E-Mail This Article to a Friend Download The War of the Worlds, Roe v. Wade, and, oh yeah, some music

Tides, "Resurface" (Teenage Disco Bloodbath Records)

The band are from upstate New York, the label is in Allston, and the song — the title track from a six-song album — is a glacial, instru-metal set piece that recent converts are likening to the work of Isis and Neurosis. But this 10-minute track is more oceanic than Isis’s Oceanic: melancholy and deep, heavy and yet evocative of all kinds of stratospheric emptiness. In the closing minutes, they achieve escape velocity with Cave In–worthy space-metal solos.

The Mercury Theatre on the Air, The War of the Worlds, October 30, 1938

Even as Tom Cruise scares DreamWorks half to death by talking up Scientology on the press junkets for the upcoming Spielberg film, here’s the radio-drama version that spooked half of New Jersey into believing Earth was under attack. Poke around the Mercury Theatre’s Web site and you’ll find nearly everything the Orson Welles–founded troupe broadcast, from Dracula to Our Town.

The Octave Museum, "Prove Myself"

This is the standout track from a clutch of three new demos by Cave In frontman Stephen Brodsky, who had so much fun recording the songs with Scissorfight drummer Kevin Shurtleff that the two formed a band to play them. The ’60s psych-folk melody is as true as any he’s written in singer-songwriter mode, the guitars shimmer kaleidoscopically, and the lyrics are straightforwardly sung to a girl. In other words, it’s a hit.

Roe v. Wade, oral arguments before the Supreme Court, 1973

The congressional battle over court appointments is already confirmed as the feel-bad political hit of the summer. And if the White House gets its way, this case may soon qualify as a golden oldie. Thanks to the Oyez Project, you can download oral arguments before the Supreme Court — not only in Roe, where the court heard arguments twice (both are downloadable) but in historic cases ranging from New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) to the Rumsfeld v. Padilla hearing on the legality of holding American citizens as "enemy combatants" (2004).

Dropkick Murphys, "The Auld Triangle" (Epitaph)

If you’ve been listening to the radio, you may have heard "Sunshine Highway," the bright and deceptively cheery first single from the Dropkicks’ forthcoming The Warrior’s Code. Proof they haven’t gone soft, this advance track is textbook Murphys: working from a song by Brendan Behan, they feint with a sentimental piano-and-tin-whistle intro, then the whole gang pile in and pine brawlishly for the gals in a women’s prison.