So this is my favorite story of the week. Apparently, if the ever-reclusive Axl Rose somehow finishes up and releases the 13-years-in-the-making Guns ‘n’ Roses opus Chinese Democracy, everyone in America will get a can of Dr. Pepper for free. (Well, everyone except original guitarist Slash, and one-time guitarist Buckethead, who left the band years ago.)

It’s pretty much a safe bet on Dr. Pepper’s part – Axl will never finish this thing, and the only way we’ll ever hear what he’s been working on for the past decade and a half is if he dies and someone else releases it. But it would be fun to imagine which would be the worse experience: listening to the no-doubt incredibly awful Democracy, or choking down the carbonated cough syrup that apparently would come with it. (Don’t you want to be a Pepper too? Yeah, not so much.)

I’ve said this before, but we’re more likely to see actual Chinese democracy than we are to see Chinese Democracy.

* * * * *

Below you will find my first quarter report, a look at the top 10 list for the year if I were forced to release it now. I said in January that I was keeping my expectations low for 2008, so as not to jinx anything. 2007 barreled out of the gate with some excellent records, then petered out by the end, leaving me to shake my head at my own breathless pronouncements in the first half of the year.

So yeah, no way was I doing that again. Thankfully, 2008’s lineup looked reasonably mediocre back in January, so I could safely adopt an air of indifference – this year isn’t going to be that great, and I’m happier that way, I said.

But now I find myself at the end of March, composing a top 10 list I already like quite a bit, and coming up with a couple of honorable mentions already to boot. I’m counting the number of albums I plan to buy in April, many of which I’m expecting will knock me out, and then I’m reading up and listening to snippets of other records set to come out in ’08, records by the likes of Aimee Mann, Ben Folds, the 77s, Portishead, Death Cab for Cutie… and all of a sudden, I feel like I have to come out and say that 2008 has been excellent so far.

Damn. Hope that doesn’t ruin it for the back half of the year.

This week and next, I’m going to be all positive all the time. My plan is to recommend five very good albums to you – two this week, three next. But a quick glance at the list below should give you a sneak preview of one of next week’s subjects, a record that surprised the living hell out of me. Stay tuned for the stunned-grin review of that one.

This week is all about comebacks, and we start with R.E.M.

Now, listen, I’ve been an R.E.M. fan since high school, and one thing I can tell you, their catalog has peaks and valleys. The boys from Athens have made some excellent records, like Murmur, Lifes Rich Pageant, and Automatic for the People. But they’ve made some real turds as well, like Green, Monster, and their last one, Around the Sun. There are few bands who put their audiences through endurance tests like R.E.M., and yet, there are few bands who also reward loyalty the way they do.

Sure, I’ve had my faith tested before. I rank Automatic for the People among the very best albums of the 1990s – its wispy beauty is unmatched in the band’s catalog, and it truly stood out among the rip-snorting noise polluting the airwaves when it was released in 1992. So imagine my dismay when I heard the follow-up, the determinedly noisy and almost entirely song-deficient Monster. My hatred for that record seeped over into my initial dislike for its successor, New Adventures in Hi-Fi – it took years for me to admit that one was pretty good.

But the past 10 years have proven the most difficult. First, drummer Bill Berry quit the band for health reasons, leaving them a three-legged beast. The remaining trio replaced Berry with a drum machine initially, for the icy, remote Up in 1999. They then papered over his absence with globs of production on 2001’s Reveal – I know that one made my top 10 list, but time has lessened my appreciation of it. And finally, they gave up trying all together on 2004’s Around the Sun, the lamest, saddest, worst R.E.M. album ever. I hoped at the time they were headed somewhere better, but I didn’t know when (or if) they’d get there.

Guess what – they’ve arrived. On Tuesday, R.E.M. will release Accelerate, their 14th album. But they’ve already uploaded it to iLike, a music networking tool that works with iTunes, and I’ve taken the opportunity to hear the whole thing. If the last decade has been their deepest valley, Accelerate is one of their highest peaks, a sterling return to form that has these elder statesmen of indie-pop rocking like a band half their age.

I kid you not, Accelerate is LOUD. But it’s not that annoying, processed, buzz-saw kind of loud that Monster was. This is the let’s-annoy-the-neighbors kind of loud you find with the best garage bands, married to tunes only experienced professionals know how to write. This is the kind of loud that comes with youthful energy, a reinvigoration of the soul, and a fuck-it-all attitude, and I can’t tell you how good it is to hear that kind of sound from R.E.M. again.

The most obvious change this time is that they’ve finally let touring drummer Bill Rieflin pound the skins for a whole record. Rieflin used to play with Ministry, so he’s used to loud, and he jump-starts R.E.M. into playing like a band again. Opener “Living Well’s the Best Revenge” is a snide nose-thumb to critics, and is the group’s most energetic starting gun since… well, maybe ever. Much of this record captures the spirit of my favorite R.E.M. song, the explosive “These Days,” from Pageant. Yeah, they sound that good again.

Here’s “Man Sized Wreath,” a takedown of King Bush II with an excellent chorus. Here’s the sharp-as-a-whip single “Supernatural Superserious,” which sees Mike Mills taking his rightful place as backing vocalist again – he soars behind Michael Stipe, giving the song a lift its chorus doesn’t quite deserve. (This is actually kind of a typical R.E.M. song, but since they haven’t written one of those in a decade, I’ll take this one.) Here’s “Hollow Man,” which begins with a deceptive piano part but quickly piles on the six-string heroics. That song is the perfect synthesis of where they are and where they were – without the fiery electric guitars, it could fit on Reveal. But it’s amazing what those fiery electric guitars do for a song like this.

There are slower moments, but far from dragging the album down, they provide its heart. “Until the Day is Done” is an Automatic-worthy acoustic piece, and “Sing for the Submarine” is a complex mid-tempo mini-epic. But before long, they’re back to rocking out – the amazing “Horse to Water” is a punked-up highlight, full of spit and bile. The album ends with a song I couldn’t stand in its live incarnation, “I’m Gonna DJ.” On the R.E.M. silliness scale, it’s somewhere between “Stand” and “Shiny Happy People,” but damn if it doesn’t do the job, closing out the album with a riotous racket. (And a shouted “Yeah!”)

Best of all, in direct contrast to Around the Sun’s seemingly endless hour, Accelerate is in and out in 35 minutes. That’s just enough time to make you want to hit play again, and not enough to screw up a good thing by over-thinking it. Eleven songs, most hovering around the two-to-three-minute range, all with great melodies and the best Peter Buck guitar work in many a moon. It steps up to the plate, knocks a couple skyward, and then goes home early, job done. Cut, print, and there you have the best R.E.M. album in a decade, hands down.

I know, I know. Next week’s albums are nice and all, but you want to hear about something you can walk into a store and buy right now. I just happen to have another band right here that’s made their best album in 10 years, a band a lot of people have written off. If R.E.M. are my high school years, then Counting Crows are my college years, and with Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, they sound better than they have since… well, my college years.

I’m sure by this point everyone believes they have Counting Crows figured out. By the time 2002’s Hard Candy came out, the band had fallen into a predictable routine. It was a routine I liked, so I didn’t care – Hard Candy sounded like a slightly smoother version of their first three albums, and I figured Adam Duritz, his dreadlocks and his band would continue on like that for the rest of their career.

Not that that would have been a bad thing – their first two albums, August and Everything After and Recovering the Satellites, were such era-defining works that matching them, let alone bettering them, was kind of a fool’s errand. This Desert Life was very good. Hard Candy was very good. Duritz and company wrote the same kind of emotional American pop song again and again, but it was a good kind of pop song, and Duritz’ aching, pleading voice is always a treat to hear.

In 2002, when reviewing Hard Candy, I finally hit upon my unique description of Counting Crows. They’re the band, I wrote, that writes the songs for the emotional montages at the end of episodes of long-running, character-driven dramas. So what do they do? They go ahead and put out an album without a single one of those montage songs on it. And it may be the best thing they’ve ever done.

Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings is two records on one disc. The first, Saturday Nights, is a six-song sequence of uptempo numbers, and some of these songs rock harder than anything since “Angels of the Silences.” Opener “1492” practically erupts, with layers and layers of electric guitar swamping just about everything else. Duritz all but spits out the lyrics on this one, an elliptical poem about disappearing into silence. It’s hook-free, it has no chorus to speak of, and it stomps all over your ideas of what Counting Crows sound like.

“Hanging Tree” is the same, but it has a killer chorus, one of the album’s best. “Los Angeles” is the weak link, a song co-written with Ryan Adams – the styles don’t exactly mesh, but the song is good anyway, and has a classic Duritz lyrical conceit: “If you see my picture in a magazine… I’m just trying to make some sense outta me…”

From there, it’s smooth sailing through choppy waters. “Sundays” starts off like a radio-rocker, but the chorus is fantastic. “Insignificant” is louder and better, Duritz whipping out a monster hook in the refrain. “I don’t want to feel so different,” he sings, “but I don’t want to be insignificant…” And “Cowboys” is the cousin of “1492,” another delirious, rocking ramble that finds Duritz making a list of “what I should’ve been but I’m not.” The last minute contains a ripping guitar solo and some unrestrained screams from the frontman.

Through it all, Duritz provides maybe the only unchanged link to the sound of Counting Crows albums past. The rest has been surrounded by electric guitars – much of it sounds like it could have been produced by Matthew Sweet. (It was actually produced by Gil Norton, who manned the boards for the Pixies’ last three albums.) I don’t want to give the impression that this is raw and rough – it isn’t, it’s fully produced – but it’s some of the loudest material the band has done.

That’s not the surprise, though. The second record, Sunday Mornings, strips away everything identifiably Counting Crows and recasts them as a country-folk band for much of the running time. And the results are beautiful. “Washington Square” sets the tone – it’s a spare, simple folk song performed on acoustic guitar, acoustic bass, banjo, piano and nothing else. Duritz takes the song’s simple framework and brings an astounding amount of depth to it. It’s a lovely little piece.

Sunday Mornings continues in that vein for the next two songs, both pretty tunes, and if it had gone on like that, it would still have been decent. But with “Anyone But You,” the band starts building the sound up, and taking some interesting left turns. The centerpiece of Sunday Mornings, “Anyone But You” starts out like an Aimee Mann song, all acoustics and Chamberlain strings, but by the end, Duritz is imitating an entire brass section with his voice.

“Le Ballet D’Or” is even cooler, a sinister acoustic piece that takes some fascinating melodic detours. But it’s all prelude for “On a Tuesday in Amsterdam Long Ago,” a piano-vocal piece that truly showcases Duritz’ voice. He sounds like he’s about to shatter here, and that’s the sound that initially gripped me – this is “Raining in Baltimore” and “Colorblind,” but even more naked and powerful. The album closes with “Come Around,” another Norton production (the rest of Sunday Mornings was produced by Brian Deck), and one that I bet was initially on the Saturday Nights half. But it brings things full circle by the end, like closing credits music.

Here’s the thing: Counting Crows is a band often accused of driving right down the middle of the road. The last two albums especially have been dismissed by many as tepid pop affairs. This one cannot be. It is an album of extremes, shifting from the explosive and torrential to the sparse and quivering. Pretty much none of this is what radio will expect, but long-time fans will find in this album the creative spark and emotional resonance they fell in love with. It is drastically different, yet unmistakably Counting Crows, and by shaking things up, they may have made their best record yet.

* * * * *

Okay, it’s time for the list. As mentioned, I have a pair of honorable mentions first, two records that are actually exceptional, but currently rank as #11 and #12. They are Distortion, by the Magnetic Fields, and Small-Time Machine, by Cassettes Won’t Listen.

As for the rest, I fully expect (and certainly hope) this list will change as the year rolls along. It includes one album that isn’t out yet, one that isn’t out in the U.S., and one that I haven’t reviewed. (Next week, next week!) But if I had to release the top 10 list right now, here’s what it would look like:

#10. Richard Julian, Sunday Morning in Saturday’s Shoes.
#9. American Music Club, The Golden Age.
#8. Nada Surf, Lucky.
#7. Panic at the Disco, Pretty. Odd.
#6. The Black Crowes, Warpaint.
#5. Vampire Weekend.
#4. R.E.M., Accelerate.
#3. Joe Jackson, Rain.
#2. Counting Crows, Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings.
#1. The Feeling, Join With Us.

And there you have it. Next week, I hope to get some Doctor Who going – I’m really behind right now. And I’ll be talking about three sophomore records (including my current #7) that blow their respective predecessors out of the water.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

It’s been an interesting week for the music biz.

First, we get the news that the Raconteurs, Jack White’s other band, plan to release their second album, Consolers of the Lonely, next week. No advance warning, no set-up marketing, nothing, just a full album ready to consume seven days after it’s announced. The idea, the band says, is to make Consolers available in every format at once, with no hype. You can get it on CD and vinyl, or you can download it from a variety of sources.

While this plan seems to be all about stemming leaks, it has another interesting purpose as well – it levels the playing field between the formats. Since albums end up online sometimes weeks before they appear in stores (or become available to download legally), people naturally turn to the ‘net to hear it first. But if the album is suddenly available everywhere, before the pirates can leak it, will most people shell out money for it? We’ll see.

Another thing we’ll see, as I alluded to earlier, is which format walks away with the prize. Will more people buy it as a download, as a record, or as a CD? Part of that answer, I think, depends on what type of download is offered – MP3s, or superior lossless formats like FLAC. (Or both.) But I hope this experiment shows that the CD is far from dead.

That would be a good lesson for Elvis Costello, who announced his new album, Momofuku, at the end of the week. Reportedly, it’s named after a famous New York noodle bar, which in turn is named after the creator of Ramen, but the title works well as an expletive, similar to the one I uttered when I heard the release strategy. Momofuku is out on April 22 as a download, and as a vinyl record. That’s it. No CD.

Momofuku!

This may end up being the first Costello album ever – EVER – that I miss out on. I just can’t support this idea. I think the future of music should be about more choices, not fewer, and Costello is skipping over my format of choice right now. Of course, I say this now, but I’ll probably pony up my cash to download this thing, just because I want to hear it. Which is exactly what Costello wants. He’ll be able to say, “See? We sold as many downloads as we did CDs of the last album!” Of course he will – he’s forcing everyone like me to either buy a turntable or get on board the digital delivery train.

Seriously. What a momofuku.

* * * * *

I had a rough week, so I’m going to try to be as concise as possible in this column. I have four CDs to review, all of which slipped through the cracks recently, and I’m going to try to quick-hit each one. This also means there’s no Doctor Who review again this week, which I’m sure doesn’t make too many of you sad. But I want to get through them – I’m severely behind right now. Ah well.

We start with Richard Julian, who released his fifth album, Sunday Morning in Saturday’s Shoes, on February 26. Considering that at one time, I never thought we’d see a third Richard Julian album, I was beyond thrilled to plunk down my cash for this. But you may remember I reviewed his fourth, Slow New York, with a bit less breathless enthusiasm than I’d showed for his first three. It was pretty, it was nice, but it wasn’t a great Richard Julian album.

Sunday Morning is a great Richard Julian album.

Here, once again, is everything that makes the man worth checking out. Julian has an appealing sarcastic, cynical worldview, which makes his glimmers of hope shine even more brightly, and a sweet sense of folksy melody that underpins his story-songs perfectly. The cynicism is in full bloom on the opener, “World Keeps On,” which starts with this verse: “They pray in the temples, they pray, sun up, sun down, and what mercy have they found? The world keeps on like this.” It’s harsh and wonderful.

“Spring is Just Around the Corner” sounds like a sunrise in comparison, Julian promising that things will get better, until he gets to the last verse, in which he puts the title phrase into the mouth of the president, and follows it up with a bitter “trust me.” Elsewhere, “Syndicated” bemoans the Americanization of the planet – “We the people, incorporated.” The song is fantastic, a skipping bit of jazz-folk with the unmistakable snap of an acoustic bass beneath Julian’s guitar, and it only gets better when he turns the song on himself – he escapes the planet, only to return because he misses his coffee shops.

The wit of much of this album won’t prepare you for the raw pain of “A Thousand Days,” a personal account of a ruined relationship. “I remember a sadness in her laughter, but the madness that came raging after, it struck without warning,” Julian sings, over nothing more than his mournful acoustic. It’s a difficult listen, but worth it.

There are so many other highlights, like “God III,” which opens with this couplet: “God the third, Jesus’ son, GPA two-point one…” “Man in the Hole” is a classic Julian story-song, this one a parable about a man who digs for treasure until (SPOILER) he finds it, and is unable to climb out of the too-deep hole with it. “If You Stay” is a perfectly blasé plea to a fleeing lover, and closer “Morning Bird” is as pretty as anything he’s ever written.

Sunday Morning was produced by Mitchell Froom, so you know it sounds good, and Froom’s trademark keyboards add a subtle heft to the record. But it’s Julian’s songs that make this as good as it is. After the slight letdown of Slow New York, here is one of America’s most criminally undiscovered talents back at the top of his game. Check him out here. You can click from there to an e-card with four full songs, which ought to be enough to make you a fan.

* * * * *

Mark Eitzel is another guy more people should know. Perhaps the most genuinely sad songwriter in the world, Eitzel made his mark as the singer and mastermind for San Francisco’s American Music Club. They made seven good-to-great records between 1985 and 1994 before breaking up, and Eitzel was even named Rolling Stone’s songwriter of the year in 1991.

Eitzel embarked on a splendidly random solo career after that, taking on jazz balladry, acoustic folk, electronic soundscapes, covers of old standards, and traditional Greek music. I loved every minute of it, but I can see where he may have left some listeners scratching their heads. Regardless, Eitzel returned to his roots in 2004, reuniting American Music Club and issuing Love Songs for Patriots, a continuation of their dark rock sound.

Now here’s The Golden Age, an album that not only cements the reunion, but elevates it. Where Love Songs was more raucous, Golden Age is a slow hymn of a record, full of gorgeous acoustic ballads and appeals to the lonely soul in all of us. Some have said this sounds more like an Eitzel solo record than a band effort, but I think those people are reacting to the overall subdued feel – this record has a full, glorious tone to it, spare but not sparse.

Eitzel’s songs are like stream-of-consciousness poems set to music, and it’s always amazed me that he’s able to make them memorable despite this. Only the next nine months will tell whether I’ll hear a prettier song this year than “Decibels and Little Pills,” one of Eitzel’s trademark character studies. Although “Sleeping Beauty” comes close, with its delightful harmonies. There are only a couple of uptempo pieces on the entire 13-song affair – the rest is slow, mood-altering, fragile and beautiful.

I was initially suspicious when Eitzel re-formed AMC – reunions are often like trying to go back to high school when you’re 30. But with The Golden Age, Eitzel has proven he’s going to allow his band to age gracefully, and he’s going to write some wonderful little songs as it does. In “Who You Are,” a smooth song of encouragement for a friend, Eitzel laments that “all I can give you is one of my stupid songs.” Well, I don’t know what his friend said, but I’d take it – the songs on The Golden Age are like hazy waking dreams, ones you can’t wait to get back to.

* * * * *

I have an uneasy relationship with the Mars Volta.

On the one hand, I admire their undeniable musical talent. Omar Rodriguez-Lopez is an incredible guitar player, and he has an epic, progressive sensibility mixed with a hundred other influences. Under his musical direction, the band has pioneered a sort of cross between Yes, early Santana and Frank Zappa. And Cedric Bixler Zavala can really belt out these tunes. On paper, the Mars Volta should be on a short list of my favorite modern bands.

But they’re not. Because, on the other hand, their music is so much sound and fury without any real point to it all. The lyrics never make any sense, and songs start and end without much of a journey in between. I liked the debut, De-Loused in the Comatorium, partially because I’d never heard a sound quite like this before, but also because the songs were memorable. I gave them a pass on Frances the Mute, despite the fact that they’d filled a fourth of that record with godawful noise, because the insane freak-outs there were fun.

But I didn’t even review Amputechture. Hell, I could barely even get through its nearly 80 minutes of wanking solos and needlessly complex riffing. And the live album, Scabdates… hoo boy. What an unlistenable mess.

Lopez and Zavala have done a few things right with The Bedlam in Goliath, their fourth full-length. For one, they’ve pared their epic excursions down – the longest song here is nine minutes, an eternity for most bands but a marvelous display of restraint for this one. (The longest ones from their last two were 17 and 32 minutes, respectively.) They’ve also summarily dismissed the noise experiments and interludes, focusing on the tightly arranged, spastic rock-funk-salsa-metal they’re known for.

But it hardly matters. Bedlam is another 76-minute monster, and another Mars Volta album I can barely sit through. Again, I admire it – it’s explosive, it’s well-arranged, it’s incredibly hard to play, and it barrels along at a brisk pace for its entire running time. I just can’t imagine why I would want to listen to it repeatedly. In fact, by the end of the sixth track, I found myself wondering why I was listening to it at all.

I don’t want to denigrate the skill with which the Mars Volta guys have crafted this album. It’s a powerhouse, honestly – the songs mostly segue, and the tighter arrangements give tunes like “Wax Simulacra” a boost that no 25-minute slog could have.

But it all means nothing to me. This album is complex to the point of headache-inducing, despite some swell moments, and all that flailing about doesn’t seem to serve a purpose. The Mars Volta may very well be the best band on my shit list, and it’s because of their impossible talent and musical ability that I keep buying their records. I’m not sure what it will take to get me to really like one, though – The Bedlam in Goliath sounds like the apex of their journey so far, and if they haven’t sold me with this one, I don’t know how they ever will.

* * * * *

But that’s okay, because I keep discovering bands I actually do like. Here’s one now: Cassettes Won’t Listen, the one-man project of Brooklyn’s Jason Drake.

I don’t know who originally tipped me off, but it may have been Dr. Tony Shore, so I’ll give him a link just in case. I’m not sure why I’d never heard Drake’s work before, but I can hazard a guess – it’s probably because up until now, everything he’s done has been released digitally through his website. His first foray into CDs is Small-Time Machine, a seven-song EP that, even though it only runs for half an hour, is among my favorite releases of the year so far.

Drake’s work could be called electro, I suppose, but it’s closer to the Postal Service’s brand of electronically-enhanced indie-pop. Opener “Metronomes” sets the stage with its mellow synth tones and clipping beats, Drake’s even voice spinning a memorable melody over them. The song remains somewhat sinister throughout, but it isn’t a patch on the second track, the amazing “Large Radio.” Minor-key synths burble around Drake’s voice at the beginning, but the song builds and builds, until it erupts halfway through. The chorus lyrics are “whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa yeah yeah yeah yeah,” but you won’t care because the song is so cool.

And on it goes. All seven songs on this EP are meticulously crafted, dark and pulsing, and there isn’t a weak one among them. I’m not sure what it says about me that it took Drake’s abandonment of the digital revolution to get me to jump aboard, but I’m glad I did. Check out his work here.

* * * * *

Next week, the deluge begins. On Tuesday alone, I’m buying new ones from the Raconteurs, Gnarls Barkley, Counting Crows, the Cavalera Conspiracy (Max and Igor together again!), Panic at the Disco, Lindsey Buckingham, and A Silver Mt. Zion. And then there’s April, the most ridiculously rich music month I can remember in the last few years. Buckle up. Oh, and next week, I’ll also include the first quarter report for 2008.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Apologies for the late posting this week – we had a special election on Saturday to select a congressman, and most of my week was spent keeping up with that, capped off by a 14-hour shift on election day itself. I’m dead tired. I do hope I made it up to you by writing extra-freaking-long this week. If you’re still unsatisfied, send me an email, and I’ll read it when I wake up.

* * * * *

So the big music news this week is Trent Reznor’s attempt to outdo Radiohead.

If you missed it, last Sunday, Reznor released Ghosts I-IV, the new Nine Inch Nails double album, exclusively on his Web site. NIN’s contract with Interscope Records expired after last year’s two Year Zero projects, and he promised then that he’d make use of the world wide web for future releases. Many thought then that he’d be the first high-profile act out of the gate with a whole new paradigm for digital distribution.

And then In Rainbows happened. Radiohead’s seventh album was exclusively released on radiohead.com, with an ingenious pay-what-you-want pricing structure for the download-only version. It took the music biz by storm at first, but after a while, people started noticing the cracks in the firmament.

Radiohead made several mistakes with their maiden voyage into the digital delivery realm. First, they only offered their album download as low-quality MP3s, which upset audiophiles looking for lossless formats. And then, they produced an eight-song bonus disc, but only made it available with the hardcopy version of the album – an $80 “discbox” with CD and vinyl copies of the record, packaged in a massive box. They didn’t make those eight songs available for download, and didn’t produce a standard (read: affordable) version of the album until it came out in stores in January.

And, of course, with the option to pay nothing, many people did, stripping the band of potential revenue with each click.

Reznor, it seems, was taking notes, because he effortlessly vaulted over each of those obstacles. Ghosts I-IV is available in a number of formats, for a number of fixed prices. He’s made the first nine tracks (Ghosts I) downloadable for free, both on his site and on any number of torrent sites. If you don’t like them, fine – your obligation is finished. If you do, it’ll cost you $5 to download the whole 36-track extravaganza, and it’s available in MP3, FLAC and other lossless formats.

If you, like me, still buy physical CDs, Reznor’s got you covered. Ten bucks gets you the 2-CD set and a free download of the whole album. Collectors who like lavish packaging are covered, too – for $75, you can get the deluxe edition, which includes the two CDs, the free download, a DVD with all the songs, and a Blu-Ray disc with the whole thing in digital surround sound. That all comes in a swank hardcover book.

A $300 limited edition version of the album was also available, with everything from the deluxe edition plus the album on four vinyl records, all packaged in a… well, a “discbox,” but that’s sold out now. Sorry, millionaires!

It certainly seems like Reznor’s thought of everything. But there are some snakes in the garden here – namely, it seems the NIN camp wasn’t quite prepared for the interest this move would generate. Their servers were overloaded with orders early on, making it impossible to get to important areas of the website. I tried to order the thing Sunday night, but was unsuccessful – I only managed it Monday morning. I bought the 2-CD edition with the free download, and got my link in my inbox in seconds.

I’m writing this on Saturday morning, five days later, and I still have not been able to download my copy of Ghosts I-IV. I tried on Monday to make it work, but the server wouldn’t let me get more than nine percent of the way through before kicking me out. And after a couple of tries, the link wouldn’t work anymore – I’d started the download too many times. Three emails to NIN’s support staff have so far yielded no results.

I’ve heard the record, although I had to go to an outside source to get it. And that’s exactly what NIN’s sloppy preparation is going to achieve – it will send people to torrent sites and other methods of downloading the album if they can’t get it legitimately. If Reznor decides to go this route again, I hope he learns from this experience.

There’s another major difference between NIN’s experiment and Radiohead’s. In Rainbows was demonstrably the new Radiohead album – 10 songs, building on what the band had done before, nothing out of the ordinary. If the band had chosen simply to release it to stores on CD, no one would have bat an eyelash.

Not so Ghosts I-IV. This thing could almost be called a side project, if it weren’t such a massive endeavor. This is a 110-minute instrumental album, comprised of 36 unnamed tracks, most of which sound like the interludes between songs on “proper” NIN albums. The liner notes say it was recorded over eight weeks last year, but if I didn’t know that, I’d say this sounds like a collection of experiments and half-finished tunes. It’s certainly not the usual NIN fare, which makes its release this way a lot less risky – if it doesn’t work, Reznor can say it wasn’t a “real” NIN album, and can choose a record company for his next, more traditional release.

None of that should take away from the boldness of his release strategy here, though. I think, if he can get this system working properly, Reznor may have discovered the template for digital delivery that will keep everyone – collectors, audiophiles, budget-minded consumers – happy. I’ll talk about the album itself more when I get a copy in my hands, but for now, let me just say it’s worth the ten bucks I paid.

* * * * *

By and large, I hate reunion albums.

Whether it’s a two-year hiatus, as with Phish, or a 24-year absence, as with the Who, the reunion album is usually nothing but trouble. When a band breaks up, the reasons for the split are often deeply personal, and those don’t simply go away. The often-trotted-out “creative differences” don’t ordinarily disappear with time either – when artists find that they can work well together, it’s usually because they’re at similar points in their own musical evolutions, and when those roads diverge, it’s time to move on.

But lo and behold, this week brought us a pair of reunion records every bit as good as the legacies they hope to continue. I almost didn’t buy either one – who wants to hear a group of creaky old bastards try to reclaim past glories? – but I’m glad I bit the bullet.

Okay, I’m fibbing a little, because there was no way I wasn’t going to buy Warpaint, the new Black Crowes album. (Although I did purchase with a bit of trepidation, mind you.) I’m on record calling the Crowes the best rock ‘n’ roll band in the world, and I stand behind that statement – you won’t find a better purveyor of beer-swilling, fight-starting, barstool-throwing, tear-the-walls-down rock anywhere. I get a lot of flak for saying this, but real rock ‘n’ roll is a mix of attitude and feeling, and these guys have both in spades.

Warpaint is the first Crowes album in seven years, and their seventh overall. The core of the band is the brothers Robinson – vocalist Chris and guitarist Rich. So much so, in fact, that the ever-changing lineup has become “Chris and Rich and some other guys” to me, and as long as the Robinsons are playing together, I call it the Black Crowes.

But since the existence of the band depends on two hotheaded siblings getting along, you knew they wouldn’t be able to sustain things forever. In 2000, after their sixth record, Lions, was released to no fanfare, they called it quits, and the Robinson brothers pursued solo projects. Family wounds are deep ones, so it didn’t surprise me that it took seven years to get the two of them back together, but blood is blood – you know these two will never break up for good.

So here’s Warpaint, the first on the band’s own Silver Arrow Records label, and the first with Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi All-Stars on guitar. Just to be funny, I considered pulling a Maxim and reviewing it without listening to it. If I had, I probably would have touted the sharp rock riffs, the full frontal attack that you’d expect from a band that’s been away for seven years. I would have called it a relentless good-time rock record, full of Rolling Stones and Faces licks and just dripping with pent-up energy.

And I’d have been dead wrong.

Despite the title and the rollicking first single, “Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution,” Warpaint is the mellowest Crowes album ever. The other 10 songs range from slow-burners like “Evergreen” to acoustic ballads like “There’s Gold in Them Hills,” and the band never hits a delirious groove like “Goodbye Daughters” again.

Instead, they take their music to new places, something I expected after hearing Lions. Imagine an entire album of “Sometimes Salvation” and “My Morning Song,” and you’ve got a hint of what you’re in for here. “Walk Believer Walk” is a crawling blues stomp that sticks to one riff and one melody for its entire five minutes, but it’s absolutely awesome. “Oh Josephine” is the first of three terrific ballads here, Chris Robinson’s aching voice sitting perfectly next to his brother’s silky clean guitar lines.

Warpaint is a grower, but give it a few listens and it will take hold. The Robinsons stretch out in the back half, delivering the Revolver-esque “Wounded Bird” before launching into an insistent cover of the Reverend Charlie Jackson’s “God’s Got It.” (I like that song because, while it makes plain that God has everything you need, it never explicitly says he’s going to give it to you.) Even more typically Black Crowes songs mix it up here and there – check the piano-vocal conclusion of “Wee Who See the Deep.” (Spelling reproduced intact.)

The album has an endearingly loose feel to it, and it should, since much of it was recorded live with no overdubs. The closing song, the breezy “Whoa Mule,” was recorded outdoors, and you can hear the birds chirping in the background. This is a confident record by a band that doesn’t have to prove itself to anyone, and while some might see the overall mellifluous tone as a risk, I see it as proof the Robinsons will make whatever music they want to make, expectations be damned.

I’m not sure what I was hoping for from the first Black Crowes album in seven years, but Warpaint confounded those hopes, and then exceeded them. This is a great little album from the best rock ‘n’ roll band in the world, a fine addition to their legacy. You’re just not going to find an album like this from any other band, and it’s crafted with heart and a sense of history. Maxim can stuff their two-and-a-half-star fake review. Warpaint is terrific.

But seven years is barely enough time to establish your solo career. If you want to see a real reunion, check out Go Away White, the first album from British goth-rockers Bauhaus in 25 years. And here’s the real kicker – before the album was even released, the band broke up again.

Bauhaus formed in the late ‘70s, and initially gained notoriety on the strength of a nine-minute single called “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.” Their sound was always dark and propulsive, led by Peter Murphy’s creepy baritone, and it set the template for gothic rock from then on. They made four albums before bowing out in 1983, but those four albums are legendary among fans.

I was nine when Bauhaus split, and I wouldn’t buy my first cassette until the next year. (The soundtrack to Ghostbusters, thankyouverymuch.) I came in through the back door, first hearing Peter Murphy’s superb solo stuff (especially Deep and Holy Smoke), then moving to Love and Rockets before hearing Bauhaus. Initially I was surprised at how raw their music was – later goth-rock is lavishly produced, with keyboards and sound effects, but Bauhaus was a moody, brooding punk band.

And they still are. Go Away White was recorded quick and dirty – mostly live, in 18 days, keeping first takes whenever possible. And damn if this doesn’t sound like it was plucked from the band’s repertoire in 1981. Openers “Too Much 21st Century” and “Adrenalin” are thumping single-riff stompers, Murphy’s voice sounding just as grandly silly as it ever has, and third track “Undone” even has that patented tinny, 1980s snare drum sound.

The 10 songs here reach for that classic Bauhaus sound, and for the most part, they get there. The heavy guitar waves in “Endless Summer of the Damned” are there to show disciples like Type O Negative how it’s done, and the sparse, stunning “Mirror Remains” makes perfect use of Murphy’s voice, double-tracked over David J’s slinky bass. But the real stunner is “Saved,” a six-minute ambient excursion with layers of keyboards and chiming bells. It takes two decades of inferior goth-rock and sets it on fire.

I can’t say I’ve ever been a raving fan of Bauhaus, but to my ears, the reunited foursome has done the near-impossible here – they’ve come back together after a quarter-century apart and made an album that sounds as good as their classics. I’m sure more informed fans will tell me where I’m wrong, but I think Go Away White makes for a better-than-expected reunion record, and a fine swan song

* * * * *

Every Doctor Who fan has their Doctor.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be the first one you encountered, but it’s the one you most closely associate with the role. It’s the one you grew up with, the one whose adventures you remember most vividly. And for me, although Tom Baker was my first Doctor, my Doctor is Peter Davison.

The Davison years get a lot of flak, and not undeservedly, but they’re my sentimental favorite of the original 26-year run. Doctor Who aired every weeknight on our local PBS station, WGBH-2 out of Boston, at 7 p.m. I remember pleading to stay up to watch Tom Baker’s episodes, but not really understanding them, and not having any idea what happened when he turned into Davison at the end of Logopolis.

But by the time WGBH started airing the Davison episodes, my family had its first VCR, so I taped every one of his stories I could, and watched them over and over. I remember individual episode cliffhangers, I recall costume and haircut changes, I remember every cheesy special effect (though I thought they looked pretty damn cool when I was 10).

I remember my mother making fun of the plastic Mara snake at the end of Kinda. I remember that sinking feeling when I realized that the atrocious Time-Flight was four episodes long, not two. I recall my fascination with Davison’s decorative celery – I think I wore one for a while, just around the house – and how amazed I was when I found out the reason for it in The Caves of Androzani. I remember Kamelion, though I wish I didn’t. I remember being gobsmacked by the ending of Enlightenment, one I’m really looking forward to (and dreading) seeing again.

As a 10-year-old American, I had no idea who Peter Davison was. But everyone in Britain knew his name when he took the role in 1981 – Davison was the first honest-to-gosh TV star to take on the mantle of the Doctor. He was famous for his role as Tristan Farnon on All Creatures Great and Small, a long-running and well-liked BBC drama. His acceptance of the role was big media news, partly because Tom Baker had played the Doctor for seven years, but also because of who Davison was.

Oh, and one other thing – Davison, at 29, was the youngest actor ever to take the part. Some thought he was too young to effectively play the Doctor, but it turns out, he was very good – one of the best actors ever in the role – and he used parts of all of his predecessors. He especially incorporated the surliness of William Hartnell, though Davison’s Doctor was so charming and upstanding that I barely remembered how sarcastic he was as well.

In what will soon become a familiar song, though, Davison was a good Doctor in a flailing, cheap show with little quality control. While it got so much worse later on, the rot was beginning to set in by the time Davison donned his cream-colored hat. Producer John Nathan-Turner had this idea that everyone on the show should wear costumes, for example, and that the Doctor’s costume should be the most outlandish of all.

It’s my understanding that Davison mentioned a whisper of a germ of an idea to Nathan-Turner about his Doctor perhaps liking a spot of cricket. The next thing he knew, Davison was dressed head to toe in a cricket outfit – quite like if Jack Bauer walked around dressed in a baseball uniform. His shirts still had the godawful question marks, and by the end of his first adventure, his trademark would appear: a stick of celery stuck to his jacket lapel.

Yes, I said a stick of celery stuck to his jacket lapel. The fact that anyone can take his Doctor seriously is down to Davison’s presence as an actor, and nothing else.

It’s certainly not down to the writing, especially in his debut story. Castrovalva, written by Christopher H. Bidmead, is an extension of the author’s work on Logopolis, which means that a) it continues the theme of matter from math, or block transfer computation, and b) it makes no sense whatsoever. It’s also dreadfully dull and hampered by the usual problems of ‘80s Who, including synthetic music, substandard acting, and cheap-looking effects.

Okay, it’s not all bad. But here’s the basic outline: the Doctor and his three companions (Adric, Nyssa and Tegan) escape from the Master on Earth, but not before the Master captures Adric and replaces him with a block transfer computational double. (Yep, he made an Adric out of math.) This fake Adric sets the controls of the Tardis for “event one,” the in-rush of hydrogen that caused the big bang. This is especially problematic because the Doctor’s regeneration isn’t going very well, and he can’t take charge of the situation.

With me so far? Okay. The Doc gets his wits about him enough to save everyone, but he collapses, and the companions take him to Castrovalva, a place of harmony, to heal. The place does wonders for him, and an entire episode’s length goes by before any kind of plot happens at all. But wait! It turns out that Castrovalva itself is a massive trap set by the Master, who created the city/planet/whatever out of numbers, with Adric’s keen mathematical mind to help.

The Doctor exposes the trap, and escapes Castrovalva, leaving the Master to die with his creations. Cut, print, end. Sounds pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? It’s deadly slow on screen, though, and it’s nearly three whole episodes (out of four) before we start to see a plot forming. The Castrovalvans are boring, and the actors playing them don’t make much of an impression. The regulars are their usual selves – Matthew Waterhouse is awful as Adric, Sarah Sutton is serviceable as Nyssa, and Janet Fielding is best of all as Tegan, when she has good lines to say. Which isn’t often.

Anthony Ainley is back as the Master, and it’s here that his wild-eyed insanity starts to take root. There is nothing even remotely human or sane about his Master – he’s just a pure, cackling caricature. Sadly, Ainley shows once again that he really can act – he spends much of the second half of Castrovalva dressed up as an old man, and his performance is so different that I didn’t realize it was Ainley at first. Otherwise, though, he’s a cartoon.

Does anything hold this mess together? Surprisingly, yes, and it’s Peter Davison. His debut performance is immediately strong – we follow the Doctor as he tries to bring his regeneration under control, and Davison whips out perfect impressions of William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee along the way. When he finds the “zero room,” a place of harmony in the Tardis, and his head clears, we see Davison immediately take charge of his performance – this is the Doctor we will see for the next three years, and he’s great.

Most of Davison’s first season (the program’s 19th) is quite good. Next week, I’ll talk about two of the best, from writer Eric Saward: The Visitation and Earthshock. (Which puts me one step closer to having to talk about Time-Flight. Shudder.) I’ve made my way through most of the DVDs of the Davison era, though, and I have to say, he’s still my favorite. He’s still my Doctor.

* * * * *

Next week, the Alarm finishes up their Counter Attack Collective. (Hint: it’s awesome.) Also, I will write less, I promise.

See you in line Tuesday morning.