I’m exhausted.

I’ve just finished working my 68th hour for this week, and I have to get up at 4:30 tomorrow morning and go back for more. They’re promising that all this overtime is a temporary situation, but I figure that once we prove we can work all these hours and still turn out the product, there’s no reason the company would ever change a workable system. “But you did it last week,” they’ll say. “Surely if you did it last week you can do it again this week. You don’t want to let the team down, right?”

So my apologies if this installment seems more scattered than most. To paraphrase some famous guy, I was dreaming when I wrote this, so forgive me if it goes astray.

* * * * *

I got a lot of letters about last week’s column, as I expected. What I didn’t expect was that every one of them would be nice, articulate and well-thought-out. I expected some hurt and bitter ranting, and as it turns out, the only one who ranted was me.

Everyone who wrote in noted that they understood where I was coming from, even if they disagreed. Last week’s missive was an attempt to capture an emotion while it burbled just beneath the surface. My anger at the situation has subsided, and mostly turned to sadness and dull grief. I would probably not write the same column the same way now – it would be a little less “fuck you” and a little more “I’ll miss you,” which I think is what many of my correspondents wished for.

My site statistics went through the roof last week as well – more people read the last column than have ever visited my site in one week. While I wish it hadn’t been that one that brought people in, I’d like to thank everyone who read it and came back for more. And I’d especially like to thank all the fine folks who wrote in with their thoughts and feelings. I’m grateful for the chance to connect with you all.

* * * * *

It’s strange to segue from that to this, but I have to get the silly music column up and started again sometime, so here goes:

I used to love the Barenaked Ladies.

This was before they became insanely popular in the mid-’90s, but I’m thankful for that popularity, if only because everyone knows who I’m talking about now when I say “Barenaked Ladies,” and I don’t have to explain that I’m not being dirty. BNL has always been an underrated band, though, even at the height of their popularity. They did it to themselves somewhat, with their carnival-esque concerts and their cartoonish videos for “One Week” and “Pinch Me,” but they’ve always been unfairly typed as a novelty band.

From the start, there’s always been more going on than just funny songs. For every “Be My Yoko Ono” on Gordon, their nifty debut album, there’s a strummed stunner like “What a Good Boy.” Bandleaders Steven Page and Ed Robertson are occasionally remarkable songwriters, and while their bread and butter is catchy, delightful pop, their lyrics often reveal a more knowing, even sinister edge.

The holy trilogy of BNL albums is Gordon, Maybe You Should Drive and Born on a Pirate Ship, three successive records that each expanded on the last in scope and sound. They’ve never written a sweeter song than “Am I the Only One,” or a catchier one than “Life, In a Nutshell,” both from Drive. They’ve also never explored their darker side to greater effect than on Pirate Ship, a consistently inventive tour full of creepy tales of obsession and self-destruction. (If “I Live With It Every Day” is the work of a novelty band, then I’ve got the wrong definition.)

Things just haven’t been the same since, unfortunately. Massive popularity hit with two huge singles, “The Old Apartment” and the insanely catchy “One Week.” And suddenly, it seemed like BNL forgot what they sounded like. 1998’s Stunt was chock full of novelty tunes, like “Who Needs Sleep” and “Alcohol,” and introduced a new, quirkier sound. By comparison, 2000’s Maroon fared better, but the sting seemed to be missing. It was more serious, but less heartfelt, with the exception of the exceptional “Helicopters.”

So what changed? Well, the most obvious difference is the addition of keyboardist Kevin Hearn, who’s been an easy whipping boy since he joined. Hearn is a real synths-and-samples guy, and his keyboard voices and lines account for much of the new music’s more plastic sound. He adds a quantifiable They Might Be Giants-ness to BNL, and unintentionally makes it more difficult to take the band seriously.

But laying all the blame on Hearn is just too easy, and not quite accurate. The tone of BNL music has shifted radically since the first few records, and it’s hard not to imagine that shift as a by-product of success. Since “The Old Apartment” hit big, the Ladies’ strong desire to be liked by everyone has been hard to miss. They seem incapable of simply tossing off wit these days – everything is rethought and revised and labored over until all trace of spontaneity is gone. BNL records are big productions now, with every note and every line in place.

The title of the band’s new album reflects this. It’s called Everything to Everyone, and all by itself the name carries with it a feeling of dread and expectation. It turns out that this new BNL is all about choice. There are no fewer than three versions of the album available – a standard version with all 14 songs, a limited edition with three bonus tracks, and a super-cool and super-expensive version with a loaded DVD. The super-cool version provides you with the greatest choice – three versions of the new album, depending on what type of band you want BNL to be.

It should be no surprise that Everything to Everyone is the band’s most layered, produced, sonically thick album to date. There are those, however, who will want still more layers of sound, and the Ladies have accommodated them: the DVD contains an impressive 5.1 surround sound audio mix of the entire album, giving it an almost epochal sheen. But wait, there’s more! For those like your faithful reviewer, who miss the intimate sound this band used to have, the DVD also contains 11 of the 14 new songs in stripped-down acoustic versions. And there’s video of the recording session as well, which the band set up as a mini-concert: BNL goes back to doing small, living-room-style shows, and You! Are! There!

It would be easy to be cynical about all this marketing, especially since the first three songs on the album live down to expectations. I never again need to hear another song about how much it sucks to be famous, especially one as vacuous and derivative as “Celebrity.” (It starts with the couplet, “Don’t call me a zero, I’m gonna be a hero,” and gets worse from there.) “Maybe Katie” is undoubtedly supposed to be rocking, but it’s just boring. And first single “Another Postcard” is a glib, forced novelty song that might have been amusing, if it weren’t exactly like every other glib, forced novelty song in their catalog.

But then the record takes off, and the idea that I’d ever really hate this band becomes ludicrous. The next 11 songs are the best set that the Barenaked Ladies have spun since Pirate Ship, easily. It’s clear that these songs were written because they were written, not because they would sell records, and that makes all the difference. On the whole, the album is bittersweet and remarkably intelligent, containing a bare minimum of silliness.

Highlights? Okay. “For You” is a delight, an acoustic folk shuffle with a great Ed Robertson melody. “Testing 1,2,3” is the most self-referential song the Ladies have done, wrapping a kiss-off to the fame of past years in a truly catchy pop ditty: “We recognize the present is half as pleasant as our nostalgia for, a past that we resented, recast and reinvented, until it’s how we meant it…” “Aluminum” is one of Page and Robertson’s prettiest songs, and I like that they acknowledge the alternate (read: correct) pronunciation: al-lu-mi-ni-um. “Upside Down” is as savage as this band gets, with Page snarling his way through an off-kilter verse structure. “Unfinished” is superb pop music, a la former BNL reference Brian Wilson. And silly song number two, “Shopping,” is a wonder of Euro-beats and “la-la-las” that was made for the 5.1 mix.

Surprisingly, one of the best songs didn’t make the record – “Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!” is only available on the DVD, but it’s a winner, far superior to “Maybe Katie” and “Celebrity.” But really, the Ladies finally did everything just about right on this album. Even Hearn restricts himself to tasteful piano when he would have used decorative synths before, and his songwriting contributions are extraordinary. Perhaps it’s the experience of hearing so many different versions of these songs in one package, but they feel lived-in, they feel real, for the first time in years.

So what does this ultimately mean for the Barenaked Ladies and their fans? Well, they haven’t quite recaptured the off-the-cuff delight of their early work, but they’ve made great strides toward becoming their own band again here. They’ve given you so many choices, so many entry points, because they really want you to hear these songs, and they have every right to be proud of them. It’s a strange paradox – Everything to Everyone is the band’s most personal set in ages, and it’s designed and marketed like a media event. The identity crisis is everywhere except the music.

And that’s what’s ultimately important. Whatever brings you to this album, be it the 5.1 mix on the DVD, the acoustic versions, the impressive packaging, or what have you, you’ll stick around because of the songs. However many marketing tricks the band and label need to do to get you to hear them, they’re worth it this time. If you’d written off the Barenaked Ladies, as I almost have many times, it’s time to come back. They’ve finally made something that’s again worth the term “criminally underrated.”

Next week, a special dedication.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I was going to write about a number of things this week.

First, I was going to recap the last Red Sox game of the season, and blame not the curse but Grady Little for losing us our best shot at a World Series since the ’80s. I was going to talk a bit about how surprised I am that I like the new Barenaked Ladies album, especially considering how lousy their last couple have been. I may have mentioned music in advertising, and perhaps might have shared a humorous anecdote from the workplace.

But then I heard that Elliott Smith died.

Well, perhaps “died” is not the right term. Smith’s body was found on Tuesday with a knife sticking out of his chest – a knife, police are presuming, Smith himself put there. They’re calling it an “apparent suicide.” Smith was only 34.

This is one of the things that sucks about being me. Most of the artists I really admire are relatively obscure, beneath the public radar. Most people I know have never heard of Elliott Smith, or if they have, they heard of him through me. His death doesn’t affect the general population one whit. And here I am, with all this rage and pain and no one to share it with.

So. A quick primer on Smith, in case you need it. Simply put, he was one of the best songwriters of my generation.

Elliott Smith started his career in a noisy band called Heatmiser. They made three noisy records before they broke up. Smith’s heart was hardly in it, however, and at the same time he launched his solo career with two lo-fi masterpieces, Roman Candle and Elliott Smith, that featured little more than his hushed voice and his gently picked acoustic guitar. But it was his songs, those unpredictable, meandering songs that garnered all the attention.

A third album, Either/Or, caught the ear of director Gus Van Sant, who finally put Smith in the spotlight by using several of his songs in the film Good Will Hunting. You may remember that that film earned a bunch of Oscar nominations, including one for Best Song. The song in question was “Miss Misery” by Elliott Smith, and he looked uneasy and out of place as he performed it at the Oscar ceremony. It’s as if people were asking, “Who is this funny-looking little man, and how did he get up on stage?”

The songs again won the day, as the Good Will Hunting soundtrack brought Smith to the attention of DreamWorks Records, a company known for sticking with artists for creative reasons, not financial ones. Given a major label budget for the first time, Smith delivered XO, one of the best albums of the ’90s. Really. No joke. It’s a big, buoyant, sad, longing master stroke, and everyone should hear it. Many Face Magazine readers were surprised, and none more so than my editor Bennie Green, when I named it the best album of 1998.

If his follow-up, Figure 8, is not quite as good – it’s a little too long, a little too self-righteous – it remains head and shoulders above the work of most songwriters Smith’s age. These are eloquent, majestic songs that couch deeply felt pain in endlessly inventive melodies. Smith never seemed to run out of new ways to twist lines and phrases, and it’s both his attention to songcraft and his penchant for the dark and lonely that led to comparisons with Nick Drake. Sadly, now that comparison seems even more apt.

And yes, I’m heartbroken and sad, but mostly, I’m pissed off. The reasons some have given for Smith’s apparent suicide include chemical dependence and frustration with work on his planned double album From a Basement on the Hill. I say that’s cowardly, pathetic bullshit. Chemical dependence can be overcome. So can artistic frustration. So can a perpetually broken heart. Far be it from me to question Smith’s motives, but his actions in this case were weak and selfish.

Yeah, I’m talking to you, Elliott. Congratulations, you made the world worse. We’ve already seen so much death this year, and to add to it on purpose, and to deny the world your gift, is just unforgivable. I mean, just look at Warren Zevon if you want a comparison. Here’s a guy with immeasurably less talent – don’t argue, it’s true – who, when handed his death sentence, worked until he couldn’t see straight anymore to share his gifts one last time. You had everything in front of you, and you threw it away at 34 with a knife to the heart. What the fuck?

You were alive, Elliott, and nothing is ever hopeless while you’re alive.

So, just a few things I want to say. First, thanks for five great albums, especially that fourth one. I’m sure we’ll get to hear the songs you were working on since then before long, and I look forward to one last visit with your immense talent.

And one more thing.

Fuck you. Fuck you, Elliott, for pissing it all away, and for giving us one more stupid rock and roll martyr. Fuck you for giving up, and through your actions, for making other people want to give up. Fuck you for tainting your beautiful art with your cowardice. Fuck you for making me feel bad for you anyway.

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.

I’ll miss you.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Sports are stupid.

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve uttered the above phrase, I’d be able to buy Fenway Park. Disdain for sporting events – of all kinds, in all varieties – has been a running motif of my life for as long as I can remember. I was forced to play baseball, basketball and soccer as a youngster, and I hated all three. Pointless athletic competition, I’d say. What’s the point?

I’m writing this in the hours before Game Seven of the 2003 American League Championship Series. I’ve watched every game of this series so far, and I’m surprisingly wrapped up in it. The Boston Red Sox are one win away from playing in their first World Series since 1986. The last time they won the World Series was in 1918. If there’s a ball club I would consider “my team,” it’s the Red Sox – I grew up in Massachusetts in a house with a rabid Sox fan, so it’s osmosis more than anything else.

It’s weird, but I’m on pins and needles right now. I’m so stressed and excited I can barely sit still. Oh, did I mention that the ALCS this year pits the Red Sox against the hated New York Yankees? I’d like to say that even if the Sox lose tonight, they’ve played a great series and it’s not who wins or loses and blah blah, but I can’t. Nothing but crushing, terrible defeat is good enough for the Yankees. Most of you reading this probably know by now who won, or you don’t care, but I thought it important to capture this rare moment while it was happening, since I may never watch another sporting event again, because they’re stupid.

So in summary, um, go Sox.

* * * * *

This is going to be a strange analogy, but it works, so I beg you to stick with me.

Those not into music often find it strange when those of us who are describe our relationships with particular bands as exactly that: relationships. It is possible to have a relationship with a band that is just as rewarding, if not more so, than a relationship with a real person. Bands are very much like people – they have opinions and thoughts and particular ways of viewing the world, and they have their own methods of expressing those views. It’s very much like each band member makes up one part of the group’s body, and the amalgam of their shared personalities and skills determines how this new person will move about the world. Bands age just like people, and they can be wounded, maimed and killed like people, too.

One thing that’s extremely difficult for any band to overcome, however, is the loss of its lead singer. The singer is, in most cases, the definable face of the group, and in many cases, the brain as well. If a band, especially a long-running one, must replace its singer, it’s like that person we’ve come to know has been decapitated and grown a new head. This new head looks different, speaks differently and holds different views and opinions from the previous head, and even though the body parts are the same, the new brain will make them move in different ways. It’s like an entirely new person, one which we as fans have to get to know all over again, and it’s little wonder that most fans don’t bother.

See, I told you it would be a strange analogy.

The second getting-to-know-you process would probably be easier if the new heads didn’t have a disturbing tendency towards top-40 radio pop. Time after time, though, talented bands will lose their singers and replace them with new ones, and within two albums they’re suddenly playing synth-heavy love ballads. Van Halen is a good example – they went from “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” with David Lee Roth to talking about nothing but love with Sammy Hagar, and the decline was steep. For a while there, it looked like Steve Hogarth was going to bring Marillion to the same sappy place after Fish left, but that band has blossomed into something wholly different, yet wholly beautiful.

Perhaps the most famous example is Genesis. That band was all but defined by Peter Gabriel in the ’70s, crafting moody soundscapes for his bizarre and creepy lyrics. After he left in 1974, the band auditioned other singers, but eventually settled on their own drummer, Phil Collins. (He’s always been a better drummer than he is a singer, by the way, and listen to Selling England By the Pound if you don’t believe me.) It didn’t take long for Collins to warp Genesis into his personal hit machine, and the less said about later-period albums like Invisible Touch and We Can’t Dance the better.

Still, progressive rock fans continue to debate the merits of the two eras, particularly the earlier Collins albums like Wind and Wuthering. Prog fans like nothing better than a good debate, and now they have another chance at one, since a similar fate has befallen Genesis disciples Spock’s Beard.

If you’ve never heard of the band, the name Spock’s Beard tends to provoke chuckles, but for about a decade, they’ve shared the throne with Dream Theater as one of the best progressive bands of our time. I have a few problems with the term progressive, since it’s used to describe a style that’s regressive if anything, but really what it means is music that’s damn near impossible to play. Genesis, Yes, Dream Theater and Spock’s Beard all share one trait – the musicians that play in these bands are, by necessity, masters at their instruments.

That doesn’t mean they can write good songs, however, as any slog through Abacab or Tormato will show. Spock’s Beard has never had that problem – in fact, the band has often been seen as a vehicle for the songwriting of Neal Morse, their lead singer. Nobody writes a 30-minute song like this guy – he pulls memorable melodies from the air, restates themes in perfect places, and never bores. Last year he wrote almost all of the Beard’s two-hour concept album Snow, a rock opera in the classic tradition.

And then he left.

We’d seen hints of the reason for his departure for several years, but none more forceful than on Snow, with its thinly veiled Christ metaphors. Neal Morse had found God, and his religious faith was calling him elsewhere. Many expected the end of Spock’s Beard, but the remaining members soon announced that they would soldier on. In a very Genesis twist, drummer Nick D’Virgilio would step in on lead vocals.

I will never forget the first time I saw Nick D’Virgilio play. He was touring with Jonatha Brooke, and all by himself he was more than half of her backing band. He sat at a three-piece drum kit with a bass guitar in his lap, and he used both hands to play the bass, his left foot to work the kick drum and his right to work the hi-hat. But wait, there’s more – he played the snare drum with the head of his guitar, shifting his whole body every fourth beat or so. Oh, and he also sang backup vocals. The guy’s amazing.

But still, could Spock’s Beard find its own identity without Morse’s songwriting? The answer, in a manner of speaking, has arrived with Feel Euphoria, the first Beard album with D’Virgilio in the lead spot. And while it’s not bad, it’s certainly the weakest music ever released under the band’s name. Despite the fact that these guys have been playing together for more than 10 years, this album feels like the first tentative steps of a neophyte.

Naturally, it’s not nearly as complex as any of their albums with Neal Morse. There are progressive touches here and there, but mostly Feel Euphoria is straight-ahead rock and pop. There are three ballads, which stay pretty well within the pop cliche realm, and there are several simple rock songs stretched beyond their ideal running times. The album’s centerpiece, the six-part suite “A Guy Named Sid,” feels like the first extended piece D’Virgilio has tried to write – he should probably have scrapped this one and attempted two or three more before recording.

But there’s some pretty stuff here as well, and some things that bode well for the future. D’Virgilio’s voice, for one, is strong and appealing. “The Bottom Line” makes good use of its seven and a half minutes, flipping from one section to another well. The melody of “You Don’t Know,” smack in the middle of “Sid,” is impressive and memorable. The band is tight and plays this simple stuff well, but given their past records, most of this material is beneath them. Keyboardist Ryo Okumoto, especially, never gets to shine, and this guy’s a wizard.

Feel Euphoria is certainly a first step for the new Beard, but even so, it probably could have been better than it is. The first signs of a top-40 direction are here, and the band needs to nip that in the bud as soon as possible. Even without Neal Morse’s direction, the four musicians who make up the Beard are capable of more than they’re showing here, and the next album should demonstrate that.

And hey, if they need a good primer on what made them special, they can always pick up Morse’s own new solo album, Testimony.

Everything that Feel Euphoria lacks is here. Testimony is a massive, two-hour progressive suite, the kind that can only be written by a master. It’s thematically sound all the way through, and it feels like one long, beautiful song. It’s the ultimate excessive prog record – there are horn sections, orchestrated passages, winding keyboard solos, tricky instrumental bridges that last for four minutes, and numerous interludes. There are even three, count ’em, three overtures. It’s the kind of laughably grandiose project that few artists even try for anymore.

And yes, this is the Jesus record that Morse felt he couldn’t make with Spock’s Beard. As the title implies, Testimony tells Neal’s story, focusing on his conversion to Christianity. It’s a topic that has, to my knowledge, not been broached in this style before, and it’s funny to me that one of the most Christian albums of the year was released on Metal Blade Records. It’s also a topic that needed to be handled delicately to fully succeed, and that’s where Morse fails. If there’s one thing prog is not, it’s delicate.

Much of Testimony sounds like Michael W. Smith trying to make The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. The lyrics are, in a word, bland – they tell Morse’s tale in the vaguest and most general terms, and infect the record with several typical CCM-style praise songs. My complaint here is not that Morse has made a Jesus record, but that he’s made one that retreads the same ground the Christian music industry has trampled since its birth. “I Am Willing” sounds like Carman at his most worshipful, and “Oh, To Feel Him” is pretty much irredeemable. (Plus, he’s releasing this album to an audience that’s not used to this sort of thing, one that will definitely catch the unintentional homoeroticism in a song called “Oh, To Feel Him.”)

But even if he’s occasionally overzealous, Morse obviously felt every note of this enormous work, as evidenced by the fact that he played almost all of them. Any sound on Testimony that wasn’t made by an orchestral instrument or a drum was probably made by Morse, and I doubt that any artist with an album this year can say that they worked harder on theirs than Neal can. (The drums, by the way, were played by Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy.) Musically, this is mostly fantastic, and it contains all the hallmarks of Morse’s best work, kicked up a notch or two. Testimony‘s two hours fly by, propelled by Morse’s sense of flow and unity.

If this is the last we hear of Neal Morse – and it may very well be – it’s a good way to go out. He’s made an album that he’s obviously wanted to make for a long time, and he’s poured everything he has into it. I hope, however, that he returns to music, and even to Christian music, once he gains some perspective on his newfound faith. Testimony is a musically rich album that, unfortunately, could have used more depth lyrically. But Morse is still better off than his former band – we already know him, and it’s going to take a bit more time to get to know them again.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I just tried red licorice soda. You know, for the hell of it.

It’s terrible. Been rinsing the taste out of my mouth for about 20 minutes now, and it’s not going away. I do things like this all the time. I have a natural and inescapable curiosity for anything that seems, by all outward appearances, as if the experience of it would be horrible. Particularly beverages – I’ve tried practically every flavor of beverage, no matter how putrid, including that grandpappy of all bad sodas, Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray. It’s celery flavored, in case you didn’t know.

It’s a disease. I can’t help it. When I heard that one of the tie-ins from the second Harry Potter movie was honest-to-God Every Flavor Jellybeans, including those that apparently taste like snot and bile, I was instantly filled with a desire to run out and buy them. So far, only the prohibitive cost has prevented me from doing so. My problem is that I’m constantly asking how bad something like snot-flavored jellybeans could possibly be, and then really wanting to know the answer.

Naturally, this is the kind of impulse that leads to buying Limp Bizkit albums. I got a lot of emails (quite a bit more than usual) questioning my sanity in forking over 10 bucks for Results May Vary, some noting that just being in proximity to that disc could likely give me a nasty infection of some sort. A few wondered if I was not, in fact, sick, either physically or mentally. While this won’t ease anyone’s mind about my mental health, I just wanted to point out that my buying albums I know will be bad, specifically to find out just how bad they are, is nothing new.

Case in point. A couple of years ago, I saw VH-1’s Behind the Music episode on Styx. When they got to Kilroy Was Here, the band’s infamous 1982 album that included “Mr. Roboto,” the producers made a point to edit together a succession of experts who all agreed that this was the worst album ever made. At that time, I had never heard Kilroy, having never been much of a Styx fan. But rather than thank my lucky stars that I’d been spared the worst album ever made, I immediately ran out and bought it. Because I had to hear it. How bad could it be?

And lo, it was very, very bad. Certainly in the running for the worst album I’ve ever heard. I remain glad, however, that I had the experience of torturing myself with it, because now I know exactly how bad it is, and my overpowering curiosity is sated. Don’t worry – I’m not tempted by 99 percent of the bad music I hear, because most of what people call bad is really just inoffensively boring to me. For me to want to hear a bad record, it has to have a reputation of being actively, painfully, laughably bad. I mean, the artist in question has to move heaven and earth to make every note worse than the last, to make an epic work of awfulness. Then I’m in.

I know. I need serious help. You’ll be glad to know, though, that this week I’m tired of talking about bad music. There’s been so much good stuff lately that I haven’t reviewed yet, and I hope to play catch-up this time. (I keep hearing Henry Rollins’ voice, yelling at me: “Review or don’t, but you can’t catch up!”) Looking back on 2003 thus far, it’s been surprisingly excellent in terms of new music, and with buzz-heavy records by Travis, Meshell Ndegeocello, Basement Jaxx and Ryan Adams coming to round the year off, I think it’s time to get cracking on the good stuff. Don’t you?

* * * * *

The best word to describe the new Rufus Wainwright album, Want One, is “fabulous.” And I don’t just mean fabulous the way music critics might say it, but fabulous the way Bryan Katt’s character from Jeffrey might. Or Sean Hayes’ Jack from Will and Grace.

You have to go back to early Queen albums like Sheer Heart Attack to find one this opulent and melodramatic. This record is full to bursting with strings, horns, pianos, banjos, layers of guitars and oceans of swooping backing vocals. It’s difficult, on first few listens, to get beyond just how huge this album is, how ornately decorated. This is exactly the sort of acceleration one expected in the wake of Wainwright’s delightful sophomore effort, Poses, and it’s just the sort of production that could easily slip from tonal coloring into excessive mess. Want One is practically an advertisement for how to do this kind of album right.

Step one, of course, is to write good songs on which to hang the production, and as usual, Wainwright has excelled in that department. There are 14 songs on Want One, and each one is a stunner, a marvel of craftsmanship. Wainwright takes equally from Broadway, the Beatles, and his father, folk singer Loudon Wainwright III. The result is songs that feel like classics, show tunes with unbeatable pop melodies and an epic sensibility, but which retain a grounded and human heart. Each of these songs would remain fascinating even if stripped of everything but piano or acoustic guitar. (In fact, “Pretty Things” is performed with just piano and voice, and is gorgeous.) Any list of the year’s best compositions would be dominated by this record.

And yet, each was written with an ear towards the massive production Wainwright loves. Take “Oh What a World,” the opening track. It wafts in on a choir of humming voices, which gives way to bleating tuba. As the song progresses, a full orchestra enters, swirling about the melody and occasionally blaring out lines from Ravel’s “Bolero.” At the center of all of this is Wainwright’s lovely voice, singing something worthy of London’s West End theatrical district. It’s huge and soaring, and one can scarcely imagine the track having the same impact without the production.

Or take “Beautiful Child,” a layered masterpiece that heralds the album’s final stretch. It’s all guitars and dazzling percussion for its first minute or so, but then the horn sections come in, augmenting the invigorating melody, and then – and then! – the backing vocals lift off, surrounding the action like a swarm of bees. And they’re all Wainwright, multi-tracked what sounds like dozens of times. When, at a crucial moment, all the instruments drop out except the acoustic guitar and the army of Rufus clones wailing away in the background, it’s a moment of genuine drama, and you don’t get those very often in pop music.

No two songs here sound alike, which could have been a detriment, but each is so well crafted, and the album as a whole sounds designed to fit together. This album, for all its sprawl, flows better than either of Wainwright’s previous efforts, and it’s his diversity that does the trick. A grand pop number like “I Don’t Know What It Is” segues into a (relatively) subdued electric piano piece like “Vicious World,” which then blends into an electric guitar stomper like “Movies Of Myself.” With “Go Or Go Ahead” he’s composed a real rock epic, one that breaks the six-minute mark, and he’s followed it up with a two-minute harp-driven ditty (“Vibrate”) and a jazz-pop shuffle (“14th Street”). And it all flows.

What links these songs is Wainwright’s voice, which he has developed over time from a pinched, nasal whine into an instrument of startling power. He wields it well on Want One, infusing his dramatic melodies with a stratospheric grace. He has the control of a classically trained tenor – check the ascending and descending melodies in fantastic closer “Dinner at Eight” for evidence. He stretches sometimes here – he almost, but not quite, pulls off the 16-second note in “Vibrate,” and “Harvester of Hearts” teeters in and out of his range – but he has a voice like no one else on the pop scene these days.

Want One is just about an hour long, and way too short – which makes sense, considering it’s one half of the double album Wainwright recorded. Want Two is scheduled for early next year, following the recent trend of halving lengthy works for easier public consumption. (See Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill or Ryan Adams’ Love Is Hell – now broken into two EPs – for further examples.) I say hell with anyone who couldn’t sit through two hours of this wonderful stuff. Whether Want Two will measure up to the standard of Want One is anyone’s guess. (It reportedly contains the “weird stuff,” like a nine-minute song and a Latin number, which, with Wainwright, could mean one with a Latin beat or one whose lyrics are in Latin. Or both.) My bet, based on his track record, is that it will.

But for now, we only have part one, and if the other reviews this time seem less considered than this one, it’s only because Want One has taken control of my stereo and will not relinquish it. It is, no question, one of the very best albums of the year – it’s battling Bruce Cockburn in my mind for the top spot, and often winning. It was obvious from his debut that Rufus Wainwright would one day make a great album, and if you thought he’d done it with Poses, wait until you hear this.

* * * * *

There’s an old adage that says that an artist has a lifetime to write his or her first album, and then just a few years at most to write a second one. That’s why the second album is considered to be so important – it’s proof that a particular artist can strike twice, that he or she is not just a one-trick pony, a one-hit wonder. When an artist fails, for whatever reason, to meet expectations on the second album, there’s an industry term for it. You may have heard it before, and it’s a term no artist likes to see in the same sentence with his or her name, and I’m about to do it twice.

John Mayer, meet the Sophomore Slump. Sophomore Slump, this is John Mayer.

Okay, it’s not that bad, but Mayer’s recently released Heavier Things is a bit of a letdown. Mayer, as you all know, burst onto the scene with Room for Squares, propelled by a first single called “No Such Thing.” It’s the kind of song that can only be written by someone under 25, with all of life unfolding ahead, and I’m glad Mayer captured that song when he could. It’s an infectious folk-pop anthem, and astoundingly, Room for Squares lived up to it. The album was full of equally memorable songs like “Why Georgia” and “3×5,” led by Mayer’s fleet-fingered acoustic guitar and warm voice. It’s not an album designed to change the world, but it stands as a pretty impressive debut.

There’s a particular skill that those hoping for a long recording career need to master fairly early on, and that’s the ability to write memorable songs quickly. Mayer’s not quite there, unfortunately, and about half of Heavier Things is given over to tunes without, well, tunes. If, after one time through, you can hum “New Deep,” or “Split Screen Sadness,” or “Home Life,” you’re a better John Mayer fan than I am. That there are only 10 songs, and of those five or so don’t stick in the brain like just about every song on the debut did, speaks of a creative crisis in the studio.

That crisis extends to the sound as well. Where Room for Squares practically leapt from the speakers with enthusiasm, Heavier Things is smoothed out and ready for adult contemporary radio. Mayer promised a more guitar-heavy work this time, and it’s a shame that he didn’t deliver – only a few songs contain guitar solos, and most rest on pleasantly strummed acoustics. There’s nothing here that would be out of place on a John Waite album, for example, and that’s depressing.

There are bright spots. The single, “Bigger Than My Body,” is impressive, even if it does try to capture the same emotions as “No Such Thing” with lesser results. The pseudo-bluesy “Come Back to Bed” is a highlight, with one of the aforementioned guitar solos. “Daughters” is a small gem, despite treacly lyrics. And closer “Wheel” hits all the right notes. Mayer’s lyrics, too, remain insightful, full of lines like this one from “Split Screen Sadness”: “I can’t wait to figure out what’s wrong with me, so I can say this is the way I used to be.”

Still, it’s unfortunate that such a talented new songwriter has made such an uninspired album. It’s nice, it’s a pleasant listen, but it takes a step back from his opening salvo. It’s good that the sophomore slump is out of the way, though. The proof of John Mayer’s artistic merit will likely lie with his third effort, and I hope he takes his time and makes it something special.

* * * * *

Forthwith, proof that I can relate anything to the Beatles.

The lads from Liverpool, whether they knew it or not, laid the blueprint for most successful and ambitious acts’ careers. Take this, for example: after perfecting their orchestral pop-rock on Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the group felt emboldened to be artistically excessive. Hence, the messy, sprawling, self-titled white album, an elaborate and disjointed affair that takes more than 90 minutes to cram in all its ideas. The white album has very little filler, but the band defiantly refused to link the 30 songs they had written, and they all just come fast and furious, one after another, seemingly at random.

It’s the kind of album that only bands who have already made their masterpiece could create. And time after time, the pattern re-emerges. After a band makes its strongest single statement, you can bet they will return, after an extended studio stay, with a huge, unedited thud of a record that mimics the white album’s structure. Led Zeppelin did it, releasing Physical Graffiti after Houses of the Holy. Guns ‘n’ Roses famously created the gi-normous Use Your Illusion albums after Appetite for Destruction. Even Ani DiFranco came out with Up Up Up Up Up Up after the unqualified success of Little Plastic Castle. Prince has done it, like, five times. And how about Radiohead’s two follow-ups to OK Computer?

So when Georgia-based rap duo OutKast made the best and furthest-reaching album of their career in 2000 with Stankonia, itself a marvel of production and precision, there was no doubt that their next outing would be a massive, excessive thing. But few could have predicted what they actually did – the two members of OutKast, Antwan “Big Boi” Patton and Andre “3000” Benjamin, separated and recorded two distinct solo albums, with the intention of releasing them together as the fifth OutKast album. It goes by two names, Speakerboxxx and The Love Below, and all together it’s more than two hours long.

The secret to OutKast has always been the duo’s dance of influences – Big Boi is the hip hop guy, and Andre is the soul crooner, most of the time, and when they bring both to bear, as they did on their smash single “Ms. Jackson,” the results are often extraordinary. One would be forgiven for thinking that separating those influences, compartmentalizing them, would leave them with two inferior records. It’s striking, then, just how impressive this set is, and while I won’t say that it might have been better if they had chosen to integrate these 39 tracks, what’s here is the most eccentric, ambitious hip-hop soul album in ages.

Again, with their respective influences, you’d probably guess that Big Boi would make the more traditional of the two discs, and you’d be right, but only because Andre has gone into orbit on his half. On its own, Big Boi’s Speakerboxxx is a consistently enjoyable rap record, full of interesting, innovative production and a touch of southern soul. “Bowtie,” “The Way You Move” and “The Rooster” form an unofficial trilogy of horn-inflected pop, kind of a southern rap manifesto. Patton incorporates gospel on “Church” to surprisingly non-MC Hammer effect. Speakerboxxx weakens as it goes on and Big Boi brings out guest star after guest star, but it never runs out of gas.

And it’s good that Big Boi has made a rap record, because rap is all but absent from The Love Below, Andre’s vast landscape of wacky funk. At 78 minutes, this disc takes up the lion’s share of the set’s running time, and to call it sprawling is definitely an understatement. The whole thing glides on a spiritual-sexual vibe that recalls Minneapolis’ favorite son – this is, in many ways, Andre’s attempt at making a great Prince album.

One of the hallmarks of any Prince album, of course, is inconsistency, and that’s one trait Andre has mimicked perfectly on The Love Below. The album spirals from the perfect, hilarious slam of “Happy Valentine’s Day” to minimal chants like “Behold a Lady” to orchestral interludes like “Pink and Blue.” By the time he gets to an unlisted techno recasting of “My Favorite Things,” there’s little doubt that Andre has just thrown everything against the wall here. That so much of it sticks is impressive, and the sprawl is part of The Love Below‘s charm.

All in all, it’s a nifty concept, but Speakerboxxx and The Love Below would have been better served as one long, integrated whole. The two discs do give insight into the OutKast creative process, however, and put their previous achievements into new lights. (Much like McCartney and Lennon after the white album – it became obvious from that point on who brought what to the table.) The pair insist the two solo albums do not indicate a straining of the seams, and that the next one will be a group effort.

Even McCartney and Lennon split Abbey Road down the middle, though, so it remains to be seen if OutKast remains as unified next time out. This time, they’ve created a remarkable achievement, one that goes beyond just about anyone else doing hip-hop these days. It’s a long trip, and it probably could have been a shorter one, but it’s fascinating.

* * * * *

I am late enough with this column that I have already seen volume one of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. It’s a big, dumb, excessive, incredibly cool samurai movie, at least so far, and it’s that last bit I have the most trouble with. Kill Bill, as mentioned earlier, has been cleaved in two by Miramax, and delivered to theaters in installments – one now, one in February. Problem is, there’s no reason for the hack job. Or rather, no artistic reason – I do understand that Miramax will make more money on two films (and likely three DVD releases) than they would have on one, and it’s better for them to have two R-rated films than one long NC-17 one.

But those are money reasons, and have nothing to do with the film itself, which suffers horribly from this wound. The movie is told in traditional Tarantino style, with sections out of order and snippets from past and future scenes cutting in at what seems like random. The chronology always makes sense by the end of his pictures, however – remember how Pulp Fiction looped on itself masterfully. By hacking off the second half, however, we don’t get to see Tarantino’s method, and all we’re left with at the moment is fractured storytelling and what we hope is foreshadowing.

I’m a sucker for lengthy works. I left Kill Bill itching for the second half, which plays right into Miramax’s hands, of course. But I also left believing that watching the second half, after a four-month break, will not be as effective as watching the whole thing all at once. It’s going to lose a lot. I often wonder where our attention span, our patience for longer works, has gone. Was it really only four years ago that Magnolia hit theaters with a 190-minute running time? Imagine if that film had ended right after the game show, and you get the idea here. Kill Bill will just plain work better all at once, all three hours and 20 minutes of it.

We’re seeing it more and more lately – longer works chopped into pieces for easier digestion. I guess my affinity for longer stories came from comic books. It’s not uncommon for a single story to be spread out over dozens of issues – or, in the case of the soon-to-be-completed Cerebus, 300 of them, totaling 6000 pages. It takes a long time to read these works, but it’s always rewarding. Similarly, it takes a time commitment to listen to huge albums, like The Wall or Frank Zappa’s Civilization Phaze III, but the rewards are great.

Of course, I’m the guy who wants to take two weeks off and watch all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a row, so maybe I’m not the right person to comment. But I respect and admire artists who tackle the long-form work, and I’m always pleasantly surprised when publishing companies back them and release them uncut. Double albums are a particular weakness of mine. Far from being the intimidating slab that record companies believe they are, often a huge double album is my perfect excuse to try a band I’ve been meaning to sample.

Case in point – Over the Rhine. Here’s a band I’ve heard of, heard nothing but good things about, and have even seen play live, but I’ve never bought any of their albums, for no reason I can think of. But when I heard that their seventh, Ohio, would be 95 minutes long and spread out over two discs, I sought it out. I know, it’s insane. But I’m always hoping that longer works like these will be more definitive statements, in a way, than smaller ones. In this case, it’s probably true.

Over the Rhine is a duo, Karen Bergquist and Linford Detwiler, and they write defiantly, deceptively simple songs that draw from traditional heartland musics. The 21 songs on Ohio are stripped to their barest essences, and often contain little more than piano and acoustic guitar behind Bergquist’s rich, lovely voice. This album is all about performance and ambiance, and it’s often painfully, beautifully intimate. It was recorded on an 8-track, which amazes me – nobody records analog anymore, but the full, ringing tones the pair has captured here say to me that more artists should try it. There’s nothing cold about this music.

And I can’t imagine this being trimmed, or worse, cut in half. This is not two albums packaged together, like the OutKast record. Ohio is one complete statement, one in which songs complement and improve each other by proximity. It’s worth every one of the 95 minutes it takes to listen to it. It’s also the kind of simple, direct music that defies explanation – I could tell you that “Ohio” drifts on melancholy piano, or that “Suitcase” is both hummable and emotional, or that hearing Bergquist sing “Changes Come” is a nearly spiritual experience, but the songs are so naked that there’s almost nothing to talk about. This is pure music, and while a mammoth production like Rufus Wainwright’s Want One wouldn’t sound the same without his embellishments, here they would dilute the music’s power.

It shouldn’t have taken seven albums for me to discover a group like this. Ohio is a wonderful album, one whose shape only becomes clear over time. I’m grateful that the band and their label, Back Porch Records, realized that this long record works best in one go. Do yourself a favor – buy Ohio, and do with it what you can’t yet do with Wainwright’s album, or Tarantino’s movie: experience it all at once.

* * * * *

Whew. Next week, I expect to check in with Spock’s Beard and Neal Morse. Thanks for reading this far. I’m going to sleep now.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

When I was 16, 30 was old.

By old, I mean ancient. Decrepit. Ready for death. I was young, modestly talented and ready for anything. I had seen old people, felt the crushing despair of their lock-step lives, and wanted no part of that, thank you very much.

What I couldn’t put my finger on then was that age, in and of itself, didn’t bother me. It was the merciless snuffing out of potential, the conversion of infinite possible paths into one actual and irreversible one, that terrified me. At 16, I could have been anything by the time I hit 30. At 30, I will only be what I am. Depressing, no?

Now, I’m not there yet – still have another nine months or so to go – so I’m not prematurely eulogizing my wasted youth or anything. But I have been feeling old lately, and boxed in by inescapable reality, and all of a sudden 30 doesn’t seem so far away. In fact, I’m starting to see signs, telling me to slow down and prepare to exit. “Miserable Relentless Adulthood, Take Exit 30.” Here’s hoping there’s a slow vehicle lane.

My musical taste is one area about which I expected to retain my youthful outlook forever. “I’ll never be like my parents,” I’d say, “who wouldn’t know Jane’s Addiction from Jane Siberry.” (They wouldn’t. I don’t even need to conduct that experiment.) I expected I would always be like my 16-year-old self, with my thumb on the pulse of What the Kids Are Into These Days. You know the drill. Don’t trust anyone over 30. If it’s too loud, you’re too old. I’d watched too many people latch on to a few artists from their youth and drift away from even trying new music, for fear of melting their fragile eardrums. “Not me,” I’d say. “Melt away, younger generation. Do your worst.”

And it may be that I’ve grown up in ways I never expected, or it may be that the younger generation’s worst is much, much worse than I ever imagined, but it’s starting to happen. I find myself standing in line behind young kids at the record store, kids who are buying Good Charlotte and New Found Glory CDs because MTV told them to, and I find myself wanting to rip the discs from their hands and replace them with records by Bruce Cockburn or Joni Mitchell or Andy Partridge. You know, old people. What’s wrong with me?

Every once in a while, I get the urge to prove to myself that I’m not a hopeless case. That I’m down with the youth. That, if I wanted to and it wouldn’t be unbelievably creepy, I could still hang with the kids and talk music and come off as that Cool Older Guy, not that Pitiful Old Freak. So I break down and give one of the bands all the kids are into a try, hoping to recapture the fleeting traces of my youth. Thankfully, this is a very occasional impulse. Otherwise, I’d end up with many more albums as atrociously bad as Limp Bizkit’s Results May Vary.

Okay, this wasn’t too much of a risk, all things considered. For one, it was only ten bucks (and a ripoff at half the price). For another, I already own all the other Limp Bizkit albums – chalk it up to my completist nature and the fact that they used to be kind of good once. (Same with their mentors, Korn.) And third, I had heard that this was to be a slower, deeper, more mature effort from these guys. Granted, their last album, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water, sounded like it came from the mind of an autistic second grader, so there was nowhere to go but up, but still.

Sadly, this bizkit is the limpest one yet. I knew, deep down, that it would suck, and that my dreams of becoming 18 again through this music would be shattered. What’s surprising and, yes, hilarious, is the new depths of suckage the boys have plumbed here. Original guitarist Wes Borland has departed this sinking ship, and taken with him all the band’s ideas, such as they were. Without him, sole captain Fred Durst has decided to get deep, to grow feelings, to reach down into his very soul and relate what he’s found there. Turns out, he’s found 15 very bad songs. Thanks, Fred.

The other band members try their very best, sadly. New guitarist Mike Smith, from defunct band Snot, plays competently and adds a few Dave Navarro-like textures to these slow plods. A few of the melodies are sort of pleasant. Snoop Dogg comes in to rap on one utterly out of place track designed for TRL, and he does an okay job. Drummer John Otto and DJ Lethal are all but invisible, which is nice. In fact, there’s only one thing that drags this album from forgettable trifle to putrid pile of ridicule-worthy slop, and that’s Fred Durst.

Most of Results May Vary sounds like someone took the very worst songs from all three Staind albums, strung them together, erased Aaron Lewis’ voice and lyrics, and replaced them with those of a brain-damaged monkey. Without Borland to keep him in some kind of check, Durst is free to trample all over this record, and he does, gleefully. He’s bad enough on the heavier tracks, where he can shamelessly ape the Beastie Boys, as he does on “Gimme the Mic,” and hide behind the song’s momentum. It’s when things slow down that results start to vary, wildly.

More than half of this album is given over to the newly emotional Bizkit sound – acoustic guitars, moaning melodies, and lyrics about childhood and relationship trauma. Thing is, it’s tough to make an emotional record without any, y’know, emotions. The simple truth is that Durst’s life before Limp Bizkit was pretty average, and his life since then has been positively charmed. He has no pain to draw from. He has no exceptional stories to relate. He’s a reality television contestant – a shameless self-promoter who believes we’re interested in all aspects of his boring, self-centered life. It’s little wonder that he’s shown grabbing his crotch in the liner pictures – his lyrics here are perhaps the most masturbatory I’ve ever seen.

Want some examples? There are countless. Here’s one from “Underneath the Gun”: “Stress is tremendous and pressure is endless, no one on this planet like me to be friends with.” How about this howler from “Build a Bridge”: “Build a bridge, make a path, overlook the aftermath, make my tears be your bath.” Here’s a bit about the above-mentioned endless pressure, from “Let Me Down”: “Rumors are tumors of the sick and mainly useless, when you come to me with these things it’s the shit that I can’t deal with.” Or how about this, from “The Only One,” in which Fred lays out his attractive principles: “If the vibe’s good, go to first base… I ain’t looking to screw till the vibe’s right.” Later he explains to his lady love that if they’re not meant to be, he has “no need to knock another home run out.” And they say romance is dead.

Anyway, this goes on for nearly an hour until Durst gets to his cardinal sin – a terrible cover of the Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes.” It’s okay to mess with his own songs, but when he runs roughshod all over a lovely tune like this one, it’s unforgivable. The worst part comes halfway through, when Durst discovers that Pete Townshend (whose name he misspelled in the credits, by the way) has somehow forgotten to include the name of Durst’s band in his lyrics. To rectify this, he programs a Speak and Spell to repeat this line: “Discover L-I-M-P. Say it.” Seriously. All over Pete’s song.

And I know I’m getting old when I’m upset that this version of “Behind Blue Eyes” is likely the only one most purchasers of Results May Vary have ever heard. In fact, given that Durst is three years older than I am, I’m starting to believe that my musical taste skews towards my elders. A good case in point is Elvis Costello, who’s pushing 50. He has a new album out too, his 20th, and it’s as far from the inane, shallow rantings of Fred Durst as one could hope to get.

But here’s the thing that scares me about my own maturing taste – I didn’t like When I Was Cruel, Costello’s raving rock record of last year. Too spastic, too repetitive, too long, and too much of a strain on Costello’s aging voice. It doesn’t make me feel any younger to report that I love North, his first solo foray into orchestral balladry. This album wafts in on beautiful strings, drifts along on subtly played piano and lilting vocals, pauses occasionally for flugelhorn solos, and strolls back out again in 41 minutes. No crashing guitars, no thundering drums, no spitting, no bile-drenched lyrics. Rarely has a long-term popular artist acted his age so completely.

Some might say it’s as if Costello has nothing left to prove, but that’s not completely true. In essence, North represents an effort to prove his worth in more challenging arenas than rock. Costello builds on his collaborations with the Brodsky Quartet and Burt Bacharach here, but this is the first time he’s flown solo, arranging and conducting all the orchestrations. Given that, this is a supremely confident record, full of twisting lines and curves, powerful in its surprising complexity.

North works as a concept piece, neatly divided in half. The first set of songs concern the aftermath of a dissolved relationship, the second the intoxicating flush of a new romance. You don’t need to know that his marriage to long-time songwriting partner Cait O’Riordan recently ended, or that he’s fallen for jazz singer Diana Krall since then, to feel how personal these songs are. You can hear it in his voice, in fine form here and none the worse for wear after screaming his way through Cruel and the subsequent tour. North is one of his finest vocal performances, warm and rich and melodic.

While all the songs here are accomplished, Costello heralds the more upbeat second half with one of his best songs, the delightful “Still.” It effortlessly captures the thrill of new love, that sweetly rushing sensation that all but defies gravity: “Now you speak my name and set my pulse to race, sometimes words may tumble out but can’t eclipse the feeling when you press your fingers to my lips.” If, with North, Costello wanted to prove to himself he could write timeless standards, then “Still” is the best evidence of his success.

North is the perfect album for those snowy, wintry nights to come. It is arguably Costello’s most beautiful work, and one that could only be accomplished by one with decades of music under his belt. While it’s true that North will likely not appeal to anyone who likes Results May Vary, and comparing the two makes me feel older than I care to continue discussing, the album itself shows that this angry young man has become a graceful elder gent. If anyone has earned the right to sneer at the minimally talented up-and-comers, it’s Elvis Costello, but he doesn’t. By North‘s end, he sounds contented, even happy, and he’s made an album that can only inspire those emotions in any willing to give it a spin. And to those young whippersnappers still more impressed with Durst and his crew, well, I can only smile and say that you’ll grow out of it. Trust me.

See you in line Tuesday morning.