I meant to write this yesterday.

I had the time all blocked off, honestly, two hours right before the new-ish West Wing documentary episode. Plenty of time. I sat at the computer, I poured myself a glass of iced tea, and I pressed “play” for my third listen-through of this week’s musical work.

And 52 minutes later, having written not one word, I pressed “play” again.

I’ve just now finished my seventh go-round with this disc, and I’m prepared to say that Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is the kind of album that seduces your attention. While it’s playing, it’s practically impossible to concentrate on anything else, and it’s such an enveloping and satisfying experience that you don’t mind at all when it hijacks your senses for the better part of an hour.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot shipped to stores this week complete with a set of expectations no album should have to overcome. It’s best known as the album Reprise Records deemed too “musically adventurous” to release, cutting the band free from its contract rather than suffer the indignity of associating themselves with the record. With one fell swoop Yankee became the stuff of legends, and Wilco’s frontman Jeff Tweedy a champion for artistic expression free from interference.

Most of the curiosity surrounding Yankee sprung from the ferocity with which Tweedy fought for the album. It took the band the better part of the following year to secure the rights to their album, negotiate another deal and ensure that this record was released untouched. If Yankee was indeed the mess the folks at Reprise seemed to think it was, why would Tweedy dedicate himself so thoroughly to preserving it as if it were a national monument?

The short, simple answer is that the record company was wrong, utterly and completely. The bootleg copies that exist attest to the fact that the Reprise reps heard the same Yankee Hotel Foxtrot that we’re hearing now, and given that, their knee-jerk response is totally amazing. And, considering that it delayed the release of such a superb work for more than eight months, nearly unforgivable. Tweedy was right to fight for this album, right to refuse to compromise a single note.

Interestingly, Yankee has been released on Nonesuch Records, which, like Reprise, is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Which, of course, means that the geniuses at AOL/Time Warner paid for this album twice. A few more decisions like that might go a long way towards explaining the company’s $54 billion net loss this quarter…

But enough about the record company. Let’s talk about the record.

Ever since Wilco split off from alt-country band Uncle Tupelo in the early ’90s, Jeff Tweedy has been working towards this, a union of American roots music, British pop and modern art-rock. The elements were all there on Wilco’s second album, the double-disc Being There, but they were separated out. The band’s third, Summerteeth, brought them crashing together in an adventurous and uneven effort, which concentrated more on studio craft than song craft in places.

While many derided Summerteeth for straying too far off the beaten path, it was merely a dress rehearsal for Yankee. Far less musically adventurous than their last in ways, Yankee takes a group of simple, elegant songs and dresses them up in swirling Technicolor. The songs exist separately, but hang together as a gentle suite, and the transitions between songs have been crafted with as much care as the songs themselves. It’s the roots-rock OK Computer.

The opening track, “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” is the mission statement. At first listen, it sounds like absolute chaos. Drums crash, guitars whine, percussion flourishes abound, and piano riffs flit in and out of nowhere. In truth, though, the song is grounded by the simplest of melodies, the most elemental of chord progressions. The song’s lyrics describe the indecisive nature of the violently insecure protagonist, unable to see the simple truths beneath the whirling debris of his mind, and the sonic coloring illustrates that whirling debris and simple truth perfectly.

Yankee juxtaposes disparate styles throughout, like the perfect pop of “Kamera” easing into the melancholy masterpiece “Radio Cure,” and then into the rave-up “War on War,” but it does so with such ease and grace that the differences barely register. Like OK Computer, it works best swallowed whole – the blazing conclusion to the horn-driven stomper “I’m the Man Who Loves You” doesn’t have the same effect unless it’s followed by the low-key acoustic opening of “Pot Kettle Black,” just to name one instance.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was supposed to have been released in July of last year, two months before the worst terrorist attack this country has ever seen. What’s doubly amazing about this album is that despite it having been written and recorded months previous, the specter of September 11 is all over it. Just start with the cover photo of two gleaming gray towers, and then move to the lyrics, especially the tough “War on War,” with its refrain of, “You have to learn how to die if you wanna be alive.” “Jesus, Etc.” seems to directly reference the attack and its aftermath: “Tall buildings shake, voices escape singing sad, sad songs…”

At its heart, both musically and lyrically, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is about finding beauty from chaos, a sentiment that captures, better than anything released since, the state of mind immediately following September 11. Every time the band latches onto a gorgeous melody, it seems to devolve into mass hysteria, but then, like string shafts of light breaking through, the next bit of beauty takes off. Those bits of beauty are often accompanied by lyrics that hearken back to more innocent times, or that strive for inner strength in the midst of catastrophe.

With the push and pull of beauty and chaos that infuses the record, Tweedy seemingly had a choice when it came time to end the album, and thankfully, he chose beauty. “Reservations” makes the best use of his world-beaten voice, telling a tale of love amidst the ruins: “I’ve got reservations about so many things, but not about you…” The album ends with a sublime three-minute piano coda that feels like the sun setting on a whole new world.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a brave and glorious album about being scared to death, about yearning for simplicity and dealing with complexity. Far from being a work of rampant experimentalism, it maintains a perfect balance and draws the listener in like few albums can. Kudos to Tweedy for seeing it for what it is, and being courageous enough to fight for it. Hearing it now, nearly nine months after its originally scheduled release, it’s clear that this album was worth every second of the wait, and every ounce of effort it took to bring it into being.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Running a bit behind again, but seriously, have you looked outside? I’m having trouble convincing myself that any free time I have shouldn’t be spent out in the sunshine doing nothing in particular. Right now I’ve got a glass of pink lemonade here, and I’m listening to LivePhish Volume 7 (a three-hour gig from 1993 in Tinley Park, Illinois) and grooving to “Guelah Papyrus,” and I’m ready to roll, so let’s not waste the moment.

Next week is a mammoth one for music, with new ones by Elvis Costello, Wilco, Mark Eitzel, Tuatara and the Pet Shop Boys. I’m giddy with anticipation, and I already wish it were next week. But it’s not. It’s this week, with nary a great musical statement to be found. In my desperation for a column topic, I actually went scrounging for something passable, and found something remarkable by accident. But later for that.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the one major release of this week, which is Sheryl Crow’s C’mon, C’mon.

Each year, there is a moment, a song, or an album that unquestionably heralds the arrival of summer. You know the type of song I mean – those lazy, breezy, put-it-on-in-the-car-while-you-cruise-the-beach-with-the-top-down kind of numbers at which Sugar Ray excels. Weezer’s “Island in the Sun,” for example, filled the role last year. And this year, the return of warmer weather has been accompanied by “Soak Up the Sun,” Sheryl Crow’s laid-back exhortation to do just that.

The album, at first glance, seems designed to capitalize on the song’s sunny content, with a design similar in tone and style to k.d. lang’s Invincible Summer. And indeed, it opens with “Steve McQueen,” a June/July driving song if there ever was one (and likely the next single), followed closely by “Sun.” However, from there, it all goes a bit awry, thanks to Crow’s seeming need to please everybody all the time.

Sheryl Crow has always been a study in contradictions (or, less charitably, in hypocrisy). She says she doesn’t want to be a pop star, and then makes pop songs and videos for the marketing machine. She rails against the current fashion of showing skin to get record sales, and then poses for the inside cover of C’mon, C’mon wearing next to nothing. She embraces rock and pop, but never integrates them, preferring to let the styles (and audiences) battle it out.

And so it goes on the new album. “You’re an Original” brings the John Mellencamp-style rock, but it’s an overused chord progression which, ironically, supports lyrics chastising those who pinch styles from others. Later, “It’s So Easy” finds her surrounded by goopy strings a la Faith Hill and dueting with Mr. Adult Contemporary himself, Don Henley. For almost the entire running time, you get one or the other – either the hackneyed guit-rock or the MTV-ready gloss-pop, neither one performed with a whole lot of conviction.

There is one song, though, that makes me kind of glad I plunked down the cash for this album. “Safe and Sound” is an epic ballad that eschews the VH-1 trappings (even though the string section is present) and soars on the strength of melody and harmony. It’s the only song here that you’ll enjoy without thinking about where you’ve heard it before.

Crow seems to make the case for retiring the pop music form all together, as if it can’t deliver anything new while remaining steeped in its roots. As if in defiant answer to that, I also bought one of the finest pop albums I’ve heard in ages this week, and it’s one that’s been out for a while (since January, I think) and I’ve avoided buying for a silly reason.

The album is Phantom Planet’s The Guest, and I haven’t bought it for the same reason I haven’t bought albums by Dogstar and 30-Odd Foot of Grunts – the movie star factor. The drummer for Phantom Planet is none other than Jason Schwartzman, who brilliantly played acidic teen Max Fischer in Rushmore. A little research might have showed me that he was in the band first, and that every reviewer on the planet has praised this thing, but what can I say. I’m silly.

I’m quite glad I got past my mental block, though, because The Guest is wonderful. By now you’ve likely all heard “California,” the hit single, and it was that song that finally convinced me. It’s a swell number, full of dynamic switches and melodic twists akin to Fastball’s underrated pop singles. It’s also this album’s worst and most commercially aimed song, yet it sets the tone well in the leadoff position.

No, Phantom Planet have aimed a bit higher, creating a focused and solid record that balances drama and sweetness like the best pop bands always have. It’s refreshing to see a group of kids this young reaching back to the ’60s and further for inspiration, and coming up with an album so rooted in classic pop, yet so willing to reach out in new directions. Many have credited producers Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake (who have worked with Crowded House, among others) with the lion’s share of the artistry here, but that seems cynical to me, especially considering neither one had a hand in the songwriting. You can produce a group of bad songs to death, and in the end, you’ll still be left with a group of bad songs.

And these are great songs, folks. Even the simplest of them (like the singalong “Anthem”) shines, and when they turn more twisty and complex (like on the menacing “Turn Smile Shift Repeat”), you’d think you were listening to a band twice as experienced as these boys. The Guest just keeps getting better, as well: the piano-powered “Nobody’s Fault” shimmies and shakes, and gives way to the scream-fest “All Over Again,” on which Schwartzman really shines. Full credit, though, goes to guitarist and vocalist Alexander Greenwald for penning “Wishing Well,” the closest I’ve heard to a true pop epic a la “A Day in the Life” since Matthew Sweet’s “Thunderstorm.”

Maybe it’s just that this year has been somewhat barren, but The Guest is my favorite album from 2002 so far, bar none. I suspect that Elvis Costello and Wilco will have something to say about that next week, but for now, this album is tops. For future reference, when I use the term “a perfect pop album,” Phantom Planet’s The Guest is exactly what I mean.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

It’s cop-out time again.

I know, I know, I promised the LivePhish reviews this week, and I only have one more week of lag time before the next six volumes come out, and blah blah blah. Here’s the thing: the Phish reviews are turning into a massive project, and it’s one I don’t quite feel like finishing today. Why? Well, if you live in Northwest Indiana, you only need to look outside to answer that question. It’s a beautiful day, which falls smack in the middle of a beautiful week, and I spent a large portion of it inside a stuffy office, and right now I want nothing more than to go out on my back porch with a tall glass of iced tea and a stack of comic books. And so I will.

So here’s my thought. Since the Phish reviews deal with an ongoing series, I had the idea of making the review page a separate entity that I update once a month or so, when I get and absorb a new volume. What does everyone think? I would let everyone know when the page is updated, of course.

Being a responsible chap, I couldn’t just leave my loyal readership without something to peruse this week, and thankfully, the topic for this column sort of fell into my lap. I get to revisit my headbanging childhood, and celebrate the rebirth that is spring by talking about death.

Or, more precisely, ‘Deth.

* * * * *

Just because I needed more reasons to feel old, one of my earliest musical obsessions called it quits just recently. Citing an injury to his left hand that prevents him from playing guitar, Megadeth’s leader and musical mastermind Dave Mustaine announced that his band has decided to break up. I’m of two minds about this.

For one, my checkbook is happy, because this announcement follows 10 years of absolute shit from the Megadeth camp. We’re talking five albums since 1992, each crappier than the last, culminating in last month’s two-disc live album Rude Awakening, which cast classic ‘Deth next to the recent godawful dreck they’ve been releasing. Songs like “She-Wolf” and “Almost Honest” don’t improve in a live setting, in case long-time fans were wondering.

But another part of me is actually going to miss Mustaine and his less-than-merry men. I got a lot of responses to two columns I wrote for Face that doubled as open letters to Dave, taking him to task for his recent output. Seriously, you have never heard a bigger piece of feces than 1999’s Risk album. Schmaltzy strings, lazy songwriting, an anthem written for the WWF called (snicker) “Crush ‘Em,” and on and on. It was so shitty that I’d bet you could walk into a record store stocking it and find it using only your sense of smell. Shit, I tell you.

But really, I only called him out so much because, believe it or not, I expected better. Megadeth used to make serious, musically muscular metal, stuff that took chops and practice and a real compositional sense to create. There was an admittedly brief period of my life when I really considered 1990’s Rust In Peace the best album ever made, and while that time has thankfully passed, I have to say that the album holds up remarkably well in this era of one-note nu-metal and rap-core. Just the opening track, “Holy Wars…The Punishment Due,” was enough to rock this 16-year-old’s world, and even now, the opening faster-than-lightning guitar riff stirs something within me.

Mustaine’s story is the stuff of legend for metal fans. Depending on who you believe, he was kicked out of Metallica before their first album because of his drug problem, or he left because the rest of the band couldn’t keep up with him musically. Lending credence to the second theory, Megadeth’s 1984 debut, the semi-classic Killing Is My Business…And Business Is Good, contained a track called “Mechanix” that was nothing more than the Metallica tune “The Four Horsemen” played at six times the speed.

They kept getting better and more intricate. Follow-up Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying contained enough riffs and separate sections for four or five albums, especially on opening track “Wake Up Dead.” Six minutes, one verse of vocals, almost nothing repeated – “Wake Up Dead” was as close to a symphony as metal gets. Third album So Far, So Good, So What contained the technically demanding “In My Darkest Hour,” often considered the best Megadeth song, and the blazing anti-anthem “Hook In Mouth,” which railed against the PMRC. This was back when censorship was a big deal, big enough to hold a congressional hearing at which Mustaine spoke.

In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find an ’80s metaller more politically aware than Dave Mustaine. When MTV began its “Rock the Vote” campaign, there was Mustaine in front of the White House, interviewing candidates and pushing for kids to register to vote when they turned 18. When most metal videos were made up of performance shots with flying ’80s hair as the main focus, Megadeth filled theirs with social and political commentary, most notably on “Holy Wars,” which (in its uncensored version) contained scenes of raw brutality from the Middle East.

And then, with 1992’s Countdown to Extinction, it all started falling apart. But I guess what I’m trying to say is that even though they were long-haired metalheads who deserve at least a portion of the laughter they often engendered, Megadeth kind of meant something to me, and I’m sure to a lot of people. Somewhere in my psyche is a 16-year-old with too much hair and a budding passion for music that still holds their early stuff dear. Without Megadeth, he wouldn’t have been him, and without him, I wouldn’t be me, so I guess I owe Dave Mustaine and company a bit of thanks for making music that once inspired me.

It’s a crummy epitaph, but it’ll have to do: Rust in peace, guys.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So here I am, sitting down to write the spring preview edition of Tuesday Morning, and I look outside, and it’s snowing. It’s fucking April, and it’s snowing, and I’m thinking to myself, given the first opportunity, I am so moving back down south.

The problem is, I have never been able to come up with a good, sound, environmental reason for snow. I mean, I understand how it happens – water is crystallized upon contact with lower temperatures, thereby blanketing the ground with millions of tiny white solid flakes – but I can’t figure out why it happens. Is there a single form of life on the planet that benefits from snow? Most of us burrow away from it, whether in the ground or in houses. Think of all the complicated preparations we go through before the snow arrives, and the number of animals that are killed outright because they get caught unawares in freezing blizzards.

This would all make more sense to me if snow served some purpose. I could say, “Well, sure, it’s a pain in the ass, but look at what it does for such and such, and how it improves so and so.” Snow improves nothing, contributes to nothing, and has no reason to exist beyond making me cold and irritable. I’m moving closer to the equator. You can keep your damn snow.

* * * * *

Okay, despite what the thermometer says, spring has apparently sprung, and with it comes the quarterly look ahead at upcoming releases of note. I want to point out that this list doesn’t even pretend to be a comprehensive listing of new music through June. You can get that innumerable other places on the web. This is just a coming attractions sort of thing for the column, covering stuff I’m looking forward to and will be reviewing in this space. So don’t write me all angry and say, “Hey, the new A*Teens album is coming out, and you didn’t say anything about it!” Well, no shit, Sherlock, because they suck and I wouldn’t buy an A*Teens album even if all four members of the original ABBA came to my house and begged me.

In short, what follows is what I’m looking forward to (or dreading) for the next few months, and it’s quite a diverse slate. 2002 is finally starting to shape up. Here’s what I mean:

First, the next six volumes of the LivePhish series kick off the spring on April 16. I know I promised I’d get around to reviewing the first six before the next salvo came out, so that leaves me a week. I’ll do my best. Anyway, the new series has one major difference over the first one: rather than present just the complete concerts, the band has chosen to fill up the remaining disc space (and there always is about half an hour of space left over) with “philler,” meaning tunes from other shows. According to the track listings, they’ve been good about making sure the philler shows are pretty close date-wise to the featured shows, so each set still provides a snapshot of a certain time period in the band’s history. Not sure how I feel about this yet.

Anyway, Sheryl Crow also returns on the 16th with the atrociously titled C’mon C’mon, before the floodgates open on April 23. A quick note – most of the new releases through June have had numerous release dates already, and while I’m pretty sure that what I’m presenting is the latest info, it’s entirely possible that any and all of these dates will have changed by the time this gets posted. One thing that hasn’t changed is that April 23 seems like the dumping ground for a bunch of cool stuff. First and foremost, Elvis Costello strikes back with When I Was Cruel, his first rock album since 1994’s Brutal Youth. As much as I dig his more orchestrated experiments, his stripped-down, angry stuff always resonates more.

Also on the 23rd is Wilco’s long-delayed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which is getting some very impressive advance notices. Hope it lives up to its reputation as an artistic milestone for the band. Tuatara, the supergroup featuring Peter Buck of R.E.M., drops their third, Cinemathique, on the 23rd as well. Plus, the Pet Shop Boys (shut up, I’m a fan) release Release, featuring Johnny Marr on a bunch of tracks, and if the advance reviews are to be believed, Q-Tip (of A Tribe Called Qwest) redefines rap with some jazz fusion on Kamaal: The Abstract. A couple of cool rereleases round off the date: Pete Yorn delivers a 2-CD version of his acclaimed debut Musicforthemorningafter, and Sloan’s Pretty Together (which landed on last year’s Top 10 List) gets a proper U.S. release on RCA.

Moving on, Phish’s Trey Anastasio releases his self-titled solo debut on April 30. Also scheduled for that date is Weezer’s fourth, Maladroit, even though by all accounts the band hasn’t even delivered the album to their record company yet. We shall see…

May 7 sees some good ones from old people, as Warren Zevon comes out with his umpteenth record, My Ride’s Here, and Tom Waits drops two apparently distinct new albums, Alice and Blood Money, that reportedly break new ground for this quirky genius. Waits is definitely an acquired taste, but once you’ve acquired it, anything he’s done is worth hearing.

Speaking of old people, Canadian trio Rush returns on May 14 with Vapour Trails, their first album since 1996’s Test For Echo. No word yet on whether this is the same album they’ve already released 20 times. Also on May 14 is Moby’s long-awaited follow-up to 1999’s Play, which he still gets royalty checks for each and every month. The album’s called 18, which Moby explains is because it has 18 songs on it. If you’ve heard the boring single, “We Are All Made of Stars,” you probably agree that it should have been called 17. Again, we shall see. Finally on the 14th, if you missed the first four Cranberries records, and you just can’t live without Dolores “Please Slap Me” O’Riordan’s caterwauling, and you’ve been dreaming of the day when you can pay through the nose for an expensive set collecting all four, well, mark your calendar, ’cause Treasure Box is the answer to your prayers.

Neil Finn gets his shot at the elusive U.S. audience with the stateside release of his solo album One Nil, retitled One All for no reason I can think of, on May 21. And that’s it for May.

June begins with the many-times-delayed release of Me’Shell NdegeoCello’s fourth album, Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape on the 4th. The following week should see Korn returning to infect the masses with Untouchables, as well as promising new ones from Bruce Hornsby (Big Swing Face), David Bowie (Heathen, the first release on his private indy label) and Our Lady Peace (Gravity). Despite my critical drubbing upon first hearing it, Our Lady Peace’s last album, Spiritual Machines, nearly cracked the Top 10 List last year, so effectively did it grow on me. I’m looking forward to the new one.

June 18 likely sees the third album by everyone’s favorite controversy magnet, Eminem. Called The Eminem Show, this record apparently completes the trilogy begun by The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP, giving the final of his three personalities his time in the spotlight. I say “likely” because the release date has changed twice in the last three weeks, so who knows. Also on the 18th, Wyclef Jean finally releases The Masquerade, his third solo album.

Finally, the rock returns on June 25 with Soulfly’s third album, Enterfaith, and the second solo disc from Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell, Degradation Trip. And that’s all I know, except for this: sometime this summer, Radiohead is preparing to release an album of b-sides from the Kid A and Amnesiac sessions. I can’t think of an album I’m looking forward to less. Considering how bad the songs that made it to both those albums are, imagine how jaw-droppingly awful the songs that didn’t make the cut must be. If I listen to this, it will be in that “Oh wow, look at that car crash” way. Every time I think they can’t possibly further betray their potential, they come up with something to surprise me.

And that’ll do it. Look for the Phish reviews next week, if I’m feeling inspired. If not, look for more meaningless, mindless drivel.

See you in line Tuesday morning.