I’m not really sure where 2010 went. But I’ve just bought my tickets back home for the holidays, the temperature is threatening to dip below 35 degrees, and the torrent of great new records has slowed to a trickle. So we must be at the end of the year.

Here’s a complete list of the new albums I’m excited about for the remainder of 2010: Elvis Costello’s National Ransom, Weezer’s Death to False Metal, Bleu’s Four, Cee-Lo Green’s The Ladykiller, Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. And that’d be it. I’m buying the official release of Mr. Mister’s Pull, and re-releases from Jimi Hendrix and the Church, and I may check out the new My Chemical Romance, because that “Na Na Na” song gets stuck in my head. But after Kanye on November 23, it’s a long, dark tunnel of emptiness until Cake’s new one, Showroom of Compassion, on January 11.

There is one bright light, however. Sometime in December, the Violet Burning is set to release a three-CD set of 33 new songs. I can only go by the videos posted to www.thevioletburning.com, but it seems to be called The Story of Our Lives, and subdivided into three parts: Liebe Uber Alles, Black as Death and The Fantastic Machine. As part of my pre-order, I got to hear rough mixes of six of the new songs, and they’re pretty good, even in this early form.

Unfortunately, it’s probably going to come out too late to make my top 10 list. And if it comes out before January 1, 2011, it’s ineligible for next year’s list. Oh, deadlines, you make my life so complicated. I promise, whenever this thing hits, I’ll do an extensive review of it. The Violet Burning is a criminally undervalued band, and the fact that they even have the chutzpah to create and release a 33-song box set independently is worth praising. If this is as good as their last record, Drop-Dead, the music will be worth fawning over, too.

We shall see. For now, let’s start talking about the final releases of 2010.

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So, for those of you keeping score in the Great Barenaked Ladies Breakup Wars, the score is now Steven Page one, BNL zero.

I honestly didn’t think that would be the case. In breakups like these, where one person walks away from four, my money’s always on the band left behind. In general, all they have to do is pick a new singer and keep on keeping on, and in BNL’s case, they already have Ed Robertson, who sang about half the songs in their catalog anyway. The Ladies will be fine, I thought. Steven Page is going to have some trouble, and will probably be at the mercy of whatever collaborators he chooses.

And then came All in Good Time, the first post-breakup Ladies album, and lo, it was terrible. Maudlin, self-serious, boring, and seemingly obsessed with striking out at Page, it was the lowest point of a long, slow decline. Even the cover photos were depressing, all black and white, their eyes full of melodramatic pain. I liked probably three out of the 14 songs, and finger-pointing diatribes like “You Run Away” and “Golden Boy” got old really quickly.

Those of you dreading the same he-said he-said lameness from Page’s solo debut are in for a treat. The wittily-titled Page One is splendid – Page deftly avoids all the traps his former band fell into, crafting a diverse, delightful romp of a record that never once mentions his old band, and remembers to bring the fun. You remember the Barenaked Ladies at their peak, right? They were fun. This album is like that, but with fewer songs about chimpanzees.

All right, this is actually a remarkably mature pop record, but not in that stuffy, all-work-and-no-play kind of way. Lyrically it takes on life and love and crazy sex and hellish self-loathing, but it does so with wit and verve. The protagonist of “Entourage,” for example, is so empty inside he’s willing to sleep with any famous person, and whoever is hanging around that famous person, and he does so with a cruelty that’s almost art. But the song is joyous, celebrating that emptiness. When Page smirks “Now we’re through with morality, can I sleep with your wife,” it’s chillingly awesome.

The string quartet wonder “All the Young Monogamists” is a terrific piece of work, detailing an illicit relationship between two people who know better than to believe in fidelity as a way of life: “Some of them will just grow tired, some of them will flee, some of them will sleep around, just like you and me.” It ends with beautiful blinders on: “But here we are, monogamists, a-swearing it will last, I know it seems ridiculous considering our pasts, but I will always be true to you…”

“She’s Trying to Save Me” is about the futility of attempting to fix your mate like you fix your house. “Over Joy” is about watching a relationship collapse and being too depressed to stop it. Closer “The Chorus Girl” has a brilliant lyric – whenever Page says the title phrase, he’s talking about the chorus of his own song, as in, “Wait until you hear the chorus, girl.” The song’s about waiting forever for something that never comes, and the beauty is, there is no chorus. “All night alone with my microphone, I never come close to the chorus, girl…”

Given all that, you might think the album is as fun as a term paper, but you’d be wrong. Every song here is a pop gem, and the great thing is, most of them are in very different styles. Single “Indecision” is a classic 1970s-style power pop tune, “Clifton Springs” is a waltz, the aforementioned “Entourage” is an electro-flavored dark dance-a-thon, “Over Joy” sounds like Jeff Lynne, and the great “Leave Her Alone” is a send-up of lounge music. Every song is lushly produced and polished by Page and John Fields, who played most of the instruments themselves. But it doesn’t sound canned. This record’s alive, in ways the BNL album simply isn’t.

This is how you do it. While his old band wallowed in their feelings of betrayal, Steven Page just got on with making great music again. Page One is a triumph, proof that Page is going to be just fine on his own. I wasn’t expecting to like this as much as I do (or even at all), so the fact that this record is so well-made, so vibrant, and above all, so much fun is a welcome surprise.

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While we’re on the subject of solo albums…

As far as I know, the Scottish brit-pop quartet Travis is still a going concern. Their last album, Ode to J. Smith, came out in 2008, but they’ve been working on new music since then. So Wreckorder, the debut project from singer Fran Healy, isn’t really an attempt to launch a solo career. Given that, and given the fact that the album sounds exactly like Healy’s work with Travis, one has to ask: what is this for?

And I guess it’s just here to give us another 30 minutes of sweet, echo-laden acoustic pop. Wreckorder is a nice little record, one that could have come out under the Travis name without skipping a beat. (This would have been one of the ones with the band on the cover, photographed from far away. Fans know what I’m talking about.) Healy’s soaring voice is in fine form, his minor-key melodies as lovely as always. “Anything,” the second track, is even something of a Healy classic, its spooky cello melody standing out from the crowd.

Healy pulls in a couple of big-name guest stars, but the record doesn’t really call attention to them. Neko Case graces “Sing Me to Sleep” with her wonderful voice, and the pair intertwines beautifully. And Paul McCartney plays the unobtrusive bass on “As It Comes,” I guess to remind everyone that he used to play bass full time. You’d never know it’s him just by listening. Most of this album, however, is Healy himself, and he acquits himself as a writer and multi-instrumentalist well.

I don’t want this to sound like I don’t enjoy Wreckorder. It’s quite a good little record. I just don’t understand its reason for existing. Healy does nothing here we haven’t heard him do before, and doesn’t lay the groundwork for anything new. It sounds like the product of an experiment: can Fran Healy make a Travis album all by himself? The answer is yes, although I’m not absolutely sure why he tried. Don’t let my confusion keep you from enjoying this, though. When I shut my brain off and just listen, I quite like it.

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Rounding off our trio of solo debuts is Mark Chadwick, lead singer of the Levellers.

Chadwick is easily the least well-known of the three artists on tap this week, but his album is the one I was most interested to hear. The Levellers are an English fiddle-rock outfit, like the Waterboys with a punk edge. I’ve been into them since high school, thanks to my good friend Chris L’Etoile. Two years ago, they released Letters From the Underground, a sustained burst of flailing anger that stands as one of their best records. They’d rediscovered their fire, and their political edge.

So of course, Chadwick’s album, All the Pieces, runs the other direction. It’s almost entirely performed on acoustic guitar, its tempos range from slow to shambling, and without a band around him, Chadwick is frustratingly boring. This is an album content to shuffle back and forth in place, never really hitting on anything special. I like “Satellite” somewhat, and the time-signature shifts in “Indians” and “Elephant Fayre” are interesting. But I can’t remember much else about this album. Which is a shame, really, because Chadwick’s voice is endlessly appealing, and I want to like the songs he’s singing.

This is another solo album that isn’t meant to launch a career. In every way, this is a side project, and it plays like it’s made up of Levellers reject songs. It feels like something Chadwick just had to get out of his system, which is fine, but means I won’t be pulling this off the shelf to play it too often. My fervent hope, now that Chadwick’s done with All the Pieces, is that the Levellers get back into the studio and make the exact opposite of this record.

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Downer ending, sorry about that. Next week, we’ve got Elvis Costello, Bleu and Weezer hitting stores, and what I’ve heard of all three has been terrific. After that, we’re gonna play catch-up as we wind things down for 2010. 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.

John Lennon would have been 70 years old this month.

I was six years old when Lennon was gunned down. I have no memories of him at all. My love affair with the Beatles didn’t start until nine years later, when I heard Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band for the first time. Lennon has always been something of a mystery to me. I’ve never had the chance to buy a new John Lennon album, or see him interviewed, or hear him play live. He’s a guy who made some of my favorite music of all time, and he died when I was a kid, before I could appreciate him.

In a very real sense, all I have is the music. I didn’t live through the social and political climate that shaped much of Lennon’s work. By the time I was walking, Lennon had essentially decided to disappear from public life, building a home with Yoko Ono and their son Sean. I turned six only a few months before the release of his final album, Double Fantasy. I’m an outsider gazing in on this remarkable time, and as much as I can read up on it, I’ll never have the experience of feeling what Lennon was singing so passionately about.

But that’s okay. He’s John Lennon, so he routinely paired his political statements with brilliant, tuneful music. And I love brilliant, tuneful music. Of all of the Beatles, I think Lennon’s solo career was the best. This isn’t a particularly high bar, you understand. Paul McCartney’s vast catalog is stunningly inconsistent and often too cutesy for words, George Harrison made one incredible record (All Things Must Pass) and then slipped into mediocrity for most of the rest of his life, and Ringo Starr, well, no one expected much from him, and he certainly didn’t disappoint.

In its own way, Lennon’s solo catalog is also pretty inconsistent, but it is fascinating, and above all, utterly real. He was never able to recapture the magic he had with McCartney, and I think he spent a long time consciously avoiding that magic. Lennon always toughened up the twee McCartney, who in turn sweetened Lennon’s rebellious nature. When the Beatles split, the two ran away from each other in opposite directions. McCartney made several albums in a row that any right-thinking critic simply has to call featherweight and inconsequential, while Lennon stripped back to basics and made Grand Statements out of simplicity and honesty.

If you’re just dipping into Lennon’s solo music, this is a great time to do it. As a 70th birthday present, Yoko Ono has overseen a full remastering of Lennon’s catalog, and re-released it in a variety of interesting (and frustrating) incarnations. The eight albums have been released on their own, and in a massive Signature Box. You can also pick up Power to the People, a one-disc hits collection, or Gimme Some Truth, a four-disc mix-and-match anthology. All of these different options contain material not present on the others, which is kind of maddening.

Your best option, if you’re a completist like me, is the Signature Box. It’s a hefty thing, simply designed, and it includes a well-made hardcover book with photos and essays, a cardboard insert with personal reflections from Ono, Sean Lennon and Julian Lennon, and (in a secret compartment) a print of a drawing by John. It’s a lovely set, even though I expect I will take the individual albums out and shelve them separately. They’re all packaged exactly like the Beatles remasters from last year, in cardboard sleeves that mirror the original vinyl art. Needless to say, they’re beautiful.

I said this is your best bet if you’re a completist, but that’s not exactly true. Let’s quickly go over what isn’t in this set. Most glaringly, there’s the first four experimental Lennon/Ono albums (Two Virgins, The Wedding Album, Life With the Lions and Live Peace in Toronto 1969). One expects those will come out in a separate set before long, since they weren’t part of the remastering project either. You also do not get the new remix of Double Fantasy, called Stripped Down. But you do get the original version, and the new one is only available with the original on a second disc, meaning if you want Stripped Down, you’ll have to buy Double Fantasy twice. That’s just silliness.

You also don’t get any of the material that ended up on Menlove Ave. in 1986. Granted, the only essential track there is “Here We Go Again,” but that’s not in the box. It is, however, on Gimme Some Truth, in remastered form. As far as I know, that’s the only place to get this new master. Live in New York City isn’t in the box either, but one of its tracks, “Hound Dog,” appears on Gimme Some Truth too.

Want to hear something else infuriating? During his solo career, Lennon released five popular singles that didn’t appear on his albums. These are some of his most well-known tunes: “Instant Karma,” “Give Peace a Chance,” “Happy X-Mas (War is Over),” “Power to the People” and “Cold Turkey.” These songs are in the box, on a separate disc called Singles. That disc is not available separately. If you want Lennon’s solo singles, you have to buy Power to the People, a collection of the hits. If you decided to splurge on the albums separately, that means you’re going to buy 10 songs twice, just to get the five you don’t have. The box is your best bet, but then you need the stripped-down Double Fantasy as well, and there’s just no way to do this without overlap.

The box set, of course, contains a bevy of material not available elsewhere, including a remastered version of b-side “Move Over Ms. L” and an entire disc of home demos. But there are numerous other Lennon tracks (such as “Do the Oz”) that make no appearances in any version of this project.

Those frustrations aside, it’s great to have Lennon’s solo work all looking uniform, and sounding fantastic. Ono and her team made an interesting choice – they went with John’s original mixes, instead of the remixes done last decade. This means the sound is accurate to the times, but might strike more modern ears as less crisp and clear. This is not a reinvention of the sound, like the Beatles remasters were. In many cases, the new versions don’t sound as “good” as the remixed ones, but I think they sound more right, if that makes any sense.

I took a full tour through the box set over the last week. In some cases, it’s been years since I’ve heard these records, and in some cases, I have ‘em memorized. While Lennon’s solo material never quite hit the same heights as his Beatles songs, he did manage one stone classic, and three other excellent albums, and even the lesser stuff here is worth hearing. Plus, over 11 CDs, you can trace the arc of his final decade. Lennon was 30 when the Beatles broke up, and 40 when he was killed, and in that time, he went from activist and icon to husband and father, and found peace and happiness along the way.

How you feel about Lennon’s solo material will depend on two things. The first is your willingness to let one of the world’s greatest songwriters just relax and play fun, simple pop-rock tunes. John loved simple blues and rock ‘n’ roll, and there’s a lot of it in his catalog.

The second, of course, is Yoko Ono, who is credited equally with Lennon on three of these eight albums. I always say that Ono is better than you remember, but she’s not in Lennon’s class, and her contributions often tend toward the annoying. Still, they’re a package deal, and much of this catalog is about her, even if she doesn’t appear. If you still blame Yoko for breaking up the Beatles (an unjustified charge, in my opinion), much of Lennon’s material will rub you the wrong way.

If you’re good with those two things, though, there’s a lot to like in this box set. Let me take you down:

Plastic Ono Band, 1970.

I mentioned before that Lennon managed one classic in his solo career, and this is it. It appeared one year after the Beatles split, and in many ways, it’s the anti-Abbey Road. Stark nearly to the point of emptiness, stripped of anything fanciful or joyous, this is the bleakest record ever made by any Beatle. It is Lennon coming to terms with his life outside the band, tearing down his old image with solemn force. Even 40 years on, this record hurts.

It’s also incredibly good. You’re just going to want to steel yourself before you listen to it. This is an album that opens with the lines “Mother, you had me, but I never had you, I wanted you but you didn’t want me.” It moves on from there, Lennon taking on religion (“There ain’t no Jesus coming down from the sky, now that I found out I know I can cry…”), modern life (“When they’ve tortured and scared you for twenty-odd years, then they expect you to pick a career”), and his own confusion (“Look at me, who am I supposed to be?”). “Working Class Hero” is a jaw-dropper, still, just Lennon and his guitar, taking apart the world in which he lives with some well-placed profanities and razor-sharp lyrics. It’s a masterpiece.

There are shafts of light here, certainly. “Hold On” is an island in the stormy sea, Lennon telling himself and Yoko that it’s all gonna be all right. “Love” is one of Lennon’s prettiest pieces, a simple poem (“Love is real, real is love”) played on piano. And despite its snarling blues backdrop, “Well Well Well” is hopeful: “We sat and talked of revolution just like two liberals in the sun, we talked of women’s liberation and how the hell we could get things done…”

But no one remembers those, and for good reason: the rest of Plastic Ono Band is dark and difficult and compelling. The album climaxes with “God,” still one of the boldest pieces of music I’ve ever heard. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to hear this in 1970, with memories of Beatle John still fresh. After dismissing God as “a concept by which we measure our pain,” Lennon begins a litany of things he no longer believes in: Jesus, Kennedy, Elvis, Buddha, Zimmerman (also known as Dylan). And then he drops the bomb: “I don’t believe in Beatles,” he spits, as the music evaporates behind him. Later he sings, “I was the walrus, but now I’m John, and so dear friends, you’ll just have to carry on, the dream is over…”

I know, unbelievable. It’s also fantastic. Like most of Plastic Ono Band, “God” is performed on very few instruments (piano, guitar, bass and drum, and that’s it), and the voice, full of anguish and anger, is front and center. You won’t soon forget hearing Lennon’s screams at the end of “Mother” and “Well Well Well,” or listening closely as he mutters his way through the chilling closer, “My Mummy’s Dead.” Even stripped of its context, this is a raw, seething disc of really great tunes, a stunning and remarkable album. John Lennon never bettered it.

Imagine, 1971.

All right, it’s no Plastic Ono Band, but Lennon’s second proper solo album starts with “Imagine” and ends with “Oh Yoko,” and it includes “Jealous Guy” and “Gimme Some Truth.” So how bad could it possibly be?

Truthfully, it’s not bad at all, though the quality does drop somewhat. Imagine finds Lennon mellowing out, especially on the gentle title track. I’m constantly surprised at this song’s near-universal acceptance as an anthem for peace, given the anti-religion sentiments at its core. But Lennon’s very clever about it, saying “imagine there’s no heaven” instead of out-and-out denying it, like he did on “I Found Out.” It’s no wonder, though, that the song’s iconic piano part and gorgeous vocal have stood the test of time.

About half of Imagine’s songs are of similar quality. I don’t need to tell you how good “Jealous Guy” is, despite an overstuffed arrangement. This is a heart-on-your-sleeve confession that nearly makes me cry every time. “Gimme Some Truth” is great, as is Lennon’s swipe at McCartney, “How Do You Sleep?” “Oh My Love” is strikingly lovely. And “Oh Yoko” is the most rollicking, joyous piece of music ever to bear Lennon’s name. Man, I love this song, and when Wes Anderson made terrific use of it in Rushmore, I cheered.

So that’s the really good stuff, and the rest is sort of… there. Many of the other songs, like “Crippled Inside” and “It’s So Hard,” fall back on the blues, and from a guy with such a prodigious gift for melody, these songs are disappointing. And “I Don’t Wanna Be a Soldier Mama I Don’t Wanna Die” is repetitive and nearly unlistenable, its anti-war sentiments notwithstanding. The remaster preserves John’s original mix, all tape hiss included, but sounds wonderful. I just wish I liked every song on here as much as I like “Oh Yoko.”

But really, Imagine is a fine album, particularly when compared with some of the later stuff. To many people, it’s his last true classic. (I think there are a couple more to come.) It is, perhaps, his most fully realized pop effort, the flip side of Plastic Ono Band, and an album that is virtually impossible to dislike.

Some Time in New York City, 1972.

And then there’s this, the only one of these albums I genuinely dislike. Recorded at the height of John and Yoko’s anti-war protests, this album takes on every societal ill the Lennons could think of, with all the subtlety of a brick to the face. Then the songs were recorded with Springsteen-esque flair by bar band Elephant’s Memory, and the whole thing lands with a thud. It’s graceless, it’s often tuneless, and it was roundly rejected by the buying public at the time.

Okay, there are a few songs I like. None of them are by Ono, who doesn’t exactly suck the life out of things (there’s not much life to suck), but drags the record down each time she appears. I always get a little chuckle out of “The Luck of the Irish,” a much snarkier take on McCartney’s “Give Ireland Back to the Irish.” I also like “John Sinclair,” with its folksy stomp and its repeated “gotta.” But there is literally nothing here worthy of John Lennon.

And then there’s the second disc, a bonus “live jam LP” that no one really needs to hear. When John is singing “Cold Turkey” and “Well,” it’s fine. When Yoko is warbling atonally over squalling feedback, it’s hideous. It’s like someone said, “What could make this oscillating, teeth-grinding guitar noise even worse? Wait, I know!” The second half of the disc features Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, and Frank’s mixes of those tracks appear on his Playground Psychotics album, with different titles. One of them, a six-minute banshee wail called “Au,” was re-named “A Small Eternity with Yoko Ono.”

‘Nuff said. This record is the only one of these I might never listen to again.

Mind Games, 1973.

A beautifully-produced piece of mediocrity, Mind Games is the very definition of an average pop-rock album. There’s nothing wrong with it as it’s playing, but it doesn’t stick. The hooks are few and far between, the songs basic and sweet without being extraordinary. The first of these songs that really struck me was “One Day at a Time,” and that one wouldn’t have stood out on Imagine. It’s nice pop music, but you can hear Lennon turning soft before your ears.

Is that such a bad thing? I don’t know. Like I said, Mind Games is beautifully produced, a cornucopia of sounds. There’s that iconic slide guitar on “Bring On the Lucie (Freda People),” the organs on “Intuition,” Michael Brecker’s saxophone on numerous tracks. And there is one song I love here, the underrated “Out the Blue,” a paean to Yoko with some nice turns. The remaster is terrific, bringing out the colors of the sound. And John sounds happier here, more content than he ever has.

I just find the whole thing underwhelming. If this album hadn’t been made by John Lennon, it would have disappeared without a trace, and no one would miss it.

Walls and Bridges, 1974.

Now this one I like. Released just a few months after I was born, Walls and Bridges is the quintessential mid-period John Lennon album. In contrast to Mind Games, the songs on this record sparkle, and the production, again by Lennon himself, is marvelous. This is the album that contains his first solo number one single, “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night,” which features piano and organ by Elton John (back when Elton John was cool). That tune’s an invigorating shuffle, one that pulses with more life than anything on its predecessor.

But that’s just the tip of the proverbial. “What You Got” is his one convincing stab at whipping out the funk, Stevie Wonder style, and it works. Walls and Bridges was recorded during Lennon’s famous “lost weekend,” his year of separation from Ono, and her specter appears throughout. “You don’t know what you got until you lose it, oh baby baby baby give me one more chance,” Lennon shouts, and in the next song, the tender “Bless You,” he addresses the man he imagines she’s shacked up with: “Bless you, whoever you are, holding her now, be warm and kind-hearted.” As he says on “Scared,” “Hatred and jealousy gonna be the death of me…”

Walls and Bridges also contains one of Lennon’s very best solo songs, “#9 Dream.” Over lush strings and soaring guitar, Lennon whips out a multi-part little pop suite of sweeping grace. “Ah bowakawa pousse pousse” doesn’t really mean anything, and reportedly came to Lennon in a dream, but you’ll be singing along with it anyway. “#9 Dream” is the highlight of this album, but the whole thing is pretty great. And 10-year-old Julian Lennon makes his musical debut on the closing track, a snippet of oldie “Ya Ya” on which he plays the snare drum. It’s a sweet way to end this very sweet record, one that practically cries out for the reconciliation that was right around the corner.

Rock ‘n’ Roll, 1975.

If any of these records could be considered inessential, it’s this one, but I quite like it.

It was born out of a lawsuit – “Come Together” was judged to be a little too close to a Chuck Berry song called “You Can’t Catch Me,” and as part of the settlement, Lennon agreed to record a few oldies to give the copyright holders some royalties. Since those old songs probably wouldn’t sit well on a typical Lennon record, he decided to create a tribute album to the music of his youth.

Nothing about Rock ‘n’ Roll betrays its contractual origins, though. These are delightful old songs, including “Be-Bop-a-Lula,” “Stand By Me,” “Peggy Sue,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Ain’t That a Shame” and others. (Yes, including “You Can’t Catch Me,” which does sound pretty close to “Come Together.”) And John sings his little heart out. If you want to hear one of rock’s all-time greatest singers in his absolute prime, give this one a listen. It’s fun, if a little inconsequential, and his band just slams through this thing. It’s a fine reminder of Lennon’s roots as a rocker in Liverpool, and an interesting way for him to enter middle age.

Double Fantasy, 1980.

And enter it he did, taking five years off to be a husband to Yoko and a father to their son, Sean. He’d retired from the world. It’s unclear whether he considered Double Fantasy, his return to recording, as a one-off or the kickoff of the next phase of his career. Either way, it’s a remarkable record, the last one released during his lifetime, and contains several of his very best solo songs.

It’s also credited to Yoko Ono equally, and it’s designed like a dialogue between the lovers – seven John songs, seven Yoko songs, alternating back and forth. Some were, no doubt, miffed by this. They waited five years to hear new John Lennon, and they were forced to buy new Yoko Ono at the same time. But the Lennons saw it as the perfect statement of their union. Yoko even called John brave for sticking with her throughout this process.

Let me say this right up front: I like the Yoko Ono songs here, a lot. For the first time in their partnership, Ono steps up here and writes songs to complement Lennon’s. “Kiss Kiss Kiss,” “I’m Moving On,” “Yes, I’m Your Angel,” “Beautiful Boys” – these are all fine tunes, melodic and catchy and sonically interesting. I never feel the urge to skip Ono’s songs on this record, and I never have.

But Lennon’s songs are the attraction here, and they’re wonderful. His seven songs are a miniature suite about settling into domesticity, about growing old gracefully, and they’re his most comfortable, most tuneful songs since Imagine. “(Just Like) Starting Over” was a hit, and is a fine pastiche of ‘50s soul. But I am in love with “Watching the Wheels,” and “Beautiful Boy,” and “Woman,” and “Dear Yoko,” numbers about calmly and contentedly disappearing into family and home life. Even the incongruous “I’m Losing You” is terrific.

But as you can see, this album came out in 1980, and it sounds like it. The production is bright to the point of blinding, the drums have that ‘80s hollowness to them, and the whole thing is somewhat over-polished. That’s why, even though it’ll cost you more money, you absolutely have to hear the Stripped Down version. It’s a beautiful thing. The voices are front and center, the arrangements uncluttered, the drums brought back in the mix, the songs emphasized. The new takes of “Beautiful Boy” and “Watching the Wheels” should be considered definitive. The whole thing is breathtaking.

And finally, finally, the Stripped Down mix reveals what a splendid little album Double Fantasy is. In every note, you can hear just how happy Lennon and Ono are to be with each other, and recording together. It’s exactly the kind of happiness Lennon’s been yearning for since Plastic Ono Band, and it’s so sweet to hear him express it. I’ve always loved this album, and now, in this unfussy, pristine form, I love it more.

Double Fantasy was released in November of 1980. Less than one month later, John Lennon was dead, killed by an obsessive man named Mark Chapman.

Milk and Honey, 1984.

And four years later, Ono released this, the second half of the Double Fantasy sessions. It’s designed the same way, as a dialogue between Lennon and Ono, who each get six songs. It treads the same ground as its predecessor, but isn’t nearly as good, and by the end of the record, it’s clear many of these songs were unfinished at the time of Lennon’s death.

Given that, there are a few classics here. Opener “I’m Stepping Out” is one of them, a fully fleshed-out rocker about rejoining the human race. It contains what might be Lennon’s late-life mantra: “After all is said and done, you can’t go pleasing everyone, so screw it.” The biggest and best reason to hear Milk and Honey, though, is “Nobody Told Me,” his final masterpiece. Originally written for Ringo Starr, this tune is eminently singable, and its lyric is a nice contrast to “I’m Stepping Out”: “Everybody’s smoking, no one’s getting high, everybody’s flying and never touch the sky, there’s UFOs over New York and I ain’t too surprised…”

The other landmark here is “Grow Old With Me,” an enduring love song that stands as Lennon’s final number here. The version on Milk and Honey is clearly a demo, but the sweet tune shines clearly even through the murk. Since its release, this has gone on to be a favorite at weddings, and it’s easy to see why: “Grow old along with me, whatever fate decrees, we will see it through, for our love is true.” Trite? Maybe, but it’s heartfelt, and it’s a lovely sentiment for Lennon to go out on.

I haven’t mentioned Ono’s songs, mainly because, like a lot of Lennon’s here, they’re mediocre and forgettable. It’s nice to have a final visit with John and Yoko, but I wish Milk and Honey were a stronger record. As the capper to Lennon’s official discography, it should have been better.

Singles and Home Tapes.

Which brings us to the pair of bonus discs. The first is positively essential, as it contains Lennon’s five non-album singles. Included here are his protest anthem trilogy (“Power to the People,” “Happy X-Mas” and the immortal “Give Peace a Chance”), the absurdly good “Instant Karma,” and the rollicking “Cold Turkey.” The b-side “Move Over Ms. L” is here as well, for some reason. All of them sound great in their remastered forms.

But the second disc is revelatory. In the spirit of 2004’s Acoustic collection, Home Tapes collects 13 raw versions of Lennon songs, recorded mainly solo. The quality isn’t great, as you’d expect, but the performances… damn. It opens with four songs from Plastic Ono Band, and amazingly, the versions of “Mother,” “God” and “I Found Out” are even more vitriolic than those on the album proper. This take of “Nobody Told Me” is marvelous, and the solo acoustic read of “Beautiful Boy” is lovely. Home Tapes also includes embryonic versions of three songs I’d never heard: “One of the Boys,” “India, India” and “Serve Yourself.” If there’s no other reason to buy this box set, it’s this disc.

And there you have it. The frustrating, inconsistent, brilliant and bold solo career of John Lennon. He started it angry and full of dread, and ended it content and blissful. Lennon died too soon, but his solo catalog is just the right length, tracing an arc that is all too human. Buy the box set, pick up the Stripped Down version of Double Fantasy, and listen. You’ll never hear its like again.

Next week, catching up with some great new music. 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.

So I was having a discussion with Jeremy Keen about music.

We do this a lot. I’ve still never met Jeremy, but our semi-regular Facebook chats usually revolve around music – he writes and plays it, I review it, so we have similar interests, but very different perspectives. Anyway, Jeremy asked me to come up with some artists from the past decade or so who will be remembered as important, as musicians who exhibited not just brilliance and craftsmanship, but real staying power and influence.

I’m not sure if I said Sufjan Stevens, but if not, I should have.

In fact, I’m coming to think of Stevens as the most important artist of the past 10 years, even if he may not be universally hailed as such. Stevens seemed to come out of nowhere in 2005 with Illinois, an album I named the best of that year, and of the decade. But those who were paying better attention (a list which, sadly, does not include this reviewer) knew that Sufjan’s body of work to that point was diverse, challenging and brilliant. From the electronic frippery of Enjoy Your Rabbit to the sparse acoustics of Seven Swans to the template-setting modern folk masterwork Michigan, the road to Illinois was paved with smaller, yet still dazzling works.

But Illinois stands apart. I’ve been collecting music since I was 14 years old, and I own very few albums that can match it for scope, craft and sheer magic. It’s 74 minutes long, contains 22 tracks, and never puts a foot wrong. More than that, it uses its fascinating conceit – it was announced as part of the now-aborted 50 States Project, and uses landmarks and historical events as touchstones – to delve deep and tell intensely personal stories. “John Wayne Gacy Jr.” is about the state’s most famous serial killer, but it is also about the secrets we keep, and the reasons we hide them. Illinois is about Stevens’ own redemption as often as it’s about Casimir Pulaski, or Mary Todd Lincoln.

I have listened to Illinois front to back more times than I can count. I have bought it for several people, and copied it for several others, and generally pushed it like a dealer giving samples of his best stuff. It is my go-to example when people claim that no one makes ambitious, perfectly-realized albums anymore. It is the kind of album that makes people quit music, certain they’re never going to hear anything better.

And for a while, it looked like Sufjan himself might have done the same. Before this year, his post-Illinois output consisted of an outtakes collection, a boxed set of Christmas music, and an orchestral piece about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The man also started giving interviews in which he sounded bewildered and defeated, like he simply couldn’t fashion his thoughts into music anymore. He’d given up on the album as an art form, he said. His orchestral work messed him up, and now he can’t find his way back to the song, he said.

A month ago, he finally returned from exile, giving us the marvelous hour-long EP All Delighted People. It sounded like Sufjan, but headed in new directions at the same time. It contained a 17-minute jam session with a lengthy, flailing, fractured guitar solo. It sported two versions of the title song, one of which seemed to slam together every bizarre bit of orchestration that swam through Stevens’ mind. But still, it sounded like our boy. And when he announced that All Delighted People was merely the table setting for the real follow-up to Illinois, well, let’s just say I haven’t been able to get this grin off my face for about a month now.

And now that I’ve heard that follow-up? Not just once, but seven times?

Ah. Wow.

Okay, let me start with this. Nothing you have heard from Sufjan Stevens will prepare you for The Age of Adz. (Pronounced “odds,” apparently.) Musically, lyrically, emotionally, it’s like nothing he’s done before. Sonically, it’s closest to “You Are the Blood,” his 10-minute track from the Dark Was the Night compilation a few years ago. But it’s way, way beyond that. For the second time in his career, Sufjan has given me an album unlike any other I own. It’s intense, it’s over the top, it’s beyond ambitious, and what initially sounds like an explosion of noise coalesces over time into, ironically, the most naked and personal work of the man’s career. It is either the album of the year, or 2010’s most phenomenal flameout, and I’m not sure which.

So let’s start at the beginning.

The Age of Adz has no real conceptual underpinning, save Sufjan himself, but it’s based on the artwork of Royal Robertson. A native of Louisiana, Robertson suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, and started drawing and painting after his wife left him for another man. He referred to himself as a prophet, and filled his work with allusions to the apocalypse and numerology. The work itself is cartoony and rooted in science fiction, but contains little screeds against his ex-wife, whom he names. It’s fascinating, even if it clearly is the product of a disturbed mind.

Stevens draws on Robertson as a metaphor for his own mind-state throughout this record. Put simply, The Age of Adz finds our sometimes twee storyteller going off the cliff, singing from the heart about his own despair and inability to cope with the world. The lyrics are, on the whole, straightforward, and full of declarations of love and pain. This is exactly the kind of lyric book Stevens might have set to sparse acoustic guitars and strings, for maximum impact. Instead, he went the other direction entirely.

Virtually every track on The Age of Adz is stuffed full of sound. And not just sound, but chaotic, layered, massed sound. It’s so big, has so much going on, that you’ll need to listen four or five times to catch everything. In some cases, you’ll need to hear songs multiple times before the melodies jump out. (And there are melodies, and they are gorgeous.) With the exception of the fragile acoustic fake-out opener “Futile Devices,” every song here is awash in electronic beats and noise, atop which Stevens stacks strings, horns, choirs, piccolos, and whatever else he feels like throwing in.

The effect is of a man desperately trying to keep control of the mess he’s created. I think he does, but only just. This is the first album since Bjork’s Homogenic to pick up the technorchestral baton and run with it, but this goes so far beyond what Bjork tried. These are symphonies more often than they are songs. In context, “Too Much” serves as your introduction to this sound, beginning with three minutes of crunching-through-ice drums and synth blips, but building and building in dramatic grandeur. By the end of its 6:43, it sounds like an orchestra trying to keep its bearings in a whirlwind. It’s unbelievable.

The title track is even bigger. It initially sounds like robots marching on Mordor, like music for the oddest techno-fantasy movie you’ve ever seen. Strings flail, horns blat, armies of vocalists sing (“Whoa-oh-oh-oh…”), everything is more massive than everything else. Until it isn’t. Proving he has control over this melee, Stevens drops out everything but his voice and guitar at key moments, and even ends the song that way. “Now my intentions were good intentions, I could have loved you, I could have changed you, I wouldn’t be so, I wouldn’t feel so consumed by selfish thoughts,” he sings, over what is, in contrast, no musical backdrop. The Age of Adz is full of these moments, but it takes a few listens to really hear them.

Trip-hop beats announce the arrival of “I Walked,” perhaps the closest to a pop single Stevens has given us here. A crawling breakup song, this one remains entirely electronic, the first one to do so. Stevens counters this with “Now That I’m Older,” a song built on nothing but massed choral vocals. It’s unearthly and haunting, and when Stevens steps in with that once-fragile, now supple voice, it’s astonishing. It’s like a low-moaning hymn. “I wanted so much to be at rest, now that I’m older, so be it…” The chilling piano plinks out a melody as the voices, those trapped and anguished voices, keep on wailing.

I could talk about every one of these songs, because they’re all integral to this record. The way Stevens reconciles his misery with his faith on the bouncy “Get Real Get Right,” the way he name-checks himself in the remarkable “Vesuvius,” the way he lays down a Wu-Tang-style backdrop, then turns it into a heart-rending lament on “All For Myself.” Everything fits, everything works, even when it doesn’t. The chaos is deliberate, the sense that we’ve gone off a cliff every few seconds is all part of the design. Had the album ended at track nine, it would have been a curious, yet mostly successful experiment.

But then…

Track 10 is called “I Want to Be Well,” and if you thought the earlier songs were a tornado of sound, wait until you hear this. It jumps time signatures, marries kinetic beats with piccolo runs and two hundred voices crying out. When everything backs away, leaving Sufjan muttering the title phrase over his guitar like a mantra, it’s frankly shocking. When he switches to a new mantra, “I’m not fucking around,” it’s jaw-dropping. Not just because this is Sufjan Stevens, who has always been a timid and faithful personality, swearing his head off, but because the song reaches levels of anger and intensity and turmoil unheard of in his catalog. This one is inspired, and I’m not sure I want to know what inspired it.

But even that won’t get you ready for the closing song, “Impossible Soul.” This thing is 25 minutes long, and I think I expected a repetitive jam-fest like “Djohariah,” which closed out All Delighted People. I was dead wrong. “Impossible Soul” is a multi-part epic suite, and it’s either Sufjan’s masterpiece or his greatest and most interesting failure. It begins like a pop song, with an almost Beatlesque rhythm and a fine melody, but before long, we’re in much more interesting (and much weirder) territory. And we never come back.

“Impossible Soul” is designed like a journey, following our singer through determination, despair and euphoria. The second section finds strings laying down a foundation while backing vocalists chant “No, I don’t want to be afraid” and Sufjan’s glorious choirs urge him not to be distracted. This is followed by a musical sinkhole, and a season in hell, trumpets mournfully calling out through the blackness. We’ve been through three songs’ worth of crazy, and we’re only at the 10-minute mark.

And then comes the auto-tune. Seriously. It’s like T-Pain in hell, Sufjan flagellating himself lyrically for about three minutes through a vocoder. And you know what? It really, really works. It’s unlike any use of the technique I’ve heard, and the blipping synths and massed backing vocals help things along nicely. But if you told me four years ago I’d one day be listening to Sufjan Stevens using Auto-Tune, I’d have laughed and laughed.

That’s not even the weirdest part of “Impossible Soul.” From here, it turns into a Prince track recorded on Mars. As the electronic beats pound out a dance rhythm, the army of vocalists starts chanting the song’s mantras: “It’s a long life, better pinch yourself, get your face together, better stand up straight…” The strings come in, the horns flail away, the electronic noise leaks in from the sides, and when the choir reaches the hook line (“It’s not so impossible”), it’s like a positivity party. The synths here remind me of “The Final Countdown,” but otherwise, this is like nothing else I know.

And it stays that way, an off-kilter, sunny booty-shaker, until about the 22-minute mark. There’s more vocoder, there’s a whispered “Do you wanna dance,” and there’s an overall sense of triumph, one that feels earned after an album of isolation and pain. The only problem with this section is you’ll be done with it before Sufjan is. He ends “Impossible Soul” with a fluttery acoustic guitar coda – you’ll think it’s a bonus track, until he starts singing the lyrics you’ve just heard in earlier sections. The coda is about how men and women don’t connect (“Boy, we can do much more together,” “Girl, I want nothing less than pleasure”) and ends by remarking at the mess they’ve made.

It’s a strange conclusion, to be sure, but thematically, I think it’s Sufjan finally climbing out of his romantic despair and surveying the damage. It counterpoints “Futile Devices” nicely, and after nearly 75 minutes of electronic madness, The Age of Adz ends with old-school Sufjan, acoustic guitars and vocals. Like he’s a whole person again, the one we remember. “Impossible Soul” is every idea Stevens has ever had ramming up against each other, the clearest example here of the artist trying to ride out his ambition and still remain in control. I’m still not sure if it all works, but it’s the year’s most original piece of work by a country mile.

I’m still processing The Age of Adz. Every time I listen to it, I hear something different. Here’s what I can tell you now. As a follow-up to Illinois, this album is maddening and magnificent. It is deliberately messier, deliberately more difficult, and yet, when it all clicks, it’s unlike any musical experience I have ever had. Stevens is working on a level none of his peers can match, or would try to match. In every way, this is the year’s most ambitious and astonishing album.

But is it the best? I don’t know yet. I’m working on it. The Age of Adz takes some figuring out. In many ways, the record does everything it can to keep you at arm’s length, while baring its soul. It’s a fascinating contradiction, but one that’s going to take some time to work through. That by itself is a remarkable thing – I haven’t needed more than one or two listens to fully absorb an album in years, and even Illinois was an immediate thing with me. This one? Sometimes I love it. Sometimes I merely admire it. Sometimes it makes me dizzy. In some ways, it would be wonderful to have such different reactions to it each time I hear it, for the rest of my life.

The Age of Adz is so unlike Illinois that it could be the work of a different artist entirely. But at its core, it could really only be Sufjan Stevens behind it. I can think of no other contemporary artist with the imagination to dream up this record, the skill to realize it, and the courage to release it. I stand by my earlier statement: he’s the most important artist of the past 10 years, if not more. The Age of Adz is a work of insane, fucked-up genius, and whatever I end up thinking about it, I’m stunned and amazed and oh so glad that it and its author both exist.

* * * * *

Wow, haven’t done a single in-depth review column in a while. Next week, a look at the newly-remastered John Lennon catalog. John would have been 70 this week, and even though I was only six when he was shot, I miss him. We’ll talk about how much next week. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m feeling lousy this week, so this will probably be a lot shorter than I want it to be.

I’ve been sick since Thursday (and hopefully I’m back at full strength by the time you read this), but I haven’t exactly been taking care of myself. I saw the Eels in Chicago (they were great), and waited outside in the cold and the rain for autographs. Then I attended a picnic party for two friends who were recently married, and went to the debut of Kevin Trudo’s new band Debbie Does Covers. (More on Kevin later in this column.) Lots of fun, but not much rest.

So first, let me tell you about something I’m doing in a couple of days.

I am not the world’s most adept Twitter user. For one thing, I hate the word “Twitter,” and I hate having to refer to my 140-character missives as “tweets,” so that revulsion keeps me away more often than not. But I am fascinated by the social media culture that’s grown up around this thing, and I think it’s an interesting tool. I’ve been trying to come up with ways to naturally work my Twitter page into what I do, and I think I’ve come up with something interesting: live first-listen reviews of records I just can’t wait to hear.

How does this work? Easy. At a pre-determined time, I will press play on a new album I’ve never heard. As it unspools, I’ll type up my immediate first reactions, and post them. It’s a little like a live performance, since I’m reviewing on the fly, and responding to tweets from those following along as well. It’s a great mental exercise, and I enjoy doing it. I’ve been told it’s fun to read, too, but I’ve been trying to come up with ways to make it more interactive and more interesting for those following along.

I have two of these live reviews scheduled for the coming days. On Friday, Oct. 8 at 8 p.m., I’ll be reviewing Sufjan Stevens’ The Age of Adz. This is my most anticipated album of 2010. I’ve steadfastly avoided listening to the stream of this album that NPR posted, but I’m glad it’s there, because that means anyone who wants to can listen along as I review it. But I expect this will be more like the live review events I’ve conducted in the past, with not a lot of interaction from my Twitter legion. (It is Friday night, after all.)

But on Wednesday, Oct. 13 at 8 p.m., I’ll live-review Belle and Sebastian Write About Love, the new one from (you guessed it) Belle and Sebastian. I’ve chosen Wednesday for a number of reasons. First, the album will be available in stores and online the day before, so anyone who wants to can certainly listen along with me. But second, more people are home on Wednesday nights, and I’m hoping for many more comments and questions. It’s my hope that Wednesday’s review will be exhausting for me, as I juggle the music, my own thoughts and yours.

So what do you think? I like this idea for a few reasons, but the big one is that it falls in line with the original mission statement of Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. I envisioned this site as a sort of running diary of musical obsession, and these first-listen reviews allow me to get my initial excitement (or disappointment) about music out there unfiltered. You’ll be reading pure emotional reaction, mainly because the format doesn’t allow me any time for anything else. My thoughts on the music I live-review will change over time, as I listen further and develop more considered opinions. But the live reviews are the closest I can offer to what it’s like to be inside my head as I’m hearing new stuff.

I hope you all can join me. Follow me at www.twitter.com/tm3am, and be there at 8 p.m. on the 8th and the 13th. And then please, let me know what you think of the experience.

* * * * *

Okay, let me tell you a bit about Kevin Trudo.

I’ve only recently gotten to know Kevin, but I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone so obviously born to be a musician. He lives and breathes music. He teaches it, he plays it, he writes and records it, he’s in three bands, and when he’s not doing all that, he talks about music and how much he loves it. One part of his multimedia musical empire I love is The Tuesday Project. Every Tuesday, Kevin releases another song, normally written and recorded within the last seven days. They’re always free, and they’re up at tuesdays.thekevintrudo.com.

Kevin’s a guy who loves music as much as I do, if not more. But here’s the thing: we’re on nearly opposite sides of the spectrum. I like big, ornate, complex pieces that take my brain on unexpected journeys. Kevin likes simple, direct, emotional songs that aim for honesty above all. He’s very lyrically-driven, whereas it sometimes takes me four or five listens to a song before I pay much attention to the words. I like melodies above everything, he’s looking for imagery and tone, no matter if the chords never change.

You all know me, and you know I’m allergic to simplicity, most of the time. Talking with Kevin has given me the chance to understand what he hears in songs I dismiss for being too easy, too much like other songs I’ve heard before. This doesn’t mean I’ve turned over a new leaf – my preferences are pretty well ingrained – but it does offer me a new perspective. Kevin really likes music that bores me silly, and I really like music that strikes him as too cluttered, too pretentious. It’s made for some interesting discussions.

That said, I have a couple of records on tap this week that Kevin will like a lot more than I do.

First up is Guster, who hail from my home state of Massachusetts. I’ve liked this band since I first heard them, more than 10 years ago. Then, they had an appealing Toad the Wet Sprocket-style college rock feel to them, but augmented it with an array of hand percussion instead of traditional drums. Sure, it was a gimmick, but it was a good one, and their third album, Lost and Gone Forever, which features no drum kits at all, remains their best. I know Kevin digs them too, because I’ve heard his band Meathawk cover “Amsterdam,” which is to my mind the last extraordinary song they’ve written.

Now, look, I don’t want to come off as one of those people whining about the hand percussion. Yes, the band has dropped the thing that made them special, and replaced it with a more standard drum kit sound. But do I think bringing back the bongos would help at this point? I don’t. Guster’s last album, 2006’s Ganging Up on the Sun, was unremittingly boring, the quartet failing to write any spectacular songs. Only “Satellite” rises above the murk. It’s not a good album, and the lack of energy is obvious in every track.

Now, four years later, here’s Easy Wonderful, and while it’s a clear step up from the woeful Ganging, it’s still pretty boring to my ears. This new record is largely acoustic, mainly folksy, and maintains a breezy, almost side project feel for the whole running time. There are some interesting bits of instrumentation, and the hand percussion does make a comeback here and there, most notably on “This Is How it Feels to Have a Broken Heart.” But the songs are just as lackluster as they’ve been for some time.

I knew I was in for a rough ride when the first track, “Architects and Engineers,” ran out of ideas less than a minute in. A couple of these tunes spark – “Do You Love Me” has the record’s best chorus, Ryan Miller soaring into a sweet falsetto, while “Bad Bad World” ambles ahead briskly, its refrain a sort of singalong. I like the “hallelujah” bit on “Stay With Me Jesus,” and I dig all of the banjo-laden “Hercules,” but more for the atmosphere than the song itself. The other songs all slide by, leaving no sign of their passing.

I wish I liked this record more. Guster is still a really good band, and they perform these wispy little tunes with commitment. Easy Wonderful is an album they obviously cared about – the energy level here is ten times that of Ganging Up on the Sun. But it’s all in service of songs that do very little for me. I like the ukulele and the harmonies and the mariachi band on “What You Call Love,” for instance, but I don’t remember the song five minutes after it’s finished. Also, the synth-y “Do What You Want” is a fun closer, but fades from memory quickly.

This album makes me wonder whether the band has really changed, or I have. I’m almost scared to go back and listen to Lost and Gone Forever, an album I still hold dear, but haven’t heard in years. As for Easy Wonderful, though it’s certainly better and more engaging than the band’s last effort, it just doesn’t do it for me. It’s too simple, too traditional in its songwriting for me. But that’s why I’d bet Kevin Trudo will like it. I’m interested to hear his thoughts, and see whether they change my outlook. Because I really want to like this record, and as of now, I don’t.

* * * * *

I’m pretty sure Kevin will like Easy Wonderful. I’m absolutely certain he will adore The Place We Ran From, the debut album from Tired Pony.

Why? Well, for starters, this is a supergroup, and I know he digs some of the musicians involved. Tired Pony includes Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol, Peter Buck of R.E.M., Richard Colburn of Belle and Sebastian, Scott McCaughey of the Young Fresh Fellows, singer/songwriter Iain Archer and producer Jacknife Lee. Oh, and M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel pop up here and there too. That’s seriously quite a pedigree.

With all of that, though, Lightbody dominates. The Place We Ran From resembles a Snow Patrol album more than anything else, although it’s a more mellow ride this time. The songs have that insistent quarter-note repetition Lightbody loves, and they’re all very simple pieces, relying more on the spell they cast than anything particularly musical. The opening track, “Northwestern Skies,” is just three chords repeated over and over, with an uncomplicated melody that also repeats endlessly. Of all 10 songs, only “Dead American Writers” grabbed me on first listen. But then, I was listening for melody and complexity, two things Lightbody has never really offered.

So on second listen, I tried to hear this thing the way Kevin might. Because Kevin? He’s going to love this. He’s going to love everything about this.

My first step was to pay particular attention to the lyrics. They are uniformly wonderful, full of haunting imagery. Check out the first lines on the record: “It’s not like it was before, there’s a beauty in slamming doors, and the lightning plays in your eyes as it cracks through northwestern skies…” That’s just great, and it probably would have taken me three or four spins to even notice. “Get on the Road” is the kind of song I can imagine playing over that scene in the movie where the guy realizes what a jackass he’s been and comes back to the woman we all know he loves, and the lyrics match that idea perfectly: “Kiss like a fight that no one wins, a tender payment for our sins, you are the drug that I can’t quit, your perfect chaos a perfect fit, so I get on the road and ride to you…”

Really, everywhere you look on this lyric sheet, you’ll find a great line. Here, let me pull a few at random:

“In this light you are framed classically, just like a painting that hangs in my head, that I know like the back of my hand…”

“All the troubles that I know look to me like great and heavy stones, and all I want to do is slowly push and pull, ‘til they rock, ‘til they roll…”

“You were saved by the good book, I was saved by the half-full glass, so come on take a good look, ‘cause this party will be our last…”

Seriously, good stuff. So what kept me from realizing it at first? To me, a good melody emphasizes the words, but there are very few stick-in-your-head moments on The Place We Ran From. But I’ve come to realize that isn’t the point of this record. These songs are slow and easy, but heavy with emotion, and while my brain is screaming at me that they’re just repeating chords over and over, I’m missing the resonance.

“Held in the Arms of Your Words,” for example, is literally four chords repeated for its entire running time. But if I let it wash over me, I can hear what’s amazing about it. “You’re effortless, you know you are, and all I want to do is let you lead me off into the dust,” Lightbody sings, while M. Ward adds gorgeous guitar accents behind him, and pianist Troy Stewart does the bare minimum necessary to set the tone. Archer’s “I Am a Landslide” is just as simple as Lightbody’s songs, but his high, aching voice adds another dimension to it.

On repeat listens, my favorite thing here is the closer, “Pieces.” This song kind of drifted by me the first time, because I was internally criticizing its simplistic structure. But I missed what a remarkable web it weaves. There’s almost nothing to it, but it spins out over seven minutes, constantly building and never arriving. Buck and Archer paint guitar pictures in the background, Lee plays a dark, simple organ line. If you close your eyes and let go, it all works. Plus, it contains this line: “You’re married to her in your mind and she loves you like a son.” So much there.

This is not a record made for me, nor is it one I’m ever going to love. But I’m trying to hear it in new ways. and let it reveal itself to me. I’m listening for things I may have missed before, and I understand what Lightbody and company were aiming for a bit more now. Kevin’s definitely going to like this more than I do, but in trying to hear it the way I imagine he will, I’ve come to admire it more. I still like what I like – and the same trick hasn’t worked on Guster yet – but I feel like I’m learning a few things.

* * * * *

Thanks to Kevin Trudo for being my literary device this week. Check him out at www.thekevintrudo.com. If you listen to nothing else on his site, hear “Gemini,” an absolute stunner of a tune, recorded for the Tuesday Project with nothing but Kevin and his acoustic guitar. That song is a compelling argument for simplicity and directness all by itself, and Kevin sings the hell out of it. Seriously, go and hear it.

Next week, Sufjan. 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.