Serenity Now!

My admiration for Joss Whedon is legendary, so I have to urge everyone reading this to go see Serenity this weekend. If you do not share my Whedon-love, then please ignore the next few paragraphs. The rest of the column is Whedon-free, and full of record reviews of various types and lengths, sure to please anyone. Don’t let me keep you from it.

But if you don’t mind a little idol worship, here we go. Serenity is Whedon’s directorial debut, his first feature film, and it shouldn’t exist. In fact, until the opening credits roll during my screening Friday night, I will be wary of actually believing it does, for fear of jinxing it. I can honestly see in my mind’s eye an army of Fox executives, barging their way into theaters all across America, determined to shitcan this film like they cancelled the series that inspired it.

Serenity is the Firefly movie, the continuation of Whedon’s excellent Fox TV series. Now, movies get made from TV series all the time, so that’s nothing special, but this is the first one I can think of derived from a show that was canned after 11 episodes for low ratings. Fox dropped the ball on Firefly so badly that I wouldn’t be surprised to find out they were taking their cues from Michael Brown. They aired the pilot last, showed the second episode first, and were somehow surprised when people couldn’t follow the story. They gave it no promotion, watched it wither, and killed it halfway through the season, with three episodes unaired.

But if they were surprised at the ratings, they must have had strokes when the DVD set came out. First, the fans demanded a complete series set, which was amazing anyway, but then they bought it in such incredible numbers that Fox greenlit a feature film. That’s right, they ended up giving Whedon a bigger budget, more time, and more creative control to develop a property they’d already cancelled, because the fans demanded it. That, I have to say, kicks all kinds of ass.

Hopefully, the film does, too. Some will be turned off because it looks like science fiction, and I can’t deny that it is – it’s set on a spaceship, after all. But listen, I hate science fiction, and I loved Firefly. Why? Because it’s more about people, and less about big ideas. Sci-fi so often concentrates on the latter at the expense of the former, and while there are big ideas here – it’s an outer-space western, complete with six-guns and horses and no aliens – the people are the most important element. I don’t care about Captain Picard, or Riddick, or Will Smith’s character from I, Robot. But I care about Malcolm Reynolds, and about River Tam, and about what Mal will do to keep River safe. I care about the people, and that’s what matters to me.

What I have seen of Serenity has been terrific, and advance reports are all positive. Fox has held about 75 preview screenings of this thing, a testament to the faith they have in the movie – if they hated it, they’d keep it under wraps until the first week. It sounds like Whedon has pulled it off. And that, more than anything, is the reason I am excited to see it, and excited to recommend it – when Joss Whedon is on, writing and directing at full strength, it’s something to behold. Hopefully movies will treat him and Firefly better than television has.

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Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad

Ryan Adams writes an awful lot of songs. You’d think a greater percentage of them would be stinkers.

He’s always been prolific, but 2005 is turning out to be a record-breaker for him. Just as I’m getting comfortable with Cold Roses, his double album from May and a serious contender for the top 10 list, he’s back with Jacksonville City Nights, his second of a planned three records this year, and it’s pretty wonderful as well. Here are 14 more Adams songs to join Roses’ 18, and none of them suck.

Jacksonville City Nights is credited to Ryan Adams and the Cardinals again, and one would be forgiven for thinking that perhaps these songs are the cast-offs from Roses, the ones not good enough for the opening salvo. One listen should dispel that notion – they are very different records. Where Roses could be considered country-rock, with its piercing electric guitars and borderline Neil Young approach, Nights is absolute country, all acoustics and pedal steels and weepy, twangy vocals. This is classic, Willie Nelson-style, Grand Ole Opry stuff.

And Adams absolutely excels at this sort of thing. Nights is full of tears-in-my-beer ballads, and every one of them sounds like a vintage gem. Once again, his gift for melody serves him well – listen to the chorus of “The End,” perversely sequenced second, for a sterling example. It’s a loping country waltz, but the catapulting vocal line elevates it. Adams duets with Norah Jones on “Dear John,” a decent little piano-driven number, and hearing Jones let her hair down and join in with sloppy harmonies is revelatory. Adams actually takes the high notes more often than not.

But full credit must go to the extraordinary band Adams has assembled. They were very good on Cold Roses, but here they are superb. The album sounds like it was recorded with a single mike, everyone standing around it and playing, and even though that’s not the case, the ambience is extraordinary. Catherine Popper sticks to acoustic stand-up bass, with its unmistakable thump, and John Graboff’s pedal steel gets a workout on nearly every song. The band just sounds like it’s lived in the skins of these songs, like someone rolled tape on a phenomenal rehearsal.

Hand to God, nothing here sucks. Nights ends with three of its best tracks, respectively the 31st, 32nd and 33rd Adams songs of the year, and he shows no signs of running out of gas. “PA” is a delicate ghost story, the wonderfully titled “Withering Heights” is perhaps the album’s best ballad, and “Don’t Fail Me Now” is a perfect ramshackle epic of a closer. Jacksonville City Nights is the sound of Ryan Adams doing what he does best, and while it’s not an out-of-the-box stunner like Cold Roses, it is a solid, swell little album.

Adams’ third outing of the year, 29, is scheduled for November 1, and if it closes out the trilogy with the same standard of quality, he will have accomplished quite a feat. Lost Highway is taking something of a risk, flooding the market with Adams material, but so far, it’s paying off, artistically speaking. If they’re all going to be this good, then I say let the man make as many records as he wants.

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X For the Win

I’m going to get in trouble with Doug Van Pelt for this one, but I haven’t really enjoyed a King’s X album in more than a decade.

When the Texas Three started out, they were unlike anyone else – heavy but melodic, atmospheric yet driving, mystical yet grounded. Their first four albums are pretty much perfect, one of the best examples of musicians forging their own sound. They had jackhammer riffs, and all three guys could thrash out with the best of them, but they also had an unerring sense of space, with full harmonies and otherworldly guitars. Other bands idolized them, and they even had a couple of minor hits with “Over My Head” and “It’s Love.”

And then it all went wrong. Their fifth album, Dogman, de-emphasized the harmonies and brought the power. It was their last really great album – everything since has felt half-hearted, as if the band forgot what made them special. You can only ignore your own best traits for so long before you actually stop being special, and the albums King’s X made for Metal Blade over the last 10 years are frustratingly typical. I like all of them, in one way or another, but it’s better for me if I consider them a new band, with Dogman the debut, Ear Candy the disappointing follow-up, and everything since then just one pretty good rock album after another.

The problem has been one of focus, I think. Since signing with Metal Blade in 1997, the band has produced its own albums in its own home studio, and with no one to push them, they didn’t bother to excel. The various side projects didn’t really help, especially since none of them were as good as King’s X could be – it was like they had denied that their sum was greater than their parts. Live, they were still a force to be reckoned with, as their concert album of last year proves, but in the studio they slacked off, content to just fill tape. They needed a producer.

Nothing bears that theory out like their new album, Ogre Tones. (Yeah, take a second and deal with that title.) They enlisted Michael Wagener, known for his work with ‘80s bands of every stripe, and with an outside force bringing out their strengths, they’ve made their best album since Dogman, easily. The riffs are here, of course, but the harmonies are back, the textures are in full effect, and the melodies are at near-classic levels. In short, they sound like King’s X again, and it’s about damn time.

They seem to know it, too. Nothing on Ogre Tones sounds rote. It’s like they’re discovering how to be a great band again. The playing is unassailable, as always – don’t trust anyone who doesn’t vote for Doug Pinnick and Jerry Gaskill in those Best Bassist and Best Drummer polls in Metal Edge magazine, and Ty Tabor knows ways to make his guitar sing and sigh that most of the six-stringers in lesser bands will never learn. But on recent albums, they have been excellent players as a matter of course, whereas here they sound invigorated, positively thrilled to be as good as they are.

The lyrics reflect this as well. King’s X has always been a spiritual band, but somewhere around 1992, they lost the faith, and the lyrics since then have been earthbound to the point of despair. Ogre Tones finds lyricists Pinnick and Tabor searching, reaching out again, and it’s a joyful thing. Granted, some bitterness remains, but this is an album that juxtaposes a sarcastic rant like “Freedom” with a genuine question to God like “Get Away.” The songs are magical again, too. “Fly” is a classic, reminiscent of “It’s Love” with its sustained three-part vocal chorus, and even something with the uninspiring title of “Mudd” is better than you’d think. “Honesty” is the first great King’s X ballad since “The Difference,” all acoustics and glorious harmonies. But the highlight is Tabor’s long, liquid mercury solo on “Sooner or Later” – man, I missed that sound.

I am not sure why they decided to toss the album into a ditch in its final stretch. Ogre Tones ends with a re-recording of “Goldilox,” a song from 1986, and a three-minute noise-and-sample party called “Bam.” It would have been a much stronger conclusion without either track, especially since “Goldilox” remains essentially unchanged from its original version.

But that and the title are the only examples I can find of the apathy that has plagued King’s X for far too long. Ogre Tones is the comeback they needed, a shot in the arm to a faltering career, and the best King’s X album since my high school days. It is such a relief to really enjoy an album by these guys again – they really are unlike any other rock band on the planet, and I’m glad they’ve started to believe that again.

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Reinventing the Wheel

My memory erodes with each passing year, so I am not certain who first played Catherine Wheel for me. It could easily have been Chris L’Etoile, who waxed ecstatic about “Black Metallic” back in the days of shoegazers. It could also have been Marc Zeoli, who brought a copy of Chrome with him to our dorm at St. Joseph’s College. Either way, I owe a debt to someone, because Catherine Wheel was a great band.

They started as feedback-loving My Bloody Valentine disciples with a well-developed sense of British melody, and Chrome stands as one of the best records of that period I have heard, all swirling thunder and underwater atmosphere. They turned more earthy on Happy Days, and stayed that way, but before they finally went to sleep, they did release a masterpiece called Adam and Eve. A more acoustic, emotional record than they had made before, Adam and Eve is just wonderful, rendering their swan song, Wishville, all the more disappointing.

Not that it was buried before, but the acoustic bent of Adam and Eve brought one of Catherine Wheel’s most potent features to the fore: the voice of Rob Dickinson. His tenor is deep and penetrating, bringing even the lamest songs (and there were some lame ones on Wishville) to a remarkable level. Five years after the band’s demise, here is Dickinson with his solo debut, Fresh Wine for the Horses, and it continues the acoustic theme admirably. The focus is on his chilling voice, and true to form, it levitates these little pop songs into orbit.

Fresh Wine’s first half is acoustic pop, far removed from the expansive sound of Catherine Wheel, and as such it’s a little disappointing at first. It’s a grower, though. The opening track, “My Name is Love,” is astoundingly simple, but when Dickinson launches into the title phrase in the chorus, it’s unstoppable. “The Night” is similarly stripped down, but the smoky reverb and Dickinson’s self-harmonizing keeps it from Bruce Springsteen territory. He includes a brief piano-vocal cover of Warren Zevon’s “Mutineer,” rescuing the song from the cheesy synthesizers of the original version.

Things do get more Catherine Wheel-esque as the album progresses, which makes sense – several of the tracks in the second half are refugees from that band’s final writing sessions. Oddly, though, the more airy, organ-inflected tunes are less memorable than the straightforward ones. While the electric guitar slammers are sweet, especially “Handsome” and “Bathe Away,” the meandering bore “Don’t Change” shouldn’t have been included. Closer “Towering and Flowering” lives up to both adjectives, though, bringing the record to a crashing conclusion.

Dickinson seems torn here between continuing down the Catherine Wheel path and reinventing himself as a folky pop singer, and as a consequence, Fresh Wine doesn’t fully commit to either. Its second half feels disassociated from its first, as if he appended some leftovers to an EP of a sound in progress. Still, it’s good to hear his voice again, and if he scores a minor hit with “My Name is Love,” I won’t be surprised. We may have to wait until his follow-up to see which direction Dickinson’s solo career will ultimately take, but as a first act, Fresh Wine is decent enough.

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No Language in Our Lungs

Which brings us to Sigur Ros.

I am never sure what to say about Iceland’s best band. In fact, I probably shouldn’t even say that – for all I know, they’re Iceland’s only band. Last time I weighed in on one of their floaty masterpieces, I remarked that Sigur handily empties the reviewer’s bag of tricks – there are no English language lyrics to analyze, no liner notes to parse, no clever references to pick up on. Last time, they didn’t even include album or song titles – most people, myself included, called the album ( ), after the cutout shape on its cover. The only words included in the CD booklet were Sigur and Ros, yet the band swore the album was not self-titled. What else could we do?

They’ve graciously thrown us a bone this time: their fourth album is called Takk, which means “thanks” in Icelandic. They’ve also decided to dump their made-up Hopelandic language and sing entirely in their native tongue, but unless you speak the dialect, I dare you to notice the difference. For all intents and purposes, this is just another beautiful Sigur Ros record, with all the standard hallmarks. The instrumentation is otherworldly, the vocals are strange and processed, the melodies are big and bold. It is background music for sunrise on Venus, and it sounds like nothing else in the world.

With only other Sigur Ros albums left as a fair comparison, I can say that Takk is perhaps this band’s most upbeat and energetic recording. Many songs are succinct by their standards, with several clocking in under six minutes, and they trim their tendency to meander. Songs like “Hoppipolla” get right to the heart of things, bringing up the strings and horns early so they can be in and out in four and a half minutes. That’s not to say there aren’t epics here – “Se Lest” drifts lazily for five of its nine minutes before slipping into a brassy waltz, and “Milano” extends its slow build over a dreamlike 10 minutes.

But what does it sound like? I’m kind of at a loss. There are pianos, guitars, drums and strings here, but somehow Sigur combines them in ways that sound utterly alien. “Saeglopur” would be a piano-led pop song with Beach Boys harmonies, if it hadn’t been recorded in the Negative Zone, and “Gong” is a creepy guitar-and-brush-drums wonder that would be Radiohead if the guys in Radiohead a) still wrote good songs, and b) were all from Pluto. I can easily imagine “Andvari” with lyrics about some poor schmuck and his broken heart, with its lovely clean guitar and extended string coda, and can picture it as the closing song of a sweet movie. It’s almost enough to make you think you’re listening to humans making music, but then “Svo Hijott” comes in, with its widescreen deserts-of-Mars feel, and you’re back in uncharted territory.

I don’t know what else I can tell you. Sigur Ros sounds like the lost dreams of an alien civilization buried for a thousand years – it’s foreboding and sad, and you don’t know why it affects you, but it does. Takk is just another superb Sigur Ros album, distant yet surprisingly accessible, and fully worthy of its beautiful packaging. I have no idea what they’re singing about, but it doesn’t matter. Music this chillingly lovely doesn’t need to use my language to speak to me.

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Slight Return

Next week, an examination of three female artists in the throes of reinvention. Go see Serenity, and we’ll meet back next week and compare notes.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

We start with a shout-out this week.

Mike Lachance has long been my most famous friend, having worked with DreamWorks Animation on the concepts and stories for Shrek 2 and Shark Tale, among other projects. But on October 7, Mike makes the jump from behind-the-scenes guru to name-in-the-credits artist. If you go see the Wallace and Gromit movie, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, you’ll be treated to a 10-minute short starring the super-spy penguins from Madagascar, written by Mike.

This is a big deal – Mike recently left the security of his job at DreamWorks to ply his trade as a freelance writer, and this is his first nationally released work. I’m also quite glad that the short is premiering in front of a movie I wanted to see anyway, since I’d have hated to spend $9 to go see a 10-minute mini-movie and leave before the feature, but I’d have done it anyway. The Wallace and Gromit movie is going to be really good, and I get the added bonus of seeing Mike’s name in three-foot-high letters.

Anyway, he spells it out in his always-entertaining blog. (Scroll past the Lord of War review.) Just wanted to spread the word, and say congrats.

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I am not a trendy person.

Ask anyone who knows me. I have had the same basic fashion sense (meaning none) since grade school. My hairstyle rarely changes, and hasn’t since high school, not because I like what I have, but because I am too indifferent to do anything else with it. It took me until last December to jump on the cell phone bandwagon, after it became horribly apparent that I would not be considered a responsible adult without one. I couldn’t care less about the latest cars, video games, video games about cars, or cars with built-in video game consoles.

Still, the part of my brain that’s reserved for full-time music criticism is constantly worried about trends, and about not appearing tied to them. I don’t know why that is, exactly. I respond negatively to tidal waves of hype, and often I don’t even care about a new band until their third album, after the overwhelming buzz has died down. (Or, as in Coldplay’s case, not.) For example, I’m coming around on Franz Ferdinand, but I found the legions of fans and critics prostrating themselves before this semi-interesting party-rock band kind of puzzling, and all sorts of irritating.

So I try not to get caught up in it. I let the whole ‘80s new wave revival movement pass me by – I care not at all about the Killers, the Bravery, or any of their ilk until they can show me that they’re worth my time. And I do tend to lump all the riders on a certain bandwagon together, though I know I shouldn’t – the Hives, the Vines, the White Stripes and the Strokes will always be parts of the same garage-rock mess to me, and it takes some effort to separate each one out and consider them as individual bands, as I did with the Stripes recently.

But isn’t disregarding trends, in and of itself, a trend? It’s at least a pattern of behavior, which makes me suspicious. Do I really dislike the Killers, or just the wave they rode in on? These are the questions that keep me up at night, examining and re-examining my motives and prejudices. It’s somehow worse when I really like something that legions of others have embraced, especially if it seems like the next big thing. As much as I don’t want to disregard trends out of hand, I also don’t want to jump aboard them if I don’t really believe in the music.

At a certain point, though, you have to say the hell with it, and like what you like. This week’s review subject is a good case in point – it’s Death Cab for Cutie’s new one, Plans. After a couple of listens, it just doesn’t matter at all that Death Cab is Seth Cohen’s favorite band on The O.C., or that every cultural prognosticator with an internet connection is calling them the voice of the Garden State generation. The trappings of scene and society don’t mean a thing, the music does, and the music on this record is absolutely marvelous.

Plans is Death Cab’s fourth album, and their first for a major label, as if the too-cool-for-school types needed another reason to hate it. It comes on the heels of not just the band’s most acclaimed album, Transatlanticism, but of the astounding success of singer Ben Gibbard’s side project, the Postal Service. Even if you think you haven’t heard a Postal Service song, you probably have – their tunes have been used in commercials and as television themes. If Death Cab wanted to play it safe, they could have made an album full of electronic overtones and trippy beats, like the Postal Service record. Or, they could have cloned Transatlanticism, with its peals of feedback and flowing peaks and valleys.

They didn’t do either one. Plans is, on first listen, a subdued, underwhelming affair, full of slow songs and pianos. In an age of ever-expanding epics and ambition, it clocks in at a modest 44:19. Their contract with Atlantic Records allowed them full control, and they retained their own guitarist, Chris Walla, as producer. This is exactly the album they wanted to make, and they used their major-label money to produce something tiny and intimate. If they are the new R.E.M., as many have said, then Plans is their Automatic for the People.

Over time, Plans reveals itself as a breathtakingly emotional song cycle about death and disconnection, but it’s wide-eyed and hopeful, earnest and beautiful. Plans is about taking moments, about overcoming the oceans that divide us, and about the sad wonder of losing everything. Its small scope is perfect for the infinitesimal snapshots it captures. There is nothing detached about it – Gibbard and company have written an album about connecting people that strives, every second, to connect with the listener.

I have liked Death Cab before, but none of their other albums does it for me like this one does. Gibbard opens himself here like he never has – a lot of attention is paid to his high, unmistakable voice, but he is a superb lyricist, and he tackles big themes here with specific sketches. One of the record’s standouts is “I Will Follow You Into the Dark,” performed by Gibbard and his acoustic and nothing else. It is the most devastating love song I have heard in years, and it encapsulates the theme of the album: “Should heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied, illuminate the ‘no’s on their vacancy signs, if there’s no one beside you when your soul embarks, then I will follow you into the dark…”

Plans develops that theme with songs about loneliness and isolation. “Different Names for the Same Thing” catches up with a man on a train, riding somewhere but not caring where he ends up, and the song ironically maps a journey from plaintive piano to swirling winds of guitar. “Your Heart is an Empty Room” pirouettes on the line, “Out on the street are so many possibilities to not be alone,” a theme that continues into “Someday You Will Be Loved,” with its martial rhythm and terrific bass line.

But the heart of the album lies in its final third. The glorious “What Sarah Said” is an epic in miniature, rising and falling with emotion as it details the thoughts of a terminal patient. “Every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time,” Gibbard sings, and later he brings the twin themes of death and disconnection together: “Each descending peak on the LCD took you a little farther away from me.” It is the thudding reality that counterpoints the fantastical promise in “I Will Follow You Into the Dark,” its protagonist wondering aloud, “Who’s going to watch you die?” I read that as a selfish sentiment mis-stated the first time, as if he meant to say, “Who’s going to watch me die,” but it clicked on repeat listens that he’s expressing his love: When I’m gone, who will watch you die, like you’re watching me right now?

“Brothers on a Hotel Bed” imagines old age, in contrast, its simple piano figure supporting a song about old lovers who have grown apart. Life is fleeting, time is the enemy, and its very ephemeral nature increases our need to connect with those around us, lest we live endless lives, aching to be loved even by those closest to us. It’s an amazing song anyway, but after “What Sarah Said,” it’s surprisingly powerful. The album concludes with “Stable Song,” an ode to choosing life, to overcoming: “The gift of memory is an awful curse, with age it just gets much worse, but I don’t mind…” Gibbard all but pleads, “Give us our measly sum,” and it recalls all the measly sums he has described on Plans, and how they’re all worth it.

This album, I can tell, is going to be like Duncan Sheik’s Phantom Moon, from four years ago. I love it, more than I expected to, but I won’t be able to explain it or convey that love to others. Many will hear a simple little collection of ditties, a disappointing major label debut, a trendy emo-pop grab at a demographic. I can’t worry about that. I adore this record – in a year already crowded with favorites, it has captured a piece of me, struck a chord deep within me. It’s an album to grow old with, one that will have even deeper resonance 40 years from now, when I will likely have lived at least one of the lives described in its lyrics. There are so many possibilities to not be alone.

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That’s all I have time for this week. I’m still drowning in work, which is an unqualified good thing, but it leaves me with little listening and writing time. I wanted to get to Rob Dickinson and Sigur Ros this week as well, but alas…

Next week, there are 12 or so new records I could possibly review. Who knows what I’ll do?

See you in line Tuesday morning.

This week has just flown away from me.

I am inundated with work, not that I’m complaining about that, and feeling a little under the weather. It doesn’t help, of course, that the weather I’m under is crappy, rainy and depressing. I’m always exhausted on rainy days, for some reason, no matter how much sleep and exercise I get, so the last four dreary, cloud-covered 24-hour mope-throughs have found me dragging.

Speaking of depressing, the television season has started up again. I have seen literally no new show announcements that make me want to watch the shows. I have even seen the complete first episode of My Name is Earl, thanks to Entertainment Weekly, and though it is easily the best-looking new show of the fall season, it’s still not fantastic enough to get me to watch. Jason Lee is a hoot as redneck karma chameleon Earl, and Ethan Suplee is even better as his amoral brother, but it’s not as good as everyone says it is.

Besides, it’s on opposite Gilmore Girls, which is every bit as good as everyone says it is. On top of its other achievements, which include being the most naturally warm-hearted and sharply written show on the air, Gilmore has done something recently that I have never seen a show do as well – the writers solved the will-they-or-won’t-they by putting Luke and Lorelai together, and rather than killing it, it’s made the show better. Who cares if I can literally feel my estrogen levels rising as I watch, or that the DVD sets look like feminine hygiene product commercials. It’s the best show on television, bar none.

So I will watch Gilmore, and I will watch House because the writing is amazing and Hugh Laurie deserves his Emmy nominations, and I will watch Lost because it remains the most captivating mystery on television. And that’s it. The best thing about the rest of the fall schedule is that it will allow me to catch up on my reading.

Oh, and my listening, too. We are in the midst of the four biggest new music weeks of the year, a veritable pile of interesting stuff, most of which I hope to cover in this space. I won’t be able to talk about all of it, though, so I may interject here and there with bullet-point recommendations. For instance, I doubt I’ll get to the Thumbsucker soundtrack anytime soon, so I’ll tell you now that it’s good – it features the final two songs Elliott Smith ever recorded, and a bunch of smaller pieces by the Polyphonic Spree. The Spree stuff is typical (except for the 30-minute droning loop called “Acceptance”), and the Smith songs are gorgeous, particularly his cover of Big Star’s “Thirteen.”

Expect more mini-reviews in the future. Now, on with the show.

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For many music fans, it’s come to be known as the Great Debate.

The Beatles vs. the Stones.

Pretty much all of pop music can be divided into those two camps – the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The Stones are the swagger, the blues, the raunch, the abandon, while their Liverpool cousins are the melody, the art, the drama, the emotional core. The Stones are trashy, the Beatles are twee, and which one you like better says volumes about your personality as a listener. Most everyone likes them both, of course, but most everyone has a preference, too.

The temptation is there to consider the Beatles-Stones division the difference between rock and pop, but that’s a little simplistic. The Beatles started out as a great rock band, albeit one with more of an interest in sweeping melodies, and the Stones have done many songs that can be considered pop music. No, to me, it’s really the difference between attitude and craft. The Stones have always concentrated on the former, turning a cocksure strut into a band personality, while the Beatles strove to better their skill each time out, to the point of not even playing as a live band after 1966.

Their albums reflect this. Stones records are barnburners, based on simple blues riffs and melodies, but designed, for the most part, to tear the roof off the joint. They strive for simplicity, actually – the best Stones albums dispense with anything that gets in the way of rocking, including tricky chord progressions and bridges. Three chords, repeat, give Keith the solo space, and it’s done. The Beatles, on the other hand, worked tirelessly to fill their records with sounds and melodies no one had ever heard. While the Stones were usually a sure bet for solid rock ‘n’ roll, you never knew what you were going to get with a Beatles album. They were always reinventing and pushing forward.

There is one other essential difference, of course – the Beatles broke up in 1970, while the Stones are still going. It’s debatable which entity has provided the most diminishing returns in the past 30 years, though, what with Paul McCartney’s increasingly piffle-stuffed solo career. In fact, each of the Beatles has tarnished the band’s legacy with less-than-great solo work – Harrison’s Gone Troppo, for instance, or Lennon’s inexplicable work with Yoko Ono, or anything by Ringo. The Stones have sucked for nearly as long, too, with uninspired records like Dirty Work and Steel Wheels to their name, and Mick Jagger has proven numerous times that he’s even worse on his own.

But the influence of both bands’ golden ages cannot be overstated. What’s in question is the continuing viability of the Stones as a band, and the surviving Beatles as artists. Astonishingly, though, both the Stones and Paul McCartney have just released late-career-defining albums, the best from each entity in decades, and even better, the records each encapsulate the influential qualities, the reasons Jagger, Richards and McCartney are revered.

When I worked at Face Magazine, I had a running argument with editor man Bennie Green. Well, I had several running arguments with Bennie, but this one was somehow more crucial – his stance was that as long as the Rolling Stones are still playing, they are the greatest rock band in the world. No matter how much evidence I could throw at him to demonstrate that the Stones have sucked since the ‘70s, he would not be swayed. He rejected any other contenders to the throne, without even a thought. Now, I love Bennie, but I could not let that contention rest.

He’s got the last laugh, though, because the Stones’ 17th album, A Bigger Bang, is the first one in 30 years that makes his case. It is, in my estimation, the first Stones album to be released while I have been alive that is worth listening to more than once. With a combined age of over 200 years, the Stones have made a record here that, comparatively speaking, makes other, younger bands sound ready for the nursing home. This thing is a stomper, the first Stones album since Some Girls, perhaps, that can rank with the classic stuff.

Now, I am not a Rolling Stones fan – I come down on the Beatles side of the debate more often than not, although I do love a good rock ‘n’ roll record. A Bigger Bang is a good rock ‘n’ roll record, one which only suffers because of its length – 16 songs, 64 minutes. The changes are not immediately apparent – the band stuck with Don Was, who also produced the travesty known as Bridges to Babylon, and worked in much the same way. But the difference is palpable. They sound like a band, like four guys jamming in a room, for much of this album, and it’s been some time since Charlie Watts’ drumming has snapped like this, or since Richards’ guitar has had quite this much bite.

The Stones only run into difficulty when they try to be diverse. They’re a rock band, plain and simple, and reggae-funk like “Rain Falls Down” doesn’t suit them as well as it could. Similarly, their ballads have always been their downfall (excepting the excellent “Angie”), and “Streets of Love” is an unfortunate detour into schmaltz that this record didn’t need. But man, listen to the groove they lay down on “Look What the Cat Dragged In,” or “Oh No, Not You Again.” Even Richards’ vocal turn on “Infamy” rocks. The bluesy numbers slow the album down, but they work, especially the Delta-fied “Back of My Hand.”

Lyrically, it’s a mess, of course. Jagger does what he knows once again, which is fast songs about good times, and slow songs about wishing for good times. The one major exception is “Sweet Neo Con,” a semi-bold foray into American politics. I’m not sure why Jagger is trying to disavow this song as a comment on the Bush administration – tell me if the lines “one thing is certain, life is good at Halliburton” can be about anything else. As much as I dig the sentiment, the song is blunt and sloppy. But then, that’s about what we should expect from the Stones – they have never been subtle or carefully crafted, now, have they?

So yes, there are problems here, and dead spots, but all in all, A Bigger Bang is the best the Stones have been in ages. They are the prototypical bluesy rock band, and while it seems easy to be good at that sort of thing, so few bands are. It is the triumph of attitude over craft – Jagger yelps and yowls, the band sounds like they’re rehearsing, but the sheer ballsiness, the conviction that yes, they are the best rock band in the world holds it together. The Stones sound like they believe this one, and for them to make an album this assured, this rocking, more than 40 years into their career is pretty amazing.

* * * * *

By contrast, Paul McCartney doesn’t rock. At all.

Here’s another Face Magazine story for you – the only time I almost got into a fight with a reader, it was over Paul McCartney. I had just lightly trashed Flaming Pie, Paul’s 1997 solo effort, in an issue that had hit the stands the day before. I believe what I said at the time was that while Pie was pretty good, and certainly better than McCartney had been in some time, an album by one of the world’s most revered living songwriters should be better than this one was. I stand by that – Pie is spotty and slapdash.

So anyway, we had an open office – the door was always unlocked, and it led right into our main production area, so anyone who wanted to could come right in and speak with the folks in charge. This large, obviously upset man barged into our office that day, demanding to speak with the person who had dared besmirch McCartney’s good name. I told him it was me, and he spat out, “Get a life!” A lengthy discussion ensued, which thankfully never came to blows, but it left me with the impression that some fans will always refuse to see the black marks against their favorites.

Flaming Pie, in retrospect, signaled the upswing in McCartney’s solo career, after decades of swill like Pipes of Peace and Press to Play. He’s finally emerged, 35 years after his excellent solo debut, with its spiritual cousin, an amazing little record saddled with the title Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. This album was always going to be interesting. It was produced by Nigel Godrich, perhaps the most talented young sound sculptor around – he did Radiohead’s OK Computer, Beck’s Sea Change, and Travis’ The Man Who. And Godrich convinced Paul to abandon the studio musicians and play nearly every instrument himself.

Quite the challenge for the 63-year-old family man – there would be no lazy way out of this record, and it would all be on McCartney. Happily, Sir Paul rose to the challenge with 13 of his best songs since the demise of Wings. Chaos and Creation is a soft, nimble little album full of nooks and crannies, the most intimate and revealing record McCartney has made in eons. Best of all, he has discovered his inner Rubber Soul, coming up with some of his most Beatle-rific melodies and riffs. There is a lower concentration of mediocrity here than on any of his other solo albums.

There is still some piffle – it wouldn’t be a McCartney album without it, and “English Tea” and “A Certain Softness” certainly qualify. The lyrics, as usual, revolve around love, kindness and family, though they are less sugary than they have been in the past. In fact, there’s an undercurrent of bitterness, of striking out at the unfairness of life, in “Too Much Rain” and “Riding to Vanity Fair,” two of the album’s most striking songs. Chaos ends well, too, with a pair of classic McCartney ballads, the sweet “This Never Happened Before” and the yearning “Anyway.”

But McCartney was always more comfortable writing the ditties, the less important, yet more beloved songs on the Beatles albums. He scores highest here with “Jenny Wren,” a natural successor to “Blackbird,” performed with sparse, lovely acoustic guitar. He also knocks it out of the park with “Promise To You Girl,” a Beatles-tastic piano romp with some superb Paul-on-Paul harmonies. Godrich successfully pushed McCartney to excel, and he found he still had it in him – this is an excellent record, nearly top to bottom. McCartney has regained his sense of craft, his desire to build the best album he can, while he can.

So Paul McCartney has presented us with his first soft-focus studio wonder in many years, and the Rolling Stones have lit the place on fire in ways they haven’t managed in even more years. To my ears, McCartney wins this battle, but that’s the way I’m wired – I appreciate song and studio craft more than I appreciate energy and attitude. But really, in this contest, there are no losers. Whichever side you come down on, this is a great year to be a fan.

Next week, we chill out with Death Cab for Cutie.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Okay, I’m back.

Thank you for indulging my week off. I spent most of it glued to CNN, watching the amazing devastation in Louisiana and the jaw-dropping ineptitude of the relief efforts. I know I’m not running a political blog here, but I found that I did have something to say about the events of last week after all, and you can find it in the archive if you want to. If not, I understand completely.

Anyway, the extra week gave me time to polish up the column I’d already written, and I think it’s a better one now. Here it is, buffed up and shiny and ready for the spotlight. Thanks again, and I’ll be back with all new stuff next week, and every week hereafter.

* * * * *

And now for something completely different.

When I go to the record store, that’s often what I’m looking for – something completely different. That’s why I buy all kinds of albums, from jazz to orchestral to choral to anything else, even though I don’t usually write about them in this space. I can’t listen to the same sounds for very long. If I immerse myself in an hour-long album with guitars, bass and drums, I need to put on something with a string section or an army of synthesizers afterwards. It’s one reason I could barely get through the Misfits box set.

Here’s a confession for you – lately I have grown pretty sick of guitars. Well, not really. I should say I have grown sick of guitars that sound like guitars, if that makes any sense. The whole “here is my drum beat, here is my riff, here is the moment when the bass, drums and guitar all hit the downbeat,” you know? The rock thing. I’m sick of it. I’ve been listening to OK Computer again, and I’m amazed at how infrequently the guitars on that record sound like guitars.

I’m also perplexed as to why, with the infinite variety of sounds available, 90 percent of bands and artists stick with the basic four-piece rock band thing. I have a lengthy history of being satisfied with that if the songs are good, and some of my favorite albums of the year stay within those parameters, but the best records, I think, are ones that make use of what’s available. I hate to keep bringing up Sufjan Stevens, but just listen to the panoply of sounds he’s conjured on Illinois – strings, horns, pianos, banjos, drones, all manner of voices. I like the Foo Fighters, but Sufjan makes them sound like they’re asleep at the wheel.

Similarly, I can’t stand most rap, because it’s lazy. Take a canned 4/4 beat, add a sample, rhyme over it about your bitches, cars and money, and you’re done. No variation in style or sound, just calculated simplicity. And if the focus is supposed to be on the lyrics, then why are they uniformly uninteresting? There are rap outfits like De La Soul (still going!) and the Roots that try to break out of the rut, but as of yet, no one has released a rap record that takes full advantage of sound and scope. There is, in short, no hip-hop Pet Sounds, no elaborate masterpiece that raises the bar.

If I were to nominate one, though, I would probably name Late Registration, the second album from Kanye West. In a lot of ways, West is his own worst enemy – no one could possibly be as good as West thinks he is, which would be fine if he’d shut up about it. He’s his own maelstrom of hype, and often what he says gets more attention than the music he makes. Just last week, his “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” comment made headlines, and very few of the people who fell all over that story are talking about what an achievement Late Registration is.

This album, despite its lame title, is so far ahead of the rap mainstream that it’s coming around for a second lap and ready to pass it again. It is the first rap album since OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below to accelerate the artform – though, to be fair, there are very few rock, folk or pop albums that accelerate their respective artforms, either. But the genius of West’s album is that, unlike OutKast, he doesn’t abandon rap for other forms of music, he brings other forms of music to rap. Late Registration builds on rap music the way the Beatles built on pop – they brought in blues and cabaret and Eastern influences, but never abandoned their pop and rock roots.

West made a lot of fascinating moves on this record, but perhaps the most inspired one was enlisting Jon Brion as co-producer. Before Late Registration, Brion had exactly no rap experience. He’s a former member of the Grays, and has produced the likes of Fiona Apple and Aimee Mann. He’s also written scores for films like Punch-Drunk Love and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Brion has a reputation for chamber-pop played with odd, vintage instruments, and he’s part of a collective of Los Angeles-area musicians that revel in low-key, melodic melancholia.

So he’s not the first person I’d have thought of to produce West’s follow-up to the mildly overrated The College Dropout, but the pairing turns out to be miraculous. West lets Brion do his thing – he plays dozens of instruments, arranges strings and horns, and fills every second of these songs with fascinating, glorious sound. West is likely responsible for most of the beats and samples, but it’s a testament to the unlikely match-up here that you can’t tell where West’s work ends and Brion’s begins. It’s a total collaboration, and it’s unlike anything I’ve heard.

Late Registration is about bringing diverse elements together, and with that in mind, the list of collaborators includes the usual suspects, like Common and Cam’Ron, but also Adam Levine of Maroon 5, and Jamie Foxx. (The latter does his Ray Charles impression on “Gold Digger,” augmenting a sample of the real deal.) He even enlists both Jay-Z and Nas, the famously feuding emcees, on adjacent tracks, and it’s debatable which one got the better song to rap over.

While the record starts strong, and there isn’t a weak track to be found, it ends even stronger. West and Brion save their finest work for the last five songs, a stretch that includes “Diamonds From Sierra Leone,” a furious track that draws a line through the drug trade to the music business. “We Major” is a tour de force, a seven-minute groove that erupts with horns and strings, but even more effective is “Hey Mama,” a tender ode set to a sweet beat and a cavalcade of beautifully arranged voices. The album concludes with “Gone,” featuring perhaps Brion’s best string arrangement here – cellos wobble in place of bass notes, violins swoop and dive, and the whole thing works like magic.

I will always be more interested in rap for the music, rather than the lyrics, but West doesn’t disappoint with his words here either. He equates selling CDs with selling drugs in “Crack Music,” a fascinating comparison, and takes on his personal compulsions in “Addiction.” Nothing here is on the level of some of his contemporaries, like Common, but he steers clear of the usual guns and pimps and Bentleys that populate too much of modern rap. West is constantly trying new things on Late Registration, and even when his lyrics fall short, at least you can hear him attempting to innovate, instead of purposely stagnating.

I feel bad for the multitude of hip-hop producers who will have to measure up to Late Registration – West and Brion have made the whole of contemporary rap sound like the walking dead. Similarly, I feel bad for West, who will have to top this next time out. I count it a success if a rap album doesn’t make me want to shut it off after 20 minutes. With this astoundingly imaginative record, Kanye West kept me enthralled from first track to last. I don’t make Beatles and Brian Wilson comparisons lightly – Late Registration is the hip-hop Pet Sounds, the rap Revolver. It may not be as good as West thinks it is, but it is damn near terrific.

* * * * *

“Something completely different” could easily be the motto for Joy Electric, one of the most idiosyncratic and misunderstood bands I’m aware of.

I wrote a lengthy column about Joy E last year, so I’ll summarize quickly: Joy Electric is Ronnie Martin, singer and songwriter. He composes melodic pop songs, ones that would not sound out of place on the radio, were he to perform them with guitars, bass and drums. Instead, Martin arranges these songs for vintage analog synthesizers. The result is often described as video game music with hooks, which overlooks the works of classic synth-pop pioneers like Gary Numan and Kraftwerk. It’s from this tradition that Martin draws, but he does it better and with more commitment to pure sound than anyone else.

Martin’s music is so singular that it almost makes no sense to compare it to anything but itself. One could say that, yes, this stuff is different from anything on the radio, and expand on that, but all of Joy Electric’s 17 releases are different from anything on the radio in the same ways. The truth is that even within his pocket universe of knobs and wires, Martin has developed a widely diverse catalog, pushing himself at every turn to deliver something different each time out.

Last time, he made a masterpiece – a minimalist, punky wonder called Hello, Mannequin. It was the third volume of what he’s calling his Legacy series, and so far, the sequence is living up to its lofty title. The three Legacy albums have varied in tone and complexity, but all of them stand head and shoulders above Martin’s previous work. Beginning with 2001’s The White Songbook, Martin took his signature sound and exploded it, adding progressive rock influences and an intensity absent from his earlier, poppier efforts.

And now here’s The Ministry of Archers, the fourth Legacy volume, and easily the prickliest and most difficult of the bunch. Where Mannequin was a fully realized, relatively welcoming collection of pop songs, Archers is an abrasive, complex suite that stands with folded arms, daring you to unravel it. At first glance, it seems underwhelming – 10 songs, three of which are instrumentals, in a mere 32 minutes. But keep listening, because Archers slowly reveals itself as a daring experiment gone wonderfully right.

The first thing longtime Joy E fans will notice about Archers is the thick, menacing sound. Martin bought himself a Moog synthesizer, coincidentally releasing this first album featuring it in the same month as the death of the instrument’s founder, Dr. Robert Moog. Martin has used the instrument here to add chunky, wavery bass lines and piercing synth leads, and an overall sense of creeping darkness. Archers is the album that finally turns the Joy in Joy Electric completely ironic – there is very little hope to be found on this record, musically or lyrically.

There is, however, a phenomenal variety of tone and texture, as if Martin perceives a rut and is railing against it. The prog-rock overtones of The White Songbook are here, with synth lines snaking in and around the melodies, but they’re met with noise-solo detonations and some of Martin’s wildest playing. They’re also supporting some of his most inscrutable songs, many of which, for the first time, seem tailor-made for their synthesizer arrangements. The three instrumentals, of course, could not have been played any other way, but the piledriver “A Hatchet, A Hatchet” masterfully navigates its dynamics with cluster-bomb drums, and even a mid-tempo pop song like “Quite Quieter than Spiders” shimmers on its shaky synth groove.

It’s the closer, “Can You Refrain,” that provides the biggest surprise. Here, for what I believe is the first time in 10 years, is a repeating drum machine pattern on a Joy E song, supporting a keyboard figure that sounds like 1980s Doctor Who music. Here also is an extended jam coda full of oscillating dissonance, rounding off a pounding beast of a melody. Martin even makes his breathy quiver of a voice sound threatening: “Unable to socialize, sleep deprived, sloping countenance…” It’s a pretty amazing finish to a slow-build of an album, one that sounds transitional yet somehow fully formed.

Joy Electric is certainly not for everyone, but the musically adventurous should find much to love here. Martin continues to expand and grow the Joy E sound, and he’s restlessly creative – he’s already written all the songs for his next album, tentatively called The Memory of Alpha, and he has a new EP ready for release in November. I said this before, and I’ll likely say it again – there is no one I’m aware of who is making the kind of music Ronnie Martin is making. He’s in a class of one, the best there is at what he does, and even still, he’s never satisfied. He keeps exploring and refining, taking his sound to new places. Martin is something completely different, and that’s exactly what I’m looking for.

Go here to try and buy.

* * * * *

Next week, the age-old Beatles vs. Stones debate continues.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I am a pretty emotional person.

I wanted to say that right up front, because this is probably not going to be as measured a response to Hurricane Katrina and her aftermath as it could be. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to say yet, but I’m offering fair warning that it might turn into a rant. If you measure this in death toll and sheer size of the area affected, the disaster on the gulf coast is much larger than 9/11, but unlike that catastrophe, I don’t personally know anyone who lost someone last week. So my response to this is really limited to what I read and what I see on television. Anyone who wants to disregard my thoughts on those grounds is more than justified.

But here is what I’m thinking.

We are, as a country, in worse shape than I thought we were.

It’s been four years since Islamic extremist terrorists crashed two planes into two buildings in New York, four years since President George W. Bush was granted enormous power and freedom to launch his homeland security initiatives. And as we, the voters, handed over the keys, we gave him one mandate: make us safer. Some of us were even willing to give up and renounce some of our most basic American freedoms for this cause. In the days and weeks after 9/11, a shattered and broken America pleaded with the guy in charge. Make us safer.

Four years later, I’m not even sure they know what “make us safer” means. Part of becoming safer, I think, revolves around actually having a plan in case of emergencies, and executing it with the precision we should expect from the greatest nation on Earth. Imagine, for just a second, that Al Qaeda decided to blow up the levees in New Orleans. The resulting devastation in that city would have been pretty much the same. The only difference between that and what happened is that Hurricane Katrina let us know she was coming, a week or two in advance.

And we still had no plan.

Thousands of people died, many of them unable to leave their homes. What evacuation efforts did take place found thousands more people packed into the Superdome, with no food, no water, no medical supplies and no promise of escape. Anarchy descended on the region, in the absence of authority figures. I heard tales of people being turned away at the bridges, or lied to about phantom rescuers. I also heard plenty of stories of looting, and of victims turning their firearms on rescue helicopters and hospital vehicles, which makes no sense at all to me.

The pictures coming in from New Orleans last week could have been from the Sudan, so desperate were the images. It was heartbreaking. The hurricane hit Monday morning. Through Thursday, the question remained unanswered: where the hell is everyone? Why aren’t they coming with food, with medicine, with a way out?

There’s plenty of blame to go around, and some of it has to land on New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, who called for an evacuation with no coherent plan to carry it out. Some of it has to land on Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, who supported said evacuation without, seemingly, assisting with its execution in any way. But in my world, being the top guy means you have to take the responsibility when things go wrong, and that’s why I think the lion’s share of the anger, recrimination and resentment must be directed at our president and his gang of idiots, who dropped the ball so completely that it was shameful.

Where the hell is everyone? I can tell you where our president was on Monday and Tuesday as thousands of people were dying. He was on his vacation. Week five of his vacation, to be precise. I can also tell you where our secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice, was on Wednesday night. She was on Broadway, taking in a show. On Thursday, as Ray Nagin was giving his famous radio rant excoriating the federal government for its slow response, Rice was shopping for expensive shoes. What I can’t tell you is where our vice president, Dick Cheney, was. I don’t know. Last I heard, he was on vacation, too.

Some of you are writing this off already as a partisan rant. It isn’t. This isn’t about left and right, it’s about complete failure of leadership. I’d be saying the same things if Kerry had won last year, and if his response to this crisis was as lackadaisical and careless as Bush’s has been. I personally don’t think it would have been – Kerry, at the very least, would have been able, through sheer presence and articulation, to appear concerned and on top of the situation, something that eluded Bush throughout this crisis. Bush is approaching the aftermath of Katrina like a public relations problem, not a national emergency.

Seriously, take a minute and read this.

It’s from a leftist website, true enough, but everything there is sourced and linked. It even points out something that not a lot of people are talking about – the very moment when Katrina and her aftermath became the federal government’s problem. That would be Saturday. That’s right, Bush, DHS and FEMA took complete responsibility for mobilizing aid to New Orleans two days before the hurricane hit.

But that can’t be, you’re saying. I’ve heard FEMA head Michael Brown, and DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay blaming the local governments for not asking for assistance earlier. You’re right, they have been saying that. And they’re wrong, plain and simple. The local government should have had a plan in place, but at least Nagin and Blanco knew they couldn’t handle the situation, and they asked for help. And they received a federal promise.

On Saturday the 26th.

You’ve also, no doubt, heard Chertoff and Brown expressing surprise at the size and the effects of the storm, saying that no one could have known what would happen. No one could have foreseen the levees overflowing, the flood walls breaking. This is patently untrue. For one thing, Nagin and Blanco seemed to have foreseen it, because they ordered the evacuation. The National Hurricane Center knew about it, too, and they told Bush, Brown and Chertoff. And you know, that’s kind of what experts are for – to tell you that these things might, and probably will, happen. It helps if you listen to them.

But Brown and Chertoff seemed thoroughly oblivious through this whole thing. Brown said he only learned about the evacuees in the Superdome on Thursday, after they’d been there for three days. I knew about it before the head of FEMA, and I found out by switching on CNN. That scares me, that I can find out about a national emergency situation from Wolf Blitzer before Michael Brown hears about it. Where the hell was he?

But the complete lack of a coordinated response doesn’t bother me nearly as much as our beloved administration’s refusal to accept an iota of responsibility. On Friday, Bush flew into Louisiana for a series of photo ops, shutting down the airport from which food and water was being delivered. It was then that he delivered his famous speech about Trent Lott’s house, and said that Michael Brown was “doing a heck of a job.” He also seemed as defensive and cavalier as always, betraying no sense that he understood or felt the scope of the disaster.

Soon after that, the effort to blame the locals kicked into gear, with the administration blithely glossing over a couple of big facts: Blanco called for and received a state of emergency on Saturday, and much of the national guard needed for a rescue effort in New Orleans now resides in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is no doubt that more could have been done over the last 20 years to strengthen the flood walls and fortify the levees in New Orleans. There is also no doubt that once the storm breached those walls and levees, none of that mattered.

Or it shouldn’t matter, to an adult. But then again, the adult thing to do last week would have been to stay on top of the situation and offer well-coordinated aid. Failing that, the adult thing to do would have been to admit it, come clean, say “I screwed up, America, and I’m sorry.” But the finger-pointing and name-calling have all but drowned out any contrition that may have existed. Meanwhile, the bungling continues – a thousand or so volunteer firefighters and rescue workers have responded to FEMA’s call, and they’re sitting in a convention center in Atlanta, learning how to hand out flyers and getting sexual harassment training. Seriously.

The name-calling is happening on both sides, too. I can’t think of a single emergency situation that Jesse Jackson has ever made better, but there he is, throwing around charges of racism. I think all of the talk about race and economics is largely a red herring – with no evacuation plan in place, of course the poorest residents were the ones who couldn’t get out, and that a vast majority of them happen to be black is beside the point. I agree with Kanye West that George Bush doesn’t care about black people, in that I think George Bush doesn’t care about anyone besides himself and his buddies, but I also think that making race the focus of this issue diverts from the more serious charge of dangerous incompetence.

Bush is incompetent. Chertoff is incompetent. Brown is incompetent. And what’s worse, they don’t seem to care that they’re incompetent, and they blame everyone else for their own catastrophic blunders. With that attitude, there is no way any of them will be able to keep Bush’s promise, given four years ago this month, to make us safer. Thousands of people died, and they’re more worried about covering each other’s backs. It’s shameful.

I believe in leading by example, even when one isn’t in a position of leadership. I’m just a guy, a regular voter who pays his taxes and plies his trade. But I’m willing to take up my share of the responsibility here. Thousands of people died, and I let them down.

We let them down.

By electing this administration, and turning a blind eye to their incompetence and their shell games, we made a bad situation worse. By not holding their feet to the fire and demanding accountability from them, we exacerbated the situation. When the time came for decisive action, Bush failed spectacularly, but he wouldn’t have been able to fail if we’d refused to re-elect him, or at least kept a close, watchful, discriminating eye on his administration. It’s our fault.

And only we can make up for it.

See you in line Tuesday morning.