Tooth of Crime, T Bone Burnett's first album on Nonesuch and only his second solo record in over 15 years, is due out tomorrow. The music stems from T Bone's 1997 collaboration with Sam Shepard, when the playwright asked the songwriter to contribute to a New York production of his 1972 play Tooth of Crime. It was a coming together that New York Times music critic Jon Pareles calls "inspired."

Pareles says that the years since the songs' original conception have allowed for a "marinating and reworking" that has "only deepened their black-humor charm." He cites the "ominous haze" created by T Bone's production as "a shadowy extension of the sound" he created for last year's Robert Plant / Alison Krauss collaboration, Raising Sand. To read the review, visit nytimes.com.

Currently on tour in Europe with Plant and Krauss, T Bone spoke with BBC Radio 4's Today show this past Saturday morning about the new record and his eventful career, going back to his unforgettable tour with Bob Dylan in the 1970s. "So much of what I've done since I learned on that tour," credits T Bone. "Bob was generous to include us all in his world at the time.

You can listen to the segment on the show's site, bbc.co.uk/radio4/today, or by clicking here to open the RealAudio file directly.

During the Raising Sand tour's stop in Chattanooga, Tennessee, last month, T Bone spoke with his hometown paper, the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram, about the initial inspiration behind the new album and about what continues to inspire him. He tells the paper's pop music critic, Preston Jones:

I'm still on this quest---this sonic quest to find the grail---to find the thing, to make the record that does for me or does for other people what hearing Jimmy Reed did to me when I was 15. Barnett Newman said, "Time washes over the tip of the pyramid." I want to make things that sit right on the very tip of the pyramid.

To read the full interview, visit star-telegram.com.