In reading some of my previous columns, I’ve come to one unfortunate yet inescapable conclusion: I bitch a lot.

Oh, sure, it’s still not enough bitching for some of you – I get emails all the time that take me to task for being so “positive” – but this column, by and large, has painted a pretty bleak picture of the state of the music industry. It’s not the music that bothers me so much, naturally, as it is the diseased system of marketing and distribution. Even if one wishes to sift through the crap to find the good stuff, the modern music machine makes it extremely difficult to a) hear about good artists and b) find their work.

One thing I don’t seem to do, however, is point the finger at the artists themselves. Well, that ends now. No target should be safe from my scattershot wrath, and in that spirit, I feel compelled to point out that sometimes, the good stuff is hard to find because the artists in question seem to want it that way. Most times I understand willful obscurity, especially when dealing with artists who genuinely do not want the spotlight to shine on them. That’s not what we’re talking about here.

We’re also not talking about artists for whom obscurity is a lifestyle. It’s no secret that much of the so-called good stuff would not appeal to the masses. Aphex Twin, for example, will never have a top 10 single, unless James radically alters his sound. And that’s his choice – he’s seemingly accepted his role as a fringe player, one whose beauty is only for a few beholders. His choices keep him there, but every one of them (including releasing a slew of singles and EPs under other names) is understandable within his worldview.

No, I’m talking about artists that already appeal to a wide base, and could appeal to a wider one, if they’d only stop making bizarre choices, ones which, whether they know it or not, make it nearly impossible for a casual fan to hear some of their best work. The template for this sort of thing is Prince, who outsold pretty much everyone whose name wasn’t Jackson in the ’80s, but who made some decisions afterwards that splintered and obliterated his fanbase. Maybe it’s just me, but changing your name to an unpronounceable symbol, releasing nothing but three- and four-disc sets, and then packaging your best work in years (The Truth) as disc four of one of those sets? Not good choices, especially if you’re then going to complain about sales.

Or, take Matthew Sweet. Here’s a guy who should be much more famous than he is, and the odd thing is, he wants the same thing. His music is so delightful, so appealing, that the only reason I can come up with for his continued semi-obscurity is that people haven’t heard his work. But then, that’s not true either – there was a time in the mid-’90s when Sweet was the it-guy. Girlfriend, his most successful album, landed him three hit singles, and the follow-ups Altered Beast and 100% Fun didn’t do so badly either.

And sure, he had a couple of duds after that, including his absolute masterpiece In Reverse, but that was the record company, surely. Sweet even complained about them at the time, which led to his exodus from Volcano as soon as his contract was up. Here, let me put together a quick marketing package for Sweet’s next project – reunite the Girlfriend lineup, make a simple guitar-pop record full of hooks and potential hits, and then find a label that will promote the hell out of it. True, such a move would be seen as angling for market share, but a new record from the lineup that scored his greatest success? If you build it (and it’s good, and it’s marketed well), they will come.

This isn’t just me talking here. Sweet has, believe it or not, done just that. His new album brings together drummer Ric Menck and guitarists Richard Lloyd and Greg Leisz for 12 terrific, rollicking pop songs, most of which would fit comfortably on any good radio station, and would open ears and move units nationwide. In short, people have been clamoring for just this thing from Sweet, and it’s really good, and they’d like it.

So what does he do with this album? He titles it Kimi Ga Suki * Raifu – really – and releases it only in Japan. The intentions are good. Japan has long been a fertile market for Sweet, and he really does love the place and its culture. He conceived Kimi Ga Suki * Raifu as a love letter to his Japanese fans, and they undoubtedly deserve it. But to make something this good, something which caters to the tastes and, yes, gripes of his fans in places other than Japan, and then give it no fanfare over here seems strange. The album has seen a U.S. release, on Sweet’s own Superdeformed label, and can be ordered from his website (www.matthewsweet.com) and found in, well, some record stores.

But not many, and that’s the point. Trust me, if you like Matthew Sweet, you will like this album. A lot. It’s exactly the sort of uncomplicated yet finely crafted record Girlfriend was, chock full of ripping guitars, catchy hooks and great vocal harmonies. The opening trilogy is like hearing three of the best songs from his greatest hits collection in a row, and while there are dead spots (the minute-long “Spiral,” for example), the album is overall as solid a group of songs as you’d expect from Sweet in his prime. It’s also full of joy, perhaps the most flat-out fun record he’s made in a while.

The secret may be the slapdash way it was created. Sweet wrote all the songs in one week (!), and recorded the album at his house. The self-imposed limitations seem to have freed him, in a way, to create the kind of raw energy that’s been lacking from his last couple of major productions. In Reverse is an amazing album, don’t get me wrong, but he labored over nearly every second of it, and you can tell. This one flows out in a thrilling burst, and it’s great to hear him do this sort of thing again.

So yeah, it’s called Kimi Ga Suki * Raifu, and you’ll only find it at smaller record stores or online. Just as icing on the cake, the title only appears in Japanese on the cover, as well, so don’t worry about spelling it right. It’s got a funny cartoon picture of a girl and a cat, and no track listing. Happy hunting.

Slightly less egregious, but no less inexplicable, is Moby. I know I’m going back a bit here, but there was a time when the name Moby could signify anything at all, any style of music. He started as a straight techno guy, layering beats over the theme to Twin Peaks to score a club hit. But when he began making albums, they were diverse affairs, and not just internally. I can hardly think of any two albums as different from one another as Everything is Wrong and Animal Rights, but they came one right after another, jamming techno and ambient next to guitar-heavy electro-punk. Moby has always been willing to go in different directions, and drag his fans along with him.

Until he hit it big, of course. 1999’s Play was a mega-success, mixing his usual ambient work with a new style – dropping beats over old gospel and soul records. And it was such a successful combination that he’s just kept doing it ever since. Counting Play, 18, and the b-sides collections for each, he’s now put out four CDs worth of the same stuff. (In fact, five, if you count the album’s worth of unreleased tracks on the audio portion of the 18 B-Sides DVD.) Those who wish to hear Moby do styles other than those found on Play have been out of luck for going on six years, and the sales reflect a growing ennui.

Those people could, of course, move from the M section to the V section of their record store and buy the new Voodoo Child album Baby Monkey. That is, if they hear about it. Voodoo Child is Moby, naturally, and Baby Monkey is exactly the kind of chilly techno album he used to make, back when he used to specialize in electronic music for the masses. There is nothing forbidding about this album, nothing insular. It’s just a series of great grooves, and if you remember “First Cool Hive” fondly (it appeared in the movie Heat, as well as on Everything is Wrong), you will like this.

Moby has said that recording this under the name Voodoo Child helped in its creation – he could concentrate on the music and not worry about the singles and video promotion that, these days, surround a new Moby release. Which means, unfortunately, that Moby is in a place where his fame prevents him from doing what he wants artistically, but it also seems to indicate that he’s lost faith in his audience. Millions of people supported Play, and by not releasing anything under his own name in six years that isn’t a direct descendent (if not a direct copy) of Play, Moby seems to be saying that those people won’t make the leap to a different sound. Even one he’s previously given them.

And yes, people bought Play, but they also lapped up Mobysongs, his best-of disc, and it was full of music just like this. If you buy Everything is Wrong, or the Move EP, you’re going to hear exactly the kind of thing that’s on Baby Monkey. You’ve got superb beats, ambient arrangements, sweeping synthesizers, and more than an hour of gorgeous electronica. There’s nothing un-Moby about it, so releasing it under another name seems a bit silly.

So while you’re digging through the record store looking for the Matthew Sweet album with the Japanese title and the funny cartoon drawings, don’t forget to go to the V section for the new Moby album. You see my point? I have nothing against artists choosing to express themselves in any way (or under any name) they choose, of course, but I think it’s a shame when good music goes unheard, for any reason. And when it seems like the artist in question doesn’t want you to find or hear his album, well, that sort of thing can put off people who would otherwise enjoy it.

I admit that this is a wobbly thesis, and I’m not sure I buy all of it, but I just wanted to see if I could make it work. How’d I do?

Next week, British pop and the sophomore slump.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I had to make sure, so I checked.

“Hey Gary,” I said, speaking to my former roommate and frequent traveling companion.

“Yeah?”

“I hope this isn’t a stupid question,” I said, “but this airport we’re in, it wouldn’t by any chance be moving back and forth right now, would it?”

“No it wouldn’t,” Gary replied. Damn. So it was just me, then.

That was Sunday. It’s Wednesday now, and since then, all manner of formerly motionless places have somehow begun rocking hither and thither, sometimes imperceptibly and sometimes in great sloping lurches. The airport, the car we took from the airport, the house in which I grew up, the houses of friends, all of them have been swaying to and fro, and I’m starting to get tired of it.

That’s what I get for spending a week at sea, of course, aboard a floating hotel called the Dawn Princess. It took a day or two for my equilibrium to catch up to the rocking motion of the boat upon the sea, but once it did, walking along the decks became just like walking on dry land. I should have guessed that when I finally did return to dry land, it would take a similar amount of time for me to adjust to a ground that does not move beneath my feet. I didn’t get seasick, but I have felt oddly landsick since my return.

Life aboard a cruise ship is, sadly, not meant for the likes of me. I don’t swim, I don’t drink, I don’t gamble and I don’t buy useless shiny crap, so I’m quite obviously not the target market for all of the big boat’s major activities. Still, I managed to have a great time, mostly due to the sweet presence of 70-plus-degree weather all week. The islands we visited (St. Thomas, St. Kitts, Grenada, Isla Margarita in Venezuela, and Aruba) were all fascinating, especially Aruba with its miles-long natural bridge made of coral. I read five books while sunning myself on the decks as well, so it was all good. A very relaxing seven days.

And the wedding, of course. My mom got married on Monday, our second day at sea, in the ship’s games room. They took the card tables out, brought a lace archway in, and called it a wedding chapel. The surroundings were symbolic of the refreshingly lighthearted nature of the ceremony, presided over by a St. Thomas official from Texas named Sam. He stopped the wedding several times for stand-up comedy routines. One of those involved his assertion that the new family unit formed that day contained “two sons.” My sister and I looked at each other, certain that my mother had failed to tell us something rather important, until Sam looked a bit closer at Emily and ascertained that she is, indeed, female. Funny stuff.

Anyway, man and wife, blah blah blah. It all went swimmingly, and everyone involved seemed to have fun. And here we are, back in the usual groove, with me facing the daunting prospect of locating gainful employment, again, for the third year in a row. I just hope the world stops swaying drunkenly before I have to go on job interviews. Might make that process a bit harder if I’m still walking into walls and stuff.

* * * * *

I hinted last column that I was going to try a massive house-cleaning project this time, hacking my way through the worthy records from last year that I didn’t get to in this space, for one reason or another. I hung on to that plan all the way through Tuesday, when, after taking swing after swing at it, I discovered a couple of things. First, there are way too many records from 2003 that I didn’t review. I was planning on devoting a paragraph or two each to 36 of them, in two installments, this time. That’s too many to cover with any depth.

Second, I realized that the 50-word reviews I was churning out were boring. And third, that 36 of those reviews one after the other would be pretty much unreadable. I was putting myself to sleep, and whenever you do that, as a writer, you’ve got an issue. Adding to my decision to retire that silly idea, I read Nick Hornby’s wonderful Songbook, in which he does what I’ve been trying to do for years and makes it look easy. The book is a series of essays, each concerning one song that Hornby loves. And I realized that if he can devote three whole pages to Ben Folds’ “Smoke,” for example, or Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road,” then trying to squeeze 36 small reviews into one tiny space is hopelessly reductive.

But I did take a couple of swings at it, like I said, and I did end up with the 36 ignored albums I think you should have heard last year (especially if you’ve liked these bands’ previous work), so in the interest of sating the curiosity that I hope exists, here’s the list, in alphabetical order:

Aphex Twin’s 26 Mixes for Cash, Basement Jaxx’s Kish Kash, Harry Connick Jr.’s Other Hours and Harry for the Holidays, the second Cush spiritual EP, Death Cab for Cutie’s wonderful Transatlanticism, the self-titled Deftones album, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones’ three-disc set Little Worlds, Guster’s winsome Keep It Together, the Innocence Mission’s Befreinded, Jars of Clay’s Furthermore and Who We Are Instead, Living Colour’s messy Collideoscope, Lyle Lovett’s boot-scootin’ My Baby Don’t Tolerate, Dave Matthews’ solo debut Some Devil, the self-titled new Mavericks album, Sarah McLachlan’s subtle Afterglow, John Mellencamp’s American folk-blues album Trouble No More, Ministry’s Animositisomina, and Moby’s 18 B-Sides, complete with exhaustive DVD.

Oh, and Beth Orton’s b-sides collection The Other Side of Daybreak, Our Lady Peace’s live record, Pearl Jam’s rarities collection Lost Dogs (and what does it say about a band like Pearl Jam when their rarities collection is better than most of their albums?), A Perfect Circle’s surprising Thirteenth Step, Primus’ EP Animals Should Not Try to Act Like People, Rage Against the Machine’s live album, Seal IV, Sepultura’s Roorback (but only if it comes packaged with the awesome Revolusongs EP), South’s excellent With the Tides, The Stills’ debut Logic Will Break Your Heart, the Strawmen’s Saving Faded Dreams (featuring past and present members of the 77s), Tourniquet’s Where Moth and Rust Destroy, Type O Negative’s Life is Killing Me, Vertical Horizon’s kinda disappointing Go, Vida Blue’s jammin’ The Illustrated Band, and the Weakerthans’ witty Reconstruction Site.

I do have small capsule reviews of each of the above either written or planned out, so if you’d like to read some of them, let me know which ones you’re interested in and I’ll e-mail them to you. Otherwise, though it pains me to let so many good albums go undiscussed, I’m putting this whole idea to bed. Let’s hope I do better this year so that I’m not forced to make a list like this again…

* * * * *

Ani Difranco might be the most restless artist working today.

There’s very little that needs to be said about her origins, and about where she’s brought her sound and career. She’s the only major artist (depending on your definition, of course) who made her own way – she’s never released an album on any other label than her own Righteous Babe Records, and she’s supported her career in a strictly grass-roots manner, touring endlessly and self-promoting tirelessly. Nearly 15 years after her debut, this self-wrought career path has led her to a place from which she can do anything she wants. If she wanted to fill her next record with Sri Lankan yodeling and ukelele solos, she could, and no one could tell her not to.

All of which would mean nothing if Difranco weren’t a) a terrific singer and songwriter, b) a terrific record-maker, and c) an artistically restless soul. She’s made undeniably great albums, like Out of Range and Little Plastic Castle, and she could probably carve out a whole career full of traditionally excellent records, but that’s not the way she thinks. Difranco is on a journey, and she’s more than willing to make jarring, experimental collections along the way if she thinks they will help her get somewhere else.

Recently Difranco arrived at a plateau with her fantastic double-disc set Revelling/Reckoning and its follow-up, last year’s Evolve. She’d taken her music in a jazz-folk direction, mastering delightfully dissonant horn arrangements along the way, and the arrival point easily justified experimental works like Up Up Up Up Up Up. As one can see by looking through her catalog, though, it’s a pattern she’s repeated – try something new, get it right, move on and evolve.

That’s a pattern that leaves bizarre, disheveled albums in its wake, however, and with this week’s release of Educated Guess, her 18th, we’re in the experimental phase again. Where her previous few records have been loaded with musicians, from her usual touring band to a huge horn section, Educated Guess is all Ani. She’s decided to return to her DIY roots, playing all the instruments and producing the disc herself – all analog, I might add. But if you read that as a sign that the old kinetic folk-punk is back, you’re in for a disappointment.

Difranco hasn’t altered her writing style to match her recording techniques here, so what you have is an acoustic jazz-folk album that sounds just a mite unfinished. There are no percussion instruments of any kind, for one thing, which only adds to the album’s feeling of disconnected meandering, and where there should be horns, Difranco has added high-pitched backing vocals in dissonant progressions. It’s an odd mix, devoid of perceptible beats and melody lines, and full of moaning and seemingly off-key scat singing. As an album, this thing seems to fall apart as you listen to it.

Give it a chance, though, and some of Difranco’s choices may surprise you. She finds a loping rhythm of sorts on “Bliss Like This,” brings in hints of her Reckoning sound on “Animal,” and concludes with a dissonant winner called “Bubble.” Throughout, the oddly slack sound of her detuned guitar, coupled with the falsetto vocal accents that just don’t seem to match up as often as they should, is grating. Yet given a few listens, it sounds right – like old Sonic Youth albums, this one takes some getting used to.

Lyrically, Difranco is in the land of broken relationships again after a brief stopover in political country. This is her most poetry-influenced album since Not a Pretty Girl – four whole tracks are recited, not sung, including a feminist rant called “Grand Canyon” that refers to the movement as “the coolest f-word ever.” The lyrics are typically soul-baring, but this time they seem a little undercooked – an obvious metaphor like “Origami” could have used a few more drafts, for instance. The political statements on Educated Guess shine brighter than the emotional ones, especially this bit from “Animal”: “There’s this brutal imperial power that my passport says I represent, but it will never represent where my heart lies, only vaguely where it went.”

Still, this is a difficult listen, and a hard album to defend musically. It almost sounds like, in her desire to produce something singlehandedly, she’s released her demos. Most of these songs would be improved by the addition of instruments and arrangements, although it’s also fair to say that most of them would be improved by stronger composition. Difranco has done some impressive things tonally on this album, making certain guitar melodies work when they shouldn’t, but that’s no substitute for good, well-written songs, and for the first time in a while, she’s failed to deliver more than a handful of those.

But hey, she’s on a journey, and the most important thing is where she goes from here. The best part about Ani Difranco is that she’s willing to surrender completely to her art, and follow where it leads her. Based on her track record, there’s little doubt that she’ll eventually arrive somewhere special when this particular leg of her trip is done. But ask her what that arrival point might sound like, and I’d bet that even Difranco couldn’t tell you. The best she can do at this point is make an educated… well, you know.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m currently ringing in the new year with a bout of strep throat. Basically, swallowing anything, including my own saliva, feels like trying to choke down good-sized rocks, and I haven’t eaten, slept or spoken in more than two days. My energy flags without warning, so be prepared for a thoroughly minor entry in the tm3am canon this week.

I was thinking about taking the week off, but I can’t, because I’m taking next week. My mother’s getting married, and because she’s my mother, and she never does anything small, she’s scheduled the wedding to coincide with a week at sea on board a huge cruise liner. So from Sunday to Saturday next week I’ll be out in the middle of the ocean, cut off from civilization. Who knows what catastrophes could occur while I’m gone? The thought of seven days without an internet connection is already driving me batty.

So that’s next week. I was going to launch into my massive clean-up project this week, doing capsule reviews of everything I bought and didn’t review last year, but my illness really prevents me from concentrating on more than one thought at a time, so I had to narrow it down to one. Thankfully, though, the first big release of 2004 hit on Tuesday, and also thankfully, it didn’t take too many spins through for me to come to some coherent conclusions about it, so here goes.

* * * * *

Phantom Planet seems to be bent on surprising me at every turn.

First, I refused to get into them, simply because their drummer was the kid from Rushmore, Jason Schwartzman, and I couldn’t stomach these actor vanity projects like 50 Odd Foot of Grunts taking label contracts and shelf space away from more deserving acts without a marquee name in their ranks. It didn’t help when I found out that singer Alexander Greenwald was in Donnie Darko as well – nothing like a whole band full of actors to make me put the Visa card back in my pocket.

But then I bought The Guest, their second album, and it blew me away. Here was a perfectly constructed pop album, full of memorable songs, performed with a real sense of classic pop history that I’d found sorely lacking in the efforts of Phantom Planet’s peers. I liked it so much that I named it my third favorite album of 2002, slotting it only behind Beck and Wilco. It’s simply an extraordinary album, made even more so by the young age of its creators.

And then I saw them live, and was surprised again. I was hoping for a pop show, and I got a noise-o-rama. On stage, the quintet is a loping, feedback-laced force of nature, trampling all its greater melodic instincts in a barrage of thundering chaos. Familiar songs took on new guises as sloppy explosions, and the old adage that everything should be louder than everything else was followed to the letter. The Phantom Planet I saw live reminded me of a garage band trying to cover The Guest, and missing the nuances in favor of power. But they were fun, at least.

The surprises keep coming with the new album, out this week. Phantom Planet, in keeping with the tradition of using self-titled albums as reinventions, sounds like that garage band I saw on stage. It’s raw, loud, propulsive, thudding, and almost completely lacking in everything I liked about The Guest. The first three songs in particular just steamroller over everything the band used to be, replacing sweetness with angular, jagged fury. It’s a complete reintroduction. It’s also a complete mess.

Okay, that’s a mite unfair, I’ll grant. One skill I need to learn as a reviewer is to discuss the album the band made, as opposed to the album I wish they’d made, especially when the album I wish they’d made is one they previously released. Phantom Planet has its charms, and I’ll get into that in a minute, but I want to make one thing absolutely clear – if you liked The Guest for its delightful melodies and its pure sense of pop, you will not like this album. The two have virtually nothing in common. Clear? I mean, don’t let me stop you, of course, but don’t say I didn’t warn you, either.

Phantom Planet comes crashing in from the very beginning, with the explosive drums of “The Happy Ending,” and by the time it allows you to catch your breath, you’re on track four, “1st Things 1st.” The album is almost punk in a way – it’s 35 minutes long, and only one of the 11 songs breaks four minutes, and that one only by one second. It compensates for its unfinished songwriting and sound by jamming the songs together into a continuous burst. Only when you get to the end do you ask, “That’s it?”

While The Guest was chock full of hummable tunes that took up residence in your skull, Phantom Planet is mostly made up of the inverse – songs which make a beeline out your ear without even stopping over in your short-term memory. The songs hardly have melodies at all, choruses are shouted rather than sung, and everything is sacrificed on the altar of raw guitar power. But if you can deal with all that, the album does rock, in its way. (I should mention that Schwartzman is no longer with the band, but that doesn’t seem to matter much – he played on half of this album anyway, and Greenwald, as before, wrote all of the songs.)

The better moments here come when Greenwald leads his band away from the furious noise they seem to enjoy creating so much. “You’re Not Welcome Here” is just as powerful as the short punkers, even though it’s this album’s “Turn, Smile, Shift, Repeat” – slow and brooding. The second half of the album is more interesting than the first, especially the ’80s-sounding “Knowitall” and the U2-style atmospherics of closer “The Meantime.” Even those songs, though, fall victim to the jarring production.

It’s difficult to describe this album as anything but a step back. The Guest was such a revelation, and even though I’m sure that the Clash influences here come from the same pure fan place as the Beatles references on the previous album, Phantom Planet pales in comparison. The best way to enjoy this record is to think of it as the debut of a completely different band, but even that approach has its problems, at least in my case – this new incarnation isn’t a band I’d have much interest in sticking with. If I buy another Phantom Planet album, it will be because of The Guest, not this record. Which might be the most damning thing I can say about it – by itself, Phantom Planet would never have made me a fan.

* * * * *

Next week, I’m in the Caribbean. Hope you don’t miss me too much. On the horizon are reviews of new albums by Ani Difranco, Matthew Sweet, Starflyer 59, Elbow, Indigo Girls, and a massive 4-CD box set of rarities from the Cure. Now I’m going to go take some antibiotics and lie down.

See you in line Tuesday morning.