 | Raising Sand
Buy new: $9.99 / Used from: $5.15 Talk about coming out of left field! If you can't dig it at first, keep trying. Some sort of award should go to T-Bone Burnett for taking Robert Plant and Alison Krauss out of their elements and making music so mystical and deep.
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 | Centuries Before Love and War by Stars of Track and Field
Buy new: $7.98 / Used from: $0.66 Silk shirt meets leather jacket. Gentle and tough.
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 | Afterwords by Collective Soul
Buy new: $29.98 / Used from: $1.75 Ain't no punk here. Collective Soul had been dropped down the memory hole by the tastemakers; but there's more here that delivers than 90% of this year's Rolling Stone favorites
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 | Magic by Bruce Springsteen
Buy new: $10.99 / Used from: $0.99 I am not exactly a Bruce "Boss" Springsteen fan. Frankly, I think he's overrated. But even I have to take my hat off to this outing. Some compare this album to the greatness of BORN IN THE USA. I wouldn't put them in the same room. MAGIC is much better.
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 | Freedom's Road by John Mellencamp
Buy new: $12.99 / Used from: $0.67 Yeah. Mellencamp's politics are a bit eccentic. Who cares? Quiet thunder from the Midwest.
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 | Live at Massey Hall (CD/DVD) by Neil Young
Buy new: $22.99 / Used from: $13.94 Ever wonder what all the Neil Young fuss was all about? Go for this one. This journey through the past will make a believer out of you. Even the DVD is worth the few extra bucks
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 | Snakes & Arrows by Rush
Buy new: $14.99 / Used from: $2.60 Lyrically, the same parade of radical individualism. No. Not my cup of tea either. Yet, every track is commanding and beautiful. Should have known a band of Canadians who like baseball would come through.
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 | Memory Almost Full by Paul McCartney
Buy new: $10.97 / Used from: $0.01 Amazing how divorce concentrates the mind. In McCartney's case, with Mills busting up his charmed life and half his friends now taking a dirt nap, it looks like Sir Paul has realized that he shouldn't just put out whatever music that comes to mind. Too close to "soft rock" to play in all occasions. But there's a good place in anyone's rotation for this one.
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 | Dylanesque by Bryan Ferry
Buy new: $14.99 / Used from: $3.48 Avalon meets Hibbing, Minnesota. It's like taking blackberries and making a pie. It shouldn't work. But it's great.
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 | Live from Radio City Music Hall by Heaven & Hell
Buy new: $16.99 / Used from: $5.88 Get past your Ozzy fixation. These guys play their butts off.
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 | All the Lost Souls by James Blunt
Buy new: $14.99 / Used from: $2.20 I tried like hell not to like this album. Some will question my manhood. But take my word for it, these songs will be playing in our head when you least expect it.
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 | Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace by Foo Fighters
Buy new: $9.98 / Used from: $3.59 After Dave's little ole' former band went the way of all suffering poets, everyone thought he would show up ten years later managing hedge funds or driving trucks. Little did they know.
Listen. Resistance is futile.
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 | I-Empire by Angels & Airwaves
Buy new: $13.98 / Used from: $4.90 This is what happens when Blink 182 grows up. Potty mouth and adolescent sex humor is largely missing. Some will complain that all the songs on the album sound alike. Not true but if it were, it's one hellva song.
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 | Black Stone Cherry by Black Stone Cherry
Buy new: $13.99 / Used from: $2.96 Really from 2006; but this had to come back to the USA by way of Merry Old England to catch interest. Influences from Black Sabbath, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the Stones. Worth a listen if for no other reason than "Rain Wizard". If McCartney is on one end of the scale, then this is on the far side of the other.
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 | Angels & Devils by Fuel
Buy new: $8.98 / Used from: $3.23 New singer after a long search. Seems the band took its sweet time looking and it was well worth it. If your taste in rock is toward the hard side, this is for you.
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 | Real to Reel by Tesla
Buy new: $16.98 / Used from: $6.92 Yeah. I know. Another rock band turning in an album of covers. But this is simply refreshing. A wide selection from Derek and the Dominos, Deep Purple, The Guess Who (?!!!), Robin Trower, The Beatles, Traffic, The Stones, and of course Led Zeppelin. Tesla doesn't fail to do more than justice to these milestones of rock. Fun and rockin'.
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