Lovers Lane is the most pop-tinged album from the group to date (that's including its recent fine reunion disc done in collaboration w./ members of Sleater-Kinney), so you've gotta figure it's my favorite. In songs like "Love Goes On!," "Streets of Your Town," "Was There Anything I Could Do?" the band pulls the tension between arty lyricism and accessible memorable songcraft tauter than you'd think feasible - and makes it work. Melancholy, always aware of the surrounding darkness, yet cautiously optimistic, the Go-Betweens do baroque rock for an audience that knows how the rock fantasy can betray you but wants to tentatively give into it, anyway. Like I noted: a great fall soundtrack.

Sam & Dave, Soul Men (Atlantic): For the two full weekends, my dog park tape of choice was Sam & Dave's 1967 classic. I'm a longstanding fan of this great soul duo, and this album was the platter that first hooked me. It's not just the statement-of-purpose "Soul Man" opener (Isaac Hayes and David Porter at their strutting best) but the range of soulful cuts that follow: from the yearning "May I Baby" (with its odd Oriental bells in the opening) to their churchly remake of "Let It Be Me" to "Don't Knock It" (with a nasally vocal that somehow manages to mesh garage punk and mainstream soul), singers Sam Moore and Dave Prater grab each song and don't let go for nuthin'. Backed by the Stax Studio musicians - a group that included Hayes & Porter, plus piercingly economical guitarist Steve Cropper ("Play it, Steve!") and Donald "Duck" Dunn - the duo exemplified passionate sixties soul singing at its apex.

Back when Belushi and Ackroyd were perpetrating the Blues Brothers, "Soul Man" was one of their big numbers. The two comedians never came close to capturing the hard-working ethic of this song, even if they did appropriate some of the Memphis musicians who'd played on the original single. Listen to both versions and you'll hear an object lesson on the yawning gap between Real and Tribute. . .

Jerry Lee Lewis, Rare Tracks (Rhino): "Sometimes," Bob Christgau once noted in a Consumer Report review of a Rolling Stones non-hits collection, "specialists have more fun." Dabblers, he asserted, make due with Greatest Hits sets; fannish obsessives go for the B-sides compilations. With artists as steeped in their influences as the sixties Stones, listening to the band play homage while they're still at their youthful peak can be even more enjoyable than grooving on the umpteenth replay of "Satisfaction."
That distinction came to me while doin' the Dog Park Walk with a copy of Lewis rarities in the Walkman. Released in 1989 to capitalize on the release of Jim McBride's bio-flick Great Balls of Fire, the set collects gems from the Killer's five-year contract w./ Sun Records, where he reportedly recorded over 250 songs (some multiple re-takes, of course) in the bonds of a contract he probably wished he hadn't signed.