This week, I’m looking forward to the reissues of the first three Led Zeppelin albums. And it’s got me thinking about blues bands versus bluesy bands.

I’ve never been a big fan of blues. Like country, I have a greater appreciation for the earliest material, the true bluesmen like Robert Johnson and Skip James. There’s a heart and soul to this howling, dusty music, one that is impossible to replicate. And yet, blues musicians have been trying to replicate it for a hundred years. The entire genre has ossified, to the point where “authenticity” means you need to repeat the same old chord cycles again and again, and sing about the same things your idols did, in the same way.

So that’s blues, and there’s no arguing the fact that it’s a vital and important part of music history. Every brand of rock and roll owes its very existence to the blues. But I need my music to grow and change, and since “blues” has come to mean just this one thing, done just this one way, we need a new term for those who are trying to incorporate the blues while pushing it forward. That’s where “bluesy” comes in.

You can make a strong argument that Led Zeppelin was a blues band, at least at first. They covered Willie Dixon twice on their first record, stole Muddy Waters’ (by way of Dixon) “You Need Love” for “Whole Lotta Love,” and swiped lines from Albert King, Robert Johnson and Howlin’ Wolf for “The Lemon Song.” They were always steeped in the blues – in later years, they developed an epic 11-minute take on Blind Willie Johnson’s “In My Time of Dying,” and later, a reinvented version of Johnson’s “Nobody’s Fault But Mine.”

But no one remembers them as a blues band. That’s because they took that firm foundation and built a skyscraper on it – Zeppelin dabbled in folk, reggae, prog and dance, all with the thunderous power of pure rock. They’re known as one of the best rock bands ever, with one of the most diverse and fascinating catalogs. And through it all, they remained bluesy. Not blues, but bluesy. They maintained their sense of history, and constantly acknowledged their debt to the blues, while building on it and creating something new.

That’s the kind of thing I’m interested in. Both of the bands I have on tap this week do the same thing, to varying degrees. Both are neck-deep in the blues, but you won’t find either one angling to be on Alligator Records, or share the stage with the likes of Buddy Guy and B.B. King. They know where they come from, where the cornerstones were laid, but they’re both consciously working on new buildings.

That’s certainly true of the Black Keys, who began their career self-producing ramshackle records chock full of the blues. The first two tracks on their first album, The Big Come Up, are blues covers: one by R.L. Burnside, and the other by Junior Kimbrough. In 2006, they even recorded an entire EP of Kimbrough songs. But at the same time, they were also covering the Beatles and the Stooges. Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach have always been more than blues disciples, and impressive rock records like Magic Potion proved it.

And then they met Brian Burton, better known as Danger Mouse. He’s produced every one of their records since Attack and Release in 2008, and while the pairing produced some interesting left-field results early on, it’s clearly run its course. The Keys’ new album, Turn Blue, goes so far beyond boring that you could fill your prescription for Ambien with it. Everything is smoothed out and slowed down and glossed up – they barely sound like they’re alive, let alone awake.

Lowlights are many. Opener “Weight of Love” crawls in on its stomach, and keeps on crawling for an endless seven minutes. Auerbach’s guitar has never sounded tamer or safer – it’s like he took lessons from John Mayer in syruping up his sound. The title track is clearly going for some kind of smooth blues shimmy, but it’s so inconsequential that it wafts in and out without leaving a mark. “Fever” shows signs of life, with its pumping organ, but “Year in Review” buries its groove beneath layers of strings and production gloss, and the absolutely awful “Bullet in the Brain” wastes whatever good will the previous two songs built up.

And on it goes like that, the Keys submerging everything that used to be good about them beneath stifling overproduction and a lack of memorable… well, anything. The record ends with a song produced by the Keys themselves, “Gotta Get Away,” but it’s perhaps the most boring thing here, a middle-of-the-road rock number that does nothing imaginative or original. It does sound like blues-rock, in a way that most of this confused mess of a record doesn’t, but when said blues-rock is this hackneyed and typical, that’s not a virtue.

If Turn Blue proves anything, it’s that the Black Keys/Danger Mouse partnership has reached the point of diminishing returns. This is, by far, the worst product of that partnership, and one of the worst records the Keys have made. It’s time to reconsider just what they want this band to be, and they need to start by getting someone else to sit in that producer’s chair. I’d hate to think that they could make something blander and lamer than this. Let’s hope they turn it around.

* * * * *

So let’s say you bought Turn Blue, hoping for a strong and smart bluesy rock record, and you found it just as stultifying and dull as I did. If you’re looking to trade up, you could do a lot worse than the self-titled debut from Noah’s Arcade.

Full disclosure: I know these guys. I’ve seen them play probably a dozen times, and I’ve talked with them all about this record, both before and after I heard it. Noah’s Arcade is a three-piece from Aurora, Illinois (natch), consisting of guitarist/singer Noah Gabriel with the best rhythm section in the city, bassist Chad Watson and drummer Justin O’Connell. Over the past couple years, I have watched them evolve from a solo act with a backup band to a truly organic unit, bringing out the best qualities in all three.

Their debut album was primarily recorded many months ago, so it doesn’t quite capture that evolution. The songs are all Gabriel’s – he has seven prior albums as a singer/songwriter, ranging from folksy acoustic material to full-band blues-rock, and for long stretches of Noah’s Arcade, it could easily be another of those. But when the band locks in behind him, as they do on fiery opener “On the Run,” and in the more powerful second half of the album, you can hear the potential. Noah’s Arcade is an electrifying live band, and though their entire album doesn’t quite capture that, there are enough moments that do.

“On the Run” certainly starts things off well. It pinches a key riff from Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well” and runs with it, the band jamming with guest organist Jeff Lantz (who is all over this record). There’s nothing particularly original here, but it stomps in, kicks up some dust, and stomps out in two and a half minutes. Boom. Gabriel’s voice is perfect for this kind of thing, husky and full of soul, and his quick solo gives you your first glimpse at his chops. He’s a well-respected axe slinger in these parts, and it’s easy to hear why.

The rest of the first side is slower and moodier than I expected, which takes some getting used to. “East of Midnight” has a pulsing, mid-tempo atmosphere, O’Connell’s tricky beat propelling things forward while Gabriel spins out a sweet and memorable guitar figure. Gabriel and Watson harmonize well on this song and others, Watson taking the higher parts. But the tune’s simple chord progression, which you’ll hear a few other times on this record, keeps it grounded for me – it never quite takes off. “Electric Rain” also dances in place, this time more slowly. It’s pretty for what it is, but it never grabs me.

“Killer’s Role” is the third simple, moody song in a row, but Lantz helps elevate this one, along with some subtle playing from Gabriel. “Here We Are Now” picks things up a little, with an intro that reminds me of the Heartbreakers, and “Hard Times” injects some pure blues into the proceedings. The playing is excellent on every one of these tracks, and Watson whips out his harmonica on “Hard Times,” adding a nice texture. But after that explosive opening, the slow-to-middling nature of the rest of side one is a surprise.

Side two, however, makes up for all of that. “Lovesick Lullaby” is quick – less than two minutes long – and loud, chugging along confidently. “Beggars Never Borrow” sports the most infectious guitar riff on the album, wrapped up in a sweet, folksy number. The jam session that concludes “Of the Engine” is, to that point, my favorite thing on Noah’s Arcade – you can hear the interplay at work, Watson sparking off of O’Connell while Gabriel and Lantz spit fire. This is what they sound like live. I want the entire second Arcade album to sound like this.

Gabriel and the band save the best for last – in a lot of ways, the entire album builds to the final two tracks. “Killin’ Time” takes that chord progression you’ve heard a few times now and puts a new spin on it, slipping in and out of an energetic reggae beat. Watson and O’Connell shine on this one, nimbly skipping through these sections with grace – Watson’s solo section is superb. And “The Love,” the six-minute finale, is the album’s high point. It’s an epic, dramatic trip, starting gently and gathering force as it goes. Gabriel’s voice is at its peak here, and the entire band locks into this song, bringing it home with the power it demands. “The Love” is the best song I’ve heard from Noah Gabriel, and this rendition does it justice.

In some ways, I feel like Noah’s Arcade wraps up just as it truly hits its stride. The album gets better as it goes along, and I could listen to those final four tracks for days. If they make this stretch of songs the starting point for album number two, it will be an order of magnitude better than this already impressive first effort. The three guys in Noah’s Arcade never forget the blues, but they rarely play it straight, preferring to build off of it in some captivating ways. There’s a lot to like on their debut record, and a lot that points to great things ahead.

If they’re playing in your area, go see them. And check out their self-titled album here.

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That’s it for this week. Next week, I plan to take my customary birthday break (which I rarely indulge in, honestly) while I turn 40 years old. I’ll be back in June with some reflections on that, I’m sure.

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.

My name is Andre and I like Coldplay.

I know, I know. That’s how you know I’m gay. I’ve heard it. I like a lot of bands that earn me raised eyebrows, particularly from the hipper-than-thou crowd, but few of them make me as defensive as Coldplay. I’ve liked them since their first album in 2002, I liked them when they became international superstars, I liked them even when I couldn’t escape them (the “Fix You” years were difficult), and I like them now.

Hating Coldplay has become something of a sport, with people lining up to throw the first punch whenever Chris Martin and company rear their pretty heads. I’ve never been down with that. It’s not that I don’t understand where people are coming from. Generally speaking, sentimentality is frowned upon, particularly plain-spoken sentimentality. (See also: Keane.) When pretty people sing popular songs about love with no ironic distance, people get wary. They’re not sure they should trust it. For most of Coldplay’s lifespan, Martin has been a multi-millionaire married to Gwyneth Paltrow. We’re supposed to hate him. It’s what we do.

I get it. I just don’t agree with it. If Coldplay were the bland, safe band their detractors think they are, I’d have a bigger problem with what they do. But for one of the most popular bands in the world, Coldplay is decidedly weird. The last time they reliably sounded like Coldplay was in 2005, on the lackluster X&Y. The loud-and-clear message of this record: here’s a band who needs to shake things up. And so they did, bringing in Brian Eno to produce the oddball collage Viva La Vida in 2008, and they haven’t stopped shaking it up since.

If you passed on Viva La Vida and Mylo Xyloto, you missed Coldplay’s most bizarre and creative work. On the former album, they sounded like a band unleashed, bringing in dozens of different influences. They went darker on “Cemeteries of London,” ducked down a prog-rock alleyway on “42,” took a little Talking Heads medicine on “Strawberry Swing.” Most of all, they never sat still – Viva La Vida packs two albums’ worth of strange rock into 45 minutes. Mylo Xyloto was a concerted attempt to bring those all-over-the-place influences back to their pop roots, but in a lot of ways, it’s even weirder. “Charlie Brown,” “Major Minus,” the Rhianna duet “Princess of China,” even “Paradise” – this is the work of a restless band, not content to do what’s expected of them. That they’ve had any radio play at all since 2005 is almost inexplicable.

But those records are feel-good hits of the summer compared with their sixth album, Ghost Stories. It is, without doubt, their most beautiful, a hushed and compact collection of wispy laments and half-remembered dreams. This is an album designed to be listened to front to back, as a single thought. Nearly every song is airy and contemplative, a sad and brokenhearted exhale. Ghost Stories was clearly crafted as a whole, as an experience, and it’s the band’s most successful artistic statement.

It’s also, clearly, the Martin/Paltrow breakup album. If Martin’s lyrics have been a stumbling block for you before, you will want to steer clear of this record. It is his most honest and personal set of songs, which can only mean that Martin’s genuine, rip-your-soul-out heartbreak really is this mundane. Martin spends most of this record feeling sad – he’s sad watching television on “Another’s Arms,” wishing “you were here beside me, your body on my body.” He’s sad waiting for the phone to ring on “Oceans,” he’s sad watching a flock of birds fly through the sky on “O,” he’s sad thinking about that tattoo he now regrets on “Ink.”

Martin’s heartache is straightforward and simplistic throughout Ghost Stories, to the point where I wish he had probed deeper. On “True Love,” he puts his all into the line “tell me you love me, and if you don’t then lie to me.” This has been spoken and sung 20 million times, in many different forms, but Martin treats it like it’s a new thought. And perhaps for him, it is. I know I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve felt like saying that honestly, but maybe he truly feels this way. I’m more inclined to believe that he’s simply an unoriginal lyricist than that he’s aiming for universal and coming up with trite. But trite it is. Ghost Stories needs Martin’s words to tie it together, but you’ll wish they weren’t so pedestrian.

The lyrics bother me on this album more than any other the band has made, simply because the music is so beautiful. I cannot emphasize this enough – listen to Ghost Stories in sequence, all at once. It opens with “Always In My Head,” more of a prologue than anything else. Jonny Buckland’s subtle, ethereal guitar glides in on a bed of atmospheric synths while Martin addresses this album’s subject directly: “you’re always in my head, always in my head.”

This barely qualifies as a song, and it’s more of a lead-in to “Magic,” the sparkling first single. It’s got an R&B beat, some gentle work from bassist Guy Berryman, some lovely electric pianos and a strangely insidious melody line. The song builds gradually, never overplaying its hand, so when Buckland’s full-throated chords come charging in, it feels like something special. “Ink” is slipperier, with its electronic beat and circular acoustic figure. In his worst moment on the album, Martin yells out “Got a tattoo and the pain’s all right.” But the central idea, of regretting a tattoo once the relationship it represents dissolves, is solid.

“True Love” is the album’s one moment of real sappiness, with its Mike and the Mechanics guitars and big synths supporting Martin’s wavery falsetto. But I’m a big fan of the jarring guitar solo, sliding out of nowhere in the wrong key and continuing to dirty up the song as it goes. The band has described this as their favorite song, and it’s my least favorite, so there you go. But I adore “Midnight,” which tiptoes in after “True Love,” as if to signal the start of a darker ride. The band again worked with ambient electronic artist Jon Hopkins, and they crafted a pulsing, beatless wonder. Martin stacks his vocals and processes them, a technique that has reminded some of Bon Iver. But Justin Vernon has never given us a song like “Midnight,” with its shadowy electronic shimmies and supple, chorus-free melody.

“Another’s Arms” picks up the pace imperceptibly, opening with an operatic female vocal and a featherbed of fluttering drums and low-key synths. Buckland refuses all opportunities to show off on this record, preferring to offer accents and atmospheres, and his clean guitar tones make this song. The melody is simple yet insidious. “Oceans” keeps the mood low and melancholy – for most of the running time, it’s played on an acoustic guitar and a beeping bit of electronic percussion. Martin sounds weary here, ready to pack it in, and not even the supple strings can cheer him up: “And to find that you’re alone in this world, to find yourself alone…” Again, this is a song without a chorus, just a lovely meandering melody.

What follows is more than a minute of cloudy keyboards, leading into “A Sky Full of Stars,” the record’s one moment of pure bliss. It feels like new love, like sunshine through dark windows. The song is a collaboration with dance music superstar Avicii, and its booming beat builds organically until it’s almost too joyous. Not much happens in this song, but not much has to – in its place near the end of this record, it does what it’s supposed to perfectly. The album then ends with “O,” a mournful piano piece that seems to put to rest this melancholy mood. It remains low-key and simple, but gorgeous, a fine and fitting end to the band’s most heartfelt record.

Now of course, Martin spends all of “O” ruminating on a flock of birds as a metaphor for lost love. I get it, I really do. I know why people hate this band. But if you can show me another act at Coldplay’s level of popularity and fame that would be willing to make an album like Ghost Stories, in defiance of everything they’re supposed to be, I will be very surprised.

Virtually nothing on this album sounds like the Coldplay that took the world by quiet storm. It is the sound of four people making the most beautiful, heartbroken record they possibly could, regardless of record sales or market expectations. That in itself is something of an act of defiance, but even that doesn’t seem to matter to Coldplay, a band only concerned with how far they can push themselves each time out.

As I said, Coldplay doesn’t have to be this weird. The fact that they are, that they continue to make albums like Viva La Vida and Mylo Xyloto and Ghost Stories, keeps me coming back. Ghost Stories is a strange and wonderful little record, and I am not ashamed to say I like the band that made it. I have no idea where they will go next, and that alone makes me excited to follow what this band does. My name is Andre and I like Coldplay. I expect I always will.

Next week, getting the blues with the Black Keys and Noah’s Arcade. 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 caught the first Lilith Fair in 1997.

Sarah McLachlan’s traveling celebration of women in music came at one of those bizarre cultural moments that seem to happen every few years, when we decide that it’s somehow novel that women write and play their own songs. I’ve never quite understood that, having been a fan of most of the women on that inaugural bill for years, but if the culture occasionally catches up to artists like Fiona Apple and Tracy Chapman, there’s nothing bad about that.

I ended up covering the Lilith Fair for Face Magazine, and I used my extended review to repeatedly poke fun at the notion that this tour was something revolutionary. This didn’t win me any friends, and I’ve grown up a lot since then. Were I to cover the tour now, I’d probably write something a lot more straightforward, noting that women songwriters still hold a disproportionately small percentage of the recording contracts, and female artists that are not called upon for their looks remain few and far between.

I didn’t know how things would go, though, did I? I couldn’t have imagined that the Lilith Fair artists would mainly have gone the way of the dodo by now. We haven’t heard from Chapman in six years (longer if you count the last time the world at large paid attention), and she shows no signs of returning. Fiona Apple is still phenomenal, but she puts out an album every five years, and then disappears. McLachlan’s last few albums have found her drifting off into willowy irrelevance. Jewel’s gone pop-country, Sheryl Crow hasn’t made anything worth listening to in ages. It’s pretty bleak.

Even at the time, though, I considered the great hope for female singer-songwriters to be Tori Amos. The first Lilith Fair took place the same year Amos released From the Choirgirl Hotel, a decent but unspectacular record that, as it turned out, was the first sign of the apocalypse. I’ve talked ad nauseam in this column about Amos’ first three unimpeachable albums, and how far she’s fallen since. It’s not worth rehashing. Suffice it to say that when the best record you’ve made in 20 years is a collection of rewrites of classical pieces, something’s gone very wrong.

But lo and behold, it’s like 1997 all over again. While Amos’ 14th album, Unrepentant Geraldines, isn’t quite up to the standard she set with Little Earthquakes and its two successors, it’s my favorite in some time. I initially approached it with trepidation, and if you’ve seen the godawful cover, you know why. And after my first listen, I wrote Geraldines off as just another latter-day Tori Amos album – overlong, overstuffed, full of mediocre songs hiding a few pretty good ones. In many ways, that remains true, but subsequent listens have convinced me that the good songs are actually really good, and could herald a Tori renaissance.

I don’t want to give the wrong idea here. Geraldines contains the usual mix of meandering nothings and a couple of absolute stinkers. I’ll tackle those first, so you know I’m not out to mislead anyone. “Promise,” a duet with Amos’ daughter Natasha, may be the worst song she’s ever written, a bland paean to motherly devotion. It doesn’t help that Natasha sings like she wants to be on American Idol. Seriously, Mariah Carey would be embarrassed to claim this one. It’s immediately followed by “Giant’s Rolling Pin,” another contender for worst ever – imagine a kids’ song about the NSA scandal. I expect that could work, given the right sensibility, but Amos, as ever, remains immune to irony, so the whole thing falls flat.

So ignore those. They’re at tracks eight and nine, so jump over them and listen to “Selkie” at track 10 to hear what’s so very right about this record. Yes, that’s Amos playing the piano and singing, and that’s a sound I never get tired of. Roughly half of this album hearkens back to her “classic” sound, just a girl and 88 keys, and it’s mostly marvelous. “Selkie” certainly is. It’s simple and poignant: “I’ve been waiting on the love of my life to find me… will you make your home in my arms.” I’d forgotten how much I love the sound of Amos just playing and singing. It’s been so long since I’ve heard her spin beauty like this.

“Oysters” might be just as lovely, particularly when Amos belts out the high, one-word refrain. (That word is “turn.”) She’s 50 years old now, but that voice hasn’t lost a note, and when she uses it right, as she does here, it can still sound like the most gorgeous thing you’ve ever heard. I have similar warm feelings for “Weatherman,” which rambles a bit, but is still wonderful, and closer “Invisible Boy,” an impossibly haunting piece of music. “Won’t it all fade away if I’m only made of clay,” Amos sings, and you’ve never heard anything sadder. This is Tori Amos. This is the artist I love. It’s been so damn long.

The fact that these songs are here, and sounding like this, vastly improves my opinion of the rest of the record. The folksy opening numbers, “America” and “Trouble’s Lament,” are well-written and memorable, and get Geraldines off to a sweet, low-key start. “Wedding Day” is pretty middling, but it has a swell guitar line buried in there, and a chorus that, well, sounds like latter-day Amos, but is somehow better for being on this record. “16 Shades of Blue” is pretty boring musically, but has a strong lyric about turning 50, and about ageism in our culture. (“There are those who say I’m now too old to play,” Amos sings, a line that would have been ironic on a lesser record.)

The other half of the album is pretty weak, as usual, but for the first time, I don’t mind as much. I’ll sleep through “Rose Dover,” or “The Maids of Effen-Mere,” or the shockingly normal “Wild Way,” to get to the stuff I love here. Even the lite-funk title track, at seven full minutes, isn’t a dealbreaker for me. Its first half sounds like the worst material on The Beekeeper, all “slinky” bass and organ, but stick with it, because halfway through, Amos sits at a piano and spins gold. That’s this album in miniature – sure, much of it is excruciating, but get through that, and the wonders that lay beyond will enrich you beyond measure.

This isn’t the Tori Amos album I’ve been waiting for, but at times, it sure sounds like it. I’d long ago given up the dream of feeling an emotional connection to Amos’ work, so the fact that she manages it more than a few times on Unrepentant Geraldines is a miracle. Hopefully this is just the first album of Tori’s second wind, and before long she will make a record so powerful, so resonant, so amazing that I can unreservedly fall in love with it. For the first time in a long while, I have hope.

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For it to really be 1997 again, though, we’d need Sarah McLachlan to come back with a new album that at least aims for the artistry of her breakthroughs, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy and Surfacing. It’s been a long time since she scaled those heights – her last record, The Laws of Illusion, was almost completely forgettable. And you’d be forgiven for not expecting a lot from her new one, given the blander-than-bland title (Shine On) and cover.

But I’ll be damned if this isn’t the McLachlan album I’ve been hoping for. More than anything else, I’ve been hoping she would wake up, invest herself in her songs again, and make a fully committed piece of work. Remarkably, she has – Shine On is a dynamic pop record full of sparkling, melancholy melodies and McLachlan’s strongest singing in ages. Like Fumbling, it opens with a pop hit, but “In Your Shoes” transcends its glossy production to really connect. Every time you think you’ve heard the whole melody, it rises again, cresting a new wave. It’s a great radio song.

And then, we get one organic, well-written tune after another, right through the end of the record. McLachlan’s at the piano for virtually all of this thing, furthering the connection to her best work, and she’s at the center of a real-live band – pounding drums, cranked-up guitars, a sense of vitality that I haven’t heard from her in ages. Let’s not kid ourselves, this is still fairly tame stuff in comparison to actual rock and roll, and the production (mainly by longtime cohort Pierre Marchand) keeps the edges sanded off, but for McLachlan, this is powerful.

It’s also remarkably uplifting, from a woman who elevated self-loathing to an art form. Where Afterglow found her giving herself 40 lashes and sulking, Shine On finds her healthy, strong and sound. It’s a wondrous transformation, and it sounds earned. Even a song called “Broken Heart,” a loping lament to lost love, is optimistic: “We trip and fall and stand again, and go on with our heads held high, we laugh and love as best we can, trying to hold on to the wonder…” A song called “Brink of Destruction” is about the joy of putting your life back together. A song called “Monsters” even finds the bright side of meeting awful people: “Think what your life would be missing if you didn’t have him to sing about.”

When she hits it here, she nails it. “Surrender and Certainty” is a slow burn, piano and drums with some tasty horns, and she sings the hell out of it. “Love Beside Me” is fueled by a distorted electric piano gallop, and explodes into a great chorus. And “Beautiful Girl” is the record’s loveliest piece, McLachlan singing like a bird atop a gorgeous piano part. “There could be winds of change in my auburn hair, but I’ll tie it back for now, and when the bitter breeze carries a trace of fear, we’ll persevere somehow…” I haven’t been this moved by a McLachlan song in years and years.

Shine On ends with a cover, a jaunty Luke Doucet number called “The Sound that Love Makes.” I inwardly groaned upon seeing that title, but the song is a warm, old-school delight. It ends this splendid little record on just the right hopeful note. As with Tori Amos, I had given up the idea of enjoying a Sarah McLachlan album this much again. I’m so glad she proved me wrong, and I’m even more glad that she sounds energized, healthy and ready to make good music again. It really is 1997, at least in my heart.

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Next week, Coldplay’s lament. 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.

Have you noticed that albums have been getting shorter?

Sure, you still have your epics every once in a while, but I’ve noticed that most of the records I’ve bought this year hover right around the 45-minute range. If an hour is the exception, not the rule, then the same holds true on the other end – the line between and LP and an EP has blurred into irrelevance.

For me, half an hour is pretty much the shortest length I will accept if I’m asked to pay full album price. But lately I’ve been struck by just how often 30 minutes turns out to be exactly what a record needs, and no more. I have three examples of this phenomenon this week – I came to the end of all three of these albums and said, “That’s about right.” I’m not sure if each of these artists consciously determined the right amount of time people would want to spend in their worlds, but that’s how it feels.

In the case of Swedish singer Lykke Li, drinking in despair for longer than the 32 minutes it takes to listen to her third album, I Never Learn, might be too depressing. Li’s no stranger to heartbreak – her last album was called Wounded Rhymes, for pity’s sake – but I Never Learn is a sustained wallow in the saddest places of her heart. It’s a breakup album, of course, but one of those breakup albums that makes “you don’t love me” sound like the heat death of the universe.

Li’s dramatic pop sound is largely unchanged, just slowed down here. She still bathes her songs in massive-sounding keyboards, and her singular voice still cuts through. In “No Rest for the Wicked” she has written one of her most indelible singles, a simple pianos-and-keys thing that pivots on universal sentiments (“I let my good one down, I let my true love die, I had his heart but I broke it every time”) and magnifies them to near-epic proportions.

“No Rest” and second single “Gunshot” are as upbeat as this record gets. “Gunshot” is similarly terrific, a menacing bit of self-loathing – you’ll be singing along to the chorus before you realize it’s about killing yourself. (“And the shot goes through my head and back, gun shot, can’t take it back.”) It’s no doubt metaphorical, but when she repeats “never get you back” at the song’s conclusion, her ache is real.

But it’s on “Love Me Like I’m Not Made of Stone” that Li truly tears her heart out. It’s a muted acoustic piece with the rawest, closest vocal she’s given us, despite being double-tracked. Her voice cracks, breaks, tumbles apart while you listen, and it’s like tiny knives. The song is a plaintive plea for true, unconditional love: “Even though it hurts, even though it scars, love me when it storms, love me when I fall…” It’s the last moment on the album where she allows herself to hope. The final three tracks are titled “Never Gonna Love Again,” “Heart of Steel” and “Sleeping Alone.” They’re all exactly what you’d expect.

That’s not to say they, and this album, are not great. As sad wallows go, I Never Learn is engrossing, and the huge production makes each falling tear feel like a tidal wave. It is just about the right length, and I think Li knows this. She’s allowed herself 32 minutes to wrap herself in pain and self-pity, and I hope she gets over it by the time she hits the studio again. Even by Lykke Li standards, I Never Learn is heartbroken, and I want to hear her find her feet again. Still, this is a pretty terrific little record.

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Justin Currie peddles a decidedly different kind of darkness.

The former Del Amitri frontman has carved out a surprisingly acidic solo career, casting a dim lens on himself the same way Larry David does on Curb Your Enthusiasm. His third solo album is called Lower Reaches, and again combines his way with a subtle pop melody with his penchant for vicious self-reflection. If Currie really is what he paints himself to be, you won’t want to spend more than this album’s 30 minutes in his company.

If you remember Del Amitri, it’s probably for winning pop hits like “Roll to Me” and “Always the Last to Know.” His solo work took a darker path immediately, and Lower Reaches continues that trajectory. Currie is still charming, and still finds a way to make his cynicism hummable. Observe the brief “Every Song’s the Same,” in which he obliterates even the idea of writing songs as emotional expression. (Contrast this with Dan Wilson’s considerably brighter “A Song Can Be About Anything.”) Check out “I Hate Myself for Loving You,” which pinches Joan Jett’s title for an altogether more difficult portrait of pitiful co-dependency: “Loving you is what I gotta do, I couldn’t leave you even if I wanted to, ‘cause it’s the hate that feeds the fire of me and you…”

I should point out that all of these songs are catchy and hummable, clever guitar pop that never overstays its welcome. That remains true when the album slips into still darker territory, like the skipping “On My Conscience,” in which Currie delights in romantically destroying someone for revenge: “Whenever you think of me you’ll wonder whether I was lying, well, I don’t really care just so long as you are crying…” “Half of Me” is a pretty piano piece that leaves you feeling hopeless, as Currie delves deep into his psyche: “Half of me knows that half of me regrets ripping through the years without a hope of happiness, but half of me deserves everything he gets…”

Musically, Lower Reaches is a fine pop record – perhaps not as immediately compelling as it could be, but still fine. Lyrically, it continues Justin Currie’s journey into the pitch-black night, and I hope this is therapeutic for him. It’s sometimes a difficult listen, and I’m glad it’s only as long as it is, but I admire Currie for heading down this path unflinchingly. I’m not sure I’ll reach for Lower Reaches too often, but it’s impressive.

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Speaking of records I won’t reach for too often, here’s Cloud Nothings.

Dylan Baldi’s scrappy little outfit was justifiably lauded two years ago for their sophomore effort, Attack on Memory. They enlisted Steve Albini to record it, wrote some gritty and hard-driving songs, and replaced all traces of the cute guitar-pop band they used to be. They were in particularly fine form on the nine-minute “Wasted Days,” which seemed to point to a strong future.

They don’t really get there on their third, the 30-minute Here and Nowhere Else. Throughout this lackluster document, Baldi tries his hardest to capture lightning in a bottle a second time, but the inspiration just isn’t there. And without Albini – the album was produced by John Congleton – the edges feel sanded back off. This album is fine, for what it is – a bunch of mediocre loud guitar-rock songs, screamed by a lunatic – but it never takes off.

There isn’t a lot more to say, unfortunately. The songs here are all pretty obvious three-chord bangers that earthbound, and even the long one this time, the seven-minute “Pattern Walks,” doesn’t whip up the storm you know this band is capable of bringing. Bless Baldi’s heart, he truly gives this record his all, and the band is right there with him, but with material this half-hearted, there’s really nothing he can do. Next time, Cloud Nothings need to keep the energy and attitude, and Baldi needs to write better songs. As it is, there’s barely enough here to fill half an hour, which makes the length of Here and Nowhere Else just about perfect.

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Next week, we take a TARDIS to the ‘90s for surprisingly good records from Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan. 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.