The Record Industry is Dead.

Lately I’ve been all about embracing change. But here’s one I’m still having a lot of trouble with: the impending death of the music industry as I know it.

I still enjoy going to my local record store every week, and picking up physical copies of new releases. But my breed is slowly dying out. Tuesdays at a record store used to be a spiritual, communal experience. Now it’s deader than the eight-track in there every week. The die-hards, clinging to a time when albums weren’t leaked to the Internet weeks before release date, and not paying for music was called “stealing,” are all like me: older, obsessive fans looking back with nostalgia at a simpler time.

But that time is all but gone. I’m thankful for my record store, still soldiering on (and surviving on sales of vinyl, a format also deemed dead some years ago). I’m grateful I still have a place to go and talk with fellow music fans – personal interaction remains an essential part of my process, taking recommendations from people and listening to their thoughts on the new stuff. But I don’t know how much longer this little world will survive.

What has me shaking my head like this? The news that for the past two weeks, Billboard’s charts saw a pair of consecutive records: the two lowest-selling number one albums in SoundScan history. First Taylor Swift’s Speak Now notched up 52,000 sales in its sixth week, which isn’t bad for an album that has been out for a month and a half. But then Cake’s Showroom of Compassion topped the chart with just 44,000 copies in its debut week. Cage the Elephant ended up at number two with 39,000 copies.

A year ago the same week, Hope for Haiti Now debuted in the number-one spot with 171,000 copies sold. We’ve sunk this far in a year. It’s not surprising to me that Cake’s album (seven years in the making, mediocre as all get-out) didn’t sell well. But that it still topped the charts with 44,000 sales… that’s astonishing. And it’s hard to ignore the big problem at the center here: everyone who wanted Showroom of Compassion, but didn’t want to pay for it, could have had it weeks before its release. Same goes for every album on Billboard’s list.

I had a revealing conversation with a younger friend recently. He’s a member of several online music-sharing communities, ones that are set up in other countries to avoid copyright laws. He takes whatever he wants without paying for it, and in fact will download popular albums he doesn’t want, just to seed them back to the community. He gets points, you see, for sharing things that more people want to download. He has every album I’ve bought this year, and every album I plan to buy for the next few weeks, sitting on his hard drive.

This is the future, ladies and gentlemen. Recorded music is worth nothing. It’s shared and traded without payment, without context, and without thought. The collateral damage is not just to the record companies, who have been slow to react to this new world. It’s to small record stores, and therefore to communities. I don’t mean to stand on a soapbox here – I’m certainly skirting the law when I make mix CDs for friends. But I will miss local record stores. I will miss physical CDs. I will miss the interconnected experience of buying a disc, tearing off the shrink wrap, reading the liner notes, and talking about it with other music fans, all of whom have come to our local store to experience the same thing.

This is why I love Record Store Day and other attempts to save the local stores. This is why I keep shelling out for compact discs, a format that has already been passed by. Musicians are starting to think of recordings as loss leaders, as free samples to generate interest in the live shows. As an old fart who loves recorded music, and who loves the communities that spring up around it, this scares and saddens me.

But the change is coming. The change is here. Like the newspaper industry, the music industry will likely not survive this, at least in its current form. The old will be swept away in a digital tide. I don’t know what the next world will look like, but I hope I can find a place in it. I just doubt that place will be as nice as my local record store.

Iron and Wine is Dead.

I admit, I have a hard time with change.

Musically speaking, I’m a paradox. I say I love it when artists flip their own scripts, bringing in different styles and influences. But whenever a musician I love does this, I’m honestly scared. I can only imagine how I would have reacted to pre-release news of Revolver in 1966. Sitars? Backwards recording? Songs about singing birds and yellow submarines? What happened to my lovable, singable Beatles? I’d have been sweating that record.

I can’t say Iron and Wine is one of my favorite artists. But I can say this: Sam Beam has been all about embracing change, and it’s been fascinating to watch him evolve. The problem with his rapid development is that he’s off to new places so quickly that he rarely leaves time to enjoy the places he’s been. Every Iron and Wine album has been different from the last, and the new one, Kiss Each Other Clean, is so different from the other three that it almost sounds like the work of a different act entirely.

The thing is, I liked the places Sam Beam has been. Okay, 2002’s The Creek Drank the Cradle is no masterpiece – it’s a home-recorded slab of folksy, woodsy ditties, played on acoustic guitar and little else. Beam’s voice, weak at the best of times, is layered atop itself to give the illusion of strength. It’s a strange album, and it gives up all it has to offer within its first few tracks.

But its follow-up, Our Endless Numbered Days, is absolutely gorgeous. Beam sticks with the acoustic, but records it cleanly this time, and adds subtle percussion. It is here that you can really hear Beam’s gift for lyrics, and pick up on his fascination with spirituality: “She’s chosen to believe in the hymns her mother sings, Sunday pulls its children from their piles of fallen leaves…” It’s a remarkable album that just gets better as I get older.

And Beam will probably never make another one like it. Four years ago, he released The Shepherd’s Dog, a deliriously-produced, noisy, hypnotic, blues-inflected soundscape of an album. It was as bold a statement of intent as any artist has ever laid down: I’m not going back, Beam was saying. Enjoy this, because it’s where I’m headed. Though I liked The Shepherd’s Dog, more for its sound than its songs, I found myself missing the painful beauty of Our Endless Numbered Days. This was a new beast.

I almost feel like Sam Beam has been influenced here by Mark Hollis, who took Talk Talk from a fine synth-pop act into deeper, more challenging waters, without caring what anyone thought. Sam Beam is clearly a restless artist, moving forward without holding anyone’s hand. As idiosyncratic as The Shepherd’s Dog is, his new music sounds nothing like it. He’s left it behind again, and by the sound of things, he’s never coming back.

Long Live Iron and Wine.

So was it worth it? Mostly, yes.

Kiss Each Other Clean (love that title) is a gigantic-sounding record that still manages to be intimate and powerful. Before hearing it, I was worried that Beam’s concepts had grown beyond his relatively simple songs, and the album doesn’t fully alleviate these fears. But I think Beam understands his strengths, and uses the massive production at his disposal here to paper over his weaknesses.

Take the leadoff track, for example. If you were to play “Walking Far From Home” on piano or guitar, it would be terribly boring – four chords, the same melody repeated over and over. But Beam uses synthesizers, electronic drums, chimes and an arresting vocal arrangement to keep things interesting. It is, at once, his smallest and hugest song, and it sets the tone for this fascinating record right off the bat. But even with all that, it doesn’t stop me from noticing how thin the actual melody is.

Beam described Kiss Each Other Clean as 1970s AM radio fodder, and he’s not kidding. I’ll be very surprised if the indie cognoscenti embrace the lite-funk of “Me and Lazarus,” with its squonking saxophone solos, or the Still Crazy-era Paul Simon vibe of “Tree By the River,” all electric pianos and sweet harmonies. Neither of these songs sound like anything Sam Beam has done – in fact, you have to go to track five, “Half Moon,” to hear anything that resembles the Iron and Wine of old.

But once you get past how jarring it all is, this record is quite lovely. “Tree By the River” is a low-key pop delight, the kind of thing Neil Diamond may have sung in his heyday, right on down to the restrained guitar break. “Time isn’t kind or unkind, you liked to say, but I wonder to who, and what you’re saying today,” Beam sings, in a voice that has never been stronger. In fact, Beam’s newfound vocal prowess is one of the first things you’ll notice about this record. It’s like he took years of lessons between albums, and they did him wonders.

From first note to last, Beam piles on the sound. “Monkeys Uptown” does The Shepherd’s Dog several better, taking a dirge that would have fit on that record and dressing it up in robot drums and piercing electric guitars. Listen closely for the Stevie Wonder-style clavinet adding to the din before the end. “Rabbit Will Run” slathers synths over a repetitive marimba line, as Beam sings through an effects board. And then the whistles come in. The song is no great shakes, but the sound is astonishing. After that, it’s refreshing to fall into the quiet beauty of “Godless Brother in Love,” a song that truly shows off how far Beam’s voice has come.

But I often found myself wishing that the melodies were strong enough to match the sheer amount of work spent on the sonics. The lyrics are, as always, fantastic, Beam upping both the spiritual content and the profanity. (My favorite convergence of the two: “When the curtain rose, the crowd was blown away while the lion and the lamb kept fucking in the back row…”) The songs, however, are simple things. They get more complex as the album goes along – “Godless Brother” really is heartbreakingly beautiful, and the funkadelic “Big Burned Hand” is superb – but never soar like the production does.

That is, until the final track. “Your Fake Name is Good Enough for Me” is a seven-minute tour de force that, all by itself, justifies Beam’s restlessness. Beginning with an afrobeat foundation and a swinging horn section, Beam takes us on a progressive-jazz-funk ride, before abruptly switching gears a few minutes in. The second half of the song is a slow build of electric guitars and harmonies, Beam telling the future over and over: “We will become the rising sun, we will become the damage done, we will become the river’s sway, we will become the love we made…” It’s simply perfect.

Like all major changes, Kiss Each Other Clean will take some getting used to. It is, at minimum, a bold and brash step forward for a guy becoming known for them. Sam Beam rarely stays in the same place for very long, so it remains to be seen if this newly-funky tone-color explosion will be his default mode for a while, or if he’s already off to other pastures. But the record he’s left us this time is an often-mesmerizing, strangely-danceable affair, full of piercing lyrics and surprising choices. At times, it’s transcendent, and it all but makes me forget where he’s been.

That’s the best compliment I can give an artist like Beam: I want to listen to this, instead of his old stuff. I want to embrace the change. Iron and Wine is dead. Long live Iron and Wine.

Next week, a few things I didn’t get to yet, like Amanda Palmer, Corinne Bailey Rae and Pearl Jam. 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.

Apologies in advance – this is going to be a quick one. I’m neck-deep into getting my Patch.com site ready for launch next week, and the sheer amount of busy work involved isn’t leaving a lot of time for anything else. I’m starting to feel a little more on top of things, but I’m really only giving myself a couple of hours to write this before heading back to work. This’ll be good news for those of you who think I’m too long-winded, though.

It’s appropriate that this column will be kind of short and slight, because the album I want to discuss is both of those things. And yet, I’ve started to like it quite a bit. I’m talking about The King is Dead, the sixth album from Portland, Oregon’s The Decemberists. In fact, this is such a small, lightweight effort that I almost feel funny calling it what it is: the first major release of 2011.

It’s also the follow-up to my favorite album of 2009, The Hazards of Love. The culmination of years of ambitious folk-prog explorations, Hazards is an hour-long suite, a dark fairly tale told in one continuous burst. The band performed it live exactly as it appeared on record, the whole twisty hour. It’s a cerebral, difficult, insanely ambitious work, rooted equally in centuries-old folk music and Jethro Tull-style theatrics, and it must have been exhausting to put together.

So it’s no surprise that the band has scaled back for the follow-up, but even I didn’t expect them to go this far. The King is Dead is 40 minutes of the simplest, breeziest music Colin Meloy has ever written. Even the earliest Decemberists albums had a hint of the epic about them, songs taking on the feel of ancient ballads and seafaring sagas. But not here. Here we have 10 little folk tunes, some with harder edges, some that just twinkle along prettily. It is completely devoid of ambition – this is an album that simply wants to be liked.

And ironically, that’s why it’s been so hard for me to like it. Meloy’s voice remains arresting and unique, but here that voice is gracing songs that its owner could knock out in a weekend. If you’ve heard the single, “Down By the Water,” you’ve heard perhaps the most complex and driving tune on the album. For most of this effort, the Decemberists are content merely to be pretty – see “Rise to Me,” a country-ish ballad that floats along on a gentle wind, or “Rox in the Box,” a folksy shuffle with a complacent chorus.

None of these songs grab you by the lapels and force you to listen, the way Hazards or The Crane Wife did. But there’s something of a joyous freedom to this album, even in its saddest moments, like the sweet “January Hymn.” It’s almost like Meloy is happy to be free of the weight of what the Decemberists have been – scholarly, verbose, thoughtful. Here he just delights in spinning out simple tales, tiny songs with succinct messages. Opener “Don’t Carry It All” is perhaps the most obvious example, since it’s literally about dropping a burden: “Let the yoke fall from our shoulders, don’t carry it all, don’t carry it all…” You can hear in Meloy’s voice just how glad he is to follow his own advice.

The King is Dead also offers Meloy and company the chance to jam with some genuine icons. R.E.M.’s Peter Buck plays guitar on three tracks, adding to this album’s IRS Records-era feel – if you can’t spot his playing on “Calamity Song,” you don’t know your early R.E.M. – and Gillian Welch graces seven songs with her amazing voice. The album doesn’t exactly have a party feel, and it’s in no way ramshackle, but I can see Meloy calling up his famous friends and putting the whole thing down on tape in a couple of days. It’s that kind of record.

And is that a bad thing? I don’t know. I certainly have a taste for the epic. Hazards soared to the top of my list nearly on ambition alone, and my favorite album of last year (The Age of Adz, by Sufjan Stevens) contains a 25-minute-long song. Simplicity usually just passes me by, even elegant simplicity. So it’s been a struggle for me to appreciate what’s here without lamenting what’s missing. The last couple of songs (the dusky “This is Why We Fight” and the sad, lovely “Dear Avery”) go a long way toward earning my love. But I can’t help thinking that The King is Dead just isn’t trying very hard.

And yet… and yet. I’ve found myself smiling uncontrollably when I press play on “Don’t Carry It All” lately, and the gentle beauty of these songs is beginning to reveal itself. Ordinarily, if an album takes several listens to sink in, it’s because it’s too complex to grasp in one go. This is the exact opposite, an album too easy, too lightweight to stick. But the uncomplicated directness of songs like “January Hymn” has started to resonate.

This may not be what you want in a Decemberists album. It’s certainly not what I wanted, after The Hazards of Love. But it’s clearly what the band needed – a break from their own myth. I expect, years from now, that The King is Dead will be seen as a quick pitstop between destinations, a layover while they decide where to fly next. But even so, there’s gold in them thar hills, if you’re willing to let it reveal itself. I like this album for its winsome qualities, its simple smile, its willingness just to be liked for being itself. The King is Dead is not a great album, but it’s a sweet one, the sound of a grandiose, theatrical band figuring out how to just be. It’ll make you smile back.

* * * * *

A couple of quick takes:

Dr. Tony Shore really likes White Lies. He’s the reason I listen, to be honest, since the Joy Division-style mope-pop of their debut To Lose My Life didn’t grab me much at all. But second album Ritual is a definite improvement. Buoyed by sweeping single “Bigger Than Us,” the album adds a depth to the band’s synth-heavy sound, and manages to outdo similar bands, like Interpol. In places, this record sounds like Julian Cope’s Krautrock work, and in many others, you can hear the ghost of Ian Curtis knocking. There’s nothing original here, but if this is a sound you like, White Lies have turned in maybe the best pastiche of it I’ve ever heard.

And here’s one from the Portland, Maine files. Spencer Albee, until recently the keyboard player with the great Rustic Overtones, has a new project. It’s called Space vs. Speed, and it’s pretty much awesome.

This thing struts out of the gate immediately with “Tea and Cocaine,” a robotic rocker with a Stone Temple Pilots-esque chorus, which is nothing when compared with the monster hook of second track “Set It Off.” (Seriously, if there’s a better “na-na-na” this year, I’ll be surprised and elated.) Albee’s synths are the bedrock of this record, but Lost on Liftoff guitarist Walt Craven adds some edge. Best of all, these songs are terrific, even in the slower, slightly proggier second half. Seriously, check this out at www.spaceversusspeed.com. It’s great stuff.

Next week, the new releases keep on rolling out, with Iron and Wine and Corinne Bailey Rae. Apologies again for the short column. Back to work…

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.

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that (apparently) never ends.

As many of you know, I had originally intended to write Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. for 10 years, and see how it went. Well, it’s gone very well, I think. I’ve met a lot of terrific people, turned people on to great music, and got turned on to some amazing stuff myself. As an experiment in musical diary entry, I’ve been happy with the way this has turned out.

So here we are, kicking off Year Eleven. I plan to do some new things this year, including semi-regular podcasts, for those of you who are just dying to hear me babble on about music. I enjoyed the live Twitter reviews last year, so I’m game for more of them this year. I really fell off the blogging train last year, so I’m hoping to climb back aboard. And I would really like to expand the reach of this column, and get it in the (metaphorical, digital) hands of more people, so I’m exploring a couple of avenues in that direction too.

But the core of this thing will always be the weekly column, my chance to talk to you directly about the music I’ve loved, loathed and stumbled upon in the preceding seven days. Even a decade in, I still love writing this column, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving music, or trying to hear as much of it as I can. So why stop now? The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades, baby.

And yeah, there’s a lot of terrible music out there, but there’s also a lot of great stuff if you know where to look. I’m happy to be the guy who nudges you toward the unseen, unsung musicians I’ve found, and I’m more than glad to hear about it when you find some as well. You can always get me through the email link to your left (or sourcil74@hotmail.com), and connect with me on Facebook (www.facebook.com/asalles) and Twitter (@tm3am).

Longtime readers know this, but if you’re looking for pessimism and anger over the state of music, you’re (usually) in the wrong place. TM3AM is meant to be a chronicle of musical enjoyment, and the best ones, in my opinion, are the ones written with breathless excitement, like I just had to tell everyone I know about this amazing, life-changing experience I’ve just had. Good music does that to me, still, and TM3AM is my way of trying to convey that feeling in words. It won’t always be like that, but when it can, it will.

So I’m always looking forward, always optimistic about what’s to come. 2010 was a year that rewarded my faith – so many good records by artists new and old. Will 2011 be the same way? I don’t know, but there are plenty of reasons to believe it will. Here, as a way of welcoming in the new year, are 11 of them, 11 musical reasons to love 2011:

1. The Decemberists, The King is Dead.

Two years ago, the Decemberists made their best record, a continuous hour-long fable called The Hazards of Love. But you can only commit yourself to progressive suites for so long (unless you’re Dream Theater). That’s why Portland, Oregon’s favorite sons have stripped back for their new one, writing 10 short, folksy songs and playing them with straightforward grace. It’s tempting to consider The King is Dead a backslide after the majesty of Hazards, but there’s power in these simple songs, and it’s an album that I expect will grow in stature with each new play. It’s out January 18, but you can hear the whole thing now at NPR here.

2. Iron and Wine, Kiss Each Other Clean.

Listening to the first few snatches of Iron and Wine’s fourth album, it’s hard to believe this project started out with just Sam Beam and a guitar. The new songs are huge, layered affairs, some reportedly featuring blaring saxophones and DJ scratching. Is there a point where the concept grows too large? Has Beam rocketed past that point? Will this album be another winner, or a classic case of too much sound and fury? I’m excited to find out. Kiss Each Other Clean hits stores one week after the Decemberists, on January 25.

3. Teddy Thompson, Bella.

Richard Thompson’s son is a fine songwriter in his own right, and unless his fifth solo album is an ode to the main character of Twilight, I expect it will continue the tradition. This album was supposed to come out last year, and has bounced around the schedule (it’s currently slated for February 8), but Thompson’s country-tinged folk is usually worth the wait.

4. Bright Eyes, The People’s Key.

Even for longtime fans, the evolution of Conor Oberst has been something to behold. Once a too-precious bedroom-folk emoting machine, Oberst has grown into a songwriter and record-maker of remarkable force. After a pair of terrific, shambling solo records and a collaboration with the Monsters of Folk, Oberst has resurrected his Bright Eyes moniker for 10 more songs. Given his rapid growth rate, they should be songs worth hearing, again and again. The People’s Key is out February 15.

5. PJ Harvey, Let England Shake.

Every time Polly Jean Harvey releases something, it ought to be an event. She’s an artist with a stunning breadth, as she showed last time out with 2007’s skin-crawling White Chalk. (She also collaborated with John Parish on A Woman a Man Walked By in 2009, with great success.) Let England Shake is supposedly a return to the raw, melodic power of earlier records, and that alone has me excited to hear it. That’s out the same day as Bright Eyes, making February 15 a banner day in my book. (Also out that day: The Dears, Drive-By Truckers, Telekinesis, and Mogwai, who have come up with my favorite album title of the year so far: Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will.)

6. Eisley, The Valley.

It’s been a rough road for the family DuPree. This, their third album, was meant to be out some time ago, but has been caught up in record label red tape. After hearing Eisley play some of the songs from this at Cornerstone last year, I’m itching to hear this record. Their penchant for driving, melodic singalongs with outstanding harmonies has not failed them. The Valley is supposed to be out on March 1. I’ll believe it when I hear it, which I hope I do very soon.

7. Bruce Cockburn, Small Sense of Comfort.

A new Bruce Cockburn is always cause for celebration. It’s been five years since Life Short Call Now, which was a mediocre effort. (Well, mediocre for Cockburn. It would have been the best album many other artists had ever made.) I don’t yet know anything about Small Sense of Comfort. Well, I know two things. It’s a new album by Bruce Cockburn, and it’s out on March 8. And after Bruce has spent more than 40 years producing some of my favorite music ever, I don’t think I need to know anything else.

8. R.E.M., Collapse Into Now.

I spent a decade dutifully buying less-than-stellar R.E.M. albums, just because I’m a fan. (Remember Around the Sun? Yeah, I’m trying to forget, too.) But with 2008’s Accelerate, the Georgia trio revived my love for them. Here was the band I remember from my youth, the band that could breathe fire at a moment’s notice, the band that wrote some of the best songs of the 1980s. Collapse Into Now is the second album of the rebirth, in a way, and it has a lot riding on it. I confess I haven’t been bowled over by the three songs I’ve heard, and that guest list (including Eddie Vedder, Peaches and Patti Smith) has me concerned. But I still have hope. Collapse Into Now is out March 8 as well.

9. Paul Simon, So Beautiful or So What.

Like Cockburn, Paul Simon’s been away for five years. His last record, Surprise, was a startling and delightful collaboration with Brian Eno that found him rapping (at age 60) and trying out all manner of electronic beats and textures. Simon is one of the very few artists who manages to flip his story each time out, and I never know what he’s going to try next. The goofy leadoff track from So Beautiful, “Ready for Christmas Day,” isn’t a knockout, but the record is expected to sport a bluegrass influence, something Simon’s never dabbled in. His gift for lyrics, I expect, will remain undiminished as well. This is the most distant point on my new release calendar – it’s scheduled for April 12.

10. Quiet Company’s third album.

And now we’re into the albums without firm release dates, and there’s none I’m more jazzed to hear than this one. Taylor Muse is, to my mind, the best new songwriter I’ve heard in many years, and he promises an epic monster of an album. The two songs I’ve heard (with the suitably epic titles “Preaching to the Choir Invisible Part One” and “…Part Two”) bear him out. QuietCo is a band everyone should hear, and in my experience, everyone who does hear them ends up falling in love. I expect greatness, and you can expect to hear a lot from me about this album in 2011. Go here. Update from Muse: the album is called We Are All Where We Belong.

11. David Mead, Dudes.

And this is the most speculative of the bunch, since I don’t know whether it’ll be out in 2011, but I hope so. David Mead is one of the best songwriters no one knows, and he’s made album after album of superb, shimmering pop music. He’s gone direct to the fans for Dudes, funding it through Kickstarter.com – he raised 20,000 through donations, and is in the midst of laying down tracks now. Kickstarter is the best thing to happen to independent music in years, and I’m glad Mead made it work for him. And I’m very excited to hear Dudes, an album that reportedly includes songs with titles like “The Smile of Rachael Ray” and “The National Conference for Sales Managers.” David Mead lightens up? That’d be awesome.

And there you have it. There’s more, much more, including the potential return of Daniel Amos, a triple-disc album from the Violet Burning, and new things from Cut Copy, Trail of Dead, Danger Mouse, Corinne Bailey Rae, Danielson and Ray Davies, all in the first three months. It’s a great time to be a music fan.

Next week, we dive in with the Decemberists, White Lies and Amanda Palmer. Year Eleven, everyone. Strap in, here we go.

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.