I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I believe there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure.

If you like a song, if it makes you happy and brings a little joy to your existence, then you shouldn’t feel even slightly guilty about it, no matter what it is. Others may try to dissuade you from the thing you love, but don’t let them. You should give not one shit what they think, be they famous and influential music critics or people you know. Or hell, both, if you know some famous and influential music critics. Art is between you and the work, and no one else needs to be in that relationship.

Hopefully I’ve succeeded in keeping this column about what I like, what I’m responding to, and not what you should like or respond to. At the bottom of this column you’ll find my First Quarter Report for 2013, essentially an early look at my top 10 list. In no way am I suggesting these are the albums you should like best. They’re the ones I like best at this point in time. I’d love it if you checked out the ones you haven’t heard, but beyond that, it’s not my place nor my business to tell you what to like.

I get some flack for some of the things I enjoy. For more than a decade, Marillion has been one of my favorite bands, despite the fact that virtually everyone else I know finds them bland and boring. I put the Click Five in my top 10 list a few years ago, and their infectious power pop still makes me smile, but some of my readers just couldn’t stomach them. Same with Hanson, a band I will defend to the death. They write top-notch blue-eyed soul-pop, and they keep getting better at it. They have a new record coming out this year – the first single, “Get the Girl Back,” is pretty great – and you can expect me to wax ecstatic about it when it drops, no matter what anyone thinks.

With that in mind, I have two records on tap this week that most people who don’t know me won’t believe I actually like. One’s a modern soul-pop masterwork from a former boy-bander, and one’s a mariachi throwdown from a former country-swing band. And both of them have occupied my CD player for weeks. Here’s what I unashamedly like about them.

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The rise of Justin Timberlake has been fun to watch.

I’ve never been a teenage girl, so the appeal of ‘NSync, Timberlake’s ‘90s-era prefab boy band, has always eluded me. I get them mixed up with the Backstreet Boys, and I couldn’t name a single song of theirs, despite being unable to escape them during my Face Magazine years. (All right, I just looked. I do know “Bye Bye Bye.”) I enjoyed “Cry Me a River” when I first heard it, but I never picked up Timberlake’s first solo album, the idiotically titled Justified. He was a pop star from a boy band, and I wasn’t interested.

Oddly enough, it was “Dick in a Box” that first commanded my attention. Timberlake has all but established a second career as a Saturday Night Live host, and his collaboration with the Lonely Island was one of the funniest things the show has ever aired. When I heard Timberlake was performing “Dick in a Box” in concert, my admiration grew. His second album, FutureSex/LoveSounds, was a huge leap forward, thanks to his burgeoning partnership with producer Timbaland. It was still radio pop, but it was sophisticated radio pop, interesting and mature.

Six years later, here he is with The 20/20 Experience, and his evolution into full-fledged artist and superstar appears complete. He’s now sold enough records that he can get a major label to bankroll an album like this, which could only have been made by someone who doesn’t care if he sells any more records. The 20/20 Experience is vast and patient, full of long, flowering, soulful songs without easy hooks. I’ve been comparing it to old Isaac Hayes records, but that’s not quite right – it doesn’t sound like old soul, but it captures some of the essence of it.

Timberlake collaborated with Timbaland again on every track here, and the two are remarkably (ahem) in sync. They throw down the gauntlet early – “Pusher Love Girl” is eight minutes long, slow and slinky, with old-school strings and horns and a decidedly Prince feel. Timberlake has a high and thin voice – he’s no John Legend, by any means – but he works it, stretching it over the groove. The last three minutes find Timbaland riffing on the theme – the song relates a girl to an addictive drug, and Timberlake drops a sotra-rapped verse: “I can’t wait till I can get you home and get you in my veins.” You wouldn’t hear this on the Mickey Mouse Club, but you also wouldn’t hear it on the radio.

In fact, only a couple songs here sound like Timberlake could even send them to radio. One of them, “Suit & Tie,” is a bona fide hit, which makes sense – it has the album’s most obvious chorus, and a (relatively uninspired) verse from Jay-Z. It’s clearly the single, and it’s fine, particularly its odd vibes sample, but it’s the worst thing here. Much better is “Don’t Hold the Wall,” a strange yet compelling crawler that extends to seven minutes, and the great “Strawberry Bubblegum,” a smooth, minimal mood piece that evolves into a jazzy pop treat.

These songs take their time – the Prince-like “Spaceship Coupe” took me a few listens to appreciate, but now I can’t get enough of the thick synth bass and the ripping Elliott Ives guitar solo. “That Girl” is one of only two songs that doesn’t surge past six minutes, but I wouldn’t have minded if it had. It’s the most classic-sounding soul number on the record, with delicious horns and guitars. The vocal arrangement is marvelous, dripping honeyed harmonies and lovely countermelodies.

The 20/20 Experience ends with three songs unlike anything Timberlake has done, and for my money, they’re the three best. “Let the Groove Get In” is an ecstatic rewrite of “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” that spins out its Latin-inflected rhythm and repeated vocal for seven minutes. It glides into “Mirrors,” the most straightforward pop-rock song here, but as it goes along, it expands and blossoms. The breakdown in the final three minutes is splendid. And then there is “Blue Ocean Floor,” a drumless ambient lament than ends the album on a melancholy note. This is the record’s biggest surprise, a song that is equal parts Thom Yorke and Moby, a shimmering and heartfelt sink to the bottom.

I hear this is just the first volume of The 20/20 Experience. If the second can maintain this album’s inventiveness, maturity and willingness to serve the song more than the singer, it should be another winner. Justin Timberlake didn’t have to make an album this interesting – whatever he released would have sold, so he could have just followed the winning formula. The fact that he did, and that the resulting album is one of the finest mainstream pop albums I’ve heard in years, is worthy of respect. It’s a little masterwork from an unexpected source, and one I can’t stop listening to. Can’t wait to see where he goes from here.

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When I was in college, I lived in a house with three other guys. We all pitched in for cable, and somehow we all got addicted to Country Music Television. We compiled a list of elements that had to be present in every country video – the hat, the truck, the guitar, the girl – and I think we were proud of ourselves when we discovered bands that broke the mold.

One of our favorites was The Mavericks, a band that didn’t seem to belong on CMT at all. Their hit at the time was “There Goes My Heart,” a bit of traditional western swing with a horn section, and all of their third album, What a Crying Shame, traded in the same old-school stompers. They only got more interesting from there, kicking in genre walls while keeping one respectful eye on the past. Their seventh album, In Time, was a long… well, time in coming – the band took a decade off while lead singer Raul Malo pursued a solo career. They’ve now evolved into a fascinating, goofy, damn fun outfit that I unabashedly adore.

On much of In Time, the Mavericks sound like Roy Orbison fronting Los Lobos. Malo has really cultivated the Orbison in his voice – it’s always been there, but he sounds even more like him now than he did in the ‘90s. The songs, as usual, are simple ditties, traditional in scope, but the band leaps genres with even more ease and confidence here. Opener “Back in Your Arms” is a ‘50s shuffle with some fine organ touches, “All Over Again” is full-on Mexican folk music, with some awesome horns, and “In Another’s Arms” is a delicate torch song with strings and sweet melodica. Malo sounds fantastic on that one, like a born crooner.

While every track is good – try the Jerry Lee Lewis boogie of “As Long As There’s Loving Tonight,” or the jazz balladry of “Forgive Me” – there are two standouts that set this album above anything the Mavericks have done. The first is “Come Unto Me,” a minor-key Tex-Mex-flavored stunner that makes full use of Malo’s powerful tenor. The ascending chant that kicks off the pre-chorus is just awesome. And then there is “(Call Me) When You Get to Heaven,” an eight-minute gospel-infused slowly-building epic, complete with insistent choral backing vocals. It’s terrific.

I’m glad I stumbled onto the Mavericks when I was an undergrad. Without that months-long fascination with CMT, I might never have heard them, and I certainly wouldn’t have the attachment to them that I do. In Time is a swell reunion record for a unique band. They’ve evolved into a genre-oblivious beast, beholden to no style, yet always cognizant of the history they’re steeped in. And they’re a lot of fun to boot.

* * * * *

Hard to believe it’s the end of March already. Below you’ll find my First Quarter Report, essentially what my 2013 top 10 list would look like if I were forced at gunpoint to publish it now. This is not a great list, although I’ll stand by the top four. I sincerely hope it gets better. You’ll also see a couple of entries that I have not yet reviewed. Rest assured, I’ll get to them.

Without further ado, here’s the list as it stands now.

#10. Johnny Marr, The Messenger.
#9. Young Dreams, Between Places.
#8. Steven Wilson, The Raven That Refused to Sing and Other Stories.
#7. Justin Timberlake, The 20/20 Experience.
#6. Little Green Cars, Absolute Zero.
#5. They Might Be Giants, Nanobots.
#4. My Bloody Valentine, m b v.
#3. The Joy Formidable, Wolf’s Law.
#2. Everything Everything, Arc.
#1. Frightened Rabbit, Pedestrian Verse.

I go back and forth between Everything Everything and Frightened Rabbit, since they spark very different parts of my musical brain. You caught me in a lyrical mood today, so the Rabbit wins. Come back in three months to see how the list has changed.

And come back next week, when I try out a bunch of new bands. Wish me luck. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m still getting used to the phrase “former journalist.”

I was an ink-stained wretch for 17 years before making the jump to public relations and science communication. For five of those years – the best five, if I’m being honest – I worked for a mid-sized daily from Aurora, Illinois called the Beacon-News. The Beacon started 167 years ago as a family-owned publication, but was bought out by the Chicago Sun-Times in 2000. I started working there in 2005, and I left at the end of 2010.

For all five of those years, I worked for John Russell. Since starting at the paper in 1973, he’s had many titles, including city editor, associate editor and managing editor, but his job description is pretty simple: he’s the heart and soul of the Beacon-News. From the moment I first met him, I knew I was working with a true professional newsman. In the years I spent sitting right across from him, I found out that he’s a walking inspiration to his staff, an endlessly kind soul hiding behind a gruff exterior, and just one of the all-around greatest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet and work for.

Even back in 2005, the Beacon staff was chafing under the misguided direction of the Sun-Times, and that would only get worse. I survived four or five rounds of layoffs, watching as good people lost their jobs and the paper’s staff dwindled. When I started, the news department had 11 reporters. When I left, we had four. This, naturally, affected our ability to do our jobs and put out a quality product. But that never stopped John Russell from holding us to the highest standard, and working every single day to make sure the Beacon was the best paper we could make it. And of course, that inspired all of us to work harder too.

The Sun-Times has made some ridiculous, mean-spirited, thoughtless moves in the past few years, both during my tenure and after it. On Friday, they will finalize two of their stupidest decisions, and I believe they will have sealed the fate of the Beacon. First, they will permanently close the paper’s Aurora offices, forcing all the remaining staff to commute to Chicago to edit and assemble the Beacon. This eliminates the paper’s presence in its own hometown, putting it out of sight and out of mind for most Aurorans.

And second, they will usher out John Russell.

They told him last week. It was a shock to everyone who knows him. Only a company with no concern whatsoever for the paper they own and the people who make and read it would do something this short-sighted and moronic. There’s no sense that can be made of it. They gave John no severance pay, no insurance bridge. And they didn’t even say thank you for more than 39 years of continuous above-and-beyond service. As you can imagine, this has left him – and us – heartbroken and depressed.

So we’re gonna do two things. On Friday night, we’re going to get together, as many of us current and former Beaconites as we can cram into a room, and we’re going to be there for John. And we’re also going to uphold a long-standing journalism tradition by creating a fake edition of the Beacon-News just for him. These fake front pages are usually comprised of snarky in-jokes, but this one will be filled to the brim with heartfelt tributes. We want John to know what an impact he’s made on all of us, how much he’s changed our lives for the better, and how much Aurora is going to miss him.

Anyway, here’s what I wrote for the John Russell edition of the Beacon-News:

The day I first met John Russell, he asked me a question, one I could tell was very important to him: “Why do you want to be a reporter?”

I’m sure this is a familiar story to most Beaconites. It was a question Russell pulled out in every new hire interview, sort of his idea of a litmus test. I remember flailing around for an answer – something about keeping the public informed and able to make good decisions. Blah blah blah.

After agreeing to hire me, JR let me in on the right answer, and it told me all I needed to know about him: “Because I want to save the world.”

John Russell is the Platonic ideal of old-school newspaper editors. He’s grouchy and curmudgeonly, he barks out orders and swears at his computer. He rarely gives out compliments, so when he praises you, it’s like manna from heaven. I worked for John for five years, and I lived for those times he would read a piece I’d slaved over, smile and quietly say, “Good story.” All of us reporters cherished those moments.

He never did get me to write shorter – I can’t count the number of times I handed in a story, and then braced myself for the inevitable shout. “Thirty-four inches? Goddammit!” (He would have edited the crap out of this piece.) But he never cut the good stuff. He made the good stuff better. John wouldn’t settle for half-assed reporting. If you knew there was a question your story hadn’t answered, you could be damn sure John Russell would ask it. And you’d better have an answer.

John taught me more in those five years than I can possibly thank him for. Beneath that gruff exterior, he was endlessly compassionate, wildly funny, and he knew how to bring out the best in his team. His whole team – there wasn’t a person in the Beacon newsroom who did not respect John Russell, and who would not do anything he asked.

Because here’s the thing about John: he made you better, but more than that, he made you want to be better. He inspired everyone to work harder, because no one would work harder than John. He was the fulcrum around which the entire newsroom spun. During my first weeks at the Beacon, the more-than-capable Mike Cetera took a turn as city editor, while John occupied an office along the back wall. I didn’t know any better at the time, but once John retook his place at the center of the newsroom, it was like the planets realigned. All was right with the world once again.

John Russell has worked at the Beacon-News longer than I’ve been alive. He’s taken every ounce of shit every inept Chicago higher-up has thrown at him, and kept on plugging, because he believes in the Beacon. But more, he believes in good stories. He believes they can change the world. And he’s right.

I wish this story had a different ending. The Beacon-News without John Russell is simply unimaginable. Most Beacon readers will probably never know his name, or what he did for them – for us – for nearly four decades.

But we know. And we know that a mere “thank you” is never going to cover it. But it’s all we have. So thank you to John Russell, the best damn editor I’ve ever met, and the best damn boss I’ve ever had. Thank you for changing the lives of everyone you worked with, whether you knew it or not. Thank you for always trying to save the world.

Thank you, John. Thank you.

* * * * *

After that, I don’t quite feel like waxing pithy about music, so let’s just end with a quick look ahead.

Next week, we’ll get new records from Depeche Mode, the Strokes and Harper Simon. We’ll also get a new Wavves, but I’m not expecting much from that. April will kick off with new things from Telekinesis and Hem, two bands with nothing whatsoever in common, as well as an archival release from Rilo Kiley.

The rest of the month will bring us albums from Michael Roe, Dawes, the Knife, Todd Rundgren, James Blake, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Iron and Wine, the Flaming Lips, the reborn Big Country (with the Alarm’s Mike Peters on vocals), Frank Turner, Phoenix, Kid Cudi, Paula Cole, !!! (who have blessed their album with the amazing title Thr!!!er), Guided by Voices and the Geoff Tate version of Queensryche. (Yeah, there’s a whole story there. Suffice it to say that there are now two versions of Queensryche, and both have new albums coming out.)

May will see new things from Vampire Weekend, She and Him, Joe Satriani, Alice in Chains, the National, Daft Punk, the Polyphonic Spree and Laura Marling. June will usher in new ones from Eleanor Friedberger, Megadeth, Portugal the Man, Surfer Blood, Sigur Ros, Aaron Sprinkle (his first solo album since Fair’s split), and the reunited Black Sabbath. Let’s hope Ozzy made it through the haze to the microphone OK. Somewhere in there we’ll get a record from the other version of Queensryche, a remastered deluxe edition of R.E.M.’s Green, and hopefully the new Daniel Amos, entitled Dig Here, Said the Angel.

It’s almost too much goodness. Expect reviews of most, if not all of the above, either here or on my supplemental blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date.

Next week, what was supposed to run this week – some music people can’t believe I like, plus the First Quarter Report for 2013.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

With some artists, you know exactly what you’re going to get every time.

The classic example is AC/DC. There’s a famous quote from Angus Young around the time of 2000’s Stiff Upper Lip: “We’ve been accused of making the same album over and over 12 times, but it’s a dirty lie,” he said. “The truth is, we’ve made the same album over and over 15 times.” That’s funny because it gets at an essential truth – AC/DC is a band that found the thing that works for them, and stuck with it. For more than 30 years.

Then there are those artists who settle into a comfortable groove, only to pull the rug out every once in a while. Ben Folds comes to mind – occasionally, he’ll make an a cappella record, or team up with Nick Hornby, or toss out a Fear of Pop. But for the most part, Folds delivers quality piano-based pop music. He’s reliable without seeming rote. That’s actually the path most musicians end up taking. They establish an identity, and shake it up now and then. (Even bland poppers Lifehouse just made an interesting-left-turn sort of record.)

But then there are the artists who steadfastly refuse to be nailed down. The chameleons, the shapeshifters, the masters of disguise. Each album is a surprise, each new guise a way of teasing out new styles, taking new paths. The downside is they’re hard to relate to. Even after decades of work, their identities remain slippery. Frank Zappa is a good example. Zappa made so much music in so many different forms that it’s difficult to get a handle on it, and even harder to figure out the man behind the songs.

The ultimate chameleon, though, has to be David Bowie. His long, strange career is one of the finer mysteries of pop music – he broke big during a time when the genre boxes were very important. Radio needed to know which format to slot him into, record stores needed to know where to rack his albums. And yet Bowie kept slipping from stone to stone, from sci-fi prog to glam rock to electro to experimental noise to that utterly bizarre dance-pop cover of “Dancing in the Streets” with Mick Jagger.

It wasn’t just his 1970s alter egos, although Ziggy Stardust was the prototype that inspired the likes of MacPhisto and Omega and Sasha Fierce and even Chris Gaines. His Berlin trilogy with Brian Eno remains one of the most effective change-ups in pop music history. He worked with Nile Rogers in 1983, and six years later debuted Tin Machine, his angular noise-rock combo. In the ‘90s, he embraced industrial aggression and whirring jungle beats. If you couldn’t keep up, Bowie didn’t care.

The idea of Bowie slowing down in his old age was a tough one to swallow. His two albums from the previous decade, Heathen and Reality, were both middling affairs awash in covers. At age 56, he seemingly disappeared, surfacing only occasionally during the next decade. (His guest spot on Extras was worth coming out of hibernation.) It seemed like he’d found a permanent identity: happy retiree. But because he’s David Bowie, he couldn’t stick with that for long.

Bowie’s 26th album, The Next Day, breaks a 10-year silence. He doesn’t need the money, he doesn’t need the artistic recognition. He’s a 66-year-old legend with nothing to prove. Which is why the urgency and power of this album is such a pleasant surprise. Fourteen new Bowie songs, clocking in at less than an hour (without the three bonus tracks), most of them barnburners. Yes, he released the slow and pretty “Where Are We Now” as the first single. No, most of the album doesn’t sound anything like that.

What does it sound like? How about a David Bowie mixtape? This album looks forward by looking back, taking liberally from Bowie’s vast discography. There’s a little “Beauty and the Beast” in the title track, a bunch of Ziggy Stardust glam, and even some Space Oddity epic folk. Some of it’s funny, particularly the rollicking “Boss of Me,” and some of it is somber, like the swaying “You Feel So Lonely You Could Die.”

It’s an album that’s hard to pin down, which is only fitting. It jumps from the blissful “Dancing Out in Space,” with Gerry Leonard’s trademark guitar shimmers floating out over an almost Krautrock expanse, to “You Will Set the World on Fire,” an eruption of blistering riffs and thunderous drums, to closer “Heat,” an almost Scott Walker-esque dirge. Throughout all this, Bowie stretches that worn, yet still strong voice, matching the energy of the loudest numbers like a man half his age.

Much has been made of the cover of The Next Day, which defaces the “Heroes” sleeve with a big white box. Some have felt that Bowie is not adequately respecting his past with this image, but even a cursory listen to the album will show that to be unfounded. This is the sound of a middle-aged Bowie taking stock, celebrating the parts of his career that still thrill him, and creating his 2013 identity from those ingredients. He’s not playing a part here. This is what it sounds like when a lifelong chameleon settles into his own skin. The Next Day sounds like a lot of things, but most of all, it sounds like David Bowie being David Bowie, at last.

* * * * *

If there’s anyone in Bowie’s native Britain living the chameleonic lifestyle these days, it’s probably Steven Wilson.

Who is Steven Wilson? An excellent question. He’s a 45-year-old genius writer, producer and player best known for two long-running projects: Porcupine Tree, his ever-changing 20-year-old progressive rock band, and No-Man, his only slightly younger atmospheric pop collaboration with Tim Bowness. But that’s only scratching the surface of the multiple identities Wilson has adopted in the past two decades.

There’s the whispery drone of Bass Communion, the clanging electronic craziness of IEM (the Incredible Expanding Mindfuck, don’t you know), the straight-ahead pop of Blackfield, and the surprisingly gentle folk of Storm Corrosion, his project with Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth. And more recently, there’s Wilson’s blossoming solo career, which has found him indulging his jazz fusion tendencies. Very little connects these different projects, except Wilson’s voice and his willingness to try just about anything. (He’s also become the go-to producer and remixer for audiophile bands like King Crimson.)

So who is Steven Wilson? Like Bowie, we may never really know, but at least he’s given us plenty of music to listen to while we puzzle it out. The most recent is his third solo album, which has a marvelously ridiculous title: The Raven That Refused to Sing and Other Stories. But that’s the only ridiculous thing about it. In a relatively concise 54 minutes, Wilson has crafted his masterpiece, a perfect summation of where he has been, and where he’s going.

Opener “Luminol” gets the spazzy, prog-metal stuff out of the way early, crashing to life on a bass-driven jam and then, four and a half minutes in, evolving into a slow-burn journey that brings early Genesis to mind. But then “Drive Home” delivers seven and a half minutes of transcendent beauty, delicate acoustic guitars leading into thick clouds of keyboards. It’s all prelude to the jazzy wonders of “The Holy Drinker,” an amazing metal-fused-with-saxophones stomper with a descending melody that’ll haunt you. Blistering organ lines and flute solos await in the second half.

The record turns melancholy in its final third. The 12-minute “The Watchmaker” is a master class on crafting pretty prog, and its piano-driven middle section is lovely. But it’s the title track that truly sets this album apart. It begins in near-silence, with slowly surfacing piano chords, and Wilson sings of loss: “I need you now, and I need our former life, I’m afraid to wake, I’m afraid to love…” Over its eight minutes, the piece swells – when the songbird melody begins near the four minute mark, it’s almost impossibly beautiful, and as the track explodes into magnificence at the end, the experience is remarkably moving. It may be my favorite Steven Wilson song, and with so many to choose from, that’s saying something.

Wilson has called The Raven his most personal album to date, though he’s couched the lyrics in fables and stories. I don’t feel any closer to knowing who he is after listening to it, but that’s not a drawback. It’s the nature of shapeshifters to leave you uncertain about their own confessions, their own honesty. And in the end, it hardly matters. All stories are true.

What matters is that on this album, Wilson has found a way to bring together his proggy, jazzy, ballad-y and epic sides without succumbing to sprawl. He’s fused his various identities together, and ended up with the closest musical approximation of himself he’s yet delivered. All of which makes this a perfect starting point. If you want a first Wilson album, a good jumping-on point for the ongoing story of one of our finest chameleons, you won’t do better than this.

* * * * *

It’s hard to believe I’ve never reviewed a Steven Wilson album before. I’ve been a fan for nearly as long as I’ve been writing this column, but somehow, he always slipped through the cracks. If you’d like other great examples of his work, check out Porcupine Tree’s In Absentia and Fear of a Blank Planet, No-Man’s Speak, and Wilson’s previous solo album, the awesome Grace for Drowning.

Next week, some music people can’t believe I like. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Twitter @tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

We discussed relatively new bands last week, so let’s aim a little older this time.

Not that old, mind you. I’m not talking about senior citizens like Bob Dylan and Neil Young. It’s a wonder those guys are still alive, never mind releasing new material. No, I mean artists who have been around for 20-plus years, and are still in that middle ground between the blood-pumping excitement of their early days and the solemn elder-statesmen respect of their twilight years. I’m talking about people in my own age group (the middle one) who are still evolving and still surprising.

It’s no secret that I lean toward the more experienced musicians. There’s really no substitute for a large body of work, and for the lessons learned over time. While I’m interested to hear high-profile new releases from newbies like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Vampire Weekend, the upcoming albums that have me on the edge of my metaphorical seat are all from older artists with long histories. Billy Bragg, the Flaming Lips, Todd Rundgren, Daniel Amos, Prince, even David Bowie. They’ve all been so many places that wherever they choose to go next, you know it won’t be well-trodden ground.

Here’s another one: Trent Reznor. He’ll be 48 years old in May, and his seminal debut, Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine, turns 25 next year. (I remember buying the 20th anniversary remaster and feeling very old.) Those leather pants are probably a little more snug these days, which may be one reason Reznor put NIN on hiatus a couple of years ago. Of course, now he’s touring with the band again this summer, so maybe he just stayed that cool.

But Pretty Hate Machine is a young man’s record, all the-world-is-ending angst and sexual dread. I’d have a hard time accepting it (or The Downward Spiral) from a 47-year-old. So it’s been fascinating and gratifying to watch Reznor age gracefully without losing the core of what he does. I’m still reeling from the idea that Reznor is now an Academy Award-winning composer for his work with Atticus Ross on The Social Network, and I’m stunned he and Ross did not receive a nomination for their expansive, brilliant score to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. (The movie was poor, so that didn’t help.) Reznor’s recent output has built on his more atmospheric side, and shown him to be the master craftsman I always knew he was.

And now here is Welcome Oblivion, the first full-length from Reznor’s new project, How to Destroy Angels. It’s the first album he’s made with his wife, singer Mariqueen Maandig, but anyone worrying that this will simply be Nine Inch Nails with a female singer needs to give this a listen. Reznor has found a way to take certain aspects of his sound to a new level while retaining his signature. There’s no doubt, listening to this, who is behind the boards, but at the same time, Welcome Oblivion is unlike anything else Reznor has done.

For starters, it’s the most consistently slow, crawling, spooky record he’s made. Nothing here is traditionally beautiful, like the quieter bits of NIN albums. The songs on Welcome Oblivion are frightening, their sonic corners full of ghosts. It is five full tracks until we get a shaft-of-sunlight melody, and eight until we get something that resembles a traditional song. After brief intro “The Wake-Up,” “Keep It Together” sets the tone – it slithers in on a barely-there beat, minimal synths percolating under a droning sheen, and Reznor and Maandig whispering vocals into the mix.

This mood continues for three songs, slowly and subtly building. The title track sounds a little like a mashup of “The Wretched” and “Tomorrow Never Knows,” and Maandig is actually given something to sing. You feel like the album is going somewhere, and then “Ice Age” happens. It’s essentially an acoustic dirge, minimal smatterings of plucked banjos and guitars repeating in a hypnotic pattern. There’s virtually nothing else here, leaving the field wide open for Maandig’s high, clear voice. The chorus of this song is the first real tune we get, and even though the song goes on for seven minutes, it’s a left-field highlight.

Even though many of these tracks, like the slow-burn “Too Late, All Gone,” have that patented Reznor sonic buildup, the album lacks energy and direction. That is, until you get to the pop single hiding at track eight. “How Long” remains slow, but its stacked-harmony chorus is a jolt in the middle of this sleepy record. It’s invigorating, and the electricity doesn’t fade for several more tracks. “Strings and Attractors” puts its NIN beat up front, but keeps the focus on its shuddery melody, and even though “We Fade Away” is a bit of a drone, it’s an enveloping one.

Welcome Oblivion ends with three tracks that are practically instrumentals, but they’re not as reminiscent of Reznor’s film work as you’d expect. “Recursive Self-Improvement” is all stuttering beats and electronic blips, while “The Loop Closes” has its roots in NIN’s “Eraser.” Seven-minute closer “Hallowed Ground” finishes with a whisper, its subtle percussion and minimal piano lines supporting a dense cloud of synth drones and harmony vocals. It drives the point home – for long stretches of this album, nothing is really happening. But it sounds remarkable nonetheless, setting a tense and shivery mood.

I’m not sure if Welcome Oblivion is completely successful. Reznor’s lyrics still sound like they were pulled from a junior high student’s journals, and even Maandig’s pretty voice can’t disguise the fact that very few of these songs really go anywhere. But while you’re listening to it, that hardly matters – this album wraps you up in its sound. Reznor has successfully established How to Destroy Angels as its own entity, separate from yet connected to NIN, and has proven that even a quarter-century later, he can still surprise us.

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I’ve been a They Might Be Giants fan for 27 years.

I was on board right from the start, when at 12 years old I saw the videos for “(She Was a) Hotel Detective” and “Don’t Let’s Start.” When “Birdhouse In Your Soul” became a surprise hit, I was in high school, and it was one of my first experiences with the general public latching on to one of “my” bands. I was in college when their version of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” swept the airwaves, and rocked out to John Henry, their first live-band excursion, in the first house I rented with friends. I was in Indiana for Mink Car and Maryland for The Spine, and I enjoyed 2011’s Join Us in the comfort of the first home I’ve ever owned.

I say all this just to note that I’ve grown up with this band, and we are both old. Both Johns (Linnell and Flansburgh) are in their 50s now, and you’d expect them to start slowing down, or perhaps getting less quirky. But as the years go by, the Johns seem to be more and more excited about being in TMBG, and making the wonderful, idiosyncratic music they make. Ten years ago, they started a second career writing children’s songs, and they’ve made four of the greatest educational records you’ve ever heard. Join Us was a terrific effort, mature without being serious, and their live shows remain legendary.

And they’re not stopping. Out this week is Nanobots, the 16th TMBG album, and it’s a triumph. The album crams 25 songs into 45 minutes, and though many are brief snippets (reminiscent of the component parts of 1992’s “Fingertips”), most are the kind of full-blooded, strange pop songs the Johns are famous for. But there’s a new energy, a new vitality to these tunes – they’re loud, they’re kinetic, and they practically explode with melody.

Opener “You’re on Fire” is a perfect example. It wastes no time getting to the good stuff – that guitar/piano riff, those skipping drums, that verse about towing someone’s car. It’s wonderful, and in 2:41, it’s over. The title track is bizarre, a tale of growing nanobots and watching them rule the world, and Linnell provides a strange mechanical counterpoint in that inimitable voice. But it’s danceable, and the horn section is marvelous. So many of these songs – “Lost My Mind,” the great “Call You Mom,” the grinning “Stone Cold Coup D’Etat” – are vital guitar-pop wonders, easily dismissing the notion of TMBG as a novelty act.

If you need further proof, there is “Sometimes a Lonely Way,” a genuine, heartfelt ballad about failure and loss. “Sometimes a lonely way, taken alive in an un-civil war, trophies in glass displays, rehearsals for third place forever more,” Linnell and Flansburgh sing, their voices entwining before embarking on a “ba-ba-ba” bridge that would make any piano-pop fan smile. It’s the kind of thing TMBG has been writing more often lately, as they’ve aged, and they’re better at it than you’d expect.

Of course, the next eight songs are all goofs, so they haven’t grown that much. Tracks 11-18 whiz by in about four minutes, and two of those minutes are taken up by the marvelous “Secret Steps,” one of Linnell’s trademark melodic circles. “Throw away the thing that tells you not to throw the thing away, you’ll forget to rue the day you went ahead and threw the thing away…” This leads to a string of songs that last between six and 17 seconds, but all in a row, they make for a dizzying few seconds.

On the other end of the spectrum is the album’s epic, “The Darlings of Lumberland,” all of 3:21. It’s an off-kilter, horn-drenched excursion, featuring ‘70s prog harmonies and a slinky synth bass pulse. TMBG stick the landing, too, whipping out the dance-a-licious “Icky” and the sad, strange “Too Tall Girl” in the record’s final stretches. The last track is a 20-second a cappella field recording – abrupt, sure, but it makes you want to circle back and hear this monster again.

There aren’t many bands who can say they’ve made 16 albums. Even fewer can say they’re still at the top of their game, and turning out some of their best work. Nanobots is the finest TMBG album since The Spine, way back in 2004, and though they’ve never lost their way, they sound energized here, full of purpose and direction. It’s a great thing to hear. I doubt I’ll ever find another band like They Might Be Giants, but as long as this one remains this good, I’ll be happy.

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And finally, we have former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, who will be 50 this year.

Marr has been making terrific music since I was in kindergarten. He’s rightly celebrated as a guitar god, with a tone many axe-slingers would kill for. Had he done nothing but contribute to the Smiths catalog, he’d still be revered, but he went on to form the swell Electronic, to contribute to dozens of albums by other artists, and, in recent years, to join Modest Mouse, pumping new blood into a band whose other members are all 10 years his junior.

But one thing Marr has never done is made a solo album, until now. It’s called The Messenger, and it’s fantastic. I like to think that Marr finally decided to put this album together after listening to the last 15 years or so of Britpop, and saying to himself, “Enough is enough.” The Messenger is everything you could want in a guitar-fueled pop album. This is probably what Beady Eye sounds like in Liam Gallagher’s head, the utopian ideal he’s aiming for.

The Messenger rocks right out of the gate, with the dark and pounding “The Right Thing Right,” and simply doesn’t let up. Marr hasn’t lost a note as a player, and he was always an underrated singer, but it’s the songwriting that will blow you away here. “European Me” sounds like every great song on college radio in the ‘80s, given a modern dusting-off. “Lockdown” is simply massive, that ringing guitar tone filling the room, that descending riff making me grin like an idiot. The title track is a showcase for That Guitar Sound, and a great song to boot.

If you expect this album to taper off by the end, you’re gonna be wrong. “New Town Velocity” is one of the album’s best, those familiar tones chiming over a minor-key acoustic strum. It’s like a lost Smiths classic, and it leads into the powerhouse closer, “Word Starts Attack.” It’s reminiscent of old XTC, with its jagged lines and jumped-up beat. It caps off an uncommonly strong record, a fitting solo bow for a living legend. What took him so long? I have no idea, but I hope this is just the first Johnny Marr album in a long line. Life begins at 50, don’t you know?

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Next week, probably Steven Wilson, and maybe David Bowie. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Twitter @tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.