At the bottom of this week’s column, you’ll find my first quarter report for 2007. I’ve decided that since it was such a hit last year, I’m going to keep posting early drafts of my top 10 list as the year progresses. If nothing else, I find going back to the early ones pretty amusing, especially after the final list is written.

I’m mentioning it up front, though, because you won’t find my current favorite record of the year on that list. That’s because it’s not out yet – I heard it through the band’s MySpace site, and so can you. Anyone who was near a radio in the mid-‘90s remembers this band, and it’s kind of amazing to me that I’m about to recommend their disc above all others I’ve heard, but here it is.

The band is Silverchair.

That’s right, the erstwhile Pearl Jam tribute band. Believe it or not, they’ve grown up into pop geniuses, especially leader Daniel Johns, who proved his worth as a songwriter on 2005’s Dissociatives project. This guy is incredible – the melodies on Silverchair’s new album, Young Modern, go every direction except the one you’d expect, and every song’s a keeper.

I’ll put up a full review next week, along with my thoughts on the new Fountains of Wayne, but for now, check out Silverchair’s site. You can hear the whole record for free, right now. If you only remember Silverchair for their grunge-heavy hits from the days of flannel, prepare to be blown away.

Meanwhile, here are some other albums I heard this week, including another contender for the year-end list. I’ll save that one for last. We begin with a minstrel. Well, he’s not really a minstrel, but he plays one on TV…

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Grant-Lee Phillips may be named after two opposing Civil War generals, but there’s nothing conflicted about his music. For more than a decade, he’s trafficked in confident, propulsive American pop, both on his own and with his old band, Grant Lee Buffalo. I’m not sure he even could sound uncertain – he has one of those voices that just convinces you to believe in whatever he’s singing.

Phillips has taken a couple of interesting detours lately. His last original album, 2004’s Virginia Creeper, wound down a knotty acoustic path, and last year, he gave us Nineteeneighties, a set of stripped-down covers of ‘80s tunes, like “Wave of Mutilation” and “So. Central Rain.” These were neat records, but I longed for a return to thicker production and meatier songwriting.

And here it is. Phillips has called his fifth solo album Strangelet, but there’s nothing strange about it. The album is 12 straightforward, strummed pop tunes with a bevy of beautiful embellishments. “Dream in Color,” for example, is a classic Grant-Lee tune, low-key and bright, with sweet strings and horns all over it. It’s like the second coming of “Hummingbirds,” and I love it.

Phillips maintains his twangy charm on songs like “Hidden Hand,” a mostly acoustic number that sounds like an old standard, but he reaches for the Beatles references he’s ignored for too long on tunes like “Chain Lightning.” His voice is in top form here, occasionally sounding like a more sedate Mike Peters.

As much as I enjoy his more upbeat tunes, it’s the slower, moodier ones here that really do it for me. “Same Blue Devils” is terrific, a languid electric piano piece augmented by a great string line. And “Killing a Dead Man” may be the highlight, a dusty blues with a weeping cello and some great rasping by Phillips.

The record turns more traditional by its end, with closer “So Much” offering a pleasant wave goodbye instead of a grand finale. And that’s the biggest problem I have with Strangelet – it doesn’t really present itself as anything significant. It’s just 12 pretty good songs, performed pretty well, and in a year like this, that’s not enough to bring out the superlatives.

But if you’ve ever liked Phillips before, you’ll like this. And if you only know him from his recurring role as the Stars Hollow minstrel on Gilmore Girls, well, this is a good place to start checking out his day job. Strangelet isn’t anything earth-shattering, but it is a good way to while away 48 minutes and not feel like you’ve wasted any of them.

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The indie purists are gonna hate me for this comparison, but it’s true: Ted Leo is what Joe Jackson could have been, had he not discovered the piano and a taste for jazz.

Since the 1980s, Leo has been writing and playing melodic guitar-pop, the kind Jackson made on his first three albums. But where Jackson drifted off into some (admittedly fascinating) orchestral dimensions, Leo’s sound has rarely changed – he’s still making guitar-bass-drums rock music with a hummable pop twist.

Leo convened his current rhythm section, the Pharmacists, in 1999, leading them with his semi-snarky (and very Joe Jackson) voice and his knack for catchy guitar riffs. The band’s last album, 2004’s Shake the Sheets, was a virtual riff monster, a consistently enjoyable slab of punky, danceable rock ‘n’ roll. There are no frills on a Ted Leo album, nothing to distract you from the songs themselves, and on Shake the Sheets, the songs were marvelous.

The same is not always true of Living with the Living, Leo’s fifth album with the Pharmacists. It’s hard to tell what’s disappointing about this album, since it sounds almost exactly like the others. It just seems like the spark isn’t quite there this time.

Living isn’t quite a clone of the first four records. Leo has taken some neat detours here, most notably “A Bottle of Buckie,” a nifty folk song that sounds like the Goo Goo Dolls playing an Irish pub. (Buckie is the nickname for Buckfast Tonic Wine, produced in southwest England.)

That song is so sweet that it leaves you unprepared for the next track, “Bomb Repeat Bomb,” with its explosive guitars and Rage-like political shouting. It’s louder and more aggressive than anything Leo has ever done, and a definite highlight of this record. Also worth noting is “The Unwanted Things,” which incorporates a heavy reggae influence. (Again, like Joe Jackson…)

But elsewhere, it’s business as usual for Leo, and this time, business isn’t quite as good. “La Costa Brava” stretches its two-chord framework over an endless six minutes, a malady that afflicts much of the back half of the record. Ted Leo is very good at writing catchy three-minute tunes, but when he tries his hand at six-minute power ballads like “The Toro and the Toreador,” the results are decidedly mixed. And stretching a groovy ditty like closer “C.I.A.” to six and a half minutes is nearly criminal.

In the end, Living with the Living is something of a chore to sit all the way through. It’s more than an hour long, and its bonus EP, Mo’ Living, is more of the same, without much life to it. I want to like this more than I do, because Ted Leo has a way of making simple little rock songs sing, but here he just plods along, workmanlike, for a distressing percentage of the running time, and it’s a bit of a bore.

As with any no-frills artist, Ted Leo albums rise and fall on the songwriting. When he’s on here, as he is on delights like “Colleen” and “The World Stops Turning,” the melodies carry the day, but there aren’t enough tunes like these two to match the unbeatable Shake the Sheets. Leo didn’t do anything wrong here, per se, and his fans will still like this record, but there’s definitely something missing, and I hope he finds it before pressing the record button again.

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Almost as an antidote to the same-old same-old of Ted Leo, here comes Duluth, Minnesota’s Low with an album quite unlike anything else they’ve done, or in fact anything else I’ve heard. It’s called Drums and Guns, and it’s one of the most harrowing albums of the year so far.

Low has always been about minimalism, but this album takes that aesthetic to a new level. Gone are the sonic embellishments of The Great Destroyer, and in their place is a creepy, skeletal, twitchy bed of nails, one that underscores the darkness of the anti-war poetry that nests in this album’s soul. Many of these songs sound like wailing prayers, framed by stuttering percussion and deep rivers of organ and bass.

Drums and Guns is unsettling, in the best way. It’s been a while since an album has shaken me as much as this one does. It opens with a feedback dirge called “Pretty People,” over which Alan Sparhawk chants, “All you pretty people, you’re all gonna die…” That leads into “Belarus,” which sets the sonic template – a repeated piano note, a thin layer of vocals, some pattering percussion, and the twin voices of Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, harmonizing in the right channel. The whole album is panned hard to one side or the other, usually drums in the left, vocals in the right.

The lyrics are just as unnerving, and often just as minimal. “Belarus” goes like this: “To my mouth, frozen shut, mother’s son, paper cup, pressing light, brighter sound, black and white, fading now…” Aside from eight repetitions of the title word, that’s it. But the effect is hypnotic. “My hand just kills and kills,” Sparhawk moans in “Breaker,” and it sends chills. The Eastern harmonies in “Sandinista” will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

There’s hardly any respite, no steady ground to stand on. “Breaker” is a handclap, a foot stomp, an organ, some feedback and vocals, and that’s all – it gives you nothing to hold onto, nowhere to hide. Drums and Guns is rarely an enjoyable listen, but it is a mesmerizing one. Just listen to the sparse crawl of “Dust on the Window” to hear just how beautiful ugliness can be.

Like a shaft of light breaking through, “Hatchet” provides a single moment of brightness on this dark, woodsy jaunt. Its riff, though spare, is almost funky, and the song revolves around the line, “Let’s bury the hatchet like the Beatles and the Stones.” It’s two minutes long, and it barely fits in here, but as a breather, it’s welcome. After the minute-long, mostly a cappella “Your Poison,” we’re right back in the darkness for the rest of the album.

“Take Your Time” is a masterpiece, its thudding piano nearly drowned in waves of ambience as Sparhawk tells the tale of a prayerful girl working on a mysterious stain. The words “take your time, sweet thing” have never sounded creepier. The final three songs almost sound like bonus tracks after this thing, even though they are no less shiver-inducing.

“In Silence” is almost the mission statement of the record, a song of hope that builds and builds to a powerful climax. “They thought the desert would divide us, they filled our hearts and hands with violence, it’s time to leave the fields behind us, in silence…” It’s gorgeous. The final two songs put lie to its redemptive tone, however – “Murderer” finds the singer offering his services to God, standing ready to do his “dirty work,” and “Violent Past” ends the record on a note of hopelessness. It’s all a cycle, violence begets violence, and it’s inescapable. Forever and ever, amen.

Drums and Guns covers a wide breadth, and all of that in 41 minutes. It is, sonically, the most fascinating album of the year thus far, and lyrically, a powerful statement in miniature about the planet we all share. This is an incredibly brave record – it sounds nothing like anything else out there right now, and very little like Low, either. But it is the only album I’ve heard thus far in 2007 that sounds birthed from necessity, like it simply had to be made, and made this way. It’s astonishing.

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Which brings us to the 1st quarter report, and it’s no surprise that the Low album made its way onto the list at the 11th hour. The rest should be no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention over the past three months. It’s only the order of the entries that I struggled with.

The coolest thing? It’s only the end of March, and I would stack this list up against the final drafts from several of the previous years of this column. Best year ever. Here’s the list:

#10. Menomena, Friend and Foe.
#9. Joy Electric, The Otherly Opus.
#8. Bloc Party, A Weekend in the City.
#7. Loney, Dear, Loney, Noir.
#6. Low, Drums and Guns.
#5. Modest Mouse, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank.
#4. Explosions in the Sky, All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone.
#3. Aqualung, Memory Man.
#2. The Arcade Fire, Neon Bible.
#1. The Shins, Wincing the Night Away.

As I said earlier, this will change next week, when Silverchair comes out. Plus, I’m expecting new ones from Fountains of Wayne, Marillion, Jonatha Brooke, Nine Inch Nails, Bjork, Wilco, and numerous others that could land on this list before long. Check with me in three months and we’ll see where we are.

Next week, Young Modern and Traffic and Weather.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

And the deaths just keep on coming this year. I just heard that Drew Hayes, creator of Poison Elves, succumbed to a heart attack earlier this week.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, Poison Elves was a comic book about a nasty, nasty elf named Lusiphur. Drew Hayes, a physically imposing and yet, by all accounts, incredibly nice man with a knack for detailed linework, wrote, drew and self-published Poison Elves for 20 issues. Then he hooked up with publisher Sirius Entertainment and wrote and drew 79 more.

It’s been years since we’ve seen a new Poison Elves issue, and more than once, I’d thought that stopping with #79 was a cruel joke – if you add the self-published issues, then Drew got to #99, just one shy of that magical one hundred. Rumors of ill health abounded for years, and Hayes spent some time in the hospital, but in his public statements, he remained upbeat. His heart attack came after a long bout with pneumonia, just as he had been discussing re-starting Poison Elves. He was only 37.

Even at its best, Poison Elves was crude, full of typos and sketchy backgrounds. But it also had a phenomenal energy, and was obviously the work of a committed creator. I met Drew a couple of times while working on Tapestry, and he had even agreed to do a cover for our ninth issue. We never got past issue six, so I never got to see what Drew would have done with our characters, unfortunately.

Sirius has kept the Poison Elves universe alive in recent years with a number of ancillary books, including Lost Tales, Ventures and Dominion. But without Drew Hayes, it just wasn’t the same. And now, it never will be again. So long, Drew. You’ll be missed.

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On to happier things. If you need further proof that 2007 is the best year in a long time for new music, well, my plan today is to provide that proof. It hardly matters what kind of music you like, this year has slaked your thirst and then some. This week I have new records for people who dig indie rock, piano balladry, epic metal and electro-pop, and they’re all superb. If you read music reviews for the witty bitching about the state of the music industry, you may want to check somewhere else, because I’m all smiles right now.

We’ll start with the most anticipated, and most discussed, of our fantastic four: Modest Mouse. Truth be told, I’ve never been a huge fan of Isaac Brock and his crew, especially their early work. This is the kind of admission that can get my membership in the Snotty Music Reviewers Club revoked, but I can still, to this day, barely get through all of their ass-aching debut, This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About. (In my house, it is alternately known as This is a Long Record for Someone with Nothing to Sing About.)

But like any good band, Modest Mouse has grown progressively better, often by giant steps. Follow-up The Lonesome Crowded West was much better, if still a little sparse and overly long, and breakthrough The Moon and Antarctica was even better than that. Then came 2004’s ubiquitous Good News for People who Love Bad News, the band’s biggest leap away from their roots and into fascinating new musical styles. Even if you don’t think you have, you’ve heard “Float On,” the massive hit from that album, and the new textures (coupled with the newfound popularity) incensed some fans and critics.

Naturally, it was my favorite Modest Mouse album. I say “was” because the new one, blessed with the extraordinary title We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, has supplanted it. To my mind, there’s no question that We Were Dead is the finest Modest Mouse record to date, and the first one I can unreservedly recommend.

As you’ve probably guessed, that means We Were Dead leaps even further away from their scrappy rock roots. If you liked Good News, well, good news: this album dives wholeheartedly into glorious, lush production, and expands the group’s songwriting further into the realms of epic pop. To these ears, We Were Dead sounds like the funeral party for the Lonesome Crowded West band, and though some will mourn, I think it’s an unqualified good thing.

I’m not sure how much of the new sound is attributable to Modest Mouse’s newest member, former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr. But I can tell you this – the band has never produced anything like the liquid guitar tones on “Fire it Up,” or like the shimmering melodies of “Little Motel.” The album squonks to life with “March Into the Sea,” an accordion-driven beast that finds Brock making Cookie Monster noises, but before long, “Dashboard” takes over, its dance beat and clipped six-string lines making it the perfect first single.

Most of the record vacillates between those two poles, Brock shouting over controlled mayhem one minute and delivering sweet singalongs the next. The astonishing “Parting of the Sensory” hits all the spots at once, starting with a slinky crawl and building to a grand breakdown, complete with tribal drums. “Florida” finds Brock doing a dynamite David Byrne impression over a pounding backdrop. “We’ve Got Everything” perfects the dance beat style, taking from new wave as much as from classic indie rock. And the great “Spitting Venom” takes its sea shanty framework and expands it into an eight-minute wonder, with shining clean guitars weaving in between subdued horn lines. It’s the first of the Mouse’s longer songs that I think earns the extra space.

Shins leader James Mercer guests on vocals on three songs, and wow, what a contribution he makes. He’s especially effective on the aforementioned “We’ve Got Everything,” providing high countermelodies and a great bit where he’s repeating “We’ve got, we’ve got” as the band shimmies and shakes behind him. I’m in a real Shins mood lately – their excellent Wincing the Night Away is still my favorite record of the year – so Mercer’s appearance here was a nice surprise.

But it’s Brock’s show, and he’s stepped up with the best songs of his career. We Were Dead is Modest Mouse’s most consistent album, and unlike the endless drone of Long Drive and other early works, this album pulls you along in its current. You won’t even notice its 62-minute running time. I can fully understand the bad reviews of this record from the more indie-minded publications – this is the most polished, shiny, squeaky-clean album the band has ever made. It’s also the best, and if, like me, you’ve been waiting for Brock to grab hold of his potential and realize it, then buckle up and take the dive, because he’s done it.

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Matt Hales calls himself Aqualung. I don’t understand it, I don’t agree with it, and I think of Jethro Tull every time I hear someone say it. But there it is – somehow, Hales has picked the worst possible name for himself, considering what he does. (Okay, something like Fuckbutcher would probably be worse, but you know what I mean.)

The shame of the name is that Hales is a great piano-pop songwriter, in the modern Brit-pop tradition. He has the charm and melodic sense of Coldplay (and now that I think about it, I guess Coldplay is a stupid name, too) and the same love of atmosphere that Marillion brings to their work. (Marillion’s not that great of a name either. Maybe it’s just the Brits. They also gave us Mansun, Echobelly, Menswear… yeah, it’s the Brits.)

Sticking with the odd names, Hales has titled his just-released third album Memory Man, after an effects module that can create analog-sounding delay and reverb. That little box with knobs on it above his keyboard on the cover? That’s a Memory Man.

Americans have never really heard an Aqualung album. Hales’ first U.S. release was Strange and Beautiful, a compilation of the 12 best tracks from his first two albums, Aqualung and Still Life. Like most compilations, Strange had no dead spots, but since I’ve never heard the two albums it drew from, I wondered what Hales’ hit-to-miss ratio would be when delivering 11 new songs all at once. As it turns out, it’s pretty damn good – Memory Man is pretty much extraordinary from the first note.

The first thing you’ll notice about this new album is how sonically rich it is. Opener “Cinderella” takes its cues from Radiohead (by which I mean good, early period Radiohead, not later period, self-indulgent ass party Radiohead), throwing in a brass section and, in one breathtaking section, a choir. It’s enormous, and yet still delicate, like the best of Hales’ work. First single “Pressure Suit” is superb – what could have been a simple, bare ballad becomes a masterpiece thanks to some great production, and Hales’ falsetto carries the melody beautifully.

“Something to Believe In” is as close as Hales comes to rocking, with its insistent beat and sharp chorus. But most of Memory Man is given over to fragile, graceful ballads, like the grand “Glimmer” and the gentle, almost creepy “The Lake.” Hales takes on a soulful tone with “Rolls So Deep,” backed by a gospel choir. Two songs later, he’s defying gravity on “Black Hole,” a thick, oscillating number that revolves around the line “If love is not the answer, then maybe I misunderstood the question…”

Like Modest Mouse, Aqualung includes a guest vocalist – Paul Buchanan of the Blue Nile sings on “Garden of Love,” which could easily be a Blue Nile song. Like his special guest, Hales writes sweet little epics that take time to sink in, and “Garden of Love” is perhaps the least immediate of these tunes. But give it a few listens, and its beauty becomes undeniable, especially when Buchanan comes in over Hales’ rolling piano chords, which build to a massive climax. It’s a great little moment.

Memory Man concludes with perhaps its most affecting song, “Broken Bones.” Played with just piano and voice, it is a plaintive plea for grace. Its first half sounds like it was recorded through an old radio system, far away and doused in static, with occasional noisy breaks as the signal cuts out. Before long, though, Hales is right next to you, playing and singing his heart out on a piano that seems to drop out of tune here and there, adding to the effect. “This world is burning and I’m terrified,” he sings. “I need a little more time with you.”

Against the odds, Memory Man is actually a better album than Strange and Beautiful, with a better batting average. Hales has turned in his finest work here, and if your tastes range towards the peaceful and heartbreaking, I’d recommend picking this up. It takes a lot to get me to look past a name like Aqualung, but Hales is a terrific songwriter and record maker. Don’t let a lousy sobriquet keep you away from his work.

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Pretty high on the list of Bands People Can’t Believe I Like is Type O Negative.

How to explain what I love about them? Type O is often pegged as a Black Sabbath tribute band, but this is only partly true. The quartet does take their slow-as-death crawl and riff-heavy style from Sabbath, but they also take liberally from the Beatles, from gothic music, from hardcore, and from a hundred other sources. When they mix all this up with fantastic production and an ever-present sense of black humor, the result is usually both musically fascinating and completely enjoyable.

No question, Type O is a dark, dark band, at least on the surface. Listen more closely, though, and you’ll realize that these are the guys who crack up at funerals, who laugh at death and despair because it’s better than succumbing to it. They first drew national attention with “Black #1,” a song that was somehow embraced by the goth-music community, despite its taking the piss out of the whole goth scene. Type O records deal with drug abuse, misery, pain and, of course, death – lots and lots of death – but they do so with a whistling-past-the-graveyard kind of wryness that I find inexplicably appealing.

The band’s seventh album has a very Type O title, Dead Again, and a very Type O cover picture, an all-green shot of Russian mystic Gregori Rasputin, who was assassinated in 1916. The CD jacket folds out into a cross, and the four band members are not pictured, though they are depicted as skeletons in coffins. They’re in on this joke, folks – the Type O boys will never let you forget they’re just a bunch of goofballs from Brooklyn.

But one thing that’s never a joke is the quality of the band’s music. On the heels of the quirky, shorter pop songs of Life is Killing Me, Dead Again features 10 songs over 77 minutes, and hails the return of the band’s epic side. It also includes some of the heaviest, fastest material the band has released since its debut back in 1991. Don’t be fooled by the crawling, sludgy intro to the title track – one minute in, Johnny Kelly’s drums explode with fury, and bassist/singer/giant freaking man Peter Steele is shouting at himself, condemning his own drug problem: “First to admit I’m a doomed drug addict, and I always will be…”

From there, the band launches into some of its finest longer songs. “Tripping a Blind Man” takes its Sabbath core and tears it apart, with delirious harmonies all over the chorus. “The Profit of Doom” (love that title) snakes its way through a dozen movements and styles, and “September Sun” starts off with a cheesy piano part (a la “Changes” on Black Sabbath Vol. 4), but soon morphs into a trademark Type O heavy ballad, with slow chords and winding, oddly lovely vocals.

The album does include a few shorter corkers as well, including “Halloween in Heaven,” a stomper about dead musicians, and “Some Stupid Tomorrow,” the closest the band has come to real hardcore since maybe “Kill All the White People.” But the heart of the record is in its masterful longer tracks. The longest of them is “These Three Things,” a song that begins with a verse condemning abortion, the clearest sign of Steele’s recently regained Catholic faith. The song itself is a stunner, 14 minutes of confident, thick, powerful Type O goodness. (Listen for the “Hey Jude” quote right around minute 12, just where you’d least expect it.)

I suppose I can’t really explain why I love Type O Negative. Some of it is Steele’s lower-than-low voice, complete with self-mocking rolls on the Rs, but some of it is the great production by keyboardist Josh Silver, and some of it is just the pure musicianship of the quartet. Type O records are silly, yet deadly serious at the same time – they’re no joke, but every once in a while, amidst all the heavy riffing and dark imagery, they’ll wink at you.

Dead Again is a classic Type O record – ironically, the band sounds more alive here than on their past couple of albums, and they’ve turned in one of their best sets. Everything that makes this band special is here, infused with some of their most energetic and incendiary playing in a long time. Every Type O album is rumored to be the final Type O album, but if they were, in fact, to go out with this one, it would be a great way to finish up. For newbies, it’s also a great place to start.

* * * * *

Which brings us to Joy Electric. I’ve gone on at length before about Ronnie Martin’s brainchild and what makes it special, so I’ll summarize here – Martin writes dazzling pop songs, tunes that would be hits if he played them with an electric guitar, and then records them using nothing but analog synthesizers. The result is like nothing else. It’s quirky, gurgling and initially quite odd, but it’s also unfailingly melodic, well-crafted and brilliant.

If you don’t like synthesizers, you’ll probably listen to the Joy E discography (10 albums, eight EPs and one box set, and counting) and hear sameness. It takes a while to break into Martin’s pocket universe, but once you’re there, you can hear the obvious, amazing progression his work has undergone. In recent years, he’s perfected his pop-punk-synth hybrid (2004’s Hello, Mannequin) and set out into uncharted waters with last year’s percussive, creepy The Ministry of Archers. He’s working exclusively with Moog synths now, and his range of sound has opened up considerably.

Album 10 is called The Otherly Opus, and it’s one of the most daring evolutions Martin has attempted. Opus is a vocal album – the instrumentation is almost minimal, with little of the swirling synth lines that characterized some of his earlier work. In their place is layer upon layer of stacked, harmonized vocals, sometimes a dozen or more tracks worth, filling in the spaces and carrying the melodies. Many songs begin with a capella sections, something Martin’s never done before.

Amazingly, it works. I say amazingly because vocals have always been Martin’s weakest point. It took him more than 10 years of albums and live shows to get his voice in the shape it’s in now – listen to Melody and Robot Rock to hear how weak it used to be. His vocals still have a thin, breathy quality, but he puts surprising force behind them, and it’s especially strong when he overdubs them into a near-choir. Even his solo vocal turn in “Write Your Last Paragraph” here finds his voice in good shape – we turned our backs for a second and he’s become a singer on us.

Just listen to the awesome vocal melodies on “The Memory of Alpha,” the original title track to this album. He repeats “memory” several times, adding harmonies, until the chorus explodes with counterpoints and “ah-ah” bits. It’s great stuff. I reviewed “Red Will Dye These Snows of Silver” before, when it was released as the single, but man, those “oh-oh” sections are awesome. “Ponderance Need Not Know” is probably my favorite here, largely due to the sweet vocal lines, and Martin’s voice simply shines on the closing melancholy ballad “A Glass to Count All the Hours.”

With the spotlight on the vocals, naturally the lyrics are in focus more than ever, and Martin has stepped up with his trademark cryptic poetry. Dig this from “Ponderance Need Not Know”: “All the icicles from the house that hanged us, I realize they still melt on us, you decline to reach for the apparatus, I cry as they carry you out…” His words, as always, reward careful readings, but they’re never as direct and accessible as his melodies.

Despite that, my only complaint with The Otherly Opus is the same one I have with virtually every project from Ronnie and Jason (Starflyer 59) Martin – it’s too short. This album is 32 minutes, and most of the songs hover around the three-minute mark. Martin does stretch out once here, on the five-minute “The Ushering In of the Magical Era,” and it’s a highlight – he repeats one of his best vocal arrangements, building it into a near-remix by the end before dropping everything else out. It’s just great.

I don’t know if I want Martin to continue down this vocal-driven path or not. On the one hand, The Otherly Opus is superb, one of Joy E’s finest releases, and I wouldn’t mind hearing more like it. But on the other, Ronnie Martin has proven himself to be a restless artist, always looking for new directions and new angles, and I’m excited to hear what he comes up with next. He’s said that his 11th album could be out by the end of the year, and whatever style he chooses, he’ll remain one of the most visionary performers we have, continuing to author a catalog driven by no outside trends or market forces. Ronnie Martin’s Joy Electric is one of a kind, and The Otherly Opus is another simply fantastic album.

* * * * *

Next week, Grant Lee Phillips, and my first quarter report. Did I mention it’s been an amazing year so far?

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I was going to do this anyway.

Last week, I had just barely heard about the death of Brad Delp, lead singer of Boston, before finishing and posting my column. I wrote a perfunctory farewell nestled at the end of last week’s missive, but it felt rushed, and I knew I wanted to do more.

Like I said, I was going to do this anyway, but then the news broke that Delp’s death had been a suicide. Apparently, the man had set up a pair of charcoal grills in his house, and killed himself with their fumes. He left a series of notes, calling himself a “lonely soul” and saying he had “lost his desire to live.” And the same conflicted mess of feelings I get whenever someone commits suicide washed over me, mostly anger and sadness in equal measure.

So now it’s become even more important to me to do this, to celebrate Delp’s work and its impact on me as a young man. Longtime readers will know that I was a teenage metalhead, with long-ish hair and a deep respect for the ouvre of Megadeth. But what you may not know is that one of the first real pop albums I heard and fell in love with was Boston’s 1986 opus, Third Stage.

Boston gets a lot of shit. They’re slammed routinely as a corporate rock band, purveyors of a certain slick sound that infected AOR radio in the wake of their hit songs. I said this last week, but seriously – there never was a less corporate rock band than Boston, and the stack of lawsuits filed by pissed-off record company execs should prove it. In their heyday, they wrote glossy rock songs and ballads with soaring choruses, but they didn’t do it in that Night Ranger way. Tom Scholz and Brad Delp were artists, crafting a signature sound, and it’s not their fault that a hundred godawful bands copied that sound.

Boston seemed to be well on their way to a successful mainstream rock career in 1978. Their second album, Don’t Look Back, was another smash, including such soon-to-be radio staples as “Feelin’ Satisfied” and “It’s Easy.” These joined the mega-hits from their self-titled 1976 debut, including the great “Long Time” (preceded, always, by the dazzling organ instrumental “Foreplay”), “Peace of Mind” and the seemingly ubiquitous “More Than a Feeling.” These are songs that end up on every one of those Sounds of the ‘70s collections, and it’s easy to forget that the first two Boston discs are really great little records.

Naturally, the record company (Epic) was hoping that Boston would follow the same formula of success that most of their artists had – make a new record every two years, one that sounds just like the first two, and tour the hell out of them, raking in the cash. Instead, Tom Scholz and Brad Delp locked themselves in their home studio for six years, crafting Third Stage.

Six years. Seriously. And they worked on it the whole time, and you can tell.

I was 12 in 1986, although I didn’t hear Third Stage until a couple of years later. But when I did, it struck me as heartfelt and beautiful – I didn’t know a rock ‘n’ roll cliché back then even when it was staring me in the face, and Third Stage is full of them, but the music and Brad Delp’s vocal delivery are all feeling. Some accuse Boston of over-cooking their music, processing out all the emotion, but those people obviously have never heard Third Stage as a wide-eyed 14-year-old.

The story behind the album certainly appealed to my nerdy nature. Third Stage was recorded between 1980 and 1985, but the band used vintage equipment – 1970s guitars, amplifiers and microphones, and no synthesizers. To get the sound he wanted, Scholz invented a device called a Rockman, a precursor to the more modern effects pedals, which could make his guitar sound like ringing chimes, violins and thunderstorms.

The fact that Third Stage is a concept album also appealed to teenage me. Granted, it’s not a complex novel of staggering proportions, but it does have a narrative thread. It uses space travel as a metaphor for the beginnings and endings of relationships (the “third stage” of those old Apollo flights was “separation”), and strings together a suite of songs on the second side about learning to take responsibility for yourself before you can love someone else. Sure, it’s not The Wall or anything, but it is unquestionably a cohesive, story-driven album, meant to be heard start to finish.

After hearing of Delp’s death last week, I pulled Third Stage out and listened to it again, for the first time in years. I came away with two impressions. First, this album desperately needs remastering – the 1980s CD quality is poor when compared with anything coming out now, and especially when compared with the new versions of the first two Boston albums, released last year.

Second, this is an amazing album. Start to finish, top to bottom, one of the finest pop-rock records ever made.

I may not be the most objective source for a statement like that. I know every note and every word by heart, of course, but it surprised even me how easily I slipped back into 14-year-old me while listening to Third Stage. There’s just something unidentifiable about the sound – the guitar tones, the incredible vocal layering, the organically produced effects. It’s the soundtrack to a very particular time in my life.

The album opens with its hit song, “Amanda,” a gentle invitation of sorts. “Amanda” is, to my ears, the weakest song here, even though it runs through some gorgeous chiming guitar parts and features an ascending bridge that knocks me out. But the record really kicks off with “We’re Ready,” a mid-tempo stage-setter with some absolutely monolithic lead guitar sections. There are solos on Third Stage, but the majority of the lead work on the album consists of these meticulously crafted melodic runs, often in harmony with each other. It’s a sound that very few guitarists do as well as Tom Scholz.

And then there’s Delp, who sings his heart out on “We’re Ready.” The harmonies on “sympathize a change of seasons” send chills every time, and he pulls out the stops for the high, clear “come on” that leads into the guitar sections. As good as he was on the first couple of Boston albums, Third Stage is Delp’s showcase, especially slower songs like “My Destination” and “To Be a Man.”

The next song, however, doesn’t have Delp on it at all. It’s “The Launch,” a refinement and explosion of the spacefaring instrumental “The Journey” on Don’t Look Back. I can’t even tell you how amazing I think this tune is. It starts with barely audible organ, then lifts off with a guitar-piano sound that has to be heard to be believed. Scholz’ lead guitar tone here is practically indestructible, and just when it’s at its peak, the Rockman-powered thrusters kick in, simulating a rocket ride. It’s awesome.

Slight personal digression – when I was in high school, my friend Mike Ferrier and I made a pair of really bad movies about these two space cadets who save their solar system, then get trapped on Earth. Near the end of the second film, our two heroes (named Sourcil and Nez) find a spaceship and make it fly, enabling them to get back home. The scene was accomplished with state-of-the-art digital technology (a Commodore Amiga, I believe), and the music I chose to accompany it was, of course, “The Launch.”

On the album, that song leads directly into “Cool the Engines,” (see the theme taking shape?) the most rocking track here. “Engines” has a surprisingly live band feel to it, considering the obvious work that went into making it sound just right. Delp whips out his ‘70s rock voice here, holding “cool it doooooown” for a ridiculously long time, and harmonizing with himself on the backing vocals. For all its bluster, though, this is the song that signals a sea change in the album – it’s all been rising action to this point, and we’re about to settle into orbit, as the gentler coda suggests.

“My Destination” is beautiful. It’s essentially a reprise of the melody of “Amanda,” played on a real live Wurlitzer electric piano, with some of Delp’s finest vocals in the second half. The lyrics are no giant leap forward for mankind, but they point to the self-realization themes of the second half: “It’s not where you can be, it’s what you can see that takes you there, your destination is here inside…”

The second half of the album traces the waking epiphanies of its hero and the sad dissolution of the relationship depicted on side one. We start with “A New World,” almost a cousin to “The Launch,” complete with a string section that sounds real, but isn’t – it’s guitars through the Rockman. “To Be a Man” may be the loveliest Boston song, and is certainly the fullest realization here of Scholz’ vision. It’s a simple piano piece that is lifted into the stratosphere by some shimmering lead guitar melodies, and Delp in three-to-five-part harmony. You just have to hear Delp sing “it’s not what you are, it’s what you can feel” over Scholz’ soaring guitars.

It also contains my favorite moment on a record full of little favorite moments. The first time Delp ends a verse with the line “What does it take to be a man,” it’s in full choral splendor, overdubbed what sounds like half a dozen times. You’d expect the same the second time, especially since the music builds and builds through the second verse, but no – it’s a lone voice, full of emotion, that delivers the line. The lyrics then answer the question: “The will to give and not receive, the strength to say what you believe, the heart to feel what others feel inside, to see what they can see…”

“I Think I Like It” turns the focus outward, as “changes really open your eyes” to the state of the world. It’s a rewrite of an old John English song, apparently, but I’ve never sought out the original – the Boston version is enough for me. Perhaps the most standard rock song on the album, “I Think I Like It” includes some absolutely killer leads from Scholz and original Boston guitarist Gary Pihl. Somehow, even when whipping out the solos, Scholz sounds like he’s playing on another planet, so unearthly is his tone.

Then there’s the epic, “Can’tcha Say/Still in Love.” The back cover will tell you this is 7:14, but don’t believe it – it’s a trim 5:13, even though it runs through half a dozen moods. It opens with the great Brad Delp overdubbed into a celestial choir, pleading, “Can’tcha say you believe in me, can’tcha see what you mean to me,” before the lovely piano comes in. “Every night I think of you, you’re on my mind,” Delp sings sweetly, and as the music builds up, it becomes clear that this is the song of loss, the third stage.

When the “Layla”-esque guitar lines come in, it’s practically transcendent. The guitars snake their way through the perfect pop-rock chorus, leading back into the perfect pop-rock verse. And when that chorus loops around again, and Delp sings “I still love you,” the whole mood changes. “Still in Love” is an interlude, with sad-sounding clean guitar lines, little bursts of lead six-string, and Brad Delp in full breakdown mode. “Can’t you see I need you, baby,” he wails, as if no one had ever sung those lines before. And then it builds back up, crashing into perfect pop utopia once again.

And finally, there is “Hollyann,” the closer, bookending the album with another first-name song. This one is a look back on a happier time, made sadder by its placement on the album after “Can’tcha Say.” The chorus of “Hollyann” even brings its predecessor to mind, with another soaring lead line from Scholz, and some thunderous drumming. And seriously, just listen to Brad Delp belt out this song: “We made the dark into light, we saw the wrong from the right, we were for life and we would never concede it…” The end is, if anything, too abrupt – Third Stage is a tight 36 minutes, which means the band recorded an average of six minutes each year they were working on it, and it seems simultaneously too short and just the right length.

I could go on and on. Third Stage took up residence in my heart 18 years ago, and it’s still there. I bristle whenever anyone calls Boston soulless, or cold, or faceless. They are none of those things, and even though the lyrics are plain and simple, Third Stage has always struck me as a very emotional record. Parts of it are practically dripping with feeling, and the band uses their thick and layered production to enhance those qualities, not mask them. Later-period Boston sounds made by computers in places, but Third Stage is an almost achingly human piece of work.

Perhaps I’m lending it those qualities, since the album meant so much to me as a teen, and perhaps, after reading this long and effusive tribute, you’ll press play and just hear a bunch of mainstream rock songs and ballads. I don’t know. But to me, Third Stage will always be one of my favorite records. In my younger days, I called it the best rock record ever made, and even now, in my 30s, I can listen to it and remember why I once felt that way.

I have no idea what drove Brad Delp to do what he did. I actually know very little about the man. But the most important thing I know about him is this: 21 years ago, he and his band put out an album that changed and brightened my life, and I’m grateful for that. So long, Brad. Hope you reach your destination, and thanks for Third Stage.

Next week, Modest Mouse, Type O Negative, Aqualung, and Joy Electric. This being 2007, the best year ever, it should be no surprise that they’re all terrific albums.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Last week, Trent Reznor released his new Nine Inch Nails album, Ghosts I-IV, exclusively through his website. This week, he reported the sales figures – $1.6 million in the first seven days.

That sound you just heard was 400 record company executives all crapping their pants.

I’ve heard some suggest that the rise of digital media means the CD’s days are numbered. While this may be true, I think Reznor’s numbers prove that the CD is alive and well. It’s the traditional record company distribution system that’s on its deathbed. While Reznor offered his new music in a variety of downloadable and tangible formats, the bulk of his sales came from good ol’ hard copies. Specifically, he burned through 2500 copies of the limited deluxe edition – two CDs, a DVD, a Blu-Ray disc and four vinyl records in a fancy box – in a day or so, and at $300 bucks a pop, that netted him $750,000 right there.

The best part is, Reznor doesn’t have to share that money with anyone. No record company is going to be skimming off the top, and he doesn’t have to pay anyone back for recording, marketing and distribution costs. He made $1.6 million in a week, and I’m guessing that most of it is profit – much more of it than he would get if he went through a record company.

Granted, the new NIN only sold in those astronomical numbers because Reznor is able to tap into a fanbase built up through years on a major record label. This is true of Radiohead as well – the new paradigm isn’t going to work for Johnny Six-String in his mom’s garage. But as test cases, both In Rainbows and Ghosts I-IV point the way to the future, like it or not.

So yeah, the bigwigs in the music industry are probably sweating those figures. But the ones who are really going to lose out should this become the template (and it will) are the small record store owners. Reznor just proved that music stores are irrelevant – artists can produce their own CDs and get them right into the hands of their audience, no matter how big that audience is.

Now, of course, we haven’t seen that Reznor will be able to do this – the download portion of his new experiment wasn’t all it could have been, and he hasn’t shipped a single disc out yet, so it remains to be seen how his distribution system will work. But if you’re searching for a good blueprint for running an Internet-based record company right, you need look no further than Marillion – they’ve been doing it for years.

Marillion’s kind of an old-fashioned band – they’re very much concerned with quaint things like melody and thematic resonance, and they determinedly make albums, not disparate singles slammed together on compact discs. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a band exploring the potential of the Internet more than they do. For more than a decade, they’ve run their own Racket Records exclusively through their website, and they’ve fostered a supportive community of fans willing to pre-pay for new albums months before they are even recorded.

The latest of these is scheduled to come out this summer. The album, the band’s 15th, is another double-disc epic like 2003’s Marbles, and will come in deluxe packaging, with a list of the names of those who pre-ordered printed inside. My name will be there – I gave the band my $60 about three months ago, before I knew anything about this new opus. When it is finished, it will be packed and shipped to me by the band and their staff – I’m talking about thousands upon thousands of pre-orders here – and it will end up in my mailbox without having to go through a record company and a retailer first.

Lots of bands do this, but not many do it on Marillion’s scale. More than 12,000 people have pre-ordered the new album, netting the band $725,000 to record and manufacture it. And all before any real details were released.

We have a couple now. The new album will be called Happiness is the Road, referencing a Buddha quote: “There is no road to happiness, happiness is the road.” The two separate volumes bear their own titles as well – volume one is Essence, and volume two The Hard Shoulder. The first volume will be a concept piece, the second a more diverse collection – presumably, containing everything that didn’t fit on the first. And we’ve heard one song, the epic “Real Tears for Sale,” which has a nice riff and some sweet folksy moments.

I’m still not sure I like the title, but I didn’t need to know any of those details to be excited about the new record. Marillion remains one of my favorite bands, even after letting me down last year with the middling Somewhere Else. However, they are another band benefiting from their major-label years – they spent 12 years on a label, building up an audience, and many of the people who continue to buy their stuff came aboard during those years.

But they’ve claimed thousands of fans since then, including me, and they may very well be the model that Internet-based acts of the future turn to. Here’s the secret – let the fans in on things, and keep your promises. The title of the new album was posted to all of us within minutes of the five band members deciding it, and that kind of immediacy is appreciated. More importantly, though, the band has always followed through on their pledges to their fans. This is the third album they’ve asked us to pre-order, and they’ve built up enough trust over the years that there is no doubt this album will be exactly what they promised, and arrive exactly when they say it will.

And you’ll read about it here when that happens.

* * * * *

We can’t talk about bands who use the Internet to maintain their followings and not bring up the Alarm.

Like Marillion, the Alarm had their greatest success in the 1980s, though (like Marillion) they were always more popular in the U.K. than here. It was a tour with U2 in the States that pushed them into the limelight here, and unfortunately, comparisons with that band and its sound dogged the Alarm from that point forward. The original Alarm broke up in 1991, and frontman Mike Peters launched a successful solo career.

He also launched thealarm.com, and through that site began an archive of the Alarm’s too-brief life. I bought the Alarm 2000 Collection, a box set containing everything the band ever recorded, along with numerous rarities and live documents and other surprises, plus a special dedication CD recorded specially by Peters for each box. It’s still the model for career-spanning sets, as far as I’m concerned.

Apparently, there was enough support for Wales’ favorite sons that Peters called up a few longtime friends and reformed the Alarm. It’s a different band, with only Peters remaining from the original lineup, which is why he appends the date to the name – anything he puts out in 2008 will bear the moniker The Alarm MMVIII. But hell, just listen to the new stuff – this is the Alarm through and through.

With this new band, Peters released In the Poppy Fields, a massive three-hour welcome home that initially came on five CDs. To get the whole 54-song extravaganza, you had to subscribe through the website. Then, once every couple of months, a new Poppy Fields CD would show up in your mailbox. Fans were then asked to vote on their favorite tunes, and the results of that poll wound up forming the track list of the 12-song commercial release of the album.

That, my friends, is how you do it. You use the website to give the fans more than they can get in the shops, and you give them the opportunity to help direct what non-fans get to hear. Peters has always had an uncanny knack of making his fans feel on the same level as him, equal partners in the Alarm, and that’s the kind of thing that will ensure success in this post-record company world.

But here’s the fun part: In the Poppy Fields was just the warm-up act. Anyone who heard the follow-up, Under Attack, knows it was one of the best Alarm albums ever – Peters sounds half his age, and the new band smokes. The straight-up rock assault on Under Attack was louder and more punk-influenced than anything Peters had ever done, And now, at 49 years old, he’s rocking harder than ever.

Under Attack was terrific, but it was just one 13-song album. For the follow-up, Peters went back to the In the Poppy Fields strategy – he asked fans to subscribe to what he called the Counter Attack Collective, and promised them seven EPs and a full-length album, which together would make up Counter Attack, the new Alarm record. I subscribed in July, and once a month from then on, a new Alarm disc found its way to my house.

The Collective is complete now – seven EPs and one LP, all pressed on black plastic CDs with ridges, to look like 45 RPM records. Each one comes in its own mini-LP sleeve, and the whole thing fits into a nifty slipcase. It’s all meant to look handmade, like the old punk singles the music brings to mind, and in total it’s 55 tracks, running two and a half hours. If Under Attack is the new Alarm’s London Calling, Counter Attack is its Sandinista.

And make no mistake, if there’s a bigger influence on these songs than U2, it’s the Clash. Peters and his band punk up their attack, but they also add a healthy mix of reggae and dub, and they incorporate the Clash’s experimental streak. They start the whole shebang off with Three Sevens Clash, a powerhouse of an EP that picks up where their hit “45 RPM” left off – slashing punk riffs, explosive drums, anthemic vocals. But by the end, they’ve penned a straight-up Alarm anthem (“Love Hope Strength”) and given us a dubby coda (“Broadcast on Street Airwaves”).

The EPs all stand alone, like individual sides of an album – the songs segue, there are interludes, and each has a consistent musical theme. The punk edge slowly gives way over the first two hours to a more even mix of the band’s chief influences, but they deliver a number of fantastic punk-rock singles here, including “Fightback,” “The Alarm Calling” (a song that breaks a cardinal rule by naming the band in the lyrics, but still rocks anyway), “Higher Call,” “Rat Trap” and “Kill to Get What You Want (Die for What You Believe In).” These are all songs that bands with half the Alarm’s experience would kill to be able to write.

Still, some of my favorite songs on the Collective are the more atmospheric ones. I’m not sure the new Alarm has written a better song than “Love is My Enemy,” a minor-key creeper that will knock you flat. The third EP, Situation Under Control, finds the acoustic guitars taking center stage, and while I dig the old-Alarm sequel “Change III,” I love “Plastic Carrier Bags,” an observational folk song of the highest order.

The final of the studio EPs is called 1983/84 Revisited, and it lives up to its name. Here is the classic Alarm sound – flailing acoustic guitars, big choruses, songs about how wonderful the past was and how we can recapture it. In some ways, it’s a bit too nostalgic – “Reveille” is clearly “Declaration” in different clothes, and “War Song” does a near-perfect imitation of “Spirit of ’76.” But by the time “For the Faithful” is over, if you’ve ever been an Alarm fan, you’ll be moved.

The pacing of the Collective, heard in sequence, is kind of odd here – you get five tracks of wistful, old-time Alarm, followed by a 15-minute medley of old punk numbers recorded live. Technically, the live EP is the bonus disc, but it’s listed seventh on the back of the box, so that’s how I listen to it, and it feels like a bump in the road. It certainly picks the pace back up, and hearing Peters and his band slam through “I’m So Bored with the USA” and “Blitzkrieg Bop” is pretty sweet, but this doesn’t quite belong here.

It’s especially jarring because Counter Attack, the recently released full-length conclusion to the Collective, follows on from the softer sounds of the last couple of EPs. You’d expect an album called Counter Attack to rock right from the get-go, but this record is a slow burner, one that finds the perfect balance between all of the sounds the band has unveiled throughout this trip. “Riot Squad” kicks things off with a U2-ish bass line and guitar figure that morphs into a shouted chorus, and “Loaded” rocks pretty hard. As does “Right Now,” a brilliant half-reggae stomper, and the great “Gun to My Head.”

But the best songs here are the softer ones. Peters has never written anything quite like “Badge of Honour Part Two” (hearkening back to a 1983/84 Revisited track), a dark acoustic interlude. The album ends with a pair of deeper ballads, “Crash and Burn” and “After the Rock and Roll Has Gone,” which close out the Collective on a surprisingly down note. “All these songs and no resolve, all these words with no meaning,” Peters sings in “Crash,” and it’s hard to accept that he’s talking about the past two and a half hours you’ve just heard.

But before you get there, Peters delivers two of the best songs of the entire Collective. “Make It Your Own Way” combines atmospheric night-driving verses with a classic Alarm anthem chorus, and “Come Alive” sounds like a cover of U2’s “One” before it lifts off with a great falsetto chorus. Like the best Alarm songs, these will have you singing along by the second chorus, and they prove that even at tracks 52 and 53 of this massive endeavor, Peters was still turning out terrific tunes with no sign of fatigue.

And “After the Rock and Roll Has Gone” is certainly no exception – it’s actually a sweet finale, picking up on the despair of “Crash and Burn” and sprinkling in some hope. It’s the sound of Mike Peters taking stock, looking ahead to when he can no longer play. “I wish I could take you with me when I go,” he sings, “but this final step I must take alone.” It’s a far cry from the ebullient joy of “Three Sevens Clash,” and it just shows how much of a journey the Counter Attack Collective really is.

After all that, you probably don’t need me to tell you that I think the Collective is excellent, another triumph for a band I’ve loved since I was 13. The fact that very few people will ever hear this thing in its entirety bothers me, and I’ll do my part, of course – go to the website and check it out. But the fact that Mike Peters continues to write and record this much material at this high a standard of quality for his relatively small audience shows his dedication to his art, and to his fans. You can’t fake that, and there’s no substitute for it.

The Alarm will always be one of my favorite bands. They don’t have to keep kicking this much ass to win me over, but I’m glad they do.

Next week, catching up with some CDs that slipped through the cracks, and another Doctor Who review.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So you may have heard that Captain America died.

My lifelong interest in the much-maligned artform that is comic books very rarely intersects with my day job as a member of the media, but this week was one of those times. Imagine my surprise when I logged on to cnn.com on Wednesday to find Steve Epting’s detailed art staring back at me, depicting Captain America riddled with bullet holes. And imagine my further surprise as the media maelstrom swirled around this “event,” desperate to fill its 24-hour news cycle.

I’m being harsh, I know. If I were a crazy conservative or loony liberal blogger, I’d probably seize on the obvious metaphor Cap’s death presents – the death of liberty, the death of freedom, etc. ad nauseam – and use it to my political advantage. And if I had 24 hours of news to generate a day, instead of about 30 column inches, I’d probably fill some of that time with Cap’s passing. But it isn’t a metaphor for anything, no matter how much they’re trying to convince you it is.

Here’s what happened, in case you don’t know. Marvel Comics has been telling this massive crossover story called Civil War for about a year now. There were seven main issues, but if you wanted to read the whole story, you needed to collect a couple hundred comics. Which I didn’t, by the way. But this is the gist: a super-hero-related catastrophe kills a bunch of people, and in response, the government passes the Superhuman Registration Act, requiring all super-powered denizens of the Marvel Universe to get licensed.

It’s a pretty paper-thin allegory for the country’s reaction to 9-11, of course, except with one major difference – this time, it leads to a big ol’ super-hero throwdown, with men and women in tights and capes beating the shit out of each other. Because that’s just what they do. Anyway, Iron Man leads the pro-registration side, and Captain America leads the anti-registration side. They have a fight, Cap loses, he’s taken to jail, and on the way out of his arraignment, he’s shot and killed by a sniper.

Now, here’s where I can separate the people who’ve read comics from the people who haven’t. The ones who have just rolled their eyes at the bit about Cap being shot and killed, and immediately thought, “Yeah, right.” This happens all the time in comics, particularly mainstream super-hero comics. (And as a side rant, comics is the only industry I can think of where stories about flying men in capes punching each other is considered “mainstream,” and stories about real people having real relationships is considered “alternative.”) There’s hardly a mainstream comic book character that hasn’t been killed and brought back to life, and some have done the resurrection game multiple times.

Hell, doesn’t everyone remember 1993, when Superman died? Like, really, well and truly died? Except for the part where they brought him back to life six months later, I mean. I’d bet money that some of you (and I’m right there with you) have the fabled Death of Superman issue (Superman #75) in the black bag with the armband, and I know hundreds of people bought those as investments. And now they’re worth nothing, because Superman’s back, and everyone who wanted Superman #75 has four of them.

Captain America #25 will be the same thing. Cap will be back in six months – the book is called Captain America, and it continues to be published, so, you know, hard to do that without Captain America. Someone else will wear the costume for a while, but a few months from now, they’ll decide they need the One, True Cap back, and you’ll find out that the man who was shot was a clone or something, and the real Cap has been ferreted off somewhere to lie low until “the right time” for his grand return.

Aren’t super-hero comics silly?

I guess what I’m saying is, don’t believe it. Marvel’s appealing to patriotism and the national mood, hoping that you’ll buy what they’re selling without questioning it too much, and they really hope you don’t remember the lies they told last time they tried to sell you the same thing. “It’s different this time,” they’re saying. “It means something. Trust us.” And they’re confident that, with the media on their side, people will take them at their word.

Wait a second. Maybe this is a metaphor after all…

* * * * *

I could stare at the cover of the Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible for hours.

It’s a simple, shifting design – an actual neon bible, with neon pages that flip as you tilt the box back and forth. If you get bored with that, you can open the box and play with the two nifty flip books, one depicting that same neon bible, the other a group of synchronized swimmers. The sleeve the CD comes in is neat, too – it’s translucent black plastic, which you can see through if you hold it up to the light. The band spent an awful lot of money on this package, and it was worth every penny – it offers tons of fun without having to turn your CD player on.

Oh, yeah, there’s also a disc with music on it included, the second full-length from this Montreal septet. Seven people in this band? That’s right, and as you might expect, their sound is appropriately huge, like an ever-expanding horizon line. Under the direction of singer/guitarist Win Butler, the group has taken giant steps toward a massive vision of towering sonic weight, with strings, horns, all manner of percussion, vocal layering, organs, pianos, and basically anything else they can find.

The result is something grand, and it just keeps getting grander. Their first full-length, Funeral, matched that big, bold sound with inward-looking lyrics about pain and death. Neon Bible, named after the other novel by John Kennedy Toole (A Confederacy of Dunces), is outward-looking, a treatise against the evils of the world, from religion to the government to all the other usual suspects. It’s less of an emotional roller coaster, but thanks to some wild production, it’s more of a musical ride.

Neon Bible opens with “Black Mirror,” a crawling, ominous dirge that lets you know right away just how much bigger the sound on this record will be. The gentle strumming that kicks it off serves as a foundation, on which the band builds layer after layer of pianos, strings and sound effects, until Butler is forced to wail atop the din to be heard. It never spins out of control, although some parts of it (and of the album as a whole) sound stuffed between your speakers, like a water balloon full to bursting.

Things get a lot more accessible and upbeat with “Keep the Car Running,” a firecracker of a song that introduces Neon Bible’s biggest influence, songwriting-wise: Bruce Springsteen. I’m not sure how to explain the recent surge in the Boss’ popularity, but between the Killers, the Hold Steady and this record, Springsteen should feel pretty good about the impact he’s had on popular music. Arcade Fire take what most everyone takes from Springsteen – a directness, a simplicity and a quest for anthemic grandiosity.

That tendency reaches its apex on “Intervention,” the first single and perhaps the most shout-to-the-sky song here. It begins with a speaker-filling organ sound, which stays for the whole song, yet somehow makes way for guitars, crashing drums, a powerful string line, a children’s choir, and Butler’s careening, pleading voice. For a guy raised on U2, it’s hard for me not to like something like this, something that so earnestly and unironically aims for life-changing, world-altering power. By the end of this track, you’re either on board or you’re not, because this is what Arcade Fire has been working towards.

The record’s not over, of course, although some of the songs in the second half deliver diminishing returns when compared with “Intervention.” Moments of heart-stopping grandeur crop up in nearly every song – check out the Twin Peaks-esque female vocals in “Black Wave/Bad Vibrations,” or the almost scary strings in “Windowsill.” And check out all of “Ocean of Noise,” a 1950s-inspired surf ballad that slowly transforms into a horn-drenched showstopper.

But oddly, Neon Bible’s high point may be a new old song – “No Cars Go” appeared on their self-titled EP from 2003, but not like this. It was always a high-energy romp, a freewheeling eruption with senseless, mantra-like lyrics (“We know a place where no cars go…”), but here it’s a technicolor wonderland, simply the most joyous piece of music I’ve heard this year. I even love the ‘80s-rock “HEY” that punctuates every few bars. It isn’t much of a song, but it is a massive release of tension, and downbeat album closer “My Body is a Cage” serves as a nice coda, putting your feet back on the ground.

Neon Bible is another step forward for Arcade Fire, a band that shows off real sonic ambition in a field that rarely applauds that sort of thing. The accolades for Funeral were so far above the reality of the album that nothing could have matched them, but thankfully Neon Bible tries for it instead of shying away from the expectation. The band produced this thing themselves, so there’s no doubt this is the direction they want to go – aching to fill an ever-wider screen, angling to be the biggest band in the world. If they can keep up the growth they’ve shown on Neon Bible, they might get there someday.

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A couple of quick things before I go.

I owe Jeff Maxwell a debt of thanks for turning me on to No More Kings. I bought the album this week on his recommendation, and really enjoyed it. No More Kings isn’t a band, per se – it’s a project based around Rhode Island singer-songwriter Pete Mitchell and his multi-instrumentalist partner Neil Robins, and features a rotating cast of thousands.

If you’re up on your School House Rock lore, you probably already recognized their band name. (We’re gonna elect a president! He’s gonna do what the people want!) If that doesn’t tip you off to Mitchell’s direction here, the front cover will – he’s in full Karate Kid getup, doing the crane kick stance on top of a 1980s-style boom box. If you guessed that you’re going to get songs about Knight Rider and other ‘80s touchstones, go to the head of the class.

But what you may not have guessed is that No More Kings is a well-crafted, genuinely enjoyable pop record with a big, wide heart. Yeah, you get “Sweep the Leg,” all about the final scenes of the Karate Kid, and you get “Michael (Jump In),” sung from the point of view of KITT from Knight Rider, but you also get delightful songs like “Grand Experiment,” about the ol’ rat race of life, and sweet numbers like “Umbrella,” a song I’d accept from any of my favorite songwriters.

And there is one point on the record where Mitchell takes a path I hope he travels down again in the future – “About Schroeder” is a brief yet wonderful ballad about the piano-playing recluse from the Peanuts strip. (Although it is Lucy, not Sally, that has the crush on him, Pete…) This song does what songwriters like Jonathan Coulton do so well – it finds the deep emotion in its pop cultural references, allowing those who grew up with Peanuts to look at it in a way we’ve never seen it before.

But if you’re not into that, I guarantee you will laugh at the call-and-response section of “Zombie Me.” And here, check out the hilarious video for “Sweep the Leg” here.

If all goes to plan, Jeff Maxwell will be a father in just a couple of weeks. He’s one of my oldest friends, dating back to high school at Mt. St. Charles in Rhode Island, and I’m glad we’re still in touch. Thanks for the recommendation, Jeff, and congrats to you and Melis.

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Ending on a sad note this time. I just heard about the death of Brad Delp.

Delp was the lead singer of Boston, and half the reason that band was so good at what they did. Boston gets a lot of flack for what many have described as a corporate rock sound, but man, there never was a less corporate mainstream rock band. Their main man, Tom Scholz, is a perfectionist beyond all reason, taking sometimes up to eight years (and numerous lawsuits) to finish a 40-minute album, which means we never got to hear as much of Brad Delp’s soaring, layered vocals as we could have.

But the pair did give us Third Stage, one of the finest pop albums ever made. Nearly six years in the making, the album is a masterpiece of production, with some incredible and heartbreaking songs. I wore out my 1986 cassette of that record, playing it over and over as a teenager, and it still holds up. And one of the main reasons is Brad Delp, harmonizing with himself and singing his heart out. Later Boston albums saw Delp shunted to the sidelines to make room for Fran Cosmo and Kimberly Dahme. I thought that was a shame at the time, and I think it’s even more of one now.

So long, Brad. You were one of the best.

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Next week, Type O Negative.

See you in line Tuesday morning.