So I’ve just seen Sicko, Michael Moore’s new documentary on the health care system. And it saddens me to report that I have the same problems with it that I had with his film on the Bush administration, Fahrenheit 9/11.

This is the second Moore movie in a row to put me in a strange, uneasy quandary. Sicko is a polemic about universal health care, advocating for the United States to drop the privatized, for-profit, insurance-driven health industry we have now and switch to a government-funded approach with full access for every American. I agree with his premise wholeheartedly – the current system is broken, and a humane, civilized nation would put the health of its people ahead of the profits of the drug and insurance companies.

As with the Bush administration’s response to September 11, there is a riveting and in-depth documentary to be made about a health care system run by companies whose best interests are served by denying their clients the care they need. And as with Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko is not that film. Moore has once again made a rousing, enjoyable, moving, one-sided argument for his thesis instead of digging deep to find the real, complex, messy truth of the situation.

Moore built his case against the American health care system by putting out a call for horror stories, then cherry-picking the dozen or so most damning examples of callous profiteering. He then contrasted that with universal health care systems by traveling to countries that have them, finding some of the best success stories he could, and failing to include some of the biggest concerns those countries have about their government-funded national health services.

It’s obvious for Moore that the issue is black and white – insurance companies have never done a good thing for anyone, and universal health care will turn the U.S. of A. into a golden paradise of health and longevity. Except you could make the exact opposite case just by reversing the steps: put out a call for Canadian, French and British health care horror stories, and then talk to the American insurance companies, who would be glad to point you in the direction of people they’ve helped.

One thing Moore excels at is tugging on the ol’ heartstrings. Sicko is an emotionally manipulative film, and it does its job well – Moore includes interviews with mothers who lost their children because they were denied treatment, and an older couple forced to move in with their daughter because of escalating health care bills. These stories tell the tale – the system is broken, and needs fixing. As one former insurance company worker says in the film, “You didn’t slip through the cracks. Somebody made that crack and then swept you toward it.”

But he blows it at the end, when, in a typically grand gesture, he brings a trio of September 11 volunteers to Cuba to receive free treatment for respiratory and other ailments they suffered as a result of their selfless actions at ground zero. For one thing, the story didn’t unfold the way Moore leads you to believe in the movie – it looks for all the world like the filmmaker and his merry band landed in Cuba and made their way to the first hospital they could find, when in fact Moore set the whole thing up beforehand.

Of course the Americans got amazing medical treatment in Cuba, especially while the cameras were rolling. The Cuban government even wrote a press release to coincide with the film’s release, saying it shows the “greatness of the Cuban health care system.” Speaking as a journalist, this has all the hallmarks of a classic manipulation, and either Moore fell for it, or he’s complicit in it. Either way, he can’t expect us to believe that the care his charges were given at the end of Sicko is representative of the care all Cubans get for free, especially since he made no effort to find out if that assertion is true.

Moore doesn’t even point out something that can plainly be seen in his own film. He makes a special effort to chastise the United States for dropping to 37th on the United Nations’ ranking of health care systems – “just above Slovenia,” as he says. But guess which nation is listed at number 39 on that very ranking, below Slovenia? That’s right, Cuba.

While I definitely agree that a humane nation takes care of its people, the problem is, and always has been, how to pay for it and effectively manage it. Moore leaves that part out. In Canada, they manage it by imposing a 50 percent tax rate, and Canadians still cross the border into the U.S. for better medical care. The British and French National Health Services are struggling to keep up with the demand, and teetering under the financial strain. Will Americans acquiesce to monumentally higher taxes to put health care in the hands of a government that can’t fix the schools, repair social security, or even deliver the mail with speed and accuracy? I don’t know, but Moore doesn’t even ask.

I hate raising all of these complaints, because Sicko is a rousing little film with a basic premise I can stand behind. My theater audience gave it a standing ovation, and I joined in, even though I had reservations about some of the tactics Moore used in the movie. As always, I wish that Moore would just get out of the way of his own point, because it’s a good one, and his tactics distract from the good his film might otherwise do.

A final thought: My theater’s audience clapped once in the middle of the film, too, during an interview segment with former British parliamentarian Tony Benn. He said what to me is the most important line in the movie, talking about where his government (and others) find the resources to maintain their national health services. Amidst all the grandstanding and obfuscation in Moore’s film, this little gem sticks out, and is worth repeating and remembering:

“If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people.”

* * * * *

I wrote all that before reading Kurt Loder’s review here. I know, he’s Kurt “MTV News” Loder, but seriously – read it. He lays it all out nicely.

* * * * *

I am struggling to come up with anything clever to say about Ryan Adams’ new album, Easy Tiger.

I think I know why, too. Adams has always been a living sound byte, with his seemingly self-destructive attitude and his insane work ethic. Since I started the online incarnation of this column, Adams has kindly provided me with much to talk about. First, he pissed off his label, Lost Highway, by handing in the ‘80s-inspired Love is Hell, which they rejected. In petulant retaliation, Adams then gave them Rock n Roll, a tossed-off collection of Replacements-style pseudo-punk that was even further from the twangy, emotional pop the label had hoped for. (Lost Highway finally released both.)

And then, in 2005, the former Whiskeytown boy genius had his best year ever, putting out three albums (Cold Roses, Jacksonville City Nights and 29) that were all varying shades of excellent. As good as they were on their own, the trilogy really came alive when viewed as a whole, providing a picture of a diverse songwriter hitting his stride.

When I jokingly suggested in my review of 29 that Adams should take 2006 off, I didn’t actually expect he’d do it. And when he announced his return to store shelves with Tiger, he thwarted expectations again by not doing anything crazy or extraordinary. If you’re looking for a hook for Easy Tiger, some quotable reason to rush out and buy it, well, there isn’t one. It is, by comparison, the most immediately unexceptional record he’s ever made.

Easy Tiger is 13 good songs on a single slab of plastic. That’s it.

Even while spinning it, I find it difficult to latch on to anything to discuss. Tiger is solid – the weakest song here is the first single, “Two,” a lazy acoustic breeze that features Sheryl Crow on anonymous backing vocals. The rest of the record is a guided tour of just about everything Adams does well, from the country waltz of “Tears of Gold” to the folksy melody of “Off Broadway” to the high-and-lonesome bluegrass of “Pearls on a String” to the sweet acoustic lament “Oh My God, Whatever, Etc.” He rocks out a couple of times (“Halloweenhead”), and delivers some of his trademark lovely ballads (“Rip Off”). And in the Cardinals, he has found the best backing band of his career.

But what to say about it? I honestly haven’t a clue. Adams has turned in his safest, most accessible work here – the whole thing glides by in 38 minutes, from the rousing, twangy opener “Goodnight Rose” to the Neil Young-esque closer “I Taught Myself How to Grow Old.” Adams’ voice is in fine form, his melodies are simple and elegant, and his lyrics are typically earthy. If you’ve ever liked Ryan Adams before, you will like Easy Tiger. If you were hoping that he’d take his Cold Roses sound to the next level, you’ll be disappointed, but not very much.

I just wonder about records like this. I’m not sure how often I will listen to Easy Tiger – it’s nice, and sweet, and full of good songs, but it hasn’t burrowed into my brain. Do I need a clever hook to capture my interest? Isn’t writing 13 decent songs and playing them very well enough for me? I’m not sure. I would never caution you away from buying Easy Tiger – it’s a pleasant listen from start to finish, and some songs (“The Sun Also Sets,” for example) are prime Ryan Adams.

But it drifts right by, unlike some of his best work, and it smacks of underachievement. Maybe Adams was trying to make a sampler, a little taster for new listeners. Or maybe he just didn’t infuse this album with the personality he normally stamps on everything. Whatever the reason, Easy Tiger is a good Ryan Adams record that still feels like a minor entry in his canon, a palate-cleanser for his next bold adventure. You won’t regret hearing it, but when the Ryan Adams story is complete, this album will barely be a footnote.

* * * * *

And now it’s time for the second quarter report. It’s a little disappointing – you remember all my talk earlier about how this is the best year ever? Well, that noise certainly quieted down in the second quarter, with one unfortunate misfire after another (I’m looking at you, Bjork, and you too, Wilco), and a number of records from old favorites that turned out to be just, you know, okay (Ryan Adams, Rufus Wainwright).

It’s still shaping up to be a pretty good year, and there are some potential winners coming in July from the reunited Crowded House, They Might Be Giants, Spoon, Rooney and Prince. And Virginia quintet Mae has put two songs from forthcoming album Singularity online at their Myspace page, and they’re excellent. August will bring new ones from Over the Rhine, the New Pornographers, Rilo Kiley, Minus the Bear and Eisley, so all is not lost.

And hey, the second quarter brought us a new #1 album for the list-in-progress, so it can’t be all bad. At halfway through 2007, here’s what it looks like:

#10. Low, Drums and Guns.
#9. Loney, Dear, Loney, Noir.
#8. Tori Amos, American Doll Posse.
#7. Bright Eyes, Cassadaga.
#6. Modest Mouse, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank.
#5. Explosions in the Sky, All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone.
#4. Aqualung, Memory Man.
#3. The Arcade Fire, Neon Bible.
#2. The Shins, Wincing the Night Away.
#1. Silverchair, Young Modern.

This will change, absolutely, but I have to say, that’s one fine top 10 list as is. I also just ordered the new Julian Cope, called You Gotta Problem With Me, and the first Swirling Eddies album in more than 10 years, The Midget, the Speck and the Molecule, should be in my mailbox before too long. A couple of mediocre months can’t get me down.

Next week, the new Click Five, Modern Minds and Pastimes.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I have friends from every chapter of my life who won’t read this column because it’s not heavy enough.

These friends of mine will poke their heads into my cyber-realm whenever I review something like the new Megadeth, which I did recently, or bands like Mastodon and Pelican, which I do infrequently. But for the most part, they tell me the music I write about is just too wimpy for them. Where’s the muscle, they ask? Where is the nigh-unstoppable hammer of the gods that is real, unadulterated heaviness? And what is that – is that a banjo? What the hell, man?

And every once in a while, I feel the need to re-establish my heaviness cred. But the truth is, I’m not sure what the word “heavy” really means anymore. To my 30-something ears, the anguished beauty of, say, Low’s new album is heavier than anything Sepultura has ever done, or at least it leaves a bigger impact when it strikes. “Heavy” has long been a euphemism for loud, fast and angry music, but when heavy metal started, it was thicker and slower and didn’t have much to do with the “play a million notes as fast as you can” mentality that soon overtook it.

But can music that isn’t considered metal still be heavy? What does that word mean?

For example, no one would confuse the sunshine pop of the Polyphonic Spree with heavy metal, and yet, the band themselves have used the word “heavy” to describe their sound, most notably in the title of their second album, Together We’re Heavy. Speaking strictly in terms of pounds and ounces, they’re the heaviest band on earth – the Spree has 24 members, incorporating strings, horns and choirs as an integral part of their sound.

The Spree is the vision of former Tripping Daisy frontman Tim DeLaughter, another one of those high-voiced guys who does Wayne Coyne a hundred times better than Wayne Coyne does. His masterplan was to create a massive, expansive sound, one that would explode his little pop gems from the inside out. The Spree doesn’t use strings and horns the way many bands do – as ornamentation, as window dressing. The violins and trumpets are key components of the Spree’s thing, and the end result, at least on Together We’re Heavy, is enormous, almost monolithic.

But is it heavy? In that hippie sense, the Spree has always been heavy – they sing about love and peace on nearly every song, and often sound like they’re reaching all 48 of their hands out, trying to take as many people as they can to some grand utopia. But in a musical sense, the Spree always tempered their sheer mass with long passages of orchestral beauty. Together We’re Heavy is a masterpiece, but it’s too spaced out and too blissful to be truly heavy.

Apparently DeLaughter saw that as a problem, because the band’s third album, The Fragile Army, takes everything the Spree has been and punches it up. You can tell right away that this is a heavier Spree – DeLaughter has ditched the colored robes the band has always worn in favor of black military-style uniforms, leather boots and all. He’s also done away with the expansiveness, compressing the band’s full-to-bursting sound into quick-hitting salvos, with none of the instrumental frippery that characterized their prior discs.

And it works. The Fragile Army is fast, upbeat and exhilarating, and what DeLaughter has sacrificed in dynamics, he’s gained in propulsive force. On first listen, it seems stripped down, with most songs coming in right around four minutes, and the focus squarely on the voice and melodies. But listen again, and you’ll hear that DeLaughter hasn’t taken anything away at all, he’s just squeezed it into place. The Spree still sounds like a giant in the world of men, but this time, the giant is leaner and meaner, faster and more agile.

Just listen to “Get Up and Go,” the orchestral rock song DeLaughter has been trying to write for years. The brass sections are given equal footing with the squealing guitars, and the resulting one-two punch is awesome to behold. The title song sounds like it will be slower and more naked, but it evolves quickly into a psychedelic anthem. There are a pair of slower songs – “We Crawl” and “Overblow Your Nest” – but both crescendo into sky-high stunners, the choir backing up DeLaughter perfectly.

Admittedly, there is a certain sameness to these 11 new songs, so it’s good that the album clocks in at a nice, compact 46 minutes. There were a couple of directions DeLaughter could have taken his grand experiment after Together We’re Heavy – he could have gone further into an orchestral prog direction, composing 30-minute songs, which would have been interesting, or he could have done what he did, which is find some way of reining it in without pulling it back. The Fragile Army is a very big small, a bunch of tiny tunes performed by the largest band on the planet, and as a next step, it’s a winner.

But is it heavy? How about this – can something so polished and produced ever be truly heavy? Didn’t heavy music start out with working-class kids in garages, making as much noise as they could? The Polyphonic Spree has been working on The Fragile Army for more than a year. Isn’t heavy music – you know, real rock – supposed to be raw and raucous?

The White Stripes are, in many respects, the exact opposite of the Polyphonic Spree – they’re a minimalist guitar-drums duo from Detroit, notorious (at least in my house) for putting in the least amount of effort possible and still making listenable records. A beat, a blues-metal guitar riff, a wailing vocal and they’re done.

Their sixth album (and Warner Bros. debut), Icky Thump, took Jack and Meg White three weeks to complete. You may think that’s pretty quick – it took longer than that just to set the levels on some of my favorite records – but for the Stripes, that’s a marathon session. And listening to the record, you’ll wonder what took them so long. The sound is crisper and cleaner than on past Stripes discs, and there’s a bit of overdubbing, with Jack playing an organ on most of the tracks along with his guitar, but mostly, this is a White Stripes album: loud, dirty and bluesy.

At first blush, it’s a bit of a step back from 2005’s Get Behind Me Satan, the most experimental Stripes record to date, with its pianos, marimbas and Queen-like cycle of styles. Icky Thump (a bastardization of ecky-thump, a British expression of surprise, as well as an apt description of Meg White’s lumbering drum work) takes a few detours, but sticks mostly to the duo’s Zeppelin-inspired riffing and roaring. “Bone Broke” could have appeared on the back half of Physical Graffiti, and the title track shifts rhythmic gears half a dozen times, a la “Black Dog.” They even skip forward to Robert Plant’s solo work for “I’m Slowly Turning Into You,” a tune that could fit nicely on Pictures at Eleven.

As always, though, it’s the diversions – the less heavy tracks – that provide the most enjoyment. “Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn” is a Scottish jig, complete with bagpipes and mandolins, and it leads into the fascinating interlude “St. Andrew (This Battle is In the Air),” on which Meg White intones poetry in her girlish voice. “Rag and Bone,” a bluesy stomp, finds the two posing as junk dealers looking for a bargain, and it’s kind of hilarious, if a bit filler-ish. And “I’m a Martyr for My Love for You” may be the prettiest song Jack White has yet written.

But best of all here is the one that makes the most use of that new major-label money, an ass-kicking version of the Patti Page number “Conquest.” The Stripes turn the song into a full-blooded Mariachi throwdown, as if preparing a submission for Robert Rodriguez’ next south-of-the-border shoot-em-up. As the horns blare, an army of Jack Whites tell a battle-of-the-sexes tale with something approaching polish. This tune, explosive as it is, may have taken up the majority of the recording time to get right.

So is Icky Thump heavy? Well, it tries to be here and there, but as the Stripes grow up, they’re moving further and further away from the raw blues of their first few records. I never thought I’d say this about the Detroit duo, but they’re too interesting, too idiosyncratic, too ambitious to settle for just being heavy. Icky Thump is a ride, one that brings back the guitars, but keeps the genre-hopping of Get Behind Me intact. It’s probably their best work, and at this stage in their career, also probably the heaviest album they’re likely to make.

But how about a more single-minded band? You’re not going to hear a lot of different styles on an album by Dream Theater, for example – you’re going to get technically dazzling prog-metal, and that’s about it. Dream Theater are equally influenced by the expansive compositions of Yes and the crunching riffage of Metallica, and they definitely fit a more conventional definition of “heavy.”

While it’s true that you know what you’re going to get with DT, lately they’ve seemed a bit more restless than usual. Following their opus Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, which featured the 45-minute title track, the band made Train of Thought, a pure, punishing metal record, and then Octavarium, a summation of their career that was so scattered it felt like a case of multiple personality disorder. It’s been a while since they’ve knocked one out of the park – since 1999’s Scenes From a Memory, in fact.

So it’s about damn time they made something like Systematic Chaos, their finest and fullest record since the early days. Unlike on the tired and confused Octavarium, the band seems revitalized here, more comfortable with their place as the standard-bearers for this bombastic sound. This is Dream Theater at their peak, for better and for worse – you get some very inventive riffing, some phenomenal musicianship, but you also get long (looooong) stretches of instrumental wankery, and the over-the-top vocals of James Labrie, singing (as usual) some inane, artless lyrics.

But as stated before, you know what you’re going to get, and for the first time in a long while, what you get is the best this band has to offer. The record opens and closes with “In the Presence of Enemies,” a 25-minute epic broken up into bookends a la “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” only with more ‘80s-metal guitar solos. It’s a fantastic Dream Theater piece, chock full of melody and technical wizardry – in fact, this album renews the band’s focus on melody, which had lately been obscured by their lack of direction. They know exactly what they want on Systematic Chaos, and there’s rarely a minute that goes by on this very long album when they’re not doing something interesting, if not mindboggling.

There is some diversity here, although it is Dream Theater diversity – both “Constant Motion” and “The Dark Eternal Night” conjure up early Metallica, with their jackhammer riffs and snarling (and, admittedly, somewhat silly) vocals, while both “Repentance” and “The Ministry of Lost Souls” stretch their slower, more ambient grooves out past 10 minutes. “Prophets of War” continues their unfortunate obsession with Muse, down to the arpeggiated keyboards, and is the record’s weakest moment, but a strong, melodic tune like “Forsaken” makes up for a lot.

The secret here is a return to the sense of dynamics that marked early DT albums – in a way, this album is their best in a long time because it’s their least heavy. Even though quite a lot of it takes a traditional metal approach, and much of it is fast, loud and uncompromising, just as much of it is slow and tuneful, and it’s the contrast that makes the difference. Even within one song – “In the Presence of Enemies Part II” begins as a spacey dirge, but over the next 10 minutes, blossoms into a chugging powerhouse, drummer Mike Portnoy and guitarist John Petrucci locking into a pummeling groove.

So is it heavy? Well, yeah, but in a way, it’s less heavy than a solidly focused effort like the Spree’s album. And when it’s over, like with most Dream Theater albums, it won’t stick with you – you’ll have a vague memory of having your musical mind blown by five of the most accomplished rock musicians currently playing, but nothing will hit you emotionally. It’s not heavy enough to leave a mark.

But hell, do you need your music to wound you all the time? Is it possible to be bone-crushingly heavy and still fun? I say it is, and so does my favorite of these four albums, Devin Townsend’s Ziltoid the Omnisicent.

Wait, what? Ziltoid the what now? What the hell is this? Well, listen to this description, and tell me this isn’t an album you just need to hear. Devin Townsend is a Canadian supergenius best known for his extreme metal band, Strapping Young Lad. He’s back to solo work, and this is his concept album about an alien named Ziltoid the Omniscient (natch), on an interstellar quest for the universe’s best cup of coffee. (“You have five of your Earth minutes. Make it perfect!”) When he doesn’t find it, he decides to blow up the Earth, and the story is about what happens next.

Want a taste of Ziltoid? Townsend has also created a series of puppet shows starring the snaggle-toothed invader – search YouTube for “Ziltoid the Omniscient” and you’ll find them. Yeah, puppet shows. The “what the fuck” factor is pretty damn high on this album.

But the actual record is, honest to God, great. Over a lengthy career, Townsend has pioneered a style of ambient metal that virtually no one else is doing. It’s heavy as all hell, with precise guitar-bass-drums riffing as its base, but it’s also blissed-out and atmospheric, treated guitars and synths providing an otherworldly, placid component that shouldn’t work, but does. Ziltoid is perhaps Townsend’s finest ambient metal record – amidst the jokey dialogue and sound effects, he’s crafted some genuinely powerful music for this bizarre radio play.

Take “By Your Command,” the first proper song. Over nine minutes, it morphs from a screaming metal explosion to a sound as vast as space itself, which segues into the absolutely devastating “Ziltoidia Attaxx!!” (Spelling and punctuation preserved.) But then there is “Solar Winds,” a moment of reflection that achieves actual beauty. You may be wondering what a genuinely gorgeous song like “Solar Winds” is doing on this album, but that’s what’s so cool about it – the Ziltoid concept allows for anything. It’s like the cheesy rock operas Frank Zappa used to make – you wouldn’t expect something as touching as “Watermelon in Easter Hay” on a sleaze-fest like Joe’s Garage, and that’s why it works.

Throughout this record, Townsend balances his metal and ambient sides perfectly, as if he knows that both styles can be incredibly heavy. Ziltoid the Omniscient is easily the heaviest of the four albums on tap this week, but it’s also the most fun, and most completely successful. Townsend sets up an anything-can-happen atmosphere, so when the storyline disintegrates at the end and we discover it was all a daydream in the mind of a coffee shop worker, it still makes perfect sense.

Whoa, wait, what? The whole album takes place inside someone’s head? Wow, that’s… heavy, man.

A quick story before I go. I sent links to a couple of the Ziltoid puppet shows to my friend Chris L’Etoile a while back, and he watched them with his two-year-old son Jeremiah. This is the email he sent to me right after that:

“So I showed that to Jeremiah…
JEREMIAH: Oh no!
ME: Oh no! What are we gonna do?
JEREMIAH: DANCE!”

Suffice it to say, I will never erase that email.

Next week, a series of single reviews starts up, beginning with the new Ryan Adams, Easy Tiger. Also coming up, reviews of the Click Five and the Beastie Boys.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Well, look at that. I’m 33.

Apologies and thanks to everyone for understanding – I really needed that week off. My gracious appreciation to everyone who wrote me with well-wishes, particularly those I haven’t written back yet. I’m working on finding the time, I promise.

I usually think of birthdays in terms of people I’ve outlived. I know, that’s incredibly morbid, and all it does is make me feel old, and I really should knock it off. A couple of years ago, I passed Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin pretty much all at once. (Jimi and Janis were 27 when they died, and Cobain was 28, but only by a couple of months.) This year it’s Jesus – he was 33 when the Romans hung him from a tree, if I remember correctly.

And next year, it’s Elliott Smith. God, that is depressing. On to happier things.

Mine wasn’t the only birthday to happen during my week off – my favorite album of all time, the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, turned 40 on June 2. I can still remember the first time I heard the album straight through, in the kitchen of the house I grew up in. I was 15 years old, and while I’d heard music before, even great music, that was the first time I really understood what it could be. Just about everything else I’ve ever listened to has been various shades of disappointing in comparison to that first brush with the Beatles.

Why do I love it so much? For starters, I’m a melody addict. I’m fascinated and enthralled by soaring, swooping, sublime melodies, and Sgt. Pepper is full of them. I’m also a fan of the complete album statement – I hate it when bands churn out one or two good tunes and pack the rest of their records with tossed-off fluff. Even the deep cuts on Sgt. Pepper, potential throwaways like “Good Morning, Good Morning” and “Lovely Rita,” are immaculately composed and produced. It was arguably the first album-length conceptual piece in pop music history, too – I love Revolver, but it’s just a collection of songs, whereas Sgt. Pepper is a journey.

I’m also a fan of difficult music, in every sense of the word. Every time I listen to Sgt. Pepper, I have to remind myself that at the time, this was an album by the most popular band in the world. Aside from the fact that, due to the fragmentation and individualization of popular culture, no band will ever equal the Beatles’ worldwide status again, there is literally no world-famous, top-selling act that would dare drop an album like this one. It’s a tough sell, particularly its loopier passages (“Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”), and it was astonishingly expensive for its time, too.

The music itself is difficult, too – complex and intricately arranged. Had there ever been a song like “A Day in the Life,” the rich suite that closes the record? For all that, it’s a remarkably silly album, full of stories about carnivals and meter maids and friends helping friends sing on key. The goofiness sometimes leaves you ill-prepared for the prickly little surprises, like the casual domestic abuse chronicled in “Getting Better,” but overall, it’s a delightfully sweet album of near-nonsense.

One of the finest examples of that nonsense is “When I’m Sixty-Four,” Sir Paul McCartney’s clarinet-jazz paean to growing old. “Will you still need me, will you still feed me,” McCartney asks, and I can’t have been alone in wondering whether he’d still be around at 64, and whether, in fact, we’d still need him.

Turns out, despite all the “Paul is dead” rumors floating around through the years, Sir Paul is still very much alive, and yes, we still need him. McCartney has a few days left before he turns 65 (on June 18), and he spent much of his 64th year writing and recording his 22nd post-Beatles pop album, called Memory Almost Full. (I didn’t include the classical stuff, or his techno trips as the Fireman, or Liverpool Sound Collage – if you do, it’s closer to 30 records.) For those of you wondering what Paul might sound like when he’s 64, well, here it is.

And as it happens, he sounds remarkably like he’s 25.

Memory Almost Full is the rare album by a senior citizen that makes me feel young – McCartney is nearly twice as old as I am, and he sounds energized, even youthful here. It’s another in a string of late-career records from Sir Paul that has not only resurrected his solo career, artistically speaking, it’s revitalized it. He’s still nowhere near as good as he was in the Lennon/McCartney days, but Memory Almost Full sounds like something he could have made during the Wings days – a far cry from mid-period twaddle like Pipes of Peace.

That said, it comes off for me like a bit of a step back from 2005’s brilliant Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard, even though McCartney used a similar process to record it. Once again, he played nearly every instrument by himself, and once again, the result is anything but canned. But where Chaos was mostly a mid-tempo meditation, Memory is a full-fledged pop-rock album, with all the pros and cons that have attended McCartney’s pop-rock albums since the Fab Four dissolved.

It opens with one of those cons, a mandolin-fueled trifle called “Dance Tonight” that a songwriter with McCartney’s chops should have left on the rehearsal room floor. It’s a warm introduction, though – “Everybody gonna dance tonight,” he promises, and with the next song, he gives them all something to dance to. “Ever Present Past,” the first single, is an unqualified winner, a hopeful and thankful look back at a full life. (More on this theme in a moment.) The bridge section (“It went by, it went by in a flash…”) is my favorite moment here, one that’s been stuck in my head more than a few times this month.

But where Chaos was an organic, piano-and-guitar album, Memory has more of the cheesy synths that McCartney has loved for most of his solo career. “See Your Sunshine” is a bit of a Todd Rundgren-esque soul ballad, complete with an awful electric piano sound, and many of Memory’s other tracks suffer from overly synthetic orchestration. “Only Mama Knows” starts off like the worst of the lot, burbling to life with synthetic strings, but it soon crashes into the most convincing rocker here.

Producer David Kahne gives McCartney a much freer rein than Chaos producer Nigel Godrich did, and it results in a few maudlin pieces like “Gratitude,” but it also allows him to create perhaps his loopiest solo song, “Mr. Bellamy,” a radio play about a crazy old man in a tree. (I think.) Kahne also indulges Sir Paul’s penchant for suites – the back half of Memory runs together, Abbey Road-style, into an interconnected musing on mortality. The heart of the album is here, too, and it sums up everything I’ve loved about McCartney’s work through the years.

Here are the album’s best songs, including the shuffle “That Was Me,” which finds McCartney wistfully looking back at high points in his life – appearing in a school play, gigging at the Cavern Club. “House of Wax” is a beautifully cryptic dirge about death, which features a fine, dramatic crescendo, Paul in probably the finest voice I’ve heard him in since Flowers in the Dirt. And “The End of the End” is just amazing, really – a ballad that strips away the cryptic and stares death in the face. It’s the only time I can think of that Macca has really addressed his own death in song, and as you’d expect, he’s nothing but grateful for his time on Earth:

“At the end of the end, it’s the start of a journey to a much better place
And this wasn’t bad, so a much better place would have to be special…”

It’s so warm, so gorgeous, that it seems like a shame to end the album with “Nod Your Head,” a throwaway track that is this album’s “Her Majesty.” But I can forgive McCartney wanting to send us out on a joyful note – Memory Almost Full is good old Paul having a grand old time, and writing some excellent songs in the process, and it’s just not like him to end things with a funeral. We need the afterparty, the celebration of life.

A funny story – the one time I’ve ever been physically threatened over something I’ve written was when I gently trashed Flaming Pie, McCartney’s 1997 album, in Face Magazine. Some guy actually came to our offices to beat me up for talking smack about what was obviously one of his favorite records of that year, and at the time, I didn’t quite understand the devotion. But looking back, Flaming Pie was the start of this remarkable renaissance, this late-career explosion of near-greatness from McCartney, and he hasn’t looked back since.

And while Memory Almost Full is not quite the revealing portrait of genius that Chaos and Creation was, it is so much better than anything I thought we’d be getting from Paul McCartney at this point in his career. As well as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band has aged, it’s almost more remarkable how well its co-author has gracefully grown older. Yes, Paul, we’ll still be sending you a valentine, and birthday greetings. Here’s to many more – both years, and records like this one.

* * * * *

If I needed more proof that the boys in Marillion don’t know a good thing when they have it, I got some this week. I have pledged to support this band through thick and thin, since they’ve made so much great music over the years. So even though their 14th album, Somewhere Else, is sub-par, I bought the new single, a double a-side of “Thankyou Whoever You Are” and “Most Toys,” to aid their quest for another top 10 chart placement.

For the first time in years, the band has included original b-sides on this single, which is available in three formats. (I bought all three.) And one of them, “Circular Ride,” is what I’ve been waiting for – the first excellent song to come out of these sessions. It’s a great, catchy, dramatic pop tune, and it blows away all the so-called hit singles that weigh down the first half of Somewhere Else. It is the first Marillion song I’ve heard this year that I genuinely love.

So, to recap: the band has now officially released the three worst songs from Somewhere Else as radio singles, including the abysmal “See It Like a Baby,” all the while keeping a winner like “Circular Ride” under wraps and off the album. It’s a better single than any of the three they’ve tried to sell to radio, and it’s buried, wasted as a b-side. Seriously, guys, what the hell?

Okay, rant over. We’re back to a weekly schedule, and next week, a random look at some of the gems from the past two weeks, along with the new Polyphonic Spree album, The Fragile Army.

See you in line Tuesday morning.