Eagle-eyed readers will remember that I promised my review of Arcade Fire’s mammoth Reflektor album this week. And I was all set to deliver it, too. I’d heard the record a couple times, and I was ready to call it a bloated, tuneless disaster. I liked three songs on disc one, and one on disc two, and on a 13-track, 76-minute album, that’s just not a good average. I was prepared to talk about how I couldn’t understand the steep decline between The Suburbs and this, and express my hope for a more subdued, restrained work next time.

But then a strange thing happened. I kept listening to Reflektor – well, I felt compelled to keep listening, really – and it started clicking. By my 10th listen or so, I’d come to realize why the band liked each of these songs, and by my 20th, I started liking at least something in all of them as well. This is not the usual way these things go, but it is the emotional process virtually all of my favorite albums followed – initial hatred, then a strange compulsion to listen further, then grudging respect, then outright love.

I’m not at that final stage yet, and my thoughts on Reflektor remain complicated. But I thought I owed it to the album to keep plugging away, and try to figure out how I actually felt about it before writing my review. So you’re not getting that this week. Thankfully, there is other music – lots and lots of it. So here are three quick reviews of three albums that are not Reflektor. One is brand new, and the other two are older ones I neglected to wax lyrical about. Hopefully this will tide you over. I hope to have the Reflektor column done shortly. Thank you for your kind indulgence.

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It figures. I post a column stating that my year is pretty much over, and there are no new records to get excited about until 2014, and then one of my favorite British bands drops a surprise fourth album on me.

Not that I’m complaining, mind you. My CD shelf always has room for a new one from The Feeling, one of the most dazzling pop bands I’ve heard since Jellyfish broke up. Their first two albums, Twelve Stops and Home and the extraordinary Join With Us, celebrated five decades of British pop with a glorious mish-mash of melodies. Not since Spilt Milk had I heard a record as delightfully in love with the possibilities of joyous pop as Join With Us. The Feeling gets a lot of criticism for embracing the more uncool elements of their music – the candy-coated swirl, the naked (and sometimes goopy) emotionalism – but they’ve stuck to their guns.

I’m still not sure what happened that third time out. Together We Were Made is a pretty good record, but not even on the same scale as the first two, relying on grooves and stuffy production that feels flat. The band had a lot to prove on their fourth album, especially considering it’s their first self-produced, self-released effort, but amazingly, they’ve managed to both go back to their roots and reinvent themselves on the wonderful Boy Cried Wolf.

What’s amazing about this album is that it seems to fly in the face of what made The Feeling great. This is not a joyous, silly album at all – it’s chock full of mature, stripped-back pop songs about hurt and loss. Lead singer Dan Sells has clearly gone through some stuff since we last heard from him, and he bares himself on songs like “A Lost Home” and “You’ll See.” There’s no carousel of color here – the album is mostly mid-tempo, often quiet, and almost entirely based around Ciaran Jeremiah’s piano playing.

But what seems like a major shift in sound ends up bringing The Feeling back to what they do best – write terrific songs. For most of this album, they sound like five guys playing live. It’s even more stripped back than their earliest work, yet it sparkles. Every time Sells’ guitar rushes in, every time he pushes his smooth voice out of its range, shouting his pain, the record just feels vital, open, alive. This is the sound of The Feeling rediscovering itself, and the songs are among their best because they obviously mean a lot to them.

Just listen to Sells singing his heart out on “A Lost Home”: “I won’t go back, please don’t look at me like that…” The song is simple by Feeling standards, but it hurts, Sells screaming his throat raw while the guitars and pianos crash behind him. He saves enough to bring the song in for a gentle landing: “I’m all right, I’m not alone, I’m just longing for a lost home…” He brings a measure of that emotion to even the poppiest songs here. The album opens with the catchy “Blue Murder,” which sets the tone with its tinkling pianos and big chorus, and continues with the one-two punch of “Anchor” and “Rescue.” When I say this is what it sounds like when grown-ups write pop singles, I don’t mean to imply that they’re sappy and boring. They’re mature, lovely, deep songs that flow from experience.

The brief interlude “Hides In Your Heart” quickly dives into the truly epic “The Gloves Are Off,” all circular pianos and cascading chords. “You’ll See” may be the gentlest thing here, but it’s also the most cutting: “When someone treats you like you treated me, that’s when you’ll understand, that’s when you’ll see…” That’s followed by a very pretty “oh-oh,” of course, because that’s what The Feeling does. And they end with the bitter taste of hope, a new emotion for them – “I Just Do” is a dark ballad, Sells wishing he could stop loving someone who has walked out of his life. “I wish I didn’t feel the way I do,” he sings with typical openness. “I just do.”

If you’re turned off by that kind of plain language, with little concern for artful poeticism, The Feeling may not be for you. Boy Cried Wolf puts the songs front and center, and they’re more heartfelt songs than ever. But they’re also fantastic, and the band sounds revitalized playing them. That sounds like an odd thing to say about an album of slower, piano-based pop songs, but it’s true. The Feeling has delivered an album that is almost nothing like their best work, and yet stands up proudly next to it. This record is a late-year surprise, but a most welcome one. It’s only available in the UK right now (and probably will never hit these shores), but it’s well worth the import price. Welcome back, gents. Lovely, lovely work.

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In looking back over the year’s releases, I was stunned to see that I had never reviewed Harper Simon’s sophomore effort, Division Street. Let’s rectify that right now.

Harper is Paul Simon’s son, a fact that I feel bad mentioning. While his self-titled album from 2009 traded in his father’s brand of lyrical acoustic wonderment, Division Street is Harper’s gauntlet-throwing attempt to forge his own identity as a songwriter and record maker. And it’s a pretty damn successful one. My guess is that it alienated some of the folks who appreciated the more traditional feel of his debut, but as one of those folks, I have to say that Division Street feels like his true first album.

The first thing you’ll notice, of course, is how loud it is. The record is surrounded by swirls of distorted electric guitar, and songs like “Bonnie Brae” and “Dixie Cleopatra” rock like an avalanche. Simon’s voice is still thin and wispy, but it works surprisingly well with this more aggressive material. The production, by Tom Rothrock and Simon, is full and rich, and more importantly, consistent – Simon’s debut was recorded in pieces, and it sounded like it. This is a fully realized album.

Helping that case is the second thing you’ll notice – Harper Simon has become a pretty great songwriter. These songs go places. “Bonnie Brae” has a wonderful chorus, the title track morphs from a piano-pounding indie-rocker to a delightful pop tune, and “Eternal Questions” is one of the sprightliest things you’ll hear this year, with its cheeseball organ and skipping beat. “Who are you, where have you been, where are you going, eternal questions not worth knowing…”

Every song here is worth hearing. The Mellotron strings on “Chinese Jade” are as haunting as the melody, the constantly building melody of “’99” is a treat, the hook line of “Breathe Out Love” (“I breathe in suffering, I breathe out love”) is awesome, and the minor-key psychedelia of closer “Leaves of Golden Brown” is surprising and perfectly realized. He’s so confident on these songs that his one moment of acoustic folksiness, “Just Like St. Teresa,” is buried at track seven, and though it brings his father to mind, it’s stamped with originality.

Division Street is a mission statement from Harper Simon – he’s his own man, out of the shadow of his famous dad, and his songs stand on their own. It’s a much louder record than you’d expect, but also a much more well-crafted one. I should have reviewed this earlier, because I like it very much – perhaps even more than the debut. I’m more excited than ever to watch Harper’s career unfold.

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And finally, here’s an album I can’t believe I like.

It’s been 10 years since Sting released a collection of original songs. The last one was the risible Sacred Love, easily the worst thing the man had ever foisted on the public. It’s become difficult to remember that Sting is a genius, and I’m not just talking about his days in the venerable Police. I mean he’s a musical giant, a strong songwriter with a thousand influences from around the world, only tripped up by his own pretentiousness. He’s also a really good bass player, though you wouldn’t know it from his more recent output.

In the time since Sacred Love, Sting fell in love with the lute and dove into the music of John Dowland, pausing only to put out a Christmas record and a lousy orchestral effort that reworked old songs to horrid effect. His reputation has suffered tremendously – I just tried Googling “Sting and his fucking lute,” in quotes, and got 110 hits. So I didn’t have high hopes for The Last Ship, an album of songs intended for a Broadway musical Sting will premiere next year. Musicals seem to be the next logical step on the downward path he’s set for himself, so I prepared for the worst.

But magically, The Last Ship is actually quite enjoyable. The story is based around Sting’s childhood home of Newcastle, England, a shipbuilding town hit by hard times. The songs take from English folk music, and Sting effects a working-class accent for his vocals, clearly playing characters. But the songs are obviously personal, in a way his work hasn’t been since The Soul Cages, and that makes all the difference. This is a work about the death of an industry and the death of childhood, but the moments of hope and grace here are well-earned.

In particular, I liked the title song, with its melancholy melody; “Dead Man’s Boots,” a song about a son rejecting his father’s way of life; the lilting “August Winds,” one of the few that can stand alone; and the heartrending “So to Speak,” in which one terminally ill character uses the album-length ship metaphor to plead for death. (“Is it really eternal life we should seek? That ship has already sailed, so to speak…”) I’m also a big fan of “Practical Arrangement,” in which a lonely man asks a less lonely woman to stay with him, and “The Night the Pugilist Learned How to Dance,” a sweet waltz that finds perfect symmetry between boxing and ballroom: “Ye swing to the left, ye swing to the right, keep your eyes on your partner, more or less like a fight… though the strategy’s subtle, retreat and advance, it’s all about attitude, all in your stance…”

This is miles from the pop music Sting is known for, but it’s all the better for it. The songs are complicated and sweet, full of nuance, and performed organically, with guitars, pianos, mandolins, pipes and violins. Though there’s no chance that he’ll regain his superstar status with this work, nor does he seem to want to, it’s the most artistically satisfying thing he’s done in a long, long time. The Last Ship is personal, poignant, and a welcome return to form from a songwriter I’d written off. A most pleasant surprise.

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Next week, it’s just a Reflektor. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am, and Twitter at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So at this point, my year is just about over.

I’m waiting on Arcade Fire’s Reflektor, which – barring any last-minute surprises – should be the last major release of 2013. There are a bunch of smaller ones – Cut Copy, Eminem, Lady Gaga, Brendan Benson – and one other that I’m intensely looking forward to: Hammock’s Oblivion Hymns. But once I hear Reflektor, I think I will know the shape of the year.

And it’s been an odd one. My top five right now includes a folksy double album from a long-running married couple, a neo-soul statement of purpose from a young genius, a disco revival record from two guys in motorcycle helmets, a dazzling progressive epic from a Scottish singer with a 30-year track record, and the strange and wonderful little thing I’m talking about this week. I discovered Laura Mvula, Little Green Cars and Tom Odell, which is an amazing streak for just one year. But those three, like most of the great albums of the year, have absolutely nothing in common.

Which is actually a good segue into my full review of Gungor’s new record, I Am Mountain. As I mentioned in my mini-review a couple weeks ago, this album contains 12 songs, and none of them sound even a little bit alike. It’s often difficult to believe, listening in sequence, that the same group of musicians devised and performed all of these tracks. But the wonder of I Am Mountain is that all of them sit comfortably next to each other (and in some cases segue into one another) as if it’s perfectly natural for one band to reach this far.

So, who the hell is Gungor? Well, up until now, they’ve been a pretty decent worship band. Their previous efforts, culminating in 2011’s spectral Ghosts Upon the Earth, have been concerned with bringing church music out into the larger world without losing its identity. Michael and Lisa Gungor, the married couple at the heart of this band, have so far written lovely hymns and played them like a hybrid of David Crowder, Sufjan Stevens and Sigur Ros. Previous Gungor records are very pretty, for what they are, but they’re straightforwardly religious praise, with little real depth to them. (Their live album was even called A Creation Liturgy, just so you know how church-y they have been.)

I Am Mountain is the first album they’ve released on their own label, Hither and Yon Records. And the Gungors could not have made a more obvious statement of freedom if they’d tried. Nothing on any prior Gungor album will prepare you for this one. None of these songs could be played in church. The lyrics are seeking and doubtful, when they’re not about topics the band has previously steered clear of – the dark politics of “God and Country,” for example, or the retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth “Beat of Her Heart.”

And musically, this album is a beast. It should sound like 12 different personalities jockeying for space, but it doesn’t. That the Gungors and their many guests – string players, horn players, vocalists, etc. – can play in all of these styles comfortably, and make such a strong showing out of this entire album, is remarkable. I don’t necessarily want to pick out one portion over another, since all the music here is pitch-perfect, but Michael Gungor’s guitar on “Yesternite,” for example, is astonishing. This band can clearly play everything, and on I Am Mountain, they’ve decided to.

I’ve heard no other album this year that deserves a track-by-track review the way this one does, so here goes.

The title track starts off like Sufjan Stevens, with interleaving keyboard and guitar parts, as Michael and Lisa Gungor harmonize a fragile, repeated melody. But the soaring wordless chorus dispels any lingering twee-ness – it explodes out of nowhere, a thoroughly effective “whoa-oh” that invites you, by the hand, into this record. Good thing, too, because the second track, “The Beat of Her Heart,” is a complete left turn – a folk tale rendered in a mix of centuries-old melodicism and twangy surf guitar. As mentioned above, this tells the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice and their ill-fated reunion in the underworld. It’s like nothing I’ve heard – the 3-D web of percussion is striking.

“Long Way Off” is much more straightforward, a pop song that floats on electric piano and a lovely melody. It’s about the march of science, and how many questions open up with each answer: “The smartest men, they saw a world with corners and endings far, far away, but when they drew it out and searched it, they were a long way off, we’re a long way off…” Bonus points for working the phrase “apophatic mystic” into something so sweet and catchy.

“Wandering,” then, comes out of nowhere. Lisa Gungor sings this melancholy number through the auto-tuner, over little more than a plunking piano and a subtle horn bed. The effect is wonderful, and the song is gorgeous, particularly the middle section, in which she really puts the vocoder through its paces, somehow transforming it into the loneliest sound in the world. The final “I’ve been wandering through this world” is dry and effect-free, and somehow more hopeful because of it. This song is amazing.

With everything so far, you’d be forgiven if “Let It Go” knocks you off your chair. It’s a synth-happy dance-rock song, with wacka-wacka guitar, and a chorus that’ll lift you off the ground. This is such a capable dance tune – complete with synth breakdown – that it’s almost hard to believe it’s the band’s first one. Similarly, “Wayward and Torn” is their first back-porch blues-rocker, with a stomping-and-hand-clapping beat and some impressively authentic acoustic work. Seriously, the band takes you from Phoenix to Jack White in back-to-back tracks.

And then comes “God and Country,” wafting in on a Pink Floyd keyboard oscillation. The song couldn’t be more surprising, though – a full-on Spaghetti western rocker, with a killer riff and some wrist-breaking percussion. (And the sound of a whip.) It’s the band’s most political tune, and its most rocking – check out the Ennio Morricone horns, and then marvel at Michael Gungor’s shredding lead guitar. “How we love our God, oh God we love our guns for the love of country, for our fathers and our sons,” the Gungors sing, before bringing it home with an acoustic outro: “Those who live by the gun die by the gun…”

What to do after that? How about a complex interlude that features wordless vocals, intertwining and combining into new shapes for two minutes? Yes, that’s “Hither and Yon,” and it glides seamlessly into “Yesternite,” a heroic bit of acoustic guitar playing that forms the backbone of a melodically complicated piece. What starts off sounding like a classical number slowly turns into a fantasia, complete with dark string flourishes. It’s hard to even know how to categorize this song, but one thing is certain: Michael Gungor can certainly play the guitar. I mean, wow.

“The Best Part” is a showcase for Lisa Gungor, and it sounds a lot like Enya to me, with the subtle keyboard bed and the clear, high vocals. The chorus brings in a trip-hop drum beat, and what sounds like Darth Vader’s breathing used as a percussion instrument. The chorus is haunting, the song effectively minimal and beautiful. At first, it seems like “Finally” is going to follow in the same vein, its understated guitars and vocals caressing instead of jostling. Even the chorus is muted. But then the banjo breaks in, and the song turns into a hands-in-the-air anthem. “Be here in the free, we could just be, finally…”

But that’s not the closing track. Oh no. “Upside Down” is a stunning finale, eight minutes of ever-building beautiful. It’s the album’s only prayer: “This world is upside down, do you see us, do you hear us, make it right.” Michael Gungor sings this over some fragile, reverbed guitar, and then for the last six minutes, the wave gathers strength, the instruments coalescing, the strings crashing in, the pianos building, and finally it all breaks, in one of the odder musical moments of the year. The last 90 seconds are bizarre – muffled conversations in each speaker, synths rising past the point of human tolerance, everything falling apart and floating to the ground. It’s an off-kilter finish, but on repeated listens, a fascinating one.

I didn’t expect it, but I Am Mountain is one of my favorite records of the year. I haven’t been able to stop listening to it. It’s an expression of unbridled artistic freedom from a band that has remained in a lovely jeweled box of their own making for years. There’s nothing like this in their catalog, and nothing like it on the shelves, either – you have to go back to prime Queen to find something this fearlessly varied, and Gungor pulls it off with a miraculous consistency. They’ve always been good, but on I Am Mountain, they kick open their own doors and make the leap to extraordinary.

Next week, Arcade Fire. Please don’t suck. Please don’t suck. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am, and Twitter at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I have a lot of music to catch up on. But lately, I’ve been spending more time watching those recently found episodes of Doctor Who.

You may have read about this. Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, before the advent of home video, the BBC saw no need to keep old episodes of television shows after they aired. So they junked the only copies in their archives of most of the old Doctor Who stories. The only reason we have most of what we have from those early seasons is that they would also create film copies of the stories to sell in foreign markets. For decades, industrious episode hunters have been searching for those film copies around the world.

A few years ago, a chap called Phillip Morris decided to conduct an on-the-ground search of television stations in Africa. A couple weeks ago, the first fruits of that search were unveiled – nine previously missing episodes from 1965, starring Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor. Put together with a couple we already had, we can now watch all six episodes of The Enemy of the World and five of the six episodes of The Web of Fear, two stories I thought I would never see.

And the BBC did another very smart thing – they offered these episodes for immediate download. I have them, and I’ve been slowly making my way through them, savoring the experience. For years, I’ve been watching these stories as reconstructions – essentially, slideshows of on-set photos run over the original episode’s audio. Watching them come alive has been a pretty emotional thing for me. For years, the opening sequence of The Enemy of the World has been a static shot of Troughton’s face with scrolling text reading, “The Doctor takes his shoes off and runs to the water.” Now it looks like this.

The Enemy of the World is a revelation. I’ve always liked the story, but to see Patrick Troughton pull this off is just astounding. Troughton plays both the Doctor and the villain, Salamander, and he’s giving three distinct performances – as the Doctor, as Salamander, and as the Doctor pretending to be Salamander. It’s remarkable work, and I’m so glad I can watch it. I haven’t seen The Web of Fear yet, but come on… it’s The Web of Fear. The Yeti in the London Underground, and the first story to feature Brigadier Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. (Wouldn’t you know it, his first episode is the one that stubbornly remains missing.)

Nine recovered episodes at once is monumental, and I’m trying not to think about rumors I’ve heard that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Even if this is it, fans owe Morris a huge debt of thanks for going where no one has before in search of these bits of Doctor Who’s past. The 50th anniversary of the show is coming up in just over a month, and I couldn’t have asked for a better present. And you can bet we’ll get to these newly discovered episodes in due course on Doing Doctor Who. They are absolute classics, and it’s great to have them back.

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Speaking of classic, there’s Paul McCartney.

I’m not really sure there’s a songwriter more deserving of the accolade “living legend.” I’m not even sure what that phrase would mean, outside of McCartney. The man started his career in the best band of all time, essentially helping to rewrite all the rules of pop music before he was 28. He went on from that to a slightly spottier solo career, with a long and fruitful stopover in Wings, and this body of work deserves a complete reassessment. (The ‘80s weren’t kind to anyone.) McCartney’s written more astonishingly good pop songs than virtually any of his contemporaries, and he tends to get dismissed simply because he prefers effervescence over soul-searching.

The crux of the matter is this – Paul McCartney doesn’t have to write new songs, or record new albums. He’s 71 years old, and he’s done everything a lad from Liverpool could possibly have dreamed of. He’s scratched his “serious artist” itch with a number of orchestral works, he’s dabbled in electronic and avant garde, and he’s legitimately the most successful composer and recording artist of all time. He’s in the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame twice. No one would blame him for becoming a nostalgia act at this point, or just retiring.

And that’s why New, his 16th album as a solo artist, is such a joyous surprise. The deluxe edition contains 15 new songs, and none of them rest on McCartney’s laurels. They’re almost all vital, imaginative tunes with a pulse, recorded with an energy and a verve you’d never expect from someone of McCartney’s age and stature. This is a young, hungry record, the sound of one of the world’s best songwriters rediscovering his love of the craft, and going after it with gusto.

I will admit to not enjoying New on first listen. I think I subconsciously compare any new McCartney work with Revolver and Sgt. Pepper, and that’s just not fair. It’s the same attitude that has led to popular dismissal of killer records like Ram and Venus and Mars. These new songs won’t reinvent pop music, but they do celebrate it, and that’s enough. McCartney’s voice has also aged, as you might expect, and he sometimes strains it here more than he should. But that’s just part and parcel of the fearless, reckless abandon with which he approached this album.

The first four tracks here may be the best opening salvo of McCartney’s later years. “Save Us” kicks things off with a bang, a stomping piano, and a sharp beat. It’s a sweeping rocker, and it sets up “Alligator” nicely – the second track keeps the insistent beat, but adds a strumming acoustic and some nifty electric guitar and keyboard flourishes. “On My Way to Work” slows things down a little, but by the time the song gets to the pealing instrumental bridge, it’s soaring. And “Queenie Eye” is a four-minute epic, explosive and complex, with some fitting Queen touches.

“Early Days” almost derails things. You’re going to hear a lot about this song, since it finds McCartney revisiting his Beatles days with a sardonic eye toward people who claim they were there, but weren’t. It’s a good lyric, but the song, performed on weepy acoustic guitar, is threadbare, and McCartney can’t really sing it. The vocal take he chose is certainly emotionally naked, but it’s hard to listen to. The ship is righted with the sprightly title track, but takes on water again with “Appreciate,” an electro-pop slog. Luckily, that’s the last song on New that fails to impress.

The rest of the record is made up of skipping, joyous tunes like “Everybody Out There” and slower experiments like “Hosanna,” and they all work, despite some vocal problems. “I Can Bet” is a fuzzy delight, “Looking at Her” overcomes its sappiness with some deft production (and an infusion of unexpected noise), and “Road” provides a suitably dramatic finish. Even the three bonus tracks are pretty good. Hidden track “Scared” ends things on a surprisingly down note, Sir Paul singing over just his piano about his hidden fears. But it’s quite nice.

With 13 out of 15 songs striking gold, New is McCartney’s most consistent effort in some time, and all by itself makes a great argument for him continuing to follow his muse. At 71 years old, he could be looking at a nice, easy retirement. Instead, he’s attacking his career as a recording artist with renewed force, and producing his most vital work in ages. McCartney doesn’t need to make new records. But if they’re going to be as good as New, I hope he keeps on making them for a long time to come.

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If there’s a current band that could be described as classic rock, it’s Pearl Jam.

Seattle’s favorite sons came of age during the grunge revolution of the ‘90s, and you would have been forgiven for thinking they wouldn’t make it out of that decade intact. And yet, here they are, with four-fifths of their original lineup (and a drummer, Matt Cameron, who has been in the band for 15 years). They’ve just released their tenth album, Lightning Bolt, hot on the heels of a Cameron Crowe documentary celebrating their 25th year together.

Over that time, the band has changed somewhat, but they’ve never taken any of the disastrous roads their peers have traveled. No dabbling in electronic music, no piss-taking lounge covers, no conceptual rock operas, no stabs at radio-rock relevance. Every few years, they simply release another slab of well-considered meat and potatoes rock, and they tour it until they drop, playing marathon shows wherever they go. And what many seem to have missed in their rush to condemn Pearl Jam for remaining basically the same is that they’ve quietly assumed the throne of the best rock band in the world.

Pearl Jam’s biggest problem is that they are consistent, and consistency is the hardest thing to get excited and write about. Lightning Bolt is another 12 very good Pearl Jam songs, on which the band plays like Pearl Jam, and Eddie Vedder sings like Eddie Vedder. The band once again worked with producer Brendan O’Brien, who has manned the boards for more Pearl Jam albums than anyone else. This one’s a little more slowed-down, a little more drawn-out, than 2009’s Backspacer (which comparatively was more of a lightning bolt). But that’s really the only difference. If you’re looking for radical reinventions and easy conceptual hooks, you won’t find them here.

So why is Lightning Bolt worth getting excited about anyway? Because it’s damn good. The first three tracks are the sound of a fantastic rock band at the height of their powers. “Getaway” is a strong opening shot, leading into the punky “Mind Your Manners,” a spiritual cousin to “Spin the Black Circle.” And “My Father’s Son” is tricky, full of interesting and unexpected melodies and chords, but it rocks like an avalanche anyway. Things slow down after that, but if you’re going to slow down, do it with a song like “Sirens,” one of the band’s best mid-tempo tunes. It just keeps climbing, piling one swell melodic moment atop another. After establishing their bona fides on the opening trilogy, they earn this moment of pure beauty. (Listen to Stone Gossard’s all-out-there solo.)

Much of the rest of the album is similarly slow and pretty, although the band does rip through the title track and the snarling, bluesy “Let the Records Play” with vigor. (Vedder pulls off that stomper convincingly.) “Infallible” takes a jabbing eighth-note thump and builds it into a full-blooded melodic wonder, Vedder singing his heart out while the two guitarists drive things forward. “Pendulum” is a dark, swirling work, with subtle percussion from Cameron and chiming piano from O’Brien, and an instrumental outro that sounds like sinking into a deep cavern.

Lightning Bolt ends with three quieter numbers, perhaps the gentlest landing the band has ever given us. “Sleeping By Myself” is a skipping acoustic number about loneliness, one that brings the Everly Brothers to mind, while “Yellow Moon” hearkens back to songs like “Better Man,” with its strum and organ lines. The finale, “Future Days,” actually begins with melancholy piano before lifting off with a pretty acoustic lilt. Vedder sounds perfect here, crooning a song of devotion: “If I ever were to lose you, I’d surely lose myself, everything I have found, dear, I have not found by myself…” Gossard’s gossamer guitars share space with a shimmering violin. It’s just lovely.

So yeah, Lightning Bolt is another in a long line of very good Pearl Jam albums. This one has a lot to recommend it, particularly the slower and prettier material. But Pearl Jam is Pearl Jam, and the band’s consistency has been its greatest strength and its biggest obstacle. They’ve carved out a quarter-century career by sticking to their guns and making the best rock music they know how to make. Their longevity, and the sheer quality of albums like Lightning Bolt, would seem to indicate that they’re doing something right. In fact, one might even say they’re doing everything right.

Best rock band in the world? Yeah, I think so.

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Next week, that extraordinary Gungor album. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am, and Twitter at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’ve always written long.

As far back as creative writing classes in grade school, I was delivering far more than the assignment called for. My one-page short stories were routinely seven or eight pages. My favorite editor from my journalism days would constantly berate me for writing long. “Your story is 37 inches? Goddammit!” And now I write this column, which edges 3,000 words each week. It’s a disease, and I need help.

So I thought I’d try an experiment this week. I’m going to review seven albums, and I’m going to do it in the fewest words I can. This won’t be a forced exercise in brevity, like my annual Fifty Second Week columns, but an organic attempt to write shorter. You can already see what a challenge this will be – this intro is considerably longer than it needed to be. Let’s just press on and see how I do. I have some great records (and some not-so-great ones) to burn through this week, and I’m hoping this will help me catch up a little bit.

Sigh. Go!

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Six months ago, Justin Timberlake gave us The 20/20 Experience, a truly surprising piece of work. A 70-minute slice of future-soul, the album fully plumbed the new depths that were only hinted at on FutureSex/LoveSounds seven years earlier. Timberlake and producer Timbaland tapped into a vein of inspiration that seemed to be bottomless.

Alas, the second 20/20 Experience volume, released this month, shows us exactly where that bottom is. Like most sequels, the second act is longer and emptier than the first, regressing Timberlake’s sound and removing a lot of the fascinating production choices and old-school soul that elevated its predecessor. There’s nothing here as smooth as “Strawberry Bubblegum” or “Spaceship Coupe,” nothing quite as joyous as “Let the Groove Get In,” and nothing as dark and moving as “Blue Ocean Floor.”

What is here? A bunch of sex rhymes with beats that range from not bad to tedious. Opener “Gimme What I Don’t Know I Want” strides in on a convincing funk groove, but second track “True Blood” outstays its club-happy welcome after its second minute. (It goes on for nine.) I enjoyed the Michael Jackson-ness of “Take Back the Night” and the dramatic “Amnesia,” but the lows are much lower – “Drink You Away” is an embarrassing attempt at blues-rock, “You Got It On” is as cheesy as anything N’Sync ever did, and “Only When I Walk Away” is a sad attempt to ape Mutemath’s sound.

Instead of leaving “Blue Ocean Floor” as the finale of his 2.5-hour project, Timberlake ends this second volume with the breezy, semi-catchy “Not a Bad Thing,” then obliterates all goodwill with the goopy hidden track “Pair of Wings.” I worried that this second 20/20 Experience would just be the b-sides from the first, and as it turns out, I was right. The first album is terrific. The second, not so much.

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In 2010, Peter Gabriel released a stunning covers album called Scratch My Back. It was intended to come out simultaneously with an album of the covered artists returning the favor and tackling a Gabriel song, but for various reasons – not the least of which was a negative reaction to Gabriel’s covers – it never materialized.

Well, it took three years, but the companion album is finally here. It’s called And I’ll Scratch Yours, and it brings together 12 artists, each taking on a Gabriel classic. I’m a huge fan of the man’s work, so for me, hearing these reinventions was revelatory. Of the original dozen artists covered on Scratch My Back, only Radiohead and Neil Young declined to reciprocate. They’re replaced here by Joseph Arthur, who turns in a remarkable guitar-dirge take on “Shock the Monkey,” and Feist, who does a capable take on “Don’t Give Up.”

The Scratch My Back Ten, though, mostly knock it out of the park. Many of them are so honored to participate, and you can hear it in their tracks. Bon Iver’s absolutely wonderful version of “Come Talk to Me” finds a home here, as does Elbow’s magical “Mercy Street.” David Byrne brings his nervous, kinetic energy to “I Don’t Remember,” Randy Newman just owns “Big Time,” and Arcade Fire work their magic on “Games Without Frontiers.” Only Lou Reed, who ruins “Solsbury Hill,” truly disappoints, but the record ends with Paul Simon’s lovely, sympathetic read of “Biko,” and it’s perfect.

Essentially, Gabriel has compiled a tribute album to himself here, a questionable practice at best. But the results are mostly fantastic, and worth the risk. If you’re a Gabriel fan, you’ll hear these songs in a completely new light.

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It’s been 17 years since Mazzy Star released a new album. But if you’d told me that Hope Sandoval and David Roback recorded their new Seasons of Your Day in 1997 and just held on to it for all this time, I would believe you.

Seasons is the fourth Mazzy album, and virtually nothing has changed. The band still delivers slow, woozy folk-pop, with Sandoval’s gorgeous, laconic voice floating over it. This album gives us less of the sinister psychedelic side of the band, but we get everything else – the organ-drenched swoon of opener “In the Kingdom,” the melancholy acoustics of “California” and the title track (and a bunch of others), the spectral pop of “Lay Myself Down,” the bluesy crash of finale “Flying Low.”

Along the way, we get some of the prettiest music the two have created. It’s all slow and simple, but if you ever liked Mazzy Star, well, here’s another one. I have no idea what about this record took 17 years, but it’s quite good.

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There’s a song on this new Jars of Clay album called “Love in Hard Times.” I first heard it when it was offered as an extra with the band’s live EP, Under the Weather, and I probably listened to it 25 times that evening. It’s a moving, wonderful thing – over a web of reverbed guitars, Dan Haseltine sings of lovely reconciliation. “It’s when I think to reach across those battle lines, and love in the hard times…” There are shades of U2 to this song, but it stays quiet and subtle for its entire running time, and it just sweeps me along. I love it.

It’s also the best song on Jars’ new record, Inland. I had high hopes for this album, but while about half of it is memorable, polished guitar-pop, the other half just lies there and does nothing. I quite like “Loneliness and Alcohol,” the most upbeat and rocking Jars tune since Good Monsters, and “Fall Asleep,” a hushed piano piece, is also quite nice. “I Don’t Want You to Forget” has a lovely melancholy to it.

But listening to the rest of this album, I find myself wishing it were as good as the band thinks it is. I don’t hate anything here, but quite a lot of it – “Skin and Bones,” for instance, and “Human Race,” and the title song – just slips by without comment. The band has called this the album it took them 20 years to make. I would like to hear that. This sounds like just another Jars record to me.

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Only William James McAuley, also known as Bleu, would risk ire by naming his first crowdfunded album To Hell With You, and then turn the title track into a song of undying devotion. It’s exactly those kind of quirks that have kept him a vital and fascinating artist for 15 years and counting. He inspires fan devotion – he raised $39,645 to make and distribute To Hell With You – because he always keeps you on your toes.

This album, his fifth, is no exception. It finds him embracing electronic music and wrapping it around his warped pop sensibility, to dazzling effect. Once you’re past the overture, the first four songs here are probably his finest opening salvo, inspiring dancing and smirking in equal measure. “In My Own Little World” is a fabulous ode to sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting life away, while “Merry Go Round” is as delightful a pop tune as the man has ever written.

From there, the record gets weirder, but no less enjoyable. “I Have to Have You” is a creepy crawl; “It’s Not Over (Til It’s Over and Done),” co-written with David Mead, is a slice of ‘50s pop; “Grasping at Straws” a true guitar-fueled epic; and “Endwell” and “Odd Future” experiments in hip-hop. I won’t tell you it all works, but enough of it does that this record comes out on top. Closer “Won’t Make It Out Alive” sums up the record’s dark tone with lilting acoustics, capping it perfectly.

It’s hard to say To Hell With You is a curveball, since Bleu’s whole career has been made up of sharp left turns. As experimental works go, this one’s pretty fantastic, though. Bleu’s a master craftsman, and here he shapes his drum machines and synths into something that remains quintessentially him. Check it out here.

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Speaking of master craftsmen, there’s Aaron Sprinkle.

Formerly of Poor Old Lu and Fair, Sprinkle’s name has appeared on a million production credits, but it’s been 12 years since he’s made a solo album. He’s back with Water and Guns, and like Bleu, he’s gone electronic – this album is glossy, layered, intricate and synth-heavy, a one-man-band labor of love. Sprinkle’s got a great voice and a way with a hook, and this album showcases both in brand new ways.

Fans of his earlier acoustic-based material may be put off by the wall of sound that comes at them at the start of opener “Heatstroke.” But by the time Sprinkle gets to the chorus, it all makes sense. “Whisper Something” is one of the year’s coolest songs – its kinetic piano chorus makes me grin like an idiot. “River of Lead” has a killer chorus, and an even more killer post-chorus refrain. Sprinkle’s voice proves a surprisingly fine fit for the synth-balladry of “Giving Up the Gun,” and “I’ve Missed You” provides a late-album jolt of energy.

Bottom line, Aaron Sprinkle is a terrific songwriter, no matter the musical pond he’s swimming in, and Water and Guns proves it. It’s unlike anything he’s done, but amid the swirling synths, electronic drums and pounding pianos, his skill with a melody shines through.

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I’m probably going to spend the least amount of time on Gungor, since I owe this one a full review at some point. I Am Mountain, the third studio album by the collective led by Michael and Lisa Gungor, moves them away from their liturgical roots and into a far more interesting realm. It’s an album full of doubt, pain and magic, and just as the lyrical concerns have widened, the musical range has exploded.

Imagine a mix of Sufjan Stevens, the Black Keys, Moby, synth-funk and centuries-old spirituals, and you have the idea. And you’ll understand why I just can’t review this one in 100 words. I write long, what can I tell you? More to come. But this album is highly, highly recommended.

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Next week, classic rock with Paul McCartney and Pearl Jam. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am, and Twitter at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Before we get rolling this week, I want to direct your attention to a couple Kickstarter campaigns you may want to support.

Kickstarter has been getting a lot of flack for essentially providing a platform for rich people to avoid risk. I get that. But to me, that’s a small price to pay for what Kickstarter does best – it helps small, independent artists create music that would otherwise not exist, and get that music into the hands of their fans. It fosters community around creation, and that’s an amazing thing. Trust me that neither of these artists I’m about to mention are rich, and both of them create wonderful work that’s worth supporting.

Longtime readers no doubt know that The Choir is pretty much my favorite band. For more than 30 years, they’ve been making stunning spiritual dream-pop, the kind of thing that bypasses my brain and touches my soul. They have 14 albums, and they’re hoping to make a 15th early next year, in addition to their first live album in some time. They’ve asked for $25,000 to make those two projects happen. I hope they get three times that, and are able to keep on going for many years to come. If you haven’t heard The Choir, here’s a link to a Zip file with 15 songs from their recent albums. If you like what you hear, you can support their Kickstarter campaign here.

My friend Andrea Dawn is a remarkable singer and songwriter. Two years ago, she released her first full-length solo album, Theories of How We Can Be Friends. Now she’s gearing up to make her second, and she’s looking for $5,000 to launch that project. Andrea writes baroque, dramatic piano pop, and sings it with a voice that seems to have infinite depths. You can hear all of Theories here. If you like it, support her Kickstarter campaign here.

Also, if you haven’t seen my new project with Andrea, you can check that out here. I’ve somehow convinced her to watch all of Doctor Who with me – all 800-some episodes – and record her reactions on video. We call the project Doing Doctor Who, because we really like innuendo. Comments are most appreciated. Thanks!

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In 1989, one of my favorite bands underwent the biggest and riskiest change in its history.

For eight years, Marillion had been led by a tall, swaggering Scotsman named Derek Dick, but more commonly known as Fish. The four albums of the Fish era reflected the frontman’s personality more than anyone else’s, particularly the latter two – Misplaced Childhood, which contains Marillion’s only real hits, is a concept album about one of Fish’s particularly bad breakups, and the great Clutching at Straws is entirely about his love-hate relationship with alcohol. Fish was the face, the voice and the outsize persona of the group, and when he chose to leave, many assumed Marillion would be over.

What actually happened was much better than anyone could have predicted. Fish went on to a solo career that, despite some lows, has found him producing some riveting, timeless work. And Marillion found Steve Hogarth, one of my favorite singers, and have thrived with him at the helm. Last year, Marillion released what may be their career best album, the amazing Sounds That Can’t Be Made. It’s risky, complex, emotionally devastating and all-around beautiful stuff, the pinnacle of the band’s work with Steve Hogarth.

And now it’s Fish’s turn. His new album A Feast of Consequences is without doubt the finest thing he’s done since leaving Marillion. The big man has been on a massive upswing lately, moving from the pummeling rock opera Field of Crows to the more groove-oriented 13th Star, and though his voice has aged, he’s found new ways to bend and shape it, and new settings to place it in. While both his most recent albums were splendid – in fact, the best he’d made as a solo artist – the praise was reserved, since his voice was nowhere near its height.

I have no idea what he did in the meantime, but A Feast of Consequences contains Fish’s best vocals since Sunsets on Empire, easy. His voice is still an older, rougher instrument, but it’s more supple than it’s been in years. I mention that first, because the songs on A Feast of Consequences – his best as a solo artist – require a subtle yet strong singer to bring them home, and Fish steps up to the plate here. He’s always had a unique quality to his voice, and in the past, I felt like he was trying to recapture his early, more elastic sound instead of working his new range and tone into something more comfortable. Well, he does that here, finally. It’s just a great performance.

But you’re here for the songs, and they’re excellent. Of the 11 tunes here – five of which make up an extraordinary suite in the middle – only one feels less than complete. The album is loud and vibrant, blessed with the best production Fish has ever enjoyed, and the songs match it. They were written with three mainstays of Fish’s band throughout the years – Steve Vantsis, Robin Boult and Foss Patterson – and you can tell that this time, they buckled down and decided to make each one as special as it could be.

The record opens with four unrelated songs, three of which would make terrific singles. “All Loved Up” is a rocker that presents a jaundiced view of technology and social media – “We’re beautiful people, we’re all fucked up,” Fish spits over a snarling riff. “Blind to the Beautiful” is the record’s loveliest song, and perhaps its darkest – it’s about the pain of life overwhelming the joy. “I just can’t see the beautiful anymore” is one of Fish’s most devastating lines, and he delivers it with feeling, before the wonderful violin section. The title track is another of Fish’s patented angry breakup tunes, this one with a bouncy and memorable chorus.

To get to those comparatively jaunty numbers, you have to get through the opener, the 11-minute “Perfume River.” But believe me, this will be no chore. It’s a gloriously atmospheric trip through Vietnam, which Fish visited in 2007. The record’s first few minutes show just how intense the production is – it opens with bagpipes and a bed of synthesizers, sounding like fog off in the distance. When the bell-like acoustic guitar cuts through, right in the foreground, you know you’re in for a 3-D listening experience, and “Perfume River” doesn’t disappoint. It turns into a hootenanny halfway through, and Fish knocks it out of the park.

But it pales in comparison to the High Wood Suite, comprising tracks five through nine. Inspired by his grandfathers and their service in World War I, the suite is a powerful bit of historical scene-setting, taking place at the sites of several famous battles in Europe. “High Wood” starts as a piano ballad, and ends as a death march, with shades of Savatage. It sets the stage: a wooded area in which 8,000 men disappeared. “Are they ghosts or moving shadows, are they spirits gone before, are these the restless souls still wandering, the ones that were forsaken in the high wood…”

The soldiers’ tale is told in “Crucifix Corner,” for my money the best song on this album. The repeated melody sounds ancient, like a folk song sung through the mists of time. But as the seven-minute epic moves on, Fish sets it against beautiful pianos and then thunderous guitars, occasionally bringing Iron Maiden to mind. The music matches the mood, as the soldiers prepare for battle, then charge, and are defeated, leaving this mournful final verse: “In the cornfields ripening corpses sweet, in a sunrise moving shadows, from the High Wood the reaper walked to a harvest duly gathered, the skylark’s solo mournful cry above spirits torn and tattered, in a new dawn the whistle blows on a field prepared for battle…”

“The Gathering” starts with a jubilant fanfare, and goes on to capture the national mood of Britain at the start of World War I. “We signed off our lives with a stroke of a pen, joined our pals in the line, we took the king’s shilling with pride…” Placing this right in the middle is perfect – we know the horrors these men will face thanks to “Crucifix Corner,” and that prepares us for the horror of “Thistle Alley,” the darkest piece here. “Thistle Alley” is the name of a trench Fish’s grandfather helped dig, and the song details the battle that took place there: “Heaven above, Thistle Alley below, motionless survivors bloody on the killing floor, praying for the darkness to return and hide the graves of the living…”

“The Leaving,” the final track of the suite, examines the aftermath, not just of the battle, but of the war. It begins on a field strewn with corpses, but ends with hollow-eyed soldiers coming home: “The men returned, the war was over, the bells rang out, a country cheered, behind their eyes they stored the horrors, behind their smiles they hid their fears…” Fish sings with emotion over a melancholy string arrangement that gives way to a sad mirror of the marching beat from “High Wood.” It brings the suite to a stunning end.

After the High Wood material, anything would have fallen short, but “The Other Side of Me” is still the album’s weakest song. A tender acoustic ballad about reconciliation with oneself, the song’s lyric and melody (and vocal performance) are lacking in comparison. The whole thing sounds great, particularly the violin lines, but the repeated “first person singular, me, myself, I” doesn’t hit home. Thankfully, the finale, “The Great Unraveling,” is great indeed. Fish uses his parents as a starting point to talk about how everyone eventually leaves everything, and he makes it sound glorious. The final refrain of “into the light” is lovely, and the song a fitting finish to this marvelous album.

It’s amazing to even think about, but since their own great unraveling, Marillion and Fish have both been gathering strength. And now, less than a year apart, both have issued career highlight records. A Feast of Consequences is Fish’s high point as a solo artist, a record of remarkable depth and power, one that has made the entire journey worth it. It’s a completely independent piece of work, beholden to no one, the product of pure artistic freedom. And it’s just wonderful.

A Feast of Consequences is only available from Fish himself, here. The special edition is packaged in a stunning hardcover book with dozens of illustrations from Mark Wilkinson (who has handled Fish’s artwork since the beginning), and comes with a feature-length documentary on DVD. It is so well worth the asking price.

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Next week, I’ll try to catch up with a bunch of shorter reviews. Yes, you heard right, I’m going to try to write shorter. Come by in seven days and see how I do. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am, and Twitter at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.