This week is a classic case of feeling like I have to talk about one thing, but really wanting to talk about another.

There’s this weird sense of duty I still have about this column, some delusional idea that people look to tm3am to weigh in on the big records of the week. That was certainly the case when I wrote it for print, and people actually read it. I’d get actual letters and phone calls asking when I would review/opine on new records. That hasn’t happened for a long time with this online iteration, and yet I still feel like there are new albums each week I’m expected to say something about.

This week’s conversation piece is, of course, Jesus is King, Kanye West’s long-delayed gospel-rap record. And the more I thought about what to write about it, the more I realized I just don’t have anything interesting to say about it. West swears he has had an actual road-to-Damascus conversion experience, and he’s filled Jesus is King with straight-up gospel worship songs. Sonically it sounds like a Kanye record, but it’s more like an Imperials album in form and content.

Which is all fine. I enjoyed my quick spins through this record – the whole thing is only 27 minutes long, and most of the songs hover around the two-minute mark, so it’s an easy listen – but I didn’t find it revelatory. My favorite part, weirdly, is probably Kenny G’s isolated solo on “Use This Gospel,” although I am fascinated by the fact that West gets people like Pusha T to rap about faith here. West’s guests, by and large, have never expressed interest in matters of faith before, so hearing them trade rhymes about Jesus is strange.

I’ve been watching the reaction to Jesus is King, which has been more interesting than the record, but I still don’t have a lot to say about it. I have no idea if West has had a true encounter with the divine, whatever that may look like. I don’t know if Jesus is King is a publicity stunt or a genuine outpouring of faith. (I do find the verses about God showing off by giving Kanye a lot of money troublesome.) And I don’t imagine all of the long-lead think-pieces in the world will let us know what’s going on in his heart.

It also doesn’t matter a whole lot. What we have is a 27-minute foray into gospel rap, and it’s no throwaway – it’s clear West worked on this and made it the best he could. I’ve been off Kanye West for some time now, listening as he lost his way and made dreary, tossed-off records about himself. This one feels more tightly focused, as if turning to the language of gospel has taken the pressure off. Jesus is Kingis a good record, and whether it turns out to be a side-step or a new direction is something only Jesus knows.

But honestly, I don’t want to talk about Kanye. I’m really here to tell you about Marillion.

I know what you’re going to say. I talk about Marillion all the time. But it’s a very good example of what I’m trying to illustrate here. Kanye’s record is one everyone cares about, and I’m just not that interested in it. Marillion’s work captivates me completely, and almost no one I know hears what I hear in them. There’s nothing I can do about that, but I still plan to fill the final paragraphs of this column with my thoughts and impressions of their surprise new record, not because I feel like anyone’s expecting me to, but because I just can’t keep music that moves me this much to myself.

So, Marillion. I don’t know if anyone reading this needs an introduction to them – just search my archive for several instances of me waxing lyrical about them. They’re often lumped in with progressive rock bands, but that’s not really what they do. To me, Marillion conjures up magic and shapes it, and those shapes can stretch to three minutes or twenty. They’re equally adept at either one, and all sizes in between. Lately, those shapes have been more symphonic – their 18th album, Fuck Everyone and Run, was built around three extended multi-part compositions and included their first-ever collaboration with a string section.

The band has expanded that collaboration on their surprise 19th album. It shares a name with their current tour – Marillion With Friends from the Orchestra – and finds them augmenting nine of their older songs with strings, horns and flutes. This is the perfect time for such a retrospective, since their inimitable frontman Steve Hogarth is celebrating 30 years with the band. He’s 60 years old and his voice is somehow even more striking and supple now than it was in 1989. They’ve made 15 albums together, including this one, and With Friends is a lovely overview of those three decades.

And man, these new arrangements. These aren’t just decorations – the band has fully integrated the orchestral elements into these songs, so much so that the original versions are going to seem slightly lacking. Marillion has always been something of an orchestral band, with keyboardist Mark Kelly’s layers of sound widening their horizons at every turn, but here they perfectly balance their more ethereal and earthbound tendencies. The song selection is perfection, opening with one of my very favorites, the death and rebirth anthem “Estonia.” It’s a song I want played at my funeral, and now this is the version I would choose. When the strings play Kelly’s countermelody on the last chorus, I get chills.

Some of Marillion’s prettiest songs are made even more beautiful here, from the transcendent “Beyond You” to the dark, powerful “The Hollow Man.” I have always wanted to hear “Fantastic Place” with real strings – the synth strings on the original version can be overpowering, but these sound delightful, caressing the early part of the song and lifting the later part. Both “The Hollow Man” and “A Collection” are filled out from their spare original versions, and my sole complaint with this record is that the sweeter arrangement of the latter masks the creepiness of the lyrics.

But all complaints are washed away by the three massive centerpiece tunes here. I’m not sure why I wouldn’t have expected that extended workouts like “This Strange Engine” and “Ocean Cloud” would be here, but they are, and the new arrangements are utterly magnificent. “Engine” isn’t changed very much, just augmented with gorgeous strings and horns, but I will never get tired of hearing Hogarth give his all to the final minutes of this song. It’s essentially his musical autobiography in 16 minutes, and he somehow sounds even better here than he did 22 years ago when he laid down these vocals the first time.

“The Sky Above the Rain,” the emotional closer of 2012’s Sounds That Can’t be Made, benefits the most from the orchestra. The best part of this song has always been the “maybe they’ll talk” coda, and here it is completely different, fragile instead of soaring. It reframes the whole song, making it a new experience. And “Ocean Cloud,” well, I don’t even know what to say. It is my favorite Marillion song, an 18-minute masterpiece, and it’s somehow even more symphonic and powerful in this new iteration.

These are songs I know by heart, songs whose nuances live and breathe within me, and With Friends from the Orchestra somehow has me appreciating them anew, hearing them in fresh ways. This is, in 79 minutes, exactly what I love about this band, and is now the single disc I will hand out to people who are curious about them. After 38 years and 19 albums, Marillion can still surprise and delight me. That’s a rare thing, and even if no one else in my life ever loves them the way I do, they’ve enriched that life more than they will ever know. Which is why, even in the face of indifference, I can’t be silent about them.

Hear and buy at www.marillion.com.

Next week, a roundup of several new releases in several genres. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning

Yesterday Coldplay announced a new double album called Everyday Life.

I am, of course, girding myself for the ration of crap I will get just for admitting that I pay attention to Coldplay, let alone for being a fan. I’ve liked, to some degree, everything they’ve done, although they came closest to losing me with 2015’s pop letdown A Head Full of Dreams. But even that record had some interesting moments and choices, and you certainly can’t say that it sounds like Coldplay. Those who remember “Fix You” and “Clocks” and haven’t kept up since then will likely be surprised by the band’s last four records, should they bother to listen.

But anyway. Everyday Life is a double album, and the timing is fortuitous, because that’s exactly what I want to talk about this week. I have no idea why double albums double my interest in a band’s work, but they do. I have always been fascinated and drawn in by epics, by long works of art that require a significant investment to absorb. I have no interest in high fantasy fiction, but I have long been intrigued by Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, just because it’s so long. What would the experience of reading the whole thing be like? Could I do it? Would it be worth it?

Same with double albums. I’m always surprised and elated when they exist, when a band or artist decides that they just have too much to say to fit onto one CD. I love marathon listens – I have, several times, made my way through the entirety of the Dear Hunter’s Acts saga in one long sitting – and each one that comes along reminds me that those pundits suggesting that we live in a singles-driven download world and the album is dying on the vine are just wrong.

I can’t say I love the recent trend of breaking double albums up and releasing them as separate discs, though. That was Coldplay’s rumored plan: an “experimental” album this year and more straightforward one next year. I applaud the decision to release both halves together in one package – the discs are separately labeled as Sunrise and Sunset– and not to make us wait. I’ve noticed a lot more two-volume sets recently, issued as separate albums months apart, and while I keep buying them, the experience is not as fulfilling for me as diving through a lengthy double album all at once.

But what, I wasn’t going to buy the new Foals album the day it came out? This British quartet is one of the most exciting and interesting bands I know of, and if they wanted me to buy one half of the 79-minute Everything Not Saved Will be Lost back in March, who am I to argue? Of course I bought it, and of course I heard it on repeat for days. It’s a great piece of work on its own, from the slow burn of “Exits” to the beautifully constructed 9/8 stomp of “On the Luna” to the pretty “I’m Done with the World (And It’s Done with Me).”

The first part certainly works on its own, but now that Everything Not Saved Will be Lost Part Two is here, two things have become clear: these records work better in tandem, and it’s obvious how and why they separated them. The first part is more moody, more groove-based, more keyboard-heavy. This second part is a guitar-fueled rock-band powerhouse, and from first moment to (nearly) last, it moves like a bullet train. It follows the same format as the first – an intro, eight songs and an interlude – but its character is almost entirely different.

I hesitate to say this, given how much I love the first part, but I like the second half better. It’s just more alive, more explosive, more instantly captivating. I’ve not heard a more driving set of songs in a row this year than the ones that open this record – after the tense intro of “Red Desert” we have “The Runner,” “Wash Off” and “Black Bull,” three extraordinary 100-mile-an-hour wonders, one after another. They lead into “Like Lightning,” which only slows things down marginally – this one should be a radio hit, though it won’t be, and on the heels of the screaming “Black Bull,” it does a great job of showing the band’s more melodic side. It’s like a Black Keys song done right.

The second half of this second half is just as great, if a mite less relentless. “Into the Surf,” teased on the first half, is a gorgeous piano ballad, and it leads into “Neptune,” the ten-minute closer. As the longest song in Foals’ catalog, this one of course had to be the finale, and it’s a crash-and-recede epic that feels like an extended mantra. It creates its own little world and lives in it for as long as it wants to. Weirdly, I think it works better as the final song of a 40-minute album than as the culmination of a 79-minute one, yet another reason to split these two up.

Still, I can’t help wondering what this might have sounded like had the band ignored the stylistic separation, mixed these tracks up and delivered an 80-minute double record all at once. I’m not sure how I would arrange it, but it’s a fun thought experiment. Everything Not Saved will be Lost is a tremendous piece of work, no matter how the band organized it. But while I wouldn’t want to sacrifice the hurtling-along feel of this second part, the moodier first part could have used some of this energy. Either way, you should check out both parts of this thing, as it’s one of the best Foals albums and one of my favorites of the year.

The Magpie Salute’s High Water is not one of my favorites of the year, and it’s a better example of the issue I have with this double-album-in-pieces approach. For those who haven’t been following the post-breakup saga of the Black Crowes, while singer Chris Robinson has been turning out album after album with his new band, the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, his guitar-playing brother Rich has been a bit quieter. The Magpie Salute is his new band with a couple Crowes stalwarts and former Sixpence None the Richer mastermind Matt Slocum on keys, and though they made a quiet entrance with their self-titled record in 2017, High Water is their true coming out party.

I was honestly pretty excited to hear that Robinson had amassed enough material to fill two discs. I think he’s the underrated Robinson brother, and his solo work (four albums and counting) has been solid. I also like the looseness of this new band, with Robinson and John Hogg trading off lead vocals. There’s an anything-goes quality to it that is appealing in an Exile on Main Street kind of way.

But man, did they just not have enough strong material to make a 95-minute record. I knew this would be a problem when the first half, last year’s High Water I, petered out before the end. I would have cut four sloppy, trad-bluesy tunes from that record, and I expected that there would be at least four solid songs on High Water II that could have taken their place, turning this into a perfectly respectable single-disc affair. Turns out I was right, but just barely.

High Water II is just kinda boring. It’s very ‘70s rock, very Rolling Stones, and if you’re into that more than I am, you may enjoy and appreciate what Robinson and the band have delivered here. I like “Gimme Something” quite a bit – it takes on the gospel overtones of a lot of the Crowes’ By Your Side – and I dig the slide guitars of “Mother Storm,” but this whole thing just blends together, none of these songs announcing themselves with any distinctiveness. I was hoping that Alison Krauss would inject some life into “Lost Boy,” but she’s barely audible. None of these songs break out of their traditional shells, and even within those shells, their choruses are surprisingly weak.

The record does end strong with the urgent “Doesn’t Really Matter” and the slinky “Where Is This Place,” two songs I’d probably save for the single-CD version of this thing. High Water II is absolutely a continuation of the first volume – you can trace just when the inspiration left these guys and they kept on trudging along anyway. So in that way, I definitely wish these 24 songs had been released all at once. Instead we have a decent first half and a much weaker second half that certainly doesn’t stand on its own. Selfishly, I wish I’d only had to shell out once for this material, instead of twice over two years. High Water as a whole is a bit of a slog – it isn’t terrible, but it isn’t worth the investment of time that a truly great double album rewards.

Next week, hopefully Marillion, but if not, we’ll have a few other options. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

As we get closer to the end of the year, the new releases start to take on a different significance for me.

Good music is good music, of course, no matter when it surfaces. But when we start to get into October and November I start to think about my picture of the year in music, and what that music ended up saying. And I do this knowing full well that at any time, some new record could come along and redraw that whole picture for me.

I have a schedule of announced releases and I’ve noted the ones I’m keeping my eye on – and there aren’t that many this year – but often the best stuff ends up being a complete surprise. I didn’t see The Dear Hunter’s Act IV coming, for instance, and its appearance at the tail end of 2015 rocked my little world. It ended up at number two that year, only trailing to a pair of masterpieces so astonishingly good that they tied for first.

So I’m keeping my ear out for anything that grabs me the way Act IV did. But at the same time, I’m tracking several other records that I expect to be worthy, and two of them landed in my lap this past week. In my world, there is little more gratifying than waiting for months for a record, finally hearing it and feeling like all that time spent in anticipation was worth it. Lucky me, I got to experience that twice in the past seven days, and I’m excited to tell you about both of these albums.

First up is Elbow, and I swear this band is incapable of making a bad record. I don’t think they could do it if they tried. Granted, I don’t believe they’ve ever tried – over seven previous efforts, they’ve refined a patient and powerful sound, and now they are equally comfortable playing their clockwork style of rock, adding enormous layers of lush orchestration, or going as minimal as possible, as they did on 2017’s riveting single “Gentle Storm.” While flashier bands have fizzled out, Elbow has spent nearly 20 years quietly amassing a stunningly good body of work.

Even by their standards, the band’s eighth album Giants of All Sizes is wonderful. Lyrically it is definitely a reaction to these Brexit-Trump times – these “faith-free, hope-free, charity-free days,” as leader Guy Garvey sings – but musically the band is clearly in a confident place. Giants contains some of their prettiest melodies married to some of Garvey’s most desperate and lonely lyrics, and the sum of those parts is perhaps the finest record they’ve made.

If you thought Little Fictions was a mite subdued, you’re going to love the opener to this one. “Dexter and Sinister” brings Elbow the rock band front and center for a seven-minute stomp that brings earlier classics like “Grounds for Divorce” to mind. This one’s about loss of faith – the opening line, “I don’t know Jesus anymore,” can be read in a straightforward way or as a metaphor for a world that has passed beyond understanding – and its powerful riff matches Garvey’s pleading words. Midway through the band shifts gears into a beautiful jam, complete with soaring vocals by Jesca Hoop.

“Dexter and Sinister” certainly throws down a gauntlet – it’s my favorite Elbow opening track in years – but the album is more than ready for the challenge. “Seven Veils” is remarkable, a sweet-sounding hymn of abandonment with a gorgeous arrangement. “Empires” picks the pace back up somewhat for a tale of self-destruction: “Empires crumble all the time, you just happened to witness mine,” Garvey sings over an insistent organ line. Strings elevate the urgent “The Delayed 3:15,” which leads into “White Noise White Heat,” a patented off-kilter Elbow rocker that finds Garvey lamenting what the world has done to him: “I was born with a trust that didn’t survive the white noise of the lies, the white heat of injustice has taken my eyes…”

Garvey channels Peter Gabriel and David Bowie at times here, the latter most completely on the stripped-back “Doldrums.” It’s probably my least favorite here, but it leads into the lovely final third, all of which is excellent. “My Trouble is a perfect number about missing someone who was never good for you, the band percolating softly behind Garvey as the strings build and he sings “Come get me, guide and check me, sail and wreck me, soak me to my skin…” It’s basically the kind of song only Elbow seems to know how to write, and I’m grateful they keep on writing them. The nostalgic “On Deronda Road” and the surprisingly upbeat “Weightless” close things on a delightful note.

When I mentioned to friends that Elbow’s new album is amazing, I had several of them tell me they’d never heard of the band. (This despite my best efforts over the past 19 years.) If this is you, I envy you – this new one is the band’s eighth, and you cannot go wrong with any of them. Or all of them, which is what I would recommend. Elbow is a band quite unlike any other, and Giants of All Sizes is another knock-me-over winner from them, and probably the best thing they’ve done. It’s a great time to jump aboard and become a fan.

Speaking of bands everyone I know should listen to, there’s Coyote Kid.

I know what you’re thinking. Who on earth is Coyote Kid, and why, if we all should be listening to them, have you never mentioned them before? Well, I have mentioned them, several times, under their previous name, Marah in the Mainsail. I first heard them at AudioFeed Festival in Champaign back in 2014, and was immediately captivated. They play a sort of apocalyptic folk-rock that draws on centuries of story-songs, updated with horns and cinematic arrangements. Two years ago they delivered a dark masterpiece with Bone Crown, a fiery fairy tale that moves relentlessly from prologue to epilogue. It’s awesome.

Their new one, The Skeleton Man, is a sequel set in the same world, but the band apparently felt that they’d moved far enough from their sea-shanty origins that a name change was warranted. Full disclosure, I like the name Marah in the Mainsail a lot more than the name Coyote Kid, but the new moniker is serviceable, and it does conjure the dystopian western image they were hoping for. It’s the music that counts anyway, and The Skeleton Man is phenomenal, taking the Bone Crown template and kicking it up several notches.

It also ramps up the band’s storytelling side, so much so that it’s clearly their identity now. The Skeleton Man appears to kick off what I hope is a nice long series of concept records about the Coyote Kid, a wanderer in the post-disaster world left by the great fire at the end of Bone Crown. There’s a plague ravaging the land, and the Coyote Kid must contend with the Crow, a childhood friend who now believes she can cure the plague by bringing people back to life, Frankenstein style. Along the way the Coyote Kid becomes the embodiment of death, and faces off against monsters called prowlers and an army of the undead.

This sounds like it would be convoluted, but the songs are all immediate and instantly enjoyable. Austin Durry has a gritty voice that fits the propulsive, raucous sound perfectly, and the band’s guitar-heavy arrangements leap from the speakers. You’ll be through five of these songs before you even know what’s happening, so unrelenting is the band’s attack, and these 44 minutes fly by in a whirl of drums and ear-catching noise.

But that’s OK, because track five, “Strange Days,” is this band at its best – it ebbs and flows with a crawling menace, Durry welcoming you to the “new dark age” before a stunning sustained howl in the middle eight. If I had only one song to play you to get you into Coyote Kid, this would be it. That’s not to say that the other dozen tracks are not worth your time, because there are no bad songs on The Skeleton Man, and it all plays like a single piece. “Tough Kids” is amazing, “Destroyer of Worlds” is surprisingly funny, and when Cassandra Valentine takes on the part of the Crow on “Dark Science” and “Electric Lover,” it’s riveting.

Yeah, this is a dark story full of death and pain, and it doesn’t conclude here: the title track closes things out, and it finds the Coyote Kid, in his new guise as the Skeleton Man, heading out to find the supernatural cause of the plague. I assume this thread will be picked up next time, which is quite the vote of confidence in themselves as a band. Such a cliffhanger may have left The Skeleton Man feeling incomplete if the songs were not so full and rich. This record is a journey through a violent wasteland, led by death himself, and it ends with hope still far, far away. I hesitate to say that resonates in these turbulent times, but it does.

The Skeleton Man will be available to hear and buy next week, and I’ll share the link when it’s up. (I Kickstarted the album, so I got to hear it early.) I hope I can convince at least some of you to give this a try, because I think Coyote Kid will be your new favorite band. They’ve been one of mine for years now, whatever they choose to call themselves, and The Skeleton Man is just one more reason why.

Next week, a pair of part twos. After that, Marillion. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

As much as I like to think I am my own person, beholden to no one when it comes to my personal taste in music, I have to admit that I do feel pressure to like certain things.

Most of the time I’m immune to the Pitchfork crowd and their manufactured hype, especially when it surrounds new artists. There’s literally no way that someone with just a self-released home-recorded EP under their belt has redefined what it means to be a musician in the 21st century, but pretty much every week I’m inundated with such bizarre proclamations from indie tastemakers. And mainly I just ignore them. It’s healthier that way. I tend to prefer artists with bodies of work anyway, musical journeys I can sink my teeth into.

But sometimes it does get to me. There are bands and artists I feel I should like, and those are the ones whose records I keep buying in some vain attempt to crack their code. An excellent example is the National, an act I find almost supernaturally boring. The buzz around them has never died down, and so many people I know and trust adore them that I am left feeling like something must be wrong with me. So I keep trying their new material, and it keeps leaving me cold.

I wish it were not the case, but Wilco has fit that particular bill for 15 years now. It’s especially difficult because I love their early material. The first four Wilco albums are varying shades of excellent, particularly the sprawling Being There and the still-incredible Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. But ever since the late Jay Bennett exited the band, leaving Jeff Tweedy in sole control, Wilco has bored me silly. I’ve bought every album, and even explored Tweedy’s solo work, and almost none of it has struck any kind of chord with me.

I say almost none because I enjoyed “Wilco (The Song)” and felt like The Whole Love was a stronger effort. But in the eight years since that album Tweedy hasn’t written a single song that resonates with me. That streak remains alive on Ode to Joy, the 11th Wilco record, which – despite the buzz – is just as formless and lifeless as most of the band’s post-YHF material. I want to like this. I really do. But these songs just kind of start and end without doing anything in between, and as much as I like hearing a happier Tweedy, what he’s delivered here is as lazy as ever.

I should say that there are two songs that nearly come alive. Where Tweedy sounds at least half asleep on most of this record, he wakes up a bit for “Everyone Hides,” which chugs forward on Glenn Kotche’s mildly energetic drumming. This elevates the song to the point where it is, you know, fine, which makes it the high point. And the single, “Love is Everywhere (Beware),” makes its simple strum and triumphant electric guitar arpeggio work for it. It’s still a very basic 6/8 shuffle of a thing, but at least I remember it.

That’s about it, though. The rest of Ode to Joy sounds barely alive to me, dragging its feet from song to song without any enthusiasm. I like bits – the harmonized guitar on “Hold Me Anyway,” the distorted flare-ups on “We Were Lucky” – but no whole songs. Wilco songs used to have choruses, used to stick in the mind, and lately they sound like Tweedy is angling for a participation trophy in his own band. Perhaps if I didn’t hear so often what a revered songwriter he is, I wouldn’t expect as much from him. As it is, Ode to Joy is another disappointment in an increasingly long line of them.

Another guy I’m supposed to love is Sturgill Simpson, but luckily he makes it a lot easier to be aboard his train. Ever since he struck gold with his second album, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, Simpson has been lauded as the future of twangy rock and roll. I liked Metamodern and I really liked its follow-up, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth, with its horns and its Nirvana cover and its general attitude. Simpson calls himself country, but he’s impossible to pigeonhole, and even protested the country music establishment in 2017 after not receiving an invitation to their annual awards.

If that didn’t drive in the final nail in his coffin with the old guard, his new album Sound and Fury absolutely will. It’s the most unexpected left turn of the year – Simpson has created an anime film, available on Netflix, and a synth-flavored futuristic rock record as its soundtrack. Hands up if you saw any of this coming after Sailor’s Guide, because I sure didn’t.

I’ve yet to watch the film, but I’ve heard the album a few times. As you might expect, it’s ruffling the right feathers, but it’s also garnering praise from all the right corners. If you like artistic surprises, this thing is for you. It’s a convincingly stomping rock record with more than a touch of ZZ Top to it, with a healthy smattering of ‘80s keyboards. It sounds like the score to a fast-paced car chase, an impression only heightened by the technique of separating songs with static, to simulate the effect of turning a radio dial.

This thing was obviously a lot of fun to make – you can hear it in the funk bass and percolating percussion of “A Good Look,” one of the best things here. After the opening instrumental, nearly every other song boogies along like dystopian dance numbers, and Simpson’s band clearly enjoyed cutting loose. Even when it chills out, as on the synthesizer landscape of “Make Art Not Friends,” there’s a real sense of freedom here, of Simpson just doing whatever he wanted. That, as an artist, is a great position to be in.

I do feel, though, that Simpson relied too heavily on the shock of this new sound to carry this album, and it only barely does so. A lot of these songs rely on overused chord progressions and fail to truly hit home, alas. “Best Clockmaker on Mars,” for example, has a great charging riff and makes good use of Simpson’s throaty shout, but beyond its basic blues structure, it doesn’t do anything interesting. The synthesizer jumps in halfway through to save it, and that illustrates my issue with this record: I wish Simpson had spent as much time on the songs as he did on the physical sound of the thing.

Because the sound is amazing, especially given Simpson’s prior efforts. He does score with “All Said and Done,” a strong acoustic ballad, and with the closing jam, “Fastest Horse in Town.” But it’s the sound I will remember here more than the songs, and for a guy who made his name as a songwriter, that’s a bit odd. Sound and Fury is weird enough that I wish I unreservedly loved it. I do like it, though, quite a bit, and I heartily endorse the artistic impulse that led Simpson to create it. I hope he stays true to his vision from here on out, because if Sound and Fury is any indication, it should be a wild career.

That’s it for this week. Next week, I expect to wax ecstatic about Elbow and Coyote Kid. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Usually when an artist goes solo, there’s a sense of uncertainty.

You know the questions. Will this person be able to capture the magic of his/her band on her/his own? What if the other members of the band were really bringing the magic? How different will this solo music be from the music this person made with his/her band? Will it be too different? Will it be too much the same? When is the band getting back together?

Absolutely none of these questions have been asked about Brittany Howard, leader of the Alabama Shakes, on the occasion of her first solo record. That’s because if any artist in recent memory seemed to have the right to take the band name on as her own, it was Howard. For most people – and no offense intended to her three bandmates, though I just had to Google to see how many were in the band – she is Alabama Shakes. Her voice, her guitar playing and her jaw-dropping presence are the three main reasons to listen to her band.

In many ways, then, Jaime is the least risky solo bow I have ever seen. I think everyone assumed Jaime would be just what it is: a solid, soulful, strange and striking piece of work that centers Howard’s voice and further cements her as an artist to watch. It’s not surprising that this album is pretty great. It would have been surprising, in fact, if it were not.

But let’s be clear: Jaime doesn’t sound like Alabama Shakes. It’s a much quieter affair, with a lot on its mind and a real sense of dynamics and versatility. The album is named after and dedicated to Howard’s sister, who died as a teenager, and when she shouts “We are all brothers and sisters” on the wild dirge “13th Century Metal,” it feels both universal and personal. This album is remarkably weird, as if Howard knew exactly how far she could push her well-earned creative freedom, but it’s leavened with beautiful numbers like “Stay High” and the deeply soulful “Baby.”

“History Repeats,” the opener and first single, masters that universal personal thing right away. It’s both romantic and political, and when she sings “History repeats and we defeat ourselves” over and over, she makes her point beautifully. “Goat Head” is one of the most striking, with keyboards from Robert Glasper and a lyric about herself as a child trying to make sense of the racist south. “Who slashed my dad’s tires and put a goat head in the back,” she sings with (and this is remarkable) a tone of jaded innocence. But she juxtaposes that with a beautiful oasis of contentment on “Presence.” The whole record is like this, stabbing you and then kissing the wound.

Like that second Alabama Shakes album, Jaime may not seem to hang together at first, but every part of it is meticulously crafted and arranged. It has taken a few listens to really piece it together, but now that it’s flowing for me, I think it’s pretty terrific. Like most people, I assume, I never had any doubt that it would be, but Howard threw more than one curve ball here, especially for fans of her band, and it’s impressive how well she navigates this jazz-soul-hip-hop blend she delivers. I have no idea if Alabama Shakes will ever be a thing again, but it hardly matters: in or out of the band, she’s swell, and Jaime is another winner.

I can’t imagine a similar truckload of confidence greeting Liam Gallagher, the erstwhile singer of Oasis. He suffers from the classic lead singer dilemma: Liam’s brother Noel is widely credited with writing the songs that made Oasis what they were, and without him, there’s no real way to know what level he’ll be able to reach. He has one of the most recognizable voices to emerge from the Britpop boom of the ‘90s, but those questions above certainly applied to him, and the mediocre nature of Beady Eye, his post-Oasis band, didn’t help answer them.

It’s a truly pleasant surprise, then, how enjoyable Gallagher’s solo albums have been. 2017’s As You Were gave us a solid set of songs, particularly the mea culpa “For What It’s Worth,” and now the cheekily titled Why Me? Why Not takes another good-sized step forward. While Noel is busy issuing dance-rock singles, Liam connected with pop craftsmen like Greg Kurstin (of The Bird and the Bee) and Andrew Wyatt (of Miike Snow) and, for the second time, assembled a catchy, memorable group of short, well-written tunes.

And make no mistake, each of the 14 songs on Why Me is a potential single. The roaring guitars of “Shockwave,” the opener, have already delivered Liam his most successful solo track, and there are so many others lying in wait here that Radio One may not know what hit it. The barrelhouse piano and thunderous drums of “Halo,” for instance, are pretty terrific, as is the melody and gentle sweetness of “Now That I’ve Found You.” Kurstin and Wyatt produced, and every song sounds crisp and ready for mass consumption.

I don’t mean to suggest that this is some crassly commercial effort, though of course it is designed to become as popular as possible. It truly is a well-honed set of songs, all of which fit Gallagher’s voice quite well. It’s a more polished effort than the last few Oasis albums and miles better than Beady Eye, which makes this my favorite Liam Gallagher record in something like 20 years. That may sound like faint praise, but I mean it as a true blue compliment. Why Me? Why Not is a thoroughly enjoyable record, and I hope Liam can keep this streak going.

* * * * *

So some of you may have noticed that I skipped the second quarter report this year. I took an entire month off for the first time in this silly music column’s long history, and that month happened to be June, and so I never compiled my halfway-through-the-year list. It’s time now for the third quarter report, and I hope it’s no surprise that it doesn’t resemble the one I assembled in March at all, except for the top spot. I mean, what a lousy year it would have been if it did.

Anyway, I’m glad to be back in my weekly groove, and glad to have a third quarter report to share with you. Here’s what my top 10 list in progress looks like right now.

10. Devin Townsend, Empath.
9. Over the Rhine, Love and Revelation.
8. Pedro the Lion, Phoenix.
7. David Mead, Cobra Pumps.
6. Coyote Kid, The Skeleton Man.
5. Peter Mulvey, There Is Another World.
4. Bryan Scary, Birds.
3. Lizzo, Cuz I Love You.
2. Keane, Cause and Effect.
1. Amanda Palmer, There Will Be No Intermission.

 That album at number six will get a review shortly, I promise. There are also a few I wish I could include, like The Bird and the Bee’s amazing Van Halen tribute record. And there’s a new Marillion, With Friends From the Orchestra, on its way later this month, but it will be ineligible since it consists of new versions of older songs. But with strings! I am very much looking forward to hearing it.

That will do it for this week. Probably Wilco and Sturgill Simpson on tap for next week. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.