I’m so tired, I haven’t slept a wink, I’m so tired, my mind is on the blink…

Seriously, folks, it’s been a hell of a week. I know I was supposed to use this week’s column to catch up on new releases I haven’t reviewed yet. I’m right now looking at the pile – there are albums here from MGMT, Roky Erickson, Gogol Bordello, Caribou, Sharon Jones, the Apples in Stereo, and David Byrne& Fatboy Slim just waiting for some attention. In truth, I simply haven’t had time to listen and absorb most of them. So instead of catching up, I’m afraid I’m about to fall further behind.

Because next week begins the deluge, the two strongest months of new music I can remember. My bank account is not going to be happy, but my ears certainly will be. Since I’m nearly ready to slip into a coma right now, I think I’m just going to give you a preview of the coming goodness, review my #5 album of the 2000s, and call it a week. Apologies in advance, but I need a break.

I’m considering this more of a gathering of strength, though, a respite before the next big battle. It’s going to be a very good summer, and here are dozens of reasons why:

May 4 is the start of the hurricane. Here’s what we’re getting (deep breath): The Hold Steady’s Heaven is Whenever, Minus the Bear’s Omni, the New Pornographers’ Together, Broken Social Scene’s Forgiveness Rock Record, Tonic’s new self-titled album, Deftones’ Diamond Eyes, Justin Currie’s second solo LP The Great War, the Flaming Lips’ take on The Dark Side of the Moon, Richard Julian’s Girls Need Attention, and a live album from Extreme called Take Me Alive. Okay, that last one doesn’t quite fit, but I like the band, so sue me.

We’ll also be hearing from something called the Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt. I only mention this because their album title is my favorite of 2010 so far: I Love You! I Love You! I Love You and I’m in Love With You! Have an Awesome Day! Have the Best Day of Your Life! How can it be bad with a name like that?

May 11 is just as good, with new albums from The National (High Violet), the Dead Weather (Sea of Cowards) and Keane (an eight-track EP called Night Train). Keane has me fascinated – the single includes rapping from Somalian MC K’naan, and the other things I’ve heard sound suitably un-Keane. We’ll also get an early-days compilation from garage-rock duo Japandroids and (finally!) the audio half of the Lost Dogs’ Route 66 project, called Old Angel. I hear this one is superb, and the songs on their MySpace page certainly bear that out.

Seven days later, on May 18, we get another flood of stuff. The big ones are Band of Horses (Infinite Arms), the Black Keys (Brothers), and LCD Soundsystem (This is Happening), but I’m equally excited about Suzanne Vega’s new acoustic album (Close Up Vol. 1), the second solo album from Tracey Thorn of Everything But the Girl (Love and its Opposite), and Swedish prog band Pain of Salvation’s tribute to the 1970s (Road Salt). That one’s the first half of a double record, in fact. Also out on May 18 is a deluxe reissue of Exile on Main St., which I would consider the best Rolling Stones album.

May 25 calms down a little, with new things from Crystal Castles, Hank Williams III, Stone Temple Pilots and Soulfly. But I’ve had this date marked off on my calendar for a while, as it’s when Robert Smith finally unleashes the three-CD remaster/reissue of the Cure’s unbeatable Disintegration. This is my favorite Cure record, the one that got me through high school alive, and I can’t wait to hear it in sparkling digital sound.

We get a break on June 1, as Paul Weller’s Wake Up the Nation is the only thing currently scheduled. But June 8 is back to being immense. Here’s the lineup: Rooney’s Eureka, Sia’s We Are Born, Teenage Fanclub’s Shadows, the Chemical Brothers’ Further, Blitzen Trapper’s Destroyer of the Void, and the debut LP from Eric Matthews’ Seinking Ships project, Museum Quality Capture. We’ll also get the new one from Hanson, called Shout it Out, and I know you’re laughing right now, but the single is good, and the album apparently has a smooth Motown vibe to it, so I’m looking forward to it. Quit snickering. They’re good, man!

June 15 will bring us Sarah McLachlan’s first album in seven years, The Laws of Illusion; the Gaslight Anthem’s new one American Slang; Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Mojo; Chris Isaak’s second live album Live at the Fillmore; and the second album from Foals, Total Life Forever. Your local store will also get the first of a four-album series by the Cowboy Junkies, called Renmin Park, but (shh!) you can get it right now from the band.

Eminem leads off June 22 with Recovery, the sequel to Relapse, which wasn’t all that great to begin with, so we’ll see. Stars will release The Five Ghosts, and Helmet will put out Seeing Eye Dog. And speak of the devil, here’s Danzig back again with another doom-laden slab o’ metal called Deth Red Sabaoth. The month is rounded off on June 29 with the new one from the Choir, which is still untitled.

July in 30 seconds: Big Boi, Sun Kil Moon, Hellyeah, Sheryl Crow, and the solo debut of Ours’ Jimmy Gnecco. Also on the horizon: Light Chasers by Cloud Cult, the Beastie Boys’ long-delayed Hot Sauce Committee Vol. 1, Crowded House’s new one Intriguer, a new record from Devo, Iron Maiden’s The Final Frontier, John Mellencamp’s stripped-down No Better Than This, and new ones from the Shins, Rush and Robert Plant. And those are just the ones I know about. Expect more in the year’s back half.

I will need to clone myself at least once to listen to all of this. Be sure to check back here every week and see how I do.

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And now, the next installment in my Top 20 of the 2000s. We’re in the top five now, also known as Records I Know by Heart:

#5. Death Cab for Cutie, Plans (2005).

I liked Death Cab before Plans came out. I think The Photo Album and Transatlanticism are both wonderful little records. But hearing Plans for the first time was like watching a boy genius who’d always shown promise finally come into his own. This remains the band’s most consistent, most heartfelt, most beautiful piece of work, and it’s the one that touches me most deeply. I said this before, but other Death Cab albums are short story collections, while Plans is a novel.

This album is a dark and fully-formed treatise on what it means to be a finite being, one who grows old and loses touch and dies, alone. It is about the different ways people fail to connect, fail to communicate. It’s about how the promise of youth melts away, about how love is watching someone die, about how we all must be happy with our measly sum. It is powerful and direct and painful and heartbreaking – some sections of this album are almost too difficult for me to listen to. And it does all of that in 44 minutes.

Some criticized this album for not rocking enough, for settling into a mid-pace and rarely leaving it. But I think the album sets a dreamy tone from the outset, and maintains it – I’m always perplexed when bands rip up an atmosphere they’ve meticulously created. Only “Soul Meets Body” and “Crooked Teeth” find the big beats, and even those are more pretty than abrasive. Every other song here is a masterpiece of restraint and mood, capturing the magic and loss of growing up, growing old and growing apart.

The whole is much greater than the parts, but some of these parts are simply magnificent. “Different Names for the Same Thing” begins with an old-time piano and Ben Gibbard’s high, clear, unmistakable voice, but soon develops into a whirlpool of sound. “Your Heart is an Empty Room” is deceptively simple, but packs a melodic punch, and a lyrical one as well, Gibbard singing about the freedom that comes with losing everything you own.

The concluding trilogy is still Death Cab for Cutie’s finest hour. “What Sarah Said” details several agonizing hours in a hospital waiting room in wrenching detail, Chris Walla’s piano simultaneously adding hope and taking it away. The final minutes, with the band arcing into nowhere while Gibbard repeats “who’s gonna watch you die” are amazing – you can feel the pain of our narrator being kept from the one he loves at the end. “Brothers on a Hotel Bed” keeps the piano framework for a song of separation, and finale “Stable Song,” a reworking of the much-longer “Stability,” finds our narrator trying to come to terms with life as it is. “The gift of memory is an awful curse, with age it just gets much worse, but I don’t mind…” It’s a gorgeous way to end.

But with all that, it’s the simple, unadorned “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” that captures my heart. It is a song from a lover to his dying beloved, performed with nothing but Gibbard’s voice and guitar. “You and me, we’ve seen everything to see, from Bangkok to Calgary, and the soles of your shoes are all worn down, the time for sleep is now, but it’s nothing to cry about, ‘cause we’ll hold each other soon…” In just a few words and notes, Gibbard finds something real and deep, and sings it true.

You don’t get the full effect of Plans without listening straight through, though – the promise of “I Will Follow You” unfulfilled by “What Sarah Said,” the joy of youth in “Soul Meets Body” becoming the thoughtful resignation of old age in “Stable Song.” It’s a journey, one that becomes more real to me with each passing year. If Death Cab never makes another album this good (and the follow-up, Narrow Stairs, was good, but not this good), then I will chalk this up as one of those rare, precious, inexplicable little miracles that sometimes happen. I feel pretty confident that I will love this album for the rest of my life, and when I look back, old as the singer of “Stable Song,” I hope I feel as peaceful as he does.

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One final note, speaking of old age: I bought the 25th anniversary edition of Mr. Mister’s Welcome to the Real World this week, an album I loved when I was 11. I still like it – it’s a well-made slice of synth-driven pop with some killer melodies – but seeing the words “25th Anniversary Edition” made me feel older than dirt. 25 years! Wow.

Next week, well, just look above to see what’s coming next week. I’ll pick a few and give you my first impressions. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m writing this on Record Store Day. I spent a ridiculous $114 on limited-edition stuff today at Kiss the Sky in Geneva, but it was absolutely worth it. I picked up some quality tunes from Nada Surf, Ani Difranco, Manchester Orchestra, Weezer and Fun, to name a few.

Better than that, though, was the opportunity to see something I never get to witness: a line of people in a record store. And I mean a line – more than a dozen people at a time, waiting for their chance to buy real-life, physical-product music from a brick-and-mortar shop. Since there are only about a thousand of those stores still in existence in the U.S., the show of support for them was heartening.

Record Store Day started in 2007, as a way to help the independent music store weather the current storm. With digital delivery quickly taking the place of my beloved CD as the preferred format, and the sheer number of people illegally downloading anything they want to hear on the rise, record stores have taken a significant hit in the last decade. The vinyl resurgence has helped, but not enough.

Me, I love independent record stores, and I love music in its physical form. For me, you can’t ever replace the feeling of browsing through stacks of music, uncovering that hidden gem. Downloading music just doesn’t bring me the sense of ownership that holding the CD does – for me, reading the notes and looking at the artwork is as much a part of the experience as listening to the music.

I know, I’m a dying breed. I get that all the time. But Record Store Day was created by and for people like me. It’s like having an international holiday of my very own. It was so gratifying to me to see so many people coming out to Kiss the Sky to revel in the same things I do – physical products sold by real, actual people. I know by the time you read this, we’ll have already gone back to the same old iPod culture, and I will again be the odd man out.

But for one day, it’s nice to be part of something like this. Soon both the CD and the independent record store will be gone. Until then, I’m happy to support both of those things any way I can, and events like Record Store Day make me feel like it isn’t a futile effort. And for that, I’m grateful.

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I’ve been looking forward to this week’s releases for a long time.

I play piano myself, so I’m always drawn to artists who do the same. I know some who think the piano is a weak-sister instrument, one that adds too much sweetness to the Real Rawk they love. But it’s a tough thing to play. Well, like all instruments, it’s an easy thing to play, but a tough thing to play well. And I always love hearing people play it well.

Matt Hales and Rufus Wainwright play it well, so you can imagine how excited I was to learn that they’d both be releasing new albums on the same day. The piano is, honestly, the only thing that unites the two of them. Hales is a British popster who goes by the name Aqualung, and writes somewhat reserved, accessible and pretty songs. Wainwright is a dramatic showman whose opulent arrangements and melodies often hit operatic heights. I like them both, but they definitely scratch different itches.

Still, there is one other thing that connects them: they’ve both made terrific new records. Longer reviews follow, but if you want a spoiler, here you go: buy both of these albums now.

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I’ve gone on and on before about what a lousy stage name Aqualung is, with its Jethro Tull associations and all. Matt Hales is unlikely to change it at this point, so I just have to live with it, and honestly, whatever he calls himself, his music is still worth hearing.

In 2007, Hales unleashed Memory Man, one of the finest albums of the last decade. A monolithic piano-pop masterpiece, Memory Man took Hales from decent to extraordinary in my eyes. The subsequent Words and Music was a bit of a hodgepodge, combining new songs and old, but was warm and pretty, and contained his most beautiful song, “Arrivals.” Still, it wasn’t quite the proper follow-up.

The new Magnetic North, on the other hand, is the next chapter. And where Memory Man was a massive studio construct, here Hales mostly just relaxes, giving us an album of breezy, sunny piano-pop ditties. I admit to being underwhelmed by the opening half on first listen, save for a couple of stunners – the rising-and-falling “Reel Me In,” and the goofy yet invigorating “Fingertip,” a song that always makes me want to dance. It’s so delightful that I don’t even notice how silly the lyrics are as I’m singing along.

The rest of the first half is, initially at least, merely pleasant. “36 Hours,” co-written with Paul Buchanan of the Blue Nile, sounds like an afternoon in the sun, its lazy melody floating by without making much of a mark. I quite like the somber “Sundowning,” but even that is missing one of those Matt Hales moments that make you gasp and smile. The drama of Memory Man is all but absent, and in its place, Hales has given us something cozy and comfortable.

But listen all the way through, and it will pull you in slowly. In fact, Magnetic North’s final four songs are its best, and the warm glow they leave you with elevates the less immediate ones at the beginning. After the brief yet glorious “California,” Hales digs in deep with “Remember Us,” an absolutely stunning six-minute ballad. From here, he can do no wrong. “Hummingbird” is a sprightly joy, Hales’ wife Kim Oliver joining him on vocals, and the haunting “Thin Air” contains several of those my-god-listen-to-this melodic moments.

As usual, Hales saves his prettiest and most affecting piece for last. The title track is just piano and voice, and it’s crushingly gorgeous. “You’re my compass, my magnetic north, you keep this old ship on course,” Hales sings, and when the melody soars upwards for the line “I’m begging you to stay true,” it’s a heart-stopper.

Magnetic North may not be as layered or as powerful as Memory Man, but it has enough graceful and well-written songs to keep Matt Hales’ streak going, and it grows and grows with repeated listens. It’s a simpler, more down-to-earth record, but its warm atmosphere works in its favor – this is the sound of a songwriter who loves his life and has nothing to prove. It is as confident and as lovely an album as one could hope for.

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But if you really want to have your heart ripped out, you need to hear Rufus Wainwright’s new one, All Days are Nights: Songs for Lulu. I’ve always said that tragedy brings out the best in an artist, and while I would never wish horrible things on anyone, the resulting art is often honest, painful and brilliant. That’s the case here – Wainwright wrote and recorded All Days are Nights while his mother, the venerable Kate McGarrigle, struggled against the cancer that would eventually kill her, on January 18 of this year.

The album is stripped bare, down to nothing but Wainwright’s piano and voice. The one picture of our host here finds him looking terrible – sad, heartbroken, unshaven, with one eye and eyebrow slathered with black makeup. (A close-up of that eye adorns the cover.) The record seems like a single thought, like Wainwright wandered into the studio one day in a reflective mood and played this entire sequence in one go.

The songs here are mostly slow and meditative. Wainwright is a fantastic piano player – just listen to his work on “The Dream” – and he takes his time, letting these pieces unfold at their own pace. The result is spellbinding, easily the most naked and emotionally real thing he’s given us. I was worried that removing his usual outsize arrangements would leave these songs too skeletal, but Wainwright sounds free here – free to be himself, with no pretense. Of course, Wainwright is a showman, so even his most honest work carries some of that drama. But this is the sound of a talented performer alone at night, with no spotlights, no curtain, and no cheering crowd.

Opener “Who Are You New York” sets the tone, Wainwright wandering the streets of his home city, looking for something indefinable. He takes stock in “Sad With What I Have,” one of the most crushing songs he’s ever written, and it segues beautifully into “Martha,” the tale of a late-night phone call to his sister. “Time to go up north and see mother, things are harder for her now,” he sings, and it’s like reality caves in on him.

Three of these songs are based on Shakespeare sonnets (including “Sonnet 43,” from which the title is taken: “All days are nights to see till I see thee, and nights bright days when dreams do show me thee”), and they are lovely. They slide right into this stream of consciousness, as does “Les Feux D’Artifice T’Appellant,” an aria taken from his opera Prima Donna, on which Wainwright unveils his flawless French accent. These pieces of Wainwright’s life only add to the sense that this is one long thought, like him telling his ailing mother what he’s been interested in lately.

But it’s closer “Zebulon” that leaves the most lasting impression. Written shortly after visiting his mother’s hospital room, the song is about trying desperately to hold on to and reconnect with the past. Wainwright conjures an old lover to talk to, hoping to take his mind off of things, and ends up confiding in him. “My mother’s in the hospital, my sister’s at the opera, I’m in love, but let’s not talk about it,” he sings, and between verses, the music mimics a slow, painful journey back to reality. It’s simply gorgeous, more heart-rending than I can even describe. It hurts.

The second half of the album’s title refers to Lulu, the mythical dark child within each one of us. (See also: Marillion’s “Interior Lulu.”) But this is not a depressing work, by any means. This is Wainwright healing himself through song, praying for the magic and wonder he feels at the piano to take him away. It’s incredibly sad and beautiful and brave, Wainwright simply being himself, by himself, and letting us listen in. Wainwright’s always been great, but this album is an absolute treasure.

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And now, the next installment in my top 20 of the 2000s.

#6. Fleet Foxes (2008).

This is the highest a debut album has placed on this chart, but Fleet Foxes isn’t just any old debut album. In fact, if there’s anything on this list I would call timeless, it’s this.

I don’t know how they did it, but this quintet from Seattle has somehow tapped into the deepest part of the endless river we call music. They play woodsy folk, sure, but through some magical alchemy I can’t explain or describe, the end result sounds older than time itself, like music that was grown by hand over centuries, tended to by generations of people. It sounds like tradition handed down, father to son, from a time when life was communicated through song.

Much of that magic comes from the harmonies, at once earthy and unearthly. All five Foxes sing, and most of the vocals here are given spellbinding arrangements. From these guys, it sounds effortless, like they simply open their mouths and this sound, older than time, comes out. But the songs are all marvelous, from the light-breaking-through “Sun It Rises” to the wistful closer, “Oliver James.” The songs on Fleet Foxes are all small, breakable things, but they seem grand and strong.

My favorites are “He Doesn’t Know Why,” which has a melody that could have come from Brian Wilson at his best; “Quiet Houses,” which is simply lovely; and “Your Protector,” which adds a bit of melancholy menace to the mix. But every single song sounds out of time, carefully preserved, yet vital and shimmering. It’s amazing to me that this is a debut album, since every element of it is so perfectly realized. Hearing this for the first time was one of those “where have you been all my life” moments for me, and I can’t wait to see where this band goes next.

A good sign for their future is the Sun Giant EP, recorded after the album, but released before it. This five-song gem contains my favorite Fleet Foxes song, “Mykonos.” I’m hoping they can even top this one in the future – a new album is expected later this year. But even if they can’t, Robin Pecknold and his band have at least given us this one perfect piece of work, and that’s more than most musicians manage in a lifetime.

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I’m running quite long this week, but I still wanted to mention one more thing.

If I had to put my finger on the loudest concert I’ve ever been to, it would be Type O Negative’s gig at the Asylum in Portland, Maine in 1999. Hundreds of people were crammed into this tiny box of a club, all screaming, and the music somehow battered all of that noise into submission. My ears were ringing for days afterwards. From my vantage point in the back, I could really only see one thing: immensely tall bassist/vocalist Peter Steele, towering over his bandmates, and leaning down to sing into a microphone straining up to reach him.

Peter Steele was an enigma, and his band no less of one. Type O Negative was billed as a metal band, but they were so much more than that – they combined Black Sabbath with the Beatles and progressive rock and goth and a hundred other things. Their six studio albums are all intense, huge affairs, with 10-minute songs and layered orchestration, but at the same time, they never let you forget that they were just four guys from Brooklyn. They covered Seals and Crofts, and Neil Young, and the musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch with equal aplomb, and while they were at times the heaviest band you’ve ever heard, they could also be one of the most graceful.

At the center of it all was Steele, with his morbid sense of humor, his endless willingness to poke fun at himself, but also his very real depression. Steele made fun of goth culture on “Black No. 1,” but he often tapped into real pain, and let it bleed all over the stage. Type O was a band unlike any other, and once they hit their stride (with Bloody Kisses in 1993), they never made a bad record. Their latest, 2007’s Dead Again, is one of their best.

Peter Steele died of heart failure on April 14. He was 48 years old. You’re not going to hear an awful lot about his life and death, because innovative goth-metal-prog bands from Brooklyn don’t bring out the tributes, so I wanted to say something here. I loved Type O Negative, and I’ll miss hearing new music from them. Rest in peace, Peter.

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Next week, I’ll be catching up with a few records I’ve missed. The week after that, the deluge begins, with new ones from the Hold Steady, Minus the Bear, the New Pornographers, Broken Social Scene, the Flaming Lips, Justin Currie, and the Deftones. Yes, all in one week. Whew!

Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Going to be a shorter one this week. I’ve noticed that these columns keep getting longer and longer, and I promise you, that’s not intentional. Quite the opposite, actually, as I’m the kind of person who can only write concisely if I consciously work at it.

So this week, I’m going to try to write only as much as I have to. I’ve even set myself a time limit. We’ll see if I can adequately get my points across in fewer words and fewer minutes. I’ve already spent nearly 100 words telling you all about my plan to write shorter, so we’re not exactly off to a flying start.

But I’ve chosen to write about side projects this week, which should help. By definition, side projects don’t invite the depth of analysis that an artist’s main band does. The understanding is that we’re listening to a detour, a pitstop, and the real journey will continue when we’re done. No matter how interesting the detour is, it just isn’t getting us any further down the path, so the tendency of most critics is to talk about how the side project differs from the main one, pat it on the head and send it away with a wave.

I’m not sure that’s entirely fair. Some side projects are just as worthy as the primary ones. Look at Jack White’s multi-faceted career, for instance. It’s generally accepted that the White Stripes is his “main” band, but the work he’s done in the Raconteurs, and most especially in the Dead Weather, is sometimes more interesting. For White, I’m not sure his non-White Stripes bands are side projects. He treats them like his main ones.

I’m also not really sure if solo albums from members of flourishing bands should count, although it’s easy enough to think of them as sideshows. In many cases, solo albums are just artistic endeavors these artists have to get out of their systems, before they can recommit to their bread-and-butter jobs. Panda Bear makes solo albums, but that doesn’t mean Animal Collective is breaking up.

So Sigur Ros fans shouldn’t worry about the fact that singer Jon Bor Birgisson, better known as Jonsi, has just struck out on his own with a delightful little record called Go. You shouldn’t even be concerned that this comes one year after Jonsi’s collaborative effort with partner Alex Somers, called Riceboy Sleeps. Sigur Ros isn’t splitting apart. Most likely.

But hey, remember when Iceland’s best band was a complete mystery? Men and women with strange names and an even stranger sound, who sung in a made-up language and were never photographed or pictured in their album art? Remember when people thought the music was transmitted to Earth by aliens, so otherworldly was the sound? Well, the band has slowly and deliberately dismantled that image, and Go is absolutely the work of a demystified artist.

It’s also, believe it or not, boatloads of fun.

Go is 40 minutes of sprightly pop. Even though the trappings are similar to Sigur Ros – the bizarre, higher-than-high processed vocals, the shimmering synth beds, the instruments that don’t really sound like Earth instruments – the overall effect is completely different. These songs move. They jump around the room with unbridled joy. Led by boom-boom-boom drums, the first couple of tracks play like happy-pill anthems. It’s so sky-high enjoyable that I don’t even miss the inscrutability.

Oh, and one other thing. On the majority of these songs, Jonsi sings in English. On opener “Go Do,” he begins by urging the listener to “go sing too loud, make your voice break, sing it out” and ends by repeating “We should always know that we can do anything.” “Animal Arithmetic” is even more effervescent: “Everytime, everyone, everything’s full of life, everyday, everywhere, people are so alive…” It’s jarring at first to hear this voice sing words I understand, but it’s easy to get used to.

Even the more ethereal pieces, like “Tornado” and closer “Hengilas,” are in major keys, and strike triumphant notes. This is the most life-loving record Jonsi’s ever made, and the sound of it is enormous, massive, full to bursting. (Nico Mulhy’s string arrangements certainly don’t hurt.) Side project or no, this record is simply fantastic, and if it marks the start of Jonsi’s solo career, then I’ll try not to mourn Sigur Ros too much. This album has everything I like about them, plus a big, wide heart.

Jonsi may have made this album on his own, but there’s a lot of his main band here. Still, there are cases in which the re-branding of a side project simply makes sense, cases where the sound of the new band bears virtually no resemblance to the sound of the one from which it sprung. That, of course, makes the new band so much harder to market – labels want to tout the famous members of this unknown entity, but they don’t want to set the expectation of a similar sound.

That’s the story of Black Prairie, a new quintet that contains three members of the Decemberists: accordionist and singer Jenny Conlee, dobro player Chris Funk, and bassist Nate Query. Despite this pedigree, their debut album Feast of the Hunters’ Moon contains no jaunty folk songs, no epic ballads, and no Jethro Tull influence at all.

Instead, Black Prairie (which also includes guitarist Jon Neufeld and violinist Annalisa Tornfelt) has concocted a mostly-instrumental trip through a dozen forms of traditional music. There’s a strong bluegrass undercurrent to the whole thing, but we get several other flavors mixed in as well, like blues, tango and ballet. The bouquet of instruments is very interesting throughout – you don’t expect the sinister accordion on “Ostinato Del Caminito,” for example, and Tornfelt’s violin proves surprisingly versatile. The album is a bit of a wild ride, and musically, it reminds me of some of The Cat Mary’s work.

Still, my favorites here are the ones on which Conlee sings. The country weeper “Crooked Little Heart” is a standout, as is the traditional “Red Rocking Chair,” both sounding a bit like Cowboy Junkies tracks. I enjoyed Feast of the Hunters’ Moon, but I’m not sure I’d have bought this without the three Decemberists on board. And now that I’ve heard it, it will probably be relegated to Side Project Hell on my CD shelves. If you like instrumental bluegrass with hints of jazz and other musics, check it out. If you’re looking for more songs like “O Valencia,” you may want to give this one a pass.

So we’ve got side projects that sound a lot like the artists’ main bands, and those that sound nothing like them. My favorites, naturally, lie somewhere in the middle, ones on which you can hear the reasons you bought it in the first place, but can understand completely why a separate identity was needed. Does that make a lick of sense?

If you want a good example of what I’m talking about, pick up Amanda Palmer’s crazy new thing, Evelyn Evelyn.

Palmer, as you probably know, is one half of the Dresden Dolls, a highly theatrical combo inspired as much by German cabaret music as modern punk. Virtually everything Palmer has done has a curtain-going-up feel to it, but Evelyn Evelyn’s self-titled record is her first full-blown rock opera. It’s a collaboration with singer/songwriter Jason Webley, and it tells the story of Evelyn and Evelyn Neville, conjoined twins who work as circus performers. In fact, Evelyn Evelyn actually purports to be the debut from the twins themselves, with Palmer and Webley each voicing an Evelyn.

The story itself is dark and frightening, in that childlike Tim Burton way. The twins are abandoned at an early age, and bear witness to freakish death after freakish death. (These are detailed in creepy monotone narration in a trio of songs titled “Tragic Events.”) Eventually, they get up the courage to write their own songs, and post them to the Internet, thereby finding others who share their sense of alienation.

This is all set to a mix of spooky old movie themes and carnival music, all of it done without winking. Palmer and Webley immerse themselves in their tale, and you can imagine the Evelyns truly recounting the horrors of their lives, and mourning their only real friend, a conjoined-twin pachyderm called (what else?) Elephant Elephant. Yes, there is a song called “You Only Want Me ‘Cause You Want My Sister,” and it’s exactly what you think it is. And yes, the album ends with a mournful cover of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” which is almost the perfect joke.

The oddest thing here, though, is “My Space.” Meant to be the twins’ first single, it is a gaudy ‘80s power ballad, with sickly keyboards and “99 Luftballons”-style vocals. It also features backing vocals from a host of strange bedfellows, including author Neil Gaiman, Andrew W.K., “Weird Al” Yankovic, comedienne Margaret Cho, and Frances Cobain, daughter of Kurt and Courtney. You will either think this is the fullest realization of the album’s themes, or an utterly jarring and wholly inappropriate climax. Not to make a tasteless joke, but I’m of two minds about it.

As a piece of conceptual insanity, Evelyn Evelyn is sort of amazing. It’s the perfect side project: there will likely never be another one, so Palmer and Webley felt liberated, and went for broke. If you like the more theatrical aspects of the Dresden Dolls, and you have a taste for the macabre, I’d highly recommend picking this up. For me, it does what it should do – it shows me another side of an artist I admire (Palmer), and introduces me to one I will now seek out (Webley). It also freaks me out a little, but I think that’s intentional.

In the final analysis, you don’t really need any of these records. Side projects are just that – off to the side, adding context and color. But even that can be tremendous fun, and can allow you to see familiar artists in new lights. Whether they do anything else, these three albums certainly do that, and from that standpoint, they’re worthwhile and worthy.

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You know the drill by now. Here’s the next installment in my Top 20 of the 2000s:

#7. Keane, Under the Iron Sea (2006).

There were probably 500 British piano-pop bands to emerge in the last decade, and of all of them I heard, Keane is my favorite. And of their three albums, this is the best. Does that make it my favorite Brit-pop album of the decade? I think it does.

Keane’s been ahead of the pack since their 2004 debut, Hopes and Fears. They play clear-eyed, soaring pop music, earnest and true, and they have no use for irony or “cool” detachment. On their first two albums, they did it without guitars – Tim Rice-Oxley’s pianos and synthesizers were the only instruments, apart from Richard Hughes’ drums. You’d think that would lead to an empty sound, but you’d be wrong. Keane music is full and rich and powerful.

And they have a secret weapon in singer Tom Chaplin, who possesses one of the finest, strongest, most flexible voices you’ll ever hear. Chaplin live is just as amazing as Chaplin on record, and Chaplin on record blows me away. His voice may not have a unique character, which has led some to call it bland, but it’s a powerful instrument, and Chaplin can wield it like nobody’s business.

Under the Iron Sea is Keane’s Difficult Second Album, made in the wake of the worldwide success of Hopes and Fears. It is deeper and darker. It was still built using nothing but drums, pianos and synthesizers, but often, this album feels enormous, waves of sound cascading atop one another until the whole thing threatens to topple over. It remains grounded, however, by the extraordinary melodies. Every one of these songs is carefully built, and spins off into unexpected directions.

But beyond the fact that these melodies are impossibly infectious, and that “Crystal Ball” is one of the best pop songs of the decade, and that the first time you hear “Is It Any Wonder” and are told that there are no guitars on it your jaw will hit the floor, and that “Hamburg Song” is four minutes and 37 seconds of graceful, fragile beauty, this album rises above the competition because it is so deeply felt. It is, essentially, the modern Britpop Rumours, its darkest lyrics written as angry letters from Rice-Oxley to Chaplin. That Chaplin sings these songs only adds to the drama.

Keane nearly broke up while making Under the Iron Sea, Chaplin struggling with substance abuse all the while, and the band members channeled their pain and anger at each other into the songs. Look at “Is It Any Wonder,” still one of the most aggressive Keane tracks: “Now I think I was wrong, and you were laughing along, and now I look a fool for thinking you were on my side…” There is this, from “The Frog Prince”: “You’ve wandered so far from the person you are…” Or this, from “Leaving So Soon”: “Don’t look back, if I’m a weight around your neck, ‘cause if you don’t need me, I don’t need you.”

And there is “Hamburg Song,” which seems from the outside to be a declaration of romantic love, but is really a heartfelt attempt to make a friend see sense. “I give much more than I’d ever ask for,” Rice-Oxley writes, before delivering the clincher: “I want to be the place you call home.” Under the Iron Sea is about three people who have known each other their whole lives, and now find themselves growing apart. It is about its own creation, and about its authors’ near-dissolution. And when it ends, with the glorious “The Frog Prince” (and bonus track “Let It Slide”), it feels like redemption earned.

If Under the Iron Sea had been the last Keane album, it would have been an extraordinary way to go out. As it is, they’ve gone on to make an album (2008’s Perfect Symmetry) and an EP (Night Train, out in May) of bizarre, envelope-stretching music, incorporating an ‘80s sensibility and a Somalian rapper named K’Naan. (Oh, and guitars.) They’re still one of the best bands in the world, and they’re still innovating, finding new ways to change and redefine what they do.

But Under the Iron Sea remains their best work, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it always does. There’s something monolithic about this record, something that elevates it beyond a collection of amazing pop songs. Some combination of the sound, unlike anything I’ve ever heard, and the emotion, so thick and dark you can feel it. Under the Iron Sea is a truly great record from one of the few truly great new bands of the 2000s. And I can’t wait to hear where they go next.

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Remember, Saturday is Record Store Day. Support your local music store. Next week, I’ll be delving into piano-pop heaven with Aqualung and Rufus Wainwright. And I kept it under 3,000 words this week. Go me! Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

On May 11, Quiet Company will release a six-song EP called Songs for Staying In. I’m not big on recommending records that, technically speaking, aren’t out yet – when magazines like Rolling Stone do this, it bugs me, because I want to hear what they’re talking about RIGHT NOW. I’m making an exception in this case for two reasons. One, the band is offering a free download of the EP immediately upon purchase, so you can, in fact, hear it now.

And two, it’s pretty damn great.

I’m running out of superlatives for QuietCo leader Taylor Muse, one of the best new songwriters to emerge in ages. Last year, the band’s second album Everyone You Love Will Be Happy Soon came within inches of the #1 spot on my top 10 list, on the strength of Muse’s unfailingly smart and melodic songs. On that album, Muse tackled faith and family and the state of the world with thoughtful and graceful lyrics, and the music… well, I still find these songs getting stuck in my head.

On Songs for Staying In, Muse puts aside all those weighty concerns, and composes a series of simple and beautiful love letters. It’s striking how contented he sounds here. Opener “How Do You Do It” is about the unending wonder of waking up next to the one you love. “Oh, you never leave my head, so let’s never leave the bed, at least for a while…,” Muse coos, and with one notable exception, that sets the tone for the EP. The music is joyous and grand, the horns coming in at just the right time, the guitars ringing out a Beatlesque romp.

Three of these six songs are rejects from the Everyone You Love sessions, but you’d never know it. They stand up proudly next to the new ones here. “Things You Already Know,” especially, is wonderful, orchestrated with horns and oboes – it’s like a missing Wings track. (Although the line “Life is always better when you’re fairly obscene” probably wouldn’t make it into a Macca song. Still…) The tune ends with a kazoo chorus that’ll make you grin for an hour.

For all the pomp and circumstance in these 28 minutes, my favorite thing here is “Hold My Head Above the Water,” a romantic acoustic ditty that features the singing debut of Muse’s wife, Leah. “Do you want to love me forever,” Taylor asks, and Leah responds, “I do, I do.” I know how it sounds, but it’s simply lovely. The heartwarming tone extends to the six-minute “If You Want,” which recalls the “nation of two” motif from Everyone You Love, and the epic closer, “The Biblical Sense of the Word.” I love that title, because it leads you to expect something sexual, and delivers a message of undying, unconditional adoration: “We make our lives worth living when we love each other…”

All of which makes the inclusion of “Jezebel” curious to me. It’s the oldest song here, and it has quite the subtitle: “A Song for My Friend About that Whore He Dated.” It’s a bitter, biting piece of music, its main character wishing he was dead, and imagining his girlfriend having sex with someone else. It ends with a plaintive, despairing “Come back to me,” and I can only think that this song is here for contrast. It’s a cautionary tale in the middle of a honeymoon, and it’s jarring. But the song is great.

Muse has said these songs are not his best work, and I can’t argue with him. This is the simplest and slightest QuietCo effort yet. But second-tier Taylor Muse songs still outdo most of what you can pick up in the record store on any given day. As a breather between main projects, Songs for Staying In is marvelous. Unabashedly romantic, in love with life, and as usual, chock full of some of the most delightful melodies anywhere.

With all that, you’d think Quiet Company would be more famous, and Songs for Staying In would be everywhere on its release date. It is, however, a self-distributed affair, and the best place to get it is the band’s website. There’s nothing wrong with self-releasing and building up a fanbase – it’s how some of my favorite artists, like Aimee Mann and Marillion, do it. But my secret wish is for millions of people to hear Quiet Company’s work, and fall in love with it, like I have. I guess that has to happen slowly, one new fan at a time.

And that, by the way, is your cue.

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I know I promised a look at three live albums this week, and believe me, that was the original plan. But a funny thing happened while I was listening and taking notes: I found I only really wanted to talk about one of them. So that’s what I’m going to do. You can find smaller reviews of the other two, from the Weakerthans and the Pet Shop Boys, on my blog.

The one that’s truly captured my attention, though, is Dan Wilson’s Live at the Pantages.

Chances are you probably only know Dan Wilson as the leader of Semisonic. That band scored two massive hits with “Closing Time” and “Singing in My Sleep” in 1998, and the album those songs call home, Feeling Strangely Fine, was a mainstay of college and alternative radio at the time. It was also very good, and even though most had never heard of him before, it was a long-awaited moment in the sun for Wilson, a hard-working and very talented songwriter.

Before Semisonic, Wilson and his brother Matt were in a band called Trip Shakespeare, and they made four increasingly great records together. With Semisonic, Wilson made three, and an EP. All of them are worth hearing, even the last one, 2001’s bloated-yet-underrated All About Chemistry. And three years ago, Wilson released his first solo album, Free Life. Point is, the man’s been around for a long time, plying his trade.

Live at the Pantages is where it all comes together. Recorded in Minneapolis in 2008, this double-disc set makes the case for Dan Wilson, Awesome Songwriter. He digs deep into his catalog, resurrecting songs from both his prior bands, and playing collaborative tunes he’s composed with other writers through the years. But he mainly focuses on Free Life, and those songs are a revelation. Freed from their fussy studio arrangements, they come alive, and they sound amazing.

The album is divided into a solo acoustic set and a full band set, with longtime bassist John Munson (who was in Trip Shakespeare and Semisonic) along for the ride. The solo set gets right to the heart of the songs, and Wilson comes across as funny, charming and self-effacing. When he slips a bit from “Tangled Up in Blue” into opener “Hand on My Heart,” you know you’re in for something fun.

He then takes you on a trip through three related tunes, from three different phases of his career – it’s amazing that I never saw these connections before. One of these songs is “California,” a Semisonic number that has taken up permanent residence in my heart for more than 10 years. Wilson brings out the piano for “One True Love,” a sweet song he co-wrote with Carole King, and “Honey Please,” one of the highlights of Free Life. On that record, the song was obscured behind strings and vibes, but here, the soul of it is bared, and it’s lovely. I laughed out loud at his comment on the signature piano riff – of course he couldn’t stop playing it. It’s a great, circular thing.

The band set is louder, but just as intimate, if that makes sense. It concentrates on Free Life songs like “Against History” and “Baby Doll,” but these tunes sound resurrected, like they’ve crawled out of their tombs and brushed the dirt off. I can’t emphasize enough just how much better these loose, lively arrangements are than the ones on the proper record. Wilson makes his second Dylan reference of the night, covering “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” and whips out a new original, “Everything Green.”

The set closes with “All Kinds,” the opening song of Free Life, and Wilson gets the audience to sing along. Now, I’m a sucker for audience participation anyway, but I was left with a wide, wide grin after the last crowd choir chorus faded. It was just the perfect way to end this. I’ve been singing Dan Wilson’s praises for a long, long time, and with Live at the Pantages, he’s made it easy for me. If you want to hear an underrated songwriter at the top of his game, and listen to a master charm an audience at the same time, you couldn’t do much better than this. Go here and give it a try.

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You know the drill by now. Here’s the next installment in my top 20 of the 2000s. I’m sure to get letters for this one…

#8. Joanna Newsom, Ys (2006).

I know a number of people who still think I was kidding when I named this the best album of 2006. Hopefully, this will put an end to that rumor. I love this album, completely and unreservedly.

I can see why many don’t take to Newsom, though. I have yet to find a way to describe what she does and make it sound appealing. Here goes one more try: Newsom plays the harp like an angel, sings like a drunken 10-year-old, writes long and twisty songs about stuffed animals and astronomy, and doesn’t seem to care if you get it or not. On this album, she worked with both Steve Albini and Van Dyke Parks, two names I never thought I’d see together, and she brings their styles together with her own beautifully.

Ys is five lengthy songs, most of them hovering around the 10-minute mark, and the ravishing “Only Skin” stretching to 17. It is performed entirely on harp and orchestra – none of the drums, guitars and pianos that cropped up on her subsequent record, Have One on Me. And yet, there isn’t one boring second here. The songs are long and winding odes, ducking down detours only to meet up with their main motifs later. Each one is perfectly composed, melodic and dramatic, and each takes its time unfolding.

If that weren’t enough to turn away the casual listener, there is Newsom’s voice. On Have One on Me, she refined her vocal instrument, wielding it like a well-forged sword. Here, though, it is a chirpy, unbridled thing, squeaking and yelping and slipping off notes. But somehow, that only adds to the inexplicable wonder of this album. Newsom sounds alien somehow, like an ambassador from another realm where everyday music sounds like this.

Van Dyke Parks contributes string arrangements to four of these five songs, and they’re amazing. The scary storybook “Monkey and Bear” benefits immensely from the power of the orchestra, and “Only Skin” slips from beautiful to explosive in heartbeats, thanks to the arrangements. Even the raw-throated plea of “Cosmia” (“And I miss your precious heart”) takes on even more force with the surging strings behind Newsom’s breaking voice.

But it’s “Sawdust and Diamonds” that takes the prize for me, and that one’s just 10 minutes of Newsom and her harp, alone. An almost crushingly beautiful piece, it builds and breaks magnificently, the ever-moving harp trills cascading into rushing waterfalls, then backing off again. It’s proof that the magic here is all Newsom, not her collaborators, and bodes well for what I hope is a long career. In fact, Have One on Me currently sits atop my 2010 top 10 list, and though it’s a touch too long, it’s still extraordinary music.

But it doesn’t quite top Ys. In 50 minutes here, Joanna Newsom proved herself a visionary talent, a writer and player of remarkable skill. She’s all alone on her own island, making the music she wants to hear, and though I’m sure she’s hoping we want to hear it too, our reactions to it don’t matter. It will be as strange and beautiful as she wants it to be, without compromise. That’s the mark of a great artist, one who will be around for decades to come. And I’ll be right there with her, aching to hear more.

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I know the column’s already pretty long, but I wanted to share a few thoughts about The Eleventh Hour before I go.

It is perhaps no coincidence that I spent Easter morning watching the resurrection of one of my favorite television shows. Doctor Who entered its 31st season over the weekend with two new lead actors and a new head writer and producer. It was, in every way, a rebirth for a show that had grown somewhat predictable and stale over the past year. As much as I love the 10th Doctor, David Tennant, by the end of his time, his performance – and the writing of showrunner Russell T. Davies – had revealed its last facet. It was time for new blood.

And man oh man, did we get it. The 11th Doctor is Matt Smith. He’s 27 years old, making him the first Doctor younger than the show, in season terms. (In actual year-to-year terms, both Christopher Eccleston and Tennant are younger than the 47-year-old program.) I was worried about this gangly, awkward-looking kid taking on the part, but from the first moment, he simply was the Doctor. He has the old-man-in-a-young-man’s body thing down, and his physical goofiness contrasted nicely with his inner confidence.

And he sported suspenders, a tweed jacket and a bow tie! You can’t get more Doctor-ish than that.

Seriously, within 10 minutes, all my fears went out the window. New showrunner Steven Moffat, who has been the best Who writer since the show came back in 2005, played to his own strengths: The Eleventh Hour found him using time travel to create an instantly deep relationship with Karen Gillan’s Amy Pond, and casting a dangerous light on another common everyday thing, a crack in the wall. But it worked marvelously. Gillan acquitted herself well too, although I’m not likely to complain about the presence of a lovely Scottish redhead, am I?

Regeneration stories are, in a sense, all the same. The plot is lightweight, just an excuse to introduce the new Doctor to the audience. The Eleventh Hour followed this formula, but rose above it at the same time – the story was interesting enough, but the characters and the dialogue were fantastic. And I couldn’t take my eyes off of Matt Smith. Some have already compared Smith’s debut to Tom Baker taking over for Jon Pertwee in 1974 – a beloved and long-running Doctor being replaced by an unknown, who quickly eclipses his predecessor and redefines the role. We could be watching Who history.

Above all, though, The Eleventh Hour was boatloads of fun. I even broke into applause at one point. It was the strongest start for a new Doctor in… well, probably ever, and the next 12 weeks look like quite a ride. After months of worry, it’s clear my show is in safe hands. Matt Smith is the Doctor, and he is brilliant.

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Next week, a smorgasbord, with Jonsi (of Sigur Ros), Evelyn Evelyn, MGMT, and maybe Black Prairie. Who? What? Tune in next week to find out. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.