This week I finally caught up with BT’s two new albums from the end of last year.

For those who don’t know, BT is Brian Transeau, producer and multi-instrumentalist, and he’s a bit of a genius. I’ve been following his career since his trance-heavy early days, and his artistic evolution has been something to behold. From the glitch-heavy pop of Emotional Technology to the beautiful ambience of If the Stars Are Eternal So Are You and I to the blissful, dance-heavy A Song Across Wires, there’s no containing BT to any one genre.

He’s also frighteningly prolific – his two new records come hot on the heels of the double-disc debut from BT’s ‘80s-inspired band All Hail the Silence. The new ones are instrumental and expansive. Between Here and You is an ambient album, full of drones and atmospheres, while the awesomely titled Everything You’re Searching For is On the Other Side of Fear mixes low-key electronic styles with orchestral elements. Both of them are beautiful things, and strong additions to an already excellent catalog.

I wanted to mention these albums because they are, by and large, pretty simple things. BT is an extraordinary musician, capable of the most complex pieces – just check out his untitled record from 2017, with its multi-part suites and extended instrumental compositions. There’s no question about what BT can play, but he often chooses to devote himself to subtler work that doesn’t emphasize his chops. It’s because he knows that skill is not the be-all and end-all. True artistry requires taste, requires making choices that serve the song and the album.

That’s a clumsy segue into talking about two artists that are all technique. The relative outputs of both serve to prove that you can be among the greatest in the world at something and still not make great art with all that talent. There was a time in my life when I thought differently, when I considered mastering an instrument or one’s vocal cords the height of artistry. The two albums I’m talking about this week probably would have resonated much more deeply with me at that time in my life.

As proof of that, I used to love Eminem. I even named The Marshall Mathers LP the best album of 2000, based largely on its satirical intent and Mathers’ tongue-twisting lyrical flash. I probably would not do the same now, but I don’t think there’s any doubting Eminem’s ability. His tracks are a blur of internal rhymes and breathtaking speed, and he can set a scene and deliver a point of view like few others. In the early days, of course, that point of view was about cultural irresponsibility, about pushing the envelope with murder fantasies and multiple personalities that, I thought, hid something a lot more complex and calculating.

But if Em once had something to say, he’s long since buried it under a mountain of bad taste and self-pity. Every album since 2004’s Encore has been, in part, about the poor reaction to the previous one, and while he’s still the king of rapid-fire verses, they’ve been empty ones for a while now. I’m the guy who liked Recovery and the political material on Revival because it sounded honest, like Mathers finding purpose for his power. But neither of them were good albums, and lesser works like Kamikaze obscure them like dark clouds.

So it goes on Eminem’s frustrating 11th album, Music to be Murdered By. It’s another surprise drop, appearing unannounced two Fridays ago, and it’s a more substantial piece of work than Kamikaze for certain. Its title and design are based on an album of scary themes released in 1958 by Alfred Hitchcock. The famed director appears on his cover with an axe and a gun to his head, much like Em does here, and Hitchcock’s interludes are sampled throughout. It’s a good conceit for a guy who made his name creating mini-horror films in song.

And there’s some good stuff here, certainly, some tracks on which Eminem shows a confidence and vision he hasn’t displayed in a long time. “Darkness” is the absolute highlight of this thing. It finds Em stepping into the shoes of Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas shooter. It makes full use of the album’s chief metaphor: rappers referring to their words as weapons and their tracks as murdering the beat. Em uses this as misdirection here, as it slowly becomes clear that he’s preparing for actual murder. The track ends with news footage from various mass shootings, and by the end Mathers has done something remarkable: given us another perspective on a national epidemic of violence.

Alas, it’s the only one like it here. The rest of this record is about Eminem himself, as usual. When it opens with a track that takes Rolling Stone to task for giving Revival two and a half stars, you’d be forgiven for strapping in for a long and tedious ride. Music to Be Murdered By is better than you may expect based on that – I like “Leaving Heaven” a lot, with its unflinching look at Eminem’s childhood, and “Stepdad” is a murder fantasy that hearkens back to his more classic period. “Little Engine” is kind of awesome too. But there’s an ocean of misogyny and tastelessness to wade through (“Marsh,” “Those Kinda Nights,” etc.), and the good stuff isn’t quite worth it.

That isn’t to say Eminem isn’t still a marvel to listen to. Just try “Godzilla,” featuring the recently departed Juice WRLD. It has a basic, minimalist beat over which Mathers again proclaims himself the best in the game, but he does it at near light speed. The final verses are a feat of annunciation, Mathers switching to full auto and firing out words with amazing skill. There’s no doubting how good he is, and Music to Be Murdered By is his best in a while. But I wish he would find a focus for all this talent, the way someone like Kendrick Lamar has. Eminem needs a mission, a reason to get behind the mic. Without it he’ll keep pumping out empty records like this one.

Speaking of empty records, here’s Sons of Apollo with their second record, MMXX. (Yes, it’s named after the year in which it came out.) Sons of Apollo, you may remember, is a prog-metal supergroup consisting of Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy and Derek Sherinian, Mr. Big’s Billy Sheehan, Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal and former Yngwie Malmsteen singer Jeff Scott Soto. If you know those names, you know exactly what this record sounds like.

In fact, if you bought the last Sons of Apollo album, Psychotic Symphony, you have pretty much heard this one too. Like Dream Theater, this band exists to show off the instrumental chops of its members. The band is led by Portnoy, and I think it’s fitting that I get to talk about him so soon after Neil Peart’s death. Portnoy is what Peart’s detractors think he was – overly flashy, busy for no reason, showing off when he could be serving the song. Peart never did any of that. He was a complex player, but his parts served the whole. Portnoy’s entire style screams “look at me” at maximum volume.

And man, I will absolutely cop to loving that sort of thing from time to time. When Dream Theater hit in the early ‘90s, they were one of my favorite bands, fusing the prog of Yes and Genesis with the explosive technical metal of Megadeth. Over time their sound has become wearying, and Portnoy brought that sound with him when he left the band in 2010. He’s been the drummer for Neal Morse’s prog projects, including Transatlantic and Flying Colors, but with Sons of Apollo he gets to set the tone. And the tone is very Dream Theater.

Within the opening minutes of MMXX, you know what you’re in for. Again, there’s no question about what these guys can play, only what they choose to, and here they deliver standard prog-metal. It’s muscular, driven by Portnoy’s energetic playing and Soto’s sorta-cheesy-but-still-impressive voice, and it makes plenty of room for Thal and Sherinian to dazzle us with their lightning-fast leads. The songs are complicated not because the songs call for complexity, but because they are showcases for the players.

There are two tracks worth mentioning, for different reasons. “Desolate July” was written in memory of David Z., a friend of the band who passed away recently. It’s a slow ballad, the kind that Dream Theater occasionally pulls out, but Soto isn’t even the lyricist James LaBrie is, and this song – heartfelt as it may be – traffics in every “no chance to say goodbye, we’re left wondering why” cliché you’ve ever heard. It’s hard to get through.

And then there is the closer, “New World Today,” which stands out for being a 15-minute five-part epic. This sort of thing is de rigueur for a band like Sons of Apollo, but if you’re in this for the flailing guitar solos and odd tempos and stop-time sections, this song contains the band’s best work. A piece like “New World Today” is the very reason a band like this one exists, and if you like 15-minute prog-metal suites, you will like this one. If you like prog-metal in general, in fact, you will enjoy this album.

I just find it surprisingly tiring. I feel like I’ve heard it all before – MMXX contains no new tricks, no new insights. It’s music played with remarkable precision and showiness, its only point being to prove again that these five guys are good at what they do. They are good at it, certainly, but sometimes just being good isn’t enough. Sheer skill rarely moves me, and more often than not these days, I am looking to be moved, not just awed. You can give me all the sound and fury in the world, but if it signifies nothing, I’m gonna be bored.

Next week, Kesha’s return and a few other things. And I’ll probably talk a bit about the Good Place finale.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I didn’t really know Brian Healy.

I only spoke with him a handful of times, at both Cornerstone and AudioFeed. My friend Jeff Elbel was a regular part of Brian’s bands at those festivals, so by being in Jeff’s orbit I got to meet Brian a few times. He was an imposing figure – very tall, husky build, bald, always wearing sunglasses and black clothing. But he was also, as everyone who knew him has said over the past few days, a kind and generous individual.

Brian Healy was the mastermind behind Dead Artist Syndrome, the first Christian goth band. If those two things together make no sense to you, you should probably hear some DAS. Brian had a quirky sense of humor (he titled songs “Young, Sexy and Dead” and “Jesus Wants You to Buy This Record”) and a penchant for cutting right to the heart of things, and his music – reminiscent of Bauhaus and Sisters of Mercy, led by his rumbly baritone – was unlike anything being produced in the spiritual corner of the music world. He was a misfit speaking to misfits, and in their (well, let’s be honest – our) language.

I would often wonder how Brian managed to get such great musicians to play with him. His albums and concerts featured members of the 77s, the Choir and Undercover, and my friend Jeff is certainly no slouch. The reason is simple: people loved Brian Healy. Where other subcultures might have found a lot to mock about him, this one embraced him. And I’m proud to have been a part of that.

After years of health issues, Brian Healy died last weekend of a brain hemorrhage. He was only 60 years old. He leaves behind a six-album musical legacy, but more importantly, the mark he made on the lives of so many people in this strange little corner of the music world. I’m sure this year’s AudioFeed will feature a tribute to him, and I’m sure that I will be there, singing along. Rest in peace, Brian.

* * * * *

The last year of Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. has been non-stop eulogies so far. I’m hoping for a respite from untimely death so I can talk about music again.

I’ve already heard several new records this year. I’ll get to Eminem and Sons of Apollo next week (and if you can guess the connection between the two of them, I’ll be impressed), and eventually I’d like to talk about Algiers and And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead and Cursive and a few others. But so far, one record stands above all the others for me, and it’s Making a New World by Field Music.

The brothers Brewis (David and Peter) are a lot better known in their native England, but they’ve been releasing smart, sophisticated pop records as Field Music since 2005. I usually let them come and go, and I’m not sure why. Their work is routinely excellent, thoughtful yet fun, complex yet hummable, drawing on decades of British pop from the likes of 10cc and Supertramp. I never quite know what they’re going to do next, and that’s the mark of a terrific band to me.

Case in point: 2018’s Open Here introduced them to new audiences, its Brexit-themed songs receiving much critical acclaim. So what better way to follow it up than with a concept album about World War I and its impacts on the next century of world society? That’s what Making a New World is – it grew from a project the brothers put together for the Imperial War Museum to accompany a graphic representation of the bullets fired in the first moments after armistice ended in November of 1919.

What they ended up with is a 42-minute thesis statement about the events of the war and its aftermath, and how they have shaped everyday life since. Songs are color-coded on the artwork to correspond with liner notes detailing the topics they address, ranging from skin graft surgeries to the development of the Ondes Martinot (one of the first electronic musical instruments) to the marketing of sanitary napkins. Each one of these can open up a Wikipedia wormhole that will swallow you for days.

I know, right? This all sounds like so much homework to enjoy a pop album. Well, never fear, because the music is wonderful and will sweep you along even without context. The Brewis brothers’ lyrics are impressionistic, vague poetic snatches instead of full-on history lessons, and their music is their usual blend of glorious melodies and harmonies. “A Change of Heir,” for example, is about Harold Gillies, who pioneered skin graft techniques in 1917 and went on, in 1951, to perform one of the first gender reassignment surgeries. But in the song, that idea is summed up in one line: “If the mind won’t fit the body, let the body fit the mind.”

Musically this album plays like a single thought. Its 19 tracks segue – many of them are instrumental interludes – and it’s possible to think of Making a New World as a single piece. In fact, it probably makes the most sense to think of it that way, because it will carry you along before you have time to check the track number and song title you’re on. The songs are delightfully clever, but some – like the mustard gas cautionary tale “If the Wind Blows Towards the Hospital” – are over almost as soon as they’ve begun. As songs they’re fragments. As fragments they add up to something remarkable.

This is, no doubt, a weird record. “Only in a Man’s World” finds David Brewis asking “why should a woman feel ashamed” and declaring that “things would be different if the boys bled too,” as a rejoinder against the male-led marketing of feminine hygiene products that began shortly after the war. Right after that is a song (“Money is a Memory”) about Germany’s final payments in the Treaty of Versailles, which it made in 2010.

These are uncommon subjects for pop songs, but then Field Music is an uncommon band. In a lot of ways, Making a New World is just another thoughtful, fascinating album for them. It’s been the one I have listened to most since the start of the year, and is my favorite album of 2020 so far. Yes, that’s certainly laughable, given that we’re only three weeks in, but if calling it the best album of the year so far gets a few of you to listen to it, well, mission accomplished.

Next week, Eminem and Sons of Apollo. And after that, Kesha, Pet Shop Boys, Green Day, Nada Surf, Tame Impala and on and on. Year 20, year last. Let’s go.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

This is the last year of Tuesday Morning 3 A.M., and this is not how I wanted to start it. But when a musician you’ve admired for most of your life passes away, you say something. That’s how this works.

So of course I’m going to talk about Neil Peart.

I’m not absolutely sure how I started listening to Rush. I can tell you that they were in the background for me for a while before I started paying attention. I remember the video for “Time Stand Still” quite clearly, and that came out when I was 13. But I also remember people talking about Rush – friends at school and church and elsewhere – because when you’re a 13-year-old boy, Rush is one of those bands people talk about.

By the time Presto came out, I was 15 and I was making my own money. The video for “Show Don’t Tell” knocked me backwards. It was metal, but it wasn’t. It was melodic, but massive. It had a riff that went on for days, it found room for sweet keyboards in the chorus, and it had that head-spinning stop-time bit that I loved. I bought Presto. Then I bought Chronicles, because I’d read about just how vast the Rush discography was, and I had this cute idea in my younger days that greatest hits albums would ever do it for me.

Chronicles was amazing, but wasn’t enough, and over the next few months I bought every Rush album. There were 16 at that time, counting the three live records. And I proceeded to listen to those 16 albums over and over and over, puzzling them out. I loved the ones everyone else loved, of course. I remember listening to 2112 on the school bus, since the title track was just long enough to cover the whole trip. I devoured Moving Pictures and Permanent Waves. But I also couldn’t stop listening to Hemispheres or Power Windows or even Caress of Steel, a record I can probably still hum all of.

People sometimes criticize Rush for making cerebral music, for aiming for the head instead of the heart. To that I would say two things. First, I find a lot of Rush songs surprisingly moving, and not just “Closer to the Heart” either. I think they pulled on a lot of different emotions during their time. But second, I am so in for music that appeals to my head. I love twisty, difficult, even showy music that takes skill to write and perform. I love music I have to map out, music willing to take me down a hundred different melodic passageways. Rush’s work, as anyone who has tried to play it will tell you, is damn difficult. And sometimes you just want to stand in awe as masterful musicians play music masterfully.

Even at 13 I could tell that there was something special about Neil Peart. He did things no other drummer I could name at that time could do. I didn’t know, as I jammed out to “The Spirit of Radio,” that I was listening to one of the best rock drummers who ever lived. I just knew that bit in the beginning where he and Geddy Lee line up perfectly was awesome. And that he made that killer guitar riff work from behind the drum kit in a way that I couldn’t explain. And that the reggae bit was pretty cool.

Now, of course, I know how special Peart was. I know he somehow managed to hold the entire band together, giving them the bedrock they needed to explore melodically – Geddy was always up in the stratosphere somewhere, and it was Neil who locked everything in place. That he somehow did this while gaining a reputation as a flashy player is remarkable to me. I’ve never thought of him as flashy, at least not in the same way I consider disciples of his like Mike Portnoy to be flashy. Peart could play anything, and Rush songs often required him to, but listen again. He rarely does anything that doesn’t serve the song.

Peart’s lyrics helped shape Rush as much as his drumming, too. A staunch defender of free will and individualism who was also open to wonder in all its forms, Peart’s lyrics could be stuffy, but they could also be remarkably straightforward. And I think calling him overly cerebral does a disservice to his work. A song like “Bravado,” for instance, is simple and pretty: “And if love remains, though everything is lost, we will pay the price but we will not count the cost…” The Rush catalog is full of these smaller, more sentimental tunes, and I love them.

I want to talk about one of them a little more closely, if I may. It’s the first Rush song I really fell in love with, nestled there at the end of Presto, and it’s one I’ve carried with me since I was a teen. “Available Light” is probably my favorite Rush song, all told, and I don’t think it’s for nostalgic reasons – it really is a perfect piece of music. And it’s deeply, deeply hopeful: “Chase the wind around the world, I want to look at life in the available light.” When Geddy sings that line, as the band drops out behind him and cycles back to the sparse piano figure that opens the song, I still get chills.

Just listen to Peart during those choruses – he’s a monster, pushing the whole thing into orbit – and then during the instrumental bridge, in which you can hear Rush ignite my lifelong love of prog-pop. When Alex Lifeson’s soaring lead guitar comes in, I can trace every day of my fascination with the likes of Marillion back to that moment when I was 15 years old, listening to this on headphones. It’s a complex tune, but I also find it full of deep feeling and emotional power. If they’d given me nothing else but this, I still would have been a fan.

As I grew older, I realized what Peart’s true impact on my life was, beyond his incredible skill behind the drum kit. It was his absolute individualism, something that extends to Rush as a whole. Like all the musicians I admire most, Rush never played a note they didn’t believe, and never made a record for anyone but themselves. They’re a band who heard every criticism lobbed at them for 40 years and never changed or compromised. Peart’s lyrics are often about taking control of your own life, being your own person, and that’s the lesson I took from him and his bandmates. Peart was never anything but his own man.

I never did get to see Rush live, and it’s one of my great music fan regrets. I watched as the band slowed down after 1996, making music less frequently, and I knew my chance was dwindling, but I never got there. I know so many friends with stories of seeing the band live, of being gobsmacked by Peart’s technical skill and stamina – this is hard music to play for two and a half hours at a stretch – and I never collected one of my own. And now I never will.

Neil Peart retired from Rush in 2015, after one final tour. Their last album, 2012’s Clockwork Angels, feels like their last album – it’s a meaty, aggressive conceptual piece that sounds like they poured everything they had into it. I knew the decades of touring had taken their toll, and Neil wanted to spend time with his family. And after the tragedies that had befallen his life in the ‘90s, when he lost his partner and his daughter in the space of a year, who could blame him. He’d started over, fell in love again, and things were going well for him.

What I didn’t know was that Peart had contracted brain cancer, and though he fought it valiantly for more than three years, he succumbed to it one week ago today. He was only 67 years old. He leaves behind his wife and his 10-year-old daughter, and my thoughts are with them.

He also leaves behind a legacy like few others. His name stands tall with only a handful of rock drummers who have influenced damn near everyone playing today. Beyond just his technical skill, though, he carved out a 40-plus-year career doing exactly what he wanted to do, and success came organically. (Even the band’s multi-decade struggle to be recognized by the Rock Hall of Fame ended in their favor, without them having to change anything about themselves.) He set his own course, charted his own path, and made an indelible mark.

On behalf of 15-year-old me, curled up with my Walkman listening to “Available Light” for the 200th time, thank you, Neil. Rest in peace.

If you’re in the mood for a good piece on Neil’s life and career, I can recommend this one. 

* * * * *

After that, anything else I might have filled this first column of the year with would seem inconsequential, so I will hold off until next week. As I said, this isn’t how I wanted to start this final year of tm3am. Hopefully we can get back to business as usual in seven days.

See you in line Tuesday morning.