Top 10 Best New Albums of the 2000s

The story goes like this: Allen Toussaint -- the legendary New Orleans songwriter/pianist/producer behind everything from Al Hirt's "Java" to Lee Dorsey's "Workin' In A Coal Mine" to Glen Campbell's "Southern Nights" -- gets reacquainted with equally legendary pop-punk icon Elvis Costello at a New York concert to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina. The two fly back down to the Crescent City to record an "Allen Toussaint songbook" in the Bywater section of the city, mere feet from the devastated Lower Ninth Ward (and where your Guide also lived for a while)...

Normally, just the idea of Electric Arguments' opening track, "Nothing Too Much Just Out Of Sight," would be enough to kickstart endless "Paul Is Alive" headlines. He's rarely gotten upset over anything but carnivores over the past decades of his solo career, and even then, his anger seemed more like a brief pose, a stylistic bone thrown to his fans. But this beast, this slow, loud stomper -- which sounds more like a Soundgarden rarity than anything in Paul's entire career -- crackles with the real deal. "Oh, did you want to be famous?" he wails. "Did you want to betray me?"...

Great production is almost always a matter of stealth; the less you notice what's developing in the background, the better. Some people think Rick Rubin just throws legends like Neil Diamond and Johnny Cash in front of a mic with a guitar and records it, but Rick's more like a personal trainer than a producer -- he works hard to find the strengths in his artists, their core greatness, then spends the rest of his time making sure nothing gets in the way of that expression. It stunned audiences to hear Cash reinvented as a post-Goth prophet of doom on his last albums, but that was just the raw essence of the man, and 2006's 12 Songs performed much the same service in removing Neil from his rhinestone jumpsuits...

First things first: this is, indeed, the first-ever solo album by celebrated Kinks songwriter and lead vocalist Ray Davies, coming over 40 years into his career as what fellow British Invasioner Pete Townshend once called Britain's poet laureate of rock. For longtime fans, this is not the sort of back-to-basics approach that Neil Diamond and Johnny Cash took in their autumn years; Davies has long been dogged by what he thinks pop radio expects of him, and so the sleek production of Other People's Lives slightly mars the effect of these 13 songs: not an embarassing sop to modern tastes, but definitely radio-friendly...

It hasn't been the easiest fifteen years for Paul Simon, given the artistic failure of The Capeman and the public's utter indifference to 2000's depressing You're The One. But just as Paul shook off his late-Seventies malaise to conquer the world with Graceland, the new Surprise finds him coming to terms with his age and his legacy in a unique way. Simon's never going to conquer the world again, but then, Surprise doesn't try to -- working with legendary producer Brian Eno, who was dabbling in world music well before him, Simon has merely consolidated everything he does well and taken it to a calm, reflective place...

Jerry Lee Lewis, for all intents and purposes, invented the rock and roll comeback, if only by refusing to go away: after the scandal of his marriage to Myra Gale Brown, The Killer simply hung on. And this latest "duets" album actually began life way back in 2002. So don't call it trendy. But is it any good? It's as good as Jerry Lee's been on record since the early Seventies; if his live appearances can be somewhat scattershot in quality, the extra time and care taken to make Last Man Standing...

From Classic Rock Guide Dave White: George Harrison's last studio album was unfinished at the time of his death in 2001. Harrison's son Dhani and ELO's Jeff Lynne, who had been collaborating on the album's production, finished work on it over the next several months. Released a year after the artist's death, the album was eventually certified gold, peaking at #18 on the U.S. album chart. Harrison had been recording material for the album off and on since 1988.

From Classic Rock Guide Dave White: Elton John's 27th studio release celebrated the 21st century using technology from the 20th. Although digital recording had become standard, John insisted on recording the album the old fashioned way, on tape, because he felt it imparted a "warmer" sound. All of the songs were co-written by the artist and his longtime co-writer, Bernie Taupin. Musical collaborators included Stevie Wonder and Billy Preston.

Rock music often makes for strange bedfellows, but this is just plain crazy -- soul organist extraordinaire Booker T. Jones, the man who put the fire under the MGs' "Green Onions," jamming on ten tracks with relative Southern-rock upstarts Drive-By Truckers, and Neil Young soloing over it all like this was a new Crazy Horse album. Covering Tom Waits? And, dear God, Outkast?! And yet, on further inspection, it makes sense. The father of Truckers guitarist Patterson Hood, David Hood, played bass in those classic Muscle Shoals cuts...

The real evidence that Cat Stevens, who became Yusuf Islam in 1977, has completely come to terms with his pop-star past in light of his religious present comes halfway through his new CD, Roadsinger, in the intro to track six, "To Be What You Must." For there, only slightly modified, lies the piano intro to his 1972 hit, "Sitting," a song that marked the moment he started to question whether his priorities were in order, and whether his audience would follow him if he suddenly reversed them...