The Eyes And The Impossible by Dave Eggers

Grammy winner, Dave Alvin, has been roaming the highways of American music for over a quarter century. During those decades he's busted speakers with roots rock kick-starters, The Blasters, as well as mined the depths of country, folk and blues with his solo projects. A mainstay during much of this journey has been Alvin's electrifying band The Guilty Men. Following the recent death of Dave's best friend and Guilty Men accordionist Chris Gaffney in early 2008, Alvin decided to move in an exciting new musical direction. In October 2008 he stepped onto the stage of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco with an all-star, all-female group. Since dubbed The Guilty Women, the group consists of Americana scene vets Cindy Cashdollar, Nina Gerber, Laurie Lewis, Sarah Brown, Amy Farris, Christy McWilson and Lisa Pankrantz. Special guests include Marcia Ball and Susie Thompson. The self-titled debut from this unique assemblage of players, led by Alvin, is a spirited collection of thoughtful yet dynamic tunes featuring world-class musicianship worthy of his now legendary pedigree.

Inspired by the raw power of the Stooges and the glam rock excess of the New York Dolls, Birmingham, England, native Dave Kusworth formed his first band (TV Eye) at the age of 16. Since then, the versatile singer/songwriter/guitarist has done time in the Hawks, Dogs D'Amour, the Jacobites (with ex-Swell Maps mastermind Nikki Sudden), the Bounty Hunters, and the Tenderhooks, as well as his own Dave Kusworth Group. His songs, gutter-bound tales of rock & roll heartache that bring to mind the Faces and the Rolling Stones, have been covered by Evan Dando and Mercury Rev and feted by the likes of Tom Waits, Chuck Prophet, and Peter Buck.

In the spring of 1966, If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears represented a genuinely new sound, as fresh to listeners as the songs on Meet the Beatles had seemed two years earlier. Released just as "California Dreaming" was ascending the charts by leaps and bounds, it was the product of months of rehearsal in the Virgin Islands and John Phillips' discovery of what one could do to build a polished recorded sound in the studio – it embraced folk-rock, pop/rock, pop, and soul, and also reflected the kind of care that acts like the Beatles were putting into their records at the time. "Monday, Monday" and "California Dreamin'" are familiar enough to anyone who's ever listened to the radio, and "Go Where You Wanna Go" isn't far behind, in this version or the very similar rendition by the Fifth Dimension.

1986's Up From the Dark collects a series of U.K. singles recorded by the husband-and-wife team of Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin (both formerly of Hatfield and the North; Gaskin was leader of the group's female auxiliary, the Northettes) in the early '80s. Although Stewart's and Gaskin's roots are in '70s progressive music, these singles show an understanding and appreciation of post-punk dynamics, both in the subtly ironic '60s covers (nearly half of the album, ranging from their hit deconstruction of Lesley Gore's "It's My Party" to a pair of Motown tunes to a sympathetic reading of the Honeybus' freakbeat gem "Do I Figure in Your Life") to a sublime pair of covers of recent singles. Thomas Dolby's "Leipzig," one of his finest early songs, is given a ghostly, gorgeous reading, and this version of Andy Partridge's "Roads Girdle the Globe" is the finest XTC cover ever…