Well, 14 hours and 40,000 slaughtered insects later, I arrived in Massachusetts for my extended vacation. The house in Indiana is huge and wondrous, and all my stuff arrived intact. Basically, I’ve been having a good week so far.

A quick housekeeping note before I jump into this week’s review:

At the start of this enterprise, I stated that I would be taking two weeks off a year, one for Christmas and one for my birthday in June. Almost none of you noticed that I delivered one on my birthday anyway (6/5), and now it’s time to collect on that. Next week I’m going to Prague.

“Oh, I’ve been to Prague. Well, I haven’t been to Prague been to Prague, but I know that thing. That stop shaving your armpits, read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, realize how bad American coffee is thing.”

Sorry. Obscure film reference.

Anyway, I’m going to Prague next week, so no column for you. Don’t take it too hard, okay? If I come back and find that any of you committed suicide because you missed me and couldn’t live without my stunning, brilliant insights, I’m going to be pissed, okay?

Okay.

Weird mail day yesterday. I got a rejection letter from the grad school I really wanted to attend, and I also got the new Daniel Amos album, Mr. Buechner’s Dream. Guess which one I enjoyed more?

Daniel Amos has been around since 1975, constantly shifting styles under the direction of one of America’s great ignored geniuses, Terry Scott Taylor. It’s amazing to me that Taylor has amassed such a huge body of superb work (26 studio albums between three bands and a solo career) and he still remains unknown. Even the most knowledgeable of music fans will often shake their heads in bewilderment when Taylor’s name is mentioned.

As a case in point, I only became aware of Taylor’s oeuvre a year and a half ago. How such a great songwriter got by me is almost as depressing as the fact that Taylor has to hold down a day job to pay the bills. This man has never written an unsatisfying song, and if some of his projects don’t stack up to some of his others, it’s only because his best work is just that good.

Named after two Old Testament prophets, Daniel Amos started in California in the early ‘70s with a heavy-handed gospel message and a sound reminiscent of the Eagles. They quickly grew out of both, Taylor turning his spiritual concerns further inward and his musical concerns further outward. By the time they arrived at their magnum opus, the four-album Alarma Chronicles, DA was a musical force to be reckoned with, one that embraced a darker spirituality filled with doubt and questioning. Post-Alarma, Taylor re-formed Daniel Amos into the fun-loving Swirling Eddies, started the Lost Dogs with three other great spiritual pop musicians (The Choir’s Derri Daugherty, the 77s’ Mike Roe and the late, great Gene Eugene) and embarked on a wildly diverse solo career.

I’m not going to delve deeply into Taylor’s history here in this column. If you’re interested, though, I have constructed a Terry Scott Taylor buyer’s guide, and you can read that by clicking here. It’s a lot of history, and all of it is worth hearing, but I’m not going to dive into it here because the new one deserves a lot of space.

Daniel Amos has been on hiatus for six years, ever since their strange concept record Songs of the Heart in ‘95. Say one thing for Terry Taylor, he knows how to come back in style. Mr. Buechner’s Dream, the soon-to-be-released 13th DA album, is a 33-song, 100-minute, two-CD set that just might be this man’s best work. If you’re a Taylor fan already, you know how good something would have to be to attain that position. Mr. Buechner’s Dream is that good.

In fact, MBD is perhaps the strongest argument yet for Terry Taylor’s induction into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. In the tradition of Blonde On Blonde, Exile on Main Street, The River and Being There, it’s a classic, timeless American double record that stands toe to toe with the great rock records of the past 30 years. If you think I’m exaggerating, you haven’t heard it. (By the way, I know the Stones are British, so don’t e-mail me. Exile on Main Street is a pretty American-sounding album, though.)

None of MBD’s 33 songs fail to satisfy in that classic, primal melody addict way. The discs are titled separately, even though the album works best in a straight shot. The first disc (called Mr. Buechner’s Dream) is pure, undiluted American rock, the kind that Wilco does so well. The melodies are sweet and perfect, the guitars sound imported right out of the classics, and Taylor’s voice has never been better. This guy just turned 50, and he hasn’t lost a note.

Highlights include the dirty “Who’s Who Here,” the lilting “Rice Paper Wings” and the Lennon-ish “Over Her Shoulder.” The acoustic “I Get to Wondering” is extraordinary, as is the psychedelic “The Staggering Gods.” The first disc is bookended by tiny piano pieces detailing Mr. Buechner’s slip into and crawl out of slumber, and it ends with the round robin “Joel,” a perfect conclusion. The first disc contains the most immediately likable Daniel Amos material since their second album, but Taylor doesn’t sacrifice quality for accessibility.

The second disc, titled And So It Goes, truly shines. It’s a bit looser in places, and a lot more menacing. Disc two takes you on a ride akin to listening to the whole DA catalog in miniature. The emotional heart of the album lies on this disc as well, exemplified by “Flash in Your Eyes,” a tribute to fellow Lost Dog Gene Eugene, who died last year. Taylor is typically real here, emotional without being sentimental: “Now you’re the catch in my throat, was I in your dreams of last goodbyes, now you’re the thorn in my heart, was I a flash in your eyes?”

It’s typical of Taylor that he can balance his heartfelt tunes with hilarious ones like “She’s a Hard Drink” and not seem incongruous. The album ends with two beauties, “Steal Away” and “And So it Goes,” songs about finding peace amidst loss and pain. There has certainly been enough of it in Taylor’s life recently. In addition to Eugene, he also lost his father early this year, and the loss permeates this surprisingly optimistic work.

Sure, there are songs I could do without on here, but unlike those from most double disc affairs, the list is surprisingly short. (Like, three.) Mr. Buechner’s Dream is a stunner that will never get the recognition it deserves. That’s never stopped Taylor before, and it won’t stop him now, I’m sure. (The fifth Lost Dogs album, Real Men Cry, hits in October and contains yet another 12 Terry Taylor songs.) MBD is a statement of maturity and artistic growth that feels like the destination point of a long, strange trip. It plays like the best of Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Leonard Cohen, all rolled into one. It’s one of the great classic rock albums of the modern age, and will remain so whether it’s recognized as such or not.

Next week, Europe for me, nothing for you. I’ll regale you with stories when I return.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So I was having this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day on Thursday. All of my potential news stories fell through, and when I went home for lunch most of my furniture was gone and the rest was packed in boxes and plastic wrap in preparation for Saturday’s move. Not a good day.

And then I opened my mailbox, and found waiting for me an autographed copy of the Choir’s box set, Never Say Never. As Cleese says in the Holy Grail, “It got better.”

I’ve been a Choir fan for more than 10 years. The first album of theirs I heard was 1990’s Circle Slide, and I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said it changed my life. I heard it just as I was rejecting pat religion in search of deeper answers, and just as I was rejecting ’80s metal and trite pop in search of deeper music. Here, from the previously unexplored (by me, anyway) ghetto of Christian music, was an album that had everything I was looking for: real, honest, probing, and often dark spirituality couched in swirling, beautiful, unearthly soundscapes.

Incredibly, Circle Slide has grown with me. With every spin, with every passing year, I relate to it in a different way, and I find new insights hidden within it. I’ve picked up each Choir album I could find since then, and kept up with subsequent releases. While Circle Slide remains their artistic peak, every Choir record is worth owning, and most are worth cherishing. They’ve mellowed nicely with age, and they’re not spiritually searching as much as they used to be, but they remain one of the few bands that continue to have a lasting impact on my life, both personal and artistic.

The Choir has released 12 records, if you count their two live albums. The first nine of those are collected in their entirety on Never Say Never, so it’s an ideal introduction to the band. For a while, the band was including a copy of their latest studio record, Flap Your Wings, with the box set. That deal might still be going on, so after you read this, rush on over to www.thechoir.net and find out.

Never Say Never might be the most lavishly produced cheap box set I own. The Choir put this thing together on their own, and released it on sax player Dan Michaels’ new Galaxy21 Music label. Considering I was paying $60 for eight CDs and a 100-page book, I expected something less attractive. It’s a nice looking set, one that nearly conveys the beauty of the music within.

As for the music itself, well, I just took a trip through all eight CDs, and the flood of emotions is surprising, even for me. This band has existed for 20 years on the fringes, their audience never numbering more than a few thousand. Despite their ability to articulate the universal yearning for truth and grace without preaching, they’ve never managed to escape the Christian realm. I’ve tried every way I know over 10 years to get people to listen to this band. You don’t share a band like the Choir to prove how knowledgeable you are for having heard of them, you share a band like the Choir because it would be unforgivable to keep them to yourself.

The Choir started as Youth Choir in California in the early ’80s, a collaboration between the two guys most associated with the band, guitarist/vocalist Derri Daugherty and drummer Steve Hindalong. Though the lineup has changed considerably through the years, the core group of Daugherty, Hindalong, bassist Tim Chandler and sax player Dan Michaels has emerged as the soul of the band. At their best, you can hear these four distinct musical personalities pushing off of each other, and ending up with a sound like no other band out there.

Never Say Never‘s comprehensive book can give you the often humorous history of the band. I want to talk about the music.

The debut, Voices in Shadows, came out in ’85, and it sounds like it. In fact, the first three are weighted down a bit by their sometimes synthetic production. Shadows actually doesn’t suffer as much as the others, since the songs are relatively synthetic themselves. It’s a surprisingly listenable collection of Christian new-wave cliches, but you can hear Daugherty earning his wings as a singer. His glorious voice is one of the biggest draws of this band.

Shades of Gray, a five-song EP, hit less than a year later, and the difference is remarkable. Most notably, Hindalong began writing the lyrics here, hitting on a fine metaphor with “15 Doors.” The songs grew measurably in depth and scope.

Diamonds and Rain, the first under the Choir name, was another step forward, despite the interference of producer Charlie Peacock. His “Kingston Road” is a plastic speed bump in the middle of the record, which is especially grating considering the leaps Hindalong and Daugherty were taking in their own songwriting. “Render Love” remains a favorite, as does “Black Cloud.” Diamonds and Rain still fell short of the band’s vision, and was the last straw. From then on, they’d produce their own albums in their own Neverland Studio.

If you’ve ever heard an album like 1988’s Chase the Kangaroo, I want to hear about it. The Choir’s sonic palette exploded here, as Daugherty’s guitar took on monolithic, disturbing overtones drenched in reverb. The songs became landscapes, and the lyrics took darker, even murderous twists. This is an album that has the courage to point out the jagged edges without offering simplistic answers, something unheard of in mainstream Christian music, even today. Even the record’s gentler moments (“Sad Face” especially) are wise enough to hold your hand without dragging you anywhere.

Not content to stick with the new sound they’d created, the Choir then made a perfect pop record with Wide-Eyed Wonder in 1989. It’s a paean to children and families, and it manages to be sweet and honest without being trite or obvious. Coming as it does between their two darkest works, Wide-Eyed Wonder is a lovely shaft of soft-focus light that still manages to darken the corners (“Happy Fool,” “Car, Etc.”), all buoyed by the most effervescent guitar-pop in the band’s catalog.

I’ve already mentioned how I feel about their next album, Circle Slide. There’s enough sadness, joy, beauty and pain on this album to last a lifetime or three. Again, there are no easy answers, just a deep, honest search rendered in stunningly powerful words and music. The unquestionable centerpiece is “Merciful Eyes,” which carries in its four minutes a depth most artists don’t achieve even after 20 years. From first note to last, Circle Slide is one of the best records ever made.

With that in mind, where they went next was quite a surprise. Sick of the Christian rock ghetto, they dumped their record label and produced the eight-song Kissers and Killers independently. It’s a surprisingly loud morass of feedback and melody, trading the Choir’s signature clean reverb sound for distortion and power. For all that, Kissers is a pop record at its core, containing a number of indelible melodies (“Weather Girl,” “Gripped”) that shine through the fuzz. Also surprisingly, as the music took a darker, more menacing turn, the lyrics got brighter. Kissers is about love and devotion and how difficult, yet rewarding, those disciplines are.

Never Say Never includes both Kissers and the national release of the same material, called Speckled Bird. The band cleaned up seven of the Kissers songs, recorded five new ones and called it the official follow-up to Circle Slide. The differences in the recordings are pretty negligible, but each record has its own identity, and hence including both makes sense. Speckled Bird adds some musical brightness (“Spring,” “Never More True”) to the mix, ending up with a raucous pop record that balances out nicely. For me, hearing it on CD for the first time was a revelation.

The same goes for Free Flying Soul, the band’s return to dreamy soundscapes. They spent a mere six weeks on this record, and it’s more layered and atmospheric than almost anything else they’ve done. Soul is a culmination of sorts, bringing together the clean-and-reverbed and the distorted-and-grungy sounds, in service of a terrific set of songs. Soul is also the first record that hints at answers lyrically. “The Ocean” is practically a worship song, balanced nicely with “The Chicken,” its dark cousin. The final two songs, “Butterfly” and “The Warbler,” contain Daugherty’s best guitar treatments and Hindalong’s least oblique lyrics. Overall, Soul is the most difficult and challenging record the band has ever released, one that takes time to seep under your skin.

The eighth disc of Never Say Never is called Nevermind the Extras, which is a great joke referencing the line “nevermind the stars” on Chase the Kangaroo. Unlike some box sets that only give you one or two demos as incentives, the Choir has provided over an hour of rare stuff. Here’s what you get:

Two new songs lead it off, the sweet and layered “Follow Me” and the silly “Noon Till Whenever.” Both are worthy inclusions. The new stuff is followed by the first recording they ever did as a band, “It’s So Wonderful.” This and the six early demos that follow put the maturation of the group in sharp relief. You then get an acoustic reading of “Wilderness” from Speckled Bird, originally released on the Browbeat collection.

Then you get the solo material, all of which is intriguing. Hindalong contributes three, including a children’s song (“Mommy’s in the Circus”) and one of the weaker tracks from his solo record, Skinny (“Winnipesaukee”). Dan Michaels’ two pieces from his solo EP Reveal are surprising, especially the swirly title track. Finally, Daugherty checks in with a tune (“All the World to Me”) from his still-incomplete solo album, and it’s gorgeous. Still and all, the Choir works so well together that any solo material suffers in comparison.

The disc is rounded off with a Choir cover of Mark Heard’s “Tip of My Tongue” and a super-cool electronic remix of “Cherry Bomb” from the new album. Nevermind the Extras is a hodgepodge, but a cool one.

And hell, if you’ve read this far, I may as well finish the job.

Last year the Choir released Flap Your Wings, their first album in four years. It’s a mellower collection of pop tunes that plays like a less daring Free Flying Soul. It’s certainly their most traditionally beautiful record, containing lovely acoustic pieces like “Mercy Lives Here” and “Flowing Over Me.” There are still some risks here, especially on the production of “Sunny,” but the prevailing sense is that the Choir has settled into a mellow, contemplative groove. That’s not a bad thing, just a less immediately impressive one.

I also just received the band’s new live album, Live at Cornerstone 2000. It’s a powerhouse recording, even if the band loses its footing every once in a while. (That comes from only playing out once or twice a year.) That these guys can produce the sheer volume and mass of sound that they do on stage and not have it sound like mud is impressive in itself. Their previous live album, Let It Fly, holds up a little better, mostly because it was culled from a number of concerts. Live at Cornerstone is a flawed yet lovely portrait of the Choir, 20 years in, playing their hearts out.

If you’ve sloughed through this whole lengthy review, you probably know what it was like to have been around me for the last 10 years as my love for this band grew. Never Say Never is an unexpected collection, in that I never thought I’d see these recordings get their due. The Choir deserves a set like this, a full-on retrospective of a remarkable career. As I stated before, I didn’t spend 2000 words trying to share them with you just to prove how knowledgeable I am, but because not sharing a band like this would be unforgivable.

I hope it changes your life.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Short and sweet this week, because I’m in the middle of packing all my earthly belongings for my move to Hobart, Indiana. My furniture leaves tomorrow. I don’t leave until the 14th. I’m not sure how we settled on this arrangement, but as the date looms ever nearer, I find my schedule growing ever tighter.

So, short and sweet.

I found out a lot about the new Tori Amos album, Strange Little Girls, out on September 18. It turns out Jay Tucker wasn’t fucking with me – I was sure he was when he mentioned that Tori was doing a cover album. Strange Little Girls is a reworking of 12 songs by male authors, meant to bring out the female perspective and accentuate the hidden misogyny that exists within popular music. Obvious choices (conceptually, not musically) include Eminem’s “97 Bonnie and Clyde” (for real) and Slayer’s “Raining Blood,” but there are some other very interesting choices here. Songs by Joe Jackson, Neil Young, 10cc, etc. that on the surface probably wouldn’t lend themselves to the piano-and-vocal covers Tori’s done in the past.

This strikes me as something I might like more in concept than in actuality. Tori has fashioned 12 alter egos for herself from the lyrics of the songs she’s covering, and she sings each one in character. (“97 Bonnie and Clyde” ought to be terrifying.) What I don’t like about it right off the bat is that she didn’t write the material. That disappointment is tempered by her willingness to enter into the debate Eminem has started. Tori’s so far the only person who has even tried to craft a meaningful rebuttal to Em’s assertion that songs never hurt anyone. The more I think about this concept, the more it feels like it could work brilliantly.

Or, it could be a total cock-up. That’s what’s neat about taking huge creative risks.

Anyway, short and sweet.

I promised a guitar-fest this time, so here we go. I’m not sure which label rep is responsible for this, but two of the most amazing six-stringers playing today not only both signed with Epic Records at the same time, but have just released double-disc live albums simultaneously. Prior to their Epic tenure, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai couldn’t have been further apart, despite the fact that both play instrumental guitar music. Satriani perfected his melodic rock vibe with his second record, the classic Surfing With the Alien, and has in large part been riding that wave ever since. Vai, on the other hand, has never been creatively stagnant. As with his mentor Frank Zappa, you never know what you’re going to get when you pick up a Steve Vai record.

For a lot of people, guitar instrumentals are useless. They sound like extended versions of those 20-second bits in the middles of other songs where the guitar player gets to show his stuff. Joe Satriani has been railing against that particular notion for years by crafting hummable, memorable songs without words, songs that rarely slip into fretboard wankery. In large part, he’s been quite successful, especially on his earlier records. Surfing and The Extremist, especially, are the kind of guitar albums that you get stuck in your head.

It’s too bad, then, that Live in San Francisco makes so few strides away from what you’d imagine a typical guitar instrumental show would sound like. The songs are nearly exact replicas of what you hear on the studio albums, with an unfortunate injection of the aforementioned fretboard wankery. The tone and style hardly varies at all from song to song, which is mostly the fault of the selection. There are plenty of Satriani songs that make use of a more diverse tonal palette, but they’re not here.

Instead, we get rock song after rock song, and while they’re all played well, especially by Satch’s crack band of bassist Stu Hamm, drummer Jeff Campitelli and keyboardist Eric Caudieux, they get tiresome stretched one after another. Live in San Francisco drags on for two and a half hours, and while there are highlights (“Raspberry Jam Delta-v,” “Summer Song,” the closing “Rubina”), the overall effect is just wearying.

Adding to my disappointment is the fact that his last album, Engines of Creation, broke some interesting new ground for Satriani by injecting electronics and drum loops into his mix. Even though that album’s tour provided the tapes for this live album, Satch only does one song from Engines (“Borg Sex”). I’d have liked to have heard some organic band versions of the more technologically dependent tunes on that album, but alas, it’s all old stuff all the time.

Not so Steve Vai. In fact, his new Alive in an Ultra World would have been cool even if the songs weren’t magnificent, which they are. The concept (and with Vai, there’s always a concept) here was to create a live album of new tunes, each written for and incorporating the traditional music of the country in which it was recorded. This is a great idea, and Vai and his superbly talented band have carried it off, even though just getting through this project apparently took quite a toll on the musicians.

You can hear why, though, and all the blood and sweat was worth it. These songs are not quick knock-offs or excuses to solo endlessly. They’re sublimely crafted and orchestrated pieces that sound like products of months of rehearsal time. In actuality, Vai would often finish writing the pieces a day or so before the live recording session, giving his band members very little time to learn and practice. The band (bassist Philip Bynoe, drummer Mike Mangini, guitarist Dave Weiner and keyboardist Mike Keneally) is incredible throughout, no matter what style Vai is throwing at them.

And he does hop styles quite frequently here, from the crunching thud of “The Power of Bombos” to the powerful Irish lilt of “Blood and Glory” to the gorgeous acoustic orchestration of “Whispering a Prayer.” Most importantly for a guitar player’s live record, every song has its own distinct identity, and listening to Alive in an Ultra World is never a chore. Despite its overarching concept, there’s a disarming lightness to the whole proceedings, especially when Vai breaks a string two minutes into “Devil’s Food” and the band is forced to entertain the audience while he re-strings. Vai’s not so full of himself that he felt the need to edit that sort of thing out.

The concluding trilogy of tunes here cements Vai’s reputation as one of the most emotional guitar virtuosos around, especially “Brandos Costumes (Gentle Ways),” the lovely finale. This is what a guitar player’s live album ought to be, and like Frank Zappa’s live albums of new stuff, the sound reproduction is so crystal clear that this may as well be a 90-minute studio album. This is that proverbial extra mile that Satriani just didn’t walk, and it puts into sharp relief the differences between these two masters of the guitar.

Short and sweet, huh? Geez…

Next week, we launch into spiritual pop overload with the Choir’s eight-CD box set, Never Say Never.

See you in line Tuesday morning.