I had a policy a while ago of never reading other reviews before writing mine.

Now, I’m addicted to music reviews – and movie reviews, book reviews, comic reviews, and basically any analysis of art I can get my hands on. I even read those usually asinine customer comments on Amazon, the ones filled with sentences like “OMG, ths CD rulz!” I can’t help it. I’m just naturally attracted to finding out what people think, especially about something as absolutely subjective as art.

So you can imagine how difficult it was for me to keep myself away from advance reviews of albums, especially since magazines like Rolling Stone seem to publish those reviews months prior to release these days. I was honestly afraid that reading other reviews might influence the way I experienced music, and that I might find myself unconsciously ripping off another reviewer, especially one who articulated my reactions more eloquently than I could.

But right around the time of Radiohead’s Kid A, I said hell with that. I read every advance five-star ejaculation I could find, looking for clues as to what to expect, and each drooling encapsulation only increased my anticipation. And then I absolutely hated the album. Years of continuing to absolutely hate it have convinced me that my initial reaction wasn’t just a matter of it not meeting overly high expectations, either. I just think Kid A sucks.

Since then, I devour advance reviews, fairly secure in the belief that they don’t influence my opinions. I realize this is a big ol’ rationalization, and that what’s really going on is more akin to a crack addict getting his daily fix, but I now consider advance reviews an essential part of my preparation process. If the notices are good, I’m excited to hear if they’re right, and if they’re terrible, I’m even more excited to hear if they’re wrong. Which, I guess, counts as outside influence, but I find I agree with most reviews only about 50 percent of the time.

Truthfully, I’m often most excited to hear albums that the reviewing community has, en masse, deemed unlistenable. There’s something appealing to me about monumentally bad records, especially from great artists, and since a large part of my process is looking for the artist’s original intention, train wrecks (especially purposeful train wrecks) are much more fun than smooth rides. Plus, occasionally, I will completely disagree with the universal negative opinion, and that’s even more fun.

Take, for example, the new Blur album, Think Tank. Just drop the band and album name into a search engine, and you’re guaranteed to encounter a mountain of lousy reviews – one star, D minus, what-were-they-thinking reviews. You can only read so many of those before you start bracing yourself for a disaster, and it’s not like the boys in Blur haven’t been heading that way recently. Their last two albums (the self-titled one and 13) were sloppy, overly long, underdeveloped messes that veered sharply from the twee pop they delivered in their early years. 13, in fact, deserves to be called unlistenable – its few delightful moments are drowned in an ocean of noise and repetition that doesn’t even pretend to be cohesive.

And then there’s Graham Coxon, the Lennon to Damon Albarn’s McCartney. Coxon left the band before Think Tank was finished, and he only contributed to one track, the closing “Battery In Your Leg.” With Coxon gone and Albarn spending a good chunk of his time in Gorillaz, his animated electronic madhouse side project with Dan the Automator, one could be forgiven for expecting a beat-happy pile of sludge this time out, which is exactly what the majority of reviewers have apparently heard.

This is definitely one of those cases where I’m not sure if I’m listening to the same album everyone else is, because my copy of Think Tank is absolutely marvelous.

Even with Coxon missing, this is easily the most complete Blur album since The Great Escape. Albarn has, of course, embraced technology in the years since 13, and under his direction Think Tank is loaded with electronic bleeps and blips. Here’s the thing, though – where most artists use technology for its cold and distant qualities, Blur has crafted perhaps the warmest and most emotionally resonant album they’ve ever made.

Most of Think Tank takes its time to unfold, wafting in on ambient waves and subtle computer drums. Virtually every time you think the electronics are going to take over, however, Albarn surprises you with a lovely vocal melody, or a delightfully human guitar line. If, for example, you’re dismayed by the twittering electronic percussion and how-low-can-you-go bass that opens “Ambulance” (and the album), just wait 30 seconds for Albarn’s vocal entrance. His beautiful tenor raises the song’s temperature immeasurably, and sends it straight for your heart.

Think Tank contains some of Albarn’s most comforting ballads, set to chilling landscapes of electronic sound which only seem to accentuate the warmth of his voice. Just listen to the acoustic guitar on “Out of Time,” or the saxophone arrangements on “Caravan,” or even the extended ambient outro of “On the Way to the Club” and you’ll hear technology given its most human foundation. The simple pleasure of “Sweet Song,” with its repeated piano sample, cannot be overstated either.

The album is, no doubt, experimental, but nearly all of the experiments work marvelously. There are misfires – the Fatboy Slim-produced “Crazy Beat” reenacts “Song 2” with a, um, crazy beat, and no one would have missed the minute-long pseudo-punk shoutalong “We’ve Got a File On You.” But the delirious successes far outweigh the miniscule failures, and the overall effect is low-key and cohesive. The band even saves the most human moment for the end – “Battery In Your Leg” is a slow piano caress full of the melodic melancholy that characterizes this record.

So what album are the other reviewers hearing? Think Tank is nowhere near the techno-driven mess you might expect from the avalanche of bad press it’s received. (In fact, I only found one review that seems to echo my reaction, and that’s at pitchforkmedia.com.) On the contrary, in fact, it joins Supergrass and Ester Drang in the upper echelon of 2003 releases, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find it in the top five at year’s end.

I’m not sure anyone would have expected the diversity of the last few Blur releases, but it seems the band has finally hit upon something here. While many artists have taken a shine to technology recently, Blur has shown with Think Tank that they’re one of the few acts that understand it, and can use it to make their music more human, not less. This album is also the first time the band has sounded sure-footed since the early ’90s, and it bodes better than anyone could have expected for the Coxon-less Blur. But beyond all that, it’s just a beautiful record, one that deepens with each trip through. Think Tank does what all great art must do to be considered as such – it resonates, it affects, and it stays with you. You can’t ask for more than that.

* * * * *

I’m going to eulogize Buffy fairly extensively next week, so I don’t want to say much about this week’s penultimate episode, except that it was splendid and a fitting goodbye to some of television’s most fully realized characters. The feces hits the spinning blade on Tuesday, and I remain blissfully spoiler-free, an act of will so difficult that it’s physically painful. Expect an overview and a fond farewell next time, and after that, a long (like, really long) column to catch up on recent releases, most of which don’t deserve their own spotlight, so they all have to share.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m so excited to have something that I can unconditionally crap all over that I’m going to lead with it: Did anyone watch that MTV Icon thing this week?

If you’re not aware, the Icon series is an excuse for MTV to kiss mighty ass on a regular basis. Each show focuses on one artist that has made MTV money, and takes the form of a tribute concert featuring (unsurprisingly) artists that are currently making MTV money. Also, the icon in question usually has a new album that the record companies who program MTV would like to see made popular, so the icon takes the stage to play the new single and push the product. It’s all a big consumer-screwing festival disguised as an honor of some sort.

Anyway, the delightfully ironic recipient of this year’s Icon treatment is Metallica – ironic because, for the first six years of their existence, Metallica steadfastly resisted MTV and its new form of marketing. They sold platinum numbers of their first three albums (which many contend are and always will be their best), sold out every show they played, and did it all without radio or video to help. When they finally cracked and made a clip for one of their songs, they chose “One,” a seven-minute dirge, and set it to black and white clips of Jason Robards’ performance in Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun. Not exactly “In Da Club.”

True, the floodgates opened with the dreaded black album, but for a long time, Metallica raised middle fingers to MTV, preferring to do things the old fashioned way. As much as I make fun of them for it, I believe it was that same resistance to new ways of marketing themselves that led to them suing their fans during Napster’s heyday, rather than figuring out ways to make file swapping work for them. Metallica has always been a working class band, and the farthest thing from an icon in their own minds as possible.

So here’s James, Lars, Kirk and new bassist Rob Trujilo sitting there and listening to the parade of shit MTV has decided to “honor” them with, and gamely pretending that they’re into it, which made me even more sad. It was hard for me to listen to Limp Bizkit, for example, slashing and burning their way through “Sanitarium,” so it must have been kind of difficult for the guys who wrote the song to hear it desecrated. But no, the short-haired, middle-aged version of Metallica just seemed to love it.

And then there’s Avril Lavigne. This is the first and last time I will ever mention the latest Canadian pop tart in this space, but I need to point out just how ridiculous marketing really is. Avril, you see, has a carefully crafted image of a “punk rock chick” to live up to, even though she herself has never heard the Clash, the Sex Pistols, Stiff Little Fingers, or, really, any punk band at all, ever. Her marketing force must have surmised that appearing at a Metallica tribute show would be oh so very punk, even though Metallica has never even approximated punk in music or attitude.

So here’s Avril, who admitted in interviews to never having heard Metallica before either, pseudo-emoting her way through “Fuel,” and just sucking at it. She described “Fuel” as “a really long song,” because four and a half minutes is just huge, I guess. Good thing she didn’t try for “And Justice For All,” or “Creeping Death.” (Actually, that’s a very good thing.)

The kicker is, the Metallica boys totally loved it. This leads to one of two conclusions: a), the band resisted the same urge to vomit repeatedly that I did, and pretended to go along so as not to ruin their big promotional push and jeopardize their label stock options, or b), the band really liked Avril’s rendition. Either way, the news is bad. They’re just not the same band anymore, which is sad. They’ve followed Dave Mustaine up Suck Mountain, and nothing’s going to bring them back now.

* * * * *

From Metallica to Fleetwood Mac. How’s that for range?

I find Fleetwood Mac endlessly interesting, mostly because they never really were what people think they were. For one thing, the group of five musicians that most people consider Fleetwood Mac is really only responsible for five of their 15 albums. They were a gritty blues band first and a dazzling pop act second, but even the dazzling pop was a facade hiding an emotional tempest and a seething bitterness. Lite FM radio will try to convince you that Fleetwood Mac put out nothing but variations on “Rhiannon” and “Landslide,” and such an assumption couldn’t be more wrong.

For one thing, the most popular incarnation of Fleetwood Mac had (and has) a secret weapon that no Lite FM act could touch, and his name is Lindsey Buckingham. This guy is seriously underrated in every respect – as a songwriter, a guitarist and a producer, he’s pretty astonishing. Just check out most of the similarly underrated and ignored Tusk album and you’ll see what I mean. Lindsey owns that show, and his carefully crafted chaos was unjustly reviled as bloated and excessive. By today’s standards, it’s fairly tame, and at 68 minutes, it’s not even all that long.

No, if you want to talk bloated and excessive, you need to hear the new Fleetwood Mac album, Say You Will. This thing has 18 songs that cover 76 minutes, and even though it’s this incarnation’s first album together (sans Christine McVie) in 16 years, the album has a bit too much of a good thing. It’s a shame, because what’s good here is outstanding.

It’s helpful to think of Say You Will as two albums jammed together, or played on shuffle. Roughly half of these songs were originally slated for Buckingham’s aborted fourth solo album, titled Gift of Screws, which should give you some indication of the tone. The other half are Stevie Nicks songs, and although all of them are decent, Nicks hasn’t noticeably changed her style in decades. The result is a bit of a mish-mash, and the album feels like a collection of songs rather than a cohesive piece. (Tusk, for all its supposed excess, flows beautifully.)

So not only is some editing needed here, but the random quality of the album makes it easier to jettison some dead weight. If it were up to me, though, we’d be hearing Gift of Screws, since Buckingham’s songs are all standouts. “What’s the World Coming To” opens the record on a Byrds-ish note, featuring the jauntiest reading of the title phrase in recent memory, but soon we’re off to the races. “Murrow Turning Over in His Grave” is a powerhouse, and Buckingham does things with a guitar in the second half that would send his Lite FM fans screaming. “Red Rover” is a tricky finger-picked piece that sounds impossible to play, and “Come” is the most dynamic thing here, slipping from reverbed acoustic to slamming electric and another amazing solo.

Buckingham’s production really deserves special mention. It’s incredibly precise and clean, yet fully human and organic as well. Say You Will flits from full-sounding chamber pop to unaccompanied acoustic to screaming ’70s rock solos, and each sound is perfect in and of itself. That the songs don’t mesh well is unfortunate – Buckingham worked so hard to make each song as good as possible, but failed to provide a through-line for the album.

There really aren’t any bad songs on Say You Will, though there are a few blandly pleasant ones. In total, though, it’s an exhausting listen – there’s just too much here, in too random a pattern, to properly absorb. It’s good to hear this band again, especially when they recapture the classic sound only this group of musicians makes, but I wish Say You Will didn’t sound like they treated it as the last record they’ll ever make. Although, considering how long Buckingham takes to get things up to his exacting standards, it very well might be their swan song, especially since it ends with two songs whose titles contain the word “goodbye.”

If Say You Will turns out to be the last album Buckingham, Nicks, Fleetwood and McVie make together, it wouldn’t be a bad way to go out. The band has remained true to itself, releasing an album of songs only they could have made this way, and they refused to pepper it with hit singles. (Strongest of all in that vein may be Nicks’ luminous title track, however.) Taken in small pieces, it’s a good album, but swallowed whole, it’s just too much. If they decide to do this again in another 16 years, they should learn from this and rein in their prolific tendencies. Or make two albums. But if they’re going to do that, they should probably just stick with their solo careers.

* * * * *

I’m having trouble with this week’s Buffy, mostly because the story didn’t move in any of the ways I thought it would after last week’s emotional wringer. I’m disappointed in the boneheadedly literal chosen one metaphor as well, though on second viewing, there’s a lot that I admire about the episode. Still, with only two to go before the end, don’t you think it’s time the writers start letting us in on some things? The longer they draw out these mysteries, the more I’m convinced they just don’t have good answers for us.

But Angel‘s season finale was amazing, perfectly setting up either the end or a new beginning for Buffy‘s still-unrenewed little brother. I’m particularly impressed at how Tim Minear (writer and director) gave us an overwhelmingly positive and emotional episode that cleverly disguised the fact that the bad guys just utterly won. Astounding. I hope Buffy‘s finale is that good.

Anyway, next week, some of the ones I mentioned last week. For sure.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I had this almost all written earlier in the week, and then the president came on TV and scared the crap out of me, and I knew I’d have to revise. But seriously, doesn’t his “America’s way right or wrong” deal frighten you all, too? Just a little?

King Bush II spoke this week from the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, ostensibly to call an end to the Iraq campaign and send the troops home. Among the scarier parts of the speech, Dubya again switched the motivation for the war. What was once about combating terrorism and then became about weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a tyrant and finally turned into liberating the Iraqi people has now reverted to continuing the war on terror. This despite no concrete evidence of Saddam Hussein’s giving weapons to terrorists, and in fact no evidence of such weapons at all in Iraq, either.

And it’s working. I had a conversation with a woman the other day who honestly believes, because she thinks the president told her so, that Hussein and the Iraqi people blew up the World Trade Center. Seriously. The harsh reality is that Bush used the deaths of September 11 to justify his private war, which, thanks to a massive rebuilding contract granted to his former company, Halliburton, will make Dick Cheney richer. But I’m sure this had nothing to do with protecting his buddies, especially those in the oil industry, right?

Anyway, Bush went on to deliver a stern warning to other countries that he sees as threats. Among his finger-wagging statements came this one: “Nothing these countries can do will alter their fates.” Wait, what? Nothing they can do? We saw this attitude in this campaign as well – even though Saddam Hussein cooperated with the U.N. inspectors, according to Hans Blix, and gave the U.S. everything it asked for (except the weapons it’s looking more and more likely that we made up), nothing he could do would alter his fate. I’d have been even more concerned about our single-mindedness at the time had I known it would become policy.

Also interestingly discouraging was the bit where Bush listed off characteristics of our “enemies” – or, as he likes to say, the “enemies of freedom.” Because the U.S. spreads freedom and utopia wherever it goes, establishing flourishing democracies in places like Kuwait and Panama and… oh, hang on. Anyway, apparently an enemy of freedom is now defined as a country with ties to terrorist organizations, one who assists terrorists with weapons and money, and one who stockpiles weapons of mass destruction. I find it utterly amazing that the administration doesn’t realize that they just described us. We fund terrorist organizations around the globe (although when we like them and they’re not blowing up our buildings we call them “freedom fighters”) and have the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction on the planet.

But this is typical, I’m finding, of an administration ready to exert its will upon anyone at any time. We started the Iraq campaign (before it became Operation Iraqi Freedom) because Bush and his puppet masters believed Hussein had given money, weapons and aid to anti-American terrorists. But look at it this way. The U.S. has given money, weapons and aid to the Israelis for years, which they have in turn used against the Palestinians. (Pre-“Road Map to Peace,” of course.) Under our current logic, wouldn’t the Palestinians be justified in declaring war on us? Forget, for a moment, the fact that we’d slaughter them. Wouldn’t that be a just war, from their perspective?

But the administration continues to paint in broad strokes, failing to see the nuances that must be taken into account when establishing foreign (and domestic) policies. We’ve kept it basically black and white – if you agree with us, you’re a Friend of Freedom. (And you get a membership card and a secret decoder ring…) If you disagree, you’re an evildoer. Period. The same Saturday morning cartoon logic applies to our domestic dealings as well, with law after law designed to separate the good guys from the bad based on their willingness to fall in line.

Which is all too ironic, since we’re ostensibly spreading freedom to the rest of the world. The proposed Partiot Act II (hot on the heels of the original Patriot Act, now law, which, among other things, makes it okay for the government to detain indefinitely, without proof or charge, anyone they suspect of terrorist activity) would effectively shatter the Bill of Rights, turning this into a much less free nation. The original Patriot Act came with an expiration date – at the end of 2005, it will disappear without congressional renewal. Which is why Orrin Hatch wants to make it permanent.

The us-against-them climate in America continues to spread, with those willing to exercise their American right to disagree being increasingly silenced through fear of recrimination. It’s not even necessary to veer too far from the entertainment and pop culture focus of this site to provide examples. In fact, in an address to the National Press Club this month, outspoken actor/director Tim Robbins pretty much laid it all out. The wave of hate is spreading, he says, and it’s hard to disagree.

Take this site, for example. They bill themselves as the “conservative alternative” to Ben and Jerry’s, offering up flavors like Nutty Environmentalist, Smaller Govern-Mint and (my favorite) I Hate the French Vanilla. Their stated objective is to offer a choice to those sick of supporting “whacko liberal causes” to get good ice cream. You know, like cleaning up the planet, or tightening child labor laws. Whacko causes like that. Star Spangled Ice Cream instead pledges a chunk of their profits to the U.S. military, which we all already pay for through our taxes, and whose funding has been exponentially increased in the past few years.

But what’s disheartening about Star Spangled Ice Cream is their assertion that “real Americans” agree with them. Worse, while their site is certainly funny, it’s also much more mean-spirited than their liberal counterpart, who promotes peace and love and doesn’t have a flavor condemning an entire country’s people. The simply stated message is that we real Americans hate and mock those who disagree with us. Oh, and we also like to make lots of money.

Try this one. This is a site maintained by a group of people who want Michael Moore stripped of his Oscar for Best Documentary for Bowling for Columbine. They offer as evidence the fact that Moore staged a couple of things and sneakily edited a couple of others, all of which is true enough. Moore should certainly be taken to task for a few of the things in Columbine, most especially Charlton Heston’s severely rearranged speech, but they do not make his work fiction, nor do they negate the points his film makes, points which, more than anything else, won him the Academy Award.

But again, what’s fascinating about this site is that the writers don’t seem to care about the alleged fabrications as much as they care about Moore’s politics, and how they disagree with party line. They don’t want Moore censured by the Academy for allegedly violating the rules of documentary filmmaking, they want him shamed before America for daring to disagree with King Bush II. Had Moore made a nice, gracious acceptance speech, this site would not exist. The amazing thing is that the site’s authors make no bones about it – the allegations are merely means to an end. It’s all very Ken Starr. (And they even get a shot in at the French.)

The worst part about all of this to me is that the right wing is trying (and in many cases, succeeding) in painting those who utilize their uniquely American freedom to speak out against policies with which they disagree as anti-American. With the rest of the world drawing parallels between Bush and Hitler and pointing out the similarities between our empire-building in the Middle East and the rise of Nazi Germany (and there are several, and they’re scary), it’s more important now than ever that those inclined to speak do so.

Yes, it is possible to support the troops and oppose the war. Yes, it is possible to support our country and rail against those leading it away from its most cherished principles. Yes, it is possible to be an anti-war activist and not be a terrorist. Things are not black and white, and freedom needs to be protected here before it can be doled out elsewhere. We need to raise voices now before it all goes away.

* * * * *

It is into this strange domestic political climate that Madonna has released her new album, called American Life. She’s a master ironist, so she surely appreciates the subversive nature of an American citizen living in the U.K. making an album called American Life with a French producer. She also must appreciate the oddity of the former Material Girl making an album almost entirely about the evils of materialism, the cancer at the heart of modern America, but here it is.

Some would take me to task for even mentioning Madonna in this column, claiming that if we’re discussing musical artists, her name shouldn’t be on the list. There are certainly arguments to be made in that direction, but in the past few years, Madonna has taken complete control of her career and driven it to places no one would have expected. She’s taken risks, jumped over cliffs and delivered some fairly revolutionary pop music in the bargain.

Still, her primary talent appears to be her uncanny ability to surround herself with the finest talent available, people who will make her sound more musically visionary than she actually is. In 1998, she released what is still her finest work, Ray of Light, a collaboration with British techno wizard William Orbit. This album fused her traditional pop tunes with the thumping, twittering electronics of the European club scene, showing that one didn’t have to overpower the other. It was a mature, radiant pop album that certainly, if nothing else, established Madonna as far more than some prepackaged marketing product.

In fact, much of Ray and its surprisingly downbeat follow-up, Music, was surprisingly non-commercial. It was on Music that Madonna hooked up with that French producer, Mirwais Ahmadzai, and they established the template for their shared sound on “Don’t Tell Me,” one of the album’s hits. It married a twittering beat to a fractured, digitally edited acoustic guitar, creating a form of dance-folk that, in Madonna’s world, qualifies as a major innovation.

That innovation makes up much of the sound on American Life, which, if not for Ahmadzai, would be the first acoustic folk album of Madonna’s career. It is almost painfully stripped down, and acutely, nay, embarrassingly confessional and honest. Not that there was ever much to begin with, but Madonna has completely removed the poetry from her lyrics, and with less emphasis on the musical ear candy side of her work (Ray of Light was like giving your ears an Easter basket), the lyrics come to the fore by default.

Kudos to Madonna for truly speaking her mind on this disc, however. She takes on her former materialistic life again and again, speaks out about her situation with her parents and how it might affect her ability as a mother, and embraces an even more overtly spiritual stance than she took on Ray. The record will make you flinch several times, though, because she does all this in the plainest language imaginable. “I’m So Stupid,” “Nobody Knows Me” and “Mother and Father,” just to name three, are so bluntly forthright that they almost inspire giggles. “X-Static Process,” where she details the moment she discovered she “was special too,” comes closer to full-on laughter.

But she’s so earnest that it’s almost cruel to laugh. And she does raise some interesting observations, mostly because they’re coming from Madonna, about the effects of greed and materialism on one’s soul. Here’s the thing, though: for someone who’s supposedly renounced the material world, she certainly spends a lot of time dwelling on it here. In the album’s title track, she even rattles off a list of amenities she’s bought for herself – personal trainers, etc. – that don’t satisfy her, but that, one senses, she won’t be giving up any time soon.

In fact, she may have hit upon the central paradox of modern American life, especially that of the liberal left. We decry greed and materialism, striving to help the less fortunate and increase our spiritual awareness, and at the same time we buy every piece of shiny, noisy crap we can get our hands on. American Life comes packaged (in a $25 limited edition) in a large box with posters, stickers and other things we really wouldn’t want if we believed the album’s message.

The irony continues: at track 10 of American Life is “Die Another Day,” the theme song from the latest James Bond flick. You know, that bastion of crass commercialism in which things blow up, girls show off their assets, and movie studio executives make tons of money? While we’re on the subject of tons of money, wouldn’t you bet that Madonna made bunches to write and sing the song? And here it is again, helping to sell her new album and make her bunches more. Its inclusion counters nearly all of the album’s main points, which may be a point in itself.

So is Madonna jerking us around? Who knows? I thought she was kidding when she married Guy Ritchie and wanted to be in a remake of Swept Away, but she did both, sweeping the Razzies in the process. Who can explain her motivations? This is a woman who, on “Nothing Fails,” enlisted a gospel choir to sing the line “I’m not religious” in glorious heavenward harmony. This is a woman who made a video for the title song in which she physically attacks a mock-up of George W., and then pulled it out of sensitivity for the political climate. Huh? When has Madonna ever been sensitive to the political (or social, or sexual) climate?

American Life is a mystery, albeit an enjoyable and increasingly mature one. It also confounds itself repeatedly. Take “Hollywood,” a nifty techno-acoustic romp that could easily be a hit. Problem is, pretty much every line ends with either “Hollywood” or “good.” The song runs out of ideas a minute in, and climaxes with a phase-shifted rap that should have been cut. These bad judgments surface all over the record, the first Madonna album that could be termed a “grower.” Repeated listens bring the subtleties in Ahmadzai’s production to the surface, but his self-limited sonic palate here grows wearying on first spin.

But damn, this is a risky record, and for that, I applaud her. It would be incredibly easy to just keep making bland hits, like Celine Dion, until someone gives you a lucrative Vegas show for three years. Madonna has consistently reinvented herself, both visually and musically, and that she occasionally stumbles just goes to show that she’s not some record company puppet. American Life has numerous rewards buried beneath its surface, not the least of which is its ironic approach to its subject matter, but in the end, even its silliest moments offer further proof that Madonna didn’t earn a 20-year career by being anyone’s fool but her own.

* * * * *

Scenes from the workplace: I just had to mention this. The plant where I work subscribes to this motivational poster service, through which they get a new inspirational platitude each month. The idea is by promoting a sense of belonging and togetherness among the employees, the company can make them all forget that they have a lousy job with lousy hours and lousy wages. Or something like that.

Anyway, April’s poster extolled the virtues of teamwork, and I must have walked by it every day and only this week realized what’s funny about it. The picture intended to illustrate how teamwork and hanging together makes us all achieve better things is of a five-member tandem skydiving team, free-falling in a circle with hands clasped about each other’s forearms. The caption says something about how it’s amazing what people can achieve by sticking together, or something like that.

But here’s the thing. If, at some point, those five people don’t stop hanging together, disengage and pull their ripcords, they’re all going to die. Sticking together will get them all killed. So it really doesn’t quite illustrate the point, I don’t think.

Anyway, made me laugh.

* * * * *

This week’s Buffy packed the same emotional wallop as the last episode did a physical one. The writers have been carefully and methodically setting their amazingly complex title character up for this fall all season, and in fact for several seasons. I’m getting the sense that this is all going to end tragically and beautifully. Only three to go…

Next week, probably Blur or Richard Thompson or Fleetwood Mac or the Violet Burning. Or maybe all of them.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I have a migraine headache today that I just made a whole bunch worse by running three miles on a treadmill, so this one’s going to be kind of brief. I have a very small window of clarity here before my Advil wears off and the dull pain magically transforms into an army of jackhammers chipping away at the inside of my skull, so let’s get to it.

I’m also not quite ready to review any new music this time. I planned on discussing the intriguing, embarrassing new Madonna album, American Life, but it’s so much different than what I expected that I think I need a few more days with it to formulate my thoughts. I also haven’t made it all the way through the new Fleetwood Mac, Say You Will, because it’s 76 freaking minutes long. What I’ve heard, I like, but I can’t very well fill a whole column with scattered impressions on the album’s first half.

Additionally, I’m having a bit of trouble downloading Wilco’s More Like the Moon EP, which the band made available at their website this week. It figures that I’d have no difficulty illegally downloading early mixes of the forthcoming Radiohead album, but when it comes to obtaining music Wilco actually wants me to hear, I’m at a loss. Next week, perhaps.

So what does that leave for this time? Well, I’ve noticed that I’ve kind of fallen away from my previous tradition of updating you all four times a year on upcoming releases, and we’ve got a ton of them coming up, so I figured I’d just do that. If you’re disappointed, I don’t blame you, but see above re: army of jackhammers, shut the hell up and leave me alone. I’ll be better next week.

Until then, here’s the skinny on new music for the spring and early summer:

Next week sees the release of Plasma, a live compilation from Trey Anastasio, lead voice and guitar for Phish. Trey did a successful solo tour last year, and the results push these two CDs to their maximum length limits. Much like his self-titled solo record, Trey live is reportedly jazzier than Phish, with nifty horn and saxophone improvs. Sounds cool.

Also next week is the new Violet Burning album, This Is the Moment, but only if you’re registered with Northern Records. Members have already begun receiving their copies of the long-awaited disc, but the rest of the general public won’t get theirs until June. The good news is, I’m a member, and I should be getting a package with that album and Wayne Everett’s (Prayer Chain, Lassie Foundation) solo debut sometime soon. The Violets album is apparently poppier and less melodramatic than previous releases, but still retains the band’s feel and edge. Yay.

May 6 brings us Blur’s new one, Think Tank, which advance reviews have called so disjointed that it practically falls apart while you’re listening to it. Can’t tell yet if that’s a good thing. Richard Thompson also returns on the 6th with The Old Kit Bag, which came out in the U.K. a while ago. Thompson is the British guitar player that makes Eric Clapton sound like the aging lite-FM geezer he is, despite his being roughly the same age. If there were any justice in the world, Thompson and Clapton would have exchanged fanbases decades ago.

Not much on the 13th, just Marilyn Manson’s The Golden Age of Grotesque. On a related topic, one of my favorite moments of Bowling for Columbine was Manson’s response when Michael Moore asked him what he would say to the students of Columbine High School. “I wouldn’t say a thing to them,” he replied. “I’d listen to what they had to say, which is what no one did.” A perfect answer.

Anyway, May 20 is going to be hell on the ol’ checkbook. Starflyer 59 unleashes Old, their seventh full-length, and we’ll see the return of Live (Birds of Pray), King’s X (Black Like Sunday) and John Mellencamp (Trouble No More, a self-described American roots album. So what’s the rest of his catalog, then?). Plus, a ragged pop supergroup called the Thorns releases their first album, which is interesting because the Thorns are Matthew Sweet, Shawn Mullins and Pete Droge.

But I’ve saved the best for last – a new album on May 20 from one of the planet’s true geniuses. That’s right, I’m talking about “Weird Al” Yankovic, who drops his 11th (11th!) slab of funny, titled Poodle Hat. More than that I don’t know, but how can you pass this one up?

May concludes with a three-CD live album from Led Zeppelin on the 27th. Called How the West Was Won, this set is designed to take the place of the soundtrack for The Song Remains the Same, with which the band was never happy, as the definitive live Zep recording. And yes, it includes a 30-minutes-plus rendition of “Dazed and Confused.” With the violin bow.

June gets off to a good start with a packed-to-the-gills 3rd. New ones are scheduled to appear from Bruce Cockburn (You’ve Never Seen Everything), Eels (the delightfully titled Shootenanny!), Guster (the about-damn-time Keep It Together) and Jewel (the cryptically named 0304). Plus, Mainers 6gig pay tribute to their late drummer Dave Rankin by releasing the album he helped them create in his final year, Mind Over Mind. Really looking forward to that one.

June 10 sees the new Metallica, St. Anger, which, if you believe in karma, is probably already available for illegal and Lars-enraging download online. But unless you buy the CD, you won’t get the bonus DVD that comes with it, featuring the band playing all the songs from the album live. Until, that is, the DVD content becomes available for illegal and Lars-enraging download online. Your choice, then.

Speaking of illegal downloads, Radiohead’s real version of Hail to the Thief also hits on the 10th, as well as the new Grandaddy, called Sumday. But enough about Radiohead wannabes, let’s go back to talking about Radiohead. I read a couple of unconfirmed reports that Thief will come packaged with an interesting extra – a bonus CD containing a complete re-recording of their debut, Pablo Honey. It’s no secret the band has always hated the way that album turned out, so if this is true, it will be a most interesting listen. Sort of like time travel.

Anyway, the new Type O Negative, out on June 17, is called Life Is Killing Me, and if you’re right now nodding your head and saying, “Of course it is,” then you must be familiar with this band. Expect long, droning oceans of despair, all delivered with tongue firmly in cheek. June 24 sees the new Delerium, called Chimera, which features return engagements with some of their most successful vocal collaborators, including Matthew Sweet. Yaay!

And the farthest my crystal ball can currently see is July 8, when Outkast releases two albums in one case, called Speaker Boxx/The Love Below. Basically, Big Boi and Dre decided to do solo albums, but they both liked the other’s record so much that they agreed to release them together as an Outkast project. Pretty neat. They have yet to release a bad record, and they’re one of the few rap acts (De La Soul is almost the only other one) in whom I have complete faith.

Oh, and one more little tidbit. Sometime before the end of the year, Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, who are collectively known as Tears for Fears, will release Everyone Loves a Happy Ending, their first album together since The Seeds of Love in 1989. (I’ve just watched Donnie Darko again for the 400th time, a movie that always gets me thinking about Tears for Fears.) Considering how good Orzabal’s solo album was, this should be pretty cool.

And that should do it. Happy spending, but don’t forget to wait for someone like me to tell you what to think before you buy. We wouldn’t want you all just checking out new music willy-nilly, would we? You might find something you like, on your own, which would completely invalidate my existence. So don’t do that. But if you do, write me and tell me about it, ‘kay?

Next week, the stuff I should have reviewed this week. I’m going to bed now, because the guys with the jackhammers have started pounding away at my cranium. And they’re not union and they don’t take breaks.

Ow.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Well, I did something this weekend I thought I’d never do again. Desperation, I’ve found, leads men down shameful paths, and the lure of money is a strong one indeed. I am rather embarrassed to admit this, but I succumbed to its siren call on Saturday, plunging into a situation I thought I had left behind for good three years ago.

Yes, it’s true. I worked in a grocery store.

As you’ve probably guessed, this is not virgin territory for me. I jockeyed a register for 10 years or so, and shuttled from the front end to the produce department for a couple more, to supplement the income of a poor college student (none) and, later, that of a starving magazine editor (slightly more, but only slightly). Despite the interesting people I met there (Hi Megs, Hi Alley), I hated virtually every second of that job, and so walking back into a supermarket environment was amusingly dreadful.

I only worked for six hours, through Manpower, doing what supermarkets call a demo. I had a table, some plastic cups, and an assortment of store brand products, and I graciously handed out these samples to unsuspecting, hungry customers. The hardest part was saying the names of these store brand products without letting irony creep into my voice. For instance, the store brand version of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal is hilariously named Cinni-Mini Crunch. Honestly, try this: say that out loud, right now. Cinni-Mini Crunch. You laughed a bit, didn’t you? It’s nearly impossible to say with a straight face.

I told you that story to tell you this one. Wandering the store at the same time as my scheduled demo was the Easter Bunny, resplendent in matted white fur and creepy-looking mesh eyes which probably didn’t allow the guy sweating profusely inside the costume a whole lot of air. Or, for that matter, a whole lot of vision. Which was probably for the best, considering his aisle-wandering companion.

It seems that the Easter Bunny couldn’t handle walking around and handing out chocolates to kids by himself, so he thought he’d invite his incredibly hot and apparently clothes-allergic girlfriend to walk around with him. Seriously, imagine Carmen Electra dressing like Christina Aguilera and you’ve got the gist. I couldn’t help but wonder, because that’s the kind of guy I am, how parents were explaining this pairing to their children. “Look, kids, it’s the Easter Bunny, and his, um, trashy whore…”

Or how about this: “Her? She’s Mrs. Bunny.” Uh huh. First name “Humpslikea,” by any chance?

Still, provided interesting scenery, I must say. And I promised myself on my way out that I’d never come to work in a supermarket again, and this time, I meant it.

* * * * *

Robbie Williams is a superstar in his native Britain, and in fact in most of the world. His fifth album, Escapology, just dashed expectations by premiering at number 46 or so in America, likely scrapping Williams’ long-discussed plans to make a major stateside push this year. So far, that push has included an appearance on MTV Cribs, and that’s about it. The funny thing is that the folks in Williams’ camp and at Virgin Records seem surprised by Escapology’s flop, when in truth, there’s nothing surprising about it.

Robbie Williams will never be popular in America. End of story.

Oh, sure, he’ll probably have another moment of radio glory like he did in 1999 with “Millennium,” from his U.S. debut The Ego Has Landed. But the kind of celebrity he’s enjoying across the Atlantic? Never happen here, and I’ll tell you why. Two words: Freddie Mercury.

Most people who remember Queen only remember the late ’70s stuff – “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “We Will Rock You” – and have likely forgotten that they soldiered on through the ’80s, producing several decent albums’ worth of gloriously excessive pop music. Those hoping for another Night at the Opera got “Radio Ga-Ga” and “Hammer to Fall” instead, earnestly corny numbers fronted by Freddie Mercury’s increasingly flamboyant and hammy voice. The final straw for America was the band’s 1984 video for “I Want to Break Free,” which found the boys vamping in drag.

See, the problem was that Queen (and especially Mercury) had embraced their proclivity for pure camp, a level of humor that the Brits love and the Americans don’t quite get, for the most part. Those Monty Python sketches with Eric Idle in a dress? Camp. Need I even mention The Rocky Horror Picture Show? Tim Curry is the very soul of camp.

But camp in America means airings on PBS, and midnight showings attended by people who never, ever listen to the radio. American humor is very different – it’s usually about people getting cut down, and usually features only the mocking and the mocked. Camp humor has no targets, only silly people fully embracing their own silliness. What most campy performers don’t realize when they come to America is that if they don’t provide a target for their humor, we’ll simply assume the performer himself is the target, and point and laugh and mock.

And I think it’s because in some way, we need to respect our performers. Most rap is about respect, for example, and about presenting the appearance of badassness. (Or is it badassitude? Badassitivity?) The public would probably have a hard time with the idea that most gangsta rappers have never even held a gun. Even fringe element rebellion is repackaged, shot in flattering lights and given right back to us, and we’re so ready to respect Avril Lavigne for her so-called punk attitude that we wouldn’t know what to make of genuine punk like the Clash. (A band of whom, by the way, little Avril has never heard.)

So when an entertainer goes out of his or her way to make an ass of him or herself, no matter how knowingly, we tend to lose that respect. It happened to Mercury, and my bet is it’s happening right now to Robbie Williams. Furthering the connection, does anyone remember that Freddie had a solo album in the late ’80s called Mr. Bad Guy? It was a huge, silly record that sailed blithely over the top, preening and emoting all the while, and it flopped big time over here. And it’s an album upon which Williams seems to have patterned his whole career.

Escapology is just like every other Williams album, and just like Mr. Bad Guy – it’s a hooky slab of campy excess with all the subtlety of a brick to the face. It’s also a hell of a lot of fun, in an irreverently British sort of way, but there’s nothing tough or badass about it. Williams would rather wink at you and mock himself than affect a believable pose, and that’s what’s going to kill him over here.

Normally, you understand, I wouldn’t care so much about an artist’s popularity, but Williams seems so concerned with it, and he’s really tried his best on this album to craft a smash hit. Problem is, what flies in Britain is relegated to the cutout bin here. Opener and first single “Feel,” for example, pulses on a decidedly Pet Shop Boys beat and piano figure, and they haven’t had an American hit since 1988. “Monsoon” is right out of the ’80s Queen handbook, and “Revolution” is almost a Rick Astley-style blue-eyed soul number. It’s all good stuff, but it’s not going to topple Justin Timberlake from the top of the charts.

One of Williams’ most endearing and hilarious qualities is his take on his own fame, a recurring theme on Escapology. Unfortunately, that preoccupation renders many of the album’s best tracks DOA in a country where Williams is relatively anonymous. Plus, I don’t think the general public would quite get it. As a case in point, remember Right Said Fred? The “I’m Too Sexy” group? They had a fun 15 minutes of fame over here, to be sure, but I’m still surprised by the number of people who didn’t get that the song was a joke. Those three odd-looking bald British guys didn’t really think they were too sexy for their shirts. Honest.

So what will Americans make of “Handsome Man,” the single best track on Escapology? Everything about the song smirks, from the punchy guitars to Williams’ hilariously mock-arrogant vocal performance. “It’s hard to be humble when you’re so fucking big,” he says, and then asks, “Did you ever meet a sexier male chauvinist pig” before promising to “milk it ’til it turns to cheese.” But wait, he goes on:

“Y’all know who I am, I’m still the boy next door
That’s if you’re Lord Litchfield and Roger Moore
Have I gone up in the world or has the world gone down on me?
I’m the one who put the Brit in celebrity
Give in and love it, what’s the point in hating me?
You can’t argue with popularity
Well, you could, but you’d be wrong…”

If you laughed at that more than once, then Williams is probably up your alley. He mocks himself relentlessly on Escapology, noting that “I’m here to make money and get laid, yeah I’m a star but I’ll fade” on “Monsoon” and dashes all notions of sincerity on “Come Undone”: “So write another ballad, mix it on a Wednesday, sell it on a Thursday, buy a yacht by Saturday…”

Funnier still is that his sincere numbers are often touching, as much as Mercury’s forays into balladry. Best of those is “Nan’s Song,” the last proper number on the disc and the only song here Williams wrote solo. It’s a sweet goodbye to his departed grandmother, and if Williams notices the bizarre juxtaposition of these sweet sentiments with the trash talk of “Handsome Man,” he doesn’t let on. He expects you to switch gears right along with him.

And then there’s “Me and My Monkey,” a seven-minute tale of gunplay, Sheena Easton, gambling and, yes, monkeys. This is the sort of hysterical, campy fun that just leaves most folks scratching their heads, but Williams hurls himself into this bizarre concept full-bore, and the result is both brave and deliriously stupid. It even features a mariachi band. No shit. You won’t believe this one until you hear it.

Chances are you never will, however, especially if you expect radio to play it. If you pass up Escapology, well, I can’t say you’ll be missing a masterpiece. It is, however, one fun disc – a pop album with no delusions of grandeur. All of its huge pomposity is just taking the piss, and all Williams wants is a laugh. But unless he loses all the things that make him so enjoyable and confounding, he’s never going to get any love from America.

One quick note: the U.S. version of Escapology features two songs not on the British version (“Get a Little High” and the nifty “One Fine Day”), but inexplicably excises three songs about his adopted home of Los Angeles. They’re worth hearing, however, especially if you like what you hear on the rest of the album. I will never understand repackaging an album for other audiences by messing with the track listing. Neither of the new songs will be singles, and the deleted tracks add some context to the overall record. Plus, like the rest of the album, they’re harmlessly inoffensive, so why were they deemed not fit for our ears? I don’t get it.

* * * * *

One last thing before I call it a night. Watching this week’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer was akin to getting kicked in the gut, and as I’ve actually been kicked in the gut, I’m qualified to make that comparison. I love the fact that 140 episodes in, this show is still able to sucker-punch you and leave you staring at your screen in stunned silence. Only four more to go…

Next week, probably Fleetwood Mac, or maybe Madonna. Or maybe I’ll chuck all that serious tripe and review MC Honky. You’ll just have to wait and find out.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

It turns out that I’ve made Radiohead quite angry.

Well, not me personally, but the band is rather upset at the versions of songs from Hail to the Thief, their sixth album, that ended up online last weekend (and were reviewed in this space last week). According to band members’ posts at their official site, the tracks leaked to the ‘net are stolen recordings of early roughs, most dating back to early February, which lends a fresh irony to their album title. Producer Nigel Godrich weighed in, explaining that some of the tracks aren’t even finished, and none of them are mixed. Basically, the Hail to the Thief reviewed last week is little more than a collection of high-quality demos and early sketches.

All I can say to that is, wow. If these are demos, then the real thing is bound to be so good it’s scary. These are 14 of the best songs Radiohead has come up with in half a decade, and even in the paste-up form circulating now, they comprise a great album. If the band manages to take this even further, I’ll be a very happy boy on June 10. Stay tuned…

* * * * *

The name Ester Drang is probably unfamiliar to most of you. I myself only discovered them at last year’s Cornerstone Festival, where I caught their spellbinding, magical live show. At that time, they were touring in support of their first full-length, an amazing work called Goldenwest that I praised up and down. The album sounds like Radiohead at their spaciest, but with coherent and melodic frameworks beneath all the songs. It’s a huge, labyrinthine work that engages the mind while it envelops the senses. If you think I’m being hyperbolic, then you haven’t heard it.

Unfortunately, since my encounter with Goldenwest came more than eight months after its release, I wasn’t able to place it in my Year-End Top 10 List for 2002, but it was far and away one of the best records I heard last year. No big thing, I figured. This band is bound to put out a great second album soon, I reasoned, and I’ll be sure to give it the attention it deserves.

And that time is now, but leave it to the band to throw a wrench into that plan. Ester Drang signed with Jade Tree, Pedro the Lion’s label, earlier this year, and they’ve just released their second disc, called Infinite Keys. Everything about this disc, from the title to the cover photo of a seemingly endless landscape topped by an even more endless skyscape, would lead one to expect an expansion of the Goldenwest sound – a huge, glorious, spaced-out record of swirling atmospheres. Everything, that is, except the disc itself, which happens to contain nine succinct and straightforward songs, clocking in at just under 39 minutes.

It takes a couple of listens through Infinite Keys to grasp what the band has done here. The album basically contains the same beautiful noise as Goldenwest, but they’ve simultaneously increased the density and shortened the sprawl. They’ve added string sections to several tracks, an art-rock staple that most bands of similar ambition usually get around to adding, and they’ve layered track after track of chiming, beautiful guitars. There’s even a saxophone solo at one point. The sound of Infinite Keys is pretty close to infinite, and each of these wondrous songs could go on for three times its length.

The wonder of the album is that they don’t. Whereas Goldenwest contained giant epics like the title track and the 12-minute “Words That Cure,” none of the numbers on Infinite Keys breaks the five-minute mark, and most stay right around four. After a few listens, though, it becomes clear that expanded running times would have been a detriment to this album. All of these songs are exactly the right length, free of the excess that most critics of progressive art-rock abhor.

The result is equal parts King Crimson-style atmosphere and indie-rock emotion, a big album of little moments. The band shifts tones and time signatures often, and embellish their songs with pianos, xylophones, sound effects and synthesizers, but they never lose sight of the simple feelings at the core. Nothing is drowned out, and Bryce Chambers’ often pained voice comes through loud and clear, grounding the proceedings nicely.

Among the gems here are “Oceans of You,” the closest this album comes to a sweeping powerhouse, and “If They Only Knew,” the sweetest melody Ester Drang has yet recorded. Also terrific is the string-laden “All the Feeling,” propelled by soaring piano and mallet percussion. Every song has something to recommend it – “Dead Man’s Point of View,” for example, has a stratospheric vocal melody, and closer “I Don’t Want to Live (In a World of Infinite Keys)” rides out on a tumbling, repeated piano figure that brings the whole song together.

At first, I was a bit disappointed in Ester Drang for not trying to outdo Goldenwest on this album. What they’ve done, though, ranks as a sweeter achievement – they’ve made passionate, droning art rock that will draw in both the emo crowd and the prog crowd. The result is something you can’t quite imagine until you’ve heard it a few times – like Stephen Malkmus covering Pink Floyd, in a way, or the Flaming Lips writing songs with Adrian Belew. It’s a great example of musicians being both ambitious and restrained in the same breath, and it’s refreshingly unlike anything else out there right now.

And it will probably find its way into the Top 10 List in December.

Get your hands on the album at www.esterdrang.com. Here’s the thing – since Goldenwest and Infinite Keys are so different in approach, I can’t recommend one over the other. Of course, I support buying both and deciding for yourself, but if you like shorter, more direct songs, go with Keys, and if you like twisting atmospheres, go with Goldenwest. Both are pretty amazing, though.

Next week, why Robbie Williams will never be popular in America.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Funny album title news first. You probably remember that Axl Rose has been promising a new Guns N’ Roses album for about eight years now. Called Chinese Democracy, the album is reportedly still being “refined,” while Axl and his new crew work vigorously at not playing their scheduled concerts. Well, enter the Offspring, who have decided to title their new album… Chinese Democracy. Subtitled You Snooze, You Lose, the album’s title is apparently a slap at Axl from Offspring singer Dexter Holland for stealing his hairstyle. The Offspring album is scheduled to come out next month. Axl’s album will be released someday, we think.

Just as an aside, does anyone else have trouble telling that Dexter guy’s voice apart from “Weird Al” Yankovic’s? Strange…

Anyway, on to the other recent announcement that made me laugh out loud. The guys in Radiohead have chosen Hail to the Thief as the title of their sixth album, a direct smack at George W. Bush. Band members have been playing down the political subtext of the title since revealing it, saying it’s really just a quote from the first song, “2+2=5,” but come on. Of course it’s a dig at Bush. At any rate, that album is scheduled for release on June 10.

And speaking of theft, how’s this: I’ve been listening to the album for two days.

In keeping with tradition, all 14 tracks of Hail to the Thief ended up on the internet this weekend, two full months before the record’s release. The band has greeted this news with a shrug, adding credence to the theory that they themselves leaked the tracks. They’ve also been quick to point out, as they did with both Kid A and Amnesiac when they were leaked, that the tracks are not mastered, meaning additional sounds and segues will likely be added when the final version is completed. Still, the basic shape and form of the album is there for the listening.

Oh, and Hail to the Thief does bear one very important difference from its two predecessors: this one doesn’t suck.

In fact, it’s pretty damn terrific.

I’m still sorting through my impressions, but I have no compunctions about calling Hail to the Thief the third-best Radiohead album, right behind OK Computer and The Bends. It’s got all the sonic atmosphere of Kid A, but they remembered to write songs this time, and impressive ones at that. Additionally, the first thing you’ll notice about Thief is that the guitars are back, and for most of the record, Radiohead finally sounds like a band again. It’s a welcome relief from the tuneless clangs and clatters of the last two discs.

I’m going to praise this record quite a bit in the coming paragraphs, so I want to make sure I get the scale straightened out here and now. Hail to the Thief, swell as it is, is absolutely nowhere near the luminous genius of OK Computer. In fact, I’m coming to think of that album as a miraculous fluke, a perfect divine accident that they will never repeat, or even approximate, again. Just so we’re clear on this: OK Computer is one of the best albums ever made. Hail to the Thief is merely very, very good, and if you pick it up expecting a glorious return to form, you’re going to be somewhat disappointed.

Okay, here we go. Album six. Hail to the Thief.

It opens with a series of dissonant feedback bursts, edited to sound like your CD is skipping, and when the familiar pitter-patter of those Kid A drum machines softly wafts in, you might be tempted to give up hope. But then Thom Yorke, harmonizing with himself, lays down a lovely vocal melody, which spins and turns over a vortex of whirling yet subtle guitar. The drums kick in, and we’re off. “2+2=5” is a powerhouse, plainly stating the quintet’s intent to get back to the business of being a real, honest-to-God band. It dives through a couple of Sonic Youth-esque breakdowns, and then crashes to a halt abruptly. It’s a superb opener.

“Sit Down Stand Up” begins with an eerie, beautiful piano and xylophone melody, which slowly builds in intensity until it explodes in a flurry of electronic percussion. It’s everything the Kid A material tried and failed to be – simultaneously grounded and weightless. This is perhaps the closest this album gets to approaching the mesmerizing effect of “Let Down” – Yorke’s repeated refrain of “raindrops” (I think) over the furious outro will stay with you for hours, and drummer Phil Selway seems to delight in dueling the drum machine. This is a winner.

Ditto for “Sail to the Moon,” for different reasons. This number is a soaring, piano-based ballad reminiscent of Zeppelin’s “The Rain Song,” or Radiohead’s own “Pyramid Song,” but better. What elevates it is the melody. Yorke is one of the world’s best singers if he’s given a melody to wrap his aching voice around, and this song makes the best use of his pipes since “Exit Music.” (Conversely, without a strong melody to sing, Yorke often comes off as whiny, over-caffeinated and irritating – see “Idioteque” as Exhibit A.) Everything you think a Radiohead song called “Sail to the Moon” should be, this one is.

The electronics come crashing back for “Backdrifts,” but instead of carrying the song, they merely create an idiosyncratic bed for Yorke’s vocal melody. You could easily imagine this song arranged for guitars, bass and drums, but even so, I think I’d like it this way better. This is the next logical step up from the more electronically-based tracks on Amnesiac, but it’s driven by the song, not the sounds. Imagine U2’s “Miami,” but much better. Near the end, an acoustic piano is played over the pulsing electronics – mixing the organic and the electronic is a recurring theme on this album, one which works to great effect here.

After the thump and shimmy of “Backdrifts,” the acoustic guitar opening of “Go to Sleep” is a surprise. What’s even more surprising is the places the band then takes the song, from a verse melody in 10/8 to a soaring chorus to a chunky electric midsection. This is one of the album’s highlights, and not the least of the reasons why is its full organic band sound. If you liked “Knives Out” on Amnesiac, this is that times 40. It even has a couple of guitar solos. Imagine that.

Similarly, if you liked the insistent throb of Kid A‘s “The National Anthem,” then “Where I End and You Begin” is a fantastic one-up. It’s based on a surging bassline that never quits, and Yorke’s gorgeous vocals are accented nicely by twin guitar atmospherics a la old U2. (Plus, no atonal horn section, so yay.) This is one of the few songs on Thief that picks you up and carries you along for its entire running time, and even though they don’t expand on the original motif much, it’s propulsive enough that it works beautifully. It concludes with all the instruments crashing to a halt and Yorke creepily repeating “I will eat you alive.”

That theme continues on the bizarre “We Suck Young Blood,” which begins with piano, brushed cymbals, handclaps and slide bass loping along in a sad, pseudo-jazz lament. It continues in this vein, no pun intended, with lovely Yorke-on-Yorke harmony and a nice guitar melody, until everything explodes and then disintegrates. This one defies easy description. Imagine if Queen did an awful lot of downers. Sort of.

“The Gloaming” most closely resembles “Backdrifts,” as it sets Yorke’s melody over a twittering bed of noisy electronics. In this case it’s more of a percussion sculpture that supports his heavily reverbed voice. This one is particularly haunting, in a way that similar tracks on Kid A and Amnesiac just weren’t. This track also emphasizes how effective Yorke’s voice is when he’s harmonizing with himself.

Once again the band follows up an electronic sound collage with a straight-up pop song – the single, “There There.” The opening guitar figure left a smile on my face a mile wide, and the song builds steadily from there, adding vocal harmonies and more insistent percussion as it goes along. It’s a simple ditty, based around the phrase “just because you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there,” but by the time it’s done, you realize that the song has effectively crescendoed for five full minutes, culminating in a crashing full band finale.

“I Will” is kind of a breather – strummed electric guitar and Yorke’s plaintive voice, multi-tracked to great effect. It’s reminiscent of “Exit Music,” yet not as venomous or insistent. The concluding refrain of “in our baby’s eyes” is perhaps the album’s most beautiful moment.

Believe it or not, these five white guys from Britain actually lay down a decent psuedo-funk groove on “A Punch-Up at a Wedding,” even if Yorke’s harmonized moaning at the start threatens to derail it. This is the album’s simplest song, sounding something like recent Peter Gabriel, but the amiable laziness of the groove carries it. It almost, but not quite, overstays its welcome.

The transition from the loose funk of “Wedding” into the dirty, blistering guitar of “Myxamatosis” is breathtaking, and even more impressive is that the syncopated progressive rhythm of the song is actually in straight four time. Yorke keeps to a lower register here, intoning the chorus: “I don’t know why I feel so tongue tied.” It’s an interesting contrast with the howling backdrop. If Devin Townsend hadn’t invented ambient metal already, this might be the prototype.

“Scatterbrain” slows things down with a sweet guitar and vocal melody that goes some surprising places. On first listen, it sounds like a pretty meander, but subsequent trips through it will reveal perhaps this album’s finest melody, one which only a singer of Yorke’s quality could pull off. The twin guitars of Ed O’Brien and Jonny Greenwood are magical here as well, chiming and ringing celestially.

After “Scatterbrain,” “A Wolf at the Door” sounds kind of like a bonus track. It’s a 6/8 shuffle delivered Elvis Costello style, with a hint of Bob Dylan’s phrasing. It grows before your ears into a towering, bitter-sounding rant, but it’s still something of an awkward conclusion. Plus, it’s over before you know it, a malady which plagued both Kid A‘s and Amnesiac‘s concluding tracks as well. It serves as closing credits music, if nothing else – disconnected from much of the album that came before it, yet nice in its own right.

So, do I recommend you go online and download Hail to the Thief? That’s entirely up to you, but I will say that the band doesn’t seem to mind that the album’s out there. Plus, this will be worth buying in June anyway, just to see how they string such a diverse collection together. Either way, you’re in for a treat, since this album is one fine piece of work. It’s single-handedly restored my faith in a band I’d just about written off, and it plays like the true follow-up to OK Computer. They’ve still got a long way to go before they reach those heights again, but Hail to the Thief shows that they haven’t lost sight of the path. In short, it’s simply wonderful.

Next week, more space-rock with Ester Drang.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

The Lost Dogs have a new album out, and it’s got me thinking about faith and religion.

Part of what I’ve been thinking about concerns that pained little sigh that many of you probably just let out upon reading that first sentence. We don’t like it when people talk to us about spiritual matters – it raises images of Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on our doors like pushy telemarketers, or obnoxious people on street corners handing out tracts. Whether or not we believe in some higher power, we prefer to maintain an ironic distance from matters of faith, lest we be considered one of those religious freaks.

That level of discomfort extends to the realm of music, I’ve discovered. Some of my favorite musicians, including the Lost Dogs, are on Christian labels and sing about spiritual matters. I’ve written about Christian music and musicians before in this column, many times, and I’ve tried to turn friends on to their albums, many of which rank with the best I’ve ever heard. Time and time again, I’ve received the same response: “I don’t like Jesus music.”

Which would be fine, if the perception of the “Jesus music” proffered by the Lost Dogs and their contemporaries weren’t so off base. I think the primary difference between most people’s idea of Christian music and the deeply beautiful work of the Dogs is the same difference between religion and faith, and people get those confused quite often as well. And understandably so, as organized religions have labored endlessly since their inception to make the two synonymous.

When most people think of God, they think of church. It’s natural, since church is where most people first hear about God, or Allah, or whatever you want to call the higher force that binds people together and gives them purpose. And from the very first time most of us enter a church, we hear it referred to as “God’s house,” the place where our ties to the spiritual world live. When we seek God out, most of us instinctively go to a church, as we did after September 11, in record numbers. It makes sense, and it’s exactly what the people running those churches hope that we do.

I have a jaundiced view of organized religion, as anyone who knows me can attest, and a lot of that negativity comes from the notion that you can’t have God without church. Religions have done more to turn people away from the idea of God than just about anything else, and it’s during times of political crisis within religious organizations that the synonym idea backfires.

Take the ongoing child molestation issue within the Catholic Church, a severe problem which has limited the church’s ability to draw new members. If the church is synonymous in people’s minds with God and matters of spiritual connection, and the priest is the most visible symbol of that church and those connections, then one cannot help but feel the same disgust and revulsion towards God that one feels towards the church because of that priest.

And if you don’t think that the church wants you to consider them on par with God, then witness their attempts to cover the issue up and remain blameless and trusted in people’s eyes. Shuffling potentially dangerous priests from one parish to another is not forgiveness. True penance involves confessing one’s sins, not sweeping them under the rug. It involves facing one’s actions and accepting the consequences, and most importantly, it involves not actually expecting forgiveness when you ask for it.

These issues are volatile and enraging, no doubt, and they often end up with people rejecting the notion of God all together. I know that I did for a while – I was raised Protestant Congregationalist, in a church full of self-righteous people. That same church has seen two senior pastors resign in disgrace after having affairs with congregation members. I haven’t been back since I was 16 or so, except for the occasional holiday, but those visits are more for my mother than anything else. The last time I set foot within those walls was for my grandmother’s funeral two years ago.

It was a while before I started looking for God again, and much to my surprise, I found him in moments and ways I never would have in church. It took me a while to figure it out, but I finally realized my guiding philosophy about God and religion: it’s not the band I hate, it’s their fans. Put simply, religion is not God, it’s religion. People do all kinds of crazy things in God’s name, and the important thing I’ve tried to remember is that God is not actively participating in any of them.

Faith, on the other hand, is between a person and his or her higher power, and that’s it. It’s a quiet, personal thing that rejects comparisons between people – faith never condemns another for being less than devout, for example. That, to me, is religion – concerned with the outward appearance of holiness at least as much as the actual presence of it. It doesn’t matter what religion you choose, or if you choose one at all – religions are just suits your faith tries on, and so far, none of them have fit for me.

In the same vein, faith has never been the cause of a war, or a crusade, or a slaughter. Religions often don’t even follow their own rules – one of the first recorded instances in the bible of God speaking to anyone was to Moses on Mt. Sinai, when God basically said “don’t kill anyone.” How the Catholics got from that to the crusades is completely beyond me. Faith is not about changing other people, it’s about changing yourself. Faith is also about being okay with the idea that people aren’t going to agree with you.

I’ve come to many of these conclusions with the help of some of the most beautiful music I know of, made by people who embrace their own spiritual sides and document them with unflinching candor. The first album I heard that mixed the spiritual and the human with perfect grace was called Circle Slide, by a little band called the Choir. I’ve mentioned them before – they’re one of the best bands in the world. They taught me that the religious music I’d been subjected to for years was just that – religious. You can’t fake honesty, and you can’t disguise music designed to give off a holy appearance.

Basically, religion preaches, and faith shares.

The Choir made (and still makes) music that comes from the soul, that takes an honest look at the world and spirituality’s place in it. That same sense carries over into Choir singer Derri Daugherty’s other band, the Lost Dogs, which also includes like-minded musicians Terry Taylor of Daniel Amos and Michael Roe of the 77s. (The fourth member of the Dogs, the late great Gene Eugene, died in 2000.) These guys do what any great songwriter does – they filter the world through their own experiences. They’re not about making you believe what they believe, they’re about examining their own beliefs and telling stories about their discoveries.

And that’s why their new one, Nazarene Crying Towel, is such a beautiful thing. The Dogs have long been about digging up the spiritual roots of American music, and here they’ve made a down-home, old-fashioned gospel record, the kind Johnny Cash used to make before he started covering Soundgarden and Nine Inch Nails. They use the words Jesus, God and Lord on this record more than they ever have before, and they stick to simple songs of solace and praise. It’s the kind of thing that usually turns me off – even Choir drummer Steve Hindalong has upset me lately with his City on a Hill series, because praise and worship music usually overlooks the humanity that I’m most interested in.

I can’t lie to you, though. I love every second of Nazarene Crying Towel. All 2063 of them.

Maybe it’s because the Dogs have done everything possible to make this sound like an old-time gospel record. Songs like “Moses in the Desert” are simple singalongs that would be ruined by modern production, so the Dogs just play them on acoustic guitars and sing them sweetly. There are very few bursts of electric guitar on this album, the most notable exception being Mike Roe’s roaring blues piece “Cry Out Loud,” and in some cases drums and bass are omitted. The production gives the album an earthy, deep feeling, one for which the Dogs have been striving for several albums now.

Or maybe it’s because the trio has learned over time how best to integrate their voices. They make their best use yet of high-toned Derri Daugherty here, especially on the glorious closer “Darkest Night.” Taylor shines on the Beatlesque “Mercy Again,” and Roe does his usual superb job on “Come Down Here.” But it’s when all three sing together, like on the lovely “Be My Hiding Place,” that they show their growth.

But most likely it’s because this is an album of honest and sweet songs, the very antithesis of the big, orchestrated modern worship album. It’s the simplest and most direct record they’ve ever done, and yet its heart is the humanity upon which they’ve always based their spiritual yearnings. Where most worship albums are concentrated on how much you – yes, you – need God, Nazarene Crying Towel is entirely about how much the Dogs themselves crave mercy and forgiveness.

Take these lines from Mike Roe’s “Come Down Here”: “There lies inside of me a heart that’s dark, come down here, won’t you come down here? Can’t take the fire but I’ll take a spark, if you come down here, we can chase that dark.” Or these, from Terry Taylor’s “Mercy Again”: “Lord are you still hiding? Where have you been? Show me, I’m still waiting, show me, my heart’s breaking, show me your mercy again.” Or these, from Taylor’s “Crushing Hand”: “Do what you must and save me, I am in the dust now, raise me, help my unbelief to go gently.”

Best of all, lyrically, is “The Yearning,” a poem about how God waits for us to come find him, sung from his point of view: “I was in the fields you would not reap, I was in the faith you failed to keep, in every arrow shot that never found its mark, I am in the words of this new song, in the love that draws you on, I am in the yearning of your lonely broken heart.” The theme of the album is present in these verses, and it’s a theme that infuses just about all of the Lost Dogs’ work. We are lonely, we crave, we yearn, but God is always there, waiting to embrace us.

In his accompanying essay, Taylor explains the album’s title – his grandmother had a ritual of crying out to the heavens while whipping her own back with a soft towel and rocking back and forth in her chair. Taylor believes these episodes were partially for the family’s benefit – “There was something of the Victorian actress in my grandmother,” he says – but he also sees the spiritual metaphor. “Could it be,” he says, “that Someone or Something is whispering to us through our brokenness and telling us that there is indeed a place where sadness turns to song, worry to wonder, burden to bliss, a place that we were always meant to inhabit, a place where a thing like Grandma’s perpetually broken heart is at last mended and we are all of us together again, healed and home?”

Nazarene Crying Towel uses its simple framework to get to the heart of all gospel music, the honest reflection on hope and healing. If such naked expressions of faith make you uncomfortable, then perhaps this album is not for you, but it’s important to realize where this is coming from, and how it differs from the usual Christian fare. It is far less important that you believe what the Lost Dogs are saying here, and more important that you feel their belief. Like all of their work, Nazarene Crying Towel is honest and personal, and it doesn’t drag you anywhere you don’t want to go. Rather, it softly offers you a window into the hearts and lives of Roe, Taylor and Daugherty, with the hope that you might see some of your own spiritual yearning within.

It probably has taken you longer to read this review than it would to listen to Nazarene Crying Towel and make up your own mind. You can do so at www.thelostdogs.com. If you’ve never heard the Lost Dogs before, I would probably not recommend starting with this one, beautiful as it is. Get Gift Horse or The Green Room Serenade Part One first, so you can see what they’re all about. Eventually, though, work your way to this simple, delightful gem. Like Taylor sings of God, it will be waiting for you to find it when you’re ready.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m not going to talk about the war.

Nope. Not at all. Not this week. Got far too many more important and frivolous things on my mind to restate my conviction that our crazed Texas cowboy-in-chief is leading us down the road to hell, with a smile on his face and whistling to the tune of Outkast’s “Bombs Over Baghdad.” All this while declaring a second, less publicized war on the Constitution of the United States. Man, November 2004 can’t come fast enough.

Not going to talk about it. Let’s talk music.

* * * * *

I finally heard that damned new Linkin Park song, “Somewhere I Belong.” This is what the major labels are pumping as the next billion-seller? God, does that thing suck. Rap that the untalented hacks in P.O.D. would laugh at, shrill and whiny screaming in the chorus about God knows what horrible torture suburban white kids in all the latest fashions must be undergoing, and a complete lack of any original ideas at all. Ooh, listen, a turntable, that’s fucking novel. Or it was, in 1992.

Now, I don’t listen to the radio, and I rarely switch on MTV, so the fact that I’ve heard this piece of tripe several times in the last week means that the record label has paid for some serious saturation here. My friend Chris, who has recently started tuning in to “alternative” radio again, reports that this song is getting played three or more times a day on his local station. The song sounds very much like the band knew that the label would be behind anything they did, and therefore they didn’t have to try to make something compelling on its own.

Plus, all that rich kid whining is so hard to take seriously, especially after Ben Folds’ merciless savaging of the whole genre on “Rockin’ the Suburbs.” “Y’all don’t know what it’s like, being male, middle class and white, it’s a bitch if you don’t believe, listen up to my new CD…”

Speaking of Folds, I just heard this bit of coolness. He and two other Bens, Ben Kweller and Ben Lee, have teamed up to form a bizarre pop trio called, naturally, the Bens. They’ve recorded an EP, they’re touring now, and they plan to record an album, with songs coming from all three Bens. Folds plays piano, of course, and Kweller plays drums while Lee jams on bass.

But wait, it gets better.

They plan to begin each show with a rendition of “It’s All About the Benjamins.”

That’s too damn funny. Too bad they’ll never get on the radio, because we need to play Linkin Park 78 goddamn times an hour.

* * * * *

I have a documented love of pop music of all stripes, but there’s a special place in my heart for that style of angular British new wave guitar pop that arose in the late ’70s. Commonly known as the “angry young men” movement, the insurgence of this style brought to our shores several pop geniuses, most notably Elvis Costello, who was just inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Even though Costello just became eligible for induction, to my mind it’s about damn time, and the music biz’s recognition of his decades of stunning work is just cool beyond words.

But along with Costello came others, some just as brilliant. Two in particular followed Costello down similar career paths in the ’80s and ’90s, turning away from the venom of their early records to craft glorious chamber pop, and attempt recognition as serious composers. Those two are Andy Partridge of XTC and Joe Jackson, a pair of wunderkinds who deserve universal acclaim as much as Costello does.

The guy who first turned me on to this style and these musicians probably doesn’t even know he’s responsible. His name is John Guevremont, and he was the best teacher I ever had in high school. Guevremont made it his mission to challenge everyone in his classes to think for themselves, conjure their own ideas, and read critically. He even lent me his four-track recorder about eight years ago, in an effort to encourage my musical experiments, and I shamefully haven’t returned it yet. I’m pretty sure Guevremont is reading this, because he sent me an e-mail about a month ago, which I also haven’t returned because I lost the address. So if you’re reading, Mr. G., I’m sorry, and write me again.

Guevremont also was a pretty good songwriter in his day (and probably still is, but I just like making him feel old), and he would often use his own songs to illustrate certain tricks of the language to his students. One of those songs was called (“I Wanna Live In a) Fishbowl,” a sarcastic rant about fame and privacy rendered in a jagged, propulsive new wave sound that, while common when I was five years old, was completely new to the 16-year-old me. I was just getting into the Beatles and R.E.M., and hadn’t given much thought to what came between the two.

Little did I know that I had just heard my first Joe Jackson song.

Well, not really, of course, but the style of “Fishbowl” was obviously patterned on the first few wonderful Joe Jackson albums. Jackson and his swell band (drummer Dave Houghton, guitarist Gary Sanford and un-freaking-believable bassist Graham Maby) exploded on the scene in 1979 with the caustic single “Is She Really Going Out With Him,” from the equally caustic album Look Sharp. Jackson was definitely the angriest of these angry young men, spewing delightful bile like “Happy Loving Couples” and “Sunday Papers” to jaunty, aerobic beats, and he carried that style on for two more albums, I’m the Man and Beat Crazy.

And then a funny thing happened. Costello, Partridge and Jackson all seemed to decide, around the same time, to start pushing the limits of their sounds. Costello and Partridge stuck with pop, but built it up into lush orchestral sound sculptures, while Jackson turned to jazz (Jumpin’ Jive) and orchestral musics (Will Power, Night Music). There was no escaping the charges leveled at all three singers – they’ve gotten old, the critics said, and they’ve lost their edge. No one wants to hear Costello do The Juliet Letters, they want Armed Forces.

Of the three, Jackson slipped the lowest below the pop music radar, even though everything he’s turned out (yes, even Heaven and Hell, a concept album about – seriously – the seven deadly sins) has been excellent. While Costello has remained a decent seller and Partridge has had sporadic hits (“Dear God,” “The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead”), Jackson hasn’t been on the radio since 1982’s “Steppin’ Out.” He even bemoaned the short attention span of the general public on “Hit Single,” a great song off his 1991 album Laughter and Lust. “Don’t give us the whole album,” he snarled, “who has that much time?” He followed that album up with more “serious” music that was unjustly ignored.

And then a funny thing happened. All three angry old men started plugging back in and reliving the old days. Partridge led the charge with XTC’s super-cool Wasp Star in 2000, and last year Costello surprised everyone with When I Was Cruel, a decent attempt at rocking out. Now comes Jackson, who has reassembled the Joe Jackson Band to record and release Volume 4, his first real pop-rock album since 1980. And surprise surprise, it’s absolutely fantastic.

There’s always the danger when returning to an old sound that the fire will have been extinguished in the intervening years. Costello came up somewhat short, for example, on roughly half of Cruel. Not Jackson, though. Volume 4 is just as venomous and sneering as volumes one through three, if a bit mellower. (The cover art even contains a sly reference to said mellowing – think Volume as in knob.) This is not a pastiche, however – it’s a new Joe Jackson album that continuously nods towards the old ones without aping them.

And the songs are just superb. First single “Awkward Age” is my favorite song of 2003 so far, the kind of instant classic Costello has somehow failed to write since Brutal Youth. “Little Bit Stupid” is a stomper of the highest order, and the twisty “Fairy Dust” sets social commentary a la “Real Men” atop a whirlwind of odd times and beats. Closer “Bright Grey” juxtaposes melody and dissonance over a powerhouse thrash beat. You’d never guess these guys were pushing fifty, so raw and propulsive is the sound. Jackson only stumbles once – “Dirty Martini” is banal and way too long.

But it’s when Jackson slows things down that he really shines, as has always been the case. “Love at First Light” is a smoky ballad fueled by Jackson’s piano, and even though it borrows a little much of “The Times They Are A’Changing,” it’s lovely. Ditto for “Blue Flame” and “Chrome,” but best of all is “Still Alive,” as bitter a breakup song as has even been written. “Something keeps on beating in there, I guess my heart survived,” Jackson sings, concluding, “I know I said I couldn’t live without you, but I’m still alive.”

Bottom line: if you like well-written, well-played pop music, this is chock full of it. Jackson has successfully revisited his past without sounding old and worn out – if anything, he sounds invigorated, like reuniting his band has reignited a fire that’s been dead for 20 years. The limited edition even comes with a six-track live CD made up of 2002 renditions of 1979 classics, and it’s obvious he hasn’t lost a note. If a guy Jackson’s age can still bellow and snarl through “Got the Time,” then Costello has no excuse. This is a truly swell album from a true genius, one that will hopefully rekindle interest in his equally swell catalog.

Next week, the Lost Dogs, most likely.

And goodnight, Mr. Guevremont, wherever you are.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Okay, back to the music reviews before this column turns into one of those goddamn blogs clogging the ‘net. Again, got a lot of nice comments about last week’s missive, and my cousin wrote to call me an idiot for taking stupid factory jobs, so it’s all good. Anyway, here’s what I’ve been listening to while job-hunting this week:

* * * * *

Ani Difranco is absolutely fearless.

If you need proof of that, and after 17 albums and more than a dozen years it’s nearly unfathomable that you would, just observe how she’s systematically rejected every label (and attendant fanbase) that’s been attached to her. It’s been a long and fascinating journey from head-shaven upstart folkie to mature jazz-folk composer, with a full head of hair and a heterosexual spouse to boot, but Difranco has never been anything but herself. She transcends the little boxes in which people like to place musicians.

A lot of artists complain about their labels and financial situations, claiming that if only they had control of their own output, they’d be making brilliant music on their own terms. As of this writing, Ani’s just about the only one to put her money where her mouth is, sustaining a lengthy and adventurous career on her own record label, with her own distribution and promotion team, and anchored by her tireless, endless touring. She started with a self-titled, cassette-only release in 1990, featuring just her voice and acoustic guitar, and through the years she’s slowly added instruments, shadings and arrangements, documenting every step of her growth along the way.

In my review of 2001’s mammoth double-disc Revelling/Reckoning album, I called it an arrival point, a plateau in her career. If one were to listen to that self-titled album and the double record back to back, one would be hard-pressed to guess at the steps she took to get there, so different is the sound. Difranco has become fascinated with jazz, incorporating beautiful dissonance and breathtaking horn arrangements into her folksy songs, and few traces of the acoustic troubadour she once was can be found. Rarely has an artist let her audience in on her own journey as completely as Difranco has, however – with at least one album a year since 1990 (and three in 1999), she’s unashamedly grown before our ears. Even her missteps (Up Up Up Up Up Up, for instance) are available in shining digital quality, waiting to be discovered as the crucial midpoints between moments of greatness.

Still, it would be hard to argue that Revelling/Reckoning was anything but a conclusion to one chapter of the Difranco story. Over two hours, she stretched the wings she earned on previous releases, coming up with a consistently engaging masterpiece. She even seemed to sense what a landmark the album was – she followed it up with a two-disc live summation of her career, last year’s So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter. While entertaining, that record felt like a holding action, unable to answer the question of how on earth Ani’s next studio release could compete with her best work to date. What would she do next?

Well, what’s a restless artist to do but Evolve.

That’s the title of Difranco’s just-released 17th album, a relatively succinct 12-song affair that clocks in a just under an hour. Were this any other artist, that title may lead you to expect something unlike anything you’ve heard from her before, but in Difranco’s case, Evolve is just an acknowledgment of her continued growth. Her fans can rest easy, and her detractors can ignore with no fear – Evolve is another set of strong jazz-folk songs with fantastic lyrics and superb arrangements, only this time the songs are stronger, the lyrics are even more fantastic, and the arrangements even more superb.

The first thing you’ll notice about Evolve is that, even though it’s only March, Difranco is way ahead in the Most Beautiful Packaging of the Year race. The album comes in a blue metallic foil die-cut slipcase, the sort of thing that used to adorn special issues of superhero comics in the early ’90s. This is what you can do with your own record label, especially if you only release (with a few exceptions) your own records, once or twice a year.

The album itself sounds like a single-disc edit of Revelling and Reckoning, mixing horn-inflected jazz numbers like “Here For Now” and the amazing “Slide” with solo acoustic guitar pieces like the title track and “Phase.” Those interested in this sort of thing will note that her skills at charting those horn parts have grown immensely – check out the thumping dissonance of “O My My” and the delightful little accents that elevate “Second Intermission.” Difranco is often underrated as a guitar player as well, especially since she all but phased the wrist-breaking speed out of her repertoire, but her nimble work here is never less than beautiful.

Evolve is among Difranco’s most consistent works, and the dead spots that have plagued her career are here kept to a minimum. The focus, as always, is on her voice and lyrics, but that voice has also evolved into a quirky, scat-influenced wonder, always avoiding the straightforward folk approach for a more interesting swoop and dive. Nowhere is that more true than on the bracing 10-minute “Serpentine,” which would be the album’s centerpiece if it were not the penultimate track. Here Difranco’s voice is accompanied only by a muted acoustic playing two chords, just to set key and time. That voice dips and soars and explodes all over that spare backing, making “Serpentine” the closest thing to beat poetry Difranco has done in some time.

In many ways, “Serpentine” follows in the same vein as last year’s venomous “Self Evident.” It’s a highly personal examination of life after September 11, taking broad yet pointed shots at corporate America, pseudo-democracy and violent responses to peaceful protests. “Give me my Judy Garland drugs and let me get back to work,” she sings in the album’s most chilling moment, “’cause the Empire State Building is the tallest building in New York.” Difranco knows a wound won’t heal if you keep poking at it, and she intends to continue poking until we learn the lessons she believes Sept. 11 should have taught us.

The closing slot on Evolve, following “Serpentine,” belongs to “Welcome To,” a sad grace note about that very process. “Welcome to something like elation when you first open your eyes,” she sings, “just ‘cuz it means that you must have finally got to sleep last night.” In many ways, healing, both personal and national, is the focus of Evolve, which sets tales of hopeless souls against a world of insecurity and violence. “Seems like you just started noticing how noticeably bad things really are,” reads the first line of “Icarus,” and that theme carries throughout.

Still, this is not a post-tragedy rallying cry like Springsteen’s The Rising. Difranco is too much of a storyteller to pander so shamelessly. Rather, she uses the noticeably bad state of the country to discuss the spaces between people, the blindness that extends from our view of America right down to our view of each other. “Serpentine,” in fact, juxtaposes the personal and the political, a national wound and a knife in the back, liberally splashing them both with the same anger and, ultimately, using both as an excuse for seclusion. At the song’s conclusion, Difranco wraps herself (and, by extension, us) in a cocoon, which we’re still in at album’s end.

But we know what happens inside cocoons, right? Eventually we emerge, evolved into something better and more beautiful. The album’s musical theme accents its lyrical one – we need to grow, slowly and gradually, into what we’re meant to be. Difranco highlights the personal and national depression she’s encountering, and she does so with the hope that we can grow beyond it. “My distraction’s my defense against a lack of inspiration, against a slow leak deflation,” she sings on “Phase,” and she’s documented that deflation here beautifully. But if she’s feeling that lack of inspiration, its evidence is nowhere on Evolve.

Like all of her recent work, Evolve is a difficult album. It takes some time to work its way into your system, and it’s a far cry from her immediately enjoyable early stuff. Those hoping Difranco will someday return to her brash folk-punk roots are missing the point. She’s growing up, evolving, and she’s giving us a front row seat while she does it. Few artists these days are willing to invite listeners on a trip like this, and it’s a ride I wouldn’t miss for the world.

See you in line Tuesday morning.