At the end of this column you’ll find the First Quarter Report. Basically, it’s a snapshot of my top 10 list as it stands right now. If you’re the kind of person who skips to the end first, you’ve probably already noticed that there’s a tie for the number one slot. And if you’re especially perceptive, you’ll have noted that the tie is between the two albums I’m reviewing this week. No, this has never happened before. Yes, they’re both that good. And I hope I am about to explain why I think they’re both masterpieces, but in very different ways.

There are basically two ways to get to the top of my list. (I promise I won’t make this all about me.) You can be go-for-broke ambitious and actually pull it off, creating something of extraordinary scope that outshines all other efforts in a given year. Or you can make me cry. I have a history of giving the top spot to emotionally resonant pieces of work that move me in ways I can’t describe. There are exceptions here, but if you go deeper or go wider than anyone else, chances are you’ll become my favorite.

These two approaches are almost not even comparable, which is why, now that I’m faced with one of each, I can’t choose between them. Hopefully, in a few hundred words, you’ll see what I mean.

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I’m not sure how to start talking about Kendrick Lamar’s monumental To Pimp a Butterfly.

This is because I hear new and fascinating things every time I listen to it. I’m torn between saying that To Pimp a Butterfly transcends the rap genre, or proves its potential. Longtime readers will know I haven’t had a lot of time for the beats-and-rhymes art form here, but I’ve certainly pointed out records that grab me, from Deltron 3030 in 2000 to the Roots’ amazing And Then You Shoot Your Cousin last year. But I think of rap like jazz – I’m pretty sure I’m only scratching the surface, only hearing the big records, the ones everyone hears.

Which means that, of course, I heard Good Kid m.A.A.d. City, Lamar’s autobiography in song, when it came out two years ago. I’m sad to say I didn’t join in the critical chorus praising this record, and I still find it somewhat flat. But listening back, there is definitely something here in this kid-out-of-Compton story, some spark that I should have caught. Because Lamar’s follow-up, this dense and massive undertaking he called To Pimp a Butterfly, is simply one of the best rap albums I have ever heard. It puts Lamar firmly among the greats – it’s a work worthy of the artists he idolizes, most importantly the late Tupac Shakur.

The ghost of 2Pac haunts this entire album – it concludes with a seven-minute interview with Shakur, conducted in 1994, into which Lamar has interjected himself. That would seem like astonishing hubris if not for the 70 minutes of extraordinary self-examination and insight that precede it. Instead, it feels like the natural conclusion to the album’s themes. To Pimp a Butterfly aims to be an encapsulation of the black American experience, and a reflection on that experience’s impact on the way Lamar has responded to his own fame. The weight of Lamar’s responsibility and his desire to live up to Shakur’s example anchors this album – the start of Lamar’s conversation with Shakur is a poem that is sprinkled throughout the record, each new line leading him to a new place. “I remember you was conflicted, misusing your influence,” Lamar says. “Sometimes I did the same.”

Throughout Butterfly, Lamar dives deeply into these themes, and the results are often not easy to listen to. “King Kunta” is the only song here that could serve as a hip-hop single – it imagines Kunta Kinte, immortalized in Alex Haley’s Roots, as a rap kingpin, “everybody tryin’ to cut the legs off him.” The rest of the album is dense and often difficult. The powerful “U” is a mad jazz nightmare. It begins with Lamar screaming “loving you is complicated,” and it sounds like it might be a complex anti-love song, but in fact he is shouting into a mirror. The song’s stunning second half lays bare so many of Lamar’s insecurities and feelings of guilt – how he neglected his dying brother, how his fame and money hasn’t dampened his own suicidal feelings.

This follows several songs about Lamar’s travails as an artist, attempting to stay true without being “pimped” by the record industry. This could be self-serving, but Lamar widens it into a meditation on black self-image and pride. “Institutionalized” is about those imprisoned by poverty (the caterpillar in his butterfly metaphor), and how his story shows that even getting out of this situation doesn’t fix everything. The problems are deeper, more ingrained. The smooth “These Walls” is deceptively complicated – its first verse is about the vaginal walls of a woman Lamar is sleeping with, the second verse about the prison cell walls that hold the father of this woman’s child, and the third verse about how the first verse is an abuse of Lamar’s power as a famous rapper. Lamar makes you feel his own guilt by making you feel guilty for enjoying the first verse.

Lamar gives these temptations of fame a persona – he calls her Lucy, short for Lucifer, and battles it out with her throughout Butterfly. “Lucy gonna fill your pockets, Lucy gonna move your momma out of Compton,” he raps on “For Sale,” precipitating a trip back home in “Momma” and “Hood Politics” to ground himself. The fantastic “How Much a Dollar Cost” puts Lamar face to face with God in the form of a homeless man asking for money. Lamar, high on his own success, denies him, and God humbles him, an experience that leads into the final third of the album, on which Lamar learns to love himself.

And it is here that the album goes wider, and becomes about more than just Lamar’s own experience. “Complexion” is about loving yourself no matter your skin color. The fierce “The Blacker the Berry” is about how centuries of racism and oppression have led to self-hatred (“It’s evident that I am irrelevant to society, that’s what you’re telling me, penitentiary would only hire me, curse me ‘till I’m dead…”), and it’s paired beautifully with “i,” the flip side of “U.” A striking anthem of positivity and self-love, “i” is the most joyous thing on the album, the culmination of Lamar’s lessons learned. Far from the usual hip-hop boast, this song’s “I love myself” refrain carries with it the relief of losing the weight that Lamar has been carrying all his life.

“i” appears on this record not in its Grammy-winning single form, but in a live version that Lamar interrupts halfway through for a fascinating dissertation on the N-word – Lamar not only retakes the word from the former slave owners, he infuses it with even more power, tying it to an Ethiopian word (negus) meaning “black emperor, king, ruler.” This ties nicely back to “King Kunta,” but with much more wisdom and self-love. It is this Kendrick Lamar who goes to talk with Tupac at the end of closer “Mortal Man,” a song about the responsibility of black voices and those who listen to them. Lamar knows he’s the latest in a long line of black men with a platform, and the album is a promise to use that platform responsibly, with a sense of history and identity. He knows he is a butterfly, and it’s his job to bring new perspectives to the caterpillars, so that one day they too can be butterflies.

I’m so bowled over by the thoughtfulness and thematic complexity of this record that I haven’t even talked about the music. To Pimp a Butterfly is nothing short of a tour through the history of black music, from jazz to funk to soul to hip-hop, some performed with live instruments (bassist Thundercat is tremendous on this record) and some with programmed beats. Songs stop short and redefine themselves, rhythms disintegrate into acid jazz jamming (keyboardist Robert Glasper contributes here), and the record never sits still for a minute. It’s a tour de force, and Lamar’s rapping is mesmerizing, slipping in and out of different voices and conveying every emotion perfectly.

There are so many elements in play on Butterfly, musically and thematically, and it’s almost hard to believe that one 27-year-old man kept it all straight and wove it together so eloquently. There’s more here that I haven’t talked about, and more here that I’m sure I haven’t heard yet. Assessing Butterfly’s ultimate effectiveness is tough for me – I’m not a member of the audience Lamar is speaking to, or the community he is speaking for. But from my perspective, it’s a masterpiece. We’re going to be talking about this record in 10 years, in 20 years, with the same reverence we reserve for the works Lamar idolizes. It really is that good, and that important.

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Where Lamar went big, Sufjan Stevens went small on his new album, Carrie and Lowell. But the results are no less astonishing.

Stevens is known for his daunting ambition – I know several people who can’t make it all the way through his electro-prog nightmare album The Age of Adz, and that’s merely the most complex in a discography that prizes sweeping statements. Stevens is still best known as the man behind 2005’s Illinois, a 74-minute examination of life, loss and faith filtered through the history of the Land of Lincoln. I named Illinois the best album of that year, and the best album of that decade – it’s a remarkable marriage of musical complexity and deep, abiding emotion. I still listen to it regularly.

But Stevens has never cut as deeply as he has with his new one. It’s reminiscent of 2004’s Seven Swans – it’s a slight 44 minutes, performed on acoustic guitar and subtle keys, never rising above a gentle whisper. The instrumentation fits the theme – the album is named after and dedicated to Stevens’ mother and stepfather, both pictured on the album cover. Carrie died in 2012 of stomach cancer, and was always a difficult presence in Stevens’ life – she abandoned him repeatedly as a child, staying mainly for a period of five years during which she was married to Lowell. The album is Stevens’ attempt to wrestle with his complex reaction to his mother’s death, and lay it all bare.

My first trip through this album was one of the most emotional musical experiences I’ve had in a very long time. It’s an album of confusion, pain, forgiveness and love through it all. It’s filled with memories, some fleshed out and some flashing by in glimpses – the swimming teacher who couldn’t pronounce Sufjan’s name in “Eugene,” for instance – and references that are specific, and yet hit home unerringly. It’s a troubled, tormented album, one that opens a vein and lets it bleed. These songs explore the hazy memories of childhood and the pain of adulthood like little else I’ve heard.

The album begins with “Death With Dignity,” one of several songs to directly discuss Carrie’s death. “I forgive you, mother, I can hear you and I want to be near you, but every road leads to an end,” Stevens sings. “You’ll never see us again.” The amazing “Fourth of July” goes deeper into the same experience, Stevens sitting by his mother’s bedside and reflecting on what she has taught him (“Make the most of your life, while it is rife, we’re all gonna die…”). “The Only Thing” begins with Stevens’ admission of suicidal thoughts, and finds him wondering if his mother ever loved him. “Should I tear my heart out now? Everything I feel returns to you somehow, I want to save you from your sorrow…”

Many of these songs delve into those five happy years, which Stevens calls his “season of hope.” Family trips to Oregon, exploring covered bridges and pear trees, loving and being loved. Adult Stevens tries to hold on to these, but is wracked with guilt over not forging a closer relationship with his mother. His faith sustains him (“Jesus, I need you, be near, come shield me,” he sings on “John My Beloved”), until it doesn’t – “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross” is simply devastating near the end of this record, trawling through the depths of his despair. The whispered “fuck me, I’m falling apart” in the final verse might be the saddest moment here.

There isn’t much hope to be had on Carrie and Lowell – the birth of Stevens’ niece, detailed in “Should Have Known Better,” provides one of the few shafts of light – and in the end, it leaves Stevens desperate and reaching for connection. “There’s only a shadow of me, in a manner of speaking I’m dead,” he sings on “John My Beloved,” and the album leaves you no choice but to believe him. It’s heartrending. These songs are the most honest and powerful that Stevens has given us, and the sparse music leaves him nowhere to hide. The result is as emotionally complex as it is musically bare, and it leaves you shattered and haunted.

I’m not sure I’m ever going to forget the experience of hearing Carrie and Lowell. That’s how deeply this album affected me. It is a devastatingly honest piece of work, and in its simple yet complicated pain, it is one of the very best things Sufjan Stevens has made. I don’t know how often I can listen to it, though, because it hurts. It hurts me down to my soul. And it makes me want to love the people I love more intensely, more frequently, more fully. That is the best thing any art can inspire.

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So here it is, my First Quarter Report. In addition to the two albums tied for the number one spot, you’ll see three here that I have not yet reviewed. I’ll get to two of them next week, and I have an idea for the third that might require me to hang on to it for a bit. But all three of them belong here, trust me. As the Doctor has been known to say, I’ll explain later.

Here’s the list as it stands now.

#10. Laura Marling, Short Movie.
#9. The Decemberists, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World.
#8. Steven Wilson, Hand. Cannot. Erase.
#7. Riki Michele, Push.
#6. Aqualung, 10 Futures.
#5. Copeland, Ixora.
#4. Timbre, Sun and Moon.
#3. Quiet Company, Transgressor.
#2. Punch Brothers, The Phosphorescent Blues.
#1: (Tie) Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly; Sufjan Stevens, Carrie and Lowell.

Now I have eight months to choose between Lamar and Stevens, unless something even better comes along. That would be miraculous, but I believe in miracles. Where you from, you sexy thing?

Next week, two of the albums up there. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I am perpetually behind on the cultural conversation.

It’s mostly my fault. While the pace of that conversation has definitely increased, the speed at which I listen, form thoughts and write those thoughts down has not. I still want four or five trips through an album before I review it, and I still want that process to include poring over the packaging and liner notes. So I’m beholden to release dates, and a slave to my own schedule and my own desire to do this thing as well as I can.

That means I am often reviewing things a week or two later than most other review sites. For instance, last week the talk was all about Kendrick Lamar’s monumental new album To Pimp a Butterfly. One might rightly expect that I would be giving this record the once-over in tm3am this week. But one would be wrong. I have it, I’ve heard it, I’ve talked about it online, but I’m not ready to write about it yet. That’ll be next week.

The problem is, the cultural conversation has already moved on this week to Sufjan Stevens and Death Cab for Cutie, thanks to NPR streaming new records from both of them. By the time I get to those, most likely on April 7, everyone will be on to something else. But I’m not sure what else I can do. I hope you all still find these useful, because I’m probably going to be a couple weeks behind everyone else for the foreseeable future.

That said, here are reviews of three albums that are not To Pimp a Butterfly. This week’s column is brought to you by the letter M.

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I don’t think it’s possible to overstate Madonna’s importance.

Everything good and bad about modern female-led pop music can be, in some way, traced back to Madonna. I was a kid when “Like a Virgin” hit – I didn’t have a clue what it was about, and was in fact much more into Weird Al’s “Like a Surgeon” – but as I grew up, Madonna did too. I remember realizing, at 13, what “Papa Don’t Preach” is about, and (as a good Christian kid) being both appalled and drawn to it. That feeling was magnified a couple years later when I saw the “Like a Prayer” video. Madonna was a professional button-pusher, and she has always been most interested in the reaction of a conservative male-driven world to a ballsy, sexually liberated, completely in-control woman.

And from moment one, Madonna was in control. She fought back against the notion of what a female pop star was supposed to be, and basically defined what it would be for the next three decades. Stars like Britney and Christina Aguilera were cast from the same mold, with the caveat that they tried to emulate Madonna instead of pushing things forward, remaking the world in her image, like she did. For my money, Lady Gaga and Janelle Monae are among the few who truly grasped what Madonna has been saying and built on it. Essentially, that message is this: have a vision, carry it out, be in charge and don’t let anyone stop you.

To me, Madonna is immortal. Which is why it’s been such a shame to watch the slide of her musical output over the past 10 years. Madonna used to set trends. Remember “Vogue,” on which she introduced Euro-dance to the rest of the world? Remember Ray of Light, her still-stunning collaboration with William Orbit that combined complex electronica with hummable pop? She kept the standards high through Music in 2000, but cracks began to show by the time of American Life in 2003.

Since then, she’s been a follower, trying to keep up with the latest club sounds and chasing the work of much younger artists. It’s a role she should not have to play – she’s freaking Madonna – and I don’t know why she’s been doing it. I can barely remember anything about 2008’s Hard Candy or 2012’s MDNA, except the sinking feeling that she’s trying too hard instead of just being who she is. She helped pave the way for the likes of Nicki Minaj, she doesn’t need to borrow cred from her with a guest spot. Madonna is 56 years old, and pop music royalty – if the kids don’t like her, so what.

All of which brings me to Rebel Heart, her 13th album. Its deluxe edition is a sprawling 19-song, 74-minute affair, which would seem like the very definition of trying too hard. It contains collaborations with Kanye West, Diplo and Avicii, among other of-the-minute producers. Madonna is pictured here holding a bloody human heart in her hand, giving herself stigmata with a metal spike, and clutching the pointy end of a sword to her chest. You’d be forgiven for not expecting very much, and for about half this record, you’d be right.

But the other half? There are 10 songs here that are the best, strongest, most Madonna songs she’s given us since the 1990s, and those are the ones I want to focus on. Rebel Heart brings the tunefulness and thoughtfulness back to Madonna’s music, and on its strongest material (“Devil Pray,” “Ghosttown,” “Hold Tight”) she sounds more comfortable, more at ease than she has in ages. These are songs worthy of her. “Hold Tight,” produced by Diplo, may be my favorite Madonna song since the Ray of Light days. The single, “Living for Love,” is her finest leadoff track since “Hung Up,” at least, and probably earlier.

What is it about these songs? Madonna would hate me for saying this, but she sounds older and wiser, more open and graceful. “Joan of Arc” is a ditty, really just four chords played on acoustic guitar and thick synths, but in its simple acknowledgement of pain (“I don’t want to talk about it right now, just hold me while I cry my eyes out”), it feels more real than anything on Hard Candy. “Cut me down a little, fucked me up a little,” she admits at the start of “Heartbreak City,” a piano-led ballad with a gospel choir in tow. “Inside Out” is a terrific electro-pop love song, all creeping bass and soaring vocals, and regular-edition closer “Wash All Over Me” is sweet and pretty.

And then there’s the title track, which closes the deluxe edition. But there is no edition of this record I can imagine that should not close with this. Over strummy acoustic guitars, she looks back with contentment over her life in the public eye. “Why can’t you be like the other girls, I said oh no, that’s not me and I don’t think it will ever be,” she sings, and if anyone can make those lines resonate, it’s Madonna. Just take these songs, the ones on which she aims for pure, grown-up pop with a sense of herself and her legacy, and you’d have her finest record since her glory days.

Of course, there’s the other half, the up-in-this-club half, and I’m sorry, but they’re mostly embarrassing. In recent weeks, Madonna has been handing out accusations of age-ism, and I guess I should line up for one, because it hurts me to hear someone with such a long history spit out something as insipid as “Bitch I’m Madonna.” (That’s the one with the Nicki Minaj guest spot, in case you were wondering.) “Yeah we’ll be drinking and nobody’s gonna stop us” is just one of the lines here that sounds like it was written for Iggy Azalea, not the 56-year-old queen of pop.

There’s a desperation to these songs – you can hear it in the Mike Tyson quote that leads off “Iconic,” the “bitch, get off my pole” interjections on “Holy Water,” the ghastly sub-Erotica-era “S.E.X.,” the Nas verse that interrupts the otherwise swell look back that is “Veni Vidi Vici.” (The lyrics to that last one reference songs and albums throughout her career.) The West-produced “Holy Water” is like a parody of Madonna’s twin obsessions with sex and religion – she commands her man to go down on her, and then asks, “Don’t it taste like holy water?” It’s textbook Madonna, taken just that bit too seriously, and I wanted to like it, but I couldn’t.

I don’t know if it says more about Madonna or me that I’m responding best to the songs on which Madonna seems to have grown up with me. It’s true, though – the best songs on Rebel Heart are the ones that find Madonna comfortable in her own skin, not desperately trying to be relevant. She’s Madonna. She’s always relevant, and the best songs on this overly long, intermittently terrific album are the ones on which she seems to understand that and revel in it.

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On the exact other end of the spectrum sits Laura Marling, the 25-year-old wunderkind who has just released her fifth album. (Yes, fifth. Yes, she’s 25. I’m amazed too.) She’s been nominated for the Mercury Prize three times, most recently for her tremendous fourth record, Once I Was an Eagle. On that album, Marling expanded the range of her dark acoustic folk music, weaving extended suites and winding narratives. It felt like a plateau, like a destination point. And when Marling scrapped a set of similar-sounding songs and set out for Los Angeles to think about what to do next, it didn’t completely surprise me.

The result of all this rumination is Short Movie, a collection of 13 songs about isolation and confusion. For the first time, Marling plays electric guitar here – she eases you in with the Eagle-like “Warrior,” but explodes on “False Hope,” and sporadically throughout the album drifts back in a more plugged-in direction. And while that is an interesting stylistic shift, for the most part, Short Movie sounds like what it is – another pretty wonderful Laura Marling record. If you liked her before, there’s nothing on this well-considered, strong set of songs that will change your mind.

Marling spent six months in L.A. doing everything but music, and that experience is reflected here. “Living here is a game I don’t know how to play,” she sings on “Don’t Let Me Bring You Down,” and songs like “How Can I” detail trips into the desert and long nights in unfamiliar places. When she reaches for falsetto and breaks just shy of the note on the line “I just need a little more time,” on the drone-like “Walk Alone,” she communicates all of her loneliness. Short Movie arranges these laments alongside jauntier numbers like “Strange,” on which Marling sing-speaks a tale of confused affection.

Short Movie feels like Marling’s most personal work – previous records found her spinning fables and allegories, but this one speaks directly more often than not. Even the occasional electric guitar and skipping drum beat can’t dilute Marling’s uncanny emotional impact, and it’s as sharp as it’s ever been here. “Divine” is one of her most contented songs, pivoting on the line “you’re fine, I’m yours and you’re mine,” and you can almost see her smiling as she sings it. In contrast, “Howl” is a dark love song, making full use of the ringing electric tones. “I’ll come get you, hope you haven’t changed your mind, be mine, be mine, be mine…”

For the fifth time, Laura Marling has made a splendid, idiosyncratic, individualistic folk record that marks her as a stunning talent to watch. She’s only a quarter-century old, but she’s already built a body of work that would make many lesser talents green with envy. In many ways, Short Movie is just another great Laura Marling album – not quite as ambitious as her last one, but still worth treasuring. Not for the first time, I hope she has a long and fruitful career ahead of her.

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Of course M week has to conclude with Modest Mouse.

It’s been eight years since we heard from Isaac Brock and his merry men, an eternity for a band hoping to keep momentum going. And Modest Mouse had momentum, coming off of the two biggest records of their career. In 2007, they had Johnny Marr and a substantial hit behind them with “Float On.” Now Marr is out, and Brock and the band apparently spent most of the intervening eight years laying down tracks. Their new album, Strangers to Ourselves, stretches to an hour, and is only the first chapter of a double set.

It’s a big comeback, and while the album has some superb moments, it does succumb to exactly the problem I feared it would. Modest Mouse started as a scrappy, brash indie band with no quality control, and they have evolved into a slicker dance-rock band with no quality control. Strangers to Ourselves sounds like a clearinghouse for everything the band recorded, with little to no thought spared for which songs might not measure up. The fact that the deathly slow and boring title track, which opens things here, is one that should have been binned doesn’t bode well for the record as a whole.

To be fair, there are some tremendous songs here. Single “Lampshades on Fire” is classic modern Modest Mouse, and the extended workout “The Ground Walks, With Time in a Box” is a live-band explosion worth its six minutes. In between those two, however, is the grating, useless “Pistol,” which reminds me of Das Racist’s “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” more than anything else. It kind of goes like that for the whole running time. For every fully realized effort like “Pups to Dust” you get filler like “God is an Indian and You’re an Asshole.” I’m a fan of the evolved Modest Mouse – the clean guitars, the space-filled arrangements, the danceable beats, Brock’s reined-in howl. When they make it work, Strangers to Ourselves is very good indeed.

My guess is, though, that the second album from these sessions will be much like the first – inconsistent, full of songs that should have been cut. If there’s a single killer record to be made from these 30 or so songs, it will solidify my belief that Modest Mouse needs an editor more than anything else. In the best songs here, like the carnival-esque “Sugar Boats” and the awesome “Be Brave,” you can hear where all the time and money went. Strangers to Ourselves is a welcome return, and I’m still excited to hear the second half, but an eight-year absence all but demands a strong, solid, state-your-business kind of record, and this isn’t it.

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Next week, hopefully Kendrick and Sufjan. The conversation keeps moving on. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Most albums are collections of short stories.

They may be connected by a theme, but most records are disparate journeys of varying lengths, bound together by the same piece of plastic or vinyl. Like short story collections, care is taken to sequence those individual pieces in a way that flows, that connects them more strongly. But take one of those stories out, read it on its own, and it will work. It may be stronger in context, but it will still do what it was designed to do.

But some albums are novels, and those are usually the ones I end up liking best. Musical novels tell a story from beginning to end, and though they may be divided into chapters, they are intended to be heard from cover to cover. Like the best novels, you can’t take them apart – there may be a particularly strong chapter, but it feeds into the whole, and the story it contributes to is more important and more rewarding than the one it tells on its own.

Any writer will tell you that short stories and novels make use of different skill sets, and neither one is more difficult to pull off. That makes sense musically as well – writing an amazing three-minute pop song is a different, yet no less daunting task than composing a full conceptual piece. I admire both accomplishments, but my brain is wired for novels (and trilogies, and ongoing series). I love sinking into stories with layers and hidden connections, stories that have the time and space to truly explore their themes.

This is why I’m a particular supporter of the ambitious and the expansive, and the best examples of that can usually be found in the progressive realm. Conceptual pieces sort of come with the territory – just about every prog band has eventually made their musical novel, from Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway to Marillion’s Brave to Dream Theater’s Scenes From a Memory to Spock’s Beard’s Snow. Some of them work, some of them don’t, but I’m always willing to give a few extra points when an artist reaches for the sky.

Which brings me to Steven Wilson. Like Marillion, I hesitate to call Wilson prog – there’s really no other musician alive like him. His work is certainly elaborate, and incorporates much of that ‘70s wibbly-wibbly sound, but he’s truly progressive, mixing in half a dozen different musical forms from jazz to metal to ambient to electronic to folk and coming out with something unique. For 20 years he led Porcupine Tree, a band that leapt from psychedelic to bone-crunchingly heavy to almost inaudibly placid, often within the space of a single song. He’s also co-led the more soothing No-Man, the tight pop band Blackfield, and the more radical Bass Communion and IEM.

But it’s as a solo artist that Wilson has been making his mark lately. His first three solo albums were short story collections, but marvelous ones, particularly 2013’s powerful The Raven That Refused to Sing and Other Stories. But now, with his fourth, Wilson has given us a novel.

Hand. Cannot. Erase. is the story of a woman in a room. It was inspired by the real case of Joyce Carol Vincent, a young English woman who died in her home and was not discovered for three years. (Vincent is the subject of the documentary Dreams of a Life.) The central character of Hand. is similar – she cuts off all contact with family and friends, cocoons herself in her room and dies alone. The album is the story of how she got there, and it’s an emotionally involving, deeply sad tale.

It is also musically immersive in a way that Wilson has not given us in some time. I don’t mean sonically – Wilson’s albums always sound amazing, and this one is no exception. But Hand. Cannot. Erase. is a single piece, with recurring themes that bubble up in unexpected places, with songs that complete each other, with a sweeping and well-thought-out scope to the entire composition. There are individual tracks, and two of them – the catchy title track and the lovely “Perfect Life” – can almost step out on their own (though one might wonder about the spoken monologue that makes up half of the latter). The rest of this album is inseparable, and the two tracks above leave a gaping hole if removed – they’re vital to the record as a whole, even if they can be singles.

The piano melody that opens the record (“First Regret”) is one of the main themes, recurring throughout. It glides into the 10-minute “3 Years Older,” which bursts to life on a Pete Townshend-esque guitar figure and some explosive drumming by Marco Minnemann. This is one of two progressive epics on display here, and it follows our protagonist through her sad early years, ending up in a city that feels nothing like home.

The title track is a pop song about love in hard times (“Hand cannot erase this love”), and is one of the few moments of joy here. It’s followed by another: “Perfect Life” is a glorious electronic ambient piece that tells the story of our character’s only real connection with humanity, her one-time foster sister. She was three years older, they had six months together before her parents broke up and her sister moved to another home. This song captures that nostalgic peace beautifully, and even tinges it with barely perceptible sadness. It helps that the lead vocals are often taken by female singer Ninet Tayeb – Wilson is writing from a female perspective, and he is not afraid to give those sentiments to a woman to sing.

“Routine” is, for my money, the most amazing thing here. A nine-minute multi-movement song about trying to hold on to hope, “Routine” is powerful in its fragility. “Routine keeps me in line, helps me pass the time, concentrates my mind, helps me to sleep…” On the heavier “Home Invasion,” our character loses “all faith in what’s outside, the awning of the stars across the sky and the wreckage of the night.” The dark mood continues through the instrumental “Regret #9” and the lovely “Transience,” leading into the astonishing 13-minute “Ancestral.” A tour de force, “Ancestral” is the final slide of our main character’s mind: “When the world doesn’t want you, it will never tell you why, you can shut the door but you can’t ignore the crawl of your decline…” It also ends with the sharpest display of musical pyrotechnics here, Minneman and guitarist Guthrie Govan pushing it heavier and heavier until it erupts.

Hand. Cannot. Erase. ends with the piano-led “Happy Returns,” which finds our character hoping to reconnect with her estranged brother and his family. She has bought them presents, and she is writing him a note: “I’d love to tell you I’ve been busy, but that would be a lie, ‘cause the truth is the years just pass like trains, I wave but they don’t slow down…” The last thing she says is “I’m feeling kind of drowsy now, so I’ll finish this tomorrow…” And she never does. The final instrumental, “Ascendant Here On,” is her death.

And it hurts. Steven Wilson has told this tale so well, and surrounded it with music so powerful and so emotional, that it actually hurts. That’s how you know you’ve been reading a great novel – when you’ve invested so much into the people you’ve been spending so much time with that it’s hard to experience pain with them. Hand. Cannot. Erase. is one of those. It’s more than just another really good Steven Wilson album, although it certainly is that. It’s a deeply felt and deeply ambitious work that stands tall, even in a discography like Wilson’s. It’s tremendous.

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I have so much to listen to, and no time to get to it all. I’m going to cut it short this week so I can hear more things, so I can tell you what I thought of more things in the coming weeks. But I have just enough time for a short story, in keeping with the theme.

Once upon a time, I fell in love with a Champaign, Illinois band called The Moon Seven Times. As an East Coast boy, I had no idea where Champaign was, of course – some magical land in the middle of the country somewhere. And as far as I knew, there were only two people on the planet who were into the Moon Seven Times, and the other one was my friend Chris, who got me hooked on them. M7x was a dream-pop shoegaze-y band making gloriously reverbed soundscapes, and I loved that stuff. Still do.

The Moon Seven Times broke up in 1998 or so, but their guitarist, a university professor named Henry Frayne, kept making lovely music under the name Lanterna. From 1998 to 2006, Frayne made five albums of blissful instrumental loveliness, and then disappeared. But man, I adore those Lanterna albums. Frayne’s tone is delicate and bright, somewhat Robin Guthrie but more earthy, and he writes simple, pretty songs to drape in that tone. Much as I would have loved a new Lanterna album every two years forever, though, I figured that would be the last I’d hear of Frayne.

Not so, as Chris kindly pointed out to me a few weeks ago. Frayne has quietly released Backyards, the first Lanterna album in nine years, and it’s just as wonderful as the other five. Strummy acoustic guitars, chiming electric tones, the perfect soundtrack for walking along a beach at sunset. Frayne doesn’t break any new ground here, but I’m just so happy to hear this sound again that I don’t care. It’s a new Lanterna album! May there be many more. You can pick up Backyards here.

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Next week’s column will be brought to you by the letter M. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I am running out of things to say about Evil Arrows.

Bryan Scary’s ongoing quick-hit pop project remains just as wonderful the fifth time out as it did the first. Scary is a genius songwriter and a dexterous player, and his solo material is insanely intricate, like a Beatlesque Mr. Bungle. In complete contrast, Evil Arrows, Scary’s tremendous rock band, successfully distills all of his best pop instincts into bite-size morsels. Even the serving sizes are smaller – each of the five Evil Arrows EPs hovers around 20 minutes.

The just-released EP 5 is the longest at 23 minutes, and the seven songs it contains are the most languid of the lot. Opener “Dance With Me Louis” is a classic quick-step that runs through half a dozen barrelhouse melodies in 3:35. “Imitation Isle” lays down a drowsy calypso beat on acoustic guitar while “Married to the Family Tree” sounds like a long-lost prime-period Joe Jackson tune. The acoustic is the instrument of choice on most of these songs – the slow-spin “Lordy Boxcar” and the ‘50s surf ballad “False Alarm” are folksier than most Evil Arrows material. Scary’s pounding piano leads the brief “The Sunday Mope,” while closer “Old Palace Road” is a crashing, tumbling Beatles blues.

All of these songs are great, like the previous 24. Really, there isn’t a lot I can add to my previous reviews – if you like pop music of any stripe, you will love Evil Arrows. Check out the new EP here.

Thankfully, though, Scary himself has given me something to talk about. He’s just launched a PledgeMusic drive for a new solo album called Birds. This will be the official follow-up to the absolutely amazing Daffy’s Elixir (http://bryanscary.bandcamp.com), released in 2012. Scary promises a dreamier piece of work, a tight and conceptual piece on which he will play all of the instruments. Any new project from Scary is worth getting excited about, and this one sounds extraordinary. Needless to say, I pledged. You can do the same, right here.

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I don’t actually know Etha.

Whenever I review a musician from my adoptive hometown of Aurora, Illinois, I like to give full disclosure. I know most of them, at least in passing, and some of them are my dear friends. When the second Noah’s Arcade album drops in a couple weeks, I’ll be giving my standard “I know all of these guys, and though I am trying to review the music honestly and fairly, you should know that up front” speech.

But despite several mutual friends and some fun Facebook conversations, I have never formally met Aurora rapper Etha. I’ve liked his work for years, but our paths have never crossed. I’m coming to his new album, From the Heart, just like any other music fan. Here is what I know: Etha is a young artist on the rise, and with From the Heart, he’s crafted the album that should take him to the next level. It’s an honest yet positive document that shows off, in less than 45 minutes, all the sides of Etha’s talent. From the Heart is diverse, polished, and ready for the big stage.

Some of that is down to the beats and production – the beats were provided by four different producers, and the record was laid down and assembled by Sam Beckley at Gremlen Studio in A-Town. The end result is sharp and varied. I don’t know Sam Beckley either, but the man knows what he’s doing – the opening title track is a dramatic powerhouse, with four backing vocalists, a snarling guitar and a growling organ darting in and out behind Etha’s unstoppable rhymes, and it all sounds fantastic.

But a lot of what makes From the Heart work so well is Etha himself. He’s a good writer, no matter what he’s doing. The first single, “Work Out,” is an anthem of hope – Etha takes an unflinching look at his city, his family and his life, and finds it all in need of reassurance, which he offers on the chorus: “I know it’s gonna work out,” he repeats, over a beautiful gospel piano (courtesy of Sampha’s “Indecision”). “Relax your mind, it’s all gonna work out.” This was the first song I heard from this record, and it made me even more of a fan.

If you’re expecting 10 versions of “Work Out,” From the Heart is gonna surprise you. Etha gets romantic on a couple tracks, the skipping “I Got You” and the dirty-sweet sex number “So Good,” then shifts gears completely for the hard-as-hell “King of the City.” This song is Etha’s finest moment at the mic, spitting out rat-a-tat lyrics at a rapid clip, and it leads into “Trust,” in many ways its opposite – where “King” is a torrent of cacophonous bravado, “Trust” finds Etha alone at the mic, offering a poem about openness.

That’s the kind of ride From the Heart is – Etha never stays in one place, and his supple voice changes from song to song, hard one minute and vulnerable the next. My favorite thing here is “Gratitude” – over a great Herb Alpert sample, Etha raps about the difficulties he’s overcome, and concludes that he is “grateful for it all, everything that’s happened in my life, good, bad, big or small.” While all of From the Heart is good, this one is perfect, and it’s nearly matched by the closer, “Feelings,” a cathartic jam with a full-circle coda. “I know it’s getting dark, but before we depart, here goes something from the heart…”

I have no idea what it takes to get to the next stage of a hip-hop career, but I hope this record does the trick. Etha’s got a good thing going on From the Heart, and I hope to meet him someday soon and tell him so. You can listen to “Work Out” and buy the album here.

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I also do not know Shawn McLaughlin, but we’ve been Facebook friends for a while. Facebook has its drawbacks, but it’s been a godsend for a music fan like me – I can keep up with dozens of bands easily and get recommendations from people I’d never otherwise interact with. I’m in a couple music-related Facebook groups with Shawn, and he’s recommended a few things to me. But none more forcefully than an album called PopArt, by a guy named Adrian Bourgeois. Shawn even named it his favorite record of 2014.

For some reason, I didn’t listen until recently, and now I’m kicking myself, because PopArt is great. It’s an expansive double record, sporting 24 songs over 102 minutes, and I wouldn’t remove a single one of them. For lovers of bold, colorful pop music, this thing is a treasure trove. Bourgeois never skimps on the melody, and goes for a classic feel – pianos, harmonies, strings and horns abound. Bourgeois has a high, strong voice and the songs to wrap it around, and though he played a lot of this record himself, he enlisted about 20 other musicians to fill it in, giving it a radiant, joyous, rich sound.

With all that, PopArt is almost too much to take in at once. Every song could be a single. This is the kind of album that finds me waiting for the bad song that I know has to crop up, but it never does. Even on the fourth side, Bourgeois is still pulling out winners like the sweeping “Still Life” and the superbly fun “Parachutes.” The whole thing ends with a sweet lullaby called “Rainy Day Parade,” which floats on an acoustic strum and a lovely sentiment: “Don’t blame the sun on the days it goes away, and I’ll let you ride in my rainy day parade.”

So yeah, PopArt is a masterpiece of melodious wonder, one I expect to be listening to for many years. You can hear it and buy it here. Thanks to Shawn for continuing to push it on me. I should have listened earlier, and I won’t make that mistake again.

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Next week, Steven Wilson’s new concept record Hand. Cannot. Erase. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I grew up with Star Trek.

I know this isn’t an original observation. There are certainly fewer people in the world who didn’t grow up with Star Trek than there are who did. Nevertheless, I grew up with Star Trek. My father was a fan, and I would watch episodes of the original series with him. I remember this fondly because my father and I don’t agree on much, when it comes to television or music or movies. But he loved Star Trek, and I did too.

I can’t tell you what appealed to younger me about the show. I can guess, though. I’ve always had an affinity for the fantastic, for stories that took me beyond the confines of my own life. (My parents always said my biggest problem was re-entry.) I loved Buck Rogers, and Battlestar Galactica, and of course Doctor Who. And I loved Star Trek. There were spaceships, there were aliens, there were gun battles, there were colorful uniforms. As a sci-fi-loving kid, I was definitely in.

As I recently completed a full re-watch of the original series (and the first six movies), I can definitely tell you what appeals to me about it now. It’s not so much Gene Roddenberry’s post-racial, pro-humanity vision, though I find some of that interesting, and it’s not so much the aliens and space battles, since those look pretty creaky nearly 50 years on. For me, the original series lives and dies with its characters, and with the actors who played them. And at the heart of the show is Kirk, McCoy, and of course, Spock.

I hadn’t seen the show in a long time, so I was surprised anew at the depth of Leonard Nimoy’s portrayal of Spock, the most human of Vulcans. He was not emotionless, regardless of what he would try to tell you. Spock was a finely coiled spring, working to keep those emotions in check, and Nimoy gave us all of that with a bare minimum of expressions and vocal inflections. His brief may have been to embody a soulless individual, but Nimoy played that part with soul. There was truly no other character on television like Spock, and try as they might, future incarnations of Trek were unable to duplicate him. They didn’t have Leonard Nimoy.

Nimoy certainly went on to do other things, including hosting In Search Of, acting on the stage, directing, lending his voice to documentaries and video games, writing books, releasing pop singles and taking some extraordinary photographs. By all accounts he was a hell of a man, gifted in many areas and a pleasure to know. But of all the paths he’s walked, he’ll be most remembered for giving life to a pointy-eared alien with a fixation on logic, and for inspiring generations of kids to open their imaginations and go where no one has gone before.

Leonard Nimoy died last Friday, at age 83, after a long illness. He lived long, and he did prosper. May he rest in peace.

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So I’ve had more than a few people ask me if I’m going to change the name of this column when summer rolls around.

The reason is this. Apparently the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (there’s a mouthful) has decided that come this summer, Friday is the new global release date for records and CDs. The reason seems not only silly, but out of touch to me: the IFPI would like to standardize the release date worldwide to stem the tide of piracy. As if closing that one-day gap between the U.K. and U.S. release dates will keep the new Taylor Swift album off the torrent services.

Of course, the industry is only really concerned about artists of Swift’s stature and popularity, so this decision will only really benefit them. For me, the day of the week has never been the issue, it’s the sometimes months-long gap between an album appearing in the U.K. or other territories and appearing here. (Aqualung’s new one, 10 Futures, has been out across the pond since mid-January, for instance. If I enjoyed context-free digital music and had no scruples, I’d own it already.) And in an age when just about every album is leaked online, either legally or illegally, weeks before the release date, does it really matter?

Well, it does to some people, but since those people are independent record store owners and labels, they don’t matter. Michael Kurtz, head of the trade group Department of Record Stores, says a global release date isn’t a bad idea, but Friday is the worst possible choice, since stores would not be able to restock until Mondays (and on holiday weekends, Tuesdays). This would be a problem for smaller releases, ones a store owner would probably only order a couple copies of.

And of course, it would only truly impact brick-and-mortar stores who sell physical product. With most of the marketing now focused on digital distribution, the independent record store is once again left out to dry. As a lifelong fan of record stores, this makes me sad, but I’ve been watching the slow death of physical product for longer than I can remember, and this is just another step down that path.

Anyway, for those who don’t know, this column’s name is a reference to the Tuesday U.S. release date (and to Simon and Garfunkel’s Wednesday Morning 3 A.M.). And no, I don’t think I will change it. I like the way it sounds, and now I like the fact that it points back to the era of record stores and midnight sales, an era I already miss very much.

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Wow, this has been a sad one so far. Let’s liven it up with a story about my terrible junior high school band.

I can’t remember when I first met Chris Callaway. We grew up in the same church together, and I saw him at Sunday school and youth group meetings and all those things Christian kids do. Chris was a funny, boisterous guy with boundless reserves of energy. He would make me laugh at all of those church-y activities, and I would get blamed for causing a disturbance. It was a good arrangement, if you were Chris.

At the cornerstone of our friendship was music. I didn’t know much when I was 12, and I absorbed everything. I credit Chris with getting me into The Alarm and King’s X, among many others. Chris was there for my second-ever concert – we went to see Stryper in 1988, and I accidentally spilled my enormous beverage all over the girl in front of us. Yes, I found a way to make “seeing Stryper live” the least embarrassing part of that night. Chris had an affinity for Christian metal, and gave me my first exposure to bands like Jerusalem and Barren Cross, which frankly I probably could have gone my whole life without hearing and been OK.

And around that time, Chris and I started a band called M.D. Well, it wasn’t much of a band. It was me on terrible keyboards and drum machines, Chris singing and our mutual friend Brian Miller playing guitar. We never rehearsed, but man, did we record – I have hours of us banging our way through rudimentary ideas with nakedly Jesus-flavored lyrics. Pretty awful stuff. Our teenage musical ambitions were so vast that Chris and I started a more keyboard-driven side project called Obliterator, which was even worse. And yes, I have hours of that stuff too.

Somewhere along the line, Chris started playing bass. And it turns out, he’s very good at it. The last band I heard him play in was called Able Archer, and I enjoyed their work a great deal. Chris lives in Denver now, and we rarely talk, so I was surprised when he messaged me and told me he’d written a book. It’s a compilation of interviews he’s conducted with musicians he loves, from Mike Peters of the Alarm to Bruce Cockburn to Tim Finn and beyond. He sent me a copy, not just because he knew I would enjoy it, but because the book doubles as a memoir, and I make several appearances. Seriously, he was so kind to me, it’s almost ridiculous, crediting me with far more than I actually did to turn him on to good music.

So this is me returning the favor. I heard so many artists through Chris Callaway first, so many that have stuck with me for a lifetime. (Steve Taylor, for example. Chris let me borrow his cassettes of Taylor’s first three albums.) I live for good friends with good taste, and Chris is both. His book is a lot of fun, even beyond the bits with my name in them. It’s called Reel to Real by Reel, and you can pick it up from Amazon here. Thanks, Chris.

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Just enough time left to mention a couple things I’m looking forward to.

As I mentioned above, Aqualung has a new album. I heard nothing about it on this side of the Atlantic, and I’ve had to import a copy. It’s called 10 Futures, and if the singles are any indication, it’s going to be a weird one that barely sounds like the Matt Hales we know and love. Listen to “Eggshells” here and let me know what you think. I’m cautiously optimistic.

Everything I’ve heard from that new Modest Mouse album, Strangers to Ourselves, has been pretty good. That’s next week. The rest of March is pretty amazing, with new things from Bjork, Sufjan Stevens, Death Cab for Cutie, Ron Sexsmith and Godspeed You Black Emperor, to name a few. April has new records from Brian Wilson (featuring a host of guest performers, in a gambit that could either be fantastic or farcical), Todd Rundgren, Lord Huron, They Might Be Giants, Alabama Shakes, Passion Pit, Built to Spill, Mew and the long-awaited returns of both the Weepies and Blur. I guess I’m looking forward to that Blur album, called The Magic Whip, but that first song is pretty lame.

Somewhere in there we’re going to get Timbre’s Sun and Moon, a crowd-funded double album from the harp-playing prodigy. I ordered Sun and Moon more than two years ago, and I am beyond excited to hear it. We’re also going to get a screaming left turn from Mumford and Sons, an album called Wilder Mind that has no acoustic instruments on it at all. Oh, and on May 19 we’ll get to hear Sol Invictus, the first Faith No More album in 18 years. I hope it’s good, but even if it isn’t, life is. Just look at this list if you need a reminder.

Next week, well, I’m not sure yet. But you’ll find out when I do. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.