I like stuff.

Anyone who has known me for any length of time can back me up on this. I have a lot of stuff. I have so much stuff that moving is problematic – last time I did it, I needed a pretty large truck, not for furniture or anything like that, but for stuff. CDs. Comics. DVDs. Stuff.

People are often amazed at how many CDs I buy on a regular basis. I try to keep these people from sensing the true depth of my obsession. For example, I will hardly ever reveal the fact that I have bought many, many albums twice, and sometimes three times, for what might seem to others as the flimsiest of reasons.

For one thing, I’m an old-fashioned packaging guy. I have mentioned this numerous times before – I just have the collector gene. I don’t know where I got it from, since neither of my parents have it, and none of my grandparents, as far as I can tell. I like being able to line up an entire body of work, in similar-looking packaging, and proudly display it as part of a collection. In fact, I am such a collector that any hole in that body of work drives me nuts.

I know, for instance, that I will never own Rochester, the limited-edition U.S. tour live album Marillion made in 1998. The only pressing was sent specifically to fans who donated money for that tour, and the band has promised it will never be re-released. Fine. But if I want to obtain one on eBay, it will cost me well in excess of $100. It’s a live album. I have probably 75 Marillion live albums, including a few from the Rochester tour. I’m not missing anything when it comes to the music. Still, I want this thing, because there’s a hole in my Marillion collection where it should be.

This year, I bought physical release copies of both Nine Inch Nails albums, Ghosts I-IV and The Slip. Technically speaking, I already owned both – Trent Reznor made them both available for free/cheap download off of his website. And yet, I wanted the packaging. I didn’t relish the idea of burning CD copies and printing off cheap covers just to display the albums on my shelf. Flimsy reason? I guess. But I’m happy I bought both.

Quick digression. There are a couple of reasons that the actual CD version of The Slip is worth having, to me. Of course, there is the artwork and the liner notes. The cover image is the same one that came with the download, but nicely printed onto a digipak, and the booklet is a good reference for who played what. The physical release comes with a DVD of the band performing several Slip songs live, and that’s a nifty bonus too.

But the big reason, which I won’t be able to explain fully to those of you who’ve grown up in the age of iTunes, is that the album is mastered.

What does this mean? Well, when I downloaded The Slip, it arrived as 10 separate audio files. I loaded them onto my iTunes and listened away. However, iTunes decided for me the amount of space between the songs, and whether the linking sections would actually connect. It was like listening to 10 distinct pieces of music, whereas listening to The Slip on CD is like hearing a cohesive suite. Opener “999,999” now segues beautifully into “1,000,000.” The transition from “Lights in the Sky” to “Corona Radiata” is exactly how it should be. The songs flow and blend, and it makes an incredible difference to me.

The new age of digital delivery doesn’t take this into account. Most of the great records of the last 40 years have benefited tremendously from careful mastering. Imagine “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” not segueing perfectly into “With a Little Help From My Friends.” Imagine The Dark Side of the Moon split into 10 different audio files, with spaces between them. (You can cut the space down to almost nothing in iTunes or other players, but there’s still a space – the sound doesn’t bleed over.) Mastering is becoming a lost art, and I think people will miss it, even if they don’t realize what it adds.

The Slip contains the loudest and most danceable guitar-industrial noise Reznor has made in a while, especially “Letting You” and “Discipline,” but as it progresses, it becomes more complex and moody. “Echoplex” and “Head Down” spin mid-tempo webs of electric guitar before “Lights in the Sky” drops the pace entirely for a dark piano number.

I still quibble with Reznor’s decision to sequence the two long instrumental tracks together. “Corona Radiata” is a nice drone, but goes on a little long – it sounds like an outtake from Ghosts I-IV, to be honest. And “The Four of Us Are Dying” doesn’t pick the momentum up at all. Closer “Demon Seed” is a little too sloppy and disorganized to bring it home, which is a shame. After a strong start, The Slip seems to lose its way, and never quite regains it.

Is The Slip worth buying twice? Well, not really, but let’s be honest – I didn’t buy it the first time, either. The free download was, to me, like getting a sneak peek at a work in progress, and the CD is the real deal. Of course, I have bought both Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral numerous times, for new remasters in new formats, so I certainly wouldn’t put it past me to shell out for The Slip again in the future.

Yes, you read that correctly – I’ve re-bought albums I already own for newly remastered sound. It actually makes a huge difference, and often, the improved clarity comes with extra goodies, like a second disc of rarities or new packaging. Case in point – I’ve just bought the first three U2 albums, Boy, October and War, for a third time each. (Once on cassette as a young’un, once on CD, and now on brilliantly remastered CD.)

It strikes me that there’s an entire generation of kids now who hear new U2 music and don’t understand why they were such an important band. Over time, the four lads from Dublin have settled into their journeyman role as pop stars, writing good (and sometimes great) radio singles and being content with changing the world in small ways. But when they started out, they were one of the best arguments for the transformative power of music. They were out to set the world on fire, and no one could argue that they didn’t fiercely believe in every note, every word they played.

U2 changed things by sheer force of will, and not just politically speaking. Before them, no one sounded like U2. Now, you can’t go six months without hearing another band aping their style.

I’m not sure if even listening to these three records would explain it to those who grew up with Pop and Zooropa. But give them a try anyway, because if you haven’t heard them, you just don’t know what you’re missing. And these spiffy new packages are the way to go. First off, the remastering is amazing. It was overseen by The Edge himself – and if you want proof that the former David Evans is an incredibly well-respected guitar player, consider that he’s gotten away with calling himself The Edge for more than 30 years now – and the clarity is astonishing.

Not only do these albums sound better than they ever have, but they look better too. The new remasters are packaged the same way as the Joshua Tree deluxe edition from last year – hardcover book, gorgeous slipcase. The liner notes and essays are wonderful, and Edge’s commentary on all of the bonus tracks is indispensable. Oh, yeah, bonus tracks – a second CD in each package, overflowing with goodness. B-sides, unreleased outtakes, crisply recorded live cuts, the works.

Boy is just an incredible record. “I Will Follow” remains one of U2’s most piercing anthems, kicking things off with a skyward shout, and the tight, pulsing, bloody superb drama-rock that follows never flags until the end. “Out of Control.” “Stories for Boys.” “The Electric Co.” “A Day Without Me.” These are the songs on which U2 established their sound, and hearing the evolution on the second disc is revelatory. The U2 style didn’t spring fully formed, and here you can experience them finding themselves, on the way to being the biggest band in the world.

Hearing it in this format didn’t really change my already high opinion of Boy, but my thoughts on October and War have definitely shifted. I’ve always thought of October as the dreaded Sophomore Slump, a hastily-made follow-up under difficult conditions that didn’t produce quite the results anyone wanted. Bono’s lyric book was stolen shortly before the band hit the studio, so he had to wing much of this record, and he turned to straight, on-the-nose Christianity. The songs have always sounded half-finished to me, the album a blemish on the early catalog.

But hearing the remastered version has shown me how wrong I was. October is a rough, gritty, beautiful record, ragged in all the right places. Turns out they’re still finding themselves here, and by stripping away all forethought and just blazing through it, they made perhaps the purest U2 album of them all. The opening five tracks are unassailable, especially “I Fall Down” and “Fire.” And with “Tomorrow” and the title track, Bono and the boys created what is probably the most gorgeous seven minutes of their lives.

What did the trick for me was listening to the bounty of live tracks on the bonus CD. The October songs live are simply amazing – I don’t think this band has ever been tighter, or scrappier. The experience is revelatory. October is the sound of a band fighting for its life, and they would never have to struggle this hard again.

Now, I’ve long considered War my favorite U2 album. It was one of the first I heard, and it contains “New Year’s Day,” still the best song they’ve ever written, as far as I’m concerned. It’s an important piece of the band’s history, as its success meant the difference between recording another album or getting day jobs.

But you know what? Listening again, it just isn’t all that great. The high points are stratosphere-high, especially “New Year’s Day” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” the songs that put U2 on the map. But the album is overproduced, and listening to it in sharply remastered form drives that home. Every live version of “Sunday” is better than the one that kicks off War, with its too-complex arrangement and out-of-place strings. And studio experiments like “Seconds” and “The Refugee” only drag the album down.

This should have been a focused attack, 10 sharp songs like “Sunday” that coalesced into a perfect whole. Instead, it’s full of diversions and songs that go nowhere, like “Surrender.” On the plus side, I was stunned to recall how chilling and gorgeous “Drowning Man” is, and how forceful “Like a Song…” becomes by its end. But overall, War gets a B-minus from me. It’s good, but not as fantastic as I remembered, and not nearly as grand as the albums directly before and after it.

The bonus disc doesn’t help. Easily the weakest of the three, the War disc is crammed with remix after remix of “New Year’s Day” and “Two Hearts Beat as One.” Hearing one clubby dance mix of my favorite U2 song was bad enough, but here are two long ones in a row, plus two other mixes of the same song. The B-sides are no great shakes, and the disc inexplicably ends with live tracks from Boy and October. Like the album it accompanies, this disc could have been so much better.

Still, I highly recommend these new packages, which finally give U2’s back catalog the attention it deserves. A similar package for Under a Blood Red Sky is planned for September, and hopefully The Unforgettable Fire, Rattle and Hum and Achtung Baby won’t be far behind. I’m very much looking forward to having a complete set of these beautiful remasters on my shelf.

A case like U2’s remastered catalog is, I think, understandable. I’m doing the same thing with the Cure’s ongoing remasters project – they sound better, they look better, they come with tons of music I don’t already have, and they line up nicely in my collection. But there’s another reason, an x-factor if you will, why I would buy albums twice. This one I just can’t logically explain – it’s simply loyalty. If I want to support a band, I’ll pick up re-releases of records I already have, especially if the money goes straight to the musicians.

This is financially idiotic, but it makes me feel sort of noble. And usually, the new versions will be ever so slightly superior to the old versions, so I can convince myself it’s not a waste of money. For instance, I’ve just bought the new version of the 77s Christmas record, Happy Chrimbo, because the new one comes in a jewel case with better artwork. The original release arrived in a cardboard sleeve with a sticker. The music’s the same, but the packaging is better, and the money goes right to Mike Roe and the band.

As another case in point, I just received copies of five albums by the Levellers, all remastered and spiffied up. The Levellers have long been one of my favorite unsung bands – I was initially introduced to them through Chris L’Etoile, who first played me “The Game” off of their second disc, Levelling the Land. Here was a sound I’d never heard. It was almost punk, but front and center in the arrangement was a flailing fiddle, not just accompanying the driving rock sound but leading it. I quickly bought Levelling (on cassette) and found that all the songs were just as great. And the fiddle wasn’t a gimmick, but an integral part of the band’s identity.

I kept up with the Levellers, buying the next few albums on tape, then upgrading to CD. I’ve already pre-ordered their next one, Letters From the Underground, out in about two weeks. But for about a year now, those five remasters have been calling my name. I’ve hesitated because, apart from the clearer sound and new liner notes, they offer me nothing – I have all the b-sides and bonus tracks already. But hell, they’re a great band, and I want to support them, so last month, I bit the bullet.

The remasters cover the heart of the band’s discography: Levelling the Land, the self-titled album, Zeitgeist, Mouth to Mouth and Hello Pig. These are the albums on which the Levs defined their fiddle-punk-folk style, and then blew it through the sky. More recently, they’ve returned to their roots, but these five records trace their growing confidence, and the height of their sonic exploration. They’re also five must-have albums, as far as I’m concerned – I like them so much, I’ve just bought all of them for the third time.

Levelling gives you the most value for your money. It’s the one record most Levs fans agree is a straight-up classic, with not one duff song. While the debut, A Weapon Called the Word, established them as politically-minded folkies, Levelling shows just how well they can rock without losing that earthy edge. “The Game” remains a favorite, but “Sell Out” is pretty close, and “The Riverflow” isn’t far behind, either. The remastering is crisp, which is good, because the original CD pressing of Levelling was almost inaudible.

The new package also comes in a mini-LP sleeve, bundled with a second disc containing a fantastic live show from 1991. If you’re only going to get one Levellers album, it should probably be this one, and the concert is a nice bonus – the Levs have always been better live than in the studio.

Case in point – their self-titled third album. Equal parts rushed and overbaked, Levellers stretches out sonically (especially on danceable drone “This Garden”) but comes up short on songs, ending up a muddy, uninspiring mess. When the best song on your record is a cover (“Dirty Davey”), it’s time to reconsider some things. The new remaster is a remarkable improvement over the original one, and listening to Levellers with this renewed clarity certainly moves it up a notch or two. It’s never going to be my favorite Levellers album, but at least it doesn’t sound like it was mixed by tone-deaf monkeys anymore.

Form was well and truly returned to on Zeitgeist, a more varied effort that brought the fiddle back to the fore. Honestly, I can’t hear much difference between the old and new versions of Zeitgeist and its successors, but listening to the record again was fun – some of the Levs’ best songs are here, including “Forgotten Ground,” “The Fear,” and the landmark closer “Men-An-Tol.” If you can get two Levellers albums, get this one too.

And then, flushed with confidence, the Levs pushed hard against the constraints of their sound. Mouth to Mouth is a pop album, pure and simple – it’s full of cheery ditties like “Celebrate,” and deals much more with matters of the heart than political causes. It’s also great, especially the second, more experimental half. “Elation” is one of the odder and more beautiful Levellers songs, and closer “Too Real” is six minutes of minor-key awesome.

And then came Hello Pig. I’m not even sure what to say about this one, in many ways my favorite Levellers album. It’s their Sgt. Pepper, an unbroken 13-song pop suite that rides half a dozen new directions into other dimensions. It’s a brilliant piece of songwriting and production, flitting from Lennon-esque ditties like “Happy Birthday Revolution” to noisy swirls of insanity like “The Weed That Killed Elvis,” to breathtakingly beautiful folk-pop songs like “Red Sun Burns.” It’s a Levellers album unlike any other, and if you can only get three of them, try this one.

Of course, Hello Pig was a commercial flop, and even the liner notes refer to it as a noble failure. (They also make mention of its “daft title” and “rubbish cover,” both true statements.) From this point on, the Levs would return to their roots, playing punky fiddle-rock on two subsequent (and pretty good) albums. Make that three, actually, including Letters From the Underground, which sounds so far like a conscious attempt to make Levelling the Land II. We shall see… (Hear more here.)

But I am happy with my reissue purchase, even though it bought me not a scrap of music I didn’t already have. This collector gene is something I just can’t explain – it’s an innate part of me, the desire to own a full set of something in its best possible form. I’ve long since given up trying to understand it. I’m a sucker for bonus tracks and packaging and all of it. The hell with the digital revolution – give me my deluxe remasters in big, beautiful cases, my box sets in ornate outer shells. Give me music with a context, music that is tangible and tactile, music as audio and visual art.

Can I get an amen?

Next week, Randy Newman and Conor Oberst.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I know I said I would talk about reissues this week, but there are so many other interesting topics floating about in my head that I think I’m going to make this an odds and sods column. But hey, they’re reissues – they’ll wait.

As a teaser, though, I highly (highly) recommend the new deluxe remasters of U2’s first three albums, Boy, October and War. I’ll discuss them in greater depth next week, but these records have never sounded or looked better. The packaging is gorgeous, and we finally get the correct cover for Boy, so the War cover (a chilling sequel) makes sense. The bonus discs are fascinating – I’ve now finally heard the original version of “11 O’Clock Tick Tock,” although I could have used fewer remixes of “New Year’s Day.” These are three absolute classic albums, and they’ve been given their just due here.

All right. Enough of the past, on to the future.

* * * * *

I’m an old-fashioned music fan. Downloading my tunes is okay as a backup plan, a last-resort alternative, but I like actually going to the music store, plunking down my cash and buying the physical CD. I enjoy taking the shrink wrap off, and reading the liner notes, and looking at the design. I spent about 20 bucks on a copy of Nine Inch Nails’ The Slip this week, an album I already downloaded for free off the band’s site, just for those very pleasures. And to have The Slip, and slot it into my collection.

But even I’m excited at the new ways artists are finding to go it alone, to make their work available to the people immediately. I bought The Slip, it’s true, but I was happily stunned when Trent Reznor gave it away for free. An entire album that fans could just, you know, have. You’re not going to make a lot of money that way, but you are going to make new fans, and artists are realizing (in ways the paranoid record companies just aren’t) that the music is often the best ad for itself. Give it away, and people will come back and buy more.

That’s the theory, anyway. The problem with digital distribution online has never been making the music available, it’s been letting people know about it, and getting them to pony up when it’s time to do so. I still think every band with a website and a dream needs to take a few notes from Marillion, who not only remain one of the very best bands on the planet, but who also have cultivated the most loyal fanbase I’ve ever seen.

Now, granted, Marillion was big once, in the ‘80s. (Well, big across the pond – precious few people remember their chart hits “Kayleigh” and “Lavender” over here.) They had a major-label fanbase to build from, but they’re not like Radiohead, releasing In Rainbows at the height of their label-financed acclaim. In the 22 years since “Kayleigh,” Marillion has switched singers, and embraced styles of music a million miles from their progressive rock beginnings, so even the older fans may not recognize them now.

So they have slowly and organically built up a new fanbase online, to the point where now, Marillion is a completely fan-supported enterprise. They have no record label but their own, no marketing staff but their own. They own the Racket Club, their recording studio, and work at their own pace. They’ve engendered such faith with their fans that three times now, they’ve asked them to pre-order albums that haven’t even been recorded, to allow them the funds to make and market their work. In 2004, 18,000 of those fans pre-ordered Marbles, at around $60 each, and those same fans took the single “You’re Gone” into the British top 10.

For a band whose music is steadfastly committed to old-fashioned ideas like melody, song construction and crisp production, Marillion is astonishingly innovative when it comes to marketing their work. And now, they’ve hit upon one of their most brilliant schemes yet, one that includes their fanbase as junior marketers, with quite an incentive.

Marillion’s 15th album, Happiness is the Road, is scheduled to come out in September. It’s another one paid for through pre-orders, and I’m guessing the pre-release campaign was a big success – not only did they pay for the recording, mixing, mastering, production and distribution of another double album, but they had enough left over to cook up this idea.

The first single is called “Whatever is Wrong With You,” and you can download it for free now here. Your mission, then, is to shoot a video that goes along with the song and post that video to YouTube. The video can be anything you want, but make it good, because in December, when the European tour ends, the video with the most views on YouTube will win its author $10,000.

Yes, $10,000. Ten. Thousand. Dollars. (Well, 5,000 British pounds, but thanks to a weak dollar…)

The band will also offer an as-yet undetermined second prize to the video they deem best, but the beauty of the YouTube method is it’s all about eyeballs and eardrums experiencing the new song. The group reasons that even if you click on your own video a thousand thousand times to fix the contest, a Marillion video will still be in YouTube’s “most viewed” list, drawing more attention to the band and the song. It’s brilliant.

But what about the song? “Whatever is Wrong With You” is… okay. It’s not a bad choice, but it’s certainly not representative of the band’s sound, and has nothing on “You’re Gone,” perhaps the most perfect pop single of Marillion’s career. The song is loud, but slow and repetitive, and it has a decent hook, but some silly lyrics. (“We need to talk about the Christmas lights in your clothes…”) It’s not bad, but it’s probably not the song I’d want hundreds of thousands of people to hear first.

And hopefully, that’s what we’re talking about here. I want Marillion to become a household name – they ought to be million-sellers. More than that, they ought to be acclaimed as one of the finest bands on Earth. I wasn’t thrilled with album 14, Somewhere Else, but the snippets I have heard of Happiness is the Road have me hopeful they’re back on track. I’m saving a spot in my top 10 list for it.

Learn more about Marillion (and buy their stuff) here.

* * * * *

Speaking of the top 10 list, the rest of the year is shaping up nicely. Here are some things I’m looking forward to, and some things I’m dreading:

The big news is September 30, which will see new records from Ani Difranco and Ben Folds. I’m excited about Ani’s album, called Red Letter Year – it’s her first since Reprieve two years ago, and apparently it’s a sprawling, full-band effort. That can only be a good thing, after three more sedate albums in a row. I love Ani, but I think I love her best when she’s taking bizarre flights of fancy, and bringing a dozen or more musicians along with her. Besides, with the great Reprieve, I think she took the tiny little sound she’s been cultivating about as far as she could.

The Folds album has me a little more worried. It’s called Way to Normal, and is apparently a return to the snarky rock of the early Ben Folds Five stuff. That’s all well and good, and it will probably feature much more explosive piano work than Folds’ last couple of records. But I liked the new, grown-up Folds of Songs for Silverman. He matured on that album without getting old and turning into Elton John, and I admired him for writing a first-person record and living in it, instead of observing it.

That’s okay, though. Way to Normal looks like it’s a romp, with song titles like “Bitch Went Nuts,” “Brainwascht,” “Free Coffee” and “Errant Dog.” And also, my favorite subtitle in years: “Hiroshima (B-B-B-Benny Hits His Head).” Hopefully it’s not all stupid jokes, because I think Ben Folds is best when he’s telling off-kilter, heartwarming stories, lovely piano melodies in tow.

Anyway, I am also excited for the new Matthew Sweet, his first in four years. It’s called Sunshine Lies, it’s apparently a psychedelic pop kaleidoscope, and it’s out on August 26. The Fiery Furnaces have a two-disc live album called Remember set for August 19, with 51 tracks – the Furnaces are famous for rearranging their songs into medleys and snippets live, and they’ve captured that here, with most tracks running two minutes or less. And Dresden Doll Amanda Palmer has a solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer, set for September 16. Ben Folds (him again?) produced that one, in case you needed another reason to buy it.

I am equal parts excited and nervous for That Lucky Old Sun, Brian Wilson’s proper follow-up to SMiLE, out September 2. It’s another cohesive work, incorporating spoken word and orchestral music, and like SMiLE, it was written with Van Dyke Parks. I’m trying not to get my hopes up – I remember how awful his last album of “new” music, Gettin’ In Over My Head, was – but I can’t deny a tingle of anticipation for this one.

On the other hand, the more I learn about the new Metallica, the more I think it’s going to be a disaster. It’s been given a lousy name – Death Magnetic – and the track listing made me want to ram my head into a wall. Most egregious is the inclusion of something called “The Unforgiven III.” I accepted the lame sequel on Reload, since that record was just a collection of discards from Load. But to keep the thread going just smacks of desperation and lack of inspiration.

Then again, the other song titles don’t fill me with confidence either. “All Nightmare Long”? Really? “Broken, Beat and Scarred”? Honestly? Okay. The album was produced by Rick Rubin, which does make me interested – at least they got away from Bob Rock, who all but ruined the band’s career over the last few records. Hopefully, Rubin had the good sense to replace Lars Ulrich’s trash cans and cookie tins with actual drums this time. We shall see…

* * * * *

So, I saw the Batman movie. It was pretty damn good, especially Heath Ledger’s fearless performance as the Joker. I know, Ledger’s turn in this film doesn’t need any more hype, but believe me, it lives up. It’s the most sinister and genuinely dangerous take on the Joker ever filmed.

But forget that, because what I really want to talk about is one of the trailers that ran before The Dark Knight. It seems that Watchmen movie is really going to happen this time. You can see the trailer here. I have been losing sleep dreading this film – Watchmen is one of the best graphic novels I have ever read, and also one of the best books-full-stop I have ever read. It is a massive, intimate epic, which turns on character moments and is rich in subtlety and symbolism. And my biggest fear has been that Hollywood would turn it into a superhero slugfest.

That doesn’t appear to have happened, although you can’t really tell from the trailer. After half a dozen directors lined up to take a shot at it, including Terry “I Film the Unfilmable” Gilliam, the winner was Zack Snyder, who says he’s making Watchmen to prevent the no-doubt awful version another director might make. Snyder, at least, is a fan of the book, and he had success with another comics adaptation, Frank Miller’s 300. But I’m still concerned that a guy with two films under his belt is taking on a novel so complex Gilliam couldn’t get his head around it.

The trailer ain’t bad, though. Design-wise, they seem to have a lot of things right – Nite Owl’s ship, for instance, is perfect, as is Dr. Manhattan’s glowing blue self. And the scene at the end of the trailer, in which Manhattan builds his glass citadel on Mars, took my breath away. It’s exactly like seeing the comic in motion, which is all I could ask for. With the exception of Billy Crudup, who plays Manhattan, Snyder has gone for a cast entirely of unknowns, which potentially hurts his box office, but hopefully makes Watchmen a more timeless film.

Reportedly, Snyder traveled to set every day with a copy of the Watchmen graphic novel, which he annotated as he went along. He even filmed the Tales of the Black Freighter stuff, which I figured would be the first to go. (It was, sadly – it’ll be out as its own DVD in March.) I can’t ask for more than that – Watchmen has a director who seems to care about the book, and about capturing what Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created 22 years ago. I am still a bit worried, but amazingly, I’m also looking forward to sinking into my theater seat next March and seeing what Snyder has come up with.

Marvelously, Snyder has also crafted his own YouTube contest, asking fans to create commercials for products produced by Adrian Veidt, one of the characters in the movie. The winners each received $1,000 and will compete to have their commercial included in the movie. You can see the winners here.

If you haven’t read Watchmen, you really should, and you really should before you see the movie. That gives you about eight months. Get to it.

Next week, those reissues I promised for this week. After that, new ones from Randy Newman, Amy Ray, the Levellers, and the solo debut from Conor “Bright Eyes” Oberst.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Ignore that date up there. Though this is the column for Wednesday, July 16, I am writing it on Saturday, July 19, and I have just watched Act III of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog for the fourth time.

What is Dr. Horrible? It’s Joss Whedon’s new project, a three-part short musical film about a super-villain in love. Whedon, the genius behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, has a new show coming out soon called Dollhouse. But during the Writers Guild strike last year, when he couldn’t work on Dollhouse, Whedon and his brothers wrote this.

That link is only good for today, unfortunately – Whedon describes Dr. Horrible as an Internet miniseries event, the three acts released for free, one at a time, two days apart, over one week. But tomorrow, they’ll be gone. You can still buy the three acts from iTunes, but the free screening will be finished. It’s kind of an ad for itself – Whedon and his team plan a DVD release of Dr. Horrible, packed with bonus features, sometime in the future.

So what the hell is it? Whedon fans will be excited to hear that it’s another full-fledged musical, like his brilliant Once More With Feeling from Buffy’s sixth season. It stars Neil Patrick Harris as the titular doctor, Felicia Day as his love interest Penny, and Nathan Fillion as his smarmy nemesis, superhero Captain Hammer. It’s designed like a series of video blog entries, sort of, from Dr. Horrible’s point of view. He wants to get into the Evil League of Evil, but he also wants to romance the sweet Penny, whom he meets at a local laundromat in his civilian guise.

Trust me, go and watch it, because from here on, I’m going to have to go to the spoiler space. Okay?

Okay?

Good. Now I can tell you this: Dr. Horrible surprised the hell out of me.

The decision to release this thing in three acts was a massive setup. Acts I and II were light and sweet and funny, for the most part. Act I in particular left a big wide grin on my face for a full day, as I sang the freeze ray song in my head. (“With my freeze ray I will stop… the world!”) Harris made Dr. Horrible a likeable geek, a lovable loser, and when Captain Hammer beat the crap out of him at the end of Act I, I laughed, but felt bad for the poor guy too.

Act II mostly concerns the bad doctor’s attempts to woo Penny away from the snarky Captain Hammer, and there are some terrifically sweet moments there. The opening song is wonderful, a Broadway-worthy juxtaposition of emotions, and Penny’s theme is beautiful. Throughout the first two acts, Dr. Horrible balances his desire for Penny with his attempts to get into the Evil League of Evil, and when the two storylines intersected at the end – Horrible needs to kill someone, and after a particularly nasty meeting between the two of them, he chooses Captain Hammer – I expected a fun romp in Act III.

And so I sat in open-mouthed astonishment as the third act, which premiered this morning, took a dark, dark turn. As it turns out, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is a tragic origin story, a tale of mounting doom that ends with a sucker punch. Dr. Horrible does attempt to kill Captain Hammer, but everything goes wrong, and Penny dies. This, then, becomes the murder that gets Horrible into the Evil League, and he spends the last few minutes becoming his new, more sinister self (and singing about it).

The last shot, though, is a killer – Horrible sings the final words (“I won’t feel a thing”) with no musical accompaniment, staring into the camera as if posting his last blog, his eyes hollowed out and defeated. He got everything he wanted, in the worst possible way. It’s devastating stuff, and a total inversion of the tone from the first two acts. Taken as a whole, the film is downright depressing, and even some of the more lighthearted moments from Acts I and II take on new significance after seeing Act III. It’s an inexorable train ride to despair, and no one leaves happy.

If you’re not expecting it (and you’re not), the shift in tone is jarring. Act III adds a weight that this film almost doesn’t deserve. Overall, though, it’s another singular (and singularly brilliant) project from Whedon. Who else would make a film like this? The music is terrific, especially the Sondheim-esque work from the third act, and the dialogue sparkles throughout.

While Nathan Fillion is suitably smarmy and Felicia Day is reliably sweet, it’s Neil Patrick Harris who steals this show. I think it’s great that Harris is now known much more as the sarcastic Barney from How I Met Your Mother than as Doogie Howser, and Dr. Horrible should go a long way towards showing people what a good actor he really is. Beyond that, though, Harris can really sing – he carries some of the film’s best tunes, like “Brand New Day,” the menacing turning point that closes Act II. His work here is funny, charming and subtle, and he completely sells the left turn into darkness in Act III.

Still, I’ve been recommending Dr. Horrible to people all week, under the impression that it would remain light and funny. Even a sad-yet-magical ending would have sufficed, but I was completely gobsmacked by the tragic events of the final act. It’s still a terrific slice of Whedon brilliance, but in the end, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog turned out to be a different kind of movie than I was expecting (or, to be honest, hoping for), and I’m still working through it.

Instead of just making me laugh, Whedon has once again made me think and feel, and it’s the rare artist who can surprise me like that. But seriously, Joss, just once, can’t you give your characters an unqualified happy ending? How about it?

* * * * *

When it comes to music, there are few descriptors that send me running in the other direction quite like “Americana.”

I’m not sure why that is. I quite like some artists tagged with that label – Ryan Adams’ more country-leaning efforts, for example, or Wilco’s older stuff. But if you tell me your band plays American folk-rock, it will probably take some convincing to get me to listen to it. I think it’s probably because my brain is not wired for simplicity – I need more than three chords and a lyric about a freight train to sign on.

So when I first came across the Hold Steady, a New York quintet by way of Minneapolis, I hesitated. Someone described them to me as “more Springsteen than Springsteen,” and that was quite the wrong thing to say. I’ve never understood the acclaim the Boss seems to effortlessly generate. His songs are simple, his stories pretty basic, and when he steps away from the excellent E Street Band, he stumbles down a sub-Dylan path. (Don’t even get me started on Dylan.) I’m just not the right audience for fist-pumping poetry about blue-jean-wearing America.

Oddly enough, I rather like the Hold Steady, though. Like a lot of people, I first discovered them thanks to the blizzard of hype surrounding their third album. It sports a title I immediately hated – Boys and Girls in America – but I swallowed that and checked it out. And it’s fist-pumping poetry about blue-jean-wearing America, but it’s played with conviction and force, and the songs are much better than anything Springsteen has foisted on us in many years. (“Radio Nowhere” notwithstanding – that’s a great song.)

The band’s fourth album, Stay Positive, is even better. For one thing, it’s louder. A lot louder, in fact – this record keeps the E Street Band sound, with pounding pianos and occasional horn sections, but adds in a raucous Husker Du influence. Opener “Constructive Summer” could actually be a Bob Mould song, so driving is the guitar line. The album rarely gets there again, but the vibe remains – almost every inch of this album is covered in gloriously loud guitars.

You could call the single, “Sequestered in Memphis,” Americana, but try hanging that description on “One for the Cutters,” the next song. It’s a disheartening story about a sad girl who becomes an accomplice to a crime, and while its verses are fueled by harpsichord twitters, its choruses augment thick guitars with chiming mandolins. It’s a powerful song, revolving around the dispassionate line, “When one townie falls in the forest, does anyone hear it?”

“Dispassionate” is actually a good word for singer Craig Finn, who tells these stories without much emotional connection, detailing the meandering lives of hollow-eyed drifters very well. Even “Lord, I’m Discouraged,” about watching a friend disintegrate, offers few details – its narrator decides that “the sutures and bruises, they’re none of my business,” and finally concludes, “I know it’s unlikely she’ll ever be mine, so I mostly just pray she don’t die.” This is the prettiest the Hold Steady get.

Ironically, Stay Positive is a pretty bleak album, although you’d never know it without the lyric sheet – the music charges forward with anthemic power. Even the title track, on which the band shows off the value of a good “whoa-oh” chorus, is about watching a music scene deteriorate and trying to keep a good attitude. The most unnerving number here is “Both Crosses,” about a woman with visions of crucifixions. Finn slips in a Billy Joel reference (“You Catholic girls start much too late”) that takes on chilling new resonance in the midst of this sacrilegious drug dream.

The Hold Steady isn’t about memorable hooks or choruses here – the songs burst forth on a torrent of words and drums. But the overall effect is almost monolithic. Stay Positive is an album of stories and set pieces, and while I’d be hard-pressed to find the glimmers of light in the lyrics, the record as a whole feels like an uplifting portrait. The theme is stated early, in “Constructive Summer” – we are our own saviors, and we can all be something bigger.

The record ends with three bonus songs, all indexed as one track, and they’re just as good as anything on the album proper. Stay Positive sticks to its template throughout, and it wouldn’t be far-fetched to call this a modern take on Springsteen’s street-level singalongs, but once again, the Hold Steady has crafted an album full of anthems with phenomenal conviction. Their sound is made up of a lot of elements I dislike, but somehow, they put them together in ways I love.

But maybe I’m overstating my negative reaction to Americana. After all, I remain a pretty big fan of John Mellencamp, and there is no one who does heartland rock like he does. I can’t explain my affinity for his music, since it’s everything I profess to dislike: simple, traditional, loaded with cliches, and dedicated to a certain American viewpoint. And yet, I have every Mellencamp album, and I plan to buy them all until one of us dies.

Part of it may be an association with my younger days. I first encountered Mellencamp in the early days of MTV – his videos for “Jack and Diane” and “Pink Houses” are etched into my memory. The first Mellencamp album I bought was 1987’s The Lonesome Jubilee, mostly because I liked the video for “Cherry Bomb.” I didn’t understand the record when I was 13, but hey, I was young and I was improving. And I apparently liked its mix of instruments and down-home tunes well enough to keep buying.

I didn’t know then that I was listening to the golden age of Mellencamp. In recent years, his work has slipped into tedium – after the bizarre and wonderful career renaissance of Mr. Happy Go Lucky, the former John Cougar made one record after another full of simple, commercial pap. His nadir was “My Country,” which still graces Chevy truck commercials aimed at the football audience. The album that song is taken from, last year’s Freedom’s Road, is just another Mellencamp record, lacking in anything one might call inspiration.

All of which makes Life, Death, Love and Freedom such a fascinating surprise. I wasn’t expecting much – the title is terrible, and the disc appeared on shelves only 18 months after Freedom’s Road. But this is Mellencamp’s finest work in many, many years – definitely since Mr. Happy Go Lucky, and probably since Big Daddy. Like the Hold Steady, Mellencamp has turned out a bleak, dark album here, but instead of his usual three-chord rock, he’s cast these songs in spooky folkscapes. It’s a quiet, brooding, creepy record, given tremendous atmosphere by producer T-Bone Burnett.

At its center is Mellencamp himself, his raspy voice damaged by decades of cigarettes, and his mood darker than night. He’s obsessed with death here – opener “Longest Days” is about withering away from a wasting disease, “If I Die Sudden” gives detailed instructions for his own funeral, and “Don’t Need This Body” finds him “washed up and worn out for sure,” contemplating just how little time he has left. (Keep in mind, he’s only 56.)

These meditations are set to spectral folk and blues backings, played mainly on acoustic instruments, and largely without drums. It’s an enveloping listen, especially when Mellencamp duets with Karen Fairchild – it’s like the darker side of Burnett’s work with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. “A Ride Back Home” is, technically speaking, not much of a song, but the instrumentation and the vocal harmony turn it into something special.

Mellencamp does turn his vision outward towards the end of the record. The already infamous “Jena” is here, on which Mellencamp excoriates the town of Jena, Louisiana, in the wake of the racially charged “Jena Six” trial. “Oh oh Jena, take your nooses down” isn’t exactly a nuanced reaction, but it makes the point. “County Fair” is another in a long line of Midwest story-songs, but it’s a good one, and the closer, “A Brand New Song,” provides the one ray of light on the album.

Life, Death, Love and Freedom is a John Mellencamp album unlike any other. It’s a dusty, dark, vicious, chilling work, one that easily rises above the mediocre, simplistic rock Mellencamp has been releasing for years. I hope he can keep on this track – I don’t necessarily relish the thought of him staying in whatever head space birthed some of these lyrics, but the specter of death has brought new life to his work. This is the best Mellencamp album in a long, long time, and although it certainly fits the definition of Americana, I find it riveting.

Next week, it’s a reissue-palooza. Now go watch Dr. Horrible!

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So I did not get the Alarm’s new album Guerilla Tactics this week. I guess I misinterpreted their press release – where it says “available everywhere July 8,” I took that to mean I could buy it everywhere, but in reality, I can only get it from their website. Guerilla Tactics is a collection of remixed and re-recorded songs from the awesome Counter Attack Collective, and since I have the Collective, I don’t quite feel like paying $25 for songs I own. But I’ll gladly pay domestic CD prices for it when and if it’s released here, and I’ll post a review shortly thereafter.

I did, however, get Beck’s new album, Modern Guilt. As it’s a short record, I don’t think it’s deserving of a long review. It’s Beck’s last album for Interscope, and it feels like a contractual obligation in places. But at 33 minutes, it’s half as long as last year’s endless The Information, and at least twice as good.

Beck has always been a malleable artist. His first self-produced efforts were acoustic and ramshackle, and it wasn’t until he hooked up with big-name producers like Tom Rothrock and Rob Scnapf (trust me, they’re big names) that he added that cultural junkyard feel to his work. The world went nuts over “Loser,” so naturally he never made a song like it again. And ironically, although he inspired hundreds of imitators in the early ‘90s, the last thing you’d call the prolific Beck Hanson is a slacker.

It would be a mistake to call Beck dependent on his collaborators, but his sound has changed album to album. Odelay made good use of the Dust Brothers’ cut-and-splice style, heard most famously on the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique. Meanwhile, Mutations and the great Sea Change found Beck absorbing the spectral folk-pop leanings of producer Nigel Godrich, who shepherded Radiohead and Travis through similar styles.

But lately, Beck has been playing against type, to mixed results. He brought the Dust Brothers back for Guero, but made a wind-blown acoustic dance-blues album, a linear effort instead of a collage. And he teamed with Godrich again for The Information, but forced him to work his magic on lame and uninspired club-style pop.

Now, on Modern Guilt, he’s done it again. This compact effort was produced by Danger Mouse, and if you think you can guess what a Beck/Danger Mouse collaboration might sound like, you’re probably wrong. Modern Guilt is a dark and dreary suite of songs, with mainly atmospheric beats instead of danceable ones. It’s the Danger Mouse who made The Odd Couple, not the one who slammed out St. Elsewhere, and the resulting album is… not difficult, per se, but not much fun, either.

There are some good tracks on here. The almost surf guitar underpinning “Gamma Ray” is nice, and the big-beat “Soul of a Man” works well. “Chemtrails” is very good, with its repeated piano figure, grand finale and all-around excellent acoustic bass, courtesy of Jason Falkner. And “Replica” is a favorite, all ghostly repetition. But song for song, it just doesn’t sound like Beck is trying too hard.

Modern Guilt works much better as a single piece than as a set of 10 songs. Listen to it all in a row, and it has a cumulative effect. (A theme this week, as you will see.) The album opens with the line, “I think I’m stranded but I don’t know where,” but closing track “Volcano” finds Beck choosing a direction and a destination. “I know where I’m going, to that volcano, don’t want to fall in, though, just want to warm my bones…” It’s an oddly hopeful conclusion to an odd little album of shipwrecks and misery, and taken as a whole, the thing works.

There’s no mistaking a contractual obligation record, however, and this is one. Within a few months, count on seeing Beck’s name added to the growing list of artists deciding to go it alone, to bypass the record companies and go straight to the fans via the internet. It will be fun to see what he can do with complete creative and commercial freedom, and I hope it revitalizes him. Modern Guilt, while better than his last effort, still isn’t up to the bar Beck set for himself over the last decade-plus, and I hope he sees brighter futures ahead.

* * * * *

The 30th season of Doctor Who ended this week with an overstuffed, joyous, nonsensical, tragic blowout. It was classic work by show runner Russell T. Davies, in his final regular season performance, and it contained all of the horrific flaws, and all of the grand sense of childlike wonder that he has brought to this show.

I haven’t talked too much about the revived series here (I know, I haven’t talked much about the classic series in a long time either), mostly because I’ve been working my way up to it. I’ve been an avid viewer of the new Doctor Who since it started four years ago, and since then, we’ve been through two Doctors, three main companions, a slew of other new characters, new Daleks, new Cybermen, new Sontarans, a new Master, a new Davros, and about 600 invasions of Earth.

Davies’ Doctor Who has been one of the least consistent shows on television, ascending amazing heights one week and plumbing dank, smelly depths the next. The see-saw effect is everywhere – some of the effects over the last four seasons have been amazing, like virtually everything in Journey’s End, the fourth season finale. And some of them have been downright embarrassing, not worthy of the old show. (See the Absorbaloff, or the plastic beetle on Donna’s back in this year’s otherwise excellent Turn Left.)

Season 30 has been the best of the lot, though, with some classic stories and punchy dialogue. And even the total lack of sense on display during the gobsmacking final episodes, which included crossovers with both spinoffs (Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures) and the return of nearly every character from the past four years, couldn’t derail it. (The scene in which the Tardis tows the Earth across the universe, back to its orbit around the sun, causing little more than a few tremors and rain storms… that came close.) It was a strong sendoff for Davies, who will end his era with four special episodes over the next 18 months.

Davies is leaving Doctor Who in the hands of its best writer, Steven Moffat, whose six episodes so far have been the highlight of New Who. He’s the most consistently rewarding writer the show has – his The Girl in the Fireplace still stands as my favorite story of this new run, but this year, he nearly outdid himself with the amazing, heart-wrenching, creepy Silence in the Library. His stories have more ideas than some full seasons of other shows, and they always orbit a deep emotional core. The show is, hopefully, in good hands.

Looking back on the Davies era, though, I think it was all designed to alleviate what he saw as a flaw in the classic series – there was no cumulative effect. Stories in the classic series were almost entirely unrelated to each other. You’d get five or six of them a season, but taken as a whole, they wouldn’t lead anywhere, and there were no season finales that wrapped things together. New Who is all centered on the season finale – every story in Season 30 leads us to Journey’s End. In fact, nearly every story in Seasons 27-30 leads us to Journey’s End, and despite the variable quality, you get the sense throughout that it’s all heading somewhere.

But I think Davies is wrong. I think the classic series does have a cumulative effect, albeit a subtler one. As Exhibit A, I offer up Peter Davison’s three-year tenure as the Doctor, from 1982-1984.

In a lot of ways, the Davison years were about growing up. They were about taking the nicest of nice-guy Doctors and putting him face to face with the ugliest horrors of the world, and then watching how he coped. The stories started pleasantly enough – Davison, with his cricket outfit and decorative stick of celery, ambled through stories like Castrovalva and The Visitation amiably, and even attended a masquerade ball in Black Orchid.

But then it all started going wrong. The first blow was dealt in Earthshock, when longtime companion Adric perished fighting the Cybermen. He was the first companion to die on screen since William Hartnell’s time in the 1960s, a genuine shock. (I remember it well from my younger days.) After that, the Mara returned to violate Tegan, and the Black Guardian twisted the mind of Turlough, a companion the Doctor trusted. Davison’s era wasn’t about putting the Doctor in peril. It was about watching him helplessly twitch as his friends were harmed and killed.

Season 21, the darkest of the original run, opened with Warriors of the Deep, a story which found the Silurians and Sea Devils – both foes of Jon Pertwee’s Doctor – teaming up to reclaim the Earth. Both were noble races, the original inhabitants of the planet, and in a way, they were right – they had cause to kick the human race aside. The story ended with a virtual genocide, as the humans killed Silurians and Sea Devils alike while the Doctor watched helplessly. His final line, “There should have been another way,” was haunting.

And then there is Resurrection of the Daleks, the bloodiest story of the classic series. As the title suggests, this story – by Script Editor Eric Saward – brings back the Doc’s most ruthless foes, and they have never been as ruthless as they are here. The story is confusing – the Daleks are losing their war with the Movellans, mainly due to a chemical warfare virus the Movellans have developed. They send a search party to find their creator, Davros, and spring him from a prison ship – he’s spent the last 90 years in suspended animation, after the end of Destiny of the Daleks.

Meanwhile, the Daleks have opened a space-time corridor to Earth, and they’re stealing people to perfect their cloning experiments. The Doctor’s Tardis is caught in the corridor, and the Daleks’ plan is to clone him and his companions, and send the clones to assassinate the High Council of Time Lords on Gallifrey. They’ve got cloned policemen on their side, and even a Dalek double agent pretending to be a prisoner. Confused yet?

None of that really matters, because the plot of Resurrection of the Daleks is an excuse for a four-episode bloodbath. From the first moment, people start dying in horrible ways, and they don’t stop for all 100 minutes. Daleks kill people, clones kill people, people kill people – it’s dark and oppressive from first frame to last. Characters are introduced only to die minutes later. Daleks use flesh-melting gas to kill the guards on the prison ship. Those who escape the Daleks are gunned down in cold blood by their cloned slaves. The Doctor even wields a gun, pumping bullets into a Dalek mutant that has escaped its casing. He joins in on the violence, only making things worse.

All of this blood and death culminates in a massive explosion, as former cloned slave Stien sets the prison ship on self-destruct, killing (we hope) Davros and his Daleks. But it all proves too much for Tegan, who runs away rather than continue traveling with the Doctor. “It isn’t fun anymore,” she says, echoing what must have been going through the minds of longtime fans. Resurrection of the Daleks isn’t any fun at all. It’s a pitch-black massacre, and it ends with the Doctor’s awakening: “It seems I must mend my ways,” he says.

All of this, every story of the Fifth Doctor’s run from Earthshock on, is setup for The Caves of Androzani, Davison’s magnificent swan song. It contains no returning characters, and shares no plot elements with what came before, but it is in every sense the finale to Davison’s run. As a single story, it’s very good, but taken in context, it’s one of the best serials in the program’s history. (It shouldn’t be any surprise that it was written by the great Robert Holmes.)

The Doctor and brand-new companion Peri Brown find themselves on Androzani Minor, the smaller of two twin planets. (Guess what the other one’s called.) Very quickly, they get caught up in a violent political struggle between the government of Androzani and mask-wearing terrorist Sharaz Jek. The war is partially over Spectrox, a restorative drug that is all the rage on Androzani Major. It’s mined on Minor, and Jek has commandeered most of the supplies for himself, holding them ransom and driving Spectrox prices sky high.

Jek has an army of androids keeping the military at bay, and he’s infiltrated their ranks as well, so he has advance word of any move they make. Jek is motivated by revenge. Powerful political figure Morgus betrayed Jek years ago, leaving him to die in a mud burst on Minor – hence the creepy mask, which hides his hideous scars. Jek wants Morgus brought low, and he’s willing to hold both planets hostage to see that happen.

The plot is much more complex than that, roping in political intrigue, honor among mercenaries, and Jek’s appreciation for beauty. It being Holmes, it all works perfectly, except for the cheap-looking magma creature, but we won’t talk about that. But the political struggle is the backdrop of The Caves of Androzani, not the story. The story is much simpler – raw Spectrox, you see, causes paralysis and death, and the Doctor and Peri both come in contact with it shortly after they land. The story is about the Doctor saving Peri’s life.

On a deeper level, the story is about the Doctor redeeming himself for the pain and agony he has put his companions through. He’s lost them all – some have died, some have run screaming from him and the life he leads – and he’s determined not to lose this one. Not this time. Risking his own life, he rappels down to the deepest caves of Androzani Minor, retrieves the antidote (the milk of a queen bat), and returns just in time to see the struggle between Jek and Morgus come to its fiery end.

Davison plays this all brilliantly. The third episode ends with one of the finest cliffhangers of his tenure – he’s piloting the gun runners’ ship back to Androzani Minor, preparing to crash land, as the gun runners themselves cut their way into the cockpit, determined to stop him. Davison’s performance makes this chilling, and he dazzles in the fourth and final episode – the Doctor has never seemed so heroic. You cannot look away from this performance.

It all leads to the heartbreaking final scenes. The Doc does get the bat’s milk, but only enough for Peri, who drinks it and is healed. But the Doctor has Spectrox Toxemia as well, and he slowly dies, regenerating before Peri’s eyes. It’s the end of an era – the Fifth Doctor has won one small victory against the horrors of the world, and he takes comfort in that as he closes his eyes. His next two incarnations will be a lot less fragile, a lot more in keeping with the violent world they are born into. (And, it must be said, a lot less heroic.) In many ways, this is the last we see of the Good Guy Doctor, and he goes out brilliantly.

That’s how you do it, Russell. That’s how you set up and pay off a character thread over three seasons, without calling attention to the fact that you’re doing it.

I vividly remember seeing the end of The Caves of Androzani as a child, and walking away stunned. Peter Davison – my Doctor – was done. In his place was this wild-eyed redhead, and in his first few seconds, he left a sour taste. “Doctor?” Peri asks, unsure what has happened. “Expecting someone else?” he cruelly shoots back. This was Colin Baker, the Sixth Doctor, and a more complex interpretation of the character there never will be. But that’s next time. For now, a raised glass to Peter Davison, and to The Caves of Androzani, still the best final story of any Doctor’s run.

It may be a while before I get to Colin Baker’s run, so I hope this extended Who rant tides you over. Next week, The Hold Steady and John Mellencamp.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

This is one of two columns I posted this week. The second, which you can reach through the archive, replaces last week’s half-hearted effort, although I’m going to leave that one up as a reminder to myself never to do anything like it again. The new column contains the real Second Quarter Report, ordered from 10 to 1 instead of in alphabetical order.

Apologies for last week, and I hope this makes up for it. And now, the Seventy Sevens:

* * * * *

I am, right now, engaged in my first ever eBay auction.

I know it’s old-fashioned of me, but I’ve never been comfortable with eBay. When I buy something online, I like to know just how much it costs, and be certain that I’m going to get the item I want. Right now, I’m still hours away from closing this deal, and my bid is already up to about what I want to spend, and I know I’m going to have to take an hour out of my day and continuously check to see if I’ve been outbid. It’s nerve-wracking.

There are very few bands that would drive me to eBay to acquire their out-of-print work. The one that finally got me there was the Seventy Sevens. I’ve been eyeing their 123 boxset for years – it collects their first three albums, from the early ‘80s, including their extraordinary self-titled third record, and I’ve seen this box go for well more than a hundred dollars before. But I’ve come to the conclusion that these three albums will never be re-released, and I won’t get this box for less than $50, so this time, I’m willing to pay.

Who are the Seventy Sevens and why would I pay so much for their music? Would it be too much to say they’re one of the best rock bands in the world? I hope not.

I’ve been a Sevens fan for more than 15 years. They’ve been playing for more than 20, and in that time, they’ve amassed a consistently rewarding and unjustifiably ignored catalog of rock-pop-blues goodness. Most of that catalog is out of print and unavailable now – hence my eBay frustration – and it’s a damn shame that so few people will ever hear albums like Sticks and Stones and Pray Naked. Hell, their awesome live album Eighty-Eight has been released twice, and both pressings are out of print now.

You are lucky, though, because the Seventy Sevens have just released one of their finest efforts, called Holy Ghost Building. And you can buy that one right now. Let me tell you why you should.

I’ve said this before, but there are only a couple of guitar players that unfailingly move me. One of them is Mike Roe, the leader of the Seventy Sevens – I can listen to his work over and over, on endless repeat for days, and not be bored. The tone of Roe’s work shifts constantly, from the blues-rock of the Sevens to his folksier solo stuff, to his country-fied stints with the Lost Dogs, to the instrumental space-rock of his collaborations with bassist Mark Harmon. But at the center of all of that is his shimmering guitar work, sometimes clean, sometimes dirty, always amazing.

Roe’s been the one constant throughout the Sevens’ career. About 13 years ago, he pared the band down to a powerhouse trio, with Harmon on the bass and Bruce Spencer on drums, and from that point on, they’ve been a tightly focused unit. Roe kicks his heels up with the Lost Dogs, and shows off his gentle side on his solo work, but with the Sevens, he rocks, and rocks hard.

It’s been seven years since the band’s last full-length album, A Golden Field of Radioactive Crows, and in hindsight, that one wasn’t their best work. I liked it – it’s summery and bright and heavy, but it’s missing some essential element that would have tied it all together. It turns out, that element was a sense of history. The best Seventy Sevens material springs from a deeper well, one that taps into rivers of blues and gospel and bluegrass. Their best work has always nodded towards American spiritual music, and the further they get away from that – see “U R Trippin,” on Golden Field – the less successful they are.

Holy Ghost Building is the album on which the Sevens embrace that sense of history, that deep and tangled root system that feeds their souls. On the surface, it’s just a collection of covers, old gospel and bluegrass songs. But one listen through makes it clear – this is nothing less than a new identity for the Seventy Sevens, a set of new priorities played out before your ears. There is no Seventy Sevens studio album that captures the power of the band as well as this one does, nor one that brings to bear the band’s deep influences as well as this one.

It should have been a throwaway. Hell, it was designed as a throwaway, a three-day recording session to get the wheels spinning. But it turned out to be a great Seventy Sevens album. One of the best, in fact.

Full disclosure time – Lo-Fidelity Records paid me to write the press bio for this album, so even though it only hit the streets a week ago, I’ve been living with it for more than a month now. I agreed to the job because, hey, it’s work, but I loved doing it because this album is so good, and getting a perspective on its creation was fascinating.

Basically, Roe, Harmon and Spencer got together for three days in 2005, and jammed out 10 old tunes. They did it Elvis style – Roe would play the band his old recordings of these songs, and when they all agreed on one, they’d crank out their own arrangement in two or three takes. They then spent the next two years tweaking it, adding harmonies and production touches, so that the finished product is both raw and polished. They also wrote an original tune, “A Lifetime Without You,” to close the record, but they did that one live too – the music came spontaneously, and Roe improvised the lyrics.

It’s in circumstances like this that bands find out who they are. I don’t know if I’ve heard a purer Seventy Sevens song than their take on “I’ll Remember You, Love, In My Prayers.” The trio transforms the old bluegrass song, most famously performed by Alison Krauss and Union Station, into a blues-rock rave-up. It’s simple, it’s uncluttered, it’s perfect. And it rocks, a lot.

The Sevens find their groove early here. Things kick off with “I’m Working on a Building,” the old Bill Monroe track that lends the album its title, and while Harmon lays down this ever-shifting bed, Roe just goes to town over it, pealing off great little leads and shuffling rhythms. The band scores a home run with their take on Rev. Gary Davis’ “Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning,” knocking the Hot Tuna version aside like a fly.

For a real taste of what this band can do, head to track five, a raw, blistering take on Fred MacDowell’s “You’re Gonna Be Sorry.” Roe whips out the slide, and injects the signature riff with such feeling, it’s palpable. The vibe on this song is awesome – it’s sloppy here and there, as Roe shifts from rhythm to lead, but it’s dusty and real and live, and will run you over like a steam train. This is the Seventy Sevens, sounding like they always should have.

The band gets more inventive as the record goes along. They turn Skip James’ spiritual blues “He’s a Mighty Good Leader” into a pretty acoustic waltz, and transform “When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again” into a dead-on Elvis Presley workout. And they storm their way through “I’m Gonna Run to the City of Refuge,” a Blind Willie Johnson song Roe and Harmon had previously covered on their Fun With Sound album.

Many of these songs are about getting yourself right with God, a common theme in Roe’s work, and on this album, you get to hear just how deep the roots of that theme run with him. As he said when I interviewed him, “I need to hear these songs as much as anybody,” and if the Seventy Sevens have been writing about redemption for 20 years, then the old masters they cover here have been writing about it for much, much longer. “Stranger, Won’t You Change Your Sinful Ways,” “What Would You Give in Exchange For Your Soul,” “Everybody Ought to Pray Sometime” – these are songs of conviction, of rebuilding one’s spiritual connection.

So it’s odd that the album ends with its one sad love song. After a very pretty vocal bridge, “A Lifetime Without You” spins a tale of painful loneliness, another common Seventy Sevens theme. It’s a reminder of what Mike Roe has been trying to tell us for years – even though God is good, life is hard. And yet, even though life is hard, God is good. It’s a beautiful dichotomy that runs through the band’s entire catalog.

Holy Ghost Building is a pleasant surprise. When Roe first announced this project, almost three years ago, I expected a stopgap, a way station between real Seventy Sevens projects. But this is the real deal, an album of great scope and history, one that finds the Sevens becoming who they are more than almost any other record they’ve done.

The last words on the album are “I think I’ll quit now and walk away,” and if this is the last Seventy Sevens album, it’s a great way to go out. But I hope it isn’t. I hope this is just the start of a rebirth for this band – they’ve toiled in obscurity for longer than is conscionable, and they deserve to be heard. Holy Ghost Building spins these old-time spirituals into gold, and flat-out rocks while doing it, defining the band’s sound and soul. This is the Seventy Sevens, in all their glory.

Holy Ghost Building is available now from Lo-Fidelity Records. While you’re there, pick up the live album Ninety-Nine. It’s awesome too. If you want to try before you buy, hit their Myspace page, and be sure to listen to “Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning.” (I just noticed “Unbalanced” is there too, from their 1999 EP – hear that one!) And of course, log onto 77s.com for all things Mike Roe.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to up my bid on eBay. I want that box set, dammit!

Next week, Beck and the Alarm.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So this is the column that should have appeared last week.

My apologies for the abortion I posted instead. All I can say in my own defense is that I had a long, difficult week. I’m leaving the first version up, just so I can remind myself not to do anything like that again. And also, because the tributes to George Carlin and Michael Turner were heartfelt, and I don’t plan on repeating them here.

What’s better about this version? Well, I actually reviewed the records I meant to talk about last week, for one thing. For another, I decided to man up and actually write a second quarter report – last week, I posted my current top 10 in alphabetical order, like a whiny bitch. “Oh, it’s so hard to pick a number one! Have pity on me! Waah!” Hell with that. You’ll find the real second quarter report at the bottom of this column.

Again, sorry for letting you down last week. I’ve posted two columns this week to make up for it – this one (kind of a “requel,” like the new Incredible Hulk movie) and my take on the new Seventy Sevens album. And I’ll be back on track from now on. Thanks.

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Another week, another baffling album from a band I love.

I’m still wading my way through the new Coldplay and Death Cab for Cutie records, trying to reconcile their new directions with my expectations. I don’t have time for another Chinese puzzle, thank you very much. So what am I to do with the new Sigur Ros album, which finds the iconic Icelandic band flinging themselves down a number of new sonic burrows?

See, here’s the thing. Like a lot of people, I thought I had Sigur Ros figured out. Their sound is almost entirely indescribable, which made them surprisingly easy to review – you just throw up your hands and say, “It’s beautiful, and you have to hear it for yourself.” Here’s a band who sings in a made-up language over ever-unfolding soundscapes that last for 10 minutes at a stretch, a band who delights in crafting some of the most alien tones you can imagine, and yet forms them into shimmering towers of beautiful oddness.

Indescribable, see? It’s beautiful, and you have to hear it for yourself.

But most of that review strategy pivots on the idea that we’ll never understand Sigur Ros. Or rather, that the members of Sigur Ros will never let us understand them. All well and good back when the band issued ( ), a 75-minute near-instrumental masterwork with no song titles and no liner notes. They were shrouded in mystery, wrapped up in their own enigma, and we’d never penetrate it.

And then came Heima, the band’s documentary film. This gorgeously shot movie follows Sigur Ros (and their traveling string quartet) as they embark on an acoustic tour of Iceland, playing back yards and small rooms, and stripping their music down to its basic essentials. It completely demystified the band – here we were, hanging out with Jonsi Birgisson, and watching him let loose with that high, strange voice, and suddenly Sigur Ros was just four people who make music. There was no enigma. And I think it was possible to tell, just from watching Heima, that we couldn’t go back from here.

Sigur Ros’ fifth album, and first post-Heima, is called Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust, which translates roughly to With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly. You can tell right away that something’s different this time. Previous Sigur Ros albums have been elaborately packaged, but this one arrives in a simple cardboard sleeve, with a photo cover depicting the four band members running naked across a road. If you’re expecting a more intimate, stripped-back Sigur Ros this time, go to the head of the class.

Med Sud is, without a doubt, the work of a demystified band. It is almost Sigur Ros’ version of a pop album, as many of the songs hover around the three- and four-minute mark. There are acoustic guitars galore, and a notable absence (with a couple of exceptions) of the band’s trademark endless crescendos. Jonsi still sings in that high-pitched tone, but he’s up front in the mix, clear and single-tracked, like a frontman instead of another instrument.

There is plenty of Sigur Ros-style stuff here, like the cyclical piano figure of “Med Sud I Eyrum.” But there’s plenty they’ve never tried before, too. The two epics are massive, but only at the end – they both start with extended vocal-and-keyboards sections, in which you can hear every inflection in the voice. “Arn Batur,” notable for packing in 90 musicians for its orchestral finale, is almost entirely naked for six of its nine minutes. And the back half of the album is made up of slow, sad pieces with as few instruments as possible backing them up.

The shift is remarkable. Rather than sounding otherworldly beautiful on this album, Sigur Ros now sounds merely worldly beautiful. There’s no denying the pop thrill of a song like opener “Gobbledigook,” with its stereo-panned acoustic guitars and flowing melody. There’s also no denying how spare and pretty an acoustic lament like “Illgresi” is, although with such a focus on Birgisson’s voice, I suddenly (and for the first time) find myself wondering what he’s singing about.

The final track clues me in – it’s the biggest surprise here, the first ever Sigur Ros song in English. It’s as if the last curtain finally comes up, and here is the band letting its American fans in completely. The result isn’t anything special, unfortunately – it’s called “All Alright,” which already commits a sin against the language, and its best verse goes something like this: “I’m sitting with you, sitting in silence, listening to bird-hymns, like home, singing in tune together, a psalm for no one…”

But there’s something oddly unnerving about listening to Sigur Ros perform in English. The song itself is a sparse piano ballad, the vocals wafting on top of plunked chords, so there’s no mistaking the lyrics for Icelandic. And I find I miss not knowing what Birgisson is thinking. I miss the idea that this is a band we’ll never fully understand. This new insight is fascinating, and the songs on this album are fragile and lovely, but the effect is almost a grounding of what was once a free flying soul.

That’s not to say this album is a dud. Far, far from it. In fact, it contains some of the most beautiful musical passages of the year so far, especially the breathtaking “Inni Mer Syngur Vitleysingur” and the stunning “Festival.” That’s the song with the classic Sigur Ros crescendo – it starts with nothing, and builds to a monolith. But when Sigur Ros wants to be sweet and uncomplicated, they do it very well – observe the string of songs leading up to “All Alright,” almost a suite of emptiness.

There’s nothing really wrong with Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust. In fact, there’s a lot very right with it. But it’s undoubtedly a turning point, the album on which the set dressing is folded up, the wooden chairs are trundled out and the folksy, fireside stage of this band’s career begins. It’s fascinating to hear them simply make pretty sounds, but on this album, they’ve given us sounds a hundred other bands are making. For the first time, Sigur Ros sounds like a band from Earth, speaking our language, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, I can’t help thinking something’s been lost in translation.

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I listen to a lot of music, but you’d be surprised just how much of that music comes from artists I’ve liked for years. On my top 10 list right now, you’ll find Aimee Mann, Joe Jackson, Counting Crows and R.E.M., all acts I have loved for 10 years or more. Believe me, I’ve noticed this pattern myself, so this year I decided to do something about it.

I’ve been buying and trying more new bands in 2008 than I ever have. The secret, I found, is to get over the idea that I’m going to be into every single band in my collection for the rest of my life. If I buy a debut album and I don’t like it, there’s no shame in just not buying the second album. Not every band has to have a 30-year career, as much as I’d like that. Some may burn brightly for a moment, some may not at all. But it’s worth trying them out, and enjoying (or not) that one album while it’s here.

My fervent hope when I started this new philosophy was that I’d find something captivating, astounding, amazing – something that I may not have heard under normal circumstances. And now I have. The band is Fleet Foxes, and you’ll find their self-titled debut occupying the number one spot in the list below.

Who the hell are Fleet Foxes? The most obvious answer is they’re a five-piece band from Seattle, led by a songwriter named Robin Pecknold. They describe their music as “baroque harmonic pop jams,” which tells you absolutely nothing. The best I’ve been able to come up with is this: imagine Brian Wilson’s 18th Century English folk band. But even that doesn’t do it. Who the hell are Fleet Foxes? It’s a complicated question.

Here’s what I can tell you: every second of their self-titled album is beautiful. Their sound is based on centuries-old folk, but it includes elements of sun-splashed California pop, ‘70s acoustic rock, and the harmonies of bands like The Mamas and the Papas. Every song here could have been written in the 1700s, lyrics notwithstanding, but the sound draws in bits from the last four decades. Pecknold’s voice is clean and clear, strong and gentle, and when the rest of the band orbits him in harmony, the vocals lift this record off the ground.

Take any song. Let’s pick “Quiet Houses,” track four. Over a thumping drum beat, Pecknold and his band spin a web of clean guitars, then layer a five-part harmony vocal over the whole thing. Then they break it down halfway through into something that sounds like a demo from SMiLE. The entire lyrics for the song are as follows: “Lay me down, don’t give in, come to me, lay me down.” It sounds astonishingly simple, but the result is simply astonishing.

Brian Wilson himself could not have written a better melody than the one that graces “He Doesn’t Know Why,” a gem of a pop song with some glorious “ah-ah-ah” harmonies. “Heard Them Stirring” has a particularly baroque base, harpsichords and harmonies accented by tympanis. There are no lyrics to speak of, but the wordless vocals and dazzling guitar fill your ear to bursting. And I doubt I will hear a more beautiful song this year than “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song,” although “Your Protector” gives it a run for its money.

When you finish Fleet Foxes, you will want more, particularly because final track “Oliver James” ends abruptly. Fear not, because the band released an EP earlier this year called Sun Giant. Oddly, this little morsel was written and recorded after the album, so these are the five newest Fleet Foxes songs. It’s a good sign, then, that my favorites reside here: the ever-expanding “Drops in the River” and the singalong “Mykonos.” You can’t go wrong with either the album or the EP, and you really can’t go wrong with both.

Many musicians work overtime, trying every trick in the book to craft timeless music. The results are usually over-cooked and half-baked, sounding desperately of their time. But Robin Pecknold and Fleet Foxes have succeeded – their sound is almost out of time, respectful of a hundred traditions at once. It is older than the ages, it is newborn and blinking its eyes in the sun. Who the hell are Fleet Foxes? They are the discovery of the year, and they have made the best album of 2008 so far. And even if they never make another record, I will treasure this moment, this time.

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Here, now, is the real 2008 Second Quarter Report. It features the same 10 albums I posted last week, but this time there are little numbers next to each of them. These numbers represent my preferences right now, and may be different tomorrow or next week. I am, as I said before, still sorting through my impressions of Coldplay, Death Cab and Sigur Ros. As always, your mileage may vary, but here’s what the top 10 list would look like were I forced at gunpoint to post it right now:

10. Joe Jackson, Rain.
9. R.E.M., Accelerate.
8. Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs.
7. Counting Crows, Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings.
6. Sigur Ros, Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endlaust.
5. Coldplay, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends.
4. Vampire Weekend.
3. The Feeling, Join With Us.
2. Aimee Mann, @#%&*! Smilers.
1. Fleet Foxes.

Thank you for your kind attention. Please read my Seventy Sevens review, if you haven’t already. Next week, in addition to what I said at the end of the other 7/2/08 column, I may whip out a couple of Doctor Who reviews. (Snap! You thought I forgot, didn’t you?)

See you in line Tuesday morning.