As John Oates prepared for the release of a new track with Hot Chelle Rae, he joined us to chat about his inventive Good Road to Follow solo project, and how his life has changed since Hall and Oates’ heyday.

While The Basement Tapes’ “Orange Juice Blues” found the Band taking their first tentative steps toward something utterly brand new, the fable-teller’s yowl of “Yazoo Street Scandal” provides a road map to their destination.

Blaze of Glory, a spacious record that lets every word echo in your heart, finds Marshall Chapman — as she has for ages — telling difficult truths, loving with all of her might, and country-rocking her ass off.

Even as bassist Billy Talbot prepares for a round of European shows with Neil Young and Crazy Horse, he’s issuing a new studio album with his own band. On the Road to Spearfish is due today from Vapor Records.

What a complex experience this is, modern poetry set in the back seat of a roaring rock ‘n’ roll muscle car. The effect, as Cavalcade unfolds, is at first very visceral and then deeply illuminating.

With a smart assist from Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, Mavis Staples transforms Funkadelic’s “Can You Get To That” from a sing-along slab of greasy-good uplift into this Americana-inflected groover.

To answer the obvious question, yes the Howlin’ Brothers do indeed howl on their major label debut called Howl. They also hoot, holler, bash away at banjos while fiddling as the barn burns down.

If 1987′s Document heralded the moment when R.E.M. started to get away from us, the follow up Green confirmed things: This wasn’t going to be our little secret anymore.

Always out of their time, the Del-Lords made a scruffy early-1980s debut in the age of synthesized MTV flashes in the pan. They return now with a suitably old-fashioned but similarly ageless amalgam of heartfelt lyrics and crunchy licks.

It would be easy enough to tag this as Southern rock, or as blues, or even — at times — as gospel, were Randall Bramblett’s The Bright Spots not so consistently all of those things, and something more.