I’m writing this from limbo right now.

This season of Doctor Who, the 31st, has been one of the program’s very best. New Doctor Matt Smith was clearly born to play this role, and new showrunner Steven Moffat overcame some early hurdles to deliver a fine, fine set of stories, all of which wrap together in a 13-episode arc. I’ve been excited about new Doctor Who every Saturday since Easter, but because I live on this side of the pond, I’ve had a few hours of limbo every week, between the episode airing in Britain and becoming available online.

These limbo hours are exceedingly difficult this week. The season finale, “The Big Bang,” finished airing about an hour ago, and spoiler-free reactions I’ve seen have been mixed. The penultimate episode, “The Pandorica Opens,” was amazing, and if Moffat sticks his landing, it will cap off an outstanding season. But I don’t know if he’s pulled it off yet, and I won’t for at least six more hours. It’s frustrating.

So here I sit, distracting myself by writing another silly music column. This week, I’ve got three remarkably different artists who all rely on electronic beats and computers to create their music. And yet, all three have delivered remarkably emotional pieces of work (yes, even the one without any lyrics). Dive in? Sure, let’s.

* * * * *

A decade ago, I named Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP the best album of 2000. I’ve gone back and forth on that decision since. At the time, I felt we were witnessing the rise of an Important Artist, one with a deep satirical bent and incredible skills at the mic. Marshall Mathers is still a thrilling piece of work, one that leaps over lines of taste and social responsibility with manic glee, and hands out cop-outs like Twizzlers.

But Em’s subsequent work has blunted the impact of his first two records. He closed out his opening trilogy with the surprisingly sensitive The Eminem Show in 2002, then fell flat on his face with 2004’s Encore, a childish, vile, overlong waste that did incalculable damage to his legacy. And then he disappeared for five years, and no one missed him. It wasn’t that long ago that Eminem had the pop cultural reach to pull off his grand-scale satire, but alter ego Slim Shady only works if impressionable people are listening to him.

Last year’s Relapse appeared to be the final nail in the coffin. Half the album was a riveting travelogue through drug detox hell, but the other half was a depressing retread, pulling up all Mathers’ old tropes: graphic violence, celeb-baiting, and complaining about his mom and ex-wife. Relapse offered nothing new, and tried so hard to be shocking that much of it was just boring. Eminem still has the skill – his internal rhyme structure is second to none, his rapid-fire delivery mesmerizing. But he ran out of things to say 10 years ago, and every album after The Marshall Mathers LP (or at least The Eminem Show) has been unnecessary.

I guess, then, it’s faint praise to call his sixth album, Recovery, the least unnecessary of Eminem’s latter-day career. But you know what? I don’t want to damn this album that way. Recovery is a genuine surprise – far from being Relapse’s evil twin, this is Mathers finally flipping over his own story and starting again. This is, for Eminem, a remarkably mature album – Slim Shady is name-checked but never appears, Mathers actually apologizes for wasting our time over the past decade, and he spends 16 tracks trying desperately to prove that he’s still worth listening to. He doesn’t do this though hip-hop bravado, though. Recovery sounds like one of his 12 steps, an album about doing everything possible to be whole once more.

Does that sound boring? I guess it depends on what you want from Eminem. Ever since The Eminem Show I’ve been pulling for him to make an album like this, one that’s heart-on-sleeve sincere and still lyrically dazzling. Given how deep Mathers has gone before, how much of himself he’s revealed, I couldn’t figure out why playing Slim Shady still held any attraction for him. On Recovery, Mathers dispenses with his multiple personalities, thereby denying himself his cop-outs, and raps as himself for an entire album. This is exactly what I’ve wanted for a long time.

I can’t tell you how bracing it is heaing “Talkin’ 2 Myself” for the first time. The album’s second track, “Talkin’” is the first of many songs here about Mathers’ healing process, but he actually cops to the fact that Encore and Relapse weren’t good discs. “I got something to prove to fans ‘cause I feel like I let ‘em down, so please accept my apology, I finally feel like I’m back to normal,” he says, and it’s like a gauntlet. After that, Recovery has to deliver, and for the most part, it does.

The problem is this: instead of just going ahead and making a comeback album, Eminem has written an album all about making a comeback album. Once the untitled hidden track fades, you almost expect the real record to start. But as a statement about coming back, it works well. The beats here are strong, but for the first time in ages, Eminem actually elevates them with his wordplay. His collaboration with Pink, “Won’t Back Down,” is a grimy march, and Em spits the lyrics out like a gatling gun. “Cinderella Man” is a highlight, the melodic vocalists giving it an earthy feel, and “Almost Famous” is a modern Eminem masterpiece.

Here’s how good Eminem is on this album. On “Talkin’ 2 Myself,” he makes a big deal about the fact that he once considered writing a diss song against Lil Wayne, humbly concluding he’d get his ass handed to him. Seven songs later, he gives the first half of “No Love” to Wayne himself, and then, in the song’s second half, blows him out of the water. The final stretches of “No Love” are astounding, Mathers skipping through a hundred rhythmic changes and rhyming every word except the ones you expect. It’s a better diss than anything he could have come up with.

I’ve been talking a lot about Eminem’s road to healing on this album, and I don’t want to give a wrong impression – he’s just as foul-mouthed as ever. When he’s not rapping about his own struggles, both with his career and his relationships, he’s making Michael J. Fox jokes and talking about making bulimics puke. Most of his jabs are clever this time (“Stick my dick in a circle, but I’m not fucking around”), but if you think he’s turned over a new leaf, you’re wrong. This is Eminem embracing every part of himself, even the ones that laugh at jokes about Parkinson’s disease.

But there aren’t any murder fantasies here, and there are several songs that show a genuine weakness, often a verboten thing in hip-hop. And he uses his own image to his advantage on “25 to Life,” a raw breakup song that sounds like just another assault on his ex-wife, until the final lines. Maturity is a relative thing, I suppose, and odd as it may be to say, the fact that there aren’t any songs here about killing his own children with cyanide or dismembering Britney Spears is an improvement. He’s all grown up, kind of.

Some have called Recovery a slog, and I can see what they’re talking about. This isn’t nearly as provocative as the button-pushing impishness of Eminem’s first two albums, and after years of poking at society and running away laughing, it’s hard to take Mathers as seriously as he wants here. Some of these songs are also frustratingly average (“W.T.P.,” “So Bad,” “Seduction”), and the album is, as always, too long. Much of it is informed by the 2006 death of his D12 bandmate Proof as well, leading to an even more straight-faced tone.

But to me, Recovery is the album on which Eminem finally takes hold of his prodigious talent and uses it to make himself whole. There’s a real emotional heft to this record, behind the constant swearing and graphic imagery, and for the first time in 10 years, I have no buyer’s remorse. This is a hugely enjoyable record, and hopefully the first step in a new direction for Mathers. For the first time, he sounds willing to take responsibility for his words, his influence, and his life, and to these aging ears, that’s more compelling stuff than even Slim Shady’s most delirious fantasies. For the first time in a long while, I’m looking forward to whatever Mathers does next.

* * * * *

If you’re a singer in a rock band, perhaps the most cliched thing you could do right now is turn to electronica for your solo debut. Thom Yorke blazed the trail with the godawful The Eraser, but more recently, artists like Julian Casablancas of the Strokes have taken the dance-beat plunge, and if you find a band more committed to the “rock thing” than the Strokes, you let me know.

Now Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke has done the same thing with The Boxer, his just-released solo bow. It would be incredibly easy to slate this record for following a trend, except for two things. First, it’s not that much of a stretch for the lead singer of Bloc Party, a band that has had a strong electronic element for its whole career (and amped that element up considerably for 2008’s Intimacy). And second, Okereke has written a strong group of songs here, and made what turns out to be a very good album.

Bloc Party has a huge sound, synths and guitars and big beats colliding on nearly every track. The Boxer, on the other hand, is sparse – opener “Walk Tall” is built on nothing but an insistent drum pattern and a wobbly bass noise. The songs here are danceable, yet melodic, and Okereke’s voice is folded, spindled and mutilated, but always front and center, carrying the song. “Everything You Wanted” could be a Bloc Party track, Okereke digging deep for a wailing, compelling chorus.

I thought I would like songs like that one the most. Two others on The Boxer are more traditional: “Unholy Thoughts” comes closest to indie rock, with a steady bassline and guitar part, and “All The Things I Could Never Say” is a dark ballad, the kind Bloc Party did so well on A Weekend in the City. But those aren’t the tracks I keep returning to. The explosive whirlygig of “On the Lam” draws me in farther, as does the near-ambient “The New Rules.”

My favorite, however, is the first single, “Tenderoni.” The beat is simply unstoppable on this song, and all I need is the descending bass line, Okereke’s voice and the thump-thump-thump. This one gets my blood pumping like no other here. You can call this his Thom Yorke move if you want, but unlike Radiohead’s main man, Okereke has fully integrated his electronic textures with his knack for writing kickass, moving songs. Yes, it’s a trend, but Okereke transcends it. The Boxer is pretty damn great.

* * * * *

Which brings us to the Chemical Brothers, and if anyone’s in dire need of a comeback record, it’s these guys.

Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons exploded onto the scene in the late ‘90s with a pair of extraordinary big-beat workouts, Exit Planet Dust and Dig Your Own Hole. At the time, electronic music was just nudging its nose out of the clubs and onto the radio, and the Chemical Brothers showed what it could be. They invited famous singers into the studio to collaborate, including Noel Gallagher, Bernard Sumner and Hope Sandoval, and for a while, they could do no wrong.

But in the last decade, they’ve settled for passable instead of excellent more often than not. I’m still not even sure how I feel about 2007’s We Are the Night – it sounds like a Chemical Brothers tribute act. It seemed like the Brothers had played their last card, and had shown everything they could do. I don’t even remember 2005’s Push the Button. I have it, I know I’ve heard it, I know it features the aforementioned Kele Okereke in a guest spot, I just don’t recall the thing at all.

So yeah, the Brothers are in desperate need of a reinvention. And they’ve picked a strange way to go about it – Further, their seventh album, is almost entirely instrumental, features no collaborators at all, and is meant to be heard as an unbroken 52-minute suite. That’s right, the Chemical Brothers have decided to recapture the public’s imagination by challenging them with head music, and delivering a full-on assault on the instant-download singles culture. And I kind of love them for that.

I also love Further, the first great Chemical Brothers album since the ‘90s. I love that Simons and Rowlands expect listeners to settle in and absorb this thing as a whole – opening track “Snow” is five minutes of drumless blips, which leads directly into the 12-minute “Escape Velocity,” an ever-building crescendo of sound. The Brothers aren’t cruising at full power until the album’s 11-minute mark, and even then, it’s still building.

Throughout Further, the Chems keep the beats subtle and the sounds watery. The whole shebang doesn’t truly kick in until track four, “Dissolve.” From there, the songs get heavier and more propulsive, until the submerged-sounding closer, “Wonders of the Deep.” (I wish that one had gone on a little longer than its 5:12.) Some parts of the album are weaker (such as the repetitive and annoying “Horse Power”), but as a whole, as an emotional ebb and flow, the thing works.

Best of all, it’s the first Chemical Brothers album in a decade that doesn’t sound like it was made on autopilot. It’s not going to knock the music world on its back like Dig Your Own Hole did, but Further is the finest album these guys have made since those halcyon days. If you have the patience to curl up with this album for its entire running time, it will reward you – it is defiantly an album in an age of quick-hits, and a remarkable one at that.

* * * * *

And now it’s time for the 2010 halftime report. Today is the last day of June, and that means half of the year’s new releases are already out. The last three months have seen some corkers, so this list has changed considerably since the first quarter report in March. If I were forced to publish my top 10 list right now, under threat of death by vuvuzela, here’s what it would look like:

10. Devo, Something for Everybody.
9. The Dead Weather, Sea of Cowards.
8. BT, These Hopeful Machines.
7. Hanson, Shout it Out.
6. Janelle Monae, The Archandroid.
5. Rufus Wainwright, All Days are Nights: Songs for Lulu.
4. Beach House, Teen Dream.
3. Yeasayer, Odd Blood.
2. The Lost Dogs, Old Angel.
1. Joanna Newsom, Have One on Me.

Joanna’s still hanging on to that top spot – hard to beat a triple-album of really good stuff. But there’s a new Choir album out this week, and new things from Crowded House, Ben Folds, Arcade Fire, Ray LaMontagne, Eels, the Hoosiers, Sixpence None the Richer, Richard Thompson, Interpol and the Walkmen coming over the next three months, so everything could change. (And yes, the Lost Dogs album really is that good.)

Next week, some notes from this year’s Cornerstone festival, and a review of that Choir album, Burning Like the Midnight Sun. Now, I’m off to watch “The Big Bang.” Come on, Moffat, blow my mind. (Update: He did, sort of. More next week, or the week after.)

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.

Next week, I am going to the Cornerstone Festival for the third time.

Cornerstone is billed as a Christian rock extravaganza, but for me, it’s the only place to see some of my favorite musicians play. The main stage this year sports Jesus-poppers like TobyMac, Skillet, Phil Joel and David Crowder, which is why I plan to steer clear completely. But on the smaller stages, I’ll get to see the Lost Dogs, Over the Rhine, Paper Route, Eisley, Mike Roe, Terry Taylor, Derri Daugherty, Iona, and a little band called the Choir – a band that, incidentally, hasn’t played live in years.

I’m also rooming with my friend Jeff Elbel, who runs the gallery stage, and plays Wednesday with his band Ping. I expect this will be a hot, dusty, grand old time. I plan to blog my Cornerstone experience, and use those blogs as the basis for the July 7 column. Just a heads-up that your regularly-scheduled music reviews will be taking a week off.

So we’d better get as many as we can in this week and next. I’m ready to go if you are. Bonus points, by the way, for anyone who catches the reference in the column/chapter titles. And now, oh no, it’s Devo…

* * * * *

Devolution

It’s been 20 years since the last Devo album.

I’m going to let that sink in for a moment. 20 years. In that time, Mark Mothersbaugh has established himself as a first-rate film score composer, and Gerald Casale has become a music video director, when he’s not moonlighting as Jihad Jerry. Also in that time, electronic music has exploded into its own widespread subculture, and it all owes a huge debt to the thumping beats and pulsing synthesizers of Devo.

Still, many wrote Devo off as a novelty act. Granted, the video for “Whip It” is funny, but there’s a satirical Swiftian heart beating beneath those plastic red hats. Society, Mothersbaugh and Casale said with all sincerity, has been going backwards – devolving, if you will – and one would be hard-pressed to argue that it hasn’t continued to slide towards the abyss in the 20 years since Smooth Noodle Maps. Those who only heard the hits didn’t quite get how angry a band Devo was, and is.

I’m not sure what external forces combined to convince this quintet to reunite. But the resulting album, Something for Everybody, melts those 20 years right away. It sounds like no time has passed at all. Devo is just as wry, just as dark, just as sarcastic and danceable and goofy and full-on awesome as ever. The four old-time members of Devo (Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh, Gerald and Bob Casale) are all around 60 – they’ve also recruited 37-year-old drummer Josh Freese – but you’d never guess their ages from the dynamism on display here.

I admit I was worried. I’ve been reading about the album for some time, and it seemed to me like the band was a little too enamored of its marketing concept – they’ve been calling themselves Devo Inc., and they hired focus groups to choose virtually every aspect of the album, from the cover art to the style of jumpsuits the band wears to the order of the tracks themselves. I understood where they were going with it – it’s clearly a comment on the image-conscious, pre-packaged pop universe of the 21st Century – but the concept threatened to overwhelm the music.

That’s why I was glad to see the band actually ignore the advice of its focus group, at least when it came to which songs were included on Something for Everybody. The panel was presented with 16 songs, and asked to choose which 12 should be on the final record. But when it came down to it, the band felt like several of its tunes were under-valued, and included them anyway, in the place of others that the focus group selected. This, to me, is heartening – Something for Everybody isn’t just a commentary, it’s a great album in its own right, and the band felt strongly enough about its own work to scrap an interesting experiment.

Not that the nine songs here selected by the focus group are inferior. Not at all. The record opens with “Fresh,” a song that could have landed on Freedom of Choice without any problem, and continues with “What We Do,” an absolute classic. Over an insistent beat and a throbbing bass line, Mark Mothersbaugh announces that “what we do is what we do, it’s all the same, there’s nothing new.” He’s talking both about his band and about modern society – this is a song with the repeated refrain “Eating and breathing and pumping gas, cheeseburger cheeseburger do it again,” after all. There’s a silliness to this song, but a mechanical, lockstep quality that’s scary at the same time.

This album moves like a bullet, throwing one three-minute wonder after another at you, each one with a hip-shaking beat. You can tell they’ve been working on this thing for a while – “Don’t Shoot (I’m a Man)” is built around a “don’t tase me, bro” reference, after all – and much of that studio time has clearly been used to tighten things up to a ridiculous extreme. These songs are all exactly as long as they have to be, and there’s nothing extraneous. “Mind Games” is a condemnation of relationships that toes a sexist line with a mischievous grin, while “Later is Now” is a glorious call-to-arms synth-swirl anthem.

But what of the songs Devo would not let hit the cutting room floor? It’s hard to defend the celeb-mocking “Cameo” as a masterpiece, but the final two tracks, both rejected by the focus group, may be the best on the album. “No Place Like Home” begins with a sparse piano, and spins a striking melody over an ever-expanding synth arrangement. And closer “March On” is pretty much the perfect Devo song, a dark pop number about hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. The melody on this one is superb, dropping the curtain on a sublime note.

It’s hard for me to believe that it’s been two decades since I last heard new Devo, but Something for Everybody is like time travel, like ducking into the Wayback Machine for half an hour. I wish the world had moved beyond the need for a band like Devo, but sadly, the same satire works perfectly in 2010 as it did in 1980. Mark Mothersbaugh may believe there’s no place like home to return to, but the members of Devo sound comfortable, confident and at the peak of their powers here. It’s like an old jumpsuit, or flower pot hat – you don’t think they’ll fit, but as it turns out, they’re just right.

* * * * *

Working Man

It’s striking to me just how similar the Gaslight Anthem is to the Hold Steady.

Both bands have adopted Bruce Springsteen’s core sound – working-class stories related over simple chords, with full-throated emotion – and made it louder. Both bands make it very difficult to dislike them, since the rah-rah-rah shout-along choruses and ringing guitar chords work, dammit, and always have. I nod my head and occasionally pump my fist along when either band is playing, even if I don’t particularly like the songs.

Here’s the difference – the Hold Steady is further along in its career, and has already passed the point where repeating a simple sound keeps working. That’s why the last two Hold Steady albums have been departures (and have been less successful). The Gaslight Anthem isn’t there yet – they’ve just put out their third album, American Slang, and it’s another short, sharp burst of Springsteen-style minimum-wage blue-jean rock. Ten songs, none of them particularly different from one another, but all of them reaching for the same spark, the same sense of all being in this together, fighting for our lives against the man.

The Jersey quartet (of course they’re from Jersey) never falters on this record. In Hold Steady terms, this is their Boys and Girls in America, the one on which they perfect the sound they’ve been reaching for. There’s an appealing E Street shuffle to “The Diamond Church Street Choir,” a bowl-you-over energy to “Stay Lucky,” and a near-spiritual heft to subtle closer “We Did It When We Were Young.” It’s difficult for me to ascribe authenticity to something that is trying this hard to seem authentic, but this album is what the Gaslight Anthem has always wanted to sound like.

And to my mind, this is the last album like this they get to make before that sound turns stale. They flirt with their own sell-by date here and there on American Slang, making almost comical over-use of the same chord progressions, and throwing “woah-oh” into as many choruses as they can. It’s clear this band has given its all to this album – just listen to the mini-epic “The Queen of Lower Chelsea” – but it’s also clear that this is it, the pinnacle.

From here, the Gaslight Anthem is either going to release the same album over and over, like a Boss-loving Bad Religion, or they’re going to change up what they do, like the Hold Steady. The first is the safest possible road to stagnation and irrelevance, the second a risky proposition that may work out for them, but may not. (See above re: Hold Steady.) Either way, if you really like what the Gaslight Anthem is doing – and sometimes, when no one’s looking, I really do – then you’d better enjoy American Slang. It may be the last time you hear its like from this band again.

* * * * *

Blues

My aforementioned friend Jeff Elbel thinks the Heartbreakers are the best band in America. It’s hard to argue, honestly – they’re a pretty amazing combo, particularly mainstays Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench. Tom Petty gets all the ink, but his backing band is simply awesome.

Petty and the Heartbreakers’ new album, Mojo, seems specifically designed to give the band its due. It’s a long, jammy, bluesy workout that showcases just how down and dirty the Heartbreakers can get. Petty’s been writing effortless pop hits for so long now that if you’ve decided to make this your first Heartbreakers record, you’re probably in for a shock. There’s nothing like “Free Fallin” or “Refugee” here at all. Instead, Petty and his band have taken up the spirit of last year’s dynamic live box set and simply rocked out.

You’ll know something’s different from the first track, “Jefferson Jericho Blues,” a simple tune based on a repeated guitar-harmonica riff. Given its bluesy blueprint, Mojo is surprisingly diverse, although that’s not always in its favor – some of this sounds like Robert Johnson, some like Led Zeppelin, and an awful lot of it like latter-day Eric Clapton. I can absolutely imagine Slowhand taking a crack at “Running Man’s Bible,” an organ-fueled shuffle that shows off Campbell’s lead guitar. But Petty’s road-worn voice works well with this material, and the band definitely makes the most of it.

Some of Mojo is surprising. “I Should Have Known It” is the most kickass rocker Petty’s given us in years, based around an inexorable riff. (It’s clearly his Jimmy Page moment.) “U.S. 41” sounds like it was recorded on a front porch in Alabama, and “Takin’ My Time” is probably the dirtiest blues of the lot, a slow crawl that explodes in a rush of lead guitar and harmonica. Some of it is less successful, of course, like middling ballad “No Reason to Cry” and embarrassing pro-pot reggae slog “Don’t Pull Me Over.”

But the most surprising thing about Mojo is that, given 15 tries, Petty did not turn out one extraordinary song this time out. The album is based on vibe and chops, not melody, and as such, it kind of slides by without sticking. The Heartbreakers are unassailably great, and the best moments of Mojo find them showing off with remarkable power. I just wish they could have kept that live atmosphere, that grubby feel, without sacrificing the great songs.

But even so, if you’re on the fence about the Heartbreakers as a band, you really should hear this. Nothing here will return Tom Petty to the charts, but that’s hardly the point this time out. This is about the band, and they rise to the occasion. Mojo is a workout – 65 minutes and change – but it’s further evidence for Jeff’s theory. Best band in America? At times on this messy, scattered, strange and bluesy record, I believe it.

* * * * *

This last bit is for Bob Slate, who, in his own sarcastic way, has been a big supporter of this column for pretty much its whole run. Slate asked me to put the top 20 of the decade list in one convenient place for him, so here it is. If you were in a coma for the last 10 years, just buy these 20 CDs and you’ll be all caught up with the good stuff.

20. Bruce Cockburn, You’ve Never Seen Everything.
19. Vampire Weekend.
18. Over the Rhine, Ohio.
17. The Choir, O How the Mighty Have Fallen.
16. Aqualung, Memory Man.
15. Silverchair, Young Modern.
14. The Decemberists, The Hazards of Love.
13. Mutemath.
12. Daniel Amos, Mr. Buechner’s Dream.
11. Duncan Sheik, Phantom Moon.
10. Aimee Mann, The Forgotten Arm.
9. Ben Folds, Rockin’ the Suburbs.
8. Joanna Newsom, Ys.
7. Keane, Under the Iron Sea.
6. Fleet Foxes.
5. Death Cab for Cutie, Plans.
4. Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
3. Marillion, Marbles.
2. Rufus Wainwright, Want.
1. Sufjan Stevens, Illinois.

Sorry, Slate, no Steely Dan on the list. Hope you like it anyway.

Next week, more new music. Lots to choose from, too, like Eminem, the Chemical Brothers, Kele, Suzanne Vega, Sarah McLachlan, Foals, Pain of Salvation, Cowboy Junkies, and… yeah. Lots. Y’all come back now, y’hear?

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.

Hi there. I’m back. Did you miss me? You look different. Did you change your hair?

What’s that? Oh, right, it’s me. I look different. Yep, for the first time in nearly 10 years, tm3am.com has undergone a complete redesign, courtesy of my genius friend Mike Ferrier. The goal here was to maintain the original look, with the scrolling column in the middle, but get rid of the frames, and clean the whole thing up. You’ll notice there are titles at the tops of the columns now, and there’s a link to my blog on the left.

I’m really happy with it. Infinite thanks to Mike Ferrier for putting this together. I hope he’ll do something similar for the 20th anniversary.

So I’m back from vacation, and excited to get writing again. The next couple of months are going to be awesome. New things by Devo, Cowboy Junkies, Tom Petty, Suzanne Vega, Foals and Sarah McLachlan are already on the shelves, with records by the Chemical Brothers, Eminem, Kele Okereke, Sia, Robert Pollard, Wolf Parade, Big Boi, Crowded House, Sun Kil Moon, Jimmy Gnecco, Marc Cohn, Arcade Fire, Ray Lamontagne, Eels, Sixpence None the Richer, Richard Thompson and Trent Reznor’s new project How to Destroy Angels set to join them.

Oh, and on June 29, we get the new album from a little outfit called The Choir, possibly my favorite band on the planet. And I get to see them play live two days later. Also, I’ve just heard that Sufjan Stevens is working on a new album, at the National’s studio, right now. Life is very, very good. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

* * * * *

I review a wide variety of music on this site, much of it relatively obscure. I’ve heard a lot of stuff that most people don’t have the time or inclination to track down, and I work hard at keeping up with what’s happening in many different corners of the music world. This has led some people to believe that I have a modicum of credibility.

If that’s true, here’s where I put it on the line again, because I absolutely love the new Hanson album.

I get a lot of shit for being a Hanson fan. It usually takes about ten seconds for some smartass to start singing the chorus to “MMMBop,” with a self-satisfied smirk. This response assumes two things. First, that singing the chorus to “MMMBop” will annoy me, which is usually true, but second, that the Hanson brothers still sound like they did when they were teenagers, which is totally wrong. Hanson gets painted with a Nickelodeon-pop brush way too often, mainly by people who haven’t listened to a thing they’ve done since 1997.

I give Taylor, Isaac and Zac Hanson a lot of credit for simply pushing through this noise and making the music they want to make. Hanson is a pop band, no question, but they’re an old-school kind of pop band, one with killer melodies and hooks, fine chops, and with a strong sense of craft behind their exuberant grooves. All three brothers are good musicians, and while they’ve never written a song that will set the world on fire, they’ve certainly turned out more fun, well-written pop songs than anyone had any right to expect.

All of which brings us to Shout It Out, their fifth and best record. If you haven’t heard the dynamite first single, “Thinkin’ ‘Bout Somethin’,” check it out. I’ll wait. Pretty good, right? Now, here’s why Shout It Out is the best thing Hanson has done: on their last two records, 2004’s Underneath and 2007’s The Walk, the Hanson brothers tried for respectability, working hard to sound like adults. They layered on thick production, took on darker themes, and strove to break free of their teen-pop past. They were good records, but they sometimes just tried too hard.

Shout It Out, on the other hand, is full-on fun. This is the record on which the Hansons stopped caring what you think. They wrote 12 swell pop songs, played them with minimal fuss, and called it good. The result is a joyous platter that practically takes your hand and leads you out onto the dance floor. I defy any fan of well-made pop music to listen to the first three tracks and not fall in love. “Waiting For This” has a superb singalong chorus and a neat Isaac Hanson guitar solo. “Thinkin’ ‘Bout Somethin’” is a Motown-style romp of the highest order. And “Kiss Me When You Come Home” is built around an appealing Jackson 5-style piano figure that should wipe away the last of your resistance.

And then comes “Carry You There,” a slow-build with a wonderful verse melody and a gospel-style coda. I checked to see if they hired a choir for the ending, and they didn’t – it’s all the Hanson brothers, layering their voices atop one another. At this point in the album, I just can’t wipe the smile from my face. This is so much fun.

Sure, there are low points. “Give a Little” is generic, and lets the well-arranged horn section do too much of the work. “These Walls” kind of sits there, and while the beat of “And I Waited” is insistent and explosive, the melodies are a bit lacking. And yes, the Hansons will never be great lyricists. These are songs about life and love, and the words are straightforward and radio-ready.

But hell, I don’t care. Not when the songs are as good as “Make It Out Alive,” a piano-based monster I would accept from Ben Folds, or “Use Me Up,” a sterling ballad that finds Taylor Hanson digging deep. The Hansons’ voices have deepened, but they still retain that youthful quality, and they sound just so happy and grateful to be making music. They say as much in “Musical Ride,” a song that doubles as invitation and thank you. It’s so refreshing to hear sentiments like these in pop music.

I’ve been asked a few times over the past week just who Hanson is making this music for. But that’s the beauty of Shout It Out, and of this band in general – they’re making this music because they love it. The Hanson brothers are rich enough that they could stop right now, and coast on “MMMBop” royalties. Instead, they have their own record label, they produce their own stuff, and they make whatever music they want to make.

And on Shout It Out, they’ve made stand-up-and-dance pop music, well-crafted and full of life. Between this and Taylor’s side gig in Tinted Windows, I hope it won’t be long before it will be all kinds of cool to be a Hanson fan. Until then, I really can’t do anything else but tell everyone I know how much I love this album. If you see me driving anytime in the next few weeks, grinning and singing my little heart out and making air drum motions, chances are I’m listening to this.

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Now for a couple of pop albums that have a little more credibility and cachet, but are a lot less successful.

It’s been five years since Teenage Fanclub had a new album. You’d think they’d sound a little more excited about it. But on Shadows, their Byrds-y, acoustic-based pop is the same as it’s been for a long time, if not a little more subdued. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but Shadows takes a few listens to really sink in, and even then, much of it is forgettable.

Honestly, at this point, though, I can’t expect any more. The Scottish Teenage Fanclub first hit big over here with “Star Sign” in 1991, aping the grunge sound that was so in vogue. But since then, they’ve revealed themselves as pleasant, atmospheric pop songsmiths. Over time, the electric guitars all but disappeared, leaving breezy acoustics, strings and organs. Shadows is the quietest thing they’ve made. There’s nothing wrong with this album, and when the band hits on a classic pop hook, as they do on “Baby Lee,” they sound like something out of time.

But Shadows sounds oddly rote, like the band is making another album out of some sense of duty. Teenage Fanclub’s three songwriters (Norman Blake, Gerard Love and Raymond McGinley) each pen four tunes, and take even turns presenting them, and every one of them is satisfied with simple tunefulness. The album never kicks in, never provides that burst of energy that could have taken it somewhere else. They’re after that mid-period XTC sound, but even when Andy Partridge stripped back his band’s sound to nearly nothing, he never lost the edge that made them one of the finest acts on the planet.

Teenage Fanclub has lost that edge. There are songs here I like, mostly from Gerard Love: “Into the City” is a fine song, with a delightful ba-ba-ba coda augmented by chimes. “Shock and Awe” is perhaps the most energetic thing here, and “Sweet Days Waiting” lives up to its dreamy title. There’s really nothing here I don’t like, in some way, but I can’t remember much of it. It’s simple and pleasant and almost weightless.

I had higher hopes for the third Rooney album, Eureka, but I was similarly disappointed. Rooney’s second effort, 2007’s Calling the World, was a triumph of ‘60s and ‘70s-inspired pop, and with “I Should’ve Been After You,” Robert Schwartzman wrote his first bona fide classic. I hoped the third album would build on that success.

Instead, it’s merely a competent pop record. As with Teenage Fanclub’s album, there’s nothing here I don’t like in one way or another, but there’s nothing that will stick with me once the CD stops spinning. “I Can’t Get Enough” has a Rivers Cuomo vibe to it and a fun, if fairly typical chorus. “Only Friend” has a nice Supertramp sound, all repeated pianos and analog synths, with a quiet breakdown in the middle. “Into the Blue” references Jeff Lynne, even to the point of subtly altering Out of the Blue’s title. It goes on like this, ‘60s and ‘70s influences piling up, but the songs just aren’t there this time. Just listen to “All or Nothing,” a bland piece of simple writing that spends four minutes doing nothing much.

The single best thing on Eureka is also the shortest: “The Hunch” packs a rollicking melody, stomping guitar part, awesome horn arrangement and cheesy-cool organ bits into a dazzling 2:30. There’s only one problem: it’s one of the only songs here not written by Schwartzman. (Drummer Ned Brower and guitarist Taylor Locke co-wrote it.) That’s all the proof I need that we’re listening to a dry spell from Rooney’s main songwriter.

I hope it’s worn off before Rooney’s fourth record, because Schwartzman is better than this. I don’t want to give the impression that Eureka is awful. It’s perfectly capable pop-rock, and there are a couple of good songs here. But overall, it’s flat and uninspiring, and not up to the standard Rooney set last time out. Like Teenage Fanclub’s album, it’s not bad, but it ought to be much better.

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Next week, tons of stuff. I’ll definitely review Devo (spoiler: it’s great), and no doubt a few others. It’s good to be back.

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 am on vacation. Yes, right now, as you read this. I’ve done pretty much nothing for the last four days, and will do pretty much nothing for the next four. It’s been great so far. Everything I’ve read about these things called “vacations” is absolutely true.

But don’t worry, faithful readers. I haven’t forsaken you. In fact, you get more than the usual dose of my ramblings this week – that is, if you don’t mind spoilers about the final season of Lost. Yes, I’ve finished my exhaustive essay on what I believe to be one of the greatest television shows of my lifetime, and I’ve coalesced my thoughts into a semi-readable whole. I am, of course, putting this essay behind a link, because I know several people who have not yet watched the finale, and I wouldn’t want to spoil what is a pretty incredible surprise.

So, if you’ve already partaken of all the island’s mysteries, click here. If not, please don’t. If you’re still catching up on season six, or if you’ve never watched the show, you should go in clean. I’ve never seen a television show with the same capacity to surprise me, and Lost kept its most beautiful shocker for the final moments. I go into that surprise in detail, so read at your own risk.

In regular column-land today, I’ve got two remarkable records to discuss, and I’ll finally unveil my choice for the #1 album of the 2000s. (Seems like I’ve been writing this list forever…) With all that wordy goodness coming your way, I hope you’ll forgive me for what I’m about to say: I’m taking next week off. Saturday is my birthday, and as is my custom, I’m going to relax with friends. I’ll be back to the column grind on June 16, and I’m sure I’ll be updating the blog (tm3am.blogspot.com) between now and then.

For now, though, onward.

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I love layered and ornate production as much as the next guy. (As long as the next guy is Tony Shore.) But to me, something magical happens when you strip all that away, and you’re left with one voice and one instrument. There’s no hiding in that scenario. You either have it or you don’t.

Steve Hogarth has it. For 21 years, he’s been the “new lead singer” of Marillion, and his soaring, emotional voice has brought heart to songs that, in lesser hands, might seem overblown. Hearing Hogarth sing “Afraid of Sunlight” never fails to bring chills, but of all the versions of that song I own (probably about 50), the one that still draws me in the most is a bonus cut on the album’s remaster, a late-night recording of Hogarth alone at the piano, his voice ringing as if in a cavern.

His new album, Natural Selection, is all like that. In 2006, Hogarth started his H Natural tour, just him and a piano, singing songs old and new. Natural Selection collects 15 of those songs, and is all the proof anyone should need that Hogarth has one of the best, most expressive voices on the planet. Now, I don’t mean he has one of those American Idol-style “great” voices. When Hogarth sings, it comes from somewhere deep inside him, an emotional place few singers ever get to.

The bulk of Natural Selection is Marillion songs, given the H Natural treatment. Here is perhaps the most riveting version of “Estonia” I’ve ever heard, and renditions of “Waiting to Happen” and “No One Can” that rescue them from the clean and commercial production of their studio versions. Here is “Easter,” one of Hogarth’s best-known songs, and you can tell – the drunken Dublin audience sings along, loudly. And here is a touching version of “Fantastic Place,” with one of Hogarth’s strongest performances. He holds a single note near the end for so long that the audience applauds.

But the H Natural shows were about more than recasting Marillion tunes. They were about tracing Hogarth’s evolution as a songwriter and performer, so he goes back to his early days with How We Live for opener “Working Town,” and brings out a couple of solo songs from his 1997 album Ice Cream Genius. I’ve never quite liked “Better Dreams” – I find it meandering and endless – but this version drives the lyrics home, and they’re marvelous.

Natural Selection includes three covers as well, the strangest of which is an amazing version of Kraftwerk’s “The Model.” Hogarth makes this frothy song about girls who crave the spotlight into something akin to a plea to an uncaring god. It’s astonishing. He covers his own favorite song, Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat,” and performs a stunning version of his father’s favorite, “Wichita Lineman.” (I’m with Steve’s dad, by the way. I’m coming around to the idea that “Wichita Lineman” may be the best song I’ve ever heard.)

You may think more than an hour of one man and a piano might get boring, but you’d be wrong. Natural Selection brings Hogarth’s voice to the forefront in ways it’s never been, and he takes full advantage, winding his way around the corners of these songs and finding new depths of emotion to pull from. Where Marillion often finds this emotion in vast, broad strokes, here Hogarth takes a fine brush and creates a quiet masterpiece. Buy Natural Selection here.

Although Michael Roe is also best known as the singer in a band, he’s no stranger to quiet solo performances either. For nearly 30 years, Roe has led the Seventy Sevens, one of the most raucous and ass-kicking rock bands on the planet, but his one-man acoustic shows are legendary. He plays guitar like he was born with one in his hands, and his voice can bowl you over one minute and break your heart the next.

Roe’s new album is self-titled, and consists of solo versions of 14 songs he’s been playing for years. Recently, Roe has immersed himself in old gospel and blues songs, both for the Seventy Sevens’ Holy Ghost Building album, and his own We All Gonna Face the Rising Sun. It’s natural, then, that this album should open with five of those old tunes, here stripped down to guitar and voice. Roe whips out his electric on “Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down” and “You’re Gonna Be Sorry,” but the rest are acoustic, and they carry more weight to me this way, just one man preaching in the wilderness.

Ah, but the rest of Michael Roe is a longtime fan’s delight. Roe runs through songs old and new, including “What Holds On,” “MT,” “The Boat Ashore” and “Smokescreen,” and the effect is like being at one of his solo acoustic concerts. I’ve always wished I could bottle that experience up, and here it is. Roe also covers the late, great Gene Eugene’s “Jimmy,” and closes with a beautiful take on Leonard Cohen’s “If It Be Your Will.”

Mike Roe fans are already salivating, just from that list of songs. But if you’ve never heard Roe, this is a fine introduction to a performer who should, in a just world, need none. If I could play guitar like this man can, I might never leave the house, and Roe’s voice has only grown stronger and more resonant with age. My only complaint with Michael Roe is that it doesn’t include “Ache Beautiful,” but even without it, it’s a great collection. While we patiently wait for new original material from the man, this will be more than enough to tide us over. Go here.

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And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. (Well, at least, I hope you have. It’s been a long journey, and I hope you haven’t given up on me.) Here’s my pick for the best album of the 2000s.

#1. Sufjan Stevens, Illinois (2005).

I first heard of Sufjan Stevens at the 2005 Cornerstone festival. His label, Asthmatic Kitty, decided to debut Illinois there. They opened the boxes in the morning, and by late afternoon, the buzz was everywhere. I finally asked someone what everyone was talking about, and he said, “Sufjan Stevens just made the album of the year.”

Well, he was partly right. In fact, Stevens had made the album of the decade.

I was sold on this record almost immediately. I’m a fan of outsize ambitions, and if there’s one thing Stevens has in abundance, it’s ambition. Illinois is the second (and, so far, last) in a planned series of 50 albums, one for each of the United States. It follows 2003’s Michigan, a dark and wonderful record dedicated to Stevens’ home state. But as good as Michigan is, Illinois is better – its reach is wider, its grasp surer. The album is 22 tracks over 74 minutes, and I admit I spent my first trip through waiting for it to collapse. There’s no way, I thought, this record could possibly remain this good all the way through. After realizing that it was, I spent the next three spins just taking it in, and dealing with what I was hearing.

On the surface, Illinois seems ridiculous. Its packaging is cartoony, the title on the front cover is Come On Feel the Illinoise, and the song titles are knowingly pretentious: “To the Workers of the Rock River Valley Region, I Have an Idea Concerning Your Predicament,” for example, or “A Conjunction of Drones Simulating the Way in Which Sufjan Stevens Has an Existential Crisis in the Great Godfrey Maze.” The whole thing seems like the product of an overeager tourism bureau, especially as several songs (“Jacksonville,” “Decatur,” “Chicago”) reference specific places in Illinois.

But this is all trapping, the device by which Stevens creates an intensely personal, deeply moving experience. Illinois is huge – most of the songs have strings, horns, choirs, mallet percussion and delightfully florid arrangements – but it’s also intimate, and its most affecting moments are its quieter, simpler ones. Stevens does an amazing job of creating a grand-scale epic about very small things – a boy’s first trip to the big city, a man dying of bone cancer – and then unfolding it into large themes, like the existence of God, and the strength that holds America together.

How he does it is almost a form of magic. I can’t properly describe the joy of hearing the first strains of “Come On Feel the Illinoise,” the true opening salvo of the record – pianos, trumpets , oboes, drums, chimes, all playing in 5/4 as the choirs sing: “Chicago, the new age, but what would Frank Lloyd Wright say?” Similarly, I can’t tell you how much “Chicago” makes me want to spread wings and fly. Amidst a beautiful chimes-and-strings arrangement, Stevens captures perfectly the feeling of being surrounded by tall buildings and possibility. “I was in love with a place, in my mind, in my mind, I made a lot of mistakes…” And yet, he still makes it sound like something he would do again in a heartbeat.

So this album lifts my soul, which is one main criteria, but it also makes me cry. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard a more straightforward song of complex despair than “Casimir Pulaski Day.” It’s about watching someone wither away, and marshalling all your faith to change things, to no avail. “Tuesday night at the Bible study, we lift our hands and pray over your body, but nothing ever happens…” The final verse is simply the saddest thing I have heard in years: “All the glory when He took our place, but He took my shoulders and He shook my face, and He takes and He takes and He takes…”

Perhaps Stevens’ finest achievement here, besides the sweep of Illinois as a whole, is “John Wayne Gacy Jr.,” an unflinching look at the state’s most famous serial killer. Over a spare backdrop of guitar and piano, Stevens goes into detail you almost wish he wouldn’t: “He took off all their clothes for them, he put a cloth on their lips, quiet hands, quiet kiss on the mouth…” But it has a purpose – the final verse points back at Stevens himself, and all of us: “And in my best behavior, I am really just like him, look underneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid…”

Stevens brings out the big themes at the end. The menacing, droning “The Seer’s Tower” (I swear, it took me months to get that pun) is Biblical in scope, bringing in Emanuel of Mothers, for whom the mythical tower was built. Still, in the end, Stevens concludes he will “go to the deepest grave, where I go to sleep alone.” But this is followed by the grand finale, the seven-minute “The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders,” which casts America’s frontier spirit in grand new lights. Reminiscent of “Illinoise,” the song is built around an 11/8 piano figure and some amazing horn runs, and by its joyous conclusion, Stevens is right back down to earth: “Celebrate the few, celebrate the new, it can only start with you.”

The album concludes with a fluttering instrumental that sounds like rebirth. Its title tells the whole story: “Out of Egypt, Into the Great Laugh of Mankind, and I Shake the Dirt from My Sandals as I Run.”

Essentially, there are two reasons Illinois tops this list. First, no other album this decade tried to do so much, and succeeded at it so well. Illinois is a massive undertaking, the work of a certified genius, and its layers are all expertly interwoven. As a musical work, it’s perfect.

But the second reason is more important, to me: Illinois made me think and feel like no other record of the 2000s. I have twisted this album over in my mind more than any other, and it has taken up residence in my heart. I doubt Stevens will ever top it – in fact, the very thought seems to have terrified him. Illinois is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of album, the very best of the decade, and one of the very best I’ve ever heard. If Stevens never makes another, he’ll just have to be happy with that.

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Next week, no new column. But when I come back, we’ve got tons of new music to choose from. Expect something that’ll take you a while to read. Thanks to everyone who stuck with me through my top 20 of the 2000s countdown. If you have a similar list, I’d love to take a look.

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.