I’m standing in an empty house in which I used to live. My life is in boxes loaded on a truck, each labeled in scrawled shorthand so that the trained professionals to whom I’ve entrusted my existence know how to reassemble them into recognizable form. They’re all nice guys – Bill, the genial driver who seems like he’d be more at home in an academic setting; Lee, the soft-spoken Woody Allen fan; and Ken, the youngest, who talks a blue streak but can lift three heavy boxes on his back without straining. Still, I can’t help feeling a bit uneasy.

Bill tries to calm my nerves a bit by telling me that random truck explosions “rarely happen,” but adds that the company can’t insure “collections.” My whole life is a collection, one I’ve been amassing since the age of 15, when I first started earning my own money. It’s now grown beyond my ability to move it, and roughly half of it remains in my mother’s garage in Massachusetts. The other half fills at least a dozen large moving boxes, and it’s more comics and CDs and tapes than any one person needs. And yet I’m certain, since it’s happened before, that the loss of any one part of this collection would leave a massive, gaping hole in my well-being until it’s replaced.

I know, deep down, that none of this stuff really matters. It’s just funny pictures and shiny metal discs, plastic reels and magnetic tape. And yet to me, it’s my life frozen in time, a series of mile markers delineating moments I can’t get back, but can always relive. I buy an absurd amount of music and story during a year, but the best of it – the ones that imprint the very moment you first heard or read it on your brain forever – make the bulk of the collection worthwhile. I buy so much stuff because my favorites have always come into my life accidentally or tangentially, and I don’t want to miss out on those experiences. A not-so-good album with a great guitar player on it, for example, could lead to a brilliant album by that guitar player, one I never would have bought without the first one leading me there. Hence, that not-so-good album becomes just as important and vital to the collection as the brilliant one.

I suppose I collect artistic experiences because my personal experiences are always changing and fluid. At least, it seems that way whenever I’m standing in an empty house, as I am now, and thinking back on another concluded chapter. “I don’t live here anymore” is a simple, declarative statement, but trust me, it loses none of its indescribably sad power through repeated use. This is the third time in as many years that I’ve looked around an empty home and said those words to myself.

I don’t live here anymore.

I also collect artistic experiences because they often lead to personal ones. I met Jeff Picchioni, for example, during my long-haired ’80s metalhead days, another chapter long since closed. I was 16, I think, when Steve Pelland introduced us, and the three of us bonded over our shared love of wailing guitars and thundering drums. Pell and I would make these lists of the best guitarists, bassists, singers, etc. Pic never seemed to get into the list-making aspects of fandom, but he knew what he liked, and as time went on and both Pell and I discovered other forms of music we liked better, Pic retained his enduring fondness for ’80s metal. He still had it the last time I saw him, roughly five years ago. Amazingly, Pic found a charming girl named Heidi who also had a thing for hair metal, and the two got married almost a decade ago.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Pic lately, because one of his favorite bands was Great White, whose recent show in Warwick, Rhode Island led to 97 deaths in a tragic fire. Warwick isn’t that far from Bellingham, Mass., where Jeff and Heidi lived last time I talked to them. I keep telling myself that there’s just no way they were there, as I doggedly scan lists of identified victims. They’ve released names and photos of about half of them now, and no sign of the Picchionis, but I’m still worried.

And that gnawing feeling in my gut each time I search for their names is all the proof I need that my separate lifetimes in separate states are all connected. It’s like my record collection in a way – if one irreplaceable piece of it is lost, a hole opens up that can’t be filled. It’s a stupid analogy, and maybe I’m less human for thinking of life as a bunch of collected experiences and stories, but it’s how I’m wired, and I’m sorry, and I just really hope Jeff is okay. There are a million and one reasons why Pic wouldn’t have gone to Warwick, and only one that he would have – he loves Great White even more than I do, and I probably would have gone.

The finality of death, even possible and unlikely death, puts a somber tint on my weekend of packing and loading my old life into a truck. If I needed another sad reminder that my life is connected and not just a bunch of smaller lives in different states, it’s that every time I do this, I promise that the next life will be better, bigger, bolder than the last. And it never really is – I move, I get a job, I buy a lot of things and I never get around to writing any of the half-dozen stories and novels floating around in my head. I’ve had so much practice at holding on to my childhood that it probably won’t go now unless I make it go.

But if art is life, and in many ways it is for me, then this year seems like a good one to finally start really living mine. Several long-running passions of mine are concluding in the coming months, most notably Star Wars, the final episode of which bows in 2005, when I’ll be 30. Just this morning, official confirmation came in that this season is the last for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of the finest shows ever on television, and full of characters whom I love desperately. In March of 2004, Dave Sim brings his 300-issue comic book epic Cerebus to a close. I’ve been reading that book for more than 10 years. Similarly, Jeff Smith’s Bone, one of the first indie comics I ever bought, concludes in eight months at issue 55. I’ve been reading that one since 1992.

And if more end-of-childhood symbolism is needed, there’s always Mr. Fred Rogers, who died today of cancer. In a lot of ways, Rogers may have been the last vestige of human decency still on the airwaves. Like Charles Schultz, Rogers died shortly after bringing his life’s work to a close – the last episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood aired last year. Like most kids, I grew up on Mr. Rogers, and used to imagine that the paintings on my walls at home were my own Picture Pictures, and that I could see anywhere by looking through them. It’s strange that his death has affected me this much, but it’s another irreplaceable piece of my collected life that’s gone missing.

In a week’s time, I’ll be settled into my new life, in a new house decorated with all my old stuff. But the reason the collection continues to grow is that new experiences are always just as important as collected ones. We’re like sharks – without constant forward motion, we stagnate and die, and even though that process usually takes around 80 years, some of us die long before that. There’s magic in moments, even ones that fill boxes and take three people to move out of your house, and there are always new moments to look forward to.

Or so I think, as I take my last look around what I’m coming to accept as my old house, the place where I used to live. It’s a strange thing, but in some way, you never really leave a place behind as long as there are people and experiences you treasure. Keeping a collection of those things somehow makes it easier to move on. And even if that collection grows so large that moving it is a daunting task, it’s always worth it to take everything. You never know what you’ll eventually miss.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

The ongoing job search was halted this week by two and a half feet of snow. That’s 30 inches, all of it this heavy, thick, packed-down shit that’s back-breakingly difficult to remove. The entire state of Maryland pretty much closed down, and the governor even issued a decree banning non-emergency vehicles from state roads. I still can’t figure out what snow is good for, but at least now I know that its usefulness is not improved by mass quantities.

The roads are finally clear, for the most part, but the problem becomes where to put all this snow until it melts. The current solution has every intersection lined by nine-foot snowbanks, which are impossible to see around. Turning left, for example, has now become a game of chance, best played accompanied by a rousing Hazard County-style “yeee-hah!” Sure, driving the streets is like maneuvering a maze of death, but at least when this all melts the resulting water could flood those same streets, turning Baltimore into Venice.

I hate snow, in case you hadn’t guessed.

* * * * *

Entertainment Weekly debuted its comics section this week, which may well be the coolest thing ever. That a major entertainment publication has seen fit to devote two pages a month (the same space they afford live theater) is indeed a big deal, but what’s cool about it is that they seem to know what they’re talking about. They’re tackling really good comics, not just movie tie-in Marvel books, and offering non-comics readers a primer on why they should care about Frank Miller and Alan Moore and the like. For a comics fan, this is pretty neat, and while I can always wish for more in-depth coverage, I’m proud of EW for taking this step.

It’s too bad, though, that the primary example of comics storytelling currently in the public eye is the execrable Daredevil movie. The film distills years of Frank Miller’s best stories into one two-hour video game, complete with minimal character development and a script that could have been cobbled together by retarded monkeys. Or even Joe Eszterhas. The actors are all sleepwalking, except for Colin Farrell, who has somehow decided that calm, collected assassin Bullseye should be played like Tweak from South Park, all jitters and excitable outbursts.

There are a couple of ways to look at Daredevil, both of them bad. As a fan of the comic, this film flat-out offends me, simply because it provides the surface of the Daredevil story without any of the underlying emotions. All text, no subtext. Matt Murdock fights crime in this film for no other reason than because he does – one lost case doth not a vigilante make. He falls in love with Elektra Natchios for no other reason than because he does. (It certainly is not her character, here eviscerated and diluted beyond all redemption.) Ditto everything about this film – things happen because they do, because they’re in the script. It’s a colorful action movie with zero substance.

But what bothers me is the comic book Daredevil has never really been that. Frank Miller changed the comic in the early ’80s from a standard Marvel superhero book to a dark, meditative vigilante drama, and current DD scribe Brian Michael Bendis has further transformed it into a subtle, nuanced crime story, full of subterfuge and politics worthy of the best underworld mob movies ever made. The colorful costume has never been less prominent in this book, and even Alex Maleev’s menacing artwork adds to the sense that this is not your run-of-the-mill guys-in-tights comic book for preteens.

Which brings me to my second way of looking at the film – through the eyes of the non-fan. Daredevil the movie serves up an ample helping of the common public perception of comics. It’s simple, monochromatic, sort of fun and borderline brain-dead. It’s an action thriller for kids, dressed up with “darker” themes to bring in the teenagers.

The paradox is this: Daredevil is the current emissary from the land of comics to the rest of the world, and it defeats its own purpose. Put simply, if you like this film enough to check out a comic book store, you won’t find the film’s simplicity in the monthly comic. Those that would like the monthly comic, those with a taste for more sophisticated storytelling than most people believe comics can provide, will likely be so turned off by the Nintendo-ness of the movie that they’ll avoid the comic, and probably the comic shop, all together. Daredevil will do nothing to break the stereotype of comics, and may end up driving people away from comic stores instead of welcoming them in.

So here’s my exhortation: if you hated Daredevil the movie, check out Daredevil the comic. Marvel’s made it easy for you – the best DD stories of the past few years (and there have been a bunch) are collected in fairly inexpensive paperback form. Try Wake Up, Underboss or Out, all written by Bendis, or the beautiful dream that is Parts Of a Hole by David Mack.

* * * * *

If, like me, you’re wary of anything with the word “super” in its title – Superdrag, Supersuckers, Better than Ezra’s Super Deluxe, etc. – you probably haven’t tried Supergrass. If any band (besides Audioslave) needs a new name, it’s these guys, if for no other reason than to separate them from the herd.

Supergrass makes groovy, ’60s-inspired Britpop with a creeping disco influence, sometimes, when they’re not incorporating ’70s punk and Pink Floyd sounds. They’re like Sloan with heavy doses of Queen and the Bee Gees, kind of, if that band occasionally got into fistfights with the 1964 Rolling Stones. Sort of. While the Clash offers color commentary from the sidelines. Almost.

Forget about it. I’m not going to be able to accurately describe the cultural mish-mash that is Supergrass, and never has it been more delightful than on their just-released fourth album, Life on Other Planets. It’s damn near perfect, right down to the cheesy photo collage on the cover that’s right out of the Revolver reject pile. This band somehow makes their puree of styles sound natural and effortless, and it’s precisely that sense of whimsy that was missing from their last record, 2000’s Supergrass.

That album sounded a bit labored, and blew its wad completely on its shimmering leadoff track, “Moving.” In contrast, this one floats an inch or two off the ground for its whole running time, spinning one great melody after another. Its weightlessness is reminiscent of this band’s great second album, In It For the Money, which, despite a title ripped straight from Zappa, was a big ol’ pile of fun. Life on Other Planets zigs when you think it’s going to zag, and never overstays its welcome.

One of the great Supergrass tricks is to remain sonically faithful to whatever influence they’re incorporating. That means that the Rolling Stones-esque “Evening of the Day” sounds practically vintage, with nifty pianos and acoustic guitars, while the closing dirge “Run” contains layers of reverbed vocals straight out of Queen and loads of analog synthesizers and electric guitars a la Pink Floyd. Minute-long pseudo-punk number “Never Done Nothing Like That Before” finds the band raging on thudding six-strings and shouting in rough cockney accents, but the more progressive elements of the song are played like Yes might have recorded them. Or maybe like Zappa would have lambasted them. Powerhouse track “Brecon Beacons” makes the most of its upbeat rhythms, a la Sandinista-era Clash, but juxtaposes them with authentic disco synths and Beatles harmonies.

Sonics aside, though, Supergrass knows how to write a great song. Just check out “Can’t Get Up,” a thundering locomotive that finds the time to be melodically inventive as all get-out. Dig “La Song,” which somehow makes Lou Reed-style sing-speak rock sit and play nicely with a Byrds-esque chorus that is, indeed, made up mostly of the word “la.” In fact, every few seconds of Life on Other Planets, Supergrass is throwing something new at you, shifting their melodies hither and thither. Only “Run” stays in one place for long, and in that case, standing still is the point.

Supergrass is sometimes dismissed as “retro-chic,” whatever that means, as if their sound is some attempt to make the past ironically cool. This is bull. Like Sloan, Supergrass takes the time to capture the sounds of bygone eras as they were, not as some detached ironist like Beck might remember them. Unlike Sloan, Supergrass then meshes all those elements together, doing for the ’60s and ’70s what genre-defying groups of today are doing with modern music. Life on Other Planets is like a delirious collage of everything good about music before 1980, played straight. It’s also one of the best records I expect to hear this year, and truly deserving of the prefix “super.”

* * * * *

Here’s something funny: personality-challenged grungers Godsmack have done reviewers the world over a great favor by naming their new album Faceless. Saves us the trouble of saying so. Also in funny album titles, the new Eels record (slated for June 3) is called Shootenanny!, punctuation included. Chuckle.

Next week, Ministry, most likely.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Should be a short one this week. I still have no job, which means no extra money, which means no new music. I should be able to pick up the new Supergrass album by next week’s column, thanks to a few temporary jobs, but after that, I have no idea. I hope you’re all really interested in my thoughts on life outside the music world, ’cause you’re probably gonna get them for a while.

* * * * *

I am always surprised when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gets it right come Oscar time. By and large, they did a decent job this year, and in fact dropped one or two big surprises. Here are my thoughts and predictions:

As I mentioned before, I think Chicago has Best Picture all but wrapped up. Naturally, the Academy ignored the best and most original picture of the year, Adaptation, offering it only a Best Actor nomination for Nicolas Cage (well deserved) and a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination, which is just plain weird. Adaptation‘s script certainly would not exist without Susan Orlean’s novel, but it uses its source more as a launching pad for a metaphorical and metaphysical head trip. It’s a much more original script, one can argue, than some of the nominees in that category: My Big Fat Greek Wedding, for example, which floats on creaky ethnic humor and low-rent charm, or Gangs of New York, a typical revenge flick.

I’m glad to see The Two Towers nominated, because the second installment in Jackson’s trilogy does the tango all over the first one. For the life of me, I can’t figure out the widespread acclaim that Scorsese’s Gangs of New York is getting, especially since Daniel Day-Lewis (justly nominated for Best Actor) carried the film all by himself. Without his presence, the film would have been just another you-killed-my-father-now-I’m-going-to-kill-you slice of vengeance-schlock. In fact, it still is, but Day-Lewis is mesmerizing, the one bright light in an overwrought, overproduced misfire.

As for The Hours and The Pianist, well, I haven’t seen them, but both seem like prestigious films that won’t appeal to most Academy voters. I think Chicago is going to ride its toe-tapping vibe to a victory, for Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay, at least, and maybe a few acting awards. Those categories are harder to predict, but here goes:

It’s between Daniel Day-Lewis and Jack Nicholson for Best Actor, I think, unless Adrien Brody’s performance is everything people are saying it is. This category contains five well-respected performances, in fact, including class act Michael Caine’s in The Quiet American (which I also haven’t yet seen), but I’m giving the edge to Nicholson, especially considering that a) the Academy loves him and b) his film, About Schmidt, didn’t ride its positive buzz to Picture, Screenplay or Director nominations. Unless Day-Lewis upsets, Nicholson should get the prize.

Best Actress is similarly close, but I have to go with Nicole Kidman, who has really stepped out in recent years as a superb and fearless actress. Besides, The Hours is not going to win Best Picture, and Zellweger will likely have to make do with sharing in Chicago‘s top honor. I am kind of baffled by Salma Hayek’s appearance here, especially considering her phenomenal Frida co-star, Alfred Molina, is nowhere to be found. The film, unfortunately, concentrated its efforts on Molina’s portrayal of Diego Rivera, and gave short shrift to the title heroine. It’s odd, but Hayek, who did a passable job, was a supporting actress in a film named after her character, and really doesn’t belong here.

Both Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress are up in the air. I hope the Academy follows the Golden Globes in honoring Chris Cooper’s terrific performance in Adaptation, but my money’s on Paul Newman to collect Road to Perdition‘s one Oscar. (More on this later.) Likewise, while Kathy Bates is cleaning up in other awards shows, I think the Academy will go with Catherine Zeta-Jones as the first sign of Chicago‘s sweep. Julianne Moore won’t win here either, which is a shame – she’s swell, no matter what she does.

Sorry, Scorsese, but I think they’re gonna give Best Director to Rob Marshall, and likewise grant Bill Condon a statue for his adapted screenplay for Chicago. (Much as I’d like to see Charlie Kaufman and his imaginary brother Donald collect the award, Adaptation really doesn’t belong here.) And while it’s really cool to see both Alfonso Cuaron’s Y Tu Mama Tambien and Pedro Almodovar’s Talk to Her nominated here, I think the Academy will hand Scorsese’s directing award to his screenwriters: Jay Cocks, Steve Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan.

So, to recap, here are my predictions:

Best Picture: Chicago

Best Actor: Jack Nicholson

Best Actress: Nicole Kidman

Best Supporting Actor: Paul Newman

Best Supporting Actress: Catherine Zeta-Jones

Best Director: Rob Marshall

Best Original Screenplay: Gangs of New York

Best Adapted Screenplay: Chicago

Okay, one jeer and one cheer, and then I’m done.

The Academy’s tendency to forget any film released before September often causes good films to go overlooked, but I think this is the first time in recent memory that a great one has slipped through the cracks. Poor Sam Mendes, who snatched up Best Picture and Best Director for his slipshod debut American Beauty, knocked it out of the park on his follow-up, Road to Perdition. As I mentioned earlier, Paul Newman received the film’s only nomination, and that’s criminal. Had this movie come out in late December, it would have undoubtedly nabbed one of the five Best Picture noms. This is one of the few examples I can cite of a film turning out better than its source – in this case, a decent graphic novel by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner – and should not have been snubbed. Road to Perdition is a great film, perhaps second only to Adaptation as the year’s best.

But they did get one thing very, very right. The Academy gave raconteur Michael Moore his first Oscar nomination for his incredible, searing documentary Bowling for Columbine, and I hope he wins it. I’ve said it before, but Columbine is a film that every American should see – it examines our culture of violence and fear in a frightening, yet surprisingly even handed way. It’s scary, hilarious and moving, and a real achievement for Moore, and he deserves to be honored for it.

Okay, I’m done. Next week, probably Supergrass, and hopefully gainful employment.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I feel sort of like I’ve stepped backwards into a time warp. There’s a Bush in the White House, we’re about to go to war with Iraq, the economy’s in the shitter, and seven astronauts just died in a space shuttle explosion.

And you know what makes me mad about that last one? Everyone scrambling about and whining as if they’ve just realized that space exploration is dangerous. Think about this for a second. Astronauts willingly place themselves into a big metal tube that’s hurled at amazing speed through our atmosphere until they arrive in an airless, endless black space which contains no other humans, and then they trust that same metal tube to get them back, even though the temperatures and stress that tube encounters on its way through the atmosphere should kill them eight hundred times over. It’s a frigging miracle that every one of those people doesn’t die on these missions, and NASA ought to be commended for the dozens of times that they’ve got it right.

And for what? For knowledge, for exploration, for the chance to broaden our view of the universe just a tiny bit more. Astronauts don’t do this so that we’ll call them heroes, and if you don’t believe me, try to remember the names of all the crew members of the last three successful shuttle missions. Can’t do it, can you? They do this because they want to know, and because they believe that the knowledge they gain out there will perhaps help us all down here.

Basically, space travel now is just like air travel after September 11. It’s no more or less dangerous than it’s ever been, and the seven members of the Columbia crew knew that long before we did. Like the New York police officers and fire fighters, they accepted the risks and they did their jobs. They knew, in probably hundreds of ways that we didn’t and never will, how dangerous space travel is, and still they and dozens like them volunteered to sit in that flimsy metal tube and see what’s out there.

So, to the astronauts that made up Columbia’s crew: bravo, and thank you. To NASA: learn from this, and do everything you can to make future shuttles better and missions safer. And to our wacky government: the last thing these seven astronauts would want is to let their deaths end the space program. Space travel will never be safe, and that’s why those who choose to do it for the betterment of all mankind should be honored, and fully funded. Because right now, somewhere in America, there’s a kid who’s going to be the first person to set foot on one of the moons of Jupiter, or discover a cure for cancer on one of our space stations, or any number of other things that will never happen without a thriving space program. We owe it to the Columbia crew, the Challenger crew and all the others who’ve made space exploration the driving force of their lives.

* * * * *

I’m not sure yet what I think of the new incarnation of Cerberus Shoal, but since the kind folks at North East Indie Records sent me their latest CD free of charge, I’m going to use this column to try to find out.

Some background first. Portland, Maine’s Cerberus Shoal is a band quite unlike any other, and their bizarre history reflects this. They are now on their third lineup, and their third sound, a complete change from their previous two. The first incarnation released two nifty albums: a self-titled slowcore thing and a more experimental affair called …And Farewell to Hightide. That record was my introduction to the band, and I still love it – its five lengthy tracks spin a web of guitars and pianos that sucks you in.

I met the Shoalers just as they were finalizing their second incarnation, one that included the three members of fellow Portland band Tarpigh. They all live in the same small house, and they’re all approachable, passionate guys, which came through in the music this incarnation made. After the lovely soundtrack CD Elements of Structure/Permanence, this Cerberus Shoal embarked on a musical journey that produced a stunning trilogy: Homb, Crash My Moon Yacht, and last year’s Mr. Boy Dog. The music on these discs all but defies description – chaotic yet perfectly arranged, ethereal yet propulsive, organic yet otherworldly.

And then the two bands split – amicably, of course. They still live in that same house, after all. Tarpigh has gone on to release two strange albums of percussive sculpture-songs (Monsieur Monsoon and Go Hogh Wild), neither of which reach the heights they scaled with Cerberus Shoal. And as for the Shoalers themselves, well, they’re pretty much a whole different band. Original guitarist Caleb Mulkerin, bassist Chriss Sutherland and drummer Tom Rogers have welcomed vocalists Erin Davidson and Colleen Kinsella, as well as writer Karl Greenwald, and come up with something far removed from the C-Shoal of old.

They’ve been rolling out this new sound slowly, as they’re obviously still forming it, but so far the new Cerberus Shoal has released about an hour’s worth of material, including their two-track EP Garden Fly, Drip Eye and the first two installments of their nifty split-CD series. It’s pretty rare that I can have an hour of music on which to base my opinion and still not quite know what I think, but one thing I can say for sure is that this new band doesn’t have nearly the effect on me that the previous ones did.

Part of the problem is the increased emphasis on lyrics and vocals. If this band is going to keep calling itself Cerberus Shoal, which it has every right to do, then it’s going to invite comparisons with the previous bands, both of which produced long, winding instrumentals most of the time. The new Cerberus makes relatively short, clanging vocal pieces, with Greenwald’s lyrics often half-sung, half-chanted in an off-kilter three part harmony. The music seems to have incorporated a carnival atmosphere, and where previously there were waves of sound made by dozens of exotic instruments, now there is a somewhat lilting sparseness punctuated by percussive noises.

The band will likely disagree with me on this point, but the rules for writing interesting and enjoyable instrumental music are different from those for writing vocal music. Unlike the band’s previous vocal works, most of which used the voice like another instrument, it’s obvious that the lyrics for the new band’s songs were not intended for music, but written as poetry. Sometimes this works, and sometimes the band has to shoehorn syllables into its melodies. Since the sparse instrumentation allows the songs to be carried by the vocal melodies, this is quite noticeable – akin to what Alanis Morissette often has to do to be able to sing her unsent letters verbatim.

A good example of this is Cerberus Shoal’s latest offering, a split CD called The Vim and Vigour of Alvarius B. and Cerberus Shoal. Alvarius B. is the stage name of a guy called Alan Bishop, who (on the evidence of his two original tracks here) writes these caustic, acoustic-based folk ditties and sings them in a powerful, low voice. The concept for this split is terrific: Bishop and Shoal each recorded versions of each other’s songs, and then included the originals, so that listeners could hear the process of reinterpretation. It helps immensely that both artists seem impressed with and respectful of the other.

The two Alvarius B. songs (“Blood Baby” and “Viking Christmas”) are nasty and foreboding. (Sample lyric: “No two bodies are the same when you’re learning how to maim.”) Where Bishop casts these tunes in simple acoustics, however, Cerberus Shoal reinvents them from scratch, keeping the melodies but adding atmosphere and strange percussion. Strangely, these are my two favorite pieces from the new Cerberus Shoal, which says to me that my problem may be compositional, not tonal.

The C-Shoal original, “Ding,” bears that out. “Ding” is an 18-minute acoustic number (which Bishop covers in only nine minutes) that, sadly, repeats the same vocal melody for its entire running time – or, basically, until the band runs out of Greenwald’s words. The band does add layers as the song goes along, but not nearly enough to justify its running time, and they saddle the first seven or so minutes with an overdubbed typewriter noise that gets old after 30 seconds. It’s a shame, because the melody is quite lovely, but after 12 or so repetitions, it becomes tiresome.

My biggest gripe, however, is with the lyrics, which seem to be the only reason for stretching the tune to 18 minutes. “Ding” is an unconnected flow of phrases and mental dribbles, strung together for no other apparent reason than to seem poetic. Some examples: “Give gravy to the singing birds to shut them up, and focus on your diaphragm, or hold your nose in effigy to mom-ma.” “A ladder partakes of itself, climbing into arm safe apertures, convinced of its usefulness.” Or how about this one: “Hello amoeba, you are such timely beings, for swirls and shirts of face soft for hitting tree stems or short steps.” I will accept an 18-minute acoustic vocal piece if it’s got something to tell me, but as far as my unenlightened brain can tell, these are just words.

Which, again, would be fine, if the melody were captivating. Unfortunately, the new Cerberus Shoal seems to be halfway between writing vocal pieces and writing instrumental ones. The new songs are several steps above the first few offerings from this new group, however, and this is a band known for refining and redefining its sound. Hopefully, by the time this new Cerberus Shoal records its full-length debut, they’ll have finished their evolution into something different, yet as beautiful as the band that came before it.

Check out the band and all their recorded works at www.cerberusshoal.com. If you have to buy just one, get Homb, still a towering achievement.

Still no job. Will keep you posted. Next week, something more mainstream.

See you in line Tuesday morning.