“Singled Out” Department

So much music to talk about this time. Deep breath.

Let’s start with “Violet Hill,” the new Coldplay single. Haven’t heard it? You can get it for free right now here. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Ready? Okay, I think what I like best about this single is it just isn’t a single at all. It starts with about 40 seconds of droning ambience, the signature of producer Brian Eno, before Chris Martin and his piano come marching in. Sounds like Coldplay, but the end result is anything but “Speed of Sound” – the song has a dirty, loose feel to it, and its very Coldplay hook (“If you love me, won’t you let me know”) is understated. Then the song ends with a lovely piano-vocal coda.

I think it’s a brilliant move to give this song away for free. It shows off just how different and cool Coldplay’s fourth album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, is likely to be – it’s one of those cases in which the best ad for the album is probably going to be the album itself. I was interested in the record before hearing “Violet Hill,” but now I’m excited for it. And one thing I like best about the single is it sounds like part of a whole, an excerpt of a complete album statement. I can’t wait to hear the rest of it on June 17.

Other singles I’m excited about:

Joy Electric has released the title track from their new one, My Grandfather, the Cubist. It’s minimal and dance-y and memorable, just the way I like my Joy E. Go here.

And if you haven’t yet heard the eight-and-a-half-minute “I Will Possess Your Heart” from Death Cab for Cutie’s new record, Narrow Stairs, you really should: clicky. I’m back and forth on it – on the one hand, there’s no reason for this thing to be eight and a half minutes long, but on the other, it’s mesmerizing.

Okay, enough singles, on with the albums.

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“I Waited 11 Years for This?” Department

Most weeks, I kind of saunter down to the local record store. I’m often excited about the week’s new releases, but not enough to quicken my pace – I’ll get there eventually, you know? But there are some new albums that send me into a sprint, ones I have to have yesterday if not sooner.

Portishead’s Third was like that for me. I nearly pulled a muscle getting to the store this week. And now that I have it, and I’ve heard it a few times… well…

Let’s back up. First of all, it’s kind of odd that this thing exists at all. Portishead’s trio of Beth Gibbons, Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley came out of nowhere in 1994 with a unique sound. I know it’s difficult to imagine, but back then, no one sounded like Portishead – by now the sparse, slow beats, samples and female vocals of their debut album, Dummy, have permeated pop music. They were sultry and spooky at the same time, when no one else was either one.

My initial reaction to Dummy was a sustained head-scratch. I felt like they just hadn’t finished it – like they’d sketched out these songs, and started to record them, and then got distracted by something else. A song like “Wandering Star” is just drums, one synth line and Gibbons’ smoky voice, and nothing else, and I found it empty instead of hypnotic. But I came around, especially after comparing Dummy to the 1997 self-titled follow-up, a fuller and stranger work that was even more off-putting.

I eventually got used to that record as well, so maybe, after a couple of years, I’ll know what to make of Third. It’s been 11 years since Portishead pretty much disappeared, refusing to reap the benefits of their revolutionary sound. Their absence has drawn deafening apathy – no one was clamoring for Third, and many were okay with the idea that the band had burned brightly and briefly. A new album was a complete surprise… but not as much as that album’s content.

As I said, I’ve heard Third a few times now. And I’m still perplexed by it.

To start with, there are no hooks. At all. Now, I don’t necessarily need singalongs to be a happy music fan, but I get the sense that everything on Third is deliberately obtuse and difficult, and par for the course with that mentality is a lack of memorable melodies. The album opener, “Silence,” starts with two minutes of abrasive acid jazz before coalescing around a couple of chords and Gibbons’ wandering vocal. And it repeats until the end – the sound is thick, full, almost live in places, and the song just stops mid-phrase at the five minute mark.

Next is “Hunter,” which starts off like Portishead – a loping jazz ballad, a smoky Gibbons vocal, a shadow of a chorus – but everything about it is off-kilter. Especially the pair of “On the Run”-style synth breaks that deliberately spoil the mood. The sound of this record is superb and unsettling, instruments panning in and out, reverb treatments giving those instruments unearthly auras, creepy multi-tracking on Gibbons’ voice. This is meticulously made – it’s exactly what they want, for some reason.

That reason is why I keep listening. I’m not sure what would possess Portishead to make an album like this. Multiple runs through it have put a few more pieces in place for me – the vocal line in “Nylon Smile,” for instance, just made my ears hurt the first time I heard it, but now I can sort of sense what Gibbons was going for. Likewise, “The Rip” now sounds ethereally beautiful, whereas at first I found it patchy and meandering, especially when the overpowering synths burst in halfway through.

But a lot of Third still confuses me. Take “Machine Gun,” a determinedly noisy headache that repeats its jackhammer drum beat into your skull for five minutes. Or try “Plastic,” which could have been a classic Portishead song if not for the what-the-fuck arrangement – elements of it keep spinning past your head, while the rug is pulled out from under your feet again and again. It’s a cacophony of crazy, like much of Third, and I find it equal parts dazzling and alienating.

Clearly, the Portishead trio wanted to make something that knocked their old sound on its ass, and they’ve done it. Like Dummy in 1994, this record is beholden to no current trend, and sounds like the work of no one else. In this case, I’m not sure that’s a good thing – you get through the entire 6:27 of the sandpaper-and-splinters “We Carry On,” and you tell me. I’ll keep plugging away at it, but by the end of the year, I predict that I’ll either put this in the top 10 list, or donate it to a library.

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“Stuff People Can’t Believe I Like” Department

I listen to a lot of music. No one style or artist does it for me completely, and while sometimes I’m in the mood for complex, cerebral head music, sometimes I’m ready to shut the ol’ brain off and just enjoy some dumb fun tunes. Particularly if they’re well-made and unpretentious.

You can see where I’d like Def Leppard, then. In many ways, the Sheffield quintet has been an essential part of the soundtrack to my life. I’m sure I heard “Rock of Ages” first, but Hysteria was the first album I bought. (I know, I know, just like everyone.) I remember the comic book video for “Women,” which naturally hooked me. And I remember loving the computerized, processed sound of much of the album – they sounded to me like the future of music, back when I was 13.

Here’s a funny story. My family was visiting my Uncle Bunky in Philadelphia around the time of the album’s release. Now, Bunky was a crusty old fellow, set in his ways, and liable to snap at you for the slightest thing. So my sister and I are listening to Def Leppard in his kitchen, and he walks in, listens for a second, and says this (I kid you not): “You call that music? Back in my day, we’d call that hysteria!” I took great joy in showing him the album cover.

Anyway, I’ve stuck with them ever since. The Hysteria-lite of Adrenalize didn’t quite measure up, but Retroactive was good. The Leps swung with the times on Slang, and as I was just nurturing my Nine Inch Nails fandom, I dug it. But I also loved the return to the classic sound, Euphoria. I’d never call Def Leppard one of the best bands on the planet, but they’ve never made an album I don’t like on some level.

The streak remains unbroken with Songs from the Sparkle Lounge, their 11th album. This one is pitched halfway between the classic rock sound of their covers album Yeah and the more metallic thud of Slang, and is the most live-band studio record they’ve made since… probably High and Dry. What does that all mean to you? Absolutely nothing. Sparkle Lounge is a 35-minute slab of enjoyable, melodic rock and roll, and if you like Leppard, you’ll like this.

The highlights include the singalong “Only the Good Die Young,” the fiery “Bad Actress,” and the ridiculous Queen-style epic ballad “Love.” The unquestionable lowlight is Tim McGraw’s vocal cameo on first single “Nine Lives,” but it’s over pretty quickly, so don’t fret. Otherwise, Sparkle Lounge is a long-haired dance of joy. I had fun listening to Leppard 20 years ago, and I have fun listening to them today. I’m not ashamed.

I’m usually not ashamed to be a Madonna fan, either, but have you seen the cover of her new one, Hard Candy? I bought it with a sense of furtive embarrassment, as if I had to get it under cover before anyone saw it.

Madonna’s a guilty pleasure, I’ll grant you, but I’ve rarely felt as guilty as I did buying Hard Candy, mostly because I knew it would suck. It’s a contractual obligation record, Madge’s last for Warner Bros. before her all-encompassing LiveNation deal kicks in. That means she probably didn’t try very hard, and a cursory glance at the contributors list confirms it.

The particular genius of Madonna has always been her ability to surround herself with cutting-edge talent. She has very little musical skill of her own, but she has an uncanny sense of the next thing in pop music, the next bend in the road, and she molds those innovations to her own style. She can make anything into pop music, and when she’s really on – see her work with William Orbit on Ray of Light, and with Mirwais Ahmadzai on Music – she offers more pleasure than guilt.

So what to make of her collaborations here with Timbaland, Justin Timberlake and the Neptunes? Here’s a who’s-who of current pop royalty, a crass attempt to grab hold of trendy radio sounds and ride them to the bank – Madonna was knocking radio-pop on its ass before some of these guys could even read. This isn’t an art project, it’s a stab at commercial success, a credibility grab that’s so sad because it’s so unnecessary.

The music, of course, just isn’t very good. I like “4 Minutes,” the Timbaland-by-the-numbers single, but that sound grows old over the course of an hour-long dance record. Some of these tunes, like the ass-achingly long “Incredible,” stretch their flimsy melodies to the breaking point, and some of them, like “Beat Goes On,” don’t have any melodies at all. It’s a plastic record about sex and dancing, and it doesn’t melt in your mouth as much as stick in your throat.

As a longtime Madonna fan (honest), I can only hope this is a one-time collapse, a symptom of the ticking clock on her contract. Listening to Hard Candy, an album as creatively dry and musically dull as Madonna’s critics mistakenly expect each time out, is like coming down off a sugar buzz. I like fizzy, disposable pop, but this just isn’t very good, and is much more disposable than most of Madonna’s work.

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“God, This Year is Shaping Up Nicely” Department

So about three years ago, I got turned on to this band called Waking Ashland. They were on Tooth and Nail Records at the time, and their debut album, Composure, was produced by Lou Giordano, who has worked with Paul Westerberg, Husker Du and Sunny Day Real Estate, to name a few. What sold me, though, was this recommendation: “It’s piano-pop. You like piano-pop!”

I do, indeed, like me some piano-pop. Waking Ashland was the project of pianist-singer Jonathan Jones, and Composure was pretty good stuff. Subsequent releases Telescopes and The Well were also pretty good stuff. And yet, somehow I failed to review any of them, bar a couple of mentions in my annual Fifty Second Week roundup. (I must have been having a bad day when I reviewed The Well, too – it’s much better than I remembered.)

I’m not sure why, but Waking Ashland is a band I just didn’t keep up with. It was always a surprise when I saw new albums from them in the record store, and I was equally surprised to find out just last week that they’d called it quits. My indifference is strange – I like the band well enough, and I think Jones is a competent songwriter with a sweet voice and a way with the piano keys. Yet once a year or so, I found myself catching up with developments in their career.

Like now. With Waking Ashland a thing of the past, Jones has gone on to form a new band called We Shot the Moon. As always, I was taken by surprise when I saw the record on the shelf, complete with a little sticker informing me of Jones’ participation. And I vowed, this time, I’d give Jones his due with a full review.

We Shot the Moon’s debut is called Fear and Love. You may be expecting a continuation of the piano-pop sound of Waking Ashland, and you’ll get some of that, but where that band was a pop outfit with guitars, We Shot the Moon is a rock band with a piano. The songs are simpler, the choruses more energetic, the amps cranked up, and the overall vibe more aggressive. Imagine Ben Folds fronting Weezer and you have the idea.

We Shot the Moon is a more direct band than Ashland – just check the 2:33 opening track, “The Waters Edge.” It starts with a driving rock beat and a bog-simple chord progression, but then the piano comes in for the “whoa-oh” chorus, and it takes off. There are no orchestrated epics here like “Sing Me to Sleep” – the closest is “Tunnel Vision,” a bedroom-studio ballad that almost sounds out of place.

Jones has kept his penchant for sweet hooks. “Sway Your Head” makes a nice first single, its breezy chord pattern driven forward by the pounding piano before the radio-ready chorus. (And another “woah-oh.” Has Jones been listening to the Alarm?) “On Your Way” whips out the vocoder, but doesn’t embarrass itself – the song has a nice refrain. While there are fewer grab-your-ear hooks with this new band, Fear and Love is another good record from Jonathan Jones, one that sounds tailor-made to get him some wider exposure. I hope it works.

We go from fewer hooks to no hooks at all, and that’s not a bad thing – the new Hammock album arrived in my mailbox the other day. It’s called Maybe They Will Sing for Us Tomorrow, and it’s ridiculously beautiful.

Hammock is Marc Byrd (of the Choir) and Andrew Thompson, and over three albums and an EP, they’ve revived, refined and perfected the instrumental shoegazer sound. What does that mean? It means dense clouds of otherworldly guitar, floating all around you, while other noises waft in and out, as if from someone else’s dream. It means music that surrounds you and lifts you from the ground effortlessly, music that uses formlessness as a virtue, music that spills out over the lines and colors in your entire world.

Okay, here’s the most practical description I can give you. You know how some bands fill in the spaces between their songs with ambient interludes, little drones or pretty reverbed guitar bits? (Like the first 40 seconds of the new Coldplay single, for example.) Imagine an entire album of those, only ten times more gorgeous, and you’ve got the idea.

Most Hammock albums use drums or drum patterns to move the music forward. Not this one. Maybe They Will Sing for Us Tomorrow is a recording of a live performance composed for an art show – unless I’m mistaken, it was Hammock’s first live appearance – and it’s all crashing waves of ambience. Byrd’s guitar tones are amazing as always, sounding like something played in an alien atmosphere, and there are contributions by his wife Christine Glass Byrd on angelic vocals, and Matt Slocum (of Sixpence None the Richer) on cello. You won’t notice them unless you’re looking for them, though – the whole album is a warm blanket of sound that covers you from first note to last.

I know what you’re thinking. There are no words, there are no melodies to speak of, there are no hooks. Why would I listen to this for an hour? And I’ll tell you, it’s because you won’t hear anything this consistently beautiful again this year, unless Hammock puts out something new. Head on over here and listen for yourself. I like them all, but if I had to recommend one, it would be this new one. Maybe They Will Sing for Us Tomorrow is Hammock’s most unearthly, most soul-filling album, and I can’t praise it highly enough.

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“The Next Best Thing to Being There” Department

Two years ago, I saw one of the best concerts of my life.

Dweezil Zappa had put together this traveling tribute to his late father, the brilliant Frank Zappa, and he’d called up some of the luminaries from Frank’s old bands to join him. He called it Zappa Plays Zappa, and while my expectations were low – Dweezil has never been his father’s equal, and most of Frank’s music is nearly impossible to play – I was knocked out of my seat. The show lasted three and a half hours, the setlist was full of incredibly difficult songs, and the band was perfect. Plus, I got to hang out with Dr. Tony Shore, who’s a bigger Zappa nut than I am.

I know, you missed it – you should have been there. But now you can see and hear what it was like with the Zappa Plays Zappa CD and DVD releases. Let me just say this up front – once again, the Zappa family has done a number on fans with the options. You’ll find a single-CD edit of the show and a double-DVD full presentation, but don’t settle for just buying both – get the five-disc “Fan Pak” instead. For less than $40, you get the full concert on two DVDs and three CDs. It’s well worth it.

I can’t even tell you how great this band is. Seeing some of these musical acrobatics in person was amazing – it was my first real proof that something like “Echidna’s Arf (Of You)” could be played live on stage by actual people. The guitar wankery goes a little overboard by the end, Dweezil trading endless licks with Steve Vai, but to see drummer Terry Bozzio play and sing “Punky’s Whips,” then take on “The Black Page,” is revelatory. And to hear the band come together for fantastic versions of “Peaches En Regalia,” “Re-Gyptian Strut” and a bring-the-house-down “Sofa,” well… it’s magic.

Sadly, I will never see Frank Zappa play live. But this is the next best thing – a fine, fitting tribute to the man’s music, played by his adoring son. (Dweezil even changed up his guitar playing, finding tones and phrases his father may have used – you have to hear his take on “Black Napkins.”) Zappa Plays Zappa was a high point in my concert-going life, and now it’s a high point in my DVD collection. Fans of either Zappa should check it out.

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“Man Oh Man, Look at All the Words Up There!” Department

Yeah, yeah. Okay. I’m done. This was a chattier column than I expected, but after last week’s cop-out, I figured I owed you. Next week, Elvis Costello’s Momofuku, which has already been described to me as his best album in 20 years. (Sure it is…) And maybe a few others, and maybe another Doctor Who review. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

See you in line Tuesday morning.

For some reason, I’m sick again, hacking up a lung as I type this.

So I apologize in advance, but I’m going to try to be as brief as possible. And then I’m going to crawl back into bed. I was originally going to write a pair of in-depth reviews this week, but I think I’ll just give you capsules instead. But please don’t mistake my lack of concentration this week for lack of enthusiasm about the albums in question. They are both excellent, and worth your time and attention.

Elbow’s fourth album, The Seldom-Seen Kid, is magnificent, in fact. Guy Garvey and his band have often been accused of meandering through their records, bringing the pretty but little else, which may explain why they haven’t had the success of their contemporaries (Coldplay, Travis, Keane). Their last album, Leaders of the Free World, went some distance towards remedying that – it was louder, for one thing – but it’s with this album that Garvey and company have learned that pretty and propulsive don’t need to be mutually exclusive.

“Starlings” is a fascinating opener, with its lounge beat punctuated by out-of-nowhere synth blasts. But it’s Garvey’s hangdog voice that captures the attention – his melody floats above the wispy background, grounding it. Elsewhere, though, Elbow turn up the amps and bring it. The best of these tracks is “Grounds for Divorce,” which brings in a healthy Zeppelin influence. Through it all, Elbow keeps the atmosphere of their earlier records, and when they slow it down (on the string-laden “One Day Like Today,” for example) they shine. This is Elbow’s finest hour, and if they’re serious about bowing out after this one, they’ve made a swell swan song.

Unwed Sailor has also learned the same lesson. Their last album, The White Ox, was so ambient and atmospheric that it barely called attention to itself. The brand new Little Wars finds them returning to the live-band feel of their earlier records, but keeping the focus on beautiful little melodies. Unwed Sailor is the instrumental project of bassist Jonathan Ford, and this one features a cast of thousands in support – it was recorded in three different sessions over seven years.

Remarkably, though, you’d never know it – Little Wars feels like a complete work. For the first time since The Faithful Anchor, most of these instrumental songs have thumping, explosive beats behind them, but Ford and his co-conspirators use them as a foil, spinning webs of gossamer around the snare drum pylons. I love every album these guys have done, but if you had to pick just one to tell you what they’re all about, I’d suggest this one. Little Wars is dazzling.

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And now, a look ahead at new music winging your way in the next few months. (Yes, this is my way of filling out a column quickly, so I can have a nap. Deal with it.)

There are some landmark albums set to hit stores this spring and summer, and one of them is slated for next week. It’s been 11 interminable years since Portishead put out their self-titled second album, and the musical landscape has changed dramatically while they’ve been away. Thankfully, Portishead themselves don’t seem to have changed very much – they’ve cleverly titled their third album Third, and what I’ve heard sounds like the same ghostly trip-hop they delivered in the ‘90s. It’s going to be nice to have them back.

April 29 has a few more blasts from the past, with new albums from Madonna, Def Leppard, Tom Petty’s pre-Heartbreakers band Mudcrutch, and Sarah McLachlan. Also, Dweezil Zappa releases a CD/DVD document of his Zappa Plays Zappa tour. I attended one of those shows, in St. Paul, Minnesota, and it was one of the finest concerts I’ve ever been to.

May 6 sees the new Elvis Costello, Momofuku, released on CD, three weeks after its vinyl-and-download-only debut. I admit, I’m mystified by this release strategy, but at least I get to hear it in my format of choice. Hammock’s new album Maybe They Will Sing for Us Tomorrow is scheduled for May 6 too, as is Barenaked Ladies’ children’s album, Snacktime. (Buy all three of those together and see what kind of strange looks you get at the record store.)

Another landmark release – May 13 will see Narrow Stairs, the seventh Death Cab for Cutie LP. I adored Plans, their 2006 album, but I felt it was about as far as they could go with the sound they’d been spinning for more than a decade. Narrow Stairs reportedly does the watusi all over that sound, exploring styles the Death Cabbers have never attempted before. The first single, the eight-minute, bass-heavy jam “I Will Possess Your Heart,” is streaming on their MySpace page now – check it out.

Also on May 13, new ones from Filter, Old 97s, No-Man and the Myriad. Then, on May 20, King’s X hopefully continues the serious roll they’ve been on with XV. Joy Electric returns on May 27 with My Grandfather, the Cubist (a more Joy Electric title Ronnie Martin could not have chosen), and Aimee Mann saunters back to store shelves on June 3 with the awesomely-titled @#%&*! Smilers.

June 10 is a big week, with the new Sloan, Parallel Play, leading the pack. My Morning Jacket comes back with Evil Urges, as does Robert Pollard with Robert Pollard is Off to Business. Supergrass returns, too, with the worst album title of the year: Diamond Hoo Ha. This is in direct contrast with Martha Wainwright’s second album, which sports probably my favorite title of 2008 so far: I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too.

Coldplay’s Viva la Vida, or Death and All His Friends hits on June 17, as does Motley Crue’s reunion album Saints of Los Angeles, and Wolf Parade’s second, which may or may not be called Kissing the Beehive. But the what-the-fuck prize goes to Judas Priest and their two-disc concept album about Nostradamus. (Called, naturally, Nostradamus.) I’ll write more about this later, but it sounds like a shoo-in for the Spinal Tap Award of 2008.

Weezer comes back on June 24 with another self-titled effort, this one already nicknamed The Red Album. But I’m much more excited about a color on the opposite end of the spectrum: Peter Gabriel’s Big Blue Ball project should finally – finally – see the light that same day. More than 15 years in the making, Big Blue Ball is a distillation of Gabriel’s “one world, one music” aesthetic, featuring contributions from dozens of artists from all over the globe. Should be awesome.

Other things coming: John Mellencamp’s pretentiously-named Life, Death, Love and Freedom; Dr. Dog’s Fate; Soulfly’s Conquer; a self-titled solo album from Conor Oberst; and Holy Ghost Building, the long-awaited old-time gospel and blues album from the 77s. And somewhere in there will be Marillion’s 15th album, a double-disc opus entitled Happiness is the Road. And that’s all I know.

Next week, Portishead. Sorry for copping out this week, but I need to lie down for about a month now.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Before we start, I just want to mention that Saturday is Record Store Day. It’s a new thing this year, bringing together a couple hundred independent music stores to promote what is, sadly, a dying breed. But it’s one I think is worth celebrating.

I vividly remember the day I first discovered there were whole stores devoted to music. Our local mall had a Strawberries (once an independent chain, then a Sam Goody franchise, then phased out), and I’d managed to get a job at the supermarket located a few yards away. The process went like this: I’d work for a week, I’d get my paycheck, and I’d walk right down to the record store and spend half of it.

This continued for years, until I moved up to Maine for college. It was then that I discovered the wonders of the independent store. It was called Bull Moose Music (still is, in fact), and it carried… everything. What they didn’t have, they could order. And the employees knew their shit. Unlike the blank stares I got at Strawberries, the Bull Moose employees usually knew what I was talking about when I asked for something. It was a revelation.

See, the Bull Moose folks knew that the local music store can be so much more than a place to buy CDs. It can be a hub for a local music scene, a place for lovers of music to get together and trade recommendations, find new stuff, see bands (local and otherwise), start bands, and develop a healthy arts community. I know music these days is all about specialized entertainment from the comfort of your own home, but that brave new world misses out on the communal spirit of the local record store.

And as much as I am fascinated by where the music industry is going, I’m already in mourning for the independent record shop. Downloading (legal and illegal) is killing the mom and pop music store. They already find it difficult to compete with the big box stores, who buy in bulk and can charge less. They’re finding it impossible to compete with digital delivery and a pervasive mentality that music should be free.

I currently shop at Kiss the Sky in Geneva, Illinois. It costs me more than it would if I were to just go to Best Buy every week, but I’m paying for more than just new CDs. I’m paying to support an idea, a notion that a record store isn’t just about notes burned into bits of plastic. It’s about people, coming together over their shared love of this otherworldly, amazing, life-altering thing called music. When the people are removed from the equation, music loses something irreplaceable. If you want to find that thing, just start shopping at an independent record store. Hang around long enough and it will find you.

For more information on Record Store Day, check out this site.

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If that isn’t enough for you, I’ve got five recently released reasons to stroll on down to your local record store right here. Of all of them, I’m most excited about the return of Ours, so we’ll start with that.

I will never forget the first time I heard Jimmy Gnecco sing. I caught the video for “Sometimes,” the striking first single from Ours’ first album, Distorted Lullabies. Here is what Jeff Buckley would have sounded like if he’d grown up listening to the Cure instead of Leonard Cohen. And when I say Gnecco sounds like Jeff Buckley, I mean he sounds exactly like Jeff Buckley – an incredible feat in itself. But Gnecco hasn’t pinched Buckley’s songwriting style – he writes heavy, intense music that showcases his incredible voice.

Gnecco basically is Ours, and his first album had me excited to hear what he’d come up with next. But he threw a curve ball – the second Ours album, Precious, was banged out too quickly, and suffered for it. And then Gnecco disappeared for six years.

You can hear all of those six years in the grooves of Mercy, Gnecco’s return from exile. In some ways, this is the first real Ours album, the one that fulfills its author’s potential. It’s not perfect, but it is the best thing Gnecco has done, and at least part of the thanks goes to Rick Rubin, the American Records mastermind who produced it. Rubin has an uncanny knack for bringing out an artist’s true sound, the one that fits them most naturally.

For Gnecco, that sound is massive, dramatic – almost epic. Rubin has flushed most of Gnecco’s unfortunate goth-rock tendencies, and pumped up the parts of his music that makes you want to shout from the mountaintops. Nowhere is that more evident than on “The Worst Things Beautiful,” which cribs from U2, but does it so authoritatively that you don’t care. And – here comes the heresy – Gnecco is a much better singer than Bono, and can really dig into these anthemic pieces.

There is much darkness to be had here – the record is subtitled Dancing for the Death of an Imaginary Enemy, after all. “Mercy” kicks off the album with a six-minute, constantly-building fever dream, Gnecco unveiling both his chilling falsetto and his jaw-dropping full-throated yell. And “Murder” is phenomenal, a pitch-black, creeping web of acoustic guitars, dissonant horns, ambient noise and thumping beats. Gnecco really lets it fly near the end – have I mentioned what an amazing singer he is?

If you need further proof of that, listen to “God Only Wants You,” a song that stretches Gnecco’s falsetto, then gives him the opportunity to carry the epic middle eight with his full vocal power. It’s just awesome, as is the screaming chorus of “Live Again,” and the memorable refrain of “Saint.” Oddly, the album ends by handing over vocal duties to someone else – Gnecco’s daughter provides the lovely coda to “Get Up.”

This is Gnecco’s best work, but it isn’t flawless – there are some tuneless numbers here, and some that go nowhere. But it’s a welcome return for an underrated artist with a singular talent. I was afraid we’d never see a third Ours album, so the very existence of Mercy makes me a happy music fan. The fact that it’s very good is just icing on the cake.

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Also making a welcome return this week is Phantom Planet, one of the only bands to inspire a retraction on this site.

Here’s what happened. I absolutely loved this band’s second album, The Guest, when it came out in 2002. I called it the third-best album of that year, and I still consider it a near-perfect pop record. It’s sunny and sweet and features glorious production from Mitchell Froom. I love it when modern bands show a love and respect for the craft of classic pop songwriting – you just don’t hear much of that anymore.

And then I saw the band live, and came away bitterly disappointed. I’m kind of surprised by my reaction now – I guess I wanted them to replicate the scrubbed-clean sound of The Guest on stage, and they didn’t. They were LOUD and aggressive and sloppy and abrasive, and they played these glittering little pop ditties as if they were Stooges songs. I left with a ringing in my ears and a sadness in my heart.

I suppose I should have expected at that point that their next album would initially disappoint me. Phantom Planet, released in 2004, carried over that on-stage energy to the studio. It was 11 sharp, shambling rock tunes in 35 quick minutes, with feedback-laced guitars, pounding drums, Alex Greenwald’s unrestrained wail, and nothing else. And I hated it.

But then, something funny happened – I listened to Phantom Planet. I mean, really listened to it, separate and apart from The Guest and my expectations. And I ended up liking it a lot. I was originally distracted by the screaming noise, the steamroller approach to everything they used to be, and missed what they had become. I immediately wrote a new review, praising the record.

I’m glad I came around, otherwise I may not have bought Raise the Dead, the just-released fourth Phantom Planet record. I have to say, as much as I still love The Guest, and as much as I grew to admire the self-titled, this is the album where it all comes together for Greenwald and his crew. Raise the Dead retains the rough-and-tumble energy of its predecessor while bringing back the sunny melodies I loved, and for the first time, Phantom Planet sounds completely comfortable in its own skin.

Now, granted, they’ve forged the Arcade Fire’s signature on the opening title track, Greenwald doing a decent Win Butler impression on the throaty vocals. It’s a surging, constantly building mini-epic, but it doesn’t exactly set the tone for what follows. The record really starts with “Dropped,” a kickass pop tune, and then doesn’t let up until the end. “Leader” incorporates a children’s choir, and it doesn’t suck – it’s actually terrific.

Raise the Dead finally provides a proper home for “Do the Panic,” an absolute winner the band has been playing for years. (It first appeared in a live version as a bonus track on The Guest.) You won’t be able to listen to this without singing the “come on come on” refrain in your head for hours afterwards. Older versions of this tune played up the piano-pop aspects, but this one goes for the guitar-laden gusto, and it’s all the better for it. This is the definitive “Do the Panic.”

The album’s second half gets more aggressive, pumping up the garage band side of the band’s sound. “Geronimo” is an awesome two minutes, with a bass line to kill for, and “Too Much Too Often” finds Greenwald affecting a snotty Brit-punk vocal over charging guitars and drums. But with “Leave Yourself for Someone Else,” they bring back the power-pop, and they end things with the sweet “I Don’t Mind.” With all that back-and-forth, Raise the Dead oddly doesn’t sound disconnected – it flows like an album should.

Greenwald has said he would like to see Phantom Planet change things up every album, and sound totally different each time. With Raise the Dead, though, he’s tied all his previous sounds up in a neat bow. This is more of a refinement than a reinvention – it’s such a confident, comfortable record that I wouldn’t be surprised if Greenwald and company just continued on this path for years to come. And like the last song says, I don’t mind.

There. I did the whole review without mentioning “California,” The O.C., or Jason Schwartzman.

* * * * *

Every couple of months, there’s a new Next Big Thing. You know it’s the Next Big Thing because the indie cognoscenti at Pitchfork and other sites tells you so. Every 60 days or so, they find a new debut album and crown it the best album ever made. They fall all over themselves trying to out-superlative each other, to the point where you feel you have to have this album or your life will remain frustratingly incomplete.

Or, it would, if you weren’t already aware of the cycle of Next Big Things. Because every couple of months, there’s a new one, and the old ones are tossed aside. Should these bands have the gall to release a second album, that record will be called disappointing at best, and a betrayal at worst, no matter what’s on it. We don’t have time for career artists with evolving catalogs, we’re already on to the Next Big Thing.

This is a massive over-generalization, but I’m always bemused when it plays out. I talked a couple of weeks ago about how difficult it is to follow up an impressive and much-lauded debut, but sometimes it happens. Case in point – Tapes ‘n Tapes, who made a massive splash in indie-rock circles with their 2006 debut, The Loon. A rough-around-the-edges noise-o-rama, The Loon has some good grooves and an appealing looseness about it. But it sounded like it had been recorded in a weekend.

The follow-up, Walk It Off, doesn’t. It sounds worked-on, and lived-in. It sounds like a finished product, a crafted distillation of the band’s sound. I like it considerably more than the debut. And of course, I am almost entirely alone in that opinion, as the indie crowd has dismissed Walk It Off as a sophomore slump. All I can say is that this one doesn’t offer the same shabby charm as the first, but in its place you get much more complete songs, and sterling production by Dave Fridmann, taking a break from his work with the Flaming Lips.

This isn’t a brilliant record by any means, but it is an improvement, and it showcases just how tight this band is. I have to make special mention of bassist Erik Appelwick, who simply shines on almost every track. Leader Josh Grier turns in a diverse group of songs, with highlights including the sweeping “Demon Apple” and the closing stomper “The Dirty Dirty.” It’s a good album. Tapes ‘n Tapes are no longer the Next Big Thing, apparently, but Walk It Off is worth checking out.

* * * * *

I still read Pitchfork and other sites like it every day, though, because sometimes, if you can peer through the cloud of smugness, you can get turned on to some good new stuff. Without Pitchfork, I probably wouldn’t have picked up Antidotes, the debut album from Foals, which would have been a shame. It’s also a really good record.

Foals are an Oxford band that rose from the ashes of math-rock combo The Edmund Fitzgerald. With their first album, they’ve found an appealing mix of math and dance – everything is in thumping 4/4 time, but the actual riffs and arrangements are deceptively complex. Plus, they add trumpets and saxophones to their guitar-based sound, but they don’t use them as accents – they’re orchestration, not cues for the upbeats.

First track “The French Open” unveils the sound – it’s a little like Isaac Brock fronting Minus the Bear as they cover Bloc Party. But not really. Things lift off with “Cassius,” an absolute tornado of a song that makes great use of the horn section. My favorite, “Olympic Airways,” creates an ambient cushion using nothing but bass and muted harmonics on the guitar. “Electric Bloom” spins a denser web with droning synths and lovely clean six-string. Over it all, singer Yannis Philippakis shout-sings in his thick British accent, adding a streetwise punk edge to the studied music.

It would be hypocritical of me to bestow Next Big Thing status on Foals, but Antidotes is a very good debut. It’s complex yet hip-shaking, very well produced, and full of inventiveness. The CD includes their first two singles, “Hummer” and “Mathletics,” as bonus tracks, and it’s easy to see why they built up the buzz in the U.K. I’ll be watching to see where this band goes.

* * * * *

Which brings us to Nine Inch Nails. Or rather, back to Nine Inch Nails, as I promised a more in-depth look at Ghosts I-IV when I got my hands on it. And I’m looking at the monochromatic little bugger now, so…

Trent Reznor got a lot of ink for jumping on board the digital delivery train with Ghosts, but for me, it’s only now, with the physical disc in front of me, that I can get a handle on the scope and shape of this record. I do want to talk about the delivery, because I think Reznor had a good idea, but mucked up the execution somewhat.

You may recall that about a month and a half ago, Reznor released this album on his website, in a number of different formats. I decided to go for the standard 2-CD edition, with free and immediate download, but others chose to get the deluxe DVD and Blu-Ray edition, or the super-deluxe all-that-and-vinyl-too spectacular. My purchase was ten bucks, a bargain for two hours of new music. Unfortunately, I never got my download link to work, and numerous emails to the support staff were not returned.

I was fine with it, though – I procured the music from another source, and waited for my hard copy to show up. The release date was April 8, so I figured I’d get it around then. But no. My copy showed up a week later, leaving me seven days to stare at the thing on my record store’s shelf. Their price? $9.99. The folks who didn’t pre-order paid the same as I did, and got the album a week earlier.

I’m not truly upset about that, but I can see how some people might be. I might have been more miffed if I hadn’t found an alternate source for the music, and if that music had thrilled me. Ghosts I-IV is a 36-track instrumental collection, and I say “collection” rather than “album” there because it plays like a disjointed data dump. For a guy whose exclusive province is themed, cohesive records that pack a cumulative punch, Ghosts sounds like a clearing house of half-formed ideas.

They’re nice half-formed ideas, though. None of the tracks have names, and they’re broken up into three suites of nine songs each, but really, you could put this on shuffle and get the same effect. Some of the songs, like the opening two tracks, are piano-based. Some are made with thunderous beats and electronic noise. Some have the abrasive, processed guitars for which Reznor is best known, and some have the tinny, strummed acoustic he’s showcased in pieces like “The Downward Spiral.”

None of them have any real melodies, though. They’re all either chord-based or groove-based, and if you put Ghosts on in the background while you’re doing something else, you’ll find it pretty easy to ignore. The physical sound is wonderful – Reznor is a master producer, and he makes this dark ambient material pop out in 3-D. Strangely, though, that’s not enough to catch the ear. I quite like most of Ghosts I-IV as mood music, but few of the tracks feel like finished works, and over two hours, it gets wearying.

Admittedly, it’s not as wearying as two hours of With Teeth would have been, and I do hope Reznor carries back some of this experimentation with him to the next proper NIN album. But I’m afraid Ghosts I-IV will come to be seen as little more than a curiosity in Reznor’s catalog. I’m not knocking Ghosts – it is very good instrumental ambience, and it’s worth hearing. But next time he wants to shake up the music industry, I hope it’s with something everyone will be aching to experience. (And I hope he ships out the pre-orders well in advance of the release date.)

* * * * *

Next week, we get Billy Bragg, Elbow, South… hell, it’s the British Invasion all over again. Plus, I’ll talk about Unwed Sailor’s great Little Wars. And maybe a Doctor Who review or two. Happy Record Store Day!

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m about to disappoint some of you, and make a few of you very happy.

You may be aware that the 30th season of Doctor Who started up this week in Britain. It’ll be a couple of weeks before the new episodes start airing stateside, and being the geeky fanboy that I am, I can’t wait that long. So I’m downloading the episodes as they become available on torrent sites. (Don’t worry, I’ll buy the DVD box sets too. I always do.)

The 30th season kicked off with an episode called Partners in Crime, and I enjoyed it so much, I watched it three times. And it’s inspired me to finally get back on the horse and talk Doctor Who in this column. To make up for lost time, I’m devoting the lion’s share of this week’s missive to Peter Davison’s first season as the Doc.

Oh, be quiet. It’s a slow music week, and next week is pretty significant, with new ones by Ours and Phantom Planet. I haven’t forgotten I’m running a music column here, though, so before we get to cheap and wonderful British television, here are some capsule reviews of new CDs I like:

The Black Keys, Attack and Release. Much as I liked Magic Potion, the fourth Black Keys album, you could hear this guitars-drums blues-rock duo hitting the limits of their sound. They shake things up on their fifth, hiring Danger Mouse to produce it and incorporating loops, keyboards, and more soulful songwriting. The results are smashing, a great example of adding color to a black-and-white world. Dig the single, “Strange Times,” and the wonderful “So He Won’t Break.”

Moby, Last Night. A definite improvement over the dismal Hotel, Last Night finds Moby returning to his clubby roots, and thankfully keeping away from the mic. It’s still not quite up to the level of Everything is Wrong, and while some of the tracks are great (“257.zero”), some are less so (“Sweet Apocalypse”). I do love the comedown section of the record, especially the ambient title track. Good, but not great.

The Foxglove Hunt, Stop Heartbeat. I love this record. The Foxglove Hunt is Ronnie Martin of Joy Electric and Rob Withem of Fine China, and together they’ve made a kitschy, glorious ‘80s synth-pop revival record. Great melodies, watery clean guitars, cheesy programmed drums, burbling keyboards, and Withem’s oh-so-‘80s voice. It’s like having your own time machine. Get it here.

Colin Meloy, Colin Meloy Sings Live. The solo debut from the Decemberists’ frontman is an acoustic live record that finds him digging deep into his band’s catalog. The new arrangements truly shine, bringing out new details in songs like “Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect.” Meloy’s on-stage presence is warm and friendly, and he does a terrific solo version of my favorite Decemberists song, “The Engine Driver.” Even if, like me, you didn’t quite like The Crane Wife, this is well worth picking up.

Sun Kil Moon, April. Saving the best for last. Mark Kozelek has essentially sounded the same for his whole career – he doesn’t evolve as much as refine. Oddly, though, I don’t mind, because his work is so beautiful. April is his second album as Sun Kil Moon, full of long Neil Young-esque guitar workouts and equally long, sparse acoustic pieces. Kozelek’s even, warm voice is hypnotic, and though these songs sound exactly like ones he might have written for Red House Painters, they’re all gorgeous. If I had to pick a highlight, it would be the 10-minute “Tonight the Sky,” but everything here is excellent. Love it.

And now, the Doctor is in…

* * * * *

In the seven years and change I’ve been doing this column, I’ve discovered that there are some bands that strip me of my critical faculties. Mostly, they’re bands I’ve loved since my teen years, like the Alarm and the Choir – I will always treasure their old records, and will eat up anything new they release. I know, intellectually speaking, that the Alarm has been putting out the same kind of fist-pumping Clash-meets-U2 anthem-pop for as long as they’ve been around, but I don’t care – I will never dislike them.

I’m finding I feel the same way about Peter Davison’s Doctor. I see the flaws in his episodes, certainly, and in many ways there are more such flaws in his era than in that of any previous Doctor. But I don’t care. I love the Davison years. I remember the Tom Baker era, but I practically memorized the Peter Davison run. With each new DVD I buy and watch, I’m remembering what it was like to be 14 years old, watching these crazy adventures for the first time.

A big part of it is Davison himself. In some ways, his more reserved performance was a reaction to Tom Baker’s over-the-top silliness, but Davison carries an air of authority with him that simply convinces. Whereas Baker sometimes failed to take the silly aspects of the show seriously, Davison never poked fun – he followed the example of original Doctor William Hartnell, infusing the rubber monsters and rolling pepper shakers he faced with real menace, just by reacting to them as if they were frightening. His Doctor is vulnerable and brave, tetchy and protective, young and old at once, and unfailingly captivating.

I mostly remember Davison’s first two seasons. I recall the third – the last line of Warriors of the Deep has stayed with me, and I remember the stone face in The Awakening and the miniature Master in Planet of Fire. (I’ve also just watched Resurrection of the Daleks, so that one’s fresh in my mind.) But I don’t have too many of these stories on my old VHS tapes, labeled in pencil and degrading by the day. I do have the entirety of the first two seasons, and The Five Doctors, and watching the available episodes on DVD is like remembering a dream.

After Castrovalva, the opening story of Season 19, Davison and his very full Tardis (Adric, Nyssa and Tegan) wound up on a spaceship full of frogs in Four to Doomsday, and a primitive jungle inhabited by a snake god in Kinda. Neither of those have made it to DVD yet, but the fourth story of Davison’s first season, The Visitation, has. And it’s great.

In many ways, The Visitation is a classic Doctor Who story. Trying and failing to return Tegan to 1980s London, the Doc ends up in 17th Century England, during the plague. He soon stumbles on an alien plot to wipe out humanity with a virus, and confronts the dangerous Terileptils in an attempt to stop it. There’s some good old-fashioned running around, a wonderfully cheap-looking android dressed as the grim reaper, a couple of significant moments, and a nice tie-in to history at the end.

My problems with it are the same ones that (forgive me) plague the John Nathan-Turner era. First, there is the plastic, synthesized music, which sort of works for futuristic stories like Four to Doomsday, but doesn’t quite fit in a historical piece like this one. Everything looks sort of plastic, too – the lighting is bright and harsh, exposing the limitations of the sets. And then there is the Terileptil costume, an obviously rubber contraption that looks ridiculous, particularly when well-lit.

But I can’t fault Eric Saward’s writing here, or Davison’s performance. (He acts so well that you barely even notice he’s wearing a stick of celery the whole time, as he does throughout his run.) There’s an extended conversation between the Doctor and the Terileptil in part three, and it could have been laughable (well, more laughable), but Davison takes it so seriously that he carries the scene. It’s a guy in a cricket uniform talking to a guy in a rubber suit about morality, and it works. Honestly, it does.

The best performance, besides Davison’s, is given by Michael Robbins. He plays wandering rogue Richard Mace, an out-of-work actor and highwayman with a flair for the dramatic. His delightfully over-the-top line readings are a joy to watch, and he steals nearly every scene he’s in. (Admittedly, when his competition includes Matthew Waterhouse and Sarah Sutton as Adric and Nyssa, respectively, stealing scenes isn’t all that tough.)

There is a significant moment in The Visitation that affects the rest of the original series’ run – the sonic screwdriver is destroyed. Fans of the new series may be surprised to learn that the original screwdriver was used mainly just to open doors. The new model can apparently do anything, getting the Doc out of one scrape after another, and in fact that was the reason Nathan-Turner and Saward did away with it – after 15 years on the show, the screwdriver had become an all-purpose way out for the writers. So after the Terileptil blasts it in part three of this story, it never reappears again – until the new series.

So The Visitation is a lot of fun, an old-time classic Doctor Who story. But the fun starts to dissipate with Saward’s next script for the series, Earthshock. In many ways, Davison’s run as the Doctor is a crescendo of death and madness, the writers putting this nicest and most noble of Doctors through the wringer. (The climax of the run is arguably Resurrection of the Daleks, with a higher body count than most war movies.) It is misery and death, and Davison trying to keep faith as the bodies pile up.

And the first bodies come in Earthshock. The Doc and his companions find themselves underground, in a cave system on Earth hundreds of years from now. Little do they know, they’ve stumbled on a murder scene – an entire archeological expedition has been killed in a particularly grisly way. Military troops find the Doctor and, of course, blame him, until a pair of faceless androids attacks. The Doc defeats them, but their trail leads to a space freighter headed for Earth, and carrying an army of (wait for it…) Cybermen.

Earthshock was the first Cybermen story in seven years, and Nathan-Turner evidently kept their appearance a closely-guarded secret. Their reveal at the end of part one is pretty awesome – they’ve been redesigned again, but they still look like Cybermen. And they’re menacing as hell. Davison doesn’t even have to fake it this time – the Cybermen are genuinely frightening.

The rest of Earthshock is impressively dark and foreboding. Director Peter Grimwade turns in a feature-film-worthy effort (well, an ‘80s feature film), and he gives the final two episodes an unsettling mood of creeping doom. The Cybermen, it turns out, are planning to crash the freighter into Earth, killing a group of visiting interplanetary dignitaries and launching an invasion force. The ship is crawling with Cybermen, and there’s a lot of death as the military troops attempt to keep them from breaching the bridge.

But breach it they do. And for the first time in his run, Davison’s Doctor is frightened and out of control. It’s a pretty great few scenes. In the end, the crew members overpower the Cybermen, but the freighter is still headed for Earth, its controls locked by a logic puzzle device. (I know, I know…) The crew abandons ship, but Adric stays behind, certain he can solve the puzzle.

He can’t. In what was, honestly, one of the most jarring moments of my young TV-watching life, Adric becomes the first companion to die since the show’s third season. (And so far, the last to die in the program’s run.) As a young teen, I was stunned by this – until the last seconds of part four, it really seems like the Doc is going to be able to save Adric. But no. There’s a big explosion, and then credits, rolled silently over Adric’s smashed badge for mathematical excellence. (Okay, it’s silly, but it was moving when I was younger.)

Earthshock is, for my money, the finest story of Davison’s first season. Writer Saward was also the script editor at the time, and he used this story to begin exploring his recurring theme – the world (nay, the universe) is a cold, dark place, and sometimes horrible things happen to good people. How, then, do those good people keep going, when faced with the futility of their actions over and over? It’s heady stuff for a so-called children’s program.

Earthshock also shows Matthew Waterhouse the door, which wasn’t altogether a bad thing. He’s a pretty awful actor, although on the commentary tracks he seems like a very nice guy. But there were just too many companions in the Tardis at the time, and one had to go. Nathan-Turner and Saward gave Adric a terrific death, though – perhaps better than his character deserved.

So after Earthshock, you’d expect the bar to have been set for the season finale. You’d be wrong.

If Earthshock is the best story of Season 19, Time-Flight is easily the worst. In fact, Time-Flight may be the worst story of the program to this point. That’s a bold statement, but Time-Flight lives down to it.

There are some stories in which everything comes together. The script, the acting, the direction, the effects, the editing, all coalesce to create classic Doctor Who. And then there are some in which absolutely nothing works. Time-Flight is one of those. It’s such a complete failure on all levels that it’s nearly unwatchable, and tests even my affection for Davison’s Doctor. It is 100 minutes of sheer inexplicable awful.

It actually starts out promising. The Doctor finally gets Tegan to Heathrow Airport, and gets wrapped up in the investigation of a missing Concorde. He determines the plane vanished down a time contour, and rousts up another Concorde to follow it. The second plane, with the Tardis aboard, trails the first back to prehistoric Earth, where the Doc finds hypnotized passengers under the thrall of a cackling Arabian mystic.

Okay, maybe it isn’t all that promising. But it probably could have turned out better than it did, if not for the fact that the production office ran out of money. This is a story that required not one, but two Concorde jets to land in prehistoric Earth, and it was made almost entirely in the studio, on a shoestring. It’s so inept, it’s almost funny – like, The Web Planet funny. You have to see prehistoric Earth. Polystyrene rocks on a studio floor with a painted backdrop behind them. And some smoke. It’s hilarious.

So the Doc and his two remaining companions (and they certainly don’t seem to miss Adric at all) join the most wooden, boring, bland actors imaginable as the Concorde’s crew in tracking down Kalid, the sniggering, gibberish-spouting wizard at the heart of the mystery. And they beat him, pretty soundly, at the end of part two. Even as a teen, I was relieved – Time-Flight was shaping up to be a two-parter, and hence much easier to forgive.

But no. Kalid whips off his rubber mask at the end of part two, and turns out to be the Master. And, um, what? Why was he dressed as a fat Arab mystic? Why did he continue his chanting and cackling even when he was alone? This makes no sense, and the following two episodes make even less. There’s something about the Master’s Tardis, and something about a race of aliens that live in a box and fight with each other, and a bunch of technobabble I can’t be bothered to understand. It’s just terrible.

The budget clearly trickles to nothing by the end as well. In episode four, there is a dramatic shot of the second Concorde. Or, it would have been dramatic in any other production – the director would have hired a crane and shot the actual airplane from above. But not here. To create this shot, the model workers bought a plastic Concorde toy and painted British Airways logos onto it. And it looks like it.

Really, this thing is terrible. Astonishingly, it was written by Peter Grimwade, the director of Earthshock – here’s a guy who knows how tiny Doctor Who budgets often are, and he scripts a complex, incomprehensible epic requiring feature film money to pull off. That’s almost as difficult to understand as the plot of Time-Flight. And it’s really not worth trying to figure out.

So Davison’s first season ends with a whimper. (Well, more like a stink bomb.) His second, if I recall correctly, was much better – we get Omega’s return in Arc of Infinity, the Mara’s revenge in Snakedance, and the Black Guardian Trilogy, which I remember, but not vividly. I do remember thinking Enlightenment is genius, the best of the Davison stories, and when the Trilogy makes its way to DVD, I’m excited to find out if I was right.

Who knows when I’ll do another one of these, but when I do, I’ll have the last three Davison DVDs to discuss. And that’ll be five Doctors down, two to go for the original series. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to download The Fires of Pompeii, the second story of Season 30. Popcorn at the ready.

Next week in music, Ours, Phantom Planet, Nine Inch Nails, and maybe Unwed Sailor.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I swear, if I’m ever in a major label band, I will lobby to call our second album Sophomore Slump. You know, just to save the critics time.

Following up an artistically and commercially successful debut must be nerve-wracking. If you deliver the same album again, you’ll get slammed for it, and it won’t sell as well as the first one. If you deliver something that veers too far off course, you’ll get slammed for it, and it won’t sell as well as the first one. Your record company is breathing down your neck, the guys in the suits are expecting you to shift the same numbers again (even though it’s statistically improbable that you’ll do so), and you’re so sick of playing the songs on your beloved debut already that the idea of doing something that sounds the same just makes you ill.

As much as I like following bands with extensive catalogs, the early records are the ones that truly set the tone, and watching those come out one by one is exhilarating. A good debut album is actually pretty easy – you have your whole life to write that one. It’s the second album, the one made under pressure, that shows what you’re made of. Do you have the wherewithal to put your head down, concentrate and make the best album you can, regardless of the pressure you’re under? Or do you crack, try too hard and make something no one can be proud of?

In short, do you succumb to the sophomore slump or not?

The intense pressure that comes with crafting your first follow-up is exactly why I was so excited to hear Join With Us, the second album by the Feeling. It’s practically a textbook on how to avoid the sophomore slump – it’s bigger and more refined that the first album, but it retains the goofy-pop sensibility that made them famous (in Britain anyway), while simultaneously setting off on several new paths. Keane did the same thing with their fantastic second record, Under the Iron Sea.

But more often than not, that second album is a stumbling block – especially if the first one was an original, fresh sound. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that I’m glad I’m not any of the guys in Vampire Weekend right now.

But take heart, A-Punks, because the sophomore slump can absolutely be overcome. I’ve got three examples right here of follow-ups that dance the watusi all over their predecessors, and they’ve all come out in the last couple of weeks. There is hope!

First up is the Raconteurs. I’m not the world’s biggest White Stripes fan – I think the first two albums were appealingly raw and bluesy, and Get Behind Me Satan is still the best (and oddest) thing they’ve done. But otherwise, I can take or leave Jack White and his minimalist scratchings. What attracted me to the first Raconteurs album was White’s main partner in crime, pop songwriter Brendan Benson. I was hoping Broken Boy Soldiers would combine the best aspects of both – pop with a bluesy rock edge.

And it did, but not very well. In fact, Soldiers sounds to me like a recording of White and Benson’s first date, if you know what I mean. They were tentative around each other, they sometimes forgot to collaborate at all, and the resulting music was tepid. The album did very well, on the strength of the lead single “Steady, As She Goes,” which winningly pinched the signature bass line from Joe Jackson’s “Is She Really Going Out With Him.” (Honestly, whenever I hear “Steady” on the radio, or in a bar, I’m fooled for a couple of seconds into thinking I’m about to hear the great Joe Jackson song. And I’m invariably disappointed.)

Most of the attention given to Consolers of the Lonely, the Raconteurs’ follow-up, has focused on the release strategy. Rather than announce the album months in advance and give the label time to build up advance hype, the band sprung the record on its audience. They issued a press release one week before the album hit stores, and one could be forgiven for thinking a rush release meant a rushed recording. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In many ways, Consolers of the Lonely is the first real Raconteurs record. Where the first one played like a loose, unkempt side project, this one’s an album, a fully realized effort. Finally, White and Benson have delivered that melding of their sounds that I wanted in the first place. Over 14 diverse tracks, the pair shows off just how much they’ve learned about each other in the ensuing year. They wrote all the songs together (except for a cover of “Rich Boy Blues”), and while some lean more in one direction or the other, the album is a whole new thing for both of them.

The opening title track shifts through three changing tempos, as White’s signature crunchy guitar cranks out a monster riff. White’s the dominant force in the early going – the first single, “Salute Your Solution,” rocks harder than anything on Icky Thump. But Benson makes himself heard on the superb piano gallop “You Don’t Understand Me,” a song that exemplifies this album – it’s fully produced, sharp and bright, as opposed to Soldiers’ murk, and with Benson on piano and White on guitar, it gives off a tight, live band feel.

Where Soldiers hinted at diversity, Consolers delivers it. “Old Enough” is a ‘70s folk-rock stomper, with dirty organ and soaring fiddle to boot. “The Switch and the Spur” is a slower cousin to the White Stripes’ take on “Conquest,” a dramatic Tex-Mex radio play complete with horn section. It was an interesting choice to give Benson the lead vocals on this one, and it shows just how well-meshed the styles are here.

On it goes like that, with nary a bad track to be found. “Top Yourself” is a Zeppelin-esque acoustic romp, “Hold Up” rocks like nobody’s business, and “Many Shades of Black” is a soulful monster, with an awesome horn section. “Pull This Blanket Off” is a down-home piano-blues ballad, and closer “Carolina Drama” ends the album well – it’s another story-song that slips through melodies and genres like water. Along the way, White and Benson include mandolins, fiddles and a spectral female choir.

I can’t fail to mention bassist Jack Lawrence and drummer Patrick Keeler, both from the Greenhornes. Consolers is the album that brings these two fully into the fold – whereas Soldiers sounded like a joint solo record in some places, this one is the work of a completely integrated band. Keeler, in particular, shines here – I know Stripes fans will crucify me for this, but it’s nice to hear Jack White accompanied by a very good drummer for once.

But this barely qualifies as a deftly avoided sophomore slump, since virtually nothing was riding on its release. White is all set with his main band – he’s basically just playing around with the Raconteurs, not setting up his retirement fund, and the other three guys have their own careers going as well. “Steady, As She Goes” was a hit, certainly, but nowhere near a nationwide smash.

Not like, say, “Crazy,” by our second contestant this week, Gnarls Barkley.

Two years ago, I picked up the first Gnarls Barkley album just based on how clever the band’s name was. Sometimes my process is just that silly. I had no idea Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo Green, two guys I’d barely heard of before, would soon be everywhere. It helped that their debut album, St. Elsewhere, was excellent, a seamless blending of modern beats and rhythms with Green’s timeless, soulful voice. But hell, the album could have been blank except for “Crazy” and they still would have been superstars.

So what to do for the follow-up? A second album of Motown-inspired party tracks would have been fine, of course – the sound is so original and ear-catching that a second helping probably wouldn’t have been stale. But that isn’t what Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo did. The second Gnarls album, The Odd Couple, shares an old-TV-shows title motif with the first, and still pairs Green’s wondrous voice with trippy beats and samples. But the similarities pretty much end there.

Try putting The Odd Couple on at your next party, and watch the room empty out. The album is slow, spacey, melancholy and eerie, with not a single smash pop single to be found. It’s also a richer, deeper and overall better record than the first one. It’s as if Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo knew that they’d never match the success of “Crazy,” no matter what they did, so they chose to explore other avenues. Opener “Charity Case” is danceable, and first single “Run” is something of a whirlwind, but it’s songs like “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul,” with its unearthly, mournful despair, that set the tone.

The Odd Couple is a lot darker than its predecessor. While that album found Cee-Lo poking fun at himself on “The Boogie Monster,” this one is doused in self-loathing. “Would Be Killer” is a frightening glimpse at a damaged psyche, and “Blind Mary” finds Green taking solace in the fact that his visually-impaired girlfriend can’t see how ugly he is. Only closer “A Little Better” shines a ray of hope into the proceedings – most of the rest is creepy, pitch-black and sad.

And it’s great. Those who came aboard with “Crazy” and skipped the back half of St. Elsewhere won’t be happy, of course, and The Odd Couple may get tagged with the sophomore slump label because of that. But artistically, it certainly doesn’t deserve it. Just listen to the extraordinary “Open Book,” a cathartic cry set to music that you just can’t pin down. Or the freaky Syd Barrett overtones of “Whatever,” or the acoustic graveyard whistling of “No Time Soon.” The Odd Couple offers experiences far more soul-searching than those on the debut, and if you’re looking for pop that is also art, you can’t get much better.

But for all their reinvention, Gnarls Barkley have kept the essential core of what they do – they still sound like Al Green produced by Fatboy Slim. Sometimes, though, the sophomore record sees such a drastic, dramatic change at every level from the debut that it’s almost difficult to think of it as a product of the same band. This can be a good or bad thing – if the band pulls it off, it can be the first step in a new direction, but if they don’t, it can come off as desperate. The last thing you want to do, as a new band, is let them see you sweat.

Which brings us to Panic at the Disco, and their second album, Pretty. Odd.

This thing came out just over a week ago, and already, the experience has been fascinating for me. It’s become pretty clear that Panic at the Disco (note the newly absent exclamation mark) is a band I’m not supposed to like. It doesn’t matter that their second album is literally nothing like their first – very few people I know will give it much of a chance. Panic is a band for emo kids and people with no musical taste, I’ve been told, and nothing they will ever do is worth paying attention to.

Now, admittedly, their hugely successful debut is an obstacle to get over. A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out combined all the cliches of modern crap-rock – it sounds just like Fall Out Boy and a dozen other bands. The members of Panic are all cute young men, and they played the kind of music that would get them cute young girls, and slots on major summer festival tours. They copied everything, right down to the too-clever song titles that have little to do with the songs themselves: “The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage,” for example.

I doubt anyone expected Panic to do anything but make their first album again (and again and again), which is one reason Pretty. Odd. is so great. I shit you not, this band has transformed from Fall Out Boy to Sloan in the space of one album. All traces of their former emo sound are gone – like, completely gone – and instead, they’ve made a terrific ‘60s pop album. I’m going to say that again, in case you thought you’d read it wrong: Panic at the Disco has made a terrific ‘60s pop album.

Now, here’s the thing. It’s clear that the Panic boys have just traded one stylistic ape for another, probably after watching Across the Universe. But I admit a certain bias here – I like ‘60s pop a lot more than I like ‘00s pop-punk. I actually think it’s harder to write a sterling pop song than people think, and the Beatles already wrote 90 percent of all possible pop songs anyway. So yeah, the band is pinching a style again, but this time, it’s a style I love.

And man, did they write some great pop songs for this one. Pretty. Odd. is Panic’s attempt to make their own Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, as evidenced by the first track, “We’re So Starving.” Over a violin-fueled fanfare, singer Brandon Urie promises, “You don’t have to worry ‘cause we’re still the same band,” a nifty inversion of the “we’re a different band” conceit of Sgt. Pepper. The best part is, from that moment on, Panic proves they’re not the same band at all.

You’ve probably heard the piano-pounding “Nine in the Afternoon,” the most radio-ready song on the album. Here are the George Harrison guitars, the ringing bells, the chiming brass lines, the swelling harmonies, all in the service of a serviceable pop song. Still, I was worried – this one sounds tentative, like they were trying to graft their new ‘60s influence to their old emo sound. This type of stylistic transformation can only work if the band jumps in with both feet.

Not to worry. The rest of Pretty. Odd. is the work of a band committed to their newfound melodic love. “She’s a Handsome Woman” is a dirty psychedelic rock song, “Do You Know What I’m Seeing” provides me with my second opportunity to reference Syd Barrett in one week, and “That Green Gentleman” sports the album’s first knockout chorus, an acoustic start-stop wonder that will stick in your head for days. Throughout, you’ll notice a lack of punky guitars, disco beats, or anything recognizably this band – they’ve traded them for strings and horns and harpsichords, and an overall Brian Wilson-esque sound.

Some of these tunes are so insanely beautiful that if they’d come out under another band’s name, they’d be praised to the skies. “Northern Downpour” is a bit treacly, but its chorus is fantastic, and “Pas de Cheval” sounds like something Chris Murphy might come up with for Sloan. “The Piano Knows Something I Don’t Know” is Panic’s attempt at a stitched-together epic, combining two songs into one, and it works brilliantly.

My favorite here is “When the Day Met the Night,” a bright and bouncy Beach Boys anthem. It starts as an acoustic ballad, with subtle strings, but soon explodes like sunlight into a chorus that compels singalongs. I had to jump back and repeat this song my first time through the album, just to be sure I’d heard what I’d heard. By the end, I had to face facts: Panic at the Disco had written one of my favorite songs of the year so far.

The album isn’t perfect. “I Have Friends in Holy Spaces” is a clarinets-and-ukuleles interlude I could do without, and “Folkin’ Around,” nice as it is, doesn’t really belong here – it’s a country-folk piece, less than two minutes long, that sticks out like a sore thumb. Brandon Urie also still has that emo-boy quality to his voice that sometimes breaks the spell of the songs. And the stretch of opulent ballads near the end gets somewhat wearying.

Overall, though, Pretty. Odd. is the best kind of surprise – a complete re-think that actually works. I bet the executives at Atlantic shat themselves the first time they heard it, and I expect the sunny pop that bleeds out of every corner here is pissing off the band’s old fans something fierce. They’ve made an album that disregards those fans, and aims for more sophisticated listeners, who probably won’t give this a shot because of the band’s name. I know, because I’ve tried to get some of those people to listen to this with an open mind, and it’s no use.

But hell, I don’t care. Every time I listen to this album, I like it more, and I hope Panic continues in this vein. I put Pretty. Odd. into my first-quarter report last week at number seven, after only hearing it a couple of times. The more I spin it, though, the more I think I should have rated it higher. Sales might take a hit, but that’s the only part of this stunning sophomore record that will fall prey to the dreaded slump. The album itself is wonderful.

Next week, maybe the Black Keys, maybe Moby, maybe Sun Kil Moon, and maybe some damn Doctor Who already.

See you in line Tuesday morning.