Like asking Yankees chief Joe Girardi if he would be willing to leave New York to manage the Chicago Cubs, peppering a famous musician with inquiries as to where his band may or may not sign is a line of interrogation that's sure to be met with vagaries (warning: this post has them). Yet Wilco's Jeff Tweedy knows the questions will come his way, and understands that speculation could point the daring Chicago pop band to a certain L.A. indie.

On Tuesday, Epitaph's multi-genre imprint Anti- Records will release "You Are Not Alone" from Chicago soul luminary Mavis Staples, a refined collection of gospel-tinged folk and blues that was produced by Tweedy in Wilco's Windy City studio. As detailed in Sunday's Calendar story, Staples is experiencing a late-career rejuvenation. The 71-year-old and 60-year-recording vet is now on her third album from Anti-, and the artist said she's noticed a boost in attention since linking with the respected label, where legends (Roky Erickson) stand alongside the elegant (Neko Case) and the out-and-out weird (Man Man). 

The label's multi-genre approach is not too different from that of Warner Music Group imprint Nonesuch Records, where Wilco has just completed its recording contract. With Tweedy recently telling Billboard that it "seems unlikely that we will be under the umbrella of a major label" for future albums, has his experience working with Anti- on the Staples album put the Silver Lake-based label in the running as a future Wilco home?

There would seemingly be little that would catch Mavis Staples by surprise. Yet with Staples now 71 years old, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy found a way to get the soul/gospel veteran to step out of her comfort zone -- literally. 

Staples' career began in earnest in the '50s, and with the Staples Singers she spent her youth on the Southern gospel circuit. Through the family's close association with Martin Luther King Jr., the Staples Singers provided a score for the civil rights era. It's safe to say that in her 60 years of singing, the South Side of Chicago resident has seen plenty. 

Yet she had never before recorded in a Chicago stairwell in below-freezing weather.

Tweedy wanted to capture Staples a cappella and in the cold, putting the boldness and defiance of her richly deep vocals front and center for a rendition of the jubilant gospel cut "Wonderful Savior." Staples, however, was more concerned about the temperature.  

"When he said he wanted to go in the stairwell," Staples recalled, "I said, ‘Are you crazy? It’s 10 below zero! I’m not going out there.’" 

Tweedy didn't relent. Tasked with producing Staples' second studio effort for Silver Lake's Anti- Records, the Sept. 14 release "You Are Not Alone," Staples noted that Tweedy took great pains to give her soulful traditionalism a refreshing spin. In the end, Staples put her full trust in Tweedy.

"He’s very family-orientated, and me too," Staples said. "He talked about his two sons. I liked him from that." 

In other words, she was willing to brave the Chicago winter for Tweedy, who recorded Staples in Wilco's famed Windy City recording studio "The Loft." 

It comes near the end of the upcoming Grinderman album. Song No. 7, to be specific, for those who still believe in the grouping of musical numbers as a collective work. It hits like a blindsided strike to the face -- a lyric that serves as a menacing put-down and an aggressively persuasive come-on all at once.

The vocals are hard to describe. Nick Cave doesn't so much sing as leer. The guitars, likewise, don't riff so much as scrape. The instrument streaks over the predatory rhythm, at times sounding as if it's mimicking a trumpet. It's dark, sketchy and a little uncomfortable. If Cave wasn't trying to seduce a married woman in her kitchen, it could be the soundtrack Darwyn Cooke's graphic-noir adaption of Donald E. Westlake's "The Hunter." 

"What's this husband of yours ever given to you?" Cave wonders just as the drums move in for in for the kill. "Oprah Winfrey on the plasma screen?" Then the tone of the song, "Kitchenette," starts to really get off the rails. At the start of the cut, Cave was digging into gingerbread cookies, but in a span of two minutes the pleasantries have long been forgotten. The lead guitar turns into a siren, and one braces for an explosion, but the music never gets too reckless. 

The chaos here is controlled, moving at a crawl's space. There's no violence -- the games are all in the head, and Cave is winning. He flashes his teeth even as he shows a bit of vulnerability, howling that he just wants the object of his affection to be his girlfriend, and then slams her children as "bucktoothed imbeciles" who happen to be the "ugliest" kids he's ever seen. Amazingly, it gets Cave even closer to his prey. After all, her no-good kids aren't her fault -- just a reminder of her poor choice in men. And being nice? There's no prize for nice in the world Cave is unraveling. 

The album, "Grinderman 2," is not all so warped and manipulative. The very next track, in fact, "Palaces of Montezuma," is a thing of beauty, and could even be a slow dance at a wedding. It's due Sept. 14 from locals Anti- Records, and Grinderman -- a Cave-led outfit that's a tad more lyrically direct than his work in the Bad Seeds -- will bring the emotional whiplash to the Music Box @ Fonda on Nov. 30. Tickets for the show, which was announced Monday, will go on sale Aug. 20, but there are sure to be pre-sales.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Nick Cave in 2008. Credit: Kiko Huesca / EPA

Don't be fooled by the lush orchestrations and friendly acoustic guitars of Lost in the Trees. There's high drama in the band's self-described campfire arrangements, with tales of heroes and villains and biblical-like imagery of raging fires. Or, to put it in more blunt terms, it's about fighting with your parents. 

The brainchild of 28-year-old Ari Picker, Lost in the Trees recently found a home with Silver Lake's Anti- Records, the adventurous offshoot of Epitaph overseen by Andy Kaulkin.The label will be releasing a reworked version of Lost in the Trees' debut, "All Alone in an Empty House," on Aug. 10. It's a collection of classically enhanced pop that's as fit for a chamber hall as it is a rock club.

"I wanted it to be able to sound like it was recorded around a campfire -- very acoustic guitar-driven and folky and simple," said Picker, who has one semester remaining toward a film score degree from the Berklee College of Music. "Then I wanted these orchestral sounds to come out of the woods and make a brief appearance and leave. I wanted it to be like an isolated person playing these songs, with all these textures weaved around it and suddenly disappearing."

The first single, "Fireplace," streaming below, walks that line, and it comes with one of Picker's more impassioned vocal turns on the album. Lyrics bound between images of old age and redemption, and guitars build around slicing strings. Adding a sense of paranoia are the just out-of-step vocals, which hint at the dark subject matter.