I’m not going to lie to you, folks. It’s been pretty miserable out there.

The national economy is in shambles. Jobs are scarce, and layoffs are happening everywhere. My chosen industry is collapsing around me, and even the brightest minds in my field can’t figure out how to stop the bleeding. And to top it all off, Michael Bay has actually made a second Transformers movie, which will infect our movie theaters in just a few short weeks.

With all that, it would be easy to give in to despair. Sensitive souls like myself need reasons to be cheerful, to borrow a phrase, lest we crumble into sobbing heaps, lamenting the state of things. We need distractions, escapes – as much as I love challenging, serious art, in times like these I appreciate a well-crafted, silly pop song more than just about anything else.

So all things considered, there’s never been a better time for a band like Tinted Windows.

The members of Tinted Windows have been very good about avoiding the word “supergroup.” It’s a term that doesn’t really fit them anyway – it usually refers to a bunch of egotists producing bloated, pretentious garbage that will always play second fiddle to the members’ regular gigs. But they’ve been gaining a lot of mileage from their jaw-dropping lineup anyway, and it’s the first thing you’re going to want to know about them, so here it is.

Tinted Windows is guitarist James Iha from the Smashing Pumpkins, bassist Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne, drummer Bun E. Carlos of Cheap Trick, and vocalist Taylor Hanson, of (you guessed it) Hanson. He’s the youngest at 26, Carlos the oldest at 57. It’s an incredibly strange assemblage of people, some of which you wouldn’t think would have the connections they do – Iha and Schlesinger, for example, co-own Scratchie Records, and Schlesinger has known Hanson for years, ever since he was tapped to write some songs for Taylor and his siblings.

What could this possibly sound like? How about the coolest cheeseball power pop since the likes of T. Rex and the Raspberries? Yeah, you betcha. The band’s self-titled debut, recorded in three days, is the most fun I’ve had in 35 minutes this year.

One of the big draws for me is hearing more Adam Schlesinger songs. I’m a big fan of Fountains of Wayne’s joyous melodicism, although Schlesinger has a reputation for being a bit too clever with that band. Not so here – while the bubbly pop melodies are intact (boy, are they ever), the lyrics are almost goofy in their simplicity. This is boy-meets-girl power pop, and despite a song called “Dead Serious,” it’s just frothy fun all the time. (There’s one song in which the protagonist repeatedly refers to the object of his affection as “my cha cha.” That’s the chorus.)

What’s fascinating about listening to Tinted Windows is just how well the quartet has preserved the individual components of their sound. First track (and first single) “Kind of a Girl” is the sort of effervescent teen-pop gem the Click Five are so good at, but the guitar sound is pure James Iha, thick and strident. Bun E. Carlos’ drumming is rock-solid, just as it’s been with Cheap Trick for decades.

And of course, there is Taylor Hanson. I’ve been taking shit for years for digging Hanson, but these 11 (well, 10 – Iha sings one) songs should prove that Taylor is a born frontman. His high, strong, appealing voice has never sounded better to these ears, and his years singing silly pop songs with his main band have prepared him well for these harder-edged, but no less silly tunes here. Listen to how he carries “Can’t Get a Read on You” on his back, and his own songwriting contribution “Nothing to Me” is easily the equal of Schlesinger’s songs.

In my more lucid moments, I understand that I can’t recommend this record without qualifying it, for fear of losing my Serious Music Critic credibility. God forbid anyone think I consider Tinted Windows high art, or that I’m mistaking lines like “I got love, if you want it, say the word and I’m on it” for poetry. I mean, who just enjoys music anymore? It all has to Mean Something Important, or it’s no good, right?

But then I remember that I’m the guy who included Greetings from Imrie House on my top 10 list, and I’m the guy who highly recommended Phantom Planet and Def Leppard and Roger Manning, and who named Silverchair’s Young Modern the best of the year in ‘07. Most recently, I’m the guy who actually kind of liked Chris Cornell’s record with Timbaland, which many dismissed as the ultimate sellout. Fizzy, disposable pop is part of my DNA, and I somehow doubt I have any Serious Music Critic credibility left.

So yeah, I love Tinted Windows. If you’re hungry for the days of Big Star and the Knack and the Nazz and, hell, even Cheap Trick, you will love this. It takes a lot of skill to craft silly pop that’s this infectious, this much fun. For 35 blissful minutes, I’m unable to stop tapping my foot, and I can’t seem to wipe the goofy grin off my face. It’s everything a disposable pop record ought to be.

Still, it’s pretty short. If you’re looking for something else to lift your spirits, may I suggest Ray Guns are Not Just the Future, the second album from The Bird and the Bee?

This band with the funny name is a musical collaboration between singer Inara George (the bird) and multi-instrumentalist Greg Kurstin (the bee). How to describe what they do? Imagine if Portishead were a lounge act, kind of. Imagine ‘50s torch songs with modern production. Imagine quirky, almost European pop songs delivered with warmth and wonder. Imagine fun float music that lifts you up with it. Hell, I don’t know. I just really like it.

The immediate attraction is George’s voice, lighter than feathers, almost sultry, but not quite. You can picture a jazz-age crooner draped across a piano, but then envision this same girl working as a librarian by day. Kurstin paints delightfully cheesy keyboard landscapes for her to dance across, like the music you’d hear piped into the most fascinating elevator ever. He throws in samples and orchestral flourishes sparingly – the core remains the trippy beats and tonic water keyboards, and it’s enough.

The highlight comes early. “Diamond Dave” is, in fact, a love letter to David Lee Roth, delivered as seriously as anything here – that is to say, with a wink. “When you left the band, I couldn’t understand it,” George purrs, “but I’ve forgiven you now that you’ve recommitted.” It’s wonderful – when George tells Dave that “no one can hold a candle, nothing else is quite the same,” she could be talking about her own fantasies, or the Sammy Hagar years.

The record never quite hits those dizzy heights again, but it’s all smile-inducing stuff. “Ray Gun” sounds like it’ll be a spacey downer, until the delightful chorus kicks in. You’ve never heard anyone sing lines like “I’m stuck inside the walls of all this inner strife” with such bliss. And you have to hear “Love Letter to Japan,” an East-meets-West fantasia that bounces forward on a video game beat and a sprightly, infectious melody. I don’t know what kind of song this is, but I love it.

Ray Guns are Not Just the Future isn’t the immediate tab of ecstasy Tinted Windows is – for one thing, it’s much smarter – but it’s a bubbly joy nevertheless. It’s another one of those records I bought on a whim, and I’m so glad I did, if for no other reason than to hear Inara George coo her way through “You’re a Cad,” a jazzy late-album hunk of delicious. (And for “Diamond Dave,” of course.) It’s music with nothing on its mind except brightening your life, and at that, it succeeds marvelously.

And hey, if you still have a hankering for super-fun, super-silly music after all that, try this: the new Click Five song is called “I Quit! I Quit! I Quit!” and I can’t stop singing it. Enjoy.

This weekend, I’m headed to Burbank, California for a friend’s wedding. I’m still going to try to write a column up, but it will probably be a short one. Ah, but the week after that, I have something special in store, and I, for one, am really looking forward to it. Ooh! Suspenseful!

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Waiting for the End of the World

So you may have heard about this. Yes, that’s my company. Yes, there were layoffs in my newsroom. No, I was not one of them, but there were many. Yes, I am terrified. To everyone who has written or called, thank you for your concern. No, I don’t know where my paper, or journalism in general, goes from here. I wish I did.

I’m trying to be upbeat about things, but it’s difficult. I have finally found something I do well, something which pays regularly and doesn’t feel like work at all, and just as I’m settling in, the entire business model that has funded this kind of work for centuries collapses. I don’t know what to make of it. Maybe I should have gone to church more. I don’t know.

Anyway, I’m not going to dwell on it here. You clicked over for a silly music column, and a silly music column you shall have. I’ve just received such an outpouring of kindness and support that I thought it deserved a public thank you. So, thank you.

* * * * *

A Tale of Two Singles

Back in 2002, I’d never heard a Tori Amos song like “A Sorta Fairytale.”

It was the first single from Scarlet’s Walk, her Epic Records debut, and at the time, it was absolutely striking. Never had Tori tried to sound so inoffensive, so accessible and spit-shined. The song was simple to the point of banal – anyone could have written it. But the performance was equally sanded down. That could have been anyone singing, anyone playing the basic piano chords. It ably answered the question “Can Tori Amos ever be truly boring?” with a resounding yes.

As an experiment, “A Sorta Fairytale” was fascinating. Little did I know it would be the blueprint for this once-great artist’s next seven years and counting. With the exception of some of 2007’s American Doll Posse, Amos has made one bland and forgettable pile of fluff after another since ’02. And if you thought she was past all that, think again – her new single, “Welcome to England,” is so forgettable it makes Sarah McLachlan sound like Karen O.

The further Tori gets from her emotionally riveting roots, the more depressing her career arc becomes. Doll Posse showed signs of life, but by all indications, her new one, saddled with the terrible name Abnormally Attracted to Sin, gets back to music for waiting rooms. It’s sad, because she was once the most important female artist in the world. I listened to Boys for Pele again a few weeks ago, and damn, that album is like a gut punch. Then I listened to The Beekeeper, and it floated by without leaving a mark. Where have you gone, Tori?

But if Amos is headed back to sleep, it sounds like the Dave Matthews Band is waking up. In June, they’re going to release Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King, their tribute to saxophonist LeRoi Moore, who died last year after an accident. DMB has been drifting for a while now, and their last record, 2005’s Stand Up, was one of their worst.

They were working on Groogrux before Moore’s death, but his passing seems to have focused them, if advance word is any indication. The first single, “Funny the Way It Is,” is the best Matthews song in many, many years, and the recording pulses with life. Listen to that awesome bridge section, and marvel at drummer Carter Beauford’s punchy, complex work – if he’s not one of the best drummers around right now, I don’t know who is. Check out Boyd Tinsley’s live-sounding fiddle solo, and listen in awe as someone (either Matthews or Tim Reynolds) takes a sky-reaching electric guitar break.

This song is very good, and bodes well for the album. My only complaint is that Moore doesn’t seem to be on it – the band used recordings he made before his death as the basis for many of the songs, and I’m curious to hear how they managed that. Still, it’s not far until June, and for the first time since about 2000 that I’m seriously anticipating a Dave Matthews Band album. That’s what a good single can do.

* * * * *

The Craft of Khan

The more music I hear, the more certain I am of one thing: I will never hear everything. I miss stuff all the time – I’ve even started up a whole semi-regular section of this column dedicated to Stuff I Missed. But in recent memory, I can’t say I regret missing something as much as Fur and Gold, the first Bat for Lashes album. That’s two years I spent not knowing about Natasha Khan, and I’ll never get that time back.

I can’t remember why I first listened to Bat for Lashes, but it was by accident. The song was “Daniel,” the zippy first single from Khan’s second BFL album, Two Suns. It was unlike anything I’d heard in some time, and Khan’s strange and wonderful voice pulled me in. Curious, I bought Fur and Gold, and was immediately entranced. This was only a couple of weeks ago, mind – I totally missed this train, but I committed to catching the next one the day it came out.

But even Fur and Gold would not have prepared me for the ambitious, nearly perfect Two Suns. This is sublime music, full stop, and I simply cannot stop listening to it.

Perhaps it’s the fact that Tori Amos has fallen off the artistic map. Amos used to make music like this. Not like this in a literal sense, although I hear Amos in the nooks and crannies here, but like this in an emotional sense. This is music that reaches out and moves you, music that grips you right away and then only grows in stature as it seeps its way into your life.

The hardest question to answer here is just what this sounds like. The first touchstone is Kate Bush, naturally – Khan has a high, strong voice that she pushes into a ghostly falsetto, and her melodies are as off-kilter as her instrumentation. Khan has a gift for mood, like Bush does, and her palate focuses on keyboards and pianos most often. Plus, she’s saddled Two Suns with a batty and superfluous (and Bush-like) concept – it’s told from two points of view, bouncing between dark-haired Khan and her blond alter ego, Pearl. You need not know this at all. The music stands on its own very well, thank you.

But Khan has many more influences, and mixes them in with her own original sound. While Two Suns maintains a fairly consistent minor-key mood, no two songs sound quite alike. Some, like “Two Planets,” sound like they were produced by Bjork. Some, like “Peace of Mind,” sound like spectral field recordings, taken around a campfire in another dimension. And some, like the absolutely riveting opener “Glass,” sound like nothing else I know – that one slowly reveals itself, slipping out of deep water one inch at a time, on a bed of synthesizers, bells and thumping hand percussion. The melody is amazing, and it builds and builds relentlessly, Khan finally reaching for those higher-than-high notes in the chorus.

It’s an incredible opening song, a grabber in the most subtle sense, and when the chugging electronic drum beat of the second track, “Sleep Alone,” crashes in, it’s startling – Khan has set the mood so convincingly already. But just listen to the up-up-up chorus melody, buoyed by the dancefloor touches – it’s simply awesome. And third track “Moon and Moon” completes the opening trilogy perfectly, showing Khan’s slower, more beautiful side. This one is most like Tori Amos used to be, a glorious piano figure leading into a haunting refrain.

For 11 tracks and 45 minutes, this album never even starts to suck. “Daniel” is the most invigorating almost-pop song here, its borderline-cheesy drum beat supporting an insidious melody. “Siren Song” harnesses an unstoppable power, moving in a heartbeat from calm waters to raging storms. (Khan’s voice is particularly amazing on this one.) “Good Love” is like a ‘50s ballad done Julee Cruise style, then recorded in an echo chamber on the moon. The album closes with a brief piano coda called “The Big Sleep,” a sort-of duet with the inimitable Scott Walker, and the entire 2:53 is like waiting to fall off a cliff.

I don’t know anyone else making music like this. I wish more people were. I want more music like this, and yet I know that the very things that make Khan an arresting artist also make her unique. I don’t expect to find an album like this one very often – hell, I never really expect to find one like this at all. By following her own muse, Natasha Khan has made something alien, yet beautiful. Two Suns is spellbinding, enveloping, submerging, music that rushes into your lungs and fills them to bursting, gently drowning you while you drift off to blissful, joyous sleep.

I cannot explain it better than that. But let me close with this: if Two Suns is not in my top 10 list at the end of the year, then we’re in for an astonishing next eight months.

* * * * *

Big Swifty

I’m not entirely sure why I bought Richard Swift’s new album, The Atlantic Ocean.

I’m never quite sure why I buy anything I’ve never heard, to tell you the truth. It’s just a feeling, most of the time, a little nudge. I’ll see an album cover I like, or read a song title that does it for me, or I’ll just get this notion that I should take a gamble on something new. Believe it or not, most of the time, my little hunches pay off. I couldn’t give you a reason, but by my quick reckoning, I’m at about an 80-20 ratio of good surprises to bad ones.

It might have been the title. I’m a fan of vast expanses of water, especially as metaphors. It might have been the cover, a fascinatingly lo-fi cut and paste job right out of the psychedelic ‘60s. It’s the kind of cover you scan for clues, trying to read the names of the books on the shelf, or the records by the turntable. (Those actually do turn out to be clues, but I’ll let you discover them for yourself.) And I did hear one song, the strikingly Motown-sounding “Lady Luck,” but by that point I’d already decided to buy the thing.

So who is Richard Swift? He’s a singer and songwriter and record-maker with a dozen or so prior releases, although I’ve heard none of them. I can’t tell you what he used to sound like, but on The Atlantic Ocean, he inhabits this odd, appealing middle ground between Ray Davies and Thomas Dolby. His voice is almost Dylan, but his soundscapes are part McCartney, part Michael Penn, part ‘80s synth-pop. His songs are mainly in traditional veins, but all have these little melodic moments that stand out. He’s a ‘60s piano-popper with an ‘80s flavor and the soul of a poet.

On some songs, Swift has assembled other musicians to help him, and these are the most organic. “Ballad of Old What’s His Name” is the fullest-sounding here, and even has Ryan Adams sitting in on backing vocals. But songs like “R.I.P.” make great use of the Mellotron and viola. These tunes sound like old-time pop songs. But then there are the ones Swift performed solo, and these rely on computer drums and bizarre ‘80s synthesizer noises, creating something totally different. “Hallelujah, Goodnight” is the weirdest plastic Beatles song you’ll ever hear, and the title track kicks things off by balancing the ‘60s piano with big, fat keyboard brass sounds. Somehow, it works.

And the reason it works? These songs are unfailingly solid. The highlight for me is “The End of an Age,” coincidentally the sparsest thing here – it’s drums and piano, with a trombone solo in the middle. But the melody is just sweet, with the faintest hint of Randy Newman creeping in. “A Song for Milton Feher” is a ’66 Beatles barrelhouse number with synth accents, but you’ll be singing along with the refrain (“I will listen to your every word”). And “Lady Luck” closes things out like a lost Marvin Gaye song, Swift unveiling a surprisingly elastic falsetto. It’s just great.

I’m not sure why I bought The Atlantic Ocean, but I’m glad I did. I’ve cut down on my gambles significantly, what with my uncertain economic situation, but I like this album enough that it’s only going to encourage me to go with my next hunch. And now I’ve got Richard Swift’s entire catalog to track down, too. It’s a rough life, it really is.

* * * * *

Next week, we explore the joys of effervescent, disposable pop music. I mean, even more effervescent and disposable than the pop music we usually explore.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So the biggest news of the month is that I now have a Facebook page.

I resisted the Cult of Facebook for years, but finally succumbed about a week and a half ago. In that short time, I’ve reconnected with a few people I’d lost track of, and somehow accumulated more than 60 friends. That’s a nice stroke to the ego. 60 people want to be my friend! Thanks, everybody.

Okay, fine, that’s not the biggest news of the month. My vote would go to this. That’s right, the finest catalog in popular music is finally getting the digital upgrade treatment. It’s about damn time, too – the Beatles CDs have been mired in a hissy analog wasteland for too long. It was novel at first, listening to a CD that sounded like a tape from the ‘60s, but after hearing the Love compilation a few years ago, I’ve been salivating for this.

I can’t wait to hear the stereo panning in “I Am the Walrus” in pristine digital clarity. I’m excited to hear the orchestral swells in “A Day in the Life” as if I were in the same room with them. Hell, I’m even jazzed to hear the guitars on “A Hard Day’s Night” ringing in louder and stronger than ever before.

All 13 studio albums, plus the two-disc Past Masters collection, will be available separately, and in what I’m sure will be a beautiful all-in-one box. Additionally, 12 of those discs will be available mixed in mono, in their own box set, in vinyl-replica sleeves. Each album will come with a mini-documentary on its creation, which will be included on DVD in the box set. Needless to say, I’m saving up my pennies now. I’m definitely picking up the stereo box set, and I may spring for the mono one, too.

Hopefully I’ll be able to afford it. Thanks for all the well-wishes over the last week. It’s not emergency time for me yet, but I’ll let you know when you really need to start praying. If you know anyone who needs a good writer, though…

* * * * *

Finances and timing conspired to make me miss Marillion’s first ever North American convention. It happened in Montreal last weekend, and apparently it was amazing, in a few different ways. As they usually do at these conventions, the band played three shows – one in which they revisit an album front to back, and two themed shows with surprise setlists.

The album this time was Seasons End, which turns 20 this year. The second night was entitled “Tracks of Our Years,” and found the band playing one song from nearly every year of their existence, starting with the new stuff and heading back as far as 1987. But it was the third night that caused all the buzz – it was called “The Epic Evening,” and it contained most of the group’s 10-plus-minute songs.

Evidently, what was intended to be the emotional high point, the incredible 15-minute “This Strange Engine,” was plagued with technical difficulties and missed sections, and singer Steve Hogarth, frustrated, threw himself on the mercy of the crowd, literally. He dove into their waiting arms and crowd-surfed while the band played on, then returned to the stage for the final crescendo (“This love…”). Far from being a disaster, the fans that night describe this performance of “Engine” as the truest connection they’ve ever had with this band, a room full of reciprocal, unconditional love. I can’t wait for the DVD to see if that comes across.

I missed the show, but I can soothe my pain with two new releases from the Marillion camp. The first is a two-CD live album called Happiness is Cologne, recorded in Cologne, Germany. Marillion live albums are always of sterling quality, but this one is simply superb. I hesitate to refer people to live albums to get a taste of a band, but in this case, you can’t go wrong.

For one thing, there’s a healthy concentration on last year’s Happiness is the Road, one of the finest albums they’ve made. They play more than half of the first volume, Essence, including the great “This Train is My Life,” and three songs from the slightly inferior second volume, The Hard Shoulder. They do plunk their way through the one song that still doesn’t work for me, “The Man From the Planet Marzipan,” but they make up for that with an extraordinary run through “Asylum Satellite #1,” the album’s true epic.

And it’s simply impossible to quibble with the selection for the rest of the record. Highlights include the always haunting “Out of This World,” the intense 13-minute “The Invisible Man,” and perhaps my favorite Marillon song, “Afraid of Sunlight.” For years now, the band has closed concerts with the cathartic and spiritual “Neverland,” and that’s here, but this show ends with “Happiness is the Road,” a song that builds and builds on record to a too-abrupt fadeout. On stage, it morphs into a singalong, and Happiness is Cologne goes out on the sound of thousands carrying the chorus by themselves. For a band that’s more about their fans than anything else, it’s the perfect closing.

The concentration on later material means Happiness is something of a slow, ambient experience – Marillion’s been headed in a more ethereal direction for some time, and I count only four songs on this live record I would consider “rock.” Some have suggested that guitarist Steve Rothery has been muted, and if given his way, the Marillion sound would be less calm and pretty. One listen to the other new record from the Marillion camp, the second album from Rothery’s The Wishing Tree, should dispel that idea. It’s even calmer and prettier than much of Happiness.

The Wishing Tree is Rothery and singer Hannah Stobart. Their first album, Carnival of Souls, came out in 1996, and I don’t think anyone expected a second. But now, 13 years later, here is Ostara, and not much has changed. The new album has more electric guitars than the first, and the sound is a little fuller. But overall, The Wishing Tree remains the same – slow, pretty songs that showcase Stobart’s strong, clear voice.

I hear bits of Kate Bush, and parts of Iona, and even some Loreena McKennitt, but I’m not entirely certain just who The Wishing Tree reminds me of this time. “Hollow Hills” stands out as a favorite, its ethereal folk bed augmented with subtle keyboards and mandolin. But then “Seventh Sign” brings a bit of the blues to the proceedings, and some soaring lead work by Rothery. Some of the later songs are more traditional ballads, like “Fly,” but the album closes on a strong note with the achingly pretty “Soldier,” which sounds like it’s four centuries old.

One thing I’ve always admired about Rothery is his willingness to serve his songs. Most guitarists, given a solo or side project, will use it to show off how well they can play, which usually translates into wanky solos and self-indulgent shredding. Rothery is at least as good as anyone you could name, but he has nothing to prove – he concentrates on making these songs as lovely as they can be, and rarely takes a solo. When he does, he shows once again that he’s an expert at getting the most out of only a few notes. Rothery is one of the most emotional guitarists I’ve ever heard, and he plays just enough to move you to tears, and not one note more.

These two releases will certainly tide me over until the next Marillion album, rumored to be an acoustic excursion and scheduled for later this year. You’ll find both, as well as a veritable cornucopia of amazing, life-changing music, at their website.

* * * * *

It’s only April, and already I have two favorite records that are ineligible for the top 10 list. The first, as I mentioned two weeks ago, is Roger Joseph Manning Jr.’s fantastic Catnip Dynamite – it came out in Japan last year, and I didn’t want to pay the import prices, so I missed out. The second is less problematic for me, but more annoying, since I like it so damn much. It’s called Slice O Life, and it’s a solo acoustic live album from Bruce Cockburn.

I saw Cockburn live once, in a little church in Portland, Maine, about 14 years ago. I was just starting to explore his extensive catalog, and what I saw that night only encouraged me more. For 40 years, Cockburn (pronounced “Coburn”) has been writing extraordinary, literate folk-rock songs about the world and how to live in it. This is his 26th release, and while it serves as a fine summary of where he’s been, it also amply shows his skills as both a guitarist and an interpreter.

Let’s start with that first one. Cockburn is an incredible guitar player, full stop. You will swear at points on this record that you hear two guitars intertwining, but it’s all Cockburn, his fingers moving at blistering speed. He’s 63 now, and you can hear that in his voice every once in a while, but his guitar playing is as dazzling as ever here. I’ve listened to him slip into the syncopated, finger-picked rhythm of “World of Wonders” three times now, and I’m still not sure how he got his hands to do that.

Cockburn has selected a wide-ranging collection of songs here, although he includes nothing from his folksier early days – the earliest song here is “Wondering Where the Lions Are,” from 1979. On the other hand, he only includes one track, “See You Tomorrow,” from his latest, Life Short Call Now. The rest is a mix of later songs and audience favorites. You get the marvelous “Lovers in a Dangerous Time,” and “How I Spent My Fall Vacation,” and you also get later tunes like the edge-of-your-seat “Wait No More” and “Put It In Your Heart.” All of them have been stripped down, and yet filled up by his acoustic playing.

I hate to be cliched about this, but the highlight for me is his controversial hit, “If I Had a Rocket Launcher.” This song is such an anguished cry of pain, written after Cockburn spent time in Guatemala and watched families ripped apart by war and oppression. It’s all rage, this song, ending with the line “If I had a rocket launcher, some son of a bitch would die,” and no matter how many times I hear it, that bit gets to me. On this record, Cockburn plays an amazing solo between verses three and four, his guitar carrying the unbridled anger of the lyric. It’s a striking performance of a still-stunning song.

I don’t think this is the best album to start with if you’re new to Cockburn. But for longtime fans like me, Slice O Life is simply wonderful. Cockburn has spent a long career in the shadows, writing politically and spiritually aware music that inspires passionate loyalty from the few that get to hear it. There’s every chance that this will end up as one of my 10 favorite records of 2009, and I won’t be able to include it on the list. But that doesn’t make it any less fantastic. Seek it out.

* * * * *

And now, completing the live album trifecta, here’s another installment of Stuff I Missed.

I love the Hooters. Always have. They’re another one of those bands with strong associations to my childhood. I remember first hearing “All You Zombies,” and “And We Danced,” and “Johnny B” on MTV. I wore out my cassette copy of One Way Home, particularly the first side. When Zig Zag came out, I picked it up on day one, and couldn’t stop listening. (Apparently I was the only one – it was the band’s Disappointing Follow-Up, more experimental than fans were expecting.) My friend Mike and I even used “Deliver Me” in one of our school video projects, about the Erie Canal. The opening guitar lick still makes me smile.

So I’m not sure how I missed the release of Both Sides Live, the Hooters’ two-disc concert document from last year. I did hear their solid reunion record, Time Stand Still, from 2007, and gave it a good write-up in this column. That album has not lost an ounce of its luster. It’s what a reunion album should be – in love with life and music, reveling in the sounds of old while exploring new territory.

Both Sides Live is like a victory lap. Released on their own label, the two discs document two different types of Hooters show. The first, dubbed The Electric Factory, captures a November 2007 gig at the titular club in Philadelphia. It’s a big rock show, kicking off with the first two tracks from the new album, then slamming into old favorites “South Ferry Road” and “All You Zombies.” That last one must be one of the strangest chart hits in history, telling the stories of Noah and Moses over a foreboding minor key crawl. It’s superb here.

Listening to this, I’m struck by how well the new material stands up. I’m conditioned to love even the opening notes of songs like “Satellite,” but the raging “Where the Wind May Blow” is perhaps the most convincing rocker here, and “Free Again” makes for a sweet extended closer. Still, my favorite Hooters song remains “Karla With a K,” the perfect example of what they do – it’s a jig, basically, all accordions and acoustic guitars until the electrics kick in, and it becomes a perfect synthesis of traditional folk and modern rock.

The second disc is the gem, however. Called The Secret Sessions, it finds the Hooters stripping down to their acoustic basics and recording before a small audience at their studio in Philly. The track selection is almost the same as the electric record, but the sound is remarkably different. Dig “Satellite,” here a bluesy stomp shorn of its trademark synth lines. Check out “Johnny B,” a much lighter take that almost dances atop its finger-picked foundation.

Both the electric and acoustic albums include the Hooters’ take on Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer,” and you may feel a twinge of hesitation at that. It’s only natural. But trust me when I say the Hooters have made this song their own, particularly on the acoustic disc. They find the sadness Henley missed. Both albums also include “Karla With a K,” and I love the acoustic take on it. The Secret Sessions concludes with “And We Danced,” and stripped of its ‘80s keyboards, it stands as a Springsteen-esque rocker, practically timeless.

But don’t take my word for it. As I said, I love this band. Always have. Your mileage may vary – log onto their site and find out for yourself. As for me, I may have missed Both Sides Live in 2008, but I’m enjoying the hell out of it in 2009.

* * * * *

Next week, Bat for Lashes, Death Cab for Cutie, and Richard Swift. At least one of these will probably be in the top 10 list. Join me in seven days to find out which one I mean.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Soldiering On

Last week, I mentioned some of the first concept albums I encountered, the ones that convinced an impressionable young northeastern lad that the album-length statement is where it’s at. It’s just an accident of birth that one of them happened to be Queensryche’s 1988 opus Operation: Mindcrime. I was 14 at the time, with long hair and a love for classic metal, and Mindcrime was the smartest album I’d ever heard.

That record left an indelible impression on me. To this day, anytime someone says “I remember now,” I am compelled to respond with, “I remember how it started. I don’t remember yesterday. I just remember doing what they told me… told me… told me…” Of course, I never get all that out before the weird looks (and occasional acts of physical violence) start, but it’s almost Pavlovian. I can’t help myself.

As a consequence of my misspent youth, I’ve been conditioned to take Queensryche at face value. I understand why people think they’re ridiculous. Honest, I do. Geoff Tate’s over-the-top operatic voice, the band’s love of cheesy metal riffs and long, flailing guitar solos, and the unfailingly self-serious nature of their material – I get it. But I just don’t automatically hear it. Because of my teenage obsession with Mindcrime and Queensryche in general, my first instinct is respect. I approach each new Queensryche album blind (or deaf, as it were) to the things that turn off most other people.

In some cases, that’s a detriment. I posted a full dissection of 2007’s Operation: Mindcrime II, for instance, comparing it to the original and examining it as a work of art, without ever really conveying the truth – it’s just not very good. But in some cases, such as the new American Soldier, I think my automatic respect for Queensryche is an asset. It allows me to see past the sometimes clumsy execution to the honest, earnest intent, which in this case is surprisingly admirable.

You will laugh at this record’s conceit. I laughed, and I love Queensryche. American Soldier is a concept album told through the eyes of (you guessed it) American soldiers. Main songwriter Tate spent months interviewing real-life members of the armed forces, and veterans of several past wars. He used these interviews as source material for his lyrics, which tell tales of soldiers going off to war, fighting, and returning home. It is meant, Tate says, as a tribute to the men and women who defend our country, day in and day out.

This is Queensryche, of course, so the record has all the subtlety of a brick to the face. When I first heard that Tate would sing a duet with his 10-year-old daughter on a track called “Home Again,” him playing a soldier at war and her playing his child left behind at home, I groaned audibly. The finished track is exactly as sappy and cringe-inducing as it sounds, just one of the ham-handed, overly-literal moments that have always defined this band, like it or not.

But you know what? American Soldier is far better than it has any right to be. It’s probably the strongest record Queensryche has made since leaving their major label 10 years ago, propelled by its concept and the band’s total commitment to it. As hard as it may be for those not raised on operatic metal to take some of this seriously, it’s clear that the band took it seriously, and did everything in its power to make this album the tribute they intended it to be.

Without question, the smartest decision Tate and company made on American Soldier was to include snippets of the actual interviews with the veterans and soldiers they talked to. The second track, “Unafraid,” is almost entirely made up of these interviews, and you get the immediate sense that these are real people with real stories, and a real love of their country. A few of them are given extended spotlights here – “If I Were King” begins with a man who lost a friend on the battlefield, while “At 30,000 Ft.” starts with an infantryman’s perspective on air combat. These are very affecting moments, and some are genuinely haunting.

Tate is not a natural storyteller – his lyrics are mainly devoid of detail, and he always takes the path of least resistance when it comes to word choices. But he handles this material well. With a concept that could have led to 12 versions of Kid Rock’s putrid “Warrior,” Tate finds the searching heart, the wounded self-doubt of his subjects. “The Killer” has a pounding rock base, but its narrator refuses to just go with that energy, instead debating with the voices in his head before taking a life. “I’ve got to be the killer,” Tate sings, and his words drip with regret.

“A Dead Man’s Words” is the story of a man left behind in the desert to die, and of the rescue party that goes after him. The music mirrors the endless expanse of sand as Tate really digs into this man’s experience. He does the same with the haunted bomber pilot of “At 30,000 Ft.,” who ends the song screaming, “I’m the creator of this new promised land, and I wonder, what the hell did I make?”

“If I Were King,” “Man Down” and “Remember Me” tell stories of soldiers who made it back home, soldiers full of guilt that they survived while their comrades did not. And closing song “The Voice” explores what it’s like to die with that pain and regret still staining your soul. Despite a few false moves here and there, I am impressed at Queensryche’s sensitivity, their willingness to make an album about warriors that explores the consequences of war. The album does so without judgment, balancing a gung-ho opening salvo with a dark and painful denouement pretty gracefully.

Oh, there are missteps. The record opens with “Sliver,” three minutes of cock-rock boot camp with guest vocalist Jason Ames shouting his bone-headed rap-rock idiocy all over it. Yes, he’s meant to be a drill instructor. No, it doesn’t work, and it sets exactly the wrong tone for this album. I’ve already mentioned “Home Again” – the on-the-nose lyrics and weepy music aren’t helped at all by Emily Tate’s shaky-kid voice. It’s not her fault, she’s 10, but unless you buy into this idea from the outset, the song will make you giggle and sigh.

And the music is late-period Queensryche, far removed from the buzzsaw guitars and energetic choruses of their early stuff, including Mindcrime. These songs are all mid-tempo, crawling pieces with little variation and no hooks. It is the strength of the concept and Jason Slater’s remarkable production that make them hang together – this is closest to Promised Land from the early days in sound and scope, and it takes a few listens to hear just how much is going on in these tracks. Tate’s voice is strong throughout, despite not having much in the way of melody to work with, and the band locks into a groove more often than not.

But the music, it’s clear, is secondary here. This album is all about the stories it tells, all about the real-life soldiers it works overtime to immortalize. If you’re worried that this is a pro-war album (or even an anti-war album), don’t be. This is Queensryche, after all. This is an album about people, about what it takes to put your life on the line, and what it eventually costs you. If you think the very idea of Queensryche and the music they play is ridiculous, then this won’t do it for you. But the band has taken this responsibility seriously, and crafted this tribute to the best of their ability. American Soldier should suck out loud. That it doesn’t, and that it in fact approaches its subject matter sensitively and unflinchingly, makes this Queensryche’s best album in a long time.

* * * * *

Two Princes

Ten years ago, I called Prince a musical genius and a marketing moron.

This was back when he was using an unpronounceable symbol as his name and releasing three- and four-disc boxed sets regularly, with some of his best material shunted off onto bonus discs. The man’s always known how to attract attention, but he doesn’t make it easy to be a fan. Fortunately, his music has usually been worth the time and expense it takes to keep up with him.

Lately, though, Prince has been figuring out some interesting ways to get his new music out there. He knows, despite having released at least one album every two years since 1978, that some people still consider him an ‘80s throwback. Despite his brilliant musical chops and his continued exploration of the jazz-funk-soul intersection, his new stuff doesn’t get a fair shake. People want to hear “Purple Rain” and “Let’s Go Crazy” and “1999,” and they won’t spring for new Prince tunes, no matter how good they are.

So five years ago, he decided to give away a copy of his remarkably strong Musicology album with every concert ticket he sold. And two years ago, he bundled copies of his last album, Planet Earth, inside a major London newspaper, to build interest in a European tour. He’s been releasing albums and jam sessions through his website for years. And now, with two very cool new records hitting the streets, he’s unveiled yet another interesting marketing strategy.

First, he signed an exclusive deal with Target to sell his new albums. These deals have worked very well for every act not named Guns ‘n’ Roses, and Target is marketing this one well. Second, he bundled his two new full-length records together, along with a third album by his new protégé, Bria Valente. The trilogy comes in one compact package. And finally, he set the price for that package at $11.98. That’s 12 bucks for two hours and 20 minutes of new music.

It would be hard to quibble with such a bargain even if the music were mediocre, but it isn’t. The two new Prince albums here – the guitar-driven Lotusflow3r and the dance-funk MPLSound – find the Purple One bouncing back nicely from the mild disappointment of Planet Earth, and delivering in spades.

The main attraction is Lotusflow3r, and if you still have doubts that Prince is an amazing guitar player, these 48 minutes will dispel them decisively. He hasn’t shredded like this since Chaos and Disorder, back in 1996, and hasn’t sounded this confident in his own abilities in ages. This is guitar-pop Prince at his finest – “4Ever” could have fit nicely on the third side of Sign O the Times, “Dreamer” kicks off with a pure Jimi Hendrix lick before it explodes into a six-string extravaganza, and “Love Like Jazz” gives Prince the chance to show off his more tasteful, yet no less excellent rhythm playing.

And those aren’t even the standouts. The one that really grabs my ear is “Colonized Mind,” a slow, minor-key blues with some outstanding lead work. Prince is in fine voice throughout this record, singing about love and God and the state of the world, as always, but the sweet instrumental “77 Beverly Park” provides a nice oasis. This is like something Phil Keaggy would play on one of his acoustic albums, and it forms a nice bridge between the more rocking sections of this album – the next track, “Wall of Berlin,” crashes to life with a thunderous drumbeat.

Lotusflow3r is top-notch Prince-pop – he even makes a cover of “Crimson and Clover” work – but very little of it is danceable, strictly speaking. For that side of the man, put on MPLSound, the second full-lengther here. This one’s a party, a genuine throwback to his ‘80s sound. Here are the electronic dance beats, the pitch-modulated vocals, the funky synth bass lines – this is music that would not have been out of place on 1999. Can he still do it? For the most part, yes.

Observe “Chocolate Box,” all six minutes and 13 seconds of it. Opening with a classic Prince harmonized intro (“I got a box of chocolates that’ll rock the socks off any girl that want to come my way”), the song is basically made up of a two-note synthesizer bass wiggle and a thudding computer beat, while Prince, his voice processed, folded, spindled and mutilated, breaks out his old horny club groove. It’s been a while since we’ve heard this from him – not since his conversion to the Jehovah’s Witness faith, in fact – and it’s surprising just how well he slips back into this sound.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that MPLSound is one of the many finished records Prince has had in his vault for 10 or more years, honestly. “Dance 4 Me” is another helium-voiced ‘80s club track, and the frequent references to God that pepper it are nothing new for Prince, and not necessarily indicative of his more recent conversion. And “U’re Gonna C Me” is an old song, first surfacing on One Nite Alone, a collection of piano performances released in 2002.

But you know what? It doesn’t matter. Prince does this sort of thing so well, so convincingly, that I’m just glad to have another 48 minutes of it to listen to. MPLSound closes with the upbeat stomper “No More Candy 4 U,” in which Prince shouts, “We’re too funky, you can’t handle our groove.” And after the retro electro party he’s just thrown, it’s hard to argue.

Of course, if you buy Lotusflow3r and MPLSound, you do have to bring home Elixer, the debut from Bria Valente, as well. I’ve never been a fan of Prince’s protégés, and Valente is just another in a long line. The album benefits from Prince’s production work, and the jazzy playing is sweet, but the songs aren’t remarkable, and Valente just isn’t a compelling enough singer to make them work. It’s nice enough, and maybe worth one listen, but it wouldn’t be worth buying on its own.

Interestingly, though, while Prince has been reluctant to sing his trademark dirty sex lyrics for some time, Valente has no such qualms. A song called “Here I Come” is exactly what you’d expect, and her references to being “deep enough” on “All This Love” aren’t referring to the bass line. Initially, I thought the typographers had misspelled “Elixir,” until I heard the song, and realized it’s a bad oral sex pun. It’s just funny to me that Prince won’t sing these lyrics himself any more (with the exception of his vocal turn on the title track), but he still writes these songs for someone else.

Still, I find it hard to complain that Prince has given me too much music this time. The Lotusflow3er package is some of the best music Prince has made in a while, for a very affordable price. Twelve bucks for three CDs is a bargain, especially when the Princely One’s two contributions here are as good as they are. He’s still a musical genius, but his marketing acumen has picked up nicely, and I hope he’s able to get this music into many more hands as a result. He may not be as relevant as he once was, but Prince’s music remains as superb as ever.

* * * * *

Three Yeahs, Three Albums

I may have mentioned my Third Album Theory before. Put simply, it’s my belief that a band’s third record is the one that defines them, that opens up the directions they will go in the future. Musicians have their entire lives to write their debut albums, so those are usually about where they’ve been. The second album is ordinarily a reaction to the first, and can sometimes be either a carbon copy or an extreme change of direction. But the third one, that’s the album on which a band usually finds its feet, finds its confidence, and creates its own identity.

The other two acts we looked at this week fit into that theory nicely. Prince’s third album was Dirty Mind, on which he fully established his computerized sex-funk sound, and it followed two more tepid, soulful records that didn’t sell nearly as well. And Queensryche’s third is still arguably their best, the rock opera Operation: Mindcrime.

And so it is with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the acclaimed New York trio that exploded onto the scene seven years ago. Their first album, Fever to Tell, is a barely-contained ball of energy, jerking from one yelping garage-band throwaway to another. It gets by on character, particularly that of singer Karen O., who practically redefines the concept of throwing yourself into your music. On Fever, she screeched, gasped, cooed and snarled her way through otherwise unremarkable two-chord trash-rock, but it was the comparatively subtle “Maps” that made the band’s name.

Hence, the band reined in that energy for Show Your Bones, their surprisingly pretty (and pretty solid) sophomore album. Here were acoustic guitars, synthesizers, squeaky-clean production and sweet melodies, but many complained that the tradeoff wasn’t worth it, since Karen O. was reduced to a faceless frontwoman. I didn’t really think so, and I appreciated the maturity the YYYs were trying to bring to their work, but there’s no denying Bones was a reaction to Fever. This is perfect Third Album Theory territory.

At first, it seemed like the Yeahs would be going back to their old ways on record number three. It’s called It’s Blitz, for one thing, and the cover is a closeup of Karen’s hand crushing an egg. For another, it follows the Is Is EP, a definite attempt to be more raucous while retaining the leaps in songwriting the band made with Bones. But to my surprise, the Yeahs have thrown a curveball – their third album sounds almost nothing like either of their first two. Thankfully, the new direction they’ve chosen works, and It’s Blitz is pretty damn wonderful.

First single “Zero” sets the pace. It opens with a machine-gun synth bassline and a few electronic percussion whispers, but right where the guitars should come screaming in, the band adds more keyboards, turning out a dancefloor epic. By the end, Karen O. has well and truly sunk her teeth into the soaring melody, and the effect is invigorating. The band keeps this up for the first few tracks, replacing their guitars with keyboards and their drums with computers, but you’ll notice pretty quickly that they haven’t really touched their basic alchemy. The webs of guitar they used to spin are now webs of synthesizers, but otherwise, they’re still the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

And they’ve clearly learned from Show Your Bones – Karen O. is the main attraction here. They resist turning her into Cyndi Lauper, although she comes close on some songs. “Heads Will Roll” is simply awesome, Karen shouting “Dance, dance, dance ‘till you’re dead” while the guitars and keyboards battle. “Dull Life” is the closest to a guitar-driven song here, a nice look back at their old sound – until the sprightly melody kicks in. Nothing on the first two albums sounded quite like this.

But just when you think you have It’s Blitz figured out, the Yeahs take a turn for the atmospheric. The last few songs are all beautiful and expansive, with synth beds meeting guitar landscapes straight out of Hammock. Still, amidst all this pretty din, Karen O. stands out. She nails the melody of “Hysteric,” gets her slinky on for the verses of “Dragon Queen,” and brings real heart to the confessional closer, “Little Shadow.” Her voice is perfectly imperfect, if that makes sense – she can sing, but it’s the moments when she cracks or slips off a note that give her voice its compelling humanity.

Going all synth-pop is becoming an unfortunate cliché, but the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have pulled it off remarkably well with It’s Blitz. It’s a surprising album, deeper and wider in scope than any they have made. I am not sure it fits the Third Album Theory, but it does seem to open new doors for them – there are a hundred different directions they could go from here. These 10 songs are all impressive, but what this album says about the possible future of the band is even more impressive.

* * * * *

That’s a lot of words. Next week, something shorter, featuring some Marillion, and some other things.

One last thing before I go. You may have heard that the Chicago Sun-Times filed for bankruptcy last week. The Sun-Times owns the paper I work for, and there have been some disheartening announcements about where we go from here. I expect a pay cut is in my future, in addition to some other sacrifices. As you may know, I pay for just about all the music I review on this site, and if money tightens up the way I expect it to, I may not be able to buy all the things I want to discuss here. Just warning you that there may be some lean times ahead, although I will certainly try to keep up with the big releases over the next few months.

Gonna be a rough summer, I can just tell.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Well. As I mentioned last week, I participated in my first-ever podcast recently, as a guest of Derek Wright, the man behind Liner Notes Magazine.

The podcast is online now at Derek’s site. I’m listening to it right now, and I think it turned out pretty well. We talked about albums by Superdrag, Quiet Company, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Wavves (winners of a WTF Award last week), Prodigy, and one of this week’s contestants, the Decemberists.

It was a fun couple of hours, and I think that comes through, despite a few rough spots on my end. You should be listening to Derek’s bi-weekly dissection of new music anyway, but if you have a particularly burning desire to hear the author of this column rambling incoherently in search of a point while a seasoned professional tries valiantly to keep him on track, then check out the March 25 podcast. Thanks to Derek for having me on. I hope we do it again.

* * * * *

Here’s the thing about being an obsessive music fan – I’m really only limited by my budget.

There’s a lot of music vying for my attention, and me being me, I want all of it. The problem is, unless you’re one of those people who just takes what you want, music costs money, and I can only buy so much so often. Still, a disturbing amount of my twice-monthly paycheck goes to new music (and old music sometimes too, in new packages), and I’m constantly trying to prioritize my endless wish list.

There are a couple of sure-fire ways to get me to buy your record, though. One of them, oddly enough, is to put out a double album – you’d think, since they’re more expensive than singles, that twin sets would move to the bottom of my list, but I respond strongly to ambition, to career-defining, go-for-broke statements. Triple albums are even more fascinating. I don’t know why, but I’m a sucker for them.

Here’s the best way to get me on board, though: tell me a story.

As much as I love collections of songs, I love full-album statements more. The idea of telling stories through song is centuries old, but it never gets less thrilling for me. Whether you call them rock operas or concept albums or sonic theater or whatever, I can’t get enough of them. Start with an overture, give me a few reprises, set up musical themes that move the story forward when they reappear – basically, give me the sense that you’re using the album format to its fullest to say something meaningful to you, something allegorical and theatrical, something that takes an hour or two to unfold, and you’ve got me.

I’ve always liked concept records, from the first ones I heard – The Wall, Operation: Mindcrime, Tommy – but my affection for them has only intensified as they’ve become endangered. We live in the age of iTunes, where the album is almost passé, and the consumer’s vision of music is much more important than the artist’s. We’re all about the quick hit these days, the two-second idea, the catchphrase. No one has time and energy for an hour-long suite anymore. Music should entertain, or reinforce your own coolness. It shouldn’t challenge or demand more of you.

Conventional wisdom says the album is dying, and the album-length statement is dying even faster. Which is why I’m so surprised and gratified to have two superb concept albums to dig into this week – against all odds, people are still making these things, pushing the limits of their own capabilities to tell sprawling, ambitious stories. And telling them very well.

Truth be told, Colin Meloy, the visionary behind the Decemberists, has always been a storyteller. Even the earliest Decemberists records have been seeped in that centuries-old, traveling minstrel feeling, as if Meloy had popped into the recording studio after riding around the countryside on his tired old horse and singing his tales for room and board. (In a sense, that’s just what a touring band does anyway.) It should be no surprise that he’s taken that sweet major label money and just continued to tell stories.

But in nearly every way, the Decemberists’ fifth album, The Hazards of Love, is a shocker. Get this: it’s a 17-track rock opera on which every song segues, wrapping together into a single hour-long piece. It tells a tale full of illicit romance, shapeshifters, jealous queens with Oedipal issues, slaughtered children coming back from the grave, vengeance and death. In addition to Meloy, who plays three parts himself, it includes two prominent female singers taking on lead roles, and at one key point, a trio of creepy kid singers too. It is utterly, utterly mad, and yet, it’s absolutely amazing.

Start at the beginning. The Hazards of Love tells the story of Margaret, who wanders into the forest one day and finds a wounded faun. She helps him, and the faun magically transforms into a man, named William. The two fall in love, meeting secretly, and when Margaret realizes she’s pregnant, she goes into the woods to find William. But their tender reunion is interrupted by William’s adoptive mother, an angry queen who will not accept William’s new love. She works with a villainous knave to arrange Margaret’s abduction, much to William’s anguish. And then things get weird.

Can you imagine how the executives at Capitol Records reacted to this idea? They must have been beside themselves when they heard the actual record – this thing rarely sounds like the Decemberists. For one thing, it rocks, hard. It’s the loudest thing they’ve ever done, full of meaty, bluesy, explosive guitars. It’s just this side of metal in places. Combine that with the fact that almost none of these 17 songs can stand on their own musically, let alone lyrically. The tracks are parts of a whole, in every way.

Initially, that was a stumbling block for me. One by one, these are the weakest songs Colin Meloy has ever written, devoid of hooks and immediate appeal. But that’s not the point. This album is all about narrative force. It establishes key musical themes early on, and pays them off in the dark and emotional final third. “A Bower Scene,” which depicts Margaret discovering her pregnancy, is set to the same music as “The Abduction of Margaret” later on, and that same piece sets up the Queen’s whiplash-inducing blues-guitar theme, taken to its fullest extreme on “The Queen’s Rebuke.” And there are four songs entitled “The Hazards of Love,” and each uses similar melodies to set very different scenes.

The one real knockout moment, melodically speaking, is the chorus of “The Wanting Comes in Waves,” with its glorious backing vocal and yearning lyrics. And like the true craftsman he is, Meloy brings that chorus back at record’s end, offering an entirely different meaning – I shuddered the first time I heard it. The record ends with the fourth of its title tracks, subtitled “The Drowned” – you can see where this is headed, I think. The song is beautiful, perhaps the only stand-alone single here, Meloy doing his best David Gilmour over a sweet country-folk foundation, and on first listen, you might almost miss how sad and tragic it is.

Perhaps Meloy’s smartest move here was his decision to share the stage, inviting other singers to play the parts of Margaret and the Queen. Lavender Diamond’s Becky Stark does a fine job with the former – her entrance on “Won’t Want for Love” is unexpected, but exactly right, and her plaintive “Oh, my one true love” near album’s end will stay with you. But it is Shara Worden, of My Brightest Diamond, who steals the show. She adds just the right over-the-top touch to the wicked Queen, and she can belt out the bluesy licks with the best of them. Her showcase is “Repaid,” which is mixed in with “The Wanting Comes in Waves,” and she’s jaw-droppingly awesome.

In one sense, Hazards is Colin Meloy opening up and taking things democratic – he shares his lead vocals, and he gives his band a much stronger role, especially multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk. Jenny Conlee’s cooler-than-cool organ playing adds a real ‘70s prog-rock feel to things, and the entire band steps up in ways they never have before. But in another way, this is the full flowering of Meloy’s singular vision – I don’t know of another songwriter who would even attempt something like this, something steeped in English folk and Jethro Tull and Broadway and dark fairy tales, all at once.

Here’s the thing. It takes tremendous faith in yourself and your audience to create and release something like this – it’s an hour-long song, essentially, and it only works if you listen to all of it, multiple times. It’s audacious, ambitious, and almost completely successful. It is also literate, challenging, difficult, and intense. I wish these were qualities embraced by the mainstream, but they’re not. Whether this daring experiment goes down in flames and takes their major-label contract with it, Meloy and his band have done themselves and their story proud here. For those of us who adore this kind of thing, The Hazards of Love is a brilliant, moving triumph, and proof that the concept album is not dead yet.

* * * * *

The Hazards of Love is an album that cannot survive without its concept. That’s not the case with the new Mastodon album, Crack the Skye, but it’s no less of a superb record in its own right.

Mastodon is one of the most acclaimed metal bands playing right now, and it’s partially because they decided early on not to be constrained by their genre. They started out like most metal bands, playing as hard and as fast as they could, but over time, they’ve developed subtlety – they’ve stayed heavy, but their work has gotten prettier, more textured. Some old-school metal fans will balk at Crack the Skye, Mastodon’s most melodic album yet, but to me, it’s their high point.

Like the Decemberists, Mastodon is no stranger to musical storytelling – this is the band, after all, that wrote an entire album based on Moby Dick. That record, 2004’s Leviathan, truly put them in the vanguard of this new metal brigade, and 2006’s astonishing Blood Mountain (no concept required, alas) only cemented their place. For album number four, they’ve come up with an absolutely bonkers framework to hang their seven new songs on. Here, I’ll let drummer Brann Dailor explain it:

“There is a paraplegic and the only way that he can go anywhere is if he astral travels. He goes out of his body, into outer space and a bit like Icarus, he goes too close to the sun, burning off the golden umbilical cord that is attached to his solar plexus. So he is in outer space and he is lost, he gets sucked into a wormhole, he ends up in the spirit realm and he talks to spirits telling them that he is not really dead. So they send him to the Russian cult, they use him in a divination and they find out his problem.

“They decide they are going to help him. They put his soul inside Rasputin’s body. Rasputin goes to usurp the czar and he is murdered. The two souls fly out of Rasputin’s body through the crack in the sky and Rasputin is the wise man that is trying to lead the child home to his body because his parents have discovered him by now and think that he is dead. Rasputin needs to get him back into his body before it’s too late. But they end up running into the Devil along the way and the Devil tries to steal their souls and bring them down…there are some obstacles along the way.”

Did you get all that? If not, don’t worry about it – Crack the Skye is immensely enjoyable without knowing any of the plot. If you need to, you can just pass off lines like “The wormhole is empty, the center of Khlysty surrounds me, the fire is dancing in a silvery sheet of breath” as fantasy-metal nonsense. And honestly, I’m not sure it isn’t. I know the story Crack the Skye purports to tell, but the lyrics are choppy and vague, the songs disconnected – the centerpiece, “The Czar,” seems only tangentially related to the rest, unless you know already how it’s supposed to connect. As a story, it fails.

But you know what? This is going to sound hypocritical, given the praise I lavished on Colin Meloy’s theatrical ambitions, but I don’t really care about the story Mastodon is trying to tell. This album is simply awesome, with or without it. It’s made up of five short songs and two epics, and every song is richly drawn and captivating. Skye was produced by Brendan O’Brien, and he’s guided the band into making one of the most sonically detailed metal albums I’ve ever heard. It may be the genre’s first headphone album.

Never fear, though – even amidst all the undeniably pretty melodies, synth textures and banjo cameos, Mastodon never lets you forget they’re a metal band. I mentioned “The Czar” before, and it’s a perfect example – over its 11 minutes, it moves from ethereal beauty to shredding madness and back. It’s simply epic, a great piece of music. That’s not to slight the shorter pieces, which cram just as much melody and power into five minutes – “Divinations” is particularly excellent.

But the real gem of the album is the final track, “The Last Baron.” It is a 13-minute crescendo, beginning with chiming, bell-like guitars and growing, building, unfolding like origami into an absolutely crushing monster. When you hit the full explosion around the 8:30 mark, Mastodon just becomes unstoppable. And yet, with all the pyrotechnic force on display, the sonic diversity remains – there are harmonies, there is orchestration, there are little flourishes and big moments. It’s an absolutely spellbinding listen.

Crack the Skye may not be a rock opera in the truest sense, and the band has certainly not emphasized the overarching story when talking about it. But it works as a whole piece anyway, each track building off the last on the way to “The Last Baron.” Mastodon has once again claimed their place atop the new metal heap, and if they can keep moving forward the way they have on Skye, they’re likely to be there for a long time.

* * * * *

And now, it’s time for the First Quarter Report.

If you’re new to this column, here’s what the quarterly reports are all about. Like every other music critic in the world, I keep a running top 10 list throughout the year, and unveil it in late December. But I decided a couple of years ago to give you a glimpse of how that list grows and changes, as new records come out and replace older ones. Every three months, I will give you a look at my running list, frozen in time – essentially, if I had to put my top 10 list out now, here’s what it would look like:

10. Fiction Family.
9. Kid, You’ll Move Mountains, Loomings.
8. Neko Case, Middle Cyclone.
7. Steven Wilson, Insurgentes.
6. Franz Ferdinand, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand.
5. Loney, Dear, Dear John.
4. Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion.
3. Duncan Sheik, Whisper House.
2. Quiet Company, Everyone You Love Will Be Happy Soon.
1. The Decemberists, The Hazards of Love.

That’s right, I like the Decemberists album enough to put it atop my list, for now. I might tire of it in a few weeks, or a few months, but right now, I’m into it like nothing else I’ve bought this year. (Except maybe for Roger Manning’s Catnip Dynamite, but since that came out last year in Japan, it’s ineligible.) If forced at gunpoint to set the list in stone right now, The Hazards of Love would be the best album of 2009. But of course, there’s nine months left. Stick around and find out what happens next.

In seven days, some Prince, some Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and something else, probably.

See you in line Tuesday morning.