Today marks the release of Pat Metheny's new Tokyo Day Trip Live EP. The collection contains five tracks originally made available online as bonus tracks for Pat's recently released trio album Day Trip, with Christian McBride and Antonio Sanchez. "There was such an outpouring of demand from listeners," Pat explains, "that we decided to compile the recordings all in one place and release them together as a set."

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.

Adding yet another hyphenated credit to his name, T Bone Burnett plays guest DJ on the latest episode of NPR's All Songs Considered. Host Bob Boilen introduces T Bone as "a musical wizard of sorts" for all his many diverse and successful musical forays, before the two discuss a range of topics, including Burnett's producing methods, a few things he learned from the late Roy Orbison, and the differences between analog and digital recording.

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."

David Byrne, in an op-ed contribution in today's New York Times, reflects on the life of the acclaimed American artist Robert Rauschenberg, who died Monday at the age of 82, recounting his own personal experiences with the man he knew as a friend, a colleague, and an inspiration.

Punch Brothers began the next leg of their US tour last night at the Sellersville Theater in Sellersville, Pennsylvania, and performs at the Satellite Ballroom in Charlottesville, Virginia, tonight. Leading to tonight's show, Chris Thile spoke with the Charlottesville weekly The Hook about his career, the new band, and their Nonesuch debut record, Punch. Says The Hook's Vijith Assar, Chris has gone from being "the world's premiere young hotshot mandolin player" expected to be "the savior of bluegrass," to moving in "a new, decidedly more progressive route."

The Black Keys played a killer set last night at New York City's Terminal 5, leaving more than a few Nonesuch staffers a bit bleary-eyed but all the better for it this morning. While in New York yesterday, the band stopped by the studios at WNYC to talk with Soundcheck host John Schaefer about the making of the new record, Attack & Release, and working with producer Danger Mouse.

John Adams's latest opera, A Flowering Tree, received its Midwest premiere last night in Chicago's Millennium Park, with the composer conducting. The Chicago Opera Theater production stars Natasha Jouhl as Kumudha, a young girl with the power to turn herself into a flowering tree; Noah Stewart as the Prince; and Sanford Sylvan, who has previously originated leading roles in two Adams operas, as the Storyteller.

With Orchestra Baobab's new album, Made in Dakar, due out on Tuesday, the group's co-founder Barthélemy Attisso spoke with Time Out New York about the new album, the forthcoming tour, and the joys of bringing their music to the rest of the world. Time Out's K. Leander Williams writes that Attisso has "been singled out as one of the most distinctive guitarist-arrangers the African continent has produced." In 2002, that singular sound met with another iconic musical ambassador when Youssou N'Dour produced what Williams calls the group's "triumphant reunion album," Specialist in All Styles. N'Dour's guest vocals on the new album leads to the "gorgeous update" of the band's classic song "Nijaay" and proves another example of the band's effort to showcase as many of their musical interests as possible.

When faced with the conundrum of deciding between two shows by The Black Keys over consecutive nights at Washington, DC's 9:30 Club, DCist's Valerie Paschall looked to Dan Auerbach's promise in Monday's first-night set: "We'll play better tonight and we'll play more songs tomorrow night."