Randy Newman, The Black Keys, The Magnetic Fields, and Punch Brothers. It's quite an eclectic list of artists, but they all share one thing, in addition to being Nonesuch label mates: they've all made the list of the Top 100 of the Year's Best CDs from NPR's All Songs Considered. The show is now looking for your input to narrow down the list to the Top 10. And speaking of year-end bests, Blender's annual Top 33 lists Randy's Harps and Angels at No. 8.

The Black Keys' US tour made its way back home to Akron, Ohio, last Saturday night to play E. J. Thomas Hall. The Cleveland Plain Dealer says the band turned the venue into "one big juke joint" for the nearly 3,000 fans. Pat and Dan, whose "music brilliantly reinvents the wheel," were treated "like conquering heroes" in this "unforgettable evening." They created "primal rock 'n' roll" that "all but demanded a visceral reaction." The band plays Akron again this Friday, at the Civic Theatre, with another group of hometown favorites, Devo, to raise funds for the Obama Presidential campaign's efforts in the all-important swing state.

The Black Keys are on the road again, with opener Jessica Lea Mayfield, who contributed harmony vocals on the Attack & Release track "Things Ain't Like They Used to Be" and recorded her own CD with the Keys' Dan Auerbach as producer. The Knoxville News describes last night's show in that city as "All you want in a rock show." The Houston Chronicle previews an upcoming show by calling the band's recordings as "progressively varied, interesting and exciting."

Wilco and The Black Keys were among the highlights of the Outside Lands Festival this past weekend, with tens of thousands of music fans flooding San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. SPIN captured two songs from The Black Keys' opening-night performance on video. The San Jose Mercury News writes of Wilco's set: "Guitarist Nels Cline is a monster, and this lineup brilliantly balances the gentle, reassuring music Jeff Tweedy could make with his eyes closed and the challenging, difficult elements that have endeared Wilco to critics and urban hipsters."

The Black Keys spent the weekend at two of the summer's biggest festivals: the inaugural New American Music Union festival in Pittsburgh on Friday and the Virgin Mobile Fest in Baltimore on Sunday, with a stop at The NorVa in Norfolk, Virginia, in between. The Western Pennsylvania press coverage of Friday's event calls attention to the "pulverizing, purifying guitar blast blues riff from the Black Keys." Brooklyn Vegan also has dozens of great pics from the preceding night's show at Brooklyn's McCarren Park Pool.

The Black Keys are in New York tonight to play McCarren Park Pool, the unique, former and soon-to-be-again public pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Tomorrow, they'll be at the New American Music Union festival in Pittsburgh, sharing a bill with the likes of Bob Dylan, The Raconteurs, and Gnarls Barkley. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette previews that set with a profile of the band that has, with Attack and Release, released its "best record to date" and "garnered the kind of critical praise that rarely comes this positive."

The Black Keys played the opening day of Lollapalooza in Chicago on Friday in a set that Time Out Chicago reports featured the band's signature "folky-blues, [which] breaks into blown-out acid riffage." Metromix Chicago says that hometown band Wilco's Saturday set showed that the city "has a lot to thank Wilco for." Over the next two weeks, each band will make its way to Brooklyn's popular McCarren Park Pool, which, as the New York Times reports, will transition back to its original use after this summer's shows.

The Black Keys will be featured tonight on Live from Abbey Road, the TV music series that captures artists performing in the intimate, audience-free setting of the famed Abbey Road studios. The show airs in the US tonight on the Sundance Channel and Friday and Saturday in the UK on More4 and Channel 4, respectively.

The Black Keys have closed out the UK leg of their Attack & Release tour and will soon be heading south for stops in Australia and New Zealand in mid-June. Reviewing the new album, JamBase describes it as music that "crawls into your marrow and disturbs your rest. It's not the blues but it's gone drinking with them. For sure, it's rock 'n' roll but with a haunted echo behind even the good time pronouncements ... [T]he imagination and talent gathered on Attack & Release make it a shoe-in for Best of 2008 lists everywhere. Often that sounds like hype but in this case it's just a statement of fact. Once in a while quality just shines out in a way that can't be denied."

The Black Keys' in-studio performance and interview on NPR's World Cafe last week is now available online. "With their newest record, Attack & Release," says the show, "the two-man band of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney has created a spot-on mix of blues and rock ... The resulting collection takes their minimalist sound into a new dimension with unexpected arrangements and expanded instrumentation."

The Black Keys are in the UK on the European leg of their Attack & Release tour. To coincide with their performance tonight at ABC in Glasgow, Scotland, BBC Radio 1's Zane Lowe will broadcast an in-studio performance and interview with the band tonight on his show, sometime between 7 and 9 PM GMT. The show will also feature an extra track tomorrow night at the same time. 

Filter magazine rates Attack & Release a 93, with reviewer Patrick Strange saying the new album seems to have "dropped out of the heavens with a fistful of downright biting blues-rock." The album, reads the review, "has all the cadence of honest-to-God Southern balladeers (via the band's hometown of Akron, Ohio) and production that makes every bass kick and guitar clash a rustic-Technicolor wonder."