playing bass for the Captain and Tennille in the '70s. There's a clip on YouTube, much to Laner's chagrin. At the time, Laner was playing in punk bands like Debt of Nature, and in the '80s, he played drums for Savage Republic, before forming Medicine in the early '90s and signing to Rick Rubin's Def American label.

In 1995, Laner got together with members of Tool, The Replicants and Failure to make Lusk, and the band released one album and quickly disbanded. Later, he resurfaced with Electric Company, a project that was more of an electronic affair than his previous output. Incredibly prolific, he released 10 albums under that name in ten years.

In a recent press release, Laner said of his latest effort, "I wanted to shamelessly utilize all of the different skills that I've built up over a lifetime of musical experiences. It's not a reflection of my record collection but rather the first examples of a new approach to pop music that feels to me to be almost biologically my own."

Having already seen the world and its rich pageant, Laner is now ensconced in domestic bliss, living in his self-restored 1964 Joseph Eichler home near Los Angeles. Music still holds an allure for Brad, who began working long distance with the likes of Brian Eno, Vetiver, and Caribou a while back. After a rare live show in 2005 at Arthur Fest in L.A., he and Monahan drew up the blueprints for what would become Neighbor Singing.

"This record was made in a 'catch as catch can' sort of situation in that nowadays I'm constantly balancing between raising my son and finding the time to be a properly self-indulgent artiste," writes Brad. "I think this dual reality kept me from traveling too far up my own ass and allowed for a (slightly) more objective perspective — i.e. lots of time to step away from it and lose the muscle memory of putting down the individual parts."

Get your Neighbor Singing track list here.
 
1. Find Out 
2. Out Cold 
3. Lovely World 
4. Vecino 
5. Arlie 
6. Alambres
7. June Gloom
8. April Bossa 
9. Sure 
10. Falling TIme 
11. From Inside 
12. Circumscribe
 
To learn more, visit www.bradlaner.com, or www.myspace.com/bradlaner.

Better known as Bruce's better half (that's Springsteen, of course) and a longtime member of his band, Patti Scialfa has carved out a nice little career for herself as a solo artist.

On Sept. 4, Columbia Records will release Scialfa's latest, Play It As It Lays, her third solo aboum since 1993's Rumble Doll. Breaking out of the Boss' long shadow, Scialfa immerses herself in sepia-toned Americana on this effort, blending roots rock, folk, country, girl-group harmonies and pop in a sound that's tougher than anything Bonnie Raitt has released in recent years.

Links for "Looking For Elvis" and "Town Called Heartbreak" were sent to media types today, and from the sound of both tracks, it seems like Scialfa's songwriting has never been sharper. "Town Called Heartbreak" is a smoldering, bluesy number that's schooled in the art of seduction, while "Looking For Elvis" is a dust bowl of rich, traditional country-folk lament riding the rails of dobro guitar and swooping harmonica. Had Woody Guthrie lived to see the new millennium, he might have sounded a lot like this.

Produced by Steve Jordan, who served as musical director for the PBS series "Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues" and has produced albums by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, John Mayer and Keith Richards, the album sees Scialfa playing acoustic guitar, banjo and wurlitzer organ. And if you're looking for Bruce, he's there in the background, playing Hammond B3 organ, acoustic guitars, electric guitar and harmonica. Nils Lofgren is there too, providing backup on guitars, pedal steel guitar and dobro.

To learn more about the release, visit www.pattiscialfa.net. To purchase the record, go to http://www.sonymusicstore.com/store/order/shoppingCart.do?event=link.add&catalog_sku=118946 <http://www.sonymusicstore.com/store/order/shoppingCart.do?event=link.add&amp;catalog_sku=118946>

Welcome back to my Top Ten albums list of 2007 ... so far. Yesterday, I wrote of an amazing Young Galaxy — from Canada, not outer space — and the glorious reunions of Dinosaur Jr. and Buffalo Tom. But, the album that's No. 1 in my heart, at least so far this year, is The Shins' Wincing the Night Away.

Today, the rest of my 10 best will be revealed. The envelope please ...

6. Meat Puppets - Rise to Your Knees (Anodyne Records) - Moody and gorgeously textured, Rise to Your Knees is dark, desert psychedelia for cowboys with a taste for mescaline. The strange, wonderful imagination of Curt Kirkwood is still working overtime.

7. Love - Blue Thumb Recordings (www.Hip-OSelect.com) - More confirmation of Arthur Lee's genius, the Blue Thumb Recordings empty the vaults of Love's post-Forever Changes, lost psych-pop glory. There's incredible variety here, a little bit of folk, some freewheeling rock and a whole lot of gorgeous, sometimes loony, melodies Lee must bought from the devil. It was a bargain.

8. Maps - We Can Create (Mute, www.mute.com) - A space-pop epic, wildly ambitious and otherworldly, Maps' We Can Create is an amalgam of breathy, electronic cool and psychedelic radiance. It's Spiritualized, My Bloody Valentine and Moby all floating in the milky way, creating sonic architecture that's huge, smooth and glassy, but never boring.

9. John Phillips - Jack Of Diamonds (Varese Sarabande) - It's not folk, but Jack Of Diamonds proves that Phillips could move beyond the acoustic ghetto to create beautiful, timeless music that defied categories. Country, rock, folk and even the blues influence his songwriting, but in Phillips' hands, they're mere tools used to shape and paint his highly textured, wind-blown pieces. A collection of lost recordings that should have seen the light of day in their time.

10. John Doe - A Year In The Wilderness (Yep Roc, www.yeproc.com) - Handsome rascal that John Doe, sort of a Paul Newman for the punk set, and like Newman, Doe has a body of work few artists can match. Tough, world-wise duets with Kathleen Edwards highlight the set, but the grit and realism of Doe's songwriting is felt throughout and provides the edge to burnished melodies that would shine like gold if not for the hard life they've lived.

At the risk of being labeled unpatriotic, it seems Europe has the right idea about a lot of things — one being universal health care, but that's a debate for another day.

No, where the Continent really has us Yanks beat is in its attitude toward music, and especially in its radio programming. Unlike in America, radio across the pond isn't ruled by Clear Channel, and therefore, it isn't so compartmentalized. Here, you've got your Top 40 station, your Classic Rock station, your Modern/Alternative rock 9or whatever they're calling it nowadays) station and your hip-hop station, etc.

Over there, radio stations play it all. There's none of this "one station for this, one station for that" kind of nonsense. Slowly, that mentality is killing music in this country, creating these fragmented gangs of music lovers that can't trespass on each other's turf without getting glares of suspicion from the arbiters of taste on every side.

In talking the other day to Roger Glover, bassist and a founding member of Deep Purple, you get the idea that Europe is a place where anything goes, where people are into all kinds of music and being a fan of Classic Rock doesn't mean you can't find something in common with the indie crowd.

For its part, Deep Purple is doing very well overseas, selling out various venues and striking a chord with the youth of different countries.

"It's been very good for us in Europe, and France especially," says Glover. "Germany's always been a stalwart supporter of Deep Purple, but France has come alive in the last couple of years. They really took to Rapture of the Deep (Purple's last studio album), and the audiences ... we just did a couple of months ago a big French tour, and we sold out everywhere, and the audiences were all around 20 or under, because in Europe, there's not quite the perception there is in the States. They don't have radio stations with categories, like rock stations or hip-hop stations ... or whatever. It's just music, so you don't get categorized quite so much, and I find that healthier."

So do I. And, if I had to make a diagnosis, I'd say Deep Purple is as healthy as its ever been. In May, the band released They All Came Down to Montreux: Deep Purple Live at Montreux 2006 (Eagle Rock Entertainment) as a 187-minute, two-DVD set (including a show at London's Hard Rock Cafe) and CD. Then, in late June, an HD-DVD version was released. Gorgeously shot, the DVD concert footage is a celebration of all things Deep Purple, with the band plowing through testosterone-fueled, proto-metal rockers like "Highway Star," "Space Truckin'" and, of course, "Smoke On The Water" with power and zeal. Guitarist Steve Morse, who's been with the band 15 years now, provides a variety of stunning, imaginative solos and heavy riffs, and Ian Gillan's vocal display raised pulses.

As everyone knows, Deep Purple and Montreux have a long history together. It was where the band's classic Machine Head album was recorded. The story of that album's creation will be published in an upcoming issue of Goldmine, so stay tuned.

If you're interested in the Live at Montreux release, head on over to www.eaglerockent.com for purchasing information.

The Purple is still on tour this summer. Remaining dates are listed below:

July 28            Montreal, QC         Bell Centre
July 31            Boston, MA            Bank Of America Pavilion
Aug. 2             Wallingford, CT      Chevrolet Theater
Aug. 4             Atlantic City, NJ     House of Blues
Aug. 7             New York, NY        Radio City Music Hall
Aug. 9             Bethlehem, PA       Musikfest