I have never in my life met anyone like Paul Dailing. This one is for him, and I’ve been waiting years to write it. Let me tell you why.

I’ve known Paul for at least 10 years now. We met as reporters for rival papers, but in my experience that rivalry never really trickled down to the reporters themselves. I was and am good friends with people I met while working for companies bent on destroying one another. Paul’s recollection of the start of our friendship matches up with mine: we were both covering some event on a snowy day at Fermilab, where I would one day go on to work, and I gave him a ride across the grounds.

I didn’t know at that time, of course, how many interests we shared, or that I was in the presence of one of the most restlessly creative individuals I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. Sometime before 2010 we started working at the same newspaper, and then I followed him to work for an online news organization that – at least while I was there – didn’t quite live up to its own lofty ambitions. I knew at the time it would be my last journalism job, and in 2012 I made the jump to science communication.

Also in 2012, Paul Dailing launched a project called 1,001 Chicago Afternoons. Based on a 1920s newspaper column by Ben Hecht, 1,001 Chicago Afternoons set out to do what it says in the title: tell 1,001 stories about the city of Chicago. (This is one of our differences: I could never live in a city, let alone love one the way Paul loves Chicago.) Three times a week, Paul would share another beautifully written anecdote, musing or observation about life in the windy city.

Sometimes, these pieces would take my breath away. He’s such a good writer it kills me. Whenever I’d post his stuff on my social media channels, I’d introduce it the same way: “Ladies and gentlemen, Paul Dailing.” I’m not sure how or why I started doing that, but to me it became a way of saying that his work deserves a wider audience. Seriously, just take a browse through his archive. I’ll wait here.

Anyway, given his thrice-weekly pace, I knew it wouldn’t be too long before Paul caught up to my output, and so I figured out, years before he got there, the exact week that he and I would post a column with the same number. That number turned out to be 868, and Paul remembered when he got there, in December of 2017. Not only did he remember, he wrote me into his project, vowing to hunt me down, destroy me and drink my salty tears. (He also said some kinder things.)

At the time I suggested that I would win the long game, that he would stop at 1,001 while I would keep on plugging, and eventually, the tables would be turned. And now we’re here. This is Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. column number 1,001. Next week I will post number 1,002 and surpass Paul, and I don’t know if he’s expecting this little tribute in turn, but I thought it was only fair. And I would totally hunt and destroy him now, if not for the global pandemic keeping me in my house.

So my only other option is to say nice things about him. Let’s start by noting that while, as of next week, I may have written more columns than Paul, I have never written better than him.

He was a creative and joyous presence in the newsroom, sneaking jokes in past the editors, but his blog is where his true love of words can be found. It was often funny – here’s a list of Chicago’s recent mayoral candidates set to “Yakko’s World,” from Animaniacs – but it was just as often an angry, bitter cry for justice, both local and global. Mainly, though, it was about people and place, observed with a keen eye and an empathetic heart.

And sometimes, it was about why writers write. That’s one of my favorites, one that practically bursts with the joy and delight of putting one word after another. And here’s a companion piece, about the reasons to keep some stories to ourselves. There’s a ton of insight in both of these pieces, and I’ve come back to them a lot over the years since Paul wrote them.

I definitely admire the way Paul always pushes people to be better. People in power, of course – he’s the guy who wrote and hosted a Chicago Corruption Walking Tour, after all – but not just them. By pushing himself to be a better writer and a better person, which you can see throughout his project, he does the same for others. He’s made me stop and think about what I value, and how I express it, more than a few times. I’m as grateful for that as I am for the times we’ve hung out and watched Doctor Who or argued about superheroes.

I’m sad to say that in the nearly three years I have spent catching up to him, our lives have drifted even farther apart. He has a lovely family now – the birth of his son coincided with the end of his column – and we live just far enough apart that we haven’t seen each other in many years now. I hope we rectify that soon. In his piece from 2017, he described us as “two friends from afar who type too damn much,” and I cannot think of a better way to put it. I’m thankful to him for being kind to me in print three years ago, and for all the kindness in person and online for the past decade-plus.

Oh, and in four days, Paul’s gonna drop this thing. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’m excited. And no doubt, when I post about it online, I will introduce it the way I’ve introduced his odd brilliance for years:

Ladies and gentlemen, Paul Dailing.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I write from first sentence to last. It’s how I’ve always done it. I’m not the type of writer who can figure out the middle bit first, then write around it. I need the first sentence before I can move on to the second. So sometimes it takes me a while to begin these columns. I’ve often stared at a blank Word document for a couple hours, trying to think of a way in, a hook to kick things off.

That is not a problem this week. I know exactly how I want to start this one, because this is my 1,000th Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. column. One. Thousandth.

That’s one of these things a week, give or take, for 20 years. There have certainly been times when I didn’t stick to this schedule (and other times when I doubled up the output), but that means that every week, more or less, for 20 years I have sat down at one computer or another and written one of these things. There have been weeks when I am not sure why I’m doing it, weeks when it feels like shouting into the darkness for no reason, but I’ve still done it. Every week, more or less.

I’ll write more about the ups and downs of the last 20 years in my final column, which is coming right up, amazingly. Suffice it to say that I was 26 years old, out of work and living in Tennessee when I began this thing, mainly as a way of keeping the writing muscles limber. I emailed out the first 30 or so to a small list before Mike Ferrier kindly volunteered to design the first tm3am website. The column has lived on his server ever since, and I remain grateful.

But if you’d told me 20 years ago that I would still be doing it every week (more or less) in 2020, I’m not sure I would have believed you. It’s been a good run, a nice outlet for my musical thoughts, and I’m eternally appreciative of the small band of faithful readers I’ve managed to keep. It’s been amazing getting to know some of you, and whether you’ve been following along for two decades or just occasionally dropping in when I cover something that interests you, I’m thankful. More than I can even say.

I’ve been uncertain about how to mark this occasion. A thousand columns seems pretty momentous, right? I should say or do something equally momentous to celebrate? But eventually I realized that I’d rather just do what this column was created to do: share some thoughts about new music. I won’t get many more chances to do that in this space, and it’s honestly something I still love doing. Tuesday Morning 3 AM was intended as a peek at the weekly life of an obsessive fan, and I’m still one of those.

I began this column to talk about what I have been listening to lately, so let’s do that. It seems like the best way to commemorate the thousandth column: by writing something that’s just like the majority of the last nine hundred ninety-nine.

I should probably start with some records that are likely going to make my top 10 list. If you saw the third quarter report a couple weeks ago, you may have noticed a few unfamiliar entries. Probably the most important of those, as far as the list is concerned, is the new Darlingside, called Fish Pond Fish. I can thankfully report that the title is the worst thing about their best record.

Darlingside is a great example of a band I wouldn’t have known about without the people I met through this column. Several faithful readers recommended them to me, back when they only had two lovely little albums, and I’ve been a die-hard fan since. Which means I’ve been listening, mesmerized, as this Boston quartet has transformed from a folk band with superb harmonies to an otherworldly outfit that spins magic onto wax. Fish Pond Fish is so beautiful, so perfectly realized, that I don’t think there are words to adequately describe it. It is everything I have loved about Darlingside, magnified and perfected.

I could certainly point out some specifics, like the absolutely stunning “Ocean Bed,” which marries a sprightly acoustic figure to a busy percussion bed with gorgeous results. Or the incredible two-part “February/Stars” that begins as a strummy folk song and ends as a hushed hymn. Or the perfection that is the final track, the anthemic “A Light On in the Dark.” But it’s the whole that impresses here, the way this band never puts a foot wrong. The four-part harmonies remain the main selling point, and man, are they indescribably wonderful, but every element here works.

I’ve been hesitant to write about the new Fleet Foxes album, mainly because it is merely pleasant without delivering a single knockout. May I say, if you like what Robin Pecknold is doing, Darlingside does it better. Every single moment of Fish Pond Fish feels timeless, like it has existed for thousands of years, and at the same time has emerged fully formed out of thin air. This year hasn’t produced a lot of must-hear records, but this is certainly one of them. Hear it here.

What else? Well, Hum is back, and that’s pretty incredible. After releasing four increasingly brilliant albums in the ‘90s, Hum called it quits, but reunited in 2015. I don’t think anyone expected a new album in 2020, let alone their best album, but here it is. It’s called Inlet, and it was clearly written with no expectations in mind, just pure creativity. Hum’s hallmark is ultra-loud guitars washing over each other, Matt Talbott’s voice all but lost within the din, and that is certainly here. But these riffs are bigger, these songs are longer, and this album overall lives up to the hype and then some. Hear it here.

I owe Dr. Tony Shore for getting me into Everything Everything, and as thanks I will use his favorite word to describe them: they are quirky. They are also fierce, unfailingly melodic and unceasingly experimental. Their new one is called Re-Animator, and it continues all those trends. It is the most keyboard-heavy record they have made, and Jonathan Higgs’ oddly compelling voice works perfectly in this setting. “Big Climb” is going to get the most ink, with its memorable refrain and almost danceable rhythm, but it is the weirder ones like “Planets” and “Lord of the Trapdoor” that I have ended up enjoying most. I have still not fully absorbed it, but I have heard it enough times to know it is one of the best things to come out this year. Hear it here.

The last new entry on the list is Lo Tom, and reviewing this one is bittersweet, since they broke up shortly before releasing it. Lo Tom is, in some circles, a supergroup – it consists of David Bazan of Pedro the Lion, Jason Martin of Starflyer 59 and TW Walsh and Trey Many of several well-regarded projects. Their first album was a quick blast of rock and roll with Bazan’s immediately recognizable voice at the helm, and this second one is too, only it’s better. “Start Payin’” and “I Need Relief” are probably my two favorite rock songs of the year, and just like last time, my main complaint is that this is too short. But for the 26 minutes we have them, they’re on fire. Hear that one here.

Since then, a lot of my listening time has been taken up by the new Tom Petty box set, celebrating his second solo album Wildflowers. I usually try to ignore nostalgia when it comes to my musical musings, but I can’t help it in this case. Wildflowers is the sound of my junior year of college, living with two Garys and a T.J. in a house on a lake. “You Don’t Know How it Feels” was inescapable, just a massive single, and the rest of the album (which I bought on cassette, naturally) got a lot of play around our house.

Revisiting it now is tinged with sadness, of course, since Petty was taken from us three years ago. I had always been a fan, and would list the Heartbreakers among the finest American bands of all time, but Wildflowers was something else. It’s just a lovely, diverse little effort, Rick Rubin finding a way, again, of helping an artist discover what he always should have sounded like. The songs are simple – “You Wreck Me” is three chords – but they all work, really well.

Wildflowers has been remastered and reissued as a box set, with hours of supplemental material. And I’m so pleased to find that this is one of the rare sets that gets it all right. There isn’t a wasted second, from the ten tracks recorded during the same sessions to the disc of revelatory home recordings to the delightful live documents, as Petty and his bandmates bring these songs to blistering, affecting life. I’m going to treasure this set for the rest of my life, and I hope the rest of Petty’s catalog is reissued with this much love and care.

There, that felt good. Go and listen to Darlingside and EvEv and Hum and Lo Tom and meet me back here in seven days for more. I’m grateful to everyone who has kept me going for these last 20 years and one thousand columns, and though I’m bringing it all to a close soon, know that your comments and emails and love has been the best part of all this, and the thing I will miss the most.

I’m not crying, you’re crying. Get outta here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I have been trying to remember the first time I heard Eddie Van Halen play.

I’m not quite of the generation that made him famous. I was four years old when the first Van Halen album came out, and I missed the golden years, not quite being conscious of music yet. Even though their hits, like “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” and “Dance the Night Away” and “Everybody Wants Some,” were all over the radio during my formative years, I can’t remember hearing any of them. But I was ten years old when 1984 was released, and that was just old enough to think that “Jump” was the greatest song ever written by humans.

I’m pretty sure I first heard Eddie Van Halen the way a lot of suburban kids my age did: on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” Even though I was eight when it came out, I can vividly remember that song being absolutely everywhere, and Van Halen’s blistering solo is seared into my brain. I can hum it, still, from memory. “Beat It” is one of the earliest songs I can remember fully responding to, one of the songs that ignited my lifelong love of music.

I guess what I’m saying here is that I literally do not remember my life without Eddie Van Halen’s playing in it. You simply could not be a teenage boy in the ‘80s and not hear Van Halen. And yet, if you asked me when I first heard Van Halen II, for example, I’m not sure I could tell you. It’s just always been an album I’ve had, in one way or another, like the rest of the David Lee Roth era. I’m pretty sure 1984 came first. I do remember reading a Rolling Stone cover story on the band while waiting for an orthodontist appointment, and probably asking for the album on cassette not long after that.

I have no doubt, though, that I did not understand the significance of Eddie Van Halen until much later. Now I know the truth: you can cleanly divide rock guitar playing into eras, and one of those dividing lines is “Eruption.” Sequenced as the second song on the band’s self-titled debut, “Eruption” is less than two minutes long and consists of almost nothing but Eddie tapping away on the fretboard, but it sparked a revolution. Guitar solos before “Eruption” sounded nothing like it. But once it dropped, everyone wanted to sound like that.

Some guitar players have fans. Eddie Van Halen had disciples. The ‘80s were chock full of glammy guitar-rock bands, and every one of them had a lead player who wanted to be Eddie Van Halen. Guys like Vito Bratta and Nuno Bettencourt built on what Van Halen had brought to the table, but his work was still the foundation. He was the first guitar god of my lifetime, and remained one of the best.

To say there is some dispute about the best era of Van Halen is to understate things by miles. I’m not sure how long it took me to become familiar with the David Lee Roth era – I do know that by the time Tone Loc sampled “Jamie’s Cryin’” on “Wild Thing,” I could recognize the riff, and that was 1989. I missed the entire era doing things like learning to read and do long division, but it still feels like a part of my life. While some players with Eddie Van Halen’s talent would have been self-serious and pretentious about it, early Van Halen had just one objective: fun.

The first six Van Halen albums are just full-on fun, winking double entendres and all. David Lee Roth was a perfect frontman. He couldn’t sing well, but that didn’t matter. His personality carried the day. He was a wisecracking ball of energy, an inexhaustible showman, and he brought out the best in the band. Eddie’s finest riffs can be found here, from the immortal stomp of “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” to the great “And the Cradle Will Rock.” I like so many of the tunes from this era, even overlooked ones like the intricate “Little Guitars” and the delightful “Beautiful Girls,” but I think they hit their apex on “Panama.” Every bit of this song works, still, 36 years later.

But I definitely came of age in the Van Hagar years, and they will always hold a special place in my heart. For one thing, I cannot overstate how much Eddie Van Halen did to make keyboards seem cool to an impressionable young kid. “Jump” was certainly one thing, but “Dreams” and “Love Walks In” were my jams. “Dreams” is still, I think, an incredible song, just a beautifully structured thing, and Hagar’s vocals work so well on it. Hagar can actually sing, meaning he can hit the notes and hold them, even if his persona was a lot more straightforward in the band than Roth’s. Roth was adamant that he wasn’t talking about love, but Hagar didn’t talk about anything else, really. It was a transformation for the band, but they handled it with aplomb.

5150 is a great little record, but OU812 was really my first new Van Halen album. Here’s a memory I have: perusing the cassettes a friend brought to Christian camp when I was 14, spotting the new Van Halen and reading the lyrics. I’m sure I had no idea what “Black and Blue” and “Finish What You Started” really meant, but I found them thrilling, subversive. (I was a sheltered kid.) OU812 knocked me sideways with its varied songwriting, extraordinary playing and sense of fun. It was a hair metal album, but it felt like more than that, like elder statesmen showing the kids how it was done.

From then on, Van Halen has never really left my consciousness. “When It’s Love” was one of those songs I tried to learn to play with sheet music, but ended up figuring out by ear, a skill I didn’t really know at the time that I had. My high school band recorded a jokey version of Van Halen’s take on “Happy Trails.” I was about ready to graduate high school when the band scored a massive hit with “Right Now,” and it became something of an anthem. My sister chose “Love Walks In” as the entrance music for her wedding. I was working at a music magazine in Portland, Maine when Van Halen III – the band’s ill-fated outing with Extreme singer Gary Cherone – was released, and I wrote a passionate defense of it. I still stand by most of it, though the album hasn’t aged as well as I would have hoped.

And I rejoiced when A Different Kind of Truth came out in 2012, and it was actually kind of awesome. Eddie had revealed his health struggles by this point, and had overcome tongue cancer, but would soon be diagnosed with throat cancer. I didn’t know this would be the last Van Halen album, but it felt like a strong return to form, bringing Roth back into the fold one last time, and in retrospect it’s a good way for the band to go out. After some attempts at deeper and more experimental music, this one felt old school. It just wanted you to have a good time, and it certainly seemed like Eddie was having fun playing this stuff. Just listen to “As Is.” That song rips, man. Eddie sounds like he’s 25 again.

Sometime in 2019 Eddie Van Halen was hospitalized, his battle with throat cancer having taken a turn. He died at the age of 65 on October 6, another lousy turn in a lousy year. This long and rambling reminiscence is my way of saying goodbye to someone whose extraordinary talent has been in my life for as long as I can remember, literally, and of saying thank you. Van Halen music has soundtracked my life, served as touchpoints along my growth as a player and appreciator, and brought me an uncountable amount of joy. Rest in peace, Eddie. You were taken much too soon.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Every year has a sound to me.

This might be one of the most difficult concepts I’ve ever tried to explain in this space. That might not even be the best way to describe it. I’m not talking about the physical sound, like how Phil Collins-style gated drums sound like 1981, or how Jerry Cantrell’s guitar sounds like 1993. I mean I can point to an album or two each year that, no matter what style of music they contain, sound like that year.

Marillion’s FEAR is a great example. There’s nothing about it stylistically that sounds even particularly modern – it’s an ambient prog-pop epic, the kind Marillion has been making for nearly 40 years. But it sounds like a storm rolling in, like the last clear moments before the skies open up and people drown. It sounds like a clarion call, like a warning from the mystics, like someone screaming at passersby in a train station, begging them to listen. In short, it sounds like 2016, and no other album really captures the year for me like that one does.

I don’t consciously look for the sound of the year. It just kind of presents itself, in one or two records that feel like they could not have been made at any other time. One of them this year is Fetch the Bolt Cutters, the bold and stunning fifth album by Fiona Apple. There’s a list at the end of this column, of the top 10 list as it stands right now, and Bolt Cutters promises to rank very highly on it. (I still have not finalized that list. At this point it’s as much a surprise to me as it is to you.)

Sufjan Stevens’ The Ascension is another. 2020 has been an absolute horror show for me and everyone I know, with the twin stresses of a global pandemic and our precarious national situation bearing down on us. Many people, myself included, have lost friends and loved ones to COVID-19, and many of us have found unhealthy ways of coping through circumstances we could not have imagined. The death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg a few weeks ago set me on a path toward total hopelessness, and it’s a struggle every day to keep on going.

That is what The Ascension sounds like to me. I firmly believe that Sufjan Stevens is the best and most important musician of my generation. There is no one else my age who approaches his work with as much complexity, nuance and honesty as Stevens does. Every project of his is worth the patience, time and study it takes to understand, beyond just the initial awe. His last three major projects – 2005’s Illinois, 2010’s The Age of Adz and 2015’s Carrie and Lowell – have all topped my list in their respective years.

They also detail Stevens’ slow tumble into despair. Illinois was a sad and serious album in places, but it was practically bursting with hope. The sprightly orchestral arrangements alone conveyed a brighter outlook, even as he was singing about overcoming doubt and pain. The Age of Adz found Stevens immersing himself in electronics for the first time, combining them with his orchestral ambitions to create a whirlwind of sound. That whirlwind threatened to drown him, and the lyrics matched the turmoil. Here was a Sufjan Stevens struggling, trying to reconcile his belief in something greater with the horror of the world. And yet, he emerged from this one hopeful as well.

Carrie and Lowell, of course, is one of the saddest albums ever made, on which Stevens grapples with the loss of his mother and the erosion of his faith. And now, with The Ascension, he’s hit an empty, hollow place. This is a record with almost no light, one that grows more desolate as it goes along, and it ends in bitterness. It hurts to listen to, especially in all of its 80-minute glory. This is the sound of Stevens breaking himself open and finding nothing inside.

It’s also absolutely magnificent. Sonically this one retains the electronics of Adz but removes the organic elements – nearly the entire thing is rendered on synthesizers. In some ways it feels like Stevens has been making music like this for a while, but the complete absence of guitars, horns and other instruments makes a much bigger difference than you’d expect. Stevens often uses his synths to create bleak soundscapes, as layered and intricate as anything he’s given us, and the sounds he uses are evocative. Much of this feels like walking through the valley of the shadow of death, and you can feel the oppressive heat and see the endless miles of barren wasteland in your mind.

The first five of these songs feel almost introductory, like Stevens setting the stage. They are the most traditionally enjoyable as well, especially the slinky electro-pop of “Video Game,” in which Stevens refuses to play the standard publicity game, preferring his own company. It’s a moment of defiance and self-actualization before those qualities slip away later. “Tell Me You Love Me” is the first hint of difficult times ahead, as Stevens opens with “My love, I’ve lost my faith in everything, tell me you love me anyway…”

Once you hit “Die Happy,” the record sinks into the depths, and it doesn’t come back up for more than half an hour. “Die Happy” is a slow, bleak ocean of sound, over which Stevens repeats “I want to die happy” as a mantra, the musical backdrop making that sound less and less likely as it goes. “Ativan” feels like anxiety, Stevens asking “Is it all for nothing, is it all part of the plan” over a flurry of electronic noise. “Landslide” is a masterpiece of darkness, the ascending melody caught in a rush of synths like rocks falling down upon it. “Death Star” is almost a dance song, but it feels like rowing the boat across the river Styx. It’s about the hopelessness of climate change, but it feels like hitting bottom.

And where the Stevens of old may have left us on a note of grace, here he refuses to. “Sugar” finds him crying out for human connection – it is the most desperate use of “don’t make me wait” you will ever hear. The title track is, bar none, one of Stevens’ very best songs, and finds him grappling with his own selfishness and complete lack of hope. The lyrics here are devastating: “And to everything there is no meaning, a season of pain and hopelessness, and I shouldn’t have looked for revelation, I should have resigned myself to this, I thought I could change the world around me, I thought I could change the world for best, I thought I was called in convocation, I thought I was sanctified and blessed…” In the context of his body of work, the final repeated “what now” here is unspeakably painful.

And then he leaves us with the 12-minute “America,” which feels like the final refutation of his wide-eyed 50 states project. It’s about losing faith in everything, from God to country, and finds him pleading to both God and man: “Don’t do to me what you did to America.” The final washes of synth are like the last vestiges of light slipping from the day. And it hurts. But it sounds like 2020 to me, like a year in which joy has been hard to find, and despair has been creeping in around the edges. The Ascension is extraordinary, astonishing, beautiful in its pain. It’s also so bleak, so dark, so difficult that I don’t know how often I can listen to it. Like 2020, it’s not something I am excited to revisit.

But 2020 has also been about overcoming all that darkness, about facing the impossible head on and making your way through it. And that’s why it makes sense to me to point to another extraordinary album, one that also encapsulates the sound of this year to me. That album is a debut from a virtually unknown artist, and under other circumstances it may have slipped by me. But not this year. The artist is Ella Mine, and the album is called Dream War, and it’s a superb piece of work, one that gives me the resolve to face not only this year, but the future.

Ella Mine is only 23 years old, but she’s already been through hell. Dream War draws on her experience of taking prescribed drugs for physical pain that caused paranoia and psychosis, and she’s still recovering from the effects years later. In this revealing interview she talks about facing a choice every night: stay awake and allow her brain to attack her, or sleep and deal with horrific, lifelike dreams. This album is about clawing her way through that, and about achieving a peace that allows her to dream again, both literally and figuratively.

It’s as cohesive musically as it is conceptually. It’s built around her piano and her voice, and it plays like a single 62-minute whole. Taking it in sequence is like going on a journey with her, through the weariness of the title track to the tumult of “Water’s Rise” to the lovely revelations of “Fire” and the two reprises that tie this album up in a bow. The sound is layered and dark and beautiful, and everything segues, so it carries you from first note to last. It’s remarkably ambitious, but Mine and her collaborators are skilled enough to pull it off brilliantly.

And it is exactly the record I needed at this point in the year. Mine’s descriptions of her experiences sound horrific. “If I’m scared then I’m scared of what I might design,” she sings on the massive title track, and on the brief musical bridge that follows she wonders, “Will I ever get to sleep without a killing in my head?” “Water’s Rise” is one of my favorites, Mine repeating “Heart is wax against flame, bronze in fire, paint in rain” and admitting she is losing strength. Both “Where Is She Now” and “Sound and Fury” are based on Shakespeare, the former from the point of view of Lady Macbeth, here only killing in her dreams.

But going through all this to get to “Fire” feels like victory, no matter how small. “I’ll run again, I’ll run again, replace the fire,” she sings, finding the will to go on. “I can’t love in this world without a fight,” she concludes, “so I’ll fight.” Dream War doesn’t end in a perfectly happy place, but it does end in a hopeful one, with Mine singing that she will dream again, and in a year like this one, that’s enough. It’s more than enough. Dream War feels like emerging on the other side of a long and painful struggle with the will to carry on, and though I’m sure she wasn’t thinking about our collective experiences when she wrote it, it speaks to them. It’s beautiful, powerful stuff, and one of the year’s very best records.

Check out Ella Mine here. I hope there will be CDs of this record soon, because I want one.

* * * * *

OK, here is the Third Quarter Report, delayed one week because of the Jandekian saga. This is what my top 10 list would look like if I were forced to publish it right now, and it’s a pretty good indicator of how it will look in December. The top spots are up for debate, of course – the two I mentioned in this column rank highly, and I need to understand whether that is just the shock of the new, or a true representation of their ranking in my mind. Anyway, here is what will be the final (sniff) Third Quarter Report.

10. Lo Tom, LP2.
9. Phoebe Bridgers, Punisher.
8. Matt Wilson and his Orchestra, When I Was a Writer.
7. Everything Everything, Re-Animator.
6. Hum, Inlet.
5. Weiwu, Are You Perfect Yet.
4. Darlingside, Fish Pond Fish.
3. Ella Mine, Dream War.
2. Fiona Apple, Fetch the Bolt Cutters.
1. Sufjan Stevens, The Ascension.

I know quite a few of these have not been reviewed yet in this space, and I hope to get there. But not this week.

OK, one last thing, just for fun.

#103. Amsterdam Saturday (2020).

A return to basics, this show was recorded about a month after the Grinnell performance, on November 10, 2007 at the Paradiso in Amsterdam. It features a reunion with OG Jandek trio drummer Alex Neilson, and new-to-Jandek bassist Phil Todd. The Rep is on electric guitar, harmonica and voice, and for the most part, this feels like an old-school trio outing. These six songs fly by in 50 minutes, and they’re mostly confident and enjoyable minutes.

The first track is the strangest: the 11-minute “The Sentence” is carried by bass and drums alone, the Rep sing-speaking atop the bedlam. Todd and Neilson aren’t interested in laying down a rhythm. They’re both all over the place, Todd trilling the higher strings while Neilson plays accents and fills without a beat. It works pretty well, and once the Rep starts playing on “Am I Dreaming,” Todd settles into a more fuzzed-out, proto-metal sound. The bass carries these tunes while the Rep improvises.

This can certainly sound disorganized, but there are moments here when the three musicians are clearly listening to one another and tailoring the noise. There are dramatic pauses, ebbs and flows in intensity, everything that signifies a successful Jandek rock combo. Neilson has, of course, been around the block with the Rep, and knows his style well, but Todd steps up as a strong addition. Amsterdam Saturday isn’t a standout Jandek live album, but it’s a pretty good one, showing there is still life in this trio format yet.

Thanks again to everyone who stuck with me through five weeks of Jandek. Hope I didn’t lose too many of you. Next week, some more music. I have a lot to catch up on.

See you in line Tuesday morning.