TOMORROW ON OUTQ: NEW CDS BY NEIL, MAVIS, YORN

For those of you who are new to No Expiration, every Wednesday morning at about 9 am ET(ish), I go on the SIRIUS XM OutQ show The Morning Jolt with Larry Flick (co-hosted by comedian Keith Price) to talk about music. Sometimes I have a theme, and this week, I have a loose one: artists who hooked up with big names to produce their latest album.

Neil Young's Le Noise sees him moving outside his usual circle of collaborators to work with Daniel Lanois. It is Neil's weirdest album in well over twenty years.  It isn't one of my top ten albums by Neil, but I'm starting to dig it, and at least it is better than his last one, Fork In The Road.

Mavis Staples continues her streak of great albums (all on the very cool Anti- label) with You Are Not Alone, which was produced by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco. He wrote the tile track, which I have found to be very moving. I think the album is one of the best things he's ever done (and it holds up to her incredible body of work as well), and I think the title track is actually the best song he has ever written. It is my favorite of the three albums I'm discussing this week.

Pete Yorn hired Pixies frontman Frank Black to produce his new album, Pete Yorn. You can definitely hear the influence sonically, and it is a cool album.  When it comes to Pete Yorn, though, I feel kind of stuck on his first album, musicforthemorningafter. Still, this one definitely adds some more classic songs to his cannon, and he is certainly an artist who is going to be around for a long time. This is probably his best album since the debut.