I’m back. I don’t even have to ask if you all missed me – I got half a dozen concerned emails from regular readers, wondering if I had died or been deported or joined a monastery or something. It’s the first week I’ve taken off in almost two years, and you’d think the world ended.

Seriously, thanks to everyone who wrote inquiring about my health. I’m fine, I just took a weekend and went to a pair of concerts in Minnesota. If you’d like to read all about my exploits, I detailed them in the other column I posted this week, which should be in the archive.

But this column is for business, so let’s get started with a look at new releases through the end of the year. It’s pretty slim pickings, and I think my top 10 list is fairly well set in stone right now, unless something comes along and surprises me. December, in particular, is the most barren final month of any year I can remember, populated as it is with dismal rap records and best-ofs. If you’ve been breathlessly awaiting that new Bow Wow, well, then December is the month for you. But if you’re a Bow Wow fan, I can’t imagine what you’re doing reading this in the first place.

Starting with next week, there’s Endless Wire, the first Who album in a quarter-century. I’m half-surprised to not find a cover of Spinal Tap’s “Gimme Some Money” amongst the tracks here – it would fit right in with this cash-grubbing effort. What I have heard is simply godawful. Roger Daltrey can’t hit any of the notes he’s aiming for, and Pete Townshend, bless his heart, ran out of good melodies decades ago. John Entwistle probably would have added some class, but alas…

Anyway, also out next week is the second album from jazzy upstart Nellie McKay, the new one from the Deftones (produced by Bob Ezrin, the guy who made The Wall), guitar workout discs from Joe Satriani and Phil Keaggy, and the new Copeland, which I’m excited about. Also out is Willie Nelson’s umpteenth album, but this one’s special – he created it with Ryan Adams producing and the Cardinals as his backup band. Should be an interesting listen.

November 7 sees Frank Zappa’s Trance-Fusion, one of three unreleased albums he finished before he died. This one’s a collection of guitar solos, focusing on his final tour from 1988. (The others, by the way, are Dance Me This, a synth-symphony album, and The Rage and the Fury, a collection of Edgard Varese pieces Zappa conducted.) That week also will see Skin and Bones, a live acoustic album from the Foo Fighters. I quite liked the quiet half of In Your Honor, so this should be at least enjoyable.

November 14 boasts a number of minor releases, the most important of which (relatively speaking) is the new And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, So Divided. What I’ve heard of this has been excellent, with the band expanding the sonic palette they tried out for Worlds Apart. New ones by Damien Rice, Joanna Newsom and Mark Knopfler, as well as the debut from Army of Anyone (Filter’s Richard Patrick with Stone Temple Pilots’ DeLeo brothers), round out the week.

But hark! November 21, the last big week of the year, gives us a Sufjan Stevens box set! Five CDs! Of Christmas songs! I’m not kidding! Stevens never does anything small, so his homemade yuletide discs from the past five years are coming out boxed together, in a lavish package, just in time for the shopping season. A likely more interesting box set comes from Tom Waits that same week – Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards is part rarities collection, part new album, with 54 tracks separated into three categories.

Finishing us off are new ones from Spock’s Beard (self-titled, and sounding much more progressive than they have recently) and Loreena McKennitt (sounding exactly the same as she did when her last record came out, 10 years ago). And after that, nothing interesting at all until the Shins’ Wincing the Night Away in January. If anyone knows of anything else I might be interested in, something to fill those winter doldrums, let me know. And no funny emails recommending Bow Wow, you hear me?

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With all that, I think I can safely call Jeremy Enigk’s World Waits the last major new album of the year.

Enigk is the much-respected mastermind behind Sunny Day Real Estate, one of the best and least-remembered groups of the ‘90s. Over four albums, they perfected a dramatic, melodic style, the ripples of which can still be felt in the modern rock pool. Since 2000, when SDRE released The Rising Tide, their final and most complete-sounding album, Enigk has been laying low. One album with the Fire Theft (3/4 of SDRE) in 2003, and that’s been it.

The title of Enigk’s new solo album is a cheeky one, but the record is, blessedly, another grand slice of dramatic rock. This one is more toned down, more restrained and more traditionally beautiful than much of what Enigk has given us in the past, but it’s no less a work of art. And Enigk’s voice remains a singular instrument, floating and wailing and carrying his melodies, and in fact the whole album, on its back.

The record begins with, fittingly, “A New Beginning,” a textured instrumental that leads into the chiming, clean guitars of “Been Here Before.” That song is a mini-masterpiece, and in its melody and 7/4 beat betrays a surprising influence – Peter Gabriel. At numerous points on World Waits, Enigk brings Gabriel to mind, both vocally and instrumentally, something that will no doubt cause the fans of Sunny Day’s first two albums to recoil. But the dramatic organ break in “Been Here Before” is simply irresistible, and should bring those folks back.

For all its grandeur, most of World Waits is fairly simple. “River to Sea” is a sweeping folk waltz, the strings and backing chorale bringing it to life, and “Canons” follows its repeated piano figure into melodic bliss. The biggest surprise is “City Tonight,” which draws on U2’s Pop period for influence – it is by far the most “normal” song Enigk has ever leant his voice to.

The second half brings the majesty, even though tempos remain sedate throughout. “Damien Dreams” is low-key and suspenseful, the rumbling cello filling out the bottom end while Enigk reaches for the sky vocally. “Wayward Love” is a progressive collage of vocals and acoustic guitars, while “Dare a Smile” adds mandolin and Brian May-style guitar harmonies to an otherwise simple piece. And in the title track, Enigk has crafted one of the year’s best songs, a mix of Gabriel and Death Cab that works surprisingly well.

World Waits is not the unbridled hunk of brilliance some may have expected from Jeremy Enigk after so long, and its quiet tones and textures don’t quite match up with the power he wielded in SDRE. But give it time, and the subtle beauties begin to present themselves. In a year marked by underachievers, Enigk’s commitment to drama and melody, no matter how sedate the trappings, sound refreshingly complete. The world was waiting, and Enigk has delivered.

Next week, a bunch of reviews, including Ben Folds, Deftones, Copeland and others. Thanks again for all the letters of concern – I’m back, and here to stay.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So you know how Muslims are supposed to make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their lives? Well, if music is my religion (and many who know me would agree that it is), I may have to start making regular pilgrimages to Dr. Tony Shore’s music room.

Yes, the man has an entire room set aside for music, for the collected spoils of decades of obsessive fandom. Three of the four walls are covered, floor to ceiling, in CDs, be they singles, albums or box sets. His closet is stuffed with vinyl and other collectibles. He has pictures of himself with his heroes, and framed gold albums that he worked on and helped promote during his years in the music industry.

I could have spent all weekend in there, easy, just pulling out and listening to the albums I hadn’t heard. (Thousands of them – there’s nothing like finding an even more obsessive music fan to drive home just how much you have to learn and hear.) But that wasn’t why I was there.

No, Dr. Shore and his wife Sara graciously opened their home to me for two reasons – Frank Zappa and Jars of Clay. It’s not often that you find a fan of both FZ and Jars, since they seem to operate on opposite ends of the musical and lyrical spectrum, which makes Dr. Shore and I two specimens of a rare breed. So I made the six-hour trek to Minnesota last weekend to join the good doctor and revel in our shared love of all kinds of music, and to see two concerts that undoubtedly drew none of the same fans, except us.

Zappa was first – the aptly named Zappa Plays Zappa show at the Orpheum in Minneapolis. First of all, it’s a beautiful venue, just breathtaking. Every major city should have at least one old stage-show theater like this, perfectly preserved and ornate while still being cozy. It’s the kind of place that elevates the artistic merit of whatever’s being performed on stage, and encourages people to remain seated, which is exactly the way Frank Zappa liked it.

How to explain Frank Zappa’s music to people who’ve never heard it? His work was complex (some would say impossible), yet earthy. He was a master of many different styles of composition, and he combined them all – he brought jazz structures to rock music, composed orchestral pieces and then transformed them into guitar workouts, took everyday events from the lives of those around him and crafted progressive epics about them, and slathered everything with a crude sense of comedy and attitude. He was a rock star with the brain of Stravinsky, and a guitar player the likes of which the world has rarely seen.

Zappa died of cancer in 1993, 17 days shy of his 53rd birthday. In his wake, he left one of the most extensive and rewarding catalogs in modern music, spanning more than 60 albums in fewer than 30 years. I am one of those Zappa fans who feels that it’s all worth hearing, that it all contributes to one long, cohesive album (a phenomenon Zappa called “conceptual continuity”). Zappa never got his due as a composer, and I think it’s because he never adopted a self-serious attitude about his work. Even his magnum opus, a two-hour orchestral piece called Civilization Phaze III, is about people living inside a piano and talking about pigs and ponies.

But if you want a case for why Frank Zappa should be revered, you couldn’t do much better than catching a Zappa Plays Zappa show. This is Frank’s son Dweezil’s labor of love, his way of turning more people onto his father’s genius. It’s three hours and 20 minutes (at least, the show I saw) of Zappa songs, played to perfection by an incredible band, and featuring some special guests. But we’ll get to that in a moment.

There were two things I worried about before seeing the show. First, I was afraid that Dweezil and his band would pick the easiest numbers, and we’d get an evening of “Dinah-Moe Humm” and “Camarillo Brillo.” Not so. While they didn’t get into “Sinister Footwear” or “G-Spot Tornado” or anything like that, the band did bite into some seriously difficult pieces, like “Inca Roads” and the great “Cheepnis.” They did the “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” suite, but skipped all the easy parts, diving right into “Father O’Blivion.” I could not have been happier with the song selection.

My second worry was Dweezil himself. For whatever reason, I’ve never had much time for Dweezil Zappa. I’ve heard his five solo albums (including the decent new one, Go With What You Know), and his two records with Z, featuring his brother Ahmet. But I’ve never thought him up to the level of his father, and hence dismissed him, without really considering that very few people are up to Frank’s level.

But man, this was a whole new Dweezil. His guitar playing was perfect, especially in the long solo sections, and his skill as a bandleader was extraordinary. While Frank’s shows had a hint of a sneer to them each time out, Dweezil, with his laid-back demeanor, fostered an atmosphere of love for the music, and it was contagious. There are three guitar pieces that Frank bequeathed to Dweezil upon his death, requesting that no one else play them. Dweezil performed one of them that night, the bluesy “Black Napkins,” and if you closed your eyes, you could almost imagine Frank up on stage, so exact was the tone and phrasing.

In short, Dweezil did a swell job – reverent and exacting and still boatloads of fun.

But the special guests made the evening. On vocals for most of the show was Napoleon Murphy Brock, the voice of the early 1970s Mothers of Invention. Brock sang and played flute on some of Zappa’s most beloved albums, including Roxy and Elsewhere and One Size Fits All. The man has to be in his 60s, but he was a boundless reserve of energy, and he hasn’t lost a note. His voice was crystal clear the whole night, and he performed some of Zappa’s trickiest vocal pieces (like the first half of “Inca Roads”) brilliantly. And, he never stopped moving.

Roughly halfway through the show, Terry Bozzio made his way out. This guy’s a legend, one of the finest drummers you’ll ever hear – he played this massive drum kit that encircled him on all sides, little toms and cymbals surrounding him. And as he did with Zappa’s bands, not only did Terry play like a madman, but he sang lead vocals while doing so. I was stunned to hear a full rendition of “Punky’s Whips,” one of the most difficult pieces of Zappa’s late-‘70s canon. It’s a labyrinthine piece of work, on which Bozzio sang and played up a storm.

And then there was Steve Vai. I’ve never seen Vai play before, but he’s been one of my favorite guitarists since I was 15. No one plays like Vai. His tone is otherworldly, and he’s able to make his six-string (and sometimes seven-string) talk, sing, wail and weep. He came out to help perform “The Black Page,” a percussion-led piece that got its name from the amount of notes on the sheet music – it looked like a black page. Needless to say, it’s nearly impossible to play correctly, but the band nailed it.

So I got to hear Steve Vai and Dweezil Zappa trade leads on an extended, amazing “Montana,” and I got to hear one of my favorite (and often forgotten) Zappa tunes, “Village of the Sun.” Dweezil and the band stretched out on a 10-plus-minute “The Torture Never Stops,” and encored with “More Trouble Every Day,” which in my world is an enduring classic. And then Dweezil nearly choked up while talking about his dad and his music, then left us with “Regyptian Strut,” a fine and glorious fanfare. It was easily one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.

One thing I will say, though, is that the Zappa family could be a little better at self-promotion. Their merchandise booth held no music at all, not even the posthumous Frank albums that you can’t get from any other source. This has been a good year for Zappa fans, with the dizzying live document Imaginary Diseases, and the forthcoming four-CD Making of Freak Out box set. But the capper is Trance-Fusion, one of three records Frank finished before he died. It’s out now through the Zappa family, and you’d think that Dweezil might have mentioned that from the stage or something. But no.

Trance-Fusion was expected in stores on October 24, but it’s been pushed back to November 7 for some reason, even though it’s been finished and awaiting release for 13 years. The Zappas just this week posted information about it to their website, but it’s not comprehensive in any way. People who wander to the site and don’t know what Trance-Fusion is won’t find out from the so-called official source. Additionally, I and many others have already pre-ordered the Freak Out box set, for $75. The release date has been pushed back twice, and we still don’t even know what’s on this thing – there’s no track list available.

It’s obvious that Dweezil and the family care about Frank’s music. But they need to learn to channel that care into regular information and customer service, or the fanbase is going to go elsewhere for their Zappa fix. And we don’t want to do that. We’d rather buy it from the family, especially a family that creates something as magical and loving as the Zappa Plays Zappa show.

Anyway, rant over. The next night was utterly different – we segued from the author of “Bobby Brown Goes Down,” the guy who led crowd chants of “ram it up your poop chute,” to a quartet of devout and thoughtful Christians named Jars of Clay. Jars played at Northwestern Bible College in St. Paul, a thoroughly different atmosphere than the Zappa show, but a moving one nonetheless.

Of course, Dr. Shore insisted on wearing his Zappa Plays Zappa t-shirt to the Jars show, which earned him a bunch of dirty looks. But that was okay, since Shore promoted the boys in the band when he worked for Essential Records, and he knows them pretty well. We got to slip backstage and meet the band, which was a nice experience. They seem like sweet guys.

I have a hard time explaining to people what I see in Jars of Clay. I have that same problem with most of the Christian bands I like, because people really get caught up in the Jesus angle without listening to the music. I play people Jars of Clay, and they listen for the J-word, almost hoping to be turned off by it. It’s strange, because musically, they’re a top-notch pop-rock band, and lyrically, they’re deeper and more thoughtful than 90 percent of what gets marketed as Christian music.

Case in point – backstage, the band members were complaining about a magazine review they just received, one which concentrated on the Christian angle and ignored the artistry. “You’d never hear them say, ‘You know, for an atheist, this guy plays guitar well,’” six-stringer Steve Mason said, and he’s right. It’s a strange bias, but it’s there, undeniably.

Adding insult to injury, that particular review was for Jars’ new album, Good Monsters, which is quite possibly the best thing they’ve ever done. After two records of low-key, acoustic folk-pop, Monsters is a loud, explosive piece of work, storming out of the gate with “Work” and “Dead Man,” two of the catchiest songs they’ve written. The whole thing sounds live and full of energy, more so than any previous record of theirs, and the lyrics follow suit, with tales of doubt and faith that find new ways to explore old themes.

That energy translated to the stage – they slammed through the first three tracks on Monsters right off the bat, opening with the third, a powerful rendition of Buddy and Julie Miller’s “All My Tears.” They played almost the entire new album, and the surprising highlight was the extended, poetic coda of “Oh My God,” a prayer of repentance and despair: “Hospitals that cannot treat, all the wounds that money causes, all the comforts of cathedrals, all the cries of thirsty children, this is our inheritance, all the rage of watching mothers, this is our greatest offense…”

They cranked out some old classics, of course, like “Flood” and “The Eleventh Hour,” but to be honest, the new material just blew the old stuff away. It wouldn’t quite be right to say that Jars remembered how to rock, because they have never rocked like this before. They’ve made a lot of good albums (honestly, all you doubters, they have), but Good Monsters may well be their first great one.

The biggest surprise of the night for me, however, was the opening act. The sports editor at my newspaper, Dave Parro, got me into the music of one of his friends, Matt Wertz, earlier this year. Wertz plays an amiable mix of acoustic pop and Motown soul, and he has a great voice, if a generic way with words. His new album, Everything In Between, was scheduled to come out on Nettwerk in September, and I’m not sure what happened, but it never materialized.

But lo and behold, there was Matt Wertz taking the stage before Jars, playing a strong set of fun acoustic tunes. The audience loved him, and frankly, he’s pretty lovable – he has a winning sense of himself, and a self-deprecating demeanor on stage that gets you on his side immediately. He conducted singalongs for several songs, and invited Mason on stage to join him for “Carolina.” His sweet disposition followed him off stage, where he wandered the lobby, introducing himself to people and shaking hands.

And of course, he had Everything In Between with him. It’s a short disc, barely half an hour, but it is sonically his biggest record, and his most varied. It contains “Heartbreaker,” a shuffling, bouncing song that stands as my favorite of his, but also whispery ballads like “5:19” and the closing “Capitol City.” “The Way I Feel” is soulful, while “Over You” is a straight-ahead rock song. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but the album is just as likeable and pleasant as Wertz himself.

You can hear it and buy it here.

Many thanks to Dr. Tony Shore and his family for letting me stay the weekend. It was a blast. You can read the good doctor’s blog here. He said he’d have something up about the Zappa show before I did, but as of yet, no dice… But what else should I expect from a guy who won’t acknowledge Steve Hogarth’s brilliance. (“Post-Fish Marillion,” he insists on calling it…) Seriously, thanks again, Doc.

This is one of two columns I’ve posted this week. The other is a more traditional tm3am, with a review of Jeremy Enigk’s long-awaited new solo album. I’ll be back on track after that, one a week for the foreseeable future. That’s right, you’re all stuck with me…

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’ve got a bunch of reviews this week, and almost no time to crank them out. And since I’ve already gotten shit about it, we may as well start with Weird Al.

I honestly, sincerely, and with no irony intended whatsoever believe that Weird Al Yankovic is a musical genius. He’s often dismissed as “just a parodist,” as if clever and funny parodies were easy to begin with, but his talent runs considerably deeper than that. Very few humor acts have produced a catalog with the breadth and punch of Yankovic’s, and there’s a reason his career has lasted more than 20 years while other Dr. Demento favorites have delivered their one novelty hit and disappeared.

And here is that reason – Yankovic understands music and its impact on American culture. He’s not just some guy who rearranges the words to pop hits, he knows what makes those pop hits tick, and he’s able to effortlessly (or so it seems) assimilate the musical sensibility of just about anyone, while skewering their place in the zeitgeist.

Yeah, I did just use the word “zeitgeist” in a Weird Al Yankovic review. And yeah, it’s easy enough to listen to his new album, Straight Outta Lynwood, and just laugh your head off, because it’s very funny. But that only hits one or two levels of what Yankovic does. Just about every song on Lynwood can be seen as social satire, gently barbed for your protection. No one would ever call Yankovic vicious, of course, and he’s not trying to smack anybody down with this record, but Lynwood is clever and pointed, all the way through.

It also makes me feel very old. This is the first ever Weird Al record for which I had to do research – I had never heard three of the five songs he parodies here, a sure sign that pop culture is finally starting to pass me by. To be fair, Chamillionaire’s “Ridin’” wasn’t exactly a worldwide hit, but oddly, its unfamiliarity only adds to the success of Al’s parody, “White & Nerdy.” It maintains the bravado of the original rap, but trades its thugs and hoes for pocket protectors and Klingons.

But that’s just the start. “Pancreas” proves once again that Yankovic is a master mimic, able to take on the musical persona of just about anyone. Here it’s Brian Wilson that gets the treatment, as bits reminiscent of “God Only Knows,” “Wind Chimes” and “Good Vibrations” weave through this loving tribute. Al and his crack band (the same three amazing musicians that have played with him since 1984) busted out dozens of odd instruments for this one, and the lyrics, praising the titular, overlooked organ, are no sillier, really, than a lot of Wilson’s work. (“Vege-Tables,” anyone?)

“Canadian Idiot” takes Green Day for a ride, delivering an attack on our northern neighbors that really says more about American arrogance. “I’ll Sue Ya” is a subtler “Rockin’ the Suburbs,” imagining an angry white boy wielding the legal system instead of a nine-mil. (“I sued Coca-Cola, ‘cause I stuck my finger down in a bottle and it got stuck! I sued Delta Airlines, ‘cause they sold me a ticket to New Jersey, I went there, and it sucked!”) And “Weasel Stomping Day,” believe it or not, has the same theme as Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”: traditions gone awry. This time it’s disguised as a children’s theme about… well, a day in which everyone stomps weasels. The sound effects are delightfully sickening.

Parodies of Usher’s “Confessions” and Taylor Hicks’ “Do I Make You Proud” stumble around a bit, but Yankovic scores with “Trapped in the Drive-Thru,” a 12-minute takedown of R. Kelly’s already hilarious “Trapped in the Closet” epic. Here, Yankovic details his adventures (or lack thereof) in the takeout line, which ends up being more interesting than Kelly’s guns-and-gay-men fiasco. Yankovic mirrors Kelly’s vocal acrobatics, his ridiculous “soulful” emoting, only this time, the action is centered on whether the drive-thru clerk will remember not to add onions.

But he saves his best shot for last – “Don’t Download This Song” is a “We Are the World”-style ballad about the evils of illegal downloading. It perfectly skewers both the all-join-hands, sappy sentiment of all-star benefit songs, and the fearful stance of the record industry in the face of a digital future. I can honestly see big-shot record execs dreaming up a song like this to convince people that “the record store’s where [they] belong.” The song is, quite simply, amazing, and in a final twist of irony, Yankovic is offering it as a free download at his MySpace site. (Listen closely during the fade at the end for the funniest line…)

If I have a complaint about Straight Outta Lynwood, it’s that Al doesn’t mess with his formula at all – here are six new originals, five parodies and a polka, just like always. But hell, why change something that’s working? Weird Al remains one of our best cultural lampooners, and given the pomposity of pop in general, we need someone to skillfully let the air out of the balloon now and then. Straight Outta Lynwood is another winner in a string of them, and with it, Yankovic proves again that he goes well beyond just “comedy music.” It’s satire, it’s social criticism, it’s the last three years of pop music all chewed up and spit back. But best of all, it’s really funny.

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I know I’ll get even more shit for this, but you just read the most positive review of the week. My other contestants include three guys that are often called geniuses, and I usually agree, but not this time.

First up is Beck, whose third album in 18 months is called The Information. This record reunites the chameleonic wunderkind with Sea Change producer Nigel Godrich, but if you’re expecting anything along the lines of the glorious, otherworldly sadness of that album, you’ll be left wanting. The Information is Beck’s attempt to bring it all together – here’s hip-hop, funk, acoustic blues, ethereal harmonies, cheesy synthesizers right alongside celestial ambience, and a bevy of nifty pop choruses.

So why is the cover art the most interesting thing about it? I’m not sure. But the packaging is awesome – The Information comes with a blank J-card insert, and a sheet of bizarre stickers, so you can design your own artwork. It’s a great concept in the age of personalized, interactive music. Create your own cover, then rip the songs to your iPod and shuffle them to create your own album, Beck seems to be saying.

And you may as well, since The Information offers no album-length journey, just a series of 15 songs. That in itself isn’t a bad thing – A Hard Day’s Night is just a collection of songs – but about half of these tunes are forgettable. As a whole, the album has a muted spell that works, and I find myself alternately bored with it and drawn into it, but 10 minutes after it wraps up (with a three-part collage that includes Dave Eggers talking over an endless synth wash), I don’t really remember much of it.

It’s taken a few listens to cull the good stuff, but “I Think I’m in Love” stands as perhaps the best of the bunch, with its skipping beat and jaunty melody. “Strange Apparition” sticks out simply by being the most traditional of these songs, a piano-led blues that plays it straight. “Nausea” picks up some of the whip-smart acoustic work of Guero, while the title song is a blippy success. But for every song that sticks, there’s one that just drifts in and out, like “Dark Star” (not the Grateful Dead song) or “Movie Theme.”

Godrich does his job admirably, stuffing The Information with details and darkening the corners with waves of sound. I just wish Beck had done his a little better this time out. He’s apparently been working on this material for years, recording Guero while on a break, but it’s strange just how much better last year’s album is than this year’s. I need to spend more time with The Information, but as of now, I’m ready to call it a strange experiment, and only a semi-successful one.

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Colin Meloy of the Decemberists has fewer acolytes than Beck does, but they’re no less fervent in their devotion. Meloy has been an indie it-boy for some time, a strange status for a guy more inspired by 18th century British folk music than anything the 20th century dished out. His band dresses in Civil War-period outfits and traffics in pirate tales and war ballads. Their last album, 2005’s Picaresque, includes a 10-minute sea shanty that defies description, and boasts no ties to modern music at all.

So, upon listening to The Crane Wife, the Decemberists’ major-label debut, one could be forgiven for wondering what happened. The signs of success are all there, at least in my world – The Crane Wife is a loose concept album that finds the band exploring different sounds and styles, and fully utilizing that major-label budget. They re-teamed with Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla, the man behind the boards for Picaresque. This should have been a home run.

But it’s not. The main problem with The Crane Wife is that, for all Meloy’s fascination with period pieces and folk tales, the band has never sounded more modern, and by extension, more normal. This record is glossy and full-sounding, but what always made the Decemberists interesting was the implied creak of the ship’s wooden decks as the waves hit, or the atmosphere of an old English pub, that radiated off of their work. The songs on The Crane Wife, barring some exceptional exceptions, are all pretty average indie pop tunes, and they provide an ill-fitting bed for Meloy’s talespinning.

Meloy himself remains the same, blessedly, his high, nasal voice defining the band here more than anything else. The album opens with “The Crane Wife 3,” built around an overused chord progression and not much of a melody. It starts acoustically, but builds to full Pete Townshend splendor before crashing into the album’s most smashing success, a three-movement suite called “The Island.” This song is breathtaking, betraying a strong Jethro Tull influence in its second movement, “The Landlord’s Daughter,” and providing the album with its most heartbreaking moment in its third, “You’ll Not Feel the Drowning.” It is one of Meloy’s best songs, bar none.

But don’t let it make you too hopeful. “Yankee Bayonet,” a duet with Laura Viers, is blah acoustic pop, and “O Valencia” betrays its Romeo-and-Juliet theme to a bouncy pop song that sounds like half a million other bands. “The Perfect Crime #2” is a nifty shuffle that ends up going nowhere, and I would like Meloy to tell me how the melody of “When the War Came,” a noisy and repetitive stomp, isn’t a direct rip-off of “No Quarter.” Neither murder ballad “Shankhill Butchers” nor wispy pop number “Summersong” make much of an impression, despite some nice production on the former.

And then you get another multi-parter, “The Crane Wife 1 & 2,” that’s really just two uninspired songs stitched together. The second part is leagues better than the first, thanks to Meloy’s lovely vocals and words, and the band’s understated accompaniment. But unlike “The Island,” this just drags on too long without doing much to keep your attention. And finale “Sons & Daughters” is a nice round-robin coda, but not the full redemption this record needs.

So what happened? I have no idea. With a band this singular, though, the only fair comparison is to their own previous work, and The Crane Wife doesn’t hold a candle to Picaresque. It’s bigger, sure, and “The Island” is a masterpiece, but there’s nothing here as beautiful as “The Engine Driver,” as striking as “The Infanta,” or as jaw-droppingly insane as “The Mariner’s Revenge Song.” It’s a definite step back, a definite disappointment, and I hope the major label had nothing to do with it. Here’s hoping that next time out, Meloy and his merry band remember what it is that makes them special.

* * * * *

And then there’s Lindsey Buckingham, a guy who may as well have “forgotten genius” tattooed to his forehead. In the 1970s, he and Stevie Nicks reinvented Fleetwood Mac, taking them from their blues roots to a layered pop sound that’s rarely successfully imitated, even now. He’s always been my favorite member of that outfit – I vastly prefer his songs to the earth-witch-spirit-goddess pabulum of Stevie Nicks. Buckingham is also a criminally underrated guitarist and producer. He does things with an acoustic guitar that sound impossible, and he does them live.

So the prospect of an acoustic album from Buckingham had me all excited, but Under the Skin is a bit of a letdown. One reason is the vocal production – Buckingham is gifted with a strong voice, but he’s chosen to close-mike most of this record, singing in a breathy half-whisper that doesn’t suit him. The title song goes for an extraterrestrial atmosphere, but falls woefully short, and I never thought I’d prefer the Rolling Stones to Lindsey Buckingham, but his version of “I Am Waiting” doesn’t quite work.

Once you get used to it, the album does weave its own kind of spell, and Buckingham’s guitar work is always excellent. The opener, “Not Too Late,” marries the most confessional lyrics of Buckingham’s career with some of his most precise and difficult playing, and “Show You How” sounds like it could be the start of a winsome pop song – you can hear how cool it would be, even if all we have here are the acoustic bass and vocal tracks.

But it’s a long haul from there to the next successful track, “Cast Away Dreams,” and you have to get through a cover of Donovan’s “To Try for the Sun” first. But “Dreams” is worth the wait, the only half-whisper tune here that really works. “Shut Us Down” is nice, in a bargain-basement Elliott Smith kind of way, but the album only really lifts off one more time, with the echo-laden “Someone’s Gotta Change Your Mind.”

Word is that Buckingham has another album in the works, this one a fully-produced pop platter in the vein of 1992’s swell Out of the Cradle. I’m already excited for that one, and hopefully it will make Under the Skin seem like the experimental diversion it is. But since it’s been 14 years since the last Lindsey Buckingham solo record, Skin can’t help but feel like a misfire. Buckingham is too talented to make albums like this one.

* * * * *

Ordinarily, I like to end these longer, multi-review columns with something sparkling and beautiful, just to leave you on a high note. Sadly, that treasure eluded me this week, but hopefully the bounty of the coming weeks will make up for it. We’ll get new ones by Jeremy Enigk, Unwed Sailor, Sparta, Ben Folds, Copeland, Deftones and some band called the Who, as well as Christmas albums (!) from Aimee Mann and Sufjan Stevens.

Next week, I am driving to Minnesota to accept an invitation from Dr. Tony Shore – he and I are going to see the Zappa Plays Zappa show, which is Dweezil, Ahmet, and numerous former Mothers of Invention playing three hours of Frank’s music. Should be a grand old time. I will try to get a column done before then, but if I don’t, then I won’t post one until the following week. I’ll have a full report on the show, of course, when I get back.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So my computer’s still broken, and this column is coming to you courtesy of pure human kindness.

It’s been an interesting week, trying to get half a dozen similar problems resolved while working on a couple of pretty major stories, and watching our local boy, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, fall apart. It was a local story on a national scale – Democratic challenger John Laesch, whom I have met three or four times, was on Hardball on MSNBC this week, fielding questions about, of all things, whether gay people should be allowed to serve in Congress. Way to completely miss the issue, guys…

Anyway, I run three miles every morning on my treadmill, and ordinarily, I’ll watch an episode of something, usually Buffy the Vampire Slayer, while exercising. But my computer is also my primary DVD player, and with that broken, I’ve been forced to watch television. So I’ve been checking out VH1’s selection of music videos, just to keep up with popular culture, and I’ve decided once again that popular culture truly sucks.

First off, there’s the Killers, who seem to be everywhere these days. “Overhyped” doesn’t even begin to describe the reaction to Sam’s Town, the band’s second album, and I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. I’ve seen the video to “When You Were Young,” the repetitive single, probably four times this week. Right around the third time, it hit me – if this exact same song were performed the exact same way by, say, Bon Jovi, all the alterna-kids would hate it. Seriously, it sounds like Jersey-style heartland rock, like right out of the Bruce Springsteen playbook. Why is this considered revolutionary?

Then there are the ridiculous new singles from Janet Jackson, Beyonce and Justin Timberlake that crop up on my TV every morning at the same times. Come on, people, these are not even songs. These are beats. Beyonce’s “Sound the Alarm” even reduces her vocals to a percussion instrument. I feel like there’s a war on between melody and mindless rhythm, and rhythm is winning. I think Gwen Stefani should be tied up, thrown in a car trunk and driven off a cliff, but I prefer her clubby drivel to these three half-assed efforts. I honestly couldn’t believe it when I first heard “Sexyback” – is this really what people have been raving about? Really?

It’s not just the computer-generated pop that sucks, though. Witness Hinder, a band VH1 assures us we “oughtta know.” First I suffered through the generic interview clip, where the tattooed bad boys in Hinder announced their goal to “bring back real rock.” And then came the actual video, for a song called (I shit you not) “Lips of an Angel.” And I was dumbfounded. Can this actually be a major-label band? Night Ranger never wrote a power ballad this bad. Poison would reject this song as too sappy and too silly.

It’s really just third-rate Nickelback, and just to prove it, VH1 played the new Nickelback clip soon after. I hate to admit this, but “Far Away” is my favorite of the videos I’ve seen this week. It’s a short film about a woman waiting to hear whether her firefighter husband/boyfriend (it’s not clear) survived a massive forest fire, and it’s almost affecting, in its way. But if fucking Nickelback is the best we can do, then I think pop culture needs an enema in the worst way.

Nickelback’s from Canada, one of many musical cancers our neighbors to the north have inflicted on us, but I can’t complain too much, because they’ve given us just as many great bands. Which is a clumsy segue into this week’s topic – sweet, sweet pop from other countries.

I hate import prices, and most of the time, I refuse to pay them. Why spend $30 on a CD that I can get for $12 if I wait for a domestic release? But more and more often, the good stuff just isn’t coming here, or its appearance on these shores is delayed by a year or more, for reasons unfathomable. Most of the time, I’ll wait – I bought Starsailor’s third album, On the Outside, when it was released here in August, not when it hit the U.K. in 2005. (And I haven’t listened to it much since.)

But sometimes I just can’t hold out. Some bands are so good that I can’t wait for them to sort out their U.S. distribution deals. I have to have their new record now. So I bite the bullet, I pay the inflated price (thanks to an underperforming dollar), and then I pay the additional charges to ship the damn thing over international borders. (I know, I know – I could download it from any of a number of international iTunes stores, but I’m old-fashioned, and I like to have the physical CD in front of me when listening. It’s a context thing.)

And then I wait. It takes a minimum of a week to get something from the U.K. to Illinois, which makes sense, but it also takes about two weeks to get something from Canada, which makes no sense. I’m less than a day’s drive from the Canadian border. I could physically go to a Canadian record store and buy what I want in much less time than it takes to ship it here.

Case in point – it took 16 days for Maple Music to get me my copy of the new Sloan CD. I meant to write about it last week, and I honestly expected it to arrive in time, but no. It just barely made the cutoff for this week’s column. But Sloan is one of those bands I can’t wait for. I’ve been a fan since high school, when my friend Chris (who now, oddly enough, lives in Canada) included “Underwhelmed” on a mix tape for me. It was snarky, funny and clever, and I immediately bought the album, Smeared, and pretended to really like it.

But I didn’t. “Underwhelmed” is great, “I Am the Cancer” is neat, but the rest of it was drowned in Kevin Shields-style guitar, and the band didn’t wear it well. It wasn’t until their third record, One Chord to Another, in 1997 that they truly found their sound – ‘60s-inspired melodic rock with hooks galore. And of course, they subsequently lost their U.S. record deal, forcing me to keep up with them via imports from then on.

But I’m glad I have. The scrappy Halifax foursome has never let me down, although they’ve never done the same thing twice. Recently, they’ve swung from the shiny, well-produced pop of Pretty Together to the gut-punch rock of Action Pact, two records the likes of which they’d never made before, and now they’ve gone to a whole new place with their new one.

Reviewers like me love it when a band provides a hook for them to write about. Nothing is harder to describe than a 12-track CD of regular old songs, especially one that doesn’t break any new ground for the band. No worries on that score – Sloan’s new record is a 30-song, 76-minute extravaganza that plays like the second side of Abbey Road. It’s a classic rock double album, by far the lengthiest and most ambitious thing they’ve done, and they’ve even given it a cheeky, self-aware title: Never Hear the End of It.

Sonically, this is a return to the sound of One Chord and Navy Blues – they recorded much of this record in their rehearsal space, and recaptured the vintage tones they used to do so well. But this is no rehash. This is a whole new thing – a 76-minute song suite, a marvel of editing, a rushing hurricane of melody that screams by at a breakneck pace. Only three songs here break the four-minute mark, and most hover around two, but none are fillers. Each song, even the 52-second “I Can’t Sleep,” is exactly as long as it needs to be, and each moment moves the album forward.

And I think that may be what I like most about it – Never Hear the End of It is defiantly an album, full of transitions and fragments that serve the whole, but wouldn’t stand alone. It’s also a statement of unity from the long-running quartet, featuring songs from each of the members. (Action Pact included nothing from drummer Andrew Scott. Here he gets equal time.) It’s a varied record, in many ways the group’s White Album, but it’s also a cohesive one, perfectly sequenced and solid straight through.

Pressing play, we hear from each member in rapid succession – guitarist Jay Ferguson sings the second verse of “Flying High Again,” the brief opener, before other guitarist Patrick Pentland crashes in with his “Who Taught You to Live Like That,” a pounding rocker. Scott takes center stage for “I’ve Gotta Try,” one of his trademark melodic stompers, and then bassist Chris Murphy grabs the spotlight for a minor-key stunner, “Everybody Wants You.”

And on it goes like that. Pentland’s “Listen to the Radio” is an epic strummer with great backing vocals, while Murphy’s “Fading Into Obscurity” runs through four tempos in as many minutes. Relatively longer tunes like the riff-heavy “Ana Lucia” and the great “I Understand” flow beautifully into minute-long segue-songs like “Something’s Wrong” and “Golden Eyes.” It’s a flood of song, and the melodies never falter. The record is sequenced for the vinyl release, with four equal-length sides, but you’d never know it listening to the CD, and they have some fun with the song orders, following Murphy’s groovy “People Think They Know Me” with Scott’s response song “I Know You.”

This album has everything, all compressed into an hour and a quarter, from the punky explosion of “HFXNSHC” (Halifax, Nova Scotia Hard Core) to the clever rhymes of “Someone I Can Be True With” to the laugh-out-loud throwaway humor of Scott’s “Living With the Masses.” The amps are cranked for much of the running time, but pianos slip in here and there, and the tempos slow down in the final fourth, with a trio of sweet ballads at tracks 27, 28 and 29. The album ends with “Another Way I Could Do It,” finishing the trip with a lovely vocal tag.

This is an album the likes of which I figured we’d never see again, in this age of the digitally delivered single, and God bless Sloan for remembering how cool something like this can be. Never Hear the End of It is pretty much the last thing I expected from this band, but then, I never know what to expect from this band. I just know they never let me down, and this is one of their best efforts, a virtual torrent of riffs, melodies and harmonies. It’s a classic.

But Sloan isn’t the only band plying a sound influenced by decades of melodic rock. I have Dr. Tony Shore to thank for turning me on to The Feeling, a new sensation from the U.K. Their debut album, Twelve Stops and Home, was scheduled for release in the U.S. last month, but alas, it never happened, so I paid in British pounds, and a week later, received one of the sweetest and best pop records of the year.

The Feeling combine 40 years of British pop into one sunny sound. Elements of the Kinks, 10cc, Supertramp, ELO, Queen and even Coldplay and James Blunt wind their way through these 13 easygoing, windows-down melody-fests. These are songs that promise big choruses, and unfailingly deliver them, and this is a record so well-produced and lovingly crafted that many will hear processed and corporate, when it’s anything but.

This is music created with pure love of pop in mind. How can anyone think that a Steely Dan meets Supertramp number like “Never Be Lonely” was written with super-stardom in mind? (It’s apparently happened across the pond – The Feeling is a smash success in their home country.) And how could anyone do anything but smile uncontrollably when it cascades into its fantastic chorus? I don’t know, but I’m unable to control the idiot grin. “B-b-b-baby, I think I’m going c-c-c-crazy…”

The album opens with “I Want You Now,” a classic pop tune if I’ve ever heard one – this is the sort of song the greats write, the kind of barnburner that would flow from the pen of a Ray Davies or a Todd Rundgren. The sound is shiny and balanced, which some will decry as too glossy, but this record sounds as good as anything Jellyfish might have turned out, and I have been known to call that band’s records unassailably perfect.

“Fill My Little World” stands as the most fun song of the year so far for me, the one I can’t resist singing along with. Right behind it is the Cars-esque “Love It When You Call,” a song that could have been a dismal failure in lesser hands. Contrary to popular belief, good pop music is not easy to write, play or record, and very few bands do it well. The Feeling does it well – better, in fact, than 90 percent of the new bands I’ve heard since Ben Folds Five broke up. Even the slower numbers are delights – “Kettle’s On” is oddly affecting, and “Sewn” is a masterpiece, a triumph of melody.

The album does drift into self-important balladry by the end, which is unfortunate. “Same Old Stuff” is a nice, Lennon-esque song that can’t withstand the epic Oasis-style treatment the band gives it, and “Blue Piccadilly” has shades of Paul McCartney’s less successful solo work. But don’t despair – sandwiched between them is a cheeky wonderama called “Helicopter” that sounds like nothing else here. And bonus track “Miss You” is as lovely a piano number as one could hope for.

There’s nothing earth-shattering about what this band does – the lyrics are simple and direct, the melodies right out front, the influences proudly worn. Which is why it’s mystifying that so few groups do this sort of thing this well. Despite a couple of well-intentioned missteps, Twelve Stops and Home is a terrific pop record, one that fills me with silly joy, and it will undoubtedly find its way into my top 10 list at the end of the year.

Speaking of that list, here (one week late) is my third quarter report. Truthfully, I was waiting for this week’s contestants to arrive, both of which pleasantly surprised me and made it into this draft of the list. I should stress once again that this is just a draft, and not the finished product. A lot can happen in three months. I should also point out that the top two trade places on an almost daily basis (and I did just see my current #1 choice live, and they were amazing), but they may not appear in the same order in three months. But they’re probably the top two, unless something else knocks me out of my chair.

With that in mind, here’s how my top 10 list looks at the beginning of October:

#10: Quiet Company, Shine Honesty.
#9: The Alarm, Under Attack.
#8: Roger Joseph Manning Jr., The Land of Pure Imagination.
#7: Sloan, Never Hear the End of It.
#6: David Mead, Tangerine.
#5: The Feeling, Twelve Stops and Home.
#4: Grandaddy, Just Like the Fambly Cat.
#3: Ross Rice, Dwight.
#2: Keane, Under the Iron Sea.
#1. Mute Math.

And with that, I bid you farewell. Next week is another big ol’ slew of reviews – this stuff just keeps hitting stores, and I’m almost drowning in new tunes. And how about that Lost premiere? As Frank Zappa would say, wowee zowee.

See you in line Tuesday morning.