Pablo Honey in no way was adequate preparation for its epic, sprawling follow-up, The Bends. Building from the sweeping, three-guitar attackRadiohead that punctuated the best moments of Pablo Honey, Radiohead create a grand and forceful sound that nevertheless resonates with anguish and despair – it's cerebral anthemic rock. Occasionally, the album displays its influences, whether it's U2, Pink Floyd, R.E.M., or the Pixies, but Radiohead turn clichés inside out, making each song sound bracingly fresh. Thom Yorke's tortured lyrics give the album a melancholy undercurrent, as does the surging, textured music. But what makes The Bends so remarkable is that it marries such ambitious, and often challenging, instrumental soundscapes to songs that are at their cores hauntingly melodic and accessible. It makes the record compelling upon first listen, but it reveals new details with each listen, and soon it becomes apparent that with The Bends, Radiohead have reinvented anthemic rock.

Lambchop have made a number of outstanding albums as they've evolved from "Nashville's most f–ked-up country band" to a singular chamber pop ensemble during a career that lasted nearly two decades, but one of their finest works is not really a Lambchop album at all. Vic Chesnutt recruited Lambchop to serve as his backing band on the 1998 album The Salesman and Bernadette, and the results were a marvelous fusion of the group's broad but emotionally intimate approach and Chesnutt's witty, skewed, and perceptive gifts as a songwriter. Chesnutt and Lambchop's Kurt Wagner seemed like kindred spirits, fellow Southerners who married oblique yet telling poetry to melodies that were strong yet fluidly graceful, and it should surprise no one that Wagner was hit hard by Chesnutt's death in late 2009. Lambchop's first studio project since Chesnutt's passing, 2012's Mr. M, is dedicated to Wagner's friend and collaborator, and though the songs don't deal explicitly with Chesnutt, there's a sense of sorrow in these songs that's deeper than what we've come to expect from Lambchop, infused with an air of reflection and regret that's impossible to miss.

The soundtrack for first-time director Jason Reitman's satire of Big Tobacco spin plays like an amiable, city slicker sequel to O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Tex Williams' western swing standard "Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette!" kicks things off with a mischievous grin, laying the groundwork for classics from Patsy Cline ("Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray"), Otis Redding ("Cigarettes and Coffee"), the Mills Brothers ("Smoke Rings"), and the Platters ("Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"). The thread is obvious, but the selections sound handpicked rather than researched solely on the basis of their subject matter. Composer Rolfe Kent, who brought such an excellent sense of place to 2004's Sideways, manages to echo the hipster swing of the Mancini-era '60s without sounding regressive, providing Thank You for Smoking with a cheerful brevity that keeps the spin more balanced than fair.