So let’s talk about women.

It’s a sad fact that female artists make up a depressingly small percentage of what you’ll find in the record store on any given day. You’d think it would be at least 50/50, but it isn’t. As of this writing, Eminem sits atop the Billboard albums chart, leading a top 10 that is 90 percent male. (M.I.A. is the only female artist there, at number nine. Two more female artists, Ladies Antebellum and Gaga, are present in the top 20.)

The reason isn’t that women make less popular (or less interesting) music than men. The reason is fewer female artists are given record contracts. The Internet has gone some way toward evening that out, but not enough. As for me, I’m not often conscious of the demographics of my CD collection. I have albums from artists of both genders and many different nationalities, although I suspect the overwhelming majority of records I own were made by white males.

I’m not really sure why this is. I can get into the racial aspect another time, although my general disdain for hip-hop probably has a lot to do with the whitewashing of my CD collection. But the gender thing baffles me. I do pay attention to the number of female artists who make it into my top 10 list every year, and the percentage rarely climbs above 20. I haven’t checked, but I’d be willing to bet that accurately reflects the ratio of men to women in my collection. Just in 2010, I’ve bought an even 175 new CDs this year so far, and women contributed to a whopping 27 of them.

This isn’t bias on my part. Some of my favorite songwriters (Aimee Mann, Ani Difranco, Imogen Heap) are women, and Joanna Newsom currently sits atop my 2010 top 10 list. (In fact, we’ll be discussing another woman in the top 10 list later in this column.) The problem is that fewer female artists are allowed to be heard. Of course, there’s the usual crop of sexualized pop stars, but we’re not talking about them. We’re talking about artists, songwriters, musicians. Women who spend just as much time as their male counterparts crafting intelligent, personal music and letting it loose on the world.

I find, because of the imbalance, I tend to overcompensate. I cut women more slack than I do men, most of the time. I highly doubt I’ll ever buy a record by James Blunt, or Jack Johnson. But I have every Jewel album, including her two recent blander-than-bland stabs at country stardom. I heard something, some spark in that first album she made, that has sadly never returned. But while I’d have clambered off the train of any male artist who put me through the same Zelig-style facelessness Jewel has, I keep coming back for more. She’s one of the 27 I supported with my cash this year.

Same with Sarah McLachlan. She makes an album every seven or eight years now, and I dutifully pick it up, hoping for something with the vitality of Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. So far, I’ve been disappointed. But I still get that little tingle of excitement when I hear about a new McLachlan project. This year, not only did she release her sixth studio album, Laws of Illusion, she reignited her Lilith Fair tour, which purports to offer the best female artists in the world, all in one place.

I went to the first Lilith Fair, in 1997, and wrote a snarky column about it for Face Magazine. In that piece, I pointed out that men actually outnumbered women on the Lilith Fair stage by a factor of three to one, particularly since bands like the Cardigans, with only one female member, were invited. I got some angry letters after that, calling me a “clueless nerd” and a sexist. While I’ll cop to the former, I will definitely defend myself against the latter. If I were a sexist, would I have bought Laws of Illusion, and then suffered through it so many times, trying hard to like it?

Okay, I don’t hate the album. But I don’t understand how it can take McLachlan seven years to write and record songs like these. There’s minimal stylistic difference between this and Afterglow, from 2003. It’s once again produced by Pierre Marchand, who frames McLachlan’s voice in lush guitars, pianos and synthesizers, then smoothes it all out to forgettable wallpaper. Opener “Awakenings” is the most interesting thing here, with its quick-hit electronic beat, soaring chorus and piano-vocal coda. But it’s like she spent seven years working on this song, and tossed the rest of the album off.

As if to emphasize the point, two of these songs (“Don’t Give Up on Us” and “U Want Me 2”) appeared in exactly this form on McLachlan’s 2008 best-of collection. But many others here sound familiar as well. “Forgiveness” is another of McLachlan’s slow-piano-chords ballads, using the same structure as “Building a Mystery.” “Love Come” is the bastard child of “Possession,” but blander. I like closer “Bring On the Wonder,” but in the exact same way I like “Full of Grace.” (And it uses the “Building a Mystery” chords again…)

Again, I don’t hate Laws of Illusion. But it’s exactly the same kind of record McLachlan has made before. If you thought Surfacing and Afterglow were little masterpieces, and you’re hungry for more of the same, this album will do it for you. But if, like me, you’ve been waiting for McLachlan to grab hold of some grand inspiration again, and make an exceptional leap forward, you’ll be left wanting.

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You can’t say McLachlan’s fellow Lilith-er Sheryl Crow hasn’t tried something different on her seventh album, 100 Miles from Memphis. Whether it works is another matter altogether.

Crow made her name on middling pop-rockers like “All I Wanna Do” and “A Change Would Do You Good,” and she’s mined similar ground since then. Two years ago, though, she released Detours, a modern protest album wrapped in history. It was my favorite thing she’d done since The Globe Sessions, and it bought her another chance with me. That chance is Memphis, a (ahem) detour into old-time Motown soul music, and it bores me as often as it makes me dance.

The first two tracks illustrate that dichotomy perfectly. Six-minute opener “Our Love is Fading” is a horn-drenched workout, a nice introduction to this new style. Crow sings this material fairly well, although she doesn’t adapt her voice at all – she sings this stuff the same way she sang “Everyday Is a Winding Road.” Still, the music is pretty good, and the horn charts are sweet. But that gives way to “Eye to Eye,” a lite-reggae bore that kills the album dead. I almost don’t want to go on after this one.

But track three is Crow’s take on Terence Trent D’Arby’s “Sign Your Name,” and so curiosity gets the better of me. I’ve always said D’Arby is an underrated artist, and “Sign Your Name” is a great little song. In Crow’s hands, though, it sounds like Paul Carrack. She smooths it out (of course she does), and this new arrangement really brings out Crow’s deficiencies as a soul singer. She brings no passion or, well, soul to this thing at all. Even Justin Timberlake can’t elevate this.

The rest of the album goes up and down. Virtually all of these songs suffer from Minute Too Long Syndrome, which isn’t a bad thing when the grooves are well-crafted, as on “Summer Day,” but makes numbers like “Peaceful Feeling” an endless bore. A little too often here, Crow basically just adds horns to her standard folk-rock and calls it soul music. And when she turns political on “Say What You Want,” it’s jarring. (And ham-fisted: “Ignorance is patriotic, reason is idiotic, winds of change keep on blowing, if this is America you’d never know it…”)

Overall, 100 Miles From Memphis is a valid experiment in theory, but pretty boring in execution. I like “Stop,” an orchestrated ballad that plays to Crow’s strengths, and her take on Citizen Cope’s “Sideways” is pleasant, if overlong. But I can’t keep from thinking how much better each and every one of these songs would be in the hands of Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, for example. And to end it with a note-for-note cover of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back,” to which Crow brings nothing, is just a waste of time. So this was Crow’s one chance, and we’ll see if I buy anything from her in the future.

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But maybe the Lilith Fair lineup isn’t the best place to look for terrific female artists. True artistry demands that you take risks, and Lilith is all about the safe and comfortable path. The real musicians, the ones worth paying attention to, are the ones who sometimes baffle you with their choices, and no matter what, stay true to themselves.

It’s interesting that I bring all this up in the context of Liz Phair, considering how often she’s been accused of selling out. I even leveled that charge, and pretty strongly, when her self-titled album dropped in 2003. The foul-mouthed indie queen had scrubbed herself clean, hooked up with the team behind Avril Lavigne’s hits, and made a weak, limp stab at pop stardom. The album sucked, for the most part, and Phair’s integrity never made a comeback.

Except, well, it should have. 2005’s Somebody’s Miracle is a very good album, still clean-sounding and radio-ready, but inspired. Had this come out in place of the self-titled, few would have cried sellout. (Well, fewer.) And a true sellout would have done whatever her new managers at ATO Records wanted her to, rather than stick to her guns, make the music she wanted to make, and then part ways with the label over it, as she reportedly did sometime in the last five years.

Wondering what that music is like? Well, wonder no more, because earlier this month, Phair released her sixth album, Funstyle, as a $7 download through her website. The album’s first single, “Bollywood,” has some thinking she’s gone insane – it’s a pseudo-rapped rant about record companies over an unchanging, cheesy, tabla-fueled beat. It’s nuts. There are touches of Frank Zappa here and there, and a big ol’ chunk of Kevin Gilbert’s The Shaming of the True. It’s like nothing she’s ever done.

It’s also kind of awesome. I don’t necessarily even mean the song – it’s kind of a trifle, but it is funny, especially when she describes the aftermath of a murderous rage as “a bad day for the pool boy.” But I think the sheer gall Phair showed, putting this out there after a five-year absence, is pretty thrilling. Especially when so much else on Funstyle is more straightforward, more along the lines of what we expect from her at this point.

No, Funstyle isn’t all ridiculous raps and skits. Four of its 11 songs are jokes, including the opener and closer, but the other seven are serious pieces, most of which could fit nicely on Somebody’s Miracle. “Miss September” is sweet and sunny, “My My” is a slinky and convincing disco number, and the wonderfully-titled “And He Slayed Her” is a fine mid-tempo rocker with a good hook. Most interestingly, Phair has returned to a grittier, more home-demo style here – her voice is just as wavery as it was during her Exile in Guyville days, freed from the auto-tuner, and she sounds a lot more comfortable as a result.

Comfortable enough, it seems, to put out those four satirical swipes set to music. Opener “Smoke” is a few skits, one about Phair’s voice of self-doubt (which she carries around in a box), another about her inability to get into the best clubs in town, and another that finds her arguing with a record company exec, who only speaks in muffled, wordless sounds. “Bollywood” is right after it, delivering a one-two punch of batshit crazy. Thankfully, it’s another six tracks before we get “Beat is Up,” a song that juxtaposes a Dalai Lama-like voice dispensing wisdom with an airheaded housewife’s delivering banalities. (“I like the juicing? And the ginko… balboa?”) What she’s trying to say here is anyone’s guess.

And then there is the closer, “U Hate It.” This is the one on which she rhymes “I think I’m a genius” with “you’re being a peni-us,” quickly adding, “colada, that is.” Inspired, or insipid? I don’t even know, honestly. Sometimes I laugh, sometimes I groan. The rest of the song features a pair of record company men trashing Phair’s work, but then, when it proves to be popular, claiming they loved it all along. If nothing else, that’s ballsy. It’s also pretty damn funny.

Whatever you think of Funstyle – and I think it’s pretty entertaining, all told – you have to admit that Phair’s gone and done the unexpected again. Had anyone asked me to predict her next move, I would never have guessed she’d self-release an album on her website, rap over a Bhangra beat, or match Zappa in bitterness over the music industry. That, to me, is the mark of a good artist, female or otherwise – the ability to surprise me time and time again. That the record is actually pretty good helps, too, but Phair’s unpredictability is her greatest strength.

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In the end, despite the gender difference, looking for music made by women is like anything else: you have to dig for the good stuff. And you’ll often find it in unexpected places. For instance, I never would have suspected, before picking it up, that Janelle Monae would make one of the best albums of the year, and that album would be released on P. Diddy’s label, Bad Boy.

But here it is. The ArchAndroid is an absolute masterpiece. Monae is a 24-year-old singer and composer from Kansas City with a strong, soulful voice. While she would be forgiven for using that voice to sing typical club-bangers and sex ballads, she decided instead to devote it to a four-part science fiction concept piece that obliterates genre boundaries and practically explodes with imagination and life. In the process, she proves once and for all that pop is not a four-letter word, and can be an amazingly fertile ground for skillful record-makers.

Okay, hang on, because I’m about to explain the concept. Metropolis is a full-blown sci-fi pop opera in four parts, which Monae calls suites. It’s not only named after Fritz Lang’s 1927 film, it borrows liberally from its plot – Monae’s Metropolis is about an android named Cindi Mayweather, cloned from Monae’s DNA, who falls in love with a human (quite against the rules), and becomes something of a messiah figure to the other androids in a futuristic city. She self-released the first of those four suites (called The Chase) in 2007, and The ArchAndroid, her debut full-length, encompasses the second and third. Confused yet?

Well, not to worry, because even if the concept means nothing to you, the album is a fully enjoyable ride from first note to last. How best to describe this thing? Imagine if Prince and Erykah Badu had a kid, and that kid really liked Blade Runner. The music on The ArchAndroid is somewhat retro-futuristic, like Prince’s ‘80s material, but it gallops through rock, Motown, electro, rap, ‘50s balladry, and just about anything else Monae can come up with. It changes every couple of minutes, too – like the best art, The ArchAndroid is restless, like Monae simply can’t wait to show us what she’s thought of next.

The album opens with an orchestral overture, then slams into a three-song mini-suite, each tune segueing into the next. “Faster” is just awesome, the quick-step beat and nimble guitar work supporting an army of harmonized Monaes, and “Locked Inside” features a terrific soul bridge, with a bass guitar line worthy of 1970s Stevie Wonder. “Cold War” is a soaring rocker, which flows directly into “Tightrope,” one of the album’s best. Over a skipping bass line, Monae and Big Boi spit out the rapid-fire lyrics, and Monae really shines on the chorus.

Throughout this record, I was amazed at the number and variety of Monae’s influences. “Oh Maker” references Simon and Garfunkel’s “Kathy’s Song,” while “Come Alive” could be a Squirrel Nut Zippers song, if not for the flailing electric guitar and Monae’s nearly-unhinged voice. Over in the third suite, which begins with another orchestral intro, she enlists Of Montreal (yes, that Of Montreal) to perform “Make the Bus,” a psychedelic Prince-esque explosion. “57821” is a ‘60s-style acoustic piece reminiscent of The Mamas and the Papas, complete with xylophones. (It’s named after Monae’s patient number in the futuristic hospital where doctors are recording the Metropolis story from her memories. For real, that’s the story.)

The whole thing ends with an eight-minute psychodrama called “BabopbyeYa,” which twists and turns through several orchestral detours, at times sounding like the score to the original Star Trek series. It’s massive and self-indulgent and kind of amazing. The striking thing about The ArchAndroid is that, in a pop landscape dominated by iTunes and download singles, it’s a cohesive – nay, seamless – conceptual album piece, designed to be listened to as a whole. And an album this complex and detailed will take you at least three complete listens to digest. At least.

That alone is worth praising, but Janelle Monae has gone above and beyond. Her album sounds to me like a blueprint for wide-ranging pop music of the future. It takes from everything – no music is off limits –and swirls it all up in an intoxicating brew. The ArchAndroid is easily one of the best albums of 2010, and that it’s the product of an insanely talented female artist is just the icing on the cake. Monae is proof that the sad state of women in music is a cause worth taking up. If, by letting more women in through the gates, we could get more albums like this one, I’d call that a win for everyone.

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Next week, Arcade Fire, Black Crowes, Jimmy Gnecco and whatever else crosses my desk. 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.

Harvey Pekar died last week.

From the outside, Pekar was just some guy who worked as a file clerk for a veterans hospital in Cleveland. He lived what most would consider a relatively uneventful life, except for one thing: he chronicled that uneventful life in a comic book series called American Splendor. His sharp, fierce autobiography-in-progress gave him a measure of fame, both inside the comics world and out, culminating in 2003 with an American Splendor movie starring Paul Giamatti. (And Pekar himself, playing himself, right next to Giamatti, who was also playing him. Trust me, it works.)

It would be hard for me to overstate the impact Pekar had on comics, particularly autobiographical ones, which basically didn’t exist before American Splendor came along. The first issue was published in 1976, thrust into a comics marketplace bursting with superheroes and fantasy tales. But Pekar steadfastly refused to glamorize or sensationalize his life. His stories celebrated the mundane, the lives of average everyday people – and not just Pekar, but his co-workers, his wife, and even a few of the jazz musicians he loved. Even though he couldn’t draw, he enlisted an army of indie comics legends to illustrate his tales, and they basically lined up around the block for the privilege.

Pekar was irritable and irascible and difficult and bad-tempered and full of self-loathing, and he never shied away from any of that in his comics. There’s no doubt Pekar opened the door for the younger crop of autobio artists, like Seth and Chester Brown, people who latched onto the idea that everyone’s story is worth telling. It’s an idea I subscribe to myself, so I’m grateful for Pekar’s work too. If someone asked me what’s so special about Harvey Pekar, I would say nothing, and that’s exactly why he was such a treasure.

Pekar died at home on July 2 after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 70 years old.

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On Sunday, I saw Iron Maiden play for the first time. I’ve been a Maiden fan since my teenage metalhead years, but somehow, I’ve never plunked down the cash and caught a show before. As part of my ongoing attempt to prove I’m not a doddering old man, I bought tickets for a Sunday night show in Tinley Park, more than an hour from my home, and steadfastly refused to take the next day off of work. I’ll show them, I said. I can still hang with the young folks, headbang for three hours, and be up at 6:30 a.m.

That was silly. Tired doesn’t even begin to describe my Monday.

But the show was fantastic. Here’s the thing: if you’re going to be in a band like Iron Maiden, who often goes as far over the top as gravity will allow, you have to commit to it. You need to give 150 percent all the time. And man, these guys delivered. Bruce Dickinson is 51 years old (which is about five years younger than I thought he was), but he spent the entire two-hour set running, jumping, leaping and singing at the top of his considerable lungs. He was a wonder to behold, and the rest of the band was amazing as well.

Maiden music is complcated and aggressive and relentless. They’re the original operatic metal band, and their songs routinely stretch to eight and nine minutes. Their set consisted almost entirely of material from the past 10 years, which probably disappointed some people, but since I love the last three records, I was happy to sing along. Plus, they blew through an amazing encore of “The Number of the Beast,” “Hallowed Be Thy Name” and “Running Free” before leaving the stage.

As if that wasn’t enough metal madness for one night, Dream Theater opened, playing a 45-minute, six-song set of their heaviest material. I’d never seen them live either, and watching guitarist John Petrucci and keyboardist Jordan Rudess do their tandem soloing thing live was revelatory. I don’t know how these five guys possibly got to the top of their game the way they have, or how they found each other and created this musical mind-meld that merges all of their astonishing skills. But watching them pull off this insanely complex material live was pretty awesome.

Thanks to Nate and Grant for being my concert buddies. I’d love to do it again. But maybe not on a work night. My aging joints still ache.

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Speaking of things that are old, let’s talk about the longest-running science fiction show in the world.

Doctor Who began in 1963. It ran for 26 years, got canceled, returned with a TV movie in 1996, and was fully revived in 2005. All together, there are 31 seasons, two movies (including The Five Doctors) and eight specials, with a ninth on the way. There are more than 800 episodes, comprising about 500 hours of television.

You’d think the idea would have grown stale by now, right? But the central concept of the show is so basic, so open-ended, that it can be anything. As a famous comics creator once said, only the limits are imaginary. Here’s what Doctor Who is about: a strange man has adventures in time and space, and he brings people along with him for the ride. That’s it. It’s so simple that its possibilities are infinite. Who is often about Daleks and Cybermen and intergalactic war, but at its heart, it’s about the wonder of the universe, about the joy of discovery.

And in its just-completed 31st season, one of the best in the program’s history, it’s about stories, about the myths and legends that live in our minds. Forty-seven years in, and Doctor Who is finally plumbing its own status as modern myth, as cultural icon. The season, the first under the stewardship of head writer Steven Moffat, was an often heady mix of fairy tale and logic game, a 13-episode puzzle box that, when opened, revealed a joyous tale about the stories we tell ourselves, and the power they wield.

The final episode of that season airs Saturday in the U.S., but through the magic of the Internet, I saw it weeks ago. (Spoilers lie ahead, naturally.) I’ve had some time to think about the shape of this season, and compare it to previous ones. Moffat is a very different showrunner than his predecessor, Russell T. Davies, but they each are strong in areas where the other is weak, and this season underlined those differences. This season had no standout episodes, like “Blink” or “The Empty Child.” But then, the standouts under Davies were most often written by Moffat, and with him at the helm, the overall quality of plotting rose. Put it this way: Moffat set a higher bar, but fewer of this season’s episodes vaulted over it.

Having said that, here are a few things Moffat did right.

1. He hired Matt Smith. I have no idea where Moffat found the 27-year-old Smith, the 11th and youngest actor to play the part of the Doctor. But his intuition was spot-on: Smith was born to play this role. He is, without doubt, my favorite actor to step aboard the Tardis since the glory days of Tom Baker and Peter Davison. He’s goofier and more awkward than David Tennant and Christopher Eccleston, his two immediate predecessors, but he also has an alien quality those two fine actors lacked. I look at Smith and I instantly buy him as a 900-year-old Time Lord.

And he’s such a joy to watch. His repartee with River Song in “The Time of Angels” was masterful, and his attempts to settle into suburban life in “The Lodger” were comedy gold, but he brings a genuine heart and a piercing intelligence to his more serious scenes. Take, for instance, the lengthy sequence in “The Big Bang” where he travels back through time, finally ending up at the bedside of seven-year-old Amy Pond. Watch his face as he tells her his story, and says goodbye. It’s emotionally wrenching stuff, underplayed to perfection.

2. He hired Karen Gillan. She’s more than just a pretty face, although she certainly is that. Gillan was the perfect match for Smith’s Doctor, standing toe to toe with him as an equal partner. The entire 31st season is about Amy Pond, about the crack in time that robbed her of her life, and about how a childhood fairy tale made her whole again. Still, the character was underwritten, I feel. But Gillan found the soul of this strange and wonderful girl she’s playing, and made her presence felt. (Moffat also hired Arthur Darvill as Amy’s love, Rory Williams, and he was astounding as well.)

3. He wrote six episodes himself. Moffat is easily the best writer in Who’s stable, and this year, we got to see what he could do with a full season at his disposal. His half-dozen episodes were the best of the lot, I think, even though his writing often errs on the side of complexity over emotion. “The Eleventh Hour” is the strongest season premiere since the show’s revival, and “The Big Bang” one of its strongest climaxes. But it’s the creeping dread and final turnabouts of “The Pandorica Opens” and the dazzling Weeping Angels two-parter that I think really show off what Moffat can do.

4. He turned to writers you wouldn’t expect. Aside from Moffat’s six, the two most successful stories of the season came from writers who’d never penned an episode of Who in their lives. Simon Nye, creator of Men Behaving Badly, turned in the dreamscape fantasia “Amy’s Choice,” and Richard Curtis, writer/director of Love Actually and Pirate Radio, wrote a brilliant examination of depression and hope called “Vincent and the Doctor.” Neither of these are like anything seen in Doctor Who before, and the freshness that comes from not knowing or caring about the formula is unmistakable.

5. He brought fairy tales to Doctor Who. I’m amazed that no one tried this earlier, since it seems so obvious. A madman with a blue box who spirits people away on adventures through time and space? Who is already a fairy tale, and it’s so steeped in British culture at this point that it’s become a story parents tell their children, just like the works of the brothers Grimm. Moffat added a generous helping of fairy dust to the proceedings, beginning with young Amy Pond’s encounter with her “raggedy Doctor,” and ending with the adult Amy conjuring the Doctor and the Tardis from her memory, drawing on the power of a story she’d clung to most of her life.

It didn’t stop there, though. The season-long threat was a fairy tale, a crack in the wall, with monsters living on the other side. The Pandorica, the box in which the Doctor’s enemies finally trapped him, was a story passed down through generations, a modern myth. And even the trap the Autons laid for him came from a story – the memories of Amy Pond, retold through living plastic. Moffat’s thesis, that the stories we tell one another are alive, and have power, was given full flower in “The Big Bang,” particularly in its resolution. It doesn’t make sense, but it feels right. It feels magical.

6. The bow tie. Bow ties are cool.

And of course, some things he did wrong:

1. He approved “Victory of the Daleks.” Hoo boy, was this one lousy. Mark Gatiss wrote this absolute disaster, the third episode of the season and the only one I flat-out don’t like. The premise is brilliant: Winston Churchill uses Daleks to win World War II. The execution, however, is atrocious. This episode just keeps tumbling further and further into failure as it goes, concluding with the worst redesign of the Daleks ever (and they’ve been around almost as long as the show). Moffat needs to exercise some better quality control.

2. He went with Davies’ stable of writers. The weakest episodes of the season were the ones not penned by Moffat, Nye and Curtis, but by the same writers responsible for bog-standard Who episodes over the last five years. We’ve discussed Gatiss, but there was also Toby Whithouse and Chris Chibnall, turning in decent but unimaginative sci-fi tales. Only Gareth Roberts rose above with “The Lodger,” based on an old comic strip he’d written – that one got by on glorious dialogue and Matt Smith’s dazzling performance. Next year, I hope Moffat turns to even more novice or outside-the-box writers. He’s already enlisted Neil Gaiman for an episode, so that’s a good start.

3. He didn’t leave much time for character development. Russell T. Davies wasn’t particularly good at long-term plotting, and his resolutions often left much to be desired. But he was aces at character, at giving the Doctor and his companions real beating hearts (two, in the Doc’s case). Moffat has the opposite problem. His plots are brilliant, but his character work was lacking this year. I still don’t feel like we know Amy Pond very well, even though she was the center of the story, and all we know about Rory is he’s a simple guy who likes Amy. Next year, we need more space to breathe. We need to take our characters out of the maze of plot for a few minutes and really get to know them.

4. The fez. Fezzes aren’t cool.

That’s essentially it, though – the only faults I can find with an otherwise exemplary season of Doctor Who. It was funny, it was sad, it was crazy convoluted and mind-blowing, but most of all, it was magical. It reaffirmed the mission statement of the show: it’s a big wide universe, and anything is possible. Bring on the Christmas special, and season 32. And here’s hoping Matt Smith stays for years and years.

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What’s that, you say? Music column? Oh, right, sorry. Here, have a review:

It’s a real surprise to me that Marc Cohn is considered a one-hit wonder. His one big smash remains “Walking in Memphis,” and if you’re gonna have a hit, you can only hope it’s as good as this one is. “Memphis” deserves to be one of those songs everybody knows. But then, so do so many other Marc Cohn songs. There’s “True Companion,” of course, which has somehow become a wedding staple, but there’s “Silver Thunderbird” and “No Rest for the Weary” and “She’s Becoming Gold” and “Girl of Mysterious Sorrow.” Most recently, there’s “Dance Back From the Grave,” from Cohn’s long-delayed fourth album, 2007’s Join the Parade. I swear, I didn’t hear a better song about New Orleans after Katrina from anyone.

Cohn is a terrific songwriter, is what I’m saying. So I’m not sure why he thought we’d want to hear an album of covers from him, especially since he’s only managed four records of original material in 19 years. I bought Listening Booth: 1970 simply because I’m a completist, and I want everything Cohn does. But I admit I didn’t approach this project with much excitement. When I buy a Marc Cohn CD, I want what I’ve always wanted from him: more wonderful original songs.

That said, I fully enjoyed this little record. For one thing, it’s not your standard covers album. It doubles as an argument for 1970 as one of the most important years in music history. All of these 12 songs were released that year, and you will know every single one of them. I was truly surprised to find out these dozen little masterpieces all have a common year of origin. Cohn’s wonderful liner notes describe the old listening booths record stores used to have, where customers could slip on headphones and cue up records of their choice, in semi-private. This album reflects many of the songs Cohn heard as a child through those headphones, songs that informed his early musical growth.

I can’t quibble with the selection. The album opens with the Cat Stevens classic “Wild World,” moves on through John Lennon’s “Look at Me” and Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” (both released as the world was coping with the Beatles’ breakup), and includes “The Letter” (the Box Tops), “The Only Living Boy in New York” (Simon and Garfunkel), “The Tears of a Clown” (Smokey Robinson and the Miracles), “No Matter What” (Badfinger), “New Speedway Boogie” (the Grateful Dead) and “Into the Mystic” (Van Morrison). It closes with a gorgeous take on Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Long as I Can See the Light.”

Musically, this is soft, mellow, acoustic and lovely. It was produced and largely played by John Leventhal, Shawn Colvin’s musical partner, and if you know his work, you know what this sounds like. Cohn’s voice is deeper than it used to be, but he sounds invigorated by the chance to sing so many of his favorite songs. He enlists some left-field help, like India.Arie, who sings on Bread’s “Make It With You,” and Aimee Mann, who provides harmonies on “No Matter What.” Everything falls into place nicely – this is a sweet little record, one to put on for a rainy Sunday afternoon, and Cohn sounds comfortable and happy.

So okay, Marc, I like your covers record. Now, how about writing a few more songs?

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As I was putting this column to bed, I got news that Andy Hummel, Big Star’s original bassist, died at age 59 after a struggle with cancer. Man, it’s a bad year to be a Big Star fan. The band’s mastermind, Alex Chilton, died in March, leaving drummer Jody Stephens as the last surviving member of the band. Rest in peace, Andy.

Next week, a look at recent releases from the Lilith Fair set, and whatever else strikes my fancy. 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.

When I was younger, I used to run out of gas all the time.

I had just learned to drive, and my mother had given me my first car, a 1984 Toyota Corolla. It was a stick shift, and the gas gauge was broken. The only way to tell when to refuel was to count the miles on the trip odometer. Every 300 miles or so, I’d need a fresh tank.

Only I didn’t quite believe the odometer, so I’d push my luck. I’d be driving along, watching the numbers flip over – 310, 315 – certain that I’d be able to squeeze a few more miles out of the old girl. So when the car started convulsing and making choking noises, and I’d scan around furtively, searching my internal map of the area for a gas station, I was always surprised. I remember the car sputtering to a stop on the side of the road at least four times during my time with it, and each time, I just couldn’t believe it.

The lesson I learned was, it’s important to know when you’re out of gas, and you need to stop and refuel. You may not think you’re running on empty, but the evidence doesn’t lie.

That’s a lesson Neil Finn could stand to learn. I consider Finn one of the greatest songwriters alive right now, but listening to his recent output, you’d never know it. You have no idea how much I hate writing this next sentence: Finn’s last great song was “Turn and Run,” all the way back in 2001. Before that, he was unbeatable. He had a string of excellent tunes with Split Enz before taking the ball and running with it in Crowded House. Very few pop albums I’ve ever heard can touch those four original Crowded House records, released between 1986 and 1993.

Then came the great first Finn Brothers album, written with his brother Tim, and Neil’s two sterling solo records, Try Whistling This and One Nil. That’s just a great run for any songwriter, and One Nil put a wonderful capper on it – it contains some of my favorite Neil Finn songs, “Turn and Run” included, but also “Driving Me Mad,” “Human Kindness” and “Anytime.” It’s just a wonderful little record.

And then? I have no clue what happened. All I know is, I can barely even get through the Crowded House reunion album, 2007’s Time on Earth. Finn’s prodigious gift for melody seemed to have deserted him entirely, and he turned in an overlong slog, full of dirges and sad experiments. I was hoping it was a one-time failure, a rare dry spell, and Finn would be back to business before long. But now here’s Intriguer, the new Crowded House album, and it leaves me with only one conclusion: Neil Finn is out of gas.

Now, let’s be fair up front. Intriguer isn’t nearly as bad as Time on Earth. For one thing, I’ve listened to the entire album three times, without feeling the intense urge to shut it off, eject the disc and throw it at something hard. But none of these 10 songs come close to the standard Neil Finn has set for himself. It’s a lazy, hazy kind of record, one that trades in mid-tempos and has virtually no hooks. If you’re not paying attention, it will just kind of drift by. Finn songs simply don’t do that – they grab you, make you stop what you’re doing to listen with everything you have.

Not these, though. Intriguer’s first third is its strongest, and for a while, you might actually think you’re hearing a creative rebirth. “Saturday Sun” is the closest Finn comes to writing a great tune here. It’s got a marvelous propulsive bass-and-drums opener (as a side note, it’s always good to hear Nick Seymour play again), and a chorus that, while not dazzling, is certainly one you’ll remember. It’s also the closest this album comes to rocking out. From here, it’s mainly acoustic guitars and gauzy moods.

“Archer’s Arrows” is similarly nice, with Finn reaching for that falsetto in the chorus. And “Amsterdam” has a sweet minor-key melody in the verses, and some very cool chords, even if it never quite stumbles on a hook. And that’s kind of it. All the other songs are forgettable at best, boring at worst. The only thing worth hearing in “Either Side of the World” is Mickey Hart’s ascending piano line. “Falling Dove” goes for “Blackbird” in the verses, and “Lady Madonna” in the bridge, but falls far short of both. It’s not a terrible piece of music, just a blah one, although it’s worlds better than the plodding “Isolation” (despite Neil’s wife Sharon and son Liam pitching in) and the apathetic “Inside Out.”

Many will tell you that “Twice If You’re Lucky” is classic Crowded House. I can see how this should be a great song. It has a wonderful lyric about second chances (“These are times that come only once in your life, or twice if you’re lucky”) and the verses have potential. If Finn had come up with a compelling chorus, this could have been a winner. But he didn’t. “Twice If You’re Lucky” never quite takes off, and wastes a fine lyric on a blah melody. Of all of these 10 songs, this is the one I most wish I could love.

And the record just peters out from there, trickling away with the middling piano ballad “Elephants.” In all, the album probably earns a C+. It’s not unlistenable, there’s nothing here that utterly destroys the Crowded House legacy, but likewise, there’s nothing that adds to it either. And it loses points from me simply because an album by one of the world’s best living songwriters ought to be better than this. It’s possible that Intriguer will grow on me, but Neil Finn songs shouldn’t have to grow on me. They should grab me from listen one.

I want to love Intriguer. I don’t want to be upset with Finn for resurrecting the Crowded House name, and then turning out mediocre work under it. But that’s where I am. I feel like none of these 10 songs would have made the cut on the first four Crowded House albums. I feel like Finn himself should be bored by these tunes. I feel like listening to Woodface again, to remind me of when he was great.

But most of all, I feel like Neil Finn needs to take some time off. He’s put out an album of new songs every couple of years for a few decades now, and it sounds to me like he needs to recharge the ol’ batteries. Intriguer’s a better album than he’s made in a while, but perhaps with an extended vacation, he can come back with new material that can stand with his best. I hope so, because I hate writing unimpressed reviews of Neil Finn albums. It’s just not fun for me.

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Speaking of a guy who needs to take a break, here’s Trent Reznor.

Last year, Reznor famously put Nine Inch Nails to rest. The final (for now) NIN album, The Slip, was offered as a free download from his website, and it sounded like a freebie – the songs were fairly standard NIN stompers, with a couple of ballads and instrumentals thrown in, and the record had none of his usual meticulous attention to detail and flow. It was a weird way for one of the most interesting artists of the last 20 years to go out, but once the Wave Goodbye tour wound down, Reznor was fairly quick to announce his new project.

It’s called How to Destroy Angels, and it’s a collaboration with his wife, Mariqueen Maandig. But other than that, you’d never know this wasn’t just more Nine Inch Nails material, left over on Reznor’s hard drive. HTDA’s self-titled six-song EP emphasizes the spookier, dingier, crawl-through-the-muck side of NIN (think “Reptile” and “The Wretched” and “Me, I’m Not” and a dozen others), and Maandig’s vocals certainly add a new dimension to it. But what’s here is essentially Nine Inch Nails with a woman singing.

I don’t dislike this, but it isn’t anything new for Reznor. The EP even takes on some familiar lyrical topics: “Fur-Lined,” which I can definitely imagine Reznor singing, is about losing control and turning into an animal, Maandig asking again and again, “Is this really happening?” “A Drowning” (essentially a clone of “The Wretched”) is about not being able to save yourself, a theme cleverly illuminated by the repeated line “I don’t think I can save myself.” And “BBB” stands for “Big Black Boots,” and is about tyranny: “No more thought control, you do what you’re told.”

Count me as one of the NIN fans who was hoping How to Destroy Angels would lead Reznor to new places. It still might – it’s early days yet, and a full-length HTDA album could be something else altogether. There are hints of it here, with the mallet percussion in “The Believers” and the lengthy ambient playout of “A Drowning.” But mainly, this EP still finds Reznor mired in his old lyrical obsessions, and sticking to the beats and synth noises that populated NIN records. Maandig may be providing the vocals, but the voice is Reznor’s, and it’s the same as it ever was.

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What’s that? Review something I like a lot? Okay, how about this: I think Sia’s new album, We Are Born, is awesome.

You may remember Australian singer Sia Furler from her time with Zero 7, but you most likely recall her solo song “Breathe Me” – it was used to haunting and brilliant effect over the closing minutes of Six Feet Under in 2005. She has a marvelous voice, quirky yet soulful, and “Breathe Me” is a superb little song. You’ll forgive me for expecting her career to take off in this country, but alas, she remains virtually unknown.

For a while, Sia followed the Sarah McLachlan route, writing pretty ballads and singing the hell out of them. (There are several on her last record, 2008’s Some People Have Real Problems.) But We Are Born takes a splendid left turn – it’s a nearly non-stop party album, full to bursting with danceable beats, slinky bass lines, hooky choruses and fun, fun, fun. There are some who will tell you I’m opposed to fun, like I can’t let my hair down and enjoy a party record. If it’s as well-crafted as this one is, though, I’ve got no problem. Sign me up for the dance floor.

I knew I was going to love this once I heard the chorus of “Clap Your Hands,” the second track. Over a thumpity-thump bass line and some nifty synth gurgles, Sia belts out nonsensical lyrics (“Clap your hands, clap your hands, turn the lights on my nights, this is life and we only get one chance”) and wraps them around a killer little melody. “You’ve Changed” is similarly kickass, opening with a toy piano, slipping into some Franz Ferdinand guitar-disco, and making full use of Sia’s powerhouse voice. The tempo of the record is on overdrive – you have to wait until track five, “Be Good to Me,” for the first slowdown, and track 10 for the second. And neither of those slow things down too much.

We Are Born was produced by Greg Kurstin, the male half of The Bird and the Bee, which accounts for some of the kitschy fun on display. Kurstin co-wrote five songs here, and plays keyboards on every track. But it’s Furler who’s driving this bus. You can tell by the way she throws herself into the vocals here – she’s always been a good singer, but on tracks like “Cloud” and “I’m in Here,” she outdoes herself. Perhaps the best product of the Furler/Kurstin partnership is “Never Gonna Leave Me,” a hookalicious ditty with a chorus that will stay in your head for hours.

The album takes on darker tones as it goes on. The amazing “Cloud” is an atmospheric delight, with a soaring chorus and some nimble guitar work from Nick Valensi. (Valensi’s guitar is all over this album, adding just the right amount of rock to these dance-y tracks.) “I’m In Here,” reprised at the end in a piano-vocal version, is a trippy little ballad with some nifty melodic turns. And “The Co-Dependent” has an appealing ‘80s vibe, with little bursts of guitar and handclaps and a dark minor-key chorus. But don’t worry, the party never really stops – the record’s most serious track is a more beat-heavy cover of Madonna’s “Oh Father” that closes things out.

But even that can’t dull the 50 minutes of awesome that precede it. Sia has taken a bold step into full-on danceable fun, and done it with style. Far from being merely an entertaining detour, We Are Born is Sia’s best album, and if I had my way, it would be the blueprint for dance-pop records from now on. I hope radio pays attention this time, but even if it doesn’t, you should. If you like smart, well-crafted fun, this is the album for you.

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Next week, thoughts on Matt Smith’s first season of Doctor Who, and a review of the new Marc Cohn album. And whatever else happens to spark my interest. 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’ve been a Choir fan for 20 years.

I know, it’s difficult for me to believe too. I still vividly remember being a gangly 16-year-old misfit, and being drawn to a peculiar-looking album with a picture of a tire swing on the cover. This was Circle Slide, my first Choir album (their sixth), and I can still remember the feeling of sinking into its remarkable textures and grooves, letting it surround me. I’d never heard anything like it, and quite honestly, I still haven’t.

If you’ve never heard of the Choir, well, I can’t blame you. They started their career signed to various tiny Christian labels, and for the past 10 years, they’ve been completely independent, issuing new records on sax player Dan Michaels’ Galaxy 21 Music and playing as few shows as possible. They have made some of the most deeply moving and brilliant music I’ve ever encountered, and very few people have heard it.

So it goes, I guess. I used to be angry about it, but the band isn’t, so I’m not sure why I should be. Every time the Choir plays a concert, or releases an album, my overwhelming emotion is gratitude. I’m so very thankful to have this band in my life. So many others in their position would have hung it up by now, but the Choir soldiers on, still creating music unlike any other I know, and doing it with grace and wonder. The band seems grateful, too, to still be around and playing their songs to however many people buy and appreciate them. There’s no bitterness in what they do, so there’s no need for me to bring any to the table.

But really, there’s no other band like them. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, the Choir put out a remarkable string of swirly, experimental albums that expressed a dark and yet hopeful spirituality, one that made me, as a young man, think about my own life in ways I never had. Drummer Steve Hindalong, in addition to being some kind of mad percussion genius, is also a lyricist with a rare gift: his songs are specific and detailed, yet universal. He’s able to talk about his faith, yet fill his lyrics with doubt (“The cosmonauts were first in space, to look for God and find no trace…”). He’s able to write love songs full of the imperfection that is every true, long-lasting relationship (“I’m thinking it won’t get any worse, I’m thinking about buying you a hat and a purse, I’m thinking about strangling you, you know that never was more untrue…”).

And then there is Derri Daugherty, the man who gets to sing Hindalong’s words. Daugherty has a clear, high, simply beautiful voice, and while I like how he uses it in his other band, the Americana-style Lost Dogs, he was born to sing Choir songs. Daugherty is one of my favorite guitar players – he works with a sonic palette that would make most guitarists cry. He’s able to create oceans of beautiful noise, provide exactly the right clean-toned accent to every line, and rock like his hair’s on fire when he needs to. He’s simply amazing.

Add to that the off-kilter bass of Tim Chandler, the saxophone and lyricon of Michaels (he’s the only lyricon player I’ve ever seen, and he makes that instrument sing), and, in recent years, the ambient brilliance of Hammock guitarist Marc Byrd, and you have a unique sound, one that often feels like speeding down a dark road in the middle of a dream. The sound has its roots in many things – Daugherty’s obviously a big Robin Guthrie fan – but it is wholly theirs, and for me, instantly recognizable.

We haven’t had a lot of opportunity to hear that sound in the last 10 years. Just two albums, one in 2000 and one in 2005, totaling 80 minutes of material. And Flap Your Wings, the earlier of those records, just wasn’t very good. But somehow, the Choir has found a new burst of inspiration. 2005’s O How the Mighty Have Fallen was one of their very best albums – they found the perfect balance of unearthly atmospherics and down-to-earth melody on that one, and it felt like an arrival point and a rebirth. Also, it rocked like it had something to prove.

Five years later, here’s Burning Like the Midnight Sun, the Choir’s 12th album, and this one is even better. Part of the reason is they’re done proving whatever they had to on Mighty. It’s the difference between working hard to be one of the best bands in the world, and simply being one. Burning is more confident, its steps more certain, and because of that, it goes places no Choir album before it has gone. The last record was a mission statement. This one is mission accomplished.

You can hear it from the first notes of “Midnight Sun,” the scorching first single. The sound is reminiscent of ‘80s Choir albums, Daugherty’s huge and reverbed guitar ringing out a three-note phrase while Hindalong sets the pace. The major difference here is Daugherty has all but given up rhythm guitar, preferring to layer notes and soundscapes atop one another, just like he did in the Chase the Kangaroo days. Byrd pitches in with some dreamy sound paintings, as Daugherty launches into a killer chorus, one that truly sets the tone for latter-day Choir: “I’m not going down behind the mountain, I’m never gonna fade away, I’m burning like the midnight sun…”

If you can listen to this song and not want to hear the rest of the record, I don’t know what to say. It’s the perfect opening track, and as it turns out, it’s just the first half of the best one-two punch this band has delivered since the ‘80s. “That Melancholy Ghost,” at track two, is faster, more intricate, and more amazing. A song about the unpredictable moods of children, it features a super-fast lead guitar line that just knocks me out. Two songs in, and Burning Like the Midnight Sun already owns me.

This is the most confident, assured Choir album in 20 years. As such, the band doesn’t mind naming two songs after band members, and telling funny, personal stories in the lyrics. This is one for themselves, and for longtime fans. “Mr. Chandler” is a little masterpiece, a song about Tim’s run-in with airport security after fixing a typo on his ticket. The lyrics are satisfied with just telling this tale, not giving it extra significance, but the music is a dark and glorious crawl, dripping with import. When Daugherty sings “Mr. Chandler, you’ve got a fraudulent ticket,” it’s surprisingly scary.

“The Legend of Old Man Byrd” is much lighter. Written for Marc Byrd’s 40th birthday, the song’s kind of a cowboy tune, but rendered in the same chiming guitars and elastic bass notes as everything else here. It’s simple and fun, and a nice breather in the middle of what is a surprisingly serious record. It’s especially welcome after the album’s two most sentimental songs, which are also its weakest. The first, “Between Bare Trees” is a pretty little number, about holding on to the one you love before everything crashes down, but it’s never more than pretty, and the wavery vocals in the chorus don’t quite do it for me.

The other is “A Friend So Kind,” written as a eulogy for pianist and string arranger Tom Howard, who died in January. I was worried about this one just from the title, but the music is amazing. The minute-long “Biko”-style intro is suitably haunted, the acoustic guitar is gorgeous, the melody is striking and memorable, and Daugherty sings the hell out of it. The lyrics, though, are a little on the nose. They’re clearly heartfelt, and well-intentioned, but Hindalong usually digs deeper than this: “So now you’ve gone away in a sudden gust of wind, and we’re sadder than hell because we miss you, dear friend.” It’s a very personal song, and its sentiments are straightforward. If you can deal with that, you’ll love it.

In the album’s second half, though, Hindalong is on fire. There are songs on here that contain my favorite Choir lyrics, and the band stepped up, writing some incredible songs around them. The second half of Burning goes more spiritual and more political, and there are no moments of levity. It’s just full-on awesome, and it starts with “I’m Sorry I Laughed,” a dreamy tune about regretting our own weakness. Where “Mr. Chandler” merely told its story, here Hindalong uses an on-stage mishap as a metaphor for our own tendency not to extend grace when we should. (The band also reuses a blaring saxophone lick from Chase the Kangaroo. Yes, I’m that into the band that I noticed this, though Jeff Elbel noticed it first.)

But it’s “The Word Inside the Word” on which Hindalong outdoes himself. Here’s a guy who rarely makes sweeping statements about religion and spirituality, preferring to keep things personal, but he does so here, and it’s brilliant. He references Gandhi, Muhammad, Buddha and Martin Luther King Jr. as men of peace and mercy – not the name-drops you’d expect, but fitting ones – and takes to task those who would use religion as a bludgeon. “The message is not a curse, a weapon of ancient verse, come out of the dark age, turn the light on, I’ve already heard enough to know what I’m certain of, the word inside the word is love…” The song itself is a killer, a three-minute rocker with a superb chorus and some sterling guitar work from Daugherty. The breakdown takes my breath away. “Every child is Heaven’s own, drop the stone…”

“It Should’ve Been Obvious” is similar, a sideways look at those who judge, framed by a dip into history, when Christians owned slaves. He’s right, it should have been obvious, but it apparently wasn’t, and he uses that as a metaphor for our own mistakes now. Hindalong even makes a quick statement about homosexuality: “Yeah, that was me, the self-appointed judge of your own orientation, I studied law at the blind man’s school of cruel indoctrination.”

And then there’s “Invisible,” an absolutely explosive piece of music. Just listen to Daugherty’s nimble, ascending guitar line in the verses, and then marvel as he full-on rocks out on the choruses. The lyrics here describe a fever dream of demons on horses riding to kill us all, and they sport some trademark Hindalong abstractions: “Enticing voices, alluring dark, miraculous joy elixir jar, with wobbly knees and blurry vision, I’ve already made the wrong decision…”

“Say Goodbye to Neverland” closes out both the album and my favorite stretch of Choir songs in two decades, and it’s probably my favorite thing here. Over a mournful piano figure, Daugherty sings Hindalong’s words about innocence dying. The song is chilling and lovely, especially when Byrd starts his magical guitar noise behind it all. Then, just as the piece has built to a brilliant crescendo, everything stops, and Byrd takes over, painting the night sky with formless, glorious sound. A few more piano notes, and a last thought: “Breathe in, breathe out, heart don’t fail, embrace the moment…” And it’s over.

Now, let me be clear. I’m always grateful to hear new Choir material. No matter what they do, I will support them. But even I never thought I’d get to hear a new Choir record this good. Sonically, musically, lyrically, it is their best record in 20 years, the product of a creative high I never thought I’d hear them revel in again. It’s rare that a band celebrates 25 years together, let alone 28, and if they do, most bands start repeating themselves, or falling into a pit they can’t get out of. The Choir, somehow, has avoided both. Burning Like the Midnight Sun breaks new ground, and rides a wave of inspiration so wide and so deep it’s almost hard to believe.

I’ve said this before, but you don’t talk up a band like the Choir to prove how cool you are for knowing a band like this. You do it because to keep music this special to yourself would be criminal. I want you all to hear this, and hopefully love it as much as I do. If I had to pick a favorite band, it would most likely be the Choir, and Burning Like the Midnight Sun stands tall with the best of their work. This band changed my life, and they keep adding to my pile of good things. Thank you, guys. Thank you, thank you.

To hear the Choir, head to www.myspace.com/thechoir. To check out the amazing new album, go to www.thechoir.net.

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I saw the Choir, along with about 20 other bands, play the Cornerstone Festival in Bushnell this year. While I was there, I wrote up my observations, and I’ve posted them as a second column this week. Go here to read it. Short version: the festival was amazing, and I discovered a bunch of new bands to follow. Plus, I got to see Iona and Over the Rhine and Eisley and the Lost Dogs. It was a good time.

Next week, Crowded House returns, plus new things from Sia, Trent Reznor and others. 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 had probably a dozen people ask me if I was going to Lollapalooza this year. My response to them was always the same: “No, I think I’m going to Cornerstone instead.” And the reply was usually a quizzical look. Yes, I was passing up the chance to see Green Day and Soundgarden and numerous other popular acts in Grant Park to hang out at a Christian music festival in the middle of nowhere.

And you know what? I’d make the same decision again in a heartbeat.

Last year’s Lollapalooza experience convinced me that I never want to do it again, especially now that they’ve opened the gates up to 20,000 more people. I had fun, but it was a festival full of people who didn’t care if I lived or died, and there were just too many of those people for me to fully enjoy myself. Cornerstone, on the other hand, is smaller – the gallery stage, where I spent most of my time, can hold about 800 people – and infinitely nicer. The vibe there is love and joy, music and fun.

Plus – and I promise you, this is true – there’s more truly great music at Cornerstone than at Lollapalooza. I saw some old favorites, and made a bunch of new ones this year – a full list of bands to check out is at the bottom of this column. I had a fantastic time at the fest this year, and I’d love to do it again next year. I owe lots of thanks to Jeff Elbel, who roomed with me, and to Chris MacIntosh, Grandfather Rock himself, who hung out with me.

Each day, after the festivities ended, I posted a summary on my blog. What follows are those posts, reworked and edited. I know, it’s like cheating, but I also wrote a 2,200-word review of the Choir’s amazing new album, Burning Like the Midnight Sun, this week, and you can find that here. For now, here are the details on my Pilgrimage to Bushnell.

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Day One – June 30, 2010

Gentle readers, I am bone tired.

I decided last year that I am just too old for all-day music festivals. This is a hard pill to swallow, but Lollapalooza really did me in last summer. Cornerstone, the annual Jesus People USA party in Bushnell, IL (roughly three hours from my house), is smaller and easier, but 13 hours of sun and music still took its toll on me today. Don’t get old. It’s depressing.

So if I’d already decided I was too ancient and decrepit for this sort of thing, why am I at Cornerstone this year? Well, that’s where the corollaries to the “too old” rule come into play. If enough stars align, enough top-of-the-heap acts turn up on the roster, I’ll be in. I’m too much of an obsessive fan to do anything else. Lollapalooza and Pitchfork seemed like total wastes of time this year, but Cornerstone… well, three big stars aligned, plus my friend Jeff Elbel agreed to split the cost of a hotel room, so here I am.

It’s been five years since I ventured out to Cornerstone Farm, a giant field in the middle of nowhere. In 2005, my response was mixed – I loved the music, but railed against the odd and all-pervasive commercialism, the Jesus-peddling I saw everywhere. I’m not sure if the fest has changed, or if I’ve mellowed out, but what struck me this time is just how cool Cornerstone is. It’s a non-stop hippie party, the kind of festival at which people leave their bags on their seats to mark them, unafraid that anything will be stolen. There’s a bike park, there’s a grocery store, there are campers and tents and RVs everywhere, and the overall vibe is just fun.

When I was a kid in Massachusetts, discovering all this cool music that no one I knew had ever heard of (The Choir, Daniel Amos, the Prayer Chain, etc.), I thought of Cornerstone as this magical faraway land I would likely never get to visit. I still think it’s kind of magical, even though I live here now, and this is my third time. The feeling is just different. Attendance is down this year, the merch tents are dark and dispiriting places, and some people I talked to are certain that Cornerstone is petering out. But still, everyone’s just happy to be there, and to hear music they can’t hear anywhere else.

As much as I try to say that I’m just in it for the music, I know it’s not true. I listen to this stuff, and I come to this festival, to confront my own faith, or lack thereof, and to see the world through the prism of these fascinating artists, if only for a little while. I’m not interested in simple declarations of faith – I could go to the main stage for that, if I wanted to, but I don’t. TobyMac makes me want to run away screaming. But I’m also not interested in avoiding the topic, either. As a man with a very abstract spiritualism (and virtually no religious tendencies), I want faith presented to me in new ways, ones that will make me think about it and consider my own beliefs.

While watching the Glenn Kaiser Band play the Gallery Stage today, I thought about this little corner of the music world, and how it’s perceived. Glenn Kaiser is easily one of the best blues guitarists in Chicago, if not the country. Why don’t you know who he is? Well, Glenn preaches. A lot. His set is about 50% killer blues riffing, and 50% talking – this time, he spoke about how Christians should get out of their churches and help their neighbors, a topic well worth visiting, in my view.

If Glenn stopped his preaching and just played, he wouldn’t be true to himself. But because he’s true to himself, no one knows how good he is. It’s very strange to me. Admittedly, Glenn Kaiser can be a lot to take in all at once, but if there’s any act on the festival bill that should be too Jesus-y for me, it’s him. And I loved listening to his set this afternoon. His perspective is not my perspective, but I enjoy hearing it, and imagining the world through his eyes.

But let’s talk about those aligning stars, before I collapse from exhaustion. I said three of them lined up for me (and I think three is the minimum it would take to get me to this fest), and two of them played today. The first is, of course, the Lost Dogs, that spiritual pop supergroup of Mike Roe, Terry Taylor, Derri Daugherty and Steve Hindalong, four guys I’ve been listening to since I was 16 years old.

The Dogs actually played throughout the day, in various combinations. Roe started things off with an acoustic set full of the old gospel and blues songs he’s been fascinated by recently. I’ve said it before, but give me Mike Roe and an acoustic guitar, and I’ll be happy for hours. Taylor then took to the stage for a trio set (with Roe on bass and Hindalong on drums) that flipped through some of his more obscure back pages. (He actually played “I Had a Bad Experience With the CIA and Now I’m Gonna Show You My Feminine Side.” I would have been happy if he’d merely said the title from the Cornerstone stage.)

Roe and Daugherty then did a set of covers and oldies, which was nice. Daugherty, who sings with the Choir, has a high and clear voice, while Roe’s is more typical bluesman, more rough than smooth. Together they sounded elegant. The highlight, for me, was “Dunce Cap,” my favorite Lost Dogs song, and one I’d never heard live.

The Dogs then played a full-on rock and roll set at 10 p.m., and man, it was great. Their new album, Old Angel, is an absolute masterpiece, and it seems to have revitalized these aging troubadours. Every second of their set rippled with energy. Hindalong remains the most entertaining drummer on the planet to watch – his facial expressions are priceless – and the rapport between the four of them is at an all-time high.

The second of my stars tonight was Iona, a five-piece from the U.K. I’ve been listening to Iona for almost 20 years now, and I’ve never seen them live before. It was amazing. I don’t know how to describe Iona. They’re like Celtic folk prog rock, like Rush jamming with Enya, and it sounds like it would be horrible, but it works brilliantly. 15-minute songs based on Celtic prayers with unison bagpipe and electric guitar solos, all capped off with the lovely voice of Joanne Hogg. They were great.

And you want to know why I consider Cornerstone magical? Try this. At 1:30 in the morning, Iona closed out their main set with a piece called “Castlerigg,” kind of an Irish jig on Jolt Cola. Even after 12 solid hours of music, everyone in the place – hundreds of people – got up and started dancing. It was pure joy in motion, and an awesome thing to be a part of.

Some stray observations and notes:

My roommate Jeff Elbel played another strong set of tunes with his ever-expansive band Ping – nine musicians this time. Several new songs, all of them good. Jeff also manages the gallery stage, where all the acts I saw today played, and he gets precious little thanks or sleep for the privilege. He’s much more tired than I am right now, and I’m pretty much wiped out.

The discovery of the festival so far is Shel, a band I was ready to laugh off. Four teenage sisters (drums, piano, mandolin and violin) backed up by their father on guitar. Sounds awful, right? But they were awesome. They played complex folk-rock, harmonized beautifully (especially on the more bizarre numbers), and capped it off with a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “The Battle of Evermore.” I was impressed.

The cafe near the Gallery Stage has a lemonade-and-iced-tea blend drink for sale. It’s called a Robert Palmer. That’s right, Robert Palmer, not Arnold. So I asked the kid behind the counter why, and he grinned and replied, “Because it’s simply irresistible.”

* * * * *

Day Two – July 1, 2010

Tired doesn’t even describe it today.

I woke up at about 8:30 a.m., because that’s just what I do – I haven’t slept past 8:30 in ages. I couldn’t get back to slumberland, so today I did 12 hours of music on four hours of sleep. You’ll forgive me if I keep this brief, although I don’t really think I will.

I’m going to say this as plainly as I can: the reason I got out of bed this morning at all was the Choir. I’ve been a fan for 20 years, and I’ve seen them play four times now. The last time was in 2005, which, sadly enough, was the last time they reconvened on stage. So after a half-decade without Choir shows, I was pretty stoked for tonight’s late-night performance.

I’ve been upfront about my absence of faith, but here’s one thing I will say: every time I get to see the Choir play, I thank God I’m alive. For one thing, it’s such a rare occurrence, and for another, every show may well be the last. And for a third, the Choir spins such a magical atmosphere each time out, it’s like living through a particularly vivid dream. I remember my first Choir concert, in 2001, after 11 years of listening to their records over and over again. I could scarcely believe it was happening – here were these people I’d only seen in photographs, playing this music I love intensely right in front of me. Magic.

If I ever needed confirmation that my heroes are human, tonight provided it. I don’t want to say this, but tonight was a bad Choir show. The band clearly hadn’t practiced much, and there were wrong notes galore, shifting tempos, forgotten lyrics, and a couple of spectacular flameouts. They tried to get through three new songs (from their wonderful new album Burning Like the Midnight Sun), and watched helplessly as they fell apart. The set was heavy on their twin high water marks Chase the Kangaroo and Circle Slide, and featured songs this band has been playing for 20 years. And yet, in Derri Daugherty’s own words, it was rough.

Despite all that, I still enjoyed myself. Watching these guys play is always fun, and these songs are so permanently etched into my soul that even a bad performance couldn’t spoil them. I feel lucky to have seen this show, and lucky to be a fan of this band. And the hundreds who gathered to watch the Choir’s return to the gallery stage all seemed to feel the same way. This is our band, and if they have an off night, we’ll help them through it. We love them. Tonight of all nights, we love them.

And every time I get to hear them play that bit in the middle of “Circle Slide,” when they all just start making as much pretty noise as they can for as long as they can, my heart sings. “Circle Slide” was magnificent tonight. It’s the kind of song that lifts you up and twirls you around, higher and higher. I wish the entire show had been as good, but hey, I got to see the Choir play one more time. I’m very lucky.

Also, I can console myself by listening to Burning Like the Midnight Sun over and over again. For the second time in a row, they’ve made their best album since Circle Slide.

I expected the rest of my day would be long and boring while I waited for the Choir to play. But I took in some superb performances today, and discovered some new favorites. Today’s gallery stage lineup was assembled by John Thompson of the Wayside, formerly of Aurora, Illinois and now of Nashville. Thompson brought several of his fellow Nashville troubadours up north with him, and they were all quite good.

There was songwriter Kate York, whose clear voice and lovely tunes were captivating even with no accompaniment. “It Rains Here Too” may be the prettiest sad song I’ve heard in years. Brooke Wagonner played a set of Regina Spektor-ish piano pop, quirky and dramatic. And the Farewell Drifters showed off their chops – they’re a bluegrass band (two guitars, stand-up bass, mandolin and fiddle) that plays well-written pop songs with great harmonies. Well worth checking out.

The Wayside closed out the New Nashville portion of the program, playing a selection from their new one, Spiritual Songs. Very nice stuff, traditional and church-y, but well-arranged. I must confess, though, I ducked out for a bit before the Wayside took the stage, to go see metal maniacs Sacred Warrior. I used to listen to them back in my teenage metalhead days, and their brand of Queensryche-esque rock still made me smile.

And Jeff Elbel and Ping’s set on one of the smaller side stages was the most fun moment of my day. Seven musicians crammed onto a tiny stage, playing a ragged set full of splendid covers, from “The Whole of the Moon” to “The Book of Love” to Chagall Guevara’s massive “Violent Blue.” It was an absolute blast, and the 40 or so people privileged enough to see it all had a great time. Plus, Jeff gave away a plaster cast of his teeth to one lucky audience member. You can’t top that.

So even though the Choir show wasn’t all it could have been, today’s lineup was a good one. Tomorrow I get to close this whole thing out with Over the Rhine, and I can’t think of anything better. Wait, no, I can – sleeping for six or seven hours straight. I think I’ll try that. Check back here to see if I was successful.

* * * * *

Day Three – July 2, 2010

So I’ve been reading this book by Daniel J. Levitin called The World in Six Songs. In it, Levitin posits that music is an evolutionary necessity, an absolutely vital part of our human existence. We create music because we have to, because our brains are wired to express and receive information and emotions through song. Music is, Levitin says, a biological imperative. We sing because we are, and we are, in large part, because we sing.

I see that everywhere I look at Cornerstone. Every few feet, someone is making music, and I don’t just mean the bands on the myriad of stages. Small groups harmonize in the middle of the walking path. A kid with a guitar spins stories while his friend keeps time on a plastic bucket. One of the coolest things I saw all week was a collective of acoustic players gathered inside an unused silo on the farm grounds, singing and taking in the ambiance.

Music is part of our hardware, and music festivals like Cornerstone are places we can connect on that deep, spiritual level. For me personally, I haven’t gone a day without listening to music since… well, I can’t even tell you. And when I meet someone, most often the first thing I want to know about them is what kind of music they like. I’m always on the lookout for new musical experiences, new connections.

Friday was new discovery day at Cornerstone. I knew going in this would be the day with the fewest expectations. None of my well-aligned stars found their way into Friday’s lineup – the headliner at the gallery stage was Over the Rhine, a band I love dearly, but one I’ve seen more than half a dozen times. OtR played twice, once acoustically and once with their full electric sound. They debuted some new songs from the upcoming album The Long Surrender. Their sets were terrific, as always, and I can’t think of a better way to bid the 2010 Cornerstone experience goodbye than listening to Karin Bergquist sing.

But before today, I’d never heard of most of the other bands I took in. And now I have some new favorites (and a bunch of new CDs I haven’t heard yet). I started the day by breaking my moratorium on the main stage – I saw Photoside Cafe, after hearing nothing but good things about them for two days. They were terrific. People told me they resemble the Dave Matthews Band, but they don’t. They sound almost exactly like the Levellers – loud, aggressive folk-rock, with a violin at the center.

Dramatic rockers Dignan knocked me out with their rising-falling-rising-again guitar landscapes. Their album is called Cheaters and Thieves, and if it’s half as good as their set today, I’ll be happy. Paper Route was less impressive, although the crowd was into it. To me, it seemed like they stole Mutemath’s schtick: the drummer is energetic and entertaining in exactly the same ways Darren King is, everyone in the band played percussion at certain points, the show was highly choreographed. The difference is, Paper Route’s songs aren’t as strong. But they have potential.

But the find of the festival, for me, was Timbre. Yes, her name is Timbre. She plays a harp and sings, and her band is extraordinarily diverse, playing toy pianos, oboes, accordions and dozens of other instruments. One song featured a section in what I counted as 21/8, a most bizarre time signature, and at another point, everyone in the band crowded around Timbre, playing parts on her harp – it sounded like a web of plucked strings. Her new album, Little Flowers, includes a cover of Radiohead’s “Like Spinning Plates.” I can’t wait to hear this.

And then there was Eisley, a band I’ve always enjoyed. This sister act has completed its third album, evidently, but it’s lost in record label hell, and may never come out. Which is a shame, because the new song they played tonight (“Sad”) is excellent. Eisley is an energetic and melodic pop band with chops and harmonies and everything going for them. I hope they sort out their label situation soon, because they’re too good to languish for long.

And that’s it, the sum total of my Cornerstone ride this year. I heard from a lot of people how bad attendance was this year, and how depressing the festival was, but I didn’t feel much of that. There was enough extraordinary music to keep me going, even on virtually no sleep. Aside from that unfortunate Choir show, everything went better than I expected.I’m off to dreamland, my third Cornerstone behind me. Special thanks to Jeff Elbel for putting me up for the week, and to everyone I met and talked with. You all helped make a special experience even more so.

Good night, good night.

* * * * *

Here’s a list of bands I enjoyed this year, many of them new discoveries, with links so you can hear them:

The Lost Dogs: www.thelostdogs.com, www.myspace.com/thelostdogsmusic
The Choir: www.thechoir.net, www.myspace.com/thechoir
Iona: www.iona.uk.com, www.myspace.com/ionauk
Over the Rhine: www.overtherhine.com, www.myspace.com/overtherhine
Jeff Elbel and Ping: www.marathonrecords.com, www.myspace.com/jeff_elbel
Glenn Kaiser Band: www.glennkaiser.com, www.myspace.com/glennkaiserband
The Wayside: www.thewayside.info, www.myspace.com/thewayside
Kate York: www.myspace.com/kateyork
Brooke Waggoner: www.brookewaggoner.com, www.myspace.com/brookewaggoner
The Farewell Drifters: www.thefarewelldrifters.com, www.myspace.com/thefarewelldrifters
Shel: www.iloveshel.com, www.myspace.com/iloveshel
Photoside Café: www.photosidecafe.com, www.myspace.com/photosidecafe
Dignan: www.myspace.com/dignan
Paper Route: www.paperrouteonline.com, www.myspace.com/paperroute
Timbre: www.myspace.com/timbre
Eisley: www.eisley.com, www.myspace.com/eisley
The festival itself: www.cornerstonefestival.com

Thanks again to everyone who made my third C-Stone experience a special one. I’ll be putting reviews of the new CDs I bought up at my blog as I listen to them. 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.