Back in 1998 (an astonishing 20 years ago), I saw Neil Finn play a free outdoor concert in Boston.

His first solo album, Try Whistling This, had just come out, and true to its title, it was a surprisingly difficult record to love. Finn gamely tried out this new material on the Boston audience, but save for the singalong “She Will Have Her Way,” it was rough going. But then, near the end of the show, Finn pulled out an acoustic guitar and started playing “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” and the crowd came to life. Even me, the guy most willing (especially as a young’un) to champion the difficult material. I felt a stirring within at the opening chords of that song, and sang along like my life depended on it.

It’s not just that “Don’t Dream It’s Over” is a better song than anything on Try Whistling This, although it certainly is. It’s not even that it’s more immediate, and thus far easier to love. For me – and I suspect for a lot of people on the lawn that day – it was that I first heard “Don’t Dream It’s Over” in 1986, and fell in love with it then, and that love has not abated through time and tide. It was not the first Neil Finn song I heard. Believe it or not, that was “World Where You Live,” which I saw Crowded House perform live on MTV. But it was the first one I fell head over heels for.

I was all of 12 years old when Crowded House’s first album hit the American airwaves, but I like to think I knew good songs when I heard them, even then. That album is full of good songs, and it sparked my lifelong admiration of Neil Finn. By the time I was making my own money and could buy records on my own, Crowded House had become a favorite, and I’d started tracking down Finn’s older work in Split Enz. I still think Crowded House’s Woodface is one of the best and most underrated records of the 1990s, and Together Alone isn’t far behind. In fact, the first Finn album I bought and didn’t immediately love was Try Whistling This, which Finn gamely tried to sell me on during that Boston concert.

For those of you rushing to Google, don’t worry, this isn’t a eulogy. This is a straight-up review situation, but I wanted to talk a little bit about how having a long history with a performer or songwriter colors one’s expectations and reactions to new work. Finn just happens to be one of the artists whose work has impacted me for the longest time, and he happens to have a new record out with his son Liam, which I swear I will talk about soon. But mainly I want to talk about what goes through my head every time Neil Finn announces a new record, or releases a new song, which is nothing less than my entire history with his music.

For instance, I think about One Nil, his glorious 2001 solo album, and how, before last year, “Turn and Run” was the last Finn song to make me shiver and well up. I have reservedly liked everything he’s done outside of Crowded House (except for that wretched Pajama Club thing), but haven’t felt that “oh my GOD listen to this melody how PERFECT” feeling since 2001. And I’ve often wondered if the material Finn has released since then just hasn’t been as good, or if his earliest work has just burrowed deeper. It’s hard to know.

I think about how much of Finn’s work includes (and in fact revolves around) his family, for better or worse. His brother Tim was the main voice of Split Enz, joined Crowded House for Woodface, and made two records with Neil as The Finn Brothers. His wife Sharon has played with him in various bands (including that awful Pajama Club thing, of which we will speak no more). And literally the only reason I keep buying Liam Finn’s work is because he is Neil Finn’s son. He’s pretty good – much more interested in electronics and atmosphere than his father – but he wouldn’t be on my radar without my connection to his father.

And of course, I am now thinking of Out of Silence, last year’s under-the-radar record, which contained the best music Neil Finn had made in at least 15 years. And I’m thinking about how I might not have bought it, or even heard about it, if I hadn’t fallen in love with Finn’s work back in my preteen years. Out of Silence is amazing, full of gorgeous orchestrated wonders, and it’s proof to me that he’s still one of the very best, when he wants to be. It also sets expectations higher for his next project.

Which, of course, brings us to Lightsleeper, Neil’s first collaboration album with Liam. I have done my best to manage my hopes for this – all it needed to do, for me, is balance out their styles, offer up some Neil Finn melodies alongside the Liam Finn soundscapes. And blessedly, following a messy opening trilogy, it does this. It’s impressive how well the duo meshes. But I have to emphasize that, had this not been a Neil Finn project, I probably would not have listened to it more than twice. It is only the long tether of my love for Neil’s work that is keeping me attached to this album, still diving through it, still teasing out its joys.

Because they are there. I almost shut down during the formless “Meet Me In the Air,” which (save for a brief prelude) opens the album with floaty meandering, and the silly “Where’s My Room” goes on for an eternity, mutating into an orchestrated five-car pileup that did not bode well for the rest of the record. But keep listening, because the following eight songs range from the simple and pretty to the delightful, and are worth digging through.

I like so many things about those last eight songs, but what I think I like most about them is the push-pull of Neil and Liam’s sensibilities. Some of these songs, like the kinda-funky “Ghosts,” feel led more by Liam, and “Listen,” one of only two songs solely written by Neil, could have fit on Out of Silence nicely. But when Neil’s piano is given equal weight with Liam’s penchant for sonic frippery, magic happens. “Any Other Way” is a treat, Mick Fleetwood’s drums and Liam’s synths making room for a classically beautiful melody line, sung by Liam. “Back to Life” is a simple tune, but it’s a really pretty one, with a strong and memorable chorus, and Neil digs into it joyously.

I’m also a big fan of the way this record ends, juxtaposing the relatively grand-scale “We Know What It Means,” sung by Neil (with just a wonderful piano solo in there too), with the gorgeous lullaby “Hold Her Close,” sung by Liam. These are both graceful little songs, and like most of Lightsleeper, they’re subtle – you have to listen more than once to really hear how well-crafted they are. And without my lifelong love of Neil Finn, I might not have done so. I might have listened once, filed it away under “not bad,” and kept on with my life.

Which is interesting to me. I’ve found a lot to love on Lightsleeper, but I’ve only given it the repeated listens and chances I have because Neil Finn’s name is on it. This raises a couple questions for me, most notably whether I am missing similar pleasures on albums that do not have Neil Finn’s name on them, albums I pay only cursory attention to. I buy such a volume of music that it sometimes takes a 30-plus-year association with an artist’s work to get me to really listen more than once. I’m in constant risk of barely hearing songs that could change my life. It’s something worth thinking about.

But I’m also using Lightsleeper as an excuse to celebrate those 30-plus years of letting Finn’s music into my heart. I still believe he’s one of the world’s best living songwriters, and at age 60, he’s still proving it. Lightsleeperis indulgent, for sure, but in its heart live some beautiful little songs, and I’m very glad to have heard them. Neil Finn’s music has been with me for most of my life, enriching it all the while, and that’s why I will give everything he does more than a fair chance. I owe him at least that much.

Next week, the dream of the ‘90s is alive and well. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

We lost Aretha Franklin this week.

I certainly hope you don’t need me to tell you why this is important, why Franklin’s departure leaves an unfillable hole in the world. She was perhaps the greatest singer who ever lived. At the very least, any conversation about the greatest singers who ever lived that does not mention Aretha Franklin is woefully incomplete. She was certainly one of the best gospel singers ever, and her move to soul and pop music in the 1960s and 1970s was impeccable. She was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, and deservedly so. There was never anyone like her, and there will never be anyone else like her.

I’m not going to be able to properly eulogize someone whose career spanned six decades and whose voice redefined much of what we know as popular music. Franklin was 76 years old when she died after a short illness, and was only four years removed from her last album, on which she sings songs made famous by female performers, and nails them. At 72. Aretha Franklin was the embodiment of legendary, just one of the finest singers this species has ever produced. Rest in peace, Aretha. Thank you doesn’t even begin to cover it.

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A few weeks ago, I pulled out Death Cab for Cutie’s 2005 album Plans, just to see if I still love it.

Short answer: I do. Plans is my favorite Death Cab album, which I know is an unpopular opinion. But I think it’s the one on which their yearning indie-rock sound transitioned most effectively into the more ambitious work we were all expecting from them on a major label. Plans is essentially a sonic novel about death and loss, a melancholy painting across a wide canvas, and I don’t think Ben Gibbard has ever stepped up with a better set of lyrics.

I’ve been hard on the band’s post-Plans work, and I don’t know if all of my disappointment has been warranted. I can say nice things about most of the follow-ups. Narrow Stairs is a great collection of short stories, even if in retrospect it was the start of the spiral. Codes and Keys is an inconsistent jump into more of an electronic sound, but there are some gems. Only Kintsugi stands out to me as a waste, a trifle of a record that contains very little I have grown to care about. And as it was the last album with Chris Walla on guitars and behind the recording desk, I couldn’t imagine that Death Cab would even continue, let alone make something worth listening to again.

It would be difficult for me to say that their ninth album, Thank You For Today, is the turnaround they needed. But it is certainly better than Kintsugi, and better than I expected by a long, long way. To be clear, this is the furthest Death Cab have sounded from their more rock-oriented origins, and the album is a slow burner, indebted more to the Cure than just about anyone else. But far from a last gasp, this feels like a right turn, the beginning of a new era. Unlike the protagonists of most of these songs, I’m hopeful.

It does take a few listens to hear it that way, though. The first half of Thank You For Today is low-key and repetitive, and I can really hear the Cure in numbers like “Summer Years,” which spin a web of clean guitars over insistent drums. “Gold Rush” is here, and it’s grown on me, but it doesn’t end up doing very much over its four minutes. I do like the sound – the slide guitars and thump-thump drum beat are new for Death Cab – but the song kind of jogs in place. The most immediate thing on the first half for me is “Your Hurricane,” a classic Gibbard tale of caring about someone too much. But even this sinks into the mood piece that is the first five songs, and if you don’t see it as a mood piece from the start, you’ll probably find it a little boring.

Things pick up significantly with tracks six and seven, two of the most convincing Death Cab pop-rock songs in years. “Autumn Love,” all by itself, justifies this album’s existence for me. The melody here is exactly the breath of fresh air I’d been waiting for, exactly the shot in the arm the record needed at exactly this point. (There’s no denying the value of a good “whoa-oh,” too.) “Northern Lights” is even better, folding a guest appearance by Lauren Mayberry of Chvrches into a deep, dark pop tune. I still think it all sounds like the Cure, but this one feels more like “In Between Days.” It’s my favorite Death Cab song for at least three albums.

These two songs give a purpose to the rest of the record – the first five tracks build up to “Autumn Love,” and the final three come down from that high. And oddly, they put you in the right frame of mind to shudder and sigh at the last act – it’s all wistful and melancholy stuff. I’m a big fan of “Near/Far,” with its pulsing acoustic guitars, and the finale, “60 and Punk,” isn’t nearly as funny as its title. It’s a piano-led lament about growing old and irrelevant. Gibbard gets a lot of emotion into the line “the band plays you off,” and if this finally ends up being the last bow of Death Cab for Cutie, it will be a thematically resonant way to go out.

But I don’t think it will be.Thank You for Today feels like hitting the refresh button. Not exactly like starting over, but like beginning a new chapter. It’s a downbeat album, for sure, but somehow it breathes new life into a band I was ready to write off. Songs like “Your Hurricane” and “Northern Lights” are all the evidence I need that my life would be poorer without Death Cab for Cutie in it, and I hope this is the start of a grand third act.

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This is my 900th Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. column. I’m in disbelief about that as well. In a few weeks I will finish up my 18th year writing this thing on a (mostly) weekly basis. I hope it is still enriching your life.

I don’t have anything special planned for the 900th. I think just putting out yet another music column, particulary one as average as this one, is a good enough statement of purpose. I’m gonna keep plugging away at this, and I hope you all keep reading it. I can’t thank you enough for continuing on this journey with me.

Next week, no idea, honestly. Freedom! Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

There are a lot of things I should be writing about this week.

Amanda Shires’ new album, for instance, is as lovely as everyone says it is. Lucero’s Among the Ghosts does exactly what it should, and is probably that band’s best work. I have yet to catch up with Meg Myers and Cowboy Junkies and Dirty Projectors. If I wanted to maintain the illusion that Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. is a real music column with any concern at all for what I should be reviewing, I’d pick one or two of those.

But this column is meant as a chronicle of what I am actually listening to, and so I have to be honest. I don’t care as much about anything I’ve listed there as I do about the new Enuff Z’Nuff. If there’s one release this week that made me rush home, rip off the cellophane and listen right away, it’s this one. I have no idea what that says about me, other than the fact that I’ve been a fan of this Chicago-based rock band for nearly 30 years. Feel free to ridicule. It won’t stop me from being excited.

I’ve lauded Enuff Z’Nuff in this space before, many times. In 1989 and 1990, they were exactly what I needed to bridge the gap between my teenage metalhead years and my budding fascination with the Beatles and all things ‘60s pop. I’d never even heard the term “power pop,” but I knew I loved what Enuff Z’Nuff was doing. Their self-titled debut was pretty good, but it was their second album, Strength, that truly made me a fan. Big, screaming pop-metal guitars surrounding beautifully written songs, melodies that went on for days and gorgeous harmonies. It’s still a great record.

And then they just, you know, kept on doing that. For the next 15 years, they seemed unstoppable, issuing one great power pop album after another. For a while they would reach back into their archives and come up with gems like Peach Fuzz that they would gussy up and release in between their more forward-looking records, like the powerhouse Tweaked. I think their best album is 2000’s Ten – it’s more concise than some of their more sprawling efforts, and has a tremendous hit rate when it comes to songwriting.

For all of that time, the Lennon and McCartney of Enuff Z’Nuff remained Donnie Vie and Chip Z’Nuff. They’re dope-smoking rock stars, to be sure, and no one would ever call them role models, but man, could those two guys write a hook. They don’t get along very well these days, and it’s a shame – Donnie quit the band more than once, returning just for studio efforts like 2010’s terrific Dissonance, and he hasn’t been a member of the touring version of Enuff Z’Nuff for more than a decade.

So now here is Diamond Boy, the 15th Enuff Z’Nuff album and the first one without Donnie Vie’s participation at all. Chip sings every song here, and is the lead songwriter, and there’s some question in my mind whether this should count as an Enuff Z’Nuff album at all. But thankfully, the record is good enough that those questions just fade away as I’m listening to it. I miss Vie’s distinctive voice – Z’Nuff doesn’t quite have the power or the character to make up for it – but the songs here are pretty great. If this had to exist, I’m glad it’s as good as it is.

Chip has taken a deep dive into ‘60s psychedelica here, upping the weirdness while keeping the guitar-rock core of the band intact. The title track is fun, but it’s “Where Did You Go” that makes the best early argument for this album’s existence. It has a hook that will sink into you, and the band plays it with swagger, which is all you can ask. As the album goes on, Chip gives us straight-ahead rockers like “Metalheart,” but also more complex ‘60s pop numbers like “Down On Luck.” This is a dark record, with references to cheap cocaine and a song called “Dopesick,” but it’s a catchy one, and its more psych-infused moments give it a flair all its own.

“Love is On the Line” is probably my favorite here, its strange Lennon-esque chord progression building and changing throughout, its chorus big and memorable. Those who write Enuff Z’Nuff off as an ‘80s glam band always seem to miss songs like this one, or like the closer “Imaginary Man,” which borrows a melody line from “For No One.” They’ve been part of the EZN DNA since the start, and it’s their ability and willingness to write songs like these that has kept me in their corner for three decades.

I’m sad that there needed to be an Enuff Z’Nuff album without Donnie Vie, but I’m pleased that the one we have is so solid. Chip and his new band can swagger all they want to. Diamond Boy is much better than I expected it would be. And for those who miss Donnie, he’s taking pre-orders for his new album now, with an eye toward releasing it this year. Three decades in and Enuff Z’Nuff keeps earning my fandom.

* * * * *

In addition to this new one from a band that draws equally from the ‘60s and the ‘80s, I’ve been listening non-stop to an album from 1979.

The obscurity of Daniel Amos continues to frustrate me, decades after I first caught on to them. They’re one of the most important spiritual rock bands ever, the one that set the template of creativity and poetry for others that followed. Inside of a very small circle, Terry Scott Taylor and his band of musical miscreants are legends. They were among the first to bring a sense of artistry to the Jesus-rock industry, and for pretty much their entire career, that industry had no idea what to do with them.

The record I have been binge-listening to is a case in point. In 1978, DA released Shotgun Angel, a weird record that is half Eagles, half prog-rock. This got them signed to Solid Rock Records, owned by fellow pioneer Larry Norman, and in 1979 they delivered their third album, Horrendous Disc, which found them taking the plunge into full-on rock. The first four DA albums chart a musical evolution so sharp that their early fans still complain about it, and that was only exacerbated by Solid Rock’s decision not to release Horrendous Disc for two years.

That means that in 1981, DA’s third album – a jump away from country-gospel and into ‘70s radio-rock – was issued mere weeks before their fourth, Alarma, which dove straight into ‘80s new wave. What fans they had built up to this point were thrown two curve balls at once, and must have wondered what had happened to the band they had known. There’s a fearlessness to this rapid artistic growth, but even the band wanted to ease their fans in a little bit more than their label allowed them to.

Horrendous Disc is often overlooked in DA’s catalog, and a new, astonishingly wonderful reissue aims to correct that. The result of a very successful Kickstarter campaign, the Horrendous Disc box combines the remastered album with four CDs of bonus material, a beautiful book, some signed postcards, a guitar pick and a pin, collected together in a purposefully garish box. I don’t need most of that stuff, but the five CDs of content are all indispensable and help make the case for Horrendous Disc’s importance.

Start with the album itself, which is splendid. “I Love You #19” starts with a classic ‘70s guitar riff, and it has never sounded bigger or better. This song should be on classic rock radio. It’s just a killer tune, and it sets the tone. Most of the rest of Horrendous Disc has a classic ‘70s sound and feel, from the Zevon-esque “Hound of Heaven” to the Jeff Lynne-style extravaganza of “Man in the Moon.” These songs all tackle their spiritual themes with metaphor and poetry – “On the Line” is about prayer, though you’d never know it just from listening once – and the lyrics demand close reads to tease out their meanings. (This is completely different from the Christian music of today, which beats you over the head with its message.)

The title track that closes the album is something else entirely, a five-minute psychodrama about a broken marriage. It’s a constantly shifting masterpiece, one of the earliest signs that Daniel Amos wasn’t going to be like any other band. (I will cop to hearing metal band Deliverance’s version of this first, but you can’t beat the original, and it sounds better here than I have ever heard it.)

As for the bonus material, well, therein lies a tale. Between 1979 and 1981, Daniel Amos didn’t just sit around waiting for their album to come out. They wrote and recorded a bunch of tunes that were never released until now. The second disc of this set contains what is basically a new Daniel Amos album, slotting in between Horrendous and Alarma, and it’s wonderful. The third disc contains four-track demos of the “ten biggies,” the ten songs intended for the next record that never happened. We also get the requisite plethora of demos and alternate takes, and a full concert from 1979, but it’s this unreleased material that is the true treasure.

And there are two interesting things about it, to me. One is that, while Taylor remains the leader of this band, Jerry Chamberlain proves himself a musical force here. His material stands strong and tall with Taylor’s, and it’s great stuff. The other is that these songs don’t provide a bridge to Alarma at all. You might think you’d be able to hear the new wave influences creeping in, but you can’t. The touchstone remains ELO for all of this material, which is fascinating. Where did the angular guitar slashing of the next record come from? It remains a mystery.

What isn’t a mystery is the enduring legacy of Horrendous Disc. While few people have heard it (or even heard of it), within the spiritual pop realm, it’s an absolute classic. I’m so glad to see it finally get the reissue it deserves. In my world, its importance cannot be overstated. You can check it out yourself at www.danielamos.com.

Next week, the new Death Cab for Cutie comes out, so I’m bound to write about something people care about. Or maybe not. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I hate saying “you had to be there.”

In a lot of ways, that phrase is antithetical to what this column is about. I set out to chronicle my musical experiences not so that readers would be jealous and upset over the music I heard and saw, but so that my excitement for that music could serve well those who do not get to hear the volume of music that I do. Saying “you had to be there,” for whatever reason, is like throwing my hands up and admitting that no matter how well I describe something, no matter how evocative the language I use, reading my words is a paltry substitute for hearing the music itself.

Trouble is, that’s true. There’s little I can tell you about Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer, for instance, that you could not glean just by listening to it. And nothing I write here should be seen as a proper stand-in for your own musical experience. That’s all well and good for albums one can buy in a shop or online (or hear in any number of ways), because even if I’m helpful to you in deciding what to listen to, you’re not dependent on me to provide the experience itself. You can listen for yourself.

It gets trickier where live performances are concerned, though, and some of the most transcendent musical moments of my life have come while watching an incredible band play on stage. This past Saturday I experienced another one in a small-ish ballroom in Nashville, surrounded by strangers who were nevertheless brothers and sisters that evening, there to witness something that may never happen again. And nothing I write here is going to capture for you the thrill of being in that room.

In short, you had to be there. But let me tell you about it anyway.

In 1993, while the Seattle grunge invasion was in full swing, I happened upon an album called Shawl by a still-unknown California outfit called The Prayer Chain. If you’ve guessed that I found this record in the same Christian bookstore where I had, three years earlier, picked up the Choir’s Circle Slide, the album that set me along a path of amazing spiritual pop and rock music, you’d be right. At this point I was buying anything and everything that looked cool from that store, and I remain surprised at how much good stuff I had found in such a short time, bands and artists that have stayed with me for a quarter-century.

This Shawl album, for instance. I saw that it had been produced by Steve Hindalong, drummer for the Choir, and that was enough for me. I bought it sound unheard, and I liked it a great deal. It reminded me of Jane’s Addiction in places, but it was weird in its own way. The first sound on the album is a full-throated “HI-YAH-HI-YAH-HI-YAH,” repeated four times like a test to see if you want to continue. “Fifty-Eight,” an emotional tale of parental neglect, was in 5/8 time. (Hence the title.) “The Hollow” was a Peter Gabriel-esque interlude with lots of hand percussion. “Never Enough” used that percussion for texture on an epic which ended with a ghostly choral round.

Shawl is a great rock record, one of those never-heard classics that you stumble across and wonder why no one else knows about it. Two years later, though, the Prayer Chain released what is still one of my 20 favorite albums of all time. Mercury remains unlike anything else I’ve ever heard. The songs got a lot more elliptical, the arrangements more bizarre, and for most of the record the Prayer Chain leaves their identity as a rock band behind entirely.

Andy Prickett’s guitar plays characters here, spinning gossamer magic one moment and filling the room with crazy noise the next, while Eric Campuzano’s bass holds down the fort, because the drums and percussion are off on their own trip. Some of it is inhumanly beautiful (“Mercury,” “Bendy Line”) while some of it is unsettling in the best ways (“Grylliade,” “Shiver”). And the closer, “Sun Stoned,” still astounds me. It’s nearly nine minutes long (one of two songs here to stretch to that length), built around a single bass figure, and though it begins almost inaudibly, it ends as one of the most exuberant alien celebrations I have ever heard.

No one’s ever made an album quite like Mercury, and so of course the band broke up shortly after. Their half-live album Antarctica has remained the closest I thought I would ever get to seeing The Prayer Chain live for more than 20 years.

You all know what’s coming, right? A couple successful Kickstarters to get Mercury and then Shawl pressed onto high-quality vinyl, and then the bombshell: The Prayer Chain would reunite for two shows, one in Los Angeles and one in Nashville, to celebrate Shawl’s 25th anniversary. It’s a dream, it’s a miracle, and there was no way on God’s green earth I was going to miss it. Add a full-on rock show by the Choir and an opening set from spiritual pop-punkers Dakota Motor Co. (who also had not played together for two decades), and what was already a must-see turned into the most important musical journey of my year.

My long-suffering girlfriend agreed to accompany me and we made a six-day Nashville vacation out of it. We visited Kix Brooks’ vineyard and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage. It was a great time, and I’m glad we did it, and I’m doubly glad she got to see the Prayer Chain play, since she enjoyed it. (I was joking with her that she was there for something monumental, but she couldn’t really brag about it because anyone who cared about it was in that room.)

I’m not going to be able to tell you what it was like to see this show, or to be in a room with so many people who loved this band the way I do. That alone would have made the trip worth it for me – I connected with several people I had only met online, including Robert Berman, with whom I sang old Choir songs in Centennial Park, and Matthew Coppola, who graciously gave us two of his early access tickets. The show was a who’s-who of spiritual pop music – among the luminaries there were Kevin Max, Steve Taylor and Phil Madiera. If you don’t know who any of them are, their presence might not mean much to you, but to the folks in that room, they were royalty.

Dakota Motor Co. had not played together in 20+ years either, but you would never have known it. Their brand of ‘90s punk-pop is still fun, and they played with a lot of energy. I understand they’re recording new material, and I’ll be first in line to buy it. The Choir is The Choir – they’re amazing live, and for this show they were accompanied by Stephen Mason of Jars of Clay on guitar and Wayne Everett from the Prayer Chain on percussion. They ran through some new songs from Bloodshot and then played the classics, including “Robin Had a Dream” in celebration of Robin Spurs joining them on bass for this show. “Circle Slide” was, as always, a highlight – swirly and massive and chaotic and loud, with sax player Dan Michaels jumping off stage and roaming through the crowd for the breakdown section. If you haven’t seen the Choir live, you should remedy that. Thirty-five years into their career and they’re still fantastic.

And then the seas parted and we made it up to the front row for the main event. I expected the Prayer Chain to be good. I did not expect them to be magical. It’s sometimes easy to compare bands, but the Prayer Chain to me doesn’t sound like anyone. For this show they had three drummers, including the indomitable Steve Hindalong from the Choir, and their astonishing guitarist Andrew Prickett unveiled his full gamut of sounds. The band played all of Shawl in order, so we got more of the Jane’s Addiction style from them, but songs like “Fifty Eight” were life-changing, and the transition from “The Hollow” into “Never Enough” was one of my favorite concert-going moments ever. The crowd sang every line of every song, and singer Tim Taber stood on the railing in front of us a couple times, towering over us. (Tim had just turned 50, and I hope I look half that good when I’m 50. I mean, I don’t look half that good now, so the odds are not in my favor, but you know.)

As I mentioned above, I like Shawl, but I love Mercury, and my favorite moments of the show revolved around finally getting to hear the Mercury material live. They opened with a shortened version of “Sun Stoned,” and man, that was something to see. We also got the title track (my favorite Prayer Chain song) and “Sky High,” the epic. I could not have anticipated how physically draining (in a good way) it would be to hear these songs performed. I shouted along with every word, I swayed to the glorious guitar textures, I moved to the tribal percussion. Audience and band were as one, and there was no greater evidence of that than when bassist Eric Campuzano kept stopping “Chalk” to make sure he was in tune with Prickett (and that he remembered how to play it). The crowd never turned on him, but rather lifted him up. “Aside from my children being born, this is the best night of my life,” he said.

All that plus my girlfriend got a free copy of Shawl on vinyl, handed out by Taber himself. After the final encore, we all stood around stunned at what we had just seen. And of course the band hung out afterward, taking pictures and just talking with whoever wanted to stick around. They knew, like we knew, that this would never happen again. Those of us privileged enough to see it witnessed something that burned brightly, but briefly, like the Prayer Chain themselves.

I hate to say it, but you kind of had to be there.

If you missed the Prayer Chain during the ‘90s, well, you’re not alone. They do have a Bandcamp page. Shawl isn’t there, for some reason – I expect they’re waiting until all the Kickstarter vinyl ships before listing it – but Mercury is, as is Humb, the album as originally handed in to their record company. It really is unlike anything else you’ve ever heard. Twenty-three years later and I’m still singing its praises.

Next week, I have no idea. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.