I like all kinds of music for all kinds of reasons.

People have a hard time believing that I enjoy angry music, but sometimes I can get pretty angry. I need bands like Sepultura and Strapping Young Lad (and yes, like Linkin Park) in my life, for those moments when I feel like ripping the goddamn world in half. I need bands like the Cure and Lost in the Trees for those days when I feel so sad that I can’t imagine making it through another sunrise. I need emotionally and musically complex artists like Sufjan Stevens to kick my brain into another gear and make me consider the world in a different way.

But there isn’t much I enjoy more than beauty. It’s one of the main reasons I’m as into music as I am – when music aims for transcendent beauty, it does it for me like just about nothing else. Pretty music doesn’t actually need to do anything but be pretty for me to appreciate it. I love songs of simple devotion, songs about opening oneself to the wonder of the world. I love songs about exquisite sadness – see Dan Wilson’s “Disappearing,” which still has my vote as the year’s most beautiful song. I even love pretty songs about nothing at all. Beauty is its own reward.

So when a band or an artist goes into the studio with the goal of making the most beautiful thing of which they are capable, I am always on board. Below you’ll find my mid-year report, essentially my top 10 list in progress, and you’ll see that Beck’s Morning Phase continues to hold on to a prominent spot, as does Elbow’s The Take-Off and Landing of Everything. Both are there because they’re incredibly beautiful. You’ll find a couple others that have made their way onto the list for that same reason, including one of the two I have on tap this week.

That one is First Aid Kit’s gem of a new record, Stay Gold. I’m not sure how Joanna and Klara Soderberg, the Swedish sisters at the heart of this band, decided on their collective name, but it’s the worst thing about them. The youthful siblings – Joanna is 23, Klara 21 – write and play delicate folk music, elevated by their intertwining voices. When these two harmonize, it’s like a warm summer day, like sunlight breaking through an open window.

Those voices have always been the feature of First Aid Kid, and I reservedly liked their first two albums, 2010’s The Big Black and the Blue and 2012’s The Lion’s Roar. But Stay Gold is another thing entirely, a fuller and more complete work. Producer Mike Mogis has incorporated strings and pedal steel guitars, adding a widescreen twang that reminds me of the best of Neko Case’s records. There’s nothing tentative about this album – it’s a remarkably assured and confident thing, particularly for two artists so young, and its wide-open soul is older and wiser than you would expect.

The tone of this record is consistent, from start to finish – it’s full of heartbreak and bewilderment, suffused with loss, and its melodies are high and lonesome. “Shattered and Hollow” is the perfect example. It’s low-key, nimble acoustic guitars dancing above a bed of pianos and droning synths, and though it begins with the line “I am in love and I am lost, but I’d rather be broken than empty,” it eventually blooms into a gorgeous chorus. “We are gonna get out of here, run from all our fears,” the sisters sing, taking that glorious melody through the sky.

On it goes, song after lovely song, and each time you think they’ve run out of splendid vocal melodies, they surprise you again. “The Bell” is a highlight, with its subtle trilling flutes, as is the gossamer “Fleeting One” and the piano-led closer “A Long Time Ago.” The music is so lovely that it may take you a few listens to notice how heartbroken it all is: “I know I lost you a long time ago” is the final line, and the summary. But when the sadness is this beautiful, you won’t mind. Stay Gold doesn’t redefine First Aid Kit – in truth, Mogis has simply added more meat to their already lovely bones. It’s their best and prettiest record, and if they keep making records that are their best and prettiest, they’ll be around for a long time.

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Long Beach, California’s This Wild Life is a study in subverting expectations and prejudices.

First off, they’re on Epitaph Records. Second, the two guys in the band – Kevin Jordan and Anthony Del Grosso – are exactly what you’d picture when you imagine a band on Epitaph. They are covered in tattoos, Jordan has an epic black beard, and Del Grosso has huge lobe-stretching earrings. You’d be forgiven for expecting a loud-yet-melodic punk record, like so many others that look just like this, and for a while, that’s what This Wild Life delivered.

But then a funny thing happened: they decided to become more beautiful. Now they’re an acoustic duo, with some occasional drums and strings, and they write sweet little ballads. Their Epitaph debut, Clouded, was produced by Aaron Marsh of Copeland, another artist who aims for the gorgeous more often than not. And while it does sound like a punk band gone acoustic, song-wise, it’s a promising start.

There’s a lot of Dashboard Confessional and the Early November on this record, and it sometimes gets bigger than you’d expect, but it largely remains strummy and pretty. Jordan has a high, strong voice, and Del Grosso harmonizes nicely with him, like the Everly Brothers raised on Blink-182. The songs are all straightforward, but it wouldn’t take too many listens to “Over It” to get it stuck in your head. (I’m a fan of the plinking pianos that come in on the bridge, certainly Marsh’s touch.) And when they hit on a fine melody, as they do on “No More Bad Days,” they drive it home.

The lyrics are, again, pretty typical, but unlike First Aid Kid, the This Wild Life guys make sure to inject a healthy dose of hope. It’s easier to do in this setting than in the louder pop-punk this band used to traffic in. We get a taste of that at the end – the amps are cranked up for “405,” a fine exit ramp for an album full of potential. I appreciate any decision that leads to more beauty, so I’ll be watching these guys to see if they keep making those decisions.

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It’s hard to believe the year is half over, but here we are.

Below you’ll find my mid-year report. If you’re not familiar with this feature, let me fill you in: for a few years now, I’ve been giving quarterly reports on my top 10 list in progress. It’s fun for me to commit to choices in print like this, and I hope it’s fun for you to read those choices. I talked a bit about what you’re about to see above, so I’ll stop babbling now. If you were to put a gun to my head and force me to write up a top 10 list right now, on June 25, this is what it would look like:

#10. Tori Amos, Unrepentant Geraldines.
#9. The Roots, …And Then You Shoot Your Cousin.
#8. First Aid Kid, Stay Gold.
#7. Nickel Creek, A Dotted Line.
#6. Andrea Dawn, Doll.
#5. Dan Wilson, Love Without Fear.
#4. Coldplay, Ghost Stories.
#3. Elbow, The Take-Off and Landing of Everything.
#2. Beck, Morning Phase.
#1. The Choir, Shadow Weaver.

As I said in March, I think this is a pretty great list. I’ll explain next week why I love that Roots album. I’m more than pleased that I can include a Tori Amos album again, at long last, and even more pleased that the Choir has roared back with such an extraordinary disc. Y’all should buy it. We’ll see if they can hold on to the top spot come the end of September.

That’s it for this week. In seven days, I’ll take a detour into hip-hop land with the Roots and Atmosphere. 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 resisted Jack White for an awfully long time.

While I try to hear everything I can, I have an inborn resistance to things I’m “supposed” to like. By that I mean music that seems to grab the critical consciousness in a choke-hold, music that seems to get universal support from all the right corners at the same time. Right now, for instance, I’m “supposed” to like Tune-Yards and Andrew Bird and the National. I only really like one of those, and I’ll leave it to you to guess which one.

I’m honestly not a natural contrarian. I sincerely want to like everything I hear. The problem sometimes is getting me to hear something that has attained such a level of hype. If the noise drowns out the music, my natural instinct is to wait until the noise dies down. At the risk of ruining the mystery of the last paragraph, I’ll tell you that I avoided Tune-Yards’ Whokill like it could give me herpes. It took a while to get me to even sample the band, so deafening was the hype, and when I did, I found something pretty terrific. Merrill Garbus is a bit of a genius, and her new album Nicki Nack is even better and more focused.

This is the way it usually works. I’ll stay away from something I’m “supposed” to like until I feel comfortable approaching it, and then I’ll kick myself for not sampling it earlier. However, I know myself well enough to know that if I had tried Tune-Yards in the midst of the critical tsunami, I would have let my own irritation color my first experience. I try not to do that, but in cases like this, it’s usually better if I wait it out a little bit.

So back in 2002, the White Stripes were a band I was supposed to like. And I didn’t. At all.

“Fell in Love With a Girl” was absolutely everywhere that year, and I hated it. Simple, punky, sloppy, tuneless, pointless – it just annoyed me to no end. The fact that the Stripes were part of a garage-rock revival at the time, leading the way for boring blah merchants like the Hives and the Vines, only served to repel me further. I didn’t buy White Blood Cells that year, and in fact I stayed away from Elephant the following year too.

It took a kind correspondent and some free copies to get me to try the Stripes in 2005, and when I finally did, I heard something pretty magical. Get Behind Me Satan was exactly the kind of diverse work I needed to feel like there was something worth investigating here. Since then, I’ve been a fan, and I’ve watched as Jack White let his genius out slowly. His pop collective The Raconteurs were nothing like the Stripes, and his dirty blues tribe The Dead Weather like neither of them. He chose fascinating artists to produce, from Loretta Lynn to Wanda Jackson to Jerry Lee Lewis, and with Third Man Records he’s been a key component of the current vinyl revival.

And now he’s released Lazaretto, his second album as a solo artist, and it may be my favorite of his things. Like everything he’s done, it’s steeped in history – White is a man who knows his old blues and rock and roll – but this is the fullest flowering of his new-old-sounds approach. It’s also his most complex and all-over-the-map record, and it seems like while his bands usually stick to one or two squares, when White records under his own name, he feels free to wander around the chessboard. Lazaretto sounds like nothing he’s done, but it sounds like everything he’s done, all tied up in a neat bow.

Of course it starts with blues-rock, because that’s his home base. “Three Women” is a hilariously clichéd blues lament – “I got three women, red, blonde and brunette” – that he updates for the iPhone age: “It took a digital photograph to pick which one I like.” The rowdy “lordy-lord” that makes up the refrain is insanely catchy, and it’ll probably take you a couple listens to realize that White isn’t playing any guitar on this tune. It’s fueled by piano and organ, with some nifty pedal steel by Fars Kaplin. “Lazaretto” follows the same path – it starts with a synthesizer bass groove, and the guitars don’t really kick in until the 43-second mark. When they do, though, they’re massive, and his Jimmy Page-style solo is a facemelter.

Had this been just another rock record, it probably would have been fine. But White pulls out all the stops, filling these 39 minutes with every influence in his toolbox. Lillie Mae Rische plays sweet fiddle and sings on the country-blues “Temporary Ground,” and comes back for the tumbling instrumental “High Ball Stepper” and the quick barroom pop throwdown “Just One Drink.” “Would You Fight for My Love” is a true epic in 4:09, Brooke Waggoner’s piano leading the menacing charge. “I know that you want more, but would you fight for my love? And I’ve hurt you before, but can you ignore, my love?” The song takes half a dozen fascinating detours before coming in for a grandiose landing.

“Alone in My Home” is folksy, and “Entitlement” is even folksier, with harp playing by the great Timbre Cierpke (whose own new album should be coming soon). While White seems to be pulling a Kanye West throughout the latter song (“I’m sick of being told what to do”), he rights himself at the end: “Not one single person on God’s golden shore is entitled to one single thing.” “I Think I Found the Culprit” is a minor-key wonder, Waggoner’s piano again taking the lead, and brief closer “Want and Able” finds White playing all the instruments to tell a winding fable over simple chords. It could be 200 years old, this song.

I quite like Lazaretto, particularly for its expanded palette of musical colors. While Jack White has contributed to many single-mission bands, he seems to feel fully unfettered when recording under his own name, and that’s a treat to listen to. Sure, I resisted for a while, but in my defense, had he sounded like this in 2003, I would have been much more interested. I still feel like I’m supposed to embrace his work, and I’m still pulling back from that a little. But if he keeps making records like Lazaretto, I won’t be pulling back much longer.

* * * * *

While we’re admitting things, I’ll say here that I do get a slight thrill out of liking bands that I’m not supposed to. Anyone who has been reading this column for any length of time can probably name many I’ve championed through the years, from Hanson to the Click Five to Kip Winger to Coldplay. It’s not intentional – I’m not forcing myself to like these bands just to be contrary. But when I do end up liking something that I know will send a tremor through the Force, it makes me devilishly happy.

Linkin Park is definitely one of those bands. Back in 2010, I included their tremendous fourth album, A Thousand Suns, in my top 10 list. It’s a record I still listen to regularly – I’d never much liked the band before Suns, but the depth and diversity of that work ensured that I’d be paying attention from then on. I still feel like Suns deserved its spot in the list. It revealed Linkin Park as a band unlike any other, with a kaleidoscope of influences and a willingness to take risks. Some of those risks were ill-advised, but still. I’d never thought of them as a particularly brave band until then.

And I’ll admit that they disappointed me with 2012’s Living Things, a record that seemed to retrench around their old sound, disregarding many of the forward leaps of Suns. It was still largely electronic, but it felt a bit like covering Meteora with synthesizers. I’ll also admit that advance press on the band’s sixth album, The Hunting Party, didn’t thrill me. “The guitars will be back,” they promised. “It will be like Hybrid Theory,” they exclaimed. This felt like a full retreat. I almost didn’t buy The Hunting Party.

But goddamn, I’m glad I did.

This is Linkin Park in full risk-taking mode, but it’s a completely different risk than Suns. This is, for the most part, Linkin Park’s version of a full-on metal album. Drummer Rob Bourdon and guitarist Brad Delson take center stage here in a way they haven’t since the early days – this record could be seen as an apology to both of them for the past four years of electronic experimentation. But this isn’t the melodic nu-metal of last decade. This is huge, thudding, almost old-school metal. This is some old-Metallica thrash metal shit. It’s louder, more aggressive and more hardcore than anything they’ve done.

And they’re still Linkin Park, so they’ve worked in a liberal amount of those electronics and Mike Shinoda’s rapping, sitting alongside Chester Bennington’s full-throated screams. “War” may as well be the Stooges, so unstoppable is its punk-rock groove, but it leads directly into “Wasteland,” a showcase for Shinoda that sounds like a heavier Fort Minor track. “Guilty All the Same” initially underwhelmed me – I had no idea the whole record would be along these lines – but now it knocks me flat. It’s a six-minute metal workout that somehow makes room for a verse from Rakim, without ever sounding like Limp Bizkit.

This is an angry record, and the band has kept the political focus of Suns, raging against the futility of war throughout. Bennington is a hell of a singer, and when he’s not shouting his throat raw here, he’s providing moments of sweetness amidst the din. “Until It’s Gone” is a four-minute cliché lyrically, but it’s pretty awesome musically, full of organ-and-keys interludes and big-big-big choirs. “Mark the Graves” may be the record’s high point, a mid-tempo thrash epic that gives way to a lovely sea of a verse and a hummable riff. But then, the high point may be the piano-led instrumental “Drawbar,” or “Final Masquerade,” an atmospheric pop song the equal of anything this band has done.

The closer, “A Line in the Sand,” is an epic among epics. It starts with a slow burn, Shinoda singing about surveying the aftermath of a battle, but it soon explodes in a volley of Megadeth-worthy riffs and beats. (This is actually much, much heavier than Megadeth’s last record.) Throughout its six minutes, it keeps cycling back to that lovely opening melody, while building on it. Bennington screams his head off, and then the song collapses into a slow rapped section that shouldn’t fit as well as it does. When it returns to that swell melody at the end, it feels like they’ve crafted the metal monsterpiece of 2014.

All by itself, “A Line in the Sand” would justify this change in direction. And make no mistake, this is a massive change. This is not a return to the Hybrid Theory/Meteora nu-metal sound, and at this point, I don’t think they’re ever going back there. I’m going to get a ration of shit for recommending Linkin Park again, but I really like The Hunting Party. For one thing, it scratches my old-school metal itch, but for another, it offers further evidence that Linkin Park is much more than their reputation would suggest. They’re not afraid to take a hard right turn like this and leave their fanbase in the dust. For sheer ballsiness, The Hunting Party gets a nod from me. The fact that it’s a killer record only seals the deal.

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Next week, back to the beautiful with First Aid Kit and The Wild Life. 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. I’m 40.

It is sort of hard to believe. Back when I was in high school, 40 seemed unimaginably old. I mean, my parents were in their 40s. I couldn’t even see that far into the future. And now that it’s here, I honestly don’t feel any different than I did 10 years ago, except for an overall surplus of confidence and comfort in my own skin. (Well, more than I had at 30, certainly.)

At 40 years old I own my own home, I have a pretty amazing job, I’m down to a weight I haven’t been since I was 19, and I have far fewer bouts of sadness. (Or at least far fewer bouts that sadness wins.) I have some amazing friends, far more than I ever expected I would, and I feel a real sense of home where I am. I make enough money to buy all the damn music I want, and I still love doing this silly little column every week, for whoever is still reading it.

In short, I quite like my life. And talking with my friends of a similar age, that seems to be the consensus – by the time you’re 40, it gets easier to love your life. Recently another 40-year-old and I were involved in a conversation with a couple friends of mine who had just started their 30s. This talk drove a few things home for me, most importantly the fact that I loved my 30s. You couldn’t pay me to do the 20s again, but the 30s were one high point after another. I spent them all in one place, as opposed to the state-hopping I did in my 20s, which certainly helped. But I’ve wrapped that place around me, and it’s become part of me in a way I never expected.

Here’s one thing my friend and I agreed on. In your 20s, you’re obsessed with making these life-changing decisions, with composing a list of things you want to do with your life and working hard to make sure you get to them all. But in your mid-30s, you realize that you’ll never do everything on that list. And you’re 100% OK with that. In fact, you’re happier – I sometimes find myself looking back on that list and wondering why I wanted to do those things in the first place. Some of them are downright silly, and some of them would have led me very different places. Given where I am now, that could have been tragic.

I know 25-year-old me would cringe at the above, and call me a sellout and a settler. But 40-year-old me really doesn’t see it that way. 40-year-old me loves his life, and the people in it, and realizes that a fine afternoon spent in the company of good friends is far better than whatever crazy thing I thought I’d be doing at this age. Life is short, and getting shorter all the time, and there’s nothing better than joy, wherever you find it. And often, the simplest pleasures are the best ones.

Thank you to everyone who helped me celebrate this momentous birthday. I love you all. And now, back to a simple pleasure that continues to bring me joy.

* * * * *

My father told me on my birthday that 40 is the new 20. I replied to him that 70 is the new dead.

I may be a tiny bit sensitive about my age. People keep telling me I don’t look 40, which always makes me think about how damn old 40 is supposed to look. I certainly feel like my best days are ahead, despite the sheer number of candles on my metaphorical cake. (No literal cake. Cake has carbs.)

As usual, music has proven a fine comfort in my declining years. Some of the finest musicians I know are still churning out fine, fine work, even after turning 40. Prince is 56 years old, and have you seen that guy? More to the point, have you heard him? He’s still one of the most badass guitar players on the planet, and one of the funkiest people alive. The youngest guy in Marillion is 53, and they made perhaps their finest record last year with Sounds That Can’t Be Made. Steve Hindalong is 54 and Derri Daugherty 55, and the new Choir album is amazing.

The indomitable Bob Mould is now 53 years old, but you’d never know it listening to his new album, Beauty and Ruin. Mould has taken some detours in his career, but 2012’s Silver Age found him picking right up where Sugar left off nearly two decades ago, stomping through some incredible (and incredibly loud) pop tunes with an almost adolescent energy. Mould pioneered this sound – sharp melodies drowned in simply massive electric guitars – and though he’s dabbled in electronics and stripped-down arrangements, that sound is still where his heart lies.

Beauty and Ruin is a fitting sequel. It returns to that same soundscape, and delivers with the same explosive force. It’s an angrier record, darker and less infectious, but it’s only the slightest of steps down from Silver Age. Opener “Low Season” is something of a tease, a trudging dirge that might make you think you’re in for a slog. But then “Little Glass Pill” breaks down your door, and “I Don’t Know You Anymore” dances in the wreckage. Together, these songs are barely five and a half minutes, but they’re awesome. The latter track in particular is a Mould classic, and it’s simply unstoppable.

Every song on Beauty and Ruin save the opener stays south of four minutes, and the whole thing barrels through in 36 minutes. There’s a punk edge to tracks like “Kid With Crooked Face” and “Hey Mr. Grey,” an attitude that Mould hasn’t embraced like this since the glory days of Husker Du. The latter song is about cranky old people, and how great the world will be when they all die out. That’s kind of perfect.

Beauty and Ruin is a more diverse album than Silver Age, too. There’s a light touch to “Forgiveness,” a pop dreaminess to “Fire in the City,” and a delightful acoustic break on “Let the Beauty Be.” The downside is that many of these songs, like “Nemeses Are Laughing,” skimp on the immediate hooks. (They’re there – that song’s “doo-doo-doo” refrain is as pop as anything Mould has done – but you have to hunt for them.)

Still, I’ll take that if it means we get an album this assured and alive from Bob Mould. On songs like “Tomorrow Morning,” he looks forward with an almost boundless optimism, and on the powerhouse closer “Fix It,” he shouts, “Time to fill your heart with love, time to find out who you are.” What a great sentiment for someone who has been where he’s been. If Mould can make an album this youthful, this superb at 53, then 40 doesn’t seem so old after all.

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A quick postscript: Part of my birthday celebration was a show by Texas wunderkinds Quiet Company at the Beat Kitchen in Chicago. I’ve said this before, but you won’t find a better live band anywhere. (They’re all nice guys, too.) The band played a few songs from their upcoming fourth album, Transgressor, and they sound terrific. If you’re thinking about best-of-the-year candidates, put that one on your list. More when I hear it.

Next week, Jack White, Linkin Park and/or the Antlers. 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.