I do have three albums to discuss this week, but first I’d like to ramble a bit about The Fountain, which is perhaps the most original and beautiful movie I’ve seen this year. The problem is, I can’t really talk about it without spoiling elements of the plot and theme, so if you haven’t seen this movie yet, please, please skip down to the first set of asterisks below. This is not a movie you want me to ruin for you.

All aboard who’s coming aboard? Okay then.

The Fountain is Darren Aronofsky’s third movie. That would have been enough right there to make me want to see it – his first two, Pi and Requiem for a Dream, are a pair of the most stylistically innovative lower-budget flicks this side of Eraserhead. (And they both make a hell of a lot more sense than David Lynch’s first opus does.) He is, no two ways about it, a great visual filmmaker.

Here’s what he cooked up for his third film. Hugh Jackman plays three guys named Tom, each separated by 500 years. Tomas is a conquistador in 16th Century Spain, Tommy is a research scientist in the present day, and Tom is a celestial traveler floating through space in a clear bubble half a hundred years from now. Each Tom is haunted by his devotion to a woman named Isabelle, played each time by Rachel Weisz. And of course, all three stories interconnect to tell a tale of love and death and rebirth.

But it’s the ways in which they interconnect, and the symbolic bridges between them, that make The Fountain a work of magic. I will try to summarize, but the web is tricky – I’ve seen the movie twice, and have plans to see it a third time, and I still feel like I have only the most tenuous grasp on it. But here goes: The modern-day Thomas is a geneticist trying to find a cure for brain cancer. He’s working around the clock, sacrificing all his spare time, because of his wife Izzi – she’s dying of a brain tumor, and Thomas is convinced he can cure her. And he finds a cure, but not in time.

Izzi, meanwhile, is writing a book called The Fountain, that’s about the 16th Century Tomas. In the book, Tomas is sent by Queen Isabella to look for the Tree of Life, so that she (and by extension, Spain) may live forever. The book is obviously a metaphor for how Izzi sees Thomas, crusading for her life, and yet Aronofsky never gives short shrift to this third of the story. Intercut with these stories are scenes of Tom, in his glass bubble, bringing a withered tree to a dying star in the hopes of reviving it. (The tree, not the star.)

And as the modern-day Thomas discovers a cure for aging (it has something to do with another tree in Guatemala), it becomes increasingly clear that the future Tom is the present-day Thomas, driven mad by Izzi’s death. He’s marked himself with tattooed rings for each year, like the inside of a tree, and when we see present-day Thomas making the first of those rings, the moment is astonishing. It is then that the juxtaposition becomes heartbreaking – he is unable to accept Izzi’s passing, even as she herself embraces it, and he spends the next 500 years trying to outdo, to “cure” death.

There’s a lot more – I haven’t even mentioned Izzi’s final request to Thomas, one which resonates through the years with multiple meanings. The Fountain is a head-scratcher, a deftly edited and sharply written puzzle, and if that were all it accomplished, it would still be worth seeing. But it goes far beyond that. This is a deeply felt film, an outpouring of grief and pain that reaches for transcendence, and actually gets there. If you’ve ever lost someone and tried with all your might to hold on to them, this film will speak to you, and move you.

Many, many people hate this movie. It’s the risk filmmakers like Aronofsky run when they put themselves out there like this. The Fountain doesn’t hide its big ideas, but more importantly, it doesn’t disguise its emotional core with irony or clever wordplay. The film is unfailingly earnest, which makes it easy to ridicule. It’s an audacious, risky movie with a big, wide heart and a depth you won’t find too often at the local multiplex. I would rather watch a daring, thoughtful filmmaker like Aronofsky fall on his face, which he most certainly has not here, than sit through a hundred cookie-cutter, big-budget action orgies.

Speaking of the budget, one of the amazing things about The Fountain is the saga of its creation. The movie itself had its own death and rebirth – its original incarnation as a big-money star vehicle for Brad Pitt was canned when Pitt pulled out, and Aronofsky transformed his film into a leaner, more direct work for Jackman. The visual effects are incredible, given that they were made with water and a microscope, and cost a grand total of $140,000. I would take these effects shots over the digital, soulless wonders Aronofsky likely would have wound up with had the original plan not fallen through.

And how this movie would have worked with Pitt is beyond me. Jackman is perfect in all of his roles here – it is, bar none, the best performance I have seen him give. The movie is him, he’s in virtually every scene, and he delivers Thomas’ grief-stricken determination and Tom’s pain and release beautifully. In a movie that easily could have been confusing and cold, Jackman brings the soul, and connects you instantly and completely to his character(s).

In short, everything seemed to work out perfectly – The Fountain plays like it was always meant to be like this, and unquestionably heralds the return of a gifted and fearless writer/director. It’s a movie that’s easy to stand back and laugh at, because it stands naked and defenseless and invites you to shed your own ironic armor and go deeper with it. If you’re willing to do that, it’s a powerful film, but if you’re not, it’s a load of pretentious hooey. There is no middle of the road here.

I was willing, twice now, and I’m very glad I was. The Fountain touched me like no other movie this year, and it is an example of my favorite kind of art – the kind that exists because its creators simply had no choice but to make it reality. It is a passionate, powerfully imagined and deeply personal movie, and I hope the day never comes when I stop seeking out and loving films like this one.

Thanks, Darren. Welcome back. Now get to work on the next one!

* * * * *

The Good.

When you think about it, Spock’s Beard is a really silly name for a band.

I wonder if the band members ever considered changing it. They had the perfect opportunity three years ago, when founding member, lead singer and chief songwriter Neal Morse left for a solo career. But drummer Nick D’Virgilio (still one of the finest multi-instrumentalists I’ve ever seen live) took over on lead vocals, and the Beard pressed on. And if any questions remained about keeping the name, they seem to have disappeared – their just-released ninth album is self-titled, which seems to signify the cementing of the new lineup.

Despite the goofy name, which they took from an episode of the classic Star Trek series, Spock’s Beard plays intricate, crunchy, melodic progressive rock with a brain. Neal Morse’s songs and lyrics were little masters’ classes on how to write prog without slipping into bombast or self-indulgence – even his 25-minute epics had choruses and soaring melodies. Without him, the Beard has struggled to maintain the same level of quality – 2003’s Feel Euphoria wasn’t much to write home about, and 2005’s Octane was better, but still chock full of average rock songs.

What a surprise, then, to hear “On a Perfect Day,” the opening shot from this new album. It’s nearly perfect – it starts with a classic prog riff on guitar and organ, moves into a memorable chorus, makes room for keyboard and guitar solos, and even contains an acoustic guitar duet in the middle, the kind Yes used to do. D’Virgilio’s voice is clear and captivating throughout, his drum work is awesome as usual, and the rest of the band really locks into a groove. It is the best song they have done since Morse left.

And the album it kicks off is self-titled for a reason – this is the definitive disc from Spock’s Beard 2.0. Gone is the tentative nature of the previous two releases, and here at last is a comfortable, energized record from these guys, one that doesn’t sound as if they lost a limb when Morse quit. At right around 77 minutes, it’s a monster of a record, but none of these tracks sound like filler to me. The Beard tries out a multitude of styles, from classic ‘70s prog to straight-ahead rock to jazz fusion to orchestral grandeur, and each one fits.

“On a Perfect Day” leads into “Skeletons at the Feast,” a furious instrumental that shows off just how good these guys are. But lest you think it’s all chops and wankery, check out “All That’s Left,” a deceptively smooth 6/8 ballad with a great chorus. Just from the title, you’d be forgiven for thinking that “With Your Kiss” is a romantic number, instead of the nearly 12-minute psychodrama it is. (The title phrase is used thusly: “Seal my fate with your kiss.”) The band nimbly shifts from blues (“Sometimes They Stay, Sometimes They Go”) to stately prog (“The Slow Crash Landing Man”) to lovely piano pop (“Hereafter”).

But the biggest surprise is the album’s “epic,” “As Far as the Mind Can See.” Neal Morse wrote one of these massive multi-part suites per album when he led the band, and D’Virgilio, I think, has felt obligated to follow suit. His first couple, though, were weak affairs, stitched together because the fans expected a 20-minute song, when he is most comfortable writing five-minute tunes. He was out of his element, and it was obvious.

But “As Far as the Mind Can See” is terrific, a 17-minute, four-part opus that feels organically grown. The Beard stretches its sound here, with the jazzy feel of the second movement (“Here’s a Man”) and the brass sections and choirs of the third (“They Know We Know”). The shifts between movements are natural, the theme is clearly thought through, and the reprise at the end is perfectly executed. It’s the first time that the D’Virgilio Spock’s Beard has shown, without a doubt, that they can carry on with Neal Morse’s traditions while expressing their own new identity.

And in a way, that brings us back to the name. Like it or not, the Spock’s Beard name carries with it a history and a standard for a passionate group of fans, and this is the first time that the new lineup has proven worthy of it, so to speak. After a pair of half-steps, this is the one that deserves to be self-titled, the one that proclaims loudly and proudly, “We are Spock’s Beard.” Hopefully it’s the start of good things to come from the band – for the first time since Morse left, I’m looking forward to many years of new Beard music.

* * * * *

The Bad.

I am late to the Copeland party. I first heard them last year, picking up their second album In Motion on the strength of “Pin Your Wings.” But I was sold when I heard their awesome cover of Carly Simon’s “Coming Around Again,” on their Know Nothing Stays the Same EP. Aaron Marsh possesses a voice of remarkable clarity and agility, and his band plays sweet piano-fueled melancholy rock. Their work is nothing extraordinary, but it’s well-made and worth hearing.

Even so, I was excited to hear their new album, Eat, Sleep, Repeat, because the more I listened to In Motion, the more it seemed just a few nudges in the right direction shy of being great. Too bad, then, that Repeat actually stumbles backwards, smoothing off all the bite of the band’s past work and settling for bland and boring songwriting. Sonically, it is the band’s most accomplished effort, but all the polish can’t disguise the fact that Marsh fell down on the job this time, turning out very few memorable songs and saddling the ones he did dream up with cripplingly bad lyrics.

Now, I admit it – I may be feeling some residual anger over the botched packaging. Eat, Sleep, Repeat comes in one of the most annoying cardboard sleeves I’ve ever seen. It has this die-cut foldover flap that, when you buy it in the store, is affixed to the rest by a semi-adhesive rubber cement-like substance. Remove that, and the flap never stays down. It’s like a perpetual pop-up book. The liner notes are affixed to absolutely nothing, and flop out of the package constantly. The artwork by James Douglas Adams is beautiful, and frankly deserves a better package than this.

So some of that resentment may be bleeding over into my thoughts about the music, but the record itself deserves its own criticism. There are only three songs that rise above the mediocrity to deliver memorable melodies, and they’re all in a row. To get to them, you have to listen to Copeland take on a newfound Radiohead influence – the guitars on the title track are so Jonny Greenwood, and so 1997. The band strikes gold with “Control Freak,” but Marsh turns what could have been a delightful song into a silly one with his repeated refrain of “you’re freaking me out.”

“Careful Now” is almost a complete success, and so is “Love Affair,” with its gentle piano chorus and its Burt Bacharach finale. But after that, the album completely loses its way. “I’m Safer in an Airplane” sounds like a winner from the title, but the electric piano and beat box ditty just lays there. “Cover What You Can” is a formless interlude that floats by without making much impression, and “The Last Time He Saw Dorie” is barely audible, so restrained is every element of it. As much as I like string sections, the arrangement here just makes it worse.

“I’m a Sucker for a Kind Word” sounds like it’s getting back on track, with its sky-high chorus, but then the finale, “When You Thought You’d Never Stand Out,” retreats back into the murk. It’s obviously supposed to be some kind of epic, but it floats away and out of my memory seconds after it’s done. I know I’m being harsh – Eat, Sleep, Repeat is not horrible, just boring, which is almost worse coming from a band that had such spark just last year. There’s still no way to dislike Aaron Marsh’s voice, but the songs he lends it to here are wispy, forgettable things, and I know he can do better.

* * * * *

The Worse.

No, for something that moves beyond boring into the truly godawful, you need to hear the new Damien Rice.

Actually, scratch that. It sounds too much like a recommendation, like it’s the bit Rice’s website will excerpt in its quotes section: “‘You need to hear the new Damien Rice!’ says Tuesday Morning 3 A.M.” And the truth is that no one needs to hear the new Damien Rice. Absolutely no one.

I first discovered Rice the way most everyone did, through the movie Closer, which prominently featured his “The Blower’s Daughter.” I bought O, his oddly titled debut, and liked quite a bit of it. It was typical singer-songwriter stuff for most of it, but elegantly played, and accented with sweet strings. I also liked how the songs segued into one another, as if you were listening to one uninterrupted performance, even though by the ridiculous “Eskimo” the record could have used an interruption.

But on 9, his similarly oddly-titled sophomore album, Rice has amplified all the worst aspects of his first record, and diminished all the little things I liked. And I honestly don’t think it’s down to personal taste. The songs on 9 are just worse, ranging from boring to excrementally awful. The strings are louder and gloopier, but the skeletons are so threadbare and amateur that the orchestrations just sound like smokescreens. The focus is on performance, not songwriting, and Rice puts his all into these shitty little songs, but they’re still shitty.

“The Animals Were Gone” is actually one of the better ones, with thunderous strings sticking to the exposed ribs of the song. But since the focus is on Rice’s voice and lyrics, there’s no excuse for this: “At night I dream without you, and hope I don’t wake up, ‘cause waking up without you is like drinking from an empty cup…”

That’s nothing next to “Elephant,” a small eternity of a crescendo that doubles as one of the silliest sex songs ever. It starts like “The Blower’s Daughter,” with Rice’s close-miked vocals picking up the guitar strum from what seems like far away. Over an endless six minutes, Rice caterwauls as more and more instruments find their way into the mix.

“You can keep me pinned ‘cause it’s easier to tease, but you can’t paint an elephant quite as good as she,” he wails, everything building up and up to a massive crashing wave of sound. And the song climaxes (no pun intended) with the line “I am lately horny,” sung as if Rice is imparting the secret of life. And it ends with a veiled masturbation reference – “You can’t make me happy quite as good as me,” Rice coos in his wispy falsetto, as if it’s the cleverest line in all of popular music.

Seriously. It’s terrible.

“Rootless Tree” sounds like it will be better, until Rice gets to his “fuck you, fuck you, fuck you” chorus. I liked this song a whole lot better when it was called “Untouchable Face,” from Ani DiFranco’s Dilate in 1996. By the end, I swore that if he said “let me out” one more time, I would set him on fire. “Dogs” has the temerity to rhyme “girl that does yoga” with “when we come over,” and sadly nothing else about it is remotely memorable. Similarly, “Coconut Skins” is only notable for its exhortation to “sit on chimneys and put some fire up your ass.”

But if you really want to sit through a small eternity, put on “Me, My Yoke and I,” another great title ruined by a crappy song. It is six minutes of the same riff and half-assed melody, over and over, which Rice obviously thinks is rocking. “I’m mad, I’m mad, I’m mad like a big dog,” Rice screeches, before announcing “my god, my god, my god gave me a rod” in his best metal voice. If he didn’t actually enlist a six-year-old to write this thing for him, then he should have his ASCAP card taken away.

It’s not even worth discussing the rest of the record, but suffice it to say that it doesn’t get any better. When it’s not badly aping Duncan Sheik aping Nick Drake, it’s limping forward on overused chords and childish lyrics. The album’s barely an hour, not counting the useless bonus stuff after “Sleep Don’t Weep” ends, but it feels like six, like watching the crushingly slow Meet Joe Black twice. It’s a mess, and sophomore slump doesn’t even begin to cover it. Sophomore stinkbomb, maybe.

But worse, 9 proves that Damien Rice is a truly overrated and meager talent, and of the worst kind, too – one who thinks he’s producing brilliant, moving work. Some may find something to like and admire amongst the simplistic and interminable dross here, but I’m all done. I’ll stick with the other guy named Rice, the one who earned a spot in my top 10 list this year, despite having no budget and even less fame to work with. Talent comes through, and on Damien Rice’s 9, it’s sadly absent.

* * * * *

Next week, no Zappa, I’ve been told, so I’m going to delve into some records that, just by their very nature, can’t compete for my top 10 list. Then, Christmas music on the 13th, the top 10 list on the 20th, and the return of Fifty Second Week on the 27th. And that will do it for year six.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

2006 is winding down. I’m Christmas shopping already, and I’ve just made my last major purchase of the year, musically speaking – the three-CD Tom Waits set Orphans. (I have listened to half of it, and I would call it extraordinary so far, if this level of quality weren’t Waits’ normal standard.) I am pretty sure about my top 10 list now, barring another major surprise (wait until you see what made number one), and I’ve mapped out the last six columns of the year.

This is always a weird time for me – the assessment period, when I try to put a few adjectives and a nice little bow on the year. I think 2006 was about stability for me, about setting the boundaries of my world, and going about the business of filling it up. It was a relatively peaceful year, all told, with no earth-shattering changes, just little ripples. Although there’s still a month left, so anything could happen…

But what better way to wind down a peaceful year than with peaceful music? Considering my addiction to melody, many find it surprising that I’m also a fan of ambient and shoegazer music, the kind based in drones and soundscapes. It’s an odd side pocket of my obsession, I admit, but in some ways, it’s my favorite kind of music. Nothing else transports me so completely. There’s something vaguely spiritual about it, and although I know intellectually that the magic is performed with technology – the tweaking of effects boxes, the permutation of sine waves – it still sounds like magic. More to the point, with most ambient music, I don’t want to know how it’s done.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to go all Music From the Hearts of Space on you this time, but I do have four records from three bands that live on the soundscape side of town, three bands that are essentially unknown outside their own circles. And I think that’s a shame, because all three produce some beautiful work.

Iona is perhaps the best-known of the bunch – their unique mix of Enya and Rush has, over the 16 years of their existence, drawn the attention and respect of the progressive community. Still, they’re not really a part of that scene, just as they’re not really a part of the Christian music industry, even though their old-world spirituality has earned them a home there, too. Iona is one of a kind, a Celtic-ambient-prog-pop band beholden to no trends or fashions. They were mixing Uilleann pipes and synthesizers for nearly a decade before James Horner thought of it, and they’ve always been what they are now.

In some ways, that’s the problem with The Circling Hour, their sixth full-lengther. All the hallmarks of Iona’s sound are here – Celtic instruments mixed with soaring guitars and sweet synth beds, Frank Van Essen’s thunderous drums, Joanne Hogg’s breathtaking voice, a couple of very long songs and a multi-part epic, and a spiritual concept. It is, without a doubt, an Iona record, and my major complaint with it is that it doesn’t break any new ground for the group. It doesn’t even hone the sound presented on 2000’s Open Sky, it just presents it again.

Any disappointment you may have with their creative repetition, however, should be allayed by the quality of the record. It’s an Iona album, but it’s a very good one, and as long as no one else sounds like this, they might as well own the style. Opener “Empyrean Dawn” begins with nothing but Hogg’s voice, but very soon explodes with guitars and keyboards, finally settling into a stately groove. The songs on Circling Hour are a bit more propulsive than those in the past – there is no sunset-lit ballad here this time, only moments of bliss before the drums kick back in.

Like always, guitarist Dave Bainbridge and pipes player Troy Donockley get plenty of space to trade leads, and in the album’s centerpiece, the 11-minute “Wind off the Lake,” they duel and duet restlessly, each pushing the other. That song contains pockets of ambience and long stretches of jig-like playing, and is the most sterling example here of their modern Celtic sound.

The other epic, “Wind, Water & Fire,” spreads its 14 minutes over three tracks. The first, “Wind,” is the most placid thing here, rising slowly, until Hogg enters at the start of “Water,” imitating lapping waves with her wordless vocals. “Fire” finds the band at full force, and while it would be silly to think of this as heavy music, the instrumental prowess exhibited here does carry substantial weight. The album ends with “Fragment of a Fiery Sun,” a brief reprise of “Empyrean Dawn” that brings The Circling Hour, well, full circle.

There’s nothing here that should surprise longtime fans, and those who’ve never sampled Iona before can start here with no fear. If you like this, you’ll like everything they’ve done before, and conversely, if you like anything they’ve done before, you’ll like this. I can whine all I want to about stylistic variation, but when a band has developed something this interesting and this unique, it seems petty. Iona is Iona, and probably always will be, and The Circling Hour is just another reason to like them.

If you want a band that sounds different album to album, you could do worse than Unwed Sailor, an instrumental collective from Seattle based around former Roadhouse Monument bassist Jonathon Ford. They haven’t been particularly prolific, but the Sailor boys seem to undergo a massive change each time out – the electric webs of The Faithful Anchor were no preparation for the haunting storybook sounds of The Marionette and the Music Box, for example.

This year, Unwed Sailor took another turn into more ambient territory with their third album, The White Ox. The signs were there on the Circles EP, released in May as a teaser for the full-length. Circles is one 16-minute song divided into two parts, and is the most droning, repetitive thing the band has ever done. The first part is an 11-minute crescendo looped around a simple, repeating bass figure, and while the second kicks things up a little, it ends just as it’s getting more interesting. It’s still oddly captivating, but in a much more subdued way than their other work.

The White Ox follows suit. This is an album to listen to in total darkness, with the volume on 11. It’s a moody, subtle effort, built on repetition and atmosphere. Opener “Shadows” is essentially three or four little pieces stitched together by synth washes, with a massive sound and some thunderclap percussion. “Gila” crawls along like the titular lizard, with a slinky bass line and some electronic distortion keeping the beat. It’s also the only song here with lyrics, a definite surprise – the last time we heard Ford’s voice was on the closing track of The Faithful Anchor. His low tone works well with this menacing number.

Most of this album happens beneath the surface, and the changes are so subtle and small that it’s easy to miss them if you’re not listening intently. “Numbers,” for example, is just as much a math-rock piece as anything on the band’s first couple of records, but this one’s performed on acoustic guitars, synth sounds and wordless vocals. Ford spends the final moments of that song counting out loud to 10, kind of a reverse countdown for “Night Diamond,” one of the most subdued tracks. The chiming guitars add a layer of shimmering beauty to this piece, and the piano melody is sweet.

While this music just floats by on first listen, keep digging and it becomes clear that Ford has made a little masterpiece here. My main disappointment is with the length – Ox is 33 minutes, and Circles is 16. Together they’d have made a normal-sized album, but no, we have to pay for them separately, even though the cover art and design makes it clear that they’re parts of a whole.

But that’s a minor quibble. There’s apparently a second Unwed Sailor full-length called Little Wars that’s in the can, and I hope it’s as consistent and lovely as The White Ox. It’s like nothing Ford has done before, and fans of the more energetic Sailor material may find it too simple, but for me, The White Ox is a lovely little record, and a happy addition to my collection of spaced-out mood music.

Of course, no one in this field can hold a candle to Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson, the mainstays of Hammock. Byrd and Thompson were members of Common Children, and Byrd has recently joined my favorite band on the planet, the Choir. But nothing in their prior catalogs could have prepared the way for Kenotic, Hammock’s magnificent 2005 debut.

Byrd and Thompson don’t play music as much as they sculpt it from the air. Every sound on Kenotic feels like it’s made up of elements from beyond the atmosphere, and describing Byrd’s reverb-soaked guitar playing as otherworldly almost seems like an understatement. This is definitely one of those cases where knowing how it’s done – arrays of pedals and stacks of electronic effects processors – really detracts from the experience, because Hammock music sounds mystical.

Hammock’s second full-length is called Raising Your Voice… Trying to Stop an Echo, and with it, they’ve landed a dream of a dream-pop record deal: they’re on Darla, home of Cockteau Twin Robin Guthrie. That name means nothing to many of you, but some of you are undoubtedly whipping out your credit cards already, because Guthrie’s name has been associated with some of the most glorious ambient pop music ever made.

The match-up is a fitting one. Raising Your Voice is 76 more minutes of Byrd and Thompson’s astonishing float music, performed with some of the most alien and transporting guitar tones you’ll ever hear. (For you Choir fans, imagine an entire album of the spacey bits of Circle Slide. Yeah, it’s that good. Better, even.) They’ve added lyrics to three songs here, sung by Byrd and his wife Christine Glass, but don’t worry, they work brilliantly, especially the awesome “Shipwrecked (Flat on Your Back).”

Elsewhere, little has changed. The duo still creates cascading waterfalls of sound, with occasional help from Glass on wordless vocals and Matt Slocum (Sixpence None the Richer) on cello. Subtle beats weave in and out of these 18 songs, but the focus is on the deep emotional undercurrent of this music. That’s right, it’s emotional music, even without lyrics or indelible melodies, which is a feat in itself. A piece like “Losing You to You” dares you to remain unmoved as oceans of emotion crash over you. This is passionate music, and hidden in its corners are surprisingly powerful moments.

The one thing Hammock needs to work on is crafting album-length journeys instead of collections of smaller trips. These 18 tracks ebb and flow, but they don’t connect as well as they could, and the final track, “Sparkle and Fade,” is more like an interlude, one that’s over before you know it. It’s a small complaint, but sequencing can often be the difference between good records and great ones.

Raising Your Voice is a marvelous follow-up regardless, and hopefully a sign that Byrd and Thompson plan to keep making this glorious music for years to come. They’re getting some well-deserved respect for it, and hopefully some well-deserved sales. It’s obvious, with every beautiful note, that this is the music Byrd and Thompson have wanted to make all their lives, and I hope they get to keep on making it, because at times, this is the music I’ve wanted to listen to all my life, and I want more of it.

Links. Clicky. Iona. Unwed Sailor. Hammock.

Next week, catching up with some minor-league releases. Then, Christmas music and (hopefully) Frank Zappa before we plunge into the year-end extravaganzas.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I knew I shouldn’t have called Nellie McKay weird. Next to this week’s contestant, Joanna Newsom, Nellie McKay is as normal as Nelly Furtado.

Newsom is… well, let’s put it this way. Every once in a while, you find an artist with a sound so completely their own that you just know they will never have any imitators. Pop culture impact is often measured in influence – how many other bands try to sound like yours? The Clash, for example, are one of the most influential bands that ever walked the earth, and the reason is twofold: they came up with a new sound, and that sound was easy to replicate and build on.

But then there are those artists who sound so much like no one else that no one else could ever sound like them, if that makes sense. Bjork is a good example – her mix of techno-savvy, pop classicism and orchestral grandeur would be enough, but then there’s that voice, towering above (and sometimes overpowering) everything else. She’s an original, in both the best and worst way.

The same can be said of Newsom, who came into the world kicking and coughing with a little record called The Milk-Eyed Mender. It’s an innocent, childlike album, featuring little else but Newsom and her harp. That’s right, her harp. The songs on Mender are melodic and folky, with sparkles of stardust, but to appreciate them, you have to get past her voice, which often sounds like that of an intoxicated child. Newsom has complete confidence in her elfin, yet powerful vocals, and they manage to be simultaneously unrestrained and paper-thin.

For all of that, The Milk-Eyed Mender is a little album, with lovely little songs. Her sophomore effort, out this week, is defiantly not little. The only thing small about it is its title, Ys, which is pronounced “ees,” and which means… who the hell knows. Everything else about the album, though, is massive, ambitious, monolithic – essentially the recipe for a disastrous sophomore slump, and the sign of an artist who suddenly has more money and control over her own work than she should.

Except it’s not a slump, and Newsom seems to have exactly the right amount of control over this monster. I don’t know how she alchemized all the elements she used here. In fact, I’ll list them, and you tell me if you can hear in your head how it would come together, because I sure couldn’t.

First, Newsom wrote five long, complicated, progressive-folk songs. The shortest of them is more than seven minutes, and the longest weighs in at 16:53. She then took her harp and her songs to producer (sorry, recorder) Steve Albini. This is a guy whose most commercial-sounding production ever was Nirvana’s In Utero. His usual fare is raw and untouched – he has the uncanny knack of making shitty-sounding bands sound even worse, in the pursuit of “honesty.”

So the guy who ruined PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me recorded the harp and vocals on these songs, and then Newsom took those tracks to Van Dyke Parks, best known as Brian Wilson’s collaborator on SMiLE, to add some strings. Let me just emphasize how weird it is to see Albini’s name right above Parks’ on the same project. So Van Dyke wrote some arrangements for full orchestra, conducted and recorded them, and then, even weirder, sent the whole mess to Jim O’Rourke, erstwhile member of Sonic Youth and Wilco, to mix together into a record.

The result? Well, the best I can come up with is that Ys sounds like 1970s prog-folk played on 16th Century instruments and then sung by a drunk 10-year-old. And if that doesn’t sound magically appealing, then I’m telling it wrong.

To be honest, I expected an unlistenable mess. What I got is a delirious wonderland, a swirly-sky journey through perhaps the most singular, idiosyncratic talent I’ve encountered in years. On paper, it sounds impenetrable, but as it’s blissfully wafting from your speakers, spreading little sprinkles of fairy dust as it rises, it sounds amazing.

Speaking of on paper, you have to have a gander at some of these lyrics. The record plays like a stream of consciousness, and reads like free-verse poetry. Little of it makes logical sense, but all of it makes emotional sense, if you know what I mean. And it’s stuffed with words you normally wouldn’t find in any kind of music, like “inchoate” and “lissome” and “hay-monger.” Here, look, it’s like this:

“Awful atoll
O, incalculable indiscreetness and sorrow!
Bawl, bellow:
Sybil sea-cow, all done up in a bow,
Toddle and roll;
teethe an impalpable bit of leather,
while yarrow, heather and hollycock
awkwardly molt along the shore.
Are you mine?
My heart?
Mine anymore?”

All punctuation and capitalization preserved from the lyric sheet, of course. I don’t mean to imply that these lyrics don’t work, but that they are tongue-twisting tales leagues beyond the average pop lyric, and merely reading the liner notes, you’ll probably wonder just what kind of music fits these words. It is a testament to Newsom’s skill that the songs themselves never sound cluttered or overstuffed.

But back to the sound itself. Albini actually did the reverse of what I expected – he smoothed out Newsom’s voice. Together, the two of them have figured out how to use her maddening, magnificent voice as a true instrument, carrying the melody and adding just enough character. The full orchestral arrangements certainly help, framing her babe-in-the-woods squeak with Fantasia-like grandeur. But the 10-minute “Sawdust and Diamonds” is all Newsom and her harp, and even there, she seems more controlled, more aware of her abilities and limitations.

Her songwriting appears to have no such limitations. Opener “Emily” incorporates half a dozen dramatic shifts and at least as many memorable melodies over its 12 minutes, and astoundingly turns an epic poem into a delightfully memorable piece. When you can get a 12-minute song stuck in your head, that’s something special. “Only Skin,” the phenomenal 16:53 piece referenced above, earns every second of that running time, and here Van Dyke Parks stands out with a spectacular string arrangement that will knock you over if you’re not careful.

But strangely, it’s something called “Monkey and Bear” that takes the top prize. It’s a 10-minute programmatic exploration of society in allegory form, and it starts as a fairy tale, but ends with an extraordinary chanted segment that will set your hair on end. Surprisingly, the strings take a back seat during this movement, leaving Newsom to kick up a storm on center stage by herself, and she does so brilliantly.

Ys sputters to a close with “Cosmia,” the clunkiest and shortest thing here, but even that misstep can’t derail this spellbinding album. And that one ends beautifully, Newsom stepping out of her comfortable range to wail desperately at its climax, in plain, gorgeous language. “And I miss your precious heart,” she cries, and you can hear the longing bursting from her.

Somehow, Newsom made everything work, and she’s ended up with a second record that no one could have expected. You cannot judge Ys as pop music, or as folk music, or as pretty much anything else – it is its own thing. It will undoubtedly be a divisive work among those few who actually hear it, and my bet is people will either reach for the stop button before the first track ends, or they will fall in desperate, maddening love with it. Something this bold leaves no middle ground.

Me, I love it. I’ve found it difficult, if not impossible, to listen to anything else over the past week. But it’s hard for me to recommend it, since I know that those who dislike it will violently dislike it. However, those who love it will absolutely, without reservation, love it like their own child. It’s that kind of album. It’s difficult to rank something this singular against anything else out there, since its goals and accomplishments are so different from virtually any other record I’ve heard this year. But in every way I can think of, Ys is one of the best (and oddest, and weirdest, and most bizarre) albums of 2006.

Next week, some pretty, pretty noise.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

It’s a short one this week – I was out last night until about 6 a.m., and only got a few hours of sleep, and I think I’m getting some kind of chest cold, so we’re going to keep it kind of brief.

Obviously, the big news for this week (not counting the crumbling Bush empire, the sweeping success of Democrats in the mid-term elections, and the none-too-soon exit of Donald Rumsfeld) is the release of Frank Zappa’s Trance-Fusion, after a 13-year wait. Well, okay, it’s big news in my world, and some may be wondering why I’m not going to review it this week.

The simple answer is that I’m planning something special soon, kind of a Frank Zappa buyers’ guide to navigate newbies through his daunting catalog. I hope to have that ready about the time that the third Zappa album of the year, the MOFO box set, ships. (Given the numerous delays on this collection, I may have more time than I need…) But because Trance-Fusion is such a big deal, here’s a brief preview:

Trance-Fusion is the first of the Holy Trilogy, three albums that Zappa finished before his death in 1993. I have no idea why the Zappa family has been sitting on these records since then, but Trance became the first to hit shops, with virtually no fanfare, last week. The cover is incongruous, but beautiful – it depicts a collage of dolphins in the shape of Zappa’s trademark (literally) facial hair. It’s a beautifully designed package, with loving liner notes (as always) by Gail Zappa – it’s a fitting release for this near-mythical album.

The record itself is Zappa’s third collection of guitar solos, culled mostly from his final tours in 1984 and 1988. If you’ve never heard a Zappa guitar album, here’s what they are – Zappa recorded every show he ever played, and later sorted through and found the best moments of guitar-band improvisation and stitched them together. Zappa was a guitar player unlike any other. His solos were often dirty and ugly, but could just as often be incredibly beautiful, and not even the man himself knew which would come out when he started to play. The solos really are little pieces unto themselves.

This is Zappa’s most focused guitar solo album, too – it’s confined to one disc, 16 solos in just over an hour, and it’s apparent why each one was included. For my money, Frank’s 1988 tone is unbeatable – he debuted this clean, spacey, almost brittle sound that’s crystalline and piercing, and the nine solos from that tour (his last) are the highlights. Frank’s son Dweezil duets with his dad on the opening and closing tracks, and it’s a sign of how much Zappa respected his son’s playing that the first solo you hear on Trance-Fusion is Dweezil’s.

In short, this is great stuff, especially for fans of inventive guitar playing. Those dipping their toes into the Zappa experience may not want to start with this, since there are no real “songs,” per se, and no lyrics. But for Zappa fans, the release of Trance-Fusion is a good omen, a sign that the vaults may be swinging open and the rest of Frank’s completed output may be available soon. (The other two parts of the Holy Trilogy, by the way, are Dance Me This, a synth-orchestra album, and The Rage and the Fury, a collection of Edgard Varese pieces that Zappa conducted.)

But I’m not reviewing Zappa this week, I’m reviewing this:

* * * * *

The music biz is, at its best, completely random. The record companies may like cookie-cutter acts with similar sounds and images, but the best stuff, to me, always seems to have sprung from the earth fully grown, the product of a weird mixture of cross-pollenated seeds and freak weather patterns that created some oddly deformed, yet entirely wonderful thing.

Nellie McKay is such a beast. Men in suits could not have dreamed up McKay in a million years, nor would they want to. Imagine someone with the piano skills of Diana Krall, the voice of Doris Day, and the artistic temperament of Johnny Rotten, back when he was punk. Now imagine that girl grew up listening to ‘80s pop and Eminem, in equal doses with jazz balladry and Patsy Cline. And now imagine that she became a whiz kid in the studio, a record maker that recognizes no boundaries, takes no orders and produces her own stuff.

That description still won’t prepare you for what McKay actually sounds like. Her 2004 debut album, Get Away From Me, leapt gleefully from show tunes to piano-pounding pop to profanity-laced rap and back again, its 18 tracks spread over two discs like a traditional vinyl double album. It was quite unlike anything else on the stands at the time, and it still is – irreverent, obnoxious, arrogant and strangely brilliant.

The same could be said of her real-life antics, which earned her the hard-to-shake label of “difficult artist.” Her contentious relationship with Sony Music reached its peak last year, when McKay delivered her second effort, Pretty Little Head. She envisioned another double-disc affair, this one 23 songs and 65 minutes, but the label wouldn’t hear of it, and against her will, they edited it down to 16 songs and 48 minutes. This pissed McKay off, and depending on who you ask, she was either dropped from the label or left of her own accord. And she took Pretty Little Head with her.

It’s a Ryan Adams-style rock star story the likes of which some artists would kill for, but it naturally leads to an important question – is the album itself worth all the fuss? Pretty Little Head was finally released last week in its full two-disc form, on McKay’s own Hungry Mouse label, and dolled up in a fab little package, likely a nicer presentation than Sony would have given it. Everything is the way McKay wanted it in the first place, so it’s a perfect opportunity to see if the full Pretty Little Head was worth sticking up for.

To start off, Head is another remarkably odd album. McKay has largely abandoned the more jazzy and Broadway-leaning material of Get Away From Me in favor of quirky piano-pop, but she once again leapfrogs genres and sounds as if she’s compiling a mixtape. The record is more sedate and, dare I say it, mature than her debut, but it still includes a sweet gay marriage anthem (“Cupcake”) that name-checks Gertrude Stein, a rant against animal cruelty (“Columbia is Bleeding”), and a rap about her mother (“Mama & Me”) that ends with her screaming for a suicide pill.

It also includes lovely ballads like “There You Are in Me” and “Long and Lazy River,” and surprisingly effective duets with both Cyndi Lauper (“Beecharmer”) and k.d. lang (“We Had It Right”). As with her debut, these songs are all over the place, and never quite cohere into a solid album, but each track has something to recommend it, and by the time it’s over, Pretty Little Head has delivered a fairly comprehensive picture of Nellie McKay’s wonderfully warped mind.

For those who have been following the saga, special attention will no doubt be paid to the seven songs that Sony cut from their version of the album, the numbers McKay demanded they include. By themselves, they don’t seem all that worth going to court over. Four of the seven are less than two minutes long, and most of them are silly little ditties. “Yodel,” for example, is a brief piece based on (you guessed it) a yodeled chorus, and “Pounce” is 56 seconds of McKay imitating a cat. The best of them, the small but striking “Swept Away” and the sung-in-French “Lali est Paresseux,” could be b-sides next to some of the finer material here.

But that’s not the point. Those seven tunes add so much character to this album that McKay would argue (and I would agree) that cutting them saps Head’s personality. Cutting these songs is like telling McKay to behave herself and act lady-like in public. Sony’s version is a serviceable collection of quirky pop songs, while McKay’s is a more complete picture of what she offers. The album would survive without the not-so-magnificent seven, but it wouldn’t be as sprawling, as strange, or as much fun.

Also, Sony’s version ended with “Tipperary,” a cute little tune, whereas McKay’s ends with “Old Enough,” a brief yet heartbreaking statement of peace that provides a much more satisfying conclusion. “Never thought I’d live to be old enough, to be old enough to feel like this,” she sings, and you may need to remind yourself that she’s barely in her 20s. In fact, this whole remarkable album sounds like the work of someone much older, with many more productions under her belt.

So few artists develop such a complete self-concept over their whole careers, never mind by album number two, which makes McKay a rare breed. Any record that gives a fully rounded picture of such a magnificently weird and dazzlingly talented human being is worth fighting for. I can’t say that Pretty Little Head is a surprise – it’s just as good as McKay’s debut, and if she can keep standing up for her own delightful perspective on life and music, then she’s bound for a rewarding career, and we’re in for a fun ride.

Next week, probably Joanna Newsom, among other new records.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So I just got back from a quick trip to the comic book store. Since I order all my books from the fantastic Casablanca Comics in Windham, Maine, I don’t find myself in my local shop all that often, and I never buy anything, which annoys the proprietors no end. So my visits are usually quick, and fueled by curiosity more than anything else – “Wow, so that’s what that book I’ve already paid for looks like,” like that.

Today’s visit was shorter than usual, on account of the pontificating nerds at the counter. My little hobby suffers under the weight of so many stereotypes that it’s just crushing to run into those cliches in the flesh. After a quick round of name-dropping (“Hey, I know Jim Lee!” “Oh yeah? Well I met George Perez!”), they launched into their critique of modern comics. I swear to you, one of them actually said this:

“I like good stories, with good dialogue. That’s why I read New Avengers.”

Convincing people that there are well-crafted, literary comics that don’t include a single muscle-bound moron or overly well-endowed bimbo in tights is hard enough without people like this running around, seriously believing that New Avengers is the pinnacle of the medium. And when they got around to the topic of super-hero movies (“Elektra’s not bad at all!”), I had to bolt. I’m a snobby snob, I admit, but jeez…

Anyway. I have a rare day off today, so I’m taking advantage of it, in the hopes of snagging a free weekend. Reviews in a second, but first, one very important addition to last week’s column, specifically the list of new records I’m looking forward to. I completely forgot the November 20 release of Raising Your Voice… Trying to Stop an Echo, the new one from the amazing Hammock. Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson make some of the prettiest noise you’ll ever hear, and their second full-length is being released by Darla, the home of Cockteau Twin Robin Guthrie, so that’s all good. Sorry for forgetting, and thanks to Chris L’Etolie for reminding me.

Now, onward. This week’s column is brought to you by the letter W:

* * * * *

So the biggest news of the week, music-wise, is undoubtedly the release of Endless Wire, the first new album by the Who since 1982’s It’s Hard. Cash-grab reunion tours are nothing new for the Who, but this is the first time in more than two decades that Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey have made a whole album together under the band’s name, and even with the undercurrent of filthy lucre, I was still interested to see what they came up with.

Now, I’ve never been on the Townshend train as much as many of my fellow critics. I like the Who, but I’ve always found their work to be both simple and overblown, if that mixture makes any sense. Tommy and Quadrophenia are both massive conceptual pieces, true enough, but the songs that comprise them are little more than ditties most of the time, and the lyrics are almost amusingly blunt. In short, subtlety, thy name is not Townshend.

Still, I was fascinated to hear what a 21st Century Who might sound like. Dr. Tony Shore (him again!) got an early version, and warned me away from Endless Wire, telling me in no uncertain terms that it sucked out loud. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Your Who collection will be complete without needing to buy this.” But did I listen? Of course not.

As much as it pains me to say so, Dr. Shore was right. Endless Wire is terrible.

I seriously believe that any positive review of this record is tempered by affection for Townshend and Daltrey. Half of the original band is now dead, and the two survivors are coasting on a tremendous amount of good will for this project, but honestly, by no objective standard is this a good album. It doesn’t deserve the four stars it’s getting in most major publications. It doesn’t even deserve two.

The first half of the album is simply embarrassing. It opens with “Fragments,” a half-assed “Baba O’Riley” that cops the oscillating synth sound, but none of the energy. The virulent anti-religion ode “A Man in a Purple Dress” is as subtle as getting a cathedral dropped on you, though obviously Townshend thinks he’s being profound. Nearly every song is based on acoustic guitars – only “It’s Not Enough” rocks with any authority, and even that stretches its simple riff to the breaking point.

When Daltrey sings, the material is at least passable, but when Townshend takes the mic, as on “In the Ether,” things turn unlistenable. He’s pretty much lost his tone, and on “Ether” he sounds like Tom Waits with a sinus infection. Townshend also sings perhaps the most sickeningly sweet thing here, “You Stand By Me,” which is obviously a letter to Daltrey – when Townshend was indicted on child porn charges a few years ago, Daltrey became his staunchest defender. But Townshend could have just sent this tune to him in a letter, instead of inflicting it on us.

The second half fares better, but only slightly. It’s taken up entirely by a 10-song “mini-opera” called “Wire and Glass,” and it could have been a bit more mini, to be honest. The opus seems to be about the transformational power of music, but its plot is so silly that I won’t even relate it here. “Trilby’s Piano” takes the award for least likely to inspire repeat listens, but it’s got a lot of fierce competition. The opera even reprises “Fragments,” and it’s just as bad a second time.

Really, this album is pretty awful. I said this when I trashed Weezer last year, but listen to this record, and imagine it’s the demo tape from a new band. Then answer honestly if you think Universal would let this in the door. This only happened because of the music industry’s affection for the Who, even though that band no longer exists. Endless Wire is pretty much awful all the way through, and at 19 songs (plus two bonus tracks), I have to say they got the first part of the title right, at least. Avoid at all costs.

* * * * *

I cannot, under my own criteria, explain how much I enjoy the Walkmen.

They are a messy, unrestrained, often amelodic quintet fronted by a guy who can’t sing at all, and they make raucous noise full of energy but not much else. And yet, every time I put on a Walkmen album, I’m wrapped up in the spell they cast, the odd house-of-cards atmosphere that surrounds everything they do. Even Hamilton Leithauser, the aforementioned frontman, manages to win me over to his caterwauling each time, somehow.

Still, I thought A Hundred Miles Off, their third album from earlier this year, wasn’t much to sing about. It didn’t have quite the memorable songs ratio that their prior effort, Bows and Arrows, sported, and I never even got around to reviewing it, despite liking quite a bit of it. I was especially fond of the pulverizing “Tenleytown” and the near-awesome “Lost in Boston,” in retrospect, but I just never moved the album to the top of the pile.

So why am I writing about them now? Well, who could have known that their second album of 2006, a song-for-song cover of Harry Nilsson’s Pussy Cats album from 1974, would be the best Walkmen record yet? I sure didn’t, and I only picked this up for the same reason I bought Endless Wire – I have all the others, and I may as well complete the collection.

But man, I’m glad I bought this one. Pussy Cats is a strange choice for an homage – it was recorded with John Lennon, during the latter’s famous “lost weekend” in ’74 (incidentally the year I was born), and as legend has it, Nilsson’s vocal cords ruptured before the sessions started, but he didn’t want to disappoint Lennon, so he pressed onward. The result is a ramshackle collection of covers and minor originals, and you can hear Nilsson’s voice get progressively worse as the album spins.

It turns out, though, that Pussy Cats is a perfect choice for the Walkmen, and not the least of the reasons why is that Leithauser’s voice already has the ragged quality of the original. Like their first three records, Pussy Cats Starring the Walkmen almost seems to fall apart while you’re listening to it, and the band has captured the spirit of the original record just by being themselves. That said, the variety of styles here sends the Walkmen to new places, and brings new colors to their palette.

The covers on Pussy Cats aren’t exactly an encyclopedia of brilliance. The record kicks off with Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers to Cross,” and also includes Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” Doc Pomus’ “Save the Last Dance for Me,” and the children’s song “Loop de Loop.” But the Walkmen understand why these songs were chosen, and infuse them with just as much frivolous fun as Nilsson and Lennon did. Often, the new covers are note-for-note versions of the original covers, if that makes sense.

Nilsson’s original songs on Pussy Cats weren’t his best, but the Walkmen take on the piano ballad “Don’t Forget Me” like they wrote it, and do wonders with “Black Sails,” a foreboding song that barely seems to fit here. But then, that’s the charm of Pussy Cats – nothing about it seems to fit. It’s a bunch of odds and ends, recorded for the fun of it, and in this new version, the Walkmen haven’t so much constructed a shrine to the album as they have thrown their own Pussy Cats party.

I always thought it strange when bands would choose nearly-flawless classic albums to interpret in the studio. Why would anyone want someone else’s version of The Dark Side of the Moon, for example, when Pink Floyd’s is readily available, if not overexposed? I’ve often wondered why bands don’t take on lesser records, ones that for whatever reason didn’t quite work out the first time, or never got the respect they deserved. With Pussy Cats, the Walkmen haven’t quite done that – the experience of their version and Nilsson’s isn’t that far apart – but they have shone an interesting spotlight on a near-forgotten record, and shown why they love it. Pussy Cats Starring the Walkmen is a surprise, and a delight from start to finish.

* * * * *

Seeing Woven Hand was one of the most intense live music experiences of my life.

The band is essentially David Eugene Edwards, formerly of 16 Horsepower, and his small armada of stringed instruments, from guitars to dobros to mandolins. Ordy Garrison joins in on drums on some of the more powerful pieces, but trust me that your eyes and ears will be locked on Edwards. He strums and shouts and spits, and all of a sudden, you’re in the deep south in the early days of America, and you’re listening to ballads about hellfire and God’s judgment, and you can feel the flames licking cold stone and the earth beneath your feet as you wrap your flimsy blanket about you and try not to think about where your soul is headed.

Woven Hand makes spooky, spooky music, and their fourth album, Mosaic, is perhaps their most claustrophobic and chilling yet. Edwards is no less intense on record, and the layering of sound a studio allows him only makes his work more spine-tingling. But let’s be clear – this is not Halloween-style silly-scary son-of-Satan stuff here, this is the real thing, fire and brimstone from an evangelical Christian wrapped up in seriously frightening soundscapes.

It’s also amazing, and unlike anything else you’ll hear this year. In the past, Edwards has stuck close to Appalachian folk styles, twisted to his own ends, but here, he’s all over the place, using choirs of backing vocals and pianos to fill out the sound. “Whistling Girl” is one of his finest songs, and one of the few that allows some light to spill in. Elsewhere, though, Edwards constructs elaborate tunnels of sound (“Twig,” “Elktooth”) and preaches over them, his fiery voice cutting through everything.

The lyrics are, as usual, cryptic Old Testament sermons, full of references to thorny woods and thundering skies, signs of God’s wrath. It’s no coincidence that the sunniest thing here, “Bible and Bird,” is an instrumental, and it leads directly into “Dirty Blue,” one of the most explosive on the album: “You’re curled up warm in your own little corner of Sodom, did you agree to believe this fall has no bottom?” The album has an apocalyptic feel to it, and it leaves you drained, physically and spiritually. I’m often interested to get inside the heads of my favorite artists, but I’m a little frightened of what it must be like to be David Eugene Edwards.

Still, he makes captivating music, and Mosaic is his finest achievement yet, the most complete realization of his bone-chilling vision. Unlike most records that promise thrills and chills, Mosaic will scare the bejesus out of you, but it will also leave you in awe of Edwards’ talent and intensity. He’s following his own path through the darkened woods, and though you may not want to follow him where he’s going, you’ll want to hear the songs he sings along the way.

* * * * *

Next week, new ones from Copeland and Nellie McKay, most likely.

See you in line Tuesday morning.