I love music.

This might seem like a redundant statement, given that I spend hundreds of dollars on it and I write a column about it every week, but I can’t help writing it right now. I love music. Nothing makes me as giddy, entranced and in love with life like transcendent music. If you’ve been reading this column to get your cynical snark on, I’m afraid it’s been (and will continue to be) a terrible disappointment to you.

When I say I love music, what I really mean is that I love its limitless possibility. The sad truth is that 99 percent of what’s pumped out by our pals in the music industry fails miserably to even pretend to care about fulfilling that potential. Most music is neither good nor bad, merely boring, as if its creators can’t hear how good their work could be if they’d only try. Considering the infinite colors and sounds that we humans have never heard before, it seems absurdly lazy to keep giving us what we know, to not even try to expand the boundaries, even a little bit.

There are two reactions to the sad state of most music. One is to shrink into bitter cynicism, decrying the bland stuff, as if its creators care about making music better. The other, the one I’ve chosen, is to ignore the beige majority and actively seek out the visionaries, those who hear the possibilities and at least attempt to explore them. And then I do everything I can to support them, because the industry at large also does everything it can to snuff them out.

Take the sad case of Brian Wilson. Wilson is, without a doubt, one of the few absolute geniuses the American rock ‘n’ roll era has produced. As the guiding light of the Beach Boys, Wilson wrote and produced some of the catchiest surf anthems ever, but if that were all he had done, he’d be a footnote. Wilson heard colors in his head, however, and in 1966, he set out to capture them. His method was deceptively simple – write some of the best songs anyone had ever heard, and record them with the sweetest, most bountiful production available.

In 1966, no one had ever heard anything like Pet Sounds, the record Wilson made. To this day, there are few songs that can stand next to “God Only Knows” and “You Still Believe in Me,” two of the most emotional pieces on the album. The production of Pet Sounds is so good that the stereo mix, engineered a few years ago, outdoes most albums made in the last 20 years for quality and craft. There were things buried in the mono mix of Pet Sounds like hidden treasures, waiting for digital technology to unearth them, and Wilson put them there, seemingly knowing that the machines would catch up with him one day.

As amazing as Pet Sounds still is today – it’s one of the few non-Beatles albums in my all time top 10 – it was meant to be the tip of the iceberg, the first step. Upon its release, Wilson began working on the next step, a symphonic collection of themes and songs unlike anything else. He was trying to outdo Revolver, you see – it was a race between geniuses, each pushing the other to new heights. But while the Beatles were getting darker and spookier, Brian Wilson was harnessing technology to paint his joy.

The album was to be called SMiLE.

There are many reasons behind Wilson’s abandonment of SMiLE, some we’ll never know. What is known is that the rest of the Beach Boys refused to support the material, the label didn’t know what to make of it, and Wilson himself apparently let outside opinions damage his fragile self-esteem. In 1967, the same year the Beatles let loose their masterpiece Sgt. Pepper, Wilson pulled the plug.

Since then, bits of the sessions have come out in dribs and drabs. The finished songs all appeared on subsequent Beach Boys albums, and some, like “Heroes and Villains” and “Good Vibrations,” became substantial hits. No one knew, though, how close or how far away Wilson had been from finishing SMiLE, and as the sessions attained a legendary status, fans began three decades of guessing at his intentions and designs.

Wilson himself contributed to a few more Beach Boys albums (with diminishing returns), and then suffered a nervous breakdown. The Boys went on to sell out completely with “Kokomo” and reunion tours, and Wilson made three solo discs (including this year’s wretched Gettin’ In Over My Head) that further eroded his legend. It was tragic – here was this sweet, remarkable, absolute genius composer and record maker, and the best he could bring himself to do was “Imagination.”

Wilson’s long road to recovery took 38 years, and is still continuing. The strides he’s made in the last five years alone, however, have been amazing. After decades of seclusion, Wilson hired a touring band and brought Pet Sounds out on the road. That would have been enough, but like the album itself, it was just the first step. The real test of his mental health came when he called Van Dyke Parks, his collaborator, and the two of them finished SMiLE.

Most great lost projects stay lost, thereby attaining a kind of perfection they could never achieve as tangible works. The sad fact is that the legend is almost always better than the truth. After 38 years, could a finished SMiLE live up to the myth? Especially since its creator hadn’t produced anything worthy of his talents since then? But there it was, and it was real – Wilson premiered the finished work in London to a rousing standing ovation, toured it, and then recorded it.

And here it is. SMiLE has been plucked from the safe realm of the theoretical and released into the harsh world, a 47-minute collection of actual tones, recorded onto a medium that didn’t exist when most of it was written. Just looking at it as a tangible CD is mindboggling – it seems so small. But it exists, now and forever. The question is, was SMiLE better off as a legend?

No way.

Believe the hype. SMiLE is perhaps the purest expression of musical joy ever released, a giddy celebration of the possibility of music. It is at once complex and silly and sad and bursting and huge and tiny and surreal and earthy, music that explodes the limits of wonder that can be contained on a plastic disc. This is children’s music, in the best possible way – music made with wide eyes, open minds and clear hearts. It’s in such full color that it makes nearly everything else sound black and white. It is beautiful.

SMiLE is the kind of album – well, there’s no kind of album like it, really. This is symphonic pop, naturally, full of horns and strings and movements and sections and some of the most breathtaking vocal harmonies ever committed to tape. It’s remarkably unified – one of the absolute joys of this release is hearing how all the parts are meant to fit together, and even though I had only heard a few of the songs before, they all have attained greater resonance within the whole of the piece. It’s a serious symphony.

And yet, it’s the silliest thing ever. It’s full of songs about vegetables, barnyard animals and American Indians. There are mooing noises, chewing sounds, slide whistles, honks and blats all over it. Wilson originally described SMiLE as a “teenage symphony to God,” and that’s pretty close – it’s about finding wonder and joy everywhere, and there isn’t a cynical or ironic second here.

That Wilson has, at 62 years old, reclaimed his child-like delight is just too wonderful, really, and that delight comes through. More than that, though, SMiLE is the finest testament available to Wilson’s compositional brilliance. This is not the SMiLE of 1966, but had it come out then, sounding like this, we’d still be miles behind it, barely gaining ground. It’s not so much ahead of its time as out of it – no one was doing anything like this in 1966, and pretty much no one is doing anything like it now.

There are enough musical ideas on SMiLE to fill four albums its size. A new one comes along every 30 seconds or so, and the whole thing is difficult to process on first listen. SMiLE is separated into three suites, commonly called Americana, Childhood and The Elements. It opens with the gorgeous a cappella “Our Prayer” before segueing into the head-spinning “Heroes and Villains.” It’s a perfect opener, five minutes of multiple movements, beautiful vocals, and wondrous orchestration. Wilson’s voice has certainly changed in the intervening years since “H&V” was first recorded, but it’s never distracting, and his backup band (the Wondermints) harmonizes around him like a cocoon.

The first suite is almost over before you know it, blowing through the tricky “Roll Plymouth Rock” (previously titled “Do You Like Worms”), the skipping “Barnyard” and a surprisingly sad rendition of “You Are My Sunshine” before tumbling into the great “Cabin Essence.” Next comes “Wonderful,” the heartbreaking opener to the Childhood suite, my favorite of the three. It’s a single 10-minute song that builds gracefully through “Child is Father of the Man” (complete with references to “Good Vibrations”) and into “Surf’s Up.”

That song is devastating here, a tour de force of emotion and regret that puts the perfect cap on a suite about innocence. The high harmony in the chorus – “columnated ruins domino” – is perhaps my favorite moment in all of pop music, and this rendition is the best one I have heard. I swear to you, I cried upon hearing it. It is every promise fulfilled, every wasted opportunity regained.

The third suite is just nuts, but in a phenomenal way. Imagine condensing the White Album to 20 minutes, but keeping everything intact, and you have the idea. The spry “Vega-Tables” slides into the delirious “On a Holiday” before gliding gently into “Wind Chimes,” the sweetest thing here. Halfway through, that explodes in a flurry of brass and detonates into “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow,” a stomping instrumental. The noise subsides for the chanted intro to “In Blue Hawaii” (previously “I Love to Say Da Da”), which itself slips softly into “Good Vibrations,” the closer.

I can’t tell you how fascinating it is to hear such a ubiquitous single take its place as the grand finale of this piece. There are hints of it throughout the record, and it fits perfectly as a last celebration of life and love. Time has not diminished the achievement of Wilson’s production, either – this is, with minor variations, a note-for-note rendition of the 1966 version. It remains one of his finest arrangements, even after the stunning cornucopia of sound it concludes. Whether or not he originally intended to include it (and many say he did not), “Good Vibrations” ends SMiLE on a perfect note.

Here’s the bottom line: if you’re looking for music that reflects your own pain, or insightfully observes the world, or provides the soundtrack to your own life, then this isn’t the record for you. But if, like me, you’re in love with the possibility of music, and if you want something that hits that little-kid pleasure center unerringly while brightening the corners of your mind, then you can’t do any better than this. SMiLE is absolutely one of the best pieces of music I have ever heard, and its full realization is even better than I had hoped it would be.

God bless Brian Wilson for finally sharing this record with the world. It’s impossible to hear it without thinking about where he would have gone next, and what the world would have been like if this were merely another starting point instead of the summit. But that seems ungrateful – we don’t even deserve this, and it’s a miracle that SMiLE not only exists, but is everything we’ve been told it would be. I love this record.

I love music.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

If there’s one truth I have learned through my artistic travels, it is this: people like boxes.

Boxes, categories, signs, what have you – people like being able to point at something and say, “This is this.” The tendency to label songs and box them with others of the same type leads to formatted radio stations and genre-driven record company marketing, with the focus on demographics rather than music. As far as the suits are concerned, their customers are not music fans, they are genre consumers. “These people in this state buy country CDs. Tim McGraw makes country CDs. Hence, we will sell this many Tim McGraw CDs in this state, especially if Tim wears a big ol’ cowboy hat and boots in all of our targeted marketing. This is this.”

There is the occasional synergistic overlap – the demographics for rap and metal, for instance – but for the most part, the more popular musicians and their fans stay in their boxes, and smile about it. With identity-based clothing marketing, it’s much easier now to spot denizens of certain boxes, too. It’s important to remember, as you’re strapping on your studded wristband and lacing up your military boots, that it’s not just a style, it’s your entire identity.

Fascinatingly, there also seems to be some pride associated with being the most identified with your box – real punk fans rail against any so-called punk fan who likes Good Charlotte, for example. It’s an amazing marketing trick. Rather than the company defining people as certain types, they’ve managed to get the people themselves to proclaim their genre loudly and proudly. Instead of “this is this,” it’s “I am this,” and more importantly, “I am more this than you are.” The direct corollary is, of course, “please sell me more of this.”

And they do, and they make it easy to find more of whatever category you fit into. There’s a visual shorthand to which we’ve all become accustomed – cowboy hats = country, for example – that even extends to name-brand clothing that signifies certain styles of rap. Even the fonts used on the CD covers are designed to communicate a style, a genre, a box. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does leave little room for those artists who know that music as a whole cares nothing for labels and categories.

Unfortunately, the current system of fragmentation and specialization has forced some far-reaching musical minds to compartmentalize their ambitions. Perhaps the template for that sort of thing is the great Frank Zappa, who started out making albums that gleefully shoved rock and blues up next to avant-garde orchestral scores, jazz and cartoon music. That abandon reached its apex with Lather, the four-record set Zappa delivered to Warner Bros. in the late ‘70s. Its 15-car-pileup mentality proved too much for the label, who demanded it be cut into smaller, more easily digestible albums.

Zappa arranged those albums by type, and he was never the same after that. He made guitar albums, orchestral albums, synthesizer albums and live records, but he never really combined the styles into one mind-expanding whole the way he had before. Not to say his post-Lather albums were bad, but they were limited in scope – Them Or Us is a rock record, The Yellow Shark is orchestral, Guitar is a collection of six-string solos. Zappa would never again produce a moment like the startling jump from “Titties ‘n’ Beer” into “The Ocean Is the Ultimate Solution,” and then into “The Adventures of Greggery Peccary.”

A similar thing seems to be happening to Elvis Costello. He used to make wild, genre-spanning albums like Spike and Mighty Like a Rose, on which slammers like “Playboy To a Man” would brush up against orchestrated ditties like “Sweet Pear.” Spike is a great example of an album that recklessly veers from style to style, from the funk of “Chewing Gum” to the bouncy jazz-pop of “God’s Comic” to the vitriolic folk of “Tramp the Dirt Down.”

Since then, Costello has been the king of compartmentalization. It’s not like he doesn’t have a history with this sort of thing – Almost Blue was his country covers album, Imperial Bedroom was his chamber-pop record – but each album since Rose has stuck to one or two things. The result is that, like Zappa’s, Costello’s catalog as a whole is remarkably diverse and all-inclusive, but the individual albums are sealed off from their counterparts.

It’s to the point now that whenever Costello makes a “rock” record, he announces it as such, perhaps aware that it would be the rare modern music fan who can keep up with his stylistic divergences. Since Rose, Costello has teamed up with the Brodsky String Quartet for The Juliet Letters, collaborated with Burt Bacharach on the delightfully pomp-pop Painted From Memory, and sung with opera singer Anne Sofie von Otter on From the Stars. He’s done songs for Disney and The X-Files, and worked with Nick Cave and Brian Eno.

Just recently, Costello formed a new backing band, the Impostors (actually two-thirds of his long-time backup group the Attractions with Davey Faragher on bass), and made two disparate records – the loud, prickly When I Was Cruel and the sedate ballad collection North. That the songs on both albums came from the same compositional mind is impressive. Aside from the inimitable voice, there is nothing that links these collections in any way. That isn’t a complaint, just an observation – Costello has taken his rock tendencies and his orchestral ambitions down divergent paths, and while I’d like to see them more integrated, what he’s giving us is pretty swell.

The divergence continues with two new albums this month, and if you can imagine it, these discs sound even less the product of one composer. First up is The Delivery Man, the first album Costello has made with the Impostors. If you’re thinking genres, this is more of an alt-country excursion, which explains its release on Lost Highway. This is the label that slipped into apoplexy when Ryan Adams dropped his twang, after all, and Delivery is right up their alley.

Actually, The Delivery Man is what used to be referred to as a session – a bunch of players in a room grooving on some simple, effective tunes. Costello and the Impostors rock out more than once – opener “Button My Lip” is a melodic shambles over a sloppy, energetic tumble, and “Bedlam” is a flurry of tones – but the vibe is country-rock. The songs are sometimes less than engaging, too, but when Costello hits a bright spot, like the creeping waltz of a title track or the old-time fury of “Monkey to Man,” he rides it well. Costello sounds about half his age here, shouting and growling with abandon.

The best I can say about The Delivery Man, in most ways an average Elvis Costello album, is that it sounds wonderfully live. These sound like first takes, especially the vocals, and it would have been easy to clutter this session up with more complex songs, ones that don’t take to barroom jamming. There is a downside to the album’s looseness – I can only imagine that Lucinda Williams’ scratchy, screechy vocal on “There’s a Story In Your Voice” was kept because it’s the first thing she spat out. Emmylou Harris fares much better on “Nothing Clings Like Ivy,” her voice meshing with Costello’s nicely.

Still, I can’t imagine that this album took longer than a week to record, and while the feel is nice, the songs are overall pretty forgettable. It seems that Costello was saving all his tricky melodies for his other project, Il Sogno, out simultaneously on Deutsche Gramophone. DG is a classical label, and Il Sogno looks like every other classical album on the shelves, except for Costello’s picture on the cover. There’s almost no mistaking this for a regular Elvis Costello album, so it’s unlikely anyone will purchase it by accident and fall in love with it by surprise.

Il Sogno is Costello’s first full score for orchestra, performed here by the London Symphony. (Coincidentally, the LSO also recorded Zappa’s long-form works for orchestra, furthering the parallel.) And as fun as The Delivery Man is, it’s here that the full range of Costello’s influences and abilities comes to the fore. Il Sogno is a ballet, inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but it contains passages of Gershwin-esque pop, sweeping film score music, and some meaty, jazzy saxophone by John Harkle. Some of it is cartoony, like the brass motif that signals Puck’s entrance, and some of it is tender and moving, like the delicate trumpet on “Slumber.”

Where The Delivery Man sounds tossed off, Il Sogno is a fully realized work – 62 minutes of memorable melodic arrangements in a myriad of styles. (Not bad for a guy who only learned to write sheet music 10 years ago.) I would hate to think that this is now the consequence of his divergent paths – that we will get finely considered orchestral albums like this and North, and sloppy rock records like Delivery and Cruel. As much as I like these two new installments, I can’t help wishing that Costello would break the boxes open and let their contents mix. How great would it be to get a single work that makes use of every part of his musical mind?

I don’t mean to sound like I’m putting Costello down. He has responded admirably to the genre-based marketplace and his own ambitions – he could just as easily have picked one path or the other, but he’s giving us both, perhaps hoping that some will respond to his entire vision. I just think it’s a shame that Il Sogno can’t sit comfortably beside The Delivery Man in a record store, and that the musical skills that brought both of these albums forth can’t co-exist on one disc. It’s all music, it all flows from the same river regardless of what label we try to give it. If you find yourself buying and liking one of these new Costello albums, do yourself a favor and try the other. We should be taking these boundaries down, not erecting them.

Next week, SMiLE!

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Just when I think the year can’t get any better, musically speaking, it does.

We’re past summer now, so the crap should be flowing freely into music stores, and yet most everyone this year (except Wilco) has failed to disappoint. In recent weeks, the worst I’ve managed to say about anyone is that the Finn Brothers wrote some simple songs on Everyone Is Here, but that they were enjoyable simple songs anyway. With every good album that comes out this year, Sturgeon becomes more and more inaccurate – maybe 25 percent of the year’s offerings have been crap thus far. Even Danzig just released his best album in years.

Of course, the pessimistic cynic in me can’t help but weigh the odds against future releases. If a certain percentage of crap is mandatory per year, does that mean the new ones by Elvis Costello and R.E.M. and U2 and the Choir will have to suck to satisfy the odds? What about poor, tortured Elliott Smith? Will his final album, out October 19, be the big disappointment I just know is coming? Or what about Brian Wilson? Will Smile fail to live up to the best-album-ever-in-the-history-of-the-universe hype?

If percentages rule the game, then things keep getting worse for the last quarter of the year – we have two brand-new masterpieces this week, and apologies in advance for those of you who read music reviews for snark and bile. It’s rave-of-the-week time again, but seriously, it’s not my fault that these records are so damn good. It just so happens, incidentally, that both of this week’s contestants are returning after a lengthy absence, further proving that art takes time.

The last Tears for Fears album came out in 1995, but let’s be honest – the last real Tears for Fears album came out in 1989. It was called The Seeds of Love, and at the time, it blew TFF’s sonic possibilities wide open. If there’s anyone reading this that has never heard Tears for Fears, I will be stunned, but just in case – TFF was one of the biggest and best acts of the ‘80s. Their really big hits – “Shout,” “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” “Head Over Heels” – all stemmed from one album, 1985’s amazing Songs From the Big Chair. With that record, Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith perfected their brand of thoughtful, melodic pop.

And then they erased it. The Seeds of Love wallowed in bright Beatles pastiches and lengthy soul ballads – it was the full flower, not just the seed, and it was the most artful project ever undertaken by a band whose songs appear on Totally ‘80s! collections. And then they broke up, but Orzabal kept issuing solo records under the Tears for Fears name. It’s not that these albums weren’t good – 1995’s Raoul and the Kings of Spain is particularly excellent, actually – it’s just that they weren’t Tears for Fears. And with the release of Tomcats Screaming Outside, his official solo debut, in 2001, Orzabal had made more albums without Smith than with him. Slowly, people stopped saying the “R” word. The one that rhymes with “fleunion.”

And then came Gary Jules.

Well, actually, then came Richard Kelly with a film called Donnie Darko, an enigmatic swirl of a hazy dream of a movie whose final scenes were scored to a haunting cover of TFF’s “Mad World,” sang by the aforementioned Gary Jules. Suddenly, the song was everywhere. Kids who hadn’t been born when the original version was recorded discovered Tears for Fears thanks to this song, and in one of those weird synchronicities that make life worth living, the time became right for a rhymes-with-fleunion just as Orzabal and Smith were contemplating one.

The result is Everybody Loves a Happy Ending, the first real Tears for Fears album in 15 years, and it’s fan-freaking-tastic. Orzabal and Smith have wisely ignored everything they produced in that decade and change, and made a record that follows directly on the heels of The Seeds of Love. Again, it’s not that I didn’t like Orzabal’s work during that time, it’s just that Tears for Fears were on a journey, and amazingly, they’ve stepped back on the path here as if they never left it.

Happy Ending is a buoyant, Beatlesque treat, bursting out in Technicolor swirlies. The title track hits first, and it’s a multi-part Abbey Road-style suite that throws down a shiny happy gauntlet. It’s like opening with “A Day in the Life,” so surprising and invigorating are the changes and abrupt shifts. Just this one song could have taken years to get right. And hey, look, there are 11 more, and not a one of them suffers from a lack of melody or weight.

When TFF isn’t trying on the Fab Four, they’re opening the ‘70s soul songbook, and the best songs here are the ones in which they combine the two influences. The first single, “Closest Thing to Heaven,” is a great example – it chimes in on a pounding piano and a pure pop verse melody, then lifts off with a syncopated soul rhythm and a falsetto melody worthy of Stevie Wonder. (You know, when he was good.) It’s an intoxicating combo, and it switches back and forth throughout the song, a la Supergrass and their time-melding alchemy.

That’s not to say the pure pop material here isn’t fantastic, ‘cause it is. If there were still a market for instantly likable, effervescent guitar-pop songs on the radio, then “Call Me Mellow” would be a number one single. The Lennon-esque explosion that is “Who Killed Tangerine” is a trip, and the chorus of “Killing With Kindness” is unstoppable. If this album has a weakness, it’s in the more traditional-sounding ballads, but even something as smooth as “Size of Sorrow” is appealing. And “Ladybird” is just awesome.

If, as the title and the artwork suggest, this is the last Tears for Fears album, then they’ve written a sweet goodbye with “Last Days on Earth,” the final track. They’ve also gone out on a high note with this peach of an album, one that reclaims the band name and sends it off in style. Needless to say, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending is one of the best records of the year.

And here’s another one.

I owe Chris L’Etoile, my friend in Canada, for turning me on to the Autumns. Chris and I met in junior high school, and I have always considered our respective music fandom thusly: if I am ahead of the curve, Chris is miles and miles down the road, and has already made some fruitful side trips. His tastes tend towards the dreamy and ambient, so the Autumns were a natural fit for him, and while I’m generally more attracted to intelligent, soaring melody, I love a good echo-drenched dirge, too.

The Autumns are notoriously slow workers – the new self-titled album is only their third full-length in seven years – but each album is a reinvention of their sound. The Angel Pool, their debut, is full of reverb-drowned soundscapes and long, twisting meanders, but lead visionary Matt Kelly has slowly worked the aimlessness out of his system. 2000’s In the Russet Gold of This Vain Hour belied its pretentious title with 10 shorter songs, all of which had sweeping melodies and cleaner arrangements. Along the way, they’ve also released EPs that dabble in interpretation (Covers) and ‘50s pop (Le Carillon), and the greatest slab of thick, glorious noise I have ever heard (Winter in a Silver Box).

Given this penchant for reinvention, self-titling a new album is almost redundant. Suffice it to say that The Autumns sounds like nothing and everything that the band has done before. For starters, it’s their loudest record, which often is a sign of disaster – I can think of very few bands who moved from swirly to crunchy without sacrificing their uniqueness. Kelly has always been in love with the sound of guitars, and here he whips out the distortion and the epic feedback squalls. But unlike many of his contemporaries, he hasn’t forgotten the sweeping ambience and the arching melodies.

What’s amazing about The Autumns is that it shouldn’t hang together. It’s an ambitious melding of styles, with a couple of acoustic pop songs, a few slow-building mantra-songs, two piano-and-strings instrumentals, and a conclusion that is both sea shanty and lullaby. That it’s one of the most cohesive albums of the year, a virtually undifferentiated 50-minute song with moods and moments and crescendos and crashes, is simply extraordinary.

Just listen to the way the loose “Slumberdoll” slides into “Edmund and Edward,” then cascades into “Wish Stars.” Or dig the ever-building shower of tones that is “Deathly Little Dreams,” and marvel at the way the final wash collapses into the ringing “Desole.” This is an album crafted by masters of tone – Kelly and his cohorts know exactly how to lead you from one moment to the next, and they know exactly what kind of grinning, euphoric reaction their arrangements will bring. The Autumns is a perfect example of a band controlling every element of their work to great effect.

And the songs are pretty swell, too. Kelly has a high, glorious voice that at times seems like it’s not even bound to this earth – think Jeff Buckley, of course, but also Jeremy Enigk – and these songs are built around that voice as much as they are the sound of the guitar. Both “Every Sunday Sky” and “Cattleye” charge out of the gate on sweet strummed acoustics and lovely choruses, but it’s on the more dramatic material, like “Hush Plain Girls,” that Kelly shines. This album features more players than any Autumns album before it – there are strings and percussion and pianos galore, but it never sounds busy or fussy.

Hell, this is just a great little record. It shares a trait with most of the great little records of the year, too – it dreams big. The Autumns is a widescreen vista of an album, one that earnestly and unironically reaches for greatness, and achieves it. There’s a certain courage there, a willingness to open one’s heart and mind and lay them out for the soulless hordes to trample, but there’s also a surging sense of the possible. This is music for the hopeful, whether that hope be something as far-reaching as a finer world, or as deceptively simple as 50 great minutes of music. This is the year of the big dreamers, and the Autumns have dreamed with the best of them.

Next week, Elvis Costello times two.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

And now for something completely different.

We talked about pocket universes a couple of weeks ago, when we discussed Joy Electric. It’s my way of describing the sealed-off idiosyncrasy of someone like Ronnie Martin, who follows his own set of rules and makes music that sounds like nothing else out there. Martin’s universe is cohesive – you can enter it at any point, and the rules remain pretty much the same. You’ll hear blippy techno-punk with soaring melodies performed on analog synthesizers.

But how about those artists who change the rules every time out? Those are rare, and always welcome. Take Terry Taylor as an oft-repeated-by-me example – Daniel Amos sounds different album to album, and bears little resemblance to Taylor’s work in the Swirling Eddies, the Lost Dogs and as a solo artist. The rules change, but the indefinable signature remains.

And yet Taylor will readily admit his influences – in fact, he wears them like a badge. Early DA took from classic country, and then from slashing new-wave, and the Lost Dogs crib from decades of American music. Taylor’s solo work has swung from Brian Wilson-esque pop to Johnny Cash-esque country and back again, and while all the songs sound like Taylor, they do draw from several traditions.

But what about the constantly-shifting artists who produce album after album that not only differs staggeringly from that artist’s other work, but from anything else out there? How many artists can consistently uproot the foundations of their own pocket universes without letting influences creep in? By my reckoning, very few – even the great Frank Zappa was a mélange of borrowed styles, from doo-wop to the orchestral work of Edgard Varese.

It’s true, of course, that no one’s work is completely original, but if there’s anyone making music that sounds otherworldly, it’s that Icelandic pixie Bjork. Starting with her tenure in the Sugarcubes, one of the strangest dancehall-reggae-pop bands ever, Bjork has cut a swath through the accepted ideas of pop, taking on bits and pieces of other idioms and wrapping them in her own sensibilities. No matter what she’s doing, she is always strange and fascinating to watch, and her work is always rewarding.

Her first two albums, Debut and Post, veered as far from the Sugarcubes as possible, spinning on vortexes of beats and bass, with the occasional brassy big band. With her third, the astonishing Homogenic, Bjork flipped the rules again, practically creating the technorchestral sound – synthesizer beats providing the crunchy foundation for an 80-piece orchestra. She moved into a colder and more ambient direction on Vespertine, with a slight detour into Broadway-from-Mars on Selmasongs, the soundtrack to her acting debut, Dancer in the Dark.

And now she’s done it again – she’s inverted the rules of her pocket universe. Bjork has never been one to do anything by halves, so when she proclaimed some months ago that “instruments are so over,” you had to expect that she would stick to that and deliver something like Medulla, her just-released fifth album. In simplest terms, Medulla is an a cappella project – there is almost nothing on here but the human voice. (The occasional piano and synthesizer only enhances the effect, and demonstrates that unlike her Dancer director Lars Von Trier, Bjork is not obsessive about her self-imposed limitations.)

This is not an album of voices, but rather one constructed from voices, and that’s an important distinction. If you’re expecting Take 6 or Bobby McFerrin here, you won’t get it. Most of the vocal tracks have been sampled, processed and mutilated into fascinating new forms, from the keyboard choral arrangements of “Where Is the Line” to the explosive beats of “Triumph of a Heart.” This is an icy, alien pop record at its core, but it’s infinitely more intimate than Vespertine, its closest cousin, simply because of the fragility of its production.

Contrary to some opinions, Bjork has not stumbled upon a completely original idea here. In fact, in 1985, Todd Rundgren made a record called (natch) A Cappella, consisting of nothing but his own sampled voice. Bjork’s album is conceptually similar, but it’s her own artistic thumbprint that sets Medulla apart. The record is eerily paced, and many songs contain no beats at all. Several of them are sung in Icelandic, and are revelatory for those who remain mystified by Bjork’s phrasing in English. In her native tongue, her trills and accents make perfect, even poetic sense. And of course, there are the multitude of other voices that contribute here, spicing up the tone.

And what voices they are. Former Faith No More singer Mike Patton lends his snarl to opener “Pleasure Is All Mine,” and the section in which his painful growls come out of the right speaker and Bjork’s pleasure-filled moans come out of the left is riveting. Robert Wyatt sings on “Submarine,” delivering the only non-Bjork lead vocal, and his shaky tenor sounds stunning when layered atop itself a dozen or more times. Bjork has also enlisted beatboxers Rahzel and Dokaka, and their work is amazing, especially on “Mouth’s Cradle” and closer “Triumph of a Heart.”

Elsewhere, Bjork sings with a full Icelandic choir, crafting minute-long interludes between the more experimental tracks. This is an uneven record – it flits about too radically and ends too quickly – but these sections work hard to tie it all together. For instance, it would have been even more jarring to slam from the majestic Olympics anthem “Oceania” into the crazed, dissonant “Ancestors” without the placid “Sonnets/Unrealities XI” in between. Still, there are no concessions to easy listenability here – Medulla is a defiantly odd and bizarrely beautiful record that sounds out of place next to… well, anything.

It’s also one of the best records of the year, and even I am getting tired of hearing myself say that. This has been an extraordinary year so far for dramatic, inspired works – so much so that I could easily fill all ten slots in my year-end list right now and come up with a respectable, even superb collection of albums. Even so, Medulla stands out as one of the most creative and rewarding of the bunch. This album, and in fact Bjork’s whole career, is the very definition of following one’s muse wherever it may lead. Damn the rules.

Next week, Tears for Fears. Rejoice, Liz!

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So I made myself watch most of the Republican convention.

Those are some angry, angry people, huh? You’d almost think that they’re the ones who just spent four years being lied to and manipulated. It’s weird. The tone of the whole affair seemed defensive to me, as if they’ve forgotten that their candidate is the sitting president. Guys, listen, “Take America Back” is the motto of Kerry’s campaign, not yours. You’re ahead in the polls, your approval rating is high, and everything is going your way. You’ve successfully hoodwinked half the country into believing that you’re out for their best interests. You will probably win in November, and you likely won’t even have to resort to your underhanded tricks to do it this time, either.

So why are you acting like the cornered tiger? Why are you so afraid?

Is it because you know that your whole platform, your whole image, is a lie? Is it because trotting out every single minority Republican with any kind of political office (including Maryland’s very own Lieutenant Governor) on “Compassion Day” is the most flimsy and crass attempt at faking diversity I have ever seen? Is it because you know that your ubiquitous mantras of national security and decisive leadership would fall apart under the slightest inspection?

You know what? Don’t worry so much. It’s working. Despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary, people actually believe that your administration has been good for this country, that we were justified in our unprovoked attack on Iraq, that the fat reconstruction contracts for your buddies in big business are coincidences, and that you really care about the jobless and homeless and oppressed in this country. (Except for the gays, ‘cause they’re icky.) More than half the people in America agree with you, and think you’re doing a good job.

Which kind of explains why I don’t go out much anymore.

Personally, I’m voting for John Kerry, and the reason is very simple. The distinctions between Kerry and Bush are small (if significant), but all things being equal, I’m going to vote for the guy who didn’t lie to me for a year so that hundreds of American troops could die for his oil interests. That’s really it. Your justifications for this war have changed so many times that it’s hard to keep track, and they keep changing, and people keep dying.

Kerry may turn out to be just as bad, and from the looks of things we may never know, but I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt more than you do. You had your chance, not just with me, but with the world after 9/11, and you lied and schemed instead of leading. I’m taking my vote elsewhere, and because of our damn two-party system, I can only take it one other place and have it matter.

But really, don’t worry about it. Seriously, relax. You’re driving this bus off a cliff, it’s true, but you’ve all but advertised the destination, and most people have bought their tickets anyway. You’re winning. You’re absolute proof that a government by, of and for the people is only as good as the people it is by, of and for. You’ve also proved that scared people will believe anything as long as you keep them scared, a maxim I’m sure you will test to its limits in the second term you’ll probably have. You’ve done well. You win the Liars Club Award for the decade. Put your feet up. Take another vacation.

* * * * *

For those of us who still care, the election is on November 2. If you don’t like being lied to so that rich people can get richer and poor people can go die in other countries for no reason, then register and vote for John Kerry. Please. I’d like to think that the polls are wrong, and that most people can see through the Republican subterfuge. I’m begging you to prove me right.

* * * * *

A president who got elected with the help of his brother seems like a fitting segue into a column about brothers, don’t you think? There seems to be no riskier proposition in music than starting a band with members of your family, but the rewards seem to be just as magical – look at the Wilson brothers for a great example. No one fights quite like siblings, because they know all the right buttons to push. But in some cases, that explosive fire can make for some great musical alchemy.

Lord knows that’s the truth when it came to the Black Crowes. The best rock ‘n’ roll band in the world might not have been quite so rock ‘n’ roll without the spitting love/hate relationship between the Robinson brothers. Singer Chris and guitarist Rich openly feuded, and less openly used that friction as an impetus to write bigger and better songs. They also competed on stage, Chris running his voice ragged just to outdo Rich. It was all very… well, very rock ‘n’ roll.

That this relationship eventually imploded was no surprise. In fact, the surprise may have been just how long they lasted. Their final album, Lions, was in retrospect a messy battleground, with Chris’ more sensitive balladry fighting valiantly against Rich’s buzzing, viscous guitar noise. The tension made it a fascinating record, and that spilled over into the subsequent tour and its live album. But no band could maintain such a struggle for long.

Thing is, that friction, that sibling rivalry, if you will, provided an essential component to the band’s sound, and separately, the brothers have found it impossible to replicate that energy. Chris was first out of the gate with New Earth Mud, a tepid slog of sentimentality and mush that wallowed in intolerable blandness. (Was that harsh enough?) Chris Robinson is too good a singer to warble tripe like “Katie Dear.” The absence of Rich’s attitude, as well as his distorted guitar tone, left the album adrift on little more than good vibes.

Chris has rebounded somewhat with the release of his second album, This Magnificent Distance, but that may be because of his band. He’s named his new assemblage of musicians after his first album – it’s credited to Chris Robinson and the New Earth Mud. I kind of hope he keeps that tradition going, because Chris Robinson and the Magnificent Distance is a great name for a band. But I digress…

This group, which coincidentally includes two brothers in drummer Jeremy and guitarist Paul Stacey, has pushed Robinson to expand his sound. This is an epic ‘70s rock album, the kind you would expect to have burned up the charts 30 years ago, and even though it’s slower and more ponderous than anything the Crowes ever put out, it infuses those slower songs with a sense of ambition completely missing from New Earth Mud.

Opener “40 Days” finds Robinson singing like the rock god he is, for the first time since leaving the Crowes. Really, this guy has one of the best rough-and-tumble voices to hit the scene since the glory days of bar rock. It’s a voice that’s able to rise above whatever is accompanying it, be it the sweeping power of something like “Girl on the Mountain” or the explosive riffage of closer “Piece of Wind.” The songs here suit that voice, in ways that the sappy piffle on his solo debut simply didn’t. If you have to hear only one, make it “If You See California,” perhaps the most beautiful number Robinson has done since “Wiser Time.”

This Magnificent Distance is a huge leap forward for Chris Robinson’s solo career, but it still falls far short of his work with the Crowes, mostly because that fire is missing. The songs are slow and lovely, but there’s no urgency to them – the album just languorously meanders until the end. Robinson did save the two punchiest rockers for the conclusion, though, so it goes out with more of a bang. Still, it’s obvious what’s missing here – Rich Robinson.

And the same can be said for the guitar-playing brother, in fact. Rich’s solo album, Paper, is a loud, frenetic, riff-happy rock festival. There are moments of acoustic pleasure, but mostly Rich has chosen to stick with the Stones-y vibe he always brought to the band. The problem is, that’s all he brings here. Sure, his familiar guitar buzz is all over this thing, and the swagger is present, but the songs are lacking, and Paper just drags on way too long.

Rich takes lead vocals on all 14 of these songs, too, which only exacerbates the problem. Charging leadoff track “Yesterday I Saw You” opens with a typically Crowes start-stop riff and a thundering drum entrance, but Rich’s merely passable voice all but sinks it. He mixed his voice low here, too, perhaps to draw attention away from it. In reality, though, the murky mix only accentuates what’s missing here – Chris Robinson.

Compared with their work together, the Robinsons’ solo albums find them at roughly 50% power, and that’s unfortunate, since it costs 100% more to follow their careers now. Hopefully they will either grow into their solo careers, or they will realize that what they need is each other’s influence. I would be front row center for a Black Crowes reunion, and I would hope that any reconciliation between the Robinsons would be fraught with hard feelings and unspoken rage that gets funneled into the most kick-ass rock music they’ve yet made.

* * * * *

The thing with brothers is, sometimes, they get along personally a lot better than they do musically. There’s never been a time when New Zealenders Neil and Tim Finn have been at each other’s throats, for example, and they have made some fine music together. Neil and Tim fronted Split Enz for years before Neil split off to form Crowded House, but Tim tagged along for that band’s finest album, Woodface. Following the demise of Crowded House, Neil and Tim made their own record, called Finn Brothers. Both then went on to solo careers before re-convening, nine years later, to make the second Finn Brothers album, Everyone is Here.

Given that their careers have been so entwined, it’s interesting to me that I have such different reactions to their work. I love Neil Finn, whether he’s in Split Enz or Crowded House or on his own. I think Neil is one of the world’s best living songwriters, and he proved it again two years ago with the positively astonishing One Nil. Conversely, I haven’t liked a Tim Finn album in… well, ever. He writes average songs and sings them in a croaky, almost-hit-the-note voice that has never done it for me.

In both the Enz and the House, Tim’s voice played backup to Neil’s, which is where it should be, but even then, the tones didn’t mesh as well as they could have. The weakest moments on Everyone is Here find Tim taking lead, and the rest of the moments find him loosely harmonizing with his perfect-pitch brother. Luckily, the whole record is a loose affair, recorded with a homespun feel that makes the ramshackle vocals work. It’s obvious that the Finns enjoy working together, and who could begrudge them such a pleasant musical environment?

I just kind of wish the results were a little less ordinary. I like this record, in the same way that I like most melodic pop records, but at this point, I expect brilliance from Neil Finn, and when I get songs that are good instead of amazing, I’m disappointed. And I can’t help blaming his less-talented brother. It’s awful of me, I know, especially considering that Everyone is Here is amiable and well-made. Opener “Won’t Give In” is a sweet song, with a catchy chorus. That chorus is, unfortunately, built on the most overused chord sequence in all of pop music – the one in U2’s “With or Without You.”

Elsewhere, the Finns get more engaging, but the songs never move out of the simple pop vein. There’s nothing as surprising and sweeping as Neil’s “Human Kindness” or “Hole in the Ice.” Of the more upbeat numbers, “Anything Can Happen” is the most winning, though Tim sullies the momentum one song later with his treacly “Luckiest Man Alive.” “Edible Flowers” finally makes its studio appearance – it was performed by the Finns on Neil’s live album 7 Worlds Collide – and it provides a moment of minor-key depth.

As for depth of the lyrical variety, the best you’re going to get here is “All God’s Children,” which asks this musical question: If we’re all God’s children, and God is a woman, then who’s the father? The rest of Everyone is Here is largely concerned with love, and mostly of the familial type. This record is a celebration of the Finn Brothers’ joy at reuniting their musical connection, and it takes a certain kind of mean-spirited prick to poke holes in such a good-hearted confection. I’m trying really hard not to be that prick, because I do like this record, just not as much as I expected to.

It’s odd that the Robinsons need each other to achieve musical greatness, but Neil Finn manages it on his own so often that Tim must feel he’s along for the ride. And in a very real sense, he is, but Neil is kind enough to give him the wheel once in a while, even if the result is less brilliant than it could be. You could call Everyone is Here a triumph of humanity over art, and as such, it’s merely enjoyable where Neil’s work is usually breathtaking. You can’t help but feel good for the Finns for rekindling their familial bond through music, but personally, I can’t help hoping for a new Neil Finn solo record soon.

Next week, Bjork. And let me just say, whoa.

See you in line Tuesday morning.