Neville Brothers - The Neville Brothers Yellow Moon

The Neville Brothers are a New Orleans institution. Their voices glide freely and harmonize into a rich texture. For Yellow Moon, they enlisted the help of producer Daniel Lanois to meld their voices and rhythms with his swampy dreamscapes. The percussion is subtle, the guitars melt into the background, and the voices puncture the placid night sky, as if providing the soundtrack to an old western. Two protest-era Dylan songs ("With God on Our Side" and "The Ballad of Hollis Brown") are recast as modern anthems for spiritual reconciliation.

The Sam Cooke classic "A Change is Gonna Come" remains an envied promise, while the original material (the title track; "Sister Rosa," about Rosa Parks) is among their finest. Not a return to form, but rather a welcome break from tradition.

Five stars doesn't even come close. Nothing makes me reach for the volume knob like "Yellow Moon". As one would expect, it's deeply funky. But there's another side to it that's ghostly, wistful, beautiful. The record companies just don't know what to do with bands like the Nevilles; they seem to see the band as some cheesy New Orleans party band. The Nevilles are far, far more than that, and nothing has ever captured it like "Yellow Moon".

Produced by Daniel Lanois during his residency in New Orleans, who saw them for what they really are: a living connection to the past, with threads of all the amazing stages of development in New Orleans music, from Congo Square straight back to Africa. His eerie, atmospheric production style has never had a better match. A stunning work, and possibly my favorite album of all time.

Millions of people visit New Orleans, but I'm not sure how many people truly "get" New Orleans. New Orleans is more than just Bourbon St. It's a place of magic and mystery, of ghosts and history, and it got under my skin like no place ever has. What an amazing accomplishment to capture this on record as Lanois has on Yellow Moon.