The first Crowded House song I ever heard wasn’t one of their ubiquitous singles, “Don’t Dream It’s Over” and “Something So Strong.” Rather, it was a live slam-through of “World Where You Live,” the opening track on their excellent 1986 debut album. The trio performed the song on MTV, for some reason, and it must have been after at least one of those singles hit big, but I vividly remember “World Where You Live” as my introduction. I especially remember the pounding, inescapable drum beat – for a while after I heard it, that’s pretty much all I remembered about it.

Of course, I was 12 at the time, and didn’t know much about music. Very few of my favorite bands during that time have traveled with me into adulthood, but with Crowded House, I somehow stumbled upon something magical. Neil Finn remains one of my favorite songwriters, and I have journeyed back and forth through his catalog, picking up his work with Split Enz and breathlessly awaiting his solo projects. Still, the four Crowded House albums have a special place in my heart, one that I don’t think either Finn brother will ever replace. And it all started for me with that thunderous drum beat on MTV.

Now I hear that Paul Hester, the author of that beat, is dead, the latest in an apparent string of suicides. Hester handled the drums in Split Enz as well, so if you’ve ever found yourself grooving to their powerhouse hit “I See Red,” well, it was at least half his doing. I don’t have much to say about Hester’s death, but I just wanted to acknowledge it here, since his band made such an impression on a much younger me. Crowded House was something of a gateway drug to other quality music for me, including the Beatles, so I owe them.

Rest in peace, Paul.

* * * * *

I think it’s about time we gave up looking for the “real” Beck.

Since he first cut-and-pasted his way onto the scene with his 1994 smash “Loser,” Beck has been confounding those listeners who like to develop personal connections with artists. Thirteen years later, he’s crafted a catalog that’s as extensive as it is inscrutable, and it’s about time we all realize that this is as open as he’s likely to ever be. His ironic demeanor even cast doubt upon 2002’s Sea Change, a glorious acoustic record that may have been sincere, but could just as easily have been another pastiche. All we seem to know about Beck Hansen at this point is that he loves 5,000 different types of music, and often likes playing them all at once.

Even comparing him to David Bowie doesn’t quite work, although it’s done all the time. Beck takes his musical chameleon style from Bowie, certainly, but where Bowie created characters and staged grand science fiction plays to couch his insights, Beck remains oddly straightforward. Difficult as it may seem to grasp, I’m coming around to the idea that the Cuisinart master who made Odelay, the white boy funker who shimmied through Midnite Vultures and the dust bowl folkie who spun One Foot in the Grave are all the same guy, just being himself. They’re all the “real” Beck.

After eight albums of insane musical variety, the element of surprise is all but gone from a new Beck album. It’s almost the opposite of the AC/DC effect – Angs Young will always sound the same, and Beck will always sound like somebody new each time out. Guero, his just-released ninth record, follows that tradition. Forget all that jive you’re reading about it being a “classic” Beck album. There’s no such thing. If anything, Guero takes some of Beck’s previous styles and combines them in interesting ways, but for the most part, it sounds like the work of a completely new artist again.

The title is apparently a Spanish slang word for “white boy,” but the Latin quotient is only amped up on “Que Onda Guero,” an atmospheric rap tune that doubles as a stroll through the barrio. Elsewhere, Beck has brought his blues influence to the table, creating perhaps his most Robert Johnson-inspired record. The slide acoustics of “Loser” are back, married to beats courtesy of the Dust Brothers, but even bluesier and less poppy.

In fact, this album is surprisingly somber and subdued. It’s very much like the brokenhearted Beck of Sea Change drove down to Louisiana and tried to make Odelay. For a while, the beats and samples try to cheer him up, as on the opener (and first single) “E-Pro” and the super-poppy “Girl,” but after the first few tracks, the Brothers kind of sit back and let Beck drive the bus down to the Delta. “Missing” includes the arresting string lines that made Sea Change so riveting, “Broken Drum” levitates on lovely piano, and “Farewell Ride” sounds almost like it would fall over if it tried to stand up, so wavery is its blues. One gets the sense that a track like “Hell Yes” is only here because that’s what’s expected of an upbeat Beck album, and his heart isn’t really in it.

The patchwork effect Beck pioneered on Mellow Gold and Odelay is still in evidence, but toned down and in service to the songs. (Check out Petra Haden’s quick vocal cameo on “Rental Car,” a late-album rocker.) But Guero contains virtually none of the giddy joy of those records. Lyrically, Beck is still in a desperate space, and the album is full of references to death and despair. “I prayed heaven today would bring its hammer down on me and pound you out of my head,” he moans at the start of “Missing,” and later, on the great “Earthquake Weather,” he mutters, “The days go slow into a void we’ve filled with death.” Closer “Emergency Exit” might be his most depressing song, with its images of landfill graves and scarecrow shadows.

As someone who appreciates Odelay but loves Sea Change, I think this dark undercurrent only strengthens the record. Guero contains its share of formless filler, like “Black Tambourine” and “Hell Yes,” but it also sports some of his finest songs, and the top-notch production keeps things busy, yet simultaneously sparse, in an odd way. It sounds like nothing else he’s done, and yet serves as a mature summation of where he’s been. Of course, there’s no point in trying to guess where Beck Hansen will go next, but if the depth of Guero is any indication, he’s done with the sound-for-sound’s-sake phase of his career, and the resultant sophistication bodes well for whichever musical path he decides to take.

Of course, he could just as easily make a record full of Mariachi nursery rhymes. He’s just like that.

* * * * *

I am writing this at my friend Ray’s house, two days from the end of my Easter vacation, so I need to thank him and his family for the use of the computer and ‘net connection that made this column possible. I plan to drive back to Illinois on Saturday, just in time for the Red Sox’ opening day on Sunday. (David Wells? What the hell…?)

Next week, Glen Phillips and/or Over the Rhine.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I don’t think I’m ever going to understand Moby.

He is, as I’ve said before, the unlikeliest of superstars – tiny, well-read, articulate and gentle, the very antithesis of the modern celebrity. In a pop music world built on bravado and vulgarity, Moby has crafted an odd little career out of thoughtfulness and borderline timidity. It’s strange to think that at one time, he was controversial for including pictures of himself on the covers of his techno/mix albums, because if there’s one thing you can’t accuse Moby of, it’s an excess of personality.

Musically, his career can be evenly divided. In the early ‘90s, he made blissful techno and ambient chill-out music, scoring club hits with his reworkings of themes from James Bond movies and Twin Peaks. He proved his ambitions with Everything is Wrong, his spectacular major-label full-length debut, in 1995. I’m always in favor of records that smash boundaries, and this one set fire to them, placing raves, punk freak-outs and pulsing ambient pieces right next to each other and watching them fight it out. He followed it up with the horrible, guitar-drenched Animal Rights, but we can forgive that.

And then he developed a pretty cool trick – he cast old soul songs in new settings on 1999’s Play, adding a depth and spirituality to his work that he’d only hinted at before. Play was a trip, but over time, the non-sampled tracks (like the I-can’t-believe-it-was-a-hit atrocity “South Side”) wore thinner than Moby’s voice. Play was roughly one-third sampled soul updates, one-third ambient instrumentals, and one-third bland vocal tracks with amateur hour lyrics.

That balance worked for millions of people, though, because Play stayed on the pop charts for two years, spun off countless singles and commercial spots, and still probably brings in a check each month for its author. Oh, and the album’s popularity has all but obliterated the second half of Moby’s career – His Timidness has been seemingly frightened of messing with a successful formula. For the past five years, he’s made nothing but clones of Play – its follow-up, 18, was exactly the same, as were the two collections of b-sides. I got so tired of waiting for him to break new ground that I even lapped up Baby Monkey, his album of ambient tracks under the name Voodoo Child, even though it sounded just like his pre-Everything is Wrong material.

Given six years and four discs of sameness, you would think that Hotel, his just-released 12th collection, would be cause for celebration. Moby has chucked the sampler, plugged in the guitar and made a record of pop songs, something he’s never done before. He’s finally loosed the Play albatross from around his neck and started fresh. I would give him credit for his boldness, if he weren’t doing it as a response to years of diminishing returns.

And for a while there, Hotel will make you think he’s made a good choice. It kicks off with the most interesting four-song stretch he’s produced since Play – the piano-pounding “Raining Again” is memorable and melodic, “Beautiful” makes great use of those fully integrated guitars, first single “Lift Me Up” is a kind of low-key powerhouse, and “Where You End” is an engaging stomper. These songs are so un-Moby-like that one can forgive his shaky vocals and his moon-june-spoon lyrics. Just listen to the “la-la-la” refrain intertwining with the nifty guitar work on “Lift Me Up.” This is the finest work Moby has released under his own name in ages.

And then… well, he gives us a limp cover of New Order’s “Temptation,” sung by Laura Dawn, and it’s a momentum killer. After that, the album dies a slow, twitching death, like a fish caught on dry land. He never switches styles – the rest of the album is varying degrees of pop, all with vocals, except the closing synth instrumental. It’s just that he runs out of melodies, and tracks 7-13 are boring and forgettable, when they’re not laughable. The thing about Moby’s music is that it’s all on the surface – if you don’t hear something engaging on first or second listen, then repeated dives through are not going to help. There’s nothing else there.

Two things hamper this record even more than the lack of interesting songs in the second half, and I’ve already touched on them both. The first is Moby’s voice, which is wavery and weak, as always. Fair play to him for stepping out and singing so many songs on Hotel, but unlike Animal Rights (his other big vocal foray), the rest of this album is so clear and well-produced that his off-key moments stand out more prominently. Moby would probably say that his voice adds a human element to his music, and in a way, he’s right, but there are a whole lot of humans with voices that would fit this material better.

But that’s not even a big deal. The most disastrous element of this record is Moby’s lyrics. For most of Hotel’s running time, you’ll think you’re listening to dramatic readings from some seventh grader’s diary. Check this bit from “Love Should,” which sounds like a middle-schooler’s first romantic ballad: “Morning sun is sweet and soft on your eyes, oh my love, you always leave me surprised, before my heart starts to burst with all my love for you…” On “Dream About Me,” he gets this out without laughing: “Tell me no truth if it hurts bad, there’s enough in my life to make me so sad…”

I have to make special mention of “I Like It,” easily the worst song Moby has ever foisted upon the public. It’s four minutes of breathy sex play over a sparse groove that’s probably supposed to sound like Massive Attack, but falls short. The lyrics are basically “I like it, I like it a lot,” repeated in a pseudo-seductive tone that just doesn’t work. It’s embarrassing, and worthy of mockery. Oh, and it sucks, too.

Moby does pull out a late-game near-winner with “Slipping Away,” full of anthemic guitar, but it’s too little, too late. (And even that one suffers because of its lyrics: “Open to everything happy and sad, seeing the good when it’s all going bad…”) The record sputters to a close with “Forever,” a two-chord exercise in lameness, and “Homeward Angel,” a somewhat typical instrumental. The second half was so bad that it made me return to the first few tracks, just to see if they were still all that. (They are.)

The saving grace of this album is its second disc, unimaginatively titled Hotel Ambient. It is exactly as advertised – 68 minutes of blissful chill-out music, the kind you can find on Moby’s earlier records. (Especially the 1993 collection called – what else? – Ambient.) Naturally, this disc on its own won’t get Moby’s face on VH-1 and sell in the millions, so it’s relegated to bonus disc status, when in fact it’s better and more imaginative than the album it accompanies. It’s hard to recommend buying Hotel just for this second disc, although if you do the math, Moby’s given us two hours of music here, and about 80 minutes of it is worthwhile, especially if you like his more ambient work.

I’m just waiting for another album that Moby really likes. Since he hit big with Play, he’s had to worry about sales and singles and videos and big tours, and I’d like to hear a new album under his own name that disregards all those things. There are definitely hits on Hotel, and he’s crafted much of it to appeal to a wider audience, so there’s very little character and personality in evidence. In some ways, I even prefer Animal Rights to his post-Play output, because at least with that album you can tell he was making the music he most wanted to make. Everything since Play has been run through the Bland-O-Matic, and we’re left with Voodoo Child albums and bonus discs if we want to hear the real Moby. Hotel sounds great, and will probably do very well, but very little of the album proper can stand with Moby’s best work.

* * * * *

I am headed to the east coast for the Easter holiday, and I plan to spend about a week there. I’m telling you this just in case I don’t get a column up in time, although I will try to write and post one while I’m in Massachusetts. Next week sees new ones by Glen Phillips, Beck and Over the Rhine, and after two weeks of disappointment, I’m ready to hear something I love again. Hopefully one of those will fit the bill.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

The coming months are reason enough to go on living. We have new records from the likes of Moby, Strapping Young Lad, Over the Rhine, Beck, Glen Phillips, Amy Ray, Starflyer 59, Garbage, The Choir, Eels, Ben Folds, Porcupine Tree, Aimee Mann, Ryan Adams, Nine Inch Nails, Dave Matthews Band, Robert Plant and Spoon. And we get the last ever Star Wars movie. I saw the new trailer, and I have to say that my inner six-year-old had a geek orgasm. And he doesn’t even know what an orgasm is yet.

Anyway, for an art and culture junkie like me, life is going to be sweet.

But all that starts next week, and this week I have to make do with a few albums I like, but don’t love. Yes, it’s the dreaded return of the Little Reviews of Mediocre Records Filler Column. I’ll try not to bore you too much.

* * * * *

Up until two years ago, to say that Adam Schlesinger was “best known” for anything was kind of laughable. He had his fans, but still his most widely disseminated work was his theme song for The Howard Stern Show.

All that changed in 2003 with a little ditty called “Stacy’s Mom.” Thousands of CD sales and a couple of Grammy nominations later, Schlesinger is now “best known” for his band Fountains of Wayne, which he masterminds with fellow songwriter Chris Collingwood. Their ’03 album, Welcome Interstate Managers, was not only wildly popular, but also very good – the closest I have heard to pop perfection since the heyday of Jellyfish.

But Fountains fans know that for more than a decade, Schlesinger has been pulling double duty. It would be tempting to call his other band, Ivy, a side project or a moonlighting gig, but it just ain’t true. For one thing, Ivy came first, releasing their debut EP Lately in 1994, but for another, it’s just obvious that Schlesinger is equally committed to both bands. My guess is that the two gigs fulfill disparate sides of his musical personality, because they’re quite different.

As varied as my musical taste is, I have to admit that I like Fountains better, but that’s because they press the classic pop buttons so brilliantly. Ivy is a different beast altogether, sweet and supple and often dreamlike in its textures. Their sixth album, In the Clear, goes even further in the float music direction, with simpler songs and more ringing tones than before. It’s nice and pleasant, but it kind of drifts by without leaving much mark.

Parisian-born singer Dominique Durand has emphasized the breathier aspects of her voice here, which fits in with the Euro-pop of tracks like “I’ve Got You Memorized,” but just wafts above lighter fare like “Clear My Head.” The record is immaculately produced, with layers of pianos and synths atop subtle guitars – it sounds beautiful, it’s just insubstantial. Even a delightful little pop song like “Tess Don’t Tell” doesn’t stick. The record sounds coated in Teflon.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s not a bad album, just a forgettable one. As with most Ivy records, more time was spent on the sound than on the substance, and it sounds great. Durand’s lovely backing vocals on “Ocean City Girl” are a treat, for instance, and the synths that cover these songs caress without drowning them. It’s a good production. I just wish it were a better group of songs, but that’s never been Ivy’s strong suit. It’s interesting that with his other band, Schlesinger plays with styles that most people dismiss as disposable, but Fountains always makes more of an impression than Ivy’s classy art-pop does.

* * * * *

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Eric Matthews.

In 1995, he was poised to be another Pop Genius-Slash-Savior, one who would lead us out of the clutches of mopey Seattle rock with his Beatlesque songwriting and baroque chamber-style arrangements. His big hit, “Fanfare,” was described as the “Penny Lane” of the ‘90s, and while I’d bet that most of you reading this couldn’t hum it on cue, you’d probably recognize the signature trumpet line if you heard it. Matthews’ ’95 debut album, It’s Heavy in Here, was a kind of low-key terrific that just didn’t make the radio in the Whiny Decade.

One more album followed in 1997 (the slightly less terrific The Lateness of the Hour), and then nothing. I scrawled Matthews’ name down on my ever-growing list of lost artists, made a note to keep an eye out for his work in the future, and thought no more about it. But surprise! Matthews is back, eight years later, with a new disc called Six Kinds of Passion Looking for an Exit, on little Empyrean Records. If I hadn’t been looking for this, however unconsciously, I never would have found it.

But find it I did, and unfortunately, it’s less a grand return and more an earnest curiosity. The most obvious issue is its brevity – the title is almost longer than the record, with its seven songs in 33 minutes. Additionally, this is more of a well-produced demo than a new album. Matthews played almost all of the instruments, and the result is much more stripped-down and confessional than his first two efforts. This is not an immediately rewarding collection. The songs take some digging into.

The layers of production on his first two albums also masked Matthews’ vocal shortcomings, but there’s no hiding them here – his breathy tenor wavers on occasion, especially on the harmonized backing vocal tracks. His songwriting remains strong, but less instantly memorable, too – only “Do You Really Want It,” with its up-and-down chorus, hits on first listen, but its cheesy computer drums and bass make it sound like more of a sketch than a finished piece.

The rest is deep and meandering, like the hushed “You Will Be Happy,” which finds Matthews reaching for that high falsetto and nailing it most of the time. “Underground Song” is similarly quiet and acoustic, and contains a melody line strangely reminiscent of the Rascals hit “How Can I Be Sure.” The apologetic “Cardinal is More,” addressed to his former collaborator Richard Davies, is the record’s emotional high point, and I give Matthews credit for stretching his range. He closes with a “Fanfare”-esque, brassy Beatles homage, “Black to Light Brown,” that’s so brief and abrupt that it sounds unfinished.

Six Kinds of Passion is either an epilogue to his career, or a prologue to its second phase. It’s much less an entity of its own, which means that the value of tracking it down is in direct proportion to your love of Matthews’ first two albums. I liked them a lot, and I hope he makes more of them, but after eight years, Six Kinds of Passion is vaguely disappointing.

* * * * *

My friend Lee was all excited last time I reviewed a children’s album, and since that was three years ago, I think it’s about time I spun another.

Of course, the only reason I reviewed a kids’ record at all is that it was by They Might Be Giants, one of the silliest and most underrated pop bands around. They called it No!, and even though it was aimed at youngsters, it could easily have been just another TMBG album, so witty and well-crafted was it. It seems that John and John are going to make a second career out of this kiddie-pop thing, because now we have their second collection of educational fun, Here Come the ABCs.

This one is just slightly less wonderful than No!, for a couple of reasons. First, its subject matter is confined to the alphabet – these are all songs about letters and words. Second, it seems like this set is more dependent on its visual component, available in a separate DVD. Something like “Letter/Not a Letter” is obviously interactive, and the CD doesn’t quite deliver the whole picture.

But you’ll notice I said it’s “just slightly” less wonderful. This is great stuff, loaded with songs (23 of them) that slide right in to the TMBG catalog. “E Eats Everything” is funky and bouncy, “Flying V” is another one of those tricky pop songs that John Linnell pulls off so effortlessly, and “Pictures of Pandas Painting” is so cool it could have been on The Spine. (What are the pandas painting? Why, penguins, of course…)

This is educational music that doesn’t insult the intelligence, which is a rare thing. “Go for G,” for example, points out that G is for glue and grapes, but also for gyroscopes, which should send your average four-year-old to the dictionary. This is the kind of album on which D and W have a conversation about why D hasn’t been around much – “I got this new television set. I like to watch the sports.” It’s the kind of album which poses the philosophical question, “Who Put the Alphabet in Alphabetical Order?” In short, it’s exactly the kind of children’s album I would want to play for my kids, should I ever have any.

I can’t forget to mention my favorite thing here, “I C U.” John and John managed to find a way to write a sad love song, in which the lyrics are nothing but letters. Picture it – a dingy country bar, with twangy music playing from the broken-down jukebox in the corner. Two divorcees meet, and one says to the other, in a weepy drawl, “I M N X, N U R N X, N I C U, N U R O K.”

I hope TMBG keeps this up, because as I said when I reviewed No!, the field of children’s music could use a regular infusion of intelligence and wit. Here Come the ABCs is clever, it’s fun, and it’s delightful for all ages. If the kids of today remember this stuff in the same way my generation remembers Schoolhouse Rock, then I will be a happy man.

* * * * *

The cover of the new Choir album is beautiful. Go here and take a look.

Next week, Moby.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I just got back from seeing two horrible movies.

The Jacket, with Adrien Brody and Kiera Knightley, is a stupid, convoluted mess, strung together by hacks who have somehow deluded themselves into thinking they have something to say. The ending is all heart, which should make up for a lot, but doesn’t. The plot contortions are so great that accepting them is nearly impossible, so when you get to the conclusion, things are happening solely because the script needs them to. I was excited to see this partially because Fish has a cameo, but his role is so small it’s almost invisible.

And Be Cool, the sequel to Get Shorty, is a snoozer. You can tell where certain things are supposed to be funny, but nothing clicks. It’s a shame, because Chili Palmer is a great character, and he’s wasted in this flimsy, inflatable sell-out of a script. When you have John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel and Vince Vaughn in your cast and they’re all out-acted by The Rock, then something’s wrong. The film is not Aerosmith’s finest hour, either.

We just escaped 2004, a horrible year for movies, and now 2005 doesn’t seem to be shaping up any better. I’m looking forward to A Scanner Darkly, Melinda and Melinda, Elizabethtown, Serenity and…um, yeah. My inner six-year-old is psyched for Star Wars, too, but that’s about it. Last year I fell in love with only three movies – Before Sunset, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the great Sideways. I also enjoyed the heck out of The Life Aquatic, I Heart Huckabees, Team America and Shaun of the Dead, and admired the skill behind Million Dollar Baby and Garden State. I argued the merits of Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Passion of the Christ, but don’t need to see either one again. The second half of Kill Bill was cool, too.

Everything else, probably 40 or so other movies I sat through, I’ve already forgotten.

It’s strange, though, that while movies have taken a nose dive, television seems to be finally waking up. I’m a freelancer these days, which means I have plenty of time to suck my brain dry with prolonged exposure to the idiot box. But I have to admit, some of it isn’t so idiotic this season. And I’m not even talking about HBO – the networks have finally come to their senses and delivered some really good scripted TV. I’d like to think it’s because of the Whedon Void – this is the first TV season since 1996 without a Joss Whedon show on the air, and the intelligence vacuum obviously needed filling. But whatever the reason, I’m digging TV right now.

For starters, if you’re not watching Lost, you’re missing out on one of the most intricate and puzzling TV mysteries since Twin Peaks. At first glance, it appears to be Lord of the Flies with adults, but there’s something creepier and much more fascinating going on. Lost employs an effective flashback device that focuses on one character at a time, and hence gives you little pieces of the connections between them each week.

Some of the episodes have misfired, but overall this show is excellent, and with the revelations of last week’s installment, it just got upgraded to can’t-miss status with me. Who knows how long J.J. Abrams and his staff can keep this going – and avoiding Twin Peaks Syndrome, in which a show teases out a mystery to the point where no one cares anymore, then reveals all and watches the ratings implode, is paramount – but I’m inclined to believe that there is a grand plan at work here. This show is going somewhere, and if the rest of the ride is as good as season one has been, then show me my seat and strap me in.

Wait… perhaps not a good image for a show about a plane crash. Scratch that.

Also kicking ass on Tuesday nights is House, Fox’s new medical drama. Yeah, another damn medical drama, but you know what? This one soars, thanks to the captivating performance of Hugh Laurie. His Gregory House is an abusive, confrontational, smug, self-righteous prick, but he’s also a genius, and he’s never wrong. Damaged people are always more fun to watch than blandly heroic types, and Laurie is a hoot. The dialogue crackles, the cast is perfect (especially Omar Epps, Robert Sean Leonard and, as House’s nemesis, Lisa Edelstein), and the plots are suitably knotty. But the attraction is just watching House be House.

Super-sized thanks to Jeff Maxwell for hooking me on this show.

What else? Believe it or not, The West Wing is picking up again, despite the writers’ apparent choice to give Jimmy Smits a shot at the presidency. He’s pretty awful in his role as Matt Santos, and as much as I don’t want a Republican in office, even in a fictional world, I’m pulling for Alan Alda’s Arnold Vinick. Gilmore Girls continues to do what it does, wonderfully. This season the writers answered the will-they-or-won’t-they between Luke and Lorelai, and rather than killing the show, it’s energized it. And South Park just launched its ninth season with a doozy of an episode in which Mr. Garrison got a sex change, and his testicles were implanted in Kyle’s knees. (Don’t ask…) Oh, and The Daily Show is still amazing, night after night.

I don’t know what the hell’s going on with TV lately, but I’m loving it. Especially Lost.

* * * * *

I get so much crap (oh, so much crap) for plugging Marillion on this site. I don’t know why – some people act like they’re the only band I review, which is ridiculous. They’re not even the act I’ve reviewed most often. I just happen to think that this one band’s whole catalog is worth hearing, and suddenly I’ve guzzled the Kool-Aid and I have no objectivity. Weird.

So I’m wary of recommending anything to do with them, lest people think I’ve changed the name of this site to Tuesday Marillion 3 A.M., with the M. standing for Marillion as well. But my job, as I see it, is to seek out music that others may not have the chance to hear, and let those folks know if it’s worth their time and cash. I wouldn’t stump for the band if I didn’t think that their music would reward those who choose to sample it.

In that spirit, here’s another Marillion-related disc that I quite like. If you’re one of those people who thinks that my critical abilities fly out my ear when I hear the band’s name, you can stop reading now.

Still here? Good.

I’m never sure what to think of side projects. If you think of a band like a family, then this sort of extracurricular musical activity can be seen as cheating, or as necessary therapy to keep the main unit together. A solo album is one thing – that’s one member of the family striking off on his own, making a statement. But a side project is one family member being welcomed into a different family, sharing a bathroom and maybe a toothbrush. Who’s to say he won’t like this new family better? Sure, he’ll call once in a while, send letters, but we’ll all know the truth.

When a band has been together for more than 20 years, like the four core musicians of Marillion have, those fears are abated somewhat. If Steve Rothery wants to do another Wishing Tree album, there’s little doubt that he’ll be back in the fold for the next tour. In a way, this is freeing, and the one member who seems to take the most advantage of this freedom is bassist Pete Trewavas. And you have to hand it to him – he has great taste in side projects.

First there was Transatlantic, a prog-rock supergroup if ever there was one. With the visionaries behind Spock’s Beard and the Flower Kings (Neal Morse and Roine Stolt, respectively) taking the lead, and Trewavas and Dream Theater’s awesome drummer Mike Portnoy laying the foundation, there was literally nothing this band couldn’t play. They made two albums of complex yet hummable progressive wonderment, then split when Morse decided to follow God.

And now there’s Kino, a slightly less super-sounding supergroup, but only because their respective main bands are less well-known. In addition to Trewavas, Kino includes Chris Maitland (ex-Porcupine Tree) on drums, John Beck (from It Bites) on keys and John Mitchell (from Arena) on guitars and vocals. It’s almost a who’s-who of semi-famous British prog bands, including one (Arena) that was started by one of Marillion’s first drummers, Mick Pointer.

But you know, forget all that. That’s just music-fan trivialities, of no interest to anyone who isn’t a little bit anal retentive. It’s possible to hear Kino’s debut, Picture, as the work of a new band making its first album, and enjoy it on those terms. Hell, it’s recommended, highly.

Kino plays classic progressive pop, and if you think that the term “classic progressive” is a little oxymoronic, you’re right. Progressive doesn’t mean progressive anymore, it means long and complex and inspired by Yes and early Genesis. The difference between a truly progressive act like the Mars Volta and a prog group like Kino comes down to how transparent the influences are. Kino sounds like mid-period Yes, with the attention squarely focused on skill and melody. It’s complicated stuff, but nowhere near as tricky as Selling England by the Pound, and the longest song is nine minutes. (Most of the others are around four or five.)

Calling it classic prog-pop is not a knock, by the way. These are powerfully melodic songs, draped in analog synth sounds and oceans of backing vocals, and produced to a lovely sheen. There’s something refreshing about a group of skilled musicians who just get together and play, with no frills and no gimmicks. Picture is an album of well-written, grandly played pop songs. The aforementioned nine-minute opener, “Losers’ Day Parade,” is textbook songcraft – a fine riff, a strong melody, a Beatles break, some restatement of themes, and a glorious coda. It may make me old-fashioned to say so, but it’s also the best song I’ve heard yet this year.

Mitchell has a voice that reminds me of Ray Wilson’s – you may remember Wilson as the guy who replaced Phil Collins on the criminally underrated last Genesis album, Calling All Stations. Mitchell’s voice is low and rough, yet can leap into a shining falsetto when needed. Observe “Letting Go,” with its classic pop chorus, and then smile uncontrollably as Mitchell jumps up an octave for the title phrase. It’s gorgeous. He handles the ascending and descending melody of “All You See” like a champ, too.

Perhaps the oddest song here is “Swimming in Women,” a dramatic prog ballad about the journey of a million sperm. Seriously. It’s rendered in typically verbose prog language, and without the packaging you might not be able to decipher the meaning, but there it is: “Sinking or swimming, swimming in women, breaking like waves against the rocks, one million voices, too many choices, you’ve got to line them up against the wall, the stronger shall rise while the weaker shall fall…” It’s fantastic, by the way.

I haven’t really mentioned Trewavas, because he’s perhaps the least flashy bass player in prog right now. He does his job, and he does it brilliantly, never calling attention to his work. The same can be said for all of the Kino guys, actually – there’s no hook here except really good songs, played really well. Beck’s keyboards get the most workouts, but they’re like Tim Rice-Oxley’s synths for Keane – in service to the songs.

Picture ends with the brief, understated title track, which encapsulates the premise: this is ego-free progressive pop of the kind you just don’t hear anymore. Trewavas is right now back playing with his main band at their annual UK convention, but I hope he keeps Kino going in his free time, because Picture is superb. It’s not modern or cool-sounding in the slightest, nor is it ironic and wry, but pretending I don’t love this sort of thing for the sake of scoring indie points is foolish. This is impeccably produced pop music at its finest.

Next week, who knows. I may have the new Choir album by then – they’ve chosen to call it O How the Mighty Have Fallen, which means that if it sucks, they’ve already written the review for me.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

The Mars Volta really can’t be compared with anyone else.

Look around. I dare you. Try to find another band like this one, a band for which labels like “prog,” “punk,” “metal,” “salsa” and “jazz” have all been tried, even in combination, and then discarded because even the five-part adjective doesn’t do the music justice. The Mars Volta is perhaps the oddest, most ambitious, most all-encompassing group of musicians whose work is available in your local Sam Goody. That’s what’s most frustrating about trying to describe their work – there’s no really good reference point. They are strange and singular.

But what sometimes gets lost amidst talk of their willfully obscure concepts and big hair is that the Mars Volta boys are outstanding players. I first encountered Cedric Bixler Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (they even have prog-rock names) as members of At the Drive-In, a powerhouse punk band. I came in where most people did – with their swan song, Relationship of Command, and I owe my friend Allison Hart a huge thanks for making me listen to it. RoC is one of the most inventive, jabbing modern rock records you can buy, even though it never breaks free of the punk template for very long.

What I didn’t realize when I heard Relationship was that At the Drive-In was splitting at the seams when they recorded it. The push and pull of aggression and artistry evident on that record can be traced to the snarling, slapping fight between its members, drawn cleanly along party lines. When the inevitable breakup occurred, three-fifths of AtDI formed Sparta, essentially a less ambitious clone of their previous band. They went on to write earthbound radio-rock with a few added textures, but nothing that would set them apart from hundreds of other bands.

Meanwhile, Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez created the Mars Volta, and acted as if they had excised the Spartans like a cancer. Call their music what you will, but it’s certainly not earthbound. Their debut full-length De-Loused in the Comatorium is a huge rush of ideas, a teetering structure that endlessly rebuilds itself. Extended running times, songs with titles like “Cicatriz Esp” and “Eriatarka” – well, you can see where the prog label might come from. I’m surprised that the band didn’t object to being lumped in with all the swords-and-sorcery noodling that makes up much current prog, though, because their work is explosive, melodic, and nearly noodle-free.

It’s become clear what an influence the five At the Drive-In guys had on each other now that that influence is gone. Sparta’s second album, Porcelain, was even more accessible than their first, with calming string sections on a few tracks and very simple structures on most. The Voltas, on the other hand, have just released Frances the Mute, their five-song, 77-minute sophomore effort, and it’s even more insanely ambitious than the first. This is not for the musically faint of heart.

There’s never been a question of what the Mars Volta is capable of playing, only of what they choose to play, which is among the most freeing of dilemmas. On Frances, they’ve chosen to keep the progressive and punk elements of their style and mix in healthy doses of Santana (really) and Zappa, with a little Merzbow noise sculpting to boot. The album is a single piece from beginning to end, with no breaks between tracks. The three minutes of doom-pop that make up the first half of “The Widow” are the only three minutes of accessibility here, the only window in for the casual listener. For everything else, you’d better bring a comfortable chair and an open mind.

Frances starts with about a minute of tenderly plucked acoustics and Zavala’s clear, high voice. The melody, called “Sarcophagi,” is the first movement of the 12-minute “Cygnus…Vismund Cygnus,” and it crashes in with full force in abrupt, energizing fashion. Zavala is on fire here, draping the song with his awe-inspiring harmonies, and the stop-time rhythms are arresting.

“Cygnus” also, by its conclusion, sums up what’s wrong with this album. After nine energetic, constantly shifting minutes, it descends into an overly long coda made up of electronic noise and tape manipulation. This, and the extended guitar solo, spotlight the unfortunate sides of their Zappa influence. The end of “Cygnus” would be more palatable on first listen if “The Widow” didn’t do the same thing – it’s a three-minute song saddled with nearly that length again in noisy, spliced nonsense.

But that’s all part of the record’s attitude – this is an album on which every song is defiantly too long. The first four songs could each have been three to five minutes, but what would have been challenging and controversial about that? Instead they’ve embraced the everything-can-be-music aesthetic, and opened their record up into a huge, expansive head trip. Cedric and Omar know what they’re doing, and by the fourth track, “Miranda That Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore,” they’ve integrated their static-filled interludes into the rising dynamic of the song. You’re more than four minutes into “Miranda” before a single note is played, but the resulting crescendo is pretty astonishing.

The Santana vibe plays out most strongly on “L’Via L’Viaquez,” another 12-minute monster sung almost entirely in Spanish. The Latin rock groove that bursts in after about 40 seconds of fluttery noise is perhaps this album’s biggest surprise, reveling in its own Ricky Martin-ness. The groove breaks down into a slow salsa numerous times, and Rodriguez-Lopez uses backwards guitar and textures to creepify what’s probably the most un-creepy beat pattern in music history. As “L’Via” continues, the guitars get more dissonant and the drums more eruptive, and it turns into spacey Spanish punk. It’s a fluid mix of genres that stands out as the high point of the record’s first half.

The aforementioned “Miranda” is next, and this one both suffers and benefits the most from the decompressed nature of this album. It runs 13 minutes, and contains two verses and three choruses, barely enough to float a song one-third its size. But damn if it doesn’t work, the intense slow build of the guitars and horns carrying you through. Unfortunately, it climaxes at the nine-minute mark and peters out by the 10, and you’re left with another overly long coda to remind you of just how slight “Miranda” actually is. The horns and strings that play the song out are marvelous, though.

So, four songs in 45 minutes, and then we’re left with “Cassandra Gemini.” Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect from a 32-minute Mars Volta song, but I sure wasn’t anticipating the sustained live band explosion that is “Cassandra.” After the sedate waves of “Miranda,” this song just blows up, its brief intro coalescing into a flutter of flutes and horns dotting an extraordinary landscape of drums and guitars. The most amazing thing about “Cassandra” is that it continues in basically the same vein for more than half an hour, and it’s the only song here that doesn’t sound overextended.

This song is the most Zappa-esque, descending into free jazz at times and letting Adrian Terrazas really let loose on saxophone, a la Ian Underwood. “Cassandra” is the song that fully cements Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s status as a guitar god – he’s simply relentless, offering friction where it’s needed and bliss where you wouldn’t expect it. What sounds like a jam on first listen takes shape as a fully realized composition on repeated dives through, especially when the horn section comes in on the third movement. Zavala holds the whole thing together with his astounding vocals, soaring and spitting at once.

And with astonishing grace, they close “Cassandra” with its chorus (absent from the song for about 25 minutes at this point) and a reprise of “Sarcophagi,” uniting the record. Or, at least, trying to. Ordinarily one would look to the lyrics for common threads between five songs this diverse, but I can’t make head nor tail of them. The album is supposedly about a diary found by deceased band member Jeremy Ward, and the horrors contained within, but I’ve stared at the lyric sheet for a couple of days, and I’ve got nothing. Frances is an album that will stand or fall on its musical merits alone.

And for about an hour of its 77 minutes, it stands pretty well. It’s worth hearing just for a freak-out like “Cassandra Gemini,” the likes of which I haven’t encountered on a major label album in years. The rest of the record, unfortunately, drowns some great concepts and melodies in a sea of wasted time. Nothing here is as willfully obnoxious as Wilco’s “Less Than You Think,” but I do wish that some of the obvious care lavished on the sonics and the noise was spent on writing two or three more fantastic songs.

But then this wouldn’t be as confounding a record as it is, and I confess to admiring some of the sprawl on those terms. Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez obviously wanted to make exactly this record, exactly this way, and it’s heartening that they were able to, even if the results are less than they could have been. As I said, there is no question of what the Mars Volta can play, only of what they choose to play, and even with their drawbacks, I would still take Frances the Mute and De-Loused over anything these guys (and their former bandmates) have done. True artistic ambition is in short supply, and if nothing else, the Mars Volta should be commended for following their vision without compromise.

See you in line Tuesday morning.