It’s a shame more people don’t recognize Billy Cote’s name. While several less talented characters from the alternative rock morass of the ’90s are remembered, even revered, Cote and his band, Madder Rose, remain obscure footnotes even to most ardent music fans. It’s sad because Cote is one of the best writers to emerge from the last decade, and is a versatile guitarist. In Madder Rose, his partner Mary Lorson gave his musical vision a voice. In his latest project, Glen The Owl, the female voice at the forefront belongs to Uniit Carruyo. Uniit’s vocals are strong and assured, smooth and fluid. Her voice is as perfectly suited to sparse, folksy songs like “Sun (Setting)” and “Blur” as it is to potential dance-floor favorites like “And Then You Lied” and “One Push.” That’s because Uniit makes tasteful choices; she knows when to pour it on and when to lay back. Cote often opted for a “wall of sound” approach with Madder Rose, but on Glen The Owl the tracks are frequently stripped down with simple yet effective elements carefully placed for ambient impact. “Behave,” “Blur,” and “Sun (Setting)” start with sparse acoustic guitar picking and layers of Uniit’s dreamy vocals. Those elements remain the centerpiece of the recording even as other basic sounds are introduced. “I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight” continues in the trip-hop direction of later Madder Rose, and “One Push” and “The Easy Way Home” incorporate beats and electronic elements borrowed from the DJ culture Cote explored with his side project The Jazz Canon. Cote has given the world another rich, varied, and beautiful album. Hopefully it won’t be overlooked.

For thirty years, it’s been one of rock music’s most contentious, ugly and crippling battles. It’s the story of one artist losing his music, legacy and identity to a piece of paper he signed as a kid. When small San Francisco jazz label Fantasy Records signed John Fogerty and his band (initially as The Golliwogs) in the mid-’60s, few suspected that they would not only go on to become the label’s flagship band but also a group that would revolutionize rock. That group became Creedence Clearwater Revival and, powered by Fogerty’s songs and uniquely soulful voice plus the crack band of his rhythm guitarist brother Tom, bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug “Cosmo” Clifford, the group’s charged brand of rock and roll dripped pure Americana (soul, r&b, country and cajun blues) in a time when virtually every other group was aping a British sound. CCR supplanted the Beach Boys to became “America’s band” with a series of landmark albums and a seemingly endless string of hits. Though he was capable of writing loose, good-time boogies like “Proud Mary,” Fogerty was more than the happy-go-lucky-hit writer. Songs like “Fortunate Son” and “Have You Ever Seen The Rain” were cries of rage directed at America’s involvement in Vietnam. CCR was the celebrated, flannel-clad band of the people. There was, however, a fly in the ointment. Fantasy owner Saul Zaentz had Fogerty bound into a contract that gave him not only control of CCR’s masters but practically sole ownership of all of Fogerty’s CCR songs. It’s a fight that stretched back to CCR’s end in 1972 until the last year, included Fogerty refusing to play the songs that made him famous for decades, Zaentz suing Fogerty for plagiarizing himself and having Zaentz depicted as a cash crazy cartoon pig in one of Fogerty’s music videos. Ugly stuff, but it’s all finally found a resolve. When famed TV producer Norman Lear and his company Concord took over Fantasy and the rights to the CCR catalog his first move was to reach out to Fogerty and try to make right what was wrong for so long. The first result is this compilation. It’s the first of its kind and a welcome one: a complete career spanning look into Fogerty’s uniquely American art, from CCR up to last year’s solo effort, that captures baseball, the bayou and the trials and travails of playing in a traveling band. Through 25 songs there’s certainly a few glaring omissions (like CCR’s “Wrote A Song For Everyone” and the explosive “Effigy” as well as his Buffalo name-checking solo hit “Rock and Roll Girl”). Otherwise, it’s hard to complain about this stellar collection from one of America’s greatest voices.

While The Kingsbury Manx doesn’t traverse the extreme highs and lows in volume and energy that its Chapel Hill, North Carolina predecessors Superchunk and Archers Of Loaf have, the consistent, inviting warmth of the group’s gentle, mellow music has its own ample charms. Manx singer/guitarist Bill Taylor has said that the title of his band’s latest record refers to the particular rhythm of life in the South, and even someone who has never resided below the Mason-Dixon Line can imagine this album being the soundtrack to sitting on the porch or swinging in a hammock in the golden glow of a Southern sunset. The Kingsbury Manx’s music is gilded at the edges with the influence of classic British-psych purveyors like Pink Floyd and The Moody Blues, but its core is solid American folk-pop and jangly roots music. Sometimes it reminds you of Simon and Garfunkel or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, but it also fits perfectly alongside modern bands creatively mining the past like Dolorean, Grandaddy, and The Essex Green. The Fast Rise And Fall Of The South never moves too quickly. It drifts and sways with a relaxed mix of subtle but varied instrumentation. And though a fair amount of noise gets kicked up at the end of “10008” and “Ol’ Mountainsides,” that’s definitely the exception and not the rule on this record.