I had a terrifying thought the other day.

In a little more than a month, I will be able to look back wistfully at this past year and say, with all honesty, “Back when I was 30…”

I’m old. There’s no getting around it. Soon I will start watching reruns of Matlock and Diagnosis: Murder and game shows. I will forget where I put my glasses, search for them for an hour, and finally find them on my head. I will read Danielle Steele books and believe them to be well-written, and I will often read them twice, forgetting that I had read them the first time. And I will only listen to soft rock (when I “rock” at all), like later-period Elton John. (Nothing before Rock of the Westies, thanks.)

Perhaps that’s why I like the new Ben Folds album, Songs for Silverman. The young punks seem to hate this one, as it contains the least amount of piano showboating and ironic sneering of any record he’s made. There are no joke songs, there’s no wiseassery, and most of the tracks are slow and pretty. There is no “Underground,” no “Song for the Dumped,” no “Rockin’ the Suburbs.” There isn’t even a “Fired.” Fans and critics who have been hoping against hope for a return to the style of the first two Ben Folds Five albums are out of luck. He’s moved on, he’s grown up.

But that doesn’t matter much when his craft is in such fine form. I admit to hopping on the worry train when Folds’ series of EPs (2002’s Speed Graphic and Sunny 16, and last year’s Super D) turned out so well. Would he have anything left in the tank when it came time to record the proper album? Would it be a collection of re-recordings and castoffs? As it turns out, there is one re-recording (more on that in a bit), but these Songs make the ones on the EPs sound like the throwaways. These are carefully molded, seriously reflective tunes that address themes far more grown-up than asking for a black t-shirt back, with melodies that only sink in after a few listens.

Can Ben Folds pull off a ballad-heavy record without slipping into middle-aged elevator music? Well, it helps to note that “slow and pretty” has always been in his repertoire – “Boxing,” “Selfless, Cold and Composed,” “Evaporated,” and, yes, even his one hit, “Brick.” His solo debut, 2001’s Rockin the Suburbs, belied its smirking title and delivered half an album’s worth of crooning character studies – “Still Fighting It,” “Fred Jones Part 2,” “Carrying Cathy,” etc. That he’s always balanced the sweetness with a dose of frat-boy winking, even on the EPs, may lead some to the conclusion that something’s missing from Silverman.

They’re right, of course, but what’s missing is a sense of emotional detachment in the songs. Consider this: Silverman is the first Folds album that has no main characters. Whereas Suburbs introduced us to Annie, Zak, Sara, Fred, Stan, Lisa, Cathy and Lucretia, Silverman is almost entirely in the first person. Ben isn’t telling stories this time, he’s inhabiting them, and the difference that connection makes is remarkable. He’s not standing outside this record, he’s at its center, and the result is 11 of his most considered, affecting songs.

Well, the exception may be “Bastard,” the opening track, which does tell the tale of a curmudgeon trying to recapture his youth – “The ‘Whiz Man’ never fit you like the ‘Whiz Kid’ did…” It is the most upbeat, Ben Folds Five-ish song here, complete with a dexterous solo over a Brian Wilson-worthy bed of backing harmonies. The classic sound is augmented by his new Five, in a way – bassist Jared Reynolds and drummer Lindsay Jamieson. It’s obvious, though, that where Robert Sledge and Darren Jessee were equal participants, the new guys are hired hands playing on a solo record. This is Folds’ show all the way.

The other story-song, “Jesusland,” takes a different angle than its title would suggest. This is not a political diatribe, but rather a travelogue – the lyrics follow Jesus as he walks around the south, taking it in: “They drop your name, but no one knows your face, billboards quoting things you never said…” The song sounds like the offspring of “The Ascent of Stan” and “Mess,” a wide vista of dust bowl grit buoyed by a breezy piano figure.

“Late” addresses Elliott Smith, but from the point of view of a fellow musician who didn’t know the man, but enjoyed his work. It’s the furthest thing from a maudlin eulogy, staying personal and refusing to canonize Smith: “The songs you wrote got me through a lot, just want to tell you that, but it’s too late…” “Trusted” explores a poisoned relationship, but from deep within it, and it revolves around a nasty bit of honesty: “It seems to me if you can’t trust, you can’t be trusted.” And “Landed” takes place after a breakup (perhaps of that same relationship), and revels in the details: “Down comes the reign of the telephone czar, it’s okay to call, I’ll answer for myself…”

The one song he re-worked from the EPs is Speed Graphic’s “Give Judy My Notice,” which I thought was the best song on any of them. Unfortunately, the new version drowns the aching loveliness of the piano-vocal original in Eagles-like guitar and backing vocals. I’d probably love this, if I hadn’t heard the first version, but as it is, “Judy” is the album’s one stumble. Still, it’s hard to fault such a well-written song, one that holds up next to the other ballads here. I’m glad this is the only repeat, too, even though I wish more people could hear “All You Can Eat” and “Wandering.”

The album ends with a pair of dramatic epics, “Time” and the oddly named “Prison Food,” which has a bridge straight out of the Yes songbook. Still, with all the gravitas flying around, my favorite thing here is “Gracie,” a tiny lullaby Folds wrote for his daughter. Now, I’ve heard a hundred or more father-daughter songs, and the trap they often fall into is one of general over-sentiment, as if the song simply must be about every father and daughter on earth. This one is very specifically about Ben and Gracie, and full of lovely images. At one point Folds sings, “You nodded off in my arms watching TV, I won’t move you an inch even though my arm’s asleep,” and you can just see it. It’s moments like that that elevate Folds’ more serious songwriting – see “The Luckiest” for some of the most off-kilter yet heartwarming declarations of love you’ll ever hear – and this album is full of them.

So yeah, he’s not rocking out on Silverman, throwing his piano bench into the keys and swearing like he used to. He’s grown up, and since I’ve grown up, too, in the years since I heard “Jackson Cannery,” I appreciate his evolution here. Folds probably would have been more successful with his critics had he released all 26 new recordings as a double album, one that would have balanced the more mature tone of Silverman with the old-school smartass style of the EPs. Still, Ben Folds the craftsman is in ample evidence on Silverman, even if Ben Folds the merry prankster isn’t, and I’ve always admired that guy more than his grinning counterpart.

I’m fond of saying this, but one day, Ben Folds is going to make an out-of-the-park fantastic gem of an album, perfect from start to finish. Songs for Silverman is not that album, not quite, but it puts him a few steps closer. It is, however, the work of an artist trying to shed his bratty side without losing his wit and charm, and by and large, he succeeds – these are the most thought-out and admirable songs he’s written, and that’s more important to me nowadays than how fast he can play, or how easily he can offend my grandmother. Songs for Silverman is the coming-out party for Ben Folds, Serious Artist, and if this is something you’d hear in your dentist’s office, then I’d like to meet your dentist. He has good taste.

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Okay, I’ve said a bunch of nice things about the album, and now here’s the curmudgeonly rant about the format. Accuse me of being set in my ways if you must, but I just hate this new DualDisc thing.

Songs for Silverman is available in two editions – there’s the “Deluxe Package,” which combines a CD and a DVD in a clumsy-looking and easily damaged book twice the size of a normal CD case, and nestles them in little pockets that scratch the hell out of them when you try to take them out. This is all second-hand info for me, though, since I bought the other edition, the DualDisc.

If you haven’t heard of them, DualDiscs are double-sided CDs, with a DVD where the label would go on a regular CD. This allows the record company to increase content (that you can’t download before the release date) and decrease manufacturing costs. Two discs of stuff, one disc to burn and package. Makes sense on paper, but practically, these things suck.

The first thing you’ll notice, if you’re paying attention, is that the “Compact Disc Digital Audio” logo is nowhere on your DualDisc package. That means, in record company language, that “the audio side of this disc does not conform to CD specifications, and therefore not all DVD and CD players will play the audio side of this disc.” In practice, here’s what that means – it’s a crapshoot whether your stereo or your computer will even recognize that you’ve inserted this disc.

Now, I have three CD players at my disposal. My favorite is my computer, of course, since it’s hooked up to my iPod, but naturally, my computer won’t read this disc. If I want to bring Songs for Silverman with me on the iPod, I have to buy it again, either in “Deluxe” form or from the iTunes music store. (That is, if I want to stick to the letter of the law – the other option is to illegally download it, of course, and the record companies may be surprised how much file-sharing goes up with this new format.)

But that’s not the end of the story, oh no. I have two other CD players – one in my car, and one vertically-loaded 25-CD changer in my office. Neither of these players are recommended for use with DualDiscs, and here’s why – the DualDisc is just that little bit thicker than a regular CD, so the mechanisms that load and unload the discs will scratch the DVD side to crap. And, on rare occasions (meaning twice since Tuesday for me), the disc will get stuck in the player, forcing one to scratch it up even more to get it out.

Luckily, I watched the DVD content first, after realizing that the CD side wasn’t going to play in my computer. It’s a 25-minute documentary, a 5.1 surround mix of the album, and a bonus track (“Landed” with an orchestra). Given the choice, I have selected the CD side as the one I want to keep, since I can’t play this album without scratching up the DVD.

Like I said, DualDiscs aren’t a bad idea, from a record company standpoint, but the concept needs some work. And if this new format requires new players to deal with it, then it’s only common sense that the companies should also make a standard version available, one that plays in every system. Otherwise, they’re just going to piss people off, and kill this format before it gets off the ground. In the case of Songs for Silverman, I don’t want to have to shell out for a clunky “special” package just to get a disc that plays for me without damage. I’m glad I’m not a Bruce Springsteen fan – his new album, Devils and Dust, is only available in DualDisc. Too fast, guys, especially for something with so many little kinks to be ironed out.

Anyway. Next week, the Eels, Aimee Mann, Nine Inch Nails or Ryan Adams. Or all four. Depends on how I feel.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I don’t know how to start talking about the new Choir album.

I suppose I can start with just how lucky I feel to be able to write those words in that order – the new Choir album. I started buying music at age 15 or so, and I first heard the Choir at age 16, after a steady diet of Def Leppard and Huey Lewis. I’d never heard anything like it – the deep guitar tones, the angelic voice of Derri Daugherty, the dark spiritual yearning of the lyrics. It was art, and I’d heard art before, but never like this, and never from a band I discovered on my own.

The album was called Circle Slide, and it changed my life. It’s such an amazing piece of work that even now, I listen to it once a month or so, and I’ve never grown tired of it. That’s almost half my life I’ve lived with Circle Slide, and next year it will actually be half my life, and I don’t foresee tossing it aside anytime soon. Every time I listen to it, I find something new to love.

For a long time, I would tell people that the Choir was the best band in the world, when what I really meant was that they’re my favorite band in the world. And you know, they really are. I’ve heard better bands, made up of better musicians who write better songs, but none of them hit me like the Choir does. I am emotionally drawn in to a Choir album like just about nothing else, from anyone else. If this means I’ve lost objectivity and cannot adequately appraise their work, then so be it. I’ll cop to it. I’d rather have one band like this that I love so completely than have perfect, clinical detachment any day of the week.

Even though I like Circle Slide best, nearly every Choir album is beautiful and wonderful in its own way. Chase the Kangaroo (1987) explored the reverb-drenched ambient side of the band, while Wide-Eyed Wonder (1989) is a perfect pop record, all acoustic guitars and lovely melodies. Speckled Bird (1994) kicked open a door that the band has yet to close, cranking up the fuzz factor and loudly rocking, while Free Flying Soul (1996) brought back the swirl, creating a low-budget masterpiece of oddness. The band’s first real stumble since the earliest days was Flap Your Wings (2000), which sported some good songs but floundered on many others. Still, the Choir spirit was there, even in the most straightforward of the tunes on Wings.

Here’s what the Choir is about – love through pain. They’re a religious band, no doubt, but they never preach, they never sermonize, and they never, ever talk at you. Choir songs (written most often by Daugherty and drummer Steve Hindalong) are about struggling with life, and about how faith eases that struggle. They talk with you, they communicate on a very human level, even as they reach for heavenly things. The Choir has never written a song about how much you (yes, YOU) need God, but they have written dozens about how much they need him, how impossible their lives would be without love and grace. I can’t explain it – let me just say that I hate most Christian music, but I have never been put off by the Choir, because they do what any good artist does: they open a window into their world and gently invite you in.

I approach a new Choir album, then, with a mix of joy and trepidation. Will this be the album that tarnishes the whole catalog? Will this be the one that makes me wistfully yearn for the days when the Choir was good, the one that makes me wish that they’d followed through on one of their eight or so retirements? How long can they extend this streak? How many great records can they do? It didn’t help that they chose O How the Mighty Have Fallen as the title of this new one. I mean, talk about opening yourself up. I said this before, but if it turned out that the album sucked, I’d only have to repeat the title phrase and my review would be complete.

And then I saw the cover. Mighty has, easily, the most beautiful packaging of any Choir album since Circle Slide – the front cover is a photo of Daugherty’s son, Chance, testing out his Icarus wings in front of a starry night sky. The whole package is so gorgeous that my fear drifted away. This, I told myself, would be a good Choir record.

And it is. It is, perhaps, the best Choir record since Circle Slide. I’ve only lived with it for a day now, but I love it like a friend I’ve known for decades. It is everything I hoped it would be, and then some. While Flap Your Wings sounded at times like the last effort of a broken band, Mighty sounds like that band reborn, back at fighting weight, playing its collective heart out. The irony of the title is magnificent – after three good-to-great records with flight imagery in the title, here is one whose name conjures visions of crashing to earth, and it’s the most soaring thing they’ve done in more than a decade.

Credit must be given to the Choir’s new member, Marc Byrd. He’s an ambient guitar genius, the mastermind behind Common Children and Hammock, and his work is all over this album. The title track opens with oceans of reverbed guitar and Dan Michaels’ lyricon, and they stay all the way through, accenting Daughtery’s wonderful voice and Hindalong’s crashing drum beat. Byrd produced this record, too, and his work in that department is flawless. There are some records you meet head-on and shake hands with, and then there are some that you fall backwards into, so lush is the sound. This, at its best, is one of the latter ones.

But this isn’t Circle Slide II by any means. The Choir have finally found a way to bring all of their styles together, mixing the rock they’ve been playing since ’93 with the space sounds of their earlier work. Mighty is a rock record, but one that sounds more like a Choir rock record than anything they’ve done in this style. It’s 10 short songs, with pop melodies and choruses, that sound like they were recorded on Venus. It’s the perfect synthesis – a crunchy album that swirls, a swirly album that crunches. And the band seems to know they’ve found their sound. They are comfortable and confident on every track, and there is no weak link.

“Nobody Gets a Smooth Ride” gets my vote for best Choir rock song, next to “About Love” from Circle Slide. It just explodes from the speakers, huge and dominant, and yet there’s waves of ambience behind it, and a little Dan Michaels saxophone. “Fine Fun Time” also rocks, this one about how grateful the band is to know each other and have the lives they have. (It also extols the virtues of Husker Du, and you can’t go wrong with that.)

But it’s the slower, lovelier pieces that grab my attention and win my love. “How I Wish I Knew” is one of the prettiest things Daughtery has ever graced with his voice, a song of helplessness in the face of despair: “When your heart defies you, and the dark mystifies you, when the stars shine down from above, how I hope their light is enough…” “Terrible Mystery,” a song of lost love, floats on Daughtery’s acoustic guitar, Byrd’s effects and Hindalong’s always unconventional percussion, and “She’s Alright” simply takes flight. This should be a hit, and in my perfect world, it already is.

Despite its title, “Mercy Will Prevail” is a thunderous, minor-key stunner, and it contains the perfect Choir lyric: “I want to swear it’s true but it’s hard to believe it.” That’s what they’re all about – how difficult it is to maintain faith and belief when life is so unforgiving. “In the thrust of a bayonet, in the hour of deep regret, in a world gone insane, in the eye of a hurricane,” Daugherty sings, telling himself more than anyone else that mercy will prevail. This is old-school Choir, dark and wonderful.

And one song later, they bring the light. “To Rescue Me” is a gorgeous hymn, sparse and vibrant, all about needing to be saved – not just in the Jesus sense, but in the very real and literal “save me” sense. “When I can’t hold on much longer to a rope weathered and frayed, when I can’t find hope and I’m losing faith,” Daugherty sings, and you can feel in his voice that the savior that reaches in to rescue him is real to him. It’s an absolutely beautiful song, whatever you believe, and a great way to end the album.

I don’t know what else to say, really. My favorite band is back, better than they’ve been in many years. I love this record. I love this band. I feel so grateful and fortunate that I got to hear it, and that the band got it together and recorded it. I get to see them live in July, and I can’t wait. I’m gushing, I know, and I’m sorry, but think of your favorite band, and now think of your favorite record by that band, and now imagine that they just released it, and you just heard it for the first time today. That’s how I’m feeling right now. O How the Mighty Have Fallen is right up there with the best Choir albums – it moves me more than I can tell you, takes root at the very core of my love of music. It makes me feel 16 again. It’s a beautiful, wonderful, good great gift, and I thank them for it.

I understand that the likelihood of anyone reading this liking Mighty as much as I do is very slim. I’ve been a Choir fan long enough to know that they’re not for everyone, and I’ve struck out numerous times while trying to turn people on to them. But as I said in an earlier review of their box set, you don’t share a band like the Choir to prove how musically learned you are, you share a band like the Choir because it would be a crime to keep them to yourself. The odds are small, but if you like this album even one-tenth as much as I do, it’s worth it to me, because that means you’ll like it a lot. Go here.

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A couple of quick ones before I go:

The new Garbage album is pretty bad, and I think it’s an unfortunate case of the culture catching up with a unique sound. The first Garbage album appeared in 1995, during the tail end of the grunge thing, and they presented a surprising alchemy – they utilized the processed guitars and industrial noise so prevalent at that time to augment fizzy pop songs. Garbage music had all the hallmarks of the alternative movement – the loud-soft guitars, the whirring electronic drums, the self-loathing lyrics, and the punky-cute goth girl singing them. Just ask the members of Curve – Garbage is often accused of stealing their sound whole, when in fact Butch Vig and company added classic songcraft and melody.

I tend to credit Vig with seeing the potential of this sound – after all, he helped start the whole grunge thing with his work on Nirvana’s Nevermind, which was more an exercise in mainstreaming than anything else. I can imagine him thinking, “If only Cobain were a little more pop, we could have something here…” I’m probably selling the other members of the band short, considering they all were known for their studio work before joining Garbage, and the sound of their first two records could only have been conjured up by seasoned producers.

The foursome gambled on their belief that people responded to the poppier elements of Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails and Smashing Pumpkins, not the rawer ones, and they were right. They also had excellent timing, releasing their confections just as grunge was dying a slow death. Garbage was the bridge between the garage bands of the early ‘90s and the glossy pop of the late ‘90s. It was a delicate balance, and they pulled it off well.

But here’s the thing – their sound, once so singular, has now been co-opted by any pop producer looking to add an “edge.” Even American Idol Kelly Clarkson’s new single, “Since You’ve Been Gone,” could be a Garbage song, with its guitar tone honed to that just-loud-enough-to-almost-rock-but-not-enough-to-scare-soccer-moms radio sheen. It doesn’t matter that Garbage was 200 times better at such studio wizardry – their one trick is now everywhere, and it’s lost its power.

Granted, Garbage themselves have lost a little something, too. I think they felt the zeitgeist moving before recording 2001’s Beautifulgarbage, which went a little far in the pop direction, incorporating ‘50s-style balladry. I liked that record, but not quite as much as the first two. And now Bleed Like Me, the fourth album, veers a little too far back into the “rawk” arena, sacrificing melody and sweetness. The guitars are certainly more aggressive, and the drums more real, but the songs are only so-so, and some (“Bad Boyfriend,” the inexplicable single “Why Do You Love Me”) are terribly lame.

Shirley Manson’s endless self-destruction is becoming sad, as well, and I can’t tell if that’s a culture thing or just a by-product of me growing up. She even succumbs to a little hypocrisy here – on “Sex is Not the Enemy,” she leads a female empowerment brigade, singing, “I won’t feel guilty, no matter what they’re telling me, I won’t feel dirty and buy into their misery.” But she spends most of the rest of the album feeling guilty, dirty and miserable.

There are two songs on Bleed Like Me that are worth hearing. “It’s All Over But the Crying” breaks the fuzzy monotony for a classic ballad, one that would have occupied the closing slot on Garbage albums past. But this album ends with “Happy Home,” a six-minute wonder with a great riff and a wordless chorus. But that’s it. The rest tries hard to recapture the textured magic of the first two albums, and resoundingly fails over and over. Garbage used to sound like no one else around, and now they sound so ordinary, so average. I’m not sure that’s their fault, entirely, but there you go.

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The big question about Bill Mallonee’s Friendly Fire is, of course, is it worth the wait?

I ordered this album in October of last year, as it was at that time intended to ship right around Christmas. It showed up in my mailbox last week. For some, that would be an inexcusable delay, but for Mallonee, it’s becoming par for the course. This guy has had almost no luck at all during his career, and the hinted-at behind the scenes delays that kept Friendly Fire from his fans seem like just more bad fortune. The shame is, Mallonee’s music deserves a wider audience, especially from the alt-country side of the biz. If you’re listening, Lost Highway, here’s a guy you should sign…

Now that Mallonee’s gone back to his semi-acoustic Americana roots, that pairing seems even more appropriate. He broke from the Vigilantes of Love, his long-time cast of rotating backup musicians, in 2002, and in rapid succession released his first three solo albums. They’re all good, especially the first, Fetal Position, but they found Mallonee stretching his Brit-pop wings a bit, playing treated guitars and singing big choruses. Many of the songs (“Wintergreen,” “Life on Other Planets,” “Crescent Moon”) were among the best he’d ever written, but none had the power of his career’s inescapable apex, 1997’s Audible Sigh.

Then, with last year’s Dear Life, Mallonee pulled out the acoustic again and made a tender, sad songwriter album, in the vein of his earlier VoL work. The record didn’t hit me for a couple of weeks, but once it sank in, it became like an old friend. Happily, he’s continued in that vein for Friendly Fire, the best-sounding album of his solo career, but he’s added violins and mandolins and drums and sweet pedal steel. Honestly, this thing really belongs on Lost Highway, or some similar major-minor roots label.

So, is it worth the wait? Uh huh, oh yeah.

The album opens with its strongest song, “No Longer Bound,” but doesn’t let up – “Is That Too Much to Ask” is terrific, the title track (a story of a returned soldier) is heartbreaking, and “Of Future Partridge Families” is surprisingly jaunty. Throughout, Mallonee keeps a perfect balance between the deep American story-songs he’s so good at and the pop songs he’s getting so much better at. He stumbles a couple of times – “You Were the Only Girl for Me” is kind of simplistic, and closing hymn “Apple of Your Eye” could have been stronger – but overall, this is his most solid and satisfying solo record to date.

Of course, the focus of any Mallonee album is the lyrics, and he doesn’t disappoint on that front either. Friendly Fire is about redemption, mostly, but it’s also about love and weariness. For my money, there’s nothing more moving here (or on any of his solo records) than the title song. It’s subtitled “No More Fight Left in Me,” and it chronicles the post-war life of a soldier who got through combat by thinking of his beloved, only to find that the relationship is not what he hoped it would be: “Now she just slams the door whenever I try to hold her, like I held on for three nights at sea, I got no more fight in me…”

Bill Mallonee’s had a long career, and he’s spent almost all of it under the radar. That he’s still plugging away, still making records independently and playing for small yet appreciative crowds, is kind of amazing. I wouldn’t have nearly the fortitude he has – I’d have snagged a day job years ago, and given up. But Mallonee’s a songwriter, mining a vein, and I don’t think he has a choice. He keeps going because the songs keep coming. Every Mallonee album takes a few weeks to seep in, but once it does, each one becomes indispensable and treasured. Friendly Fire is a great starting point, his best album in years. Visit his website and check it out.

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Next week, Ben Folds.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m always on about little labels and little bands that show faith in each other. It’s been my position that the next best thing, in this internet-savvy new world, to putting your own stuff out there is to find a label run by music fans. I’m talking about the organizations that care more about the artistry than the sales figures – or rather, that see the artistry as the primary concern, believing that sales will follow if the music and packaging are done right. I’m talking about labels that stick with low-selling yet adored bands, letting them make the records they want to make and giving them the full benefit of their design and marketing expertise.

And when I’m talking about that, the name Tooth and Nail Records always pops into my head. Tooth and Nail is a group out of Washington that started a little more than 10 years ago, but in that time, they’ve developed the template for the modern artist-friendly independent record label. One thing that’s clear after their first decade – the Tooth and Nail team believes in developing artists, in standing by them and letting them evolve. But they also take great care of the unknowns, the new bands that sign to their family.

Here’s a look at one of each.

I first heard Starflyer 59 on, of all things, a tribute album to little-known satirist Steve Taylor. They did a track called “Sin for a Season,” originally a clean-guitar mood piece, in low tones and huge walls of distortion. Early Starflyer built such fortresses out of their guitars that they really didn’t sound like guitars at all, and the effect was like drowning in concrete. Their self-titled debut from 1994 was the third-ever release on Tooth and Nail, and Starflyer has stuck with the label ever since.

Starflyer 59 is the brainchild of Jason Martin, who one day will be recognized as the pop genius he undoubtedly is. When I reviewed Old, their 2003 album, I remarked that since each Starflyer album is so radically different from the last, each one is in some way their best album. Well, that still holds, but sit down, kids, because their just-released ninth record, Talking Voice Vs. Singing Voice, might just be their best album overall, by any criteria. It’s certainly a huge step up from both Old (which was borderline marvelous) and their last one, I Am the Portuguese Blues (which was not).

In fact, Portuguese Blues, a collection of new recordings of old songs, now seems like the stopgap it probably was. Talking Voice is the real deal, a massively melancholy affair full of Cure influences and gorgeous layers of beautiful sound. Martin produced it with Frank Lenz, the only other credited band member this time out, and he obviously learned his lessons working with the likes of Terry Taylor, Gene Eugene and Aaron Sprinkle. Sonically, I can’t think of a Starflyer album I like more than this one.

But how are the songs? Well, this should be no surprise to Starflyer fans, but they’re fantastic. Most of the tracks creep and crawl like spiders, spinning their eerie textures into dark webs. The opener, “The Contest Completed,” crashes in on a patented Martin guitar chime, an insistent bass line, and a sweeping, Disintegration-era Cure-style synth squall. The chorus is pure Martin, though, strengthened by the deep melancholy of his baritone voice. The obvious single, “Good Sons,” bops along delightfully, and smoothly eases into a chorus that won’t leave you alone.

You can spend days just listening to the sounds of this record. Martin and Lenz employed a string section, which Lenz arranged, and the violins and violas come to the fore on the great “A Lists Go On,” “Softness, Goodness” and “A Good Living.” Dig the trumpet on “Easy Street,” too. The Starflyer boys are just as imaginative with the tones when they’re working with just guitars, too – dig the chiming notes on “Something Evil,” or the slippery clean tones on “Night Life.”

This is an immaculately crafted album of superb songs, and in fact my only complaint with it is the same one I have every time Starflyer puts something out – it’s too short. Talking Voice is nine songs in 32 minutes, and I wanted more as soon as it was over. Martin is remarkably prolific – he’s released three albums and an EP in the last two years – but each of his projects is tiny. You could fit Talking Voice, Portuguese Blues and the Last Laurel EP all on one disc. This is a minor complaint, of course, since Martin doesn’t release any filler tracks. His 30-minute albums are all solid, and probably just the right length, in retrospect. I just want more of his work, is all.

As I said before, Starflyer has hung in there with Tooth and Nail since the beginning, and the label has stuck with them, seemingly letting Martin do pretty much whatever he wants. (They have a similar deal with his brother, Ronnie, the mastermind of long-running electronic pop act Joy Electric.) Nine albums, four EPs and a box set later, the arrangement obviously has worked out for both of them, and Starflyer’s first four releases are the subjects of the first Tooth and Nail remasters, slated for later this year. They are the label’s signature band, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they continue their partnership with Tooth and Nail until one of them calls it a day.

A new band could do a lot worse than signing on with a label that develops artists the way T&N has developed Starflyer. Just ask Virginia Beach quintet Mae – their second album, The Everglow, is the talk of their label’s website. It’s the follow-up to Destination: Beautiful, a left-field wonder full of hooks and surprising musicianship, and one of the most memorable modern rock records I’ve heard in ages.

I’m surprised at myself for being such a fan of this band, since I usually don’t buy into the pop/punk/emo thing, but Mae transcends those sorts of labels. You could hear them on the radio with the likes of Good Charlotte and Dashboard Confessional, but they have so much more going on musically than pretty much any other similar band I’ve heard. Part of the secret is that they’ve refused to go full-bore into any one aspect of their sound – they are pop/punk/emo/ambient/rock, and they don’t identify fully with any of those. They just write good songs, record them well with interesting arrangements, and leave the categories to the critics.

The Tooth and Nail design department knocked themselves out with The Everglow’s package – it’s designed like a children’s book, with illustrations and a slipcase. Everything about this album screams “major, serious work,” from the lovely cover art to the foil-embossed booklet, but luckily, the record itself is as much fun as Mae’s debut. The guitars are a bit louder, the songs are a bit longer, but overall, little has changed. The Everglow is another hook-packed collection of winners, with some surprising moments, and no bum tracks.

I admit to worrying a bit at the beginning. The “Prologue” is funny, but piano ballad “We’re So Far Away” is a little trite, and “Someone Else’s Arms” is more normal-rock than I’m used to from Mae. The new version of “Suspension” (it was originally on their b-sides record) de-emphasizes the kinetic lead guitar, too, which was my favorite part. But with track five, “This is the Countdown,” the album takes off and never looks back. That song features a killer chorus, a neat clean-guitar section, and a classic piano break. It’s a monster hit in the making.

From there, as The Everglow unspools, it just keeps building, vaulting from track to track as if the band can’t wait to show you what they’ve come up with. There’s no instant classic like “This Time is the Last Time” here, but overall, the record is deeper and better than its predecessor. “Painless” explodes with a prog-style piano figure and a stop-time chorus that takes a couple of listens to wrap your brain around. “Breakdown” marries pounding piano with a cool, unexpected bass line and an infectious “woah-oh” melody, but it’s the acoustic guitar midsection that packs the punch. And “Mistakes We Knew We Were Making” (a nifty Dave Eggers reference) gets my vote for best track, with its odd time signature and subtle yet lovely percussion.

The album concludes with another inescapable pop song (“Anything”) and a seven-minute float-a-thon (“The Sun and the Moon”) unlike anything they’ve tried. But they pull it off, all pianos and harmonies, capping a wide-eyed, romantic album that cements Mae’s rep as a band to watch. If you don’t like anything that sounds like MTV, then Mae might not be for you, but if you love to hear the potential in a style (or four) really explored by quality musicians, then try this. The Everglow is one of my favorite records of the year so far, energetic and bright and hooky and just plain good. This should be on every modern rock station in the country.

Both the Starflyer and Mae records are testaments to what artists can do in supportive environments, when they are left to follow their own visions. On many other labels, Starflyer might have been shown the door years ago, and Mae might have been “asked” to pick one demographic and stick with it. Tooth and Nail sees the artistic value in records like these, and they’ve earned my respect and support. I may not like everything they do, but I love them for doing it the way they do.

End love letter. Special thanks to Jim Worthen for hooking me on Mae. Next week, Bill Mallonee and/or Garbage. After that, Ben Folds, Eels, Aimee Mann, Ryan Adams, and the Choir.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I hate Pennsylvania.

Apologies to any faithful readers who happen to live in the Keystone State, but I hate it. I have a good reason, though – Pennsylvania hated me first.

This enmity started about seven years ago, when my friend Ray and I were stranded for almost a week in Clearfield, a tiny town in the middle of central nowhere, PA. A truck we were following on the highway dropped its spare tire from underneath, landing it right in the path of my newly purchased (and dangerously low to the ground) Saturn sport coupe. With a ditch to the left of me and traffic to the right, I saw little choice but to go over the obstacle and hope no serious damage would be done. A couple of inches either way and I could have flipped the car.

So we went over the tire, and immediately the car started acting up. We pulled over, called Triple A, and they sent a down-home guy with strange facial hair named Shawn. And Shawn assured us that our problem was a cracked oil pan, and that we’d be on the road in a few hours. We were breathing sighs of relief, when Shawn made one last trip around the car, stopped short, stared at the engine – and if I could mark one part of this story “And Here My Troubles Began,” it would be this one – and exclaimed, “Holy shit!”

And then he said it again.

This did not sound like a happy diagnosis. Apparently, the tire had cracked my engine block, rendering it scrap. I needed a new one, stat. Luckily, Shawn had just that week discovered “this thing called internet,” and he ordered an engine post haste. Here’s the thing, though – Shawn happily gave us a ride to a nearby hotel, where the receptionist knew his name, and all but said, “Got another one, huh?” I got the definite sense that the two of them had done this before, and the hotel pretty much had a room reserved for whatever strays Shawn picked up off the road.

And soon the entire conspiracy became clear. It was the state, you see, the whole state of Pennsylvania. They trap people and force them to spend money at local businesses – trucks in Pennsylvania drop tires regularly so that folks like Shawn and the hotel owners can rake in some out-of-state bucks. I was there for four days – Ray abandoned me after two, citing unimportant things like “work” and “family” and “my own life” he had to get back to. (I often asked him what he would have done in my place in that situation, and without fail, his response was always, “My Jeep would have cleared the tire.” Har dee har.)

I’ll give Shawn this much, he did great work. I was a bit apprehensive when I first saw the backwoods automobile graveyard he called his shop, and spotted my car in 30 pieces in his garage, but his repair job was top notch. I had thousands of further problems with that little car, some of which bordered on science fiction, but none of them had anything to do with the engine, or with Shawn’s work.

Anyway, since then, I have been wary of Pennsylvania, and every time I have made a cross-country trip, either across the northeast or up from the southern coast, I have designed the route to avoid as much of the offending state as I can. Sadly, it’s a pretty big state, and avoiding it entirely often involves air travel, so I’ve had to grit my teeth and get through it several times. The first time I managed an in-and-out without incident, I waited until I was safely over the New York border, then I flipped off Pennsylvania, shouting exultantly, “You didn’t get me this time, fuckers!” It was a good moment.

So I told you that story to tell you this one.

I’m sick as that sex-change episode of South Park right now, coughing and wheezing and breathing slowly, lest my chest burst with pain. Let me tell you how I got this way.

I drove out east for Easter, taking I-90 for the full 16.5 hours, and I stayed a week and a half. Had a great time – saw some folks I hadn’t seen in a while, got Easter candy from three different sources (despite being 30), and got the latest installment of the book my uncle’s writing about his time in World War II. I saw Sin City, and it was pretty much perfect. All in all, good vacation. I even spent an extra day to avoid the bad weather predicted for the weekend, deciding to make the trek back on Sunday, April 3. Not a problem.

I got through Massachusetts and half of New York okay, and then I hit some freak snowstorm, one the Weather Channel apparently missed. I almost died in New York when the car skidded out and pulled a complete 360 in the middle of I-90. I swear I was facing the oncoming traffic for a good three seconds, unable to get out of the way. Luckily, the car righted itself and landed off the road, and after I was done being terrified, I told myself that I was fortunate that hadn’t happened in Pennsylvania. I’d be dead for sure.

I forged onward at 30 miles per hour, passing up several opportunities to get off the road and get a hotel or something, and then it started to clear up. The clouds parted, the snow started letting up, and I figured I’d be okay. I must have forgotten that, geographically speaking, I was just about to enter the third ring of Hell. Almost three minutes after I crossed over into Pennsylvania, traffic ground to a halt. Miles of it, not moving at all.

Well, I waited an hour or so, then shut the car down to conserve the quarter-tank of gas I had left. Venturing from the warm confines of my Focus into the snowy forest of immobile autos, I found some truck drivers who knew what was going on. Pennsylvania had closed I-90. Yep, the whole road, and just in that one state. What they planned to do with the people already stuck on I-90, no one knew. I got back in my car and froze some more.

Five hours. That’s how long we were sitting there, shivering and waiting for rescue. Five hours. When the Keystone Cops finally arrived, they muscled their way up through miles of unmovable traffic, then shepherded us to the next exit. Something we could have done, of course, by ourselves, five hours before. Tired and nearly sick as I was, there was no way I was going to stay in Pennsylvania overnight – who knew what could happen? My car would undoubtedly have been stolen, stripped and sold, and I would have had to pay some PA taxi driver $500 to get me to the airport. That’s how they make their money in PA – by trapping unsuspecting motorists.

No, I wasn’t about to do that, so I found Route 20 and drove west until I saw the greatest thing I’d ever witnessed – the “Welcome to Ohio” sign. Only then did I pull off the road and find a hotel. I didn’t spend any money in Pennsylvania, but they got me anyway. Those five frigid hours did a number on me – I have a kickass immune system, and I’m hardly ever sick, but right now I feel like I can’t breathe, and any rapid movement makes my lungs hurt. So congratulations, Pennsylvania, you screwed me again.

Oh, how I hate you.

* * * * *

At least the drive gave me plenty of opportunity to listen to new music. Here are my thoughts on two of the first really good records of 2005:

In retrospect, Glen Phillips always kind of belonged on Lost Highway Records. There’s always been a bit of twang to his folk and rock style, and his band Toad the Wet Sprocket was always a much more serious and introspective group than its name would imply. I’m not sure why it’s taken Phillips this long to hook up with Lost Highway, the home of Ryan Adams and Elvis Costello’s The Delivery Man, but now that he has, it’s an obvious pairing. He fits right in.

Phillips’ solo debut, 2001’s Abulum, emphasized the folksiness and lyrical poetry in his sound. It made my Top 10 List that year on the strength of its lyrics, one of the best sets of words I’d heard in ages, so much so that the sweet acoustic pop songcraft was just icing. His sophomore record, Winter Pays for Summer, isn’t quite as immediately striking lyrically, but Phillips makes up for that with his strongest group of songs since Toad’s Dulcinea. Some of this record is deceptively simple, but given a few listens, all of it sounds just about right.

The opening two tracks sound like Toad reborn. “Duck and Cover” is a wonderful number, full of the family-oriented sentiments that modern country strives for, yet always bungles. There’s nothing saccharine about Phillips’ words here – “One way or another, we all need each other, nothing’s gonna turn out the way you thought it would, friends and lovers don’t you duck and cover, ‘cause everything turns out the way it should.” It’s realistically optimistic, if such a thing is possible, and the music is somehow the same. It’s just a great little song.

“Thankful,” the first single, is even better, with its driving rhythm and unpredictable shifts. It’s the one moment on Winter Pays for Summer that might be considered power pop, but Phillips grounds it with his sweet voice and words. “Thankful,” like many songs here, features former Jellyfish singer Andy Sturmer on backing vocals, and while you can’t quite pick him out, I’d like to think that his influence has punched up these tunes.

It’s not all happiness and light, of course. Phillips brings the emotional ache on “Released,” a perhaps metaphorical tale of incarceration on which he sings, “My cup’s one-sixteenth full, I’m getting there but the getting’s slow.” He takes the seemingly simple rhythms and chords of “Cleareyed” and spins a joyous shout of it, and makes the similarly uncomplicated “Simple” seem revelatory. The album stumbles only once, with the too-easy “True.” Lyrically, it explores honesty and fidelity, the two sides of the title word, but musically it feels like a b-side.

But that’s the only dead spot. As late as track 10 (“Finally Fading”), Phillips is still pulling out the melodic winners, and no matter how close he seems to steer towards AOR-land, he never crosses that city’s limits. The closing track is an ode to contentment called “Don’t Need Anything,” and as trite as it may read on paper – “I’ve a roof overhead, the stars if I choose, but I’ve got no itch to fly, got no need to move” – he sells it on disc, singing over a sparse piano bed.

Winter Pays for Summer is perhaps Phillips’ most honest record, and he sounds genuinely happy and at peace. That the album is still moving and engaging despite its lack of bite is a testament to his skill. Phillips, in fact, describes his own album best with a few of his song titles: it’s mostly clear-eyed, simple and thankful. And it’s a treat to listen to.

* * * * *

The great Over the Rhine has made a similarly simple record with their new Drunkard’s Prayer, but under vastly different circumstances.

Over the Rhine is a married couple, pianist Linford Detweiler and singer Karin Bergquist, and in 2003 they made a massive, two-disc opus-a-rama called Ohio. It was the culmination of a trip they’d been on for a while, taking their tiny little sound and exploding it with musicians and layers of production. Sure, it was still smaller than most anything else you’d find at the record store, but for Karin and Linford, Ohio was an untamed, unwieldy beast that they somehow tamed and wielded. It was the best album they had yet made.

The tour, on the other hand, nearly drove them apart. Ohio was such a lumbering undertaking that they were feeling the strain on their marriage, so rather than keep pushing forward, they cancelled the tour and went home to reconnect. They made a deal – they would open one bottle of wine a night and talk until it was empty. And they would make a little record in their living room, one made up of simple songs and genuine feeling, scrubbed clean.

It’s a wonderful story, and you know what? It’s a wonderful record, too. Drunkard’s Prayer is almost entirely acoustic guitar, piano, upright bass and Bergquist’s striking voice. There are drums on only three of these 11 tracks, and even those are subtle. This album is the sound of Karin and Linford opening the doors to their home and inviting you in. It’s so warm and intimate that I don’t even feel odd about using their first names.

This is an album about reconnecting, about mending relationships, and it bursts with real longing and pain. It opens with its simplest declaration, “I Want You to Be My Love.” The title phrase makes up 80 percent of the lyrics, and it’s this commitment right from the beginning that provides this record’s center. You will not hear a more lovely song this year than “Born,” a six-minute honeydrip that seems to glide by like something half its length. “I was born to love, I’m gonna learn to love without fear,” Karin sings, and to say that you can feel her conviction here is to understate by miles.

Drunkard’s Prayer never “takes off,” in the traditional sense, although it seems like it might when “Spark” kicks in. The duo brings it back down with “Hush Now,” a lovely piano-vocal number, and then takes it up one last time with “Lookin’ Forward,” the obvious single. From there, though, they close the album with four sweet ballads, perhaps the finest sustained run in their catalog. “Little Did I Know” expands its jazzy tone with a lengthy saxophone solo (by Brent Gallaher), while “Who Will Guard the Door” sets its tale of love and loss over an acoustic guitar web reminiscent of Ohio’s “Suitcase.”

“Firefly” levitates on Detweiler’s piano and David Henry’s cello, letting Bergquist dig deep into the minor key melody. This would be her finest moment on Drunkard’s Prayer, if not for the closing track, a cover of Rogers and Hart’s “My Funny Valentine.” Over just piano and upright bass, Karin brings gorgeous depth to the familiar tune – she’s obviously very good, but until I heard this rendition, I had no idea of just how good she is. She weaves this song’s take on odd yet perfect relationships into the very fabric of the album, and it’s a wonder to behold.

According to the liner notes, the duo picked Drunkard’s Prayer as their album title because it sounds like the name of a race horse, “a long shot, a horse with little chance of winning, but one you’ve got all your money on.” If there’s a better metaphor for any long-term relationship, I’ve yet to hear it. Drunkard’s Prayer is not the way any label rep would have advised Over the Rhine to follow up Ohio, but as you can hear in every note, every line, every deep pocket of this record, it’s exactly the one they needed to make. This album may have saved their marriage, and there’s an honest and palpable beauty to it that can only come from such depth of meaning and feeling. It is, once again, the best album they’ve done.

* * * * *

Quick notes: The new Weezer song is so bad that I don’t know whether to laugh or find Rivers Cuomo and shoot him. It makes me very sad. The new Nine Inch Nails is similarly execrable. In brighter news, Aimee Mann has released her whole new album, three songs at a time, on her website, and it’s very, very good. And if I see another four-to-five-star review of the new Eels record, the 33-song Blinking Lights and Other Revelations, I may go out of my mind waiting for April 26. The songs released on the band’s web site are excellent.

The current front runner in my search for my favorite album title this year is the Lost Dogs. You may remember that they made an album of re-recordings last year called Mutt. Well, they’re currently recording the second installment in that series, and the title they’ve chosen is perfect: Jeff. I bet you just laughed out loud reading that right now. That’s the one to beat, though no one else has quite stepped up to the plate yet. The closest second place contender is The Wonder Stuff, with Escape from Rubbish Island. But it’s early yet.

Next week, I hopefully will stop coughing. I’ll also be reviewing two discs from Tooth and Nail Records – Starflyer 59’s Talking Voice vs. Singing Voice and Mae’s The Everglow.

See you in line Tuesday morning.