Last month, I had a few not entirely coherent things to say about the leaked cuts from Scarlett Johansson’s Tom Waits tribute album, Anywhere I Lay My Head. And ultimately, I had no idea what to make of it.

So the album dropped on Tuesday, and while I had it in hand last weekend, I had to wait through a brief addiction to the new Death Cab For Cutie before I could get around to listening to it in its entirety to try and get a better idea of what the fuck to file it under.

Read on for our honest track-by-track review.

Billie Joe Armstrong, Tre Cool and Mike Dirnt are tripping hard down memory lane with Stop Drop And Roll, the latest Green Day album. Except it’s not Green Day. It’s the Foxboro Hot Tubs. Like The Network and Pinhead Gunpowder before them, Foxboro are another musical escape for Armstrong and Co. from the standard pop-punk format that’s made them all massive millionaires.

I can’t speak for you, or anybody besides my own damned self for that matter, but Narrow Stairs, the latest studio effort from Death Cab For Cutie, has earned them at least one new fan. It doesn’t possess nearly as much pensive, sleepy mortality as 2005’s Plans, but maintains a familiar musical personality while adding many more colors to their palette. This was no doubt aided in no small part by producer-guitarist Chris Walla, who’s also laid wax with indie darlings The Decemebrists, as well as Tegan And Sara. Considerably darker and more introspective this time around, Death Cab For Cutie comfortably flex all their muscles on Narrow Stairs with excellent results.

Back in January, when Weezer mastermind Rivers Cuomo told fans to expect “longer songs, non-traditional song forms, different people writing and singing, instrument switching, TR-808s, synths, Southern rap and baroque counterpoint,” we should have taken him more seriously. The Red Album completes Weezer’s homage to primary colors, and despite a shockingly bad collection of lyrics, it could also be their best release yet. Only eight tracks of the expected ten have leaked so far, and the album’s not due to hit until June 3rd. However, these tracks confirm that, with the help of Rick Rubin and Jacknife Lee, Rivers Cuomo and Co. have set a creative high watermark for themselves by adding new colors to the familiar palette, complete with unexpected blind turns and trap doors.

Yesterday, a House committee found that the Pentagon has been effectively writing blank checks to insurance companies providing coverage for civilian employees in Iraq and Afghanistan. Apparently, the Pentagon allows its contractors to negotiate their own insurance contracts, unlike the State Department, the US Agency for International Development and the Army Corps of Engineers, who have all selected a single insurance carrier to provide the insurance at fixed rates. The Boston Globe reports that KBR Inc., one of the largest defense contractors in Iraq, paid the insurance giant AIG $284 million for medical and disability coverage under the Defense Base Act, a reference to the federal law mandating the insurance. Because of the way KBR’s contract is structured, this premium, along with an $8 million markup for KBR, gets billed to taxpayers. All told, the insurance companies have collected nearly $600 million in excessive profits over the past five years, according to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s report.