So I think I might start writing weekly updates on my ongoing trek through Doctor Who, as it’s monopolizing an awful lot of my brain lately. I’ve decided to buy all the available stories on DVD – at my current rate of one a week, I’ll be caught up with the release schedule by mid-April of next year, I think, and then I’ll be one of the many waiting for the next BBC America newsletter…

Given that the original show was on the air for 26 years, there aren’t as many DVD releases as you’d think – only 49 of the 159 original stories are available on this side of the pond, and with an additional 23 or so either completely or substantially missing from the BBC archives, that leaves 87 more full stories to come out. As you might have guessed, this really appeals to my long-term collector’s nature.

You’d think that the older the story is, the bigger the chance that it wouldn’t exist anymore, but that’s not entirely true. With the exception of two stories, the first two seasons are accounted for – that’s 15 full black-and-white stories starring William Hartnell, the extraordinary first Doctor. The problems start in his third season, but there are an additional four Hartnell stories that exist in complete enough form that they will probably be released on DVD.

So far, we have six of those existing 19. I talked about the first two last week – the neat An Unearthly Child and the oddly superb The Daleks – but I glossed over the third, The Edge of Destruction, because it’s pretty awful. Two episodes, confined to the TARDIS (the good Doctor’s time-and-spaceship, disguised as the iconic blue police box you’ve probably seen, even if you’ve never seen Doctor Who). The main characters all start acting strangely, and for a while you think there must be some kind of alien presence on board, but no… the resolution is so remarkably lame that I’m surprised Hartnell could deliver his lines without laughing.

But this week, I bought 1964’s The Aztecs, the sixth Doctor Who story, and it’s terrific. It is the oldest surviving “historical” adventure, which finds the Doctor and his companions traveling back in time and meeting the titular Mexican natives. That would be enough to be fascinating, but this story also works in a philosophical debate about cultural differences, a morality tale about changing history (even if it is for the better), and a love interest for the Doctor – something that wouldn’t be repeated until the new series in 2005.

The Aztecs is frustratingly studio-bound, and you can tell that when the characters are staring out over the sunset, they’re looking at a matte painting, but if you ignore the Shakespeare-in-the-park shortcomings (something you need to do to watch any Doctor Who anyway), this is a great little story. Hartnell is at his best here, sly and manipulative, but genuinely caring and concerned when need be. Every one of the regulars has some terrific moments, and the supporting cast is superb. (It’s one of the quirks of Doctor Who’s format that you get a new supporting cast each story, with varying results.)

In the end, The Aztecs makes full use of its historical setting to present a morality play, a story of faith, and a sweet little romance, all in 96 minutes. This is what old-time Doctor Who should be – a fun, thought-provoking romp. Hopefully I’ll say the same about next week’s DVD, The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

* * * * *

Since there’s been an avalanche of new music lately, and I’m still digging myself out, I thought I’d give myself a bit of a chance to catch up this week. Most of the CDs I’ve bought over the past couple of weeks have made little lasting impression on me, sadly, and I’d find it difficult to fill an entire column with thoughts on any one or two of them.

So I picked seven, and I plan to keep them short. This will be especially helpful, since the onslaught of new tunes isn’t going to stop anytime soon. August alone will see new ones by Bruce Hornsby, Eisley, Mae, Minus the Bear, the New Pornographers, Over the Rhine, Rilo Kiley, Kanye West, KMFDM and Liars, plus I’m sure a few I haven’t thought of, plus two new Marillion live albums, and on and on. So here is me, shovel in hand, tunneling my way out.

First up is Prince, whose 4,962,589th album is called Planet Earth. It’s no secret that I think the former Purple One is a musical genius, even though he’s a marketing moron – see his scheme to give this new album away free in Britain through the Daily Mail, which has only succeeded in making every British music store owner pissed off at him. This may not concern him now, but when he tries to get them to stock his 4,962,590th album next year, we’ll see how well it works out for him.

Planet Earth’s cover is the most striking thing about it. It’s a flashy hologram that alternates between Prince’s male-female symbol thing and a picture of the man himself, hovering over the Earth like some kind of celestial puppet master. It’s the next step up from his Diamonds and Pearls cover, and it’s so neat that I can almost forgive him for not including the album title or a track listing on the package. (Almost.)

Unfortunately, the music doesn’t follow suit – this is a pretty lazy Prince album. The Artist Formerly Known as a Critic’s Darling gets taken to task a lot for not producing another Purple Rain or Sign O’ the Times, but his last couple of albums have been so self-consciously “classic” Prince that I worried he’d been listening to his detractors too much. Not to worry – Planet Earth is far from classic Prince. It’s a by-the-numbers disc that includes some Motown pastiches (“Somewhere Here on Earth”), some breezy guitar-pop tunes (“The One U Wanna C”), and some of his trademark religious imagery (“Lion of Judah”).

None of it is bad, but none of it makes me want to press play again. The best thing here, and the only song with a definite pulse, is funky workout “Chelsea Rodgers,” containing some bitchin’ saxophone solos. Otherwise, this is a lightweight effort from a guy who can do much better, and I kind of wish I’d been able to get it free with my Sunday newspaper.

* * * * *

They Might Be Giants fare better with their 12th album, The Else, although it’s not quite up to the high standard set by The Spine two years ago. This album was co-produced by the Dust Brothers, but if you’re expecting a return to the synth-heavy days of old, or a beat-crazy collage like Paul’s Boutique, you’ll be disappointed.

I wasn’t expecting either of those, so The Else seemed to me like the next step in a natural progression. Gone forever (most likely) is the image of John Linnell and John Flansburgh in matching suits, standing behind a row of synthesizers. This here is a live-sounding rock band album, with thunderous drums and raucous guitars throughout. Oddly, the opening song, “I’m Impressed,” brings Lincoln to mind, but from there, it’s a thoroughly modern They Might Be Giants.

Trouble is, it just isn’t that compelling. The songs are okay, especially mini-epics like “With the Dark,” and there are superb turns of phrase in tunes like “Bee of the Bird of the Moth” and “Withered Hope,” but largely, this is a forgettable TMBG album. “Take Out the Trash” sounds like a lost Smash Mouth song, all bass and sneering, and it’s the album’s low point. But even the more TMBG-ish songs are less than breathtaking. Breezy closer “The Mesopotamians” may be the best thing here, and that’s unfortunate.

But The Else is probably the first TMBG album that fully makes the case for their records to be removed from the Novelty/Comedy section of the record store. These are probably the most serious songs the Johns have written, and there are no quirky interludes (like The Spine’s “Stalk of Wheat” or “Bastard Wants to Hit Me”) to be found. As much as I’ve been pulling for the Johns to do something like this, and convince all their detractors what legitimate songwriters they are, the result here leaves me a little cold. A bad TMBG album is still better than half of what I hear on an annual basis, but I wish I liked The Else more than I do.

* * * * *

From their first gig to their last multi-day festival, Phish were compared to the Grateful Dead.

Now, I wouldn’t want to suggest they didn’t take a big chunk of their sound and aesthetic from the Dead, but I always thought a bigger influence on the Vermont foursome was Frank Zappa. Their tendency towards jazz-rock, their predilection for comedic/nonsensical lyrics intoned in a low voice, their marathon solo spots in concert, and even lead guitarist Trey Anastasio’s lead guitar tone all seemed to bear the mark of Zappa. (There’s a Doctor Who story title for you: The Mark of Zappa.)

So far, Anastasio’s solo career has been the furthest thing from perfectly Frank, but with his new one, The Horseshoe Curve, he’s brought that influence back in spades. The album is basically Anastasio’s Hot Rats – jazz-rock instrumentals covered in horns, with some dynamic extended solos over them. He’s assembled a nine-piece band – essentially his Petit Wazoo – for the record, and laid down some smoking grooves.

And like Hot Rats, it’s just about the right length at 44 minutes. There’s a certain sameness to some of these tracks, no matter how neat the bass lines are, or how explosive Anastasio’s own solos turn out to be. Pianist Ray Packowski gets a workout here too, and the horn section is excellent, but by the time The Horseshoe Curve is over, you’re pretty much gorged on the sound. It ends with a pair of Zappa-esque compositions, notably the angular “Porter’s Pyramids,” which add just the right cherry on top. This is good stuff, much better than the dreck Phish released in their last years of life, and light years ahead of Anastasio’s own recent solo records.

* * * * *

One thing about Phish, though, is that they were constantly changing. If you need a stable sound, one you can count on year after year, you should try being a Bad Religion fan. Their 14th album, New Maps of Hell, sounds just like their 13th, which sounded just like their 12th, and on and on. But then again, the last time they tried to shake up their sound was in 2000, when they hired Todd Rundgren to produce The New America, and it was a mess. So perhaps sticking with what they know isn’t a bad idea.

So here are 16 more populist polemics set to crashing double-time drum beats and chock full of hooks and harmonies. Greg Graffin’s voice is as powerful as ever, and the three-guitar attack packs just as much punch as it always has. It’s a formula, and sometimes that formula works for me and sometimes it doesn’t. I think it just depends on my mood. I panned The Empire Strikes First for playing into that formula too much, but New Maps of Hell does the same thing, and I found myself liking it a great deal. Most of these songs hover around two minutes long (the last song, “Fields of Mars,” is a genuine Bad Religion epic at 3:39), and all of them deliver hook after hook with their trademark force.

So don’t listen to me. If you ever liked Bad Religion, you’ll dig New Maps of Hell. If you’ve grown tired of their melodic punk sound, then don’t bother, because there’s nothing new here at all. But this time, I don’t seem to mind.

* * * * *

I first heard of Bryce Avary and his one-man band, the Rocket Summer, when I reviewed a reissue of his first record for HM Magazine. I was impressed, to say the least – Avary writes neat little pop songs, with thumping pianos and oceans of harmonies, and while he’ll occasionally invite a guest musician or two on board, he mostly creates this whole shiny, spunky pop sound all by himself.

The Rocket Summer’s new album, Do You Feel, is no exception, but I swear, I didn’t quite make the emo connection when I first heard Avary’s work. There’s some very typical pop-punk stuff on here, nice as it all is, that gets wearying by the end. But hell, that’s quibbling, especially since Do You Feel is so huge and melodic from start to finish. “So Much Love” may well be Avary’s finest moment so far, a piano-pounding pop tune with some sublime saxophone licks and a great chorus at its center, and many of the album’s 13 songs follow suit.

I just wish there were more variation in Avary’s sound here, since it wears a little thin over a whole album. Avary doesn’t push himself here as much as he refines his prior sound for his new major label audience, and while it works, and it certainly inspires singalongs, I find myself wishing that some of these songs sounded significantly different from the others. But Avary’s impassioned, high voice and his knack for killer harmonies sells Do You Feel. It’s a good record, but I want the next one to be better.

* * * * *

If you want a consistent pop-rock record that’s as diverse as it is well-written, though, you can’t go wrong with Rooney’s new one, Calling the World. It took this New York quintet four years to follow up their self-titled debut, but the wait was worth it – the result is a pop gem seeped in history, with hook after hook after hook.

Lead singer Robert Schwartzman is Rushmore star (and former Phantom Planet drummer) Jason Schwartzman’s younger brother, and he proves that a knack for superb ‘60s and ‘70s-based pop melodies runs in the family. Just try not to sing along with “When Did Your Heart Go Missing,” and then prepare to be blown away by “I Should’ve Been After You,” one of 2007’s finest pure pop songs. Seriously, it starts with a Queen-style fanfare, kicks in with a dazzling pop chorus, and then spins off into Rick Wakeman territory for a smashing middle eight. Superb song.

Calling the World pulls from the Beatles, Cheap Trick and ELO in equal measure, and Jeff Lynne himself would probably dig “Are You Afraid,” a tribute to his sound. The album isn’t all amazing, but it is all good, and it’s the first album of the six I’ve reviewed so far this week that made me want to press play again as soon as it was over.

* * * * *

Which brings us to the odd one out, Tegan and Sara’s The Con. It’s odd because it’s the only one in this list that sounds anything remotely like it, but also because it’s flat-out amazing, and even though I don’t have much to say about it, I highly recommend it.

Tegan and Sara Quin are twin sisters, and their previous albums have found them swimming in familiar pop-punk and folk waters. Not so The Con – I almost didn’t pick this album up, because their previous discs bored me, but this one sounds like a whole new thing to these ears. This one was produced by Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla, but even that won’t prepare you for the odd, yet perfect, sound of this record. It is the sisters’ most fully realized effort, even if on first listen it can sound like a collection of disparate parts.

With the Quins’ high, screechy voices and the music’s odd angles, it’s a wonder that The Con is so immediately likeable. It opens with the brief, drum-less “I Was Married,” and it takes a full minute before “Relief Next to Me” takes its full shape, but even through what could have seemed like a false start, the sisters keep the focus on the melodies (and bizarre harmonies) that are this album’s treasure. From there, there is just nothing wrong with this album at all, as the songs move from strength to strength.

It may seem odd that I have very little to say about The Con, other than to recommend it, and I can’t explain that either. I love this album, and it will probably find its way into my top 10 list, and I owe Dr. Tony Shore another round of thanks for urging me to buy it. Every time I listen, I fall in love again with the new wave synths on “The Con,” and the lazy groove of “Back in Your Head,” and the gorgeous guitars of “Dark Come Soon.” Don’t let the truncated size of this review put you off – The Con is one of the coolest albums of 2007, and it comes highly recommended.

And that’s all I have to say.

* * * * *

Next week, the new Swirling Eddies album. After that, a look at three new albums from my friends in Maine, and then, well, the avalanche continues…

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I complain a lot about my nerdy, socially awkward and psychologically scarring childhood, but the older I get, the more I realize how cool it was to be a kid.

Twelve-year-old me never had to make it through a week like the one I just had, with its 12-hour work days pushing me to the brink of exhaustion. Sure, school was tough, but it was over in seven hours, and left me with the whole afternoon and evening to do what I wanted. I had no bills to pay, no responsibilities, and I could literally spend whole days in my head, listening to fascinating music and writing out absurd stories, or watching similarly absurd stories on television.

I’ve recently been described as a big kid, and I guess in some ways it’s true. I mean, I have a good adult job, and I pay all my bills on time, and I own my own car, and all of that, but an enormous chunk of my annual income still goes to fascinating music and absurd stories, much of which I buy because I loved it in my youth. For example, I bought the new Great White album, Back to the Rhythm, this week, not because 33-year-old me expected it to be some kind of masterpiece, but because 14-year-old me loved Great White.

Entertainment corporations are knocking themselves out lately to get me to relive my youth, and spend and spend those adult dollars in the process, and it’s usually easy to see through such crass tactics. I won’t go into depth about the godawful Transformers movie, except to say that it had no connection whatsoever to the Transformers I played with (and, let’s be honest, imagined sweeping, complex epic stories about) as a kid. It was loud and dumb and contained no heart whatsoever. I actually prefer the fairly lousy cartoon show, because at least that stirs up memories for me.

But sometimes the revivals work, because they capture something indefinable about the original. Case in point: Doctor Who, the insanely long-running science fiction show produced by the BBC. Two years ago, producer Russell T. Davies launched a new Doctor Who series in Britain, starring Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor, and while it was hit or miss, it did, finally, trigger in me an almost overpowering nostalgia for the original series.

For the uninitiated: Doctor Who ran for 26 years on the BBC, from 1963 to 1989, and was produced in-house for all of that time. It’s about a free-wheeling adventurer called the Doctor, one of a race of near-immortals called Time Lords, who flits about time and space in a machine disguised as an old-model British police box. (They used to be on street corners, and allowed you to lock yourself in to escape attackers, and contact police quickly.) The Doctor usually travels with companions that he picks up along the way, and he faces off against vicious enemies when he’s not solving mysteries in the past or the future.

Sounds silly, I know, and it undoubtedly is. And it was made on the cheap, too, especially in its later years – rubber monster suits, primitive computer graphics, cardboard sets. The whole thing has an element of grown men playing dress-up that’s inescapable, and if you’re not charmed by it, you won’t be able to get through a single episode. But for me, Doctor Who has this odd magic to it, which I certainly attribute to my having watched it religiously as a kid.

Much like just about everyone my age, my first Doctor was Tom Baker.

(I should explain here – one of the reasons Doctor Who lasted for so long was the concept of regeneration. When the Doctor gets himself into a spot he can’t get out of, well, he dies, but then he regenerates into a completely new body. Which means the producers hire a completely new actor to play the part, ensuring that the show goes on past the tenure of its stars. Seven actors played the Doctor during the original run, with an additional three and counting after that. It’s a novel and kind of brilliant device, and helped turn the show into an institution in Britain.)

Anyway, Tom Baker. He was hilarious in the role, that was the first and most important thing. His hair was wild and curly, his toothy grin infectious, and his manner unpredictable. Even as a 12-year-old, I loved Baker immensely. Doctor Who aired weeknights on Channel 2, our Boston-area public television station, at 7 p.m., and as a very young child, I was allowed to stay up just long enough to see the Doctor before heading to bed. The Tom Baker title scene still gives me goosebumps, with its endless tunnel of liquid-looking video feedback, but it scared me to death as a kid.

I think the first story I saw was “The Invisible Enemy,” but I’m not sure. (Doctor Who is an old-time adventure serial and is told in stories, which are each made up of four to six 30-minute episodes.) The first one I really remember, though, is “The Deadly Assassin,” which reduced the Doctor’s arch enemy, the Master, to a desiccated, creepy husk. I was hooked for life.

Naturally, I had no idea what the hell was going on when Tom Baker’s Doctor regenerated into Peter Davison’s at the end of “Logopolis.” I’d never even heard of regeneration when I saw it, so it came as a complete surprise. I later learned all I could about the various actors who played the Doctor, and I still say that even though Baker was my first, I like Davison’s more refined, reserved portrayal best.

The new series just wrapped up its third season, easily the spottiest of the bunch, but they’ve struck gold with David Tennant, the 10th actor to play the Doctor. He’s awesome – manic, hysterical, and yet able to act with surprising force and intensity when needed, something Tom Baker did very well, too. The third season’s best stories brought back that old Doctor Who feeling, especially the devastating “Human Nature/The Family of Blood,” and the surprisingly spooky “Blink.”

But it was sitting down recently with my old friend Mike to watch the entirety of the Key to Time saga, which made up all of Tom Baker’s fifth season as the Doctor, that did it. I had such a good/bad time watching all ten-plus hours of this story (actually six stories that wrap together) that I shortly made a financially idiotic decision: I’m putting together a complete run of Doctor Who DVDs.

This isn’t as easy as it sounds. The DVDs are released by story, not season, and command pretty high prices. There were 159 stories in the classic series, and just about 50 of them are on DVD now. (Sadly, more than 25 of those stories are either completely or partially missing from the BBC archives – they didn’t expect to need them again, so they wiped the videotapes.) But I’ve decided to go in chronological order – I bought “The Beginning,” a box set containing the first three stories, a couple of weeks ago.

The first Doctor, debuting in 1963, was an older gentleman named William Hartnell, and his portrayal is surprising at first – he’s a mischievous, irascible old coot who’s always out to save himself, a far cry from the genial and selfless Doctors of later seasons. And unlike later actors and production teams, everyone involved in these first stories took them incredibly seriously, and played them straight.

And it works. The second story introduces the Daleks, basically murderous pepper shakers with toilet plungers for arms, and even as a kid I laughed at these things. They can’t even go up stairs, so how menacing can they be? But damn, “The Daleks” makes them work. They’re actually kind of creepy, and they prove to be a match for the first Doctor and his companions. The story is in seven parts, and lasts almost three hours, but it’s riveting. I’ve ordered a couple more black-and-white Hartnell stories, and I’m looking forward to seeing as many as I can.

I will confess, too, that I skipped ahead, just this once – I was dying to see Tom Baker and Peter Davison again, and the BBC was kind enough to give me a one-stop-shopping opportunity with the “New Beginnings” box set, containing Baker’s last two stories and Davison’s first one. Watching them again brought back a flood of memories, especially the final episode of “Logopolis,” Baker’s swan song. Baker is just as terrific as I remembered, and Davison, while he hadn’t found his swing yet, reminded me throughout “Castrovalva” why I like him so much.

Sure, it’s all breathtakingly cheap, and the stories are convoluted and often nonsensical, but I love this stuff. I even accept the worst of the new series, which has a bigger budget and yet still relies on cheese more often than not, because it’s Doctor Who, and I loved it as a child.

Musically, there are a number of bands I feel the same way about. I will take any scrap of recorded material by the Cure and love it to pieces, because Disintegration saved my life in high school. I will buy new records from the most cornball hair metal bands on Earth because they remind me of my earlier days.

No other band can take me back in time, however, quite like the Alarm can. I owe my friend Chris Callaway for lending me a cassette copy of Strength, back when we were pre-teens, and sparking my eternal love for this band. The Alarm’s fist-pumping anthems are such a part of the fabric of my life that I find I can’t even objectively rate their new work. If it has Mike Peters at the helm, and contains at least one sky-high “woah-oh,” I will love it unconditionally.

I have been waiting since I was 12 years old to see the Alarm live, and earlier this month, I finally did it. The band played (brace yourself) the Ribfest in nearby Naperville, part of a triple-bill of nostalgia that included the Fixx and the Psychedelic Furs. Peters and his new Alarm (he’s the only original member left) played for only 45 minutes, but it was worth waiting 21 years for. They slammed through a set of classics, songs I’ve been singing along with for two decades.

“Rescue Me.” “Where Were You Hiding When the Storm Broke.” “Rain in the Summertime.” “Sixty-Eight Guns.” And to top it all off, perhaps the quintessential Alarm song, “Spirit of ’76.” I’ve been waiting most of my life to hear “Spirit of ‘76” live, and it was amazing – Peters sandwiched modern classic “45 RPM” between the two halves of “Spirit,” and I was hoarse by the end, shouting the lyrics to both songs. It was an amazing show.

But unlike the other two bands on the bill, the Alarm is still going strong – stronger, some might say, than ever. Their last album, 2006’s Under Attack, was excellent, displaying a louder and rawer Alarm sound than I’ve ever heard. Mike Peters has just bounced back from a second bout with cancer, and he’s playing and recording now like he might never get the chance again. You can hear the edge in his voice, and the urgency in his always melodic, always terrific songs is undeniable these days.

And he keeps on trucking. The new Alarm project is called The Counter Attack Collective, a seven-month release schedule leading up to the new album, Counter Attack, in January. You ready for this? You may want to sit down. Peters has recorded roughly 50 new songs, and he’s releasing most of them on six EPs, one a month leading up to the album. Subscribers to the Collective will get the six EPs, a bonus live EP, the full album, and a box to put them all in. That’s just awesome.

So of course I subscribed – it’s a mere $110. And the first two discs showed up in my mailbox this week, including the first EP Three Sevens Clash and the bonus live EP. Peters has gone right back to his punk rock roots with these things. They come in cardboard sleeves, made up to look like cheap one-color punk vinyls, and the CDs themselves are black plastic, designed to look like old 45 RPM records, with grooves and everything.

Seriously, these are so… fucking… COOL.

And the music is just as good. Three Sevens Clash was obviously designed as a unified EP statement, 20 minutes long. It contains four songs, with an intro, an extended outro, and a quick interlude in the middle. “Three Sevens Clash,” the song, is a sequel to “45 RPM,” and is all about the history of the band, in a way. But from there, Peters brings in some deep minor-key grooves on “Kill to Get What You Want” and “Fill in the Blanks” before kicking your ass for 48 seconds with “Zeros and Ones.”

The EP concludes with “Love Hope and Strength,” a slower, more anthemic piece that continues into “Broadcast on Street Airwaves,” an extended coda reminiscent of the Clash at their dub-influenced peak. By the time the three concluding tracks have segued into one another, it becomes clear that Three Sevens Clash is a single 20-minute piece, as full of life and energy and passion as anything Mike Peters has ever done.

The bonus EP is a live medley of punk tunes, including “Blitzkrieg Bop,” “Anarchy in the U.K.” and “I’m So Bored with the U.S.A.,” filling out a terrific performance of “45 RPM.” It just underscores the focus on the Alarm’s early, street-level days that seems to be the theme of Counter Attack, and if Peters can pull this entire eight-CD project off with the same level of intensity he’s brought to these first two, this could be the most consistent, most unrelenting set of Alarm songs ever. I’m thrilled to find out if he did it.

But most of all, I remain amazed that Mike Peters and his bandmates continue to inspire that same feeling in me that the original Alarm did when I was 12. Back then, the Alarm convinced me that anything was possible, that there really were no frontiers that can’t be crossed. And even now, the Alarm still strikes the same chord in me, making me believe that with love, hope and strength we’ll never give up without a fight. I will always love this band, and I will always look forward to anything they do, because they make me feel young and alive. And for that, I can never repay them.

The second EP, called Fightback, comes out in two weeks. Check out thealarm.com.

Next week, a whole smattering of new records. I’ve been deluged with new albums over the past two weeks, but I’ve also had very little time to listen to them. I promise to rectify that next week, with brief looks at Interpol, Spoon, They Might Be Giants, Emerson Hart, Suzanne Vega, the Chemical Brothers, Julian Cope, the Swirling Eddies, and the new Prince album, Planet Earth. Or, again, some combination thereof.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

In case you hadn’t noticed, reunions are all the rage these days.

Among the top-grossing acts at the moment is the reconstituted Police, rehashing their glory days in sold-out stadiums around the country as we speak. Genesis, Led Zeppelin, the Doors… hell, even the fricking Spice Girls have announced reunion plans recently, confirming what the folks in Branson, Missouri have known for ages: nostalgia is big business.

In the constant battle between art and commerce, reunion tours and albums rank almost as far in the filthy lucre camp as you can get. They usually only happen when the old members of some once-famous band realize that they’ve just never raked in as much cash as they did when they were together, and the “musical and artistic differences” that drove them apart just don’t matter so much when they’re unable to buy that fifth Porsche while supporting the massive drug habit.

If you think the Police reunion isn’t about the cash, just look at the sales of anything any of the three members have done in the last 10 years. You’ve got Sting with his fucking lute, tunneling even further up his own rectum, and you’ve got Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland, who haven’t done a damn thing in more than a decade, just waiting to lick their fearless leader’s boots. These are three guys who couldn’t be in the same room together after they split up, but for the right price, they’ll churn out “Roxanne” every night for a few months.

But at least the Police reunion contains all three original members. Nothing’s worse than a reunion that isn’t a reunion, one that’s just one or two original members trading on the name, and putting out music that taints that name in the process. Pretty much the only guy I can think of who’s pulled that off is Mike Peters – he’s the only original member left in the Alarm, but the new band retains the passion and power of the old one, and he never sold it as a reunion. Peters even adds the date after the name Alarm on each new record, just to make the point – it’s the Alarm MMVII on tour now, and the Alarm MMVIII who will be credited on their new album, Counter Attack, next year.

Not so the Smashing Pumpkins, who returned to store shelves this week for the first time since 2000 with Zeitgeist. For more than a year, big bald boss Billy Corgan has kept the lineup of his new Pumpkins a secret, and for good reason – there isn’t one. Zeitgeist is all Corgan and faithful drummer Jimmy Chamberlin. I expected that guitarist James Iha and bassist D’Arcy Wretzky would not be involved, but I didn’t expect that Corgan would just Jack White the whole thing.

The Pumpkins were probably the most ambitious American band of their time, consistently building on their own formula over a delirious deluge of material between 1991 and 1998. With Siamese Dream in 1993 they crafted one of the most layered rock albums of the day, full of seemingly boundless beauty and rage, and then with Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness in 1995 they delivered one of the first true double albums of the digital age, exploding their sound over 28 songs that ranged from good to great. Even the wispy pullback album Adore was a treat, and the Pumpkins also released a treasure trove of b-sides in their heyday, most of which were just as good as the a-sides.

When Corgan fell apart, he fell apart hard. 2000’s Machina/The Machines of God was a terrible swan song, a raging rock record that went nowhere and took forever to get there. And Corgan’s post-Pumpkins output has been pretty sad, especially The Future Embrace, his godawful embarrassing solo album from 2005.

So to say that Zeitgeist is his best work in years isn’t really saying a lot. Despite the money-hungry revival of the band’s name on the cover, this is almost more of a solo album than The Future Embrace was, only this time Corgan’s put aside the synthesizers and returned to his trademark thick-as-molasses guitar sound. Trouble is, he’s forgotten how to make that sound work – Zeitgeist is a remarkable failure in the production department, with a truly abysmal mix and an overall sub-Gish vibe that buries the songs.

Truth be told, the songs aren’t all that bad, for the most part. Zeitgeist mostly sounds submerged beneath an avalanche of squealing guitars, but now and then, Corgan’s stacked harmonies break through, and occasionally (very occasionally) he’ll stumble on a melody worth hearing. Mostly, it’s the songs that sound like Zwan that are the keepers, like “That’s the Way (My Love Is),” or “Bring the Light.” But for a depressing stretch of Zeitgeist’s running time, Corgan tries to capture the magic of Siamese Dream (on which he played all the instruments, too), and it just doesn’t work.

But at least he keeps all those half-ass retreads to four minutes or less. The real stinker here is “United States,” Corgan’s sad attempt at an epic. Over Chamberlin’s thudding drum dirge, Corgan pounds out a repetitive, boring slog that drags on for 10 minutes as he whines about the state of the country in his ever-reedy voice. This song contains the most pathetic call for revolution you’ve ever heard, and its lyrics are typical of the forced social consciousness that infects Zeitgeist like a rash. Corgan’s never written political songs before, and it shows in the clumsy wordplay of “Doomsday Clock” and “For God and Country.”

The final two tracks find Corgan just disintegrating. He brings his beloved synthesizers back, and on “Pomp and Circumstances,” the goopy closer, he conjures little puffy clouds, then goes all ‘80s guitar hero on top of them. It’s laughable, really, something that probably would have been a low point even on The Future Embrace. The last word on the album is “shamed,” and I only wish he meant it.

But Corgan appears shameless here. Slapping the name of his most successful band on a glorified solo record, particularly one as poorly made as this one, just seems desperate, akin to renting out a 50-foot neon sign that reads “LOOK AT ME!”

That’s the downside of reunion records: had this been released under Corgan’s own name, or under another moniker, I’d probably be focusing on its smaller charms, and calling it a leap forward from Corgan’s last couple of efforts. But since it’s the new Pumpkins album, ostensibly, then I have to compare it to the Pumpkins catalog, and I’m sad to say this comes up far short of even the worst of their records. Never mind that this isn’t really the Smashing Pumpkins. It purports to be, and in doing so, stains that band’s legacy.

At least Neil Finn has been honest about the origins of Time on Earth, the Crowded House “reunion” album he’s just released. He’s openly admitted that it began as his third solo album, but after the sad death of Crowded House drummer Paul Hester, he reunited with bassist Nick Seymour and, later, guitarist/keyboardist Mark Hart. And since the band was all there, mostly, he decided to call it Crowded House. (Presumably the fact that the band’s name is still worth its weight in gold in Finn’s native New Zealand didn’t factor in at all…)

But there’s another reason to call Time on Earth a Crowded House record – it’s something of an album-length eulogy for Hester, who took his own life in 2005. There are no songs here that specifically address the void Hester left behind, but there are numerous little lyrical nods, lines about keeping hope alive, and dealing with loss, and sighing with regret. And the entire record exudes a slow, mournful vibe, a hushed reverence that sometimes sounds funereal.

I consider Neil Finn, the driving force behind Crowded House, to be one of the finest songwriters alive right now. His catalog is chock full of gems, from his days in Split Enz to his excellent second solo album One Nil. But his four albums with Crowded House remain his best work. Those records are like an aural home run derby, Finn sending one ball after another out of the park, coming up with hook after indelible hook. Some people think writing good pop songs is simple, and they only think that because geniuses like Neil Finn make it look easy.

So how, then, to explain Time on Earth, an album on which Finn’s gift for memorable melodies seems to have failed him entirely?

It actually starts out well. “Nobody Wants To” is a whisper of an opener, but its chorus is sweet, and Finn includes a lyrical turnaround that knocks me out. The single, “Don’t Stop Now,” is next, and it’s a sweet little song that would have made a nice b-side from the Woodface sessions. From there, though, it’s downhill fast, as Finn delivers his most average and forgettable set of songs… well, ever. Some of it, like “A Sigh,” is very pretty. Some of it, like the Johnny Marr collaboration “Even a Child,” is nearly hummable. But none of it sticks with you, and most of it just lies there, barely moving at all.

Some have termed Time on Earth a grower, and sure, I can see that. Each time I listen to it, I gain more of an appreciation for what Finn was trying to do. But it still takes intense concentration for my mind not to wander away from some of these songs. “Silent House,” co-written by the Dixie Chicks, lumbers forward for an eternal six minutes, doing almost nothing, and it’s hard to pay attention for that long. It would help if the song had anything approaching a chorus, or a melodic hook. But like most of the songs here, it doesn’t.

But at least it’s not dreadful, like the final fourth of the disc. “Transit Lounge” finds Finn trying to shimmy and shake his way through some form of lite-funk, and he just can’t bring the slinky. And the terribly titled “You Are the One to Make Me Cry” slips into Norah Jones territory, and it’s just awful. He pulls it out in the end with the above-average “People Are Like Suns,” but it’s too late. Time on Earth is a full plate of boredom with an embarrassing cherry on top.

Here it is again, the whole reunion thing. Had this album remained the third Neil Finn solo album, I would be calling it a disappointment after the great One Nil, and I would be looking forward to the next one. But it’s not. It’s the new Crowded House album, representing now 20 percent of that band’s output, and it simply is not worthy of the name. Very few new pop albums can stand with the four Crowded House records, and to invite that comparison, especially with a collection this slipshod, is just silly. This is not Crowded House. This is Neil Finn going through a rare dry spell, and coming up empty.

I know, I know. No matter how bad these new albums are, they don’t actually change the old ones. Mellon Collie and Temple of Low Men are both right there on my shelf, just as excellent as ever. It’s just depressing that now I have to file these sub-par reunion affairs right next to them. I’m as susceptible to the name-dropping as anyone – there was no way I (and thousands of others) wouldn’t have bought the new Crowded House, no matter how bad it was, and Neil Finn seems to know it. He has my money, and I have this limp coda to his finest work, and now I have to decide just what to do with it.

Anyway. Next week, better albums from They Might Be Giants, Interpol, Spoon, Emerson Hart, Rooney and the Chemical Brothers. Or some combination thereof.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Hey, it’s America’s birthday! Happy birthday, America! Take the rest of the day off.

As you read this, I am on my first ever paid vacation. That’s right, first ever, from any job. I’m way too old for that to be the case, but it is. And it’s still a new concept for me – I’m chilling in Massachusetts, hanging out with old friends and watching the Transformers movie, and I’m getting paid for it. That’s five kinds of pretty cool.

America’s not the only one celebrating a birthday this week – Radiohead’s OK Computer turned 10 on July 1. I remember when I first heard it, on cassette through headphones while on vacation in Florida. I hesitate to admit this now, but I didn’t really like it upon first listen – it was cold and difficult and shorn of the anthemic grandeur of The Bends. But a couple more spins and everything clicked. The coldness, as just about every reviewer since has said, is the point, and the grandeur is still there, buried under a brilliantly oppressive, icy veneer.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that OK Computer sounds dated now – it sounds like the template for the last 10 years, as dozens of bands have stolen elements of its sound. That Jonny Greenwood guitar is everywhere, and half the singers on the planet now try to emulate the quivery tenor of Thom Yorke’s voice. Some bands have based their entire careers on aping Radiohead. (I’m looking at you, Muse.) Even Nigel Godrich’s production techniques, which sounded like the future in ’97, are now commonplace among “ambitious” bands who want to sound “serious.”

But most people forget that it’s the songs that make this album. Even lesser numbers like the plaintive closers “Lucky” and “The Tourist” keep the melodies front and center, and monsters like “Paranoid Android” and “Karma Police” are unstoppable, multi-part excursions that never just coast along. Some will argue that you can overthink an album to death, but OK Computer is a grand example of striking that balance perfectly – every second of it was planned in advance and meticulously crafted, but it sounds so very alive.

I still think of OK Computer as the best album of the 1990s, because no other record of the time took music as a whole and pushed it forward quite like that one did. Other bands of the time were busy looking backwards, still trying to sop up the commercialized punk throwback wave that crashed when Kurt Cobain died, but Radiohead was one of the only bands seeking out new ideas while keeping their sense of melody and complexity. They soon chucked all that over the bridge with Kid A and its sequels, which turned a once-great act into meandering technology whores, but in 1997, they were the greatest band on earth.

* * * * *

What better way to celebrate OK Computer’s birthday than by talking about an album that’s its polar opposite in nearly every way?

I talk a good game when it comes to liking intricate, artistically ambitious music, but as long-time readers no doubt have figured out, nothing quite pushes my particular buttons like well-crafted pop music. My favorite band is the Beatles, and even though I love their revolutionary epics like “A Day in the Life,” I’m also a dumbstruck fanboy of the perfect two-minute breezy pop of their first five albums. In the past, I’ve put records by Matthew Sweet, Phantom Planet, Sloan and Fountains of Wayne on my top 10 list. I won’t deny it – I have a weakness for that sugary-sweet melody rush.

I’m used to the ration of shit I have to endure whenever I recommend a so-silly-it’s-wonderful pop record, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the metric ton of feces I got for putting the Click Five’s groovy debut, Greetings from Imrie House, into my 2005 top 10 list. Virtually no one I know heard what I still hear in that album. Maybe it’s the matching suits and haircuts, or maybe it’s the ill-advised tours with Ashlee Simpson and the like, or perhaps the band just takes too much from 1960s romance-pop for a lot of people, but Imrie House made a lot of people question my taste.

But listen to the record. It’s a blast. It is a gleaming, perfect little nugget of power pop, and if the subject matter leans a little heavily into prom theme territory, it’s the same kind of delightful cheese that’s all over “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” or “She Loves You.” The Click Five are absolutely in on their own joke, winking at you while delivering goofy, infectious tunes like “Catch Your Wave” and “Just the Girl.” Nothing here will change your life, nothing here will make you a more musically sophisticated person, and nothing here will increase your credibility in the eyes of Pitchfork readers. Imrie House is just a knowing, well-crafted good time that draws on decades of similar, sweet pop music.

The debut was such a sugar rush that I doubt they could have done it again. As it happened, though, circumstances intervened, and the Click Five of 2007 is a very different proposition. For one, lead singer Eric Dill is out – he reportedly wanted to bring the group into a more hard-hitting direction, and the rest of the band resisted. Dill did stick around long enough to film Taking Five, a Hard Day’s Night-style movie starring the quintet, but he left soon after.

Dill’s replacement is Kyle Patrick, whose voice is similarly strong, but lower and more direct. The band probably could have made another Imrie House with Patrick, but instead they’ve chosen to diversify on their second record, Modern Minds and Pastimes. And the result is a slightly better album that, paradoxically, just isn’t nearly as much fun.

Where Imrie House flashed by in a blur, every song drawing from the same power-pop well, no two songs on Modern Minds sound quite alike. The band has brought in a strong new wave influence (and funny how we still call a sound more than two decades old “new wave”), especially on synth-driven tracks like “Addicted to Me.” They tread into Def Leppard territory on “Happy Birthday,” crank up the amps on the near-punk “When I’m Gone,” and deliver another great prom theme with “The Reason Why.”

Two tracks in particular are genuine surprises. “Headlight Disco” might yank the rug out hardest, with its convincing 1970s four-on-the-floor stomp – check out Ethan Mentzer’s elastic bass line, and the wonderfully cheesy female vocals after the choruses. This is the goofiest song here, and it’s contrasted with the closer, “Empty,” a forlorn acoustic ballad that morphs into a Weezer-style finale. “Empty” is pretty much the first Click Five song that demands you take it seriously, which leads us to the biggest problem with Modern Minds – they’ve stopped winking.

More on that in a second, because I want to be clear about something – every single song on Modern Minds is chock full of hooks and memorable melodies, and while there are a couple of lesser lights (most notably the idiotic “Happy Birthday,” but also “Long Way to Go” and second-tier ballad “I’m Getting Over You”), nothing here is bad. In fact, many of these songs are better than their counterparts on Imrie House, and overall, the Click Five has crafted a superior follow-up.

So why don’t I like it as much? I mentioned before that it’s certainly not as much fun. Most of these songs are about adolescent heartbreak, and it’s a subject that just can’t stand up to solemn treatments. It’s a shift in tone – where Imrie House was effervescent, Modern Minds is more down-to-earth. It is, in a way, this band’s Pinkerton.

Case in point. The first single from Imrie House was “Just the Girl,” a song about a teenage boy in wide-eyed love with a frustrating girl out of his reach, and it was a fizzy number that melted in your mouth. The first single from Modern Minds is “Jenny,” about a similar situation – the guy has been dating the girl for a while now, and she’s still frustrating, in a much more real way. “Jenny” is as close to a classic pop song as this album gets, but it isn’t a shiny happy gem like “Just the Girl.” And songs like “Addicted to Me,” a junkie anthem sung from the drugs’ point of view, and “When I’m Gone,” which may be about the end of a relationship or about sudden death, only add to the comparatively solemn mood.

One might guess that Kyle Patrick just has a rougher perspective than Eric Dill does, but it’s keyboard whiz Ben Romans who wrote most of these songs, as he did on Imrie House. It’s just a shift in tone for the band, and while the Click Five template is still there – crashing guitars, glittering synths, stacked harmonies, and melodies galore – the fun is mostly missing. On Modern Minds, the Click Five sound like a really good power pop band with an eye towards the Kelly Clarkson market. But on Imrie House, they sounded like the most delightfully stupid-smart power pop band in the world.

Still, I don’t want to downplay just how enjoyable this new album is. It’s a testament to the strength of these songs that I remembered every one of them after only hearing the record once, and it’s only grown in stature with me since. I’m going to get shit for recommending the Click Five again, but I can’t do anything but recommend an album so full of terrific tunes. Music like this takes me back to when I was a kid, back when a song like “All I Need is You” would have set me humming for days. It’s that soft spot again – I can’t help it. Songs like “Flipside” and “Jenny” just make me want to listen again and again.

So, in summary, the Click Five have survived the loss and replacement of their lead singer with only minimal damage, and they’ve grown up in some unfortunate ways. But they’ve still made a great little pop record with Modern Minds and Pastimes, and even though the cliché would call for the band to break up for good in a year or so, I hope this is just the first chapter in a longer story. The glimmering pop band of Imrie House is no longer with us, but this Click Five is still very good, and Modern Minds is still one of the most hummable, most immediately memorable records I’ve heard this year.

Everything’s different now, everything’s the same. The Click Five is dead, long live the Click Five.

Next week, well, we have some choices – there are new records from the Smashing Pumpkins, Spoon, Crowded House, They Might Be Giants, Interpol, Bad Religion, and Nick Drake. The following week will see new ones from the Chemical Brothers, Rooney, Emerson Hart, Teddy Thompson and Suzanne Vega. It’s a good time to be alive.

See you in line Tuesday morning.