Last week Marillion came within walking distance of my hometown. So of course I went to see them.

It was my ninth Marillion show, counting the three performances at the 2016 Montreal Weekend separately, and I’m still not tired of seeing this band do what they do. This show was at the small-ish Arcada Theatre in St. Charles, a venue that books a lot of specialty prog acts, and I guess that’s what Marillion is. But to me they’re so much more than that.

To me, they’re one of the most emotional bands I’ve ever heard. Where prog-rock is often full of soulless instrumental acrobatics, Marillion music takes its time, unfolds patiently, lingers on beauty. Steve Hogarth has one of the best, most impassioned voices I know of, and when he lets loose, as he does on powerful epics like “The Invisible Man,” it sends chills.

Last time the band toured the U.S., we elected Donald Trump president. (Seriously, they played New York City on election night.) This time, they opened with “El Dorado,” a stunning piece about how money makes us all worse, with a section about how letting in refugees is the most human and humane thing we could do; followed it up with “Living in FEAR,” about melting all our guns down; and followed that up with “Seasons End,” a sad piece about climate change. It was like their letter to America, much like their brilliant 18th album, Fuck Everyone and Run, was their warning to the world.

And we also got “The Leavers” for the first time, and this performance solidified it as one of my very favorite Marillion songs. Nearly 20 minutes long, constantly changing, unfailingly emotional, it’s basically the best life-on-the-road song ever written, and a real showcase for the entire band. I brought my long-suffering girlfriend to this show, and she enjoyed it. I’m not sure I could have asked for a better setlist for her first show, and even though I found the crowd subdued in comparison with other Marillion gigs I have been to, she remarked on how appreciative the audience was, clapping for individual parts of songs and offering three standing ovations.

That’s all part of being a member of this family. It’s not a large family over here, although I’m told that a pre-show meet-up that I wasn’t in time to attend attracted 60 people. But it is a dedicated one. We love having this secret between us, this band who clearly isn’t for everyone, but is absolutely for us. I’m already looking forward to Montreal next year. Thanks for a great show, guys.

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Back in 1996, Stephen King decided to release The Green Mile in monthly installments.

This was nothing new for literature – Dickens wrote almost all of his novels this way, in pieces delivered one by one through magazines and newspapers. But for me, a high school kid with a definite fascination for King, it was (please forgive the pun) novel. I played his game: I bought each part of The Green Mile as it came out, and though I have since read the whole thing as a single work, the experience of following along, of hitting King’s cliffhangers and not being able to turn the page, was pretty exciting.

I’m a sucker for anything released in pieces. I love trilogies, a fascination I can trace right back to Star Wars. I read comics, which are long stories released in monthly chunks. And so it’s no surprise that I am always interested in music that comes at me in puzzle pieces, waiting to be connected. The best example I can give you is The Dear Hunter’s extraordinary Acts series, a six-album story that only needs its final installment to be completed. Hearing the climax of the plot in Act V, after living with the story for years, was an astonishing experience.

I’d never suggest that Belle and Sebastian’s new album is anything like that, but they did issue it in three pieces, one a month since December. And it’s been fun trying to figure out how it would sound as a whole. Naturally, I did not buy it in installments – it was released only on vinyl and download – but I did buy the compilation CD, which connects all 15 songs in the order in which they first appeared. And I have no doubt that this collection of songs was originally conceived as an album, and broken up into chunks only for marketing reasons.

Which is fine, but it works so much better as a whole. The album, the long-running Scottish outfit’s 10th, is a long and flowing thing, but it still feels tightly controlled. It’s the band’s most consistent set of songs since probably Dear Catastrophe Waitress, all of 15 years ago, and has so many pleasures it’s almost hard to count them. I’ve liked a lot of their work over the last decade or so, but I’ve felt like they’ve been running in place, turning out pleasantly twee, danceable tunes without really trying.

How to Solve Our Human Problems (for that is the name of the record) breaks them out of that rut, and if the process of recording and releasing these tunes five at a time helped them get here, then I’m all for it. Leader Stuart Murdoch, who will be 50 this year, hasn’t sounded this energized in a while, and the multitude of producers and guest musicians seems to have pumped new blood into this enterprise. I mean, just listen to “We Were Beautiful,” which starts off sounding like Pet Shop Boys hitting the drum-and-bass club (with a lap steel), but then explodes into a chorus so awesome that I haven’t stopped singing it.

What I can say about the decision to break this album up into thirds is that each of the first two thirds made me want to hear the rest. The first installment includes not only “We Were Beautiful” but the delightful “The Girl Doesn’t Get It,” a full-on synth-y dance tune, and “Everything Is Now,” a big, expansive showcase that sounds like the sun rising over the cliffs. The second volume opens with a bracing “na-na-na-na-na” that introduces the very ‘60s “Show Me the Sun,” which for long stretches is as minimalist as this band has been in ages. (Admittedly, there is an insistent, awesome drum beat that runs for the duration.) We also get the terrific, sweet, oboe-driven “I’ll Be Your Pilot,” the odd yet compelling “Cornflakes” and closing ballad “A Plague on Other Boys,” another one that sounds right out of the Summer of Love.

And if all that made you want to hear the third part, it won’t disappoint. “Poor Boy” slinks in on a funky bass line, Sarah Martin’s voice dripping down over it beautifully. There’s a second part to “Everything is Now,” one that is just as lovely, and there is “There Is an Everlasting Song,” possibly the prettiest thing here. Closer “Best Friend” is goofy and sugary, ending in joy. In pieces, these three EPs are swell slices of Belle and Sebastian in their prime. Collected together as their 10th album, it’s their best in more than a decade. While I think it holds up better as a single work, if you’re a fan of this band, you should hear this in any form you can.

I expect the new Oh Hellos project will hold up nicely as a complete work as well, once it’s done. But we’re in that sweet spot, following along as they give us their new songs in smaller pieces, and we’re only halfway through. Last year the Texas ensemble gave us Notos, the first of four 20-minute EPs full of new songs. It was classic Oh Hellos, folk music as played by what sounds like 300 people, rising as one to sing the heavens down, and just as enamored with moments of quiet beauty as with rousing anthems.

Now we have Eurus, the second EP, and it’s just as good. Like Notos, it plays like a single piece, a suite connected by short instrumentals. The songs held together by those instrumentals are wonderful. Opener “O Sleeper” is wider than the ocean, huge and all-encompassing. “Grow” is amazing, morphing from a boom-bam beat into a massive anthem, and it slides right into the down-home acoustic title track. You’ll fly right through that, and before you know it, you’ll be on the superb closer, “Passerine.” And three minutes later, you’ll be hungry for more.

I’m very much looking forward to having all 80 or so minutes of this new Oh Hellos project, but I am very much enjoying hearing it in chapters. I have no idea when the next one will be available, either, so I keep looking out. If you’ve never heard the Oh Hellos, you need to. Bonus: this new EP contains a track called “A Convocation of Fauns (A Faunvocation, If You Will).” How can you not love that?

Hear and buy the Oh Hellos here: http://music.theohhellos.com.

Next week, the Breeders return. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Ever been taken in by marketing?

It’s not the most pleasant of feelings. I tend to avoid hype like the plague, so when it works on me, it doesn’t thrill me. I tend to do the opposite of what hype wants me to. I didn’t read the Harry Potter books for years, just because everyone else was raving about them. (That turned out to be a mistake, since everyone else was right.) I haven’t watched a single episode of This Is Us, partially because it looks awful, and partially because of the constant bombardment of that show on my eyeholes and earholes.

Anyway, Justin Timberlake’s new album is called Man of the Woods, and I have to admit, the marketing worked on me. I’ve always kind of liked Timberlake, but wished he would break out of his apparently fervent desire to be Michael Jackson. Calling an album Man of the Woods felt like a good first step. The accompanying photos were right out of an L.L. Bean catalog, too, with Timberlake dressed in flannel and outdoor gear, surveying the wilderness thoughtfully. Of course, it’s all image manipulation, but I thought perhaps this would signal the sonic shift I’ve been looking for, and open Timberlake up to more honest and interesting music.

Yeah, I’m a sucker. By now you’ve probably all heard the wretched singles “Filthy” and “Supplies,” and they unfortunately set the tone for the first half of this album. Timberlake is still working with Timbaland and the Neptunes (Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo), and what changes there are to his basic sound are for the worse. The first three songs, including “Filthy,” are the same kind of Michael Jackson pop that he’s given us for years, with a surfeit of inspiration. “This ain’t the clean version,” he croons on “Filthy,” giving us yet another entry into the “songs that describe themselves” genre.

The title track is so much worse, though, bouncing along on a kinda goofy groove, Timberlake proclaiming himself a man of the woods while singing over programmed drums and synthesizers. It just doesn’t work. And “Wave” is even worse, the Neptunes laying down a canned Caribbean strum while Timberlake tries very hard to sound natural over it. On the bright side, this is a definite curve ball for him, but it’s pretty poor stuff. And then comes “Supplies,” which is just plain bad.

So the first half is hard to get through, but on the second half, Timberlake’s idea of mixing in more acoustic folk with his usual electronic groove begins to bear fruit. I can’t really fault “Morning Light,” a soulful duet with Alicia Keys, but it is with “Say Something,” Timberlake’s collaboration with country-rocker Chris Stapleton, that the shift happens. “Say Something” isn’t a great song, but it does shift Timberlake into new territory, and it also seems to be about not centering cultural conversations on oneself, which starts to address the issues of appropriation that have dogged his career.

From here, Man of the Woods turns into more of a folk record, and believe it or not, Timberlake sounds much more comfortable singing these songs than something like “Filthy” or “Sauce.” “Flannel” is particularly silly, but it’s also sweet, and while I’m sure Timberlake has never in his life lived off the land, “Livin’ Off the Land” does mix up the guitars and dance grooves nicely. “The Hard Stuff” might be my favorite thing here, despite its John Mayer-ness, and closer “Young Man” is the personal connection I spent the whole record looking for. It’s a positive, upbeat letter to his son, and it’s catchy and cute.

Is catchy and cute enough? I’m not sure. I ended up liking the second half of Man of the Woods more than I expected to, but it’s certainly not the stripped-down affair the marketing blitz might make you think it is. Justin Timberlake is no more a man of the woods than I am, and the record only gently tweaks his musical direction, rather than rewriting it. On that score, it’s a disappointment.

If you’d like to hear a real man of the woods, may I suggest Bill Mallonee. There’s no image manipulation with him. When you see photos of Mallonee with his long beard, taken out in the wild, you know this is how he really lives. Mallonee has been plying his trade for nearly 30 years, first with the Vigilantes of Love, and then solo. He has something like 40 solo records, and he’s been cranking them out at a rate of at least one a year for a long time. Lately they’ve been true solo records – just Bill in his country house, overdubbing drums and bass and guitars and then singing in his world-weary, wise voice. His records are dispatches from his soul, and they feel like them.

His latest is called Forest Full of Wolves, and like much of his recent material, it’s somewhat dark and bleak. Mallonee believes in facing darkness full on, and wringing whatever hope he can out of it. I sometimes criticize Mallonee for writing the same kind of great song over and over, and he makes no strides in another direction on Forest. It’s just another ten really good Bill Mallonee tunes, poems set to jangly American rock and roll.

That said, there’s nothing here I don’t like. I’m a particular fan of “In the New Dark Age,” which is subtitled “The Best Thing You Can Do is Fall in Love.” It’s kind of the perfect Mallonee song, taking an unflinching look at broken lives and bringing them courage. “Changing of the Guard” is a surprisingly political number: “Now the devil pays for your allegiance, hiding behind stars and stripes, he speaks his piece through the lips of the elite and appears as an angel of light…”

There are more than a few excellent turns of phrase on this record, some of them exactly what a poet like him should be speaking into the world right now. “Before the Darkness Settles In” is another one that doesn’t flinch: “Now the milk of human kindness is curdled to the bone, and the autumn light is paler than I’ve ever known, pull on your heavy coat before the howling wind, before the darkness settles in…” “I Know, I Know” is about lies, and twists the knife with this verse: “Now I know a good joke, and I’ll share it with thee, what’s a hundred politicians at the bottom of the sea?”

But of all of his hymns of hard-fought hope, it’s “Trimmed and Burning” that most does it for me this time. The final verse: “I hate to end on a sober note, but there are spirits who won’t survive, in a world of meanness and cruelty, they won’t get out alive, so hand the world an olive branch, and hand yourself one too…”

Bill Mallonee has been as honest a songwriter as one could hope for (as well as a heck of a guitar player) for decades now, and each new record just solidifies that legacy. I’m happy he’s still at it. I’m happy I get to pay for a new set of songs every year (at least), and happy that this music still feeds him, both physically and spiritually. Forest Full of Wolves is another in a long line of really good Mallonee records, and if you want to start somewhere, this is as good a place to begin as any.

Listen and buy online: https://billmalloneemusic.bandcamp.com.

Next week, Belle and Sebastian for sure, and who knows what else. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I hope I can be forgiven for thinking that Franz Ferdinand was a flash in the pan.

They first burst onto the scene in 2004 with a sound that was like four glitter cannons going off at once. I described them then as Morrissey’s dance band – leader Alex Kapranos has a particularly Mozz-like voice, disaffected and droll, and Franz themselves were equal parts punk and disco, even then. It was a novel sound that I dismissed as a bit of a novelty.

But fourteen years later, here we are. Franz Ferdinand is one of the hardiest survivors of the 2000s, and they’ve proven remarkably adaptable. Over time they’ve added more and more dance elements to their style, and while they are still determinedly quirky, they’ve carved out their own niche. I think a lot of what they’ve been trying to do crystallized when they collaborated with Sparks in 2015, creating a wild record called FFS that played to both bands’ strengths. Franz is far more like Sparks than any of their peers from 2004, and hopefully will be similarly long-lived.

Their fifth album, Always Ascending, continues their streak. With the addition of programmer/producer Julian Corrie to the ranks, the band’s sound has become even more keyboard-driven, and they’ve taken on some Duran Duran overtones here and there. But they still sound like Franz Ferdinand. Kapranos still sounds like he’s commenting on the music while singing it, and the band sounds even more like a danceable Smiths in places here.

And as always, the most damning thing you can say about a Franz record is that it is too short. The songs on Always Ascending are tight and full of hooks. I’m particularly fond of “Finally,” Kapranos floating above a constantly morphing groove, celebrating having found his people. “Lazy Boy” dares you not to take it seriously – it is perhaps the one here most influenced by their time with Sparks.

“Lois Lane” seems to be an earnest tribute to Superman’s girlfriend, lauding her for her journalism career. “Huck and Jim” finds Kapranos going darker, trying his hand at half-speaking, half-rapping, and dropping this chorus: “We’re going to America, gonna tell ‘em ‘bout the NHS, and when we get there we will all hang out, sipping 40s with Huck and Jim.” The album closes with ballad “Slow Don’t Kill Me Slow,” and I always like it when Kapranos takes on these more melodic pieces – he stretches his tenor and delivers with sincerity.

Always Ascending is yet another swell little Franz Ferdinand album. I feel pretty silly for dismissing them at first. They clearly have a strong and solid idea of who they are, and now that I have a bit of a better idea of it too, I’m looking forward to hearing more as they evolve.

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About ten years ago, a friend of mine suggested I listen to The ’59 Sound, the second album by New Jersey band The Gaslight Anthem. I enjoyed it like crazy – it was like the punk version of The E Street Shuffle, raucous and hopeful and fun. I wish I’d known then that the band and its leader, Brian Fallon, didn’t have any other tricks up their sleeve, and would be riding that sound out forever.

Three Gaslight albums and two solo records later, here is Fallon with Sleepwalkers, another dozen songs he dug out of Bruce Springsteen’s dumpster. (I wish that were my joke.) I don’t hate this record, but I’m not finding a whole lot to hang my ear on either. It’s breezy and amiable, hoping to make friends wherever it goes, but it kind of sits there for me, never accomplishing too much.

I like the opening song, “If Your Prayers Don’t Get to Heaven,” well enough – it has a sharp little guitar part, and the organs are pleasant. But then “Forget Me Not” barges in, sounding exactly like Born in the USA-era Bruce, and the momentum collapses. “Come Wander With Me” could be Bryan Adams, so complete is its ‘80s anthemic sound. I like the mandolin on “Proof of Life,” even if the song leaves me cold. “Little Nightmares” works in an Elvis Costello-style guitar-and-organ riff and some swell double-time drums. That one’s probably my favorite.

Throughout this record, Fallon sings his little heart out, and his working man’s poetry is the same as always. I’m sure his heart is in the right place, and he seems invested in the characters he creates and the stories he relates. Of course, those characters and stories are right out of Springsteen, and I wish someone with Fallon’s passion and intensity had it in him to break out of his influences and give us something original.

Sleepwalkers isn’t that. It’s a very well-produced pastiche, a wasted harnessing of forces to create a mediocre copy of better work. Fallon’s singing voice is exactly what it should be, but his songwriting voice is still stuck in the same rut. I’m sure it’s working for him, sales-wise, but he’s leaving a trail of empty art behind him, and that’s a shame.

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Field Music never has that problem. They are unfailingly original, fascinating and captivating. There’s just one problem I have with them: I never remember their songs. Like, ever.

I’ve bought every Field Music album – the new one, Open Here, is their eighth, not counting their b-sides collection – and I’ve loved every one of them. Field Music is, at its core, brothers Peter and David Brewis, and they’re steeped in Supertramp-style progressive pop and English folk music. Their songs are tricky and twisty, but unfailingly melodic and catchy. The brothers Brewis clearly labor over these records, and Open Here is no exception.

I just have some kind of resistance of memory to their work. I’m listening to Open Here for the fourth time right now, and it’s like I’m discovering it again for the first time. I love it – six-minute opener “Time in Joy” is pretty much the perfect Field Music song, with a Steely Dan groove, a pure prog riff that holds the whole thing together, and an absolutely delightful full-harmony chorus. There’s even a flute. It literally could not be better. And next time I hear it, it will be like stumbling across how wonderful it is all over again.

The rest of Open Here is similarly awesome, its 39 minutes flying by in a rush. “Count It Up” sounds like Gary Numan joining 10cc and then ranting about Brexit – the brothers hail from Sunderland, England, the first town in the UK to vote for leaving the European Union, and much of Open Here takes on a renewed political focus. “Goodbye to the Country” is the angriest this band gets, and “Checking on a Message” ably captures the pins-and-needles feeling of waiting up for election results, certain that things are about to go very badly.

I’m also a big fan of “No King No Princess,” a letter to the young Brewis children about rejecting stereotypical gender roles. The horns here are classic Field Music – they almost don’t fit in with the early-XTC-style groove the band lays down. Closer “Find a Way to Keep Me” is a plaintive plea, leaving things on an uncertain note. I love the way it builds and builds, strings and woodwinds winding around it, until it delivers a final pirouette.

Open Here is a great record, just like the last seven Field Music records, and I genuinely would love to remember that it is. My inability to recall how excellent it is has nothing to do with the band or the songs. The brothers Brewis did everything right, as always. I think the key might be to listen over and over, almost obsessively, until this complex yet fully alive music settles into my brain. Wish me luck.

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For all the new music brought to you by the letter F, the thing I’ve been listening to most lately dates back 45 years.

Frank Zappa was a musician like no other, and to be in his band, you had to follow two rules: no drugs allowed, and you had to be able to keep up. He was a musical machine, creating new songs and arrangements at a stunning pace, and he only employed the best of the best to realize his visions. And one of his very best bands played with him from 1973 to 1975, creating some of his best-loved records.

One of those records is called Roxy and Elsewhere, and it features performances captured at the Roxy in Los Angeles over a weekend in December, 1973. It also features a raft of overdubs and studio tweaking, as was Zappa’s wont, and it blurs the line between a live album and a studio creation. The Zappa family has, of course, been milking that weekend of performances, issuing Roxy By Proxy (a collection of other performances not on Roxy and Elsewhere) in 2014, and Roxy the Movie and its soundtrack a year later.

And now they’ve given us the motherlode – a seven-CD box set called The Roxy Performances that includes every note played during that weekend. It’s eight hours long, and contains four full shows, a recorded rehearsal, a studio session and a filmed sound check. (Never let it be said that Zappa didn’t work his musicians.) This might feel like overkill to anyone not steeped in Zappa, but trust me when I tell you it’s not nearly enough kill. I could listen to this incredible band play this incredible material for twice this long without getting bored.

The four shows are amazing, of course. It’s great to finally hear how familiar songs like “Village of the Sun” and “Cheepnis” fit in with the overall arc of what Zappa was trying to do, and to hear them stripped of studio sweetening only emphasizes how fantastic this band is. It would be pointless to call out individual players, since they’re all so good, but I’m always amazed by percussionist Ruth Underwood. She’s flawless, and Zappa gives her some impossibly difficult material to play. Just listen to her showcase on “Don’t You Ever Wash That Thing,” presented here three times. (The 13-minute take from the second show is my favorite.)

The rehearsal is fun – it’s not some hissy-tape document, it’s a crystal clear opportunity to hear the band working out parts of this tricky material. I’m not sure what its replay value is, but I’m glad to have it. The rehearsal tapes also include a new version of “The Idiot Bastard Son” with lyrics about Tricky Dick, called “That Arrogant Dick Nixon.” It’s a technique Zappa would use to full effect on his 1988 tour, which took aim at Jimmy Swaggart and his fellow televangelists.

The studio session is interesting in the same way, as a historical document. Zappa leads the band through some of the best-known material of this era, including the full “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” suite, and most of this is Zappa giving notes to his players and fine-tuning these pieces. The final disc contains the sound check/film shoot, recorded a day before the first show in front of a select audience. The band vamps on “Pygmy Twylyte” for 35 minutes, gives us a typically great “Echidna’s Arf (Of You),” and closes with quick run-throughs of some extremely difficult pieces (“T’Mershi Duween,” “Dog Breath” and “Uncle Meat”). There isn’t much here that isn’t represented elsewhere, but it’s great to have even more stunning performances of these songs.

There’s so much here, it’s almost impossible to absorb it all. The Roxy Performances is one of the most welcome pieces of Zappa history, finally available in a beautiful box for a decent price. I cannot recommend it highly enough. If you love hearing real musicians playing truly astounding music live, you, like me, won’t be able to get enough of this.

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That’s it for this week. Next week, Justin Timberlake meets Bill Mallonee. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

The first time I saw Listener, I had no idea what I was witnessing.

It was at the AudioFeed Festival, of course, where I have discovered most of my new favorite bands for the past few years. Listener was a buzz band there, meaning the kids at the fest were positively giddy at the notion of seeing them play. I’d never heard of them, but had committed early on to trying as many new bands as I could over that weekend. I got maybe three songs in. I had no idea what to think.

They don’t seem that strange to me now, after years of immersion in their work. But that first exposure was something else. Listener is a rock band with a sometimes slow and abrasive edge, and they exist as a delivery method for Dan Smith’s poetry, which he spits out at a snarling, frantic pace. Honestly, there is no frontman in the world like Smith. Imagine if Craig Finn of the Hold Steady grew up on Fugazi, and you’re close, but not quite there.

One of my favorite things about Listener is that they’re already unique, but they keep growing. Each album has expanded their reach, aiming for new sounds and ideas. Their new one, Being Empty: Being Filled, is their most adventurous, and their best. Eight of its songs were released on seven-inches over the past few months, but the full album has just arrived, and if you’ve never heard Listener, I think this is a great starting point.

For one thing, if you want a basic idea of what this band does, you can’t ask for a better introduction than the first two songs here. “Pent Up Genes” is a simple rocker with some spit-fire lines from Smith and some robust horns (at one point playing “Taps”), and “Little Folded Fingers” might be the perfect Listener song – its insistent rumble reminds me of Shellac, it has a memorable chorus (which Listener songs sometimes eschew), and everything fires on all cylinders. I love how it dissipates, then comes roaring back at the end. This one’s going to kill live.

But for another, Being Empty finds the band staking out interesting new territory, and delivering the most complete vision of who they are. “There’s Money in the Walls” is a slowly unfolding undercurrent to Smith’s poetry, fired at you like bullets over the ocean. “Bloodshot/New Love” does interesting things with its vocal arrangement, finding Smith singing the choruses, speaking the verses and then shouting the bridge, while the music constantly shifts under him.

Even when they’re not innovating here, they’re delivering the best realization yet of Listener’s signature sound, as on “Shock and Value” and the immense “A Love Letter to Detroit.” This is their most polished record, and yet there’s a determined rawness to the best moments, the grooves connecting like gears made of sandpaper. While the more traditional Listener tracks are comforting, in their way, the album feels most dangerous when it steps outside that, most notably on closing track “Plague Doctor.” A true epic, this song begins with an explosion of drums from Kris Rochelle, fires some math-rock at us, then stops short, bringing in synthesizers, guitar choirs, space-y vocal effects and a whole ton of noise. It’s the most interesting song they’ve ever given us.

Your enjoyment of Listener will depend on whether you can roll with Dan Smith’s voice. The first time I heard a Listener album (the exquisite Time is a Machine), I was convinced he was yelling at me for the whole thing. It took a while to realize he was yelling with me. His lyrics are beautiful poems of encouragement, of recognition, of worth and value. Shouting along with them has become a particular pleasure of mine at AudioFeed. This is music made for shouting along with, for seeing yourself in, for feeling part of. It’s unfailingly earnest, heartfelt and powerful.

Being Empty: Being Filled would get my vote as the Listener album everyone curious about this band should hear. You can check it out at the band’s site. And you should also come to AudioFeed, where you’ll likely get the chance to see this material played live. I can’t wait.

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As any player can tell you, you don’t need to sing to have a voice. Instrumentalists have their own voices, their own telltale touches that make their sound their own. And if your instrumental band consists of, for instance, drums, bass and piano, changing the piano player can be just as wholesale a change as swapping in a new lead singer.

That’s exactly the situation the Bad Plus find themselves in, after parting ways with founding pianist Ethan Iverson in December after 17 years together. Iverson, along with drummer Dave King and bassist Reid Anderson, created a wholly individual sound for their band – not quite jazz, not quite rock, not quite prog, but with elements of all three liberally mixed together. They made their name covering rock, pop and prog tunes with instrumental flair, crafted sterling original tunes, worked up a trio take on The Rite of Spring, and worked with saxophonist Joshua Redman and vocalist Wendy Lewis.

After all that, you’d think that any one member of this group would be irreplaceable. But like everything else, the Bad Plus has made welcoming aboard a new lead player look easy. Orrin Evans is a well-respected jazz pianist, having recorded more than two dozen albums as a leader since 1994. He’s known Anderson and King for many years, and on the band’s new record, Never Stop II, he steps right in as if he’s always been there. From the title on down – it references the band’s 2010 album, their first to consist entirely of originals – this is a continuation of the Bad Plus, not a reboot of it.

That’s a good thing, in case it wasn’t clear. Never Stop II is chock full of the fascinating time signatures, memorable melodies and superb improvisation that has been this band’s trademark. Some of these songs – “Trace,” with its difficult-to-count single-note chorus, for instance, or “Safe Passage,” a beautiful, tricky, energizing thing – are classic Bad Plus. Evans contributes two songs, including “Boffadem,” on which he plays toy piano, and they sound tailor made for the Bad Plus, despite being older tunes repurposed for the band. “Commitment,” a ten-minute suite on Evans’ own Meant to Shine LP, here is a lean and languid four minutes, containing the most straight-up jazz improv section on the record.

Are there differences? Sure. Evans has a lighter, more immediately pleasing touch than Iverson, so when he plays the blockier, more prog-like tunes, they don’t sound quite as heavy. But when he improvises, his ear is more on melody than Iverson’s was. The result is more accessible without losing the edge they’ve always had. Evans is a terrific player, more than up to the challenge, and while he’s not doing an Iverson impression by any means, he slides into the Bad Plus style perfectly. Evans, steeped as he is in a hard bop style, will clearly bring a different outlook to the table, and I’m excited to hear his vision for where the band can go.

As for Never Stop II, its quick release – only 19 days after the band’s last gig with Iverson – is clearly intended to relieve those nervous about the change. It’s a terrific Bad Plus album, different in some ways but consistent in most. It begins the next chapter in this extraordinary band’s story with grace and confidence. I’m glad this next chapter exists, and I’m jazzed to read further.

Check out the Bad Plus here.

Next week, lots of options, from Franz Ferdinand to Brian Fallon to Frank Zappa. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

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