This is the last straight-up review column of 2018.

I’m not sure where this year went either. It seems to have disappeared on me. In some ways, that’s good, since it’s been a difficult one for a lot of people I know. I have high hopes for 2019, though, and I’m very much looking forward to this year ticking over.

And if you’re marking that time in these columns, like I am, we’re into the special programming part of the year. Next week is my annual roundup of Christmas music, and then we’re into honorable mentions and the top 10 list and Fifty Second Week, and we’re done. I realize this leaves some important records, like Jeff Tweedy’s Warm, out in the cold, so to speak, and I plan to catch up with some of the late-year releases early in 2019.

But this is it for this year’s reviews of non-holiday albums. So I’m very glad that the first one I have on tap this week snuck in under the wire, because it’s truly great. It’s also another testament to the power of crowdfunding, as it likely would not exist without the contributions of a few hundred of us on PledgeMusic. Not every crowdfunded album turns out this well, but this is one of those instances in which the artistic freedom bought by eliminating financial concerns up front paid dividends to spare.

I’m talking about Donnie Vie, the former lead singer of Enuff Znuff, and I hope that you’re still listening, because just mentioning the fact that I have been an EZN fan for nearly 30 years makes some people question my taste. Even three decades in, people seem to lump Enuff Znuff in with the hair metal of the ‘80s, when they were never quite that. Even at their spandex-clad height, they were much more of a Beatlesque power-pop outfit, and that sensibility has only grown over the years.

Take a listen to an album like Ten, in which the Lennon/McCartney sense of craft comes to the fore, or even Paraphernalia, a louder record that never forgets the melodies. These guys have always sounded like Cheap Trick might have if they’d leaned into their Hard Day’s Night influences more heavily. Since the beginning, Donnie Vie and Chip Z’Nuff have been the songwriting team at the band’s heart, and together they’ve written some of my favorite power pop of the past few decades.

This year, the division between Donnie and the band was finally solidified. Vie has been an auxiliary member for a while, splitting after 2004’s ? and returning only to write and sing on 2009’s Dissonance. He hasn’t been a member of the live band for more than a decade now, and has been making terrific music on his own since 2003. But this year, Chip fully took control of Enuff Znuff as a recording act, issuing Diamond Boy, the first album to feature him as chief songwriter and vocalist.

And it was pretty good. I liked it very much. But I missed Donnie’s voice and his melodies something fierce, and I haven’t really revisited it as much as I normally would a new EZN album. If you want to hear with crystal clarity what I felt was missing on Diamond Boy, it’s here in full force on Donnie’s new album, Beautiful Things. It’s his sixth studio album, and his best by some distance, a glorious pop record full of gorgeous harmonies and songs that demonstrate the best of what he has to offer.

Seriously, I am so happy with this record. The sound is lush and full, in a way that Donnie’s more ramshackle solo work hasn’t been. This is, finally, the production that his songs have long deserved, and he’s stepped up with his best set of tunes… well, ever. I say that as a longtime fan of his work, as someone who absolutely adores not only the best of EZN, but Donnie’s own solo records. These ten songs are the best ten songs he’s ever given us.

I’m going to say this as plainly as I can: Beautiful Things is a classic power pop record, worthy of standing tall with the giants of the genre. Vie clearly worked for ages on these songs, and they all sport killer melodies and lovely twists and turns. Each one bears the mark of a master craftsman showing what he can do. Even a guitar ditty like “Plain Jane” takes a trip to the stratosphere in its chorus, refusing to just be a surface-level rocker. And when you get to a masterpiece like “I Could Save the World,” with its delightful harmonies and full-on Beatles homages, I dare you not to smile.

“I Could Save the World” was the first single from this album, and happily, it isn’t even the standout. Every song here rises to the challenge this song lays down. The title track is a bursting firework of positivity with an absolutely killer melody. “Fly” is one of the most beautiful piano ballads Donnie Vie has written, and he sings it with a tender touch. “Tender Lights” is a George Harrison-esque strummer, while “Whatever” is a double-time skip of a thing that brings a good mood with it wherever it goes. Closer “Back From the Blue” is another lovely slow tune, the kind of song that many people couldn’t imagine coming from Enuff Znuff (but which, in truth, Donnie wrote for them all the time.)

I can’t help but think that Beautiful Things is as good and as rich as it is because Donnie was given full freedom without having to worry about selling the end product. As of this writing, it isn’t even available for sale – the download has gone out to backers, those who believed and supported it, with a full release coming soon. Taking care of all those financial headaches up front clearly freed Donnie to do his best work as a writer and a record maker, and I’m so pleased with the results. Beautiful Things is a strong argument for this method of making music, and a deep reward for our faith.

It’s also just a really good little record. I wish I could point you to someplace where you could hear it and buy it, and I’ll be sure to update this when the full release happens. (Here’s “I Could Save the World” in the meantime.) If you’ve been reading my reviews of Donnie Vie and Enuff Znuff for years and never been convinced to give them a try, Beautiful Things is a great place to start. It ably demonstrates what I have been saying for 20+ years – Donnie Vie is a stunningly good songwriter and singer. If you like melodic rock of any stripe, you owe it to yourself to hear this.

* * * * *

Just enough time and space to briefly talk about a few recent records that deserved full reviews, but just didn’t get them for some reason. They’re all significant, though, and I really should at least mention them.

First up is Smashing Pumpkins, or rather three-fourths of them, reuniting for a short record with a really long title: Shiny and Oh So Bright Vol. 1/LP: No Past, No Future, No Sun. From that nearly Fiona Apple-length moniker, you might expect something excessive, something that stretches to 70-plus minutes and emphasizes Billy Corgan’s prog-rock tendencies and self-aggrandizement. I certainly didn’t expect something that only runs 31:48 and contains some of Corgan’s laziest, least interesting songwriting ever.

I can hear Corgan straining (and not just vocally) to match the orchestrated heights of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness on this thing, and the fact that it falls so far short for all that is just painful. Opener “Knights of Malta” sets the tone – four chords repeated slowly, some strings, a lame chorus. “Silvery Sometimes (Ghosts)” is better, in that it apes “1979” and actually goes somewhere, but it isn’t great. None of these songs are great. Even when the band kicks up the amperage on “Marchin’ On” and closer “Seek and You Shall Destroy,” it feels like it hasn’t locked in. And then it’s over.

If this had been released as a Corgan solo album, no one would bat an eye. But it’s not. It’s the Smashing Pumpkins reunion album, with Jimmy Chamberlain on drums and James Iha on guitar, and the fact that it plummets down to earth like this is almost tragic. It’s a classic case of “such terrible food, and in such small portions,” and since I don’t like what’s here very much, I can’t really complain about how short this is. Twice as much of this wouldn’t have made me happier. I really did expect better.

I think I expected more from Tom Odell’s whole career than he’s been willing to give us so far. I absolutely loved “Can’t Pretend,” one of his first singles, and enjoyed his first album, Long Way Down. Since then, Odell has decided that he’d very much like to be Elton John, which is fine, but not quite what I wanted from him. His third album, Jubilee Road, is his most Elton, and I like it quite a bit. But I have to separate my enjoyment of it from my expectations of Odell in general.

But seriously, if you like Elton John, you will love Tom Odell, especially this new record. It’s anchored by one of Odell’s best songs, “If You Wanna Love Somebody,” with its instantly memorable hook and gospel choir. There are others just about as good as this one, like “Half as Good As You” and “Go Tell Her Now,” and Odell has centered this organic-sounding album on his striking voice and piano playing, which is a good move.

Tunes like the title track and “Son of an Only Child” wear their Reginald Dwight on their sleeve, though. Jubilee Road reminds me of Joshua Kadison’s work from the ‘90s, and if you liked that kind of Elton worship, Odell is even better at it. He’s still only 28, and is already an accomplished songwriter – honestly, “If You Wanna Love Somebody” is very nearly as perfect as pop music gets – so I hope he finds a more original groove someday. I’ll definitely be listening.

Finally, there’s Twenty One Pilots, a band I’m not supposed to like. Well, the hell with that, because their new record, Trench, is really good. The two Pilots, Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun, are joined here by Paul Meany, the mastermind behind Mutemath, and Trench sounds like an equal mix of their styles. It’s a far fuller and richer experience than Blurryface, as well as being a more mature effort – there aren’t any trifles here, just 14 well-thought-out songs.

As a longtime Mutemath fan, I hear Paul Meany’s influence everywhere here, from the beats to the keyboard sounds to the bigger, fuller melodies. But I also hear Josh and Tyler keeping their identities intact – this isn’t a Mutemath record. The rap and dubstep moments are here in full force, and a tune like “Nico and the Niners” is full-on Twenty One Pilots. Meany’s production is fantastic, melding his own sound with the band’s on songs like “Bandito,” with their full participation. It’s a different Twenty One Pilots, but it still sounds like them, if that makes sense.

Trench has an ace in the hole, though, that all by itself sets this album above its predecessor. That ace is “My Blood,” one of the finest songs of this year. A paean to companionship and family, “My Blood” is exactly what I would want from a Twenty One Pilots produced by Meany. When it slides into that delightful falsetto chorus, it’s just magical. I don’t care if I’m not supposed to like this. I do. I very much do.

OK, next week, Christmas music. If you know me, you know I’m about to switch over to the holiday tunes full time, and there have been some winners this year. After that, we’re in the endgame for 2018. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I recently saw Bohemian Rhapsody. The short version of my review: it’s a terrible movie, and I had a great time watching it.

I should mention that I am a lifelong Freddie Mercury fanboy. Queen was one of the first bands I truly loved – I was a dramatic kid, and their music matched my inner life pretty closely. Freddie was probably the first musician whose work I wanted to emulate. I wanted to play piano like him (I still can’t), write songs like him (no way), sing like him (ha!), and take in the full range of musical influences that he did. I’m really only partway there on that last one, because Freddie loved all kinds of music, and could write and sing in any style.

I want to come back to that, but let’s chat briefly about the movie. It plays to me like one of those VH1-produced made-for-TV films about the likes of Def Leppard and MC Hammer. Rami Malek is very good as Freddie, and the three actors they got to play his bandmates are spot on. But there are no new insights here, and in fact the script plays havoc with the timeline, setting important events later than they actually occurred and cramming a million seismic moments into a single day at the film’s end.

That day, of course, is July 13, 1985, the date of Queen’s (ahem) killer performance at Live Aid. The film faithfully recreates almost all of the band’s 20-minute set, and it’s a marvel to watch. When the film is about Queen’s music, it’s delightful. (It also stops short of Freddie’s death from AIDS-related complications. Mercury was the first celebrity whose death genuinely affected me, and I can still remember hearing about his passing on my alarm clock radio in November of 1991.)

But yeah, for a time Queen was my favorite band, and Freddie my favorite musician, and there were a few reasons for this. One of the most important ones, though, was the band’s artistic restlessness. Queen completely transformed themselves, not only album to album but often song to song. The best Queen albums play like mix tapes, like songs that have no business being strung together, but work well anyway. I’ve always responded to a desire to avoid pigeonholing, to try anything.

This doesn’t seem to be a quality that music fans prize much, and that surprises me. I often find myself in the strange position of defending a band like Coldplay or Linkin Park, and the main thing I enjoy about those bands is their complete willingness to change everything they do. Listen to A Thousand Suns, The Hunting Party and One More Light back to back and it barely sounds like the same band, let alone the band that made Hybrid Theory. My favorite bands, like Marillion, make these sonic shifts all the time, hardly ever sounding like people expect them to.

So when I defend Mumford and Sons, it’s for the same quality. I was an early adopter of the Mumford sound, latching onto it before it became ubiquitous, and I still enjoy their debut, Sigh No More. The single bass drum thump, the strummy guitar, the banjos, the dramatic folk songwriting, it was all pretty new in 2009. But then bands like the Lumineers turned it into a cliché, and then a joke. By the time the carbon copy Babel came out in 2012, the Mumford sound had run its course.

So they did what any good, restless band would do: they changed everything. And then they kept on changing. The last three Mumford records are as different from the first one as they are from each other, embracing full-on rock, melding their sound with South African textures (played by South African musicians), and now, on their fourth full-length Delta, taking in electronics and orchestral sounds to create a meditative record of whispered beauty.

If what you liked about Mumford was their fire, this won’t be for you. But if you can appreciate a band once again chucking out everything that people might expect from them and landing on something that is at once unfamiliar and fits like a glove, then I’m with you. I haven’t been able to stop listening to Delta since I bought it. Initially I was put off by just how quiet the whole thing is. Only a few songs, like the single “Guiding Light” and the sprightly “Rose of Sharon,” rise above a slow hum. But I soon picked up on the fascinating textures the band has woven into this record, and realized that with everything kept so quiet, the moments when this bursts to life are magnified. They sound epic in contrast.

The Mumford boys have called this record experimental, and also said it finds them returning to their traditional folksy instruments. The truth is somewhere in the middle – the banjos and mandolins are back, but they’re processed and removed from their usual contexts. The record is full of keyboards and subtle drums (both acoustic and electronic), and while the songs feel Mumford-ish at times, the instrumentation never does. The band takes a lot of risks here, not the least of which is producing an album that stays at a low simmer throughout, and they mostly all pay off.

What doesn’t work? The vaguely Dave Matthews-ish “Woman” isn’t exactly a winner, although I like its chorus. I like the coda of “Picture You” more than the song itself, which ambles forward on a vaguely Caribbean beat with a strong synth pulse. And, well, that’s kind of it. I like everything else, to one degree or another, and I really like Delta as a whole. The ones I like best are the quieter ones – “The Wild” starts off almost inaudibly, but builds to a string-laden climax, while “October Skies” is just lovely, right to its a cappella ending. And “If I Say” conveys desperation without Marcus Mumford raising his voice – he lets the orchestra carry it.

Elsewhere the band makes good use of the lessons they learned making Johannesburg in 2016. “Beloved” sounds like an outtake from that project, with an urgent chorus over hand percussion and an insistent beat. “Rose of Sharon” is a highlight, raising the tempo slightly and adding bouncing clean guitar. The title track, which closes the record, is simple and quiet for half its running time, but unfolds into more of that delightful clean guitar, this time in harmony, leading to an anthemic conclusion.

I have no idea who Mumford and Sons made Delta for, but it sure sounds like they made it for themselves. It is, like all of their records, a vaguely spiritual affair, with plenty of references to guiding lights and deeper truths. That much hasn’t changed, but everything around it has, and it’s changed in a way that I can’t imagine resonating with a wider pop-weaned audience. This is an artistic endeavor from note one, Mumford and company shedding their skin once again to great effect. A few years ago I was sure that Mumford and Sons would just fade away, a here-and-gone fad. But they’ve proven me wrong, more than once now, and I’m grateful. Deltais the sound of a band who wants to be here for the long haul, and I hope they are.

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I have two more records brought to you by the letter M to talk about here, and both were pleasant surprises. Not that I expected either one to be bad, but I didn’t expect either one to exist, and I’m glad they both do.

Let’s start with Andrew McMahon, whose solo project is called Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness. He’s a piano player and songwriter with a winning sense of earnest sentimentality, and I’ve been a fan for a long time. He’s only 36, but he’s fronted two bands (Something Corporate and Jack’s Mannequin), and Upside Down Flowers is his third solo album. I wasn’t expecting it this year, hot on the heels of his second, Zombies on Broadway, and I also wasn’t expecting it to be the opposite of that album. Where Zombies was huge and pop-oriented, Flowers is thoughtful and organic. It’s mainly slow piano ballads, and McMahon excels at those.

I do wish I liked the opener, “Teenage Rockstars,” more than I do. It’s a very simple song, but it’s clearly an important one for McMahon – it details his time in Something Corporate, a band he started at age 16. It’s just too simple for me, thudding through an obvious chord progression and melody, which is a shame considering its personal lyric. The rest of the record is much more successful, especially “Ohio,” “Paper Rain” and “House in the Trees,” which are all classic McMahon songs.

Even the lesser ones, “Teenage Rockstars” aside, are written very well here. “Monday Flowers” is a superb little story-song, one you might expect from Ben Folds or Elton John in his prime. I’m a fan of the sparse waltz “This Wild Life,” and the anthemic “Goodnight Rock and Roll,” but I have a special place in my heart for “Careless,” which skates along on a glitchy little beat to a U2-ish chorus about pushing away those who love you most. Closer “Everything Must Go” is touching, a song about moving on, yet keeping what matters most.

Considering how quickly he must have put it together, Upside Down Flowers is a really nice little record. It’s not revelatory like the first Wilderness album, but it shines a spotlight on McMahon’s heartfelt songwriting, stripping the sound back and letting the songs breathe. There’s very little Andrew McMahon could do to make me dislike him, and this record certainly didn’t manage that.

As surprised as I was to see a new McMahon album so soon, it’s nothing compared to how gobsmacked I was to hear that Midnight Oil had reunited last year for a world tour. It’s no exaggeration to say this Australian outfit is one of the most important bands to ever stride the earth, and I envy everyone who took the opportunity to see them play for what might be the final time. I would have loved to, and I can’t for the life of me remember now why I didn’t.

But at least I have Armistice Day: Live at the Domain, Sydney as a consolation prize. Recorded on Nov. 11 of last year in one of the hometown clubs where the band began (in 1972!), Armistice Day is simply wonderful. I don’t want to spend a lot of time dissecting highlights, because there really aren’t any low lights. This is Midnight Oil live on stage, ripping through a set of songs that runs the gamut of their catalog. Peter Garrett, for years out of commission while he served as a member of the Australian parliament, is on fire here, spitting and snarling some of the most politically charged material they’ve written. Guitarist Jim Moginie and drummer Rob Hirst sound like they’ve never been away.

Midnight Oil is a band we need right now, and I hope they’re working on new material. On the evidence of Armistice Day (named after one of their most urgent songs, which opens this show), they’re in fine form, reinvigorated and ready to pounce. I’m so looking forward to what they do next.

Speaking of next, we have one more straight-up review column this year, and I’ll probably talk about the great new Donnie Vie record, among others. Then we’re into December, when I’ll be posting about Christmas music, honorable mentions and the 2018 Top 10 List. The year’s almost over. I can hardly believe it.

Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m a writer. I’ve been writing all my life, and doing it professionally since 1996. I’ve never really wanted to be anything else. Like all writers, I was a reader first, and I credit a few authors with teaching me about the joy of language and inspiring me to make it my trade. One of them is the late, great Douglas Adams, whose Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a master class in bending words to one’s will. Another is Stephen King, whose books I read at far too young an age, but whose imagination thrilled me.

Before both of them, though, there was Stan Lee.

Lee was the first author whose name I committed to memory. Spider-Man was the first character I fell in love with. In collaboration with Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, Stan Lee created an entire universe that I loved to visit. My grandfather would take me on Sunday afternoons to the newsstand and buy me reprints of old ‘60s comics by Lee, Kirby and Ditko. I had no idea they were reprints – to me, they were new stories, and they burst off the page in full, glorious color.

I later learned that Stan Lee’s primary innovation in comics just happened to be the thing I loved most about his work as a boy – the heroes were flawed and fallible and relatable. I don’t think it’s any surprise to anyone who knows me that I saw myself in Peter Parker, the awkward and shy kid who lived a secret life as Spider-Man. I dreamed up secret lives for myself all the time as a kid. It was Stan Lee who taught me (through Spider-Man) that with great power comes great responsibility, a lesson that still burns at the core of who I am. From those to whom much is given, much is expected. Be grateful and treat each other well, and use your gifts to make the world a better place.

I know whole generations of kids only know Stan Lee as the old guy who crops up in every Marvel movie. I also know that among those who understand his legacy, he’s controversial, infamously unwilling to give his collaborators the credit they deserve. Stan Lee was a huckster and a showman, but he was also a creative force, and for a young kid growing up on comic books, he was my gateway to other worlds. His impact on my life and the lives of so many others is incalculable.

Stan Lee died yesterday at age 95. I join the chorus of millions paying tribute to him today, by saying simply this: Thank you, Stan, and excelsior.

* * * * *

I remember when Muse was just another guitar-rock band from England.

I was working at a music magazine when their first album, 1999’s Showbiz, came out. We received a promo copy of it, which I still have. It struck me as decent, but it never distinguished itself from the mold that Radiohead had crafted (and then shattered with OK Computer). I didn’t expect much from Muse, but I have to admit they’ve surprised me at every turn since then.

If I could have peeked 20 years into the future, I probably would have been surprised to find that Muse had not only soldiered on, but evolved into one of the most ridiculous, awesome rock bands on the planet. Their main strength and weakness remains their seemingly genetic inability to half-ass anything. They not only embrace every idea they have, good and bad, they follow those ideas to their most absurd conclusions, committing and then doubling down. When those impulses come together, we get something fantastic, like The Resistance. When they chase down folly, we get something insane, like The 2nd Law. And you never know which way they’ll go each time out.

Muse’s eighth album is called Simulation Theory. If you’ve seen the cover, drawn by the artist who designed the marketing imagery for Stranger Things, you probably know two things about the record before diving in. First, this is the album on which Muse goes full Tron, indulging all of their ‘80s synthwave fantasies. And second, in true Muse fashion, they fully committed to this transformation. When Muse says they’re going ‘80s, they mean it.

Simulation Theory is drowning in synthesizers. At times you could be forgiven for thinking you were listening to the Blade Runner soundtrack. Since they’re a trio with progressive rock tendencies, it’s always tempting to relate Muse to Rush, and the sound here falls somewhere between “Subdivisions” and “Distant Early Warning,” though not exactly like either of those. It’s big – enormous, even – with Matthew Bellamy’s elastic voice gliding atop monolithic walls of guitar and keyboard sounds out of a Thompson Twins record. Yet somehow it still sounds like Muse. (It was produced by Rich Costey, who helmed two of their classics, Absolution and Black Holes and Revelations.)

And it contains its fair share of great ideas and terrible ones, all taken deathly seriously with complete buy-in. I love “Pressure,” which sounds like classic Muse with a pulsing synth base. It has a stomping guitar part, a catchy chorus with some delightful falsetto, and an attitude that won’t quit. Right next to it is “Propaganda,” testing my patience with its “prop-op-op-op-op-pa-gan-gan-da” refrain, which sounds like it’s being delivered by a video game character. Its beat is slinky, Bellamy sounds great on it, but I just can’t do it. Every time the refrain comes around, I’m taken right out, the band’s spell broken.

But that’s life as a Muse fan, and thankfully Simulation Theory has more good ideas than bad ones. I’m not even sure what to make of “Break it To Me,” which combines a bluesy guitar part with a Middle Eastern-sounding vocal melody over a trip-hop beat, Bellamy whispering the title every few seconds. But I love “Something Human,” a slick ballad I could imagine hearing on the radio in 1985. “Get Up and Fight” is a standard Muse inspirational lyric set to surprisingly danceable synth burbles before the guitars bring it into the ‘90s, while the vaguely Gospel “Dig Down” makes the most of its throbbing bass, Bellamy channeling his inner Bono.

Given some of the excesses of Muse albums past, like the full symphonic excursions on The Resistance and Drones, this album is one of the band’s most reserved. Granted, that’s a relative term when it comes to this group, but Simulation Theory’s 11 short songs showcase their new sound without overblowing it. This is a strong piece of work, another reinvention in a career full of them. If you’d handed me this album in 1999 and told me it was by the same band who made Showbiz, I wouldn’t have believed it. They’ve gone some remarkable places just by being unafraid, and that confidence, for good and ill, is on full display on this record. When it’s good, though, it’s very good.

* * * * *

Speaking of bands that ‘90s me would have been surprised to know are still going strong, there’s Hanson.

I’m on record as a Hanson fan. I have been for a long time, probably since their second major label album, 2000’s This Time Around. They’re a swell pop band, and each of the brothers can sing, play and write indelible pop and rock tunes. They’re not earth-shakingly great, and I expect they’ll never make an album that I’d call a profound work of art. But they’re fun, and their songs are delightful.

If you want a good summary of those songs over the past 20+ years, you won’t do better than picking up String Theory, their new double album. Working with arranger David Campbell, the brothers Hanson spent the last couple years putting together a cohesive show that (ahem) strings older songs together with new ones, and dresses them up with an orchestra. The result is something like a cast recording of a Broadway revue, only with the original singers front and center. The 23 songs that make up String Theory tell a loose tale about young kids who follow their dreams, even through hard times, and come out the other side as happy adults. Which ought to remind you of three brothers from Tulsa.

I think I’m angrier than the band ever was that “MMMBop” remains their only hit, and the fact that the brothers fully embrace this song, playing it live and including it here, should make me feel better about it. “MMMBop” appears early on String Theory, in a nice mix of its early ballad form and the pop single everyone knows, and it represents youthful exuberance (along with similar early hit “Where’s the Love”). They sing it like an old friend, slotting it into their career at just the right spot, and once it’s out of the way, they dig deep into their catalog, giving us gems like “Tragic Symphony” and “Siren Call” and “Me, Myself and I.”

And what about the string arrangements? Well, they’re awesome. They’re big and bold, of course, full Broadway settings with almost no subtlety. But that’s fine, since Hanson songs are rarely subtle. The orchestrations fully reinvent an early-career trifle like “Yearbook,” and invigorate a relatively new piece of awesome like “Siren Call.” (Seriously, this is one of the best songs the Hansons have ever written.) The new tunes, like the two-part “Reaching for the Sky” and “Battle Cry,” hold everything together nicely. The second disc delves into latter-day numbers like the new single “I Was Born,” and everything wraps up with the lovely “Tonight,” from their most recent album Anthem.

I love String Theory. It’s at once a well-curated flight through the catalog of a band that I think deserves a lot more respect than they get, and a nice reinvention of that catalog. Hanson is touring this album now, playing it straight through with an orchestra, and it’s a show I’d love to see. Over the past 20 years I’ve been a longtime fan of a lot of bands who have rewarded that loyalty with consistently excellent work, and Hanson numbers among them. They knew who they were before the world did, and they never backed down, believing in their own talent. I’m so glad that String Theory is their story.

Next week, Andrew McMahon and Mumford and Sons. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Every once in a while, I like to remind you all that I used to be a teenage metalhead.

I know it’s hard to imagine now, but once I had the whole package: long hair, denim jacket, attitude, everything. I was your typical depressed and angry teen, and metal was an outlet. It’s not an unfamiliar song, I grant you, but I sang it with gusto. And for a while there, I would rarely listen to anything else. I’m fond of saying that at one point in my life, I would have fought anyone who suggested that Megadeth’s Rust in Peace was not the best album ever made.

I’ve cut my hair, and my outfits now largely consist of button-down shirts and sweaters, but I’ve carried my love of metal with me for the rest of my life. If I’m looking for something to engage both the technical, analytical parts of my brain and my need to prance around a room screaming at the top of my lungs, I just can’t do any better. Each year I buy a dozen or more new metal records, and as the art form has branched out and evolved, so have my tastes.

I can trace this all back to a single album, a 67-minute gateway drug that has influenced my life more than most other music combined. That album is Metallica’s …And Justice for All, the first metal album I truly fell for. I remember borrowing it from Jack Sabetta in eighth grade, and listening to it over and over again for days before buying my own cassette copy. I’d never heard anything like it. These songs were massive things, full of twisty corridors and lengthy, intricate passages, and the lyrics were more socially relevant than anything else I had heard at the tender age of 14.

And of course, having no experience at all with metal and how it is supposed to sound, I spent way too long thinking that the mix on …And Justice for All was just how metal was. Spoiler: it isn’t. In fact, there is no other album ever made that sounds like this one does. That boxed-in, claustrophobic, bass-deficient mix is unique, the result of Lars Ulrich’s tin ear and insistent demands. Justice was the first album to feature Jason Newsted on bass, and Lars mixed him right out. He made his own drums sound like they were recorded from a different room. He built these strange sonic walls to deaden everything, and for the entirety of this album’s running time, you’re trapped in those walls too.

It’s been 30 years since Justice came out, and still nothing else feels quite like it. The band has just released an anniversary edition, and if you think they took the opportunity to correct what to most other people would register as a sonic mistake, you’d be wrong. Justice still sounds unimaginably terrible, but in this newly remastered version, you can hear with unprecedented clarity just how unimaginably terrible it is. In the intervening years I have come to think of the mix as a feature and not a bug – it conveys the bleak despair of every one of these songs extremely well. It’s interesting to have proof that the band agrees.

But honestly, whenever I listen to Justice, I’m 14 years old again. To paraphrase Nick Hornby, I’m not sure if I was a depressed teenager because I listened to music like this, or if I listened to music like this because I was a depressed teenager. Either way, Justice is one of the bleakest albums I own. It starts with a song about how our environment is being irrevocably destroyed (in 1988!), then moves through pieces about sorrow and insanity and the lack of any real relief for suffering people. Its big hit, “One,” is about a kid who gets his arms and legs blown off in the war, and is forced to live a mute, blind, deaf existence in a limbless shell. Cheery stuff.

And I love it. I love this record, even when it’s putting me through the interminable “To Live is to Die.”Justice is the very definition of uncompromising, with songs that stretch to eight, nine and ten minutes with no variety of sound. Even now, it remains fascinating, the last gasp of prog-metal Metallica before they decided to become rock stars. Three decades later and I still can’t get enough of it. It ignited within me a love and hunger for this kind of music, one which continues to this day.

Case in point: I’m deeply digging the new Tourniquet album, Gazing at Medusa. Without Justice, I might never have heard records like Vengeance’s Human Sacrifice and Deliverance’s self-titled debut, both of which led me to their label-mate Tourniquet’s first two albums. Had I never heard Stop the Bleeding and Psychosurgery, I would have missed out on one of the most fascinating rides in my metal-loving life.

Tourniquet has been around since 1989, led by mastermind Ted Kirkpatrick. Ted is a drummer, and one of the best in the business, but he’s also a devotee of classical music, and he brings that sensibility to everything his band does. Gazing at Medusa is the tenth Tourniquet album, and the band has been through at least as many changes. They started out playing speed-thrash with Beethoven licks thrown in, and their first three albums are largely considered their best. The arrival of singer Luke Easter in 1994 heralded an era of slower, more groove-driven material, which is reductive at best – Tourniquet has never been an easy band to box in.

Easter left the band after 2012’s terrific Antiseptic Bloodbath, and with 2014’s Onward to Freedom being more of a various artists collection, Medusa is the debut of the new Tourniquet. Their new singer is Tim “Ripper” Owens, famous for taking Rob Halford’s place in Judas Priest for a few years. (If you’ve seen that movie Rock Star with Mark Wahlberg, that’s about Owens.) Whatever else you can say about him, he’s a hell of a singer, and he attacks this material the way he attacks everything.

Kirkpatrick and longtime guitarist Aaron Guerra handle the music, with early Megadeth star Chris Poland on lead guitar solos. The result is classic Tourniquet, big and thrashy and complicated, with layered guitars and tricky passages galore. “Sinister Scherzo” is everything there is to love about modern Tourniquet, including a lengthy Poland solo. “Memento Mori” does kill the momentum a little bit – it’s reminiscent of “Officium Defunctorum,” from Psychosurgery – but they kick it back into gear with the great “All Good Things Died Here,” and never slow it down again.

The lyrics are more straightforward than Tourniquet sometimes is – they tend to couch their spiritual themes in medical metaphors, but in this case they just say what’s on their minds. “The Peaceful Beauty of Brutal Justice,” for instance, begins with a family sitting in court alongside the man who killed their daughter, and Owens just flat-out asks the question: “Where is justice in this world?” The song (which is terrific) is about how the wicked will be sent into damnation, and it makes room for, of all things, a flute melody in the middle.

For eight of these nine songs, Tourniquet sounds like a cohesive unit, (ahem) ripping through a set of songs that lives up to their legacy. The ninth is the title track, and this one features a different set of musicians for some reason, including Journey drummer Deen Castronovo on vocals, and it makes for a slightly awkward conclusion. But it’s a really good song, crashing in on half a dozen killer riffs one after the other, Kirkpatrick just tearing it up. Castronovo’s voice is more Dream Theater than Ripper’s, but it works on this song, and there’s enough energy and complexity that it still feels like Tourniquet.

I’m a longtime fan and even I didn’t expect Gazing at Medusa to be as tight, polished and strong as it is. Best of all, it just rocks – it’s great for jumping around the room like a madman. I’m all for diverse sounds in my metal – I love Soulfly and Holy Fawn and Bell Witch and Deliverance’s Bowie years – but there’s something to be said for a rip-snorting record like this one that wastes no time and just pummels you. I’d have loved this at 14, and I love it now. You can also love it at their site: www.tourniquet.net.

Next week, Muse and Hanson. Beat that combination. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.