I still buy CDs.

Yes, I’m that guy. I’m the one who keeps my local record store afloat, spending twice as much on new music as I’d have to if I just switched to downloads. (Alternatively, I spend half as much as I would if I went to vinyl for everything, which some people I know do. But I can’t play vinyl in the car, so I buy very little of it.) I know CDs are the most reviled form of music delivery system out there – even behind cassettes, the cutting-edge technology of 1971 – but I think they still deliver the best value for what I want.

I’m not one to go on about the quality of the sound I’m listening to, but I can definitely hear the difference between compressed download files and glorious full-sound CDs. And I’ve never warmed to the idea that extra noise and pops and crackles somehow enhance the sound of vinyl. CDs are where it’s at for me, still, and it’s partially because I like the sound, but mainly because I’m a fan of physical media.

I’ve sung this song before here, so I’m sure you know the tune. The artwork, the credits list, the liner notes, even the thanks list provide important context for me, into which I place my experience of the music. Just listening to the music itself is a less complete experience for me, and I don’t feel like I actually own the album I’m hearing. I feel like I’m just borrowing it, which is why paying money for downloads is so hard for me. I feel like I’m buying air.

But in recent years I’ve been listening to more and more downloaded music, and the reason is pure impatience. Many bands – and I have three instances of this on tap for this week – are offering immediate downloads of new music with CD purchases, and I have found that I just can’t wait. Often it takes weeks, if not months, for a band to press a CD, and with the music at my fingertips, I can’t help myself. I have to press play. By the time my CD shows up, I’m intimately familiar with the music, and I’ve robbed myself of my preferred experience.

I suppose I could be more patient, but when the music is as good as it is in all three cases this week, it’s pretty unlikely that I will wait months to hear it. I don’t know anyone who could. I absolutely understand the convenience and instant gratification that comes with downloaded music. I totally get it. But I feel a little adrift this week, reviewing music I don’t really feel like I have heard yet, in its full context.

In the case of Nine Inch Nails, the physical component of their work has always been important. This is a band that takes great care when designing the artwork and packaging for their releases, setting a mood and drawing you in. NIN artwork is unsettling, often indistinct and abstract, letting you know you’re about to hear something damaged, something just beyond your ability to grasp. And amazingly, most of their music lives up to this image.

And then, late last year, NIN basically stopped making albums. Trent Reznor, the group’s mastermind (and, until the recent addition of Atticus Ross, sole member), announced a series of smaller EPs that would be released online, and touted this as the way forward for the band. The idea is a mixed bag for me – I get new NIN material every six months or so, but Reznor – one of the most accomplished album artists in the world – is limited to smaller statements, released into the ether without proper packaging.

Luckily, these EPs have also been really good. Last year’s Not the Actual Events brought back the weird and creepy aspects of Reznor’s sound, and the recently released Add Violence continues along that path. The opener, “Less Than,” is the catchiest and most immediate NIN song in years, but once it’s over, the remaining four songs swim in darker waters. “The Lovers,” like much of Reznor’s best work, is physically uncomfortable in places – his unnerving voice-overs send chills – while “This Isn’t the Place” rides its slow slither of a groove through more than two minutes of instrumental setup before Reznor’s wavery falsetto enters, singing “I thought we had more time” over and over.

“Not Anymore” is a shambling burst of anger and confusion punctuated by his unhinged screams over the unmistakable sound of live drums. But it is the 12-minute closer, “The Background World,” that is the most disorienting. After a slow crawl of a first act, Reznor and Ross fill out the remaining eight minutes with a disjointed, cascading loop that builds in intensity and disintegrates as it goes. Every time it loops, it misses a fraction of a beat, which drives my musical OCD nuts, but truly illustrates how confused and out of step the song’s protagonist feels. It goes against all the lessons Reznor seems to have been teaching himself about sonic architecture, burning it down in a fascinating way.

Even without a full album to work with, Reznor and Ross have spun a whole world around Add Violence. The CD version is out in a few weeks, and I’m definitely buying it. But these EPs do have physical components, which ship weeks (or months) after the music is available, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention them. While Not the Actual Events was accompanied by a dossier covered in a strange, invasive black substance, Add Violence’s component is safe to open indoors. It looks like an owner’s manual for a sound mixer, and actually contains lyrics and details (including that Add Violence is Halo 31). These are appreciated, though a straight-up CD would be appreciated more.

Quiet Company is doing the same thing with their new music, releasing it in bite-sized chunks as it is recorded. Thankfully, they’re also releasing CDs of these mini-albums, but as they’re one of my favorite bands, the instant download has so far proven too tempting. The second of these installments is called Your Husband the Ghost, and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t, for the first time, really capture what this band sounds like live. I’ve been following QuietCo since their debut, and up until now, the insane ferocity of their stage show has outpaced their recorded output.

The snarling Your Husband makes me feel like I’m watching them play it. Taylor Muse, the band’s mastermind and lead singer, is as passionate and emotional here as he is on stage. His songs are typically sharp and hummable, but they feel more intense here than usual. Part of that is the subject matter – this album dissects his relationship with his ex-wife, in all its messy, painful truth, and offers a bleak state-of-our-disunion address from Muse’s conflicted mind. But part of it is the way it’s recorded – loud, vibrant, barely controlled.

Much of this EP is difficult for me to listen to, since I’m invested in Muse’s happiness. He’s clearly miserable on “An Unholy Year,” using sex as a “poor imitation of the thing I needed” and only comfortable when the encounter ends. “Oh! The Humanity” is even bleaker, contrasting the Muse of today with his more optimistic younger selves. The song is such an uptempo winner, horns and gang vocals and all, that it’s easy to miss how dark it is: “Now I’m 33 and all that’s left for me is greed, spite and jealousy…” He seems lost in “On Guilty Pleasures,” when he dismisses a connection (“I want you to mean more, but I know what it meant”) and resigns himself to feeling this way forever (“I will never fall in love again, but I think that I can do without…”).

This EP is terrific, of course, as Quiet Company records always are, and I’m very much looking forward to owning the CD and adding it to my collection. Musically, it is tremendous – ferocious and hummable, with surprising quiet interludes and some great arrangements. But I’m not sure how often I’ll listen to it. It’s a dark and painful thing, and I find myself hoping that Muse takes the advice he shouts in “We Should Go to Counseling”: “You’ve got to change, change, change, motherfucker, you cannot stay the same, same, same, expecting progress.”

I’d been expecting both the Nine Inch Nails and Quiet Company records, but the third of my review subjects this week was a complete surprise. I wasn’t sure we’d ever hear from Brand New again – it’s been eight years since the rushed-sounding, not-quite-there Daisy, and that album had all the hallmarks of a band throwing something together for the sake of it. Of course, Daisy followed up The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me, which is basically this band’s OK Computer, completing their rapid transformation from pop-punk to a thoughtful, textured, almost indescribable kind of music.

Five days ago, Brand New surprise-released Science Fiction, their fifth album, and there’s nothing rushed about this one. If Daisy was a speed bump, Science Fiction completes this band’s evolution, bringing the subdued maelstrom of The Devil and God home to a more reflective, consciously beautiful vibe. Among a small segment of my friends, the unheralded appearance of this record was a seismic event, and while I can’t pretend to feel quite the same about this band that many do – they’re cherished and important to a select few, in a way not many bands ever are – I had to listen to the download ahead of the October CD release, to be part of the conversation. And I am so glad I did. Science Fiction is quickly becoming one of my favorite records of the year.

For a band that started out playing three-chord punk, the fact that most of this record is played on acoustic guitars is striking. Much of this record is like staring into a lake at a calmer reflection of the band Brand New used to be. Jesse Lacey only rarely breaks out his full-throated scream, and you have to get to track five to hear it at all. The album starts slowly, almost hypnotically, with “Lit Me Up,” which sets the introspective tone. Lacey struggles throughout this record with his faith in God and his lack of faith in humanity, and he dives deep right at the start: “When I grow up I want to be a heretic, I want to climb over the wall ‘cause I’m not on the list, I want to put my hands to work ‘til the work’s done, I want to open my heart like the ocean…”

From there, Lacey thoughtfully tackles depression on the self-consciously upbeat “Can’t Get It Out” (“I want to tell you we’re all right, want to erase all your doubt, I’ve got this thorn dug in deeply, sometimes I can’t get it out…”), self-harm on “Same Logic/Teeth,” nuclear war on “137” (named after Caesium-137, an isotope that only appeared in the atmosphere after the first nuclear detonation), healing through video games (really) on the heavier “Out of Mana,” censorship on the shuffling “451” and the bigotry infesting modern Christianity on “Desert.” Science Fiction is also without a doubt meant to be heard in sequence, with interludes and snippets of conversations and segues throughout. It’s beautiful, and it’s beautifully made, worth every day of those eight years.

It’s definitely intended as a single thought, as well, diving below the surface on track one, visiting painful experience after painful experience, feeling those emotions drive closer to depression, and on the glorious closer “Batter Up,” coming to peace with those feelings and continuing the work to make the world a better place. “It’s never going to stop, give me your best shot,” he sings over gorgeous acoustic and electric guitars, spinning a fine and fitting swan song for the album and the band.

Yes, Science Fiction is most likely going to be the final Brand New album. Lacey and his bandmates have been talking about the impending breakup of the band for a while now, and they plan to finish things up next year. Many of the lyrics on Science Fiction take on a new resonance with that context – some songs, like “Waste,” are clearly about the band and what Lacey hopes it has accomplished – and its conclusion a new significance. Before Science Fiction, I didn’t realize how much I would miss this band. Now I’m genuinely mourning them.

I didn’t see Science Fiction coming, and every time I listen – even without context, even just as wisps of air floating out of my hard drive – I’m impressed anew with how good it is. I’m looking forward to hearing it for real in October, and losing myself in it all over again. If this truly is the last we hear from Brand New, it’s a fantastic way to go out. I’m still all about the CDs, but I’m glad I got to hear this right away. Two months waiting for this music would have been tragic.

Next week, Everything Everything and a couple others. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Just being alive and aware right now is emotionally exhausting.

The tragic events in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend were just the culmination point so far of this horrible year of hatred. Every few days there has been some new outrage, some new affront to decency and humanity. Just keeping up with it all is taxing, never mind reacting to it. And no one is looking to a white guy with a music blog for a cogent reaction anyway. You want thoughts about this week’s new tunes, and all I can think about right now is Nazis marching on a U.S. city, and people defending them.

I don’t know a way to segue from this into frivolous music reviews without at least acknowledging the privilege that would allow me to do so. For the record, and with no “on many sides” false equivalences: the racism and hatred personified by Nazis is sickening, despicable and inexcusable – or, it should be for any reasonable person. These ideas aren’t new. This country’s history of racism runs much deeper than a statue could ever hope to symbolize, and it should be named, called out and resisted.

Which is emotionally exhausting stuff. And I’m coming at it from a place of privilege, so I can’t even imagine how tired my friends of color are right now, or how long they’ve been dealing with the realities I am only lately waking up to. I have always drawn strength from music, and writing this silly music column helps me to go on pushing through the muck. I’m going to keep on doing it even if it seems pointless, because it gives me the strength to show up elsewhere and speak up.

And really, it isn’t pointless. In fact, if you need a story of strength to draw inspiration from, I have one this week. It’s certainly been helping many of the women I know, and it surprised the hell out of me too.

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I have never really cared about Kesha.

Let me qualify that. I have never really cared about Kesha’s music. She burst into the public consciousness in 2010 with a synthetic, self-consciously annoying little record called Animal, and I heard the first two songs and wrote her off. It was Not My Thing. The dollar sign in her name, the obviously invented or exaggerated party girl image, the cheeseball synthesizers – the whole thing felt cheap to me, and I figured she’d be gone in a year or two. I never even heard her second, Warrior. There’s a lot of music and I just didn’t care enough about this music to pay much attention to it.

But none of that means I wasn’t interested in her story, and passionately on her side. For the past five years, Kesha has been fighting to break free of her producer, Dr. Luke, whom she says physically, sexually and emotionally abused her. The courts did not have her back, denying her request to be released from her record contract (so she would not have to work with her abuser) and eventually throwing out all her abuse claims, forcing her to drop the case last August. This means she’s still on Dr. Luke’s record label, and is still bound to give him her new music.

Which, as it turns out, she has. She’d been writing and recording throughout her self-imposed exile, not wanting to give these songs to the man she was trying to get away from. I have no idea how hard it was for her to go through what she’s gone through and then hand her new music over anyway. Kesha has said that she didn’t know whether she would ever be able to create new music again, and even though she’s forced to work with Dr. Luke, she’s celebrating the release of these songs, so I’m going to celebrate with her.

And I figured that’s as far as it would go. I’d be happy to see a third Kesha album, finally. I’d be happy to see her back in the public eye, talking about her ordeal over the last five years and the reserves she drew on to finish it and release it. I’d be a cheerleader from a distance, happy for my friends who like Kesha, but continuing to not be all that interested in listening to her myself.

And then I heard “Praying,” the powerful first single from Kesha’s new album, and it was all over. I knew I would be buying and listening to this thing. “Praying” is a haunting piano number all about Dr. Luke, although it never names him. But it’s not vengeful or even angry. It comes from a place of pride and strength, wishing good things for her abuser: “I hope you find your peace, falling on your knees, praying…” This is a completely different Kesha, a serious-minded and thoughtful one.

That’s the Kesha most on display throughout Rainbow, her absolute revelation of a third album. Rainbow is ludicrously better than anything else I’ve heard from her, a massive leap into the realm of serious artist to be reckoned with. I don’t want to overhype it – it’s still a pop record, not The Age of Adz or anything – but damn if it isn’t a compelling pop record, solid and diverse and endlessly entertaining. Best of all, it showcases (for the first time, I believe) the real Kesha, not the cartoon party animal she played on her first two records. (The complete absence of Dr. Luke from the credits is not a coincidence here.)

And the real Kesha is weird and fun, of course, but also strong and self-possessed. After years of being accused of auto-tuning her way through her music to hide her vocal deficiencies, she begins Rainbow accompanied only by acoustic guitar, singing the folksy “Bastards” alone. “Don’t let the bastards get you down, don’t let the assholes wear you out,” she sings, which is basically the album’s mission statement. For the album’s first half, Kesha swears like she’s just discovered it while penning anthem after anthem about standing up and being yourself in the face of adversity.

And they’re great songs. “Let ‘Em Talk” is where the record kicks in, an electric guitar-fueled pop-punk powerhouse featuring Eagles of Death Metal. It’s so singable, and it leads perfectly into “Woman,” one of the record’s cornerstones. Over tasty licks from the Dap-Kings horns, Kesha gives us a modern-day “Respect,” declaring herself a “motherfucking woman, I don’t need a man to be holding me too tight.” You can’t listen to this song without simultaneously dancing and pumping your fist in the air. My favorite part, though, is the most authentic – it’s her breakdown into giggles in the second verse. It sounds like an outtake, like it shouldn’t be here, and I love the fact that it is.

Honestly, the record never gets less interesting. “Learn to Let Go” is a delightful pop tune, all about moving past hardship and embracing life. Its message is the record’s message, and in this context “Praying” fits perfectly. It’s not even the best piano ballad on the album, though – that prize goes to the title track, with full orchestration by Ben Folds. It’s about getting back the stars in your eyes, falling in love with being alive, and it’s exactly the hard-won encouragement you’d hope for. The soaring middle eight may be my favorite part of this record.

And then, in the second half, she just gets on with the business of being Kesha, still informed by the ordeals of the last five years but free of them in new and interesting ways. “Finding You” may be my favorite here – it’s about devotion, about saying forever and meaning it, and it’s a world-class pop song, all pianos and acoustic guitars and Kesha’s swooping voice. Good-time tunes “Boogie Feet” and “Boots” are back to the old Kesha sound, but updated in more organic ways. “Hunt You Down” is a genuine surprise, a rockabilly two-step about murdering cheating boyfriends. Believe it or not, it’s fun, and it’s great to hear Kesha having fun.

The final stretch is probably the most surprising, though. None other than Dolly Parton joins Kesha on “Old Flames (Can’t Hold a Candle to You),” a lovely torch song she popularized in 1980. Why is it here? Well, because Kesha’s mother, Pebe Siebert, co-wrote it. Its inclusion is touching, and leads into the quirky final two songs. I’m not even sure what to say about these, they’re so outside the realm of what I expected. “Godzilla” is an acoustic ditty about loving people no matter what they are, and “Spaceship”… well, “Spaceship” is just awesome. A cosmic folk song in the middle ground between Patsy Cline and The X-Files, “Spaceship” is about not fitting in down here, and waiting for the aliens to rescue you. For real. That’s what it’s about. That Kesha is so committed to it makes it oddly beautiful. It’s one of my favorite things here.

That I have favorite things on a Kesha album is a strange experience for me. Make no mistake, though, Rainbow is a superb, solid, triumphant and endlessly entertaining piece of work. It’s such a revelation, so far beyond what I thought I was going to get that it boggles my mind. It’s a testament to her strength and resilience that it exists at all, and that it comes from such a place of peace and self-worth. She’s come through a harrowing time, and found herself on the other side, changed for the better. This is our first visit with the real Kesha, and I like her quite a bit. I can’t wait to hear what she does next.

Next week, who knows? Could be anything. Be strong until then. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m often asked to name my favorite song. I always name “Wichita Lineman.”

This may seem like a strange choice, but I think it’s a perfect song. I must have first heard it on the radio when I was very young, because I cannot remember a world in which I didn’t know “Wichita Lineman.” Its melody is a glorious, ever-changing thing, capped off by a perfect rising note that still sends chills. It contains one of the most beautiful lines in all of pop music: “I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time.” I’ve heard probably 40 different versions of this song, and every time it gets me.

The definitive version of “Wichita Lineman,” of course, belongs to Glen Campbell, who turned it into a hit in 1968. And if that were the only thing Campbell had ever done, he’d still be noteworthy. But of course it isn’t. Campbell’s career spanned more than 50 years and led to an astonishing 80 hits, 29 of them top ten. That’s not even counting his work as a member of Los Angeles session musician collective The Wrecking Crew, with whom he performed on hundreds of the most important songs of the ‘60s and ‘70s. (He’s on

And that’s not even mentioning his work in film and television. Campbell was a rare talent – a guitar player’s guitar player with a hit-maker’s charm, able to duck anonymously into work-for-hire one minute and be a charismatic band leader the next. We lost Campbell today after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Over the past seven years, Campbell has been saying a long goodbye, re-recording some of his favorites (including “Wichita Lineman”) and giving us a final album of cover tunes in June called Adios.  It’s truly marvelous stuff, and a reminder of what a powerful performer we’ve lost.

Rest in peace, Glen. And thank you.

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Last week Manchester Orchestra released an album that takes place in and around the site of one of my laboratory’s upcoming experiments. This week Randy Newman releases an album called Dark Matter, an album that opens with an eight-minute examination of science and faith. It’s like all of music has decided to be about me.

There’s no one on earth like Randy Newman, and I’m always glad to see a new record from him. They’re appearing about once a decade now, which isn’t nearly frequently enough for me, but he’s 73 years old and his intricate work takes some time to put together. Dark Matter is… well, it’s a Randy Newman album. It’s sharp and biting and definitely not safe. It’s also tender and sad, often in ways you would never expect from a man with his singular voice. And it’s fully orchestrated – these all sound like show tunes from a Broadway in a much more interesting alternate universe.

Newman wastes no time at all on this album, hitting you with “The Great Debate” right up front. Only Newman would write this song – it’s a dramatic piece pitting the world’s scientists against religious leaders in an arena in Durham, North Carolina (which should be a hint as to how this will go). Newman’s ringmaster character demands that science explain dark matter (which it can’t yet), and gives a Ken Ham-style refutation of evolution. His snarky pronouncements are punctuated by bursts of gospel music and dancing. And then it turns meta, with a member of the audience calling out Newman by name for setting up these cynical straw men. When the song Newman is writing turns against him, it’s a wildly thrilling moment, one that says a lot about his view of America.

Dark Matter doesn’t quite get there again – “The Great Debate” is the biggest and broadest statement of this record. But there are other highlights. Oh yes. “Putin” is one of Newman’s all-time greats, a sarcastic anthem for Russia’s bare-chested leader. “He can drive his giant tractor across the Trans-Siberian plain, he can power a nuclear reactor with the left side of his brain…” The Putin girls, there to provide lascivious commentary on Vladimir’s attractiveness and power, are hilarious, as is Newman’s dismissal of them: “Putin hates the Putin girls because he hates vulgarity.”

Elsewhere, Newman takes on the roles of historical figures. “Brothers” is a dialogue between Jack and Bobby Kennedy on the eve of the Cuban missile crisis. “Sonny Boy” imagines the original Sonny Boy Williamson returning as a ghost and seeing the young upstart who stole his name. Television makes a significant mark this time, Newman giving us not only a full version of “It’s a Jungle Out There,” his theme to Monk, but resurrecting “She Chose Me,” a beautiful song he wrote for (yes, really) Stephen Bochco’s Cop Rock.

And amidst all the satire and snark, there is a real beauty to Newman’s work, and he’s never been afraid to let it show. “Lost Without You” is the album’s prettiest song, a raw and real document of a family on the verge of losing its center. It’s devastating. The record ends with its second-prettiest, “Wandering Boy,” a swaying folk song that tells a whole tale about fatherhood in three minutes. Like all of Dark Matter, it’s vintage Randy Newman, a short story in song form. While I’d like one of these short story books more than once every ten years, when we get one, it’s always cause for celebration.

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If we’re talking about great songwriters this week – and we are – my list would absolutely include Dan Wilson.

He’s remained pretty much anonymous for most of his career, but chances are you know at least one Dan Wilson song. For nearly 20 years – basically since the breakup of his swell band, Semisonic – Wilson has been the songwriter for the stars, responsible for a remarkably wide range of tunes performed by a remarkably wide range of artists. Just over the last year, he’s written songs for Phantogram, Halsey, Cold War Kids, the Head and the Heart, Sara Watkins, Andrew Bird and Weezer, among others.

Like Jimmy Webb, the man behind “Wichita Lineman,” Wilson has stayed out of the spotlight, only receiving accolades for his myriad songsmithing contributions from those in the know. But his new solo album is designed to remedy that, showcasing Wilson’s versions of songs he wrote or co-wrote for others. It’s called Re-Covered (get it?), and it includes some of the biggest hits Wilson has penned, as well as some interesting deeper cuts.

I’ll admit that I was more interested in the idea behind Re-Covered than the album itself. Wilson’s versions of these songs are all sturdy and enjoyable. I’m especially fond of his take on “All Will Be Well,” a song recorded by the Gabe Dixon Band (and used in a great episode of Parks and Recreation). The horn arrangements are spot on, and Wilson sings this with a delightfully wistful quality. But he’s not quite the singer he needs to be to match the original versions of some of these tunes.

Most notable here, of course, is Adele’s “Someone Like You.” Wilson gamely sings it, and he does a fine job, but come on, he’s no Adele. Others, like “You and I,” recorded by John Legend, and “Not Ready to Make Nice,” popularized by the Dixie Chicks, suffer similar fates. I like these versions fine, but I probably won’t turn to them very often.

Re-Covered does burst to life when Wilson tackles lesser-known tunes. “Landing” was written with his brother Matt for his 1998 solo album, and this re-do is marvelous. Wilson breathes new life into “Your Misfortune,” co-written with Mike Doughty. And I adore this take on “When the Stars Come Out,” originally performed by country darling Chris Stapleton. Wilson caps things off with a new take on “Closing Time,” Semisonic’s biggest hit, reminding everyone listening that yes, he wrote that one too.

I don’t want to be hard on Re-Covered. I like it fine. It certainly accomplishes its main purpose – connecting Dan Wilson’s name to all of these terrific songs he’s written. If this opens some people’s eyes to his wide-ranging, below-the-surface talent, I’m all for it.

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Next week, Kesha’s comeback. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Who wants to talk about music?

Well, good. Me too. So let me start by telling you a story about science.

I work for a particle physics laboratory, and a couple weeks ago we held a groundbreaking for our latest and largest experiment. We’re basically building a 70,000-ton monolith that will help us capture more information about tiny particles called neutrinos that are all around us, but are frustratingly difficult to study. This wasn’t just any groundbreaking – it took place a mile underground, in the site of the old Homestake mine in South Dakota.

Homestake used to be the deepest gold mine in North America. It’s located in a town called Lead, which is pronounced like “lead on, MacDuff” despite the many lead-into-gold jokes that a different pronunciation would open up. To get to the site of what will be our new experiment, you have to take a cage (basically an open wooden elevator operated by a massive 80-year-old winching system) down for about 10 minutes, watching the rock pass by as you go, and then get onto a motorized tram car and travel for another 10 minutes through narrow caverns of rock. It was quite the experience.

While I was there, I got a sense of how important the Homestake mine was to this region, and how intimately tied to the mine the history of Lead is. I met people who worked in the mine, and whose parents and grandparents worked in the mine. Building our new experiment will create a couple thousand local jobs, and the people of Lead are grateful to the underground research facility that took donation of the mine in 2009. They’re pleased to see something that was the center of their town’s life continue to be put to good use.

I mention all of this to say that I have a personal connection to Manchester Orchestra’s brilliant new album, A Black Mile to the Surface. Its story takes place in and around the Homestake mine, when it was still used for its original purpose. There’s a song called “Lead, S.D,” the only song that breaks with the album’s article-noun naming convention. (Others include “The Maze,” “The Gold,” “The Silence,” etc.) The mine and the town are used as a symbol of being stuck in a place, and later on, being stuck in a family.

Manchester Orchestra (they’re actually from Atlanta) is led by Andy Hull, a powerful singer who writes aching lyrics and sweeping melodies to go with them. Hull has said that Black Mile was inspired by the birth of his now-three-year-old daughter. Becoming a father has matured Hull, but it has also opened up new topics for him to dissect with his trademark fervor. This is a record about being part of a family, but it is also one about death and insignificance, about seeing one’s life for the fleeting thing that it is. It’s fitting that it was inspired by a birth, because this record really is the birth of something new for the band.

A Black Mile is the most complex and widescreen Manchester Orchestra record, and it gets there not by going bigger (as if they could get bigger than the amps-on-fire rock they’ve been playing since the start), but by embracing dynamics and scope. It’s the most well-produced album in their catalog, and in this case that doesn’t mean that it’s glossy or blunted. It just means it sounds fuller, that instead of just running headlong into the red, the band is now playing on a canvas that can accommodate their ambitions. Their last records, the scorching Cope and its quiet twin Hope, explored the extremes of their sound. Black Mile brings it all together, showing what they’re really capable of.

Hull and the band have responded with their best set of songs, their most cry-out-in-the-desert honest work they’ve ever delivered. Much of this album is wrapped up in fictional narratives, and it’s remarkable – as it always is with this band – that they’re able to cut right to the emotional heart anyway. “The Gold” is one of the sharpest songs they’ve written, Hull introducing us to a couple torn apart by the gold mine and their differences. “You and me, we’re a day drink, so lose your faith in me,” he sings over a rolling 6/8 riff, and it’s magical.

While “The Gold” is a high point, the album never slips from that pinnacle. Other highlights include the tricky, furious “The Moth,” the lower-key and lovely “The Alien,” the Hull solo track “The Parts” (probably the saddest and most affecting of these songs) and the extraordinary closer “The Silence,” on which Hull addresses the chains of family: “Little girl, you are cursed by my ancestry, there’s nothing but darkness and agony…”

A Black Mile to the Surface is a novel in album form, a dark masterpiece about responsibility and inertia. I went into it looking for connections to my own life and Homestake, but came out of it simply blown away by the heart and scope of this thing. I’ve always liked Manchester Orchestra, but this is the first time I have unreservedly loved every song, the first time that Hull’s horizon-wide narratives and ambition have swept me along like a pebble in a river. Everything about this record is beautiful. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

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Ambition, scope and heart used to be the hallmarks of Arcade Fire, the Montreal band with like 75 members. They exploded out of nowhere 13 years ago with a driving, nostalgic rock record called Funeral, and only got better on 2007’s Neon Bible and 2010’s The Suburbs. Arcade Fire’s sound was enormous and all-encompassing, the sort of thing you can only do for so long before burning out on it.

The turning point came on Reflektor, a double album on which the band embraced danceable, Talking Heads-ish grooves. And now they’ve gone full Abba on their fifth and worst record, Everything Now. Most of this album takes the form of a dance party about materialism and commercialism, which certainly feels like an attempt at irony, but it’s so leaden, so on the nose, that it falls flat. U2 took on a similar irony in the ‘90s and did it far more successfully, which should put this backfire in perspective.

Not that this doesn’t shimmy and shake convincingly. The opening trilogy of the bubblegum-pop title track, the relentless “Signs of Life” and the throbbing synths of “Creature Comfort” certainly set a tone, Win Butler railing against our dead-inside culture and addressing teenage suicide with typical bluntness: “God, make me famous, and if you can’t, just make it painless.” The synth-heavy sound is bright neon, the words subversive, but Butler acts as if no one has ever thought of this dichotomy before.

To say “things go south from there” is to understate considerably. “Peter Pan,” “Chemistry” and the two tracks titled “Infinite Content” are the worst Arcade Fire songs ever. It’s amazing to me that something as goofy and unlistenable as the faux-reggae “Chemistry” ever made it past the rehearsal stage. You simply won’t believe how bad it is. And Butler sings his lyrical pun on “Infinite Content” – in one form a piss-poor punk pastiche and in the other a lazy Sunday acoustic piece – with an unearned sense of self-satisfaction.

The album gets more interesting in its final third, but it couldn’t really get less interesting. I actually like the pulsing love song “Put Your Money on Me,” though its obvious “commercialism is not as good as love” theme is pretty basic, and the slow burner “We Don’t Deserve Love” is the album’s best song. Had they started from there, scrapped everything else and really buckled down, they might have written something worthwhile. As it is, though, Everything Now is remarkably facile and surprisingly limp. It’s a sad and precipitous fall for a once-great band, and proof that if you make a bad record ironically, you’ve still made a bad record.

* * * * *

The artist formally known as Klayton seems to delight in being hard to predict.

He is the sole member of three projects. As Celldweller, he specializes in epic, genre-busting electronic prog-metal awesomeness. As Circle of Dust, he pummels you with chugging guitar-heavy industrial madness. And as Scandroid, he time-travels to the 1980s and channels the Blade Runner soundtrack for pure retro synth-pop goodness. He’s worked hard over the past few years to establish and separate these identities, even remixing songs from one project in the style of the others, just to delineate them.

So of course, his new Celldweller album, Offworld, sounds like nothing else he’s done. Gone are the hyperactive electronic drums, gone are the bursts of distorted guitar, gone is the almost ADD-quality genre-hopping. Offworld is a quiet, reflective thing, centered mainly on shoegaze-style clean guitar and melancholy atmosphere. It’s still perfectly produced, big-sounding and clear, but the subtle keyboard flourishes and linear, organic guitar that dominate this record are a surprise.

Is it any good? Of course it is. The expansive title track kicks things off with a long instrumental introduction that sets the tone. “How Little I Must Know” is the most naked Klayton has ever allowed himself to be on record – just an electric guitar, a subtle synth and emotional vocals. “The Great Divide” is a splendid single, strummy and memorable. He knocks a cover of the Call’s “Too Many Tears” out of the park, and then positively reinvents Scandroid’s “Awakening with You” as a shoegaze epic. “Into the Fall” is a rewrite of Circle of Dust’s “Embracing Entropy,” and it’s thoroughly unrecognizable.

Offworld is just the right length, too. Seventy-five minutes of this melancholy might have been too much. Klayton stops at 47 minutes, following up the terrific “Last Night on Earth” with a reprise of the title track. As a bonus, he gives us a stunning Ulrich Schnauss remix of “Awakening with You” that is absolutely worth the additional five minutes. This is a successful experiment on Klayton’s part – a Celldweller album that sounds nothing like Celldweller, and yet fits in with the aesthetic he’s built. It blurs the lines between his three projects while forging new paths. In short, it’s Klayton, and I’m still glad to be along for the ride.

Check out Klayton’s work here: https://fixtstore.com.

* * * * *

Next week, more music with Randy Newman and Dan Wilson. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

We lost Chester Bennington this week.

I’ll talk about Linkin Park first, because that part’s easier. I have long maintained that Linkin Park doesn’t get the respect they deserve. Their first album, the processed rock-rap hit factory Hybrid Theory, is still their biggest-selling, and I think many people assumed the band’s entire bag of tricks was exhausted on their first go-round. But Linkin Park proved to be one of the most artistically restless bands to ever sell more than ten million records.

Truthfully, they only carbon-copied themselves once – their rushed second album, Meteora, is basically Hybird Theory II. But after that, Bennington and his bandmates never really revisited that sound. Minutes to Midnight is a largely quiet and reflective thing, and then their magnum opus A Thousand Suns took them to a new level. A more mature, political work, A Thousand Suns was a patchwork quilt of influences, from Bowie to Chuck D. It still surprises me each time I hear it.

From there they kept throwing curve balls. Living Things has grown in my estimation – I gave it short shrift because it wasn’t as all-over-the-map creative as A Thousand Suns, but it’s a strong and risky electro-pop record. The awesome The Hunting Party followed that up with a full-on metal record, and I don’t mean the radio metal of Hybrid Theory. I mean old-school blast-beat metal. And just two months ago, they took a dive into glossy radio pop, the kind they’d never really made before. I’m still absorbing One More Light, but I waver between thinking of it as the ultimate sellout and considering it their most beautiful set of songs.

My favorite artists keep me guessing, and Linkin Park certainly did that. And in Chester Bennington they had a singer who could handle anything they threw at him. He could scream with the best of them, and wasn’t intimidated at all by metal epics like “Keys to the Kingdom,” and he could also sing with subtlety, as he proved one last time on the title track of One More Light. I’m not sure Bennington ever got the respect he deserved either.

Now we get to the more difficult part. Last Thursday, Bennington was found dead in his California home. He had hung himself, another victim of depression who saw no other way out. Bennington killed himself on what would have been Chris Cornell’s 53rd birthday, had he not also hung himself two months prior.

This is a lot to take in. Bennington didn’t have quite the impact on my life Cornell did, but he was a singer I always looked forward to hearing, and now we won’t get to hear him again. I knew very little about his private life, about his daily struggle. I do know this, though: depression is real. It’s a clawing, insidious thing that works on you every minute, convincing you that you’re not worth anything and the world would be better without you. It can strike at any time, but the truth is if you have it, it’s always there, coiled and waiting.

I would never presume to know what Bennington felt, or what he went through. But for many years I have glossed over his more angst-filled lyrics, the same way I did those of Cornell and Cobain and others. And maybe that’s my fault for not taking them seriously. Bennington has been telling us for his whole career that he is in pain, that he’s close to giving up. He even wrote his own eulogy in “Leave Out All the Rest”: “When my time comes, forget the wrong that I’ve done, help me leave behind some reasons to be missed, don’t resent me and when you’re feeling empty, keep me in your memory, leave out all the rest…”

I’ve been listening to Linkin Park intently since Bennington’s death, and it all sounds new to me. Even a pop song like “Nobody Can Save Me” hurts now: “I’m dancing with my demons, I’m hanging off the edge, storm clouds gathered beneath me, waves break above my head… I’m holding up a light, chasing out the darkness inside, but nobody can save me now…”

The most painful for me, though, is “One More Light,” which quickly became one of my favorite Linkin Park songs. It is a passionately anti-suicide plea: “Who cares if someone’s time runs out if a moment is all we are? Who cares if one more light goes out? Well, I do.” God, it hurts. And not just because I will miss Bennington and his work. It hurts because Bennington sung this song, believed this song, connected with it so deeply that he could barely get through it at Cornell’s funeral, and it wasn’t enough. The very idea of that pains me to my soul.

Suicide stories are always difficult for me. I think I’ve said enough about this one. Remember that you are loved, and remember to let others know that they are loved. If anything will beat back the darkness, it’s love.

*

On the subject of farewells, we lost two longtime Doctor Who stalwarts this week, and I wanted to mention them.

Deborah Watling played the Second Doctor’s companion Victoria Waterfield in 1967 and 1968. Victoria was a classic damsel in distress kind of companion, and I always wished she’d been given more development, but Watling screamed and ran away like a pro. The moments of her brief run where she was allowed to be fierce and inventive have always drawn cheers from me. A few years ago the BBC announced that it had recovered nine episodes of ‘60s Doctor Who, episodes that had been missing for 45 years. Watling is in all nine of those episodes, and I’m so glad we have more of her performance now to watch. Deborah Watling died on Friday, July 21 after a brief bout with lung cancer. She was 69.

Trevor Baxter had an interesting life quite apart from Doctor Who – he toured with the Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing in productions in several countries, and wrote many plays himself. But to me, he will always be Professor Litefoot, investigator of infernal incidents. 1977’s The Talons of Weng-Chiang is one of the strangest and best Doctor Who stories, and not just because it introduced the world to Jago and Litefoot. But that’s high up on its list of good qualities. Theater owner Henry Gordon Jago, played by Christopher Benjamin, and Professor George Litefoot, played by Baxter, were a classic double act, one boisterous and prone to exaggeration, the other meticulous and reserved.

The pair would go on to reprise their roles as Jago and Litefoot in an audio series from Big Finish that ran 13 seasons. To say that they are beloved among Who fans is to understate by miles. Baxter died of unknown causes on July 16. He was 84. There are some fine tributes to him on the Big Finish page.

Of course, the big Doctor Who news is the casting of Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Doctor. She’s an inspired choice to play the first female Doctor. Whittaker is a tremendous actress, an out-of-nowhere selection that instantly feels right. She’s going to be superb. I’m actually much more worried about the material she will get, due to Chris Chibnall’s imminent takeover as showrunner. Chibnall’s work for the show has been so-so at best – in fact, Whittaker’s casting is the first glimmer of hope I have had for his era. She will likely be the best thing about it, but I am very excited now to see how it goes.

And Whittaker is exactly the caliber of actor you need to succeed someone like Peter Capaldi, who over three years in the role has more than proven himself to be one of the all-time greats. I like Capaldi a lot more than many seem to – I think he may be the best actor to ever take on the role of the Doctor, and he’s played the part with a subtlety that flies in the face of the David Tennant-Matt Smith style. (Not that I don’t also like that style!) I’ll have more to say about Capaldi when he bows out at Christmas. But let me leave it by saying this: it’s a great time to be a fan of Doctor Who.

Next week, some actual music reviews. I promise! Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Last week I waxed eloquent about the importance of the AudioFeed Festival, to me and to the world in which it lives. But this is a music column after all, so it’s time to talk about the music I picked up while I was there.

AudioFeed, as I have mentioned before, has pound for pound more excellent music than any other festival I could name. For the past few years, once the old-school headliners stopped being the only draw, it has been my yearly chance to chart the growth of some new favorites and an unmissable opportunity to discover even newer favorites. And I always walk away with a ton of new CDs.

This year there were fewer out-of-the-park discoveries. But there certainly were a couple. One of them, in fact, is a couple: Dave and Licia Radford of Nashville, who go by the name The Gray Havens. (Obscure Tolkien reference!) They refer to their music as narrative folk, and it certainly fits that description. They write story-songs (the absolutely delightful “Sirens” is a good example of this), and though they are stripped-down live, their voices intertwining over guitars or pianos, they are full-blooded on record.

I bought all three of the Gray Havens’ albums, and although I missed out on their recent Kickstarter, I am patiently awaiting their fourth. The latest, Ghost of a King, is really nice – there are shades of Coldplay here and there, and hints of Gungor, but mostly the Gray Havens are their own thing. I’d write more about these albums, but my lovely girlfriend has had them since AudioFeed (she loves them as much as I do), so I’ve only heard them online. But when record number four arrives, I will certainly delve deeper. Check them out here.

The AudioFeed community seemed excited to have booked as one of their headliners an act I’d never heard of: Lowercase Noises. It turned out to be the one-man project of Andrew Othling, who has been releasing beautiful ambient music under his band name since 2010. His show was breathtaking – an hour of sweeping, wave-like, gorgeous noise flowing over the audience as we watched mysterious shapes and colors appear on a screen at the back of the stage. Othling made oceans of wonder come out of his guitar, and it was bliss.

His new Lowercase Noises album is called The Swiss Illness, and it’s great. It’s about nostalgia, which was characterized as a disease during the 17th to 19th centuries, particularly in Switzerland. Soldiers were discharged for nostalgia, and were treated for it as if it were a mental disorder. The music on The Swiss Illness, though completely instrumental, feels sad and nostalgic to me. It’s almost overwhelmingly pretty, and listening to it on full volume is like being surrounded by water, cut off from everything, experiencing nothing but beauty. I love it. I’m hungry for more. Buy it here.

On the exact other end of the musical spectrum, there is Death Therapy. It’s the new project from Jason Wisdom of metal band Becoming the Archetype. Incidentally, I remember Wisdom and his bandmates handing out free CDs at Cornerstone in 2002, dreaming of being signed. Becoming the Archetype turned into a popular and impressive band, with five records and an EP to their name. Wisdom left in 2011 to pursue other avenues.

Those other avenues have led him to Death Therapy, a band I saw in action at last year’s AudioFeed. They’re danceable electro-metal, kind of like Deliverance’s Assimilation album, but more complex and shouty. Electronic drums sit alongside organic ones, distorted bass fires out in rhythmic bursts. Everything is about the groove. Death Therapy’s debut album is called The Storm Before the Calm, and it’s everything I was hoping for. I’m fond of every song, but the two-part instrumental at the end was a particularly interesting surprise. Find out more here.

Insomniac Folklore is a mainstay at AudioFeed. I saw them the first year, and was not surprised to hear that they are from Portland, Oregon. They take a lot from the Decemberists, though they are more stripped-back and apocalyptic. I’ve enjoyed their shows, but never picked up one of their albums before.

I rectified that this year, buying their new one, Everything Will Burn. While the title sounds more like something Death Therapy would put out, this album is rooted in centuries-old folk music and anchored by the baritone voice of Tyler Hentschel. It’s rickety in the best way, swaying back and forth on concertinas and cellos. The album is a song cycle about Exodus, and while it certainly isn’t for everyone, I find myself more enchanted by it than not. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a band quite like this one, and for that alone they deserve respect. Check the record out here.

I’ve made some discoveries at AudioFeed that I know will be with me the rest of my life. Von Strantz is one of them. Led by the core duo of Jess and Kelsey Von Strantz (they’re not related, they just both adopted the band name as their own), this band has appeared in half a dozen different incarnations throughout AudioFeed history. Their folksier early EPs shared space with some jazzier tracks on their first album, Narratives, which I praised effusively here a couple years ago.

A couple months ago, I pledged to a Kickstarter campaign for a new Von Strantz record called Apple of Your Eye, recorded with John Vanderslice. I was a little surprised to find out that Apple’s seven songs only stretch to 20 minutes, but they’re a pretty terrific 20 minutes. Von Strantz played the album straight through live at AudioFeed in a more acoustic setting that really brought the songs home, and prepared me for the more electronic, bizarre production they’ve employed on the record itself.

This is absolutely a divorce record, detailing the dissolution of Jess’ relationship. It’s darker and more difficult than the more upbeat Narratives, but it’s naked and powerful. Songs like “Loved You More” lay it bare: “Every time we touched, it never seemed to mean much to you…” The lyrics keep the songs grounded, no matter how many strange avenues the music takes. (The grooves of the title track and “Best Kept Secret” are particularly well-constructed, made of unlikely materials.) The best thing here, though, is the Adele-like “Sometimes It Hurts,” a simple piano piece that Jess sings the living hell out of. It’s a stunning closer to a record that takes Von Strantz to new places, musically and emotionally.

There doesn’t seem to be any place online to hear the new one, but you can hear all the old ones here.

Jess Von Strantz is also one-half of a band called Native Land, along with singer/songwriter (and fiancee) Matthew Hobler. Hobler’s songs are altogether stranger, but quite beautiful – he reminds me of Tim Buckley more than anyone else, writing and singing space-y acoustic tunes with cosmic imagery and surprising melodies. Native Land’s self-titled EP is handmade – it comes on a CD-R in a paper bag – and was recorded at home, but the lovely songs come through. I’m particularly fond of closer “Aneetha May,” which sounds timeless to my ears. You can hear the EP here.

But perhaps my favorite new CD I picked up at (actually shortly after) AudioFeed comes from Sho Baraka. I’d never heard of him before his post-midnight set on the final day of the festival, but he knocked me out. Imagine the gospel-tinged hip-hop of Chance the Rapper with a more pointed social awareness, a deeper willingness to talk about racism and inequality and systemic oppression and how those are moral issues for people of faith. Baraka walked into an almost entirely white room and guided this audience by the hand through all of these hard topics, with grace and humor and confidence. It was one of the best shows of the weekend.

Baraka’s new album is called The Narrative, and it is everything I could have wanted after his set. It’s a powerful piece of work, walking us through the history of racial oppression in this country and never whitewashing the role of the church in that oppression. It’s also, paradoxically, a lot of fun. “Kanye” uses Chicago’s loudest as license to rant, and the rant itself is fantastic. “Here” and “Excellent” are eminently danceable tracks with heavier themes. “Fathers” is a moving ode to men who take responsibility, and the closer “Piano Break” (which got Baraka banned from LifeWay Christian bookstores for using the word “penis”) is perhaps his fullest expression here, a deep and wide-ranging poem of anguish and love.

The Narrative is superb in every way, probably my favorite hip-hop album I have heard this year. (It came out last year, alas, or it would be in my list.) You can check Sho Baraka out here. He has a follow-up EP to The Narrative out now too, called Pianos and Politics, and I am looking forward to hearing that.

All in all, a pretty good haul from AudioFeed 2017. Already looking forward to next year. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

The AudioFeed Festival turned five this year.

I’m happy to say I haven’t missed an AudioFeed yet, and if I have anything to say about it, I’ll be there each year for as long as the merry band who organizes it keeps the torches lit. It’s become for me like going home and seeing family once a year. I’ve really stopped being able to review the festival, if that’s ever what I was doing, since it’s become such an important part of my life.

I’ve talked at length in this space about why AudioFeed is important to me. I grew up in a church, but for 25 years after I left, I’ve never felt at home in houses of worship. I’m still not sure what I believe, or even how best to explore the belief I have. The constant thread, though – the thing that keeps me coming back to a sense of the divine, the infinite – has been music. I grew up listening to Christian music – awful stuff, like Petra – but in 1990, I bought a mysterious-looking album called Circle Slide from one of the best bands I’ve ever had the pleasure to stumble on, The Choir.

The rest is history. My love of the Choir introduced me to Daniel Amos and Adam Again and the 77s and Starflyer 59 and so many other artists. My life would be infinitely poorer without them all. I eventually made my way to Cornerstone, the legendary alternative Christian music festival in Illinois, and when I moved to this state in 2004, I started going regularly. Cornerstone allowed me to see bands like the Choir and the 77s live for the first time, and introduced me to many more terrific artists I may never have encountered otherwise.

Still and all, I never felt comfortable at Cornerstone. I felt like an impostor more often than not, as if I were just waiting to be unmasked as a non-believer. I made some dear friends at Cornerstone, but always came away from it feeling like I’d crashed a party, and barely got away with it. Still, I was heartbroken when Cornerstone ended its mammoth 28-year run in 2012, and when the Choir, the last band on the last night, closed their set with “To Bid Farewell,” I definitely had something in my eye. (It’s really dusty in Bushnell.)

AudioFeed has gamely stepped into that gap, but it’s become more than clear over the ensuing five years that they have no intention of being the “next Cornerstone.” While the main draws for me at first were the bands I have loved for decades, I’m now just as excited about discovering new artists and seeing again the bands I first found at AudioFeed. I’m there for the likes of Von Strantz and Hushpad and Marah in the Mainsail (bring them back!) as I am for the old favorites.

As you might have guessed, this approach has turned off a lot of the old Cornerstone crowd, and I used to worry about that too. But I’ve seen this remarkable community grow up around AudioFeed, and I understand now that this festival is for them, not for the folks who just want to re-live the good old days. It’s about the future, in ways that Cornerstone no longer was. It’s about nurturing a new crop of fantastic artists and supporting them as they grow and create. And if they happen to explore faith in interesting ways, more so the better.

For five years running, I have felt at home at AudioFeed. It’s a festival that accepts people wherever they are in their journey, and invites them to participate. That, more than anything else, is what I need. I’ve recently started going to church again for the first time in a quarter-century, and it’s because I found a place that believes that everyone is welcome. Religion, for so many people, is about exclusion, about building walls between people and then getting on the “right” side of those walls. And I have always thought that it should be about love.

Because, as a band I love once sang, there’s something wonderful about love.

This fifth year was no exception. It was less a year of discovery for me – there seemed to be fewer new acts I had not seen before, but there certainly were some, including the Grey Havens and Lowercase Noises, that I will now follow forever. My favorite sets this year were mainly found on the larger Arkansas Stage, and included a smooth and soulful show by singer Liz Vice, a completely unexpected old-time gospel revue from the normally swamp-blues-y Sean Michel, a similarly surprising gritty set from John Mark McMillan, a guided tour through social issues set to rhyme by Sho Baraka and another chance to see the rolling fireball that is Ravenhill. My friend Jeff Elbel played two sterling sets as well, one with his current band Ping (road-testing several songs from the upcoming The Threefinger Opera) and one that reunited his ‘90s band Farewell to Juliet.

In addition to Sho Baraka (more about him next week), there were a couple shows at AudioFeed 2017 that I think demonstrate clearly why this festival is not just important to me, but an important thing to have in the world. With evangelicals supporting Donald Trump (still!) in record numbers and Christians seemingly standing against every fight for equality, I can think of no institution that needs to consider other viewpoints as much as the church does. And one of those viewpoints the church needs to consider is why people leave it.

The organizers of AudioFeed invited Derek Webb to make his debut appearance at the Radon Lounge (basically the acoustic stage). Webb is a superstar in this corner of the music world, having made his name with Caedmon’s Call and a slew of inventive, incisive, decidedly Christian solo records. But in the intervening years, Webb’s marriage dissolved (due to infidelity on his part), and he has lost his faith. His new songs, to be released on an album called Fingers Crossed later this year, detail that loss of faith with as much honestly and insight as he has brought to his entire career.

He played six of those new songs, and make no mistake, they are searing and amazing. They would have had him run out of Cornerstone on a rail. That AudioFeed gave him a platform to share them, and that the audience accepted both them and him as they are, speaks volumes about why I am so comfortable at this festival. When they say they want everyone to feel welcome, they mean it. I identified with much of what Webb was singing about, and had the audience turned on him, they would have been turning on me too. But they didn’t.

Similarly, one of the headliners this year was David Bazan, who, with his band Pedro the Lion, was an important part of the Christian indie scene in the ‘90s. Bazan also went through a very public loss of faith some years ago, and has been writing (brilliantly) from that perspective ever since. His work is bleaker now, more concerned with struggle and silence than it used to be, but it’s no less wonderful. (And he’s just delivered a swell platter from his new supergroup Lo Tom that is well worth hearing.)

I encountered some Christians who could not believe that David Bazan was not only invited to be part of AudioFeed, but was headlining. This would never happen at Cornerstone, or at any other Christian festival, they said. And of course, they’re right. That, to me, is what makes AudioFeed special. Bazan wasn’t preached at or lectured. He was listened to and loved, right where he is. I think we could all use more of that, but I think the church especially could learn that lesson.

Yeah, AudioFeed is just a music festival, a gathering of a few thousand in a fairground in Champaign once a year. But it feels like so much more than that. It feels like a family to me, and in the way it approaches community, inclusion and diversity, it feels like the future. It feels important. I’m so grateful I get to visit every summer, and I hope I get to every summer for a long, long time. Viva AudioFeed.

Next week, I’ll talk about some of the music I picked up at this year’s festival. Yes, music! I know, right? Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m going to spend this Independence Day talking about how much I depend on my friends.

If you know anything about me, you know that I connect with people most directly over music. “What are you listening to” isn’t just an idle question for me, it’s a way of seeking out kindred spirits, of finding connection points with people and then reveling in them. Discovering that other people love the same music I love, as deeply as I love it, is one of my life’s greatest joys.

Another of them is when those people hear new music they love and think of me. I’ve discovered so many new bands and songs and albums through kind recommendations. Quite often those recommendations come from folks I have never met in person. Those hold a special place in my heart. Knowing that people I’ve never even shared a meal with think enough of me to want to enrich my life with music, well, it makes my heart grow several sizes.

I’ve never met Adam Baker, though it feels like I’ve known him forever. We connected in a Facebook group for fans of Christian music from the ‘90s (yes, that’s a real thing), but as he lives in North Carolina and I’m stuck in the vast expanse of the Midwest, we’ve never even shaken hands. But we have talked about music, a lot. I know he likes a diverse array of hardcore, which for a Methodist pastor is absolutely fantastic, and he knows what I’m into as well.

Which is probably why he knew I would like Algiers. I can’t remember the circumstances that led Adam to recommending this Georgia band to me, but I’m glad he did. My first exposure to them was the title track of their just-released second album, The Underside of Power. The song is, frankly, amazing. It’s like soul music from a dark, dystopian future. Franklin James Fisher has a powerful, rich voice, and the band creates a fury around him that feels like Motown meets the Death Star. It somehow manages to be portentous and important while maintaining the shuffling soul sound of a Leon Bridges at its core.

Frankly, I’d never heard anything quite like it, so I ran to the record store that day to buy the album. And while it never ascends those heights again, The Underside of Power is pretty awesome. It’s all together darker than the single would indicate, taking you through a wounded and wrecked world while gently nudging you toward revolution. “Dystopian soul” is, it turns out, a fine way to describe the entire thing. Fisher’s voice remains a beacon throughout, able to express great misery (check out his tortured performance on “A Murmur a Sign”) while still embodying glimmers of hope.

Long stretches of this record wallow in murky atmosphere, the clattering of electronic drums breaking the surface here and there. “Cleveland” brings the tempo up a little for a call and response over pitter-patter percussion, Fisher screaming and moaning while name-checking African-Americans like Sandra Bland whose suspicious deaths were ruled suicides. “The hand that brings the gavel down is the hand that ties the noose… but that hand is gonna fold, the day is coming soon…” “Animals,” right after that, is the loudest and punkiest track here, slashing and burning everything in its way for two and a half minutes.

The final third of The Underside of Power is the darkest, full of oppressive instrumentals and the unsettling lament of “Hymn for an Average Man,” with its refrain of “deny it, deny it.” (At one point, a barely-audible voice sings out “Ignore their screaming, you got away with it.” Chilling.) But the final track is a hell of a way to go out. “The Cycle/The Spiral: Time to Go Down Slowly” earns its multi-part title, Fisher’s soulful “we are the cycle that begins, we are the spiral to the end” stretching out over flitting piano and drums. The band creates an almighty racket before fading away, leaving its revolution in your hands.

Adam was right. I think this is pretty great, even if it never gets quite as good as my first exposure to the band. The title song rises head and shoulders above everything else here, of course, but as an experience, The Underside of Power is a tough and uncompromising one, making use of the band’s unique elements in unexpected yet powerful ways. As a walk through a difficult future, this is something else. I’ll be buying whatever Algiers decide to do next.

* * * * *

Of course, this doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate recommendations from my longtime friends.

Case in point: I’ve known the irascible Javi Terrazzas for years now. He’s one of the most supportive people I’ve ever met, even if he likes to project an air of grumpiness and misanthropy. He’s also ahead of the curve in so many areas of music, and I’ve learned a lot from him. I’m sure during the time I’ve known him that he’s tried to get me into Gossip, a band I’ve never quite investigated. But my delayed reaction didn’t stop him from enthusiastically recommending Fake Sugar, the first solo album from Gossip frontwoman Beth Ditto.

And good lord, is this record fantastic, and I may never have heard it without Javi. Just from spinning this album over and over, Ditto is quickly climbing my list of favorite singers. She has a big, strong, malleable voice that carries every song here, caressing when the song calls for it and letting loose with a forceful wail when it’s needed. One of those times is on the refrain of the first song and first single, “Fire.” This thing is a delight. It comes on like a shimmering old-school shuffle, but with her siren-call “Fiiiiiiiiyer,” it erupts. The song still shimmies, but in a more volcanic way. It’s just great.

The rest of Fake Sugar is sweeter and softer, Ditto delivering one great showcase for that voice after another. “In and Out” may be one of my favorite pure pop songs of the year, but there’s more than one contender for that crown here. The title track is a lovely, sparse gallop, Ditto subtly singing the solo-guitar opening before the song blossoms into something out of Paul Simon. Ditto co-wrote most of these songs with her producer, Jennifer Decilveo, who also played bass and other instruments, and it’s clearly a partnership that sings. I cannot stop listening to “Savoir Faire,” particularly its vivacious chorus. These two know how to write a song.

The whole record is delightful, even if it gets a bit samey-sounding by the end. Ditto and Decilveo set a template of spare guitars and subtle drums, leaving plenty of room for the voice to fill in the corners. (One exception is “We Could Run,” on which Ditto fully opens up those vocal chords, and the production matches her. “Love in Real Life” gets a fuller treatment too, and it benefits.) I’m kind of in love with this record, and I’m grateful to Javi for letting me know about it.

And I’m grateful to anyone who has ever let me know about music they love. It keeps me going, but more than that, it keeps me connected to you all, and I’m thankful for that.

* * * * *

Okay, one week late, but here is the Second Quarter Report. I’m not sure I have seen a more complete rewriting of the First Quarter Report since I started writing them. The last three months have seen an avalanche of excellent new records, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to let up. If most of the ten records listed below end up being also-rans in December, it will have been an extraordinary year.

Here is what the top 10 list would look like if I were forced under pain of death to publish it right now:

10.  Mount Eerie, A Crow Looked at Me

9.  Fleet Foxes, Crack-Up.

8.  Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, The Nashville Sound.

7.  Roger Waters, Is This the Life We Really Want.

6.  Husky, Punchbuzz.

5.  Elbow, Little Fictions.

4.  Slowdive.

3.  Jonathan Coulton, Solid State.

2.  Aimee Mann, Mental Illness.

1. Planetarium.

Next week, AudioFeed 2017. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

As much as I love the kind of labyrinthine puzzle box albums we talked about last week, if you know me at all you know my heart lies with the song.

Give me a catchy melody, some heartfelt and well-considered lyrics, and a solid structure and I’m in every time. I’m constantly on the lookout for songwriters who try to capture entire worlds in four or five minutes. Elvis Costello may be the best of them, but there are plenty of others – Aimee Mann, Neil Finn, Dan Wilson, the astonishing Paul Simon, along with the three I have on tap this week – who keep on finding new ways to marry words and music, telling stories and baring their souls.

Soul-baring is Ani DiFranco’s stock in trade, and a new Ani album is always cause for celebration. She’s giving us fewer of them these days – for the whole of the ‘90s, it was a given that there would be a new DiFranco record each year, culminating in 1999, during which she released three of them. Her twenty-first album, Binary, arrives after a three-year absence, although she has never stopped touring.

You grow up and you calm down, and this angry young folksinger has aged gracefully into a considered, textured songwriter. Albums like Binary just take longer to make than slapdash nearly-live documents like Imperfectly, and for my money, the deep, rich sound she conjures on this record is worth the wait. Binary finds DiFranco engaged with the world around her, preaching politics and feminism and letting her rage boil up more frequently than she has recently, and that also can only be a good thing. If there were ever a time for a strong female voice like DiFranco’s, that time is now.

The most direct song here is “Play God,” her feminist pro-choice anthem: “You get to run the world in your special way, you get much more, much more than your say, government, religion, it’s all just patriarchy, I must insist you leave this one thing to me…” It’s reminiscent of the old Ani – you can actually see her at 20-something, selling her cassettes out of her car and playing that guitar for all she’s worth, giving her older self a high-five. The only thing that separates it from the furious songs she used to write is the loping, jazzy groove, a staple of this record.

Mostly, though, DiFranco is here to talk about how to live together, how to build each other up without breaking under the strain of Trump’s America. “Alrighty,” amidst its arguments for a female God, is about remaining connected to our collective consciousness. “Terrifying Sight” is about looking around and not liking what she sees, buckling up for the difficult ride ahead. “Pacifist’s Lament” charts a nonviolent path forward, urging us to say we’re sorry and stop in the middle of our pitched battles. And closer “Delayed Gratification” is about teaching our children to live and act with empathy. “I vote in every election,” she sings. “Hopefully one day these kids are going to help us win.”

It’s an album with no easy answers, no quick fixes, and that’s fitting for someone whose years of engagement have given her perspective. I know this is a matter of debate among her fans, but she’s also become much better at wrangling these observations and ruminations into songs. Binary is a beautiful-sounding record, anchored by her longtime bassist Todd Sickafoose and her touring drummer Terence Higgins. They get DiFranco’s jazz-funk groove – to pinch one of her new song titles, they’re practically telepathic. They nimbly handle a tricky vibe like the “Spider,” and add punch to the one true love song here, “Even More.”

DiFranco jams here with some distinguished guests, including trumpeter Maceo Parker, pianist Ivan Neville and saxophonist Skerik. Justin Vernon pops up on “Zizzing,” but it’s violinist Jenny Scheinman who steals that show, and every track she’s on. Her solo on “Telepathic” is a highlight. Through it all, DiFranco, who has been self-producing her records forever, keeps everything focused. This is the work of a seasoned, experienced record-maker – it’s tight, colorful and exactly what it should be.

So yeah, a new DiFranco record is always cause for a parade through the town square. But one this good, this insightful and well-crafted, is even more welcome. She’s slowed down, but I hope she never stops. I’ll gladly wait three years for an album as good as Binary.

* * * * *

If you’re going to talk about songwriters, you have to talk about Nashville. And right now, one of the best songwriters in Nashville is a guy from Alabama.

Jason Isbell has been at it for a long time, first as a member of Drive-By Truckers for six years (during which he gave us gems like “Danko/Manuel”) and then as a solo artist. It took him until his fourth album, the phenomenal Southeastern, to gain the acclaim he has always deserved. That’s not finger-wagging – I didn’t really pay attention to Isbell until Southeastern either, much to my shame.

But when I finally explored his work, I found a songwriter able to collapse whole novels into three minutes. Isbell is part of a long tradition of storytellers, one that includes Townes Van Zandt and Johnny Cash and Tom Waits and Hank Williams. Isbell creates characters, then gets behind their eyes and brings us their lives in a few incisive lines. It’s a skill few possess, and even fewer can do as well as Isbell can.

In some ways, the success of Southeastern was a liability. In retrospect, Isbell’s follow-up, the ambitious Something More Than Free, strained under the weight of expectation. It felt like a record with something to prove, branching out in new directions just to show that it could. What I like best about The Nashville Sound, Isbell’s new record, is that it feels free of that weight. It’s a confident, low-stakes record that paradoxically shows off Isbell’s undeniable talents better than the all-over-the-place nature of its predecessor.

For the first time since 2011, Isbell shares top billing on this record with his band, the 400 Unit. As you might expect, that means The Nashville Sound rocks a little harder and feels a little more live, and that vibe fits these new songs perfectly. After the acoustic opener “Last of My Kind,” the band leaps into action on “Cumberland Gap,” a roaring rocker about dying slowly in a small town. Here’s one of several perfect verses: “I thought about moving away, but what would my momma say? I’m all that she has left, I’m with her every day. Soon as the sun goes down, find my way to the Mustang Lounge, if you don’t sit facing the window you could be in any town…”

Good as the opening of this record is, there’s a stretch of songs in the middle that are as good as anything I’ve ever heard from Isbell. In “White Man’s World,” one of his best lyrics, he tackles his own privilege and responsibility as a white male American: “I’m a white man living on a white man’s street, got the bones of the red man under my feet,” he sings, and one verse later he finds himself “looking in a black man’s eyes, wishing I’d never been one of the guys who pretended not to hear another white man’s joke…” He sums it up perfectly in the chorus: “There’s no such thing as someone else’s war.”

“Anxiety” gets more personal with one eye on the world situation, starting with a riff right out of prog-metal and ending up as a seven-minute ode to the immobilizing stress many of us feel every day. “It’s the weight of the world, but it’s nothing at all, I’m light as a prayer then I feel myself fall…” On the glorious “Hope the High Road,” he obliquely references the Trump election, repeating “there can’t be more of them than us” and offering his hand: “Last year was a son of a bitch for nearly everyone we know, but I ain’t fighting with you down in the ditch, I’ll meet you up here on the road.” And on the great closer “Something to Love,” he sings of hope to his daughter: “I don’t quite recognize the world you’ll call home, just find what makes you happy, girl, and do it ‘til you’re gone.”

But for my money, the best thing here is “If We Were Vampires,” which is an odd title for perhaps the best, most realistic love song Isbell has ever penned. It’s about how mortality makes every second with the ones you love precious: “Maybe time running out is a gift, I’ll work hard ‘til the end of my shift, give you every second I can find and hope it isn’t me who’s left behind…” That last line links back to the chorus, in which Isbell is as frank as can be: “Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone, maybe we’ll get forty years together, but one day I’ll be gone, or one day you’ll be gone…” That he makes these sentiments beautiful, longing and haunting is a testament to his skill.

In fact, the whole of The Nashville Sound is a testament. Isbell sounds relaxed here, fully aware of his prodigious talent and comfortable using it. This is a songwriter at the height of his powers, making it all seem easy. Jason Isbell has been great for a long time, and he may be at his best on this record. It’s a thing of beauty.

* * * * *

Speaking of songwriters that have been plying their trade for a long time, here’s Matthew Sweet.

I first heard Sweet when all of you did: in 1991, when his third album Girlfriend took over the radio and MTV. A snarling power pop gem, Girlfriend yielded several hits (the title track most notable among them) and made Sweet a household name, at least for a few years. His follow-ups Altered Beast and 100% Fun were similarly acclaimed, and his run of records through the ‘90s, culminating in the wonderful In Reverse, are unimpeachable.

And then I’m not sure what happened. It would be difficult for me to say that anything he’s done since In Reverse matches up to that historic run through the flannel decade. I’ve enjoyed his subsequent records, especially Sunshine Lies, but I could hear him running out of gas. He seemed to save most of his exuberance for a series of covers albums he made with Susanna Hoffs, and while those were splendid, they didn’t do much for his reputation as a songwriter. The last of those came out in 2013, two years after the last original album he made, Modern Art.

So when Sweet offered a new record through Kickstarter, I jumped at it, even though I doubted it would be anything special. My doubts only grew as the album took years beyond its original due date to appear. But man, I was so wrong. The new record is called Tomorrow Forever, and it’s easily the best thing Sweet has done since the ‘90s. It’s a generous 17 songs over 59 minutes, and I’d probably keep all of them, since the album flows so nicely. It’s his most consistent, most full-on power-pop record in many years, and it’s so good to hear him play and sing songs like this again.

All you need is the first song, “Trick,” to know that we’re back in classic Matthew Sweet territory. Guitars chug, lead lines step all over each other, and Sweet harmonizes with himself beautifully. It’s not quite like listening to Girlfriend again – Sweet’s voice is older and more worn – but it’s close. And Sweet’s gift for melody has followed him into his fifties. These songs are simple things, for the most part, but they’re lovely, and you’ll want to sing along. And when he gets deeper and darker, as he does on “Haunted” (featuring Rod Argent on piano), he reminds you just how good he is.

If you backed Tomorrow Forever on Kickstarter, you also got a 12-song bonus album called Tomorrow’s Daughter, which is (amazingly) just as good and just as consistent as the main disc. In fact, some of those songs (like “Years”) stand above the main disc, and the sound is overall rawer. I’m not sure Tomorrow’s Daughter will ever be available outside of the Kickstarter campaign, but combined with the main record, Sweet has given us 29 new tunes over 100 minutes. That’s how you make a comeback.

I’m so happy to be here for this Matthew Sweet renaissance. If you’ve been confused or turned off by Sweet’s post-‘90s output, this is the record you’ve been hoping for. Fingers crossed that it’s just the start of a killer third act. I’ll be listening.

* * * * *

This week’s column ran way too long, so I’m going to hold off on the Second Quarter Report until next week. I’ll also be taking a look at some out-of-the-blue surprises. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I have too much music to listen to.

I understand, of course, that on the scale of problems I could have, “I have too much music to listen to” doesn’t really rate. It ranks up there with “I don’t like this new car smell” and “I really wish people would stop handing me money for no reason.” I get that. But bear with me. I promise this won’t be too whiny.

Because I want to talk about complexity this week, which is a common theme here at Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. I love complexity. I love albums that require a dozen listens to fully grasp, and even then you end up finding more and more to praise about them. I love music that requires my time and patience to unravel and to truly appreciate. I absolutely adore spending weeks with a new record, swimming in its depths, piecing together my reaction to it.

I’m sure you see where I’m going with this. With the virtual tidal wave of new music coming at me lately, I’m only able to give most records two or three listens. If I don’t keep this pace up, I miss out on giving at least one listen to everything I buy, and I would like to keep up. But that means that when faced with albums of the caliber and complexity I’m writing about this week, I just don’t have the time to give them the attention they need.

So what you’re getting this week is first impressions of albums that I know I will be listening to for years. Both of these records give me that tingly feeling in the back of my head, the one that says to me that I’m hearing an album I will treasure for a long, long time. And both of them, it must be said, are tricky and dense and difficult enough that I know I am only scratching the surface right now, and it will take months of repeated plays to truly unlock everything here.

Both of them floated in seemingly out of nowhere, too. It’s been long enough since the second Fleet Foxes album, 2011’s lovely Helplessness Blues, that you’d be forgiven for wondering if we would ever get a third one. Leader Robin Pecknold has been talking about new Fleet Foxes music for a while, but as the years ticked by without any specifics, it felt like empty talk.

And hell, not many bands deliver two near-perfect records and a glorious EP to boot. It’s a fine legacy, one built on celestial harmonies and earthy, timeless songs. I still consider the self-titled Fleet Foxes album to be one of the finest records of my lifetime. Could a new album even live up? Would it be the curse of the Difficult Third Record, destined to be admired from a distance but never loved?

Crack-Up, that decidedly weird and complicated third record, is in fact all of those things. It is absolutely the band’s Difficult Third, but it’s also a textbook case of how to embrace that cliché while doing it right. Virtually nothing about Crack-Up is easy. It contains long, multi-part songs, some separated by slashes (like opener “I Am All That I Need/Arroyo Seco/The Thumbprint Scar”), some spread out over adjacent tracks. Pecknold’s penchant for writing indelible, timeless melodies has not exactly been pushed aside, but has been relegated to second place behind the obvious joy he takes in stretching his prog-folk orchestrations as far as they can go.

And they go very far indeed. The scratchy, almost inaudible opening of the album begins a crescendo that breaks with the gigantic clarinets-and-piano ending of second track, “Cassius, -“ which, as the title indicates, segues directly into its sweet second half on track three, “- Naiads, Cassiades.” The track titles aren’t hiding quick and clever pop tunes behind them – they’re appropriate for the gorgeous, patient, study-worthy music Pecknold has written.

Crack-Up, even more than the first two Fleet Foxes records, needs and deserves to be heard as a whole. The way the rolling piano of “Kept Woman” picks up perfectly from the pitched-down guitar at the end of the prior track is seamless. By the time you’re through the nearly nine-minute “Third of May/Odaigahara,” the fifth winding and tricky song in a row, you’re ready for something simpler, and right on cue, here is the beautiful plainsong “If You Need To, Keep Time on Me.” It does exactly what it’s supposed to, at exactly the right place in the album.

There’s no doubt, though, that over 55 minutes, this level of complexity can get wearying. Pecknold and his bandmates still deliver those woodsy, men-out-of-time harmonies, and they are still perfect – they take your hand and guide you when the melodies get too obscure. But this is the kind of album that will find you needing an anchor, something to hang your brain on. The second half is marginally more immediate, particularly the stunning “On Another Ocean,” but the concluding title track brings back the multitude of instruments, the ebb and flow of the musical tide that marks this record. Occasionally the song will drop from full orchestration to nearly empty spoken word and then crash back again, horns wailing. It’s mammoth, almost too much to absorb.

Given all that, does Crack-Up add to the Fleet Foxes legacy, or take it down a blind alley? If you’re like me, you’ll find it hard to say after the first few listens. But I have the unmistakable feeling that this album will only grow more rewarding as I listen further. It’s definitely their Difficult Third Record, but even at this early stage, I feel like it’s a bit of a masterpiece, and I look forward to learning more about it.

If you think Crack-Up is complicated, you may want to buckle in for Planetarium, our other contestant this week. This one is positively brain-melting. I’ve heard it four times, and I still don’t quite have it mapped out in my head. I just know that it’s utterly brilliant.

Of course, an album like this could only come from Sufjan Stevens, perhaps the finest musical mind of my generation. It is also ostensibly a collaboration with Bryce Dessner of the National, string arranger Nico Mulhy and multi-instrumentalist and producer James McAllister, and while I hear all of them in this thing to varying degrees (with the blessed exception of Dessner), the dominant force here is undoubtedly Stevens. Planetarium follows nicely from his Age of Adz experimentalism, mixed with his penchant for delirious melodies and multi-part orchestral suites.

But this is no retread. Written and refined over a period of years, the music on Planetarium goes further out than Stevens ever has. Framed as an exploration of our solar system and featuring songs for every planet (and Pluto!), the cosmic backdrop gives Stevens and his collaborators license to go supernova – some parts of this record leap further into the electropocalypse than even Age of Adz, and some parts are head-spinning progressive orchestral wonderamas. And some sections are so beautiful that I won’t have adequate words for them.

What is it like to listen to? Imagine being on a roller coaster that plunges underwater at random intervals, forcing you to pay attention and hold your breath at a moment’s notice. Every few seconds, there’s something new, some fresh hairpin turn, some moment that you swear is the best moment yet. And then seconds later, here comes another one. There are extraordinary epics here, like “Jupiter” and “Uranus” and the jittery, unbelievable “Earth,” and you’ll come back to those more than once, but there are also immediate pieces of gorgeous songcraft like “Saturn” and the delightful album-closing “Mercury.” While Planetarium can sometimes leave you lost in space, it always brings you back around.

There are some portions of Planetarium that even after four listens still befuddle me. The early stretches of “Mars,” for example, or the lovely yet too-long ambient pieces “Black Energy” and “Sun,” which stop the album’s momentum dead. But even those moments feel like they’re purposeful, that they fit into a larger vision. The lyrics are similarly head-scratching, as Stevens often is, but even more so this time. Much of it seems to be wrestling with God and our place in the universe – standard topics for Stevens – but enough of it is indecipherable that I can only hope that repeated listens will make it clear.

As you can tell, I’m barely beginning my journey with Planetarium, and already I know it’s like nothing else I own. I’m swept away by it, stunned into silence by its complexity and yet able to lose myself in it at the same time. This is a lot of music – 76 minutes, and it rarely slows down for you, throwing you new ideas at a feverish pace. But if you’re looking for music that takes you places and leaves you with the unmistakable sense that you have been somewhere else, and now you are not the same, then this is for you. It’s a lot to take in, but its rewards are many, and they will no doubt unfold over years and years.

Next week, it’s a songwriters’ paradise with Ani Difranco, Jason Isbell and Matthew Sweet. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.