A quick one, then a long one, then I’m out for the weekend, barring an 8-hour shift at the paper tomorrow covering an immigrant rights march. And funny that I should mention the newspaper, because that leads me right into talking about Steve Lord, his son Bobby, and Bobby’s band Surround Sound.

Steve Lord is an interesting cat. He’s been covering his beat since I was in grade school, and he knows everything there is to know about the county I live in. But he’s also got great musical taste, and he and I have had numerous discussions, sometimes lasting for an hour or more, right there in the newsroom where everyone can hear and be annoyed by them, about this band or that band or whether Paul McCartney should hang it up or just how freaking great David Mead really is. Like that.

And many times in the past, Steve has mentioned his 18-year-old son Bobby, and Bobby’s band. And finally, last week, he gave me a copy of the CD. The band’s called Surround Sound, and the record is called The Sun is On Our Side, and it’s self-produced and self-released.

And it’s quite good.

I have this separate rating scale for friends’ bands, and relatives-of-co-workers’ bands, and things like that, so I was all ready to form an opinion of The Sun is On Our Side based on that curve. But by the third track, I threw out my friend scale and just used my regular one, the way I do with the best musicians I know, like Lost on Liftoff’s Shane Kinney. Essentially, some musicians are just so good that they make me forget that I know them – or, as in this case, that I know their dads.

Anyway. Surround Sound plays punchy, bright power pop, with hooks galore and a songwriting sense far beyond what you’d expect a group of teenagers had in them. Most of the songs are Lord’s, and it’s obvious he’s been raiding his dad’s record collection – here are riffs and melodies straight out of the Kinks and the Raspberries, layered with backing vocals and played with an impressive tightness, especially considering this was a budget-minded production.

I said before that I stopped grading on a curve with track three, and that one’s called “Wake Up.” It’s a world-class pop song, in my estimation the best thing here, and if Bobby Lord can write more like that one, he’ll be an indie superstar in no time. I occasionally wished his singing voice had a lighter, more confident tone, and that the production was a little brighter, but those things come with time. The Sun is On Our Side is one of the most unexpected, pleasant surprises of my year – I got it for free, just for knowing the singer’s father, but if I had paid full price for it, I wouldn’t feel ripped off in the slightest.

Surround Sound has no record deal, and as far as I know, the only place you can purchase the CD is at Not Lame Records. You can hear some of it at their Myspace site or their own new website.

* * * * *

I get excited easily, especially when it comes to music.

I like concepts, grand ideas, format-shaking visions, and there’s little that gets me interested in a record more than seeing the evidence of years of thought and planning. The Early November announced a triple-CD concept record where each disc tells the story from a different perspective? I was there. Who’s the Early November? I had no idea, but suddenly I was very excited to find out, and it turns out it was worth it – The Mother, The Mechanic and the Path is a swell album.

It’s even more exhilarating when an artist I already know and respect takes that extra step, and puts together something beyond anything in his or her catalog. Such is the case with This Binary Universe, the new album from Brian Transeau, who prefers to go by just his initials, BT. The concept had me salivating before I even heard a note of it – TBU is a seven-song ambient excursion that comes packaged with a DVD containing short films for each of the tracks. Essentially, he composed a suite, and then hired people to make his own Fantasia, and now he’s touring it as an audio-visual experience.

Wow, huh?

BT has always been ambitious. His first album, 1996’s Ima, is more than two hours long, all beats and textures, and though it sticks to pretty traditional trance music throughout, it’s still damn good. But Transeau has proven himself a visionary since then, breaking down musical barriers by bringing in pop singers and acoustic instruments and anything else he thinks will serve the song. His last proper album, 2003’s Emotional Technology, wound up on my top 10 list that year, and I called it perhaps the perfect synthesis of electronic music and pop. It’s not club music with a singer, and it’s not pop songs with an electro-beat. This is something else, and I’m not really sure how to quantify it.

Transeau also scored the film Monster that same year, and his music for that movie is amazing – ambient, creepy, gloriously produced, beautiful and uncharacteristically serene. And it turns out that This Binary Universe follows the same path, only to a bigger and better place. BT has abandoned the manic pop melodies of his last few albums and turned in a 74-minute soundscape record, one that shimmers and flutters instead of gyrating and thumping. There are beats here, but they are mostly subtle ones, and the focus is on mood.

Oh, and one more thing – it’s absolutely fantastic.

Taking just the CD first, This Binary Universe starts with “All That Makes Us Human Continues,” which sounds like a dirge for its first minute or so before morphing into a web of underwater chimes. Roughly halfway through, it sounds as though it’s building to an explosion of beats, but it doesn’t – the intensity is only ratcheted up by a small degree. It’s the tone-setter for the album, and its intricate production is one element that never wavers from track to track. This record sounds incredible, like every BT release, and it’s music you can truly get lost in.

“Dynamic Symmetry” is perhaps the most traditional piece here, with its thudding drums and bass, although the tempo is still easygoing. But then the song flips into an electro-jazz experiment, and it works, though not as well as any other track here. Things get back on course with “The Internal Locus,” as both it and “1.618” shift and change subtly throughout their 10-plus-minute running times, always slowing down at the perfect moments to keep the atmosphere consistent.

“See You On the Other Side” is the longest track at 14 minutes, and it’s the one that never dices itself into some other form – it’s a lovely buildup and breakdown of pure electronic ambience. In contrast, “The Anhtkythera Mechanism” (named after an ancient Greek computing device found at the bottom of the Aegean Sea) is dazzling in its journey, going from purring pianos to full-on orchestral grandeur. And the finale, “Good Morning Kaia,” is perhaps the prettiest thing here, building in scope while never losing sight of the fragile piano melody at its core.

But writing about music like this is like trying to smell colors. I have no idea how to impress upon you the experience of hearing this stuff – it’s all feelings, all little snatches of emotion. I can tell you that “The Anhtkythera Mechanism” feels like the floor giving way every two minutes, or I can say that “Good Morning Kaia” broke my heart, but that tells you nothing. More than any other kind of music, I think, complex instrumental works like this need to be heard first hand. There is so much detail here, and so much emotion, that I’m never going to do it justice.

Similarly, I don’t think I can describe the films that accompany this music any better. Some of them are too abstract for my taste – “All That Makes Us Human Continues” opens the movie with what looks like a fractal landscape that changes color repeatedly, but it’s just a still shot for all eight minutes. Some are more successful, especially “Dynamic Symmetry,” with its undersea robot hummingbird (really) and many-eyed creatures. But mostly the filmmakers concentrated on moods and tones, which accompany the music well – often I couldn’t tell which came first, honestly.

But by far the most moving and successful track, both audio and video, is the aforementioned “Good Morning Kaia.” The film, directed by Transeau himself, is made up of home movies of his daughter, after whom the song is named. The song is the most personal work BT has ever crafted, bar none, and the video just brings it home. This is what instrumental music could and should be. It’s not crippled by its lack of lyrics, it’s free of the limitations of language, and able to express emotion in ways that words simply can’t. There’s no way to come away from this song and film unchanged.

BT is unfairly lumped in with DJs and techno artists all the time, and if Emotional Technology didn’t make it plain that he’s on another level entirely, this album should do the trick. There’s a depth and a diversity to This Binary Universe that you don’t often hear. It’s a big, bold record that draws you in but makes you work for it, and it sparkles with ingenuity and beauty. It is, unquestionably, the best thing Brian Transeau has ever done, but I would also go so far as to say it is one of the finest instrumental albums I own. It’s an immersive experience, one of the most ambitious projects of the year – and one of the greatest.

Next week, we get all proggy on your ass.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m feeling like death right now. I have this painful chest cold, and I’m coughing and sneezing, and I made it one whole mile on the treadmill this morning before I practically collapsed, sputtering and heaving.

So yeah, not feeling well. And I think I’d like to put this week’s column to bed quickly, so that I can put myself to bed shortly thereafter. A couple of quick hits, a review, and we’re done for the week. I know, I know, you miss me already, but that’s just the way it has to be.

First up, the latest in a series of things to look forward to, 2006 edition:

The new Sloan album comes out on September 19. It’s called Never Hear the End of It, and in direct contrast to the brief (yet very enjoyable) Action Pact from 2003, this one has 30 songs and spans 76 minutes. Even so, the majority of these tunes must hover around the two-minute mark, so I’m fascinated to see if the band can make something like that come together. The record is being described as the Halifax Fab Four’s White Album, which could be either good or bad. The Beatles’ White Album is an occasionally brilliant, yet completely unfocused mess, and it will be interesting to see if Sloan follows suit.

The end of the year is shaping up, and some newly announced records could help the so-far struggling 2006 along. The Decemberists return on October 3, as does Beck with an album called The Information that he’s been working on since before Guero. Lindsey Buckingham checks in with an acoustic album called Under the Skin, Copeland comes back with a new one called Eat, Sleep, Repeat, and Sunny Day Real Estate mastermind Jeremy Enigk issues his second solo album (10 years after his first), dubbed World Waits.

Add in new things from Ben Folds, Modest Mouse, Unwed Sailor, the Walkmen and the first album in 24 years from some little band called the Who, and it might not be such a mediocre year after all.

On a completely different note, I want to point everyone in the direction of their local DVD store (or online equivalent), because Kicking and Screaming has finally found its way to digital permanence. No, not the Will Ferrell soccer movie (and I hate that I have to say that now), but Noah Baumbach’s brilliant, touching, and above all hysterical first movie. Baumbach hit last year with a critically acclaimed film called The Squid and the Whale, and while I agree that Squid is the better film, Kicking and Screaming will always be my favorite.

It concerns the year after college, and how that slowly becomes your life, but it does so with a script that I think is the closest I have seen to perfection. Each line is either incredibly funny, or incredibly moving, or often both. I saw it at exactly the right time in my life – during the months after graduating from St. Joseph’s, degree in hand, and living in a crummy apartment while working at a music magazine. It’s one of those films with special significance for me, so much so that I can’t really give you an objective review. I just love this movie to death, and can quote it endlessly.

For 10 years now, I’ve had to watch it on VHS, in a pan-and-scan version that cropped the edges of the screen, because there has been no DVD. Baunbach fans signed petitions, wrote letters, and basically waited for a decade while watching anything and everything (Porky’s II?) make it to disc first. Until Baumbach’s recent success with Squid and Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic (which he co-wrote), I was all but convinced we’d never see a Kicking and Screaming DVD.

But here it is in a glittering Criterion Collection special edition, with deleted scenes, interviews, and a whole other short film from Baumbach, and I can’t help but feel that the guy is finally getting his due. The Squid and the Whale proved to the world that he’s a great filmmaker, but after Kicking and Screaming, I needed no further convincing. And if you’re sufficiently impressed by those two, his much-maligned second film, Mr. Jealousy, is also quite good.

Congrats, Noah. It’s about damn time.

* * * * *

If ever there were an album I was too harsh on, it’s Eric Matthews’ Six Kinds of Passion Looking for an Exit.

This seven-song excursion came out last year, after a nearly eight-year drought of new Matthews music, and all I can think is that I just felt it wasn’t enough. I was surprised upon spinning the thing that Matthews’ penchant for chamber-pop, for horns and strings and harpsichords, had all but gone by the wayside, leaving stripped-down melodic pop songs with a few snatches of trumpet here and there. And I guess I had forgotten what an interesting pleasure his voice is, and I was searching for something stronger and higher.

I don’t know what I was thinking, but I severely undervalued Six Kinds of Passion, so it was a treat playing it again recently and discovering what a good crop of songs it is. Eric Matthews hit in 1995 with an album called It’s Heavy in Here, and though he probably will never be recognized for it, he helped spark the new melodicism that grew out of the late 1990s. His sole hit, “Fanfare,” stood out from the crowd in ’95, inspired by the likes of Brian Wilson and Neil Hannon instead of Billy Corgan and Kurt Cobain, and the record holds up – it’s a low-key delight.

But after his sophomore effort, the slightly less successful The Lateness of the Hour, Matthews disappeared, emerging most of a decade later with only seven new songs. And I wrote at the time that Six Kinds of Passion was either a curious epilogue or the start of the second phase of his career.

Happily, it’s the latter: Eric Matthews Phase Two continues with the Empyrean Records release of Foundation Sounds, his new album. And where Six Kinds could be rightly criticized for its brevity, this new one is an embarrassment of riches – 17 new songs, spanning more than 68 minutes. It sports the same stripped-down feel, and the same melodic winsomeness – in short, it’s an extension of Matthews’ new sound, which isn’t all that different from his old sound, just a little more raw.

As he explains in the liner notes, sound is a preoccupation on this album, and while budgetary constraints may have contributed to the sparseness, Matthews is also on a quest to find the core of what he does. That’s led him to play every instrument on this album (except for a quick clarinet bit on one song), and he gives himself what I call the Prince Credit: he wrote, produced and performed the whole thing. And amazingly, you’d never know that unless you read the liners – Foundation Sounds is warm and organic, not canned-sounding at all.

The barefaced nature of this record puts the focus on Matthews’ songs instead of his intricate orchestration, and that’s where it belongs. This guy can write a melody, and that gift never fails him here. Foundation Sounds stays at pretty much the same intensity throughout – it’s light and shade over slower tempos and languid atmospheres. None of these songs are easy, but all of them lead somewhere, and given a few listens, you’ll find numbers like “Survive” or “All the Clowns” catchy and irresistible. Emotional songs like “This Chance” benefit tremendously from the renewed focus, too – there’s nothing in the way of Matthews’ voice and melody here.

There are too many highlights to point out each one, but there is one thing I want to mention, since it will probably not be emphasized by many reviewers – Matthews’ bass playing on this record is extraordinary. He counts Colin Moulding and Paul McCartney as influences, and you can really tell – the bass is used as a melody instrument more often than not. His work never calls attention to itself, but it’s very advanced bass playing, and could be a by-product of his orchestral leanings. He knows what notes are needed in what spaces.

But Matthews’ music has always been impeccably arranged, and even though he’s working with fewer instruments here, and playing them all, he’s turned in essentially a series of string quartet pieces for guitars, drums and voice. Everything’s in its right place, and it’s obvious that he labored over this album – it’s easily the best thing he’s ever done, even though I miss the orchestra sometimes. There’s really no one else that sounds like Eric Matthews right now, and he’s made an album here that shines a spotlight not on his penchant for interesting tones and colors, but on his pure songwriting talent.

If you order Foundation Sounds from the label, you may possibly get a limited edition EP with five more songs from the same sessions. There’s no drop in quality here – these five could have been on the album, if the CD format would allow it. “The Boy Made of Clay” may well be the best song out of all 22, in fact, so I’d say it’s worth it. But even if you only get Foundation Sounds, it will be worth your money, and worth the nine years it’s taken Matthews to get a new full-length out.

So here’s to creative rebirths, and to second acts, especially from songwriters and musicians this good. And here’s to peeling back layer after layer until you get to the heart of things, as Eric Matthews has done here. Foundation Sounds is a very good record, and the start of something grand. This time, there’s no either/or about it – Matthews is back in the game, and the game is lucky to have him.

Next week, This Binary Universe.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I love lists.

I love making lists. I love reading lists. There’s something about the ranking of these things over these things, of discovering someone else’s subjective ordering of the universe – or imposing one’s own. When I was a teenage metalhead, my friends and I would sit around and rank Megadeth albums, or guitar players, or caterwauling vocalists. We’d then compare lists, and we’d nearly come to blows over them.

“Dude, there is NO WAY that Lars Ulrich is a better drummer than John Bonham. No WAY!”

“Say that again, man. I’ll beat your skinny ass.”

“Dude, Lars Ulrich is a pussy. Dave Lombardo’s the best drummer who ever lived.”

And on like that. Many times, these lists were composed while driving around town, doing what we called the Franklin 500 – from Stop & Shop up to the Ben Franklin bank in the center of town and then back down, over and over until we ran out of gas. Which, incidentally, only cost about 80 cents a gallon back then…

Anyway, the love of list-making has never left me, and often I’m challenged by other music fanatics to rank and order preferences – best Beatles album, or best Terry Taylor song, or something like that. I ordinarily jump at the chance to participate, although I have to say that I take these lists insanely seriously. I will pore over my choices for days (or in the case of my annual top 10 list, months), making sure that each seemingly insignificant ranking is exactly where I, in my heart of hearts, believe it should be.

I know. Obsessive.

So when Dr. Tony Shore posted on his blog his list of the top 50 albums of all time, and then issued the same challenge to me, I was taken aback. When I was younger, this is the type of thing I would have jumped right into, full bore. (And Megadeth’s Rust in Peace would have been in the top five, too…) But now, I’m more wary of lists like this, and the permanence of the Internet. I make fun of magazines like Spin and Rolling Stone when they do their Best of ALL TIME lists, so how can I do one?

The answer, of course, is that I can’t, even under Tony Shore’s rules. His list is proudly subjective, full of little pop gems that few have heard – Toy Matinee, for example, is a wonderful album that came and went with practically no fanfare, and Daniel Amos’ Doppelganger is also several shades of amazing. He tops it off with 90125, Yes’ gleaming pop sellout record, and though he’s been saying the same to me for years, I think it takes guts to go ahead and publicly call that his favorite record of all time. Kudos, you crazy, crazy bastard.

So Shore’s list is quite plainly his favorites, not any stab at an objective best (as if that were possible), and even so, I can’t bring myself to do it. So I decided to go another way.

Below you’ll find 10 records that changed my life. They’re not in any real order, except I’ve tried to keep them in the sequence I first heard them. I’m doing it this way partially because ranking these 10 (and 40 more, to meet Shore’s challenge) would take me the better part of a month, and it would still be wrong. But I’m also going about it like this because of a few conversations I’ve had recently, with people who don’t feel the way I do about music, and don’t understand the impact albums like the 10 below have had on me. This is a painfully flawed and ultimately futile attempt to explain.

And there are many, many more records that have rewritten parts of me, some that should probably be here instead, but these are the first 10 I thought of, which I considered the most honest way to do this. It’s not Andre Salles’ 10 Favorite Albums OF ALL TIME, but it is, hopefully, a little glimpse at what music means to me, and what it does to me.

Anyway, here goes. 10 records that changed my life.

* * * * *

1. The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

There were others before this one, certainly. My parents had a vinyl copy of Led Zeppelin IV that I would play over and over again as a small child, and even then I knew that “When the Levee Breaks” was an amazing song. We had Eat a Peach by the Allman Brothers Band, and I loved that as well. I started buying tapes pretty early on, and nearly wore out my Pet Shop Boys and Huey Lewis albums.

I loved music before I heard Sgt. Pepper. I just didn’t really know what it could be.

I was 15. I’d heard about this record from my older friends, many of whom were much more literate than I was. I had read the album’s title, written in reverence, in many reviews. I had heard the Beatles, too, but nothing prepared me for listening to Sgt. Pepper front to back that first time. Here was something grand and melodic and important, but also silly and hummable. It was fun music that took itself seriously – or the other way around, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I couldn’t get “Fixing a Hole” out of my head, and I was mesmerized by “A Day in the Life,” an epic unlike anything I had heard before.

Sgt. Pepper still does it for me. It’s pretty much flawless, I think, a perfect record from start to finish. And the Beatles never made another one like it. Everything from A Hard Day’s Night on was buildup to Sgt. Pepper, and everything after it was a comedown. It is the benchmark by which I judge pretty much all pop music, and in a lot of ways, my constant search for great new stuff is just an endless attempt to replicate the giddy joy of that first time through this album, when I was 15.

2. Metallica, Master of Puppets.

But of course, at the time, I was a teenage metalhead. And this album is one of the main reasons why.

As a good Christian boy, I was scared of Metallica. Their record covers just looked evil, like the sort of thing my pastor would tell me to stay away from. So my immersion in the world of Hetfield, Ulrich, Burton and Hammett was tentative, but once I dove in, I was hooked.

Master of Puppets is still one of the best metal albums I have ever heard. The metal years, for me, were a passing phase, but while bands like Overkill have gone by the wayside in my collection, the good stuff – early Megadeth, Sepultura, Anthrax – still gets me. And the three records Metallica made with Cliff Burton still rank as the best of the best. As a young kid, I was struck by the extraordinary power of Puppets, from the opening barrage of “Battery” to the furious finale of “Damage Inc.,” and also by the relevance, the importance, of the lyrics. The album attacked unjust wars, drug addiction, mental illness and shady evangelism with blunt force. When I was 15, these words Meant Something, and demanded attention.

Nowadays, I am still impressed with the progressive nature of this album, and always struck anew with just how melodic it is. “Orion” is even kind of beautiful. Every once in a while, I will pull this out, and remember what my long-haired teenage self heard in it. The band has gone steadily downhill since, like almost all of their ‘80s metal brethren, and Master of Puppets represents this odd little golden age of my youth, and a doorway to the more complex stuff (Dream Theater, for example) I have grown to love since.

3. The Cure, Disintegration.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say this – Disintegration saved my life.

Without this album’s glorious sadness to fall back into, I don’t know that I would have made it through high school alive. I spent a lot of time as a kid brooding, exploring my own melancholy, and hanging on to my depression. And Disintegration was the soundtrack for a lot of that. Never before had I heard an album that depicted my own loneliness the way I heard it in my head. I identified with Disintegration, but more than that, I was able to lose myself in it, and come away strangely hopeful.

Even now, it is one of the richest albums I own, especially the extended soundscapes on the second half. I don’t listen to it very often, because the shimmering depression of “The Same Deep Water as You,” for example, brings me right back to my worst days as a teen. It is a testament to the record, however, that none of its dark poetry seems silly to me now. It still strikes me as honest, powerful, and enveloping, both in Robert Smith’s words and in the band’s sheer sound, massive and fragile at once. But then, it’s hard for me to objectively judge an album like this, one that had such an impact on the way I saw the world for a while.

4. Queen, A Night at the Opera.

While the Cure was capturing my own sense of isolation in song, Queen broadened my musical horizons like almost no other band. Freddie Mercury could play and sing anything, and he often did within the space of 40 minutes. I had never heard another band with quite the amazing range Queen effortlessly displayed.

This album, despite how cliched it would quickly become thanks to Wayne’s World, was my favorite. What other band would open with a kiss-off like “Death on Two Legs” and then segue into Mercury’s old ragtime piece “Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon”? The second half knocked me out, jumping from the sludgy “Prophet’s Song” to the sweet “Love of My Life” to Brian May’s jug band wonderama “Good Company,” and then to “Bohemian Rhapsody.” What a range.

And as a young kid still trying to work out the ins and outs of audio production, A Night at the Opera offered exploding vistas of sound, from the astonishing opera smack in the middle of “Rhapsody” to the guitars-as-brass-band of “Company.” Sure, it’s over the top, but the musicianship and the sheer amount of work and time put into the production is still impressive to me now. Queen also managed to be diverse while still making coherent album statements, something that few bands can manage even now. They were silly and campy, but man, they were good.

And Mercury’s death from AIDS in 1991 offered me my first experience with loss, in an artistic sense. Here was a guy still making great music – Innuendo is an underrated album – and in a heartbeat, he was gone, and the band was over. I didn’t know him, I’d never met him, but his music meant something to me, and his death truly affected me. Not to get melodramatic about it, but in a way, Mercury’s passing prepared me for every time it’s happened since, from Elliott Smith to Johnny Cash.

5. The Choir, Circle Slide.

What can I say about Circle Slide that I haven’t said before?

I heard it in high school, just as I was in the midst of rejecting religion and its pat ideas about life. The Choir is the band that convinced me not to reject the spiritual altogether. Here was deep belief tempered with deep doubt, all wrapped up in an unbelievably beautiful sound. Here, in short, was art about God, and it came along at a time in my life when I was drawing an inviolable line between the two.

In the intervening years, Circle Slide has gained more and more significance to me. I hear something new in it every time, and familiar lines strike me in newly resonant ways. An example – just last week, I spun the album again, and a line in “About Love” jumped out at me: “You threaten my dreams.” What a thing to say to someone, but yet, what an honest assessment of a relationship. Love, when it’s real, redraws your plans and reimagines your dreams, threatening the old ones, no matter how long you’ve held them.

Circle Slide remains one of the most important albums, personally speaking, that I own. I have been listening to it regularly for 16 years, and I’ve never grown tired of it. And it opened the door to an entire corner of the music world I might never have explored – without Circle Slide, I may never have heard Daniel Amos, Adam Again, the 77s, the Prayer Chain, Starflyer 59, or numerous other amazing bands that are unjustly ignored because of their spiritual content.

For these and a hundred other reasons, I will be eternally grateful that I took a chance on that artsy-looking cassette with the tire swing on the cover back in 1990. It’s an album I believe I will still be listening to in 30 years.

6. Human Radio.

This record was the first forgotten masterpiece I ever discovered, and I remember feeling indignant, angry even, that it wasn’t more popular. Human Radio is the only officially released album by this group, led by a great songwriter named Ross Rice, and its 10 songs are all little wonders, melodic and witty and brilliant. It contains a couple of songs (“Hole in My Head,” “Another Planet,” “I Don’t Wanna Know”) that rank among my very favorites – when I try to write songs, these are the kinds of songs I try to write.

Human Radio was recommended to me by a record store clerk, the same one who had once applauded my purchase of Queen’s Innuendo, so I knew he and I had similar tastes. This clerk called Human Radio’s lack of universal popularity “one of the greatest crimes of the 20th Century,” and while I would never go that far, I admit that I do secretly consider it criminal that this band, and this album, didn’t set the world on fire. This is not inaccessible stuff. This is a great pop album that slipped through the cracks, when it should have launched four hit singles and several careers.

As I said, it was my first brush with that feeling, and it hasn’t gotten any easier as time has gone by. Instead of being heralded as one of the best songwriters we have, Ross Rice has gone on to make only a handful of subsequent records, and to live the life of an unknown working musician. It’s an old song, and I hear it all the time – my CD collection is now full of bands and artists that deserve better than they got. Every serious music collector has that one album that introduced him or her to the concept of unjust obscurity. This was mine.

7. Jane’s Addiction, Ritual de lo Habitual.

Speaking of injustice, this album was my first brush with censorship and the very real threat it poses to artistic expression. The front cover of Ritual was meant to be a photo of a sculpture, one that depicted three people in a naked embrace. But Warner Bros. wasn’t having it, and forced Perry Farrell to change it. Instead, he replaced the original cover with a black-on-white reprinting of the First Amendment, and in the process, became my hero.

As a young boy, I was stunned and dismayed to learn that often, artists are not allowed to make the art they want to make, and that companies and governments would stifle people who said things they didn’t agree with. But I was also heartened to learn that in this country, we have a law that, at its best, prevents such stifling. I’ve since dedicated much of my life to exercising the right that law guarantees, and supporting artists and politicians that work to defend it.

But beyond all that noise, Ritual de lo Habitual is just a really great record. Take a California funk-metal band, and give them a huge dose of ambition, and what you get is a 10-minute epic about sex, a wild violin-fueled waltz about slapping your own face, some great Zeppelin-esque mini-suites, and, in “Been Caught Stealing,” one of the most jubilant songs of the ‘90s. It was, in my teenage estimation, art worth standing up for, and even now, when standards have relaxed to the point that the widely available original cover art seems tame, the story behind it makes me smile.

8. Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes.

It’s hard for me to measure the impact that Little Earthquakes had on my life. For a while, it was all I wanted music to be. I was searching for honest, searing beauty, music that would make my heart stop and my soul melt, music that would force me to sit down and take it in, and leave me a different person when it was over. Tori Amos’ first album was all that and more.

Little Earthquakes grabbed hold of me from its first line – “Every finger in the room is pointing at me” – and wouldn’t let go. Here was an artist of amazing talent, gifted with a voice that could part the seas and a piano style that was both technically complex and emotionally rich, and rather than just rely on that, she bared herself completely on this record, daring you to look and making you feel her pain. One moment she’s filling you with fury (“Precious Things”) and the next she’s nudging open your heart (“Winter”). And near the end, on “Me and a Gun,” she chills you to the bone, almost literally.

I’m using this phrase a lot here, but in 1991, I’d never heard anything like this. This album made me feel like few before or since, and even now, moments of it (the chorus of “China,” the bit in “Winter” when all time everywhere stops as Amos breathes in) move me like almost nothing else. Amos has gone downhill considerably since her first three records, but it’s the extraordinary power of Little Earthquakes that keeps me coming back, hoping she’ll deliver something as naked, intense and graceful as this again.

9. Jellyfish, Spilt Milk.

When people ask me for my favorite concert experience, I still say it was seeing Jellyfish with Chris L’Etoile at Club Babyhead in Providence, Rhode Island in 1993. It was the first show I’d been to where I knew all the words to all the songs, and watching this group of guys recreate two of my then-favorite albums was an incredible experience.

Jellyfish was one of the first new bands I fell in love with. I saw the video for “That Is Why” on MTV – and as a slight aside for the kids in the audience, there was once a time, lost in the mists of history, when MTV actually played music videos, like, 24 hours a day – and immediately had to have the album. The harmonies, the melody, the everything, it was just awesome. The record was called Bellybutton, and it was delightfully silly and surprisingly dark and every bit the work of genius I was hoping. I quickly became a Jellyfish evangelist, and I pretty much wore out my cassette of that first record.

Spilt Milk, the band’s fantastic follow-up and swan song, marked the first time I bounced a check to buy a piece of music. I knew I didn’t have the money for it, but I had to hear it. Spilt Milk and Tori Amos’ Under the Pink the following year were the first two albums I can remember being almost insanely excited for before they were released, a pattern that has continued at least once a year since. And Spilt Milk lived up to my wildest hopes for it – it was bigger, more intricate, and somehow better than Bellybutton. It was a perfect pop record, the kind they just don’t make anymore.

Spilt Milk has ruined me for most modern pop. I honestly thought that I would never hear a pop album like this one outside of the Beatles collection, but Jellyfish showed me that it can be done. You can do something new and astonishing within these parameters. It’s just that nearly everyone else simply doesn’t.

10. Brian Wilson, SMiLE.

Simultaneously the oldest and most recent piece of music here, SMiLE arrived when I needed it most. It came out two years ago, when I was at my lowest point. My life had fallen apart, and I was feeling hopeless, directionless and lost. And then this gorgeous thing arrived, this perfect album with its attendant tale of redemption and joy, and I suddenly found it impossible to spend my days moping.

The story is common knowledge by now – Wilson intended SMiLE as the follow-up to the Beach Boys’ masterpiece Pet Sounds, but allowed himself to be convinced that it was as bad as his bandmates told him it was. Nearly 40 years and one nervous breakdown later, Wilson went back and finished the piece, then recorded it with his new crack band at the age of 62. The final SMiLE is unequivocal proof that the other Beach Boys were dead wrong – this album is pure joy captured on disc, and one of the best things I have ever heard.

And it just seems to be the way of things with me and music. The right records come along just when I need them. In September of 2004, I desperately needed SMiLE, and thank God it was there for me. Its very essence surges with hope and love, two things I can never have enough of, and just as Disintegration’s grand sadness got me through a rough time 16 years ago, so did SMiLE’s boundless, childlike bliss enable me to move on from the worst two years of my life. I’m doing pretty well these days, and I can’t help but think this album’s timely arrival helped me get where I am now. SMiLE is still one of the best albums I own, and I remain grateful that I lived to hear it, and that I heard it when I did.

* * * * *

As I said, there are many, many more, and this barely scratches the surface of what music has meant to me, but it’ll have to do for now. Special thanks to Dr. Tony Shore – go and read ObviousPop. It’s good stuff.

Before I go, I need to mention this, because I haven’t yet made a big deal of it, and I should. On August 29, Brian Transeau (better known as BT) will release a project called This Binary Universe that looks like it’s going to be amazing. Longtime readers will remember that BT’s last album, Emotional Technology, made my top 10 list in 2003 for its dynamic synthesis of pop melody and intricate electronic textures, and since then, he delivered a terrific score for the Charlize Theron movie Monster that I should have reviewed.

But this looks like Transeau’s most impressive project yet – it’s a 74-minute album, but it’s also a film. Transeau asked animators from all over the globe to create short movies for the album’s seven tracks, and the CD comes with a DVD of the film, mixed in surround sound. Essentially, he’s created his own Fantasia here, and the snippets I have seen and heard are fantastic. Here, check it out for yourself.

It arrives on the 29th along with new ones from Ty Tabor, Bob Dylan and Dream Theater, as well as a 2-CD set of lost Black Crowes tracks. Good week, man. Good week.

Next week, Eric Matthews, I hope.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

We’re more than halfway through, and it’s looking like 2006 is one of those periodic down years, musically speaking.

Not to say that there hasn’t been good stuff this year, or that there isn’t good stuff on the way. It’s just that the energy seems to be lacking. This is one of those years in which there seems to be no momentum, no rising tide of excellence that carries everyone along. There have been just as many disappointments this year as there have been works of genius, and many of the artists that made 2004 and 2005 such winning years seem to have taken 2006 off, or released so-so stopgap records.

This list includes Sufjan Stevens (although The Avalanche is very good, and we can’t expect him to drop another platter like Illinois so soon), Bruce Cockburn, Muse, Guster, Tool, Beth Orton, and the second of my two review subjects this week. My hopes are high for upcoming records by Eric Matthews, Roger Joseph Manning Jr., Starflyer 59, the Decemberists, Beck and Jeremy Enigk, to name a few, but I’m not getting too thrilled just yet. And the news that Aimee Mann, one of the best songwriters currently working, will release a Christmas record, of all things, this fall doesn’t make me jump for joy, either.

This happens from time to time, and it’s nothing to worry about. But it does take a toll on my excitement level. I still buy just as many records, but fewer of them have really stuck with me this year. No slight intended to the likes of Keane, Mute Math, David Mead or any of the other acts that have knocked me out. It’s just that the overwhelming majority of 2006’s musical offerings have been mediocre-to-good, not fantastic.

It may come down to what I want out of music. I’m looking for craft and passion, of course, but mostly I’m after an individual vision, fully realized, that I can follow and explore. Because of the way the industry works, such visions are rare, especially when extended over an entire career. I have seen it happen too many times – a band is on a creative musical path, and they stop it short because the label doesn’t like it, or the commercial concerns intervene. (I call it the Monster Effect, after R.E.M.’s disastrous 1994 album. That record abruptly ended the fascinating journey the band had been on, one which had led to the amazing Automatic for the People two years before.)

Art vs. commerce is an old topic here at tm3am, but I firmly believe that the only way for an extended artistic vision to fully flower is for it to be fully funded, with no outside interference. The artist writes and records, the label releases the product untouched, and everyone sinks or swims on the merits of the music. This hardly ever happens, of course, but it’s worth celebrating when it does. The most compelling musical journeys, for me, occur when artists are allowed to do whatever they want, whenever they want. The results are not always successful, but they are always interesting.

Off the top of my head, though, I can only name a few prolific artists doing things their own way, on their own dime, with no interference at all, and at the top of the heap is Ani Difranco. Since day one, Difranco has been releasing her stuff on her own Righteous Babe Records, and she’s responsible for everything, from track selection to artwork. Over time, she has grown into a model of self-reliant creativity – she rarely does the same thing twice, and you can be sure that every album she puts out is exactly the way she wants it to be.

One thing Difranco does better than most anyone else is packaging. Righteous Babe started with black-and-white cassette inserts and home tape duplication 16 years ago, and Difranco’s whole system of distribution was her touring van. These days, she puts her heart and soul into the look and feel of each record, and even her official bootleg series has a neat, interlocking design to it.

Her latest, Reprieve, is no exception, and currently has the prize for best packaging of the year. It comes in a cardboard slipcase that depicts, raised and embossed, a photo of a tree taken in Nagasaki shortly after the bomb dropped. Pull the digipak out, and you get another tree motif, in raised and embossed cardboard, and a vertically opening case that includes an impeccably designed art object of a booklet. This type of attention to art design has become par for the course with Difranco, and it’s almost worth buying her annual records just to see what she’s done with the trappings.

Lately, though, she hasn’t been lavishing as much attention on the music inside these glittering packages. Difranco is a restless artist, and just when you think she’s hit her stride, she’ll push off in another direction entirely – just ask the legions of fans who have abandoned her in recent years, due to her refusal to make another Out of Range or Little Plastic Castle. For half a decade, she worked with a jazz horn section and an amazingly tight band to produce several massive, difficult records, culminating in 2003’s Evolve, on which she finally sounded absolutely comfortable.

So, of course, she ditched the band right after that and set off on another journey. This one seems to be more introspective, less grand – her first album after Evolve was Educated Guess, which she made entirely by herself, with limited success. After a brief sojourn into more elegant accessibility with Knuckle Down last year, she’s back to quiet near-minimalism on Reprieve, easily the most atmospheric collection she’s ever recorded.

The difference is, this time she’s made a masterpiece.

Although I’m still not sure why I think so. The songs on Reprieve are little more than sketches, fragments of thought and melody that waft in and out. Difranco is still using her de-tuned guitar as the primary instrument, with its slack tones and sometimes off-key fumbles. The only other musician is bassist Todd Sickafoose, who adds a jazzy feel here and there. Otherwise, the sound is as it was established on Educated Guess.

But in retrospect, where that record set the style, its follow-ups have been attempts to decorate it, to place it in new settings. Reprieve uses ambient synthesizers, nature sounds, electric pianos and sound effects to paint a mood, one that lends these scattered thoughts the feel of a 48-minute song. From the start, the atmosphere is king – “Hypnotized” opens with a minute-long stand-up bass solo that congeals into a verse and chorus so gradually that you barely notice it. From there, guitars glide in and out, and Difranco’s voice coos and snarls, but the record barely gets above a whisper.

It’s an incredibly compelling whisper, however. Difranco balances internal and external concerns throughout, starting the album with four songs about attraction and transitioning into angrier, more political territory around the halfway point. But Reprieve merges the two so completely that they feel like different sides of the same thought. The vitriolic “Millennium Theater” drifts across on a soft and gentle bed, Difranco calling out Enron and Halliburton while calling for President Bush’s impeachment while the music chimes and ripples beneath her, and immediately after that, “Half-Assed” marks the most frenzied moment of the album, with personal lyrics about regret and enjoying each second.

In truth, these songs can’t stand on their own too well – there’s no melodic hook that will stick in your brain, no standout track like “Studying Stones” or “As Is.” But somehow Difranco has turned these half-realized tunes into a fully realized album, despite including no drums and no easy entry points. The album carries you from first note to last, and when she brings it home with “Shroud,” a classic old-time folk anthem about tossing off the shackles of modern life and selfishness, the moment is transcendent. Yes, the song sounds out of tune, and yes, by itself it’s no great shakes, but at the end of this record, it’s like a great moment of waking, a powerful dawn.

This is another album that any label with any sense would have tried to convince Difranco not to make, and it’s definitely another step towards something greater down the line. But not only do I love seeing Difranco’s process laid bare year after year, I love it when her experimentalism yields results, as it has here. I can’t explain the spell that Reprieve casts, and I’d have a hard time naming these 13 among her best songs, but I can’t help thinking of this as one of her best records. It is a quiet triumph, a creeping and moody work that gets under your skin in the best way. Fans of the old, folksy Ani may not enjoy it, but for those who love to watch restless artists dig their way in and work their way out, Reprieve should prove captivating.

* * * * *

If there’s anyone who looks ready to rival Ani Difranco for Most Prolific Artist, it’s Matthew Friedberger. As the male half of the Fiery Furnaces, Friedberger has co-written and produced five full-lengths since 2003 with his sister Eleanor, and now, mere months after the 72-minute Bitter Tea, he’s unleashed his 105-minute solo debut, Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language School. It is simultaneously the sixth and seventh album of his brief career, and proof that someone needs to tell him no once in a while.

No question, the Friedbergers have quickly amassed one of the most idiosyncratic and original catalogs you’re likely to hear. But so far, I’ve been able to roll with it – I remain unimpressed with the flat blues-rock of Gallowsbird’s Bark, but the twisty, garage-proggy Blueberry Boat and Bitter Tea are little wonders, and I’m one of the few that considers the Friedbergers’ rock opera about their grandmother, Rehearsing My Choir, one of their best.

And maybe it’s just overexposure, but I’m finding Matthew’s solo album to be impenetrable. It’s as if I’ve reached my tolerance for quirky keyboard rock operas – this sort of thing should probably only be attempted in small doses, but here are two complete albums of thumping pianos, cheap-sounding synths, odd electronic percussion and stop-on-a-dime arrangements. I’m not sure what my problem is, because by all indications Matthew is just as much of a nutty genius as ever, and very little of these two albums sounds out of character with his main band.

Maybe it’s just that I miss Eleanor’s pretty voice. Matthew has a low near-monotone, which works for backing vocals and for contrast on Furnaces albums, but has trouble carrying 100 minutes of material on its own. He talks his way through most of Holy Ghost Language School, definitely the odder of these two discs, and I found myself hoping for a vocal melody to latch on to.

Winter Women, the first of these albums, is marginally more song-oriented, and worlds more melodic. A song like “Up the River’ is actually sort of hummable, although Friedberger makes it more difficult here to find the melodies than on Furnaces albums. He employs Tortoise’s John McEntire on drums, and instructs him, apparently, to fill the spaces with random pounding. He drowns the record in odd sounds, some forwards and some backwards, that only serve as distractions.

Friedberger plays all the instruments on Holy Ghost Language School, a supposed conceptual suite about a businessman who sets up a school for speaking in tongues (I guess). At times sounding like Frank Zappa’s 1980s work with the synclavier, this album is a keyboard-fueled nightmare of self-indulgence. And while I admire it, I find it difficult to listen to all the way through. It just seems too random, too quirky-for-quirky’s-sake, with no real grounding.

The lyrics don’t help matters, and here is where Eleanor’s presence is truly missed. Her crystal-clear tones help sell the bizarre concepts that float through every Furnaces record, adding a depth and earthiness to them. Matthew on his own just sounds like he’s reciting the words, especially on the more novelistic Holy Ghost. It’s unfortunate, because some of the tunes on Winter Women are worth saving, and perhaps turning into full-fledged Furnaces songs, but it’s difficult to hear that potential in their current state.

And for the first time, the Matthew Friedberger sound feels like a parody of itself – he needs to open up the floodgates a little more, and perhaps break away from the same machines and pianos he’s been using. I predicted some of his arrangement tricks on this album – “Oh, here’s where he will drop everything and switch to dissonant left-hand piano chords,” for instance, or, “Here comes the backwards sound effect.” Enough of these records remain surprising to keep it from being a disaster, but it might be time for another seismic shift in the way Friedberger does things.

All of this is just an attempt to explain why I am disappointed in something that meets my criteria for engaging art – it explores a singular vision, follows it to its fullest extent, and seems thoroughly un-meddled-with by the industry at large. And yet, I think Friedberger needs to slow down a little, and let the inspiration rise up again. Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language School only exists in the form it does because no one told him it shouldn’t, and maybe in this case, a little oversight might not have been a bad thing.

But Friedberger remains a stone genius, a musician with few peers in his field, and if he needed to get this sprawling mess out of his system, then I’m glad he did. Ani Difranco has made a few sprawling messes of her own (Up Up Up Up Up Up, anyone?), and they were all steps to something greater. I can only hope that Friedberger learned whatever he needed to learn about himself and his process by putting this thing together, and that the next Furnaces album will find him renewing his focus.

Next week, any number of possibilities.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I got the word this week that once again, the greatest musical genius of our time would be gracing our shelves with a new record.

And it’s about time – it’s been three years since the pop culture has taken its regular and well-deserved spanking from this guy, who has proved over more than 20 years to be just what the pompous and over-inflated music scene needs. He’s a devastating satirist, but he’s also a terrific musician, and his band is among the best group of pure musicians you’ll find anywhere.

I am, of course, talking about “Weird Al” Yankovic.

Go ahead, laugh – that’s kind of the point. Yankovic is all about taking the piss out of pop music, and the more self-serious the artist he’s lambasting, the sillier the parody he comes up with. But make no mistake, the guy’s a deadly talented musician – just check out “Genius in France” off his last record, Poodle Hat. It’s a brilliant pastiche of Frank Zappa’s sound and style, and just as complex as anything the man himself might have foisted on his backing band. Plus, it’s funny as hell.

So yeah, “Weird Al” Yankovic will return on September 26 with a new record called Straight Outta Lynwood. You can see the cover here. Not included, because of a dispute with Atlantic Records, will be Al’s James Blunt parody “You’re Pitiful,” but you can download that for free from his site. It’s not a home run, but it is pretty funny.

I think it’s appropriate to start this week’s column with Yankovic, because the rest of it concerns Serious Artists, those guys out to Make a Statement and Do Something Meaningful. Yankovic has made a career out of poking holes in music that goes beyond its station as entertainment, but I think there’s a huge difference between the type of empty, ego-centric pop Yankovic slams, and honestly ambitious art. And while these things are all subjective, I think the three albums I have on tap this time are examples of the latter, not the former.

But let’s see, shall we?

* * * * *

Ambition is a funny thing.

For many critics, all it takes is the word “ambitious” to spark a rabid, frothy rant about how music shouldn’t be pretentious and all “arty.” The truth is, though, I like ambition, especially if the artist in question has the chops to pull off an extraordinary vision. I give musicians points for even trying to accomplish something beyond the norm, and if they actually do accomplish it, well then…

Those moments are kind of what I live for.

Ace Enders, for example, is an ambitious guy. Until a few months ago, I had never heard of Enders or his band, the Early November. They’re on tiny Drive-Thru Records, and their previous output has consisted of fairly average post-punk guitar rock with some sweet acoustic overtones. Their debut full-length, The Room’s Too Cold, had some good moments and some not-as-good ones, but it was overall pretty enjoyable.

But it’s the kind of thing I probably would have ignored completely and never heard, under ordinary circumstances. Enders hooked me, however, with news of his band’s second album, The Mother, the Mechanic and the Path. It’s a triple-disc affair, a two-plus-hour rock opera about dysfunctional family relations. That’s right, a triple album. The kind of thing that can either be a self-indulgent mess that goes on forever, or an artistic triumph of style, song and theme.

Even the idea of an album that can’t be contained on one or two discs excites me. I’m always interested in possibly discovering something brilliant, something that catches a wave of inspiration and explores it to its fullest. At the same time, I’m always morbidly fascinated by potential train wrecks, especially ones that reach for the stars and fall depressingly short. Even those projects, however, get credit for trying to step out of the typical, the average, and really Say Something.

The Mother, the Mechanic and the Path is somewhere in the middle, a fantastically ambitious record that ignores boundaries and really goes for broke in terms of its concept. And it’s largely successful, but its occasional missteps and backslides into clichéd territory keep it from being the masterpiece Enders obviously wants it to be. But the thing is, he’s so committed to this thing, so immersed in its possibilities, that he gets me on his side right away. I really like this album, despite its shortcomings.

The album is broken up into threes, and each disc gets its own title. (Go to the head of the class if you guessed them.) The first two are the more traditional – 11 songs each, connected by thematic threads, but not a straight plot. The Mechanic starts things off with a bang – the first three tracks are melodic rock of the highest order, especially “Decoration,” which may be one of my favorite songs in this style.

The Mechanic is the rock disc, told from the point of view of a father working hard to raise his son, while falling out with his wife. “Money in His Hand” sets the tone with a snarling guitar riff and the refrain, “It’s not the heart that makes the man, it’s the money in his hand.” The lyrics explore emotional disconnectedness and communication breakdowns, even if they do so in fairly typical ways. The music stays within well-defined boundaries, and some songs, like “The One That You Hated,” slip into tedium.

But it ends well – “The Car in 20” is a propulsive rocker with a great lead, and the graceful “Figure it Out” concludes the proceedings with sweetness. Enders has said that The Mechanic is the single album the band almost made, and while it’s pretty good, and fans of the band’s earlier material would certainly not have been disappointed with it, I’m very glad they went further.

The Mother is the quieter, more romantic record, opening with the piano piece “My Lack of Skill,” and it’s the superior group of songs. It is, naturally, from the relationship’s other perspective, and is the loving and painful response to The Mechanic’s anger. “Hair” is a world-class pop song about the lies that prop up domestic life, while “Driving South” is a lovely and difficult poem about emotional distance.

There are some missteps here, too, like the overly long “Is It My Fault,” but like The Mechanic, it rebounds by the end. Enders has an appealingly average voice, but he occasionally pushes it into more emotional terrain, as he does on “The Truth Is.” The song’s lyrics describe its music, the singer quivering and demanding more support from the ever-unfolding backing tracks. Only when the band is in at full strength does the mother feel confident enough to speak the truth – “I love you so much it hurts.”

The disc ends with “1000 Times a Day,” a romantic look back at the start of the relationship, and while Enders can’t quite bring himself to switch up the pronouns and take on the part completely, it’s a great summation of the mother’s point of view. The Mother is a superb companion record to The Mechanic, and though with a little trimming they would both have fit on one disc, I find surprisingly few of these 22 songs fit for the bin.

But wait, there’s more. The Path is easily the best and most creative of these discs, an old-fashioned rock opera told from the point of view of this family’s only child. Unlike the other two records, this one is full of dialogue that explicitly spells out the story of the album, interspersed with smaller songs and interludes that explore unfamiliar territory with surprising eloquence. It’s obvious that Enders has listened to a lot of Who albums – this is something Pete Townshend might have done in his younger years.

The album details a series of sessions between the main character, Dean, and his therapist, and maybe it’s my advancing years, but I found a lot of this dialogue trite. The story is like something out of a 20-something’s journal – my dad treated me badly, I ran away, became a father myself and now I’m making the same mistakes my dad made. It’s not like this is a subject that doesn’t deserve exploration, and for the most part Enders explores it well, but it’s the work of a young man in a young band, and it doesn’t quite speak to me. But then, it’s probably not supposed to, and I’m glad Enders got these thoughts out now, before he outgrew them.

Musically, though, The Path is terrific and unpredictable. The Townshend reference is perfect for “Runaway” and its sequel, first-person declarations of independence with furious acoustic guitar backdrops. We get blues (“You Don’t Know What It’s Like”), acoustic folk (“Never Coming Back”) and jazzy cabaret (“Guess What”), but we also get a mock-up of bad teen pop and a punked-up version of “If You’re Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands.” Really. And it works. The instrumentation is wide and varied, with strings, horns and banjos all over the place.

The Path ties it all together thematically as well – many of the dialogue sessions are backed by instrumental versions of other songs on The Mechanic and The Mother, and we get a swell cello version of “Decoration” at a perfect moment. It’s obvious Enders knocked himself out on this third disc, and aside from a needlessly metaphysical conclusion, his efforts have resulted in something kind of extraordinary. It’s especially fascinating since he’s working in a genre that rewards the appearance of ambition, but never gives due to the real stuff. The Path is genuinely ambitious, and could have been embarrassing. Instead, it’s a spellbinding listen, well worth the time it obviously took to complete.

So what’s the verdict? As befitting a three-disc album, The Mother, the Mechanic and the Path is a solid triple, with bonus points for even conceiving something this grand and sweeping. Enders is out on a limb with most of this album – his open sentimentality will be slammed for its triteness, and while at times it’s a fair criticism, his work here is also boldly naked. This is the kind of record that makes or breaks careers, and despite its flaws, I’m glad to support something that takes as many musical and thematic risks as this album does. Ace Enders has me on his side, and I’m excited to see where he goes from here.

* * * * *

But enough of Americans with ambition, how about those Europeans?

I credit Dr. Tony Shore a lot here, but he deserves it. It was his recommendation (passed along from Tooth and Nail’s Jim Worthen, if I’m not mistaken) that I pick up Mew’s second album, Mew and the Glass-Handed Kites. As with most of Dr. Shore’s recommendations, I resisted initially – this time I was put off by the title, the astonishingly cheesy cover art, and the few seconds of “Circuitry of the Wolf” I listened to. But when the album received a stateside release last week, I picked it up, just so I could rib Shore about his lousy taste.

I am a silly, silly man.

Mew plays an expansive, grand form of space-rock, I suppose, although I don’t know quite how to describe the dramatic, fantastically melodic stuff that fills this album. Mew is from Denmark, and maybe that explains it – I am completely ignorant of the music scene in that part of the world. But this is unlike anything you will find over here.

Glass-Handed Kites plays like a single 54-minute song, one that never seems to run out of surprising melodic shifts. Imagine a Fiery Furnaces album as played by some 1970s art-rock band with Brian Eno on keyboards, maybe. I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t stop singing “The Zookeeper’s Boy,” with its circular harmonies, or “Special,” with a chorus to die for. Most of these songs would need some more fleshing out to work on their own, but as parts of a 14-chapter whole, they work brilliantly, smaller bits like “Fox Cub” passing the baton to larger epics like “Apocalypso.”

The record ends with two lovely bits of piano-synth drama, “White Lips Kissed” and the breathtaking “Louise Louisa.” This is one of those albums that makes you feel like you’ve been somewhere when it’s done, and I’m not sure what kind of audience (besides me) there is for a hugely produced hour-long seamless epic piece, but I hope they find this record, because it’s excellent. I’m honestly not sure what I can relate this to – at various times I hear bits of Sigur Ros, Bjork and (in the voice and melodies) the Pet Shop Boys, but that could be just me. You’ll likely hear something completely different.

Also making their U.S. debut is a band I turned Dr. Shore on to: Pure Reason Revolution. They, too, have produced an album-length suite with The Dark Third, which refers to the 33 percent of our lives we spend asleep. Their sound’s a little easier to encapsulate, being a mix of Pink Floyd and the Beach Boys, primarily. But the female singer, the Rush-like riffage here and there, and the overall melodic scope of this thing defy such easy categorization.

The Dark Third glides to life with “Aeropause,” a very Floydian instrumental which segues into “Goshen’s Remains,” adding melody without sacrificing atmosphere. There are prog-like tendencies all over this thing, but mainly, PRR makes space-rock that actually gives a real sense of floating through space. “The Bright Ambassadors of Morning” is the standout, slipping from its winningly harmonized refrain to its pure rocking coda over 11 grand minutes.

PRR is a British outfit, picking up a long and somewhat proud tradition of progressive music from across the pond, and complementing it with traces of American folk and pop music. It’s one of those cases in which a band takes the literal meaning of progressive – music that takes elements from the past and makes something new of them, moving things forward. It’s something we don’t do very often over here in the U.S. of A. – recycling is more our thing, at least musically speaking.

But both PRR and Mew belong to a new wave of musicians, Americans included, eager to push themselves into new areas with challenging compositions and ambitious arrangements. From the aforementioned Fiery Furnaces to the Mars Volta to Sufjan Stevens to Tool to Pain of Salvation to Ester Drang, there’s a whole new crop of bands that expect their audience has the patience and desire to listen to complex, cohesive, lengthy suites that stretch to album length. And it’s refreshing and encouraging – the only sane response for lovers of the album in this age of iPods and single-song downloads is to make albums, ones that can’t be split up or taken apart.

In the end, this is why I love the Early November’s record, and Mew’s, and Pure Reason Revolution’s: they respect the album format, and give me something I can sink my teeth into, thematically speaking. Pretentious artists, to me, are the ones who waste my time. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are pretentious for thinking I would want to sit through two hours of their fair-to-middling California rock. But I would listen, and have listened, to TEN, PRR and Mew again and again, because there’s so much in these records. They demand more of my time, but they reward it.

Next week, Ani Difranco and Matthew Friedberger, speaking of ambitious artists.

See you in line Tuesday morning.