Dangerous Minds recently posted a great deconstruction of Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones, featuring the vocals, guitars, bass, and drums separated into different tracks and little breakdowns of what’s going on musically.

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Australian band Powderfinger have a new album out, Golden Rule, which was again recorded with Nick DiDia, responsible for their successful albums Internationalist, Odyssey Number Five, and Vulture Street albums. We checked in with them to get the inside word on the songs that inspired their new recording, and they started with the Rolling Stones classic, Gimme Shelter [listen below]: ‘From the guitar intro solo genius and riffing, through Mick’s insightful lyric, to when Mary Clayton’s spine chilling vocals break at the peak of the song, it is a benchmark for me as to how a song can have restraint and be heavy at the same time. It wreaks of a band in fine form. I’m also a sucker for a dirty harmonica. Give me dirty harmonica!’

We checked in with Jimmy Shaw from Toronto group, Metric, and asked him about the music that inspired their latest recording, Fantasies. He started by propping the Rolling Stones’ classic, Exile On Main Street: ‘I set up a turntable because my friend left all of his DJ records at my house for a year and a half. It’s the only non hip-hop record, which is funny because all they were doing was trying to sound black. Either way, the record is warped and sounds awesome’. Read the rest of Metric’s Secret Playlist.

I love the rock and roll! I love the sheer coarseness of it all, the sweet rambling mayhem that a standard guitar set-up and Marshall amps stacked to the roof can generate. The audacity of it. The messed up, cat strut that every singer worth their rider will turn on when there’s more than handful of goggle-eyed, half-trashed punters in the room. So hit that power chord, my friend, raise two fingers to the heavens and send me soaring far, far into the stratosphere – free, unhinged – a rock and roll time bomb just waiting for that moment of pure sonic catharsis. Sure I’ll probably be deaf by the age of 40. But I ride the volume on my stereo low, and the sucker still has a long way to go. Eleven? Ha! Mine goes to twelve. And you ain’t heard nothing yet. Yes, it seeps into my skin like the smoke from an hour-long bonfire, shattering my mind with every numbing crack of a 16-inch snare. I talk it, sing, play it, swagger it, living at least part of my life vicariously through music’s most iconic figures. Eric Clapton, Angus Young, Keith Richards … Now there’s a face that tells a thousand stories. If only his wrinkles could talk. For those about to rock, I salute you. Just remember to wear your earplugs.