You won't find a warmer, more powerful and moving tribute to the City of New Orleans and its people and culture than this five-star, 13-track album that features some of the city's most revered artists. Young and old, the New Orleans Social Club members capture many facets of the Katrina tragedy while also celebrating in distinctive 'Nawlins styles the music that helped make American popular culture famous the world over. Nearly everything on this sumptuous collection of angry, compassionate, patriotic and hopeful sentiments are cover songs. But they are covers like you've never heard before in the hands of Cyrill and Ivan Neville, Marcia Ball in duet with Irma Thomas. Dr. John, Henry Butler, the subdudes and others. While Ivan Neville reworks Credence Clearwater's "Fortunate Son" into an even more sympathetic victim of an alienating bureaucratic system that underscores this democracy's appetite for war and domestic neglect, the Mighty Chariots of Fire let go a joyful gospel challenge to the nation in "991/2 Won't Do." But the political hue and cry that hangs over many of these tracks, including Dr. John's impromptu and melancholy reading of Fats Domino's "Walking to New Orleans," there are also some classic New Orleans music moments where engaging style, spirit and rhythm and nutthin' else rules the day. Just check Trombone Shorty's tasty "Hey Troy, Your Mama's Calling You," or The Sixth Ward All-Star Brass Band Revue whipping up a familiar medley of tunes as if it were a big pot of gumbo, and you know right then that the spirit of the city can never die, come hell or high water. Highly recommended. -- Martin Keller