The first electronic album I ever bought was Dig Your Own Hole by the Chemical Brothers.

Actually, that’s not true at all. I owned plenty of electronic music before “Block Rockin’ Beats” was a thing, from the likes of the Pet Shop Boys and the Art of Noise and New Order and Gary Numan and on and on. I just didn’t think of it all as electronic music until the ‘90s electronica movement took hold. And the first electronic – not electronic pop or electronic rock, but electronic – album I consciously decided to try was Dig Your Own Hole.

I’ve never regretted it. Dig is a monumental album, a watershed moment for the popularity of big-beat dance music. It’s grand and grimy and uncompromising, and it ends with the nine-minute “The Private Psychedelic Reel,” the first of the Chems’ many attempts to update “Tomorrow Never Knows” for modern audiences. I’ve been a Chemical Brothers fan ever since, sticking with them through ups (like Surrender and Further) and downs (like Push the Button). Furthermore, the Chemical Brothers opened up my ears to intelligent and interesting electronic dance music, a genre that includes now-favorites like Aphex Twin and Four Tet and Flying Lotus.

For all of their longevity, the Chemical Brothers have barely changed at all, and their stasis continues on their eighth album, Born in the Echoes. There’s nothing at all wrong with it – it’s just another Chemical Brothers album, full of thundering beats, repetitive vocals and strong hints of psychedelia. If you’ve liked them before – and I certainly have – you’ll like this. The band is tonally consistent, so the only question each time is whether they hit on the good kind of consistent, or the kind that makes you wonder when they’re going to evolve.

For the most part, Echoes stays on the good side. Opening track “Sometimes I Feel So Deserted” is classic Chemical Brothers, mechanical synths giving way to stomping drums and mantra-like vocals by Daniel Pearce. The hook is simple, and repeated until it lodges directly in the pleasure center of your brain. The song never quite explodes, building up and building up for most of its run time, but the catharsis comes next with “Go,” a marvelously danceable tune. It’s a spotlight for guest rapper Q-Tip, who crushes it, and its chorus is the album’s most infectious. (Although – and this will ruin the whole song for you – I can see a laxative company using “we’re only here to make you go” as a slogan.)

As with many Chemical Brothers albums, the thrill of this one lies in its guest spots. St. Vincent stops by “Under Neon Lights” to sing in a robotic monotone, and it works wonderfully. Saxophone wunderkind Colin Stetson adds organic intrigue to “Reflexion” and “Radiate,” while Cate Le Bon brings the title track home. But the award for best guest appearance here has to go to Beck – his tune “Wide Open” sounds like a genuine collaboration, like a track from “Morning Phase” given a skipping synth treatment. It ends this album gracefully.

Unfortunately, the songs on which Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons go it alone here are the least successful. I could live without ever hearing “Just Bang” again, and “EML Ritual” pounds its one melody into the ground. “I’ll See You There” is another one inspired by “Tomorrow Never Knows,” and it’s awesome for what it is – giant beats supporting wild backwards-sounding noises and huge torrents of effects – but it’s nothing new for them, and fails to recapture the thrill of “The Private Psychedelic Reel.”

But that’s all right. It’s now been 20 years since the Chemical Brothers burst onto the scene, and by this point, most of their contemporaries have run out of gas. The Brothers are still here, and as evidenced by the best moments of Born in the Echoes, they still have ideas worth exploring. I’m hopeful that “Go” will be a decent-sized hit for them, but even if it isn’t, I remain interested to hear whatever they do next.

* * * * *

There are really only two ways you can go from the Chemical Brothers, when it comes to electronic music. The first is to become more compact and poppy, focusing on melody and structure while still creating danceable music. That’s the path taken by the likes of Passion Pit and Imogen Heap, and also by Kevin Parker, who goes by Tame Impala. Live, Tame Impala is a full-on danceable rock band, but on record Parker generally plays every instrument – he’s a one-man show, and with 2012’s Lonerism, he created a tremendous ‘60s-inspired dance album that drew critical acclaim.

I was rather looking forward to Parker’s third, Currents, and now that it’s here, I’m somewhat baffled by it. It’s fine, but it sounds very much like Parker reined in his cornucopia of sound to focus on just one or two patches and tempos. The first song, “Let It Happen,” is the best, Parker developing a strong melody over nearly eight minutes, dropping out instruments and swapping in others while the main through-line stays constant. It’s a height of compositional agility that the album never hits again – unlike on Lonerism, where songs evolved beyond their basic ideas almost as a matter of course, most of the songs on Currents stay grounded. There are several half-formed interludes, too, which only weakens Parker’s case.

This is a strikingly sad album, and I think Parker chose a monochromatic wash of tones for it on purpose – it certainly fits with the theme of loss and futility. “I know that I’ll be happier and I know you will too, eventually,” Parker sings on the vaguely Brian Wilson-esque divorce song “Eventually,” and it sounds like he’s trying to convince himself. The painful sentiments of closer “New Person, Same Old Mistakes” rub up against the minor-key bassline, concluding things on a desperate yet resigned note.

Currents isn’t an awful album, but it is a surprising one on the heels of his earlier, more kinetic efforts. It feels like a Tame Impala album with all the air sucked out of it. Currents leaves the impression that Parker is going through a difficult time, and I hope things get better for him. I’m still looking forward to another Tame Impala album, but I’m not sure I’m going to listen to this one too many more times.

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The other option for electronic music is to go further into abstraction, which has been the path taken by the Orb for more than 20 years. Alex Patterson’s indefatigable project has always taken the more meandering, ambient route, filtering in dub influences and echo-y sound bites and coming up with the most eerie sorta-dance music you’ll find anywhere. My favorite Orb album came out 20 years ago – Orbus Terrarum is one of the most abstract pieces of electronic music I know, its interlocking gears forming something massive yet, in the end, barely there.

It’s that sound that Patterson has returned to on the new Orb album, Moonbuilding 2703 AD. Over four long pieces, Patterson and co-conspirator Thomas Fehlman weave a lovely tapestry of skittering drums and long washes of sound, growing and changing each piece over its extended running time. It’s the most subtle piece of work the Orb has given us in many years, and a refreshing return to form after their recent collaborations with David Gilmour and Lee “Scratch” Perry, which resulted in decidedly un-Orb-like music.

At its best, the Orb’s work defies description – I could tell you that “God’s Mirrorball” morphs through two dozen sections and flows like liquid from one end to the other, or that “Lunar Caves” maintains a spooky atmosphere for all of its nine minutes, or that the closing title track is where it all comes together, with a more propulsive (yet still subtle) beat. But none of that will really tell you what it’s like to listen to this. Moonbuilding is the first Orb album in a long time to give me the same feeling that radiated out from their earlier work, and I’m overjoyed at its existence. It’s not one of their very best, but it is music that will widen your mind and make you feel like you’ve been somewhere entirely other. And for that, I’m happy to have it.

Next week, I go to Nashville and tell you all about it. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but we’re a few weeks into the new global release date system.

For my entire life, new albums have hit stores on Tuesdays. I vividly remember lining up late on Monday nights to get the new albums at midnight in the ‘90s. In fact, I named this column after that very experience – at its best, I think, this column feels like the excited ramblings of an obsessive music fan who has just returned from a midnight sale, spun his new albums and typed up his thoughts just in time for 3 a.m. I’m happy to say I did this more than once during my college and post-college years.

It really should seem like the end of an era, then, as this month saw the global release date for new albums move to Friday. The idea, as I understand it, is to cut down on international piracy – if an album comes out in the U.K. on a Monday, but doesn’t come out in the U.S. until Tuesday, that’s a full 24 hours during which fans in London can upload the music to the internet and fans in Detroit can download it for free. Or so the thinking goes, and I guess if I were a record executive, that might make sense to me. But I’m not, so it doesn’t.

Let’s say all the other issues are beside the point, including that those who would buy the album anyway don’t mind waiting another day to do so. Let’s also ignore the fact that it’s not the extra day that would lead me to download an album from the U.K., it’s the fact that records sometimes come out there more than a year before they come out here. (The excellent new Everything Everything album is a great example.) No, the real problem with this way of thinking is that it assumes that corporate-dictated release dates mean a damn thing anymore.

The internet has turned everything into a free-for all. Not only do albums routinely show up online weeks before their intended release date, but bands can choose to ignore the Friday release date entirely and get their music into the hands of their fans directly, if they so choose. (The losers in this case, as in most cases, are brick-and-mortar record stores, and their continuing demise is a tragedy.) Radiohead has been working on a self-release-online model for more than a decade now, and fans rarely know more than a week in advance when that band issues an album. D’Angelo’s Black Messiah just kind of… showed up at the end of last year, on a Monday at midnight.

And just last week, Wilco joined the club, giving us their ninth studio album as a free download through their website. (That was on a Thursday.) The new Wilco was all anyone could talk about last week – it overshadowed more traditional releases by the likes of Tame Impala and Jason Isbell. It’s an attention-grabbing strategy: 11 new songs in exchange for an email address. The fact that the album is called Star Wars and its cover image is a curious painting of a cat only served to fuel interest in this move. This is how albums are going to be released in the future. Not all of them, and certainly not for free, but this will become more and more frequent.

It’s too bad, then, that Star Wars is awful. I’m not a Wilco fan in general – I’ve flat-out loved only one of their albums, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and admired a few others, including the most recent, The Whole Love. Mostly, though, Jeff Tweedy’s mumbly, melody-deficient songwriting leaves me cold. This new one revs up the volume – it’s the most rocking record they’ve made in some time – but dials back all the interesting leaps forward Tweedy made with The Whole Love. This sounds like a more raucous version of his solo record from last year, and even though I’ve heard that four times, I couldn’t hum a single song for you.

Same with Star Wars. Most of these songs are two-chord jams with muttered lyrics that go nowhere in particular. It starts with an ungodly long 76-second noisy fumble that masquerades as track one, then slides into song after song of forgettable nothing. “You Satellite” captured my attention by dragging on for five minutes, and my ear was tickled every once in a while by some stabbing guitar line or another. But the songs are just boring – “Cold Slope” and “King of You,” right next to each other, are even the exact same kind of boring. I’ve heard it multiple times and the best I can say about it, still, is that it’s only 34 minutes long. It might be a grower, but I doubt it.

Naturally, critics across the country are praising Star Wars as a little masterpiece, and as usual, I am wishing I could hear in Wilco what others do. To me, this sounds like something the band threw together in about 45 minutes to pump up their mailing list. The clickbait title and album cover (It’s a cat picture! The internet loves cat pictures!) only add to the sense that we’re not supposed to be taking this thing very seriously. Star Wars will, however, see release on CD and vinyl (on a Friday, naturally), so it will soon become a thing they want money for. Suffice it to say that right now, it’s priced pretty fairly.

A global release date also fails to take into account the phenomenon of crowdfunding, which is how many artists are choosing to create and release their music. In 2015 so far, I have contributed to more Kickstarter and Pledgemusic campaigns than in any other year, and I expect that will keep on growing. Crowdfunded albums come out when they’re ready, regardless of what record companies want – I’ve received download emails from artists on every day of the week, and it’s always a nice surprise.

Crowdfunding also allows bands that might not otherwise be able to afford the expense of making a record to do so and get it directly into the hands of their fans. Record companies need not apply – it’s a new world. In many ways, even though the technology is new, these bands are doing things the old-fashioned way: they’re playing live, recording and releasing their own material. Case in point – last year, I saw Marah in the Mainsail play at the AudioFeed Festival, and their set was so good that I immediately bought their self-issued EP. And when the band asked me to pony up months in advance through Kickstarter for their first full-length, I did without hesitation.

That album, Thaumatrope, fulfills all of their promise and then some. Marah is a six-piece playing what they call “cinematic indie,” and what I call dramatic acoustic rock. At their best, they are what I wish Mumford and Sons could be – they’re wildly energetic folksters with a powerful sense of arrangement and scope. Their sound includes a little Decemberists, a little Levellers, but it’s mainly their own. Put it this way – when Charon welcomes you to his boat and ferries you across the river Styx, these guys will be the ship’s band.

These 10 songs show off everything great about this band. It opens with 30 seconds of haunting trumpet, which leads into the dazzling “The Traveling Man” – a skittery drum beat supports a dark choir pulling back the curtain before the guitars and horns kick in. Austin Durry has a growly, gravelly voice that he uses to tremendous effect, and Cassandra Sabol counterpoints it nicely with her angelic tones. That push-pull works wonders on the single, “Your Ghost,” propelled by a massive low horn part that will jump up and grab you.

Many of these songs are about haunted people, wanderers lost and at the end of their tethers. I heard “Wendigo” live last year, and its first lines still make me stop short and listen: “I keep my pistol under my pillow and a rifle beside my bed, don’t keep it loaded for self-defense, just one bullet for my own head…” The song’s narrator is terrified of the monster within, and his desperation comes through in Durry’s voice. Your first real chance to catch your breath is “See No Evil,” a lilting acoustic number led by Sabol, but its tone is the same: “I see no evil, I’ve been the problem all along, darling I was wrong…” The spooky “Graveyard” finds the two singers floating above an ever-building acoustic dirge, praying for rest for their troubled souls. The drunken waltz that finishes this song off is magnificent.

“Holy Water” is the noisiest and scariest thing here, like Nick Cave after a particularly bad dream. Less abrasive but no less powerful is “Clockmaker.” Over five minutes, Marah inexorably builds this strummy wonder, carrying it through wave after cresting wave. When it finally breaks, it leads into the carnival-esque closer “Your Work Isn’t Done,” and the band chooses to leave you with perhaps its most riveting and evocative song, the tale of a beaten and bloodied man hoping in vain for a rest. “Though you think your time has come, the wheels of fate have spun, death has declared your work isn’t done…” It’s dark and riveting stuff.

A thaumatrope is a toy that plays with persistence of vision – a two-sided piece of cardboard with a picture on each side. When you spin the cardboard, the two pictures blend into one before your eyes. The cover art of Marah in the Mainsail’s album is a working thaumatrope, showing a bird and its cage. It’s a really nice touch housing an album full of them. I’m quite glad that I supported this album, and quite pleased with the finished product. You can hear it here, and buy it directly from the band. Whether or not it’s Friday.

Next week, three new electro-pop records. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I nearly missed one of the best records of 2013.

I’m still upset about it. In a lot of ways, I’ve organized my life so that sort of thing doesn’t happen. I hear as much music as I can in a given year, even things I think will probably be awful, on the off chance that I will find the one album that changes everything for me. My best discoveries have all been by accident. I liked the cover of the Choir’s Circle Slide, for instance, and bought it on a whim. I remembered Aimee Mann from that one Til Tuesday song I liked years before. (No, not that one.) I had my ear to the ground in time to not only hear Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois before a lot of people, but to snag a Superman cover before DC Comics found out about it.

So when an artist as superb as Jason Isbell passes right by me, I feel like I haven’t done my job. I vaguely knew of Isbell as a former member of the Drive-By Truckers, a band I can mostly take or leave, and I read some pretty good reviews of his earliest solo efforts. But I didn’t hear Southeastern, Isbell’s fantastic fourth album, until late November of 2013 – five months after it was released, and too late to make my annual mix CD of the year’s best tunes. (“Elephant” and “Cover Me Up” would have been on there without a doubt.) I snuck the album into my top 10 list, but I still wish I’d heard it when it came out. (I owe my good friend Tony Scott for raving about it to me until I gave it a shot.)

I was determined, then, not to miss Isbell’s follow-up, to be in at the start of the cycle this time. I’m glad I did, because while Something More Than Free isn’t quite the immediate classic Southeastern is, I’m growing to love it just as much as its celebrated predecessor. It’s a different kind of album, softer and wider in scope, but it again offers up a remarkably consistent set of songs with lyrics to die for. Where Southeastern dipped into autobiography more often than not, Something More Than Free is a storyteller’s record, and Isbell paints a picture like few of his peers.

My favorite lyrics here concern people finding their way out of difficult and oppressive situations. Opener “If It Takes a Lifetime” is the story of a man who “thought the highway loved me, but it beat me like a drum,” but it’s a story of awakening, of realizing that there is a path out. “A man is the product of all the people that he ever loved, it don’t make a difference how it ended up, if I loved you once I can do it all again, if it takes a lifetime…” The title song is the dark flip side of this one – the narrator feels defeated by his endless treadmill of waking, working and sleeping, but he still has hope. “The day will come, I’ll find a reason, somebody proud to love a man like me, my back is numb and my hands are freezing, but what I’m working for is something more than free…”

Best of these is “Speed Trap Town,” a vivid portrait of a life collapsing, and a man escaping, leaving behind an ailing family member and a broken relationship. “It never did occur to me to leave until tonight, when there’s no one left to ask if I’m all right, I’ll sleep until I’m straight enough to drive, then decide if there’s anything that can’t be left behind…” The final refrain finds him on the open road, free: “Road got blurry when the sun came up, so I slept a couple hours in my pickup truck, drank a cup of coffee by an Indian mound a thousand miles away from that speed trap town…”

Southeastern also kept largely to country-inflected rock, with traditional chord structures, and while Something More sometimes stays in that vein – check out the great “24 Frames,” or the aforementioned “Speed Trap Town” – the songs Isbell has come up with here just as often break out of that mold and strike out for somewhere new. Most arresting is “Children of Children,” an epic acoustic lament with a walking bass line and some terrific Mellotron strings. It’s a dark piece of work – “I was riding on my mother’s hip, she was shorter than the corn, and all the years I took from her just by being born” – and the big, bold two-minute guitar solo that closes it out matches its majestic sweep.

Similarly, jaunty pop songs like “The Life You Chose” and the wonderful “Hudson Commodore” head down melodic avenues you won’t expect. “Palmetto Rose” starts off like an electric blues song, but soon blooms into something with more on its mind, with flourishes from Isbell’s wife Amanda Shires on fiddle. Closer “To a Band That I Loved” is a delightful singalong with a great little melody, sweet and sad. “I’ll be guarding your place in the lights, on the stage, in my heart, I guess we’re all still finding our part…”

For all of the ambition on Something More Than Free, my favorite moment may be the simplest: “Flagship,” one of the few indisputably autobiographical songs. It’s a feather-light, delicate acoustic number about a couple seeing the run-down, used-up world and pledging never to be like it. “Baby, let’s not live to see it fade, I’ll cancel all the plans I’ve ever made, I’ll drive and you can ride in the back seat, we’ll call ourselves the flagship of the fleet…” It’s the slightest thing here, but in many ways it’s the most beautiful.

For all the praise I’m lavishing on it, Something More Than Free is a grower, much more than Southeastern was. With every listen, it grows ever more impressive – it might be his best work, and I might be ready to call it that after a few more spins. Jason Isbell has become the face of the younger alt-country movement, and he lives up to that and more on this record. I’m glad to be in on it from the start this time, and I’m never going to miss another one.

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The possibility of missing another Southeastern drives me to hear as many new records as I can. From there, of course, my compulsive collector gene takes over, and I need to have every album by an artist I end up liking. Even when I’m sure what I’m going to get is absolute crap, I need to find out for myself, and add even the worst of those records to my collection. I know, it’s a sickness.

So that’s how I ended up with Mobile Orchestra, the godawful fifth album from Owl City. I used to like Adam Young, and I would vociferously defend him from those who called Owl City a cheap knockoff of the Postal Service. I still think I’m right – the similarities are superficial, and Young’s early work contains a go-for-broke whimsy that the dour Postal Service would never dream of. But I’m tired of defending him. Young has succeeded in sucking all the joy out of Owl City, turning it into a hollow shell of blandly commercial electro-pop, and with Mobile Orchestra, he’s added that extra whiff of desperation. This is about moving units, nothing more and nothing less.

Like its predecessor, The Midsummer Station, this one’s for the record label, and Young has tried to craft hit singles in as many markets as he can, hoping that one of them will stick. Opener “Verge” tries to replicate the success Avicii had with “Wake Me Up,” including guest vocals by Aloe Blacc. It’s pretty shameless, and ironic, considering this lyric: “For the rest of my life I will make a promise, to be true to myself and always be honest.” There’s nothing genuine about this – the oddball honesty that first interested the general public is entirely missing from this generic effort.

“Verge” is one of the record’s best songs, sadly. Young makes a bid for the country market by teaming up with Jake Owen and adding pedal steel guitars to “Back Home,” turns in some simplistic dance-pop for the clubs with “Can’t Live Without You,” and most dispiritingly, fires off two trial balloons in the direction of the contemporary Christian audience. These songs are just awful, sitting nicely with the worst synth-happy Jesus music, and featuring faceless CCM pop songstress Britt Nicole on one of them. This is probably a big step for Young, plainly stating his faith instead of dancing around it, but it’s so generic and sappy that it makes me want to vomit.

Really, there isn’t much here for even Young’s staunchest defenders to enjoy. It’s shallow, soulless and empty, begging for your cash. (I’m beyond sad that Hanson, a band that has fought against a reputation for making similarly awful pop, is wrapped up in this mess – their featured song, “Unbelievable,” is pretty lousy.) Listening to Mobile Orchestra, I am longing for the days of silly lines like “with fronds like these, who needs anemones.” Owl City used to be goofy, joyous fun. Now it’s like listening to Adam Young begging to be liked, no matter what he has to change to do it. It’s deflating. It makes me hate even the thought of buying another thing from him, and makes me question whether I ever really liked him in the first place. That’s a pretty bad result for 10 songs. But then again, these are 10 pretty damn bad songs.

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Next week, more good and more bad. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Last weekend, while I was enjoying the third annual AudioFeed Festival in Champaign, several of my friends were at Soldier Field watching the final shows of the assemblage calling itself the Grateful Dead. They posted pictures of the thousands and thousands of people crowding the stadium, and uploaded snippets of songs. Some people I know paid hundreds of dollars to be there, and while it looked like a good time, all I could think about was this:

I’m so glad I’m at AudioFeed.

For a fraction of the cost of a single Grateful Dead show, I had another glorious three-day music extravaganza in the company of marvelous people. I’ve written before about all the things AudioFeed does right – its roots are in the late, lamented Cornerstone Festival, but it’s smaller, the main stage is indoors, the other stages are within easy walking distance, the mix of new bands and old favorites is just right, and (this is very important) the bathrooms are indoors and have working toilets. In just about every way, it’s an improvement for me over Cornerstone, wonderful as that festival was.

For its third year, AudioFeed didn’t change much of anything, and that’s perfectly fine. The Champaign County Fairgrounds remains the perfect venue for an intimate fest like this, and I wouldn’t trade the family atmosphere for anything. Because truth be told, what I love about AudioFeed has very little to do with the comfort of the air-conditioned main stage or the fact that the toilets flush. It’s the fact that this gathering of people has become special and important to me. Unlike Cornerstone, I’ve been there from the start with AudioFeed, and I’ve watched it come into its own. I have no doubt I’ll still be attending this festival in 20 years, and we’ll be talking about the bands I saw this weekend in the same hushed and reverent tones we use for those who were there for Cornerstone’s early days.

And that’s the last time I will mention the predecessor festival, because AudioFeed is absolutely its own thing. While there are always the requisite headline acts to bring in the old-school fans (like me), this fest belongs to the younger artists. For me, AudioFeed is about finding new bands to obsess over as much as it is enjoying my favorites. The festival’s hit rate is pretty amazing so far – I maintain that there are more great bands per capita at AudioFeed than at any other festival I’ve been to. This year I found several terrific acts I hadn’t heard, from the brooding American Wolf to the Ryan Adams-y Jason Barrows to the dexterous prog-rock-y Narrow/Arrow.

But while the music is the draw, it’s not the reason I choose this festival over any other. I think my friends have stopped expressing surprise that I would not only attend but look forward to a fest dedicated to a faith I don’t share. As longtime readers no doubt know, spirituality is something I wrestle with, and something I’m fascinated by. And while Cornerstone sometimes felt like a club I wasn’t in, AudioFeed continues to be a place where I can just be who I am. There are die-hard Christians and atheists and those who aren’t sure, and everyone is welcome and respected. The vibe is never preachy, always open. And there are so many great people – this year even more so, as a couple of my old Cornerstone buddies made the trip. Getting to see them again while watching some of our favorite bands was a treat.

As usual, the musical lineup broke down into new discoveries, returning AudioFeed staples and classic bands. Here are some highlights:

My AudioFeed began on Thursday, July 2, with my good friend Jeff Elbel and his band Ping on the main stage. Ping is a lot of fun, and Jeff is never happier than when he’s performing – it’s always nice to see. The six-piece lineup tore through some new songs and some tunes from the latest Ping album, Gallery, before launching into what ended up holding the top spot for most unexpected cover of the festival: “Can You Picture That,” by Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, from The Muppet Movie. Yeah, it was awesome.

Also on Thursday I saw the aforementioned Jason Barrows, whose moody and guitar-heavy set sold me on a copy of his album, Islands of My Soul. It’s a brooding collection of meditations with a couple terrific rockers, particularly “Up From the Sea.” The legendary Harry Gore played a blistering set on the main stage, at one point continuing to solo while walking through the audience and standing on chairs. (Harry also, as is his tradition, set up a portable PA and jammed for a bit outside on Saturday. He covered a 77s tune while its author, Mike Roe, was walking by with Derri Daugherty and Steve Hindalong of the Choir, and all three rushed over to join him on the chorus. I saw a bit of that from afar, and it was great.)

Waterdeep, a husband-and-wife duo I haven’t had much time for, thoroughly charmed me with their acoustic set – so much so that I bought their new self-titled double album, and enjoyed it completely. The album is technically a pair of solo records – disc one features songs written by Lori Chaffer, disc two songs written by her husband Don – but it seems to present a coherent picture of this winsome act. I’ll be exploring further. On the other end of the spectrum were Phinehas and Silent Planet, two of the bands I caught on the metal-oriented Black Sheep stage. Both were inventive and interesting.

I’m going to try to be kind to Burlap to Cashmere, since their set was so good. This long-running quartet plays a truly progressive mix of wrist-breaking acoustic rock and world music, and they do it very well. But I have to say I wasn’t impressed with their attitude – they sound-checked for 40 minutes, then played for 90, including three encores, although they were only scheduled to play for 75. This massively truncated the set of the band ahead of them. And since that band was Hushpad, one of my favorite AudioFeed discoveries, I wasn’t pleased. Hushpad did take the stage close to midnight and played a few songs, and their expansive lineup – including Von Strantz violinist Kelsey Horton – sounded amazing. I wish I could have heard more from them. A more compact version of Hushpad played a tremendous set of shoegaze pop on Saturday, though, so that’s OK.

Speaking of Von Strantz, they were the first act I caught on Friday, July 3, and holy hell, are they great. Every time I have seen them, they’ve had a different lineup – this time they were a duo, singer/guitarist Jess Strantz and Horton on violin and cello. It’s the songs that make them for me – Strantz’ tunes are tremendous, melodic and joyful and always memorable. Their debut album Narratives is excellent, and you should buy it. They were followed on the main stage by Narrow/Arrow, the new project of Cody Nicolas, formerly of the La De Les. I’d never seen Nicolas play live, and he knocked me out – he played two electric guitars at once, one flat and one strapped on, while singing, with N/A’s ridiculously good rhythm section weaving and winding behind him. It was groove-oriented prog-rock, very well represented on their debut EP Middlechildren.

I got to see Noah James sing three times over the weekend, and they were all worth it. James has a big, soulful voice, and he writes acoustic folk-gospel tunes that tackle themes as big as that voice. His EP Sun and Moon is worth checking out. I told him that I will never get tired of hearing him sing, and it’s true. I also got to see the incredible Timbre perform songs from her amazing double album, also called Sun and Moon. Timbre plays harp and writes from both a progressive rock and a classical standpoint, composing eight-minute epics of grandeur and scope. Nicolas joined her on stage for a superb rendition of the harp-guitar duet “Of Cloudless Climes and Starry Skies” that took my breath away. There’s almost no way Timbre’s album will not be among the 10 best of the year, so you should definitely hear that.

Duo Analecta impressed with their loop-heavy post-rock wonderment. They’re working on a new record now, but I bought their previous one, Janusbifrons, and enjoyed it immensely. The previously mentioned American Wolf stands as my discovery of the festival. They play a dark and moody brand of atmospheric rock, with a high-voiced singer and some glorious guitar textures. Their set was one of my favorites of the weekend, and they’re from Chicago, so I have no excuse – I’ll be seeing them again soon. After them, The Soil and the Sun hit the stage, and they are seriously one of the best live bands you’ll ever see. Their extraordinary music takes from a hundred different sources and blends them together with a sweep that would make Sufjan Stevens proud. Their new record Meridian is fantastic.

The main stage closed on Friday with a set by Christine Glass Byrd, one-half of GlassByrd, performing gauzy pop along with a lovely cover of the Choir’s “A Sentimental Song.” That wasn’t randomly chosen – her band included Choir drummer Steve Hindalong and bassist Mike Roe, along with Christine’s husband Marc Byrd, known for his work with the Choir and Hammock. Christine has a high, lovely voice – you can hear it on many Choir albums – and her set was pretty great. Once they finished up, I wandered over to the metal tent to hear the last few songs from My Epic, simply the loudest worship band on the planet. They have a cracked and broken quality I respond to. It was a fine way to end my night.

As good as the previous two days were, Saturday stands as my favorite. I began it with a seminar, the first one I’ve ever attended at AudioFeed. John J. Thompson is a living legend in this corner of the music world – he ran True Tunes in Wheaton, IL for years, plays guitar in the Wayside, and just wrote a book called Jesus, Bread and Chocolate that details his time in the industry. He joined Aaron Lundsford, drummer of As Cities Burn, for essentially a history of Christian music, and a meditation on what it means to keep faith through everything that industry throws at you. Really interesting discussion.

And the music on Saturday! So much. Mike Roe played a swell set of 77s tunes with Steve Hindalong on drums. The legendary Glenn Kaiser ripped through his usual sterling gospel-blues tunes, but I ducked out early to catch Ravenhill, a quintet that plays a fierce mix of southern rock, gospel and metal – think Black Sabbath goes down to Georgia. I snatched up their album, Soul, and it rocks like crazy – this band has three guitar players and four vocalists, so their sound is thick and powerful. Their album closes with the same song their set did: “Blood on the Church Floor,” a jaw-dropping piece full of new resonance in the wake of the South Carolina shooting. Just great stuff.

The most pleasant surprise of the day was seeing Mike Stand. Back in the ‘80s, the Altar Boys were the prototypical Christian punk band, with simple lyrics, three chords and super-catchy melodies. Mike is in his 50s now, but he looks like he’s in his 30s, and he has the energy of a man in his 20s. In the afternoon, he played a fun set of old Altar Boys songs acoustically – I came in late to that band’s story, so I wasn’t as emotionally attached to those tunes as many of the older folks in the audience. But then at night, Mike unveiled the Altar Billies, his new trio with acoustic bassist Johnny X and (I keep saying this word) legendary drummer Chuck Cummings. They’re a rockabilly punk band, and their set was the most fun I had all weekend.

Lauryn Peacock is a piano-playing songwriter with an elaborate new album called Euphonia. She held a record release party on Saturday afternoon, playing a strong set with a full string section. I’m still digesting Euphonia, but it’s lovely stuff. I also caught a bit of Muir‘s set – they’re an instrumental trio and their self-titled album is a big, loud, crashing post-rock album with what sounds like a hundred guitars on it. Muir was the last new band I saw this year, and theirs was the last album I bought. It was well worth it.

And then there was one more show. I could not have picked a better way to close out my third AudioFeed than to see The Choir. They’re still my favorite band, and for this show, they were joined by both Marc and Christine Byrd, along with Mike Roe on bass. And yes, they played all of Circle Slide, my favorite of their albums. What is left for me to say about the Choir? They were magical, extraordinary, beautiful. Saxophonist Dan Michaels bounded off the stage and played the middle section of “Circle Slide” while walking through the audience. Marc Byrd and Derri Daugherty entwined their ringing, gorgeous guitar tones like a ballet. Crashing finale “Restore My Soul” was an extended, explosive wonder. I left walking on air. It was perfection.

Many thanks to Jeff Elbel for again being my roommate, for heading to Merry Ann’s Diner at 2 a.m. for the unhealthiest food on the planet, and for making it possible for me to go to this festival. I hope we can keep doing this. I have no doubt at this point that AudioFeed will continue, will grow, will thrive. Three years in, it’s my favorite thing I get to do each summer. I’m so grateful.

Next week, some more music. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.