So did ya' miss us last week?

Because we are not only back — we also have lots of great new releases to talk about. For all who have been less than overwhelmed by the new music (or lack thereof) the labels have served up so far this year — it seems your train has just come into the station.

There is so much new music to talk about this week, it's hard to even know where to start. The new R.E.M. would probably be about as good as any place though. Accelerate is being hailed by just about everybody as a return to form for the boys from Athens — and in just a little bit here, we're gonna' let our own Mark Saleski tell you all about it. Tom Johnson will also be checking back in with his thoughts on the new one by the Black Keys.

In the meantime, a certain little english rock and roll band called the Rolling Stones have a new movie (and accompanying live album) directed by Martin Scorsese out this week. The Stones have long claimed to be the world's greatest rock and roll band. In his review of the soundtrack to Shine A Light, BC's own Donald Gibson certainly seems to think so. Gibson calls the soundtrack a "brazen, balls to the wall" live album in his review, and based on the reports that I heard coming from the Bigger Bang tour, I wouldn't bet against that claim. The CD out this week comes in both a standard and an expanded deluxe edition.

Van Morrison also releases his latest disc Keep It Simple this week. Despite the deceptive sounding title, Morrison is back writing a lot of the material here for the first time in awhile, which is reason alone to sit up and take notice. He also plays everything here from the harmonica to the ukulele. For those who worship at the altar of the guitar gods, Joe Satriani is back with his latest six-string opus, which carries the bizarre sounding title Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock.

Sevendust are back doing their post-grungy sort of thing on Chapter VII: Hope and Sorrow. Moby mixes things up on Last Night, with elements of hip-hop and various other club music styles combining with his trademark pop electronica. Prog-rock cult favorites Dream Theater have an anthology of hits, rarities, and the like that arrives just in time for a stateside tour with Opeth on their Greatest Hit (....And 21 Other Pretty Cool Songs).

There were a handful of nights back in the early 1980's when me and my buddy Gene did little else but sit around in his folks' living room, bliss out on the heat of the woodstove, and listen to Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom and, especially, R.E.M.'s Murmur. I remember being completely amazed at what I was hearing — the weird part being that I had no way to articulate the "why" of the music's greatness. Peter Buck's jangly arpeggios and mashed chords, Mike Mills' hyperactive basslines...these were surely part of the reason I was so entranced. They just sounded very new and fresh, this despite the supposed Byrds influence that I'm sure I didn't pick up on at the time.