People always ask me what kind of music I listen to.

I kind of find that an odd question anyway, assuming as it does that music can be typed and boxed and labeled, but that’s an old argument and I won’t start it up again. My usual answer is non-committal and all-encompassing: “What kind of music? Well, everything.” This reply has served me well for many years, and I suppose it’s accurate, considering the question – I have not, as far as I know, banished an entire genre or style from my CD collection. (Not even ska, believe it or not. I have some of that – a little Sublime, some Less Than Jake, a Supertones record. And I love the Clash, the band that first married reggae and dub beats to punk rhythms.)

Lately, though, I’ve given it some thought, and here’s why. There’s a radio station in my area whose slogan is “We Play Everything,” and at first I chuckled at that notion. No radio station plays everything, I scoffed, unless by “everything” they mean “these three dozen songs selected from very strict format guidelines.” But then I listened to it, and I was blown away. It’s not unusual for this station to play Styx, Snoop Dogg and Velvet Revolver, all in a row. It is, without a doubt, the most inclusive radio station I have ever heard. And it led me to an interesting conclusion.

I don’t listen to everything.

In fact, I hate most of what this station plays, just like I disregard 90 percent of the songs I hear on a daily basis. If you’ll permit me a moment of hypocritical categorization, the dominant styles of music these days leave me cold. I have never been a rap fan, try as I might, because I’m too addicted to melodies. I can’t get into the angst-ridden three-chord rage-rock or the “sensitive” three-chord rage-ballads that pose as “modern rock.” Similarly, I detest the minimalist clangings of the new garage rockers. When it comes to modern radio and sales charts, I am a man without a country.

If anything, this year’s Top 10 List should firmly cement my status as a fuddy-duddy traditionalist. Unlike most reviewers this year, I did not hear the future in records by Franz Ferdinand, Modest Mouse or the Black Eyed Peas. Oh, I heard all those records, and liked them, but they didn’t strike me as particularly innovative the way they struck half the pundits on the ‘net. No, in a year full of so-called breakthroughs, I’m awarding the top prizes to some old-school musicians, making old-school wonderment at the top of their game. Two of the top five artists have been around for more than 20 years, and the numero uno man has been at it for more than 40.

And you know what? I think this is the best, most consistently rewarding Top 10 List I have done since I started this column. How is this for solid: there isn’t a single song on any of the top five albums that I’m not in love with. Not one bad song. This year was so great that even the honorable mentions would make a fine Top 10 List by themselves. This was the year that melody struck back, and ambition fueled some expansive dreams. 2004 was almost an embarrassment of riches, and my list has as its bottom rung an album by perhaps the best songwriter of my generation, and as its apex one of the four or five finest pieces of pop music I have ever heard.

It’s a great list. Seriously.

And with its focus on melody-rich, old-time songcraft, it is the list that best represents me and my particular taste. Often, there are only a few undeniably good albums in a certain year, and even though they don’t push my buttons as much as they could, they end up on the list. But there were so many good records this year that I ended up getting to pick my subjective favorites. The result is a rarity – these are, I think, the 17 best albums I heard this year, but they are also the ones I love most, for all the silly and inexplicable reasons I find myself loving music.

I didn’t have any of the usual problems coming up with the list this year, either. The rules are still deceptively simple – only new studio albums of original material are considered, which means no EPs, no reissues, no box sets of previously unreleased outtakes, and no live albums. Seems easy enough, but for two years running those rules have excluded my favorite albums of the year. Not this time – this was the year the full-length album statement made its comeback. Whether this is its last gasp or its renaissance, I don’t know, but I’m grateful for this year’s crop.

If you want proof, just look at one of the fall season’s biggest splashes – Green Day’s American Idiot. This thing has sold through the roof and ended up on a bunch of Top 10 Lists (but not this one), and at the moment it sports two big radio singles. It’s also an old-fashioned rock opera, a concept album with a plotline that requires every song to make its point. If even perennial singles band Green Day is taking its cues from Tommy, then maybe we’re on an upswing after all.

Either way, it’s cause for celebration. We love the album here at tm3am, and 2004 was a great albums year. Here, then, are the 17 best, all of which I would recommend without hesitation.

Honorable mentions first. As you may have read last week, Mike Roe and Mark Harmon delivered a superb electro-guitar-pop feast called Fun With Sound. If you’ve been reading my column long enough, you’ve see Roe’s name crop up in half a dozen of these installments. If you’ve never tried his work, this is a good one to start with. Sweet, sad songs with dynamic production and some of the best guitar playing you will hear from anyone anywhere.

Icelandic visionary Bjork made another dizzying left turn with Medulla, an album constructed almost entirely from human voices. It’s a brilliantly written burst of ear candy, with some fascinating guests (Rahzel, Mike Patton). It is a bit too short, and a bit too dissonant at times, but it’s overall another bizarre, yet somehow perfectly right-sounding record from one of our finest experimenters.

Bjork didn’t invent the sampled-voice album, and in fact some of the best tricks on Medulla are copied from Todd Rundgren’s amazing A Cappella record from 1985. Rundgren has always been one to try new ideas, and he was among the first musicians to offer his work through an online subscription service. This year, though, he roared back to the physical world with Liars, a 74-minute masterpiece of electro-soul and carefully considered rage. It is as sweet and tuneful, and as socially conscious and unerringly accurate, as any of his best work, and for a guy who has been making records since the ‘60s, that’s saying something.

I didn’t get around to reviewing it, but Tom Waits’ Real Gone is another powerhouse from the gravel-voiced eccentric. He dives right into the world of mouth-percussion here, constructing rickety bulkheads of popping, jagged sound and then setting them on fire. The molten lava of “Hoist That Rag” is undeniable, but perhaps the finest moments here are the tender ones, like the closing letter home, “Day After Tomorrow.” In a different year, this would have been in the top five, easy.

The Polyphonic Spree finally proved their concept this year with a dizzying full-length called Together We’re Heavy. When the Spree’s more than 20 members kick in full blast here, they earn the album’s title. A lot of pundits have tried to describe this thing using terms like “progressive sunshine pop,” but I think it’s better than that. It’s the sound of a painter (mastermind Tim DeLaughter) ripping up his tiny canvas and aiming higher. You can just hear DeLaughter being told he has the whole roof of the Sistine Chapel to work with, and him saying, “All right. Let’s fill this sucker.”

The Fiery Furnaces dreamed bigger this year, too. In the wake of their slipshod blues debut, they knuckled down and made Blueberry Boat, a 78-minute prog-pop-blues-whatever excursion that ranks as perhaps the most initially off-putting chunk of genius I heard this year. Boat is absolutely fearless in its eccentricity, leaping from 10-minute garage-prog workouts like “Quay Cur” to piano-pounding blues-rockers like “Straight Street” to sad, pretty pieces like “Spaniolated.” It’s daunting, and I guarantee you the first three times you hear it, it will make no sense to you at all. But stick with it, because it’s truly a work of lo-fi art.

And now we come to number 11, or 10-and-a-half, or whatever infinitesimal fraction you’d like, because this one almost made the list. If not for my enduring affection for the number 10 artist, it would have, and I nearly came down to flipping a coin anyway, so good is this album. It’s the self-titled disc by the Autumns, a mix of guitars and atmospheres so delightfully constructed that it plays like one extraordinary song. It’s an absolute triumph of oceanic tones and Matt Kelly’s astonishing, cloud-reaching voice, and it draws you in early and never stops surprising you. It’s as beautiful a work as anything they’ve done.

The list! The list is life!

#10. Elliott Smith, From a Basement on the Hill.

I still can’t quite type the phrase “Elliott Smith’s final album” without feeling a little chill. It’s no secret that I consider the late Smith perhaps the finest songwriter of my generation – he shares the honor with Jeff Buckley, another who died too young. And even the sting of Smith’s apparent suicide doesn’t taint Basement for me. This is a hell of a record, at least until the final third, when it crashes down to earth. It is raw and ragged in places, which many say is what Smith wanted, but it finds the balance between his indie-rock lo-fi days on Kill Rock Stars and his huge George Martin-style studio records on Dreamworks. Only near the end does it begin to feel like the unfinished project that it is, but even those songs have the punch of the sad and final about them. Smith will never finish this album. It is imperfectly perfect just as it is.

#9. They Might Be Giants, The Spine.

I will only accept hate mail on this one from people who have heard this record in its entirety. They Might Be Giants have always struggled with their perceived identity as a novelty act, despite being one of the best guitar-pop bands around, and despite being led by Johns Linnell and Flansburgh, songwriters who manage to come up with hook after hook, year after year. There are 16 songs squeezed into The Spine’s 35 minutes, and none are less than wonderfully melodic. It’s also the most economical ass-kicker the Johns have produced in many years – there isn’t a wasted second, and if it were any longer, it would lose focus. From now on, if anyone asks why I listen to TMBG, I’m giving them a copy of this.

#8. Spymob, Sitting Around Keeping Score.

I really dislike N.E.R.D. for cribbing from the Prince songbook and passing it off as originality. But I love their backing band, a group that on their off days goes by the name Spymob. And I really love their second album, a mix of perfect pop and jazzy keyboards crafted with wit and charm. These guys take the Fountains of Wayne spot this year with winking winners like “I Still Live at Home” and “2040,” and they draw from the grand tradition of piano-fueled power pop that informed Jellyfish and Human Radio, two of my favorite acts. This is a superb record, and if not for the band that landed squarely at number two on this list, Spymob would be a shoo-in for discovery of the year.

#7. Tears for Fears, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending.

This year, everybody loved a good reunion, and none was more artistically successful than this one. Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith hadn’t made an album together since 1989, but this one picks right up where they left off, Beatles influences and all. The whole thing is wonderfully ‘60s, with the opening title track sounding like the second side of Abbey Road smashed into four minutes. There’s nary a tuneless minute here, and the album is the most relentlessly upbeat one the duo has made. Just dig the harmonies and sweet, sweet chorus of “Secret World.” Not only is this the best reunion record of the year, but it’s the most welcome, as far as I’m concerned.

#6. Rufus Wainwright, Want Two.

Well, it finally happened – pomp-pop supergenius Rufus Wainwright finally wrote a song I don’t like. “Old Whore’s Diet,” the nine-minute conclusion of this, the second half of his third album, is tired and repetitive and too mediocre for Wainwright’s fantastic voice. But the eleven songs that precede it on Want Two are just as lovely and tricky as anything else he’s written, and the production here is just as full and vibrant (without being overblown) as it was on Want One. This is the sadder, more operatic half of the project, and as such it contains some weepy stunners like “This Love Affair” and “Memphis Skyline,” as well as the ultimate camp ditty, “Gay Messiah.” It’s overall a wonderful album, just like its predecessor, if only slightly less so. And Wainwright remains the North American songwriter most worth watching.

#5. Muse, Absolution.

Was a time when this widescreen firecracker was a sure bet for the top three. Muse is often written off as a louder Radiohead, but while they share the blueprint, Matt Bellamy and his crew take it to stratospheric heights Thom Yorke and his haven’t even aimed for in years. Absolution is a concept record about insecurity and wonder, and its sound strains against the confines of any system you play it on. It’s huge. Every song is lovingly sculpted, and every sound is crafted and labored over, from the jackhammer guitars of “Stockholm Syndrome” to the gorgeous atmospheres of “Falling Away With You.” Still, the most arresting and wondrous element here is Bellamy’s voice, unrestrained by gravity and humanity, flying and swooping and spinning all about this album. Yes, it’s huge, but sounds this big need an endless sky to play in, and Absolution takes all the space it needs.

#4. U2, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.

I, for one, never lost faith. I took every one of U2’s ‘90s albums in stride, no matter how awful they were, and held out hope for a return to greatness. And here is my reward – the first U2 album since 1987 that I truly, desperately love. Bono found his voice, Edge found his amp, and the foursome found some terrific songs on their 11th record. I can’t even adequately describe the joy of hearing an old-time circular guitar tune like “Miracle Drug” or a perfect singalong like “City of Blinding Lights” or a rocker that truly rocks like “All Because of You” from this band again. Cancel the funeral – U2 is alive and kicking, and after a decade in the gutter, they’re reaching for the stars again.

#3. Marillion, Marbles.

This fantastic voyage had a lock on the number one spot for months, and I’m still surprised that not one, but two albums blew it out of the water. That’s because it seems unsinkable – it is the best album ever by one of my favorite bands, and it takes you on a 100-minute trip of head-spinning and heart-rending proportions. Much has been written about the way Marbles was marketed and sold – its recording, mixing, packaging and promotion were all paid for by fan pre-orders, and they ended up with a pair of top 20 singles, stunning the British music industry. But all that would mean nothing if the album weren’t incredible, and it is. From the creepy wonderama of “The Invisible Man” to the pop perfection of “You’re Gone” to the smooth blues of “Angelina” to the blissful playout of “Neverland,” everything here clicks. And then there is “Ocean Cloud,” an 18-minute trip all to itself, which I still consider my favorite song of the year. Through it all, Marillion do what they do best – head music for the soul. This is tricky, complex, literate stuff that somehow cuts through its own pedigree and hits your emotional center. It is, in short, beautiful, and the band deserves all its success. Viva la revolution!

#2. Keane, Hopes and Fears.

So how did this comparatively small and slight album best Marillion’s magnum opus? I’m still not sure. I voted with my heart on this one, and Keane’s debut album simply shone more light into the corners of my year. Marbles is a draining experience, in the most positive of senses, whereas Hopes and Fears is compact and thrilling. It makes you want to press play again the second it stops. That this is the band’s first stab at an album is simply mindboggling, and it sets the bar insanely high for their follow-up. These are 11 of the catchiest and most well-written songs you will find anywhere, delivered with no guitars, but with Tim Rice-Oxley’s gorgeous piano work and Tom Chaplin’s strong, clear, outstanding voice. Keane is the discovery of the year, bar none, and perhaps the culmination of Britpop’s recent journey. From the perfect opening trilogy to the deep and dreamy “Bedshaped,” from first note to last, Hopes and Fears is a treasure.

Which takes us to the best of the best, and when your top five is as impressive as this one, the only thing that can round it out is one of the greatest records ever made. Hyperbole? Perhaps, but nothing flipped my particular switch this year like this one did:

#1. Brian Wilson, SMiLE.

It took Wilson 38 years to finish his teenage symphony to God, and it will probably take another 38 years for pop music to catch up with it. Wilson started SMiLE as the Beach Boys’ follow-up to Pet Sounds, but the sessions were abandoned after the other Boys (and their label) heaped disdain on the material. They called it silly, and goony, and odd, and it is. It’s also unmistakably, unbelievably brilliant, and its completion firmly cements Wilson as perhaps the greatest pop songwriter and composer America has ever produced. No one, before or since, has ever attempted, much less pulled off, a suite of pop songs quite this intricate and joyful. SMiLE is the infinite possibility of music, grinning at you and inviting you in.

If you couldn’t tell, I love this record.

It’s not just that SMiLE’s completion is redemptive for Wilson, although that plays into my love a little bit. Wilson overcame a debilitating fear of this music, and his own mental breakdown, to finally put it all together, and that act of courage alone deserved the huge standing ovation he received at the piece’s premiere. But it’s not just that. Even shorn of its lengthy history and presented fresh, the work of a new band, SMiLE would stand as a masterpiece, and would be atop this list. The music is just that good. This is full-color pop music, the kind that makes everything else seem slow-motion by comparison. It sounds not so much timeless as completely out of time.

It’s not just the composition, it’s the arrangement, the recording, the performance, everything. SMiLE utilizes an array of instruments the Polyphonic Spree would kill for, and still the most amazing thing about it, sonically, is the vocals. They’re inhumanly dense and sweet, and if I didn’t know that the Wilson band (known as the Wondermints in their off hours) can play and sing this stuff live, I’d think it impossible. Instrumentally, SMiLE throws a million ideas a second at you, especially in its goony final third, and the phenomenal vocal arrangements keep pace.

SMiLE is three suites, and while the Americana-inspired first and the absurdly complex third will make your head swirl about, the deeply emotional second suite is the heart of the album. It concludes with “Surf’s Up,” Wilson’s greatest melodic triumph. Given all of pop music from which to choose, I would probably name the ascending chorus melody of this song as my favorite moment. If Wilson had written nothing but “God Only Knows” and this, he would still be in my songwriters’ pantheon.

I do have some concerns about the relative newness of this record. Most of it was written in 1966, even though these recordings are new. It concludes with “Good Vibrations,” which no one would ever mistake for a new song. Almost all of it has appeared in one form or another across numerous Beach Boys releases – there’s even an album called Surf’s Up. How to justify naming an album of 38-year-old songs as the best new release of 2004?

It’s a valid question. I spent a lot of time this year talking about the album-length piece, though, and SMiLE is the perfect expression of my point. Before Wilson sat down with Van Dyke Parks last year and made the final compositional stitches, SMiLE did not exist. The album is much more than the sum of its songs, and I would argue that this new recording is its first appearance. The album is all about context, and hearing “Good Vibrations” as the final act of SMiLE is like hearing “A Day in the Life” at the end of Sgt. Pepper. Wilson intended SMiLE to run in this order when he first conceived it, and the intervening years and scraps from the original sessions don’t prevent this from being a whole new thing, contextually speaking.

Whether this is a rationalization or not, you’ll have to judge for yourself. I can only say that this is easily, far and away, the best thing I heard this year (or last year, or the year before that, etc.), and I couldn’t conceive of this list without Wilson at its head. The biggest reason is almost embarrassing, really – SMiLE is pure joy, pure love, pure possibility, and I haven’t heard anything this open-hearted in so long. Musicians these days spend far too much time defining themselves by what they are not, boxing themselves in and building walls. Wilson’s music is anything and everything, welcoming and warm, joyous and bright. SMiLE is a gift we don’t deserve, and I, for one, am grateful for it.

And that’s it. Thanks for plowing through it. I’m edging close to 4,000 words, which may be a new record. Next week, I’m off for Christmas break, but Year Five starts on January 5, 2005. Should be easy to remember. Thanks for reading Year Four, and have a very merry.

See you in line Tuesday morning… and to all a good night.

A few months ago, I was gazing out my second-story window as three big men took down a rotten tree in my yard. I did everything I could to turn that into some sort of thematic statement, but I couldn’t get it to work for me. Sometimes, metaphors are tricky little buggers.

And sometimes, they just write themselves.

Just to drive the point home. It’s called the Liberty Tree. And it was taken down for public safety reasons. Wow. It’s modern America in symbolic miniature.

* * * * *

My original plan for this week was to write a lengthy column catching up on worthy records I just didn’t get to over the past few months. There are quite a few, including missives from Green Day, A Perfect Circle, King’s X, Neal Morse and John Lennon. But then I took a look at January’s barren desert of no new music, and decided to hold on to these reviews, lest I have nothing to talk about until Valentine’s Day.

So I picked one for this week, and it wasn’t hard to choose.

Mike Roe is an absolute renaissance man. He has tried his hand at a dozen different styles, and pulled off each one wonderfully. But that unpredictability has sometimes been a drawback for Roe, since newbies don’t know where to start sampling his massive catalog. The novice who sees an acoustic concert and then picks up Orbis or A Golden Field of Radioactive Crows might not come back for more. Roe skips around, musically speaking, and he doesn’t often leave a road map for curious potential fans to follow.

Lately, though, he’s been neatly dividing his interests into four boxes, each with different names, and while I object to categorization from a purely artistic standpoint, the separation does help with suggesting entry points. With the Lost Dogs, Roe is an Elvis-loving country crooner with strong gospel roots, and you can hear that on every Dogs album since their 1992 debut Scenic Routes. With the 77s, Roe is a full-on blues-inspired rock machine, best evidenced by Tom Tom Blues and Golden Field. On his own, Roe is an acoustic folkie with a knack for self-deprecation and spiritual uplift, as heard on Say Your Prayers and It’s For You.

And when he teams with 77s bassist Mark Harmon, the duo turns out experimental, groovy electronic jam music. This side has showcased Roe the guitarist better than any other lately, with dynamic instrumental records like Orbis. Harmon seems to bring out the ambitious side of Roe, and their projects together have been layered, knotty and demanding, but very worth the time. Orbis especially is a little off-putting at first, opening with a 10-minute sound-effects-laden free-for-all and continuing wordlessly for 78 minutes.

One would be forgiven for expecting the same from an album called Fun With Sound, but one would be wrong. Roe and Harmon’s new record, released under the resurrected Seven and Seven Is moniker, is a full-on vocals-and-guitars collection of glorious pop songs, reminiscent of Roe’s The Boat Ashore. It’s a lovely piece of work, subtle and enveloping, and it continues the amazing streak Roe has been on these past few years, in all of his incarnations.

Fun With Sound is so titled because Roe and Harmon have knocked themselves out on the production front here. The drums are all programmed and sampled, keyboard effects weave in and out, and Roe’s guitar takes on personality after personality. If you’ve heard Orbis, imagine taking the more melodic sections of that piece and writing songs around that sonic template. The grooves are sweet, the melodies sweeter, and the blankets of overdubbed guitar are sweetest of all.

Opener “Gone in a Moment” sets the mood for the record, then bursts out of it with a perfect bridge. Listen to Roe and Harmon playing around each other on the beautiful extended ambient coda, and then dig the intro to “A Quiet Little Place,” on which Harmon takes the lead with his fretless bass. These two have been playing together for more than a decade, long enough to continually push each other to new heights. They harmonize delightfully on the tricky “My World Inside,” and practically duel on the fiery “L’Orbis/Jack Spoiler.”

Lyrically, this album treads familiar ground for Roe – broken hearts and downtrodden souls. He gets positively optimistic on “Ride the Waves,” but takes the emotional current of “Say So Long to Your Sad Old Love Song” as far as it will carry him. And in “Guadalupe” he pens a lovely tribute to Gene Eugene, the former Lost Dog and Adam Again mastermind who passed away in 2000. (Guadalupe was the rumored title of the sixth Adam Again album, which Eugene never got to make.) He ends with a nod to his gospel roots on “I Will Run to the City of Refuge,” with a Zeppelin twist. It’s the heaviest thing here, and makes for an explosive conclusion.

I’ve often said that there are only a few guitarists I will never tire of listening to, and Mike Roe is one of them. His six-string is everywhere on Fun With Sound, adding flourishes and weaving webs. And when he solos, as on “Thank You For Your Dreams,” it’s a wonder to behold. I will never figure out why guitar magazines aren’t falling all over this guy – he’s an obvious master with a lyrical tone and a deeply emotional playing style. Roe should have disciples who transcribe his every lick and try to play them with as much heart as he does. Just listen to the lengthy, lovely ending of “Sad Old Love Song” if you don’t believe me.

It wouldn’t be stretching too far to consider Fun With Sound the best thing Roe has done in years, even considering the steep competition. This is a record that spotlights just about everything he does well – the guitar playing of Daydream, the songwriting of the 77s’ Direct, the perfect production of Orbis, the lyrics and sweet, sweet vocals of Say Your Prayers. This is not an experimental toss-off, it’s the real deal. If you’ve never sampled Roe’s work before, this is a great place to start.

It’s beyond me why you can’t walk into any record store and buy this, but you can’t – like most of Roe’s work, it’s only available at 77s.com and related websites. You can listen to clips from every song there as well. While you’re there, pick up Direct, Golden Field, Prayers, It’s For You… hell, everything. It’s all good.

Next week, the Top 10 List, and likely a lengthy justification of my choice for number one.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So I’m flipping back through my archive, and I’m re-listening to some old records, because I can’t quite put myself into a 2000 frame of mind. I need to ask you all this, though, because I don’t think I imagined it.

Eminem used to have something to say, right?

Back when The Marshall Mathers LP came out, it seemed like we were welcoming a new master of the form. I even named Eminem’s second album as the best record of 2000, feeling pretty confident in my assertion that Em was, in fact, underrated as an artist because of his subject matter and frequent profanity. Marshall Mathers was a grand-scale satire perpetrated on the music business and on its lambs-to-the-slaughter fans, willing to emulate whatever the stars told them to do. It was an exaggerated pile of lies from the mouth of a multiple-personality maniac with a cop-out for every occasion.

And it was thrilling.

Even musically, The Marshall Mathers LP was a good pop album. It’s no secret that Em’s flow is best when it’s fast and sarcastic. He’s got lyrical tricks most MCs never learn, and his internal rhyme structure is second to none. You never know which direction his rhymes will go, largely because you never know which of his personalities will come in to lead the lyrical train of thought next. Some gave me grief about my praise of this record, but I stand by it. As a rapper, a writer, and a cultural theorist, Eminem is almost absurdly talented.

So what happened?

In 2002, he released The Eminem Show, the final act of his opening trilogy, and it broke the mold of his first two by drawing back the curtain. Instead of pathological liar and certified nutjob Slim Shady at the wheel, this one featured just plain ol’ Marshall Mathers, regular guy. He laid bare the joke behind The Marshall Mathers LP in his opening shot, “White America,” and went on to discuss fatherhood, family and emotions. It was the rap equivalent of an Ani Difranco album – here’s what’s going on in my life right now, as plainly as I can state it.

He even started to show signs of social responsibility on tracks like “My Dad’s Gone Crazy,” on which he admitted that he wouldn’t let his daughter listen to his songs. The Eminem Show was a good finale, a decent last bow out. After all, what can a magician do after he’s explained his tricks? Nothing but pack up and go home, of course, unless the audience demands an Encore.

Eminem’s fourth album was more than two years in the making, and it proves conclusively that the demand for his work has outlasted his supply of worthwhile material. The 23-track Encore is so long that three songs spill over onto a second disc, and I can count the ones worthy of release on one hand. With several fingers left, including Em’s favorite one. Its title is appropriate – Encore feels like a collection of leftovers from the last record, played as half the house is heading for their cars.

The joke this time seems to be that Eminem fans will buy whatever half-hearted, uninspired work he turns out. There is ample evidence throughout this record that Em didn’t even try. The lyrics on Encore seem to have been made up on the spot, rambling as they do through every thought that crosses Mathers’ mind. “My 1st Single” repeats belching and farting noises while Em sings “poo poo ka ka” seriously and brags about ruining a catchy song with silly verses. And you haven’t heard anyone waste a beat like Mathers does on “Big Weenie,” which sounds like something Alanis Morissette would have written in her notebook in second grade.

Roughly half the record is given over to stream-of-consciousness freestyles about… pretty much nothing. Shady makes his one token appearance on “Just Lose It,” sadly the sprightliest track, and without his guidance, Eminem just isn’t very funny. His targets are broad and simple this time, too. I mean, Michael Jackson? I tired of making fun of Michael Jackson when I was in a high school band. And get this, Em reserves a whole song (“Ass Like That”) to shoot back at Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. I’m not sure Mathers got the memo, but Triumph is a puppet. He’s not real.

To be fair, Mathers does swing for the big boys once or twice. “Mosh” is a sustained burst of venom aimed right at George W. Bush, on which Em suggests that the president should be given an AK-47 and sent to fight his own oil wars. But mostly, the barbs are blunted and the humor is scarce. Encore is the first Eminem album that really isn’t any fun at all.

Which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if diary-entry Marshall Mathers weren’t so boring. He gives a dry cataloguing of rappers with grudges against him in “Like Toy Soldiers” that’s a chore to plow through (despite the catchy Martika sample), and even musters up an honest-to-gosh apology on “Yellow Brick Road.” His ode to Kim this time out is “Puke,” a very silly trifle that doesn’t even touch the Shady-fueled murder fantasies of previous records. And his lullaby to his daughter Hailie, “Mockingbird,” is sweet, but doesn’t pack the punch of “Hailie’s Song.” Even the violence fantasia, “One Shot 2 Shot,” is riddled with fear and social conscience. Not that that’s a bad thing, of course, but it is less dangerous and less interesting.

Essentially, we as listeners are the single girls of the world, and Eminem has become the nice guy we all say we want. The truth is, of course, that we don’t want the nice guy, we want the unpredictable, scary, potentially violent guy, because he’s just more interesting. Even the shoot-the-audience finale of this record can’t balance off the nearly 80 minutes of lazy, sensitive, confessional drivel before it.

Now, normally, I am the undying champion of the nice guy. So why in this case am I less interested in Mathers without his psychotic, lying alter egos? I’m not sure, but I think it has something to do with the music. Rap is a lyric-driven art form, much like folk music, and without a captivating perspective fueling the lyrics, the repetition gets dull. The music on Encore is stark, simplistic and hookless. The focus has to be on the lyrics. With his words, Mathers could have taken the blank slate of his backing tracks and shaped them into something gripping.

But no. Mathers has dispensed with his fascinating lies and manipulations, but hasn’t replaced them with anything. He rambles, he talks about what a dangerous rapper he is without once proving it, and he sounds afraid to offend. He writes about his life without giving you a window into it, often adding syllables and lines just to fill up space. Drawing from life is fine, of course – most of my favorite artists do little else – but what separates the artist from the guy on the street is perspective. Mathers has the skill, but he’s failed to present a compelling point of view.

And this from the guy who was all point of view four years ago. The best we can hope for is that Encore is a transitional album, a bridge from the Sybil-esque carnival of the first three into something else. It seems more likely, though, that the master satirist only had the one trick, and he’s all out of things to say. Eminem is too talented a rapper to waste his time on albums like this. Let’s hope he finds his focus soon, because Encore is the least interesting and least forgivable thing he’s done.

* * * * *

This is the second column I wrote this week. The first is more bloggy, dealing with a wedding and a celebrity death and other personal-type non-music-review things. It’s in the archive if you’d like to read it.

Next week, we play catch-up as a prelude to the following week’s Top 10 List.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Love…

If I learned anything at all this weekend, it’s that I look pretty sharp in a tux.

Sure, formal wear is annoying and binding and it instills in one a total fear of soup or pasta sauce or any other kind of sloppy food, but you get six guys in tuxes all lined up, and they look snazzy. Especially if they’re all wearing sunglasses. Indoors.

I have been to a lot of weddings in recent years, but Sunday’s was the first time I have been in one – both a wedding and a snappy tuxedo. This was special for me partly because I introduced the bride and groom. I lived with Gary Porro all four years of college, and he was kind of a quiet guy who didn’t meet people very easily. (Which was a shame, because if you get to know Gary, it becomes immediately apparent that he’s one of the best people on Earth.) I was in several plays with his new bride, Lisa Assetta, and it was through that connection that the two of them met. Although romance did not blossom until many years later, I still take full credit, because that’s the kind of jackass I am.

So the wedding weekend arrives, and I get on a plane and fly to Boston, and within two hours, there I am at Gary’s house pulling old windowsills out of his walls. Seriously, not only does he make me put a tux on, but he puts me to work. The nerve of some people. And Lisa’s brother Guy is probably right now hanging drywall in those rooms, for free, while Gary and Lee (her preferred nickname) sun themselves in Hawaii. Who says good help is hard to find?

I’m kidding, of course. Oh, I did pull windowsills out of old horsehair for seven hours, but it was fun, and it gave me a chance to tell my story about the day I hung drywall for money. (Short version – the guy who hired me asked what kind of work I’ve done before, and I answered that I’ve been writing for newspapers and magazines. He looked me in the eye and said, “I’m going to teach you to hang drywall today, and when I’m done, you’ll never have to write for a living again.” And he meant it.) More importantly, as anyone who knows them will attest, Gary and Lee are the kind of people who would jump in front of a moving train for their friends. If anyone deserves total happiness (and a good, solid, insulated home), it’s them.

Lee’s dad sure seems to agree. If the hugeness of the wedding is any indication, Lou Assetta has been saving for this since he first heard the phrase, “it’s a girl.” I would guess the whole thing cost twice as much as my car. The reception was held at the Tewksbury Country Club, a mammoth and beautiful wooden hall with balconies and rafters and fountains. The band was Java Jive – three keyboards and some horns that played a mix of stuff from Harry Connick to Garth Brooks to OutKast. It was your classic wedding, full of food and dancing.

I most enjoyed seeing people I hadn’t connected with in a while. Bill and Sara Yates, who are still up in Maine and are about to have their first child. (Bill, a big Star Wars fan, was hilariously jealous of Gary’s idea to use the Imperial March as his processional music.) Calvin Sanborn, the coolest priest I know, who lives in Manhattan. (We also got to meet Cal’s great, funny boyfriend, Dan, for the first time.) Joe Wellman, another Mainer who is also expecting a child with his lovely wife Andrea. Jeff King, Jamie Grover, Jay Hutchinson – it’s fascinating to see where life has taken all of my college friends.

Then there was the conclusion of the Penguin Project, and now the truth can be told. Bridesmaid Christine Guertin has this stuffed penguin, see, and she calls it Juggernaut. She’s so attached to this penguin that it’s been an ongoing game of ours (myself, Gary and a bunch of other college buddies) to steal this penguin and put it through some form of torture. We’ve hung it from ceiling fans, thrown it down stairs, and chucked it out of third-story windows, all to see the look on Christine’s face. Well, about a year ago, we hatched this plan.

We stole the penguin from her house.

And we treated it like the garden gnome in Amelie, sending it places like Texas and Mexico, taking its picture and sending Christine emails from Juggernaut with the photos attached. Juggernaut has his own Yahoo account, and has been more places than I have. Life got in the way of the prank a bit – it should have been better than it was – but it was always supposed to culminate at Gary and Lee’s wedding. And so it did.

Midway through the reception, the lead singer of Java Jive produced Juggernaut, complete with little sunglasses and straw hat, and handed him over to a thoroughly embarrassed Christine while singing “Friends in Low Places.” Many pictures were taken, much video was shot, and it couldn’t have gone any better than it did. Many thanks to Christine for being a good sport about it, even when months would go by without word from her beloved penguin. As usual, the look on her face was worth it.

As the party wound down, I took a moment away from admiring my tux in every reflective surface I could find and really looked around. And then I looked at Gary and Lee, smiling and dancing and meeting people. If anyone doubts that you can physically see love, you need to see these two. I flashed on them cracking each other up during the wedding ceremony, and on Gary mouthing the words to “True Companion” to Lee during their first dance, and just to the way they look at each other. Gary is fond of saying that he doesn’t think he’ll ever be truly happy. I think he proved himself wrong on Sunday.

Congratulations, guys. You deserve every joy.

* * * * *

…And Death

When I was a teenage metalhead (yes, another one of these stories), I loved Pantera.

Here’s the thing. During the early ‘90s, the pantheon of metal bands started to fall apart. Metallica lost a limb when Cliff Burton died, and starting with 1991’s Black Album, they limped through more than a decade of uninspired crap. Megadeth had no such excuse, but they decided to suck anyway, and stuck to it for five increasingly awful records. Anthrax was still Anthrax, more or less, but they lost singer Joey Belladonna and started writing Seattle songs. Brazil’s Sepultura was still pretty great, but what about American metal? Wherefore art thou, Headbanger’s Ball?

The shining light amidst all the pop flotsam was Pantera, a group of four southern rednecks who never compromised their mission – pure, straight-up metal, complete with screaming vocals and shredding solos. They started out with a different singer and a more Judas Priest-style sound, but come 1990’s Cowboys From Hell, new singer Phil Anselmo locked in and Pantera made a classic metal record. And then they outdid it, twice, with 1992’s Vulgar Display of Power and 1994’s astonishingly heavy Far Beyond Driven. (It may be safe to say that Driven is the heaviest record ever to debut at number one on the Billboard chart.)

Vulgar, in particular, is linked with certain images in my mind – most ominously, the image of Steve Souza, my co-worker at Superior Junk Comics and dorm-mate at college, intoning the hook line of “This Love” at random moments. Seriously, this guy would come up to you and say, in a low, imposing, creepy voice, “I kill myself for you, I kill you for myself.” And then he would walk away. He also would blast “Fucking Hostile” from his dorm room pretty often.

I was a much bigger fan of the uncompromising Driven, especially its speed and complexity. “Shedding Skin,” “Five Minutes Alone,” “Strength Beyond Strength” – these were some of the best metal songs ever. And the not-so-secret weapon of Pantera was guitarist Dimebag Darrell Abbott, he of the screeching harmonic and the pulverizing riff. You could listen to Pantera just for the aggression, or you could parse out what Dimebag was doing and get a satisfying musical experience out of it. Their stuff was intense in all the best ways.

And best of all, they never sold out, not even a little bit. Their last album, 2000’s Reinventing the Steel, was a 40-minute statement of purpose, all thundering riffs and unstoppable metal power. It was a big middle finger to the corporate nu-metal that Pantera unfortunately inspired, and it turned out to be their swan song. Pantera’s breakup was acrimonious, of course – you just knew these guys wouldn’t part ways with a handshake – but Dimebag Darrell and his brother, Pantera’s awesome drummer Vinnie Paul, moved on. They formed a band called Damageplan and released their debut in February.

And now comes news from Columbus, Ohio, that Dimebag Darrell is dead, shot in the back of the head while onstage with Damageplan. Apparently an outraged fan stormed the stage with a gun, screamed something about Darrell breaking up Pantera, and killed him, along with four others. And he may have killed more people had a heroic police officer not taken him down first. Sickening stuff, and really unfortunate end to a great career. So I just wanted to say thanks to Darrell from my younger self, and rest in peace.

* * * * *

And the Greatest of These…

I have just written a story for the local paper that warmed even my cynical little heart.

The local middle school up here has a special education class that meets daily. Eight students, with disabilities ranging from autism to down’s syndrome, get together and learn about everyday things that will help them be more independent as they grow older. They learn hygiene, nutrition, and how to balance a checkbook, among other things, and they seem to have one of those rare teachers that really enjoys what she does. It’s a fun class to sit in on.

Anyway, as a project for the last few months, the students have started their own business. They called a vendor and got vending machines installed in the school hallways, machines full of pens and pencils that can be purchased for as little as a quarter each. Every day, these students rush to the machines, empty out the money, count it and deposit it in their business bank account. They’re learning about deposits, budgeting, ordering supplies, and basically running their own company.

That’s not the cool part, though. The students have just made their first purchases with the money from their business, and guess what they bought?

Gifts for needy families.

Seriously. Special education students have worked for months to buy Christmas gifts for needy children. If that doesn’t bring a snark-free smile to your face, I don’t know what will. ‘Tis the season and all that, but I have rarely seen a more tangible example of goodwill towards men than this.

And on top of that, scientists may have found a cure for tuberculosis. Life is good.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

December already. We have mild snow here in the Chicago area – enough to remind you that snow is pretty, but not enough to annoy the piss out of you. U2 landed at number one on the album chart this week, and Gwen Stefani stalled at number seven. And two of my very good friends are getting married this weekend. All seems right with the world.

So what could screw up my good mood? Well, Rolling Stone magazine.

I’m glad that Rolling Stone exists, if for no other reason than to give me example after example of how I don’t want to run this column. RS bills itself as a music magazine, but to my mind, it isn’t one, and hasn’t been one for a long, long time. It’s a culture rag, all about a certain marketing demographic and how they live. Which is fine – there’s nothing wrong with abandoning your original focus in favor of something else, but at least be honest about it. Musicians and music fans still turn to Rolling Stone as if their coverage had any purely artistic motivation, and their opinions held merit. The days of Cameron Crowe’s William Miller writing about the transformative power of rock ‘n’ roll are long gone.

But they’re not honest about it. They continue to do music magazine features like their latest, a list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Let’s just stop for one second and marvel at that concept. The 500 best songs OF ALL TIME. Now, let’s note that by “all time” they mean “1950 or so to the present,” excluding songs like Beethoven’s Fifth and “Stardust” and “Giant Steps” and “Ave Maria,” which is still one of the greatest melodies I have ever heard. If they had just said that these are the 500 greatest songs you can still hear on corporate radio, then fine.

But that isn’t even my gripe. I find myself disagreeing with Rolling Stone’s reviews and proclamations more often than not, and I think it comes down to a fundamental difference in the way I see the job of a music reviewer. I like to discuss the music, and the artistic evolution of artists, whereas the RS review section is all about the cultural impact and importance of that music. Neither one is inherently right, but one is the purview of a music publication, and the other the focus of a pop culture mag. To put it another way, the music reviewer tells you what the music sounds like and means to him, letting you experience it and make up your own mind, whereas the culture reporter tells you what it means to you and your generation.

A culture paper can do music features, but I think those features should be held apart from serious criticism of the art. You can take Rolling Stone’s list and call it The 500 Most Influential Songs or The 500 Songs People Seem to Love Best, and that’s fine, but to put it out there as a definitive list of the greatest songs implies some measure of artistic examination. A favorites list is not a best-of list, because a best-of list would have to include criteria like the most effective use of a particular harmonic technique, or the most musically surprising bridge section, or the most genre-expanding mix of influences.

And that’s boring. People don’t like to read artistic criticism, they like to read lists of favorites and contrast them with their own. All well and good, and this is certainly a list of favorites masquerading as a critical ranking, because if one were to examine this list from any kind of musical standard, it would be one big 97-page joke. I have a lot of problems with this list, but one sticks out, and it’s a familiar one. (And it’s one for which my cousin Carol is going to repeatedly smack me.)

It is, of course, goddamn Nirvana.

I understand that this list only covers about 55 years – calling “Like a Rolling Stone” the best song OF ALL TIME is screamingly funny anyway, and it’s a little less absurd to call it the best song since about 1950. Still absurd, mind you, but a bit less so. Even with those limited parameters, though, landing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” at number nine is just insulting to all the brilliant songwriters represented (and unrepresented) on this list. The song is made up of four repetitive chords, played sloppily, with Kurt Cobain’s amelodic yolwing atop it. A fifth grader could have written it. Hell, I saw a kid on 60 Minutes last week who is composing fully orchestrated symphonies at age 12. He blew by Cobain in the talent department before he could even read.

But because this is a culture magazine, there are two reasons why “Teen Spirit” is this high on the list, or in fact on the list at all. First, it sold millions of copies when nothing else like it was on the radio. And second, its author killed himself a couple of years later. There is no doubting that Nirvana tapped into the zeitgeist, and provided a media representation of a generation, or some such crap. But – and here is the crux of my disagreement with Rolling Stone – that has no bearing on the actual music. If Nevermind had flopped and Cobain had gone on to live a happy, average life, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” would still be the same song, recorded the same way. And it wouldn’t be anywhere near this list.

It’s human nature to form associations. People hear a certain song they haven’t heard in years, and it takes them right back to their younger days. For a lot of people, “Teen Spirit” means something, and Cobain’s suicide means even more – a glorious dream deferred, the death of innocence, etc. People connect with huge events en masse, and often associate those events with a song or a film or a picture. And then all of a sudden, it’s more than a song – it’s a symbol, an unassailable monolith to some grand ideal.

And I think the job of the music critic is to break those associations and talk about the work.

Now don’t get me wrong. I like Nirvana, as modestly talented garage bands go, and I quite like In Utero, which I think is their best – it’s almost a halfway acceptable Pixies album. But come on. In purely musical terms, they were among the worst of their Seattle brethren. Their finished recordings sound like demos, which begs the question of why a three-CD box set of demos is necessary. But of course, it exists, and it’s selling. Having heard a good chunk of With the Lights Out, I can’t imagine anyone really wanting to listen to these hissy, sloppy artifacts more than once.

When you set yourself up as a critical examiner of music, and then rate “Teen Spirit” as the ninth-best song OF ALL TIME, your credibility is in serious jeopardy. Even on a list of American cultural favorites, though, its high rating makes no sense. Just for fun, here is a partial list of songs Rolling Stone considers lesser works than “Smells Like Teen Spirit”:

“My Generation”

“Yesterday” (and in fact every Beatles song except “Hey Jude”)

“Purple Haze”

“God Only Knows” (I mean, holy shit. Nirvana at nine, Brian Wilson at 25. On a songwriting list! They only saved themselves in this case by ranking “Good Vibrations” at number six.)

“Layla”

“Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay”

“I Walk the Line”

“Stairway to Heaven”

“Georgia on My Mind”

“Hotel California”

“Let’s Stay Together”

“Tangled Up in Blue”

“I Heard It Through the Grapevine”

“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”

“Fortunate Son”

And that’s just from the top 100. Now, did anyone need me to list the artists’ names with any of those songs? Is there a single one there that people don’t know, or wouldn’t recognize within seconds if they heard it? I daresay that all of the above songs (and just about every Beatles song not listed) outdo “Teen Spirit” as musical works, and as cultural touchstones. Even “Every Breath You Take,” down there at number 84, would seem to outshine Nirvana on both levels. But Sting is still alive, and his later work has suffered, and he no longer symbolizes anything. So he’s out of luck.

I don’t even want to get into the bottom four-fifths of this list, and the insanely low rankings for Randy Newman and Neil Young and Elvis Costello and Stevie Wonder and Joni Mitchell and countless others. I will just add my own opinion that the worst song Elvis Costello ever wrote is still leagues better, and draws on a much more considered knowledge of music, than the best thing Cobain ever did. (And one more thing, because I can’t believe it – does anybody seriously think that R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly” (#406) is a better song than Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On” (#433) or the Beatles’ “Penny Lane” (#449)? Seriously?)

There will probably come a time when this sort of thing doesn’t piss me off. For now, though, it just illuminates the ways in which I want to build my approach. The longer I do this reviewing thing, the more I define my own attitudes by carving away what they are not. At the risk of delivering a pompous, pontificating manifesto, here is the latest swing at a Tuesday Morning mission statement:

Music itself is more important than its effect on the culture, or even than the very culture it affects. It’s bigger and broader and more vital, and it doesn’t need our trends to change the world, one listener at a time. As long as I am doing this column, it will celebrate great music for its own merits, wherever it may be found. It will revel in the idea that the best song in the world may very well be on someone’s demo tape in someone’s closet, and only three or four people may ever get to hear it, but those people will be the luckiest on earth, and the song will still be the best song in the world.

This is, after all, just a tribute. Music is beyond us, and capturing the muse is far more important and praiseworthy than capturing the public attention. The best stuff is just waiting to be found.

Wow, that is pompous. And I believe every word.

As for Rolling Stone and its ilk, well, idolization of Cobain will continue in the same way that deification of Sid Vicious has. But even Cobain didn’t like “Teen Spirit” as much as Rolling Stone does, and he’s quoted in that very issue as saying so: “There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better.” I agree with him – “About a Girl,” “Drain You,” “Aneurysm,” “Milk It,” “Something in the Way” and even “All Apologies” are more accomplished songs. He seemed to understand his place in the musical canon, covering David Bowie and Leadbelly with respect, even if his disciples didn’t, and still don’t. Culturally speaking, his impact was huge. Musically speaking, he was a blip, dragged into godhood at the expense of more deserving songwriters.

And there’s nothing wrong with celebrating his cultural influence. Just be honest about it.

End of rant.

Only two more columns before the Top 10 List hits on December 22. It is my favorite Top 10 List, by the way, since I have been keeping record of them. Dare I say it’s the best Top 10 List OF ALL TIME?

See you in line Tuesday morning.