I love comics.

I always have. My grandfather used to take me to the Franklin News store in the center of my old hometown and pay for comics for me. Usually Spider-Man, since he was my favorite – even at 10 years old, I identified with the shy and nerdy Peter Parker. But I really started to love the sequential arts when I found Casablanca Comics in Windham, Maine, just down the street from the college I attended in the early ‘90s. It was there that I first discovered that comics could be (and often were) more than men and women in capes punching each other for ridiculous stakes. There were comics for adults, comics that tackled weighty themes and came complete with healthy helpings of sex and swearing.

I was 18, and this was exactly what I was looking for. I’d read Sandman, and I’d dabbled in Jamie Delano’s Hellblazer, but that was about it. It was that latter one – Hellblazer, the story of magical con man John Constantine – that really led me into the next 20-plus years of reading grown-up comics. But I truly came aboard that title in 1993, when Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon started their epic run. I’ve been collecting and reading comics for most of my life, and I have rarely seen a writer and artist sync up so completely as Ennis and Dillon did on that run of issues.

And when it was over, they launched their joint magnum opus, Preacher. A rowdy, irreverent and gleefully nauseating romp through America on a quest to find God, Preacher remains one of my favorite books from the ‘90s. The characters were richly drawn by both Ennis and Dillon, and the art, while certainly lingering on some of the more disgusting aspects of the tale, remained sympathetic to characters like Arseface, making him a tragic figure instead of an object of ridicule. With Preacher, Ennis and Dillon painted on a wide canvas, taking on difficult questions with a shoot-from-the-hip attitude. It’s a hell of a book.

We lost Steve Dillon this week. He was only 54 years old, and died of complications from a ruptured appendix. The bloody 2016 took a little time off, but now it appears to be back to work, and this one hurts. Dillon’s art was instantly recognizable, and I still associate it with my college years, when I began digging into an art form I cherish to this day. I owe him a lot. Rest in peace, Steve.

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It’s fitting that we begin this week’s column with a eulogy, since death moves between every note and line of the only album I have on tap, Leonard Cohen’s astonishing You Want It Darker.

Cohen is 82 years old now, and every time he makes a record, it may be his last. He’s always been obsessed with death, but You Want It Darker is the first one in which I feel that knowledge, that preparation for his own mortality, everywhere. It almost didn’t happen – Cohen began recording last year with Patrick Leonard, but a severe back injury halted the sessions. Cohen’s son Adam stepped in, and ended up producing six of the nine tracks on the album. Cohen expresses his gratitude in the liner notes, and I can’t help but add my own. You Want It Darker is the most captivating album of Cohen’s late career, a stunning meditation on faith from a man with nothing to lose.

For his entire career, Cohen has grappled with God, with his religious upbringing and his doubts and questions and longings as an adult. This album is a frank testament from an old man about to come face to face with whatever awaits him, and here he wrestles with faith like never before. The music is typically stripped down – pianos, organs, thumping bass, minimal drums, and Cohen’s low growl of a voice. He speaks this album more than sings it, his aging vocal cords thick and rumbling, the microphone close enough to pick up every whisper, every nuance. When he sings, as he does on the hymn “If I Didn’t Have Your Love,” his performance is compelling in its messiness, its imperfection, its raw honesty.

And in the same way, Cohen’s words this time are as brave and open as his voice. The album’s title is fitting – many of these are dark songs with powerful images, Cohen cutting right to the bone. In “Leaving the Table,” he sings of lost love, but equally of his own impending death: “I don’t need a reason for what I became, I’ve got these excuses, they’re tired and lame, I don’t need a pardon, there’s no one left to blame, I’m leaving the table, I’m out of the game.” “Traveling Light” performs the same trick, over a subtle electronic blues and his trademark choral backing vocals. “I’m traveling light, it’s au revoir, my once so bright, my fallen star,” he sings. “I’m running late, they’ll close the bar, I used to play one mean guitar.”

And with death closing in, Cohen wages an internal battle with the stories of God and the afterlife, and whether he believes them. “Treaty” is about loss of faith, and is as direct as Cohen ever is: “I seen you change the water into wine, I seen you change it back to water too, I sit at your table every night, I try but I just don’t get high with you.” The chorus finds him admitting “I’m angry and I’m tired all the time,” and wishing for a more concrete agreement with God. “I’m so sorry for the ghost I made you be,” he sings. “Only one of us was real, and that was me.”

“It Seemed the Better Way” finds Cohen looking askance at the gospel, turning it over in his mind and trying to balance its message with the dusty reality of his life. “It seemed the better way when I first heard him speak, but now it’s much too late to turn the other cheek,” he says, admitting that “it sounded like the truth, but it’s not the truth today.” The song is chilling, giving us a crystal clear glance at Cohen’s inner monologue. And at its end, he keeps his true feelings inside: “I better hold my tongue, I better take my place, lift this glass of blood, try to say the grace.” It’s the most broken and painful beauty, and it catches me up short.

Nothing here is quite as powerful, though, as the album’s first and last songs. The title track opens things with a bleak pulse, and with Cohen contrasting himself with God: “If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game, if you are the healer, I’m broken and lame, if thine is the glory, mine must be the shame, you want it darker, we kill the flame.” It’s stunning stuff, particularly the repeated Hebrew phrase “hineni hineni” (“here I am”), followed by Cohen’s “I’m ready, my lord.” This is the closest he has come to saying “I am about to die,” and the remainder of the song (and in truth, the album) dissects the questions he hopes to have answered when he does.

Closing track “Steer Your Way” is the most powerful thing here, particularly if it is Cohen’s final statement. He is speaking to himself throughout, steering past crumbling monuments to things he once believed, headed toward a last destination. “Steer your way through the ruins of the altar and the mall,” he sings, equating religion and commercialism. (He goes deeper in that direction in the chorus: “As he died to make men holy, let us die to make things cheap,” an amazing single-line excoriation of our economic wars.) “Steer your way through the pain that is far more real than you, that has smashed the cosmic model, that has blinded every view,” he sings, as strings sway beneath him. “And please don’t make me go there, though there be a God or not,” he pleads, knowing that the end is near. “Year by year, month by month, day by day, thought by thought.”

It’s utterly compelling. If you have followed Cohen through his journey, the cumulative impact of You Want It Darker is astonishing. He knows this may be his last turn around the sun, and like David Bowie at the beginning of this year, he has crafted what may be his final statement, a dusky and clear-eyed powerhouse of a record. Listening to this album is like eavesdropping on Cohen’s darkest thoughts, his most existential inner battles. If this is his last, he is leaving us with a masterpiece, thoughtful and painful and strangely beautiful. Cohen’s contemporary Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in literature a few weeks ago, and at the time I suggested Cohen’s name as a possible future candidate. You Want It Darker is not only a stunning possible capper to a long and poetic career, but further proof that if anyone deserves such an honor, it is Leonard Cohen.

May this gorgeous, difficult goodbye not be the final statement it appears. My life, and the world, can always use more Leonard Cohen.

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Well, I thoroughly failed to give that album a brief review, didn’t I? Next week, an epilogue to the October Project with a bunch of (I promise) short takes on new records. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature this week, which of course has led to a lot of conversations about songwriting within my circle.

I’ve read passionate arguments both for and against treating song lyrics as literature, and I think if you consider them poetry, a good case could be made. Dylan, it seems to me, is perfectly poised to make that case, since his lyrics usually feel divorced from his music in a way that, say, Elvis Costello’s don’t. Dylan songs often consist of repetitive chords designed as delivery vehicles for the words, and it’s those words for which he will be remembered.

Of course, this led to several conversations about favorite songwriters. I’m not sure why, but I’m always surprised when Glen Phillips doesn’t show up on anyone’s lists except mine. Maybe it’s that he fronts a band called Toad the Wet Sprocket, who had a couple hits in the ‘90s? I don’t know why Phillips isn’t taken seriously as a writer, because he fits all the criteria one might imagine for such a list – he’s literate, insightful, simple without being simplistic, pointed when needed, open-hearted and honest.

I’ve been a fan of his writing since Toad’s seminal album Fear, and I’ve kept up with his splendid solo career. I was overjoyed at the Toad reunion, but I’m just as happy to have a new solo album from Phillips. It’s called Swallowed by the New, and it’s mostly as pleasant as the autumn twilight, while offering a fresh and optimistic look at life’s smaller moments. Many of these songs fall neatly into the folk tradition, maintaining the distinction between Phillips’ softer solo material and Toad’s more amped-up sound, but there are a few exploratory detours as well – the dark “Unwritten” rides a pitter-patter groove and a storm-cloud atmosphere, while “Held Up” gallops off in a bluesier direction.

For the most part, though, Swallowed by the New offers delicate meditations that act as healing balms. Songs like “Amnesty” and “Grief and Praise” and the lovely “There’s Always More” are like gentle encouragements to keep going, keep looking up, and Phillips’ oblique spirituality adds a wider scope to these little songs. There’s nothing on Swallowed by the New that will change your mind about Glen Phillips, but these 11 songs are fine additions to what was already a fine catalog.

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Eleven years ago, Mike Doughty issued his best solo album, Haughty Melodic. It was a clean break from the trip-hop soundscapes of his band, Soul Coughing, and from his acoustic songwriter roots – it was a beautifully produced pop album bursting with colorful melodies and memorable moments, thanks in no small part to his creative partner in that endeavor, Dan Wilson.

Since then, fans of his unique beat-poet voice have been waiting for him to equal it. He’s come closer in the last couple years than he ever has – 2015’s Stellar Motel is strong and diverse, and its follow-up, the just-released The Heart Watches While the Brain Burns, keeps the streak going. Neither of these albums quite measure up to Haughty Melodic, but I think this is about the best we can expect to get from Mike Doughty, and it ain’t bad.

The Heart Watches is a more consistent songwriter album than Motel, meaning it sticks to a particular style for most of its running time. These are groove-driven pop songs, performed on guitar and synth by Doughty (with some drumming help by Pete Wilhoit), danceable beats with acoustic strumming and keyboard flourishes. Doughty takes that limited yet instantly recognizable voice for a spin down familiar avenues, firing off nonsense words because the consonants sound good colliding together. His writing is strong here, as it was on Motel – “There Is a Way Out” is one of his hookiest pop tunes in years, and single “I Can’t Believe I Found You in This Town” is a double-time delight.

This is going to sound like a half-hearted compliment, but it’s not meant as such: The Heart Watches also doesn’t overstay its welcome. Where Motel jumped all over the map, this album centers on what Mike Doughty does best, gives us just over half an hour of it, and then gets gone. The result is the first Doughty album that has left me wanting more in a very long time.

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Speaking of leaving me wanting more for the first time in a while, here’s Conor Oberst.

Omaha, Nebraska’s most famous son, Oberst began his career as the sole member of Bright Eyes, his folksy songwriter project. The first Bright Eyes songs were recorded with little more than Oberst’s guitar and voice, but over time – like you do – he expanded his reach. Bright Eyes ventured into mammoth concept albums and electronic noise, and Oberst’s solo career has seen him paint on vast canvases with the Mystic Valley Band. The last Bright Eyes album, 2011’s The People’s Key, could barely breathe under the layers of sound.

All of which makes Ruminations, his new solo record, so refreshing. Written in the months following a bout of laryngitis that led to the cancellation of a tour, the songs on Ruminations sport just piano, guitar and harmonica, and were played and sung live by Oberst on his own. He channels his hero Bob Dylan here, writing simple songs that exist for their lyrics and then leaving them alone, unadorned. Oberst keeps his voice in the low register, never slipping into his trademark emotional screams. Even so, there’s an honesty to this album that hasn’t been in evidence for quite a while, and that alone makes this worth hearing.

The songs aren’t anything special, but I have a fondness for material like this from Oberst. As ever, he keeps the chords easy and the lyrics difficult, name-checking Christopher Hitchens and Sylvia Plath in the same verse and admitting to spreading his anger “like Agent Orange.” Like the earliest Bright Eyes material, these songs sound like streams of consciousness, like they poured forth in a torrent, like the world’s most literate man is just making them up as they go. After years of over-thinking and over-working his material, Ruminations marks a fresh start for Conor Oberst – he could build up in any direction he chooses from here. I’m interested to see which way he goes.

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And now I am about to flush all my remaining credibility by giving a longer and more considered review to Geoff Tate than to Conor Oberst. Such is life.

Longtime readers know of my nearly 20-year love for Queensryche, which began with Operation: Mindcrime, the first concept album I ever heard at the tender age of 14. I followed them through their surging popularity in the early ‘90s and their fall from grace after that, despite thoughtful albums like Tribe and American Soldier. I suffered through the band’s acrimonious split with singer Tate, and through the weird period when there were two Queensryches, one led by Tate and the other featuring the other founding members and phenomenal new singer Todd La Torre.

And I cringed a little when Tate, who lost the rights to the name of the band, re-christened his project after Queensryche’s most famous album, Operation: Mindcrime. Tate’s Operation released the first part of a planned trilogy of albums last year, The Key, and it was… you know, fine. Where Queensryche with La Torre has embraced its metal roots, Operation: Mindcrime has taken up the progressive storytelling part of the band’s work, but The Key was largely forgettable groove-rock, Tate struggling to hold my attention for the full 48 minutes. I figured this was just the sad, slow petering out of a voice and a songwriting style I have loved since my teen years.

But hold on, because the second chapter of that trilogy, called Resurrection, is considerably stronger. In fact, I’m rather surprised at how much I like it. Part of the reason is that Tate has fully embraced his prog-rock tendencies here, leaving any sense that he’s supposed to be fronting a hard rock band behind. Some of Resurrection rocks, for sure, but most of it is concerned with texture and movement, particularly the five longer tracks at the end. Tate has also dropped all pretense that Operation: Mindcrime is a band – he’s the only consistent presence song to song, and he invites guests like Megadeth’s Dave Ellefson to contribute.

The concept drives the album, but not much happens, truthfully. In The Key, we met our main character, a web developer who has fallen into possession of something called (you guessed it) “the key,” which could revolutionize the internet. Or something. At the end of the first album, our hero is buried alive and left for dead, and in Resurrection, he, you know, is resurrected. At the end he’s ready to fight his enemies for possession of the key, which I am assuming will be the subject of the third album in the trilogy. So these songs are largely just motivational epics, with titles like “Taking on the World” and “Invincible,” detailing our hero’s physical and mental return.

But this album contains the best music of Tate’s solo career (for that’s what this is, a continuation of his solo career). The album is structured in an interesting way, beginning with four preludes (lasting a total of five minutes) that set the mood, moving into five catchier normal-length tunes and concluding with five epics that hover around seven minutes each. It eases you in and leads you carefully into the more challenging material, and takes that challenging material seriously – “A Smear Campaign” and “Into the Hands of the World,” the two longest songs, let their arrangements breathe and develop, Tate’s keyboards snaking in and out between guitars by mainstays Kelly Gray and Scott Moughton. (Those keyboards sound cheap and tinny more often than not, unfortunately, which is just a matter of taste.) These songs are downright weird, in a way I didn’t expect, and far more interesting (even when they stumble) than anything on The Key.

Even the more compact numbers, though, like “Miles Away” and “Healing My Wounds,” pack more of a punch this time. Resurrection is a strange album, a sign that Geoff Tate may have entered the deliriously fearless stage of his career, doing whatever he wants regardless of his audience. He plays saxophone here, pretty well, more than once. He flirts with self-parody by inviting also-ran singers Blaze Bayley and Tim “Ripper” Owens to sing on “Taking On the World.” Resurrection is a good title for this album, as its reckless oddness has reawakened my interest in Tate and his Operation: Mindcrime project. There was more here than I thought, and I’m now fascinated to see what he does next.

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Speaking of next, we’ll delve into new ones by Leonard Cohen, Jonatha Brooke and Lady Gaga next week. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Twenty-five years ago, a teenage boy walked from the grocery store where he made his money to the music store where he spent his money, looking for something new and different. On the recommendation of the clerk he respected, he bought an album he’d never heard of – the self-titled effort by a Memphis band called Human Radio. That this album had never caught on with the masses, the clerk said, was a crime. He was certain, given the boy’s love of quirky pop music, that he would agree.

Twenty-five years later, I’m still listening to that Human Radio album. Not only do I agree, still, that its unjust obscurity is a crime, but I rank it among my favorite records ever. “Hole in My Head” is one of the best songs I’ve ever heard about miscommunication. “Another Planet” is the catchiest environmentalism anthem I know. “My First Million,” “I Don’t Wanna Know,” “These Are the Days,” these are amazing songs, and the fact that outside of Memphis only a handful of people have ever heard them is baffling to me. If not for that kind clerk (whose name I completely forget), I would have missed them too, and my musical life would have been all the poorer for it.

It’s doubly depressing since the self-titled album is the only one they released. They recorded a second one, which you can find floating around the interwebs, but were dropped from their label and then broke up before they could release it. (It’s good, especially “While You Were Sleeping.”) Lead singer Ross Rice made a pair of decent solo records, neither of which I would have heard without previously knowing who he was, and outside of their hometown, Human Radio slipped even further into obscurity. I never expected a second Human Radio album. And I certainly never expected one 26 years after the first.

But here we are. Human Radio has reunited and given us Samsara, their first record in more than a quarter-century. And I’m struck, every time I listen to it, by how unlikely it is that this album exists, or that I heard about it at all. It was a confluence of events leading back to that one store clerk in 1991 that led me here, now, enjoying the hell out of a new Human Radio record. Life is very strange.

And Samsara is very good. While I can hear much of the old Human Radio in this album, much of it sounds new – older, more seasoned, less immediately clever. Rice’s lyrics were once full of jokes and irony, disguising serious points. Now they’re much more straightforward – you don’t get more on-the-nose than “We’ve Got to Live Here Together” or “She’s Gonna Be the One.” The original album had a plastic late-‘80s sheen to it, and while this new one sounds fantastic, it also feels more raw, more live. The new Human Radio sound is groove-driven, the band’s two Steves – drummer Ebe and bassist Arnold – locking in on many of these tracks. Their secret weapon remains violinist Peter Hyrka, who adds flourishes and also solos like he’s the lead guitarist.

While Samsara does sport a winning live energy, it’s also a well-made record. Songs segue one into another, orchestral parts add depth. Rice sounds fantastic, and when he hit that first harmonized high note on opener “Super Solar Satellite,” I was 16 again. I’ve always responded to his voice – there’s nothing unique about it, but I associate it with some of my favorite songs, so it will always work for me. The songs on Samsara don’t rise to that level, although I didn’t expect them to. But they’re strong and solid, more so than I thought they would be. And this album explores so many different styles that weren’t present on the first one. “The Water, The River, The Sea” is a beautiful ambient guitar ballad, “Transatlantic Lives” is Todd Rundgren soul, and “Walk in the Garden” (probably my favorite) is basically a great Joe Jackson song.

Samsara is also remarkably optimistic and joyous record, even when it’s sad. You can hear it in “The Big Drums” and the aforementioned “We’ve Got to Live Here Together” and the tremendous closer “We’re All Light” – these guys love playing music together, and are so damn happy to be given the chance to do it. Samsara is an album I never thought I would get to hear, and you can tell it’s an album these five guys never thought they’d have a chance to make. I’m so glad we were both wrong. You can learn more about Human Radio and pick up Samsara here.

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I’ve always liked Regina Spektor, but I’ve never loved her.

I came in with 2006’s Begin to Hope, and have bought everything since. I find her to be a fine songwriter, a lovely singer and a performer with just enough quirk to make me smile. And yet, for some reason, I’ve just never connected in a deep and emotional way with one of her records. Here, of course, is where you can rightly expect a well-placed “…until now,” because her seventh, Remember Us to Life, is breathtakingly good. I’ve heard it a dozen times now, and each time it has made me cry. It is sweet and sad and heartfelt and open and smaller in scale than she has been, and yet bigger than the world.

The two songs I had heard beforehand, opener “Bleeding Heart” and electro-stomper “Small Bill$,” while quite good, don’t set the tone for the album. Most of the rest is lyrical, lovely piano balladry, the kind that Spektor made her name with, but deeper somehow, more powerful. I’ll only mention a couple, but they’re stunning. “The Light” is gorgeous, a treatise on finding hope in darkness. “Tornadoland” is about being soft in a world of hard edges, and it hurts. “The Visit” spins a simple tale of old friends reconnecting and somehow manages to make it feel like the heavens opening. And how the remarkable “New Year,” a perfect portrait of loneliness and the struggle to remain encouraged, ended up as a bonus track I will never know. (The same goes for the fantastic “End of Thought.”)

Through it all, Spektor is in complete command of her songwriting voice. These are the best, most consistent fourteen songs she has given us, and she invested herself in them to a degree that I’ve never heard her do before. Remember Us to Life is a beautiful record, quietly assured, painting with nuance and ending up with a vivid masterpiece. I’ll be listening to this one for a long time, and maybe one day I’ll get through it without tearing up. Not today, though.

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It’s sad, but Green Day has become the Bon Jovi of pop-punk.

Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool are all in their mid-40s now, and while I would never suggest that they’re old (being that age myself), I think they’ve grown too old to innovate. They do what they do – three-chord punk with a dramatic flair – because that’s what they do, that’s what they’re known for. I have no idea what kind of music they really want to make, but they haven’t convinced me that any of it is on Revolution Radio, their just-released 12th album.

Not that this record is bad, per se. The trio took a four-year break after knocking themselves out to produce a trilogy of overcooked and half-baked albums in 2012, and that has done them good. Revolution Radio sounds like the product of a regrouping, and an attempt to return to the American Idiot sound that brought them their biggest hits. And in a lot of ways, that’s the problem with it. American Idiot worked because it took the band to new places, but this album feels stale before it even gets to track four. The rock opera impulses are here in opener “Somewhere Now,” which ties nicely into the three-part “Forever Now,” and the politically charged rock of the title track and “Bang Bang” feel like they’re right from Idiot.

The rest of the record follows suit, taking the band no new places. I like “Outlaws,” with its wider scope, and “Still Breathing” feels like a strong alt-rock single from the ‘90s. But songs like “Youngblood” and “Bouncing Off the Walls” just kind of feel like Green Day. The album even ends with an acoustic ditty, just like “Good Riddance,” called “Ordinary World.” If you think you know how it sounds, you’re exactly right. Revolution Radio gleams in the light – the production is full and rich, the guitars vibrant, the drums pummeling. But if you have their most popular stuff, you already have this.

And that’s why I say they’ve become Bon Jovi. Who looks forward to new Bon Jovi albums anymore? They’re all the same – cut-rate Springsteen and encouraging balladry, the same chords played the same way. That’s Green Day all over. I’m sure they’ll keep making new music, and I’m sure it will all sound like this, and I’m sure people will go see them play and will want to hear songs from American Idiot and Dookie. And I’m sure they’ll play them, happy to serve. Revolution Radio isn’t bad for what it is, but it’s just another Green Day album, existing just because, without much reason to.

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Speaking of the ‘90s, here’s a new album from Phish.

I know that’s not really fair, but I originally heard Phish in the ‘90s, when they first gained popularity outside of Vermont. They’re on their third life, having taken hiatuses in 2000 and in 2004, and I have no doubt they’ll have at least nine. The four musicians in Phish are among the best players you’ll find anywhere, and of course it’s the live show that remains the draw, but they keep on putting out albums. And thankfully, at least lately, they keep on being pretty good.

Big Boat is the band’s 13th, and the second in a row to be produced by Bob Ezrin. Its predecessor, Fuego, was quite good, and proved that Ezrin is a good fit for the band at this stage in their career. On record, Phish has been eschewing its tendency to jam – their songs sometimes hit 30 to 35 minutes in extended versions on stage – and turning in breezy rock and roll. That’s what you get for most of Big Boat, a relaxed piece of work that finds the foursome playing well off of each other, but rarely challenging each other either.

It certainly sounds like they had a great time making it, though. There are some remarkably straightforward numbers here, like “Tide Turns” and “Miss You,” both from the pen of guitarist/singer Trey Anastasio. Pianist Page McConnell sings lead vocals twice, and bassist Mike Gordon once, adding to the loose feel of the album. Tunes like “Breath and Burning” and “No Men in No Man’s Land” glide by on gentle grooves, and the whole thing feels like a pleasant stroll by a stream in late spring.

That is, until the final song, which makes up for a lot with me. “Petrichor” is a tightly composed 13-minute wonder. Initially given an orchestral treatment by Anastasio, here it showcases just how good these four musicians are, navigating this intricate piece while dancing around each other. It’s a worthy successor to “Time Turns Elastic,” and a nice reminder that while they seem content to play pretty simple tunes lately, Phish is truly a monster band, right up there with the best collective of players you can find. I enjoyed most of Big Boat (though admittedly not as much as the band seems to have), but I adore “Petrichor,” and for that alone I’d say the album is worth hearing.

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Next week, more reviews from the likes of Glen Phillips, Mike Doughty, Conor Oberst and more. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

October is not just one of my favorite U2 albums. It’s a month in which more music is released, on average, than any other. This year took a 30-day head start – we’ve just wrapped up one of the busiest Septembers I can recall, in which my current picks for the top two slots of the year took up a huge chunk of my listening and reviewing time.

The upshot of all this is that I have an enormous backlog of music waiting to be heard and dissected, and I’m expecting more, much more, each week of this month. I am planning to buy about a dozen new albums just this week, and I’m not counting the first Human Radio record in 25 years, which I have also ordered. It’s too much. I have too much already, and too much on the way, and I can’t possibly hear and deliver a considered review on each of them.

Hence, The October Project.

This is my attempt at burning through as many new albums as I can, in an abbreviated format. Not quite as abbreviated as my annual Fifty Second Week feature, but certainly trimmed down from my usual bloat. If you’re someone for whom the long-form discussion of an album is the reason you read this column, first, God bless you, because it’s my favorite thing too. But second, you may find this month frustrating, as it’s going to focus on quantity and pithiness. Heck, I might find it frustrating too, so we’ll see how well I do keeping things short.

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And already I’ve run into trouble, because the first thing I want to talk about deserves so much more space than I am about to give it.

Eighteen months ago, Michael and Lisa Gungor announced their intention to release a trilogy of new albums, one every half-year, under the banner One Wild Life. Their band Gungor began life as a worship-oriented art-pop collective, composing liturgies and church songs. Uncommonly beautiful liturgies and church songs, of course, but music designed for the devout. With 2013’s extraordinary I Am Mountain they broke out of that mold, traveling a more bizarre, thoughtful and, ultimately, rewarding path.

Most of One Wild Life continues that journey brilliantly. The first volume, Soul, is more airy pop, more traditionally Gungor in scope, but the second, Spirit, is a delightful explosion of ’80s-style keyboards with dissertations on faith and life. (I’m particularly fond of “Let Bad Religion Die,” which is just as pointed and critical of American Christianity as it sounds.) And the concluding installment, Body, is the best of the bunch, driving this ship home with style.

Body is an earthier piece of work, describing a human life from birth to death. It’s impossible to confine it to a single genre – it travels through as many styles as it needs to tell its story, from the gentle folk of “Birth” to the positively slamming dance-funk of “Alien Apes” to the swaying pop of “Walking With Our Eyes Closed” to the full-on gospel soul of “Free” (with a killer lead vocal performance by William Matthews) to the off-kilter epics “To Live in Love” and “Tree.” Body never falters. Not for the first time in this series, the Gungors’ creative vision takes them to some strange and initially off-putting places, and they follow that vision with perfect clarity.

Like I said, this album deserves a lot more space than I am giving it here. Sometime next month I would like to write a full review of the One Wild Life series, which has become a watershed project for Gungor. For now, let me say that the astonishing creativity they displayed on I Am Mountain is in full bloom here on Body, right through to “The End,” an eight-minute finale both to this album and the trilogy as a whole. It’s brilliant, and it’s one of the best things I’ve heard this year, and I’m looking forward to taking it apart in greater detail at a later date.

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I’m running into trouble again with my next contestant, not because I need more words to properly review it, but because I feel like I need another few weeks to keep listening to it.

I’ve never been a part of the cult of Bon Iver. Justin Vernon’s two previous albums (and one EP) under that name were, I thought, pretty good – the first a solid example of hipster-folk, the second a wildly incongruous chamber-rock album that left a lot of people scratching their heads. If you had any doubt that this state of confusion is how Vernon likes his listeners, one spin through the third Bon Iver album, 22, A Million, will remove it.

This record is, frankly, batshit, a collection of song fragments and noises that defiantly refuses to cohere. The song titles are numbers and symbols, the liner notes laughably pretentious, the lyrics diving from heart-on-sleeve insight to random nonsense (sometimes within the same stanza), and the whole thing feels more like a detached art project than a real statement. Plus, at the danger of making a terrible-food-small-portions joke, it’s remarkably brief – you’ll zip through the first three tracks before you even make your way back to your chair after pressing play.

And yet, pieces of this album are sticking with me, and I keep listening to it, almost compulsively. The songs are, no doubt, weak, and the production is intended to mask this, but there are some beautiful moments – the sad melody of “22 Over Soon,” the delicate “29 Stratford Apts” disrupted by distortion, the guitar part on “666,” the saxophones on “___45___.” These moments are not enough to make me love or even like this album yet, but they’re enough to keep me interested. I’ve seen many people call this the most compelling album of the year, and while I can’t agree, I can keep listening. And I will.

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In complete contrast, Rachael Yamagata has always been easy to love.

Though Yamagata has steadily delivered terrific new music since 2004, you don’t hear a lot about her. I think that’s a shame. She writes silky, dark songs and sings them with a rich, full, immediately recognizable voice. Fiona Apple got a lot more press for doing a similar thing, but Yamagata has staked out her own territory and has quietly built up a solid, impressive body of work.

Her new one, Tightrope Walker, doesn’t break with tradition – it’s another swell record in her style, another ten smoky songs that showcase her voice over slow, crawling grooves. “Nobody” could be the best Garbage single in a decade, easy. “EZ Target” builds its groove slowly, out of angles and odd-fitting shapes, but its chorus, complete with banjo flourishes, is a winner. “Let Me Be Your Girl” is a stunner, an old-school bluesy soul number, and she crushes it. “Break Apart is a high and lonesome lament that sounds as wide as the sky.

I’m not sure why more people don’t rave about Rachael Yamagata. She’s quietly and consistently made heartfelt and haunting music for 12 years, while working with (and standing proudly next to) some of the best in the business. And yet she still feels like a secret passed around by a select few. Tightrope Walker is one more reason to love her, one more reason that more people should be talking about her. It’s delightful.

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I know the saying about consistency and hobgoblins and all that. I’m all for shaking things up. But I’m not quite sure what Dawes was going for on their new album.

It’s called We’re All Gonna Die, and if that sounds like a particularly un-Dawes title, well, the incongruities don’t stop there. Much of this record sounds like the breezy California band’s attempt to be OK Go, with harsher edges and synthesizers on nearly every track. Opener “One Of Us” sets this tone, with its blatty, brassy synth bass line and Taylor Goldsmith’s normally sweet vocals distorted and processed. This is a song that contains nothing I like about Dawes, and it demands to be judged on its own merits.

And on those merits, the album is merely OK. I like “Roll With the Punches,” with its pulsing organ bass lines, and the shuffling “Picture of a Man” has its moments. “For No Good Reason” is probably the album’s best song, with its George Harrison guitar lines and its memorable chorus. But for the most part, this album’s attempts at sonic reinvention don’t stick as well as the band hopes they will. It’s hard to tell from just this album whether they’re on a journey or they’ve ducked down a blind alley – we’ll need to see where they go next for that. But We’re All Gonna Die is a strange effort that trades in the band’s easy appeal for something that turns out to be less interesting.

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By now you’ve all seen Stranger Things, yeah?

Netflix’s show of the summer was a fun mix of The Goonies and ‘80s Stephen King, with some fascinating theoretical physics thrown in. (Trust me, I work for a Department of Energy lab, and there was a lot of talk about the theoretical physics of the show.) To me, though, it wouldn’t have been what it was without the dark, synth-y music, and for that you can thank Austin band S U R V I V E. (Yes, that’s how they spell it, spaces and all.)

The band’s second album, the cryptically titled RR7349, is like getting a whole second soundtrack to Stranger Things. It’s all chilly synthesizers and old-school electronic drums, arranged into nine vast, wordless soundscapes. These nine tracks all blend together into a whole, but if I had to pick highlights, opener “A.H.B.” and the arcade-sounding “Dirt” would rank up there. The darkly dramatic “Wardenclyffe” does it for me too.

I know S U R V I V E is but one example of an entire genre of ‘80s-inspired instrumental outfits, and it’s an area I have not explored to any depth. But on the strength of RR7349, I might sample a few of this band’s contemporaries. This is nostalgic and yet sounds boldly relevant, a blast from the past that fits alongside some of the most interesting music being made today.

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That wasn’t so bad, was it? Another four or five albums next week, including a glorious new one by Regina Spektor. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.