A brief follow-up on last week’s rant:

I watched the second episode of Love Monkey, just to see if it would get better, but alas, it got worse. Absent even the minor wit of the pilot, the focus switched to the musical content, which, to be frank, pissed me off. I don’t think I’ll be watching again.

This is a look at the music industry as written by people who have done no research at all, and seemingly have never met anyone even sort of connected to the business. I’m not even connected to the business, and I know just how lazy, wrong and stupid this show’s view of it is. Let’s start with the fact that a tiny indie label in New York has no way of booking the Black-Eyed Peas or U2 for anything, let alone a benefit concert in a tiny little hall. But then let’s also mention that no tiny indie label in New York would want to book either act for anything.

Nor would they want to book a teen-pop starlet like Zoe, the show’s obvious Britney pastiche, even if they could get her. What kind of label is this? It’s depicted as an anti-corporate, music-loving haven, but the only artists they have discussed so far are mega-corporate superstars, either real or fictional. Many of the real ones, by the way, are on labels owned by Sony, the same company that owns Sony Pictures Television, one of the show’s producers. Which explains the product placement last week.

But it also leads me to the main reason I will never watch this stupid show again. For two episodes now, the industry folks played by Tom Cavanagh and Eric Bogosian have been fawning and fighting over this John Mayer soundalike kid named Wayne, despite the fact that he exhibits no more label-worthy talent than anyone you could catch at any open mic night anywhere. It turns out that Wayne is played by Teddy Geiger, a real-life Mayer clone who does his own singing and guitar playing for the show. Geiger releases his debut album, the laughably titled Underage Thinking, next month. Guess which major label he’s on?

That’s right, this supposedly anti-corporate show is really a giant ad for one of Sony’s new artists, designed to do nothing but increase sales for yet another mega-corporate star in the making. In a sterling example of synergy, Wayne’s songs for the show are actually Geiger’s, and appear on his forthcoming album. It’s no wonder the show seems so out of touch with real music and real music fans – it’s a product of the ad and marketing departments of exactly the kind of soulless company it half-heartedly rails against.

Love Monkey is trying very hard to appear like the exact opposite of what it is, and it’s not working. Part of the problem is the laziness of the writers, who could do just a little research, but given the corporate premise of the show, I doubt the producers could entice any real music fans to work for them. I was angry at Ben Folds for whoring himself out for a quick cameo in this week’s episode, until I remembered that he’s a Sony/Epic artist himself, and probably was forced to do this. And hey, Leann Rimes is distributed by a Sony label, too! Gee do you think that every star cameo and placed product will be from Sony? I wonder…

It’s not very often that I take stands like this, but then, it’s not often that I find something that is so completely opposed to what I stand for. Love Monkey is not only insulting to people who genuinely like independently-produced music, it’s pretty much the enemy, dressing up its money-hungry, stock-price agenda in music-fan clothes. Here’s hoping it dies a quick death.

* * * * *

One of the problems with major labels is that if they don’t know how to market you to a set demographic, they’ll chew you up and spit you out.

Take Duncan Sheik, for example. He had his major label go-round in the early ‘90s, scoring a huge hit with “Barely Breathing,” still his poppiest song. But when Atlantic Records realized that he didn’t want to write that song again and again, they lost interest. They shunted his masterpiece, 2001’s Phantom Moon, off to Nonesuch Records, despite its fragile brilliance, and when he returned with a terrific, breezy pop album called Daylight in 2002, they had already moved on.

Three years later, Sheik appears done with his major label days. He’s just released his fifth record, White Limousine, on Zoe, an imprint of Rounder Records. As you may expect, without the multi-billion-dollar marketing department trumpeting it, few have even noticed that the album is out. No one is talking about it, and there is no buzz, as the industry wags might say.

On the other hand, there are no expectations, either, which may be how Sheik likes it. His brand of slowly-unfolding, epic-scale folk-pop is blissfully out of sync with popular culture. His work has always moved at its own pace, but since Phantom Moon, it has become deeper and richer than even his most ardent supporters would have predicted. To type him as the “Barely Breathing” guy is to do his lovely, layered recent work a huge disservice.

White Limousine is another record without a hit, another wispy song cycle that reveals new wonders over time. It’s an album that no one else would make, grounded in Bryter Layter-era Nick Drake, and yet restlessly reaching for new atmospheres. The songs here recall Phantom Moon, while the production is pure Daylight. Half the songs feature the London Session Orchestra, and all of them are wrapped in Gerry Leonard’s swirling electric guitar flourishes. Everything is slow and luxurious – the title track is the one song that might be considered up-tempo, and it’s the first single.

I admit disappointment the first few times I spun White Limousine. I liked the extremes of his last two records, and this one is a 50-50 mix, one that, I thought, failed to be as beautiful as Phantom Moon or as effortlessly catchy as Daylight. Over time, though, the album reveals its own character, separate from its predecessors. This one definitely takes repeated listens to cozy up to – most of the songs eschew cleverness and immediacy, but they radiate warmth.

The inviting production is deceptive, as well – it’s only through repeat plays that the cynicism and bitterness of this album comes through. The title song is an accusatory glance at popular culture: “America, America, and this is our reward, everything is boring, everyone is bored.” “Star-Field on Red Lines” might be the prettiest anti-Bush song yet, all acoustic guitars and strings, over which Sheik sings, “Strong-arm Christians oiled up and fed, safe as houses in aprons of lead, and sanctified…”

Even with all that, “Shopping” may be the most cynical song in Sheik’s catalog. It starts with him receiving a letter from a fan, asking him why he writes the songs he sings. In merciless language, he lays it all out – music pays the bills, and feeds the consumer culture. “Rock and roll,” he says, “is built on shopping.” The album itself puts lie to that notion – Sheik is relentlessly artistic, and if he’d wanted to, he could have played the game and made untold millions in the ‘90s, but he didn’t. Still, “Shopping” is a stunning bit of bile, its characters soulless and aimless – “Let’s go shopping together, so we can find ourselves, so we can buy ourselves.”

But elsewhere, Sheik spins romance, and love of life. The closer, “Hymn,” is gorgeous, the story of a couple watching a sunrise and wondering how many more they will live to see. “Fantastic Toys and Corduroys” is similarly warm-hearted, a sweet song from a wayward son to a faithful mother. And “So Gone,” one of the album’s delicate highlights, captures the moment when one wakes into redemption, wondering if one will be forgiven.

Time has only strengthened Sheik’s even tenor. It was once his biggest liability, but on this record, it’s one of his greatest attributes. As a songwriter and producer, Sheik only stumbles a couple of times – “I Wouldn’t Mind,” a laborious waltz set to plucked strings, should have been a b-side, and “I Don’t Believe in Ghosts” lacks melody, fading to nothing between some of the stronger tracks. But otherwise, this is a strong outing, a pure Duncan Sheik album – no commercial potential, just some well-written songs produced like daydreams, making up a record that a major label wouldn’t know how to handle, and probably wouldn’t release.

A special note about the package – White Limousine comes with a CD, labeled Mine, and a DVD-ROM, labeled Yours. The DVD includes pre-mixed tracks for every song on the record, so you can create your own remixes. It’s also a neat way to learn the ins and outs of recording. You can play each track separately, and hear what was laid down on each, from bass to guitar to backing vocals to strings. It gives you some sense of just how hard it is to make a record sound this good. It’s not an essential piece of this package, and you can enjoy White Limousine without it, but it is an interesting addition, and I wouldn’t have expected it from Duncan Sheik.

Next week, either the great Richard Julian, or the great-in-a-different-way Ester Drang.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I have absolutely no motivation this week. Apologies for the late column, and further apologies in advance if it ends up sucking. I seriously considered blowing this week off, but with so much new music hitting stores in the next few weeks, I can’t afford to. If I don’t get to these reviews this week, chances are way too good that I’ll never get to them at all.

But first, a digression into TV land:

I caught the premiere of Love Monkey this week. With that title (taken from the novel on which the show is based), I had no idea what to expect, but I watched it because a) it stars the immensely likeable Tom Cavanagh, who made Ed a worthwhile stop each week for years; b) the supporting cast is eccentric and excellent, including Larenz Tate, Judy Greer and Jason Priestly, as well as two Buffy alums (kudos to the first person who can tell me who they are without consulting IMDB), and c) it’s about music nerds. As a music obsessive who’s been trying to capture the spirit of that experience for years, I’m always interested to see how others approach it.

Love Monkey looks like it’s going to be one of those shows I wish I could embrace. Cavanagh is terrific, as always, even if he’s basically playing Ed Stevens again. The writing is sometimes klutzy, but it’s the pilot, and I did laugh out loud a couple of times, so I’m willing to give it another shot. The plotting was ridiculously predictable – Cavanagh’s character has both a girlfriend who’s no good for him, and a girl-slash-friend who would be perfect for him, and I get the definite sense that the show’s writers will pursue this will-they-or-won’t-they in the most cliched manner available to them. But as I said, it’s the pilot. I’ll give it another go.

But what really bugs me about Love Monkey is the music stuff. No, scratch that – the music stuff in this show pissed me off. Cavanagh plays an A&R guy for a major minor label in New York, and his job is to seek out the new sound. He’s portrayed as an obsessive music junkie, one who actually gets fired from the record company for standing up for the transformative power of music. “We should be all about bringing the music to the people, not about making money” he says, name-checking the whole of the 1960s in the process, and it’s an inspiring little speech.

There’s just one problem. The show is so obviously corporate, so obviously not written by music fans, that it’s insulting. Early in the pilot, Cavanagh’s character Tom Farrell finds his next big thing, a guitar-playing kid named Wayne, and he’s shown reacting with wonder and awe at his obvious talent. But Wayne sounds just like a third-rate John Mayer, and no better than 95 percent of what you hear on the radio. You can hear kids like Wayne at 400 open mic nights a week in New York alone. What’s so great about him? The show never tells us.

But I will. Wayne sounds like what the execs at CBS expect their audience of middle-agers to like. He sounds like the next ready-to-mold adult contemporary star, one step above the contestants on American Idol. He’s carefully inoffensive, designed to make the 40-somethings watching on Wednesday nights say, “Yeah, he’s pretty good.” There is literally nothing about this kid that would make any music junkie take notice.

It doesn’t stop there. The references throughout the show are all easy. Not one band or artist was name-checked that my mother wouldn’t recognize. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, and I don’t need obscure you’re-in-the-club asides to like a show like this, but if you’re talking about people who live and breathe music, the breadth of their knowledge and obsessiveness will naturally extend beyond Eric Clapton and Sting. It feels like the writers are being careful not to make anyone feel left out, and in doing so, they’re missing the essence of a character like Tom Farrell.

The most nerdishly upsetting thing about Love Monkey was the obvious product placement – Sony’s Essential Bob Dylan collection, which is a key element of two scenes. First of all, any music fan like Farrell purports to be would know that there is nothing essential about these collections, and wouldn’t give them as gifts. He’d more likely make a mix of his own, and fume a bit about how all the good stuff was left off the corporate compilation.

Worse, though, is what he says when he hands it over: “It’s every song he ever recorded.” Um, what? Dylan’s been recording for more than 40 years, and he has more than 30 albums. The Essential Bob Dylan is a two-CD set that collects 30 songs. There’s no way a supposedly music-mad guy like Tom Farrell would make that mistake, or not correct someone when they make the same mistake. It’s a sales pitch put into the mouths of characters in an attempt to sell more of an extraneous Dylan collection, and if Tom Farrell were a real guy watching this show, he’d have kicked his TV at that point.

I know, because I almost did.

There’s a lot right with Love Monkey, but if it’s supposed to be about music, and about how much this character loves it, then there’s a lot wrong with it, too. He bitches about Air Supply at one point, and then spends the rest of the show trying to sign a guy whose songs are the A&R equivalent of that band’s crowd-pleasing pap. It makes no sense to me, but then, I don’t think I’m the target audience here. They’re not going for music fans, they’re going for people who know music fans, and older folks who stopped listening to new bands around 1979. They’re going for Targeted Consumers, and I would bet that more specifically marketed CD collections like The Essential Bob Dylan will be product-placed in future episodes.

Anyway, I’ll give it another shot or two, mainly for Cavanagh and Greer. But I don’t highly recommend it.

* * * * *

Speaking of that…

In a lot of ways, TM3AM lives and dies on recommendations. Not only do I have this extensive network of friends and acquaintances who know what I like and give me tips on great new stuff, I also have readers who write in every week to tell me about their favorite records. Most of the time, I know the artists, but surprisingly often, a stranger will surprise me with something excellent that I’d never heard.

For example, last year’s number one album, Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois, was a recommendation. So was number nine, The Dissociatives. Last week, I reviewed Imogen Heap’s Speak For Yourself, which I probably wouldn’t have bought without Dr. Tony Shore’s ecstatic emails. I get excited about music, and I love it when others share that excitement. It’s infectious. I’m not always as taken with the recommended albums, but just knowing that there are people as thrilled to share the music they love as I am often keeps me going.

But sometimes I just forget to say thanks, or to write something about the records themselves. I have a few from 2005 that just slipped by me, very good albums that I may not have bought without some very jazzed readers telling me about them. Last year especially, there was just so much good music that I couldn’t get to everything.

Case in point. So many people told me to pick up Porcupine Tree’s Deadwing that it would be unfair to single one or two of them out. But there’s a guy named Matthew Waterhouse (and yes, Doctor Who fans, he’s heard all the Adric jokes) who has been urging me to review it for months now, and wondering why I didn’t give it at least an honorable mention in the year-end top 10 list. So this one’s for him, although he’ll probably want his money back.

It would be inaccurate to say I’m a Porcupine Tree fan, although I do like them. Their mastermind, Steven Wilson, first came to my attention as the producer and co-writer of Fish’s Sunsets on Empire album, which still stands as one of the big man’s three best efforts. Wilson played the mean guitar solo on “The Perception of Johnny Punter,” and if you’ve heard it, you know how immediately impressive it is. That initial exposure led me to Wilson’s main band, and a couple of his side projects, but he’s never made a stronger impression than that smoldering solo, unfortunately.

But I really liked In Absentia, the more concise, rocking Porcupine Tree album from 2002. PT has always been a slower, more Floyd-esque guitar-rock band, dabbling in electronic textures and ambient skyscapes, but In Absentia packed a pop song punch I enjoyed tremendously. Of course, I forgot to review it, but what else is new…

Deadwing is in a similar vein, but the more drawn-out passages are back, providing an interesting balance. The album ignites early with the nine-minute title track, a heavy groove with a pleasant melody and a kickass solo by Adrian Belew. It does slightly overstay its welcome, but thankfully, the same cannot be said for the bulk of Deadwing. “Shallow” is a great little rocker, and “Lazarus” is fragile and very pretty. Of the longer songs, “Start of Something Beautiful” impresses the most, with its buildups and diversions.

The problem is, most of this album just blends together into one long groove of various tempos. With all of Wilson’s meticulous production, the songs often lie there – “Mellotron Scratch” is creepy, yet forgettable, and “Arriving Somewhere But Not Here” could have been half as long and still been as effective. By the end of Deadwing, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to get out of it – it feels more like an attempt at a mood piece, but the driving rhythms keep it from achieving the ambient grace of some of Wilson’s earlier records.

In the final analysis, this is a decent enough record, but it doesn’t concentrate its efforts enough to be anything more. I have heard better Porcupine Tree albums (like In Absentia), and I have heard worse ones. I probably forgot to write about this because it didn’t lodge itself in my brain. It has just sort of existed in my to-review pile for months, not calling much attention to itself. And even after re-immersing myself in it, I have to say that I’m still more impressed by Wilson’s work on Sunsets on Empire than anything here.

If I recall correctly, Matthew Waterhouse was merely curious as to whether Deadwing would appear in the top 10 list. Whereas my longtime correspondent Lucas Beeley was downright incensed that his recommendation didn’t chart, writing me an email with the subject line, “So what gives?” He was kidding, of course, but I owe him an apology for not responding quickly, and for not reviewing the record he suggested. It’s a double insult, because the album itself is fan-bloody-tastic.

It’s Picaresque, the third LP from the Decemberists, a five-piece from Oregon who may as well be the house band on the Flying Dutchman. It’s odd to be able to tie this band down to a terrestrial place, to give them a state of origin – their work is so timeless, haunting and otherworldly, like the songs of the sea itself. The Decemberists work almost strictly within the English folk tradition, playing ghost stories and sea shanties as if they were pop songs.

In a lot of ways, they remind me of the Levellers, but rather than use their folksy framework to capture the sound of the earth rising up, as the Levs usually do, the Decemberists tap into the sound of the ocean. It doesn’t need to rise up – all things sink into it eventually, so it’s unnervingly patient. Leader Colin Meloy’s songs are as traditional as Richard Thompson’s, and yet here, thanks to the production of Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla, they sound perfectly modern, like newly minted legends.

The band could not have picked a less poppy opener than “The Infanta,” the tale of a baby monarch. It’s strummed with almost explosive abandon, a strident minor-key folk song of the highest order. Just listen to the thunderous toms throughout, and the fanfare of strings in the bridge. This thing is awesome, and while Picaresque never quite gets there again, it makes for a stunning opening shot.

Not that the rest of the album isn’t excellent, it’s just quieter. The Levellers comparisons strike closest on “We Both Go Down Together,” a sweet fiddle-driven number, and “The Bagman’s Gambit” somehow manages to be both sparse and epic at once, all acoustics and pianos until its two-minute mark. “For My Own True Love (Lost at Sea)” is the perfect Decemberists song, a foreboding, deathly waltz over bass drum bomb-blasts, given added ethereal grace by Meloy’s wavery voice and delicate melody. One song later, they’re breaking out the Beatles influences on the sprightly anti-war diatribe “16 Military Wives.”

My favorite number here is “The Engine Driver,” a song that seamlessly combines this band’s folk and pop leanings. Revolving around the simple line, “And if you don’t love me let me go,” the simply strummed piece has a melody that never stops surprising. It’s a song that would sound equally at home in the repertoires of R.E.M. and Fairport Convention. The album concludes with an extended, lurching epic called “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” and a graceful coda called “Of Angels and Angles,” striking just the right note. But it’s “The Engine Driver” that stays with you.

I can’t say why I never reviewed this one. I had heard of the Decemberists before, but I probably would not have picked this album up without Lucas Beeley’s now-trademark breathlessly excited email. And he’s right, this deserved an honorable mention in the top 10 list. I plan on picking up this band’s other work – I already have Her Majesty, and it’s similarly terrific. Which is all I can ask of a recommendation – that it introduces me to great music I might never have heard otherwise. So keep them coming, folks.

Thanks to Matthew Waterhouse, Lucas Beeley (and his brother Steve), and everyone else who wrote me with questions, complaints, comments and suggestions this year. You’re all appreciated.

Next week, just for Mike Cetera, there’s a new Duncan Sheik album.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

A quick movie roundup, before we get started. I’ve seen more movies in the past two weeks than I have in the last two months, I think, and while I still don’t think I’ve seen the Best Picture winner (I’m usually pretty sure when I encounter it), I have been enjoying the cinemagoing experience more and more lately. Gotta love Oscar season, if for no other reason than for the markedly increased quality of the flicks at the local multiplex.

Anyway. My friend Jody and I did a three-movie day a couple of weekends ago, hitting the major epics all in a row. First was The Chronic (WHAT?) cles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, the first of seven planned adaptations of C.S. Lewis’ beloved fantasy series. I was told once that you should read the Narnia books three times in your life – once as a youngster, once as an adult and once as a senior citizen. So I read the Chronicles when I was in grade school, and re-read them about four years ago, and now I’m going to wait until I’m 70 and read them again.

In the meantime, Disney will likely finish their seven-movie saga, and if it’s anything like this first one, it will be more of a distillation than an adaptation. I have always liked the Narnia books more than the Lord of the Rings trilogy, despite their obvious Christian allegory – the very thing J.R.R. Tolkien disliked about Narnia, if my admittedly cursory research is correct – because they’re about magic and wonder more than drama and warfare. They’re kids’ books, in the best possible sense.

So I was dismayed to see that director Andrew Adamson had added a Helm’s Deep-style battle to the first book for this film, but otherwise, I think he did a decent enough job. He and Disney surprisingly refused to tone down the allegory and the difficult Passion of the Lion sequence near the end. Best of all, I think, this film captured what it would be like, as a child, to find yourself in another world – the saucer-eyed wonderment that filled this first book. I honestly don’t think the producers have read past Prince Caspian, if they think they have a marketable franchise on their hands, but this one was a pretty good start.

Next was King Kong, the only one I wish I hadn’t seen. Too long, too flashy, too inconsequential for its incredible running time. There were whole sections of this thing that were obviously only in the movie to show off Peter Jackson’s effects team. I will admit that they did a hell of a job with the big ape himself – the most affecting parts of this movie were the ones between Kong and Naomi Watts, just looking at each other – and the final 20 minutes almost redeemed the other 230, but in the end, it’s King Kong. We’ve seen it before, and it wasn’t that great the first time.

But then, ah, we capped the day with Steven Spielberg’s mesmerizing Munich, probably the best film I’ve seen this year, and easily Spielberg’s best since Schindler’s List. It is, remarkably, not about the 1972 massacre at the Munich Olympics, but about the Israeli response, and it balances themes of justice and vengeance beautifully. Eric Bana, whom I had only otherwise seen in Ang Lee’s ridiculous Hulk, was fantastic here, as one of the special operatives hired by Israel to hunt down and kill the men responsible for the murders in Munich.

It’s staged as a thriller of sorts – we watch Bana and his cohorts, including new James Bond actor Daniel Craig, carry out their mission, assassinating the planners of Munich one by one. But at the edges, it slowly becomes much more. For every vengeance killing the Israelis carry out, there is a Palestinian response, and the futility becomes clear. The movie’s final scene is perfect, reducing the centuries-old conflict to two men who cannot just sit down and talk. It’s an amazing, powerful movie, one that’s never preachy or didactic. Word is Spielberg has angered both Israel and Palestine with this movie, and that’s a sure sign that he did it right.

From the big studio pictures to the tiny indies – I saw The Squid and the Whale on Friday, at the marvelous old Town Theatre in Highland, Indiana. It’s the new film by Noah Baumbach, who made what might be my favorite movie ever, Kicking and Screaming. (Not the Will Ferrell soccer movie, thankyouverymuch – although that one’s on DVD, and Baumbach’s is not.) Baumbach’s style has always been observational smartassery tinged with sadness – he also made Mr. Jealousy and co-wrote The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou – so I was surprised at the harshness of Squid. It’s a tough little film.

Then again, it being a mostly autobiographical divorce drama, perhaps a little sandpaper around the edges is to be expected. This is probably Baumbach’s most accomplished movie – it has what I like to call a calculus script, one in which each word and phrase is so perfectly crafted and placed that the outcome seems preordained. Where this movie is funny, it is darkly funny, and where it is sad, it is devastating, but it never seems like anything but real life. It is small and beautiful, and contains a final scene of such grace that it easily outdoes all of Peter Jackson’s expensive monkeying. It’s wonderful, plain and simple.

Many dismissed Baumbach’s first pictures as the work of a junior Woody Allen, and perhaps as an exercise in contrast, here’s the real Woody Allen, back with Match Point, his most acclaimed movie in probably 10 years. But the comparison is silly – Match Point looks and feels nothing like a Woody Allen movie. It was shot in London, with an all-British cast, and none of its characters are stuttering, neurotic, or intolerable.

Now, I’m a Woody Allen fan, so I’m of the opinion that he never went away – he’s made a movie a year, every year, for longer than I’ve been alive, and the past decade has seen some winners. I thought The Curse of the Jade Scorpion was hilarious, and Sweet and Lowdown was a masterpiece, and Melinda and Melinda was superb. Oh, and Deconstructing Harry was awesome, too. So all this comeback talk has me mystified, but I can see how Match Point would be considered his most traditionally captivating film in a while.

Problem is, it’s essentially Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Next Generation. The plot is the same, the outcome is basically the same, only the details have changed. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – one of Allen’s best traits as a filmmaker is his ability to weave themes through his work, and this one uses the same setup to say something completely different. Where Crimes was about God and justice, Match Point sets up life as a series of blind chances. It’s a much more nihilistic film, although it is similarly bitter.

I don’t want to discourage you from seeing it – it’s very good, very enjoyable film. I just wish it hinged upon a more original idea. Allen is always good at those – even his misfires, like Hollywood Ending, have sparkling premises. Match Point is a philosophical thriller, and a good one, but it’s no work of genius. For that, you might want to check out some of the Woody Allen movies I named above. Next time, I hope he keeps the quality of this film’s writing and comes up with a more, shall we say, Woody-esque idea to flesh out.

Wow. These 1200 words were meant to be the opening paragraphs. I still have a whole music column to get to. Hope you’re not going anywhere for a while…

* * * * *

I got a startling phone call this week regarding one of my stories in the paper.

It was a harmless little feature on new year’s resolutions. A couple of photographers and I scoured the streets for probably six hours over two days, looking for people who had resolved something, anything. We ended up with five people willing to have their pictures taken for the front page, and I didn’t even think about it beyond the fact that, after so many refusals and brush-offs, we had what we needed for the story. I was just glad to be finished with it.

So it ran, and the next day, I got this phone call. It sounded like an older gentleman, and man, was he upset. I listened with disbelief as he expressed his disappointment that all five of our subjects for the story were white. And honestly, I hadn’t even thought about it. In my defense, neither had one of my photographers, who is black, but that sounds like a cop-out. I didn’t think about it because I don’t think about it – I just don’t see the world that way. Considering my job, I probably should, or at least I should remember that some of our readers will pick up on unintentional imbalances like that.

But I don’t.

I’ll tell you what I do recall about the new year’s feature, though – three of the five people I talked to were women. I don’t know why that matters more to me than race – it absolutely should not, but it seems to. You can be black, white, blue, orange, or polka-dotted, and if you make good music, I’ll buy your stuff, and I likely won’t even notice. (Well, I may notice the polka-dotted people…) But I always scan my year-end lists for female artists, and I’m conscious of how outnumbered they often are.

The 2005 list had two albums by women – Aimee Mann’s amazing The Forgotten Arm and Kate Bush’s double-disc comeback Aerial. I know that more than 20 percent of the records I bought last year were from female artists, and some of my favorite musicians are women, including the two listed above. I honestly believe the 10 albums I picked were the best ones I heard during the year, subject to my specific tastes, but I still felt a little twinge of guilt at the poor showing from women. In fact, of the 50 albums that make up the previous five lists I’ve posted, only seven are from women, and two of those are also Aimee Mann’s.

I would hate for anyone to think that I’m implying through my selections that women don’t make good music, any more than I would want people to infer that only white people make new year’s resolutions. And I hope no one takes either of those things from my work, ‘cause they’re just not there. There’s very little I can do about the resolutions thing, because while I talked to all sizes, ages and colors of people for the story, the five white people I ended up with were the only ones that wanted to talk and be photographed.

But I can do something about the lack of women in this column, although part of me doesn’t feel like I should have to. I have three overlooked releases from Aught-Five in front of me, all by women, and all excellent. Trust me when I say, though, that I didn’t buy any of these because their authors are female, and I’m not grading on a curve. These records are all terrific – not top 10 list terrific, but great nonetheless – and the gender of the artists is incidental.

Okay, then. Some overlooked women of 2005:

* * * * *

If anyone has redefined the whole idea of a female artist in the last few decades, it’s Madonna. She’s known as an icon more than as a musician, which is unfortunate, but probably not unjustified. As a pop cultural figure, she smashed every taboo in the book, in an endlessly calculated effort to be remembered and revered. Even now, I’m not sure we know a lot about Madonna – she is her public image, and that’s the way she wants it.

As much as I rail against the more premeditated aspects of what she does, though, I have to admit that she wouldn’t have navigated a 20-plus-year career if she had nothing artistic to offer. The fickle public would have turned on her long ago if her work wasn’t in some way satisfying, and in truth, I think much of it is superb. Madonna’s chief talents are an innate sense of where to push her sound, and an uncanny knack of surrounding herself with geniuses who can realize her vision. If you open the door to good pop music, like I have over and over, you have to assess Madonna’s work favorably. It’s just good stuff.

Her last few, in particular, have been restlessly creative, experimental pieces that somehow distill complex techno-pop ideas down into blissful pop tunes. Ray of Light remains her masterpiece in this area, I think, thanks largely to the precise work of British producer William Orbit, but parts of Music and American Life nudged against the boundaries as well. The latter is one of her weaker efforts, containing more clumsiness per minute than anything she’s done, but it is still recklessly brave, and not the work of a safe, complacent pop star.

Her new one, Confessions on a Dance Floor, is by its nature a little less reckless, but it is infinitely more consistent. She’s returned to her pure dance-pop roots, but instead of mining the dead seam of American booty-rap-club-crap, she’s turned in a decidedly European effort, working with British producer Stuart Price and longtime collaborator and Frenchman Mirwais Ahmadazi. They’ve crafted a cohesive slab of thumping, pulsing dance music that is by turns melancholy and melodic, joyful and moody. All the tracks segue, and there are no ballads, so what you have is an hour-long uninterrupted rave party that somehow still sounds like 12 great pop songs.

It’s a retreat after American Life, sure, but Madonna has never sounded more comfortable with this style. Full credit to her producers, of course, who filled this record with ear-catching, dazzling moments. The syncopated pulse of “Get Together” is wonderful, as is the atmosphere of “Let It Will Be,” as is any of a hundred little flourishes that make this a very quick 60 minutes. Confessions is the sound of Madonna closing ranks, picking the one thing she’s best at and essentially showing off. But it works.

Once again, of course, she’s the worst thing about her own album. Her voice is typically weak and mannered, although with the layers of effects that surround it at all times on this record, you hardly notice. Her lyrics, on the other hand, weigh this album down. Mostly they’re harmless tales of flirtation, love and loss, but the worst offender here is “I Love New York,” which actually rhymes the title phrase with the line, “Other places make me feel like a dork.” It’s not as embarrassing as some of American Life, but it is cringe-worthy.

But man, the one that really comes together here is “Isaac,” the “controversial” number. (There’s always one…) It’s half Hebrew, half abstract poetry, and it ends up saying very little that anyone should be upset over, but the overall effect of the music and lyrics is haunting and memorable. It’s the best thing here, swirling and deep, but perhaps its biggest achievement is how it segues in and out without feeling like it’s out of place between two pop songs, one that bitches about fame and one that bitches about relationships. If you’re still on the fence about whether Madonna should be considered an actual musical artist, this is more evidence that she absolutely should.

Of course, her whole image is that of the independent woman doing it for herself, which makes the fact that she’s so dependent on her producers kind of ironic. If for some reason that matters to you, and you’re looking for an electronic pop album fully written, played and produced by a woman, you won’t do better than Speak For Yourself, the solo project of Frou Frou’s Imogen Heap. It is every bit as dazzling as Madonna’s record, if not more so, and Heap’s voice and writing talents are much stronger.

In a recent interview in Paste Magazine, Heap noted that women are often assumed to provide only the voice and lyrics, not the melody and production, and it’s sadly true. If this album is anything to go by, Heap is every bit the expert knob-twiddler that her male counterparts are (including former Madonna producer and the other half of Frou Frou, Guy Sigsworth), and she obviously labored over every scrap of sound you hear here. It’s a marvel of assemblage, accomplishing the same trick as Madge’s recent work – incorporating ear-tickling techno without losing the pop melodies – with more grace. Heap has an ambient edge to her work, as well, which comes to the fore near the end of the record.

But just for a second, let’s indulge the stereotype and talk about her voice. It’s stunning. Like on Frou Frou’s album, Heap’s voice here is multi-layered and strong, effortlessly hooking upwards at surprising moments, and she harmonizes with herself beautifully. If vocals were all she contributed here, she’d still be worthy of praise – this sounds like where many Chemical Brothers fans wish Beth Orton’s solo stuff had gone, instead of the spare folk paths she’s taken.

Of course, that’s not all she has going for her. The songs on Speak are marvelous – even the obvious singles like “Goodnight and Go” are ludicrously enjoyable, and when she gets down to business, as on “Have You Got It In You” and “Closing In,” she writes remarkable melodies. The production is impeccable, glorious even – you never know what’s going to fly at your ear next, from the looping keyboards to the occasional splashes of dirty guitar to the astonishing backing vocals.

But then there is “Hide and Seek,” the reason most people will know Heap’s bizarre name. It played over part of an episode of The O.C., apparently, and has become a left-field hit, but its vocoders-and-nothing-else aesthetic makes it an odd fit for this buzzing little record. It really brings things to a halt, nice as it is, and though it will sell copies, I often wish it wasn’t included, or at least not at track five. Naturally, the one the rest of America likes is the one I sometimes want to skip through. Nothing against the song, per se, but it pales in comparison to its neighbors, especially “Clear the Area.”

And I’ll admit to being a little upset that the hit song from this record is the one that least exhibits Heap’s talents. Speak For Yourself is full of little wonders, and even some big ones, like the closer, “The Moment I Said It.” If you want to hear what a brilliant female electro-pop artist can really do, then this record is a nearly flawless example. In fact, you can remove the word “female” from the preceding sentence, and it’d still be true.

Speaking of that, here’s another one: Tori Amos is one of my favorite female artists. You can take the word “female” out of that sentence, repeat it back to me, and even after her recent string of incredibly bland, boring, wasteful records, I’ll still nod in agreement. She’s one of the most captivating, brilliant, moving musicians around, nearly without peer, but only when she wants to be.

For my money, she hasn’t really wanted to be since about 1995. From the Choirgirl Hotel was the first step on a long, downward road, the lowest point of which (so far) is this year’s The Beekeeper. It’s nearly 80 minutes long, and it contains not one song that can match even the b-sides from her first few records. Plus, it’s all wrapped up in this disaffected gauze, with all of the potentially interesting edges rounded off. It sounds like oatmeal, and not the apples and cinnamon kind, or even the brown sugar kind. Plain old mushy, tasteless oatmeal.

If Amos were a lost cause, an album like The Beekeeper wouldn’t piss me off so much, but she’s not. She is still capable of investing herself in a song like no one else, of reaching deep and connecting with an audience, of turning even a simple ditty into something devastating. How do I know this? She keeps on reminding us, for some reason. The most recent example is The Original Bootlegs, a 12-CD set of live recordings from her Original Sinsuality tour last year.

It is amazing. Every second of it is amazing.

This is more than 11 hours of Tori and her piano and her organ, and nothing else. If you’re unfamiliar with Amos’ work, you probably think that such a thing would be boring after a while. You’re wrong. Every one of these six full concerts is Amos at her best, playing and singing her heart out. I know what it means to be in the room when she’s working this particular magic, and there’s nothing I can compare it to. No one speaks, no one moves, everyone is enraptured, and while the CDs don’t exactly capture that feeling, they do give you some idea of what it’s like.

There are too many highlights to enumerate here, although I must mention the section of every show in which she selects bizarre covers to give the Tori treatment. Included in this box are piano-vocal versions of Flock of Seagulls’ “I Ran,” Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” George Michael’s “Father Figure,” Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” Oasis’ “Don’t Look Back in Anger” and Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” among others. If you never thought any of the above songs could be heart-wrenchingly beautiful, you need to hear these versions of them.

As much as I love The Original Bootlegs, it pisses me off more than anything else I heard this year. There’s no denying that she can still do this, so why the hell doesn’t she? Roughly half of The Beekeeper’s songs are included here, and every one of them is infinitely better in this setting. And not just because Amos is alone here, but because she’s invested. On the album, I couldn’t have cared less about a simple bit of fluff like “Jamaica Inn,” but here, she makes me care. Every concert here contains a 10-minute take on “The Beekeeper” itself, and each is different, and extraordinary. If she loves these songs this much, how could she stand to strip them of all feeling for the album? I don’t get it.

But enough negativity. The Original Bootlegs has once again restored my faith in Tori Amos, and reminded me of how much I love her older songs, like “Yes Anastasia” and “Cloud on My Tongue” and “Horses” and “Space Dog” and especially “Winter.” New numbers like “Parasol” and “Barons of Suburbia” and “Carbon” seem to fit right in here, and this set has sent me back to her last few albums to rediscover them. What else could you want? I can only hope that Amos listens to these CDs and remembers how to do what she does best when she sits down to make the next album. Because she’s one of the best female artists on the planet.

And there’s another sentence you can take the word “female” right out of, and it would still be true.

* * * * *

Next week, some recommendations I forgot to get to last year. And the week after that, the new stuff starts coming in, with records from Ester Drang, Richard Julian, Robert Pollard, Jenny Lewis and Duncan Sheik. And yes, I did notice that the preceding list contains only one woman…

See you in line Tuesday morning.

It’s a short one this week, as I’m still working on that Zappa buyer’s guide. It looks like it’s going to be eight interconnected pages, full of thousands and thousands of words. I don’t know what made me think I could pull this off when I can barely get the regular-sized columns out on time. Check with me next week to see if I did it.

As I mentioned last week, we’re in the January lull. New tunes don’t start coming out in earnest until the 23rd of this month, and when we hit February, there’s another dry patch. The one new record I’ve picked up so far is Workmanship, the CD release of Joy Electric’s 2006 7-inch, and it’s 15 minutes long. That’s not enough new music for a junkie like me, no matter how good it is. (And Workmanship is very good, if a little extraneous. It’s a decent primer for the new full-length and EP, both out on March 20.)

Thankfully, there were some last-minute releases in December of ’06 that have helped me get through these long, cold weeks. December is an odd month for anything musical, really, except Christmas carols. The best movies of the year are often held until the twelfth month, and sometimes given only limited release near the end of December to qualify for an Oscar. Not so with music – the Grammy cutoff is October, and no one has time to pay attention to new records in December. Hence, nothing comes out. Nothing at all.

In fact, when a new album gets a December release, you kind of have to wonder why. The last month of the year is usually home to best-ofs, box sets and rarities collections, the kind of thing that either fulfills a contract or tries to squeeze a couple of Christmas bucks out of last-minute shoppers. Take, for example, Sonic Youth’s new set, The Destroyed Room. It does two things – it collects unreleased tracks from their 16 years with Geffen Records, and it brings those years to a close by finishing out their contract. Unless you’re a hardcore SY fan, you would need some good reasons to pick this up.

So let me give you some.

First off, if you’re one of the millions who thought that the past few Sonic Youth albums were just a little too concise and poppy, you’ll be glad to know that The Destroyed Room is almost entirely filled with the band’s weird instrumental side. It kicks off with “Fire Engine Dream,” a 10-plus-minute jam session that sets the tone – this is the explosive, dissonant guitar-army Sonic Youth, the one that’s been taking a back seat to their slightly more radio-friendly alter ego in recent years. It’s challenging, trippy stuff, but like the best Sonic Youth, it makes most other rock music just sound dull and flat.

There are highlights here, but mostly, The Destroyed Room has an appealingly unfinished feel that works well if heard in sequence. “Kim’s Chords” doesn’t even have a real title, but it’s superb, an instrumental sketch that blossoms and blooms before your ears. I’ve liked the last batch of SY albums, as flowchart-perfect as they’ve been, but listening to this, it’s clear that the Sonic Youth magic is at its best when it’s four people chasing an intricate, unknowable secret with abandon.

Which brings us to the best reason to buy The Destroyed Room – the complete, unedited, 26-minute version of “The Diamond Sea,” which I consider the best song they wrote for Geffen. The 19-minute cut of this feedback-drenched extravaganza closed Washing Machine, one of their finest albums, but here the song is given its full digital due, and it’s amazing. In a very real sense, the song ends after four minutes, and the band just shoots for the stars over the remaining 22, making some of the most crushingly beautiful noise you’ll ever hear.

Still, this is definitely a December release, cobbled together from scraps and old recordings, and it’s a contractual obligation to boot. For a long time, these patchwork records were the only things dotting the landscape in December. But a few years ago, for some reason, the final months became the oasis for hip-hop. Now almost every major rap record comes out at the end of the year, which doesn’t help me much – I’m too much of a melody addict to like much hip-hop – but does give fans of the genre something to spend their Christmas money on.

This year we had Jay-Z, Clipse, Ghostface Killah, and the definitely not dead 2Pac releasing records in November and December, but topping them all is Nas, who cheekily titled his eighth album Hip-Hop is Dead. It’s not, and his clever, enjoyable record is all the proof you’d need. Any new Nas album will always be unfavorably compared to Illmatic, his 1994 debut, which is still considered a classic. But as someone who has followed his career pretty closely, I feel confident in saying that Hip-Hop is Dead is the closest he’s come yet to equaling his opening salvo.

The problem, as always, is length – Hip-Hop runs out of gas about two-thirds of the way through. But before it does, Nas treats you to some killers. Most notably, the title track is set to the riff from “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida,” and makes the most of its propulsive, guitar-driven backdrop. Nas’ duet with Jay-Z, “Black Republican,” is a winner, as is “Carry On Tradition,” another in a long line of street remembrances with a thumping beat.

But you know what works best here? It’s the closer, “Hope,” recorded a cappella, just Nas rapping with no beats. Here he delivers a passionate plea for rap music – “This about us, this our thing, this came from the gut, from the blood, from the soul,” he says, moments after taking a machete to the notion of old school vs. new school, or east coast vs. west coast. Here and elsewhere on Hip-Hop is Dead, Nas proves he’s one of the best there is, and he remains one of the few rappers I admire.

A December release is kind of expected for a hip-hop artist like Nas – his fans will know to look for it at the end of the year, with all the other high-profile rap releases. But for a pop-rock band like Switchfoot, a December release is a tragedy, and it makes me wonder just what their record label is thinking. The band’s sixth album, Oh! Gravity, hit stores the day after Christmas, with exactly no pre-release hype – a strange strategy for a group with a number of hits under its belt. It’s naturally been all but forgotten about, not so much released as dumped out on the street and left to fend for itself.

The worst part? Oh! Gravity is unquestionably the best album Switchfoot has yet made.

I’ve always considered them underrated, and several cuts above the average modern rock band, but this album takes them to new places. Start with the unbridled aggression of the title song, scrappy and propulsive, then move to “Awakening,” a raise-your-hands-to-the-sky anthem that will have you screaming along. The band still sounds glossy and professional, of course, but this album puts a new fire on display – this sounds like the first album in years that the band simply had to make.

The diversity here only adds to that impression. “Dirty Second Hands” is a bluesy, odd-time jaunt slightly reminiscent of Alice in Chains, and “Circles” is a quiet-loud epic with a bridge that will knock you out. “Faust, Midas and Myself” rises above its terrible title to become a whirlwind mini-suite centering on the line “you’ve one life left to lead,” and even late-album rockers like “Burn Out Bright” and “4:12” (which is, naturally, four minutes and 12 seconds long) don’t skimp on the melodies. I can’t remember anything about the second half of Nothing is Sound, despite the fact that it came out only a year ago, but every song on Oh! Gravity does it for me in one way or another.

Okay, not every song – I could live without “Amateur Lovers,” the point at which the band took their newfound diversity too far. It’s a 1970s-style bar band rocker, and its stupid refrain (“We don’t know what we’re doing, let’s do it again!”) makes me want to find something heavy and blunt to smack singer Jon Foreman with. The fact that it’s sandwiched between two of the album’s best cuts doesn’t help matters.

But without “Amateur Lovers,” Oh! Gravity would have been a nearly flawless modern rock record. You can hate Switchfoot because they’re beautiful, but you’ll be missing out on some punchy, well-crafted rock. The band obviously had a number of breakthroughs on this superb little album, and they should feel betrayed by Columbia Records. Just about everything that was up to the band (songwriting, performance) is excellent, and just about everything that was up to the label (cover art, promotion, release date) was botched.

Don’t let that stop you, though, because Switchfoot has delivered what is undoubtedly the best reason to go to the record store during these after-Christmas doldrums. There’s some great stuff coming out, starting with the Shins on the 23rd, but until then, Oh! Gravity will likely remain in permanent residence in my CD player.

Next week, Zappa out the yin yang, I hope.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Happy Aught Six, everyone.

I’m sure history will decide what abbreviated nickname we give this decade, but I like calling it the Aughts. First, it’s delightfully old-mannered, like you should have to be wearing a fedora hat and smoking a pipe just to say it. And you should say it to a guy named Jeeves, if at all possible. “It’s the Aughts, Jeeves.” And secondly, it seems to make people nuts. I don’t know why, but I’m always amused by small things that drive others insane.

So it’s Aught Six. This is the sixth new year’s column I’ve done, and I’m looking back over the archives and noticing that I haven’t yet succumbed to the lame-ass trap of writing one about my new year’s resolutions. In my ongoing attempts to make tm3am as pitiful as possible, in the hopes that you’ll all feel bad for me and send money, I decided to rectify that. I only have one, but here it is:

I resolve to be less judgmental in the coming year.

Now, I’ve told this resolution to a few of my friends already, and each of them has said, independent of the others, something like, “That’s a good resolution for you!” I’m not sure what to say to that, other than “ouch,” but I’m guessing from the reaction I’ve received that this is an area I need to work on. And I may as well start now, with music.

I judge music without hearing it all the time. It’s the only way (besides illegal downloading, which is no good for anyone) that I can still manage to pay my bills – if I were to buy and listen to everything I should, as a critic and as a fan, I would be penniless on the street, forced to sell my iPod for food. So over the years I’ve developed what I call the Third Album Test. The absolute genius of this name will become apparent when I tell you that it’s a test that centers around a band’s third album. Fooking brilliant, wot?

I like to wait until third albums before really making a judgment call on a band, and here’s why. The debut is the record you have your entire life to make – songs you’ve been working on since you were 12 can wind up on the first album, fully formed and crafted. By that very same logic, the follow-up is often a disaster, because you spent your wad on the first shot, and kept nothing back, and instead of your whole life this time, you only have six weeks to come up with something.

At least, that’s the way it often works. Many artists know this pattern already before they launch into their recording careers these days, and they work to avoid it. And still others follow a more organic path, stumbling around on their first record and finding their footing on the second. But it’s most often the case that the third album cements everything. It’s the one where the evolution either takes off or caps, most times, and by the third, I usually know if I’m going to like a band.

Thing is, I’ve been circumventing the Third Album Test for some time now, snapping to judgment early on many well-respected acts. A good example is the Strokes, a band I dismissed 15 seconds after hearing “Last Nite.” In a perfect world, that first time would have also been the last time I heard “Last Nite,” but no – it was rammed into my skull for months, inescapably played on radio and video, and included on mix CDs I received. Was I the only one bored by it?

I naturally did not buy Is This It, the hyped-beyond-belief savior-of-rock first record by the Strokes. I also didn’t buy Room on Fire, the apparently disappointingly similar second album. I argued vociferously with many people who pressed the Strokes on me, lumping them in with the “garage rock” movement and basically denying their existence as best I could. Why? I dunno.

So here’s First Impressions of Earth, the third Strokes album, out this week. Just in time to remind me of both my resolution and my Third Album Test, which I hadn’t planned on doing with this band. Which is just plain judgmental, especially since the reviews for Earth have been pretty smashing, citing perhaps my favorite phrase in the critical lexicon: artistic growth. After a few days of this, I turned to the universe and shouted, “All right, already! Jeez! I’ll buy the stupid Strokes albums!”

So I did. And I listened to them all in a row, with open ears and (hopefully) open mind.

Perhaps it would be best at this point to say what I didn’t like about this band to begin with. I am not a fan of minimalism, which seems to have swept the country like a plague. It’s become some kind of strange virtue to record your album in a weekend, or at least make it sound like you recorded it in a weekend, even if you took three years on it. Any evidence of ambition or labor must go, until what’s left is energy and abandon, no matter how weak the songs are.

“Last Nite” is a pretty weak song. It is, oddly, one of the strongest on Is This It, an album that makes 35 minutes seem like 10 years. The songs are pretty simplistic, and the recording is unbelievably basic. If all you want is a shuffling beat and a thudding guitar, this will do it for you, but memorable moments are few. Singer Julian Casablancas (what a rock ‘n’ roll name…) mopes through the melodic sections and screams through the rest, and he’s not very ear-catching in either mode. I suppose the acclaim centered around the energy present throughout the record, the “real rawk” it proffers, but that’s never been enough for me.

So, strike one.

Room on Fire is better, not even close to the holding action I was expecting. It’s shorter than the already-EP-length debut, but the songs are sharper, especially the first few. The band still sticks to one-four-five progressions a little too often, but they stretch their melodies here and there, and let the lead guitar do its thing better. They’re still boring, though – where many hear reckless, explosive energy, I hear sameness and repetition and an overall soup of blah.

Which would be strike two. As Room on Fire drew to a close, ironically with a song called “I Can’t Win,” I reconsidered this whole resolution thing. Perhaps judgmental is where it’s at. Maybe, at this point in my musical life, I really can tell within one song whether or not a band will ever be worth my time. Maybe I’ve been right all along. And maybe I just wasted $36 on thudding, too-cool-for-school rawk music that I’ll never listen to again.

And then I fired up First Impressions of Earth.

The album’s texture was the first thing that caught me by surprise. While the other two Strokes albums sound like they were recorded from seven miles away, Earth is big, clear and up-front. The change is remarkable. They no longer sound like they’re trying to fake poverty, or pretending that it’s 1972 and their crippled reel-to-reel machine is all they have. It’s warmer and more inviting, which some will see as a sellout, but which I consider a real improvement.

But wait – that’s not the only giant leap here. The songs are light years better. Listen to “Juicebox,” the new single – that thing’s a monster, incorporating some of Franz Ferdinand’s melodic tricks and a monolithic bass groove. The chorus is massive, the band sounds like they’re on fire – the energy on this one makes Is This It sound like a moldering corpse. “Juicebox” isn’t the only good song here, but it is probably the best one, and the surest sign that the Strokes want to move forward.

The rest of Earth is similarly ambitious. The album is nearly twice as long as its predecessor, and many of its songs top four minutes. (For the Strokes, four minutes is “Stairway to Heaven.”) Of those, very few don’t deserve the longer run times. “15 Minutes” is the most egregious, with “Killing Lies” right behind – those tunes drag down the middle of what otherwise is a pretty enjoyable little record. Beyond that, though, the production is just swell, effectively countering boredom at every turn with lead guitar breaks and neat little moments.

The most surprising song here is “Ask Me Anything,” which sounds like something Stephin Merritt would come up with. It is the only Strokes song without any guitars at all – it’s all string sounds and Casablancas’ tenor. The lyrics are typically lame, with “I got nothing to give, got no reason to live,” and “I got nothing to hide, wish I wasn’t so shy” being representative examples. But the song is interesting, especially in contrast. It’s followed by “Electricityscape,” which is not only a great pun but a well-arranged piece of melody.

Still, nothing here approaches the slap-you-upside-the-head force of “Juicebox.” The band picks up steam near the end, with “Ize of the World” and the shambling “Evening Sun,” but it can’t regain the power of its opening shots. But hell, at least they tried. First Impressions of Earth is several large steps in the right direction for the Strokes, and I hope they keep traveling down this road.

I’m also glad I got over my hang-up and heard it. We’ll see how long this non-judgmental thing lasts, but given how successful the Third Album Test was this time, I can’t see not doing it again, and giving more chances to other bands I’d written off. I might even start to take some of Dr. Tony Shore’s recommendations seriously. You never know. Anyway, I’ll keep you posted on how my journey to a less obnoxious me is coming along.

Next week, I catch up with some of 2005’s forgotten sons. And daughters.

See you in line Tuesday morning.