I had this elaborate idea for a column this week, discussing the new sounds created through interesting collaborations between well-known artists. Yeah, sounds like a corker, doesn’t it? Try not to doze off just yet…

But I had what could easily be termed my worst week ever as a professional reporter, and it’s my birthday on Monday, and I really just need to decompress. So, how about a brief look at some of the new records I’m looking forward to this summer instead? I promise, that lengthy thesis relating collaborations to genetic mutations will be ready to go next week.

Cool? Cool.

So June is a pretty decent month for new tunes. Next week we have a collaboration (imagine that) between Elvis Costello and famous New Orleans songwriter Allen Toussaint called The River in Reverse, which is already being touted as the best response to Hurricane Katrina thus far from the artistic community. What I’ve heard sounds great. Also giving me a birthday present is Aaron Sprinkle, formerly of Poor Old Lu, who debuts his new band Fair. The album is called The Best Worst-Case Scenario, and for a typically effusive review, check out Dr. Tony Shore’s website.

Things pick up over the next few weeks. Sonic Youth returns on the 13th with the oddly titled Rather Ripped, and the 20th is dominated by Keane’s sophomore release, Under the Iron Sea. Every year there’s an album I look forward to more than any other, and Iron Sea is this year’s. What I’ve heard is just amazing, from the dramatic melancholy of “Atlantic” to the U2-ish rocker “Is It Any Wonder” to the mega-melodic “Nothing In My Way” to the most beautiful tune of theirs I know, “Hamburg Song.” Unless the album completely falls apart in its second half, expect kind words.

Guster returns on the 20th with Ganging Up on the Sun, their second album in a row to feature actual with-sticks drumming. I’m still not sure what I think of that choice – on the one hand, it takes away a big part (perhaps the only part) of their original identity, but on the other, the songwriting hasn’t changed, and the sweet melodies and harmonies were what kept me coming back to Guster anyway. I alternately like and am bored by the songs I’ve heard, so we shall see.

On a related topic, every band on the planet has a MySpace account now, and most will preview selected tracks from new albums before they hit stores. Guster’s does. If you’re interested, you can just replace Guster’s name in that web address with pretty much anyone’s I mention here and hear new songs from all of ‘em.

June 27 sees the new Pet Shop Boys album, Fundamental. I’ve heard good things, especially about the last track, “Integral.” The single, “I’m With Stupid,” is funny – it imagines a love affair between George Bush and Tony Blair. I get shit fairly often for being a Pet Shop Boys fan, but they are classic pop songwriters, and every album of theirs has something to recommend it. Technology has changed around them, and they’ve used it to their advantage, but their penchant for hooks and memorable songs has never wavered. You could play just about everything they’ve done on acoustic guitar, and they’d still be good songs.

Speaking of acoustic guitars, Grant Lee Phillips (semi-famous as the Stars Hollow minstrel on Gilmore Girls) returns on the 27th with Nineteeneighties, a collection of stripped-down covers of ‘80s songs like “Wave of Mutilation” and “Under the Milky Way.” His take on R.E.M.’s “So. Central Rain” is fantastic, as is his take on the Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry.” What a voice Grant has. This is going to be superb.

Into July, Independence Day will see the final American record from Johnny Cash, subtitled A Hundred Highways. This is the one Cash was working on when he died, and includes the last songs he ever wrote. I honestly think Cash’s work with Rick Rubin should all be rounded up and issued as a monument to the man – it’s among the best stuff he ever did, a late-career resurgence in energy and creativity few thought possible. I would buy a 10-disc set of all of it, even though I have most of it already, just to put the box on a shelf and look at it.

The July 4 week will also see the release of The Lost Cabin and the Mystery Trees, the 10th album by the Lost Dogs. They’re a collective of some of my favorite songwriters, including Terry Taylor, Derri Daugherty and Michael Roe, and their work is heavily influenced by the aforementioned Johnny Cash. The last few Dogs albums have felt like placeholders, just something to have on hand to sell at the summer festivals, but this one is being touted as the real deal.

July 11 is deceptive – it’s huge, with a lot of new releases, but not much that will shake the earth. Muse strikes back with Black Holes and Revelations, led by the disco-flavored single “Supermassive Black Hole.” Sufjan Stevens issues The Avalanche, a collection of outtakes from Illinois. Thom Yorke releases his first solo album, The Eraser, which by all accounts sounds like Kid A. Phish puts out a triple-CD live album, Strapping Young Lad erupts onto shelves with the wittily titled The New Black, and there’s a They Might Be Giants tribute album scheduled as well.

But perhaps most interesting to me is an album called The Mother, The Mechanic and the Path, by relative unknowns The Early November. Exhibiting more ambition than most bands of their post-punk ilk, TEN has crafted a three-CD, 46-track concept album, each disc relating to one member of a family. The Mother is mostly acoustic, The Mechanic is heavier, and The Path, which deals with their child, is apparently a radio play with songs interspersed. The songs I’ve heard are leaps and bounds ahead of TEN’s other work, so this should be very interesting. And it gets points just for being grandiose.

Bruce Cockburn comes back on July 18 with an album entitled Life Short Call Now, about which I know next to nothing. But it’s Cockburn, so I will buy it sound unheard. The following week sees the new Tom Petty, Highway Companion. And then nothing until August, unless the schedule changes.

The eighth month will bring the new Ani Difranco, Reprieve, which purportedly is her angry response to the hurricane, recorded largely in New Orleans. Could be an interesting contrast with Costello and Toussaint’s record. Also on August 8 is the two-CD solo debut by Matthew Friedberger, the male half of the Fiery Furnaces, and when does this guy sleep? The Furnaces have released four lengthy albums and an EP in the past 33 months, and now here’s Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language School, Matthew’s 100-plus-minute side project, which will come out before the three-year anniversary of his band’s first record. And it’s not like any of it’s been terrible. Maybe Friedberger should be the one writing an album for each of the 50 states…

And finally, one of the ‘90s most interesting songwriters, Eric Matthews, will return on August 22 with Foundation Sounds, a 17-song proper album that should more than make up for his relatively weak six-song EP of last year. Matthews’ solo debut, It’s Heavy in Here, is still a template for lush modern chamber-pop, and I’m excited to hear him paint on a larger canvas again.

And that’s my summer, barring any last-minute surprises. Next week, that collaborations column, I hope, and after that, reviews of Sonic Youth, Keane and Guster, among others. And I’ll be 32. I expect to spend my birthday fielding angry calls and getting a headache at work, so I think I’ll go celebrate a bit right now. Thanks for your indulgence this week.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I really don’t like George W. Bush.

I thought I’d get that out early, before anyone accuses me of the bias that is certainly going to be present in this column. I think there’s certainly plenty of evidence to support naming Bush our worst president in recent memory, if not ever. At every opportunity, the man has shown a failure of leadership, of character, and of honesty. The most recent controversy regarding the NSA and phone records of thousands of Americans is just the latest – to tell you the truth, it didn’t really surprise me at all. Bush and his administration have shown a consistent willingness, if not eagerness, to shit on the Constitution whenever possible.

So yeah, I’m not his biggest fan. And I have to admit that I get a small charge out of anything that strikes back at his particular brand of Orwellian subterfuge and Barney Fife-ian incompetence. I find it hard to believe, for example, that I knew about Hurricane Katrina and its effects on New Orleans before the president, but there you go. The man can’t even be bothered to turn on CNN while people are dying. I’m amazed that he still has defenders. But then, I’m amazed that people watch American Idol, so I’m probably not the best judge.

Still, my political position used to be pretty moderate, fairly central – I’m fiscally conservative and socially liberal, I used to say. But thanks to this bizarre and seemingly unchallenged hijacking of the right wing by frothing, angry, intolerant nutjobs, what used to be considered right-of-center is now moderate, and I find myself labeled a loony liberal pretty often. The left has been scrunched down into a smaller space, and I find I’ve been shoved into it, sitting next to the likes of Al Franken and the guy who made Loose Change.

Thankfully, it’s becoming more and more acceptable to think Bush is an idiot. In recent years, left-leaning thinkers with something to say had to out-shout Fox News, but lately, what I like to call the “sense and reason” point of view has made some headway. Approval numbers are way down, The Daily Show is wonderfully popular, and even the Republicans are distancing themselves from the Bush administration.

Quite literally my favorite thing about America is it offers us the ability to speak out against our government (or anyone, really) if we feel we should. I don’t agree with the guy who made Loose Change (Alex Jones is his name), but I’m grateful we live in a country where the very act of putting that short film together doesn’t land someone in jail. Similarly, I’m glad Ann Coulter can continue to spout off. I just wish fewer people would pay attention to her.

If we lived under the same rules as many Middle Eastern countries, the two records I have to review this week would probably get their authors sentenced to death. They are both angry responses to Bush’s America, and they both take some cheap shots at his expense. I can’t deny that those cheap shots made me smile, though let’s be clear – neither of these are measured, rational arguments against the Bush administration and its policies. They are both simplistic doses of rage, which for some remains the only sane response to five years of insanity.

Take Neil Young, for example. Despite being from Canada, Young has never shied away from explicitly and specifically commenting on American politics, from his 1971 hit “Ohio” (with Crosby, Stills and Nash) to his 2002 response to September 11, “Let’s Roll.” But he’s never made an album quite like Living With War, his explosive tirade against King Bush II and his unprovoked invasion of Iraq. Recorded in a matter of days, War is defiantly a product of its time, a protest album that will mark off this specific year, no matter when it’s played.

For this record, Young has matched his trademark snarling guitar with a 100-voice choir, presumably to symbolize the voice of the people. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s an interesting choice, given this president’s southern Gospel leanings. At times, it’s like the most politically charged church service you’ll ever hear, with Young’s high-pitched wail collapsing into the arms of the choir after a fire-and-brimstone sermon full of righteousness.

But “judge not, lest you be judged” is not the verse of the day, and Young does a whole lot of judging here. The quick turnaround time is apparent in the lyrics, which are as subtle as Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” banner. “How do you pay for war and leave us dyin’,” he charges. “You could do so much more, you’re not even tryin.’” That’s from “The Restless Consumer,” which pivots on a repeated bellow of “Don’t need no more lies.”

“Shock and Awe” is as you’d expect, a look back on when we thought we’d be out of Iraq in a few weeks. “History was the cruel judge of overconfidence, back in the days of shock and awe,” Young spits. “Flags of Freedom” is about young men going off to war, while “Families” is about the people they leave behind. It’s all written in plain-spoken language, the furthest thing from poetic, and while the anger comes through, there’s sadly very little art to it. As a statement, it’s mostly successful, but as an album of songs, it’s graceless.

And that goes double for “Let’s Impeach the President,” the album’s most directly aimed track. It opens with a bugler playing “Taps,” then lists off a litany of reasons to yank Bush from office: “Let’s impeach the president for hijacking our religion, and using it to get elected, dividing our country into colors and still leaving black people neglected…” It’s a sharp tune, at one point wondering aloud if New Orleans would have been any safer if Al Qaeda had blown up the levees instead of Katrina overflowing them. “Was someone just not home that day?” he asks, not expecting an answer. The song also contains numerous sound clips of Bush contradicting himself, over which the choir chants “flip… flop… flip… flop…”

For all its unbridled rage, Living With War makes some good points. It concludes with a lovely and optimistic version of “America the Beautiful,” a hopeful finale to a bitter suite. Still, there isn’t much here that will sway anyone who doesn’t already agree with it, and there’s nothing that will stand the test of time. That’s the danger of being politically specific – it irrevocably dates the work. Living With War will soon only be a historical mile marker, and as the period it documents is not one I’m looking forward to reliving, I don’t know how often I will listen to this once 2009 rolls around.

But hell, three years is a decent shelf life for any pop record these days. And Young is not alone in his willingness to let current events brand his work. For Al Jourgensen, it’s almost a trademark – his band Ministry has been one of the most consistent voices of dissent against Bushes of all ages. In fact, it’s not so far off the mark to say that his band sucks when there isn’t a Republican in office – they were born in the Reagan years, really started kicking ass during King Bush I’s reign, and were just hitting their stride in 1992 with Psalm 69 when Bill Clinton was elected.

And they spent the next eight years floundering about, looking for something to stoke their rage. They only made two albums during Clinton’s terms in office, 1995’s Filth Pig and 1999’s The Dark Side of the Spoon, and they were both uninspired, limp affairs. Seriously, no one wants to hear Ministry cover Bob Dylan. They want to hear Al Jourgensen screaming his lungs out about injustice and the rape of America, over piledriver electronic drums and the fastest and most abrasive guitars this side of Slayer.

But lo and behold, as soon as W. was elected, Ministry started to kick ass again. Jourgensen’s in the middle of a renaissance, having rediscovered that the tempo button on his drum machine can go way above 100 beats per minute, and it would be hard to miss the fact that it’s another President Bush that has energized him. Ministry’s latest, Rio Grande Blood, even features El Presidente on the cover – his face is superimposed over the body of Jesus Christ, complete with crown of thorns and bleeding side, bursting out of an oil drum while B-2 bombers fly ominously overhead.

In case you missed the subtle point, the lyrics of Rio Grande Blood rip the Bush administration from a thousand angles, some of them (I hate that I’m about to say this) a little unfair. The title track opens the record with a Ministry staple – sampled sound bites of the president. However, unlike those that cropped up all over Rantology, these are spliced together to form entirely new sentences: “I’ve adopted sophisticated terrorist tactics. I am a weapon of mass destruction, and I am a brutal dictator. And I’m evil.”

It’s very funny, on a gut level, and some of Jourgensen’s later charges are right on. (“Squeezing the middle class whom I detest, taxing the poor so the rich can invest…”) I just can’t help but think that Bush has said enough self-incriminating and scary things without needing a cut-and-paste job.

But that kind of thinking defeats the purpose of a one-sided screed like Rio Grande Blood. “Fear is Big Business” smacks down the culture of paranoia the Bushies have fostered (“I was never scared of Saddam Hussein, the U.S. Government’s the one to blame”), and “Palestina” takes on terrorism by slipping into the mind of a Palestinian girl with a bomb on her belt. “Ass Clown” even includes contributions from Jello Biafra, always a potent political observer.

Elsewhere, however, Jourgensen straps on his tinfoil hat and starts making unfounded accusations. On the closing epic “Khyber Pass,” he wonders where Bin Ladin is: “Some say he’s livin’ at the Khyber Pass, others say he’s at the Bushes’ ranch…” And on “Lieslieslies,” he even samples the aforementioned Alex Jones and his theories about the government collapsing the World Trade Center and hitting the Pentagon with a guided missile. “We want some answers and all that we get is some kind of shit about a terrorist threat,” Jourgensen growls, while Jones asks derisively, “Do you still think that jet fuel brought down the World Trade Center?”

And here’s where I have to draw something of a line, because as much as I despise Bush and his cronies, I really can’t imagine them killing 3,000 Americans just to nail Saddam Hussein. Can’t do it. It’s unfortunate, because I think Jourgensen is right about so many other things here. And it’s possible he’s play-acting and I’m overreacting to it, but I wanted to love Rio Grande Blood, and instead I’m stuck with just liking it a lot.

Luckily, it’s often difficult to make out what Jourgensen is saying, and as a titanic slab of industrial metal, the album is the best damn thing he’s done since 1992. Ministry now includes former Prong guitarist Tommy Victor on six-string, shredding along with the machines, and the sound is amazing – tight, powerful, vicious and spiteful. Can a guitar tone sound spiteful? This one does. Ministry under Bush II is a different animal than under Bush I – more straight metal madness than mechanical precision – but the fire is the same. If anything, Rio Grande Blood is more venomous than this band has been before, and that it doesn’t implode under the weight of its own bile is impressive.

Jourgensen has said that this album is part two of his final trilogy. Part one, Houses of the Mole, came out in 2004, and the concluding chapter, tentatively titled The Last Sucker, is slated for 2008. It’s an election year, you see, and Jourgensen expects the Republicans to be soundly defeated. And he’d rather retire than go through the Clinton years again, musically speaking. The hope is, once the last Ministry album comes out, we won’t need him anymore – we’ll be smart enough to make better decisions, elect better people, and dig ourselves out of the mess we’re in.

But just in case, I’m sure he (and others) will be watching.

Next week, some strange bedfellows.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

That date up there is a lie.

This is the column for May 17, but I’m writing it on May 21, Sunday, in the first genuine string of free-time hours I’ve had in a week. Work is really starting to cut into the independent writing time, and to make matters worse, I’m the Saturday reporter this month, which means I’ve had to put this off until Sunday each week.

I’m very tired.

And let me tell you one of the things that wore me out this week – I’ve been on Da Vinci duty for a while, talking to churches and religious groups about their issues with Dan Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code, and with Ron Howard’s quadrillion-dollar movie adaptation, which came out on Friday. So I read the book, I called people, I attended lectures, and on Friday, I went to see the movie. On my own, I’d have done none of those things – my sensitive allergy to hype has kept me away from Dan Brown the way it’s kept me from J.K. Rowling.

So what have I learned, after sloughing through the novel, staying awake through the film and talking endlessly with religious people of all stripes? Basically, that people are taking this thing way too seriously. The Da Vinci Code is based on old theories, most of which have been disproved by scholars and historians, as you can find out by doing a simple Google search. But I talked to some of those scholars, just in case, and they confirmed that Brown just didn’t do his homework.

But then, why should he? It’s a fantasy, a novel, clearly racked in the fiction section of your local Barnes and Noble. It’s barely enjoyable as it is – Brown’s prose is clunky and sixth-grade-level at best – and what’s good about it is the breezy pace and tense action that fills its pages, not the “stunning revelations” about Da Vinci and the Catholic Church. But guess what? Ron Howard took the whole thing too seriously, too, and his movie is a ponderous, overly long slog that tries to turn a simple globe-hopping treasure hunt into an Important Event for Our Times.

It’s all so stupid, and it’s already made more than $77 million, and it’s on track to be the biggest moneymaker so far this year, and I’m so tired of it. The only good thing about the movie is Ian McKellen, who plays Sir Leigh Teabing (an homage to the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail: Richard Leigh and Michael Baigent, an anagram of Teabing). McKellen has that mischievous glint in his eye the whole time, as if he’s the only one who knows that this movie is supposed to be fun. It’s no coincidence that the first hour, in which McKellen does not appear, is the hardest to sit through. It’s an unfortunate mix of solemn and preposterous, and no fun at all.

In this context, the “grand secret” of the Catholic Church seems even more silly. I have no love for organized religions, and I do think that the Bible was put together by politicians who probably left some things out for selfish reasons, but really – a centuries-old secret society keeping the casket of Mary Magdalene in an undisclosed location, for fear that people may discover that Jesus had a kid? A secret society that left clues everywhere, ones which even a schmuck like Dan Brown could unravel? And no one has figured this out and exposed the church before?

In that light, the reaction of the church is even sillier. When are the Catholics going to learn that overreacting like this, demanding boycotts and bans and everything else, just lends credence to whatever ridiculous thing they’re upset about? Remember Kevin Smith’s Dogma? How much more obviously fictional can you get? Remember the Catholic responses? Protests, screaming fits, anger. Same with this – if people didn’t want to read or see The Da Vinci Code before, well, now they will, just to see what the church is so worked up about.

In fact, the furor is the only reason I had to read the book and see the movie, which makes me even more upset about it, despite the fact that I was paid to do both. I can’t wait for this whole thing to go away. See the movie if you have an abundance of free time and you don’t mind wasting two and a half hours of it. Read the book if you have a free Saturday. Me, I can think of a million better things to do with my time than that.

* * * * *

Let’s talk about music, shall we? Sheesh.

Paul Simon is one of the few artists that make me feel good about growing old. I discovered Simon and Garfunkel my freshman year of college, which was the perfect time – their work is full of sparkling. naïve optimism, the sense that all one needs is a poetic soul and moral determination to save the world. It’s beautiful stuff, especially the layered Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, and its political idealism and youthful joy was exactly what I needed at 18.

Even in his early days, Paul Simon was imagining what it would be like to grow old – check out the first side of Bookends, a life journey in miniature, and its heartbreaking centerpiece, “Old Friends.” He is now five years away from adding an ironic twist to that song’s line, “How terribly strange to be 70.” And his solo work has, naturally, turned to the subjects of mortality and God as he’s aged.

His new one is called Surprise, which is great, because it’s always something of one when Simon puts a record out. His last effort was 2000’s You’re the One, a retreat to lighter songwriting and stripped-down guitar tunes after his disastrous Broadway show, The Capeman, imploded in 1997. You’re the One felt like a final statement, in a way – it brought together the folk leanings of his early days, the world music influences of his greatest successes (Graceland especially), and the simple joy of just plugging in and playing. It was a nice summation, and would have served well as a final bow.

But Simon’s not done yet, and man, am I glad about that. He’s been a restless musical soul for decades now, and since Graceland in 1986, no two of his records have sounded alike. He always goes away for extended periods, but comes back with some new wrinkle, some new setting in which to couch his elegant, literate tunes. (Seriously, I know it was a flop, but dig out Songs From the Capeman, Simon’s album of tunes from the show. It’s excellent, just as good as anything he’s done in the last 20 years, and wildly unlike anything he’s done in that time as well.)

Surprise is no exception. This time, Simon has hooked up with legendary producer Brian Eno, who provides (no joke) “sonic landscape,” according to the liner notes. That’s easy to scoff at, until you hear this thing – it is easily Simon’s most sonically dense album, the polar opposite of You’re the One. Electronic drums thud and flutter, synthesizers support and caress, and sound effects twinkle in from both speakers. It’s a pretty impressive production job, even if it occasionally sounds just like Eno’s work with the Talking Heads in the 1980s.

But Eno never loses focus here – at the center of the whole affair is Simon, whose voice and guitar somehow find all the space they need. Check out the lovely “Wartime Prayers,” which includes waves of keys and guitars alongside a full choir, and still sounds intimate. Or dig the oddly funky “Sure Don’t Feel Like Love,” which homes in like a laser on Simon’s deft (and often overlooked) guitar playing.

So yes, the songs are wonderful, especially in the second half – “Once Upon a Time There Was an Ocean” and “Another Galaxy” are classics out of the box. But what really makes this album something special, besides its very existence after a six-year break, is Simon’s lyrics. He’s always been a poet, but Surprise contains some of his finest observations and turns of phrase, full of a perspective one can only gain by living past 60.

The album opens with “How Can You Live in the Northeast,” a seemingly odd title for a lifelong New Yorker, but the song is a back-and-forth between people from different backgrounds – “How can you live in the northeast? How can you live in the south? How can you be a Christian? How can you be a Jew?” It’s an examination of how the places of our birth and the characters of our families shape us, and about how our preconceptions mean nothing – “Weak as the winter sun, we enter life on Earth, names and religion come just after date of birth…”

“Wartime Prayers” is gorgeous, a sad lament for post-9/11 America. It opens by discussing peacetime prayers, but then transitions: “But all that is changed now, gone like a memory from the day before the fires, people hungry for the voice of God hear lunatics and liars…” “Once Upon a Time There Was an Ocean” finds Simon using an old metaphor (he’s a rock) to new effect: “I figure once upon a time I was an ocean, but now I’m a mountain range, something unstoppable set into motion, nothing’s different but everything’s changed…”

One thing age has done for Paul Simon is made him less concerned about sounding silly. You’re the One was full of funny ditties, and while Surprise is more serious as a whole, it is fantastically joyous at times. Still, nothing will prepare you for “Outrageous,” the third track. It starts as a rap (you read that right) about social ills – “It’s outrageous to line your pockets off the misery of the poor” – which Simon deftly turns on himself: “It’s outrageous, a man like me, stand here and complain…” It then morphs into a lighthearted admonition (“Who’s gonna love you when your looks are gone?”) and then into a gospel song (“God will, like he waters the flowers on your windowsill…”). It’s a ridiculous, silly song, and one of the album’s most enjoyable.

The final few tracks on Surprise are beautiful, self-aware and content, and Simon has rarely sounded so comfortable, despite the unfamiliar sonic setting. It’s almost a shame that he tacked “Father and Daughter,” his 2002 song from the Wild Thornberrys movie, onto the end. Or at least it would be a shame, if the song wasn’t so sweet and delightful. In a way, it’s kind of perfect – an album about old age that concludes with a song about passing things on to the next generation. Some will see it as proof that Paul Simon has slipped into irrelevance, but I see it as graceful aging, and I bet I will further appreciate his perspective the closer I get to sharing it.

There’s something to be said for the younger crowd, too, especially if they’re as talented as Taylor Muse, the sole member of Quiet Company. He’s the latest discovery of Northern Records, the California home of the Violet Burning and Cush, and he did just about everything but the drums on his debut album, Shine Honesty. I ordered it on a whim, having liked a clip or two I heard, and I’m glad I did. It’s a stellar first album.

Quiet Company plays dramatic pop, kind of like a budget Sufjan Stevens, with pianos leading the way most times. Every song here has something to make melody addicts smile, and most of them feature breakdowns and buildups, hallmarks of a developed sense of dynamics. The titles are pretentious – “I Was Humming a New Song to Myself,” “Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History,” “The Emasculated Man and the City That Swallowed Him,” like that. But the songs amazingly live up – they are simultaneously huge and heartfelt.

Take “Fashionabel,” which would be the first single, if Northern could afford to release singles. It goes through half a dozen little changes, floating through dramatic gateways before settling on a repeated piano figure and Muse’s aching voice. And then there’s the chorus, a soaring Britpop delight, and then comes the best part – the instrumental motif that follows, which sounds like something Michael Penn might come up with.

The songwriting never falters – the album’s sole misstep is “Circumstance,” a punk-ish gut punch sandwiched between two sweeter pieces, but even that one ends up enjoyable, with its distorted guitars and vocals giving way to cleaner piano sounds. “Then Came a Sudden Validation” is fantastic, nearly gospel in scope, and “I Was Humming a New Song to Myself” does everything Bright Eyes tunes should, but rarely do. I’m not sure why there is such hoopla over Conor Oberst when there are songwriters like Taylor Muse running laps around him.

The album closes with a seven-minute journey called “We Change Lives” that is easily one of my favorite songs of the year so far. After an unlisted interlude, the song explodes with purpose – this is the final song, and it couldn’t be anything else. I miss the days when albums built to songs like this one. This is a 6/8 march, in a sense, that sheds its skin around the four-minute mark to become a surprisingly effective portrait of death. (The final track proper is a one-minute coda called “When You Pass Through the Waters,” concluding the story with a passage into heaven.) In a way, Paul Simon and Taylor Muse are concerned with the same issues, and the only difference is age – Muse still romanticizes it, the way Simon did in the ‘60s.

And it will be curious to see how Muse continues his career, and whether he lasts as long as Simon has, and how his perspective changes with time. That’s the beauty of music – it can be shaped to augment any kind of observation or worldview. Paul Simon is still restless musically, but contented lyrically, and willing to share his vantage point at the end of his career. Taylor Muse is ambitious both musically and lyrically, just starting his journey with the same energy Simon displayed in the ‘60s. As old ones fade, new ones arise, but both old and young are capable of surprising you.

You can pick up Paul Simon’s album anywhere. You can get Quiet Company’s here.

Next week, the liberals strike back.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I vividly remember the first time I heard Grandaddy.

I was working part-time at a music store called Bull Moose in Portland, to supplement my meager magazine salary. (Yes, it’s true, editors for music rags don’t actually make a lot of money – I was the highest paid employee they had, and I needed a second job…) One of my co-workers was a guy named Chad Verrill, a man with amazing artistic ability (go here) and impeccable musical taste. I learned a lot from Chad during my short time there.

Anyway, so it’s a fairly busy day in the store, full of customers and employees. I’m bustling about, doing whatever it was I’m doing – probably one of those infernal dot lists, the Bull Moose method of restocking – and suddenly this song starts playing. Softly, at first, but then cascading in an ever-swelling build of graceful beauty.

I should mention that there’s a part of my brain that is always focused on what music is playing in the background wherever I am, even if I just acknowledge it as sonic wallpaper, but that part very occasionally hears something that makes it smack the rest of my brain to attention. And that’s what happened here – I stopped what I was doing and listened as the song washed over me. The final stretch, the playout of this eight-minute excursion into some strange galaxy, lifted me nearly off the ground. I had to find out who this was.

Turns out, it was Chad’s turn with the CD player, and he’d chosen Grandaddy’s The Sophtware Slump. And the song was the epic opener “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot,” a masterpiece that still takes me somewhere else.

Grandaddy is a band from Modesto, California, led by a guy named Jason Lytle. They play… well, it’s difficult to describe exactly what it is they play. Their sound has elements of indie rock, especially Lytle’s high-pitched voice and penchant for repeated quarter notes, but also of prog rock and Paul McCartney-esque pop. Their best stuff is simple in structure yet covered in layers of lo-fi orchestration. They are unfairly compared to the Flaming Lips all the time, but I think of them more as a garage version of Pink Floyd without the bombast. Even that isn’t totally accurate – there are moments of Sonic Youth and Genesis and half a dozen other bands in their sound as well.

The only real way to describe them is the one I started with – they’re a band from Modesto, California. Or, I should say, they were a band from Modesto, because Grandaddy is officially no more.

But don’t be sad. They left us a pair of fantastic parting gifts, a far more generous gesture than we get from most bands who call it quits. First out was last year’s EP Excerpts From the Diary of Todd Zilla, a seven-song continuation of the sound they perfected on 2003’s Sumday. “Pull the Curtains” remains one of their coolest songs, all crunchy guitars, delightfully cheesy keyboards, and sunny optimism, and the concluding piano number “Goodbye?” is drenched with regret.

And then there’s parting gift number two. Upon its release, Lytle claimed that the Todd Zilla tracks were the b-sides, the songs the band threw together on the side while crafting their final album. They were the eight-track songs, he said, whereas the album would make use of the full studio. And by God, he’s right – Grandaddy’s final album, out this week, is a stunning sonic wonder, the best sounding record the band has made. It also contains some of Lytle’s best songs, and is his most complete and cohesive statement. It’s the Grandaddy album to end all Grandaddy albums.

It’s called Just Like the Fambly Cat because, in Lytle’s words, when the family cat dies, he doesn’t make a big deal of it, he just finds a corner and curls up. And that’s exactly what Grandaddy has done here – they’ve made a final album that summarizes everything that was ever great about them, but wrapped it in a sweet, graceful balm of a sound, full and rich, yet soothing, as if it’s wiping away its own tears and offering a reassuring hug. The songs are mostly acoustic and sweet, with some of the most emotional, spacey orchestrations you’ll ever hear. It’s a beautiful thing.

Grandaddy’s main theme has always been mechanical breakdown, from “Jed the Humanoid” to “I’m on Standby” and beyond, so the organic metaphor, crystallized in the opening “What Happened,” is striking. This album is not about rusting and falling into disrepair, it’s about dying. The burst of screaming guitars on “Jeez Louise,” a near-monolith of a song, belies the tone of the record – almost immediately we’re into “Summer… It’s Gone,” the first of many autumn laments.

The album takes off with “Rear View Mirror,” a song about looking forward instead of backward, but just listen to the slowly unfolding melody and the building backdrop, blooming over a full six minutes. This is what indie rock can be, massive and ambitious without sacrificing simplicity or emotion. It’s terrific, and if this song doesn’t make you miss this band already, then the rest of the album will. Dig the eminently hummable instrumental “Skateboarding Saves Me Twice,” or the sky-high chorus of “Where I’m Anymore,” or the floating, ethereal “Guide Down Denied” – it’s a sad record, no doubt, but the sheer sound of it is almost joyous.

The only misstep here is the brief punk freakout “50%,” in which Lytle sets a goal: half as many words in 2006. Thematically, it works, but sonically, it just breaks up the sublime final half of the album, a transgression only ameliorated by the fact that it’s a minute long. The final stretch really begins with “Elevate Myself,” the most danceable thing here, its blipping beat and wondrous orchestration masking the self-loathing beneath: “And maybe for a little, get to where I find it really hard to hate myself…”

The last Grandaddy songs are about disconnection – our guide has decided to take his own advice, elevate himself, and be on his way. The printed lyrics to “Campershell Dreams,” which pivots on the line “You don’t have to be alone anymore,” come with an instruction to “repeat again so it sinks in,” and the stratospheric strummed acoustics help bring it home. “Disconnecty,” Grandaddy’s last great pop song, is about deciding whether to fly alone, and the near-lullaby conclusion, ironically titled “This is How it Always Starts,” describes the aftermath in darker tones – “Nothing great, nothing good, nothing works, and it should…”

And my God, the finale of that song is beautiful, an ocean of vocals crashing onto a shore of keyboards and drums and finally collapsing into a lovely ambient fade, like a ship disappearing over the horizon. It’s wonderful and fitting, and the untitled track that follows it is almost like closing credits music, Lytle repeating “I’ll never return to Shangri-La” over sad pianos and strings. Grandaddy have chosen to go out with their finest work, a movie for the ears. It’s not perfect – nothing they did ever was, but their ramshackle charm was always a big part of the attraction. And yet, it is as close to perfection as I could have hoped.

I’m not sure Lytle would be comfortable with grand pronouncements about his band, so I won’t make any more. Just Like the Fambly Cat is equal parts silly and sad anyway – just check “The Animal World,” or the lyrics to the final tune. And hell, no one died, no one’s sick, there’s really nothing permanent about this. Still, there is a sense of finality to Fambly Cat that is impossible to ignore, and speaking for myself, I will miss this band. Lytle has said he doesn’t want this to be a big deal, so I won’t make it one, but I wanted to thank him for years of great music, and for leaving us with his best work. Hopefully there’s much more on the horizon, but if this is it from Jason Lytle, I’ll still be happy and grateful.

* * * * *

Did we really need a two-hour, 28-song album from the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Really?

Whether we need it or not, here it is – Stadium Arcadium, the most ambitious album of this Cali band’s career. Granted, there isn’t a lot of competition, but word is that Arcadium was scaled down from the three-hour extravaganza the band wanted to release. The cylinders were firing this time, they said, and the creative juices flowing like never before.

Well, let’s just say that if you like the direction the Peppers have been heading in since Californication, then you’ll love this. Stadium Arcadium is the band’s final acceptance of their mature adult contemporary leanings. Every second of this thing is glossed up and spit-shined, courtesy of producer Rick Rubin, who ordinarily traffics in much rawer sounds. It’s one radio-ready pop tune after another, with well-crafted choruses and nicely layered backing vocals and punchy guitar sounds and Anthony Keidis singing almost entirely on-key.

And it’s so boring.

There’s no sense of adventure to anything here, despite the implied promise of the double album – this is just two half-decent Chili Peppers records in one package. Everything is sanitized for your protection – there’s nothing here that your local “alternative” radio station wouldn’t play. Even sorta-funky numbers like “21st Century” and the unfortunately titled “Hump de Bump” play it safe, and the album is practically drowned in mid-tempo numbers like the title song and “Snow” and “She Looks to Me” and “Especially in Michigan” and on and on.

This album is also uniquely built for the iPod generation. It may sport the form of the classic double record, but these songs would work in any order. Load them into your iPod Shuffle, stick it on random and you’ll get the same experience, more or less. There’s no reason that “Dani California” (a real departure in subject matter for the band…) opens disc one, or that “Hey” closes it. It’s almost like they sequenced it by writing each song title down on a plastic ball and then putting them through that vacuum machine you see on the televised lottery drawings. It’s that random.

And none of it is bad, exactly, just unexciting. One thing and one thing only saves Stadium Arcadium from being unbearable, and his name is John Frusciante. Coming off a year in which he released six solo albums, Frusciante still finds enough variety of tone to sustain 28 tracks, and his solos are, as always, fun little rides. He’s the Jimmy Page of this band, but as even Page learned by the end, he can’t carry the thing by himself.

Much as I like double albums – and if there’s one way to get me into your band, it’s to release a double album, because ambition always scores points with me – I think the next Chili Peppers record should be 35 minutes long, and recorded live with cheap microphones in a dingy basement. This band needs an infusion of energy, stat, because the polished soft-rock that fills most of Stadium Arcadium is like fizzy water, tickling a little but leaving no aftertaste at all.

* * * * *

Speaking of bands that should make shorter albums, there’s Tool.

It takes five years each time for Tool to return with something new, and each time, that something new is more than an hour long and packaged in an art object of some sort. 1996’s Aenima came in a special case that animated the artwork if you tilted the package back and forth. It was 76 minutes long. Then came Lateralus in 2001, dressed up in see-through layers of acetate that produced a 3-D effect. That one, a definite step forward, was also 76 minutes long.

But now I think they’ve stepped over the edge. The fourth Tool album is called 10,000 Days, and it comes in one of the most annoying and ridiculous packages I have ever seen. It’s wider and heavier than a standard digipak, and over the front cover is a half-flap that contains two lenticular lenses. And the point, I guess, is to set up the package like an eye chart, and view it through the lenses, so that the images coalesce into one 3-D picture. It’s neat, once, but when the novelty wears off, you’re left with a stupid-looking case you can’t rack, you can’t stack, and which makes the thing you actually bought – the CD – really difficult to access.

But that’s okay, because 10,000 Days isn’t an album you’ll be reaching for very often anyway. It is, again, 76 minutes long – the title doesn’t refer to the record’s duration, though at times you’ll think it does. No, it refers to the amount of time lead singer Maynard James Keenan’s mother spent paralyzed, between her stroke and her death. It’s a powerfully emotional theme, explored in a 17-minute epic called “Wings for Marie,” that is probably the finest piece of deeply-felt ambience Tool has yet made. Its second part, called “10,000 Days,” is more than 10 minutes of rain-soaked atmosphere that’s mesmerizing.

Other good things – the first two tracks, “Vicarious” and “Jambi,” are terrific examples of the minimalist prog-metal Tool does so well. There is hardly ever anything but bass, drums and guitar on these songs, and they stay pretty close to the root note at all times, but the band has perfected this grounded style into something downright exploratory. No choruses, no hooks, no ins for anyone who doesn’t appreciate musical theory, and yet it’s still captivating stuff. The penultimate track, “Right in Two,” is similarly great, exploding into riff-heavy catharsis after a lengthy intro.

But that’s it. And that’s roughly half of this long, long trip. A surprising amount of filler jams up the remaining 40 or so minutes, from the chanting of “Lipan Conjuring” to the uselessly long “Rosetta Stoned” to the concluding five minutes of electronic noise, oddly given its own title (“Viginti Tres”) as if it were an actual song. (They’ve done this before, but never taken up this much disc space with their experiments in formlessness.) There are really only seven songs on this thing, and three of them are well below par. But man, are they long.

And that’s the thing with Tool – it’s as if they feel like they can’t go back to a shorter album, like it wouldn’t be prog enough or something. Seriously, guys, if it took you five years to come up with 40 minutes of good material, then that’s what you’ve got. Ignoring the obvious question of why you’re still trying to get blood from this particular stone, if you have 40 minutes of good stuff, make a 40-minute album. I would have bought and loved one that included the first four tracks and “Right in Two” and that’s it, and I think that running order flows pretty well, myself. Strong opener, beautiful ambient epic in the middle, strong closer, no five minutes of worthless noise clogging up the finale. It’s a winner.

Granted, you wouldn’t be out of line for expecting more from a band like Tool after five years. Keenan has a voice like no other metal singer’s, strong and even and melodic, and the interplay between the three instrumentalists, when it’s on, is breathtaking. No one sounds quite like Tool, which is why it’s disappointing to hear them flounder about here. Half this album should have gone straight in the bin, but the good half is evidence enough that Tool has created its own unique sound, and they can pull it off like no other band. Many try, but there’s only one Tool, and when they put out something as haphazard as 10,000 Days, it’s like when the smartest kid in class brings home a D-. It’s not that they can’t do it, it’s that they’re not trying.

* * * * *

And then there’s the Elms, whose second album, Truth, Soul, Rock ‘n’ Roll, nearly made my top 10 list in 2002. There was an exuberance to that album, a celebration of melody, that’s all but missing from its follow-up, the just-released The Chess Hotel. And I’m not sure what happened.

The last time I encountered something like this, the band was Phantom Planet, and they’d followed up their winning sophomore album The Guest with a punky, noisy self-titled thing that couldn’t have strayed further from the reasons I liked them. I grew to enjoy that album, as I think I will grow to enjoy The Chess Hotel, but my heart lies with the melodies, and in both cases, the earlier albums just have better ones.

The Elms, a four-piece from Seymour, Indiana (home of John Mellencamp), are led by Owen Thomas, who writes all the songs, plays guitar and sings. And this time, instead of taking from British pop like the Beatles and the Knack, he’s gone for American rock – the guitars are on 11, the riffs are heavy and thudding, the songs are speedy little numbers that concentrate on knocking you flat more than sticking in your head.

Opener “I Am the World” is everything that’s right and wrong with it – it’s propulsive, with a chanted verse over nothing but the pounding drums, and a guitar riff that’s ripped right from the Keith Richards songbook. It’s good stuff, if you dig ‘70s rock, and the two songs that follow are similarly kick-ass. But by the time you hit “She’s Cold,” at track six, you’ll realize that none of these songs are very memorable. And that’s something you couldn’t say about the Elms before.

The second half is better, including the epic “The Towers and the Trains” and the finest piece of melody Owen Thomas wrote this time out, “Black Peach.” In fact, none of The Chess Hotel is bad – it does its job well, and it’s a concise and well-made rock record. But I wanted more than that, I suppose. I wanted songs I could sing along with, tunes I could hum, sweet melodies and harmonies, and it’s not Thomas’ fault that he didn’t write those this time, because he obviously wasn’t trying to. But his shift in focus has moved the Elms from a band that I love to a band that I like, and even that matter of degrees is unfortunate.

This goes right back to the theme of last week’s column, though – why shouldn’t the Elms stretch out and try something new? Why should I penalize them for that? I shouldn’t, but I can only report on my own reactions to music, and The Chess Hotel made me want to go dig out Truth, Soul more than it made me want to press play again. Some will (and have) celebrate the newfound ballsiness of the band’s sound, the sheer roadhouse bar band energy that’s all over this thing, and while I appreciate it, I don’t respond to it.

And in the end, as I have always maintained, a critic is no good to you unless you agree with him. A different critic would have praised this to the skies, but this one likes different things than this admittedly very good album is offering. Fans of bluesy rock and stomping good times are encouraged to check this band out, but if you have been reading this column for a while, and you find you agree with me more often than not, then I’d recommend starting with Truth, Soul, Rock ‘n’ Roll. Call it a prejudice if you like, but it’s what I’m hoping the next Elms album sounds more like.

* * * * *

A note before I go: Another song from Keane’s upcoming Under the Iron Sea has hit the web, this time in the form of an internet-only video directed by Irvine Welsh, writer of Trainspotting. It’s for the album’s opening track, “Atlantic,” and calling it a departure for Keane would be like calling Tom Cruise a little bit nuts. It’s a glorious six minutes, a moving and building track that is one part Marillion, one part Rufus Wainwright, but somehow all parts neither one. If this is the tone of the album, as dynamic first single “Is It Any Wonder” also suggested, then I am jumping out of my skin to hear the whole thing.

Check it out here, but I’d recommend listening without the video.

Next week, Paul Simon.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I wasn’t even going to see United 93.

Like a lot of people I know, I have been dreading this five-year anniversary of 9/11, and kind of hoping that it would pass by without any patriotic grandstanding or crass commercialism. And when I heard that there were not one, but two September 11 movies coming out, I felt like curling into a ball and sleeping until 2007.

It’s not that I think we shouldn’t remember 9/11. It’s just that the way we choose to remember it is often private and difficult and impossible to encapsulate in a movie. I’m also leery of anything that attempts to capitalize on a tragedy, especially one so fresh, and I’ve watched our illustrious president use and abuse 9/11 as an all-purpose justification too many times. I’m not about to pay nine bucks to be told what to think and feel about the attacks, especially if those thoughts and feelings can be unironically scored with Trey Parker’s “America, Fuck Yeah.”

I am especially worried about Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, scheduled for later this month. Stone has never been a subtle filmmaker, and from everything I’ve heard, his film treats the attacks as the setting for an action thriller. The presence of Nicolas Cage doesn’t do much to quell my fears of exploitation. I’m terrified that Stone’s movie will reduce 9/11 to the level of Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor, a minor American tragedy in itself.

So here’s Paul Greengrass, maker of The Bourne Supremacy, out of the gate first with a film about the plane that didn’t hit its target, and you can forgive me for expecting patriotic swill. All the elements are there – regular people caught in a dangerous situation, forced to stand up and become real American heroes. I could just hear the swelling strings as the camera closes in on the face of Todd Beamer (perhaps played by Josh Hartnett or Leonardo DiCaprio), his steely gaze fixed on the camera for interminable seconds as he gathers his red, white and blue courage and says, dramatically: “Let’s roll.”

It could have been terrible, in so many different ways.

Which is why it’s so astonishing that United 93 turned out to be perfect.

Start with the fact that as a pure movie, I have not been sucked in and enveloped like this in years. I knew the outcome, but I was still gripped, held in sickening suspense. Greengrass made two artistic decisions early on that set the tone – he shot this like a documentary, with handheld cameras and no dramatic staging, and he designed it in real time, which means you are on board Flight 93 for pretty much the entire 81 minute journey, watching the seconds tick by with increasing dread. In a way, knowing the outcome is worse – you are locked in, marching towards the inevitable, and it’s painful and difficult to watch.

So many times during United 93, Greengrass nimbly steps over potential land mines with sensitivity and an honest artistry. He gives each hijacker the dignity of an individual personality and perspective, something he’s been taken to task for. He dares to portray them not as monsters, but as real, frightened people. He cast no-names to play most of the parts, and got the real air traffic and military commanders to portray themselves in their scenes. He offers no backstories, no cheesy emotional hooks, and in fact very few names.

And he tosses aside Todd Beamer’s famous quote – if you’re not paying attention, you won’t even hear it.

So much of the conversation about United 93 has concerned What It All Means, and what it symbolizes for America, and how to contextualize it into the current political landscape. To his eternal credit, Greengrass is concerned with none of that. He never tells you how to feel about the attacks, or about the events on Flight 93, he simply presents them, in the most real and honest way he can. There is no catharsis here, no national mourning, no “let’s get ‘em” attitude. This film leaves you with a black pit in your stomach, and offers you nothing to soothe it.

It’s amazing. It is far better and more respectful than I thought possible, and at every opportunity it refuses to cheapen the events of September 11, 2001. Americans don’t need a movie to tell them how to feel about 9/11, and most Americans will not need this one to remember it. But if 9/11 movies are inevitable – and they are – then I can only pray that they are all as well crafted as this one.

Would I recommend seeing it? Probably not – you already know whether you want to sit through this or not. It’s not a fun night out at the movies, but it is a stunning work, a great example of how to dramatize an event without exploiting it. The only option better than making United 93 this way would have been not making it at all.

* * * * *

My good friend Chris L’Etoile wrote me a couple of weeks ago with an excellent question, and I’ve been too busy to get back to him. Those who know me know I’m not the best at email communication – I do try, but often my crazy schedule gets the better of me, and I just can’t find the time.

Anyway, Chris’ question, asked mere hours after I posted my Built to Spill review:

“Sometimes you criticize a band for lack of growth or retrenchment – finding a sound and mining it out. Other times you hail continued exploration of or a return to a given sound. What swings an album down one critique or the other? The skill with which they explore the boundaries of a chosen sound? How many other bands are doing something similar? Whether or not you like it?”

I’ve been thinking about this since he asked, and I’m still not 100% sure. There is a certain element of personal taste involved in everything I do – if Ben Folds, for example, decided to make an album of mariachi music instead of his crystalline Beatlesque piano-pop, I would be disappointed, no matter how fantastic his mariachi music turned out to be.

But Chris is right. I am often critical of bands like Franz Ferdinand, who take their one style, press repeat 12 times and call it an album, and I wonder if it’s just that I don’t like their one style. That criticism is borne out by my positive comments on their atypical ballad “Eleanor, Put Your Boots On,” from their latest record. I liked it at least partially because it doesn’t sound like Franz Ferdinand at all.

I guess it comes down to whether I still think there is gold in the mine. I think there’s a difference between exploring a sound to its fullest, and just retreading. The Rolling Stones, in my opinion, have been retreading for more than 30 years, recycling the same blues, rock and soul riffs and lyrical themes, and you only really need one or two Stones albums to get the full picture of what they do.

But take a band like U2, who have basically written the same type of anthemic pop song over and over throughout their career, and are still coming up with new ways to do it. I disliked their attempts to branch out on Zooropa and Pop because they just didn’t capture what this band is best at, and the group proved with their last two albums that they’re still excited about their old-school sound, and that there’s still much to be mined.

But on the flipside, it could be that I simply respond to U2’s sound more – witness my love of the Alarm, and of virtually every British art-pop band that reaches skyward in song. Witness, similarly, my dislike of just about every bluesy rock record I hear – I just don’t think, after more than half a century of this stuff, that there’s much more that can be done with it. It’s a definite bias – the Stones could be, as they believe, the best rock band on the planet, and I’m not sure I would care about them any more than I do now.

Complicating that is the fact that my tastes have changed over the years. Take Pearl Jam as an example. I used to love Pearl Jam. I stood in line with my fellow college students, waiting for midnight so I could purchase Vs., their second album, in 1993. I gave them enormous credit in print for branching out with No Code in 1996, and even for returning to guitar-rock with Yield in 1998. Pearl Jam deftly outlasted the Seattle scene they rode in on, just by being a great rock band, and I loved them for it.

But since then, I just haven’t been able to get excited about their stuff. Binaural, Riot Act and the rarities collection Lost Dogs just slipped by me – they’re there, sitting on a shelf with the rest of my collection, but except for research purposes for this very column, I haven’t listened to them (or any Pearl Jam, really) in half a decade. And I’ve come to realize lately that it’s not Pearl Jam that changed, it’s me. I’m making it sound like I’m breaking up with them, and maybe I am – I have relationships with bands, on a certain level, and sometimes the band and I grow apart.

Pearl Jam’s new self-titled album is, I guess, the best thing they’ve done in a while, and a return to the monolithic rock sound they once traded in. Or so I’ve been told, repeatedly, since the funny blue record with the avocado on the cover came out. And I suppose the critics who are fawning over this are right – this is the leanest, most muscular Pearl Jam album since Yield, and the songs sound mostly full and complete. It is, I suppose, a return to form, and I’m dismayed that I can’t greet it with any more than a yawn.

And it’s partially because, aside from a renewed sense of focus from Vedder and the boys, this record doesn’t sound any different to me than just about everything the band has done. The first five songs all blend together, buoyed by thudding riffs and Vedder’s bellow, which admittedly sounds less bored and detached this time around. Of the opening salvo, only the single “World Wide Suicide” sticks in my head, and if you’ve heard it, you know how typical Pearl Jam it is.

The band takes a couple of detours here and there, most notably on the Grant Lee Phillips-esque “Parachutes,” but mostly sticks with the guitar-driven rock, and that’s what Pearl Jam is best at, no question. On this record, they sound like the same garage band that recorded Riot Act, only someone switched out their decaf with high-test. Pearl Jam is the best, most consistent album they’ve made in ages, and they’ve obviously engaged with this material and put in every effort.

It just bores me silly, that’s all. Near the end, they almost lose me completely with “Come Back,” a rewrite of their hit cover of “Last Kiss” that drags on and on, and even though I know that this is the album’s one truly bad song, I can’t muster any excitement for the other 12, either. “Inside Job” is probably the most successful, closing the album with a moody yet hopeful semi-epic that reminds me of the Pearl Jam I fell in love with.

But that’s not even accurate, either. The whole album sounds like the Pearl Jam I fell in love with, and it’s almost as if the band is making a last-ditch, full-throttle effort to recapture my affection, as if they know I’m on the verge of walking away. And it’s just too little, too late. Pearl Jam hasn’t changed at all – they’re as good now as they’ve ever been – which leaves me to conclude that I have. I would have loved this record when I was 19, but if an album that is quite obviously the best they can do doesn’t thrill me, then it may be time to move on.

I also know that acknowledging my changing tastes doesn’t answer Chris’ question, not completely. The risks and rewards of reinvention is a topic I keep coming back to in this column, and he gives me a new angle to explore – what does lead me to conclude that the well has run dry in one case, but not in another? This will be on my mind for a while, so expect to revisit this theme in the coming weeks. And thanks, Chris, for the challenging query.

Next week is the big one, with a two-hour effort from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the long-awaited return of Paul Simon, and the final album from Grandaddy.

See you in line Tuesday morning.