The Black Keys have closed out the UK leg of their Attack & Release tour and will soon be heading south for stops in Australia and New Zealand in mid-June. Reviewing the new album, JamBase describes it as music that "crawls into your marrow and disturbs your rest. It's not the blues but it's gone drinking with them. For sure, it's rock 'n' roll but with a haunted echo behind even the good time pronouncements ... [T]he imagination and talent gathered on Attack & Release make it a shoe-in for Best of 2008 lists everywhere. Often that sounds like hype but in this case it's just a statement of fact. Once in a while quality just shines out in a way that can't be denied."

Emmylou Harris's new Nonesuch release, All I Intended to Be, is due out June 10. Crawdaddy!'s Steve Matteo calls "Harris's recent albums, including this new one, some of the best music she has ever made ... [H]er voice remains the heart of her music. The aching compassion with which she sings reveals a voice as real as any in music today." Matteo concludes with high praise for "this superb recording": "It would appear that Harris is simply incapable of making a bad album."

T Bone Burnett's recently released Tooth of Crime earns 3.5 out of 4 stars in the Boston Phoenix, which calls the album "a sonic adventure thanks to Burnett's current signatures: booming drum kits sans cymbals, knotty guitars, lyrics sung through amplifiers, and an open, airy quality that's the antithesis of modern rock production."

Made in Dakar, Orchestra Boabab's first album of new recordings since 2002, was released last week. Billboard says the collection of new songs and new takes on classic Baobab tunes proves to be "a great retrospective" on the band with "no shortage of stylistic turns." The review calls it "a major thrill" to have the chance to rediscover some of the many hard-to-find classics, "retracked in grand fashion" for the new album.

The Black Keys' in-studio performance and interview on NPR's World Cafe last week is now available online. "With their newest record, Attack & Release," says the show, "the two-man band of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney has created a spot-on mix of blues and rock ... The resulting collection takes their minimalist sound into a new dimension with unexpected arrangements and expanded instrumentation."

"It's a rich time for Burnett fans," says the Rocky Mountain News, "with new music and new projects among the best work he's done." In its review of T Bone Burnett's Nonesuch debut, Tooth of Crime, it gives the album an A-, calling it "a strong set of songs. Burnett has been at the forefront of reimagining the recording process in the age of digitized sound. He recently made mention of it in an interview with Bob Boilen on NPR's All Songs Considered. As he explains it to Rolling Stone: "We've been fighting the limitations of digital audio since it first came out ... [I]t's just got to the point where the Dude could not abide."

Punch Brothers had a packed schedule over the long weekend: they performed at the first annual Delfest in Cumberland, Maryland, on Sunday; The Mauch Opera House in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, on Saturday; and The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, on Friday. The Washington Post says The Blind Leaving the Blind, the centerpiece of the group's Nonesuch debut, Punch, was the "most adventurous number" of a live set "that packed a powerful ... well, punch." The AV Club calls it "a tour-de-force." 

Last Friday, Kronos Quartet performed composer Terry Riley's Sun Rings at two events in Germany. The Quartet's latest Nonesuch release also features a work by the composer, The Cusp of Magic. The piece, says JamBase, "delivers subtlety and tenderness in exchange for open ears and hearts. Far from the gravity and self-importance of classical/art-music, the album ... deals in a light playfulness that won't fail to rub off."

Made in Dakar, Orchestra Baobab's first album of new recordings since 2002's Grammy-nominated Specialist in All Styles, hits stores in the United States today. Rolling Stone gives Made in Dakar four stars, with reviewer Will Hermes writing that "with this collection of burbling grooves, these Senegalese legends recapture the Afro-Cuban bliss of their 1982 classic, Pirates Choice---imagine the Buena Vista Social Club weaned on motherland polyrhythms." Hermes points to guitarist Barthélemy Attisso as the band's "secret weapon," calling him "a guitar giant with a touch as delicate and melodically sublime as Jerry Garcia's" and describing his performances on two particular tracks as "so chill they'll buckle your knees."

While Wilco's next scheduled tour date is a couple months away, folks are still talking about the band's May 14 show that took over the streets of downtown Lawrence, Kansas. The venue was a makeshift stage set up where 10th Street meets New Hampshire, and JamBase's Nathan Rodriguez writes that it was a "cause for celebration" among the locals.

Filter magazine rates Attack & Release a 93, with reviewer Patrick Strange saying the new album seems to have "dropped out of the heavens with a fistful of downright biting blues-rock." The album, reads the review, "has all the cadence of honest-to-God Southern balladeers (via the band's hometown of Akron, Ohio) and production that makes every bass kick and guitar clash a rustic-Technicolor wonder."

Wilco set in for a three-night residency at the The Pageant in St. Louis starting last Thursday. The sold-out shows marked the last tour dates from the band till the end of July, and, reports Daniel Durchholz in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "Thursday's set dipped deep into Wilco's catalog and demonstrated the emotional depth and musical breadth of one of America's great bands."