Most music just floats right by me without making any impact. Some music makes me sit up and take notice, and a very small percentage of that is good enough to make me more in love with life.

But some… Some music just leaves me bewildered, scratching my head and wondering just what its authors were thinking. This isn’t a bad thing – I hear a lot of music, and nearly all of it fits neatly into categories and formulas, so the songs and records that step outside those boundaries and do something truly different are rare thrills.

I have to confess, though – the bewildering records are much more difficult to assess. Part of my process includes trying to figure out just what an artist was aiming for, and then determining for myself just how close I think they came. If the intention remains elusive, it’s much harder, and the review becomes much more about whether or not I like what’s going on. If I can’t figure out why you’ve fused death metal, polka and Tuvan throat singing, all I can do is say whether I like your polka-metal-throat-singing thing, and admit my confusion.

I’m sure this peek behind the curtain is interesting to no one but me, but it leads into this week’s main event, which I’ve called The WTF Awards. (As in, “What the fuck?!?”) This is all about music that makes you go “hmm,” musical ideas that, on the face of them, make no sense. I expect to get a couple of them every year. I’ve bought three in the last two weeks.

Let me just say up front that the gold standard, the WTF Lifetime Achievement Award, is Texas musician Jandek. Nothing here is as baffling (or as interesting, frankly) as his 30-plus-year career as the most outside of outsider musicians, and I promise I will do a whole column on him someday. The three contestants this week just get plain old vanilla WTF Awards, and as you may expect, once I wrapped my brain around them, I ended up liking some more than others.

Without further ado, the first ever WTF Awards.

* * * * *

The ‘90s alternative explosion was the soundtrack to my college years. Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, even shameless copycats like Stone Temple Pilots – I can’t hear those songs without thinking about my years as a student. But at the top of the heap for me was Soundgarden.

They were among the originals – their first major-label album, Louder than Love, came out in 1989, two years before Nirvana’s Nevermind opened the floodgates. None of the Seattle bands mixed melody and flat-out superb musicianship the way Soundgarden did. Just listen to “Rusty Cage,” one of the singles from 1991’s Batmotorfinger: the multiple choruses are as much of a surprise as the explosive riffing in the verses. Technical, difficult, heavy-as-hell music that just plain rocked – that was Soundgarden, and they remained consistent through two more terrific albums before imploding in 1997.

Since then, frontman Chris Cornell has seemed directionless, which is a shame. He has one of the most versatile, compelling voices in rock, but he wasted years fronting Audioslave, trying to fit that melody-rich voice into the mindless pounding of Rage Against the Machine’s rhythm section. Cornell’s solo debut, Euphoria Morning, was a sweet, low-key affair, but the less said about his second, Carry On, and especially his godawful cover of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” the better. Oh, and he wrote a crappy song for a crappy James Bond movie too.

And now, there is this. Cornell’s third solo album is called Scream, and it’s… I don’t even know.

We can start with the basic facts. Cornell plays not a single note on this record. Scream was produced by Timbaland – yes, that Timbaland – and the music on it inhabits this strange middle ground between dance-pop and electro-rock. Programmed beats thump away while string samples fill in the corners, buzzing synth bass lines percolate under studio-sweetened choruses just drowned in backing vocals. And on top of all this, there’s Cornell and his rock-god voice.

You’d think it would be an odder fit, but here’s the thing – Scream is much more baffling on paper than it is coming out of your speakers. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still weird to hear the guy who shouted “Big Dumb Sex” and “Spoonman” crooning over funky dancefloor beats, and when the album turns more towards the rump-shakers, it stumbles. But you’ll be surprised how well this combination works.

It took me several confused listens to figure out why. Most of the negative reviews (and there have been a lot of them) focus on which personality should be dominant here – some complain it’s not rock enough (or at all), and some complain it’s not danceable R&B, the kind that has become Timbaland’s stock-in-trade. The secret they seem to be missing is that Scream represents an equal partnership. Both Cornell and Timbaland made a genuine effort to come to a middle ground, and purists on either side won’t like the results, but I have to give them credit.

Does it work? Sometimes. Opener “Part of Me” might be the most uncomfortable, with its opening synth fanfare, Justin Timberlake-ready beat and bass line, and a chorus that finds Cornell repeating the line “That bitch ain’t a part of me.” The song is about rubbing up against a girl in a club, and then explaining yourself to your lady – prime material for most of Timbaland’s clients, but sort of embarrassing for a 44-year-old rocker from Seattle.

Thankfully, it gets better, and pretty quickly. “Time,” “Sweet Revenge,” “Get Up” and “Ground Zero” all swagger pretty convincingly, and the segues between each song keep the momentum going, turning Scream into an hour-long suite of sorts. The best part of this album is the return of Cornell’s melodic gift. Slow burners like “Long Gone” and “Never Far Away” stand out the most – these are Chris Cornell songs, underneath it all.

Without a doubt, this is the most interesting record Cornell has made since Soundgarden broke up. You’ll listen through to the whole thing – it’s never boring, and Timbaland is constantly throwing new things at you. But will you like it? The meet-in-the-middle approach here has served to alienate fans of both Cornell and Timbaland, despite the fact that this isn’t a throwaway project for either one. It’s clear that some serious work went into making this album sound exactly like this.

And I’ve kind of been feeling protective of it lately, like it’s an ugly, handicapped baby or something. I feel like wrapping it up in my arms and telling everyone to stop being mean, to leave it alone. “It’s not the baby’s fault it’s ugly, and has club feet! It’s trying!” The simple fact is that Scream is an experiment, one that sometimes fails. But you can’t fault Cornell and Timbaland for their commitment to it, and the more I listen, the more I think they’re on to something.

* * * * *

Sometime this week, I’m going to participate in my first podcast. I feel so hip, so not old at all.

My friend in music, Derek Wright, has asked me to join him for his seventh Liner Notes podcast, and I’m a little nervous. I enjoy listening to Derek’s opinions, and I’m not sure what I’m going to be able to add. Nevertheless, I’ve been given homework – Derek discusses a wide variety of music, much of it relatively obscure, and he sent me a list of records I need to hear before we sit down and talk about them.

And that, dear reader, is how I heard Wavves. Believe me, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have come near this for all the money in the world. I understand the irony in reviewing something to say that no one should be reviewing it, but this record is so bad, and on so many critics’ good lists, that I feel the need to say something.

Wavves is Nathan Williams, a one-man noise factory from San Diego. His music is shit. I don’t want to spend too long discussing it, because it’s not worth much space. Somehow, this guy convinced a fairly well-known indie label, Fat Possum, to release his stuff – his second album, Wavvves (note that third “v”), comes six months after his first. And what baffles me as much as this terrible music is the fawning acclaim it’s been getting. Wavves has become one of those indie-cool buzz bands, and I can’t figure out why.

We can start with what’s actually on the CD, because I get the feeling that the music has little to do with the acclaim.

Now, listen, you all know I love studio production. I’m a Brian Wilson fan, I love the Beatles, Roger Manning makes me jump for joy. But I also like the raw stuff, the recorded-in-a-basement type of thing, as long as the songs are good. It takes a lot for thin production to turn me off. So I say this as someone who owns every Misfits album, including that live record with the tape squeal running all the way through it. I say this as someone who owns and enjoys PJ Harvey’s 4-Track Demos, and early June Panic, and all kinds of cheaply-made efforts by local bands.

Wavvves is one of the shittiest-sounding things I’ve ever heard.

No, honestly. It’s actively annoying. Not only does it sound like it was recorded with a 50-year-old tape deck and all levels pushed into the red, but the mixing is ridiculously bad. Backing vocals are louder than lead vocals, drums are buried, and everything is covered in a fuzzy layer of ear-splitting distortion. This isn’t a matter of the music being too loud for my aging ears, it’s honestly just horribly made. It’s either the most amateur thing you’ve ever heard, or it’s purposely crafted to sound like dogshit.

So grading this thing is a matter of listening through the muck to find the songs. And it turns out, it’s not worth the effort. Track two, “Beach Demon,” has a nice riff. Everything else is either boring or boneheaded, repetitive or random. “Sun Opens My Eyes” is two notes repeated while Williams moans over them, except for the “guitar solo,” placed in quotes because it honestly sounds like something a six-year-old fumbling around on a guitar for the first time might play. Five of these songs have the word “goth” in the title, and I almost wish I could make out the lyrics so I could tell you why.

Wavvves is absolutely terrible, a chore to listen to even at 36 minutes. Every single unsigned musician I know is better at making actual music than this guy. And yet, the Onion A.V. Club gave it an A. Pitchfork placed this in its “Best New Music” section. ABC News did a piece on it. People are talking about Nathan Williams as if he were some kind of… musician or something.

Actually, that’s not true. One of the selling points I’ve seen in multiple reviews is that Williams is not a musician. This is usually written as if it were something refreshing, a breath of fresh air. Who wants to listen to those elitist musicians, acting like they’re all better than people who can’t sing, play or write songs? Honestly, lack of skill is becoming something to be proud of now, a banner to fly high. It’s more genuine, more real somehow, I guess.

All I can figure is that Wavves somehow represents this new indie-cool philosophy. It’s obscure, it is objectively terrible, and by praising it to the skies you’ll drive those “mainstream critics,” the ones who want to hear “songs” and “melodies” and “actual talent,” insane. It’s all about how cool you can look, how ahead of the wave you can be as a reviewer.

The bottom line is this. One of two things is happening here – either Nathan Williams is a terrible musician with a good publicist, or he is actually a good musician making himself sound terrible on purpose for some kind of critical credibility. Either way, why the hell would I listen to this? Wavves gets the WTF Award in the worst possible way. It is beyond my understanding why it was made, why it was released, and why anyone is talking about it.

* * * * *

Like any good music fan, a big chunk of the V section of my CD collection is taken up by various artists compilations.

I love these things, even though, quality-wise, they’re often a mixed bag. I’m often impressed with the themes the producers (I guess they’re called curators now, for this kind of thing, but that’s just too pretentious for me) come up with to tie the hodgepodge of tracks together. F’rinstance, War Child’s latest benefit collection is called Heroes, and features veteran artists (Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Brian Wilson) picking younger ones (The Hold Steady, The Like, Rufus Wainwright) to cover their songs. That’s just neat.

But every once in a while, I’ll get one of these that just… makes… no… sense. That’s the case with the awkwardly-titled Covered, a Revolution in Sound: Warner Bros. Records. The concept is fine – this is current Warner Bros. artists covering songs from the label’s vast catalog. But if these 12 songs are supposed to hang together in any other way, well, they don’t.

Still, I’ve got to say, this disc is thrilling. Various artists collections like this allow bands to really stretch out, pulling off things they’d never even attempt on their own records. The opening track here, for example, is ZZ Top’s “Just Got Paid,” as covered by Mastodon. That’s right, Mastodon, the terrifying metal band responsible for Leviathan and Blood Mountain, two of the most punishing and progressive heavy albums of the past decade. That band, doing ZZ Top. All southern-boogie style. With Billy Gibbons sitting in. It’s pretty great.

The songs on Covered are grouped into informal sections – it starts with the blues rockers, including the Black Keys’ stomping take on Captain Beefheart’s “Her Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles,” but shortly segues into the acoustic folk numbers. Many of these are about what you’d expect – Michelle Branch does a capable job with Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You,” while James Otto pulls off a note-for-note rendition of Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic.”

The curve balls are Against Me’s take on “Here Comes a Regular,” one of the most emotional Replacements songs – they do it just like Westerberg did, with one acoustic guitar and vocal – and Adam Sandler (!) doing a very good Neil Young impression on “Like a Hurricane.” Sandler plays this absolutely straight, and also chokes out some mean lead guitar, Crazy Horse style. Why would Sandler do this? Is this the start of a serious music career, or just a weird one-off? I don’t get it, but I like it.

The angsty bands are next, and the absolute best of them is electro-metal outfit The Used, who slash their way through the Talking Heads classic “Burning Down the House.” Also awesome is Disturbed’s take on Faith No More’s “Midlife Crisis’ – though not quite as great as Disturbed’s explosive version of Genesis’ “Land of Confusion” from a few years ago, it’s quite good, and reminds me what a terrific band Faith No More was.

But it’s the last track that seals this record’s place in this column. Get this: The Flaming Lips, doing Madonna’s “Borderline,” with the help of nephew Dennis Coyne’s band, Stardeath and White Dwarfs. Honest to God, they do “Borderline.” They turn it into a six-minute spacerock dirge, but somehow, they preserve every single element of the original. It’s brilliant, it’s silly, it’s out of nowhere, and I have no idea how the hell it came to be. I listen to this, and all I can do is shake my head in bewildered admiration.

If the intention here was to create a disjointed, crazy, utterly confusing mix tape, well, they did it. I don’t know what to make of Covered as a whole, and though it is uncommonly successful track by track, it makes no sense as a collection. And then there is “Borderline,” which turns the rest of the record inside out – it’s impossibly good, and utterly perplexing. Perhaps there is no rhyme, no reason, no meaning. Either way, this one gets a WTF Award just for existing.

* * * * *

I was planning on including the Decemberists’ new mad-as-hatters rock opera The Hazards of Love in this week’s piece, but I think it will work better next week, paired with the new Mastodon. The theme, of course, will be bugfuck insane concept albums. Come back in seven days for that.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So this is going to sound very strange, especially since it has nothing to do with music or anything else this column usually tackles. It’s just something that’s been tickling my mind lately.

Okay. Have you seen those new Cheetos commercials? The ones with a depressingly computer-generated Chester Cheetah? The usual conceit of these ads is that our non-Cheetah protagonist, easily identified because he or she is eating Cheetos, encounters someone rude or obnoxious. He or she then uses his or her Cheetos to exact some form of petty revenge – wiping orange residue on the obnoxious person’s back, for example, or throwing the tasty snacks on the ground by the obnoxious person’s feet, to attract birds.

And each time, Chester Cheetah looks on approvingly. In some of the ads, he actually gives our protagonist the idea for whatever Cheetos-related vengeance they enact. In one, he says “Papa Chester’s proud of you,” in a really creepy, low voice.

This troubles me. Not a lot, you understand, but it does rub me wrong. I just think Chester Cheetah deserves better. When I was growing up, Chester was unflappable. You couldn’t rattle that guy. He’d breeze through Cheetos ads with his cool-as-hell shades, sometimes dancing but often just hanging out, totally laid back. He rolled with the punches and kept on smiling, just being… cool.

And now? This Chester is a bit of a scumbag. Rather than just letting the irritations of life roll off his back, he encourages striking out at people, and revels in their misery. Who is this guy? What happened to Chester? Did he have a bad experience with a woman cheetah that hardened him towards life? He’s no longer cool. He’s just kind of a dick who thinks he’s cool.

Yes, I’ve actually spent time thinking about this. Shut up. Stop laughing. Move along, nothing to see here…

* * * * *

Tori Amos’ new album is called Abnormally Attracted to Sin.

I would repeat that for effect, but I don’t want to type it again. It is easily the dumbest, most on-the-nose title of her career, even if it is from Guys and Dolls. The album, out on May 19, is another 17-song monster, and the cover art is bland and boring. Every Tori album fills me with dread these days, but I fear even the modest gains she made with American Doll Posse (an album that has diminished somewhat with time) may be lost here.

Depressing. We shall see.

* * * * *

I’m finding myself interested in parts and their sums this week. I’ve been a fan of Canadian supergroup The New Pornographers since their first album, Mass Romantic, in 2000. I came awfully close to including their third album, Twin Cinema, on my 2005 top 10 list. They’re less a band and more a collective, a group of songwriters and prolific artists in their own right who come together once every couple of years to pool talents.

And what they do works brilliantly. But me being me, I’m practically obsessed with taking things apart and putting them back together. It’s not enough for me to just enjoy the sound, however it comes together. I need to know which of the component parts is responsible for what, and why the combination works as well as it does. I know, I frustrate myself, too.

But the Pornographers make it easy for me by maintaining their own careers, apart from the band. This makes it easy to figure out just what each one brings to the table, and what compromises each one makes in service of the collective sound. Happily, each of the Pornographers’ solo records is also worth hearing – it’s not just an academic exercise, but an enjoyable romp through different kinds of musical imagination.

No disrespect to Dan Bejar intended, but the two New Pornographers who get the most attention are Carl Newman and Neko Case. They’re the Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks of this group, although I’m pretty sure they never dated, broke up and wrote a whole album of songs about each other. Newman writes most of the band’s tunes, often for Case to sing – he’s the boy genius, the guy with a thousand good ideas a minute. Case grounds his work with her glorious voice. She adds an air of authenticity to everything she sings, and can sell Newman’s melodies better than anyone.

They work so well together that it’s sometimes strange to hear them acting independently. Case’s solo work is often country-inflected, usually earthy and genuine-sounding. She doesn’t quite have the scope as a songwriter that Newman does, but with her voice, it rarely matters. Newman, on the other hand, is a melody factory. His songs are endlessly inventive and quirky, if not always memorable. His voice is nice, but words like “capable” and “adequate” come to mind. He has a songwriter’s voice, not a singer’s.

But both of their recent efforts are quite strong – both, in fact, are better than the last New Porn album, 2007’s Challengers. Why is this? Did the synergy simply fail during the Challengers sessions? Did Case and Newman save their best stuff for their own albums? You’d think that would be the first assumption, but the songs on both of these albums play to their authors’ individual strengths more than to the New Pornographers group dynamic. Put simply, these aren’t really New Pornographers songs.

That’s especially true of Case’s record. It’s her fifth, and it’s called Middle Cyclone. I have to make special mention here of the cover, as it’s my favorite of 2009 so far. It features Case in a short black skirt, crouched on the front of a classic old car, and clutching a sword in her right hand. She looks ready to strike, or at least ready for an adventure. It’s a pretty awesome picture. But if it leads you to expect something bold and raucous, like the soundtrack to a Quentin Tarantino flick, prepare to be disappointed.

Middle Cyclone is a slow, pretty affair, for the most part. Case’s country leanings are all but gone here, replaced by acoustic balladry and jangle-pop. But it’s pretty good acoustic balladry and jangle-pop, and Case brings That Voice, which elevates everything. Opener “This Tornado Loves You” is her most clever, a lovesick letter from a force of nature that has chased the object of its affection across the country: “Carved your name across three counties,” she sings, and ends the song pleading, “This tornado loves you, what will make you believe me?”

The overall tone is sweet and down-to-earth, with some real flashes of invention. “Polar Nettles” does some interesting things with backwards recording, which the title song contains two music box solos that fit in with Case’s melodies perfectly. My favorite song here is “Prison Girls” – this one does sound like a Tarantino flick, with its minor-key surf guitar and dark lyrics. (Oh, and the best “oh-oooh” refrain Case has ever written.) She also does a great job with Harry Nilsson’s “Don’t Forget Me,” a song also recently covered by the Walkmen.

Still and all, Case’s songs are pretty simple, even if they are simply pretty. Middle Cyclone sounds great when you’re playing it, but leaves your head pretty soon after it stops, no matter how haunting and moving her voice is. Strangely, she ends her album with 31 minutes of frog and insect noises, as if to underline the nature themes that sprinkle her songs this time. I’m not sure what to make of that, but the other 14 tracks are decent-to-good tunes that never reach for more.

Meanwhile, Carl Newman (who goes by A.C. Newman when recording on his own) has stepped up his songwriting game on his second solo disc, Get Guilty. He keeps the more mellow approach of Challengers, but remembers to bring engaging hooks this time, and his record is all the better for it. Opener “There Are Maybe Ten or Twelve” sounds like a fanfare, and says a lot with a few well-placed lines and observations. The third verse begins like this: “And her eyes, they were a color I can’t remember, which says more than the first two verses…”

Newman does his budget Brian Wilson production here as well, with trumpets, trombones, saxophones, recorders, flutes, mandolins, strings and an army of backing vocalists. (The recorder is on second track “The Heartbreak Rides,” and its entrance is unexpected, but sounds just right.) While I like all these songs, Newman shines in the record’s final third. “Young Atlantis” may be his best song this time out, a circular folk number with a great chorus and some swell strings. It’s matched by the bizarre “The Collected Works,” and Newman ends the record with the singalong “All of My Days and All of My Days Off.”

But here’s the thing – Newman on his own is a songwriter’s songwriter, assembling chords and riffs and orchestrations like a master, but failing to emotionally connect. It’s a flaw I’m not sure I would have even noticed if he hadn’t spent so much of the past nine years working with Case, who bridges that gap effortlessly. It’s easy to see from these records what Newman and Case bring back to their band – he’s the brain, she’s the heart. They’re good on their own, but when they really click together, they’re something more.

Would I recommend these solo albums, then? Sure. Case’s record is frequently beautiful, and quite frankly, I’d pay money to hear her sing just about anything. And Newman’s disc is an indie pop masterclass, like just about everything he does. If you want to hear 12 songs packed with little surprises and big hooks, you can’t go wrong. As much as I like the whole better than the parts, I’m glad I don’t have to choose. I can have both, and so can you.

* * * * *

One thing to mention before I go. Did everyone see Jon Stewart’s epic takedown of CNBC’s Jim Cramer last week? It was one of the most impressive pieces of actual journalism I’ve seen in a long time. That it came from a guy who hosts a fake news show on Comedy Central surprised some, but not me. Stewart is one of the most important voices of our time, especially when he’s good and angry and has a boatload of research to back him up.

The unedited interview is in three parts on Comedy Central’s Web site here, here and here. Do check it out.

Next week, a little thing I’m calling “The WTF Awards.” Come back in seven days to find out WTF that means.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

This is the first of two columns this week. The other, which you can get to via the archive, is my long ramble about the Watchmen movie. To sum up: it could have been a lot better, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. I’m a pretty happy geek right now.

This one, however, is about music. We’re mere weeks away from a flood of new tunes that won’t let up until summer’s over, at least – I’d have to write two columns every week to keep up with everything. (I won’t, of course, so I’m bound to miss some things.) Expect to see reviews of new records by the Decemberists, Ace Enders, Indigo Girls, Mastodon, The Wishing Tree, Prince, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Queensryche (how can I not review this craptasterpiece?), Ben Folds, Pet Shop Boys, Jars of Clay, Tinted Windows, Great Northern, Conor Oberst and Green Day. Anything else I get to is gravy.

Whew! Onward!

* * * * *

I’ve been living with the new U2 album, No Line on the Horizon, for a few weeks now, and I’ve come to the conclusion that my copy is defective.

I’d like to borrow David Fricke’s copy – his seems to be in perfect working order, judging by his five-star review in Rolling Stone. Mine, however, remains a confusing, difficult listen, no matter how many times I plow through it. I’ve been waiting for this album to click, to finally reveal itself to me, but after weeks of listening, first to a downloaded copy and then to the real thing, I’m afraid it just isn’t going to happen.

I’ve never had such a complex reaction to a U2 album before. Ordinarily, my first impression remains my enduring one – The Unforgettable Fire was a favorite early on, and has remained one, while Zooropa rubbed me wrong the first time, and never grew on me. The only exception has been Achtung Baby, which struck me as an odd, off-kilter little record my first time through, and soon blossomed, taking its place in the pantheon pretty quickly. I’m hoping the same will happen with No Line on the Horizon, though I doubt it.

The thing is, I’m an old-school U2 fan. Critics have turned on their last two albums, 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind and 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, for being U2 by the numbers. I completely disagree. I think they signified a return of creative fire after a decade in the wilderness. I’m especially fond of Atomic Bomb because of its focus – it’s four guys in a room, playing their hearts out. The songs are loud and massive, and they have that reach-for-the-sky U2 flavor, but they’re much more down-to-earth and gritty than anything since the early days.

A band this restless isn’t going to stay in one comfortable place for very long, though. No Line on the Horizon is the inevitable transitional album, Bono and the lads indulging their experimental streak again. I’ve always admired U2’s willingness to follow those impulses, even if they lead straight off a cliff. But I’ve never particularly liked listening to the end products. Zooropa and Pop, perhaps the most experimental records they’ve made, occupy the bottom two slots in my U2 hierarchy.

So already I was bracing myself for No Line, an album crafted over several sessions, with numerous producers. In the end, they whittled down the dream team to alumni Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite, with a little help from Will-I-Am. But the finished album sounds like what it is – a confused hodgepodge of differing tones and intentions. It’s a baffling listen the first time through, and many of the head-scratching moments don’t coalesce on repeated listens.

Take “Magnificent,” a song I really wish I could like more than I do. U2 has built a career out of making the most of one riff, and they do it again here – “Magnificent” is constructed entirely on one pretty awesome guitar lick. But this song should be a joyous explosion, and it’s oddly muted. It’s produced within an inch of its life, with string sections and keyboards jockeying for room. Every time Larry Mullen goes into one of those endless snare drum fills, the song’s momentum stops dead. This will probably be great live, but it’s far too subdued here.

Speaking of momentum-killers, there’s “Moment of Surrender,” a seven-minute faux-gospel drone that drags the album down at track three. It’s not much of a song, but I expect the idea was to create cavernous space for Bono to fill. The Edge takes one of his few guitar breaks around the six-minute mark, but it’s so reserved it’s like it barely happens. The electronic drum beat never changes, the song never builds, it just goes on and on.

But I can see what they were going for, even if they fell short. With “Unknown Caller,” the six-minute meander that follows, I can’t even figure out what they wanted it to be. You get chiming guitars, you get keyboards, you get gang vocals urging you to “force quit and move to trash,” and the whole thing goes absolutely nowhere. Similarly, “Fez-Being Born” is like a dial tone. It drones on for five minutes without actually doing a damn thing.

It’s not all bad news. I can think of few things that scare me more than a U2 song with a title like “I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight,” but it’s actually not that bad. At least it has a good chorus, and holds together as a sweet little ditty. “Get On Your Boots” is a mess, but its follow-up, “Stand Up Comedy,” really works, even after a dozen listens. It’s no coincidence that it’s one of the few songs here that sounds like it was jammed out live, and it has Bono’s best line this time out: “Josephine, be careful of small men with big ideas.”

Speaking of Bono, I am convinced the rest of the band needs to corner him, rip his first draft lyrics out of his hands and throw them on the fire. Even though I’m not fond of the results, it’s clear the music on this album was labored over. The lyrics, on the other hand, sound like they were scrawled onto bar napkins ten minutes before Eno hit the record button. The record kicks off with its title track, a mid-tempo tunnel of sound – you won’t be able to tell what noises were made with guitars, basses and synths, but Mullen’s powerhouse drumming holds the whole thing together. But what does Bono sing on top of this? Here are the honest-to-God opening lyrics:

“I know a girl who’s like the sea, I watch her changing every day for me, oh yeah/One day she’s still, the next she swells, you can hear the universe in her sea shells…”

Seriously. You can hear the universe in her sea shells. It gets worse. “Moment of Surrender” is about having a religious epiphany while using the ATM (or “ATM machine,” as Bono redundantly puts it). The narrator of “Unknown Caller” wants you to “cease to speak, so that I may speak, shush now” and “restart and reboot yourself.” All of “Get On Your Boots” is embarrassing. He hits the mark a few times, particularly on the superior second half – “White as Snow,” despite borrowing its melody from “O Come, O Come Emanuel,” is a haunting tale of a wounded soldier in Afghanistan. But mainly, the lyric man blows it.

The best song on the album is buried at track 10. “Breathe” is reminiscent of “Trip Through Your Wires,” but rowdier and funnier: “Coming from a long line of traveling salesmen on my mother’s side, I wasn’t just going to buy anyone’s cockatoo,” Bono smirks at one point. But this song moves – it has a terrific melody, and carries it along for its full five minutes. Yeah, there’s an unnecessary string section, but this is the one song here that pulses with life. “Cedars of Lebanon” closes the proceedings on a hushed, almost sinister note, and I’ve grown to quite like this one, too. “Choose your enemies carefully ‘cause they will define you,” Bono sing-speaks, and as the music melts away, he closes with, “They’re gonna last with you longer than your friends.”

But despite brief flashes, No Line on the Horizon is less than the sum of its parts. About half of it still leaves me baffled, even after more than a dozen spins, and the other half doesn’t hold a candle to the best songs from the last two records. Worst of all, that creative fire so prevalent on those last two albums is in short supply on this one. This is a band in dire need of some scaling back. I would like to hear what they come up with given only three months, a live room and a bunch of microphones. No Line on the Horizon is overcooked, yet lukewarm, a confusing collection of sounds that never takes flight. Like its title, it makes less sense the more you consider it.

* * * * *

And now for something completely better.

Three years ago, Austin songwriter Taylor Muse appeared out of nowhere, releasing a hell of a debut album, Shine Honesty, under the name Quiet Company. I don’t regularly listen to a lot of the records I bought in 2006, but Shine Honesty still gets a lot of spins to this day. The reason is Muse’s songs – they are dynamic and bold and melodic, and they reveal more little pleasures each time you hear them. The album was like a sustained fanfare, announcing the arrival of a major talent.

I wanted more right away, but it took three years for Muse and his collaborators to put together Quiet Company’s second album, graced with the glorious title Everyone You Love Will Be Happy Soon. In those three years, Muse has left Northern Records and struck out on his own – the new QuietCo album is a self-released affair. Which means it will probably reach fewer people than even the debut album did, unless word gets around. Well, I’m about to do my part, because this album is excellent – it’s not as immediate as Shine Honesty, but with repeated listens, it reveals itself as a gem, better in many respects than the band’s terrific first effort. Put simply, you should buy this, and you should buy it now.

On Shine Honesty, Muse overdubbed himself again and again, achieving these dramatic epics that belied his budget. On Everyone You Love, he’s gone even bigger. The sound is somehow more homespun and ragged, but the songs are more confident, more layered. It’s a more complete album, a fuller experience. New band member Thomas Blank, who plays guitars, pianos, organs and other things, helps flesh these tunes out, and there are a host of guests this time. It sounds more like a band effort than the one-man show Muse gave us last time.

What hasn’t changed, however, is the songwriting. Taylor Muse remains a singular talent – there are 15 songs on this thing, and every single one packs a melodic punch. Even the most typical of these tunes, the Wilco-esque “Golden (Like the State),” goes places you won’t expect, and when Muse really builds up a head of steam, his songs unfold and flower and evolve, rarely ending up where they began. “Seal My Fate” begins with four chords on a loping acoustic guitar, but check out where it goes – the delightful sunshine pop chorus is fantastic.

Highlights? Okay. The deliriously-titled “It’s Better to Spend Money Like There’s No Tomorrow Than Spend Tonight Like There’s No Money” gallops to life with an electric piano figure and a quick-quick drumbeat, and its energy never flags: “You better stop and smell the roses, you better love the life you live,” Muse sings, and the joyous music backs him up perfectly. “Our Sun is Always Rising” is one of my favorites. It begins with a simple piano sketch, guitars and drums crashing in out of nowhere and disappearing just as quickly. But it evolves into an epic pop wonderland worthy of the Polyphonic Spree.

“Red and Gold” is the album’s most beautiful moment, Muse stepping into Fleet Foxes territory for a few minutes. A fragile acoustic guitar, some sweet harmonies, and a great little melody – what else do you need? Oh, right, thoughtful lyrics, which Muse also provides in spades: “Take your time discussing all your needs, because every road will end up at the sea,” he sings.

Some of these songs are straight diary entry, some (like the sweet “Congratulations Seth and Kara”) are letters to specific people. But every one of these lyrics is considered and well-written – Bono should take notes. Muse wrestles with God, just like Bono does, but Muse’s struggles somehow seem more real, less concerned with an audience. He argues scriptures with his brother in “Seth and Kara,” and in “The Beginning of Everything at the End of the World,” he declares that modern religion “leaves me feeling cold, leaves me feeling faithless, because our scars both old and new, they never seem to shame us.”

And just like last time, Muse really pulls out the stops at record’s end. He’s already asked you to listen to 45 minutes of relatively complex pop by the time you get to “How to Fake Like You are Nice and Caring,” a seven-minute excursion into awesome, but you won’t mind. The title is a reference to Magnolia, and the song is a doubt-filled excoriation of this greedy world. Once it gets going, it’s like a roller coaster, zipping through different movements and melodies with graceful ease.

He gets no less epic with “On Modern Men,” another one that starts slow and builds relentlessly, Sufjan Stevens style, into a wall of sound. “They want you to take a bow, everybody here’s allowed one, so make it good, son,” Muse sings, effectively bringing the album to a close. Sweet coda “Congratulations April and Lucas” is like a parting gift: “I’m gonna count my blessings, I’m gonna count my sacred things…” Despite the noisy denouement, it’s a low-key, optimistic finish to an album that has laid bare its author’s soul, and by the end, you feel Muse has earned his rest.

I didn’t know what to expect from a second Quiet Company album, and in some ways, I feared the first one may have been a fluke. In retrospect, though, I’m not surprised that Everyone You Love Will Be Happy Soon is this good. This is the sound of Taylor Muse coming into his own, and what a sound that is. I only wish more people would get to hear it.

So here’s the deal. You can hear a bunch of songs from the new record here. If you like it, you can buy it here. Last time, I favorably compared Taylor Muse to Paul Simon, and this time, I’ve given his record a better review than U2’s. That should tell you something. Click over and check it out. You won’t regret it.

Next week, well, I’m spoiled for choice. Neko Case? Soundtrack of Our Lives? Chris Cornell? Cursive? Buddy and Julie Miller? Could be any of them. Join me in seven days to find out.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So they finally made a Watchmen movie. I’ve seen it twice. Let me tell you about it. I will try to do it without spoilers, but I can’t promise anything, so be warned.

* * * * *

Watchmen is not about superheroes.

This is the first thing you need to know if you plan on seeing the movie. If you go in expecting good guys and bad guys, Batmen and Jokers, you’re going to be baffled. The book sent a seismic shock through the comics industry when in came out in 1986, and 23 years later, its pitch-dark vision hasn’t lost any of its punch. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons essentially took Stan Lee’s approach to its logical, nihilistic extreme – Lee gave his superheroes real-world problems, then laid them over fantastical backdrops, but Moore and Gibbons went all the way.

The question Watchmen posits is this: what would costumed heroes really be like? What kind of people would actually dress up as bats or owls and prowl the night, looking for rights to wrong? Well, they’d be disturbed personalities who get off on the rush of violence. They’d be attention-seekers looking for the spotlight. Or they’d be psychopaths with an insanely heightened sense of justice. These are the characters of Watchmen. People crazy enough to think they can turn the tide of human nature. And one of them is crazy enough to think he can save the world.

I bring this up because many reviewers are missing this fundamental point. Some have complained that they don’t know who to root for. Some have supposed that Rorschach, the obviously mentally damaged and hyper-violent vigilante that sets the movie’s plot in motion, is in fact the hero. He’s not. There aren’t any heroes. You’re not supposed to root for any of these people, and if the ending leaves you wondering about the moral compasses of everyone, including your own, then it’s done its job. Watchmen is not about superheroes. It’s about people.

What would costumed heroes be like? Imagine the worst people you know. Now give them anonymity and autonomy – free rein to do whatever they want with no consequences. That’s what they’d really be like.

* * * * *

So I’ve been dreading a Watchmen movie for about 15 years now.

Part of the reason for this is that Watchmen is defiantly a comic book. It’s not a storyboard, it does not have aspirations towards any other storytelling method. It does not propose ideas beyond its medium, it explores its medium to the fullest with its ideas. The book is partially a commentary on comics from the 1930s to the 1980s, and no matter what, there’s just no way a screen adaptation could (or would) capture that.

The context is just one of those things I had to let go, and I’d been preparing for that for years. But as I heard about the on-and-off plans for this movie over the last decade and a half, I realized there were some things I just couldn’t let go. I really boiled it down to a couple. I mentioned the biggest one above – any attempt to turn these people into heroes would have turned my stomach.

Also, the alternate 1980s setting was sacrosanct, as far as I was concerned. The book pivots on the escalating arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the threat of nuclear war always in the background. Only one period in our history gives you that perfect sense of all-consuming dread that Watchmen needs. Pushing it forward in time, making it contemporary, swapping in George W. Bush and the Iraq war – these were all ideas honestly mooted during Watchmen’s long journey to the screen, and I think I pulled a decent percentage of my hair out just reading about them.

Finally, there’s the ending. I’ve said before, I don’t care about the mechanics of it. The morality of it, the theme, is what’s important. The ending of Watchmen is about what it really takes to save the world, and it’s not the superheroic throwdown that the studios were likely expecting. I worried that the ending would be changed, that the deliberately comic-booky tone of the penultimate chapters would be carried through. They’re a feint, you see. A trick, a joke. The messy, complex world of Watchmen cannot have a simplistic ending wrapped in a bow. It just can’t.

Adding to my sense of dread was the seemingly endless succession of terrible Alan Moore screen adaptations. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. From Hell. Constantine. V for Vendetta. Endings changed, characters eviscerated, and in some cases, entire foundational concepts burned at the stake. Alan Moore may be the most thoughtful writer the medium of comics has ever produced, but his on-screen legacy is littered with brain-dead wrecks. (Keanu Reeves as John Constantine? In Los Angeles? Really??)

Moore himself gave up on Hollywood a long time ago. He has asked that his name be removed from adaptations of his works – he can’t stop them, because much of Moore’s output has been for the major companies, who end up owning his books, and can sell the rights to production companies without his consent. He even gives his portion of the movie money to his original collaborators – Eddie Campbell on From Hell, for example, or David Lloyd on V for Vendetta. Moore has no hope that any adaptation will do his work justice, and maybe he’s right to think this way. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be Alan Moore, watching the League movie. I shudder just thinking about it.

But I’m not Moore, and I tried to remain hopeful. The movie passed through hands both talented and not so talented before landing with Zack Snyder, the man who adapted Frank Miller’s 300 a few years ago. This is only Snyder’s third film, but he’s shown a genuine love for the comics medium, and a penchant for remaining faithful to an author’s vision. I had hope.

The cast was announced. Almost entirely unknowns. Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. Billy Crudup (the movie’s biggest name) as Dr. Manhattan. Patrick Wilson (who?) as Nite Owl. I started getting excited – Snyder seemed to know that big-name actors would only be distracting for characters this indelible. The trailers began appearing. Dr. Manhattan looked amazing. His clockwork palace on Mars looked exactly right. The Owlship. Rorschach’s shifting mask. Everything was right. I started getting very excited.

I ended up taking four hours off in the middle of the day last Friday to see the movie. As the lights dimmed and the screen turned yellow for the opening credits, I could barely breathe. I was watching Watchmen, and I wasn’t scared. I was thrilled.

* * * * *

Realistically speaking, I could not have asked for a better Watchmen movie.

That sounds like faint praise, and I don’t mean it as such. This movie is a miracle. Had it been 60 percent faithful to Moore and Gibbons, it would have been impressive. But 99.9 percent faithful is just… amazing. I know Alan Moore will never see this, but he could not have found someone more respectful of his work and his intentions than Zack Snyder. Even in places where the story has been altered, the intent has remained true. Snyder’s not just a fan, he’s practically an acolyte, and I love him for it.

The movie opens with the murder of the Comedian, also known as Edward Blake. It’s a nasty, violent scene, and it sets the tone well. Then we’re off into the most amazing credits sequence I’ve seen in ages – a parade of images that give you the back story of Watchmen brilliantly, set to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changing.” There’s a ton of exposition covered in artful silence here, and a number of very important character clues sprinkled throughout. I would have paid full price just to see this sequence again.

And then, Snyder adapts the first six chapters of the book, almost verbatim. It was incredible to watch. Even the tricky fourth chapter, giving Dr. Manhattan’s back story as he reminisces on Mars, is as exact as it could be. I’m sure dozens of screenwriters struggled with this sequence, trying to make its shifting times and settings more accessible for a moviegoing audience. David Hayter and Alex Tse just wrote Moore’s words down, and Snyder essentially shot the comic, nearly panel for panel. And it works brilliantly.

Above all in this first half, Snyder and his screenwriters kept the most important thing front and center – these are not heroes. Rorschach seems like the central character at first, but his intense origin story (truncated a little here) puts him at the fringes, just as he should be. Jon Osterman (Dr. Manhattan) is distant, shallow, and self-obsessed, qualities you wouldn’t expect from a big blue god. (Or maybe you would, which is the point.) Dan Dreiberg (Nite Owl) is flabby and retreating, a middle-aged failure. Laurie Juspeczyk (Silk Spectre) is an emotional mess, living in the shadow of her mother and tired of a life as Jon’s lover.

I could go on, but you get the point. Snyder got everything right. And even though he veers off the track somewhat in the second half, it’s never to the movie’s detriment – he adds only a couple of scenes invented from whole cloth, and does his best to deliver a faithful treatment of even Moore’s less considered moments. It’s a dense book, which makes for a complicated movie, but by the end, you really feel the conflicts of these characters. It’s superbly done.

* * * * *

The cast is variable, unfortunately. At the top of the heap is Jackie Earle Haley, who simply is Rorschach. I have been terrified of just how Rorschach would come across on screen for years. Would he be cheesy? Would they turn him into a hero? But Haley is amazing. With the constantly-morphing mask on, he has only his voice, but he nails Rorschach’s dispassionate growl. With his mask off, he is simply incredible – he has the character’s detached stare down perfectly. His scenes with the prison psychologist are a highlight, and I was pleased to see that Hayter and Tse rescued Rorschach’s best line – in the book, it’s an offhand recollection written down in the psychologist’s journal, but in the movie, he says it, and delivers it perfectly.

(You will know the line when you hear it. I don’t want to give it away here. Suffice it to say, it caps off the prison cafeteria scene, and it brought gasps and cheers both times I saw the film.)

Billy Crudup is excellent as well. I’d always imagined Dr. Manhattan with a booming, omnipotent voice, but his thin tones work even better – they are bored and disengaged, which Osterman often is, a side effect of omniscience. The special effects team did wonders with this big blue monstrosity, and the best part is, you can still see Crudup at the character’s center. Also excellent was Patrick Wilson, as the schlubby Dreiberg, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, as the psychotic Comedian.

But there are two characters I probably would have re-cast. The flaws are not fatal, but they are significant. First is Malin Akerman as Laurie Juspeczyk. To start, she’s just too young to play this part. Her character talks about things she did 15 years ago, and I found myself thinking, “What, when you were eight?” But more than that, Laurie is the emotional center of the movie – so much of this orbits around her feelings, her pain. And I didn’t quite feel that from Akerman. Her big scene on Mars in chapter nine comes off a bit flat, and I didn’t quite buy her love story with Dan, a big part of the second hour.

And then there is Matthew Goode, as Adrian Veidt, a.k.a. Ozymandias. In many ways, Veidt is Watchmen’s most complex character, and Goode’s performance is frustratingly one-note. What I wanted, and didn’t get, was the weight of responsibility Veidt feels. We don’t get any of his sadness, just his confidence. Also, Veidt’s last panel in the book is his one moment of terrified doubt, and I wish we could have seen that in the movie. Goode is also too young to play Ozymandias, and what should be world-weary determinism comes off as brash arrogance. Of all of them, I wish this performance had been different.

Snyder didn’t help matters by faithfully copying one of the missteps of the book – we don’t get to know Adrian very well. He’s sidelined for much of the story, until he steps center-stage. I would have liked an origin story, some sense of why he does what he does. In the book, it’s told in little moments, and in a text piece at the end of chapter 11. The movie keeps the moments, but Goode’s performance doesn’t let us in. Reading the book, we know that Veidt watching the map burn at the first and only meeting of the Crimebusters was a major moment, one that led to his later actions. That’s in the movie, but we don’t really feel the weight of it on Adrian, and I wish we did.

* * * * *

Do I have problems with the movie? Oh, yeah. As wonderful as it is, there are still some things I’d have done differently, and I expect every fan has his/her own list. Some of mine:

The violence has been ramped up for the film. The book was more suggestive about it, but the movie is very in-your-face, particularly when Dan and Laurie are attacked in an alley. I understand the points Snyder is making, but I fear this scene undermines the characters a bit.

Dr. Manhattan’s big blue penis is on display quite frequently. I get the symbolism, and didn’t really care that much, but I worry that it will be a distraction for moviegoers not as invested in the story as I am.

Speaking of phallic symbols, the other one – President Nixon’s protruding proboscis – is a little too, pardon the expression, on the nose.

The music choices were okay, but pedestrian. Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in particular invites laughs over Dan and Laurie’s sex scene, although those laughs will come anyway once the flamethrower is triggered. (Trust me, it’s funny.) Here’s one they did right, though – see if you can spot Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” played under a key scene.

Carla Gugino’s makeup, as the aging Sally Jupiter, is not very convincing.

The second hour seems to lose its way, as the sense of impending dread fades into the background. In the book, it’s kept front and center with other characters, small parts that didn’t make it into the movie. I like what’s there, and it makes sense to focus on our main characters, but I don’t feel the same sense of movement I do in the book.

The context and subtext is largely missing, which I expected. You wouldn’t really get the idea, watching this movie, why the book made it onto Time Magazine’s list of 100 greatest novels. It doesn’t feel as important without the subtext scattered throughout. And no movie could replicate this book’s impact on comics as a medium and on pop culture, which informs every re-read. Not Snyder’s fault at all, but still.

I can think of more, but I’ll stop there. As you can tell, these are all minor quibbles, not devastating flaws. For every missed step, Snyder took ten that are sure and steady. All in all, I am happy.

* * * * *

Of course, I have to talk about the ending.

I will try to do so without giving it away, which will be a challenge. For much of its running time, Watchmen seems to be headed for a heroes-and-villains denouement, a Dark Knight-style rumble. The subversion of that expectation is one of Alan Moore’s finest moments, and I have read with dismay as many critics have dismissed the ending as anti-climactic. That, of course, is the entire point – the unexpected events, and the characters’ reactions to them, are the book. And, blessedly, they are the movie too.

Yes, the ending is different. You may have seen the phrase “giant squid” in some reviews, and I can tell you that no such squid appears in the film. What does appear, astonishingly, is something better, something more elegant, that allows Snyder to retain every emotional moment of Moore’s finale. The mechanics are different, but the beats, the themes, the philosophical questions – they are all the same. Snyder and his screenwriters even kept Veidt’s best line, in many ways my favorite in the entire book.

I’ve been thinking long and hard about this, and I believe it’s true – the new ending is better. It doesn’t pack the same punch as the original, partly because the book’s momentum is lost somewhat in the film’s second hour. But when it happens, it still comes as a fantastic surprise. And every moment after that is perfect. Haley in particular knocks his final scenes out of the park. In the final analysis, how the ending happens doesn’t matter, just that it does. And here, it dovetails with the rest of the plot much more thoroughly.

The first time I saw Watchmen, I was watching with a critical eye, looking for deviations from the book. The ending was a white-knuckle journey for me – I could just see the cop-out coming, the studio-mandated sugar being coated on. And as it unfolded, I slowly relaxed – it wasn’t until an hour or so later that it struck me just how well Snyder had pulled this off. The second time, I sat back and enjoyed it, and I have to tell you, it quite simply works.

It really works.

* * * * *

Watchmen the film will never be Watchmen the book.

For all the effort Snyder put in capturing moments large and small, the essence of Watchmen can’t be translated to the screen. The story has survived intact, and amazingly, the emotions and themes have as well. But the experience of reading the book is its own thing, one I highly recommend.

Will people who haven’t read the book respond well to the movie? I don’t know. It’s a dense film, and it doesn’t work overtime to make non-believers care. I tried to imagine what I would think had I never encountered these characters or their world before, and I couldn’t do it. But as someone who has read the book, over and over again, I’m deliriously happy with Snyder’s adaptation. Could it have been better? Of course. But it could have been so much worse, too.

After 15 years of worrying about this, I can finally exhale. The Watchmen movie is here, and it’s better than I ever hoped it would be. I expected I would see this once, out of obligation. Now I am making plans to see it a third and fourth time, out of unbridled joy and admiration. Go ahead and watch this Watchmen – while it isn’t the book, much of what I love is here. Thank you, Zack Snyder, for taking such care with this book. It’s just a story about people in costumes, but it’s pretty important to me, and I appreciate it.

Oh, and David Hayter? All is forgiven.

* * * * *

As a side note, this is why I run my own website. I can’t imagine any publication paying me (or even allowing me) to write more than 3,000 words on the Watchmen movie. Thanks for making it this far. I’m done now.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Final Edition

Some of you may have seen that the Rocky Mountain News closed its doors last week.

The Rocky was one of Denver’s two major newspapers, along with the Denver Post. It had been around for just shy of 150 years. For the last month, it had been up for sale, but its corporate owners just couldn’t find anyone willing to buy a newspaper in these terrible economic times. So with one final edition, printed on Friday, an institution stopped its presses for the last time.

The Rocky is the first major newspaper to crumble under the weight of changing times. It won’t be the last, and it won’t even be the last this year, I guarantee it. Newspapers are in trouble. They were in trouble before the national economy took a tumble, but they’re in even worse shape now. The Internet has proven both a boon to news gathering and delivery, and a millstone around our necks. Shrinking reporting staffs around the country are working harder than ever to keep up with a 24-hour news cycle that demands we give our work away for free.

It’s like a death spiral, and it’s not going to get any better until we figure out how to make up lost ad revenue online. We don’t know how we’re going to pull out of this, and the Rocky’s demise raises the question of whether we’ll pull out at all. If you think the media sucks now, wait until it’s all bloggers and “citizen journalists,” with no newsroom training, but with agendas galore. If you love your newspaper, please support it. We need you more than ever.

Anyway, the Rocky staff produced a video to mark their last publication day. It’s 20 minutes long, but it’s riveting stuff, showing the real human cost when a newspaper goes under. I think “It was scheduled for Saturday” is the saddest thing I’ve heard in a long time. You can watch the video and read the Rocky staff’s thoughts on a century and a half of publishing here.

* * * * *

Are You My Mummy?

Porcupine Tree was on my to-do list for far too long.

I expect most music fans have one of these lists. Mine contains three dozen or so bands I’ve been meaning to get into, but haven’t yet taken the plunge on. The more music I hear, the more I’m aware of just how much music I haven’t heard, and the to-do list keeps on growing. It’s like this guy I once knew who went to strip clubs all the time. He was asked once why he keeps going, and his reply was, “Because I haven’t seen all the titties.”

The first Porcupine Tree album I heard was In Absentia, from 2002. It was louder than I expected, but very good stuff, and I’ve been hooked ever since. Turns out, 2002 was a good year to jump aboard, since PT mastermind Steven Wilson began remastering and reissuing the band’s catalog that year. I gleefully bought all of them, and marveled at the metamorphosis Porcupine Tree had undergone. I guess you could call them progressive, but they started as a more psychedelic, space-music outfit, and only gradually allowed the guitar to take over. 2007’s Fear of a Blank Planet was the apex of the new approach – loud and thudding, melodic and graceful, massive and grand.

So after all this work establishing Porcupine Tree’s identity over the last decade, what does Wilson do? He goes and makes a solo album, one that returns to the Pink Floyd-esque soundscapes his band used to create. I can see why the just-released Insurgentes would be released under Wilson’s name, instead of the band’s – with only a few exceptions, these just aren’t Porcupine Tree songs anymore.

But man, they’re good ones. Wilson has described this as the most experimental song-based music he’s ever made, and I think that’s about right. There aren’t any 15-minute noise experiments on here, but the songs are much less structured than anything Porcupine Tree’s done in some time, and the entire record is about texture and mood. Most of it’s slow and spacey, the vocals are usually low in the mix, lyrics are fragments instead of whole thoughts, and songs will flip inside out at a moment’s notice, rarely ending up where they began.

Opener “Harmony Korine” is one of the most straightforward, wafting in on chiming guitars and building its simple frame into a guitar-heavy powerhouse. I’m not sure what this song has to do with the real Korine, writer of Kids and director of Julien Donkey-Boy and Gummo. (The chorus is “Feel no shame, too brave, feel afraid to wait forever.”) Could be Wilson just liked the name. Regardless, it’s some time before you get another rolling-guitar anthem on Insurgentes again.

Rather, you get pieces like the eight-minute “Salvaging,” which begins with a foghorn, stomps through four minutes of stoner-metal repetition, and then suddenly blossoms into a strings-and-ambience second half. Don’t get too comfortable, however – Wilson builds up the white noise, collapsing the entire piece end over end before it’s finished. You’re almost grateful for the gorgeous, linear “Veneno Para las Hadas” (loosely, “To Poison a Fairy”), with its thundercloud guitars letting loose a light rain of piano. This is one of the album’s most beautiful songs – two fragmented verses, and a soaring wordless chorus.

Insurgentes stumbles with the other eight-minute piece, “No Twilight Within the Courts of the Sun,” which sadly lives down to its King Crimson-esque title. Little more than a pasted-together studio jam, this song features Crimson bassist Tony Levin and Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess, and it sounds like it. It does nothing for the album’s mood, and drags on far too long. (A more placid instrumental with the same players, “Twilight Coda,” is much better.)

But that’s the one track I have trouble with, and it’s followed by my favorite, “Significant Other.” We’re back to otherworldly atmospheres here, this time with a memorable melody in tow, and some astonishing backing vocals by Clodagh Simmonds. “Only Child” is a creepy song reminiscent of the Church, and “Get All You Deserve” provides the album’s climax – it starts off quietly enough, in a Thom Yorke vein, but since Wilson is credited with playing “total fucking noise” in the liner notes, you know it won’t stay that way. And the title song is a pretty piano coda to close things out.

So what do we have here? Insurgentes is a Porcupine Tree album that isn’t, a record that balances the band’s later, song-based records with its earlier, more experimental works. We have a solo album from a guy who basically is his band, carving out a wholly separate identity. But mostly, we have an album of superb musical landscapes, another jewel in an already glittering catalog. This may not be the best place to start with Wilson – try any of the last few Porcupine Tree albums first. But once his off-kilter style takes hold, you’re going to want this. I hope we see more like this from Wilson, a singular artist stepping out under his own name for a whole ‘nother trip.

Oh, one more thing – you won’t get the title I chose for this section unless a) you’ve seen the Insurgentes cover, and b) you’re a Doctor Who fan. If you have seen a) and are b), though, it’s pretty funny. Trust me.

* * * * *

Thoughts before watching Watchmen

I honestly didn’t expect to feel like this.

We’ve got only a few days to go before Zack Snyder’s Watchmen film hits theaters. It’s actually going to happen. People have seen it. I’ve read reviews already. I’ve been dreading a Watchmen movie in general, if not this Watchmen movie in particular, for about 15 years or so, and on Friday, I’m actually going to head on down to a theater, plunk down some cash and sit through this thing. And I’m feeling… honestly…

Excited.

I expected it would feel like a chore, or an obligation. I have to see the Watchmen movie, no matter how it is, simply because it’s the Watchmen movie, and if that doesn’t explain it, I probably won’t be able to. I envisioned dragging myself down to the cinema, my unwilling feet propelled by a sense of fanboyish duty.

“I don’t want to go,” my feet would say.

“But it’s Watchmen,” I’d cajole in return. “We have to.”

“But it’s going to suck,” they’d reply, and I would have no argument. And then I would seek treatment.

I have read and re-read Watchmen more than any other book, I believe. If there’s a close contender, it’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a series which, in comparison, could not be more opposite in tone, although a similar core of hopelessness runs through both. Douglas Adams believed everything was ridiculous and should be destroyed, but he chose to laugh about it. In a way, he’s the Comedian, the character that is brutally murdered in Watchmen’s opening pages. He got the joke. The older I get, the clearer that joke becomes.

Watchmen, as I am sure you know, is a graphic novel. Written by Alan Moore, drawn by Dave Gibbons. It is 23 years old, and yet it is still the most perfect synthesis of artist and author I have seen, and the book which makes the most of the unique and fascinating language of comics. Watchmen starts off looking like a superhero story, but in the end, has so thoroughly subverted both the smaller genre of superhero stories and the larger genre of comics that it could stand as the medium’s last word, if it weren’t so damn inspiring.

It is a complex, layered, multi-tiered story about what it takes – what it really takes – to save the world. I have read it probably two dozen times, and each time, the end of the 11th chapter arrives like a kick in the stomach. Its conclusions are inescapable, its plot seemingly preordained, and yet, its impact surprises me, every time. It is a tough, uncompromising story with no easy answers, no simple characters. It is also, to many, the standard-bearer of this thing I love called comics, one of the most perfectly realized (and certainly one of the most famous) graphic novels ever created.

Moore himself has called it unfilmable. (Of course, he’s also a perpetually grouchy curmudgeon who worships a snake god.) Directors have come and gone over 23 years – Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky, to name two – and each has given up on Watchmen. Eight years ago, X-Men screenwriter David Hayter was set to direct, which led a much younger me to call for his death. (I have issues.) I would rather see no Watchmen movie than a bad one.

Why? It’s simple, but convoluted, honestly. I’ve been talking about Watchmen for more than 15 years – evangelizing about it, even. Most of the people I’ve pushed it on haven’t read it. But I’m betting they’ll go see a Watchmen movie, and whatever ends up on screen, that’s what they’ll think I’ve been talking about for 15 years. It’s really my credibility I’m worried about, which, in retrospect, isn’t a great reason to call for a man’s death. (More like a mediocre reason at best.)

Watchmen would be so easy to screw up. And when I heard that Zack Snyder, the punk behind Dawn of the Dead and 300, had taken up the challenge, I sighed. 300 was visually striking, and a pretty faithful page-to-screen translation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel. But it’s pretty simple. Nothing in Snyder’s oeuvre convinced me he could handle this.

So why am I excited? Because I think, as best as he could, Snyder may have gotten it right.

This movie will not be Watchmen the book. I understand that. But Snyder seems to have done everything in his power to stay true to the story and tone (and even the dialogue) of the book. There is a scene in the trailer of Dr. Manhattan building his clockwork fortress on Mars, and when I saw it, my heart skipped a beat. It is exactly right. Interviews and behind-the-scenes footage show a director working like mad to create something as faithful as he can make it. And Dave Gibbons liked it, which is a good sign. (There’s no pleasing Moore, who will not see it on principle.)

Two things I am still worried about.

First is the acting. Nothing has dropped my spirits more in the past few weeks than seeing actual clips of these characters talking. I am specifically concerned about Malin Ackerman as Laurie, and Matthew Goode as Adrian. Goode is way too young and small to be Ozymandias, so he has to show me that he’s right for the part in other ways. And Ackerman, from what I’ve seen, may not be up to the arc her character has to travel.

The second is the ending. I know, I’ve been reassured over and over, but I’m still worried. The mechanics of the ending have changed, but if the meaning remains the same, I will be happy. In truth, the mechanics were never that thrilling to me, so if Snyder has managed the same commentary on life through different means, I will be happy. (Quick update – I’ve read a synopsis of the new ending, and if they pull it off, I think it might actually be better than the original. It’s at least a more elegant way of making the same point. Which is sort of miraculous, really.)

But I expected that list to be pages long at this point, and it isn’t, because so much of this seems to be just right. I don’t even mind that the name of the team has changed from Minutemen to Watchmen, to match the title. I get why Snyder would do that. It’s silly, but I get it. It’s a small price to pay for a true Watchmen movie.

I am daring to hope that Watchmen works. Everything I have seen screams to me that it does. Every review I read assuages my fear more and more. It may, actually, against all odds, be a terrific, faithful adaptation of this near-unfilmable book. I hope so. And so I will go to the theater Friday with a spring in my step, and no dread in my heart. Watchmen is a movie, and I am actually out-of-my-skin excited to see it.

More next week, after I have.

Also next week, the returns of U2 and the great Quiet Company.

See you in line Tuesday morning.