A legendary 3LP set – core work by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, with help from many others who make the record great – including Mother Maybele Carter, Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Merle Travis, Jimmy Martin, and Roy Acuff! The whole thing feels a lot more like a traditional bluegrass album than you'd expect – comes off beautifully at a level the group would never hit again! CD

Charlie Louvin's amazing late career creative upswing continues with these Murder Ballads And Disaster Songs – the kind he's sung for 50 something years – done wonderfully this time for Tompkins Square! Back in the 50s, the Louvin Brothers put out 2 widely disparate theme albums in a short stretch, the ominous Tragic Songs Of Life and the spiritual Satan Is Real – and Charlie does a similar thing with this record and its counterpart Steps To Heaven. He does magic with a few numbers from Tompkins Square's superlative People Take Warning box set of archival folk & blues recordings, and a few other gems, with sly honky tonk arrangements. Mark Nevers staffs the sound with some of the best young pickers and players in Nashville, including Chris Scruggs, William Tyler, Ben Hall & others – and as a bonus, we always love it when Andrew Bird lays off the whistling, the live looping and gimmickry, and just fiddles – as he does wonderfully here on "Darling Corey". Other tracks include "Wreck Of Old 97", "Katy Dear", "Down With The Old Canoe", "The Little Grave In Georgia", "My Brother's Will", "Dixie Boll Weavel", "Is This My Destiny", "Mary Of The Wild Moor", "My Texas Girl" and more. CD

Instrumental guitar great William Tyler's second album under his own name, and his first for indie powerhouse Merge Records – and it's an exceptionally beautiful piece of work from a player who's really just getting started! Tyler strikes a youthful presense, but he's actually been playing around a lot behind the scenes – as a studio and/or touring guitarist for Lambchop, Candi Staton, Charlie Louvin and others wise enough to record with producer Mark Nevers – who works on this record, too. Tyler is definitely inspired by finger style folk guitarists from the mid 20th Century onward, but he's also got a hypnotic style that feels like it's inspired by more atmospheric country rock and rustic 70s soundtracks. Here he's mixing it all it into a brilliant style all his own, and it's SO good. Guest musicians include fellow youthful Nashville string genius Chris Scruggs, drummer Scott Martin, steel player Luke Schneider and Roy Agee on trombone. Includes "Country Of Illusion", "The Geography Of Nowhere", "Cadillac Desert", "We Can't Go Home Again", "A Portrait Of Sarah", "Hotel Catatonia", "The Last Residents Of Westfall" and "The World Set Free". CD

Cash's fourth volume of stark, sparely-arranged studio recordings for producer/set list provider Rick Rubin. As Johnny gets on in the years his always haunting voice, like Bob Dylan's, is weighted by age, but the heavily-breathed delivery only adds to the ghostly quality of the increasingly dark tunes. With this fourth set in the series we're far past being surprised by the choices of material – this time Cash conjures up spiritual takes on Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus", Trent Reznor's "Hurt", Lennon/McCartney's "In My Life", and more traditional material like Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" and the eternally underrated Marty Robbins' "Big Iron". You can't forget that Cash's pen is still pretty sharp, too, as the really spooky imagery in the title track and others testify. The accompaniment includes the great Randy Scruggs, Beck/Tom Waits guitarist Smokey Hormel, Marty Stuart, Glen Campell, and backing vocals by Nick Cave and Fiona Apple. Another great one from the greatest! LP, Vinyl record album

Starday/King work by Flatt & Scruggs, The Willis Brothers, Justin Tubb, Moon Millican, Cowboy Copas, and others! LP, Vinyl record album