So. Doctor Who first? OK.

Last week’s episode, “Listen,” is going to rank as one of the best and most thoughtful episodes of Who since the revival, and maybe ever. It fully cements Peter Capaldi in the role – this is the first of his stories that could only have been built around his Doctor. It also finds showrunner Steven Moffat using his own reputation as misdirection. It begins in fairly standard territory for Moffat, with the Doctor on the trail of a monster that has mastered “perfect hiding.” But by the end, it has blossomed into something completely new – a treatise on fear, and specifically, a look deep inside the fears of the man who scares the monsters.

“Listen” is a loop, but a glorious one, and its final revelation – the one that ties it all together – is not plot-related, but a chance to offer new insight into the Doctor and Clara. He gets his strength from her, who gets it from him, and on and on. Some fans decried the notion of seeing the Doctor as a young boy, but from where I sat, the ending to “Listen” was beautiful. Moffat spent 45 minutes flipping our expectations of him on their ears, and delivered a masterpiece.

This week’s, “Time Heist,” was not nearly as good, but still brought the fun. It’s Doctor Who meets Ocean’s Eleven, as the Doctor and Clara are kidnapped and forced to rob the most heavily guarded bank in the universe for reasons unknown. Writer Stephen Thompson (with an assist from Moffat) tries his hand at a similar loop structure, and this one doesn’t work as well – the final reveal is simultaneously obvious and nonsensical. But the story offers Capaldi a chance to be a warmer, softer Doctor (of sorts), and that’s nice to see. I expect he’ll open up as the series progresses, but right now I’m enjoying his brusque manner, and I think the writers are too.

And “Time Heist” gets extra points for a winking nod towards Capaldi’s other famous role, Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It. I laughed out loud. We’re almost halfway through, and this season is remarkably strong. (I didn’t mention “Robot of Sherwood,” but I liked it more than almost anything else Mark Gatiss has ever written.) Looking forward to the back half. Bring it on, Moffat.

* * * * *

At the beginning of every year, I sit down and write a list of records I’m looking forward to. I start with the sure things, albums that have already been announced or are heavily rumored. But by the end, I’m usually just writing down my wish list. I’ve had a new Postal Service album on the docket for years, for instance. But even allowing for the ludicrous, I never expected to be writing about a new Aphex Twin record in 2014.

Richard D. James is one of the few universally agreed-upon geniuses in electronic music. He specializes in spinning your head clean around – his work is maddening, complex, insane, confusing and difficult. It’s also amazing. My first Aphex Twin album was 1995’s I Care Because You Do, and I’d never heard anything quite like it. Where most electronic music found joy in repetition, James’ work was the sound of attention deficit disorder, new elements flying in every couple seconds. The result was something oddly beautiful, if a bit unsettling.

James’ discography is a wonderful mess. He records under half a dozen different names, including AFX, Polygon Window, Brad Strider and GAK. From the early 1990s to the early 2000s, he was frighteningly prolific, firing off releases at a blistering pace. But after 2001’s Aphex Twin double album Drukqs, James has quietly faded away. A collection of remixes, a series of 12-inch singles under the name Analord, and two projects by The Tuss, an alias James still has not officially claimed, are all that mark those 13 years.

A new Aphex Twin album became something of a joke, like an EDM version of Chinese Democracy. But just as Axl’s folly was finally released, so too has Richard D. James resurfaced, and under his most popular name. Syro is the first Aphex Twin album in more than a decade, and blessedly, it’s just as maddening and fascinating as anything he’s done. The album is a little more straightforward, especially at first, but as it evolves, the things that make Aphex Twin such a treasure unfold with it. Aside from some strange vocal samples, buried in the mix, it is entirely instrumental, and mostly danceable. That is, if you have seven legs.

Song titles rarely matter in Aphex Land, but they matter even less on Syro. By now you’ve probably heard the first single, “Minipops 67 (Source Field Mix).” That’s one of the more sensible titles. Others include “4 bit 9d api+e+6” and “s950tx16wasr10.” The sorta-title track is actually called “Syro u473t8+e.” These probably mean something to James, and perhaps to electronic music programmers, but they mean nothing to the average listener. The packaging, also, is somewhat insane – it’s a long cardboard fold-out that lists, in a plain font on a white background, the per-copy cost of everything that was paid for during the making of the album. For instance, I know that, per copy made of the album, James paid 0.00057 pounds for taxis for a planning meeting in London about the record. Of course, he doesn’t total all this up for us, so we still have no idea how much a single copy of Syro cost to make.

But all that is secondary. Here are 12 new Aphex Twin songs, and they’re all pretty great. The first few sound relatively sane, but still fold in new elements faster than you expect. Most of Syro is club music as reimagined by James – the ninth track is almost funky, in fact. Most of these tracks sound like a grown-up James experimenting with restraint. The 10-minute second track is a thesis statement on intelligent dance music, and even when things turn weirder on the fourth track, with its unsettling descending chords, it remains enjoyable. Aphex Twin for the masses? Maybe so, but it’s still brain-meltingly complicated stuff, beats flying together with palpable force, blips and bleeps covering everything like confetti, and that warm analog synth sound ringing out beneath the din.

For Aphex fans, there aren’t a lot of surprises here. In fact, the big stunner comes right at the end – the final track, “Aisatsana,” is a sparse solo piano piece. But it’s not the atonal prepared piano collages you’ll find on Drukqs – this is sweet, melodic, peaceful and quite lovely. Birds chirp in the background as James plays something honestly emotional, and it’s really quite something, especially after 11 tracks of electronic madness. For this alone, I’m happy to hear from Richard James again. The rest of Syro, terrific as it is, is just gravy. Here’s hoping the wait won’t be quite as long next time.

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Mike Doughty has never gone away, so I can’t say I’ve missed him.

But for years now, he has been delivering sub-par, tossed-off recordings that have made me wonder, on more than one occasion, why I’m still buying them. We’ve had two live albums, a covers album, a self-covers album (Doughty does Soul Coughing songs on his acoustic guitar), and a few pretty lame new studio records. Does anyone remember Yes and Also Yes with fondness? I’ve heard it four or five times, and I can’t remember anything about it.

Well, don’t call it a comeback, but Doughty’s new one, Stellar Motel, is his strongest since the fabled Haughty Melodic. It’s still spotty, but rather than just spit some nonsensical verses over that same twanged acoustic pluck he does, he’s put some serious effort into finding new contexts for his inimitable voice. He funded this one through PledgeMusic, and the creative freedom it bought him can be heard all over this disc. Just listen to the opening track, “Light Will Keep Your Heart Beating in the Future,” which features an awesome banjo loop atop a dance beat. You can practically hear Doughty waking up.

He did a few other things right this time. First, he remembered to write some pop songs, which he hasn’t really done since Haughty Melodic. “When the Night is Long” is his best chance for a bona fide hit in ages, a silky-smooth, simple singalong with a great beat. “Raging On” combines his sorta-rapping and his singing better than anything he’s written in a long time. “These Are Your Friends” is almost an ‘80s pop tune. And I absolutely love both “When You Come Home” and the closer, “Better Days Come Around.”

He also invited several unknown rappers to share the mic with him, and while the results are mixed, it’s an invigorating experiment. “Oh My God Yeah Fuck It” is just as throwaway as it sounds, but when MC Frontalot steps up on “The Champion,” amidst its ringing acoustic chords and hand percussion, it’s surprisingly terrific. On the other end of the spectrum, “Pretty Wild,” which features three guests named Ash Wednesday, Clara Bizna$$ and Uncle Meg, is pretty much the worst thing Doughty’s ever done. But it was certainly worth trying.

That’s the crux of Stellar Motel – this is the album on which Mike Doughty started trying again. It’s all over the place, but it’s never boring, and it feels like a new beginning after years in the wilderness. That might be too serious a metaphor for an album that includes a song called “Let’s Go to the Motherfucking Movies,” but there you have it. At the very least, this album is a good reminder of why I liked Mike Doughty in the first place. I was actually in danger of forgetting.

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Every time I hear new music from the 77s, I worry that it will be the last.

That’s why each time is such a delight. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of Michael Roe and his quieter, more reflective material. In fact, Roe is one of only a handful of guitarists that I never tire of – I could listen to him play for days and never be bored. But something special happens when Roe jams with bassist Mark Harmon and drummer Bruce Spencer. For one thing, he rocks – the 77s are one of the loudest and best rock bands you will ever see. There’s a certain undeniable energy that surrounds Roe when he’s with the band, and time has only sharpened their attack.

And yet, they record so infrequently. The last 77s album was 2008’s Holy Ghost Building, a collection of old gospel songs. It was fantastic, of course, but given that the last 77s record before that was 2002’s Direct, it wasn’t enough. Roe has been active, of course, playing with Derri Daugherty in Kerosene Halo and issuing several solo projects, including the heartbreaking Guadalupe last year. But I missed the band.

So I can’t tell you how pleased I am to have a new double record from Roe and his cohorts – one disc from the 77s, and one from Roe solo. It’s called Gimme a Kickstart and a Phrase or Two, a title that hints back at its origins. This record was originally a reward for backers of Guadalupe on Kickstarter, and all of its 20 covers were chosen by those who paid for the privilege. The album is now available to everyone, and if you like hearing an incredible guitarist and singer interpreting some fantastic songs, both as a rocker and a troubadour, then this should definitely be on your wish list.

The first disc is the 77s, and man, it is so good to hear them playing together again. They sound comfortable, like no time has passed, and that old alchemy is still in effect. The record opens with Wilco’s “The Late Greats,” a song that was lost at the end of A Ghost is Born, and it makes a fine starting gun. From there, the band tackles a multitude of styles, ripping through an almost-punk take on the Smoking Popes’ “I Need You Around,” gliding over Simon and Garfunkel’s “Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall,” and pulling off a credible version of Led Zeppelin’s “The Battle of Evermore.” (In an ironic touch, they follow that up with a faithful rendition of Blind Willie Johnson’s “In My Time of Dying,” which Zeppelin completely rewrote.)

The undisputed highlight of disc one is an absolutely scorching rendition of the Animals tune “Bury My Body.” Harmon is a monster on the organ part, and the entire band crushes this song as if they wrote it. It’s a perfect 77s song. It contrasts mightily with the closing number on the disc, Eric Clapton’s sappy “Wonderful Tonight,” a stark reminder that the band did not pick the songs for this collection. They do a decent job with it, and Roe sings it sweetly, but it’s still “Wonderful Tonight.”

Roe takes the second disc solo, just him and his acoustic guitar, and it’s unfailingly gorgeous stuff. I could listen to this disc on repeat for hours and not mind. He begins with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s glorious “Looking Forward,” harmonizing with himself beautifully. From there, it’s just one highlight after another: Band of Horses’ lovely “No One’s Gonna Love You,” Bruce Cockburn’s underappreciated “Lord of the Starfields,” and perhaps best of all, the Waterboys’ amazing “How Long Will I Love You.” Hearing Mike Roe sing this song is one of the high points of my musical year.

The funniest thing here is a mash-up of Michael W. Smith’s “Never Been Unloved” and Art Garfunkel’s “Bright Eyes,” essentially the same song. Roe plays it straight, but whoever asked for this song must be smirking. The disc ends with three hymns, and then, oddly, a tremendous version of Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash Into Me.” It is jarring to hear a paean to sex sequenced after “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” but on reflection, that melding of the sacred and the secular pretty much sums up Mike Roe’s career.

A disc of the 77s playing like the stunning rock band they are, and a disc of Mike Roe breaking my heart with graceful beauty? Yes, please. Gimme a Kickstart is another fine production from Lo-Fidelity Records (based right here in Chicagoland), and you can get it right from the band’s Bandcamp page. If you’re new to the band, try some of the other records there too. You won’t be disappointed.

* * * * *

There is a certain subset of the population for whom there is only one comeback that matters this year, and that’s The Physical World by Death From Above 1979.

I can’t really count myself among them, although I like DFA quite a bit. Ten years ago, the bass-and-drums duo of Sebastien Grainger and Jesse F. Keeler unleashed their debut album, You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine. It was an onslaught of danceable punk delivered with a manic energy and an abrasive, who-cares-if-you-like-it sensibility. In a lot of ways, it set the template for dance-punk for the next decade. So of course, the band immediately broke up. Grainger started a solo career. Keeler formed MSTRKRFT. And that was it.

Did anyone expect a reunion, and a second record? And if so, did anyone expect that second record would pick right up where they left off, and deliver another set just as solid as the first? The Physical World could have been recorded in 2006 – the band has made virtually no changes to its formula, but since no one else is doing quite what these guys are doing, that’s just fine. The songs are slightly more refined, but they explode with just as much attitude and power as they did 10 years ago. There are synths here and there, but in the main, they don’t need anything but Grainger’s pounding drums and Grohl-esque voice, and Keeler’s fuzzed-out, knock-you-across-the-room bass.

The first five songs on The Physical World just erupt from your speakers, culminating in the phenomenally danceable “Crystal Ball.” On “White is Red,” you can hear that these guys are a decade older – the song is slower, more reflective, sweeter – but with “Trainwreck 1979” they’re right back in it. The back half is a torrent of power, particularly the thrashy “Government Trash,” and it leads to the title track, which, at five minutes, is the DFA 1979 version of an epic. It’s tricky, nuanced, and louder than hell.

I can’t agree that The Physical World is the only comeback that matters, but listening to it, I can understand why some feel that way. It’s rare to hear a band return after so long away, and to return with such fire and fury. If you liked them before, and your tastes haven’t changed dramatically in the last decade, you will like them now.

* * * * *

Next week, the flood continues with a bunch of old men. 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.

Early on in U2’s 13th album, Songs of Innocence, Bono sings this line: “I get so many things I don’t deserve.” He couldn’t have known it when he wrote it, but that sentiment is the perfect touchstone for everything I’ve watched happen in the past week, as the band gave this album away for free and our crybaby entitlement society smacked them over and over again for it.

By now you’ve all heard the story. As part of Apple’s iPhone 6/iWatch/iWhatever event last Tuesday, U2 unveiled Songs of Innocence, their first album in five years. And they did it in dramatic style – with the push of a button, the album’s 11 songs were given away free to everyone with an iTunes account. All we had to do was download it from our purchased folders. Or, if we had the automatic download option switched on, we had to do nothing – the record showed up in our playlists, ready to be listened to.

Now, understand, I’m a U2 fan. I have been since I first heard The Joshua Tree, at my aunt and uncle’s house in New Hampshire, on headphones in the dark. I was 13, and this music took me places that few other bands had. I still think The Joshua Tree is a masterpiece, as is Boy, as is War, as is The Unforgettable Fire. And the band grew with me. In the ‘90s, I wanted to be all ironic and clever and cool, and they did too – Achtung Baby smacked me upside the head when it came out, and Pop – poor, maligned Pop – is actually a wonderful record. And in the 2000s, I grew up and took stock, and so did U2, making some of their most earnest, stripped-back music on All That You Can’t Leave Behind and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, two records I still like a great deal.

So I was one of the millions who greeted Songs of Innocence with shouts of glee. Like all U2 fans, I’d been hearing about – and worrying about – this record for years, and to have it suddenly show up, out of the blue, for nothing? That actually made my day. I was so excited about it that it never even occurred to me that some people might be upset by the way the band chose to release this album, pushing it out to 500 million purchased folders without asking. This is why I am no longer a reporter – to me, the story was the music, not the method.

But man, was I wrong.

If U2 wanted to get people talking, well, they did it. Every hipper-than-thou type on the Internet seemed to pile on, accusing the band of being underhanded, insidious, even evil. People saw it as an invasion of privacy, and treated the album like an unwanted virus, or worse. The uproar reached absolutely ridiculous levels, with some comparing it to breaking and entering, or even rape. (For real. If I read one more rape analogy, I’m going to punch a wall.) Apple even released a tool to remove all traces of the record from your iTunes, because it wasn’t enough for people to simply delete it, they had to eradicate every scrap of evidence that the offending album had once been there.

And all the while, gleeful U2 haters have been stoking the fires. (See this ludicrous New Yorker review as an example.) They turned what should have been a minor annoyance for some people into a cause for those who want to see both Apple and U2 crash and burn. The hyperbolic bloviations are still going on, while the band is taking things in stride – at last count, more than 40 million people had downloaded Songs of Innocence. To put that in perspective, their last record, the underwhelming No Line on the Horizon, sold five million copies worldwide. If expanding the audience was the goal, mission accomplished.

But look. It’s a free record. Additionally, it’s a free reminder that the iTunes platform you are using doesn’t belong to you, and Apple can do what it wants. They push similarly optional updates to all accounts on a regular basis. Songs of Innocence only downloaded directly to your phone if you told iTunes to do that. To act like this is your house and they broke in is laughable. Especially since – and I will keep saying this – it’s a free record! It’s a gift. You don’t like the gift? Delete the gift. It’s that simple. If someone giving you 11 free songs is the worst thing that happened to you last week, that’s pretty damn good. Just calm down. Seriously. You’ll hurt yourself.

So that’s what everyone’s writing about – the Irish Big Brother and how they forced us to own their new record. But what no one seems to be writing about is this: Songs of Innocence may well be U2’s best and most consistent album since Achtung Baby, 23 years ago. A really great record is being lost in the invented and exaggerated furor, and that’s a shame. So let me tell you about it.

Songs of Innocence is reportedly the first half of a double album, with the second half completing the William Blake allusion: Songs of Experience. Given that, it’s not too much of a leap to assume that we’re hearing the backward-looking half, the one about where the band has been. The lyrics repeatedly reference the band members’ childhoods, and the music is a superb distillation of U2’s last 38 years. (Yes, 38 years, without a single lineup change.)

Everything they have ever done well is represented here, and the result is the most confident set of songs in more than 20 years. They worked with a bevy of producers, including Danger Mouse, Paul Epworth, Ryan Tedder and Flood, but you’d never know it. The album flows brilliantly from first note to last, the most effortless-sounding 49 minutes of their latter-day career. In fact, it’s impressive how much Danger Mouse, who produced the album overall, stayed out of the band’s way. You’ll hear no trip-hop beats here, no electro-soul embarrassments, no straining grasps at relevance. For most of this record, you’ll hear U2 just doing what they do, and doing it better than they have in a long time.

The album opens with its weakest song, but damn, “The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)” is a pretty good weakest song. It’s the biggest production here too – you can feel them sweat as you listen. It begins with a massed-vocal chant before The Edge crashes in with a piercing fuzz tone, and Bono sings of the first time he heard the Ramones, relating it to an actual miracle: “Everything I ever lost now has been returned, the most beautiful sound I ever heard…” It’s a song that learns absolutely no lessons from the Ramones, but whatever. Although it never takes flight, it stomps along convincingly, stating its case as a far better first single than “Get On Your Boots.”

Everything picks up from there. “Every Breaking Wave” is classic U2, almost a rewrite of “With or Without You.” The band has grown immeasurably better at disguising the fact that bassist Adam Clayton is playing the same four notes repeatedly – this song’s chorus just erupts, Bono asking if we’re ready to be swept off our feet. “California” is modern U2 at its finest, a Brian Wilson homage at the start giving way to a driving beat that surges into a soaring refrain. “All I know, and all I need to know is there is no end to love,” Bono sings. This is the kind of song they’ve been writing for the past decade or so, flawlessly, and this is a very good one.

Up to this point, it’s just another U2 record. But with track four, the lovely “Song for Someone,” the record takes off and never comes back down. It’s a hymn, the kind of hymn U2 has always written well. Bono’s perfectly imperfect voice has rarely been stronger and clearer than it is on this song – he puts everything into it. Near the end, he laments, “I’m a long, long way from your hill at Calvary, and I’m a long, long way from where I was and need to be.” He still hasn’t found what he’s looking for, but the most spiritual lyricist in popular music keeps on looking.

“Iris (Hold Me Close)” is a stunner, a powerful, anthemic song about Bono’s mother, who died when he was 14. Edge pulls out the infinite guitar for the first time in ages, while drummer Larry Mullen brings it all home on this one. And just wait until you hear Bono. There’s a purity to his vocals on this song that I haven’t heard in a long time. After four minutes of celebration, the song takes a surprising turn for the mournful, lyrically: “Iris says that I will be the death of her, it was not me.” This is an extraordinary U2 song, capturing a flame that I worried had long died out.

And once it rekindles, it catches. “Volcano” is the album’s most explosive tune, putting efforts like “Vertigo” to shame – it actually shimmies, Edge laying down stabbing shards of guitar while Mullen and Clayton rock out behind him. (This should have been the first single. No question.) “Raised By Wolves” is a remarkable bit of time travel – it would have fit on Boy or War without much trouble. It’s a dark epic, with that “New Year’s Day” piano sound and a vicious sense of menace. The chorus comes out of nowhere, slicing through the sky. It’s a wonder, and it finds the foursome sounding 20 years old again.

“Cedarwood Road” keeps the streak alive, and in fact may be the record’s high point. Named after the street on which Bono grew up, it’s a raw, live-band rocker that slowly evolves into an anthem. “You can’t return to where you never left,” Bono sings, and the band effortlessly states that case. This is another song that recaptures a decades-old energy. After that, you might greet the synth opening of “Sleep Like a Baby Tonight” with dread, but stay with it – it evolves into a creepy crawly highlight. Bono whips out the “Lemon” falsetto for one high-wire act in the middle, and he comes so close to pulling it off that it works anyway. The song ends with a jammy section that ably displays just how restrained this band really is, contrary to popular opinion.

Songs of Innocence steadfastly refuses to fall apart at the end. “This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now” is almost dance-rock, a slow build that takes off like a rocket once it gets going. And “The Troubles” is magnificent, one of the few here that point forward. Lykke Li provides a hook while the band spins out an atmospheric mid-tempo float, complete with thick strings. It’s not a song about the Irish Troubles, at least not directly. “I have a will for survival, so you can hurt me then hurt me some more, I can live with denial, but you’re not my troubles anymore,” Bono sings, putting a bad relationship to rest. The song ends things on a spectral, haunting note, Edge playing delicious leads over the fadeout.

And then it’s over. And every time, I sit back and marvel at the fact that I have just heard one of the best albums ever by one of the best and most important bands in the world. One could chide the band for taking few creative risks this time, but they’ve crafted a conceptual piece about drawing strength from one’s history. I expect the second album – which may include the singles “Ordinary Love” and “Invisible” – to be more about where the band is headed. This record, on its own, is a summation of everything I have ever loved about U2, wrapped up in 49 of the most consistently great minutes they have produced since I was in high school. And I got to listen to it for free.

We get so many things we don’t deserve. Amen, sir. Amen.

Next week, some unexpected comebacks with Aphex Twin, Mike Doughty and Death From Above 1979. 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’m staring at a rising tide of important new records, one that isn’t going to recede until the frost is on the pumpkin, as Frank Zappa used to say. So there’s nothing for it except to get reviewing. Thanks for your patience last week as I indulged my inner (and, let’s be honest, outer) Whovian. I quite liked this week’s episode, “Robot of Sherwood” – it gave me a lot more perspective on Capaldi’s Doctor, and the journey I expect he will go down – and while I could spend another thousand words talking about it, I won’t. You’re welcome.

Now, on with reviews of new music, before it drowns me.

* * * * *

Counting Crows are the sound of college to me.

I went to a small Catholic school outside Portland, Maine from 1992 to 1996. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to southern Maine, but the air has a particular feel to it, sort of cold and pure. There’s a particular smell too, and a sensation of that air on your skin that I haven’t found anywhere else. And though there are plenty of bands that defined my college experience – Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, others of that ilk – there is no band that brings back all of those sensory experiences like Counting Crows.

August and Everything After was required listening among people my age in 1993 (and the years following), and its influence was everywhere. The image of Adam Duritz, dreadlocked poet, shimmying his way through the “Mr. Jones” video is forever emblazoned on the minds of everyone within spitting distance of my age. It’s hard to understate the ubiquity of that record, and luckily, it’s also hard to hate it. As a calling card for a literate new band, they couldn’t have done better. Many, in fact, still consider it their best, although I disagree – I like 1996’s Recovering the Satellites and 1999’s This Desert Life even more.

But the fact remains that for a certain segment of their audience, Counting Crows will never top their debut, and they may as well not even try. Those people may end up enjoying Somewhere Under Wonderland, the Crows’ sixth album of original tunes, more than I did. This is the first Crows record that sounds, to me, like they’ve accepted the legacy of August and Everything After and have become content to live in its shadow. It’s still hard not to like them, but it’s also hard to ignore the lack of original ideas and powerful songs on this album.

Somewhere Under Wonderland arrives six years after Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, a record that found the band shaking things up remarkably well. In the ensuing years, they’ve released three live albums and a covers record, a sure sign that the inspiration just hasn’t been there. Wonderland bears that out – this is the sound of a very good band playing average, uninspiring songs very well. These nine tunes fly by in about 40 minutes, and very few of them will leave a mark, let alone the indelible impact of which this band is capable.

Wonderland begins with its most ambitious misfire, the eight-minute “Palisades Park.” It takes its time springing to life, and its first four minutes are pretty terrific, but after that, it just starts meandering until it putters to a close. I don’t need a prog-rock epic from Counting Crows, but I would like the sense that their songs are more than just chords following Duritz from behind. Duritz, it should be said, is on top form lyrically and vocally on this record. Gone is any sense of fatigue that you may have heard on the live records – his voice is strong as ever, and his poetry remains delightfully distinctive. He tells stories, and he tells them well.

But the band this time is content to just strum behind him for unfortunately long stretches of this album. I’m starting to enjoy the simple charms of “Earthquake Driver,” “Dislocation” and “God of Ocean Tides,” but all in a row, they fade into the mist. “Scarecrow” is a step up, though it’s not a big step. I enjoy “Cover Up the Sun” a great deal – its shit-kicking barroom tumble is easily the best thing on this record – but it’s followed up by the pointlessly boring “John Appleseed’s Lament.”

I’ll confess to being moved by closer “Possibility Days,” while wishing it did more with Duritz’ impassioned vocal and dark, wonderful verse. (“The worst part of a good day is knowing it’s slipping away, that’s one more possibility day that is gone…”) Like most of Somewhere Under Wonderland, it’s content to tread water instead of really going somewhere.

The weak songwriting is doubly disappointing because the band sounds so, so good. There are seven people in Counting Crows now, and they’ve gelled into a powerful live unit. The three guitarists bring it, never stepping on each other but infusing everything with a pulsing, palpable energy. I’m not sure that energy has ever been captured on record better than it has been here. The band has such verve that while the songs are boring, the album never is. The current carries it over even the roughest patches.

I don’t think Somewhere Under Wonderland is a bad record. It’s just an unambitious one, and after six years, I expected more. Many will be perfectly happy with nine more Counting Crows songs, whatever their quality. And it is so, so good to hear this band again. If this is what they’re going to do from now on – release short, unremarkable records every six years or so – then I guess I’ll have to be content with that. Counting Crows have never been content with that, though, so it’s surprising to get that feeling from one of their efforts. They sound like they’re trying hard as ever, but the evidence suggests otherwise. I guess we’ll see in 2020.

* * * * *

No one could ever accuse Sloan of not trying hard enough.

Twenty-three years into a wonderful career, the Nova Scotian quartet keeps coming up with new ways to do what they do. I’ve been a fan since very near the beginning – I heard “Underwhelmed” in 1992, thanks to my ahead-of-the curve friend Chris L’Etoile, and bought the debut album Smeared right away. I’ve picked up every one of their subsequent 10 records as soon as I could get my grubby hands on them, and I’ve marveled at the journey they’ve undertaken. They started as My Bloody Valentine clones, moved into stripped-down college rock, then into perfectly sculpted ‘60s and ‘70s rock. Now they take from a huge catalog of influences from four decades of pop, and they remain one of the biggest and most important bands in their native Canada. (And of course, virtually unknown in the United States.)

Now they’ve come up with yet another way to shake things up. Their 11th album is called Commonwealth, and it emphasizes the way this band works – they’re all singers and songwriters, and they all write their own material before bringing it to the band. Normally, those songs are then segued all together to form an album (and to create the illusion that the band works as a unit). This time, they’ve decided to give each songwriter his own side of vinyl, creating four miniature suites, each with its own personality. These aren’t little solo albums – the full band plays on all four sides, as always. But they do neatly put a point on what each member brings to the group.

Essentially, Jay Ferguson is winsome, Chris Murphy is emotional, Patrick Pentland is ballsy and Andrew Scott is cerebral, and that’s how these suites shake down. But put them together in one package (one gloriously well-designed package, that assigns each member of the band a playing card suit), and you have one of the very best Sloan albums. You could rearrange these tunes into a more even representation of their work, and it would still be great, but sequenced like it is, Commonwealth takes you on a trip that none of their other records do, and the format allows for some experiments and sounds you’ve never heard from this band.

Guitarist Ferguson starts things off with five slices of delightful, low-key pop. The brief “We’ve Come This Far” slides into the wondrous piano-and-guitar hum-along “You’ve Got a Lot on Your Mind.” Ferguson has a high, airy voice that works beautifully with material like this, and always has. He turns in a pair of delicate ballads, the Rundgren-esque “Three Sisters” and the acoustic “Neither Here Nor There,” but the highlight of his side is “Cleopatra,” one of the most relentlessly singable Ferguson songs ever. His five tunes ease you into this record, leaving you with a wide smile.

Bassist Murphy is next, and true to form, he delivers some more complex, emotionally heavy fare. His side begins with the fantastic “Carried Away,” with a soaring chorus and some thick strings. He stumbles a little lyrically on the piano-led “So Far So Good” (“Don’t be surprised when we elect another liar, did you learn nothing from five seasons of The Wire?”), but the melody is strong and solid. And he never puts a foot wrong again – in fact, his side closes with two of his strongest songs, the winningly ‘70s “Misty’s Beside Herself” and the stunningly good rocker “You Don’t Need Excuses to Be Good.” The guitar riff on that one will stay with you for hours.

Someone had to turn in the weakest side, and that someone is guitarist Patrick Pentland. He’s the balls-out rocker of the bunch, so of course three of his four songs are stripped-back guitar workouts. They’re fine – the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club overtones of “13 (Under a Bad Sign)” slip into the pure six-string excess of “Take It Easy,” and his side ends with the rollicking “Keep Swinging (Downtown),” which Pentland sings with verve. But it all falls a bit short when compared to the work of his bandmates. He does come up with one stunner, the slow, echo-drenched “What’s Inside,” which is quite unlike anything Sloan has ever done. This one brings back the My Bloody Valentine influence, and gives it a psychedelic edge.

But if you want something completely new for Sloan, check out drummer Andrew Scott’s side, a single 18-minute song called “Forty-Eight Portraits.” It could be subtitled “Andrew Scott’s Prog-Rock Nightmare” – it’s devilishly complicated, opening with three minutes of freeform piano and percussion that somehow coalesces into a superb melodic ride. Scott has always been the most thoughtful of the quartet, and here he lets loose, spinning out a dissertation on the insanity of life and the need for togetherness. The song nimbly jumps from movement to movement, all four members taking lead vocals, and it remains captivating all the way through. It even culminates with a children’s choir, and that doesn’t suck. It’s actually poignant. This is the single most ambitious song of Sloan’s catalog, and it works on every level. (It even ends with what appears to be a Battlestar Galactica reference.)

I’m not sure Scott would have even tried something like “Forty-Eight Portraits” had he not been given an entire vinyl side to play with, so from that standpoint, the Commonwealth experiment was more than worth it. The fact that the rest of the record is also splendid, and the journey as a whole one of the band’s most fulfilling, is pretty wonderful. After 23 years, Sloan can still surprise, and can still turn out a record as stunningly good as Commonwealth. Really, there are only good Sloan records and great ones. It’s so nice to have another great one.

* * * * *

Speaking of Canadian supergroups, here’s the New Pornographers.

Unlike Sloan, the leaders of the New Pornographers – A.C. Newman, Neko Case and Dan Bejar – have their own flourishing solo careers. But every few years they get together to make another testament to the apparent joy of working with each other. They’ve hit some speed bumps recently, with the sluggish Challengers and the just-OK Together. But if you were hoping against hope that the band would one day put out another thoroughly excellent slice of ornate, complex pop, well, that day is here.

The sixth New Pornographers album, Brill Bruisers, is named after the famous Brill Building, the Manhattan workshop that was home to some of the most influential pop songwriters of all time. (Big names include Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Neil Diamond, Laura Nyro and Phil Spector.) Newman and company don’t exactly emulate the Brill Building sound here, but they do place a huge emphasis on sweeping melodies, and they give the whole album a Spector shine. It almost sounds recorded in mono, so thick is the sound, and the waterfalls of backing vocals wash over every song. It’s a striking texture, and it complements some of the band’s best work.

There are eight New Pornographers, but the three mentioned above are the architects of the band, and the three voices you’ll hear throughout. Newman takes the songwriting lead here, penning all but the three Bejar tunes, and from the first notes of the title track, you’ll hear a renewed vigor to his compositions. The first three tracks come at you in a power-pop rush, and Bejar’s “War on the East Coast” doesn’t halt that momentum. When Newman slows things down on “Backstairs,” he does so with style – the song includes synths and a computerized voice, before exploding into a cloud of those wonderful Newman-Case harmonies. Nothing about this record was thrown together. Every nuance has been carefully arranged.

And the energy never flags. Listen to the Case spotlight “Marching Orders” – it’s a pop winner, with its oscillating keyboards and strident strum. Quick interlude “Another Drug Deal of the Heart” has a Stephin Merritt feel to it, while Bejar’s “Born With a Sound” swirls its way home. “Dancehall Domine” is a late-album gem, with its thudding, danceable beat, and “Hi-Rise” soars with its clever vocal arrangement and orchestration. Even the cover of Swan Lake’s “Spider” (written by Bejar) fits in well. By the time things end with the big beats of “You Tell Me Where,” it’s clear that they’ve pulled off their best and most consistent record since Twin Cinema.

And they’ve renewed my faith. Brill Bruisers is exactly the album the New Pornographers needed to make, and they made it at exactly the right time. It’s a complete top-down revitalization, and it’s wonderful. I’m completely on board once again. You tell me where to be, guys, and I’ll be there.

* * * * *

Ryan Adams isn’t from Canada – that would be Bryan Adams, but it’s an easy mistake to make. He is, however, one of the most prolific and celebrated songwriters around. We put up with a lot from Ryan Adams and his bad-boy attitude, but it’s the songs that keep everyone coming back. From his early days in Whiskeytown to his solo career-launching one-two punch of Heartbreaker and Gold, to his extraordinary 2005 trilogy with the Cardinals, and even to 2011’s comparatively quiet Ashes and Fire, Adams rarely disappoints. He has a classic ear for melody and an appealing country-rock heart, and his extensive catalog holds riches that reward repeated listens.

Which is why it’s always tough to watch him screw around, rather than take hold of that prodigious talent and make something special. It’s been three years since Ashes and Fire, and in that time he’s formed a couple punk bands, produced Fall Out Boy, and coughed up a couple one-offs. He’s reportedly written and recorded more albums than Prince, but so far, he hasn’t let us hear any of them. I don’t want to hear Ryan Adams play in bands like Pornography. I want to hear him write powerful original songs, and record them.

From outside appearances, my wish has been granted with the release of Ryan Adams, the man’s 14th solo album and first self-titled effort. Here are 11 new Adams songs, most of them played with an electric-guitar verve the likes of which we haven’t heard in a while. Adams’ tone has a Mike Campbell edge to it, a cavernous ‘80s reverb that is undeniably wonderful. The early Heartbreakers feel is in full effect, from the catchy opener “Gimme Something Good” to the minimal rocker “Stay With Me,” which may as well be a lost Tom Petty tune. It’s a great feel, and Adams’ voice works perfectly with it.

So why am I not thrilled with this? Because these are songs Ryan Adams could have written in half an hour. They’re fine – in fact, most of them are pretty good – but they’re safe. Gone are the days when Adams would pen searingly personal tunes that burrowed into your heart. Now he writes choruses like this: “I love you baby, treat me right, hold me closer in the middle of the night, don’t worry, it’s all right…” I really like some of these songs, particularly “Trouble” and “Shadows” and the delicate “My Wrecking Ball.” But it all seems too easy somehow.

I definitely don’t dislike Ryan Adams. In fact, there’s a darkness to this one that I’ve been missing from his work, and the guitar tone alone is worth getting this for. The whole thing just flutters by without doing very much to me, though, and at his best, Ryan Adams would not stand for that. I want more. I want to feel these songs, and while I like them, I’m not feeling anything from them. I’m glad to have Adams back, but this record feels like something he did in a weekend, rather than something he yearned for, struggled with and birthed. There’s nothing wrong with it, but there’s nothing particularly right with it either.

* * * * *

Whew. More reviews next week, as the flood continues. Robert Plant, Mike Doughty, Death From Above 1979 and My Brightest Diamond, at least. See you then. 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.

Last week, I made a bold statement. This week, I want to double down on it. Doctor Who is the ballsiest show on television. And it has been for more than 50 years.

If I think about the sheer number of gutsy decisions the show has made since debuting in 1963, my mind reels. I’ve been watching since I was six years old, and Doctor Who still regularly takes me by surprise. It’s a show with an infinitely malleable format – misfit traveler from the planet Gallifrey flits about time and space in a machine that can go anywhere and anywhen, having adventures and basically being wonderful. The Doctor is a vehicle to tell stories, and with that setup, it can tell virtually any kind of tale.

Just take a look at the show’s first season. That first episode remains an all-time classic, introducing not only the concept, but the TARDIS, a stroke of absolute genius. It’s a time and space machine that is bigger on the inside, and disguised as a British police box on the outside. That first burst into the TARDIS, when Ian and Barbara can’t believe their eyes, is still one of my favorite moments of television. Once whisked away from modern-day Earth, our travelers visit, in order: prehistoric cavemen searching for fire, vicious mutant creatures in mechanical armor on a planet in the far future; Marco Polo on his travels to Cathay in the 1200s; five different locales on the planet Marinus; an Aztec tribe in 15th century Mexico; the Sense-Sphere, home to the mind-reading Sensorites; and France during the revolution.

Yeah, this all happens in the first season. Doctor Who never makes any attempt to ease the audience in. Companions come and go – the first to leave was the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan – and the locale and supporting cast changes every few weeks. But even all that could not have prepared audiences for the concept of regeneration. Put simply, when the Doctor dies, his body renews, in the form of a completely different-looking man. (Or woman, but we’re not there yet.) That means the lead actor also changes every few years. The first time they did it, they just did it – they didn’t explain it at all, just replaced William Hartnell with Patrick Troughton. Now it’s old hat, but can you imagine being one of the viewers in 1966, watching this happen?

Twelve actors have now played the title role (13 if you count John Hurt), and every one of them was a risk. The show has rarely gone back to the well – dandy James Bond type Jon Pertwee was as different from cosmic hobo Patrick Troughton as Troughton was from crotchety old William Hartnell. Tom Baker – he of the teeth, curls and scarf – brought an unpredictable madness to the role, while Peter Davison approached it with earnestness and dignity.

Poor old Colin Baker was saddled with a horrible costume and instructions to play the part as a loudmouth, cowardly bully, perhaps the riskiest choice of all. Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor hid his manipulative nature behind buffoonery, Paul McGann’s was a romantic, Christopher Eccleston’s a brooding survivor, David Tennant’s a dashing nerd, and Matt Smith’s a goofy, glorious young-old man. Every incarnation is the same man, emphasizing different characteristics. But every interpretation has been dazzlingly different.

Which brings us to the Twelfth Doctor, played by the absolutely incredible Peter Capaldi. Talk about a risk, though. The so-called “new series” that returned to our television screens in 2005 has made its name by casting young, nerdy-cute Doctors. David Tennant was the first heartthrob Doctor, bringing the show to new levels of worldwide popularity by making goo-goo eyes at Billie Piper, and Matt Smith, all of 26 when he took the role, turned Doctor Who into a global phenomenon. I adore Smith’s version of the character, all gangly movements and alien reactions, but there’s no denying that he’s still young and adorable.

Had they done that again, cast a young man, they would have cemented the Doctor as a teen dream romantic lead. I’m so very glad they didn’t. The new Doctor is played by a 56-year-old Scot who is best known for portraying an unbelievably rude swearaholic in The Thick of It. He’s not cute, he’s not cuddly. He can certainly play warmth, but his natural state is somewhat cold and detached. Even in interviews, he comes off not as the excited fanboy that Tennant and Smith were, but as more of a stand-offish man, uncomfortable with the limelight. (He’d definitely better get used to it…)

A sizeable portion of Doctor Who’s new audience is made up of young people who responded to the charms of Tennant and Smith. For the past year, it’s been something of a pastime among old-school Who fans to wonder how they’re going to take to Capaldi. I definitely imagined his Doctor being more in line with the older ones – the difficult Hartnell, the imperious Pertwee, the often arrogant Tom Baker, the brusque Colin Baker. The Doctor is not cuddly. He can, in fact, be quite a dick, and it looked to me like we were heading back into that territory.

Well, now the Twelfth Doctor is here, and I am still not sure what I think. I saw the premiere episode, the 75-minute “Deep Breath,” four times before deciding that I largely liked it, painfully flawed as it is. It opens with a dinosaur tromping through Victorian London, and Capaldi’s Doctor in the throes of regeneration trauma. And he stays in those throes for half the episode, falling down and talking nonsense and jumping into the Thames. It’s a level of madcap lunacy I certainly wasn’t expecting, and Capaldi looked vaguely uncomfortable playing it. Lots of great lines, of course, but a lack of confidence and not much of a center, and it goes on like this for a long time.

About halfway through, the Doctor and Clara meet at a restaurant populated by clockwork droids, and “Deep Breath” comes to life. So, too, does Capaldi’s portrayal of the Doctor, though I don’t quite feel he had a handle on it before the end. No, the real work of the episode is to finally, finally give Clara Oswin Oswald a character, and Jenna Coleman shines. She’s never been better than during her spotlight scenes here, arguing with Madame Vastra, sparring with the Doctor and attempting a daring escape from the robot stronghold. I’m so glad we finally get to see what she can do with meatier material.

My biggest issue with “Deep Breath” is the lack of confidence it shows in Capaldi’s portrayal. It works overtime to ease the audience in. The entire episode is about wearing new faces – the villains are droids who steal faces from their victims and wear them, Vastra wears a veil in front of strangers, the Doctor has an epic rant about replacing parts of oneself until there’s nothing of the original left. Vastra scolds Clara for not immediately accepting the new Doctor’s face, saying that he trusted her enough to drop the pretense of youth in front of her. The whole thing is about helping the audience see Capaldi as the Doctor, and there’s a lot of hand-holding that I don’t think was necessary.

The biggest misstep, despite the emotions it brings up, is Matt Smith’s cameo near the end. As the Eleventh Doctor, he calls Clara from her past to assure her that the older man in front of her is still him, still the Doctor. He’s basically speaking to the audience, to the fans of Smith’s portrayal, begging them to give Capaldi a chance. I hope that’s not necessary. I hope it’s a gross overreaction to what I expect will be a pretty small backlash. But you never know. I’ve just never seen this before. No new Doctor has ever needed the previous Doctor to hand off the show in this fashion, and it hobbles Capaldi before he can really get going.

So with all that going on to detract from Capaldi’s performance in “Deep Breath,” I decided to hold off from writing about him until I had seen his second story, “Into the Dalek.” I’m glad I did, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that even with 30 fewer minutes to play with, “Into the Dalek” is a stronger and better episode. It finds the Doctor, Clara and a few interplanetary soldiers agreeing to be shrunk down and injected into an ailing Dalek to fix it. The twist is that this may be the first morally good Dalek ever, and if they can keep it alive, they can change the evil and twisted Dalek race forever.

But what starts as an examination of the Daleks turns into a treatise on the new Doctor. Is he a force for good? Even by the end of the episode, it’s hard to tell. The Doctor opens his mind to the Dalek, expecting it to find enough goodness to make the transformation permanent. Instead, it finds a burning hatred of the Daleks, and takes that on as its new mission. The Doctor has always defined himself in opposition to the Daleks, but this episode suggests that they’re the same – “You are a good Dalek,” the creature says to the Doctor at the end, echoing a similar line from the Ninth Doctor story “Dalek.”

And Capaldi? He earns every inch of that darkness. Those hoping for a bit of Malcolm Tucker in his performance must have been ecstatic. For my money, I’m still struggling with much of it. We’ve seen the Doctor kill before, but we’ve rarely seen him this callous about death. The demise of Ross, with the Doctor’s “trust me” before failing to save him and his subsequent quip about his liquefied remains (“Top layer, if you want to say a few words”), was genuinely shocking. I was not sure at that moment whether this guy is, in fact, the Doctor.

I think that’s what I’m supposed to be feeling right now. I don’t really trust this guy. Capaldi turned in riveting, fascinating work on “Into the Dalek,” essentially playing the Doctor as a more nimble Gregory House. I’m just having trouble seeing the Doctor sometimes behind his cold gaze. Of course, then he turns on a dime, and there he is, the Doctor. So it’s hard to say so far what I think of this portrayal. I do hope that by the end of the season we have a definitive handle on the Capaldi Doctor, and I hope we don’t toss out all the warmth, hope and whimsy of this show on the way there. Of course, the next episode is called “Robot of Sherwood,” and is about Robin Hood, so I expect that whimsy will be back in force.

Here’s hoping. It’s still the ballsiest show on television – what other show would completely transform itself this way, at the risk of alienating the fans that have brought it to new heights of popularity over the past nine years? No other show. This is Doctor Who, redefining itself once again. And that’s the most exciting part.

Next week, I choose from among these candidates: the New Pornographers, Counting Crows, Ryan Adams and Sloan. Be back in seven.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.