I’m trying to think of what Adele could do to make me hate one of her records.

Perhaps go full reggae? Honestly, there doesn’t seem to be much. By now you’ve all heard “Hello,” the first single from her third album, 25. It’s an incredibly simple song – a few slow piano chords, a less-than-sophisticated story about a woman hoping to get back in touch with an old lover who doesn’t care about her. Rinse, repeat, end. But when Adele sings it with that force-of-nature voice of hers, I’m swept away. I expect I wouldn’t like this song nearly as much from another singer – in fact, I may not like it at all. But Adele elevates everything she sings, even songs that don’t quite deserve her.

My first reaction to 25 was that Adele’s voice is the best thing about it. I meant that as a criticism, but then, of course her voice is the best thing about it. It’s one of the best things in music right now, and it has been ever since “Chasing Pavements” brought her onto the world stage. It’s hard to even describe that voice. It’s impossibly powerful and soulful, almost as if her voice is singing her, but at the same time Adele is in total control. (My earlier complaint that she has “one setting” seems churlish, and totally inaccurate now.) At times on 25 she channels Whitney Houston, but most of the time she just sounds like herself, and quite unlike anyone else around.

The main difference is in the songs this time. She approaches this material with more maturity, which sometimes feels like resignation and sometimes like blossoming perspective. 25 has been described as a make-up record, in contrast to the break-up record that was 21, but all that really means is she’s less angry, and there’s no “Rumor Has It” to be found. It’s is a slower, more patient record, and songs like “Remedy” offer healing balms instead of fire. It’s not a revolutionary shift, but Adele sounds more at peace on this album, which is nice. Even the songs riddled with jealousy, like “Send My Love (To Your New Lover),” or concerning breakups, like “Water Under the Bridge,” are gentler this time.

Adele worked with a cornucopia of pop producers, including Max Martin, Shellback, Greg Kurstin and Ryan Tedder, many of whom were responsible for synth-ing up Taylor Swift last year. That Adele remains seemingly committed to an organic feel is refreshing. Only a couple songs here sound like the work of these producers – most notably “River Lea,” her collaboration with Danger Mouse – and nothing sounds particularly modern. This is the right call. She has such an old-school welcome-to-church kind of voice that anything she sings is going to sound timeless, and surrounding that voice with too many flashy touches would detract from it.

And nothing here detracts from that voice. I keep going back to her singing here, but it’s just that captivating. The songs here that strip everything back to pianos and vocals (and occasional strings), like “Love in the Dark” and the aforementioned “Remedy,” truly shine a spotlight on that voice, and really, there isn’t anything like it. I’m not sure what Adele would have to do to get me to stop listening, but I know she didn’t do it on 25.

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Speaking of remarkable voices, there’s Guy Garvey.

The frontman for Elbow, Garvey’s honeyed tones are reminiscent of Peter Gabriel at times, and suit his band’s patient, low-key ambient pop perfectly. As with most great singers, part of the thrill is hearing them in new contexts, and Garvey’s first solo album, Courting the Squall, provides those in spades. A harsher, looser and more fun record than Elbow’s usual fare, Squall finds Garvey lending that voice to tumbling, percussive rockers and horn-driven workouts, as well as a fair helping of glorious balladry.

The first song, “Angela’s Eyes,” serves as a fine warning that you’re not in Elbow territory anymore. Shambling drums, scratchy guitars, thumping stand-up bass and a screechy lead keyboard shuffle behind Garvey as he sings a rubbery blues from Mars. It’s a strong opener, and even if the record slides into more familiar territory with the title track and the lovely “Unwind,” it’s a good flag-planting song. While Garvey proves adept at shout-alongs, when he croons some of the more slowly unfolding songs here, he demonstrates that there are few who can deliver material like this as well as he can.

A good case in point is “Juggernaut,” a plaintive dirge built on three circling piano chords and a lilting melody. There isn’t much to this song, and it repeats itself often, but as a vehicle for Garvey’s smooth tenor, it’s delightful. While some of these songs would fit on Elbow albums, they’re performed here with a looser abandon (by members of I Am Kloot and The Whip), so a shuffle like “Yesterday” sounds like it could fall apart at any second. “Electricity” is a convincing slow jazz ballad, a duet with Jolie Holland, complete with shambolic saxophones. One track later, those saxes are getting a full workout on the stomping, Morphine-esque “Belly of the Whale,” a true surprise. (Even more surprising: the hat tip to “Careless Whisper” in the breakdown.)

Courting the Squall manages to be reminiscent of Elbow and to set up shop in a different town, selling different wares. Garvey’s voice is the key element, of course, and hearing it in these different settings is remarkable. Garvey proves his versatility here, and even if he doesn’t bring any of this looseness back to his band, he’s made a terrific down-to-earth detour here, one well worth picking up.

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There are different kinds of voices, of course. A strong songwriter or record maker doesn’t even need to sing all that well to have his or her voice come through loud and clear. Take Jeff Lynne, for instance – here’s a guy who will never be lauded as a crooner, but whose voice as a songwriter and a producer is as distinctive as a fingerprint.

For the first time since forming Electric Light Orchestra in 1971, Lynne has put his name on the band’s latest album, Alone in the Universe. He didn’t really need to, though. All it would take is 30 seconds or so of opening track and first single “When I Was a Boy” to realize that this is pure Jeff Lynne. In fact, though billed to the band, Lynne played almost all of the instruments on Alone in the Universe, and produced it himself at his home.

Sometimes it sounds like it – Lynne has substituted dollops of synth strings for the more expensive real thing – but for the most part, this is what you’d expect. That’s no bad thing. Lynne is on form as a songwriter, and his signature is all over this album, from the chiming guitars on “Dirty to the Bone” to the lovely major-key shift near the end of the bluesy “Love and Rain.” This is a quick record, here and gone in 32 minutes, and it doesn’t offer any new insights into Jeff Lynne or his work. But it is an enjoyable slice of pure pop, and if you’ve missed Lynne’s songwriting voice, you’re going to like this.

Same goes for the new Squeeze album, Cradle to the Grave. Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook haven’t made an album together as Squeeze since 1998, but listening to this, you’d never know it. The two British gentlemen honed their distinctive sound together for more than 20 years before their hiatus, and it all comes flooding back within seconds here. The title track of the new album is a delirious barrelhouse dance-along that runs on pure optimism, and they start as they mean to go on.

There isn’t a weak song on Cradle to the Grave, and it’s clear that working together again has energized Difford and Tilbrook. “Happy Days” is almost giddy, a celebration of joy, and “Open” is a wedding song without any bitterness. The familiar Squeeze twisty-turny melodies are in full effect, and Tilbrook’s voice sounds the same as it did in the ‘80s and ‘90s. If anything, the band is wiser and more philosophical, more content. The last line on the album is “there’s nothing I would change,” and that sentiment breathes through these 12 songs.

I don’t have much to say about Cradle to the Grave, other than to say that it’s excellent. Squeeze has been away too long, and the pop world has been poorer for it. Difford and Tilbrook are fine on their own, and each has made worthy solo records. But there is something unique about their work together as Squeeze, something that speaks to that idea of a songwriting voice, and you can hear it all over Cradle to the Grave. And you should.

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One last songwriter, and we’ll put this one to bed.

I’ve been a Sara Groves fan for all of four years now, which means I was a miserable 13 years late for this train. I came aboard with her seventh album, Invisible Empires, and I only picked that one up at all because Steve Hindalong of the Choir produced it. But what I found when I did was something remarkable – a songwriter working within contemporary Christian music, yet creating strikingly honest songs about the pain and wonder of life. When I venture into this corner of the music world, Groves is what I’m looking for – someone who isn’t trying to change my ideas about faith, but is singing from her own, viewing life through her particular prism without coloring it a shade of rose.

I liked Invisible Empires a great deal, particularly since it was a primarily piano-based affair. Groves’ eighth album, Floodplain, isn’t that at all – it’s mainly guitars, and is much more folksy – but it’s another beautiful collection of thoughts and observations, set to lovely music. Floodplain is about feeling all the difficulties of life, and diving right in anyway. It’s about connecting, about loving even the worst parts, about being grateful while still grasping on to every experience. “Expedition” is the mission statement – “Meet me at the river, I’ve fashioned us a raft and oar, we’re going on an expedition looking for lost time…”

“Second Guess Girl” is about trying to love through uncertainty: “It’s a hard world for a second-guess girl, with one hand and another, I try to take it in and it leaves me spinning, trying to love my sister and brother.” Groves sings this one over a skipping acoustic strum that only adds to its Indigo Girls feel. “I’ve Been Here Before” is about remembering that doubt and pain ebb away, and looking for grace. “On Your Mark” is about waiting for life to begin: “Tomorrow never really comes now does it, it’s always sailing up ahead, the SS Good Intention full of everything you said you ever wanted…” The album ends with a perfect pair – “Your Reality” is a love song dedicated to her husband, and “My Dream” is a gorgeous, allegorical tale of God and forgiveness as recounted by her grandfather.

All that is great stuff, but Groves actually made me cry twice on this record, and those two songs are the heart of Floodplain for me. The title track is an extraordinary metaphor for depression and anxiety: “Some hearts are built on a floodplain, keeping one eye on the sky for rain, you work for the ground that gets washed away… and the river it rushes to madness and the water spreads like sadness and there’s no high ground…” Somehow she transforms this into a song about reaching out past this pain and helping others through it, and it’s beautiful. One song later, on “Enough,” she’s acknowledging the hardship and misery and yet expressing gratitude: “In these patches of joy, these stretches of sorrow, there’s enough for today, there’ll be enough tomorrow…”

If a songwriter can make me cry, I’ll be in for life. I’m so happy I found Sara Groves. I’m happy whenever I find a songwriter of her caliber, one who can express faith and joy and sadness and love, always love, with an unflinching clarity and grace. She reminds me of Shawn Colvin – she’s at that level. I’m in love with Floodplain, and sad that I missed so many years of her work. I can’t wait to hear what she does next.

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Next week, live albums galore. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Let me start off by saying unequivocally that I love it when artists radically change.

In fact, I demand it. My favorite artists are restless, like sharks, constantly moving forward, looking for new territory. While I appreciate the value of consistency – and there are some very good bands who have plied the same trade for 20 or 30 years, and you know what to expect from them – I’m a sucker for risks. If you’ve decided to do something that sounds kind of insane, and could completely derail your career if it fails, I’m in. I love that kind of reckless artistic drive.

So when I say that the new Mutemath album, Vitals, is a wretched example of a band giving up on everything that made them special, believe me that it’s not the idea of radical change itself that I’m railing against. I actually respect Mutemath for knowing that what they were doing wasn’t working, and that they needed a reinvention. But Vitals is the absolute worst reinvention they could have made. It will probably do very well for them, but as a piece of art, it’s empty and hollow.

Let’s start from the beginning.

I first saw Mutemath perform their traveling musical carnival act at the Cornerstone Festival in 2005. They were amazing – doing somersaults on stage, swapping instruments, playing with a fire that I’ve only rarely seen. And on top of that, they wrote terrific songs, merging the punk attitude of early Police albums with a soaring and hopeful pop sensibility. Their self-titled debut album was one of the most perfect first efforts I’ve ever heard. It was instantly memorable while being remarkably progressive and complex, and held together as a single unbroken unit. It was astonishingly confident, given that it sounded like nothing else on the market.

Every subsequent album has been a baffling step further away from the brilliance of the first one. 2009’s Armistice was essentially the debut again, but worse. 2011’s Odd Soul, the first without founding guitarist Greg Hill, incorporated a Black Keys-style classic rock influence while failing to include many songs that rose above the din. (“Prytania” remains great.) My biggest problem with Odd Soul is that I couldn’t hear the band I fell in love with. Subsequent listens showed that they were still in there somewhere, crying out with weak voices, but it took a while to find them.

And now here is Vitals, the biggest break yet from the band they used to be. That’s not in itself a bad thing, but they’ve settled on a synth-driven simplistic pop style that sounds alternately like Maroon 5 and a remix record from the ‘80s. The whole thing sounds like it’s crying out for placement in commercials about luxury cars and skinny jeans. I knew things were headed off the rails when I heard “Monument,” the painfully cheesy first single, of which the band seemed inordinately proud. Seriously, replace Paul Meany with Adam Levine and no one would really notice.

“Monument” is on the low end of the album, thankfully, but even the songs I like (“All I See,” “Stratosphere,” “Remain”) are saddled with simple arrangements and plastic production. The band’s finest asset has always been drummer Darren King, and it’s hard to hear his influence here at all. He’s replaced by machines half the time, and never allowed to truly cut loose. This one, much more than the previous effort, sounds like the band lost a guitar player, which is odd since this is their first with newbie Todd Gummerman. There are guitars here, just as there are organic drums, but they’re largely buried under all the synths.

And again, the fact that this music is synth-driven isn’t really the problem. The problem is that the songs are lacking and the production does them no favors. Opener “Joy Rides” is a goofy dance-a-thon that throws you right into the deep end of this new sound. In some ways it’s similar to Keane’s “Spiraling,” which opened their own stab at changing things up, Perfect Symmetry. Except that “Spiraling” is a really good song, and “Joy Rides” is the soundtrack to a Lexus ad. Even goofier is “Best of Intentions,” which tries on an ill-fitting Hall and Oates impression.

Mutemath fares better when they try to sound like Mutemath. “Used To” is no great shakes, but it has that Darren King slow-thump backbeat going for it, and a nice sense of resignation. There are two instrumentals, both pretty good but pointless – on the debut, the instrumentals extended or linked other tracks, and these are just… there. Still, it’s a welcome throwback. And the band is at its best here when embracing the dreamy side of what they do. “All I See” is quite beautiful, a successor to “You Are Mine” from the debut, and the layers of keyboards fit in well here.

The album’s best song is its last, “Remain.” It is here that the band remembers how to write a lovely closer like “Stall Out,” building their rainclouds of synthesizers into a massive wave over six minutes. “Just keep trying, just keep fighting, just keep going, just keep surviving,” Meany sings atop this wave, and for the first time in 47 minutes, I feel something. Most of this record keeps me at a distance, particularly when it sounds like Meany’s home demos (“Composed”). On this one track, Mutemath taps into something special, pulls from something real, and as the final strains fade out, I find myself wondering why they couldn’t do that eleven more times.

Vitals is one of the biggest disappointments of my year. It’s the furthest this band has fallen, the worst music they have made. It’s still Mutemath, so there are certainly good songs and certainly strong moments. But in their zeal to redefine their sound, they’ve lost most of what I loved about them. Perhaps this will be like Odd Soul, and with further listens I will hear the band I once knew submerged in there somewhere. Perhaps it will grow on me. I certainly hope so, because I hate feeling this way about artists I adore. I’ll keep listening.

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If you want an example of a band successfully reinventing themselves between albums, check out Birds Say, the sophomore LP from Darlingside.

I had two people I’ve never met (Alex Caldwell and Shawn McLaughlin) recommend Darlingside to me, and it took only a cursory listen to convince me that I had to own everything this band has done. This Massachusetts band has a great way with a melody and four singers who harmonize like angels. Their 2012 debut, Pilot Machines, established them as a propulsive folk-rock group with some truly wonderful songs (“The Woods” and “Blow the House Down” are favorites). Three years later, their second album has arrived with a completely different conception of the band, and a totally transformed sound.

The main difference is the departure of drummer Sam Kapala, who took with him all notion of Darlingside as a rock band. Birds Say is a primarily acoustic affair, with the focus on the quartet’s gorgeous, intertwined voices. They announce this change in style by reprising a song from Pilot Machines right up front – “The Ancestor” is a deliriously lovely anthem of hard-won hope in either version, but as the opener of this new record, it glides in delicately and sweeps the clouds away. It also perfectly sets the tone – Birds Say is a gentle delight, sunny and warm.

An early highlight is “Harrison Ford,” a kinetic tale of an odd meeting with some wonderful cello flourishes. “Clay and Cast Iron” is a bittersweet fable set at a skating rink. “Go Back” makes fantastic use of those harmonies to tell a story of retreating into the past. “The God of Loss” is stunning, its lyrics based on a book band member Auyon Mukharji was not allowed to read as a child. “She’s All Around” brings in a delicate electric guitar, adding texture behind the acoustic and the mandolin, and making space for those dreamlike voices. Closer “Good For You” is one of the band’s best songs, a searching and probing piece of work that ends the album on a questioning, yet hopeful note.

Really, I’m just listing and describing songs now, which does you no good. Birds Say is a wonderful listen, a tremendous example of committing to a new identity and making it work. I’m grateful to both Alex and Shawn for turning me on to this band. You can hear them and buy their stuff here. You won’t regret it.

Next week, catching up with a bunch of new releases. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I just added it up: I spent $163 to buy Celldweller’s new album End of an Empire.

Granted, I spent all this money gradually over a year and a half, so it never seemed like that much. And to be clear, I don’t regret it at all. But the fact that I literally did not know how much I’d invested in End of an Empire shows just how successful its marketing plan has been. I have a crazy collector gene, and the Celldweller team knows how to tap right into it.

Of course, I knew going into this that I’d be buying many of these songs more than once. End of an Empire, the third Celldweller album, was released in chapters over the course of a year, and each chapter came on a limited-edition CD that I, of course, needed to have. These CDs each included two songs from the album, remixes, instrumental versions, and “factions” – basically, reinterpretations of the music with interesting links to what eventually took shape as an overarching plot. They were cool items in their own right, with superb artwork.

But I also knew that when End of an Empire became available to buy in its finished form, I would do that too. There were two things I didn’t know: that the finished album would have two songs not included on the chapters, and that in addition to a single-disc version, there would be a five-CD box set collecting every song, every faction and remix (including ones I didn’t have on the chapters), and every instrumental in one swell-looking package. So of course, I had to have that too. What’s that? End of an Empire will be released on vinyl as well, and it’s super-cheap to buy as part of a package deal with the box set? Sign me up.

So yes, in the end, I will have 13 CDs and two vinyl records full of this music, and I will have bought many of these tracks twice and some three times. And I’m perfectly happy with all this. So who the hell is Celldweller and why do I like his work so much?

In some ways, I discovered Celldweller only a couple years ago. But in some ways, I’ve been a fan since I was 19 years old. The mastermind behind Celldweller now goes by Klayton, but in the ‘90s he went by his real name, Scott Albert, and called his musical project Circle of Dust. I first heard CoD on a tribute album to satirical superstar Steve Taylor – their version of “Am I In Sync” was blistering and insane. Circle of Dust followed in the industrial metal footsteps of Ministry and KMFDM, marrying chugging riffs to insistent electronic beats and samples, with well-placed full-throated screams for punctuation.

I bought the three Circle of Dust albums, the Metamorphosis remix record, and even Albert’s bizarre side project, Argyle Park (where he first started using the name Celldweller). When the final CoD album, Disengage, came out, I was dispirited to read that Albert was moving on. His next project, Angeldust, was a collaboration with magician Criss Angel, and was impossible to find. So I didn’t. I lost track of Albert (or Klay Scott, as he was then calling himself) completely, and it was only in the last couple years that I first heard that he had started recording under his new name. And come to find out, he’d made huge leaps in his style in the meantime.

Over three albums, Klayton has refined that style to the point where it is now totally unique. Celldweller music is a hybrid of industrial, metal, electro, symphonic prog and pop, with splashes of punk and dubstep. I’ve heard a lot like it, but I’ve never heard anything exactly like it. Klayton is an extremely detailed producer, up there with the likes of BT and Trent Reznor, but what he does sounds very little like either of them. It’s sonically rich material – almost too rich to take in all at once sometimes – and Klayton isn’t afraid to jump genres on a dime. The title track of End of an Empire alone leaps from ambient to screaming death metal in the space of a minute, with a big, soaring chorus and two minutes of electro-proggy workout at the end.

The ten long songs on End of an Empire unfold over an hour. If you buy the single-disc version, you get those songs interspersed with three of the factions, and if you buy the box, you get the songs on one disc (in a different order) and all 15 factions on another. There’s no point in asking which is the “correct” order, although both end with the crawling yet hopeful “Precious One.” They’re both correct, and completely different listening experiences. (Which is yet another reason I bought both.) While the box begins with the title track, the single-disc starts with the traveling-at-light-speed throb of “New Elysium,” one of the album’s most propulsive tunes.

Throughout this record, Klayton takes chances like he never has. “Heart On” begins like NIN’s “Down In It” but soon erupts into a semi-goofy dance-punk track that pivots on the line “I fucking love you.” He revels in the pun: “I wear my heart on my sleeve so everybody can see I’ve got a heart on for you,” but somehow it works. “Just Like You” is a dark, spacey, ever-building ballad that shows how well Klayton can sing, while “Good Luck, You’re Fucked” is a jolt in the arm – a three-minute garage-punk tune with awesomely cheesy keyboards and a killer chorus. Somehow it comes at just the right moment in the album, whichever running order you choose.

The two songs I hadn’t heard are both swell. “Breakout” incorporates Klayton’s side project, Scandroid, the hallmark of which is a strikingly ‘80s sensibility. This song, literally about a jailbreak, is a nice mix of the angularity of Celldweller and the glass-smooth shine of Scandroid. The other, “Jericho,” is a more straightforward, dark tune that stays in one mode for its entire running time, which alone makes it stand out on this record. The final minutes are bold and symphonic, and among my favorites on End of an Empire.

Yeah, this is the kind of album where you have to pick favorite minutes, because the songs are so intricate, and they come at you without letting you catch your breath. An hour of Celldweller music is exhausting (but a good kind of exhausting), and End of an Empire even more so, since these songs are mostly in the six-to-seven-minute range. That’s one reason I love Celldweller – it’s a workout for my musical brain, sending it a whole bunch of different places at once, while still giving it the nourishing melodies it craves.

If you find that you can handle it, you may want to try the box set – it’s four hours and 40 minutes, with an additional hour and 40 minutes of downloadable bonus content. The 15 factions on disc two are interesting, more in the vein of Klayton’s soundtrack work for films and video games. Some of it is ambient, some of it is noisy, and some of it includes narration that adds context to the songs. The third disc includes instrumental versions of the 10 main songs, allowing you to hear the intense sonic detail Klayton puts into them.

The fourth and fifth discs include 20 remixes of the End of an Empire songs, along with five goofy chiptune takes on the songs, which sound like the score to an 8-bit video game from the ‘80s. Most of the mixes are reinventions, not just retreads, making for a varied listen that is rarely boring. Klayton even resurrects Circle of Dust for a remix of “Jericho,” and he does a perfect job of recreating his old sample-heavy sound. Instrumental versions of all the remixes and chiptunes make up the downloadable bonus content. In all, it’s a ton of music, and it takes a while to get through and absorb it all. But it’s impressive, enjoyable stuff.

In general, I’m torn about the idea of releasing albums in installments, but Klayton has made an art form out of it. I found myself wanting all four chapters, the final album and the full box set, partially because they’re all so well designed. And if Klayton does what I think he’s going to do and releases a two-CD “narrative version” of the album, integrating the songs and factions with more narration and a sense of story, I’ll buy that too. Other artists on Klayton’s label FiXT are following this release model, and it works because fans feel like they’re getting sneak peeks, new songs as soon as they’re finished.

None of it would matter if the music weren’t strong, but End of an Empire is the strongest Celldweller has been yet. Try this one – if you can listen to an hour of Klayton’s explosive, intricate, inventive work and remain unimpressed, then nothing he’s done will be for you. I’m definitely impressed, and glad to have caught up with Klayton/Klay Scott/Scott Albert after so many years. Word is he’ll be remastering and reissuing the Circle of Dust albums next year, too, so it all comes full… ahem, circle.

You can buy Celldweller music (and there’s a lot of it) online here.

Next week, Mutemath. I don’t plan to be this effusive. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.