An informal poll – who is more annoying?

a) The “You’re getting a Dell” guy
b) The “Can you hear me now?” guy
c) The “Zoom zoom” kid

I can’t decide. I seem to hate them all pretty equally. Every time one of them appears on my screen, I think, ‘Yeah, that one,’ so I can’t quite make up my mind. I think my own personal hell, however, will prominently feature all three of them spouting their catchphrases for eternity.

Feeling a little punchy tonight, as you can probably tell. A quick word about next week first – I am going to the big, beautiful, annual Cornerstone Festival in Illinois for the first time. This week-long event features all those spiritual pop bands I can’t get enough of, in the flesh, including the Choir, Daniel Amos, the 77s, Starflyer 59 and dozens more. What this means for you: My column, if it’s done, will go up on Tuesday next week. If it’s not, that means I’m taking the week off, which I can do because I posted on my birthday, so nyah. The following week will be a roundup of sorts of the festival’s multitude of new releases, including albums from the 77s, Michael Roe, Terry Taylor, Michael Knott, Cush, and more. Big freakin’ column, and I have to get it done that week, because I need to make room for new ones by Counting Crows, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Dave Matthews Band, the Orb, Filter and Beth Orton, to name a few. It’s a tight schedule, but I think I can handle it. You’ll know whether or not I can by next Tuesday, anyway.

So. New stuff.

* * * * *

For a band named Sonic Youth, Sonic Youth has aged remarkably well.

Who could have guessed in 1988 that the searing sheets of ugly beauty that made up their double album Daydream Nation in fact represented the band’s adolescence, and that the best and most complex material was yet to come? Over their first four albums for Geffen Records, SY perfected their signature sound, one that is at once delicately arranged and fiercely sloppy. You can never really tell how much of any given SY song was mapped out at the start and how much was made up on the spot.

One thing’s clear, though – the foursome (guitarists Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, bassist Lee Ranaldo and drummer Steve Shelley) have an almost telepathic connection with each other, and an exceptionally well-developed sense of harmonics. After a while of immersing yourself in Sonic Youth, it’s hard to go back to the standard chords proffered by most everyone else. SY create weaving walls of sound that flirt with dissonance and dance inches away from bedlam. That they almost always top it off with the most lackadaisical vocals you’re likely to hear is just part of the contrast.

Lately the band has been pushing the extremes of its sound, with 1998’s sprawling A Thousand Leaves and the double-disc avant-garde experiment Goodbye 20th Century. They really reined themselves in on 2000’s nifty NYC Ghosts and Flowers, offering a slice of Sonic Youth beat poetry to compensate for the lack of shifty soundscapes. Well, the shifty bits are back with the just-released Murray Street, named after the studio at ground zero in New York where they recorded it, but at 45 minutes, it’s still a bit of a comedown.

Ah, but it’s quite a good one, even if it never reaches the heights of Washing Machine or A Thousand Leaves. The band has, thankfully, cranked up the melody meter again, splicing their lengthy instrumental excursions into some of their most hummable tunes. Some will call that a sell-out, but I call it an achievement – they haven’t sacrificed any of their monolithic noise in crafting these arrangements. Murray Street is no more or less a pop album than Daydream Nation was, and is often just as gloriously chaotic.

Consider the sheer insanity “Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style” degenerates into, or the extended dissonant conclusion to the 11-minute “Karen Revisited.” Consider, also, Gordon’s spitting strut on “Plastic Sun,” which manages to evoke a danceable beat around a song that isn’t at all danceable. But best of all, consider the elegant, elastic arrangement of “Rain on Tin,” a classic SY song if ever there was one. The dual guitars pirouette around each other, sometimes coming dangerously close but never crashing into each other. It’s almost as though they arranged it for strings and then played it on guitars.

It’s worth noting that for this album, the band hooked up with famous Chicago noise-monger Jim O’Rourke, who also produced Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Finding the beauty in noise seems to be O’Rourke’s forte, and the same can be said of Sonic Youth. They’ve been making this kind of delirious, fascinating noise for two decades now, and no one even comes close to surpassing, or even imitating them. They’re in a class by themselves.

* * * * *

Bruce Hornsby has called his ninth album Big Swing Face, thereby earning the prize for Most Misleading Title of 2002 so far. Simply put, folks, there ain’t no swing on here.

And while I was mildly disappointed at first to discover that Hornsby, one of the best piano players in modern music, doesn’t tickle the ivories once on this album, my sadness turned to elation as the disc unspooled. No, there’s no swing, but Big Swing Face is Hornsby’s most successful attempt to create a new idiom by mixing together all of his influences. The result is invigorating, a jolting trip to the 21st century by a genuine classicist.

If you look at Bruce Hornsby, or listen to him talk, you would think that funk and jazz would be out of this square white boy’s grasp. On the contrary, however, since disbanding the Range in the early ’90s, Hornsby has concentrated almost entirely on the jazzy side of his prodigious talents, with snippets of funk thrown in. His last studio album, the two-hour Spirit Trail, gave us the acoustic jazz-pop on disc one and the smooth electric pop on disc two, and his live album Here Come the Noisemakers brought the roof down with more than two hours of jazzy improvisation.

Pulling back from such huge statements, Big Swing Face is a mere 46 minutes, but I would easily trade the sprawl and inconsistency of both his most recent records for another trip through this thing. Hornsby’s stylistic amalgam defies easy description, but here goes: imagine Medeski, Martin and Wood mixed with the Grateful Dead and produced by Prince, combined with… well, with Bruce Hornsby, because his songwriting and playing style is as distinct as a fingerprint.

A good chunk of this album is set to slamming funk beats straight out of Prince’s Black Album, and when Hornsby augments his voice with wailing blues and gospel backups, the effect is a clash of organic and electronic that really works. Both “Take Out the Trash” and groovy closer “Place Under the Sun” thrive on that contrast, and the title track feels like a Delta blues jam session out of Paisley Park. Early favorite “The Chill” is epic, all electric pianos and soaring guitars surrounding a superb melody.

The album’s high point, however, and the apex of its concept is “This Too Shall Pass.” The song begins like a folksy reel played on electric piano, but two verses in, a flurry of electronic drums thunders in, elevating it to a new level. The organic and mechanical roughly caress each other for the duration, synth beds supporting a sweet guitar solo that leads back into the piano. It’s a stunner, and the closest Big Swing Face has to a mission statement.

Who could have guessed that hiding behind Bruce Hornsby’s adult contemporary facade in the late ’80s was an idiosyncratic artist willing to, as his song says, try anything once? Big Swing Face retains its experimental vibe even when delivering the sweet pop songs Hornsby is known for, and it manages the neat trick of updating his sound without feeling like a desperate measure. This is a keeper.

* * * * *

There’s no question of truth in advertising with the title of Geoff Tate’s solo debut – he named it after himself, and he stuck his ugly mug on the cover. He’s not the best-looking guy anyway, but the cover shot is a particularly bad one, and certainly won’t sell him more copies of this thing by itself.

There is, of course, a question of who’s going to buy this disc anyway, and whether they’ll enjoy it once they press play. Geoff Tate is the lead singer of Queensryche, who never made it big as a late-’80s/early-’90s metal band to begin with, and has maintained a small cult following after their biggest success with Empire in 1990. Here’s the thing, though: cult followings don’t really like it when you radically alter the sound that they fell in love with in the first place, which sort of tends to temper artistic experimentation because no one outside your cult following is going to buy your new record. It’s a trap, and you have to have incredible faith in your devoted audience to pull the rug out from under them and expect them to keep coming back.

All that is a long-winded way of saying that Geoff Tate sounds nothing at all like Queensryche, even at their most experimental. (Promised Land, their most underrated record, f’rinstance.) Those looking for their dose of thinking-man’s metal, a tag Queensryche has been saddled with for years, are gonna be really disappointed. Tate has made the same stylistic choice that Kip Winger did when he went solo – he’s made a mature, well-constructed album of progressive pop music that only very occasionally rocks.

But hell, isn’t artistic growth what it’s all about? Winger’s three solo discs are far and away the best work he’s ever done, and similarly, Geoff Tate rises above most of Queensryche’s catalog on ingenuity alone. Songs float on synthesizers, acoustic guitars and drum loops, but never turn to radio-ready mush. Tate’s songs are typically cerebral, even when dealing with the mundanities of love, and his voice has been cast against walls of guitars for so long that the nuances revealed in these clean productions feel like revelations.

And what a voice it is, as Queensryche fans well know. The first time you hear Geoff Tate sing will send shivers, no matter the setting, but it’s impressive to hear him bend and shape that operatic bellow to these mellower foundations. He’s especially effective on “Helpless,” a latin-tinged pseudo-dance track complete with flamenco guitars, and on the gorgeous “Every Move We Make.” The middle section of the album is slower than the beginning and the end, and contains the best tracks, like the lovely “In Other Words.”

Simply put, Geoff Tate is a risk, but it pays off artistically. It remains to be seen whether Tate will alienate all of his existing fans or gain some new ones, but at the very least, he can say he’s made an album unlike anything he’s done before. Some will derisively snort at the lack of guitars and say it sounds like he’s gotten old, but I say that if this is what getting old sounds like, then sign me up.

* * * * *

Next week, some discs I won’t rave as much about. Maybe.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I get weird looks from record store employees all the time.

It’s because I buy so much music, and in such strange combinations. I’m often asked if I’m buying for other people, and I have to explain that, yes, I plan on listening to everything I buy, and if I’m lucky, enjoying all of it. Music store clerks are so used to compartmentalization these days that the very thought of someone harboring an appreciation for both Harry Connick Jr. and Sepultura, for example, is enough to get them scratching their heads.

I mention this because I bought all four of this week’s discs at once, and I got one of the strangest looks I’ve ever received from the girl who rang me up. I’m betting it’ll work on anyone, so try it. Come to the counter with all four of this week’s review subjects and see what reaction you get. (If you truly want to duplicate my experience, throw in a copy of Wyclef Jean’s The Masquerade, which I also bought at the same time.)

And we’re off…

* * * * *

The last time I trashed an Our Lady Peace album, I lived to regret it, so I’m wary of doing it again.

Last year’s Spiritual Machines didn’t do it for me on first listen, or on second, so I let ’em have it in this column. I charged that OLP was nothing more than a standard alternative rock band with an interesting singer, and that the 10 songs on Spiritual Machines didn’t reach to the level of the futuristic concept the band had hung on them. There’s nothing special about it, or about them, I declared.

And then the album grew on me like a fungus on hormones. I found myself humming the songs at odd hours, and reaching for the album more often than I thought I would. I now consider it one of their best, and while it’s true it rarely transcends the realm of alt-rock, sometimes that’s enough, especially if the songs are well-crafted, as these are. The most striking element of Our Lady Peace’s sound remains the unique and elastic voice of frontman Raine Maida, who loops and swirls all over these memorable melodies. I almost put Spiritual Machines on my Top 10 List last year, which is saying something, considering the overall quality of that list.

And I will admit that Gravity, the Canadian foursome’s fifth album, is starting to grow on me as well, but I can’t imagine that it will come anywhere near the best records of 2001. This album is everything I charged Machines with being – it’s full of typical songs that disappear from memory 10 seconds after they’re over, and it sounds like just about every other alt-rock act on the radio.

Only Maida’s still-striking voice separates Gravity from similar-sounding works by the likes of Matchbox 20 or Everclear, and even that is muted here. Maida, who normally reaches for split-second high notes in his flawless falsetto mid-melody, here intones stuff that would make Rob Thomas yawn. Granted, he wrote most of these songs himself (as usual), so he’s not being forced into it, but there’s very little here that one could call interesting. It’s a shame to waste a talent like Maida’s, even if the rest of the band isn’t quite up to his standard anyway.

But it would seem that the band realizes what they’ve made – Gravity, true to its title, remains earthbound, never taking flight even when the arrangements make you think it will. There are, I think, a few reasons for this, beginning with the fact that Gravity is the first OLP album not produced by their “fifth member,” Arnold Lanni. While all the elements of the band’s sound are present in Bob Rock’s production, it’s missing the character that has set the band apart for four albums. Rock is also one of those guys that a label hires to “punch up” a band’s sound for maximum radio consumption, and Gravity sure sounds like it’s designed just for that purpose.

It’s not just the production, of course. The songs are all fairly standard, as if dictated by the label as well. First single “Somewhere Out There” has “big hit” written all over it, as do “Made of Steel” (perhaps capitalizing on Five for Fighting’s success with “Superman (It’s Not Easy)”) and closer “A Story About a Girl” (which practically apes the title of Nine Days’ hit from two years ago). Maybe it’s just my cynical nature, but this album feels to me like a desperate grab for an American audience. The band even appears on the cover for the first time, displaying the rugged good looks that will help teenage girls part with their parents’ money.

It’s possible that I’m going to be eating these words come December again, but I don’t think so. Gravity is every cheap and simple thing Spiritual Machines isn’t, and while it may signal the death of the band’s American record contract, that will hopefully open the door to a more artistically satisfying career in Canada, where they’re already household names. While I’d previously said that Our Lady Peace just isn’t that good a band, Gravity compels me to add that they’re much better than this.

* * * * *

You’ve gotta wonder if Jerry Cantrell is a Type O Negative fan.

The former Alice in Chains guitarist has recently signed to Roadrunner Records, the home of Type O, and released his second solo album, Degradation Trip. The cover is classic Type O, funny and scary at the same time, and full of that unnatural green color the band loves so much. And the album itself is a 72-minute slow plod, just like Type O’s last three records.

The similarities largely end there, however, and that’s sort of a shame. One thing Cantrell could learn from Type O is how to take himself less seriously. Degradation Trip, like his solo debut Boggy Depot, is a sloppy, sprawling pile of bitterness and simmering rage. There are serious songs on here with titles like “Psychotic Break” and “Hellbound,” and Cantrell sells us lines like “reside in darkness, thrive where most won’t go” without the wink and smile that accompanies all of Type O’s work. Maybe it’s just that I’m numb to this kind of thing, or that I’ve turned 25 and thus exited Cantrell’s target audience, but I just don’t buy it anymore.

It doesn’t help that, musically speaking, the album is chock full of very little. Back in ’92, Cantrell and Alice in Chains released Dirt, a compact and complex slab of tricky, twisty, slow metal that still stands up today. Degradation Trip is further proof, if any were needed, that Dirt was a fluke, a one-time deal with the devil for skill and imagination Cantrell has never displayed since. This album is nearly twice Dirt‘s length, and yet nothing sticks. Songs stay within a set groove, usually made up of two or three notes repeated, and Cantrell’s guitar slathers it in sloppy vomit. Former Faith No More drummer Mike Bordin plays on every track, and is hardly ever required to do more than plod along in 4/4 time.

There are some exceptions – “Give It a Name,” for instance, would have fit well on the final, self-titled Alice in Chains album, and “Solitude” is nicely constructed. For the most part, though, Degradation Trip is not one worth taking. It’s eerie, as well, to hear Cantrell’s voice out front. It’s a fine voice, naturally, but one can’t help but imagine the departed Layne Staley singing lead on top of it. The sad truth is that, for Alice in Chains fans, Cantrell’s solo work is always going to sound like half of what it should.

* * * * *

All right, enough with the negatives.

In 1998, Peter Gabriel announced the imminent release of his new album, called Up. In fact, he was quite distressed to learn that R.E.M. also had an album that year called Up, concerned as he was about the possible confusion that might create. (In a bout of hilarious synchronicity, Ani DiFranco also released an album that year called Up Up Up Up Up Up.) Gabriel announced he would voluntarily delay his own release date so as not to conflict.

Four years later, here we are, and still no Up from the Gabriel camp. They’re promising it sometime this year, but don’t hold your breath. The strange thing is, though, that Gabriel’s been just as busy as always. Last year he released OVO, a miraculous work that finally brought together all of his diverse world music influences into a seamless whole. OVO was the soundtrack to a show at London’s Millennium Dome, which Gabriel also oversaw. It was a huge, expensive, elaborate production worthy of the stellar music he composed to accompany it.

Additionally, he’s recently remastered and rereleased his whole catalog, front to back. The eight studio albums and two live records he’s made since splitting from Genesis in 1975 are all the evidence one should need that this guy’s a frickin’ genius. Anyone that can jump from the orchestral grandeur of his first solo album to the creepy soundscapes of his fourth in a mere five years is worth following, ’cause you never know what he’s going to do next.

Case in point – his new album that isn’t Up is called Long Walk Home, and it’s the soundtrack to a low-budget Australian film entitled The Rabbit-Proof Fence. Gabriel has long had a miniature side career as a writer of film scores, and in fact his finest work to date remains Passion, his amazing soundtrack to Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. On that record he melded his synth-laden dreamscapes with the glorious cacophany of dozens of African musicians, creating something ancient, modern and timeless.

He thankfully doesn’t try to repeat that trick here, although the recipe is the same. Long Walk Home features Gabriel’s synthscapes alongside percussion, vocals and traditional instruments from some of Australia’s most celebrated musicians. Just for effect he tosses in the London Symphony Orchestra and the Blind Boys of Alabama choir, and the result is marvelous. The story of The Rabbit-Proof Fence is that of a 14-year-old girl kidnapped from her family, who uses the titular landmark to find her way home across the outback. While most of the score is of necessity dark and foreboding, there are moments that swell and practically burst with well-earned hope.

Long Walk Home has one thing over Passion – it plays like a single piece of music. It ebbs and flows with a consistency not found in the previous work. Like Passion, though, its soaring moments are deep and powerful. “Running To the Rain,” in particular, has a wondrous crescendo of treated strings that may be this album’s finest half-minute. “Ngankarrparni,” which reportedly also appears on Up, is a stirring track that even finds room for Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green to chime in on guitar. He builds on that on closer “Cloudless,” which is simply beautiful, one of Gabriel’s best pieces.

Of course, this is not the Peter Gabriel of “Sledgehammer” and “Digging In the Dirt,” but rather his deeper, more spiritual twin, and Long Walk Home is a beautiful piece of work that will stand among his most important musical contributions. Like the best scores (and both of Gabriel’s previous ones), it exists as a separate entity from the film, and is evocative enough to conjure images rather than being chained by them. In short, I can wait for Up, because there’s no way it’ll be better than this.

* * * * *

The back cover of the new They Might Be Giants album, No!, announces it as their first disc made for the whole family. It figures that just as I make the case against thinking of them as a novelty band, they go and make a full-fledged novelty – a children’s album.

Or so it would seem, although TMBG fans would be hard-pressed to come up with many ways in which this album differs from their usual fare. It’s still twice as clever as anything around, it’s still catchy as hell, and it’s still wonderfully, hysterically weird. It’s also a bit revolutionary, in some ways, considering TMBG’s insistence on refusing to talk down to their younger audience. Johns Linnell and Flansburgh have basically made just another really cool album of really fun songs.

Take “Four of Two,” for example, a classic TMBG song if ever there was one. It’s the story of a guy who gets stood up, but has eternal hope because, according to the broken clock in the town square, his date still has four minutes to show up. He even nods off at one point and pulls a Rip Van Winkle: “At once I awoke to a futuristic world, there were flying cars and gigantic metal bugs, I’d grown a beard, it was long and white, but I knew that the girl would be coming very soon, for though everything had changed there was still that clock and it still said four of two.”

“John Lee Supertaster” is the tale of a guy with a superpower of sorts: “When he tastes a pear, it’s like a hundred pears, he’s got superpowers!” “The House At the Top of the Tree” is a recursive yet wholly logical story about the machinations one goes through to keep from being eaten. “I Am Not Your Broom” is a brief emancipation proclamation from a put-upon household item: “I’ve had enough, I’m throwing off my chains of solitude, I am not your broom…” Fabulous closer “Sleepwalkers” makes a potentially scary nocturnal activity seem less so.

And on and on. No! is one of the best albums for four-year-olds ever recorded, and the best part is that there are interactive animations included on the disc for 13 of the 17 tracks. I admit some skepticism when I first heard of this project, but John and John have pulled it off by making it just as cool as anything they’ve done. If there were a hundred more records like this, and a few hundred less from the likes of Barney and Elmo, I wouldn’t feel so cynical about the younger generations these days.

* * * * *

Next week, another bevy of bountiful delights, including the new Sonic Youth and the debut of Page McConnell’s Vida Blue.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

The floodgates are about to open on the summer music deluge.

Coming in the next two weeks are albums from (deep breath): Our Lady Peace, Wyclef Jean, Peter Gabriel, Jerry Cantrell, Soulfly, Joe Satriani, Fatboy Slim, Michael Roe, Orbital, Bruce Hornsby, Sonic Youth, Cowboy Junkies, Queensryche’s Geoff Tate and Vida Blue, the side project from Phish’s Page McConnell. Oh, and on the 25th, the long-awaited Jellyfish rarities box set, Fan Club, ships from Not Lame Records. Also on the way are records from Dave Matthews Band, Oasis, Counting Crows, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Orb, Terry Taylor, 77s, Cush, Starflyer 59, The Violet Burning, Robert Plant, Filter, Beth Orton, and yes, Def Leppard. And that’s just July.

So, lots of work cut out for us, and lots of big columns coming our way. Let’s get started, ‘kay?

* * * * *

One of the few times I’ve bought an album based on its placement in critics’ top 10 lists was in 1999, when Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill came out. It slipped under my radar when it was released, but I finally picked it up after every critic on the planet called it the best record of the year. After listening to all 70-some minutes, three words came to mind: come fucking on. And three more words, somewhat more depressing: lost the receipt. Ah well…

I still don’t get the acclaim, even though the album has grown on me, but assuming the best of intentions from the legions of critics, I’m not sure how Hill can remain a superstar while Meshell Ndegeocello stays a bit player. Hill made her mark by combining rap, jazz and soul with emotional delivery, and while that’s definitely a laudable ambition, Ndegeocello has been doing it for far longer, and doing it far better.

Hill has recently undergone a transformation, switching from a hip-hop base to a more acoustic and soulful vibe on her Unplugged album. This has, naturally, disturbed and confused the critics who praised her mix of styles. Interestingly, Ndegeocello has just made the same transformation in reverse. Those who bought her last album, 1999’s lovely Bitter, and are expecting more of the same from her fourth, the just-released Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape, will probably be reaching for that receipt after they hear the expletive-laced first verse of “Dead Nigga Blvd. (Part 1).”

Cookie is Ndegeocello’s most rap-inflected album to date. And yet, from that base point, she brings in dozens of other influences, and the final effect does resemble a mixtape. First single “Pocketbook” is a trippy hip-hop anthem, all beats and rhymes, but then “Better By the Pound” is covered in nifty percussion, “god.fear.money” sports a searing rock guitar part, and “Jabril” mixes in some jazz saxophone. Cookie is a liberal mixture of rap, pop, jazz, blues, soul and rock ‘n’ roll, and plays like something Prince would have in his private collection.

So why don’t I like it more than I do? Well, part of my disappointment stems from the near total lack of memorable melodies here, which is something that’s plagued Ndegeocello’s work since the beginning. Even Bitter, a slower, more organic album as a whole, just seemed to drift from one chord to another. Cookie is all about the groove, and while the grooves are pretty great, the end result is kind of listless. It’s the kind of album that floats out of my consciousness without sticking.

Still, while I wouldn’t vote Cookie for album of the year, it is admirable and well-made. Ndegeocello is using her platform to send a message to the streets here, with lyrics full of anti-violence paeans and spiritual uplift. Her own credibility is unassailable, and she’s crafted an album that speaks from experience and talks a difficult yet important game. While I definitely prefer the emotional roller-coaster of something like Bitter, Cookie is an album that could net Ndegeocello some of that acclaim her lessers have been getting for years.

* * * * *

More my style, however, is the latest lyrical wonderama from Warren Zevon. While one couldn’t be blamed for writing Zevon off years ago, he’s been on a roll lately. Last year’s Life’ll Kill Ya was classic Zevon, and the streak continues with his new one, My Ride’s Here. And part of the credit for that must go to his unlikely list of collaborators. For this album, Zevon bounced lyrical ideas off of a virtual who’s who of the literary world, including (and here’s a contrast) Hunter S. Thompson and Mitch Albom. Yeah, you read right – the guy behind Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas shares disc space with the guy who wrote Tuesdays With Morrie. That alone should get you to the record store in a hurry.

Musically, this is a Warren Zevon album, and there are pros and cons with that. After the acoustic bent of Life’ll Kill Ya, the raucous electric opening of “Sacrificial Lambs” signifies a return to the classic Zevon sound, sort of rock meets folk at a hootenanny. Still, the songs are all simple, relying on the same chords and progressions that make up most of his catalog. There are surprises – the Irish folk of “MacGillycuddy’s Reeks,” the dissonant strings of “Genius” – but if you’re looking for complexities, they ain’t here.

But much like Randy Newman, no one buys a Warren Zevon album for the music. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the lyrics on My Ride’s Here rock. Zevon’s poisonous worldview is in full effect, especially on “Basket Case” (based loosely on Carl Hiaasen’s novel of the same name) and Thompson’s contribution, “You’re a Whole Different Person When You’re Scared.” The highlight is a little tune called “Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song),” which features David Letterman in a supporting role that doesn’t quite mesh, but provides laughs nonetheless.

The song I wish I’d written, however, is a collaboration with Larry Klein called “Genius,” all about bitter romance and the art of selling out. Cynical, nasty, witty – it’s everything a good Zevon song usually is. Verse two:

“There’s a face in every window of the Songwriters’ Neighborhood
Everybody’s your best friend when you’re doing well…I mean, good
The poet who lived next door when you were young and poor
Grew up to be a backstabbing entrepreneur
Albert Einstein was a ladies’ man
While he was working on his universal plan
He was making out like Charlie Sheen
He was a genius.”

In short, it’s just another Warren Zevon song, one of ten on My Ride’s Here, just another Warren Zevon album. If you liked him before, you still will. If you’ve never tried his stuff, this is just as good as any to start with. Remember that kid that stood brooding in the corner of the playground, wearing a t-shirt that read “Does Not Play Well With Others”? That kid grew up to be Warren Zevon, and if you ever wondered what that kid might have been thinking about you, here’s your chance to find out.

* * * * *

Next week, the floods come. It’ll be a big one, folks.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I am 28 today.

I have officially outlived Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain.

I’m taking the week off to contemplate this and basically feel like the ancient old man I am. Fortunately for those of you who can’t live without a weekly dose of my wit and wisdom (uh-huh), I had the following column all ready to go last week. I decided to let my little tribute to Dave Rankin stand alone, which left me with a column in the can. Hence, you get an all new (well, new to you) rant this week, and I get seven uninterrupted days off. Works for me. Curtain goes up, lights go on. Let the show begin…

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After September 11, many “experts” predicted that such a devastating attack at the heart of our country would signal the death of irony in our popular entertainment. Whether or not that’s true (and I highly doubt it is), it seems that America’s favorite court jester, the inimitable Eminem, was listening.

The biggest surprise of the Detroit rapper’s just-released third disc, The Eminem Show, is that he’s swapped his trademark satire for plain-spoken sincerity on virtually all of it. Em’s previous albums (1999’s The Slim Shady LP and 2000’s The Marshall Mathers LP, which I voted the best album of the year) traded in cartoon violence and sleight of hand, with Em’s three personalities juggling responsibility for each other’s words. Each jaw-dropping declaration came packaged with a ready-made cop-out and a deft satirical twist, with the end result being a subversion of the entire gangsta rap genre. Eminem set himself up as the ultimate unreliable narrator, hopping back and forth between the level-headed Marshall Mathers and the pathologically violent and dishonest Slim Shady, and in the end, he made you question everything that came out of every rapper’s mouth, including his own.

The first thing you’ll notice about The Eminem Show, should you get through all 80 minutes’ worth, is that Slim Shady only shows up once, in the instant classic single “Without Me.” Even that track, in context, is a portrait of an idea that’s run its course – Shady lashes out, as usual, but at the least controversial targets he could have picked. He slams ‘N Sync and Moby (Moby?!? What the hell did he ever do to anyone?), and while the barbs are clever, you get the sense that his heart’s just not in it as much as it used to be.

The rest of the album bears this out, as the remainder of the running time is given over to Marshall Mathers, the man behind the masks. It’s a daring move – Mathers has scrubbed away the greasepaint and created a first-person testimonial to his state of mind, an album as intimate and confessional as any six-string folkie’s efforts. In its best moments, The Eminem Show offers a glimpse behind the curtain at the fragile man holding the strings, and in its way, that’s even more bracing than all of Shady’s razor-sharp sobriquets.

Don’t get me wrong here – Mathers hasn’t made a record for moonlit walks in the park. The Eminem Show is just as raw, venomous and powerful as his previous efforts, only this time it’s real, which ups the stakes considerably. For example, Mathers’ legal disputes with his mother Debbie are well documented, arising as they did from backhanded jabs on both previous albums. (Shady even took an opportunity to verbally sodomize her on The Marshall Mathers LP‘s “Kill You.”) Still, you likely never took them quite seriously, which will probably leave you unprepared for “Cleaning Out My Closet,” this album’s savage evisceration of Marshall and Debbie’s relationship: “Remember when Ronnie died and you said you wished it was me? Well guess what, I am dead, as dead to you as can be…”

“Closet” is an extended poisonous assault, and its author doesn’t wink playfully once. Its exact opposite is “Hailie’s Song,” a sweet ode to Mathers’ daughter on which our faithful foul-mouthed irony machine actually sings, and it sounds for all the world like he means every word. “Hailie’s Song” is the album’s bravest moment, with Mathers standing naked on a bare stage and confessing, “My insecurities could eat me alive.” The fact that his voice is merely competent and often shaky only adds to the effect – if he could really sing, it wouldn’t be as fearless as it is.

In between those extremes, Mathers gives us further insight into his relationship with estranged wife Kim (immortalized as a murder victim in both “97 Bonnie and Clyde” and “Kim” on previous albums). Rather than the rage fantasies of albums past, though, here we get honest regret and mature understanding. Similarly, where most rappers would have turned the sex games of “Superman” into a litany of conquest, Mathers graces us with a picture of the guarded, cautious semi-swagger of a newly free man who’s been recently broken.

One of the album’s most exhilarating moments comes at the beginning, as Mathers pulls the curtain back on “White America.” The track serves as an explanation, in simple, deliriously biting terms, of the previous two albums and the cultural (and yes, racial) reasons for Mathers’ fame. The message is the same one it’s been all along – white America has never looked internally for the root causes of its downfalls. Mathers, a suburban white kid, connected with other suburban white kids by speaking their minds as Slim Shady, and his memo to the parents of his fans reads “your kids are just like me.”

Even “White America” is free of satire, however, preferring to take the straight approach. Similarly, the groovy “Square Dance” takes aim at war overseas with fastballs, not curves. Throughout the album, Mathers flirts with the responsibilities of fame, and even more poignantly, the personal responsibilities of fatherhood. Hailie Jade is at the center of this work, informing nearly every song, so it’s only fitting that she makes an appearance on the closing track, “My Dad’s Gone Crazy.” That song, one of the record’s definite highlights, contains the album’s kicker line, directed at America’s parents: “I don’t blame you, I wouldn’t let Hailie listen to me, neither.”

Beyond the surprise factor of a serious, introspective record from Eminem is the question of whether his multitude of fans will embrace such a work. Suffice it to say that if you’re looking for another slice of lyrical legerdemain mixed with pop cultural bitchslaps, you’d be better off listening to The Marshall Mathers LP again. Like any restless artist, Eminem is heading off in new directions, and hoping his fan base will follow him. The central conceit of his chosen genre, however, is insincerity – MCs are known for keeping the hard-edged front up at all costs. Eminem has chosen to wear his heart on his sleeve, and only time will tell if that’s seen as weak, or recognized as remarkably courageous.

As for the album itself, well, it’s overlong, self-obsessed, immaculately crafted and unforgettable. Eminem has thrilled in the past by leaping from one voice to another, contradicting himself from song to song, but on The Eminem Show, he proves what very few rappers have learned, but most acoustic folksingers have known all along – the only voice you need is your own.

See you in line Tuesday morning.