So, the Red Sox won the World Series. Again.

I know, I should be jumping out of my skin with glee, but this time, I’m just kind of… ambivalent. I watched all the games, particularly that nail-biter of a finale, and I cheered when they pulled it off. But it’s just not the same as it was in 2004. It’s similar – the team came back from the brink in the championship series, then steamrollered all over the National League in the big games. But it’s not the same.

I guess you can only erase an 86-year drought once, but the Sox are perilously close to becoming a dynasty, and that’s a major shift in identity for fans of the team. Also, I probably would have enjoyed the World Series more if the Rockies had shown up and put up a fight. After a while, it was like rooting for the schoolyard bully. I don’t want my team to be the Yankees, despised far and wide, looked on as the big dog pissing on the little people.

So yeah, they won again. They have nothing to be ashamed of – they played hard, they out-hit and out-pitched the competition, and very little of it had to do with the big-name, big-money players. It was the farm league guys like Pedroia and Ellsbury that made the difference. They didn’t buy the series. They’re just the best team. So why am I so defensive about it? I don’t know. It’s a weird place to be. It’s possible I’m just never happy, and I should just enjoy the win. I’m just finding it harder this time.

Are any other Sox fans out there feeling the same way?

* * * * *

I have to mention Pushing Daisies before it inevitably goes away.

Like Wonderfalls before it, Pushing Daisies is a wonderful show from the mind of Bryan Fuller. Here’s the concept. Ned the pie maker has an unexplained, unexplainable gift – he can bring the dead back to life. One touch, they come back. Next touch, they’re dead again, this time for good. And if Ned leaves a dead person alive for longer than one minute, something or someone else has to die to balance the scales.

It’s bizarre, but beautiful, especially when you get to the plot – Ned revives his childhood sweetheart, and can’t bring himself to kill her again. But now he can’t touch her, ever, and the show is largely about how these two fall in love without the luxury of physical contact. It’s also about blackmail schemes, murder plots and retired synchronized swimmers, but you expect a measure of weirdness from Fuller, and this is all wondrous, fairy-tale weirdness.

And like Wonderfalls before it, this show is destined for an early grave, and no mystical touch from Ned will revive it. So watch it while you can. It’s the best new show of the season, a Tim Burton-esque fable with crackling dialogue and terrific characters and more than a sprinkle of magic dust. It’s probably already too late to save this show, but however many episodes are left, it’s worth watching and getting lost in. Pushing Daisies airs on ABC Wednesdays at 8 p.m. EST.

* * * * *

So I’m all set to write this column about depressing solo debuts when I get the news that one of my favorite depressing solo artists, Aimee Mann, has picked a title for her new record.

Mann, you may remember, was the leader of Til Tuesday in the ‘80s, before splitting and issuing an amazing first solo album with Whatever in 1993. Never the happiest of songwriters anyway, Mann’s solo career has been one heartbreaking tale of lost hope after another, and the only song I’ve heard from the new one, “31 Today,” certainly doesn’t disappoint on that score: “I thought my life would be different somehow, I thought my life would be better by now…”

So what did she call the album? Fucking Smilers. Seriously.

It will probably be written like @#!% Smilers, but you can just hear her muttering the phrase under her breath as she walks past one of Joe Jackson’s happy loving couples, can’t you? “What the hell are you so happy about? Don’t you know the world is a cesspool? What’s wrong with you?” I love it.

Mann’s solo career has been an organic transition from the shinier pop of her Til Tuesday years, but a pair of just-released solo debuts from a couple of other popsters may leave you scratching your head a little. Both of these guys have taken the opportunity to make a clean break from their old styles, and deliver somber, serious records.

If you know Dan Wilson at all, you know him as the lead singer of Semisonic, the band behind “Closing Time.” In 1998, that song was everywhere, followed closely by “Singing in My Sleep,” the second single from Feeling Strangely Fine. Love them or hate them, you can’t deny the way tunes like these get stuck in your head, and that’s down to the craft of classic pop songwriters like Wilson.

Semisonic made one more album, 2001’s expensive-sounding All About Chemistry, before splitting. Six years later, here’s Wilson’s long-rumored solo debut, Free Life, and he’s scrubbed his music clean of the fizzy pop effervescence it once had. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the 13 slow dances here do all stick to the same slow tempo, and none of them are as effortlessly ingratiating as his work with Semisonic.

The lyrics also work against this record. They are cliché-ridden and typical, miles away from the smart pop poetry he used to turn out. While he may have been going for soul-baring, he ended up with treacly more often than not. The song titles say it all: “Baby Doll,” “Come Home Angel,” “Sugar,” “Cry,” “Golden Girl,” and on and on. Oddly, I’d think these were fine titles for sugary pop songs, but these are open-hearted coffeehouse ballads, and I wish they sounded a bit more personal.

But hell, for all I know, these could be straight out of Wilson’s diary. His voice is still the sweet, even instrument it’s always been, and when he hits on a melody worth remembering, as he does on the title track, he earns his reputation. Songwriters love this guy, and for good reason – the music here is very well written, and perfectly arranged. Even something as potentially embarrassing as “Come Home Angel,” which opens with the words “Oh love, the moment that we live now will stay with me forever and ever,” has a captivating piano-led melody and a chorus you’ll want to sing along with.

And when he gets to the good stuff, like the semi-uptempo “Against History” or the lounge waltz with a twist “Honey Please,” Wilson strikes… well, not gold, but maybe bronze. Wilson’s got pure pop skills, and I wish he made more use of them on Free Life, especially after such a long wait. Not to keep bringing her up, but when Aimee Mann makes albums like this, I can tell she feels every song, and wants you to feel them, too. Wilson’s album is competent balladry, but little more, and I was hoping for a richer experience.

Faring much better is Justin Currie, leader of Scottish poppers Del Amitri. With his partner Ian Harvie, Currie has been turning out literate, bright melodic rock with Del Amitri since 1985. They had a couple of hits – “Always the Last to Know,” “Roll to Me” – but they’ve always been one of those bands that doesn’t stamp a clear identity on their work. People know Del Amitri songs, but they don’t know the band at all, and a song like “Roll to Me” is just one of those anonymous tunes that many people probably imagine ends up on the radio all by itself.

So only the fans will be surprised by the opening title track on Currie’s solo debut, What is Love For. Currie sings the bitter hymn backed by a harp and an orchestra, and it sets the tone for this slow, sad, thoroughly captivating record. I don’t know what it is that sets this above Wilson’s effort, but it may just be that Currie is angrier and more depressed, and expresses it in more interesting ways. Much as I dislike the album’s title, the opening song completely dispenses with love as a subject worth writing about, and Currie takes that to heart, penning one down-in-the-dirt wallow after another.

You’re going to remember a John Lennon-style bitchslap like “Something in That Mess,” or a velvety gut-punch like “If I Ever Loved You,” a song that makes indifference seem like hell. “Love can make your world bring you alive,” Currie sings, before delivering the blow: “But I wasn’t dead before, so baby, you ain’t hard to survive…” Currie switches from pianos to acoustic guitars, and incorporates strings here and there, but the pervasive bitterness remains from first song to last.

If the first nine songs don’t leave you feeling wasted and exhausted, the last two should do the trick. “Still in Love” sounds like it might be sweet, but the hook line is “I’m still in love with nothing but myself.” “I know all their mothers’ ages, I know all the stories so well,” he sings over a gentle piano backing. “And I know I’ll see their faces in hell.” Confession or not, this song is self-hatred at its finest.

But it’s merely a palate-cleanser for the grand finale, “No, Surrender.” Notice that comma – this is the bleakest state-of-the-world song I’ve heard in years. Over an orchestral backdrop, Currie lists off the reasons modern life isn’t worth living, and then hits you with this chorus:

“Should you stand and fight, should you die for what you think is right
So your useless contribution will be remembered?
If you’re asking me, I say no, surrender.”

And then you slit your wrists. Never the happiest man on Earth, Justin Currie has delivered, in the guise of a pop album, a treatise on hopelessness that stands with some of the most depressing records I’ve ever heard. These songs sound lived-in, to the point that I’m actually kind of worried about Currie – is he okay? What happened to him? What makes someone write a piece like “No, Surrender”? This is the real stuff, a pop album that sounds like a warm bath at first, but ends up feeling like drowning. It’s so bleak it’s almost dangerous, and that’s the mark of something deeply felt.

It will be difficult for Currie to slip back into Del Amitri’s hooky pop guise after this, if that’s even his plan. What is Love For is a surprise and a half, and despite its blasé title, it’s highly recommended for those who want to spend 44 minutes alone, isolated, wrapped in a blanket, entombed in sound and emotion. I’m not sure how Currie will follow this, but it sheds new light (new darkness?) on a songwriter I’d taken for granted. It’s an entirely successful solo debut, and it is, to borrow a title from his band, truly twisted.

* * * * *

I’m not going to have much to write about next week, so I think I’ll save my massive Tom Baker analysis for then. Apologies to everyone looking forward to the giant robot. He’ll be here next week.

We’ve pretty much heard the best of 2007 by now, I think, but there are still records from Sigur Ros, Duran Duran, Seal and Queensryche to come, along with live documents from Phish, Barenaked Ladies and Frank Zappa. Plus, the year will go out with a fabulous bang, as Rufus Wainwright will release his recreation of Judy Garland’s 1961 shows at Carnegie Hall on CD and DVD on December 4.

Watch Pushing Daisies this week. You’ll be glad you did.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Doctor Who reviews first? You betcha.

There are two final Jon Pertwee stories that have made it to DVD on this side of the pond, and they couldn’t be more different.

Start with Carnival of Monsters, a minor classic by Robert Holmes that is let down here and there by the budget, but is no less captivating for it. This one’s just pure fun – the Doc and Jo Grant take the Tardis for its first spin since the Time Lords disabled it more than three seasons ago, and they end up in the 1920s, aboard a cargo ship in the middle of the Indian Ocean. However, all is not what it seems, and they soon find out that they’re really in a miniaturized menagerie, a carnival attraction, and what’s happening outside the machine could have dire consequences for the beings trapped inside.

Seriously, what a cool idea, and for the most part, it’s well-realized. (Well, you know, as well-realized as 1970s Doctor Who could be…) There’s a great sense of variety to the production, as we jump from the 1920s to the inner workings of the machine to a barren landscape filled with monsters. Outside the scope, there’s a rebellion happening on an alien world, and while those scenes aren’t quite as compelling, they do tie the story together nicely. Carnival moves quickly and fancifully, and it’s never boring – it’s a terrific way to kickstart the space-faring adventures again.

By contrast, The Green Death is long and plodding, and for the most part, it’s a pretty serious tale. It’s a six-parter, which means it stretches to two and a half hours long, and very few Doctor Who stories earn that length. This one comes close, though, and even the heavy-handed environmental morality tale at its center can’t fully derail it.

Yes, The Green Death is about a chemical company poisoning the planet, and about the heroic hippies that try to stop it. And yes, there are long speeches about how we’re killing the Earth, and about how we can all live happily on toadstools and use water to power our cars. But this was ahead of its time in 1973, and it’s still pretty much right on today, so even though it’s as subtle as a sledgehammer, it’s hard to fault the story too much for that.

Especially since we’re soon off of that and on to giant maggots. For the first four episodes, the big bad of The Green Death is a hive of irradiated, mutant maggots, and I have to say, they’re pretty scary looking. The plastic dragons in Carnival of Monsters just look cheap, but the creepy crawlies here look great. This story is another Earth-bound one, guest-starring Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and Nicholas Courtney is terrific as always.

And the languid pace lets the characters shine in this story. The writers only had six episodes to introduce Professor Clifford Jones, establish his immediate chemistry with Jo Grant, and then justify her leaving the Doctor to travel the Amazon with her new paramour, but they do a decent job with it. Stewart Bevan is very good as Jones, and the script never gives short shrift to his budding relationship with Grant. Writer Robert Sloman also makes time to round out the bad guys at Global Chemicals, and he brings a real sense of place to Professor Jones’ commune, the Nuthutch.

It’s a silly little story, of course, but the final 10 minutes add a touch of poignancy to it. This is Katy Manning’s last story as Jo Grant, after three full seasons with the Doctor, and in their final scene together, you can see just how much Pertwee will miss his co-star. Every Doctor goes through this – the dissolution of the family unit (or UNIT, in this case) that has been built up around him. It usually signals the end of one actor’s tenure, and sure enough, five stories later, Pertwee stepped down as the Doctor.

It’s fascinating, though, to watch it happen repeatedly. The Doctor builds up a life for himself, it’s good for a while, then it evaporates, and shortly thereafter he regenerates. It’s usually obvious, in the final stories of any actor’s time as the Doctor, that the joy of doing the show has disappeared, and that heavy weight adds immensely to the regeneration scenes. It’s very meta – the Doctor isn’t just regenerating himself, the show is regenerating itself as well, adding new energy where it was lost.

None of Pertwee’s last season is on DVD yet here (although those lucky Brits have The Time Warrior already, which introduces beloved companion Sarah Jane Smith), so we have to jump right into Tom Baker’s iconic seven-year run next time. Pertwee returned to the role one last time, in the 1983 story The Five Doctors. He sadly died of a heart attack in May of 1996.

That makes Tom Baker the oldest surviving Doctor. Next week, we launch into his run, all teeth, curls, a massive scarf and a giant robot.

* * * * *

We’re coming to the end of the year, a time when, traditionally, the good stuff just dries up. The next few weeks will give us the likes of Britney Spears and Jay-Z, but little in the way of music that touches the soul. It’s going to be a long, hard winter when the upcoming releases I’m most looking forward to include the likes of Queensryche and Duran Duran.

That’s why it was so gratifying to have an October like we just had. Late-year surprises are always nice, but this year sent some amazing records our way, many of which went unnoticed. Perhaps the best of those was a genuine shock – I mocked the very idea of this album when I heard about it, and man, I feel like an idiot for doing so. It’s Raising Sand, a duets album by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, and saying it’s better than you’d expect that pairing to be is probably the understatement of the decade.

Honestly, this album is amazing, easily one of my favorite records of the year. The song selection sticks mostly to old blues, folk and country songs, including tunes by Gene Clark and Mel Tillis, but it also branches out with some Tom Waits, Townes Van Zandt and Everly Brothers numbers. The production by T-Bone Burnett is earthy yet ethereal, tapping into some mystical vein of pure, unadorned beauty. These are all simple songs, treated respectfully and recorded like hymns.

But you won’t care about much of that. Raising Sand is all about the voices of Plant and Krauss, entwining and dancing around each other. Here’s a guy who fronted one of the greatest rock bands of all time, and a woman who brought bluegrass music into the mainstream – they couldn’t come from more diverse backgrounds, and yet, they sound as if they were born to sing together. Their harmonizing on Clark’s “Polly Come Home” is spine-tingling, and they knock the Everlys’ “Gone Gone Gone” out of the park.

My initial apprehension about this album stemmed from my inability to reconcile the histories Plant and Krauss bring to this project, but listening to it, none of that matters. Plant, who turns 60 next year, has honed his bluesy voice into a restrained and lovely instrument – it took all of the intervening years between Zeppelin and now for his voice to become this world-weary and wise thing it is now, and Krauss complements it perfectly, her graceful tones reaching down and lifting Plant’s off the ground.

They are perfect together, in this moment in time. I promise you – they are perfect.

My only complaint about Raising Sand is that Krauss sometimes takes whole songs by herself. She does a stunning job with Waits’ “Trampled Rose” – it’s never sounded better, honestly – but I wanted to hear more of this unlikely, yet incredible pairing. Elsewhere, Plant resurrects “Please Read the Letter,” a song from Walking Into Clarksdale, his 1998 record with Jimmy Page, and it makes for a super country ballad. Van Zandt’s “Nothin’” makes for a dusty, desolate departure, its dirty guitar contrasting with the atmosphere conjured by banjo and fiddle. Plant takes this one by himself, though, and again, I wanted more of the pairing.

That’s a minor complaint, though, when everything here is so good. The record concludes with a sad, graceful reading of funeral hymn “Your Long Journey,” and as it’s the most spare piece on the album, you get to really hear how Plant and Krauss mingle their silken voices. I had no idea that this combination would even work, never mind cast such a spell. It’s full of covers, so you won’t see it on this year’s top 10 list, but Raising Sand is one of the finest albums of the year, a genuine treasure.

* * * * *

A new Autumns album is always a pleasant surprise. Their first full-length, The Angel Pool, came out 10 years ago, and they’re only now issuing their fourth. The new one, Fake Noise From a Box of Toys, is out on Bella Union… but only in the U.K. The Autumns are from Los Angeles, and they can’t even get their own record in their home country yet, and if I hadn’t obsessively checked their website for the past few months, I’d have missed the release entirely.

But even more surprising than the existence of a new Autumns album is the content of this one. Three years ago, the band released a self-titled album that took some steps toward redefining their sound. On their earliest records, the Autumns unleashed sheets of glorious noise and beautiful, nearly formless ambience, the kind of thing Hammock does so well. They’ve been slowly transitioning towards a more traditional sound for a while, and the self-titled went a considerable distance towards that, angling for distorted, dramatic rock – like a prettier, less absurd Muse, in a way.

Fake Noise is the album that takes it all the way. The instrumental interludes are gone, the glorious oceans of reverb have been phased out, and the Autumns stick to writing grandiose, stratospheric rock songs and playing them super-freaking-loud. For those who loved the fragile, otherworldly beauty of the first couple of albums, this record will land with a thud. But for those willing to take the trip with them, Fake Noise represents a very successful change – it’s noisy dramatic rock, but it’s excellent noisy dramatic rock.

The heart of this record, and of this band, is the voice and guitar of Matthew Kelly. His voice is elastic, leaping up to the highest of high notes on dynamite rocker “Boys,” and yet delivering a mid-range wonder like “Glass Jaw” with force. His six-string work on this album is excellent, but it’s the tightness of the band that knocks me out this time. Drummer Steve Elkins particularly shines – listen to his circular, imaginative work on “Clem” – and the whole group pulses with a connection, a life, that they haven’t quite managed before.

Kelly and company have come up with some terrific songs for this album, and the production is varied – it’s all guitars, but they take on different shades and tones, from clipped and clean to explosive, even when confined to one speaker or the other. “Killer in Drag” marches forward in bass-driven lockstep, but the swirling guitar sounds all around it send it skyward. Even late-album pieces like “Adelaide” are melodic and memorable, and make the most of the new, aggressive sound.

So yeah, this is a totally new kind of Autumns album, but it’s just as stunning as their others – they remain one of the best bands no one’s ever heard. Fake Noise From a Box of Toys will cost you a bit more as an import, though I hear a U.S. release is in the cards for February, but if you like grand, writ-large rock, you owe it to yourself to try it out.

* * * * *

Our last contestant is a true surprise – I never thought Monarch’s second album, Lowly, would see the light of day. I also didn’t expect it would be brilliant.

Monarch put out one album, The Grandeur That Was Rome, through tiny Northern Records in 2004. The band is so under the radar that they don’t even have a Wikipedia page. I saw Brennan Strawn, singer and songwriter for the band, opening for the Violet Burning last year, and assumed he’d gone solo. So the sudden appearance of the second Monarch album, recorded more than a year ago, came as a shock. (Apparently its release took Strawn by surprise as well…)

There may be financial trouble at Northern. They haven’t put anything else out this year, and Lowly comes in a cheap package – one piece of cardboard, folded over, with one-color printing and a plastic tab attached. But don’t let that deter you – the album sounds like a million bucks, and it’s even bigger and better than the debut.

Lowly may be credited to the band, but this is Brennan Strawn’s album. He wrote all the songs and played just about every instrument, and the focus here is clearly on his amazing voice. I was blown away seeing him live, with only an acoustic guitar, and he sounds even better surrounded by pianos, strings, guitars and flailing drums. It’s one of those crystal clear voices that cuts through everything – the spotlight would be on Strawn’s vocals even if he were backed by a 90-piece orchestra and the sound of an avalanche.

But even though I’d listen to Strawn sing the Farmer’s Almanac, Lowly would be nothing without the songs, and what songs they are. I love it when artists aim for greatness, unironically, and pursue it with everything they have – these are all intense, anthemic wonders, produced brilliantly by Strawn and the Prayer Chain’s Andy Prickett, and the album never coasts. It never leaves you waiting for the next song, because every one is a knockout.

It opens with the mid-tempo stunner “Perform,” which sets the tone – the acoustic strum is accompanied by keyboards and atmospheres, leading into Strawn’s powerful singing on the chorus, like the clouds parting. “If You Dance” and “Lose it All” are two of the most hummable pop songs you’ll hear all year, but it’s with the slower, more dramatic numbers that Strawn really hits his stride. Check out “Find Others,” with its close-miked vocals and gorgeous string parts, then stick around for “Save Your,” an astounding six-minute sustained crescendo that is the album’s high point.

There is nothing bad here. There is only good. I can’t fathom that Brennan Strawn’s music will only be heard by a few. An album this well-made, emotional and flat-out wonderful should be heard by everyone. This is top 10 list material, believe me. If you’ve ever liked unironically grand music that touches the soul, seriously, get thee to Northern Records and buy a copy of this right now.

* * * * *

Next week, sad sack solo acts Dan Wilson and Justin Currie. And a giant robot.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Ignore that date above – I had a hell of a week, so I’m writing this on Sunday, the 21st.

Last night, my team, the Boston Red Sox, forced a Game 7 in the American League Championship Series. That’s after losing three games in a row to the Cleveland Indians, and being all but written off by fans and the press. There are definitely shades of 2004 here, even if the hated Yankees are watching this game from home, and I’m on the edge of my seat again, wondering if the Sox are good enough to secure a spot in the World Series this year.

We’ll know tonight. As I write this, Game 7 starts in a little over seven hours.

Update 11:15 p.m. CST: Hell. YES.

But while I’m thinking about whether my team is good enough to be the best, I’m also thinking about my own yearly contest. It’s late October, which is traditionally the time of year when I take stock and start to seriously consider candidates for the top 10 list. I’m re-listening, re-evaluating and reconsidering some favorites – Radiohead will probably make it, while Modest Mouse will probably not – and firming up my criteria for this year’s entries.

At the same time, every new record I hear from this point on gets put through the crucible. I just don’t have time to let these end-of-the-year discs grow on me, so I try to intensely pick them apart the first time through, and see how they stack up to the records I feel confident will make an appearance in December. It’s not the best way to hear new music, unfortunately, and it’s especially complicated by the fact that I don’t think I’ve heard a clear number one album this year. I’m looking for something that blows me away, and anything short of that will probably be sidelined in favor of earlier releases. Sad, but true.

Anyway, here is a look at four also-rans, four recent releases that are good, but not quite good enough. I wouldn’t try to talk you out of buying any of them, and if they become your favorites of the year, I wouldn’t argue. But good as they are, none of them grabbed me, and none of them will appear on my list in a month and a half. At this point, I can’t definitively tell you what will be on my top 10 list, but I feel pretty confident that these won’t.

* * * * *

In the liner notes of the remastered The Colour and the Shape, released earlier this year, Foo Fighters bassist Nate Mendel talked about how the band has never escaped the shadow of that monolithic album. It’s true – Colour, released in 1997, was the first full-band Foo Fighters album, their self-titled debut having been more of a Dave Grohl one-man show, and it remains the tightest, most energetic thing they’ve done. Grohl at the time was best known as Nirvana’s drummer, and Colour retained the sonic power of his old band while marrying it to some superb pop songs.

Mendel anticipated the reviews that would surely compare any new Foo Fighters album to Colour – at the time he was writing those liner notes, the band was recording their sixth full-length, which he called “what will surely be our finest record.” I scoffed a little at that, because despite their consistent popularity, the Foos have been releasing blander clones of Colour almost ever since. Their last one, 2005’s In Your Honor, separated the band’s louder and softer sides into two discs, and while it was a fun experiment, the basic sound didn’t change much.

The Foo Fighters are just a decent modern rock band, performing competent mainstream music with the skill of expert craftsmen. I’ll get outraged letters for this, but in another decade, they’d have been Night Ranger.

So here is their “finest record,” called Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace, and despite a couple of interesting diversions, it’s just another Foo Fighters album. It contains 12 well-written songs, most of them rockers, none of them classics. It’s produced by Gil Norton, who made Colour, and the sound is similar, if a little more polished and spit-shined. There’s nothing to hate on this album, but there’s nothing to celebrate, either. There are some very good tunes, like “Cheer Up, Boys (Your Makeup is Running)” and “Long Road to Ruin,” but those songs would have fit comfortably on any Foo Fighters album to date.

The band does take a couple of left turns worth mentioning. While In Your Honor split up the electric and acoustic stuff, Echoes reintegrates them, most effectively on the epic “Let It Die,” this album’s finest moment. There are acoustic ballads, most notably the loose “Stranger Things Have Happened,” and even one nifty acoustic instrumental, “Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners,” performed with guitar whiz Kaki King. And in keeping with the Night Ranger comparison, there are some piano-based power ballads too, in “Statues” and “Home,” although they sound like they were written on guitar.

But essentially, this is just another Foo Fighters album. If you liked them before, you’ll like them now, and if all you need are competently written and played rock songs, then there are very few reasons to dislike them. But Echoes doesn’t offer any compelling reasons to buy this Foo Fighters album over any other, especially The Colour and the Shape. Sorry, Nate – I know I’ve lived down to your expectations, but as nice as this new one is, Colour is still the best thing you’ve done.

As a side note, am I the only one who needed to exercise some patience and grace of my own to get this CD out of its jewel case? Anyone else have that problem?

* * * * *

Continuing with the odd comparisons: the Fiery Furnaces are starting to remind me of Dream Theater.

I know, they sound nothing alike, and I’d never dream of saying they do. But bear with me. When Dream Theater broke onto the scene with Images and Words in 1992, they sounded like no one else. Here were 10-minute epic prog-metal masterpieces, full of dazzling musicianship and multi-part instrumental interludes. It was very Yes, but also very Iron Maiden too, a combination that few had tried, and none had accomplished with such finger-bleeding skill.

But here’s the thing: every Dream Theater album since then has been a variation on Images. You buy a DT album now, you know what you’re going to get – rapid-fire metal riffs, lightning-speed drumming, epic songs that stretch to 20 or 30 minutes, and an abundance of complex musicianship. If you see a 10-minute song on a DT album, you know that song will contain a five-minute section full of guitar and keyboard solos over complicated riffing. There are no surprises anymore, just refinements.

This is how I feel about the Furnaces. Like DT, they debuted with an album that barely hinted at their potential – in the Furnaces’ case, it was Gallowsbird’s Bark, a bluesy toss-off that had nothing on their second record, the mammoth Blueberry Boat. That 80-minute monster unveiled the Furnaces sound, almost a type of garage-prog. Songs stretched to 10 minutes, and sounded like patchworks, with a hundred different movements and tonal shifts. Eleanor Friedberger’s vocal melodies were amazing and memorable, but it was brother Matthew’s oddball arrangements and refusal to sit still and groove for longer than eight seconds that made the album a wondrous listen.

And since then? Well, you know what to expect now. The Furnaces’ sixth album, Widow City, follows the formula, even if the result sounds head-spinningly non-formulaic. It kicks off with “The Philadelphia Grand Jury,” a seven-minute track that encapsulates the garage-prog sound the Friedbergers have been churning out for years. It starts with a spare, odd-timed guitar riff, then stops short for a harmonized section, and makes room for some piano bits and a classy melody before noodling off into the sunset. It is paradoxically like nothing anyone else is doing, and yet like everything else the Furnaces have done.

That’s not to say the album isn’t terrific. Like DT’s Systematic Chaos, Widow City is a refinement of a singular sound. The 16 songs blend together into a cohesive whole, made up of what sounds like 300 smaller parts – some of the individual songs this time are short and straightforward, like “My Egyptian Grammar” and “Japanese Slippers,” but just as many are long and constantly changing, like “Navy Nurse.” The blues influence is here, alongside more bizarre synthesizers and that old, tinkling piano they’ve been using since Rehearsing My Choir.

As usual, there are some mindboggling masterpieces. The highlight this time is “Clear Signal from Cairo,” a simple yet superb melody serving as a springboard for a six-minute, ever-fluid piece full of distorted guitar and wild drums. Robert D’Amico’s drumming is pretty much the star of this record, adding muscle to nearly every track – “Uncle Charlie” even starts with a minute-long drum solo. But like all Furnaces albums, this one takes concentration to follow and absorb, and by the end, you’re worn out and ready for it to be over.

I’m not sure what else the Furnaces can do. Clearly, this is their sound, and it’s still a unique one – Matthew Friedberger is something of a mad genius, and he knows his way around an impossible-to-play arrangement. Widow City is very good, and gets better with each listen. And how can you not like a song called “Restorative Beer,” especially one that sounds like a rock ‘n’ roll aria?

But we’re getting to the point where one Furnaces album is just as good as another, and that’s no way to be. Bands, like sharks, have to keep moving forward, or they’ll die. Here’s hoping the Furnaces find that next level before their next album.

* * * * *

No one could ever accuse Sam Beam of not moving forward.

The man who is Iron and Wine has been on a constant quest to define and redefine what he does. He started out with nothing but his voice and a guitar, writing fragile, lovely folk songs. By the time of 2005’s Our Endless Numbered Days, he had that sound down, and crafted an absolutely beautiful record. Having done that, it seems, he’s moved on – like Chris Cooper in Adaptation, who was just simply done with fish, Beam is done with spare folk music.

The third Iron and Wine album, The Shepherd’s Dog, is a giant step forward. Beam’s silvery voice is practically the only element that has carried over from Our Endless Numbered Days – the songs here are covered in exotic percussion, strings, pedal steels and a hundred other instruments, all of them perfectly balanced. It is, in many respects, like an indie-folk version of a Paul Simon album – it keeps the core of Beam’s music, but explodes the sonic trappings, turning it into something else entirely.

If you’re an Iron and Wine fan, you are not ready for what Beam’s done here. A song like “White Tooth Man” would be spooky with just guitar and vocals, but here it’s a death dream, with driving percussion, nasty slide work and some nice sitar touches. “House By the Sea” is similar, if not a little better, all bongos and layered vocals, and “Wolves” is best of all, its electric piano and harmonica turning it into an otherworldly version of an Eagles song. The entire album is impeccably arranged, and even though the style switches from song to song, the whole thing wraps together well.

So why am I not completely taken with this album? I think it’s because while Beam has vastly improved as a record maker, he’s still writing songs as if he’s going to play them with just his acoustic guitar. There aren’t very many memorable tunes here, and the focus is clearly on the sound, not the songwriting. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but most of these songs have only one verse melody, repeated a few times – the songs are skeletal, and Beam is counting on the sonic tapestry he’s weaving to flesh them out.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. “Boy With a Coin,” for example, really works – it is just one verse melody repeated, but the slide guitars, the walking bass lines, and the backwards noises add so much atmosphere that it hardly matters. But something like “Lovesong of the Buzzard,” with its two chords and island music beat, is a bit boring after a minute or so. And in the end, it is “Carousel” that works best for me, a spare and lovely ballad that could have fit onto Our Endless Numbered Days with minimal changes. In fact, the “No Quarter”-style vocal processing kind of gets in the way.

I don’t want to give the impression that The Shepherd’s Dog is a failed experiment. It truly does represent a huge jump in Sam Beam’s evolution, and if you’re used to his more spare sound, its dense and intricate production will knock you flat. It’s a very good record. I just hope that next time, the songs will be as compelling as the sound. If Beam manages that, the next Iron and Wine album will likely be something to behold.

* * * * *

To give you an idea how long it’s been since Marc Cohn put out an album, the entire careers of two of this week’s contestants, Iron and Wine and the Fiery Furnaces, have taken place between his last one, 1998’s Burning the Daze, and now. That’s nine years, an almost Peter Gabriel-length wait between that record and his fourth, Join the Parade.

But cut the guy some slack – quite a lot has happened to him in the meantime. A couple of years ago, Cohn was shot in the head during a carjacking in Denver, and his recovery was long and slow. The fact that we’ve got a fourth Marc Cohn album at all is kind of a miracle, considering, and the fact that it’s a very different kind of Marc Cohn album should be little surprise. This is an album haunted by the specter of death, drowned in ghosts, and it focuses on both his own life and on New Orleans, using the city as a metaphor for crawling back from disaster.

He’s shaken things up on the songwriting front as well, adding more grit and soul to his work, which can only be a good thing. Daze, nice as it was, felt a little bit overworked and underbaked. Not so Join the Parade – these 10 songs are all just right, and the production by Charlie Sexton and Cohn is warm and inviting. Within the first two tracks, he’s reclaimed his sound. “Listening to Levon” is another anthemic opener, slow yet ringing, and “The Calling” is a trademark Cohn minor-key ballad, a la “Medicine Man,” atmospheric and deep.

But from there, Cohn takes a number of fascinating chances. “Dance Back From the Grave” is a stunner, part Tom Waits and part Gospel shout, a song unlike any Cohn has done. It is, of course, all about New Orleans, and it is the song that best fits with the cover image, a photo of a jazz funeral procession. “There’s only one thing to do, in the name of every soul we didn’t save,” he sings in a newfound gruff register. “From the Ninth Ward to the Quarter to the Mississippi border, dance back from the grave…”

“If I Were an Angel” is a full-on soul song, complete with heavenly backing vocals by the Holmes Brothers, but with “Let Me Be Your Witness,” we’re back in familiar territory – the song is a great Marc Cohn ballad, with a middle eight that slips in some lovely gospel piano work. In the nine years since Cohn’s released an album, I’ve forgotten just how much I like his sound, and “Witness” is a nice reminder.

The second half isn’t as experimental, but it’s still solid. “Live Out the String” is a direct statement of gratitude for another day, another year, and it works despite a typical adult-pop arrangement. It also contains my favorite line on the album: “Maybe life is curious to see what you would do with the gift of being left alive…” “Giving Up the Ghost” is an acoustic ballad with great harmony vocals by Shelby Lynne, while the title track is reminiscent of Michael Penn.

But the final two songs contain the heart of the record. “My Sanctuary” is a mournful piece about New Orleans, and probably the best mid-tempo piece on the album. “The forgotten ones were screaming from the rooftops, a thousand souls had all been washed away,” Cohn sings, before the trombone and flugelhorn chime in, adding to the funereal atmosphere. But it’s the glorious coda, with the Holmes Brothers, that shines, and fully embodies the album’s theme of rising up from disaster.

And the closer, an understated acoustic piece called “Life Goes On,” hammers the point home – terrible things happen, but life continues, and it’s better to join the parade than watch it from the sidewalk. “You might think it’s gonna stop, just because you’re closing shop, but life goes on…”

I didn’t quite realize how much I’ve missed Marc Cohn. His “Walking in Memphis” was part of the soundtrack to my teen years, and his second album, The Rainy Season, contains a couple of songs that will always make me think of graduating and moving on. One of my best friends chose a Cohn song for the first dance at his wedding, and I’ve used “The Things We’ve Handed Down” as an audition piece several times. His music is part of the fabric of my life, and I’m happy to add Join the Parade to my Cohn collection. In another year, this could have been a contender, but don’t let the fact that it won’t make my top 10 list keep you from buying it. Welcome back, Marc. I’m glad you’re still with us.

* * * * *

No Doctor Who this week – this thing is already too long anyway. Next week, maybe Dan Wilson and Justin Currie, or maybe the Autumns and Monarch, or maybe Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. Who can tell. And here’s hoping the boys from Boston pull it off tonight, and the next time we speak, we’re most of the way through a Red Sox World Series.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So I ended up paying 10 bucks for In Rainbows.

I thought about it a lot, and I feel like $10 is just about the right price for a digitally delivered new album. Some might argue that 10 bucks is too high, considering there are no costs for artwork, manufacturing or distribution, but as I said last week, I want a say in determining the fair price for bands who don’t have the built-in fan base Radiohead has. If this is going to be the template, I want it to level as many playing fields as possible, and I just don’t believe in getting something as important as music for free.

So I paid my money, and quickly got a confirmation e-mail from the band. And when I woke up Wednesday morning, my personalized download link was waiting for me in my inbox. Three minutes later, I had the new Radiohead album. Now, here’s the ironic part – the band went to considerable trouble to come up with a distribution system that bypassed traditional CDs and record stores, one that delivered their work as a stream of digital information, one computer to another. And what’s the first thing I did when I finished downloading it?

I burned myself a CD so I could listen to it in the car.

For me, the old-fashioned pleasures of holding a hard copy of a new album, taking it out of its case, sliding it into the CD player and listening to a complete work in sequence are just not going to fade. I know I’m old, and the revolution has passed me by, but there’s something magical about the complete package to me, and something about downloaded, context-free music that just feels incomplete. I don’t feel like I really own In Rainbows yet – until it appears in record stores with artwork and packaging, I’m going to feel like I have a sneak peek, pre-release leak of the thing, despite paying 10 bucks for it.

Radiohead’s new method seems like a success so far. I keep hearing different numbers, but the ones I’ve heard more than once are these: there were allegedly 1.2 million downloads of In Rainbows on its first day of release, and most people apparently paid about what I did. That’d be about $10.2 million, straight to the band. But hell, even if the average payment was only about a dollar, that’s $1.2 million in one day, if the figures are right. Under a standard record contract, the band would only get about a buck per CD sold anyway, and it would take ages to climb to a million albums sold, cutting checks to middlemen all the while. Everything they’ve made off of In Rainbows so far has gone straight into the band’s bank account.

This is what you get when you mess with us, indeed.

But you know, smarter people than I have already weighed in on the format of this release, and What It All Means for the industry at large. I’m noticing that not a lot of people are talking about the music itself, which is odd, considering the whole idea of this new system is to get the music into the hands of as many people as possible. The fact that the band basically gave this record away for free didn’t inspire much confidence in me, and as is well documented on this site, I haven’t really enjoyed a Radiohead album since OK Computer in 1997.

So imagine my surprise as I spun In Rainbows.

Subsequent listens have only cemented the first impression – this is the album they were trying to make last time, with Hail to the Thief, and the high point of their post-OK Computer work. It is my third-favorite Radiohead album, behind Computer and The Bends, and while there isn’t a lot of competition for that prize, In Rainbows leaves it all in the dust.

But it took about 10 listens for me to really figure out why it’s better. On the surface, this sounds like Thief, especially at the start – “15 Step” opens with those same thin electronic drums that have plagued Radiohead albums since Kid A. But as the track unfolds, it blossoms. “15 Step” is probably the catchiest song in 5/8 since Dave Brubeck, and it finds the band finally bringing some actual songwriting to their fascination with electronic textures. Happily, that continues for all 10 tracks – there are no tuneless interludes here, no loop-the-drums-and-yelp throwaways.

It’s not just that, though. For roughly a decade now, Radiohead has been a cold, paranoid, hermetic band, trapped inside itself and suffocating. In Rainbows is the album that sets them free. It is the warmest thing they’ve done since The Bends, an album that finds Thom Yorke shutting down his defenses and letting the world in. And it’s a magical sound, because the music has warmed up with him. The album is full of lovely clean-toned guitars and string sections and glockenspiels, and for the first time, they sit alongside the electronic tones and textures as perfect complements.

It may not seem that way at first. “15 Step” is terrific, but it’s the top of the mountain they started climbing with “Idioteque.” “Bodysnatchers” brings the rock, more so than any song since “Electioneering,” but it’s almost ironic in its big, dumb riffing. (Although it does have a superb middle section.) At this point, you may feel like you’re in for just another closed-off Radiohead album.

“Nude” wipes that misconception away. It’s one of the best songs in the band’s catalog, a holdover from the OK Computer sessions, and this version is breathtaking. I haven’t heard Radiohead sound this organic, this human, in years, and in a setting like this, you can really tell how great a singer Thom Yorke is. The final section, with its wordless and yet totally compelling melody, is the first lift-you-out-of-your-chair moment on a Radiohead album in a decade.

In fact, the three songs that would close out side one, if there were such a thing anymore, are worthy of the pantheon. “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” rises above its bizarre title to deliver a gorgeous, spaced-out lullaby about decomposing (I think), and when the bottom drops out, then explodes back in, you’ll be cheering, even if you have no idea what the hell this song’s about.

And “All I Need” is probably my favorite thing here. It’s got a typically odd arrangement, full of synth noises and processed vocals, but at heart, it’s an uncomplicated, beautiful semi-love song. The chorus is simple and understated, and it might take you a listen or two to hear Yorke undercut it with lines like “I only stick with you because there are no others.” The song ends with a glorious, too-short coda that finds Yorke battling his own reassurances: “It’s all right, it’s all wrong, it’s all right…”

Believe it or not, In Rainbows stays in that vein, sequencing one lovely orchestral ballad after another. “Faust Arp” is an interlude for strings and acoustic guitar, while “Reckoner” is a gentle, moody tune sung in a ghostly falsetto, and laid on top of a propulsive backbeat drowned in ride cymbals. But there is no surprise here as great as “House of Cards.” The simplest pop song Yorke and company have written since “Creep,” this number hangs in the air with effortless grace. Even the words are direct – “I don’t want to be your friend, I just want to be your lover,” Yorke sings at the beginning. It’s a treat, and I love it despite myself.

I find myself having a strangely different reaction to “Videotape,” the elegiac closer – I think they all but ruined it in the studio. The song itself is a repetitive, mournful dirge on piano, with a haunting melody, but instead of letting it stand on its own, or adding ghostly textures and strings, they chose to saddle it with a seemingly random assortment of percussion. I’m not sure what they were trying to do here, but it’s the one moment of In Rainbows that strikes me the wrong way. But hey, I like the song enough to quibble about the arrangement, which is a huge step forward for Radiohead in my eyes.

As “Videotape” ended that first time, finishing off a very quick 42 minutes, I realized something remarkable: I had just enjoyed a Radiohead album, fully and completely, for the first time in a decade. A few more listens, and I figured out what was really going on: the band has opened itself up and let me in. For the first time in years, I don’t feel like I’m peering into one of their albums through thick glass. This is an enveloping experience, perhaps the most warm-hearted and genuinely pretty album Radiohead has made. This is the sound of Thom Yorke re-engaging with the world, and it’s a beautiful thing.

So, to sum up In Rainbows: You can pay whatever you want, and it’s worth whatever you pay. Now, I have to figure out if it should go on this year’s top 10 list, or next year’s…

Next week, I catch up with records from the Foo Fighters, the Fiery Furnaces, Marc Cohn, Dan Wilson, and maybe the Autumns. And maybe a bunch more, too. Plus, the Doctor Who reviews will return – I’m feeling under the weather this week, but expect a torrent of words in seven days. Thanks for reading.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m trying to decide what to pay for the new Radiohead album.

For those of you who somehow missed the onslaught of press regarding Britain’s favorite sons this week, here’s the rundown. Radiohead has finished their seventh album, called In Rainbows. What they don’t have, at the moment, is a contract with a record label – their long-running association with EMI expired after 2003’s Hail to the Thief. But rather than sign up with another label, they’ve decided to give the music industry a kick in the bollocks.

The 10-song In Rainbows will be available to download starting Wednesday from their website. It’s the first time a band of Radiohead’s stature has decided to digitally self-distribute a new record, and that alone would send shockwaves through the corporate music landscape, but they’ve gone one better: the price for downloading In Rainbows is whatever you want to pay.

Seriously. The price field on the order form is blank, and you can fill in nothing, or a penny, or a million dollars. Whatever you think the record’s worth. If you click on the question mark next to the price field, you get a message that reads, “It’s up to you.” Click on the question mark next to that, and you get a second message: “No really, it’s up to you.”

I know I haven’t had a kind word to say about Radiohead yet this century, but this is an incredible idea. Below-the-radar artists like Jane Siberry (who now calls herself Issa, for some reason) have been working on the variable pricing method for years now, but Radiohead’s worldwide fame and sharp critical divide make this a whole new ballgame. This way, the band gets to see just what their fans will pay for new work – surely some will swipe it for nothing, but I’m sure just as many will pay what they think is a fair price.

Of course, this is also a sweeping broadside in the war between my beloved CDs and downloads. In Rainbows is available in a physical format, but it’s so extravagant and expensive that it looks like rigging the bet – the “discbox,” as they call it, contains the album on CD, a bonus disc with eight other songs, both of those collections on vinyl records, and a hardcover book, all wrapped up in a massive slipcase for $81, plus shipping. If the band had made the album available in a standard CD format, with a standard price, alongside the variable price download, that would have been an interesting comparison. But only the hardcore (and the rich) will buy the discbox.

I’m neither of those, although if you’d asked me in 1998, I would have gladly shelled out for the big package. The thing is, everyone’s talking about the format of this record, and no one’s talking about the music that will be on it, which I think is probably the way Radiohead wants it. Since Kid A in 1999, Thom Yorke and company have been tunneling up their own asses, treading the same formless, song-less ground, and what I’ve heard of In Rainbows is no different. (In fact, if you go to NME’s site, you can hear live recordings of nearly every song on the new album. I hated just about all of them. Is this really the same band that made OK Computer? Really?)

Still, I want to hear the finished product, and I’ll most likely buy the standard CD release, for which the band is currently negotiating terms. As much as this variable pricing download thing is an assault on the way I like to buy music, I want to be part of the experiment. Given my distaste for just about everything the band has done since 1999, I am tempted to pay nothing. I’m sure many have done the same thing. But I know that’s not fair, and I want a say in setting a reasonable price for what even I can see is the future of music distribution.

So I’m thinking that $10 should be about right. It costs less to make music available this way, I know, but I’m not thinking about Radiohead here, I’m thinking about the thousands of other bands that will be looking to this grand experiment as a sign of what people are willing to pay to download new music. This also brings up an interesting conundrum: if the download is available this year, and the CD doesn’t hit shops until next year, is the album eligible for the 2007 top 10 list, or the 2008 one? (Luckily, it’s Radiohead, so this shouldn’t even be a concern.)

Anyway, I’ll let you know what I decide, and have my review of In Rainbows here next week.

* * * * *

I’ve been doing a top 10 list for so many years now that I just know when I’ve heard the number one record. It’s an indefinable, intangible thing – more of a feeling than anything else. I heard Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois, and I just knew. I heard Joanna Newsom’s Ys, and I just knew.

I’m starting to get that feeling about PJ Harvey’s new one, White Chalk, though I’m not quite sure why. If you were to go on what I say I like, then this album shouldn’t be anywhere near the top – it’s not poppy, it has no catchy melodies, its production is odd and off-kilter, and it’s a barely-eligible 33 minutes long. But I can’t stop listening to it. White Chalk is nothing short of 2007’s most compelling and unsettling album thus far, an amazing feat of fearlessness that gets under your skin like little else out there.

Polly Jean Harvey’s career has been marked by sweeping change, from the raw guitar bursts of her first few albums (Dry, Rid of Me) to the more sinister To Bring You My Love, to the extraordinary pop of Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea. But she’s never done anything like this. For White Chalk, she ditched everything that sounds like PJ Harvey, setting aside the six-string for a piano, and singing everything in a high-pitched voice that sounds octaves out of her comfortable range. The fact that Harvey can’t really play the piano only adds to the fragility of this record – more accomplished playing would ruin the whole thing.

The result is, frankly, otherworldly. It sounds like cobbled-together radio transmissions from a planet where music evolved in completely different ways than it did here. But once you get past its ghostly exterior, it is uncommonly beautiful, much like the spectral cover photo. It’s also an album that will not leave you alone. One listen through will leave you unnerved and shaken, but you’ll want to listen again. This is something that goes beyond my usual concerns about song structure and melody, and heads straight for the emotional center of things – I didn’t even try to deconstruct these songs until my third time through the album.

Surprisingly, the songs themselves are simple things, tiny sketches given grand shape by the shivery production. Opener “The Devil” is haunting, its refrain of “come here at once” both comforting and unhinged. Throughout, Harvey pounds the piano, giving the songs basic shapes, but nothing more – they sound like they could float off and discorporate at any time. She layers her voice atop these fragile pianos and acoustic guitars like a choir of ghosts, often allowing one vocal line to fight against the others. Her impossibly high lead vocal on “To Talk to You” sounds like she can barely keep it together, which only adds to the atmosphere.

The subject matter is just as unsettling as the music. This album is about brokenness, about unwanted lives and loves. “Silence” tells the tale: “I freed myself from my family, I freed myself from work, I freed myself… and remained alone.” “When Under Ether” is simultaneously the most accessible and most horrifying thing here, a first-person account of a woman having an abortion. That’s the only song here that makes any reference to modern times – otherwise, this is a record without an era, one that could have been written 100 years ago, or yesterday.

You may think that an album consisting of little more than piano and voice would be peaceful and relaxing, but you’d be wrong. This album is almost unbearably tense, until the final 30 seconds. “The Mountain” starts like most of the other songs here, a simple piano line and that nearly whispered voice, but it concludes with a series of blood-curdling, orgasmic screams (melodic screams, mind you, in key), that sound like our narrator finally achieving catharsis. Naturally, the record abruptly ends two seconds later, giving you no time to join in that moment of release.

White Chalk is the kind of album that makes it nearly impossible to just go on with your day after listening to it. It weaves a skin-crawling spell, and cocoons you in it – you’ll be glad that this album is only 33 minutes long, because much longer would feel like suffocation. But the very weaving of that spell is a tremendous achievement – music that can make you feel anything is rare enough, but music that can make you feel this unstable, this unsafe, this unsure of the ground beneath your feet is akin to magic.

White Chalk is, in its own way, a masterpiece. Some will see it as just a fascinating diversion for PJ Harvey, but it captures something inexplicable, something without form or definition, something that goes beyond notes on a page, or sound from a speaker. This is an amazing album, and while it may not make it to number one, I can’t stop spinning it, and succumbing to its ghastly, ghostly charms.

* * * * *

And now, The Three Doctors.

There are some fans who have this bizarre notion of Doctor Who as a serious science-fiction drama. To be fair, occasionally it does try to spin tales with weight to them, like this year’s superb “Human Nature” and “The Family of Blood.” But above all, this show is supposed to be fun, and my favorite stories are the ones that realize how much fun it can be.

The Aztecs, for example, is a romp, a morality play that keeps things light and funny. Patrick Troughton’s Doctor was always poking fun – witness the scene in The Invasion where, after the UNIT troops chase the Cybermen down the street past the Doctor, Isobel begins snapping pictures of him, and he fixes his hair and poses. Doctor Who is, at its heart, an adventure serial, the kind you used to be able to see for a dime at the theaters on the weekends, and too much gravitas just stretches the concept, never mind the budget.

Which may be why I love The Three Doctors so much, especially since many others seem to hate it. This story, which began airing in 1972, is the first multi-Doctor tale – the Time Lords are under attack, and for some reason not fully explained, their only hope of survival is to bring the Doctor’s three incarnations together. So we get Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell sharing a screen for the first and, sadly, only time.

This could have been boring – if Doctor Who were a straight sci-fi drama, no doubt the three incarnations would have seen the looming threat and immediately decided to work together for the common good. Thank God that isn’t what happens here. It’s an essential part of the Doctor’s personality that he’s always the smartest person in the room, so of course his various incarnations can’t get along – they’re always trying to one-up each other. And it’s hysterical. Patrick Troughton is a comic genius, of course, but this is one of the few opportunities Jon Pertwee has to show how damn funny he is, too, and the pair simply crackles on screen together.

William Hartnell, the original Doctor, was supposed to have a bigger part in this story, but sadly, his health was in such poor shape that all he could do was sit and read lines. The writers came up with a clever solution – the first Doc gets trapped in a time eddy, but can communicate with the others through the Tardis scanner. Unfortunately, this means that Hartnell’s last performance as the Doctor is confined to a few moments on a TV monitor. He’s excellent anyway, famously dismissing Docs two and three: “So, you’re my replacements. A dandy and a clown!”

The story is delightfully silly. It introduces Omega (pronounced OH-meh-gah, for no good reason), the Time Lord who discovered time travel. Omega is stuck in a black hole, but he’s learned to harness the power therein to take his revenge on the Time Lords. This revenge is wonderfully ill-defined, and it seems to involve snaring the Doctor with a special effect that looks like someone drew on the frame with crayon, and attacking UNIT with walking hunks of Jell-O called Gellguards. These are the stupidest monsters I’ve yet seen in Doctor Who, and as such, they’re awesome to behold.

But the real story is the interaction between the Docs and the rest of the cast. This is a UNIT story, so we get Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier, and this may well be his finest performance. He plays the Brig as a stubborn empiricist, and the scene where he refuses to believe that UNIT headquarters has been transported into the black hole is laugh-out-loud funny. He’s a great foil for both Troughton and Pertwee, and Courtney plays the straight man to both Doctors brilliantly.

The Three Doctors was the kickoff to Doctor Who’s monumental 10th season, and serves as a warm look back at the show’s history. The plot of the story also finds the Doctor regaining the use of his Tardis, freeing him up to travel in time and space again. Two further stories from the 10th season are out on DVD, and I’ll talk about those next week. But I highly recommend The Three Doctors – it’s exactly what Doctor Who should be, to me, and watching it was the most fun I’ve had since I started this silly obsession.

The Three Doctors does one other thing that I wanted to mention, though – it serves as a final goodbye to William Hartnell. The immortal first Doctor died shortly after filming his part in the story, and even though I’ve only recently gotten to know his work on this show, it was touching to get one last visit with him. And the writers treat him perfectly here – his Doctor is the classy one, sighing heavily over the argumentative and childish natures of his other selves. He’s the Doc the other Docs look up to, and as the originator of the role, that’s a fine, final tribute to Hartnell and his work.

Next week, the last two Pertwees on DVD: Carnival of Monsters and The Green Death. I’ve just received Robot, the first Tom Baker story, and I’m anxious to dive into episodes I can remember watching when I was a kid. More to come, of course.

See you in line Tuesday morning.