A programming note first: I am beyond happy to report that the long-rumored and long-delayed Jellyfish four-CD box set Fan Club not only exists, but is out and available. I’m looking at my copy now, and I hope to slam this column out in a couple of hours so that I can stay up late and absorb the whole thing. I plan to review this next week, but as someone who would pay good money to hear Andy Sturmer and Roger Manning play tunes from McDonald’s commercials (which they do on Fan Club), I can’t promise the most objective review.

After that, I hope to play catch-up with a massive column encapsulating the new ones by Coldplay, the Black Crowes, Spoon, Ani DiFranco and Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch. That’s all to make room for the deluge on September 24, including albums by Beck, the Levellers, Mortal, Tonic, Poor Old Lu, Peter Gabriel, Low and Ryan Adams. Sheesh. October, of course, is no less expansive (and expensive), with releases from Mark Knopfler, Tom Petty, Ben Folds, Tori Amos, Tracy Chapman, the Elms, Foo Fighters, Badly Drawn Boy, the Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson and Sixpence None the Richer. If I don’t answer your e-mails until November, that’s why.

I know I said I’d do Coldplay this week, but I’m still absorbing it. Luckily, there were a bunch of releases this week, and two of them struck me as complementary and worth discussing together. They’re both, in many ways, about escaping where you’ve come from.

* * * * *

I’d bet that Duncan Sheik cringes each time he listens to his self-titled debut.

A strange and mostly unsuccessful attempt to merge Nick Drake-style atmospherics with radio-ready pop, Duncan Sheik contained a couple of swell tunes and a whole bunch of boring ones. It was overproduced, with waves of intrusive strings blocking out everything except Sheik’s unpracticed, straining voice, which sends shivers of the wrong kind. Still, there was promise there, buried under oceans of studio dronery, and my instincts told me he would be worth watching.

If every major label artist improved at the rate Sheik has, the industry would be in much better shape. His second album, Humming, was worlds better, even in its improved balance between the pastoral and the poppy. His third, Phantom Moon, made a brave and fantastic leap into acoustic artistry, leaving his first two efforts in its gentle, chilling dust. I enjoyed it so much that even in the face of unenviable competition, I awarded it the top spot on last year’s Top 10 List.

Sheik has long maintained that he will be attempting a split between his more artistic endeavors, like Phantom Moon, and his pop star records. Most greeted this news with a mixture of anticipation and dismay – depending on which side of Sheik you like, every other album could potentially feel like a trade-off at best and a sellout at worst. Being a huge fan of Phantom Moon, I greeted his just-released Daylight, described by Sheik himself as a more modern radio album, with trepidation.

I needn’t have worried. As the titles suggest, Phantom Moon and Daylight are merely two sides of the same coin, each album the yin to the other’s yang. Daylight is light-years removed from the fragility of Moon, but even further from first-album tripe like “Out of Order” and “Days Go By.” This is an accomplished pop album, populated by elegant songs honed to a fine sheen. These are the kinds of songs you want radio to embrace, because by their very presence on the dial they would up the relative intelligence of the airwaves.

Daylight was produced by Patrick Leonard, who has worked with Peter Cetera and Michael W. Smith, among other lightweight popsters, so the atmosphere and muscle present here is a bit of a surprise. The requisite string accompaniment on two of the album’s best tracks, “Half-Life” and “Shine Inside,” stays south of overpowering (except at the climax of the latter song, where overpowering everything else is the point), and the layers of guitar and keyboards are subtle and in service to the songs.

The real surprise here, though, is Sheik himself. He’s carried the Phantom Moon experience with him into this project, and exhibits a casual confidence throughout that truly marks his arrival. The Duncan Sheik of the first two albums tried way too hard to convince himself he could write and sing his songs. The Duncan Sheik of Daylight already knows he can, and you can hear the difference in his voice, which has grown into a remarkable instrument. His even tenor is unlike any other voice out there right now, and he can bring it soaring into a weightless falsetto with surprising grace, especially when compared with earlier attempts.

The songs have come a long way as well, and while Daylight is indeed a bunch of pop tunes, these are artfully constructed pop tunes with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of memorable hooks. While both of Sheik’s prior pop records contained stretches of uninspired boredom, there isn’t a moment wasted on this one. Opener “Genius” is as bad as it gets, with its simple chords leading into a rousing “la-la-la-la” chorus that brings it home.

I confess ignorance here, but if the buoyant “On a High” isn’t the first single, it ought to be. “Magazines” recasts the J. Geils Band’s “Centerfold” as a disturbing morality play, “Good Morning” finds the narrator taking sales pitches from the devil, “Start Again” makes the most of its circular melody, and “For You” is a near-perfect acoustic break. And closer “Shine Inside” is the kind of epic few songwriters these days even reach for.

In short, while it’s a shame that someone capable of Phantom Moon chooses to make pop albums like Daylight, these 11 songs establish Duncan Sheik as a force to be reckoned with. This is as artful as modern pop gets, and the album serves as the second half of Sheik’s mission statement. Hopefully there will be an audience for these songs. Sheik is an unabashed classicist, a throwback to the days when “pop” wasn’t synonymous with “crap,” and it would be a shame to lose him. Especially since he’s reportedly working on another Phantom Moon as we speak.

Aimee Mann, as well, came from humble beginnings, and I’d bet she hasn’t listened to those old ‘Til Tuesday albums in more than a decade. Who would have guessed in 1984 that the punkish “Voices Carry” girl, who used to front a noisy anti-pop combo called Young Snakes, would be capable of the luminous pop she’s been making for more than 10 years as a solo artist? Even the final ‘Til Tuesday album, the accomplished Everything’s Different Now, couldn’t have prepared anyone for Whatever, Mann’s delightful solo debut.

Since then, it’s been one commercial disappointment after another, with label after label either folding or rejecting her work. Her second solo disc, I’m With Stupid, was delayed for more than a year while Mann fought with Geffen over its release. (This after Imago, her first label, went belly-up.) Her third, Bachelor No. 2, met a similar fate, and Mann finally bought her album back from the label and released it her damn self, riding a wave of attention she earned with her soundtrack to Magnolia.

Hence, Lost in Space, her fourth album, is her first since Whatever to come out on the label and the release date originally announced. Not hard, really, since the album is on Mann’s own SuperEgo Records, which exists specifically to release her work. With no label interference and unlimited creative freedom, Mann has finally made an album that sounds purely her, a collection of sad tales set to superb, graceful atmospheres.

If I could put an album atop my Top 10 List based solely on packaging, Lost in Space would be a shoo-in. A beautifully designed digipak, the album features the sublime work of New York cartoonist Seth, who has told a few sad tales himself. His graphic novel, It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken, could be an Aimee Mann song. It’s the tale of a cartoonist’s obsession with the past, and failing attempts to fit in with the present. His art conveys all that lonely, sepia-toned emotion with gorgeous clean lines and a classic style.

Seth is a perfect choice for this album, as Mann’s lyrics are equally past-obsessed. In just about all of these 11 songs, things are not as good now as they were in some hazily-remembered past. Mann’s characters drift though these songs, tethered to their memories, and often lacking the will to rearrange their circumstances. (To her credit, only one song, “Pavlov’s Bell,” could be interpreted as an attack on a record company executive…)

As is her trademark, Mann sets these stories to some of the sweetest melodies you’ve ever heard. There’s rarely any light at all in her words, so she relies on the music to provide that, which it does admirably. The result is a kind of melancholy lightness, a nostalgia-tinged reverie that remains oddly hopeful. Even though the main character of “Today’s the Day,” for instance, never gets up the courage to actually leave before the song’s conclusion, one gets the sense through the music that she will one day.

If I have one complaint about Lost in Space, it’s this: Mann seems to have found a style she’s sticking with, and even though this album is a step up from Bachelor No. 2, it provides the same effect. Mann writes terrific songs, but she’s starting to write the same kind of terrific song over and over, and it would be to her benefit to stretch out a bit more on her next record.

A minor quibble, however. Listening to Lost in Space from beginning to end provides an experience unlike any offered by any other singer-songwriter currently recording, and it will stay with you long after the final strains of “It’s Not” have faded. Lost in Space is an emotional experience, an album you feel and experience rather than analyze. It finally cements Aimee Mann as an artist who has grown beyond her humble beginnings to become a master of her craft, and of her own destiny.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

For a while now, I’ve been contemplating changing the admittedly strict rules for inclusion in my Year-End Top 10 List. The one that’s garnering the most scrutiny right now is the only-domestically-released-and-in-record-stores regulation, which, given my newly global audience, seems to have outlived its purpose. (Plus, nixing that would let me consider the new Levellers album, out September 24, provided it’s as good as I expect it will be.)

A couple of rules will stay the same, however, most notably the ones that prohibit live records or cover albums into the list. Simple reasoning, really: I like to reward albums that match composition with performance. The song is half the magic, and how it’s played and recorded is the other half. It’s a shame, then, when someone as gifted and list-worthy as Peter Mulvey takes himself out of the running by breaking both of the above rules at once.

Mulvey cut his teeth in the Boston subway system, playing virtually every day. Unlike most of the buskers, however, Mulvey was using his subway time as partially subsidized practice, and emerged several years later with the crucial ability to hook a listener quickly and hold his or her attention. He also became one hell of a guitar player and singer, and the difference is noticeable between his first album, Brother Rabbit Speaks (pre-subway), and his third, Rapture (after two years down there).

On stage, Mulvey is simply mesmerizing, and he soon proved that the studio was no threat to him either, producing two great follow-ups to the manic, impressive Rapture. Deep Blue showed a more sinister and atmospheric side of Mulvey, and The Trouble With Poets should have been a breakthrough, so completely did it capture his sound and songcraft.

Poets sounded like a destination point, a final arrival, and so it’s no surprise, really, that Mulvey’s gone back to his roots with his new one, Ten Thousand Mornings, just released on Signature Sound Records. It turns out he’s never forgotten the subway, or the thrill of playing and singing for complete strangers who haven’t paid to come listen to you. Mornings is a live album, recorded entirely at the Davis Square T-stop in Somerville, Mass., outside Boston, and in its atmosphere you can hear the bustle of the city and feel the chill of the air.

Mornings is also a covers album, as Mulvey takes a trip through 35 years of his favorite songs. (Actually, given the traditional nature of “Rain and Snow,” the range of years is likely much larger than that.) And like any passionate music fan, Mulvey has chosen songs off the beaten path, even from some of the more famous contributors here.

For example, the album opens with “Stranded in a Limousine,” which Paul Simon recorded for his Greatest Hits Etc. album in 1977. Mulvey performs it raw, with famous folkie Chris Smither providing the accompanying beat with a pair of shoes. (Really.) While many of the songs come from the folk tradition, and thus translate well to Mulvey’s spare acoustic renditions, many more hail from unlikely sources. For every Bob Dylan (“Mama, You Been On My Mind”) and Gillian Welch (“Caleb Meyer,” a definite highlight), there’s a Leo Kottke (“Running Up the Stairs”) or an Elvis Costello (“Oliver’s Army,” which seriously never sounded better).

There really isn’t any such thing as an obscure Beatles number, but Mulvey picks one (“For No One”) that isn’t among the first twenty or so to come to mind, and performs it as a duet with Schwang’s Anita Suhanin. He also lays bare the power of Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues,” another unlikely choice, and really fleshes out Randy Newman’s overlooked “In Germany Before the War.” While Mulvey recommends the Be Good Tanyas version of “Rain and Snow,” I’m most familiar with the song thanks to the aforementioned Levellers, who recorded it on their 1997 album Mouth to Mouth. Mulvey adds new dimension to the tale.

Surprisingly, though, the most effective song here is by Dar Williams, whom I’ve often had trouble liking in the past. Mulvey finds the heart of “The Ocean,” singing and playing with the passion that makes him one of the best six-string storytellers working today. And then, at the emotional climax of the song, something happens that could only come about on a project like this one: a train rolls by. Mulvey somehow uses the din of the subway as an instrument, rising with it to finish off one of the best things he’s ever committed to tape.

Still and all, Ten Thousand Mornings is a bit of a place-keeper. It’s enjoyable, touching and often quite beautiful, but it’s still made up of other people’s songs, and half the reason I buy Peter Mulvey albums is to savor his words and music. In fact, for a limited time, Signature Sounds is making available the “other half” of Mornings, an eight-track EP called Five-Thirty A.M., and in listening to that, I discovered what’s missing from Mornings: more of Mulvey’s own songs.

It’s somewhat surprising that the EP, as a whole, works better than the album, but that’s likely because Mulvey sings his own songs better than anyone else’s. Included here are spare readings of songs from each of his last three albums, beginning with the lovely “Wings of the Ragman,” off of Poets. The title track to Rapture is well done, if not much different from the album version, but “Grace,” off of Deep Blue, is a wondrous thing. The album version was all beats and atmosphere, but here it’s just Mulvey’s guitar and voice, and the final effect is striking. It’s easily my favorite thing here.

Coming in second is Mulvey’s version of Radiohead’s “Airbag,” the most unlikely cover on either disc, and he does it straight, just guitar and voice. It’s further proof that a great song is a great song, and it doesn’t need studio trickery to hold its head high. The EP also features songs by two of Mulvey’s guest collaborators, the sweet-voiced Suhanin (who contributes “Sugar”) and bluegrass boy Sean Staples of the Resophonics (who wrote “Muddy Ground”). Cap it all off with an instrumental, Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” with cellist Kris Delmhorst, and you have a much more diverse and delightful offering.

But really, any chance to spend time with Mulvey is worth taking, and where else are you going to find a live record on which an amazing musician occasionally breaks stride to thank people for tossing quarters into his guitar case? Ten Thousand Mornings and Five-Thirty A.M. are unique and diverting discs that offer a glimpse at Mulvey’s breadth of talent.

There comes a point, however, in a musician’s journey where going back and playing the subways is just downright unfair to the other buskers. The light of day, the packed houses and the critical acclaim he deserves are awaiting him, and he’s too good to go unrecognized any longer. Mulvey has, literally and metaphorically, been underground too long.

You can help. Go to www.petermulvey.com and buy his stuff. It’s all worth your money.

Next week, Coldplay and Aimee Mann, and after that, I feel another big column coming on…

See you in line Tuesday morning.

In order to fully explain the flurry of emotions surrounding my high school reunion this past weekend, I have to tell you a bit about Bronwyn Moylan.

I doubt highly that she’s reading this, but when I was 17, Bronwyn was the most singularly creative and luminous individual I had ever met. We collaborated on the musical score to a play she had written, and she helped hone my raw ideas (dozens of them, in fact) down to a manageable and relatively effective core. I was thrilled to be asked to work on this, because it allowed me the chance to watch Bron at work. She was incredible, subtly manipulating all the elements necessary to bring her painfully personal story to life.

Bron won the female half of the “most talented” award our senior year (and in fact the designer of this very page, Michael Ferrier, won the male half), and it might as well have been written in flaming letters thirty feet high that this girl, this whirlygig of ideas and artistry, was Destined for Great Things. Amazingly, she thought the same of yours truly – that I was going to set the world aflame within 10 years. Bron and I used to joke after rehearsals about being too big and famous to attend our 10-year: “Send my re-gaaaahhds to the reunion.”

I don’t have any idea where Bron is right now, but she wasn’t at the reunion. I was, however, mostly because none of my maids or manservants would attend in my place, and my agent had the weekend off. When my personal assistant placed the event on my schedule, in between lunch with Ron Howard (“It’s about time you won an Oscar, Ronny, and why the Academy didn’t recognize your genius before, when you were making Backdraft and EdTV, is beyond me…”) and a Sunday getaway with Nicole Kidman (turns out she used to call Tom “shorty,” and not because of his height), I was aghast. But I finally reconciled myself to hobnobbing with the riff-raff, at least for a few minutes, before calling for my private helicopter to whisk me away.

The truth is, a lot of my fellow high school graduates shared Bron’s opinion of me, and expected that I would prove them right. Instead, I spent the 10 years since high school basically meandering around, waiting for my magnetic needle to find north. (I also spent it gaining 50 pounds, which didn’t help.) I ran a failing music magazine for far too long, I published a bad comic book, I took several journalism jobs, and I did everything possible to forestall starting my Real Life. So it was no surprise to come back to Rhode Island and find that many of my classmates had grabbed hold of their Real Lives as soon as we graduated.

I’ll be the first to admit that the wife-and-kids thing isn’t for me. I was still surprised at how many of my classmates had tried it on, and found that it fit well. Even the most unlikely folks from the Class of 1992 had become amazingly respectable and settled.

And here I have to tell you about Doug Borden.

In high school, Doug was an insane, alcoholic clown. He saw no class lines, talking to everyone and spreading his phenomenal gift for making people laugh. My favorite Doug story involves his bizarre habit of snorting Tic-Tacs – he would place one on his desk, lean over and inhale it so that it would bounce off the back of his throat and down. A funny trick, albeit a disgusting one, which he abruptly stopped after getting a cinnamon flavored one stuck in his sinus passages. Judging from his reaction (screaming, jumping, smacking the back of his neck) I’d wager it hurt a lot, but it made everyone laugh, and that’s what Doug was all about.

Come to find out that Doug is married to a lovely girl named Erin, has two kids and one on the way (all boys, or as Doug would say, “every one of ’em packing a turtle”), and has become an East Providence cop. Officer Doug Borden. I tried all night to wrap my mind around that one and couldn’t do it.

His story was not unique, however. Everywhere I turned, there was someone else with a well-respected job and multiple children. My closest friends from high school, with whom I have kept in regular contact, have for the most part avoided those jobs, and although some have significant others, none have children. And there we were, all huddled together, as if making a defensive line against the Real World and everything that goes with it, a handful of Peter Pans hoping never to grow up, despite evidence that we already have.

And yeah, there was still that schism that we felt all through high school, with the cool kids on one end and the losers on the other. I shudder to think how many people from my class saw a combination of talents and thought they knew me. To illustrate the point, one of the Cool Girls came over to where I was sitting two hours into the event, and proceeded to tell me how much she’s thought about me in the previous 10 years, and how she wishes she hadn’t been as mean as she was, and that she’s grown up tenfold, and on and on. I didn’t want to tell her that it took me a minute to remember her name.

But then, she asked me, “Are you still doing art? Because you could draw really well.”

Before I could respond that I can’t even doodle really well, it hit me that she wasn’t thinking of me at all, but of either Mike Ferrier or Jason LeClair, the two most gifted artists in our class. I casually pointed out Mike, seated a few feet away, and in doing so realized that this girl and I didn’t know each other at all, and that neither one of us had made the effort in high school to get beyond our little class cliques. Those barriers don’t exist in the real world (though at my most cynical I’m tempted to think that they’re merely replaced with more insurmountable ones), but the worst part of the reunion experience was that I found myself slipping back into the person I was 10 years ago more than once.

I don’t like that person, and have done a lot to try and kill him, but he’s still there, still carrying high school around with him. He’s the one that tried to make up lies about my 10 years, convinced that the real story wasn’t cool enough. He’s the one that really wanted to look some of the popular kids in the eye and say, “I can’t remember why I cared so much what you thought of me,” not realizing that the very act of saying that sentence belies it.

It’s amazing that 10 years can disappear before you realize that you haven’t really done anything with them. You don’t really understand that those years aren’t coming back until you see someone you haven’t seen in a decade, and try to match up this person with your memories. The ’90s aren’t coming back, though, and as much as I occasionally want a do-over, I’m okay with that. The person I am is a million miles from the person I was, and hopefully, the person I become in 2012 will be another million.

In the end, I’m glad I went, even though only about 40 out of around 150 of us showed up. The strangest thing happened on the way out, though: one of the more popular kids from my class, who had impressed everyone all night with tales of his exciting adult life, admitted to me that he’d lied his way through the whole thing. It broke my heart, but it cemented the impression that 10 years on, we’re all the same, and we all carry high school around with us like a weight. I wanted to tell this kid that I’d figured it all out – we can put the weight down any time we like – but for some reason, I didn’t.

There are some things, I later figured, that we just need to learn for ourselves.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

A while back, I received my first unsolicited request for review in the form of three CDs by Boston area guitarist and singer Peter Calo. They were good discs, so I gave them good reviews. Calo impressed me with his instrumental prowess (Cape Ann), vocal and lyrical ability (Wired to the Moon) and interpretive capability (Cowboy Song, a collection of old west tunes). He thanked me for the review, and I figured that would probably be it.

Turns out, though, Calo has taken on the role of part-time hype machine for my column, to the point of asking a couple of his musical compatriots to send free CDs my way. Besides being nifty cool in that I get to check out free music, this is a swell thing for Calo to have done, especially since I’m such a small and insignificant source of publicity for him, so here’s his public thank you.

I then went and dropped the ball by not finding some way to work reviews of these discs into my schedule. Thankfully, the musical downpour has kind of dried up for a couple of weeks, and I’m finally ready to talk about both Pamela Ruby Russell’s Highway of Dreams and Chris Brown’s Go West. Besides being friends with these musicians, Calo added his signature swell guitar and arrangement skills to both of these discs, and co-produced them as well, so they both already have points in their favor.

Ladies first.

Russell sent me her disc a few months ago – her salutation at the end of her letter read “happy summer” – and I’ve been meaning to e-mail her and thank her ever since. She’s a Bostonian who used to head up local band Beauty and the Beast, and Highway of Dreams is her debut solo disc. It was inspired by a couple of trips to Mexico to overcome family tragedy, and it features a wide variety of styles, all in service to Russell’s high, powerful voice.

In fact, it’s a voice that I sometimes have trouble with, since it often sounds a bit too studied. She hits the notes high and clear, but occasionally I wished for a bit more emotional resonance, especially since the songs seem to cry out for it. The main criticism I have for Highway of Dreams is that Russell doesn’t vary her vocal tone as much as the music behind her shifts and changes. She sings a haunting number like “Avenue of Tears” in the same tone she uses for a bluesy number like “Is There Any Love.” She does allow a great deal of character to seep in on the Spanish romp “Tengo Razon,” and I wished for more performances like that one.

But anyone that can write an album that bounces between those styles, and several more, is worth listening to. Highway suffers slightly from its sequencing, which places two of the weaker songs, “Boxcar” and “Live Baby,” up front. There’s nothing wrong with these songs, they’re just not as well-written as others like “Almost Gave My Heart Away” or the title tune. The aforementioned “Avenue of Tears” is this album’s finest moment, with rich harmonies accenting the melancholy chords. Russell actually sang this song on top of a Mayan temple at midnight five years ago, and unsurprisingly, it’s the best vocal delivery on the album.

All the songs here are Russell’s, but it’s impossible not to notice Peter Calo’s influence on this work. His rich guitar playing elevates even a simple number like “Boxcar,” and it’s quite surprising how few notes Calo needs in that song to make his mark. “Tengo Razon” shows a side of Calo’s playing that didn’t surface on his solo discs, and of course, he pulls it off fabulously. Highway of Dreams is not an album that I will pull out and listen to repeatedly, but it is a nice effort, and shows a fine collaboration between singer and instrumentalist.

New Yorker Chris Brown also has one of those voices that takes some time to become familiar with, but he gets by a bit more on cleverness. His album Go West is by turns smirking and sad, full of the stuff that makes the coffeehouse singer/songwriter circuit such a delight most of the time. His voice is low, deep and quirky, and he often sounds like the bastard child of Elvis and Leonard Cohen, especially on sing/speak numbers like “Dominoes.”

Go West is Brown’s third effort, after 1987’s The Edge of Life and 1991’s Surrealin’ In the Years, and that experience in the studio is felt all over this record. Brown, most likely with Calo’s able assistance, plays with dynamics on Go West to decent effect, mixing in accordion, organ and piano at the perfect times. The album is a fun and sometimes moving listen.

It’s Brown’s lyrics that really stand out, however. Sly opener “Nice Shoes” counts down a list of everything the singer’s significant other despises about him, but makes sure to point out that she can’t disrespect his shoes. The wry tune ends with the following couplet: “Nice shoes, nice shine, in lieu of another rhyme, I’m simply going to let the music play as I walk away.” Cleverness also abounds on the rollicking “Every Time We Kiss,” which includes the lines “Sometimes all this spinning has me feeling like an old 45, all pops with a hiss, scratch and skips, stuck on my b-side.” He saves one final zinger for the last verse: “It’s survival of the fittest and I feel fit.”

Brown strips the sound down for the sad recovery tune “My Better Half,” which stands as my favorite here. That comes directly after another highlight, Brown’s straight folk-rock reading of Tom Waits’ lovely “Hold On,” sung with all of Waits’ passion and none of his roar. And yes, Calo is all over this album as well, lending his graceful playing and arrangement skill to Brown’s well-crafted songs, but Brown exhibits enough confidence on his own to emerge as the focal point. Go West is a quick, clever piece of work that grows deeper with subsequent listens.

You can get Pamela Ruby Russell’s album at www.rubytunes.com. Chris Brown’s work is available at www.cbonline.net. And of course, I highly recommend (again) that you check out www.petercalo.com. Thanks to Pamela and Chris for sending me their work, and thanks again to Peter Calo for recommending me.

Next week, tales from the dreaded high school reunion, probably.

See you in line Tuesday morning.