If there were justice in this country, Ted Leo would be the biggest rock musician in the world.

For a while there, rock music really mattered. People like Bruce Springsteen and The Sex Pistols weren't out to create jukebox fodder; they were out to stir things up.

But rock's lost an awful lot of its spark in recent times, and it's been quite a while since we had somebody up there with a guitar and something to say.

Team America: World Police might not think it's the entertainment industry's place to question authority, but somebody has to do it, and the news media haven't exactly been holding up its end of the bargain.

Don't you think we need a new Boss to shed light on the problem?

Though Ted Leo is from Springsteen's native New Jersey, he's really become heir apparent to the throne of Joe Strummer.

Leo and his Pharmacists marry punk passion and expert songcraft like The Clash in their height, and Leo's politics are, as were Strummer's, smeared all over the lyric book.

This is not to say that Leo's brilliant new record Shake the Sheets is the Pharmacists' bloated Sandinista; in fact, Leo has sharpened his focus between Sheets and last year's stellar Hearts of Oak, perfecting his powerful guitar attack while spitting even more lyrical venom at deserving causes.

Given current events, I don't blame him. And given Shake the Sheets, I'm glad he's putting his anger to good use.

"I'm worried for my tired country," Leo sings in "The One Who Got Us Out," and he's certainly not alone.

These are trying times, and Leo's understandable disgust with the goings on in Washington, D.C., pop up all over the record.

Not only is Shake the Sheets the best rock album of the year, it's the most relevant set of songs to be released in quite a while, the perfect soundtrack to both regime change and (God forbid) four more years of protesting deception and conceit.

This is not to say Shake the Sheets is just 40 minutes of liberal showboating; Leo's a populist and a concerned citizen, sure, but mostly just one hell of a songwriter.

Bringing the political out through the personal (as Springsteen did so brilliantly), there's plenty of Shake the Sheets that won't arouse your militant streak.

"Me and Mia" and "Counting Down the Hours" are phenomenal pop songs, highlighting Leo's innate gift for melody and his wildly emotive voice.

"Heart Problems" and "Bleeding Powers" are proof enough that punk hasn't really died, and Leo's gift for deft lyricism shows no signs of slowing down on any of Sheets' eleven tracks.

You shouldn't buy Shake the Sheets just because it's proof that rock 'n' roll is still alive and screaming.

You should buy it to serve the cause of justice.

Not only does Ted Leo deserve the stardom, but if people like him were the ones doing the grandstanding, we'd finally have somebody to rally behind, somebody speaking for us instead of for them, somebody to unite, not divide.

At the very least, we'd all have some great songs to sing along to.

Oh yeah; vote or die.