At the bottom of this column you will find my half-year report on the progress of my top 10 list. It’s radically different than it was three months ago, and is half-comprised of records that have come out since March. This is the way it always happens – old favorites are reconsidered (see Belle and Sebastian) and new favorites leap to the top of the heap, waiting for time and perspective (see Keane).

I guess I’m trying to say that it’s not final, and nothing is set in stone. July, especially, is a huge month for new music – we’ve got Johnny Cash, Muse, Sufjan Stevens, Thom Yorke, Bruce Cockburn, the Lost Dogs, Tom Petty, and an ambitious project from the Early November, and then August brings Ani DiFranco, Matthew Friedberger, the Mars Volta, and many others. The list is constantly changing, ever fluid, up until (and sometimes after) I post the final draft in December.

And to kick it off right, I opened my mailbox this morning and found Bill Mallonee’s new album, Permafrost. It’s his first full-band effort (he calls this band Victory Garden) since the Vigilantes of Love broke up. I’m spinning it now, and it sounds like a good one.

But that’s not what I want to talk about this week.

I want to discuss melodies, and their all-important place at the top of my criteria for music I love. I am an avowed melody addict – I can’t explain it. Nothing inspires my love like a well-crafted melody, and nothing sparks my ire (or, more likely, my boredom and apathy) like a lazy song that just lies there. Quite a lot of modern music is based around the sound, the texture, the beat, and while these are all important elements, I feel that they’re the supporting cast, and the star should be the song, the melody.

But really, that’s the wrong film analogy. A good melody is like a good script – you can pump all the money and star power and special effects you like into a movie, but if it doesn’t have a good script, then the actors are going to look silly while the budget tries to distract you from the dialogue. It’ll be empty, no matter how much money it makes, and while the corporate suits will be happy with it, it won’t stand the test of time.

What constitutes a good script is open to debate, of course, but for me, it needs to be smart and confident, setting a tone and sticking with it. And the dialogue needs to crackle, or at least sound like people really talking. The best movies, as far as I’m concerned, contain moments I’ve never seen before, lines I’ve never heard, and layers of meaning that tell me something about the world and my place in it. Some people don’t need that, of course, and will enjoy a movie because it looks cool and expensive. I’m not one of them.

That all sounds so snobby, but the point is this – the core of the movie is the script, the blueprint, just like the song, the words and music written down on paper (sometimes), is the core of music. You can take a good song and put it into nearly any setting, and record it for 10 bucks or 10 million bucks, and it will still be a good song. The execution is its own matter – sometimes cheap recording (or too-expensive recording) can tarnish the finished product. But if the song, the core, is good, it will shine through.

Take Guster as an example. A lot of ink has been spent (even digital ink from this very site) on the way this Boston quartet now records its albums. Guster used to be the only pop band I can think of that exclusively used hand percussion, but with 2003’s Keep It Together, they switched to traditional drums. Some were dismayed, but most heard the quality of the songs on that album, including the fan-bloody-tastic “Amsterdam,” and realized that the switch didn’t matter that much. The bongos were trappings, and the core remained rock-solid.

And that’s the problem with their fifth album, Ganging Up on the Sun. The trappings are the same, if not a little better – Guster still has that appealing Toad the Wet Sprocket sound, only this time the production is glittering and dynamic, including keyboards, mandolins, trumpets, slide guitars, and waves of backing vocals. This album sounds great. But except for a few songs here and there, it isn’t great. The direction and effects are wonderful, but the script is weak.

Ganging Up on the Sun simmers to life with “Lightning Rod,” a whispery number that floats out on an “ooh-ooh” refrain. “Satellite” is next, and is one of the album’s best tunes, a mid-tempo acoustic number that even includes some of the once-trademark bongos. It’s smooth as silk, and goes down easy, but it’s over before it gets anywhere too exciting. “Manifest Destiny” fares better, because its junky Beatles vibe is so unfamiliar in the context of a Guster album, but it doesn’t really stick until the choral finale.

This is Guster’s most sedate album, full of slower songs and atmospheres, and even an obvious single like “One Man Wrecking Machine” is smoothed out. The band takes some sonic detours, like the folksy “The Captain” and the near-psychedelic “Ruby Falls,” but throughout this whole album, they never once hit upon a melody that will stay with you. The energy level is pretty low throughout, too – only once, on “The New Underground,” does Guster the rock band come to the fore.

“Ruby Falls” is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. The sound is very Traffic, with neat guitar chords played slowly over drums and organ, but it never really goes anywhere. It stretches to seven minutes, with a distorted solo in the middle and a horn-fueled section at the end and rippling vocal harmonies, and it’s all very pretty, but it doesn’t do a whole lot. After seven minutes of that, you’d think the band would want to kick the pace up a little, but they sequence middling tune “C’Mon” next, as if they want your attention to wander.

I’m being mean, I know, but this is the first Guster album that never rises above pleasant, and after a string of very good, very melodic efforts, it’s a let-down. By the time it’s over, I’ve forgotten most of the songs, which has never happened with a Guster record before – I can still hum every track on Lost and Gone Forever, their masterpiece. Ganging Up on the Sun isn’t bad, not really, but it just isn’t very interesting. It’s like a pleasant Sunday drive. It beats being at work, but it’s not as much fun as almost anything else you could do with your weekend.

If you want a real melodic pop album, you can’t do much better than David Mead’s Tangerine. If not for Dr. Tony Shore, I’d never have heard of this guy – he urged me to buy Mead’s EP Wherever You Are last year, and I loved it, especially the haunting “Astronaut.” And I went on a mission to find and purchase the other three Mead albums – the great The Luxury of Time, the less-great, Adam-Schlesinger-produced Mine and Yours, and the fantastic, mostly acoustic Indiana. All in all, a great career, and the self-released Tangerine tops them all.

The secret, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, is the melodies. Mead writes some incredible melodies, ones that swoop and dive and take hairpin turns and go unexpected places. Each of his albums sounds different from the last – you can’t get much more diverse, sonically, than the stripped-down Indiana, the glossy Wherever You Are, and the delightful chamber-pop of this new one – but the songwriting remains the same, and of the same high caliber.

Tangerine is David Mead’s Great Leap Forward, a pop album so self-assured and perfectly executed that it gives its obvious influences, like Paul McCartney, a run for their money. The album, produced by Brad Jones, is Mead’s most accomplished-sounding work, full of clavinets, percussion, pianos, ukeleles, mandolins, glockenspiels and many different guitars, most of which are played by the artist himself. It opens with a brief instrumental wonderland, then segues into “Hard to Remember,” a classic piece of three-ring-circus music that sways like Jellyfish’s “Brighter Day.”

Other highlights include “Chatterbox,” a thumping monster with a clavinet part right out of “Misty Mountain Hop”; “Reminded #1,” a lovely a cappella tune with a great chorus; and “Hallelujah, I Was Wrong,” a piano-powered delight. But every song here is a highlight in its own right, from the epic scope of “Hunting Season” to the light McCartney-isms of “Sugar on the Knees” to the beauty of the closing ballad “Choosing Teams.” It’s all great. It also does something the Guster album doesn’t manage – it sounds mature without sounding dull.

Throughout, Mead never loses track of his gift for hummable songs with tricky structures. I can’t emphasize that enough – Mead obviously spent a long time crafting the classic pop sound of this album, but even if he decided to just release his acoustic demos, Tangerine would still be an excellent batch of songs. I’m not saying he should have done that, though, because the production is superb, and worth every second of work Mead and Jones put into it. It’s a case of both the script and the direction being just about perfect, like a Wes Anderson movie.

Tangerine is absolutely one of the best records of the year, which means that at least one-tenth of the list that follows is no mystery. It’s also a grower, and it keeps gaining in significance and wonder each time I hear it, so it may even chart higher by year’s end. Or, you know, half a dozen more fantastic albums might nudge it from the list entirely. You never know.

Anyway, here is my mid-year report. The top 10 list, as it stands right now:

#10: Quiet Company, Shine Honesty.
#9: The Violet Burning, Drop-Dead.
#8: Belle and Sebastian, The Life Pursuit.
#7: Paul Simon, Surprise.
#6: The Alarm, Under Attack.
#5: David Mead, Tangerine.
#4: Grandaddy, Just Like the Fambly Cat.
#3: Ross Rice, Dwight.
#2: Mute Math.
#1: Keane, Under the Iron Sea.

Take that for what it’s worth, because I hope it won’t look like that in six months. But every one of those albums are perfect examples of what I’m talking about – their authors value melody and songcraft above all else, and the best of them, especially the top two, use their solid songs as foundations to explore new sonic territory.

And that’s what it’s all about.

Next week, I promise I’ll be a lot less snobby and technical, because I’ll be talking about Johnny Cash’s final album, American V: A Hundred Highways.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Radiohead played here in Chicago this week. As part of their show, they premiered a new song, presumably from their upcoming album. It’s called “All I Need,” and video from the show turned up online pretty quickly. You can find it if you look, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

It’s horrible.

It’s the same repetitive, dull, whoops-we-forgot-the-song-but-aren’t-the-textures-nice crap they’ve been doing since Kid A, and which I’d hoped they’d turned away from with Hail to the Thief. Perhaps this is just an early version, and the finished song will have a melody or something, but I doubt it. It’s possible, like many of their ardent supporters believe, that Radiohead is trying to say something beyond music, something about disconnection and alienation and other, like, really deep themes.

But if so, they’ve forgotten the music, which is to me the most important part. The Radiohead who made OK Computer could have coughed out “All I Need” in 30 seconds, and would probably have rejected it as too musically uninteresting. But the new model Radiohead has turned not trying very hard into an artistic statement – we are ambivalent about our fame, our place in popular culture, and of course, our music, they seem to be saying. And people keep eating it up.

I don’t get that. This may be an old-fashioned notion, but I want my favorite musicians to care about what they do. I want records that sound like their authors loved them, and worked on them and tweaked them and gave them every ounce of talent and creativity they had. If I don’t get the feeling just from listening to the album that the artist cares more about it than I ever could, then what’s the point? If the artist doesn’t care, why should I?

I love music that reaches, that yearns, that looks up an impossible mountain and tries its best to scale it. I would even go so far to say that any musician who doesn’t, when given the opportunity to make a record, aim for the sky and try to make The Best Fucking Album Ever is just wasting time. I hate having my time wasted. There are thousands upon thousands of great albums I will never hear. To me, great music should move you, and should be about much more than selling records or being part of some hipper-than-thou mass art project.

Above all, it should be about the music. My favorite artists are the ones who, each time out, say, “Here are 10 or 12 songs we love. We worked our asses off to make these the best songs we’ve ever done. We hope they change your life.”

And the best ones do.

Some time ago, I took a mental inventory of debut albums I enjoyed more than Keane’s stunning first record, Hopes and Fears. I came up with about three. Keane’s an easy target for the too-cool crowd – they are unfailingly romantic, they traffic in big, sweeping melodies, and they sound each time out like they’re trying to write the best pop song anyone’s ever heard. The cynics and critics who think that music should be alienating and obscure and About Something Important just can’t stomach their up-front and obvious search for classic pop beauty.

Thankfully, Keane themselves don’t care. Their second album, Under the Iron Sea, muddies the waters a bit with darker tones and shades, but in the end is an even better melodic tour de force than Hopes and Fears. It is an expansion in every way, a giant leap forward in both sound and song. Best of all, it is obvious from first note to last that the band knocked themselves out – this album is a labor of love, and why some critics are hearing bland, mass-marketed pabulum in the grooves of this fantastic record I will never know.

I’m sorry if I sound defensive here. Under the Iron Sea was greeted by an onslaught of negativity from the arbiters of indie-cool taste, most of whom, it seems, didn’t even listen to the album. “It’s Keane, they had a top 10 hit, they’re British and they use pianos, it must be crap,” they seem to have said. Somehow, they have missed the craft, the melodies, the arrangements – you know, the songs. I don’t know how, but they have.

That being the case, I want to offer the counter-argument, and talk about nothing but the songs.

Under the Iron Sea opens with two tracks that take the Keane formula, such as it is, and set it on fire. “Atlantic” is a deep, slow crawl that builds in menace and atmosphere, sounding very much like a gathering storm, until it breaks into a glorious Rufus Wainwright-esque melody in its second half. It’s a phenomenal tone-setter, Tim Rice-Oxley’s piano providing a base for layer upon layer of keyboard orchestration. This is the new Keane, deeper and more melancholy, and it explodes with the second track, “Is It Any Wonder,” a little bundle of energy and disillusionment.

These two songs also establish one of the most striking things about this album – the physical sound. It’s all Rice-Oxley, layering his keyboards over and over again, and putting his pianos through effects boxes, but you’d never know it. This album makes Hopes and Fears sound like a bunch of four-track demos, and nowhere is that more evident than on “Is It Any Wonder,” which will make you doubt the truth of the band’s no-guitars claim. It’s gritty and thick and powerful and just awesome.

Thankfully, the focus here is still on Tom Chaplin’s amazing voice, front and center as always. His voice is strong and clear, and able to connect even over the cacophony Rice-Oxley conjures. The third song, “Nothing In My Way,” is the first that is recognizably Keane, and the vocal melody just steals the show. The chorus is superb, and it’s one that Chaplin’s contemporaries, like Chris Martin, could not pull off. Chaplin’s voice is stronger, his control more exact, and the tricky intervals here require a singer who can really reach down and belt it out, not waver around the note and quiver.

But forget all that musician talk. These songs have terrific structures, and the performances are impeccable, but that’s not the point. “Nothing In My Way” is just a great tune, hooky and hummable, one that will take up residence in your skull after one listen. The whole album moves like a bullet, one great song after another, one remarkable melody making way for the next. “Leaving So Soon” sounds like it will be the fly in the ointment for a bit, but then the soaring falsetto chorus kicks in and it’s unstoppable. “A Bad Dream” is melancholy, but grand, and rises like a tidal wave.

And then there is “Hamburg Song,” debuted on the tour last year. It starts with an organ and Chaplin’s voice, and throughout, the band resists the temptation to pile on the production. They add subtle piano, a few cymbals, and that’s it. It is the prettiest song they have written, and they were smart enough to get out of its way. When Chaplin reaches the chorus (“Lay yourself down…”), it all comes together, and it’s beautiful.

Under the Iron Sea is most definitely a darker work than Hopes and Fears, the lyrics mainly concerned with dissolution and doubt. The band nearly broke up while making it, and there’s some speculation that the album is the modern Brit-pop equivalent of Rumours – all about the infighting. Specifically, many of these songs seem to be about Rice-Oxley’s anger towards Chaplin, and both “Leaving So Soon” and “Hamburg Song” work under that interpretation. If lines like “You take much more than I’d ever ask for” and “If you don’t need me, I don’t need you” are in fact about him, it takes great strength of character for Chaplin to sing them. But the beauty is that they work as songs about love and loss, too.

“Put It Behind You” is the record’s most optimistic track, and it bops along on a distorted piano Beatles groove until it hits (you guessed it) a great melodic chorus. “The Iron Sea” (not listed on the U.S. version of the album, but included at the end of “Put It Behind You”) is a nifty instrumental interlude that sounds like the incidental music in Das Boot, and it flows perfectly into “Crystal Ball,” perhaps the record’s finest track. My God, the melody on this one – it’s just a juggernaut. It is perhaps the most singable expression of doubt and despair you’ll ever hear, especially the knockout bridge: “I don’t know where I am, and I don’t really care, I look myself in the eye and there’s no one there…”

The final third is more experimental, and a bit weaker, but not much. “Try Again” is lovely, even though it steps the closest to Phil Collins territory. (It even has a Genesis-style keyboard ending.) “Broken Toy,” however, is a masterpiece – jazzy and hooky and sad: “I guess I’m a toy that is broken, I guess we’re just over now…” Dig the bass on this one, played by Rice-Oxley. It thumps and grooves over Richard Hughes’ percussive bedrock. And then check out the amazing distorted piano in the extended instrumental break. It’s a wonder no one has tried this kind of sound before.

Perhaps the record’s only real mistake is in sequencing “The Frog Prince” last. It’s not a bad song – it would be the best thing most bands ever recorded, but it’s an average piece for Keane, all rising melody and pounding piano. Hopes and Fears concluded with “Bedshaped,” a true grand finale, whereas this record just kind of ends. I like the twinkling music box coda, but it’s not enough of a reason to end with this one.

But hell, that’s the only real flaw I can find. Under the Iron Sea is wonderful, magnificent pop music, played with a wide-open earnestness that invites magic. As good as Keane’s debut was, I have heard very few second records that build upon the foundation of a first album as well as this one does, and no other records this year with the quantity and quality of extraordinary songs that this one offers. The naysayers may scoff at Keane’s big heart and unwavering belief in their own melodies, but to these ears, all that passion makes their work shine that much brighter.

If you couldn’t tell, I love Under the Iron Sea. It is the rare example of a band with much to offer actually deciding to offer it, rather than try to hide behind some image-conscious idea of what they’re supposed to be. It is also a rare case of an already brilliant band becoming even more so, and refusing to sit still. It’s an album I can listen to (and have listened to) again and again, and never be bored for a moment.

Most of all, though, I’m grateful that Chaplin, Rice-Oxley and Hughes stayed together, overcame their personal issues and finished this record, and I hope they remain together for many more. It plays like a postcard from the edge, despite its joyous melodies, and seems to depict a band with little grounding. I hope this is not the case, and that Under the Iron Sea will one day be seen as a launching pad rather than a last gasp. There are too many bad bands making too many bad records to lose one capable of making an album like this one.

So, summary. Under the Iron Sea is an even better album than Keane’s debut, a twisty, emotional ride through incredibly singable tales of disconnection and loneliness. It is easily one of the best albums of the year so far, if not the best, and I pity the cynics who can’t see past their own sense of ironic detachment and alienated cool and simply enjoy it. I will take something this delightfully melodic and smart over 100 Kid A-style Grand Artistic Statements any day of the week, and I will die a happier person, with a song in my heart. Albums like Under the Iron Sea just make life more worth living.

Is it really that good? You know what? It really is.

Next week, Guster and David Mead.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Paul McCartney’s birthday is Sunday. He’ll be 64. And while I think he can still feed himself, I have to say that after the terrific heights of his latest album, his best in 25 years or so, we definitely still need him. Happy birthday, Sir Paul.

I make fun of McCartney a lot, especially in light of his mid-period solo fluff like “Ebony and Ivory,” a low point for both him and Stevie Wonder. But it’s easy to forget sometimes the wide-reaching impact his work has had on popular music over the last 45 or so years. McCartney, as far as I’m concerned, is the patron saint of melody addicts, the guy who showed the world that you could have both the strength and the sweetness, the driving rock and the complex, head-spinning tune.

The album “When I’m Sixty-Four” appears on, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, is considered by many (including me) to be among the best records ever made. It’s also one of the silliest – the Beatles were never a group that spoke to the oh-so-despairing soul. But within its passages lie some of the greatest melodies in pop music, and some of the most elaborate and fantastic arrangements, and many of the best of those were products of McCartney’s vision. He’s influenced hundreds of bands and songwriters, from legends like XTC and Jellyfish to lesser-knowns like Eric Matthews and David Mead.

And I have to wonder, when he was laying down the tracks for Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard in 2004, if he became aware of that influence in ways he hadn’t before. It must be difficult to be Paul McCartney, and have everyone expect that you will live up to your own monolithic status every time out. No one could do that, but on Chaos and Creation he came closer than he has since Wings broke up, and it was a wonder to behold. It was like the old Chevy Chase line – that album was like him saying, “This is why I’m Paul McCartney, and you’re not.”

They may not seem to have a lot in common (or, really, anything), but I think the same pressure applies to Sonic Youth. They helped create the sound that later became co-opted and repackaged as “indie rock,” and for many bands, Daydream Nation holds the same status as others bestow on Sgt. Pepper – it’s a revered example of the form, to study and emulate. But unlike the Beatles, Sonic Youth have had to make do with being the unjustly ignored grandfathers, whose grandchildren outsell them 20 to one.

Here’s a shocking moment for anyone who grew up in the ‘80s. Pop open the new Sonic Youth album, Rather Ripped, and wiggle the disc out. Now take a look at the tray-card photo of the band, Thurston and Kim and Lee and Steve, a quartet again after the departure of collaborator Jim O’Rourke. Look at that picture, and take a minute to deal with just how old they look.

Thurston Moore is nearly 50. Kim Gordon is 53. Steve Shelley is the baby of the band at 42. That’s pretty old for a band that keeps calling itself Sonic Youth. Whether they like it or not, they have become elder statesmen, presiding over a scene they helped originate. If you’re listening for it, you can hear SY’s influence everywhere – 200 bands a year copy Moore’s deceptively sloppy quarter-note style, and bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs should be paying Gordon royalties.

Meanwhile, here they are, at the end of their major-label contract with Geffen, and selling somewhere between respectably and miserably. Rather Ripped is album 24 or so, not counting side projects and solo affairs, and it sounds like the culmination of their recent evolution – here is a more subdued, older, more concise Sonic Youth, concentrating on songs and melodies instead of noisy guitar freakouts (although those are here, too). Rather Ripped is perhaps the most adult album they have made, and they still sound like they could beat up half the bands on alternative radio.

As she has on each of SY’s recent records, Kim Gordon steps to the forefront here, turning in some of the best tunes. Opener “Reena” is a perfect example, driving and hummable, but it’s “What a Waste” that stands out, with Gordon coming as close as she has lately to her unrestrained vocal performances of old. Only a couple of songs here blow past five minutes, but the band can still take you on a knotty woodland journey in four, as they prove on “Jams Run Free.”

Of the longer songs, “Pink Steam” makes the biggest impression, remaining a tricky instrumental until around the five-minute mark. But even this one is calmer, more about gentle ripples than tidal waves. The album ends with “Or,” a brief, spoken meditation over a sparse instrumental bed – where prior albums ended with an epic flourish, like “The Diamond Sea” on the incredible Washing Machine, this one kind of dissipates. It’s a remarkably restrained ending to a remarkably restrained disc.

Is this a sign that the Youths are growing too old? Not on your life. In fact, the album’s focus gives it strength – SY’s semi-improvised style can often lead to unfortunate wanderings, but here, everything is tightly wound and purposeful. Rather Ripped is the band’s most direct album in… well, pretty much ever, but it still sounds like Sonic Youth, and the quartet is still running laps around its imitators. Only a band that’s been together as long as SY has can play like this, like one single entity with eight arms and three guitars. The up-and-coming twenty-somethings can’t touch them – they get the garage-band style, but not the complexity, not the skill, and not the telepathic connection between the players.

Of course, they’ll never get the credit or the commercial success they deserve, but isn’t that always the way? At this point, I don’t even know if they want it. But I like them even more now than I did when they were young and hungry – now they are old and wise, making music for its own sake, and while they’re unlikely to cause another seismic shift in the landscape, they’re still living up to their own legacy. Rock stars growing old with integrity – what a concept.

Next week, Keane.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Sometimes they just don’t work.

I’ve been trying for two weeks to make my thesis on genetic mutation as it relates to side projects into something readable, and all I’ve ended up with so far is boring, wordy crap. I won’t subject you to it in its current form – I may come back to it later, but there’s a ton of new music headed our way (as you know if you read the stopgap column from last week), and I don’t know when I’ll be able to fit it in.

So for now, here’s the important stuff, stripped of pretentious garbage and distilled for your reading pleasure:

The Raconteurs is Jack White’s new band, and does anyone else think that he should form a musical partnership with Jack Black? I think that would be hilarious, and certainly more successful than his collaboration with Brendan Benson, as evidenced by the first Raconteurs album, Broken Boy Soldiers. I am not a White Stripes fan, but I do like Benson’s work, and I was hoping the new band would combine the best aspects of both.

Instead, the duo (together with Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler of the Greenhorns) turned in a tossed-off slab of diverse, yet underbaked rock, with some Zeppelin, some folksy blues, and a dash of melodic pop. I admire the myriad of styles the band tackles here, but they don’t do any of them very well, and at just over half an hour, this feels like a weekend jam session rather than a whole new creation. Benson and White take vocal turns, and in the spirit of free association, they’ve forgotten to truly collaborate at all – there isn’t much here that sounds like a melding of their signature sounds.

More successful is Peeping Tom, which is really just Mike Patton, of Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, Fantomas, Tomahawk and numerous other solo projects. However, Peeping Tom isn’t a solo show – he collaborates here with the likes of Dan the Automator, Kool Keith, Massive Attack and Kid Koala, and the result is a semi-creepy slab of electronic dance-metal. It is Patton’s most accessible work since Faith No More broke up, and it’s worth it just to hear Norah Jones say “motherfucker,” but it falls short of the brilliant insanity of which Patton is capable. The packaging is great, though.

Oddly, the most successful of the three is Gnarls Barkley, which is just way too good to be as popular as it is. Gnarls is soul goofball Cee-Lo Green and producer Danger Mouse, and their debut St. Elsewhere is the perfect combination of their sensibilities. Imagine Marvin Gaye as produced by Fatboy Slim and you have the idea. You’ve heard “Crazy,” but the album goes so many other places, some of them cartoony and some of them strangely moving. It’s not great art, by any means, but it is a fun mutation, a melding of styles that works. For collaborative side projects, I think that’s the best anyone can ask.

So there you go. And now for this week’s real column, which I have dubbed The Manny Ramirez Effect.

* * * * *

So I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Manny Ramirez play, but I’ll try to encapsulate the experience for you. The Red Sox left fielder is an amazing hitter, and he has so much inborn talent that he manages to get away with a lackadaisical attitude in the field that Sox fans have come to call “Manny being Manny.” Often, it can seem to outside observers that Ramirez isn’t even paying attention, and occasionally he’ll do stupid things like throw the second-out ball into the stands, thinking it’s the third-out ball. Nothing fazes Ramirez, and nothing seems to light a fire under him, either.

But whether intentional or not, Manny’s laissez-faire demeanor causes his opponents to underestimate him all the time. One second he’ll be grinning at fans while the game is in progress, and the next he’ll be hauling ass to the back wall, making a spectacular catch and throwing in to second to hold the runner to a single. And whenever Manny snaps out of his sunny haze and executes a play like that, it takes everyone by surprise, like it came out of… well, left field.

What does this have to do with music? Well, I’m asked all the time where I find out about the bands I listen to, by people who apparently believe that I’m hooked into this secret network of musical insiders that trade in forbidden knowledge. And while I do rely on recommendations and research and tracking things down, spending way too much time and energy in the process, I also happen upon surprises, things I didn’t see coming, but which suddenly make their way to the top of my pile and knock me out.

And that’s the Manny Ramirez Effect – when new, unknown music catches you by surprise.

Case in point. I went to see the Violet Burning a couple of months ago at the Warehouse in Aurora, Illinois. They were opening for Kevin Max, one of the most ridiculous performers you’ll ever see – I walked out about the time he started his poetry readings. But TVB was excellent, as always, slamming through oldies and some awe-inspiring new ones from Drop-Dead, their terrific new record.

Seeing a small show like this can often be a pain – it takes ages for one band to leave the stage and another to set up and start, and I went by myself, so I had no one to talk to during the lag time. So I was sitting there, and I started to notice the music playing over the speakers. Well, that’s not entirely true – as I’ve mentioned before, there’s a part of my brain that is always noticing the music in the background, but there are times when that part smacks around the more conscious parts and says, “Listen to this! You have to hear this!”

This was one of those times. It seems the Violets had brought their own iPods, and they had chosen the music that played between sets. Some music fills a room, but this stuff flooded it – watery, wavery, electronic, organic, trance-like and mesmerizing. I was fully taken in, and I waited a few songs to be sure, but each successive tune was more enveloping than the last. The thought process went a little like this:

Song one: “This is good. I wonder who this is?”

Song two: “Man, this is really good. Will the next one be as good?”

Song three: “Yes, it will. Who does this sound like? Who could this be?”

Song four: “This is awesome. I should know who this is. I’m actually embarrassed that I don’t know who this is.”

Song five: “Okay, that is it. I have to find out who this is.”

So I asked one of the Violets, who was more than happy to tell me. Turns out it was the first full-length album by the Listening, formerly the Rock ‘n’ Roll Worship Circus. I immediately made the connection – Gabriel Wilson, leader of the Circus, contributed heavily to Drop-Dead, as did keyboardist Josiah Sherman and guitarist Chris Greely. I sat back down, satisfied. They kept playing the record between sets, and I got to hear all of it. Had it been on sale that evening, I’d have plunked down my cash then and there.

I had avoided the Rock ‘n’ Roll Worship Circus because, well, just look at their name. The songs I’d heard were average modern rock, with not much to recommend them. I had heard somewhere that the Circus had changed their name and their sound, but I had no idea the change was this drastic or impressive. The Listening is all about mood and moment, and it’s captivating – songs don’t move as much as they slither forward, like an underwater creature. These are songs for darkened corners, and the sound is amazing, full and swirling and midnight black.

“Triple Fascination” is the template – a repetitive drum pattern provides the framework for layers of clean guitars and droning keys, while Wilson sings in a low-key voice, one that provides warmth without breaking the mood. The song that sold me originally is the fifth, “Hosea in C Minor,” a constantly ascending web of despair, with occasional shafts of harmonic light. It’s fantastic. Some will hear the pianos and repeated drum figures and draw a line to Kid A, but Wilson remembers one thing Thom Yorke and company keep forgetting – the melodies. These songs go somewhere, no matter how slowly.

The lyrics are littered with biblical references, which some may find off-putting, but trust that there is nothing here that could be considered church music. The spiritual allusions are juxtaposed with songs like “The Factory,” a tale of criminal arson, for interesting effect. The album concludes with a pair of beauties – “Lovely Red Lights” is a deep submersion of a song, all lovely synths and melodic changes, and “Everything is Nothing” is surprisingly upbeat, pivoting on the line, “Everything is nothing without love.” The electric piano, subtle programmed drums and snaking guitar line are perfect, taking what could have been a throwaway into truly memorable territory.

The Listening is a remarkable record, all the more so for being an independent release. If not for the guys in the Violet Burning, I might never have heard it at all, and instead, it’s vying for my top 10 list this year. That’s a left-field surprise, and one I’m grateful for.

Here’s another: I had almost completely forgotten about this band called The Cat Mary, until Chris L’Etoile reminded me. I borrowed their debut album, Her High, Lonesome Days, from Chris when we were both in school, and I never returned it – it’s a long story that involves an impromptu cleaning and a basement wall, and it’s not all that interesting. But the crux is, I liked the record, and I remembered the band’s name, even though I haven’t heard them in years.

Cut to 2006, and Chris emails me to tell me that the band has a new album. And I’m thinking about it, and wondering just how I would have known about this kind of thing before the internet. How would a band like The Cat Mary, who sounds out of time to begin with and has only made three albums in a decade, get the word out otherwise? I don’t know – I suppose if we didn’t have the internet, we’d have to invent it.

Anyway, the band. The Cat Mary describes their sound as “kitchen-sink Americana,” and that works as well as anything. They play a kind of country-jazz-folk-prog that’s equal parts traditional and inventive, and their songs are little stories, brief radio plays. Their new album is called Postbellum Neighborhood, and I had to look “postbellum” up – it refers to the period just after the Civil War.

I haven’t heard Her High, Lonesome Days in many years, but I don’t remember it being this lively, this jazz-inflected. The album opens with a six-minute epic called “A River, a Dead Mule, A Train…” that leapfrogs styles elegantly. You can’t mistake the thump of an upright bass for anything else, and Ken Dow provides an impeccable, earthy foundation. His brother Kevin on drums adds a surprisingly technical touch to some of these tunes, particularly the opener.

But it’s the voice of leader Andrew Markham that will keep you coming back. It’s the element of the sound I remember most from my first brush with it in the mid-‘90s – he has an even, powerful tone that reminds me of Vince Gill a bit, but it stands on its own. Markham’s lyrics are sometimes surreal, but always enjoyable – “Now, before you invoke your meemaw, I will tell you that I once had me a meemaw too…”

Postbellum is surprisingly diverse as well – the originals include two string-laden instrumentals along with a beautiful ballad (“The Big, Dumb Way”), and the band also includes takes on songs by Tom Waits, Jimmie Rodgers and Jesse Winchester. My only complaint with the album, in fact, is that four of the 11 songs are covers, and another is a poetic interlude. That leaves a scant four new songs and two instrumentals from the mind of Markham, and it’s a mind I’d like to hear more from.

Nevertheless, it’s a great little album, organic and sweet, full of fiddles and steel guitars and real, honest musicianship. This was another out-of-nowhere surprise, and despite the backlog of music I have to listen to, when the quirky strains of “Anniperversary” fade out, I don’t want to do anything but press play again. Postbellum Neighborhood is a welcome return from a band I’d all but forgotten, and I hope they keep going so I can keep my promise to watch them more closely. Thanks to Chris L’Etoile for letting me know about this.

Now, can anyone help me find their second album…?

* * * * *

Both The Listening and Postbellum Neighborhood are available from CDBaby. Pick ‘em up here:

The Listening.

The Cat Mary.

Next week, Sonic Youth, or something similar.

See you in line Tuesday morning.