"For me, the lyrics are a… freedom to express my insanity. If the Iraqis aren't used to freedom, then I'm glad to be part of their exposure."

So said American patriot James Hetfield, Metallica’s frontman. At the time, his band's hit "Enter Sandman" was being used to soften suspected terrorists at Guantánamo. Defending its use in interrogations on the grounds of equal opportunity, the singer noted, "We've been punishing our parents, our wives, our loved ones with this music forever. Why should the Iraqis be any different?"

Now, five years later, Hetfield seems to have changed his tune.

As the release schedule winds down for the year -- gotta get everything in the stores in advance of Thanksgiving -- there's been a flurry of excellent new albums appearing. Here are a few highlights, unconstrained by genre or order.

Brock Van Wey: White Clouds Drift On and On (Echospace)
Brock Van Wey is better known (and more prolific) as a dub techno artist under his pseudonym, Bvdub.

Harmonica virtuoso Norton Buffalo passed away last Friday, October 30, losing his brief battle with stage four metastasized lung cancer. Buffalo, who was diagnosed with the disease in September, performed throughout this summer, as he’d done for over 30 years, as a member of the Steve Miller Band, where he provided harp, vocal, and percussion. Miller would introduce him as his "partner in harmony."

Norton Buffalo was born in Oakland, CA to musically inclined parents -- his mother a nightclub singer, his father a harmonica player, and his great uncle an Academy Award-winning composer of music for the film The Wizard of Oz.

I was first introduced to Daniel Johnston's music four years ago when I lived in Los Angeles, taking my inaugural listen to Johnston's 1994 release, Fun, while crashing on a buddy's couch. One of my best friends had recently passed away and the song "Life in Vain" brought me a much needed sense of comfort at that moment in my life. I have since reserved a special place in my heart for that title and the unlikely rock star who composed it.

Daniel Dale Johnston was born in 1961 in Sacramento, CA. He spent most of his childhood in West Virginia, then later found his way to Texas, where he became an almost mythic rock legend during the music movement that started in Austin during the early 1980s.

Etienne Jaumet: Night Music (Domino)

After stints in Zombie Zombie, Married Monk, and Flop, French electronic producer Etienne Jaumet went solo two years ago; after some well-received 12"/EP releases, this is his first full-length album. He stands outside current trends, instead looking back on old styles and giving them his own spin.

The opening track, the 20-minute excursion "For Falling Asleep," suggests at first with its heavily pulsating beat a more emotive Kraftwerk circa Autobahn but then surprises with saxophones halfway through, pointing to earlier Krautrock influences, and at 14 minutes a brave abandonment of the previously insistent beat.

Manassas: Pieces (Eyewall/Rhino)
This is the third vault-mining compilation Stephen Stills has been involved with recently for Rhino. He started with the solo Just Roll Tape: April 26th, 1968 in 2007; earlier this year we got CSN Demos; now this. All have been rewarding, and it’s nice for a change to be able to get rarities without having to rebuy an album you already own that some label’s decided to attach them to. This is the way to do it without ripping off fans, so kudos to Stills and Rhino Records!

The Cribs: Ignore the Ignorant (Wichita)

Some guys date younger girls, some buy a motorbike or a flash car, others re-invest in the record collections of their youth; some do most or all of the above. Johnny Marr's mid-life symptoms have manifested themselves by his joining forces with a ropey indie band. The Cribs are the Jonas Brother for the student hordes. Shouty, frantic, and currently popular, what they lack in talent they disguise with energy.

Nia Morgan: Nia Morgan (Patrin Records)

Discretion can be a form of silence, a means of being ignored. Nia Morgan's debut album is a mannered, refined and eloquent affair. No major splash has been penciled in, and no lavish promotional campaign lurks to herald its arrival, but she owns what many crave: a profound sense of integrity. This is an affectionate punch that lingers like a long anticipated kiss. As reputations go, hers is confined to a discreet coterie, but with this release the secret is out, and secrets are at their best when shared.

Mingus in Wonderland (Blue Note)
Blues & Roots (Atlantic)
Mingus Ah Um (Columbia)
Mingus Dynasty (Columbia)

Charles Mingus was one of the greatest bassists and composers in jazz history, an important figure in bebop who anchored a Charlie Parker-Dizzy Gillespie band at one point but eventually developed in very different directions. By 1959 he was already a prolific recording artist as a leader. Making four albums was hardly an unusually productive year by his standards, but rarely did he match the peaks he hit in 1959.

Having come from a rather disappointing event where I failed to meet up with some people I was planning to spend the evening with, I stomped across The Village through stormy weather, in a foul mood, making poor company for the friend who did show up, as we pressed on to Fat Cat. Now, I am no longer a church-going man, nor do I ever plan to be, but if I found a congregation that worshiped with the music I heard on that rainy Friday night, then my parents might get some relief from worrying about my hell-bound soul.

Pushing through the crowded underground of Fat Cat, my friend and I managed to negotiate our way past the pool players and gaming tables to the welcoming sounds of Myron Walden Countryfied. Ranging between funk, jazz, gospel, and rock, this trio of soulful musicians single-handedly altered what had otherwise been a miserable evening.

"I’m sure you’re both convinced my self-destructive streak has won out again…

I’m awfully sorry to be such a disappointment to you… Please believe that you can’t possibly want for me to be a winner more than I do."

Janis, 1966 letter to her parents, after joining Big Brother and the Holding Company

Four years later, October 4, 1970, the Queen of the Blues was found on the floor of her Los Angeles hotel room, dead from a heroin overdose.

All Tomorrow’s Parties is a multi-day music festival originating in England, held annually since 1999. For the past two years, there's been a U.S. branch of the festival at Kutsher’s Country Club in Monticello, New York. This year, Day One -- Don’t Look Back/Comedy -- featured Panda Bear, Iron and Wine, Dirty Three, and a comedy stage curated by David Cross. Day Two was music curated by All Tomorrow’s Parties. Day Three was curated by underground mainstays the Flaming Lips and featured No Age and Bob Mould performing Husker Du, Menomena, Deerhoof with Martha Colburn, and many more. I attended Day Two.

Marcy Playground at B. B. King Blues Club (9/28)

"Sex and Candy" is far from being the best song by Marcy Playground, yet it is the only one that most people know. In 1997, when the band released its first album, it was somehow decided that a song with "sex" in the title deserved relentless radio play, which was fine, because it's a good song. However, when the alternative rock trio released its follow-up album, Shapeshifter, despite it being superior to their previous release, there was no love from the radio. Over ten years and four albums later this Minneapolis-based group continues to hover under the airwave radar.

Vic Chesnutt: At the Cut (Constellation)

This continues the style shift started on North Star Deserter, Chesnutt’s first album on Constellation, recording in Montreal using a similar mix of musicians including Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto (who had the most input regarding production and arrangements), Frankie Sparrow’s Chad Jones and Nadia Moss, and labelmates Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra. Like its predecessor, it has stormier musical outbursts than his previous work usually contained, including the outright anthemic “Chinaberry Tree,” but there’s still plenty of room for acoustic guitar-centered songs.

Rodriguez: Coming from Reality (Light in the Attic)

Rodriguez proved a striking presence when he left his native Detroit to record the successor to Cold Fact, his at times uncompromising debut for Sussex Records. Londoners in the winter of 1970 thought he was a Native American Indian -- the world was smaller then, and their innocent assumption was an understandable stab at the origins of the bohemian exotic in their midst.

Before I get to the reviews, it’s worth noting that the song I have listened to obsessively over the past few weeks is not new, not reissued: it’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Five minutes of musical perfection, and not just because Paul Simon wrote a great song and Art Garfunkel sang it divinely. The third irreplaceable ingredient is session pianist Larry Knechtel, who is just as prominent as Garfunkel; Knechtel shared the 1970 Grammy Award for “Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)” for his work on this song. Best known as a member of '70s soft-rock icons Bread, he played on hundreds of storied sessions, but none surpassed “Bridge Over Troubled Water” for impact or beauty.

Rocks Off Concert Cruises presents Electric Six

The answer is, I don’t really know. His girlfriend informed me that this wasn’t the first time he had littered in an act of protest against technology. Having recently gotten out of prison, perhaps he was still adjusting to life on the outside… and on the outside we were. We had just appointed our phone-chucking friend as the president of the autonomous Republic five of us had recently formed on a section of the aft deck of The Temptress while waiting to depart from the dock… perhaps the pressures of public office were already getting to him.

Robert Glasper has found a way to negotiate his double life, and then some. The four-hour show at Le Poisson Rouge (8/30/09) appropriately began with a straight-ahead acoustic jazz set with his trio, himself thoughtfully massaging the ivories, with drummer (Chris Dave) and bassist (Vincinte Archer). Insert industry mingle break. And back on stage with his alternate band, The Experiment, where hip-hop/soul/nu-jazz/electro stayed engaged in an invigorating conversation, with added quirky inflections from Bilal’s operatic-turned-falsetto wailings and Casey Benjamin’s vocorder.

Double Booked, though the tongue-in-cheek title of his new album, suggests perhaps a real case of being caught in between cultures, or in this case, music communities.

Forty years ago, the Rolling Stones' founder, Brian Jones, drowned in his swimming pool. At the time, 1969, authorities called it “death by misadventure.” The Sussex police have just announced that they may reopen the case as a homicide. The decision is based in part on a recent eyewitness report that the guitarist was in fact drowned by his live-in carpenter, Frank Thorogood.

Before dying of cancer in 1994, Thorogood himself was said to have confessed the murder to Stones chauffeur Tom Keylock. In her 2001 memoir, Jones’s girlfriend, Anna Wohlin, another eyewitness to the tragedy, also fingered Thorogood. She alleged that band managers put her on the next plane back to Sweden, threatening her life should she talk to authorities.

Fruit Bats: The Ruminant Band (Sub Pop)

"It’s okay" is the most back-handed compliment one can give to a work of art.

Though Fruit Bats formed in 1999, 2009's The Ruminant Band is the first time I listened to them. I was immediately struck by the solid quality of the songwriting, Eric Johnson’s country-tinged lyrics and James Mercer-esque croon, the band’s jangly-folk instrumentation, and the album’s straightforward production values.