I’ve written a lot already this year about how I only plan to review the things that bring me joy. I’ve had a few comments from people that I seem to be Marie Kondo-ing tm3am, and I swear to God I had never heard of Kondo before those comments. Now I have, and her approach seems to be exactly what I’m aiming for: tossing out all the things that don’t bring me happiness. Or at least not writing about the records I don’t care as much about.

This week is a good case in point. I was all set to follow up last week’s reviews with thoughts on new ones from James Blake and Sharon Van Etten. And then I started to dread sitting down to write this week’s missive, and I finally figured out why: I don’t have anything to say about the new ones from James Blake and Sharon Van Etten. Blake’s album is boring, trading in his former transcendence for radio-ready pop music, and Van Etten’s album is good, but not in a way that makes me excited to write about it. It would just be variations of “her voice is strong” and “her melodies are usually interesting” with some additional praise for “No One’s Easy to Love,” my favorite thing on the record.

Does that sound exciting to read to you? Or would you lose interest by the third paragraph? I know I wouldn’t be able to summon up a lot of energy to enthrall you. Fair play to you if you like those records, but I know I would rather wax ecstatic about something I truly love.

Thankfully, something I truly love found its way to my inbox this week, and I’ve been listening to it whenever I have the chance. About two years ago I paid up front for three new albums from Over the Rhine, and the first of them, called Love and Revelation, was sent to backers this week. It’s not officially out until March, and I have to admit I still get a thrill from listening to music before its release date, even if the band sends it to me and dozens of others at the same time.

Ordinarily, of course, I would wait until that release date to write about a record like this, one that I sincerely hope everyone reading this will check out. But you can pre-order the album now, and I hope by the time I am done jabbering about it, you will. I’ve been an Over the Rhine fan for 15 years now, having jumped aboard with their extraordinary double album Ohio, and I’ve seen them live half a dozen times. They retain their power to move me like few other artists can, and they do it again on this new album.

Over the Rhine is a husband-and-wife duo. The husband, Linford Detweiler, is the piano player, and he sings occasionally, his rough, low tones adding a touch of earth to the angelic tones of his wife, Karin Bergquist. Karin is, without a doubt, one of my four or five favorite singers alive. Patsy Cline is the closest approximate, but Bergquist is her own thing, her voice containing such depth of feeling and history, drawing from tradition while singing from an overflowing heart. I can’t do it justice in words, but her voice stirs something inside of me, something that only stirs at the most powerful of musical expressions.

On Love and Revelation, she uses that voice to sing about the hardship of life, about the pain of leaving good things behind, about the healing balm of music and about the all-reaching love of God. This is one of those albums that sounds stripped-back (and at times it is), but when you really listen you can hear so many elements working in concert, creating an atmosphere of quiet beauty. There are strings all over this record, but they’re so subtle that you may not notice them right away. Everything here, from the tender acoustic guitars to the generous peals of pedal steel to the always perfectly restrained drumming of Jay Bellerose, is in service to these songs, and to Karin Bergquist’s glorious voice.

There’s a lot here that could be called traditional folk music, from the sad opener “Los Lunas” to the sweeping “Broken Angels,” and once again Over the Rhine has created an album of songs that could be brand new or could be a hundred years old. Along the way, they’ve written some of my favorite things in their catalog. The melancholy “Given Road” cracks me open, the strings dancing slowly with Greg Liesz’s wonderful, weeping pedal steel. “I miss what I’m forgetting, I try not to but I’m letting go of any shred of anything that held you here,” Bergquist sings before launching into a wordless refrain that sends shivers.

“Let You Down” is a song of devotion, and the band’s slide guitarist, Brad Meinerding, sings lead with Bergquist complementing his high tenor perfectly. It’s a gorgeous string-accented weeper. And Detweiler joins his wife on lead vocals on the lovely “Betting on the Muse,” a song about their musical relationship – for years, Detweiler kept silent and in the background, and I wish he’d started singing with the band earlier. It’s just Bergquist, a guitar and a drum set on the shuffling title track, but it’s marvelous, a call for more understanding and more love in the face of a populace armed to the teeth.

But they save my favorite for the end. “May God Love You (Like You’ve Never Been Loved)” is, bar none, one of the prettiest songs this band has ever given us. It’s about our need for wholeness, our deep desire for something greater than ourselves to pull us through. “There are no wise men traveling, there is no gift to bring, but if you welcome home a child you’ve thrown your hat into the ring, we’re not curable but we’re treatable and that’s why I still sing, may God love you like you’ve never been loved…” It’s a song that dives to the lowest depths this album plumbs and then looks up, crying out, certain of the direction from which grace will come.

I will never, ever tire of songs that that one, or albums like this one. Bergquist and Detwiler pack so much feeling, so much agony and hope, into the 41 minutes of Love and Revelation that it’s a wonder that it sounds so effortless. This is the 14th Over the Rhine album, and by now they have their sound down to a science. But it’s still the most deeply emotional stuff, and it still draws me into another place, and I’m still incredibly grateful for it. In a couple months, when you get to hear this album too, I hope it will do for you what it does for me.

* * * * *

I was going to write a bit about Weezer this week, but I think I’ll save it, since there isn’t much of interest heading our way next Friday. I’ll just say that the Teal Album came out of nowhere and made me happy, and I can only hope the coming seven days hold more surprises like this one. Until then, be good to each other.

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

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I said last week that I would only write about new music if I truly enjoyed it. I am happy to report that I have thoroughly enjoyed 2019 so far.

We’ve just had the first major new music Friday of the year, and it was an extraordinary one. I bought eleven new albums, and I’m still sifting through them, listening whenever I have time. Still on my docket are new ones from Sharon Van Etten, Juliana Hatfield and James Blake. I am right now actually enjoying Guster’s Look Alive. It’s the album they have been moving toward for more than a decade now, and while it is nothing like the music I most love from them, it’s the first one since their directional shift to move me in any way. So that’s good.

Prioritizing is a difficult thing for me, and when I get a slew of new music like this, I often don’t know what to listen to first. I usually let my gut guide me on that one, figuring out on the fly which records I am most interested in. This time I chose two from long-running artists that have meant a lot to me. Even so, I’m not sure I was ready for how much Pedro the Lion’s Phoenix affected me. I’ve heard it four times now, and each time I’m drawn in, hearing new emotional layers.

Pedro the Lion is the full-band project of David Bazan, a songwriter I have adored for many years. Bazan was one of the first artists I followed through spiritual deconstruction – his early Pedro material is drenched in his faith, but as he started asking questions, he found the bottom of that faith falling out from beneath him. He detailed this struggle in raw, searing terms on his first solo album, the amazing Curse Your Branches, and has kept on detailing it through a series of increasingly insular records. His songs and his voice have remained magnificent, but his electronic sound has sealed him in.

Which is one reason it’s so exhilarating to hear him reignite Pedro with new players Sean Lane and Erik Walters. Bazan plays bass in this new incarnation, with Walters providing most of the bright, gorgeous guitar tones on Phoenix. This is a collaborative project, his new players pulling the life and soul out of these new songs. They simply explode from the speakers in a way Bazan’s work hasn’t for some time. (I’m not forgetting about Lo Tom, his delightful side project with Jason Martin and TW Walsh, and I hope we get more of that someday too.)

Phoenix is the perfect title for an album that resurrects a project many had written off for dead – this is the first album under that name in 15 years – and I’m sure Bazan intended the name in that sense, but the more grounded explanation is that these songs draw heavily on Bazan’s childhood in Phoenix for inspiration. The record opens with “Yellow Bike,” a paean to childhood that contains a lifetime of ache in one succinct line: “My kingdom for someone to ride with.”

“Model Homes” uses a family trip to see houses they could not afford as a metaphor for Bazan’s eternal hope for something better. “Circle K” turns a childhood story of spending all of his savings on nothing of value into a dark lament. “Quietest Friend” tells a tale of a 30-year-old regret, and gets fantastically meta by the end: “We could write me some reminders, I’d memorize them, I could sing them to myself and whoever’s listening, I could put them on a record about my hometown, sitting here with pen and paper, I’m listening now…” The amazing “My Phoenix” finds the adult Bazan returning to his home town to take stock. It’s one of the best songs Bazan has ever written.

Song by song, these are wonderful little things, but together they have a cumulative effect I didn’t expect. Phoenix as an album is about trying to recapture something that seems ephemeral. Bazan really did make a deeply personal trip back to Phoenix during what he acknowledges as his lowest point in 2016, and these songs find him searching his past for something lost. I will admit that when closer “Leaving the Valley” ends with a reconsideration of a verse from “Hard to Be,” off of Curse Your Branches, I usually tear up: “If I swung my tassel to the left side of my cap, after graduation will there be no going back?”

It’s not that I don’t expect a thoughtful songwriter like Bazan to put his previous conclusions through new prisms. It’s just that Phoenixis such an emotional journey, and its ending the perfect arrival point. It’s hard for me to say whether this is my favorite Pedro the Lion album, because there is so much competition. But it’s my favorite right now, and each time I listen I hold it closer.

* * * * *

I don’t have a favorite Joe Jackson album, but that’s simply because his work has been all over the map since day one. Look Sharp is probably my favorite snarky new-wave Joe Jackson album, while Night and Day is probably my favorite guitar-free keyboard panorama Joe Jackson album and Rain is my favorite piano trio Joe Jackson album and Night Music is my favorite chamber-pop Joe Jackson album, and on and on. He has no signature sound, and his disparate catalog is only bound together by his voice and his famously grouchy lyrics.

Because make no mistake, Joe Jackson has been a grumpy old man since he was an infant, and that carries through on his splendid 20th album, Fool. This record comes four years after Fast Forward, a meticulous and varied piece of work recorded in four cities with four different bands. Fool, created quickly with the Fast Forward touring band, is a tighter and more consistent record – these eight songs clearly belong together, and all sound of a piece.

They also sound like a live band finding a groove and locking in. Longtime bassist Graham Maby anchors this ensemble – he’s one of the most underrated players around, having spent the last four decades providing the backbone of every Jackson record. Guitarist Teddy Kumpel and drummer Doug Yeowell round things out, with Joe on the piano as always. The sound is rich and alive, and the songs match it. Lead single “Fabulously Absolute” is one of Joe’s most convincing rock rave-ups in years, the title track is a wild journey through half a dozen styles, and “Strange Land” is one of my favorite late-career Joe Jackson ballads.

That one works as a mission statement, lyrically speaking, as well as any of them. Jackson spends much of Fool the way he’s spent wide swaths of his career: looking around at the world in bewilderment, and occasionally in disgust. “Is this a strange land, or am I the stranger,” he asks, feeling isolated by a humanity he doesn’t recognize. “Big Black Cloud” is a spiritual sequel to Night and Day’s “Cancer,” hitting back at a world in which everything will kill you. (He even includes a reference to 9/11, to drive the point home.) “Fabulously Absolute” is an angry song about how we box people into their worst characteristics and judge them for it, delivered with Joe’s trademark lack of subtlety: “I’m just somebody to ignore, someone who doesn’t know the score, or maybe blinded by the light, ‘cause I’m a filthy troglodyte…”

Given all that, it’s a wonder that Fool ends on such a positive note. I really love the second half of this album, particularly the what-the-hell title track (which, as the liner notes suggest, “may contain traces of Twelfth Night and King Lear) and the gorgeous “32 Kisses,” a song of regret and gratitude. The album concludes with the pretty, lounge-y “Alchemy,” in which Joe points to a bewildering world with a newfound sense of wonder. Jackson is 64 years old now, and you never know whether you’re hearing an artist’s final work, so the fact that this one ends on such a high fills me with joy.

I’m not sure Joe Jackson has ever wanted to fill me with joy, but there it is. Aside from that ill-advised Duke Ellington tribute-slash-mess from a few years ago, Joe Jackson has been on a serious roll for nearly two decades now, and Fool continues the streak. Jackson’s never quite gotten his due as a songwriter and a player, existing in the margins for much of his career, but the bright side there is that he’s been able to do exactly what he wants, as often as he wants. Despite what I said above, I hope he has another 20 albums in him, and I hope they’re all as good as Fool.

OK, next week, more from this week’s bounty. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

We now return to our regularly scheduled program.

Hello! I’m back, here with another year of this silly music column. I must, on some level, enjoy writing it, since I keep refusing to take that end-of-the-year opportunity to just stop. I don’t know how long I’m going to keep tm3am going, but at least I can say that 2018 is not going to be its last year. I have a couple long-term goals, like seeing this column through to its 20th anniversary on Nov. 29, 2020 and outlasting Paul Dailing by writing at least 1,002 of these things, so onward we go.

I’m making that sound a lot more mercenary and defeatist than I feel. In truth I’ve found the weekly deadline a difficult thing to meet over the past couple years, and have often sat down to write tm3am and found I have no energy for it. Part of it has been the frankly exhausting world we live in now, with each week bringing new things to be outraged or conflicted about. Part of it was the paltry musical offerings of last year, which brought us only one great album (and a bunch of good ones, to be fair).

But part of it is my need to recapture the reason I wanted to write this column in the first place. It’s meant to be a chronicle of the joy of being an obsessive music fan, and I need it to be more about the joyous part. So this year I may not simply write about whatever is out in record stores in a given week. Often these aren’t the records bringing me joy, and I’d like this column to reflect what I am actually enjoying listening to.

That’s not to say I won’t be focusing on new music when it moves me. In fact, most of the below reasons to love 2019 are confirmed new releases, and the others are new release rumors I am jazzed about. New music is in my blood, and this year already looks like it’s going to be better than the last. (“And it’s one more day up in the canyons…”) What follows is in no way comprehensive – there are new things coming from Solange and the Raconteurs and others that didn’t make the list, but that I am aware of. These are just the ones I’m most excited about.

Without further ado, here are 19 reasons to love 2019:

1. Pedro the Lion, Phoenix (Jan. 18)

We’ll start with one I’ve heard already, thanks to NPR’s First Listen feature. David Bazan has convened his band for the first time in 15 years to chronicle tales of his childhood in Phoenix, Arizona, and the result is gorgeous. I’ll likely have more to say about this next week, but for now I’ll just say that there’s a huge difference between Bazan on his own and Bazan with the band, and this album exemplifies it. It’s a lovely thing.

2. Joe Jackson, Fool (Jan. 18)

Yet another of this week’s new records. (It’s a good week – Alice Merton, Sharon Van Etten, Juliana Hatfield and Guster are all returning, as is the next artist on this list.) Joe Jackson has been on a serious upswing lately – he continues to be an acerbic lyricist and a swell melodicist, having grown into his grumpy old man persona nicely, and what I’ve heard of Fool continues the streak.

3. James Blake, Assume Form (Jan. 18)

The last one I’ll mention from this week. Blake’s fourth album was just announced a few days ago, and already I’m excited. There’s no one like him, and even if he just continues doing what he’s always done – minimal electronic soundscapes buoyed by his ethereal, elastic voice – Assume Form will be worth hearing. I’m hopeful that he will branch out a little, and guest spots from Moses Sumney and Andre 3000 bode well.

4. Swervedriver, Future Ruins (Jan. 25)

I remain thankful and amazed by the shoegaze revival that continues apace. Sure, we’re still waiting for another My Bloody Valentine record, but new albums from stalwarts like Slowdive and Lush, along with new bands like Teenage Wrist, have kept the dream alive. Swervedriver’s reunion album, 2015’s I Wasn’t Born to Lose You, was fantastic, and they’re cementing that reunion with a new set of songs next week.

5. David Mead, Cobra Pumps (Jan. 29)

The last January album I will mention is also the one I am most excited for. David Mead is a songwriter’s songwriter and an incredible singer, and he’s never quite gotten his due. His last album, 2011’s Dudes, was full of snarky pop wonderment, and Cobra Pumps looks to be the same. It’s been too long since we last heard Mead’s dulcet tones, and I’m ready.

6. All Hail the Silence, Daggers (Feb. 8)

Technically this is another January record, as it will be available to pre-orderers on Jan. 25, but it will be in stores two weeks later. This is the long-awaited double-disc debut album from BT’s ‘80s pop collaboration with singer Christian Burns, and everything I’ve heard from this has thrilled me. AHTS’ songs have a Depeche Mode meets Yazoo feel to them, and Burns is a terrific singer for this style. Very excited.

7. Copeland, Blushing (Feb. 15)

Five years ago, Aaron Marsh and his band put out Ixora, a beautiful experiment in lush songwriting and production. Ixora was actually three albums (Ixora, its companion Twin, and the third album that appeared when you played both together in sync), and it brought Copeland into this new realm of studio wizardry and complex arrangements.Blushing is all on one disc, but from the three singles it sounds like another step into mind-bending territory for this band.

8. Peter Mulvey, There Is Another World (Feb. 15)

I’ve been a Peter Mulvey fan since the ‘90s, and even I was blown away by Are You Listening, his first record for Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records. There Is Another World evidently came quickly, and is a reaction to the state of the country and the world. If anyone can find the dark poetry at the heart of our current malaise, it’s Peter Mulvey, and I’m very much looking forward to hearing what he has come up with.

9. Amanda Palmer, There Will Be No Intermission (March 8)

My guess is that no one else will craft a reaction to the world quite as powerful as Amanda Palmer has on There Will Be No Intermission. This is reportedly a 78-minute monster, full of painful stories and difficult topics and righteous anger. Palmer has been charting her own course through Patreon for years now, and this is her first album created with no limitations, with every element in her control. I can’t say I expect to enjoy it, but I do expect to be moved and challenged by it. And that’s what art is for.

10. Esperanza Spalding, 12 Little Spells (March 29)

Technically, Esperanza’s seventh album is out already – it was released song by song last year on YouTube and streaming services. But I’m old-fashioned, so I’m holding out for the CD, which will actually contain 16 little spells. Esperanza Spalding is one of the few artists out there now who deserves to be called a genius, and I’m so in for anything she does. Evidently this will be her last project in the album format, and I’m interested to see where she goes next.

11. Three new albums from Ryan Adams (first one April 19, other release dates TBD)

The last time Ryan Adams released three albums in one year, it was 2005 and the results were pretty fantastic. (Cold Roses, Jacksonville City Nights and 29.) He’s promised to do the same in 2019, and the first of those three, Big Colors, is set for April 19. The second will be called Wednesdays, and that’s all we know right now. Adams hasn’t been on quite the same hot streak lately that he was in 2005, but he’s still one of the best, and these should all be worth hearing.

12. Jonathan Coulton, Some Guys (April)

Internet superstar Jonathan Coulton made one of the best albums of 2017 with Solid State. He’s following it up with a bizarre project: an album of note-for-note covers of sensitive soft-rock hits of the ‘70s. You know the type – “Baker Street” and “How Deep is Your Love” and “On and On” and “Easy.” I just happen to love all of those songs. Coulton launched a stunningly successful Kickstarter for this record, and is pitching it as a blow against the patriarchy. But even if you just think of it as a bunch of lovely songs, this’ll be worth it.

13. Devin Townsend, Empath

Now we’re into the albums I know are coming, but have no set release date. Devin Townsend remains one of the most idiosyncratic and remarkable musicians working, and over the past couple years he’s taken some victory laps, playing old albums live and putting his long-running Devin Townsend Project to bed. Empath is the first of four (I think) records he’s working on, and the opening salvo of his new direction. I’ll follow him anywhere, so I’m psyched, of course.

14. Derek Webb, Targets

Derek Webb made the best album of 2017 with Fingers Crossed, a stark and devastating chronicle of his twin divorces from his wife and from God. He’s promised a return to the pop-rock he does so well on Targets, and I’m sure we will get more of his honest perspective on what it means to leave the life you thought you knew behind. Webb is self-releasing this album, and we’re not sure when, but I will be first in line to buy one.

15. A new Sleater-Kinney album produced by St. Vincent

I don’t know that I need to say anything else here, right? There’s a new Sleater-Kinney album coming, and the band has been working with St. Vincent in the producer’s chair. If that sentence does nothing for you, I don’t know what to say.

16. Fish, Weltschmertz

Thirty years after leaving Marillion to launch his solo career, Scottish singer Fish will close it out with what he has announced will be a double album. Fish’s solo work has been spotty, but not lately – his last four albums have been wonderful, and the three songs he’s released from this final one are even better. Expect long, proggy poems and some dark observations from a man who has seen it all. I’m looking forward to the record, but not to bidding Fish farewell as a recording artist. Should be a bittersweet listen.

17. New Celldweller, Circle of Dust and Scandroid albums

The mad professor known as Klayton has so many musical personas that it’s sometimes difficult to keep up with them all. This year will definitely see a new one from his synthwave project Scandroid, called The Darkness and the Light, but we should also hear new things from his industrial metal band Circle of Dust and his genre-defying Celldweller identity. Keeping up with Klayton is hard, but very worth it.

18. A new Tool album

I know, it feels like a pipe dream, but the rumblings are louder than ever that we might get Tool’s first record in 13 years sometime in 2019. We’re going on 30 years of this band’s existence and this will be only their fifth album. I do imagine that their complex metal sculptures take time to build, but I also hope that whatever new record they come up with won’t crumple under the weight of expectations. (See Maynard James Keenan’s other band, A Perfect Circle, for exhibit A.)

19. Something from The Dear Hunter

And finally, an entry for which I have no evidence whatsoever, except that I really want something new from Casey Crescenzo and company. Their Acts sequence remains one of the finest musical achievements of the past 15 years, and while I’m sure we won’t get the climactic Act VI anytime soon, I’m here for anything Crescenzo wants to give us. And hey, if he wants to surprise us with Act VI, I won’t complain.

As I said, this list is in no way comprehensive. But it does represent my hope for a really strong year of music, and I’ll be here chronicling my experience navigating through it. Thanks to everyone who reads this little endeavor of mine. Year Nineteen, here we go.

Next week, Pedro and Jackson and maybe some others. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.