Well look at me, I’m forty-three.

I actually took a week off for my birthday this year. I never do that. I’ve promised both you and myself that I will do that every year for at least the last ten, but I don’t think I ever have. I may call it a tradition from now on, because it was surprisingly refreshing and revitalizing. If the day ever comes when I end this column, whether from exhaustion or simply running out of time to write it each week, I may look back on this delightful week off as the beginning of the end.

Don’t worry, though. I still feel like I have plenty to say, and lord knows the torrent of new music is not slowing down. I’m going to try the same experiment I tried in October of last year – a month of columns full of shorter, more to-the-point reviews. June is full to bursting with new tunes, and just out of necessity I have to start with a couple that came out last month, so I’m going to try to say fewer words about each of these records and make the words I do say count more. We’ll see how I do.

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My birthday has, of course, brought with it the usual reflection on my life, accompanied by the usual wish to be 17 again. Don’t get me wrong – if offered, I probably wouldn’t go back and live my twenties again. They weren’t my favorite years, and I’m actually quite happy in my forties. But what I miss sometimes is that fire I used to have, that ability to pursue projects until they were a reality. I miss the way I could once get through an entire week without feeling tired at the end.

I do think some of my teenage drive came from the music I listened to. And when I put that music on now, I feel the same optimism and idealism that defined my best days as a teen. Sure, I was a metalhead in those years, with a long curly mullet and a firm belief that Megadeth’s Rust in Peace was the pinnacle of artistic achievement, but it was during that phase that I also discovered some of my most enduring favorites. And perhaps the most enduring of them all has been the Alarm.

Let’s just get this out of the way: I am never going to hate the Alarm. They mean too much to me. My friend Chris Callaway, who very kindly mentioned me more than once in his book of interviews with rock stars, got me into the Welsh foursome by lending me Eye of the Hurricane when we were both 14, and it shone new light on my world. It was everything I loved about U2 with a more pop sensibility, and even then I appreciated a great melody more than anything else.

The original Alarm released five studio albums and a bunch of other material, and I love all of it. They morphed from an acoustic punk band to a melodic rock band and then headed in a bluesier, crunchier direction before calling it quits in 1991. Nine years later, frontman Mike Peters reformed the band with new musicians and started its second chapter, and the Alarm been a powerhouse since.

It was in this later incarnation that the Alarm broke free from the U2-isms that had always dogged them. Mike Peters still sings like Bono, with all the passion and fire he can muster each time out, but he started bringing in louder punk influences, and with 2008’s tremendous Counter Attack (an 8-CD box set of new material), captured the spirit of one of U2’s earliest inspirations, the Clash. They sounded alive, vital, hungry, ready for anything.

Which is why it’s somewhat disheartening that Peters has gone back to U2-land with Blood Red, the Alarm’s first record of new material in nine years. Blood Red is the first of at least two new records coming down the pike, and while it’s good, it doesn’t quite rise up to the bar they’ve set for themselves, and it doesn’t make me particularly jazzed for the second installment.

Now look, I’m never going to hate the Alarm, and these ten anthems still stir the soul. Peters sounds older, which of course he is, but given his fight (and his wife’s fight) against cancer in recent years, he doesn’t sound nearly as beaten down by life as you might expect. “Coming Backwards” includes every Alarm cliché, including Peters’ wailing harmonica, and it all still works. “There Must Be a Way” is a low-key fist pump, a song that could have been written in the band’s early days, recorded a bit slower than younger Peters would have done it, with a few more synthesizers and a bit less energy. But it still sounds like the Alarm.

And if that’s all you need, Blood Red is going to do it for you. The best stuff comes in the middle – “Time” is a deep, dark excursion, “Love and Understanding” basically rewrites “Strength” for 2017, and “Brighter Than the Sun” is a minor-key mid-tempo thing, reminiscent of “Scarlet” from 1989’s Change. Outside those three and the classic Bono-style ballad “No Greater Love,” Peters struggles for inspiration, but he always sounds like Mike Peters – older but unbowed, and still itching for a fight. For most of this album, that’s enough.

Find the Alarm online here: www.thealarm.com

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I’ve bought a lot of music recently, but one thing I haven’t bought is the new mix of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I feel like I ought to, but I’ve bought Sgt. Pepper four times now in various formats, and even though it’s one of my very favorite records, I’m not sure I need to buy it again, particularly with all the potentially fantastic new records coming out. But that doesn’t mean I can’t celebrate its birthday. I’m just more than seven years younger than Sgt. Pepper – the album turned 50 on May 26. The magic of Sgt. Pepper is that in many ways, we’re still catching up with it.

I discovered the Beatles in junior high, which I think is about the same time everyone discovers them. There’s a short list of bands that everyone finds out about in junior high or high school – Led Zeppelin, for instance, or Simon and Garfunkel. The big one, though, seems to be Pink Floyd. I play in the band at my church, and our guitarist is a 15-year-old kid who loves Floyd. He plays “Money” and “Wish You Were Here” like they were new songs, and it always makes me nostalgic, because I discovered them around the same time.

Of course, by the time I got there, they were the David Gilmour Band, soloing their way through A Momentary Lapse of Reason. I remember the first time I heard Roger Waters sing – I jumped right into The Wall next on a recommendation – and I wasn’t impressed. Who was this shouty guy? Where was the far more melodious Gilmour? What about the guitar solos? It didn’t take long for me to come around. By the time I’d delved into his solo work, I was a Roger Waters fan.

So when Amused to Death hit during my freshman year of college, I was ready for it. Basically a rant in album form, Amused is the one where all of Waters’ sonic and social interests collided, painting a dark picture of a world addicted to digital experiences and devoid of human ones. It was basically the ultimate Roger Waters album. Amused was so good that I thought we’d never see another one out of him. He’d basically said what he came here to say.

Thankfully, I was wrong. Twenty-five years after Amused to Death, here is Waters’ fourth solo album, Is This the Life We Really Want. In most ways, this is a sequel to Amused – Waters worked with Nigel Godrich here, the man behind every Radiohead album for the last 20 years, and he creates a very Roger Waters atmosphere, full of ambient interludes and big string arrangements and stabbing guitar accents and Pink Floyd-style keyboards. It’s a patient album, a slow one, but in its best moments, it’s a remarkably powerful one.

Lyrically, this record is mainly what you’d expect, if not more so. Waters is 73 years old now, and this is even more of a cranky old man rant than Amused was. Much of this was either written very recently, or tied in retroactively with Trump’s election – “A leader with no fucking brains,” Waters sings on “Picture That,” lyrics that are transposed over a photo of Dear Leader in the liner notes. “Every time a young girl’s life is casually spent, and every time a nincompoop becomes the president,” he spits out on the title track, essentially a litany of society’s ills.

I am all about Roger Waters ripping modern life to shreds, so I enjoyed every second of his venomous invective. But he does something even more interesting here, something that sets this record above all of his other solo work to me: he juxtaposes his descriptions of the crumbling world with an examination of a crumbling relationship. Waters’ emotional vulnerability, his genuine regret, give these songs (and by extension, the album) a weight that they might not have had otherwise.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in the final three songs, which together form a gorgeous little suite. “Wait for Her” and “Oceans Apart” are poetic love songs, and the finale, “Part of Me Died,” shows how much he has grown. “When I laid eyes on her, a part of me died,” he sings, listing off the qualities he no longer wants to feel: cold-hearted, devious, greedy, mischievous, global, colonial, bloodthirsty and blind. The message, of course, is that love is the answer, love is the way out of the mess we’re in, the way to find the life we really want. But Waters delivers that message with such delicate honesty that it lands. It’s my favorite moment of his career.

Is This the Life We Really Want is an event. It may very well be the last record of Roger Waters’ life, and if so, he’s gone out with a stunner. There are so many moments throughout this work that brought a smile to my face and a tear to my eye. It’s another rant in album form, make no mistake, but it’s probably his best rant, and there’s a twist in the tale that takes it to another level. I’m not sure what I was expecting 25 years later, but Waters delivered.

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Shorter and to the point, huh? Wow, do I suck at this. Regardless, I have one more record to tell you about, and as it’s one of my favorites of the year, I need to tell you about it now. It also illustrates that while I’m always excited to hear from artists I’ve loved for years, I’m equally excited to find new acts that thrill me.

Husky thrills me. I have my friend Rob Hale to thank for turning me on to this Australian band. They’re exactly the kind of melodic folksy rock band I adore, and namesake Husky Gawenda’s songs are unfailingly terrific, twisting and turning while remaining as catchy and infectious as possible. Their first two albums were revelations, and their just-released third, Punchbuzz, is easily as good, and better in a lot of ways. One day, Husky is going to make a bad record. This is not that day.

Punchbuzz is a different kind of Husky album, but one that nudges its evolution forward without forgetting what brought them to the dance. It’s a more plugged-in work, with programmed drums and keyboards and chiming, ringing electric guitar all over the place. A song like “Shark Fin” barrels forward with remarkable confidence, the band taking on this propulsive new sound like it’s second nature. “Late Night Store” is a stunner, shrouded in shadow, making full use of the new, fuller production.

But they don’t sound like a totally different band, and there are two reasons for that – Gawenda’s distinctive, even voice and his songs. The songs are uniformly excellent here, a little darker than they’ve been before but still rippling with melody, still tight and beautiful. The band indulges in an atmospheric jam at the end of the grand “Cut the Air,” and it is the first moment on a Husky album that sounds like it wasn’t mapped out in its entirety. Their trademark sure-footedness is all over this album.

They even save some surprises for the end. “Flower Drum” is as far-out as they’ve gone, sonically speaking – it takes the new wave dive, the way Keane did on Perfect Symmetry. And it’s awesome, zipping through its insidious chorus at a trot. Closer “Space Between Heartbeats,” similarly, pulls out the spacey keyboard drones and Phil Collins electronic pitter-patter, then augments them with pedal steel guitars. It shouldn’t work, but it does, wonderfully.

From the first time I heard them, Husky has been one of those tell-everyone bands for me. Punchbuzz has only solidified their stature. They’ll make a bad record someday, although I can’t imagine it. For now, though, they’ve made three great ones, and I cannot recommend all of them highly enough.

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Next week, I’ll try my best to actually write short reviews. I’ll have a ton to choose from, including Fleet Foxes, Ani DiFranco, Jason Isbell, Phoenix and Sufjan Stevens’ Planetarium project. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

When I was a kid, my father had a subscription to the Columbia Record Club.

I’ve told this story before, about how my dad, who doesn’t really love music, ended up with some of the best albums of the ‘70s on vinyl. I was obsessed with these records as a young boy, playing them over and over again until I had them memorized. The selection included Led Zeppelin IV and Grand Funk Railroad’s Mark, Don and Mel and Leon Russell’s Carny. And it also included one of my favorites: Eat a Peach, by the Allman Brothers Band.

I didn’t know anything about the Allman Brothers at the time. Eat a Peach came out two years before I was born, and I must have been three or four when I first heard it. I didn’t know it was the last Allman Brothers Band album to feature both Allman Brothers – Duane Allman had died in a motorcycle crash shortly after finishing the sessions. (I do remember my dad later telling me the legendary – and untrue – story that the album had been named Eat a Peach because Duane had crashed his bike into a peach truck.)

No, all I knew about the album was that I liked it, a lot. The twin guitar harmonies on just about every song, but especially “Blue Sky.” The gorgeous “Melissa.” The 33-minute “Mountain Jam,” my first real experience with epic song lengths. I remember “Mountain Jam” was broken up over sides two and four, and I remember how revelatory it was to realize that it was broken up that way for record stacking – you’d listen to sides one and three first, then flip them both over to hear two and four.

I kept up with the Allman Brothers Band, and of course bought all of their classics once I was old enough to know how classic they were. Gregg Allman was a legend, helping to invent southern rock and setting the standard by which it is judged. He was also a fantastic guitar player. I know all this now, but whenever I think of him, I’m transported back to four years old, watching the record with the peach on the label spin around and getting lost in the songs.

Gregg Allman died this week at age 69, another legend taken too soon. May he rest in peace.

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I know no one really cares about my thoughts on Linkin Park.

Of all the bands I’ve admitted an obsession with here in this column, it might be Linkin Park that has generated the most backlash. My insistence that there is something worth paying attention to behind Chester Bennington’s screams and Mike Shinoda’s raps has all but ensured my eviction from the cool kids’ club. Between that and my ongoing praise of Hanson, I’m pretty sure I won’t be invited to write for Pitchfork anytime soon.

But for real, there’s something worth paying attention to here. Linkin Park’s first album established a core sound that mashed up rap and rock for, like, the millionth time, and their second followed suit, so I’m not surprised that people wrote them off. But those people need to hear 2010’s A Thousand Suns, an absolutely extraordinary inversion of that sound in service of a conceptual piece about injustice and love. They’ve yet to top it, but Linkin Park has steadfastly refused to make the same album twice – 2012’s Living Things builds on a foundation of electro-pop, and 2014’s surprising The Hunting Party goes full-on into thrash metal.

That’s one thing I love about them – they’re never afraid to alienate their audience. Hybrid Theory remains their best-selling effort, and they refuse to go back to that sound. They’re restless, challenging themselves and their fanbase as much as possible, never worried about sales or chart placement. And it works for them – they routinely hit number one on the Billboard chart, and in countries around the world, by doing whatever they want.

All of which makes their seventh album, One More Light, so mystifying. By every outward sign, this is a complete sell-out. The songs are all polished radio-pop, with virtually none of the raging guitars or abrasive synth sounds that have marked Linkin Park music since they started. Professional songsmiths share co-writing credits. Teen pop singer Kiiara duets. Cheesy pop drums click along as Bennington sings atop tracks that could have gone to Justin Bieber or One Direction.

And yet the band swears they worked just as hard on this one as they always have, and took this new direction seriously as an artistic choice. And it is only the fact that they have proven so restless, been so willing to throw caution to the wind, that I’m even thinking about this record in those terms. Everything about this record screams “we would like some hits, and we would like some money.” Which is odd, since they have been doing just fine, sales-wise. They don’t need to sell out, and they’re treating this obvious sell-out as genuine. So I almost have no choice but to believe them.

But man, listen to “Nobody Can Save Me,” the opening track. They’ve made this as safe as possible in every single way, from the fluttering keyboards to the snap-sound percussion to Bennington’s voice, smoothed out and supple, singing “I’m dancing with my demons” in the most radio-friendly way he can. “Battle Symphony” is even worse, a song of empowerment that even Katy Perry might have rejected, Bennington singing “if my armor breaks, I’ll fuse it back together” as if it were a strong lyric. This one is even more insidious because I can’t stop singing it in my head. As a pop earworm, it does exactly what it’s supposed to. “If I fall, get knocked down, get myself up off the ground…”

I could chalk all this up to maturity, to a desire to stop making angry, shouty records. Bennington is 41. Musical mastermind Mike Shinoda is 40, and you can hear those years on “Invisible,” a song of reconciliation and hope that features one of his best vocals. I’ll be 43 next week, so I appreciate a good maturity story, and that might be why I feel compelled to keep listening to this. Yes, “Heavy” sounds like every radio pop song from the past 10 years, and it’s hard for me to think of it as anything but pandering. But songs like “Invisible” work for me, even though I know they shouldn’t.

The title track, then, tips the scales in this record’s favor. It’s remarkably subtle – a faintly pulsing keyboard, some clean guitars, and Bennington at his most restrained – and God help me, I think it’s beautiful. It’s a song of compassion, reaching out to those who feel alone, those contemplating darkness: “Who cares if one more light goes out, well I do…” I could listen to this one for hours. It’s the best argument they have that One More Light is a true artistic statement.

I still don’t know whether to believe them. This is the most unabashedly radio-ready and inoffensive album they’ve ever made, and it only feels like Linkin Park in that it is typically uncompromising. There are virtually no nods to their previous sounds, no olive branches to fans of their louder material, no indication that they have ever been any more than a glossy pop act. Like it or not, this is the new Linkin Park, and the best I can tell you is that they never stay in one place very long, so this should be out of their system soon.

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I don’t know how this shoegaze revival got started, but I’m ready to give whoever got the ball rolling a wet, sloppy kiss.

Shoegaze has been part of my musical vocabulary since high school, when my good friend Chris introduced me to an entire gaggle of bands that remain favorites. Some are well-known, like My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins, some more obscure, like The Moon Seven Times and Kitchens of Distinction. In our entire friendship I think the only shoegaze band I ever introduced Chris to was Starflyer 59, which certainly doesn’t balance the scales. I owe him, is what I’m saying.

One of the bands Chris brought into my world was Slowdive, whose 1993 album Souvlaki has gone on to be considered a gem of the genre. (It didn’t do quite as well upon release, when Britpop was all the rage.) Slowdive was led by singer/guitarists Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell, and their intertwining voices were their trademark, along with their chiming guitars and cloudy, beautiful atmospheres. Their third album, 1995’s Pygmalion, was altogether stranger and darker, and it crashed and burned, seemingly taking the band with it. Halstead and Goswell formed Mojave 3, an earthier combo, and even that faded out by the late 2000s.

I never in a million years expected Slowdive to reunite. I got to see them on tour in 2014, and they were magical, and I figured that was probably it. But no, here we are in 2017 with a brand new Slowdive album, 22 years after the last one. And it’s fantastic. It’s a little smoother, a little more grown-up, but it handily sidesteps all the perils of a creaky old band trying to recapture their sound. Slowdive feels effortless, like it could have come out in 1997, or even 1991.

This record is obviously Halstead’s baby. He wrote most of the songs, except two he co-wrote, and he handles the majority of the singing and the production duties. I’d love to hear more of Goswell, but that’s literally my only complaint with this record. The glorious clean guitar sound is here, weaving its brilliant spell, and the band locks into its familiar groove on songs like “Star Roving” and “Everyone Knows,” both of which feel like rebirths. The epics (“Go Get It” and “Falling Ashes”) that close the record are monumental pieces, simultaneously crashing and soothing.

But it’s “Sugar for the Pill” that all by itself makes me overjoyed to have Slowdive back. This is a classic, deeply melodic and atmospheric, like floating and falling at the same time. It’s a song that makes me stop everything I’m doing and listen. It’s just the most beautiful thing, and it comes with seven other beautiful things on an album I never thought I would live to hear. Slowdive’s return is complete, and completely magnificent.

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I was hoping to get to the new Alarm album this week, but I’ll save it for next week. I’ll be 43 on Monday, and it feels like a good time to reflect on a childhood favorite. Talk to you then. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I can vividly remember the first time I heard Chris Cornell sing.

I was 17 years old, and in the full bloom of my teenage metalhead phase. I had a mullet – a big, curly, flowing one – and a ridiculous jean jacket. I’d discovered Metallica three years prior, which kicked off my love for all things heavy, and just one year before, Megadeth’s Rust in Peace had been released, and I was still convinced that it was the best album ever made. I still didn’t know what to do with Nirvana – Nevermind was only a few months old, but people in my high school were talking about it. I found it pretty simple, but I would, given I’d spent years immersed in technical metal tunes.

I had no idea that Seattle was about to take over the world. I’d been familiar with Mother Love Bone and bought Pearl Jam’s Ten (because of course I did, everyone who was alive and cognizant in 1991 bought Ten) and Alice in Chains’ Facelift, but totally missed Temple of the Dog, and so I missed the idea that this was a scene, a movement, a powerhouse. And I also missed that Soundgarden had already led the way with two albums, including one on a major label. I’d never heard of them.

All I knew about Soundgarden was wrapped up in the five minutes and ten seconds of “Outshined,” the first of their songs I heard. I don’t know if you all remember this, but MTV used to play music videos, like, all the time. (The M stood for Music. And now you know, and knowing is half the battle.) The video for “Outshined” looks like metal. Hell, it features a bunch of it – it’s set at a foundry, where we see saws buzzing and hammers striking anvils and pits of molten something bubbling.

So I was already in, and then the song. The song! It was slow and sludgy, built on one of those riffs that feels mired in mud. But this one soared. There’s a pre-chorus that I would have accepted as the chorus, and then the chorus itself lifts off with the single most memorable melody from the Seattle scene to that point. And out front, shirtless and wild-haired, was Chris Cornell, singing like some strange combination of Robert Plant and Freddie Mercury, just nailing it.

I bought Badmotorfinger, Soundgarden’s third album, that week, and was confronted with music unlike any I’d heard. It was metal, but it wasn’t – Soundgarden remained unconcerned with how fast or how precisely they could play, but they weren’t sloppy, either. A song like “Rusty Cage” piled on the tricky time signatures, even more than Rush at that time, and something like “Slaves and Bulldozers” took that thick, powerful sound and ran you over with it, slowly. They were heavy, but they also had melodies to spare, and it was clear even on this early record that Cornell could sing anything.

It would be a disservice to call these early Soundgarden albums “humble beginnings,” but there was no way I could have known that Cornell’s voice would be a constant in my life for the next 25 years. I’ve often said that I would listen to Cornell sing anything, and he gave me plenty of opportunities to prove it.

I know it’s cliché, but 1994’s Superunknown is not only my favorite Soundgarden album, but may also be my favorite thing to come out of the ‘90s Seattle craze. Even the ubiquity of “Black Hole Sun” hasn’t dimmed that record for me. (I thought “My Wave” was gonna be the big hit. Shows what I know.) Even at a time when everything on the radio was heavy and grunge-y, Superunknown stood out. The songs were tighter than a drum, and Cornell was nothing less than a rock star, able to belt it out with the best of them and hit subtler spaces at will.

I remember having a conversation with my girlfriend at the time and being unable to concentrate because the radio station in the background was playing unreleased songs from 1996’s Down on the Upside. (That relationship didn’t work out, but I don’t think it was solely because my attention was divided that night.) I remember buying the soundtrack to Great Expectations in 1998 almost entirely for “Sunshower,” our first taste of what Cornell’s solo career would be like, and being blown away by the tender nature of the thing, and the utter purity of his voice. I adored Euphoria Morning, that first solo album – it proved that Cornell was a hell of a songwriter too.

And yeah, I shook my head at his cover of “Billie Jean,” and was mystified by 2009’s Scream, a collaboration with Timbaland that was one part electro-pop, one part hip-hop and three parts confusing. But damn if Cornell didn’t love taking risks like that. Audioslave was certainly a risk, marrying that subtle, supple voice with three-fourths of Rage Against the Machine, one of the most single-minded, thunderous rock bands around. It worked, though. More than that, it turned into a strong argument for Chris Cornell as a rock god.

In recent years Cornell reformed Soundgarden, issuing the surprisingly strong reunion album King Animal, and gave us one of his best solo albums, the folksy Higher Truth. Things seemed from the outside to be going well, which just goes to show that you never know. I woke up Thursday morning to the news that Cornell had finished a Soundgarden show in Detroit, returned to his hotel room and hung himself. He was only 52.

I still don’t even know what to do with this information. I feel like I want to talk about depression and suicide – I’ve been living with the former for most of my life, and have definitely thought about the latter. Stories like this one have a tendency to knock me off my axis. But everything I want to say about it sounds clichéd and trite. Depression is sneaky and invisible, and affects people in different ways, and I don’t know that anyone could have helped Cornell. I’m sure there’s no shortage of people blaming themselves this week for not seeing the signs, but they’re very hard to see. Cornell suffered for a long time with addictions, and it sounds like a different kind of addiction might have played a part here.

It also strikes me that the music we loved during the ‘90s was largely about depression and how to deal with it, Cornell’s music included. Among the first lines I ever heard him sing were “I can’t get any lower, still feel like I’m sinking.” “Fell on Black Days” is an obvious one, as is “Let Me Drown.” A huge percentage of grunge songs were about drug addiction or depression, and we’ve now lost four leading lights to drugs or suicide. I never quite took the self-loathing and pain of those songs as seriously as, clearly, I should have.

But what I really want to talk about is Cornell’s voice, and how sad it is that we’re never going to hear it again. It’s still strange to think about. Cornell was such a constant presence – every couple of years since I was 17, I’ve been able to hear him sing something new. His voice was such a part of my life that I never even considered that one day that voice would be gone.

I’ve seen several people sharing this video of Cornell covering Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” and I wanted to share it too, for a few reasons. For one thing, it’s awesome. For another, both Cornell and Prince are now gone, taken before their time. But most importantly to me, it shines a spotlight on that voice, here in an unfamiliar setting, singing a song you might not expect from him. And he absolutely slays it. Here’s where I might say something like “I’ve rarely heard his voice sound this beautiful,” except that’s not true. His voice always sounded this beautiful. He was the finest singer of the ‘90s Seattle scene. I would listen to him sing anything. I wish I could keep on listening.

I hope you rest in peace, Chris. I’m sorry you were in so much pain. And I hope we learn to be good to one another, to listen to one another, to really hear one another. No one is alone, no matter how it may sometimes feel like it. There is always light. There is always love.

Obviously, that’s all for this week. Next week I’ll try to write a longer one, with reviews of Slowdive, the Alarm, Linkin Park and The Lulls in Traffic. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

When I was a young boy, I always loved visiting my grandparents. Of course I loved them and enjoyed their company, but there were two reasons in particular I liked going to their house: they always let me have snacks my mother would not, and my grandfather always bought me comic books.

If I owe my lifelong love of sequential art to anyone, it’s to the kindly old man who indulged my longing for the further adventures of Spider-Man, back when comics were a quarter. (I also owe much of my lifelong love of music to his wife, my grandmother, a concert pianist who taught me to play my first songs.) My fascination with four-color universes has never faded – it now encompasses 96-million-color epics and black-and-white tales and everything in between.

Along the way I learned that many people have a strange misconception of comics as an art form, as if one can only use it to tell stories of costumed heroes punching one another. In college I found books like Bone and Cerebus and Strangers in Paradise, and discovered that comics can be anything. (One of the most brilliant professors at my school once borrowed a couple comics from me, and he returned them with a gleam in his eye as he said this: “I just realized you can write anything you want in the word balloons!”)

These days I buy dozens of comics, both in single-issue and book form, and I read voraciously. I expect my love for this medium will never die – I’ll run out of money first. So naturally, I’m drawn to anything that taps into the world of comics, particularly if I can simultaneously indulge my love of music. I feel like I’m getting some kind of two-for-one deal.

So you can imagine how ecstatic I am to be talking about both of this week’s contestants. First up, obviously, is Gorillaz, the best animated band on the planet. (That’s right, Jem and the Holograms. Sorry, Dethklok.) Created by Blur’s Damon Albarn and Tank Girl illustrator Jamie Hewlett, Gorillaz officially includes 2-D, Murdoc Niccals, Russel Hobbs and Noodle, four misfits finding their way through a post-apocalyptic future. Unofficially, of course, none of them exist outside of Hewlett’s imagination.

But the animated band is vital to the Gorillaz experience. For one thing, the band’s album covers and videos are all great, all rendered in Hewlett’s punk-influenced style. But for another, the four-color foursome allows Albarn to basically be invisible. Remarkably, this frees him up to sound like anything he wants, much like writing whatever comes to mind in the word balloons. Gorillaz music is hip-hop, electro-pop, soul and funk, all mixed together in a heady brew that goes by like lightning, and none of it has ever sounded like what you’d expect from the frontman of Blur.

Albarn and his co-conspirators have taken most of this decade off after releasing two records – the stuffed-full Plastic Beach and the more intimate The Fall – in 2010. Their comeback, Humanz, is much more the former than the latter. It spans 26 tracks and is positively loaded with guest stars. It’s also exactly what I want in a Gorillaz album. It breaks genre boundaries like they were nothing, confidently treads anywhere it likes and plays like a mixtape.

Albarn himself is on most of these tracks, but he takes a back seat, ceding the floor to his frankly astonishing roster of guests. Just to hit some of the highlights: “Let Me Out” features Mavis Staples and Pusha T and is one of the most stirring things here, “Momentz” harnesses the renewed power of De La Soul for a surprising strut, “Charger” brings Grace Jones to the forefront (and is a powerhouse), and Vince Staples fires off verses on album opener “Andromeda.” Carly Simon shows up on one song, as does Savages’ Jehnny Beth and splendid singer Anthony Hamilton.

You might think that such a diverse roster leads to a scattershot feeling, and you’d be right. Very little holds this record together as more than a collection of disparate tracks. But those tracks range from good to great, and if you think of this (and every Gorillaz album) as a mix CD created by these four fictional characters, it really works. Part of the thrill is hearing these tracks rub up next to each other. “Submission,” a pulsing winner featuring singer Kelela and a rapid-fire verse by Danny Brown, slinks its way into the dirty sorta-guitars of “Charger,” on which Albarn’s half-asleep vocal style slides into Grace Jones’ powerful one.

There are certainly low lights, as you’d expect from an album with 26 tracks. “Busted and Blue,” performed entirely by Albarn, is the first dip in momentum. It’s also the longest thing here at 4:37, which just shows how quickly this thing flies by. I definitely could have lived without “Sex Murder Party,” and “The Apprentice” feels thrown together. But it’s remarkable how much of Humanz is as good as it is.

Gorillaz is a band of comic book characters, and their albums feel like the soundtrack to their strange and unbelievable lives. It feels like reading comics, like getting pieces of 26 different stories every month, and reading them all back to back. Albarn doesn’t do the best job of setting a scene and telling a story, but this project has freed him in so many important creative ways. Just listen to “Hallelujah Money,” featuring Benjamin Clemente. I mean, what is that? Synthetic drunken future-soul meets noise sculpture? Any project that allows this kind of freedom is aces with me.

* * * * *

While I love Gorillaz’ comic book style and sensibility, no one has better integrated comics with his music so far this year than Jonathan Coulton.

Coulton himself is a comic book story. A self-proclaimed internet superstar, Coulton made his name writing about geeky subjects – monkeys, robots, the Mandelbrot set. He’s a stunningly clever writer, able to find the sadness behind his sci-fi inspiration. Early song “I Crush Everything” was written from the point of view of a self-loathing giant squid, unable to stop himself from destroying the things he loves. “I’m Your Moon” is a valentine from Pluto’s moon Charon, on the occasion of Pluto’s declassification as a planet, and is one of the warmest songs of affirmation I know.

For years, Coulton has been shoving against the idea that he’s a novelty act, writing nerdy songs for nerds. His last album, Artificial Heart, was a clear sign that he was heading elsewhere. There were novelty songs, most notably the awesome “Je Suis Rick Springfield,” but they sat alongside truly heartfelt pieces like “Glasses” and “Today With Your Wife,” songs any writer would be thrilled to pen. Coulton is in the odd position of having to please an audience that loves songs like “Re: Your Brains” while also growing as a songsmith.

He’s found a way to do that, and do it brilliantly, on his fantastic new record Solid State. It is simultaneously the geekiest and most mature thing he’s done. Solid State is a concept album about the internet and its wide-ranging effects, accompanied by a massive graphic novel co-written by Matt Fraction and illustrated by Albert Monteys. The comic tells the album’s story, filling in details – it’s essentially about an internet troll who invents an artificial intelligence that causes a worldwide collapse, then leaves earth, returning many years later to survey the damage.

Yeah, that’s geeky, and it allows Coulton to say a lot of things he’s probably wanted to say for some time about anonymity and technology. But I’m not sure his audience is quite ready for Solid State itself, a record that is remarkably serious in intent and execution. This is a great leap forward for Coulton, a record that can stand proudly alongside the works of his heroes. And those heroes, it is becoming clear, are the likes of Elvis Costello and his new collaborator and label boss, Aimee Mann.

These songs. These songs! Coulton has never delivered as consistent a set of songs as this one. Solid State begins with “Wake Up,” from the point of view of the unnamed artificial intelligence awakening in space, and just by itself it announces the ambition and intent of this record. “The whole world is waiting for you,” Coulton sings over an epic arrangement that leads into “All This Time,” an electro-blip tune set in the future. This song name-checks Kurzweil and depicts a society where people are cogs in a machine, where all they have is all this time. The lovely title track bemoans this use of technology, and then we’re back in the past, looking at the origins of dystopia.

Those origins just happen to be an abrasive character who grows, changes and matures over the next nine songs, becoming a family man just in time for his creation to ruin the world. This section of the album kicks off with “Brave,” one of the very best things Coulton has written. A backhand to anonymous internet trolls set to a superb guitar-rock beat, the song finds Coulton taking on the voice of one, ranting about “sheeple” and declaring “when I torch the place, cover up my face, that will make me brave…”

But as the pressures of the world (and the internet) get to this character, they change him. Only Coulton would write a tender ballad about coping and call it “Pictures of Cats,” and only Coulton could make it this affecting. Only Coulton would write a song about creating a massive artificial intelligence, call it “Robots.txt,” and imagine it as a beautiful song of encouragement. And only Coulton would pen a song from that AI’s point of view as it scours the internet and decides that we’re not worth saving. That song, “Don’t Feed the Trolls,” is the most old-school Coulton thing here, and it’s wonderful. “Lucy had a steamboat, the steamboat had a bell, Lucy went to heaven but she still felt like hell, so she only gave it two stars, worst place ever…”

By the time of “Your Tattoo” and “Ball and Chain,” the main character of Solid State has settled down and is a better person. So naturally, the world falls apart in “Sunshine,” possibly the most impressive and intricate song of Coulton’s career. “Long on Bitcoin and regret without much to show, the roaches took the kitchenette, we just let it go…” The chorus is superb, lamenting the burning world and leaving it behind.

Honestly, even though the record has 17 tracks, I could have used another song or two set in the future civilization. (The graphic novel does yeoman’s work filling in the narrative gaps.) The last four songs are a suite from the AI’s POV as it makes its way back to Earth, longing for humanity, for connection. The two-part “All to Myself” brings a Pink Floyd feel to the proceedings, and the brief “There You Are” depicts the reunion. The last panel of the graphic novel captures the same moment, creator and destroyer, face to face. What happens next, only Coulton knows.

I think this album is going to surprise a lot of people. It surprised me. I’ve been waiting for a quantum leap forward like this from Coulton for a while, but even I’m stunned by how good Solid State is. The songs are all top notch, without a wasted moment. The production is gorgeous. Best of all, you feel like you’ve been somewhere by the end of it. It seems like a ridiculous understatement to say that Coulton has grown as a songwriter and a record maker here. He’s made one of the year’s finest albums, a deep and coherent statement about where we are and where we’re going. This is one to experience.

You can hear Solid State and order both the album and the graphic novel online here.

* * * * *

Wow, ran long this time. Next week, Slowdive and a few others. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So here’s the thing. I’m very, very behind.

Not just on this column, though I am behind on this too. I’m behind on every single aspect of my art-loving life. I have thousands – and I’m not exaggerating there – of comics and books to read, some of which I’ve borrowed from friends. I am so far behind on my television watching that I am just now getting to Fringe. (Which I am enjoying!) And as for music, well, I have probably two dozen records just from this year that are languishing unheard. Life is busy, and it leaves little time for my second career as a semi-pro appreciator.

Here’s how this manifested itself this week. I’m behind on the column, late as usual. I intended to write about both the swell new Gorillaz album and Jonathan Coulton’s delightful Solid State this week, wrapping them up in a theme about comic books. But I wanted to wait until my copy of the Solid State CD and graphic novel arrived, so I could explore the full experience and then write about that. Of course, it hasn’t arrived, and while I have the album practically memorized at this point, I still don’t feel comfortable writing about it until I’ve taken in everything Coulton wants me to.

Normally, that would be no problem. I’d just shift to reviewing something else. But because I’m so far behind on my listening, I don’t really have anything to say about anything else right now either. I’ve been enjoying several new records, including the wonderful new Slowdive (their first in 22 years) and the terrific collaboration between Isildur’s Bane and Marillion’s Steve Hogarth.

I plan to write about both of those. But if I were to do that this week, you’d get something rushed and disorganized. (You might get that anyway. But I don’t want it to be from lack of preparation.) I’ve heard each of those records twice, which is one more time than I’ve heard any of the other candidates for this week’s column, including Juliana Hatfield’s vicious Pussycat and Feist’s Pleasure. I haven’t even heard the new At the Drive-In yet, and I’ve been anticipating that one for months.

So I could just lag behind again, but I decided I would at least try to give you something this week. And as I often do when I’m in this jam, I decided to look forward at what’s coming up. This year is shaping up to be pretty good, so here’s a brief look at a few records I’m looking forward to. (Of course, I’ll buy them and then not listen to them for weeks, trying to find the time, but I remain excited!)

Probably highest on my list right now is Husky, whose tremendous sophomore album Ruckers Hill made my top 10 list a couple years ago. Husky, led by a guy actually named Husky, might not seem that innovative – they’re an acoustic folk-pop band, like half a million others. But they write outstanding songs, songs that stay with you for weeks. The two songs I’ve heard from the upcoming Punchbuzz (“Ghost”  and “Late Night Store”) don’t make me think that this will be the one to break the streak. I adore this band, and I’m jazzed to see where they go next.

I waxed eloquent about Sufjan Stevens last week. I think he’s one of the most important and compelling artists of this generation, and I’m interested in any project he’s part of. That includes the new Planetarium, a cosmic-themed project with string arranger Nico Mulhy, longtime Sufjan collaborator James McAllister and the National’s Bryce Dessner. (Yes, Sufjan’s involvement has me excited in spite of someone from the National muddying things up.) As with most things Sufjan, it’s difficult to describe or summarize. You just have to hear it.

I grew up on the work of Roger Waters, both with Pink Floyd and on his own. I can vividly remember hearing The Wall for the first time – that’s a revelatory record when you’re 14. Radio K.A.O.S. provided an embarrassing percentage of the soundtrack to my first years of high school, while Amused to Death scored my early college years with piss and venom. I never thought I’d live to hear another Waters album, but lo and behold, one is coming. It’s called Is This the Life We Really Want, and the two songs released so far (“Smell the Roses”  and “Déjà Vu”) somehow sound exactly as you’d expect them to, and at the same time very good. I don’t think it’s just nostalgia – I’m very much looking forward to this record.

I mentioned Slowdive above – they’re just the latest old-school shoegaze band to reunite and return after a long absence. Later in the year, English band Ride will return after 21 years with Weather Diaries. Single “Charm Assault” feels like they’ve never been away. Another surprise, announced this week, is supergroup Lo Tom, made up of Jason Martin from shoegazers Starflyer 59, David Bazan, Trey Many of His Name is Alive and Velour 100, and TW Walsh of the Soft Drugs. My bet is that most of you are befuddled right now, but some of you are nodding vigorously, salivating to hear this. Wait no more.

The great Steven Wilson has just announced a new record called To the Bone. I know virtually nothing about it, but Wilson’s track record is enough for me. Same with Fleet Foxes, whose third album Crack-Up is high on my most wanted list. (It’s only so far down in this column because I’ve mentioned it several times before.) The Choir plans to release Bloodshot later this year, and frontman Derri Daughterty will have a solo record before long. You all know how I feel about the Choir, so you can imagine how much I’m looking forward to these.

And finally, a band you may not know, but should. Marah in the Mainsail was a highlight of the second AudioFeed Festival for me, and their first full-length, Thaumatrope, didn’t disappoint. They’ve just completed a successful Kickstarter campaign for their second, the darker-sounding fairy tale Bone Crown. It’s a concept piece about animals fighting for dominance (I think), and it sounds like it’s going to be great. You can hear Marah here.

There’s more, of course, and I’m sure the release schedule for the second half of the year will fill out nicely. (Right now it’s a wasteland, save for that new Tori Amos.) But these are the records I’m most excited about. Anything you think I should be paying more attention to?

Next week, honest, I’ll get to Gorillaz and Jonathan Coulton, and then Slowdive and others. And hopefully I’ll stay on track. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

In 2012, Sufjan Stevens lost his mother.

It’s fair to say that Stevens’ relationship with his mother was complicated at best. She had abandoned him repeatedly as a child, staying sometimes for days and once, when married to his stepfather, for five years before leaving again. She died after a long battle with stomach cancer, leaving Stevens confused and standing on the precipice of complete despair.

And so he wrote an amazing album called Carrie and Lowell. Named after his mother and stepfather (who now runs Stevens’ label, Asthmatic Kitty), Carrie and Lowell laid bare the depth and power of Stevens’ grief. It was sometimes frightening to listen to. Stevens was at such a low point when creating these songs that even those things that previously had sustained him – his faith chief among them – were not enough anymore. The album is painful to listen to, sparse and bare to an unflinching degree, and I can only imagine how painful it was to live through.

But in many ways, that’s what art is for – to give us a way to live through it. Stevens has said that creating Carrie and Lowell was not cathartic for him, that as the songs kept coming, he kept feeling worse. The album bears this out, closing with “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross,” on which he descends into self-destructive behavior, and “Blue Bucket of Gold,” which finds him reaching out desperately, with no reply. It’s dark and difficult, a clear memoir of a place I certainly hope he has not stayed in.

And if I have hope that Stevens is clawing his way back to the light, much of it comes from Carrie and Lowell Live, his extraordinary new concert document. Stevens took these songs – some of which I can’t fathom how he could sing more than once – out on the road, and fashioned an affecting and beautiful show from them. All of the songs from the album are here, but they are reinvented. They’re fuller, bigger, they radiate life in surprising ways. They’re still haunting – they’re some of the most haunting songs you will ever hear – but they feel like progress, like kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight, as a wise man once said.

The show still begins with “Death with Dignity” (after a brief benediction in the form of “Redford”) and ends with “Blue Bucket of Gold,” but within those boundaries it opens itself up to new possibilities. “Should Have Known Better” takes the light electronic foundation of the original and runs with it, illuminating the second half (“Don’t back down, concentrate on seeing…”) with glorious synths and a small choir of singers. “All of Me Wants All of You” is a revelation, beginning a lot like Genesis’ “Mama,” all electronic toms and dirge-y keys in place of the strummy acoustics of the studio version. When it erupts into a blistering synthesizer solo, it feels like an entirely new song.

That’s the overall effect of Carrie and Lowell Live – these feel like new songs, or at least new ways of looking at familiar ones. Even “No Shade,” performed in a similar way to its studio counterpart, feels new – the way Stevens sings it and plays it here sounds less like a man on the edge of despair. It sounds like a man looking back on despair, remembering it and honoring it, and inviting his audience to honor it with him. Grief and mourning are important, difficult though they may be, and Carrie and Lowell Live walks a fine line, acknowledging their power while not celebrating it.

The reinvention is so complete here that when Stevens adds two songs from the manic The Age of Adz (“Vesuvius” and “Futile Devices”), they fit right in. “Blue Bucket of Gold” still finds Stevens reaching out, but the blissful 12-minute ambient outro provides a closure, a beauty that the album version eschewed. It feels for all the world like healing, like catharsis, like crying out through pain and being answered. (That Stevens chooses to encore with a goofy cover of “Hotline Bling” only underlines the notion that this has all been about putting grief behind him.)

I’m glad to see this get an official release, because Carrie and Lowell Live is now an essential part of the story Stevens began with the original album. Together they lead you through Stevens’ darkest places, first from within and then from without, showing that while grief is heavy and painful and it seems impossible while you’re in it, it does fade, it does become manageable. And eventually you will look back on it, not as a distant memory, but as something that helps define you, helps make you who you are. That process, as detailed lovingly here by Sufjan Stevens, is beautiful.

Carrie and Lowell Live is available as a video you can watch for free, and as a soundtrack that you can download for ten bucks.

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In 2016 Phil Elverum lost his wife, and the mother of his child.

Her name was Genevieve Castree, and while she had her own musical legacy as O Paon and Woelv, she is perhaps best known as a frequent contributor to Elverum’s long-running musical project Mount Eerie. In May of 2015, Castree was diagnosed with an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer, and in July of 2016 she died at home, leaving Elverum to care for their daughter alone. It was the worst possible ending to what should have been a fairy tale story of two musicians in love, and in its wake, Elverum was lost.

And like Stevens, he wrote songs while in the midst of this loss. The new Mount Eerie album is called A Crow Looked at Me, and if you are familiar with Elverum and his work, this one will leave you stunned. Mount Eerie albums are normally enormous, mysterious things, but this one is bare, empty, full of space and longing. There’s precious little here except Elverum’s guitar and quivering everyman voice. Mount Eerie songs have tackled death as a subject for years, in metaphorical and poetic ways, but this one dispenses with all of that, just telling the story of his pain in plain language. It’s like reading Elverum’s diary. It’s almost too real. “Conceptual emptiness was cool to talk about back before I knew my way around these hospitals,” he sings on “Emptiness Pt. 2,” and it feels like a key insight.

A Crow Looked at Me is an invitation to experience Elverum’s greif along with him, from deep inside it. The liner notes even inform you of when each song was written, in relation to Genevieve’s death. Opener “Real Death” was penned one week after, while closer “Crow,” the latest of these, was penned four months after. That isn’t a long time, so there isn’t much of a journey here, just slow realization of what her absence means, trying to hold on to memories and not collapse while living each day, one at a time.

“Real Death” is in some ways the most raw, the most open. It casts a newly wise eye on Elverum’s canon, speaking as plainly as possible: “Death is real, someone’s there and then they’re not, and it’s not for singing about, it’s not for making into art… When I walk into the room where you were and look into the emptiness instead, all fails, my knees fail, my brain fails, words fail…” The song ends with a story of a package arriving a week after Genevieve died: a backpack she had bought for their daughter, as a surprise. The album is full of these little moments, these horrible everyday things that bring her rushing back, that remind him that death is real.

“I watched you die in this room, then I gave your clothes away, I’m sorry, I had to, and now I’ll move, I’ll move with our daughter, we will ride over water with your ghost underneath the boat,” he sings in the crushingly beautiful “Ravens.” He sings of spreading Genevieve’s ashes in “Seaweed,” written 11 days after her death: “I brought a chair from home, I’m leaving it on the hill facing west and north, and I poured out your ashes on it, I guess so you can watch the sunset, but the truth is that I don’t think of that dust as you, you are the sunset…” In “When I Take Out the Garbage at Night” he explains that he is leaving windows open despite the cold, just in case “something still needs to leave.” In “Forest Fire,” written later, he closes the windows: “I kept them open for as long as I could, but the baby got cold…”

Most of these songs stop abruptly, refusing to offer comfort or release. “My Chasm” finds Elverum wondering, two months after her death, if the people in his life are growing tired of hearing about her. He writes about this in the most ordinary and painful of ways: “I now wield the power to transform a grocery store aisle into a canyon of pity and confusion and mutual aching to leave, the loss in my life is a chasm I take into town and I don’t want to close it, look at me, death is real…” It’s these details that make A Crow Looked at Me such a powerful and difficult listen, its author in the midst of the worst experience of his life and making us feel it. It’s a travelogue, and its mile markers are simple yet devastating.

The expansive and beautiful “Soria Moria,” written seven months before Genevieve’s death, is the album’s most poetic, giving us a glimpse into life before she was gone. It gives way to the finale, “Crow,” written four months after her death, and it offers a single glimmer of light. Elverum writes of his daughter dreaming of a crow just before one appeared, and it’s a moment that remains meaningful for him, one that helped him get through the pain he details throughout this aching wound of an album.

I wish A Crow Looked at Me did not exist. I wish it didn’t have to. I wish it were not important to live through these hellish experiences, and to talk about them and share them with each other. I have a hard time listening to this, and like Carrie and Lowell, I cannot even begin to imagine what it was like to experience. But I’m glad to have it, while at the same time glad to have albums like Carrie and Lowell Live that assure me that this is not the end of the story, that while death is real and grief is like a dark gray cloud covering everything, you can live through it. There is healing, there is hope, there is life.

Buy A Crow Looked at Me here.

Next week, Gorillaz and Jonathan Coulton. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So, Doctor Who is back.

You’d be forgiven for not realizing that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a quieter, less momentous start to a season, let alone a season this significant. Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi will bid goodbye at Christmas this year, so this is his last full season. Arguably more importantly, though, showrunner Steven Moffat will also hang up his TARDIS key this year. We have only four more Moffat-penned episodes to go, and since I consider him the best writer the show has ever had, I’m feeling wistful about it.

But despite the winds of change surrounding it, season 36 (or series 10 for those of you who care about the old show-new show division) has sauntered in on a summer breeze. The first two episodes have been almost entirely about the relationship forming between Capaldi’s grumpy yet kind Doctor and Pearl Mackie’s winsome, curious Bill Potts, and it’s a lovely one, to be sure. I adore Mackie, and Bill is a perfect companion for Twelve – after the brutality of last season, he needs someone who can help him see the universe afresh, through new eyes.

This isn’t a new dynamic. It is, in fact, the very engine of the show – the companion revitalizes the Doctor, and the show at the same time. But I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that dynamic approached in such a gentle way before. Moffat’s opening episode, cheekly titled “The Pilot,” spent most of its running time introducing Bill (and reintroducing the Doctor). It was ages before a plot appeared, and when it did, it was a simpler, more emotional story than I expected.

“Smile,” the second episode, followed suit. Penned by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, the story follows the Doctor and Bill as they investigate a seemingly empty settlement on a distant planet in the future. And it’s very quiet. For about 30 of its 45 minutes, Capaldi and Mackie are the only actors on screen, wandering empty halls and looking for clues. The resolution is a lovely anticlimax as well, and it’s clear that so far, the focus here is on these two characters getting to know one another as they travel space and time.

Nothing whatsoever wrong with that, and I’m enjoying the slower pace, the more languid feel, and the trust this show is placing in us to appreciate those things. I expect the show’s heart rate to ramp up soon – there’s a three-parter at the heart of this season, and an intriguing mystery in the background that will no doubt explode all over the place. But for now, Doctor Who season 36 is a quieter, more reflective thing, and that’s a delightful change of pace. It gives us more time to take in the nuances of Capaldi’s performance before he heads off into the sunset.

* * * * *

Kendrick Lamar may be the greatest rapper alive.

He’ll tell you so, of course, but when Lamar refers to himself as the greatest, it sounds more like an acknowledgement of fact than a boast. More than that, it sounds like an acknowledgement of responsibility. When Lamar speaks now, people hang on his every syllable – more people, perhaps, than Lamar himself ever expected to be paying attention to him. He knows he has influence, and a moral imperative to use that influence wisely.

That’s what To Pimp a Butterfly, his masterpiece of a third album, was all about at its core: Lamar’s struggles with his own responsibility, and his intense efforts to live up to it. He knows he’s an example and an inspiration to poor kids in Compton, his home town, and now to millions of other kids who look up to him, and Butterfly, with its Biblical temptation narratives, its deep probe into the self-image of Black America, and finally, its extended fantasy conversation with Lamar’s idol, Tupac Shakur, explored this from all angles.

I don’t hesitate to say Butterfly is one of the best albums of the past decade, and Lamar’s almost superhuman ability to realize his tightly controlled and intricate vision is one major reason why. That’s why I think he’s the greatest – not just because he’s the fastest and most adept behind the mic, though he very well may be, but because he thinks on grander scales, maps out his albums like novels and trusts his audience to understand. We will still be listening to To Pimp a Butterfly in 20 or 30 years, still parsing it out, still revering it as a milestone.

The same can’t quite be said of its follow-up, Damn, but Lamar’s hallmarks are here. The album has a circular structure, beginning with the rapper’s own death and ending with a story of redemption. It explores Biblical concepts of justice and humility. It speaks directly to Lamar’s Black audience, offering them more insights into his own struggles in the hopes that it will help with theirs. It feels like a Kendrick Lamar album.

I just wish I liked it more. Lamar’s on fire throughout this record, particularly on “DNA,” “Feel” and “Fear,” and there’s no faulting his prowess. But coming off of one of the most complex rap albums ever made, Damn feels thrown together in ways I didn’t expect. It certainly announces itself as more visceral, from the title to the cheap-looking cover, and songs like “Loyalty” don’t feel like they contribute to a larger whole. That wouldn’t bother me if the songs were amazing, but mostly they’re just good.

The production on Damn doesn’t help me to love it. Butterfly’s experiments with jazz and funk are all but gone here, replaced by a pretty average electronic hip-hop sound (thanks to producers like Mike Will Made-It). If the goal of Damn was to show that more typical hip-hop records can be creative and inspiring, it succeeds a good chunk of the time. But I’m not sure why Lamar chose that goal, especially when following up one of the most creative and interesting records of the decade.

It remains a singular treat, though, to hear Lamar dig in on tracks like “XXX,” a mini-epic that features Bono on vocals near the end. Just check out this extraordinary verse: “Hail Mary, Jesus and Joseph, the great American flag is wrapped and dragged with explosives, compulsive disorder, sons and daughters, barricaded blocks and borders, look what you taught us, it’s murder on my street, your street, back streets, Wall Street, corporate offices, banks, employees and bosses with homicidal thoughts, Donald Trump’s in office, we lost Barack, promised to never doubt him again, but is America honest or do we bask in sin?”

Lamar seeds Damn with mirror images sequenced next to each other – a song called “Lust” followed by one called “Love,” for example. It’s no coincidence that “Pride” and “Humble” sound like their opposite, “Humble” crashing in on a strident beat while “Pride” takes a more contemplative tone. It is on “Pride” where Lamar addresses his own arrogance, something he has always been cognizant of: “Seems like I point the finger just to make a point nowadays… I know the walls, they can listen, I wish they could talk back, the hurt becomes repetition, the love almost lost, that sick venom in men and women overcome with pride…”

And as he often does, Lamar ends that verse with a skyward look: “In a perfect world I’ll choose faith over riches, I’ll choose work over bitches, I’ll make schools out of prison, I’ll take all the religions and put ‘em all in one service just to tell ‘em we ain’t shit but He’s been perfect, world.” That’s just perfection, some of his very best work.

If much of the rest of Damn is intended to remind us of how imperfect the world is, it certainly does that. But there are just too many unconnected, sloppy moments for me to rate this as highly as I would like to. “Loyalty,” just as an example, isn’t a bad song, it’s just average, with lines about working “only for that dollar sign” and “that pussy good, it’s to die for” cluttering it up like stray thoughts. Rihanna’s presence doesn’t elevate things, either. “Love” is typical, as is “God” – these songs could be from anyone, and that they’re from Lamar is disappointing.

Here’s an example of the sloppiness that I keep coming back to. “Fear” is, for most of its running time, a lyrical masterpiece. Lamar revisits his own life at seven, 17, 27 and now at 29, illuminating what he feared most at each age: an abusive father, facing death as part of his gang life in Compton, losing what he’d earned, and not living up to his responsibility as a voice for his people, respectively. It’s stunning, but what keeps tripping me up is the repeated “life’s a bitch, pull them panties to the side” in the chorus. It means nothing there. It feels like a rough draft, like syllables. I can see a possible “I will dominate the world” interpretation, but that doesn’t stick with me. It mars an otherwise tremendous song.

Normally I would not be so picky, would not scour these lyrics like Sherlock Holmes looking for clues to deeper meaning. I would excuse a few less inspiring tracks, and would focus on the good parts of what is, after all, a pretty strong outing. But Lamar has trained me to expect better from him. Butterfly was so intricate, so well-considered and so strong that I’m conditioned now to look for that intricacy, consideration and strength in everything he does. And so much of Damn is so good that the too-often moments of laziness and sloppiness stand out.

Lamar does leave us with a stunner, one that redeems much of what came before it. “Duckworth,” titled after Lamar’s given surname, tells the unlikely yet true story of a fast food clerk and the gangster who made a choice not to kill him. In the kind of twist only real life throws at you, that clerk was Lamar’s father and that gangster grew up to be Anthony Tiffith, the head of Lamar’s label Top Dawg Entertainment. “Whoever thought the greatest rapper would be from coincidence, because if Anthony killed Ducky, Top Dawg could be serving life while I grew up without a father and die in a gunfight…”

That the album then loops back around to the start, a skit in which Lamar does die of a gunshot wound, only serves to drive the point home. We all have choices, and those choices create ripples in reality, spreading out around us, affecting things we don’t even understand. I love this message, and I wish Lamar had spent more of Damn delivering it. As a raw document of perhaps the world’s greatest rapper doing whatever he damn well pleases, this album is mostly great. It only suffers in comparison to his greatest work. And he doesn’t owe us anything, of course, but now that we know what he’s capable of, it hurts to hear him fall short of that. Damn is fine. It’s good, even. But I was hoping for better than good.

Wow, that’s a lot of words. Next week, either Mount Eerie or Gorillaz. Or both, if I’m feeling particularly ornery. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Gather round, kids. Let me tell you a story about the good old days.

The way it used to be, an artist would record an album, and then it would take months to put that album through the label process to get it ready for release. There was the manufacturing process (particularly for vinyl) and the publicity run-up, then the first single would drop weeks in advance, and then finally, when you just couldn’t wait anymore, the album would arrive in stores. Yes, actual stores that you had to go to, where you would buy physical things that contained the music you wanted.

I hesitate to say “that’s all changed,” since for the majority of artists I follow, the process hasn’t really evolved. One of the biggest album releases of the month is Humanz, by Gorillaz, and despite the social media-ness of the entire project, it followed the traditional path – album announcement, advance singles, album to drop on April 28. But for an increasing number of artists, that path has proven a little too… well, traditional.

We’re living in the age of the surprise release, which takes the traditional release cycle and eliminates all of the buzz-building that seemed so essential when I was growing up. Artists of a certain stature these days know that the buzz will be created organically by fans – all they need to do is generate excitement by putting the music out there, and the audience will do the rest.

Kendrick Lamar is the latest to drop an album with little advance warning – his Damn was released on Friday, at least digitally – and while advance word has been good, I’m old, so I’m waiting for my local record store to receive a shipment of the shiny plastic discs. So I haven’t heard this yet, but I’m looking forward to it, despite my initial reaction to the unimaginative title, shoddy cover art and underwhelming first single (“Humble”). Lamar made one of the best albums of the last 10 years with To Pimp a Butterfly, so he gets my attention, always and forever. But I’m still not going to buy his record twice just to hear it on the release date. (Next week, I swear.)

For bands and artists not at that level, though, it’s hard to generate the excitement you’d need to justify spending months on an album and dropping it without warning. In fact, it’s often hard to generate the excitement you’d need to justify spending months on an album, full stop. Austin band Quiet Company has decided on a way around that – they’re working on their fifth album, but they’re releasing it in chapters, Celldweller-style, as they complete it. This means we get Taylor Muse’s new songs in bite-sized chunks, and then get to see how they fit together into a full album statement.

The first of these chunks is called It’s Not Attractive and it Changes Nothing, and the title might be longer than the three-song EP itself. But short as it is, it’s so, so worth it. The three songs show off Muse’s range, easing in with the middle-tempo “Celebrity Teeth Poacher” before sucker-punching you with the best rock song of the year so far, “Get Beside Me, Satan.” This thing moves like a high-speed train, Muse spitting out more of his honest wranglings with faith and religion (“We were promised something better, but when it couldn’t be named, we scorched a bit of earth and did it all for the fame, and a comfortable position when eternity came…”) before sliding into a darker, slower section near the end.

The EP concludes with “On Single Moms,” which finds Muse reaching out for love for the first time in a song since the churning breakup music of 2015’s Transgressor. This song is sweet the way QuietCo songs used to be, with ringing horns and lovely lyrics: “And you’ll be free to lean on me, because I am twice as strong as I need to be, and I’ll be true, I’ll be good to you, but only if you really want me to…” Near the song’s end, he repeats “You don’t scare me at all,” and I nearly teared up, so powerful is the moment. (Especially if you’ve been following Muse’s story.)

If you’re only going to give us three songs at a time, those three songs better be very good. It’s Not Attractive and it Changes Nothing is very good, and absolutely justifies purchasing it now, instead of waiting. Listen to it and buy it at QuietCo’s Bandcamp site, and tune in sometime this summer for the second installment.

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John Mayer doesn’t need to parcel out his recording budgets, but he’s taken the same approach with his new album, The Search for Everything. He released eight of these 12 songs in smaller portions – four-song EPs, called Wave One and Wave Two – before compiling the record onto a single CD. Why he did this I have no idea, especially since hearing this music would convince anyone not to buy it. But he did.

Naturally, I waited and bought the full 12-song monstrosity, so my listen was more of a marathon than a sprint. After two albums of acoustic-based music that at least felt more honest, The Search for Everything is Mayer’s return to cheesy, wimpy pop. Here’s the thing that hurts the most: this album is the one on which he finally brought his trio (bass god Pino Palladino and drumming legend Steve Jordan, previously only captured on fiery live records) into the studio with him. And this is the material he gives them.

I have long since given up defending John Mayer from his own work. Live, he’s a monster – he’s a tremendous guitar player, and with Palladino and Jordan backing him up, his shows are often blistering jam sessions. But put him in a studio and all that fire goes away. There are two songs on The Search for Everything with a pulse. One is the opener, the pseudo-soul “Still Feel Like Your Man,” and the other is track three, “Helpless,” which actually features a pretty grand guitar solo. “Still Feel” gives you some idea of the talent Mayer is wasting here. Just listen to Palladino knock himself out on the bass lines. They’re like butter.

The rest of the album – seriously, every other song – is the aural equivalent of drinking milk with a well-balanced dinner. There’s a song called “Emoji of a Wave,” and while that’s ridiculous, you at least expect that it might be interesting. Nope. Total boredom. “Love on the Weekend” is just as bad as it sounds. “Changing” promises that its singer is evolving, but the typical chords and sing-song-y melody put lie to that. It’s “Daughters” redux. There’s an instrumental that isn’t bad, and “Rosie” and “Roll It On Home” take stabs at jazz-pop and country, respectively, and pull them off. But it’s too little too late, and then the sickly string-laden closer “You’re Gonna Live Forever in Me” completes the dive into the ditch.

It’s my fault, I know, for continuing to buy Mayer’s records. I was heartened by 2012’s Born and Raised, hoping that it had signified a newfound sense of purpose. But he’s squandered all of that with this overcooked and underbaked collection. He’s right back where he was ten years ago, when I was still saying things like “One day he’ll make a great record” and “Listen to him live.” I don’t even have the energy to say that anymore.

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So far we’ve talked about two artists who made sure we could hear their songs early, before the albums were finished. If you want a good example of the opposite tack, of really making us wait for it, there’s Eric Matthews.

You may remember Matthews from “Fanfare,” his 1995 hit and the leadoff track from his debut album, It’s Heavy in Here. “Fanfare” stood out in the ‘90s for its orchestral influence – Matthews’ trumpet led the charge – and that first album followed suit, essentially consisting of a series of chamber music pieces posing as pop songs. He kept that up for three more records and an EP, his songwriting taking on baroque overtones while his instrumentation focused more on bass and guitar. 2006’s Foundation Sounds remains a favorite, Matthews playing nearly every instrument in search of a singular vision.

There’s been a Wikipedia listing for Too Much World, his fifth album, since at least 2010. Matthews announced it in the immediate wake of his fourth, The Imagination Stage, in 2008, and since then, nothing. A couple side projects, including a reunion of his duo Cardinal (with Richard Davies of the Moles), but no news about the album. I expect it’s been sitting in a vault since then, untouched.

But now, thanks to Jeffrey Kotthoff at Lo-Fidelity Records, Too Much World is here. And I have virtually no doubt that this record has been sitting completed for seven or eight years. It’s very much of a piece with Foundation Sounds and The Imagination Stage. Matthews played all the instruments, and wrote a cycle of unfailingly tricky and surprising songs. None of these tracks have easy choruses or follow the usual rules of pop. But if you’re willing to follow Matthews down his particular rabbit hole, they’re fun to puzzle out. The Bowie-esque “Exactly Like Them” is the single for a reason – it’s the only one that shimmies and struts. The rest of these songs are content to unfold in their own time, winding down pathways no one but their author saw coming.

As you might guess, this is up my alley. I’ve always enjoyed Matthews, oblique as he can be, and these 12 tunes do nothing to keep me away. Some of them are downright wonderful, particularly at album’s end: the nightmarish “Your Mom’s at Midnight” gives way to the sweet instrumental “A Quiet Place We Can Go,” and then slides into the piano-driven title track, which ends the record on a surprisingly upbeat note. I’m not sure I can say Too Much World was worth the wait, since it sounds so much like the records he made right before it, and is so obviously part of the same burst of creativity. But as a missing piece of the Eric Matthews story, it fits right in and makes its case nicely. Check it out at his Bandcamp site.

Just a quick plug for Lo-Fidelity, since I’ve been buying from Jeffrey for something like a decade now. This is what he does – he shines a spotlight on albums that would have been lost to the ravages of time, giving them new leases on life. Most recently he remastered and re-released Adam Again’s fantastic Homeboys, a record almost nobody heard on its initial release in 1990, and he’s currently taking pledges for a new remaster of the 77s’ dark and heavy monster Drowning with Land in Sight. Show him some love, if you have some to spare.

Next week, Kendrick, I promise. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Last week’s column was all about artists just doing what they do, establishing a signature sound and riding it out. If I’d heard it in time, I would have included Whiteout Conditions, the seventh album by Canadian don’t-call-us-a-supergroup supergroup The New Pornographers.

Before hearing Whiteout Conditions, I was expecting a bit of a shakeup. While they prefer to be called a collective instead of a supergroup, the New Pornographers initially drew together seven well-known Vancouver-area musicians, most notably chief songwriter A.C. Newman, golden-voiced troubadour Neko Case and Dan Bejar, leader of the constantly-morphing band Destroyer. This lineup has remained relatively stable, and Bejar especially has injected some important mood-shifting diversity with his rougher-edged songs.

Whiteout Conditions is the first New Porn album without Bejar, although Newman insists he has not left the band entirely. It is also the first without founding drummer Kurt Dahle, replaced here by touring drummer Joe Seiders. Case stopped writing songs for the band after their first record, so this means this new album is the first one entirely led by Newman. All eleven songs are his.

In theory, this means Whiteout Conditions should be the band’s most homogenous, monochrome record. In practice, though, what we get is eleven glittering, pulsing pop songs in classic A.C. Newman style, and the final product is remarkably enjoyable. I’d even put this above the last couple – much as I liked Brill Bruisers, the songs on this new one are stronger, solidifying the band’s resurgence after the mediocre Challengers and Together. Case has settled nicely into her role as hired gun singer, and she blends her voice nicely with those of Newman and Kathryn Calder, delivering lovely harmonies. They sound unified here, and it suits them.

All of which would mean less than nothing if Newman hadn’t come up with the goods, but in this album’s new-wave pop-rock grooves, he’s found his. Tunes like “High Ticket Attractions” swagger and shake, the insistent bass thump anchoring flickering keyboards and stabbing bursts of guitar. “Colosseums” bounces along with authority, the title track dances down the lane, beckoning you to follow. “We’ve Been Here Before” offers a glowing interlude that feels like the clouds parting, the three singers harmonizing like angels.

There really isn’t anything here you haven’t heard before from Newman and his band – this is really just them doing what they do. But what they do hasn’t felt this energized, this (to steal an old album title) together in some time. I’m not sure what the circumstances were that led to Whiteout Conditions falling almost entirely under Newman’s purview, but it’s proof that he can deliver, and that the New Pornographers are nowhere near out of gas.

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Newman’s not the only one to pull off a return to form this week.

I’ve been a fan of folk songwriter Peter Mulvey for more than 20 years. His first label, Eastern Front, sent copies of his third album, Rapture, and its companion EP, Goodbye Bob, to the music magazine I worked at after college. It was Mulvey’s voice-and-guitar cover of Prince’s “Sign O’ the Times” that drew my attention, and his unique approach to the guitar on songs like “If Love is Not Enough” and “On the Way Up” that kept it. I saw him live only once, at Raoul’s Roadside Attraction in Portland, Maine, but that was the night he wrote and debuted one of his signature pieces, “The Trouble with Poets.” I’ve been following ever since.

Lately, though, Mulvey’s output has felt strangely spotty to me. I adore Letters from a Flying Machine, his 2009 conceptual piece that includes “Vlad the Astrophysicist,” a song so good he turned it into a TED talk. But covers album The Good Stuff was, you know, good, and 2014’s Silver Ladder felt a little uninspired to me. Mulvey, it seemed to me, needed something to shake him out of his comfort zone and get him thinking about different approaches to songwriting again.

Who better to shake him up than Ani DiFranco? I have no idea how these two connected – probably just orbiting the same troubadour-with-a-guitar circles – but I’m so glad they did. DiFranco produced and played on Mulvey’s terrific new album, Are You Listening, and has released it on her own Righteous Babe Records, hopefully opening up a new audience for him. At least I hope so, because this is an album that deserves to be heard.

Are You Listening was made largely with DiFranco’s backing band – bassist Todd Sickafoose and drummer Terence Higgins, with violin and vocals by Anna Tivel and lots of contributions from the Little Folksinger herself. There’s an energy to it that has been missing from his work lately, a sense of playing out on the edge, of finding these songs on the side of the road and just running with them. The album opens and closes with jaunty vignettes about country life (“Hold me touch me feed me, that’s what my phone always says, it needs me, but I don’t need you, phone,” he sings on opener “D.I.A.”), and in between touches on war, change, loss and the death of Trayvon Martin, just to name a few.

And despite the fact that it jumps from tone to tone, from strummy exuberance to dark lament to spoken word, it holds together beautifully. Standout “Just Before the War” is about memories of more innocent times, taken (like the song’s subject) too soon and too abruptly. “Winter Poem” is just that, a spoken piece about the stories we erase, just by being the biggest and strongest. “Which One Were You,” dedicated to Martin, is an abstract, haunting tone poem that aches with grief. “The Details” is an old-school Mulvey piece, de-tuned guitar and all, about how we cause our own problems.

As much as I love all of that, I’m a huge fan of the way this album ends. “Sebastian” is a hip-shaker, Tivel’s violin shoving the air around while Mulvey half-raps and harmonizes with DiFranco on the catchy chorus. (“How does it make you feel?”) He follows up earlier number “The Last Song” with “The Song After the Last Song,” a simple anthem of hope that builds and builds over its unfolding five minutes to become something truly special. And then he chooses to go out with a bookend, an epilogue: “Still Life” is silly and timeless, a minute-long reminder that we’re all just simple people with simple lives, and that is beautiful.

I’ve been a Mulvey fan for a long, long time, and Are You Listening is easily one of his very best. Taking a gamble and working with DiFranco and her band paid off a hundredfold. I know there is room for records this deep, this insightful, this dedicated to capturing the human experience, and if DiFranco can open her audience up to the magic that is Mulvey at his best, they’ll be enriched. I certainly have been. It’s been a joy to follow this man’s work for the past two decades, through hills and valleys, great records and misfires, like following a real person’s life. Are You Listening is most definitely a great Peter Mulvey record, daring and powerful and grounded while staring at the sky in wonder. Get thee to www.petermulvey.com and buy it.

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That will do it for me this week. Next week, reviews of Kendrick Lamar (if I hear it in time), Quiet Company and others. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Sufjan Stevens has just announced the release of Planetarium, his long-in-the-works collaboration with Bryce Dessner, Nico Mulhy and James McAlister. Stevens and his cohorts premiered much of the music from Planetarium live in 2013, and it sounds like nothing he’s done. The first single, “Saturn,” is so outside the realm of anything I’ve heard from Stevens that it feels like exploring space itself.

If you’ve been reading for a while, you know I love it when artists light out for new territories. Many of my favorite songwriters are also chameleons, shape-shifting from album to album, shedding skin and emerging fully formed as a whole new beast. I love that quality so much, in fact, that I’m going to spend an entire column talking about its exact opposite.

Because there is virtue in consistency, too. There’s value in doing one thing very well for an entire career, especially if you’re the best there is at doing that one thing. For instance, if that one thing you do very well is write sad, perfect songs, and you can do that consistently for more than 30 years, trying on different musical affectations but remaining true to a signature style, then you might be Aimee Mann. But you probably aren’t, because there’s only one Aimee Mann, and she’s amazing.

Over eight prior solo albums (and one swell collaboration with Ted Leo), Mann has written some of the most heart-wrenching tunes I know. She’s wrapped those tunes in orchestration, snarling rock, delicate acoustics and, on 2012’s Charmer, kitschy synths, as if to distract us from the fact that she’s penned the same kind of odes to loneliness and pain her entire life. I don’t even mean that as a criticism – as I said above, she’s pretty much the best there is at writing songs like these, and I will gladly take another 20 albums’ worth of them.

What I admire most about Mental Illness, Mann’s ninth album, is that it signals an embrace of this identity. Where her last few records tried to obscure their sad-sack waltzes with punchy production touches, this one lets them be what they are. Mental Illness is the slowest, saddest, most nakedly emotional album Mann has made in a long time, and she’s risen to the occasion with a set of songs that can proudly stand among her best. Considering this is Aimee Mann we’re talking about, that’s very high praise.

The album is almost too wispy a thing to shoulder such praise. It’s almost entirely acoustic, built on delicate finger-picking and glorious harmonies and occasional shuddering strings. Opener “Goose Snow Cone” sets the tone, if not the bar – it’s a simple thing, gliding by without drawing blood, but it raises the curtain perfectly. The songs get so much better from there, rising up with swaying waltz “Stuck in the Past” and never coming back down. (That bridge is wonderful, its cello line sublime.) “You Never Loved Me” feels the same, but heads off in different directions. How’s this for a sad line: “3,000 miles to sit in a room with a vanishing groom, ‘til it undoes me.” Ugh. Right there.

Mann invited the great Jonathan Coulton to co-write some of the songs on Mental Illness (she’ll return the favor by releasing Coulton’s new rock opera Solid State later this month on her SuperEgo label), and perhaps coincidentally, those are the ones I ended up loving the most. “Rollercoasters” is almost too beautiful to exist, its chorus a delicate fade. I have never heard a more lovely or crushing “please, baby, please” in all my years. “Patient Zero” is one of the few things here that makes use of drummer Jay Bellerose. Here’s another Mann special: “Life is good, you look around and think ‘I’m in the right neighborhood,’ but honey, you just moved in, life is grand, and wouldn’t you like to have it go as planned…”

I can understand people complaining that Mental Illness (and take a second to deal with that title) gets a little same-y, particularly in its back half. But it’s same-y the way Bach concertos are. These are all Aimee Mann songs, all rendered in similar ways, but each one makes a case for itself. The strings and harmonies on “Philly Sinks,” for example, elevate this simple waltz to gorgeous levels, and the clever orchestration on “Simple Fix” is delightfully distinctive. Closer “Poor Judge” is a piano-driven dive into despair: “You might have had some other reason to lead me to the guillotine, but your heart is a poor judge and it harbors an old grudge…”

To say I am in love with this album would be to understate things by an impressive amount. Aimee Mann is one of the best songwriters we have, especially when she feels free to simply be who she is. Mental Illness is the sound of her granting herself that freedom, and the results are stunning. She’s a treasure, and this album is one of her very best, a slow and gentle collapse into the cold and dark, lulling you all the while.

Put it another way: Mental Illness. You’d be mad not to love it.

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Speaking of just doing what they do, here’s the Jesus and Mary Chain.

The big difference here is that it’s been nearly 20 years since the Reid brothers have written and recorded together. Jim and William Reid burst out of the gate in 1985 with a shoegaze-rock classic called Psychocandy. Its juxtaposition of ‘50s rock with snarling, overpowering feedback was a revelation, and it worked so well that they never really did it again. On subsequent records they ditched the shoegaze and turned in simple, repetitive melodic rock. Even their quieter record, Stoned and Dethroned, sounds the same but without amplifiers.

The Jesus and Mary Chain broke up in 1999, and each Reid brother took on other projects. But ten years ago they reunited, and now they’ve just released Damage and Joy, their first record in 19 years. And you know what? It sounds exactly like they did two decades ago. I mean there is literally no change – the songs still siphon their biggest influence from ‘50s pop, the band still plays those songs on overdriven electric guitars, the Reids haven’t changed a lick vocally. They’re exactly the same band.

Whether you like that or not depends on your opinion of everything after Psychocandy. I reservedly like it, but I can’t name a single highlight – the songs are all kind of the same, and are all produced the same way. Which sounds like exactly what I said about Aimee Mann’s record above, but in this case, the songs aren’t as well-crafted and they don’t distinguish themselves. Sky Ferreira and Isobel Campbell put in guest vocal spots, but you wouldn’t be able to tell – they disappear into the record, pummeled by the Jesus and Mary Chain-ness of it all.

And I guess that’s the lesson from consistency. If you really like the Jesus and Mary Chain, enough to be able to tell these 14 songs apart from not only each other but almost everything the Reid brothers have written since their debut, then Damage and Joy will hold untold delights for you. You’ll get exactly what you want from it. I’ve never been their biggest fan. I’ve trudged alongside them, buying their work and feeling unmoved by it, and I get the same emotion from this new one.

As with everything, it comes down to taste: I love what Mann does, and want more of it, but I could have lived without one more Jesus and Mary Chain album that is a carbon copy of the other Jesus and Mary Chain albums. But if this is for you, I hope you love it. Get as much joy from it as you can.

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OK, it’s time for the First Quarter Report. I know, I’m a week late, and while that is partially because last week’s column ran long, it’s also partially because I knew what would, after this week, sit atop the list. Every three months I post a look at my top 10 list in progress – basically, what the list would look like if I were forced to publish it right now. And as there are barely ten great records this year so far, I feel pretty confident in this list, with the caveat that I haven’t heard Laura Marling’s new one yet, as well as a few others I know I have to get to.

But for right now, here’s the list:

10. KXM, Scatterbrain.

9. Son Volt, Notes of Blue.

8. Grandaddy, Last Place.

7. Pain of Salvation, In the Passing Light of Day.

6. Ryan Adams, Prisoner.

5. Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, Zombies on Broadway.

4. Peter Silberman, Impermanence.

3. The Magnetic Fields, 50 Song Memoir.

2. Elbow, Little Fictions.

1. Aimee Mann, Mental Illness.

I am 100 percent certain that this will change, and in fact it won’t take long. I hear Kendrick Lamar has a new thing coming next week…

Speaking of next week, I’ll have more reviews on tap. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.