I think I may need a new term to replace “pop music.”

I’m not really a genres guy, as a casual perusal of this website will show, and new split-off categories like emo and hick-hop and crunk and whiney-core mumble-prog-salsa or whatever else will have cropped up by the time I finish this sentence give me a rash. Music is music. It’s just that if I’m going to explain the appeal of something, I kind of have to give it a name, one with associations. Otherwise, you’ll have even less of an idea what I’m nattering on about than usual.

And “pop” is just a term that fills me with dismay. I love pop music. I’m sure there are bigger Beatles fans than me in the world, and probably in the metropolitan Chicago area even, but I wouldn’t bet my paltry freelancer check on it. While I admire all kinds of albums from the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, it’s the pop records that do it for me more often than not. I all but worship bands like Jellyfish, who worked their asses off in the early ‘90s to create two perfect albums full of joy and wonder. I love the Kinks, I love XTC, I love Elvis Costello and Sloan and Brian Wilson and Ben Folds.

To me, that’s all pop music – melody-centric, hummable, catchy and accessible. The problem is, pop as a term has come to mean sugary radio crap, and only sugary radio crap. The definition expands beyond Jessica Simpson and the contestants on American Idol, but that’s what the word has come to mean. The narrow purview of pop, defined by radio and MTV and marketing departments, leaves artists like Aimee Mann and Supergrass without a home.

Pop is not a word that really applies to most of what I love, anyway, because originally, it was short for “popular.” Thanks to the industry’s marketing machine, intelligent pop music hasn’t had a shot in hell of being popular in decades. I think the Beatles changed the established idea of what popular music can sound like, but they were astoundingly popular to the last, whereas artists that have taken from their lesson book remain marginalized, unable to pay their rent. I’ve just been reliably informed that the Dissociatives, whose excellent debut album was released in the U.S. in March, have sold less than 3,000 copies. It’s pop, but it sure isn’t popular, at least on these shores.

With all that, though, we are in something of a pop renaissance right now. My favorite album of the year so far, Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois, wears its Brian Wilson influences on its sleeve. There’s a new crop of brilliant melody makers taking the reins from the old Brits, like the aforementioned Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright, but even beyond them, there’s a rejuvenated sense of song craft in some of the most celebrated young bands these days.

If there’s anyone in the indie scene that seems willing to grab the mantle of pop genius from the likes of Costello and Ray Davies, it’s A.C. Newman. Back when he was Carl Newman, he was one-fourth of Canadian popsters Zumpano, but he’s better known now as one of the guiding lights of the New Pornographers. The band took their name from Jimmy Swaggart’s oddball quote “Music is the new pornography,” and it’s less a band than a loose collective revolving around Newman, but also featuring singer Neko Case and Destroyer guitarist Dan Bejar.

Their third album is called Twin Cinema, and it’s their best and strangest work. It’s also the perfect opportunity for me to hopefully dispel this misconception that I’m anti-indie. I have been accused before of hating the indie sound, and while there’s some truth to that – I do like intricate productions and big, full sounds – the songs are much more important. Twin Cinema sounds like it was recorded in the same garage the White Stripes use, the occasional mariachi horn notwithstanding, but the songs are amazing, so it doesn’t matter. The problem I end up having with a lot of Pitchfork-recommended discs is that the songwriting is just as ramshackle as the guitar tones.

Not so here. Newman has proved, over two previous New Pornographers albums and a great solo disc (last year’s The Slow Wonder), that he just never runs out of melodies. Previous New Porn records have focused on short bursts of electrified pop, and while they’ve been catchy as all hell, I am happy to report that Twin Cinema takes it the next step. Newman displays an uncanny ability to write an epic track in less than four and a half minutes here, and his best songs infuse this album with a newfound serious side.

That’s not to say it doesn’t rock, because it does. “Use It” proves that the New Pornographers are the band Spoon thinks they are, and the spunky title track is delightfully trashy. But the best moments on Twin Cinema are the more bizarre ones – Case’s angelic vocals and Dave Carswell’s slide guitar on “The Bones of an Idol,” for instance. “The Bleeding Heart Show” starts as a light ballad, but ends up with an anthemic choral finale that reminded me of Dream Academy. (Remember them?) “Falling Through Your Clothes” spins about on a missed-beat refrain that sounds, on first listen, like your CD is skipping, while “These Are the Fables” lightly pirouettes its way into an unexpected piano-pounding coda. Newman’s songs (12 of the 15) are his most intricate, yet all are hummable and infectious.

Bejar takes three tracks here as well, and acquits himself nicely, particularly on “Jackie, Dressed in Cobras,” all stuttering stop-time beats. He’s not quite at Newman’s level, which weighs the album down a tad, but doesn’t kill it – he’s Colin Moulding to Newman’s Andy Partridge, if you will. His songs do bring up an interesting point about this band, though – they are such a democracy that they sometimes risk not having a solid identity. There are four singers, counting Nora O’Connor with Case, Bejar and Newman, and often the voices intertwine. Although most of the songs are Newman’s, no one personality steps out.

The upside of such collectivism is that the focus remains on the songs, where it ought to be. Twin Cinema closes with “Stacked Crooked,” a layered masterpiece of collapsing vocals and triumphant horns that fades out too quickly. But really, if that’s the worst complaint one can levy against this album, that it ends too soon, then Newman and company must be doing something right. In fact, after a few listens through this scuffed-up jewel of an album, I’d have to say that they’re doing something extraordinary.

But is it pop? I think it is, but many critics would come up with some other genre to place it in, or make up some cross-hybrid box for it. The definition of pop seems to hew closer to something like the Boston’s The Click Five, a group that touts itself as “new school power pop.” That description fits as well as anything, but to my ears, it’s just pop. It’s glossier, hookier and scrubbed a lot cleaner than the New Pornographers, but it’s pop, of the freewheeling and slightly cheesy variety that many will see as another hit to my already shaky credibility.

Yes, the Click Five are silly. They dress in matching suits, they have mop-top haircuts, and they look like teen idol models on the cover of their debut album, Greetings from Imrie House. The album comes with one of five randomly inserted trading cards – there is one for each member. Yes, trading cards, with bio information on the back. I got keyboardist Ben Romans, who apparently has blue eyes, likes baseball and went to see Weezer for his first concert. (I mentioned this to a friend of mine, and she said, “That makes me want to die.”)

Are they serious? Of course not. It’s a gimmick. But don’t let that keep you from the music, which is insanely catchy, gloriously cheeseball pop perfection. They went to the right collaborators for this fun little gem – Boston producer Mike Denneen (Guster, Aimee Mann) worked the boards, while the band co-wrote songs with Kiss’ Paul Stanley and Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger. (Schlesinger wrote the single, “Just the Girl,” the video for which depicts the band descending by helicopter to the roof of Paul Stanley High School. Uh huh.) Fountains is a good touchstone for this stuff, but unlike that band, which tends to orbit around silly pop with an ironic flair, the Click Five dives right in.

These songs are stupid, let’s get that out in the open. You cannot like this and still maintain a detached air of musical superiority. The Click Five will not make you cooler. Every song is about love and heartbreak, in the simplest, most ‘70s radio-rock way. But in embracing that, the band has delivered something borderline brilliant. This is steeped in decades of fun power pop, full of huge choruses, swirling vocals, driving guitars and pristine production. Anyone noting a heavy Cars influence would not be blowing smoke, but there’s more hiding behind these delirious harmonies. It’s very much like the 2005 version of the 1975 version of the 1962 Beatles, if that makes any sense.

The hooks on this thing are everywhere. I heard it once, and couldn’t stop humming it for hours, until I just had to hear it again. I didn’t want to – I tried to make myself hate this album, because it’s so syrupy and goofy, but I couldn’t. It’s impossible to object to this on purely musical grounds. The whole thing is so well-written, so perfectly disposable and effervescent. In fact, its disposability would be the most glaring drawback, if the band hadn’t so fully embraced it and made it the feature of the record. These songs will not change the world. These songs are not important. But they are super-groovy nifty-keen.

The Click Five are gimmicky, but they’re not prefab. “I’ll Take My Chances” is like the best prom theme you’ve ever heard, and one definitely gets the sense that these five could have chosen to write any type of music, and they picked prom themes. But by God, they wrote the hell out of them. There’s a sly nod in “Chances” to the Beatles’ “Across the Universe,” which I think is telling. Six songs later, they’re crashing through a great cover of the Thompson Twins’ “Lies,” which just shows the huge range of pop influences they draw from.

The bottom line is, I think this is wonderful. It’s not about the suits, the trading cards or the video, it’s about the songs, and the Click Five have written an album full of sparkling, feel-good winners. Some may have to let go of the notion that music has to be Serious and Important to be worthwhile, but hell, there’s pop for those tastes, too – the New Pornographers are well on their way to becoming one of the most important bands of the decade. The Click Five will never be taken that seriously, nor should they be – they just make good, fun pop music. They’re a guilty pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless.

So, do I need a new word that can encompass both A.C. Newman and the Click Five? I don’t know, I’m open to suggestions on that. I’m also open to the idea that pop represents music so joyous and unrestrained that there isn’t a word that can encompass it. Someone once said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, which means that mere language can’t adequately quantify it. Good pop music puts that big dumb grin on my face like nothing else, and if I ever come up with a word that fully describes that feeling, I’ll let you know. But I doubt I will.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to stretch a wedding-themed narrative device to its stupid limits. We’re all here, so shall we begin? The sooner we start, the sooner we get this obviously lame idea over with. Here, then, are something old, something new, something borrowed, and something… well, you’ll see:

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Something Old

For a guy who’s been around forever, Richard Thompson doesn’t get a lot of respect. Even from me, apparently – I’ve started this review by, in effect, calling him old.

But hell, Thompson is in his fourth decade as a recording artist, beginning with Fairport Convention in the 1960s, then with his ex-wife Linda, and finally on his own. His roots are in English folk music, but in the decades since striking out as a solo artist, Thompson has displayed an amazing talent for blazing electric guitar. For a while there, every note he played sounded like a smirking middle finger to Eric Clapton and those who think he’s the best of the middle-aged British guitarists. Just listen to the fiery solo that concludes “Hard on Me,” from 1999’s Mock Tudor, for a sterling example of what I’m talking about.

But at heart, he’s never really altered what he does – he tells stories in song, with his rich, resonant voice, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to call pretty much everything he’s ever done folk music. Thompson has been consistent for so long that it’s hard to imagine that he’ll ever expand his audience much further. Like Bruce Cockburn, Thompson has probably gone as far as he’s going to go, from an industry standpoint, which explains why Capitol Records dropped him in 2001 after more than 12 years of releasing his records. He’s on tiny Cooking Vinyl now, and barring a late-in-life Johnny Cash-style renaissance, he’ll probably stay beneath the radar for the rest of his life.

The news is not all bad, though, because the small label and the lack of commercial pressure has brought out the best in Thompson. It’s doubtful that Capitol would have even released Front Parlour Ballads, his new album – at the very least, they would have asked for a fuller production sound and a radio single, not realizing that the very sparseness of this record is what makes it special. Ballads is almost entirely acoustic, the first time Thompson has unplugged for an entire set of songs since the second disc of You? Me? Us? in 1996. It was recorded in his home studio, and it features only one other musician, percussionist Debra Dobkin.

It’s precisely that intimate, ramshackle quality that sets this record above most of his Capitol output. For starters, the man has a great voice, one that never sat too comfortably atop some of the poppier production of his ‘80s albums. Here it’s the focus, and it allows Thompson the performer to come out. He leads you through his tales, giving you insight with his inflections, and striking at the heart with songs like “Cressida.”

His ability to put the listener in the skins of his characters is a double-edged sword, as always, because Thompson’s songs are often bitter and disturbing. Ballads contains a song about blackmail and adultery (“Should I Betray”), one about how awful it must have been to be on a slave ship (“Row, Boys, Row”), and several about cruel women and the morons who love them. It closes with “When We Were Boys at School,” which concerns the birth of a monster: “All he ever wanted to do was harm, all he ever wanted to be was cruel, at 12 years old Fate marked his brow, and he said, ‘I have a mission now’…” It’s chilling.

There’s very little to conceal the darkness this time – only two songs contain electric guitar, and most of the rest are just Thompson and his acoustic. Such sparseness makes for an extremely effective downbeat record, but a downbeat one nonetheless. Thompson’s fans, however, are used to his fascination with the underbelly of human nature, and will lap this right up. The acoustic work is excellent, the melodies are haunting, and Thompson’s voice is as powerful as ever. Front Parlour Ballads is a superb folk album, the most mesmerizing, captivating work Thompson has released in ages, and though there’s very little light within its black heart, its surface is beautiful and prickly.

And though I’d like to hear Thompson pick up an electric again, I’m glad he’s in a position now to make and release records like this one. He sounds reinvigorated, invested in these songs, and I can’t help but think that it’s down to the nature of the recording, and the freedom from interference it represents. This is how he wants to sound, not how Mitchell Froom and Capitol Records want him to sound, and you can hear it in his voice and his fretwork. It would be a stretch to call this record joyous, but as bitter as the songs are, their author sounds contented, even thrilled, to be playing them. With nearly 40 years of such songs behind him, that’s saying something.

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Something New

This year has been a good one for surprising new discoveries. There’s Sufjan Stevens, of course, whose Illinois continues to make the rest of the year’s music sound uninspired, but he’s been around a while, and it’s only my ignorance that kept me from praising him earlier. But 2005 has been full of new bands that deliver, like the Dissociatives, the Click Five (more on them next week), Mute Math and Waking Ashland. And here’s another one to add to the list: Marjorie Fair, whose debut album Self-Help Serenade is a dreamy triumph.

Though you’ll probably find Marjorie Fair’s album filed under F at your local record store, if you find it at all, it turns out that the name is a cover for singer/songwriter Evan Slamka. (Hey, it’s a better pseudonym than Badly Drawn Boy…) I’m not sure how he did it, but Slamka has assembled quite the cast of musicians to help him out with his debut. It’s produced by Rob Schnapf, who did Elliott Smith’s later records (and, coincidentally, Richard Thompson’s Mock Tudor), and it features contributions by Jon Brion, Patrick Warren, Jim Keltner, Billy Preston, Joey Waronker, Roger Manning, Kim Bullard – basically a who’s who of behind-the-scenes pop talent.

With all those names aboard, you might expect old-timey chamber pop, but Slamka has other ideas. Self-Help Serenade is a slow collection of atmospheric guitar-ballads with rich, simple, anthemic choruses. Nearly every song is set to a lazy simmer, which lets the waves of sweet, ringing guitars and rolling backing vocals expand them like sponges. In many ways, Marjorie Fair is reminiscent of Elbow, another band that uses production to explode their small, slow-moving songs, but Slamka doesn’t have the same hangdog sense as Guy Garvey. His world is much brighter.

Still, there’s nothing special about Slamka’s songwriting. His tunes do take some unexpected turns sometimes, like the chorus of “Stare,” but mostly they stick to the basics. No, this album is about performance and sound, and on those scores, it’s sweeping and full and lovely. Slamka’s voice is high and yearning, without slipping into emo territory, and his playing is laced with feeling. But it’s the production that wins half his battles for him. Every song is a glorious burst of color – even something as low-key as “Please Don’t” has ripples of guitar and keyboards behind it, forcefully nudging it.

I don’t mean to suggest that Slamka would be lost without his more seasoned cohorts, because that’s not the case at all. The songs would still be pretty good, and his voice would still soar. It’s just that this record, without the musicians and Schnapf’s wizardry, would merely be good. Instead, it’s extraordinary, a late-night firelight wonder. Just listen to the awesome guitar tones on “Stand in the World,” and then try to imagine the song without them. It would still be good, but not this, and this is great.

So the test will be Marjorie Fair’s second record, or whichever one finds Slamka branching out and producing his own work. If it turns out that he doesn’t have a second Self-Help Serenade in him, I won’t be overly surprised. I will be depressed, though, because this album is pretty damn good. It’s a sterling example of how to make a remarkable record out of less than remarkable songs.

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Something Borrowed

I love the Cowboy Junkies, but I always kind of forget about them.

Since I started the online version of this column in late 2000, the Junkies have released two studio albums and two live documents, one with an excellent DVD, and I haven’t reviewed any of them. I’m not sure why that is, but I have a theory: the Junkies are such a low-key band that their records never really stand up and call attention to themselves. They have a quiet beauty about them that, unfortunately, sometimes just slips right past me.

That’s not to say that what they do isn’t memorable or engrossing. Margo Timmons, all by herself, is reason enough to buy all of their records – her smoky voice is full of mystery and feeling, and it manages to be the center of whatever the band is doing, despite her rarely taking it above a low mumble. The rest of the band, including Margo’s brothers Michael on guitar and Peter on drums, is similarly reserved, and the songs they write are almost always bare-bones, traditional-sounding things. The end result is either quietly captivating, if you like it, or lazy and boring, if you don’t.

I like it, or at least I like it well enough to own everything they’ve ever done, although I rarely pull their albums down off the shelf. When I’m not listening to the Junkies, I can’t think of many reasons why I like their work, but while one of their discs is playing, I can’t think of many reasons why I wouldn’t enjoy it. They’re a performance-based group, no doubt, and their best records have been the ones they’ve done quickly, playing live. Something about the way they play together casts an odd sort of spell, and even when they’re waltzing through the simplest three-chord folk song, I’m taken in.

Seventeen years ago, the Junkies camped out in an old church for a night and recorded what many still consider their best album, The Trinity Sessions. It was mostly composed of covers, and the band even scored a minor hit with Lou Reed’s “Sweet Jane.” I don’t think Trinity is their best, simply because over the years, the Timmonses have grown immensely as songwriters and record makers – parts of 2001’s Open, for example, are as creepy and moving as anything on Trinity. But there’s no doubting that the Junkies put their own distinctive stamp on every song they cover.

So why has it taken 17 years to try that experiment again? In our sequel-happy society, you would think that The Trinity Sessions II would have been a no-brainer, but to their credit, the Junkies conducted an idiosyncratic and original career from that point, rarely resting on laurels or slipping back into old tricks. That’s why I don’t mind that their new one, Early 21st Century Blues, is essentially a follow-up to Trinity – it was recorded quickly, played live, and it’s almost all covers.

It’s also a fascinating political statement from a band not known for them. The nine covers and two originals dissect war and its horrors from many different angles, and while the outer slipcase contains a painted peace sign, the actual front cover is a white-on-black quote from Timothy Findley’s book The Wars. Devotees of the band will recognize some of the usual suspects here (songs by Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen), but some of the choices are surprising, and all of the performances are terrific.

While Dylan’s “License to Kill” and the Grateful Dead staple “Two Soldiers” are done well, the album doesn’t really kick in until “December Skies,” the first original song. It’s here that the Junkies switch on the foreboding atmosphere that they do so well, electric guitars creeping along beneath Margo’s husky vocals, and they keep that minor-key tone going for most of the record. Springsteen’s “You’re Missing” is a devastating highlight, and the band strips George Harrison’s great “Isn’t It a Pity” down to the bone.

But the real surprise is hiding at track 10. What’s billed as a cover of “I Don’t Want to Be a Soldier,” one of John Lennon’s most embarrassingly forthright and repetitive songs, actually is a full-fledged folk-rap reinvention, complete with programmed drums and rhymes by a guy named Rebel. Here is the most openly political volley, with jabs at our “installed” president and the lies woven to justify his war. It’s actually pretty good, once you get over the shock of a Cowboy Junkies hip-hop song.

The Junkies conclude this record with a reading of U2’s “One,” which is quickly becoming that band’s most enduring standard. From Bono, it sounds specific, as if written to one person, but in this context, it’s universal, an impassioned cry for peace: “We’re one, but we’re not the same, we have to carry each other…” It’s a great capper on a stirring record, and while I don’t hold out hope that it will change anyone’s mind, I applaud the Junkies for taking this project on. It’s a surprising act of defiance from a band that many accuse of being too quiet, and I’m glad they made their voices heard.

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Something Belew

Get it? “Something Belew.” Heh. Credit to Dr. Tony Shore for that one. I was originally going to talk about some crappy album here, and call the segment “Something Blew,” but I liked Shore’s pun so much that I had to use it. I’ve been putting off buying the latest solo work from King Crimson’s Adrian Belew for a while now, and this gives me the perfect opportunity to check it out.

Belew is known as an experimental guitarist – you don’t come up with King Crimson by churning out power ballads – and while a lot of his solo stuff has been poppy and catchy, a lot more of it is dissonant and churning, and quite difficult for non-Crimson fans to get into. The more radical side of Belew is in the fore of his new project, a three-album set titled as three sides to the same record. Last year saw Side One, which found Belew jamming with Primus’ Les Claypool and Tool’s Danny Carey, as the trippiest power trio in the history of everything. That album had some beautiful moments, but flew off into atonality more than once.

And now here’s Side Two, a beast of a different color entirely. The whole thing is tricked out with electronic beats and textures, and a clarity of tone that was missing from Side One. It’s not necessarily better, but it is a more pleasant listen – you can hum most of these tunes, especially the spry “Face to Face,” and Belew rarely steps off the reservation into the stuff that makes my fillings hurt. “Asleep” is probably the closest to that Belew here, and it changes and morphs within itself often enough that it’s engaging anyway.

Side Two is mostly instrumental, with what lyrics there are inspired by the form of haiku – short and abstract. There’s a fair amount of odd filler here, too – “Happiness” is kind of useless, as is “Sex Nerve,” and “Then What” is damn annoying – and on a 33-minute album, that’s unfortunate. But here’s the thing – I get the impression that Belew is not considering Side Two a 33-minute album, but the second part of a 100-minute whole. I feel a little premature judging each of these records on their own without Side Three, which should be out this fall.

That’s the money-hungry genius behind this project, and part of the reason I can’t recommend it. It’s clear by this point that Belew is releasing everything he recorded during these sessions – and if he isn’t, I would hate to hear the tunes that didn’t make the cut – and he would have been better off with one consistent hour-long disc. Instead, we have three half-hour excursions, each in its own packaging, for full price. Belew fans are probably going nuts over everything here, and the good stuff on Side Two is certainly worth hearing, but I can’t help thinking that the three-record concept has a lot to do with the $40 or so you’ll have to pay to hear it all.

As I said, though, Crimson fans don’t care – they happily pay for dozens of live recordings and four-disc sets of rehearsals, just to experience Belew and Fripp jamming. In comparison, Side One and Side Two are polished, accomplished works, and Belew is undoubtedly a fantastic guitar player and producer, so if you’re planning on buying the whole trilogy (as I am, admittedly), I can’t blame you. I just wish there was more genius and less filler on these discs to justify their individual existences.

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You may kiss the bride. We’re done. Time for cake and dancing!

Next week, pure pop with the New Pornographers and the Click Five.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I first heard about My Date With Drew about two years ago. There was a brief mention in Entertainment Weekly or someplace about this guy who’d made a movie about his quest to meet Drew Barrymore, and I thought it sounded like a cute idea. And then I heard nothing about it again, and assumed it had fallen prey to the ravages of the Hollywood system. Ninety percent of the good ideas never seem to make it past the development stage, whereas it sometimes seems like producers snatch up any bad idea they can find, and the worse the idea, the better.

It turns out, My Date With Drew has been done for a couple of years, and has played to festival audiences since then, looking for a distributor. I heard about it again last month, from my friend Mike Lachance. As fate would have it, Mike knows Brian Herzlinger and his Drew Crew cohorts, and has been urging his friends to see the film. Happily, I complied this week, and I have to say, it’s a cool little flick. It’s also, in its small way, a pretty inspiring one.

Here’s the back story. Brian Herzlinger has had a crush on Drew Barrymore since both of them were in grade school, and he counts her among his inspirations to move to Los Angeles and pursue a film career. So here he is, broke and floundering, when he wins $1,100 on a game show. (The winning answer? “Drew Barrymore,” of course.) He figures he can spend the next month as he is now, or he can take that 1.1 grand and do something fascinating. He decides to give himself one month to get a date with Drew Barrymore, and to document the whole bizarre process.

Why one month? That’s the funny part. Herzlinger and his friends can’t afford a video camera, so they go to Circuit City and take advantage of their 30-day return policy. They buy a camera on credit, planning to return it 30 days later, hopefully with the movie completed. It’s that kind of weird ingenuity that powers the film, as Herzlinger tries every avenue available to him (and some that aren’t) to snag a date with Drew. Watching their increasingly desperate tactics is often hilarious, but never less than fun.

Whether or not you respond to My Date With Drew will depend on two things. First, you have to like Brian Herzlinger, since he’s in every scene, and he exposes his life and personality in great detail. I found him charming and funny, but I can see how some would find him irritating. Second, I think it helps to have a dream of your own, since that lends resonance to Herzlinger’s quest. On one level, Drew is a film about a regular guy who wants to meet a movie star, and makes it happen. On another, though, it’s the story of a regular guy who wants to be a movie star, and against even greater odds, he makes that happen, too. Brian and his film are easy to relate to, and by the end, you’re sharing in his dream, and pulling for it, and your own, to come true.

Check out the site here.

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My afternoon showing of Drew, for which I was the only attendee, was preceded by literally 20 minutes of trailers. I don’t mind that – I would sit through two hours of trailers, provided that some of them at least are for interesting films. This time, though, I suffered through sneak peeks at one painful-looking pseudo-comedy after another, full of groin kicks and forced jokes. That is, right up until the last one – my first big-screen look at Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown.

I am now jazzed beyond belief for this film.

I can’t explain my love for Cameron Crowe’s movies. It’s an intangible, non-quantifiable love. But here’s one way to put it, one that will undoubtedly kill all my credibility. You know that feeling you get after a particularly great, moving trailer? That goosebumpy, spine-shivery, bubbling, giggly sense of anticipation? Crowe is one of the only directors I have encountered that can extend the trailer feeling to his whole movie. He’s been off before – Singles and Vanilla Sky are certainly not his best – but when he’s on, he speaks right to that warm, beautiful center of people. I can’t imagine movies more in love with life than …Say Anything and Almost Famous, so grateful and generous and free of falsehood.

And it looks like Elizabethtown is another home run. It’s been a while since I’ve responded emotionally to a movie trailer, but I’m already in love with this film. If the movie is as heartfelt and funny as the preview, it will be my favorite of the year, hands down.

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Tribute albums are a bad idea.

That’s one of those universal truisms. I don’t know who came up with the idea of tribute records, but they’re an inherently strange concept: We will honor this band and their songs by taking obviously inferior cracks at performing those songs ourselves, even though the band’s catalog is, in most cases, readily available. They’re only useful as gateway drugs – fans of whatever pop-punk group is in the charts this month might try out a tribute because they’re on it, and through that purchase, they may get turned on to the honoree’s original albums.

But buying tribute albums expecting free-standing, engrossing listens in their own right is a fool’s game. Very often, the participants will have an overwhelming affection for the band being honored, and will attempt note-for-note covers that only highlight how much better the originals are. Either that, or the cover versions will so reinvent the originals, in an attempt to avoid that comparison, that they become unrecognizable, and then, what’s the point? I have bought a few good tributes here and there, but the lion’s share I have heard are pretty much useless.

With that in mind, though, I’m going to recommend Killer Queen, a self-explanatory tribute that just came out this week. There was no question that I was going to buy this – those who know me can attest that I am an enormous Queen fan. I have every album memorized, and I even wrote a massive, melodramatic farewell to Freddie Mercury when I was 18. My high school band recorded it with such a somber, self-serious attitude that I can’t help but think Mercury would have hated it to bits.

While a lot of attention was always lavished on Mercury’s flamboyant nature and stage presence, he deserves a lot more respect than he gets as a musician and songwriter. The Queen catalog is full of brilliant, difficult, melodic songs, and most of the best of them are Mercury’s. They were certainly over the top, campy, and dramatic, but the core of Queen was superb songs and arrangements. Their use of layered vocals and guitar choirs became their trademark, and they did that sort of thing so well that, listening to their stuff, you get no sense of just how hard it is to sing and play all those parts, especially over such tricky chords.

It’s no surprise that guitarist Brian May’s songs get nearly equal billing with Mercury’s on Killer Queen – they rock harder, and they’re easier to play. Los Lobos, for example, simply slam their way through his bluesy “Sleeping on the Sidewalk,” and Floridians Shinedown rock “Tie Your Mother Down” like they’ve been playing it for years. (Which they may have been.) The record closes with all-female folk-rockers Antigone Rising taking on “Fat Bottomed Girls,” a funny twist that is nevertheless played straight. Well, as straight as a song called “Fat Bottomed Girls” can be played, at any rate…

Mercury’s more popular numbers get workouts here, of course. Sum 41’s “Killer Queen” is amazing, simply because it sounds nothing like Sum 41. There are two takes on “Bohemian Rhapsody,” one by American Idol contestant Constantine M., and one by the Flaming Lips, and as much as I hate to praise anything that has to do with Simon Cowell, I like Constantine’s much better. First off, he can handle the vocal parts, and lead Lip Wayne Coyne can’t, at all. Second, the arrangement of “Bohemian Rhapsody” is nigh-on perfect just as it appeared on A Night at the Opera, and Constantine sticks closer to it. Still, neither of these versions can hold a candle to the original.

So why am I recommending this? Because hiding between the obvious choices are some genuine surprises, some new takes on forgotten favorites. Jason Mraz, for example, dances his way through “Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy,” one of Mercury’s best show tunes. Rooney does a smashing version of “Death on Two Legs,” even capping it with a snippet from “Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon.” Breaking Benjamin take “Who Wants to Live Forever,” one of my personal favorite May songs, and strip it of its orchestral colors, but not its melodic power. Even Be Your Own Pet’s punky slam through “Bicycle Race” is nifty.

There are missteps – Gavin DeGraw opens the record with a hoarse take on “We Are the Champions” that sounds anything but triumphant, and Josh Homme joins Eleven to slow down and all but ruin “Stone Cold Crazy.” But those are balanced out with winners like Jon Brion’s characteristically quirky version of “Play the Game,” and Joss Stone’s soulful rewrite of “Under Pressure.” Perhaps my favorite inclusion is Ingram Hill’s folksy, perfect read of “39,” a song that would have been thoroughly overlooked on most tribute records.

Most of all, though, this record just drips with love for Queen and their music, and since I have a fair portion of that myself, I respond to it in these versions. Is any of this essential listening? Of course not. But it’s a lot more fun than I expected, and if it gets even one Gavin DeGraw or Sum 41 fan to pick up some Queen albums, then I’m for it. I expected to agree with Killer Queen’s existence, but I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I do.

I have one quibble, and I’ve kept it until the end, so as not to spoil an otherwise positive review. The liner notes, in their apparent zeal to promote the new tour with Paul Rodgers and the continuing commercial viability of the band, refer to Mercury as Queen’s “original singer.” I’m sorry, but no way. He is their only singer – without Mercury, it’s not Queen, and now that he’s gone, the best thing May and company could do is lay the name to rest. Rodgers may try on Mercury’s spangled jumpsuits for this tour, but he will never, ever be Queen’s singer. No one else will, and even suggesting that Mercury’s place in the band is one that any other musician could simply step into is insulting.

They were great. For more than 20 years, they were great. Killer Queen and the current tour may give you some inkling about how great they were, but seriously – accept no substitutes. If you haven’t heard the Queen catalog, you owe it to yourself as a music fan to find out what all these artists on this tribute album are talking about.

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Quick apologies to Melissa Maxwell – she was looking forward to my take on the new Richard Thompson, as promised last week. I’m still absorbing it, and I should have a review ready to go next time. Also on the horizon, the Cowboy Junkies, the New Pornographers, Death Cab for Cutie and Joy Electric.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m not one for celebrity culture.

I watch a lot of movies, and I honestly couldn’t care less which movie star is sleeping with which other movie star, or which ones are getting divorced or having kids or converting each other to Scientology. It’s all about the work, not the personal lives of the artists to me – it’s the kind of attitude that lets me continue my Woody Allen fandom in blissful ignorance. Likewise, I listen to a lot of music, and I only care about the private lives of the musicians if they invite me to, by writing songs or albums about their relationships or their kids. But even then, it doesn’t matter – Trent Reznor claims to write about his personal pain, but he’s probably full of shit, and I don’t mind. He writes good songs.

There is one bizarre exception, though: I can’t seem to mention either Michael Penn or Aimee Mann without bringing up the other. It’s just a fascinating relationship to me – how often do two like-minded songwriters of the caliber of Penn and Mann get married, remain happy, and refuse the temptation to write songs about each other? They have so far spared us what could be a Buckingham/Nicks situation by keeping their private lives private. They play on each other’s albums, and they obviously push each other to keep writing great tunes.

This year, Mann and Penn have done something so interesting that it’s impossible not to mention them as a pair: they released his-and-hers concept albums. Mann led it off in May with her amazing The Forgotten Arm, the tale of a boxer who returns from war to a faltering relationship and a battle with alcohol. And now, here’s Penn with Mr. Hollywood Jr. 1947, his long-gestating fifth album, and surprise surprise – it’s conceptually based around people living and loving in post-war California. Penn’s record is not as tightly plotted as Mann’s, but both seem to have found themselves needing to invent characters and weave stories in order to keep writing their trademark sad songs. That’s right, they’re that happy together.

I’m just kidding, of course, but both albums are chock full of morose lyrics, supported by classic chamber-pop melodies. There is another similarity, too – after two underperforming albums on Epic, Penn has followed his wife’s example and started up his own label, Mimeograph. (Penn’s label is distributed by SpinArt.) The process of leaving the majors and setting up his own home may explain the long wait between albums – Penn’s last was MP4, in 2000, which came and went with barely a whimper. At least, I hope that’s what took up all the time, because there’s little evidence of that half-decade on Mr. Hollywood Jr.

I always hate having to write bad reviews of albums I have been eagerly anticipating, but Penn’s latest is sadly underwhelming. Here’s a guy who has made a name as an albums artist – every song on his first four records is good. March remains his most successful, thanks to his only hit, “No Myth,” but those who bought the album found a tone-setter for Penn’s career. Every album features winding melodies that take two or three listens to sink in, but once they do, they’re impossibly catchy, and they leave you wondering why you found them so impenetrable in the first place. His sound is guitar-driven, yet almost patchwork in the way it makes room for drum loops, retro-sounding keyboards and harmonies, shifting on a dime.

Perhaps he considered such consistency a rut, but Hollywood is Penn’s spottiest recording to date. It’s doubly unfortunate when you consider that the album is a mere 38 minutes long, counting the unlisted acoustic bonus track. It starts off strong – the first four songs, in fact, are classic Michael Penn. “Walter Reed” is a slow builder, but the deceptively jaunty chorus leads to the hook line, “Every good thing I had abandoned me.” Hummable melodies supporting lyrics full of misery is a Penn (and Mann, for that matter) trademark, and he carries it through the sad goodbye of “Denton Road,” the broken hearts of “Room 712, The Apache” and the deceptions of “Pretending.”

At this point in my first listen-through, I admit that I was clearing space on my top 10 list for this record. But with track five, Mr. Hollywood Jr. just goes off the rails, and only rarely does it right itself. While the packaging may promise 12 new Michael Penn songs, three of those listed tracks are minute-long interludes, and they’re almost one right after the other. “The Television Set Waltz,” at least, has notes and a melody, but “The Transistor” and “18 September” (the date the Department of Defense was formed in 1947) are formless noise. The latter two are separated by “Mary Lynn,” an experiment in repetition and drum loops that just doesn’t work.

So all of a sudden, we’re on track nine, the start of a three-song stretch that can best be described as achingly average. There’s nothing wrong with “You Know How,” but there’s nothing right with it, either. It’s perhaps the first Michael Penn song I have heard that just lays there. “A Bad Sign” sounds like it could have been written for Sheryl Crow. “O.K.” is certainly better, but it takes until “On Automatic” for the ship to stop taking on water. That song is another classic, with terrific glimmer-of-hope lyrics and driving acoustic guitars. Less than three minutes later, it’s over, and so is the album, save for a hidden track called “Millionaire” that sounds like a home demo.

Granted, I may need to give this album a few more listens before declaring it a misfire. Also granted, there are moments of brilliance here that rival anything Michael Penn has done in the past. The sound is wonderfully retro all the way through, and the lyrics are full of Penn’s usual wordplay. (“When you think he likes you then you like the way he thinks,” from “You Know How,” is a typical example.) But no other album of his has fallen this flat for me. Regardless of the five-year wait, I wish Penn had taken a little more time on this one, because what’s here is an EP of great stuff and a depressing amount of half-baked filler.

I will also admit a certain level of expectation playing into my reaction. Michael Penn’s throwaway songs would exponentially enrich the catalogs of most other working musicians – he’s one of the best American songwriters, and hearing him rely on simple chords and melodies is depressing to me. I’m sure many will listen to Mr. Hollywood Jr. and find nothing to complain about. For me, though, five years is a long time, and this album should have been a lot better, or at least a lot more consistent. Penn originally announced this record as part one, with a second half coming soon, and I hope that’s still in the cards, because the Michael Penn I know and love is capable of more and better than just this in five years.

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I have the same problem with Bob Mould.

The guy’s a legend, thanks to his groundbreaking run with Husker Du in the ‘80s and, to a lesser degree, his power-pop streak with Sugar in the ‘90s. He knows his way around a melody, and he all but redefined the sound of alternative-rock guitar (I hate phrases like that), bringing a stinging depth to his punky pop tunes. Consistency is also a Mould hallmark – after Husker Du broke up, Mould released two fantastic solo records (Workbook and Black Sheets of Rain), then formed Sugar, his most successful project.

And then, somehow, it all fell apart. Mould has had four solo albums since Sugar’s demise, and only one of them (the self-titled effort from 1996) has been worthy of his legacy. He appears to have grown tired of the guitar-rock sound he perfected and explored, as evidenced by the electronics and dance beats of Modulate, his unfortunate 2002 effort. It’s not that I’m against Mould dabbling in electronic textures, but the album simply didn’t work – the songs and their production clashed.

Mould has returned to guitars on Body of Song, his sixth solo album and his first in three years, but the depressing lack of inspiration continues. Mould will never be my favorite songwriter, but he’s better than the simple nothings that populate this record. Sadly, he’s also not yet given up his obsession with dance music, as evidenced by “(Shine Your) Light Love Hope,” an experiment that fails so completely that it’s a glaring embarrassment. It’s essentially one verse, repeated for five minutes in a Cher-like vocoder voice while the drums thump and flail ineffectually. Let’s just say it’s not exactly “Hoover Dam.”

But I do wonder if I would like this record had it come from a guy not enshrined in the pop-rock pantheon. How much of my dislike of “Light Love Hope” is really me wishing he would write something like Zen Arcade again? Am I holding Bob Mould back? If he were not tied to his past, would he be able to really stretch out and make something mindblowing? It’s not like Body of Song is a bad record, for the most part, it’s just not up to par with Mould’s work from the ‘80s and ‘90s. Is that a fair comparison anymore? Can Mould be expected to compete with his 22-year-old self, or even his 32-year-old self?

Taken on its own, Body of Song has some decent bits and some less decent bits, and is all in all pretty average. Good stuff includes “Always Tomorrow,” a slinky, bass-driven nightmare, and “Underneath Days,” a minor-key monster. “Days of Rain” is a Mike Roe-style ballad that fares better than the other torch song, the goopy “High Fidelity.” The record ends with a pair of epics – the dismissible “Gauze of Friendship” (which actually includes the line, “Nothing matters when hearts go pitter-patter”), and “Beating Heart the Prize,” a thundering steamroller of a thing that closes Body of Song convincingly.

It’s about a B-minus, if I were to assign letter grades, and if it weren’t an album by someone with such a vast and influential catalog behind him, I would leave it at that. Is it fair to dock points from Mould for not producing another Candy Apple Grey or Copper Blue? It’s complicated, since the legacy is probably the only reason one would anticipate buying Body of Song. It’s not just an album, it’s the New Bob Mould Album, and if he’s willing to take the sales his name will bring in, he should be ready for the comparisons with his best work. The Rolling Stones, for example, should be prepared for A Bigger Bang to be held up next to Exile on Main Street, a contest the new record has no hope of winning.

Is it fair? Probably not, but there it is. Mould can’t escape the comparisons, he can only make the records he wants to make and hope that people don’t expect masterpieces each time out. So let’s do this comparison thing right. Body of Song is not nearly as good as Mould’s work with Husker Du. It is also not as good as his run with Sugar, or his first two solo albums. However, it does slide nicely into his latter-day catalog, which shines a little less brightly than any of his other music. It’s a valiant effort to steer his electronics obsession into safer, more guitar-driven waters, but it lacks inspiration, and has no defining spark. If you’ve liked what Bob Mould has done for the last decade, you will like this. If you’re looking for something on par with his golden age, keep looking. Body of Song is not it.

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Next week, probably Richard Thompson, unless something more exciting occurs to me.

See you in line Tuesday morning.