I was an angry young man, and I listened to angry young music.

I’ve talked at length here about my teenage metalhead years, during which bands like Megadeth and Testament gave me an outlet for my adolescent rage. But when that phase was over (and I say “over” like I’m not still into all that great stuff), I was a twenty-something in the 1990s, the decade where the angry, the sad and the depressing became mainstream. It was the decade when the word “alternative” ceased to have any meaning at all – bands like Alice in Chains became superstars, riding the wave of Nirvana’s out-of-nowhere blockbuster Nevermind.

And I sank right into that music. I couldn’t get enough darkness, even in my sunny pop music. Which is exactly why Garbage worked for me when they appeared in 1995. I was only happy when it rained, and the songs on Garbage’s first album married grey sentiments like that with jaunty, memorable electro-pop. The band was originally a studio creation convened by Butch Vig, who had produced Nevermind, but audiences responded so strongly that they decided to become a real touring band.

Twenty-one years later, they’re still together and still kicking. Their sixth album, Strange Little Birds, is the darkest one they have made, and I think 22-year-old me would have loved it. For the first time, the music is routinely as gloomy as Shirley Manson’s lyrics, which means they’ve jettisoned the tension that used to define them. In its place is just… bleakness, and I’m finding as I get older that bleakness isn’t at (or near) the top of my list of favorite qualities. I’m a happier person, and I’m actually kind of sad that Manson isn’t.

Throughout Strange Little Birds (and in fact throughout the Garbage catalog), Manson is insecure, lonely, angry and very often hopeless. Album opener “Sometimes” circles around these words: “Sometimes I feel so jealous, sometimes I feel so insecure, sometimes I feel like I vanished in thin air, sometimes I feel I’m not there.” “Empty” is another in a long line of Garbage songs about obsession: “I’m so empty, you’re all I think about.” “Empty” is the first single for a reason – it’s one of the very few that marries its desperate lyrics with upbeat, propulsive music.

The rest of this record mostly crawls forward on its stomach, getting down in the muck. You can imagine what songs called “Night Drive Loneliness” and “Even Though Our Love is Doomed” sound like. The production is amazing, as always – when Garbage decides to set an oppressive mood, they really set one. The pulsing synths on “Magnetized,” for instance, give Manson a dark cloud to sink back into: “You bring your light, I’ll bring my pain, you bring your joy, I’ll bring my shame.” The sound is impeccable, the band still refining the rock-pop-electronic formula they invented.

I just wish there were more joy here. I’m not sure why I would expect any – nothing this band has ever done would lead me to that idea. But while Garbage has shaded darker, I’ve been seeking out more light. I hope making records like Strange Little Birds is cathartic for the band, particularly Manson. When she reaches for glimmers of hope, as she does on the epic “So We Can Stay Alive,” it’s even cathartic for me. But I find that I need music like this less these days. Strange Little Birds is a beautiful-sounding, bleak little thing, and while 20 years ago I would have nodded along in solidarity with its lonely, bitter sentiments, now they make me want to give Manson a hug and tell her that it gets better.

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Tom Odell is 25 years old, so I can forgive a little more melodramatic depression from him. He was a mere 22 when he gave us Long Way Down, his remarkable debut album. The highlight of that record for me was “Can’t Pretend,” as dramatic a song as has ever been written about love withering on the vine. It was a marvelous calling card – Odell has a big, bold voice, and his piano-driven songs give him ample opportunity to use that voice to its fullest.

In some ways, I like his second album, Wrong Crowd, better. It’s a more mature album, its songs of love and loss more subtle and full. There’s nothing here that captures me the way “Can’t Pretend” did, but there are plenty of riches, and the production is less kid-with-a-piano and more journeyman tunesmith. It’s a progression that usually takes more than a couple years, and to hear Odell pulling it off so quickly is gratifying. He’s definitely one to watch.

Wrong Crowd does jettison the fun, though, in search of more meaningful pop music. Gone is the ivory-pounding likes of “Hold Me,” and in their place is a mellower, prettier, more considered brand of Tom Odell. Second song “Magnetized” is as rowdy as this gets, and it’s more of a slow build to a big chorus. “It’s not right, I’m magnetized to someone who don’t feel it,” he sings over pianos, drum rolls and handclaps, and it’s the album’s best hands-to-the-sky moment. As an army of Tom Odells sings “she keeps me hanging on,” you might think Wrong Crowd will turn out to be more fun than it eventually does.

But there’s nothing wrong with the direction Odell does take. “Constellations” is gorgeous, a song about a magical moment in time: “It’s the same old constellations of stars up in the sky, but yeah, I’ve got a feeling they’re gonna look different tonight.” This one is just Odell, his piano and some lush strings, and while I might wish it were even sparser, it works. “Sparrow” is a highlight, a circular, constantly growing lullaby, and “Still Getting Used to Being On My Own” sways with a newfound soulful influence. “Silhouette” sounds like an attempt to make a British mid-tempo dance-pop song, with a computer beat and strings.

Throughout it all, Odell’s voice remains vast and strong, lending this whole album cohesion and character. Wrong Crowd isn’t quite the out-of-the-park follow-up I was hoping for, but it is a step in some confident new directions for this young songwriter. He’s still using lines like “I never believed from the day that I met you that a loser like me could ever get you,” but if he keeps growing at the rate he has been, I’m excited to see the kind of songs he writes in his 40s. In the meantime, Wrong Crowd is a fine pop record, a worthy successor to a great debut, and one I’ll no doubt be coming back to for years.

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Finally this week, we have Miles Nielsen.

I said I would mention more about him this week, after seeing him and his band the Rusted Hearts deliver a tremendous set at the Two Brothers Summer Festival here. I may be underselling how great they were – they were easily the highlight of the day’s lineup, playing complex Americana-tinged rock songs arranged for six very tight musicians. Miles, as you may have figured out, is the son of Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen, but he doesn’t trade on that, and gets no mileage from it. His work couldn’t be farther from the lick-driven rock of his dad’s band.

Many of the songs Nielsen played last week were taken from his third album, Heavy Metal. It’s also his best album, and you can hear how much he and the band put into it. These ten songs are strong, lived-in, smartly arranged and memorable. There’s a strong Tom Petty influence here, particularly on songs like “Simple Times,” but Nielsen throws some curve balls, like the Beatlesque bridge of “Honeybee” (complete with clarinets) or the Allman Brothers guitars of “Strangers.”

Nielsen’s been on a steady trajectory toward something as good as Heavy Metal for years, and I’m quite glad that he and his band took the time and spent the money on this. The saxophones on “Sarah,” for instance, might seem like an extravagance, but they’re integral to the song. This album sounds like a million bucks, and happily the songs deserve everything the band has lavished on them. Atop it all is Nielsen’s voice, high and distinctive, surrounded by lush harmonies. Heavy Metal is great, a triumph for a songwriter and a band I’m excited to keep watching. You can get it here, and you should.

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That’s it for this week. Next week I’ll hopefully think of a theme. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m writing this on June 5. It’s my birthday.

Today I am 42 years old. This seems unfathomably ancient, especially since, in my head, I feel about 20. But I went to an all-day music festival yesterday (featuring Cold War Kids and the great Miles Nielsen – more about him next week), and today I’ve paid for it. My joints are creaky, my head hurts, my whole body is in revolt. I’ve slept a lot of the day away.

Nonetheless, I have been looking forward to 42 for some time, since my whole year will be a Douglas Adams joke. “Hey there. Were you looking for the ultimate answer to the ultimate question about life, the universe and everything? Because here I am.”

As always when I turn a year older, I’m grateful for anyone who says to me, “Oh, you’re not old.” I’m also grateful for anything that convinces me that life doesn’t end at a certain age, that people can be marvelously productive and creative and interesting well past the point when others might call them senior citizens. I’m beyond happy to hear stories of so-called “old” people thumbing their noses at even the notion of growing old, proving that the brain doesn’t have to atrophy, and ambition doesn’t have to wither.

So you can imagine how grateful I am to have a splendid new Paul Simon album.

Simon is 74 years old, and I’ll be thankful to live that long, let alone retain as much fire and intellect as he has. His new album Stranger to Stranger is his 13th solo album, not counting (of course) his seminal work with Simon and Garfunkel, and from its Chuck Close cover to its complex and engrossing songs, it’s a weird garden of delights. Simon’s last record, 2011’s So Beautiful or So What, was a meditation on age and mortality, and was in many ways his final statement. This has left him free to say anything on Stranger to Stranger – no one will be looking to it for more of the same musings on age and death – so it’s as loose, limber and wide-reaching as you could hope.

Simon also, at 74, doesn’t care anymore what people think of him. This is a glorious place for him to be. He sing-speaks with abandon here, and he eschews immediacy – these songs are based in rhythm and mood, with only a few offering singalong moments – and those are subtle, only revealing themselves after time. It can be hard to wrap your mind around what Simon is trying to do on songs like the opener “The Werewolf.” It starts with a single, twangy bent note played on a gopichand, an instrument from India, then the drums – half electronic and half acoustic – shimmy in, leading the song through half a dozen little sections, none of which sound like a traditional Paul Simon song. The production is amazing, including horns and wolf howls, and the organ dirge that closes the song is straight out of Kid A. It’s remarkable.

Much of Stranger to Stranger is driven by rhythm, in the way a lot of Simon’s material has been since Graceland. “Wristband,” the nimble first single, is mostly drums and acoustic bass, with a few tasty horns here and there. (That song is fantastic, starting off as an anecdote about being locked out of his own show and morphing into a treatise on social justice: “The riots started slowly with the homeless and the lowly, then they spread into the heartland, towns that never get a wristband…”) The two linked songs, “Street Angel” and “In a Parade,” are entirely percussion and voice, the first introducing us to a neighborhood poet who “writes his songs for the universe,” and the second finds him being treated for schizophrenia, deposed from his place as visionary of the streets.

And if I have any complaint about this album, it’s that the sharpest and jauntiest of these songs are missing Simon’s instantly identifiable guitar. He only plays on half these songs, including a pair of minute-long instrumentals, and mostly on the slower, more thoughtful ones. But that’s all right, since the heart of the record is in those moodier pieces. The title track is a sparse waltz that imagines how Simon would feel meeting his wife again, now, as he is. “If we met for the first time this time, could you imagine us falling in love again, still believing that love endures all the carnage and the useless detours…” It’s also about the joy of music, and by the end – after a tremendous muted trumpet solo by C.J. Camereiri – he’s reduced to repeating “I love you,” overcome with emotion.

The centerpiece and masterpiece of this album is “Proof of Love,” and every time I hear this song, I’m swept away, amazed again at how great it is. Its agile acoustic guitar figure gives way to a refrain that climbs up and up: “I trade my tears to ask the Lord for proof of love, if only for the explanation that tells me what my dreams are made of…” The unexpected amens, the flute, the absolutely gorgeous coda (“Silent night, still as prayer, darkness fills with light, love on earth is everywhere”), it’s all so beautiful. This is the truth Simon’s long life has shown him: love is everywhere, and is the only thing worth seeking.

The record comes back to earth for two more rollicking tracks. “The Riverbank” flirts with rockabilly to tell the tale of a community in mourning, and “Cool Papa Bell,” named after a Negro League baseball player, includes a treatise on the ugliness and usefulness of the word “motherfucker.” “Cool Papa Bell” is the only song that looks backward – it sounds like a Graceland outtake crossed with “La Bamba” – and for that reason, it’s my least favorite thing here.

But the album ends with its eyes forward, half-closed though they might be. “Insomniac’s Lullaby” is a gentle piece of music, Simon praying for sweet slumber: “Oh Lord, don’t keep me up all night, side by side with the moon, alone in the bed, the season ahead is winter that lasts until June, the insomniac’s lullaby…” This song is arranged for several microtonal instruments, invented by American theorist and composer Harry Partch. These are gadgets that play a whole range of notes between the ones we know, and the effect is disorienting, unmooring. It’s not quite out of tune, but your ears can barely process it. Which makes it a perfect backing for a song about being heavy-lidded, yet unable to sleep.

And let me underscore this one more time: this is an album by a 74-year-old who has arranged a song for microtonal instruments for the first time. Stranger to Stranger would have been a strong record from Paul Simon 20 years ago. That he’s still pushing himself, still creating work of such vivid imagination, is astonishing. These returns have not diminished one bit. I never want him to stop. I know each new Paul Simon album might be the last, but when they continue to be this wonderful, I want him to keep going well into his 90s. If Stranger to Stranger is it, well, it’s a good one. But I hope it isn’t. I hope he lives a much longer life, and keeps showing us younger folks how it’s done.

Next week, at the very least, Miles Nielsen and Tegan and Sara. Probably more. Happy birthday to me. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

As some of you know, I’ve been having trouble lately keeping up with all the new music I want to hear.

I bought 12 new records this week, and so far, I’ve heard three of them – you’ll find reviews of them below. There’s just so much hitting stores every week, and my taste is ridiculously broad (as has been pointed out to me), so listening to and writing about everything is impossible. This is why, at least of late, I’ve been grateful for short albums.

Brevity used to bother me. I’m paying the same price for an album that lasts 30 minutes as I am for an album that lasts 70. But even putting aside the fact that I’m finding it difficult to schedule 70-minute listening sessions, I’ve come to appreciate the joy of a compact, no-frills statement. How many times have you heard a lengthy album and thought about which songs should have been removed? (I just did this with James Blake’s latest, which I reviewed last week.) There’s something about a half-hour record that adds focus, like the band knows it only has so much time to win you over, and they’d better not waste any of it.

This isn’t to say that I’m not still in love with the longer, more involved statement. The new Marillion album is probably my most anticipated disc this year, and I’ve just learned that it contains five songs and commands more than 70 minutes. That’s some epic songwriting, and I can’t wait to dig into it. But the four I have on tap this week all clock in around half an hour, and the shorter running time actually does them a world of good. Plus, blessedly, I managed to listen to all four and write thoughts about them in only a few days. I say keep the short records coming.

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Weirdly, the longest of my four subjects this week is the latest reunion album by the Monkees.

This is a band that came up during the vinyl era, when albums were routinely 30 to 40 minutes long, and that needle-drop sensibility is all over Good Times, a 36-minute slice of ‘60s-style grooviness. This record celebrates the band’s 50th anniversary, and is the first bit of new Monkees music since their 30th anniversary. Is it necessary? Well, no. But is it fun? Is it a breezy, summery good time? You bet.

The three surviving Monkees (Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith) are all in their 70s now, and they all know they might not get another chance to record and tour together. If they needed a reminder of their own mortality, they’ve dedicated Good Times to Davy Jones, who died in 2012. (In a nice tribute, they’ve included him in the band lineup, complete with a photo of him from the glory days of the band, and completed an older song that he sang on – Neil Diamond’s “Love to Love.”) I have no idea if Dolenz, Tork and Nesmith consider this the last Monkees album, or even thought about it while they were making it, but it’s definitely a pull-out-all-the-stops record. If it is the last, it’s a good one, like a surprise visit from a friend you thought you’d never see again.

The Monkees worked with Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne on this album, and his witty pop fingerprints are all over it. They also enlisted an army of extraordinary songwriters to contribute, and these new songs sit nicely next to old standards from Harry Nilsson, Neil Diamond and the great team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King. The voices have aged, and the harmonies are not quite as dazzling as they used to be, but little else separates this record from their ‘60s output. They still sound like the Monkees.

It’s those new songs that should be the draw here. The crown jewel of this album is “You Bring the Summer,” the first new pop song written by Andy Partridge since the demise of XTC. This tune is a delight, a windows-down highway drive of a ditty that sits nicely with Partridge’s sunniest work. Rivers Cuomo contributes the catchy “She Makes Me Laugh,” while Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie gives us the very Ben Gibbard “Me and Magdalena,” sung beautifully by Nesmith and Dolenz. Schlesinger’s “Our Own World” is a wonderful slice of jubilant pop, naturally, and the harpsichord and upright bass bring it home.

There are some surprises here, most notably “Birth of an Accidental Hipster,” co-written by Liam Gallagher and Paul Weller. It’s a fascinating psychedelic mash-up of Oasis and the Jam, and sits quite outside the usual Monkees purview, but they pull it off. Perhaps the biggest surprise, though, is that each Monkee writes an original song, and they’re all quite good. Tork’s “Little Girl” is a tricky waltz, Nesmith’s “I Know What I Know” is a heartfelt piano ballad (on which he sounds his age, to lovely effect), and Dolenz closes things out with the rave-up “I Was There (And I’m Told I Had a Good Time).”

Good Times isn’t quite the revelation that the entirely self-penned Justus was, back in 1996, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s a solid bit of frivolous, fun Monkees goodness, and since it’s been 20 years since we had one of those, I’ll take it. I hope I get the chance to buy a new Monkees album again, but if I never have the pleasure, well, this one is a joy, and I’m glad to have it.

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I love Beth Orton’s voice.

It’s not an expressive voice, the way voices are considered expressive. It’s a haunting, high-moan, ethereal thing, and she always uses it in exactly the same way, never stretching it out or trying for vocal acrobatics. But I love it. It cuts right through me. For more than 20 years, Orton has been making music that suits her unconventional voice best: dirge-y electronic music and dirge-y acoustic folk music, with some magical combination of the two intertwining to form her best work. The music is usually there to set a mood, with her voice doing the emotional work, lending it sorrow and yearning and, sometimes, joy and peace.

This year, her breakthrough album Trailer Park turns 20. Rather than rest on those considerable laurels (I mean, have you heard “Galaxy of Emptiness”?), Orton’s returned with Kidsticks, her first album in four years. It’s a brief excursion, but a fascinating one. Orton worked here with Andrew Hung, one half of ambient electronic group Fuck Buttons, and the result is certainly more synthetic than her last effort, Sugaring Season, but also more diverse and expansive.

The opening trilogy works as a crescendo, the mantra-like “Snow” easing into the supple “Moon” and the ever-building “Petals,” which ends with an eruption of electric guitar. The snap-drum dance groove of “Snow” almost hides the fact that the song never goes anywhere, repeating its two chords like marching orders to its army of vocalists. “Moon” does the same with its delightful bass groove, and like the best of Orton’s songs, she finds different ways in and around that groove with her voice. “I see the light, ain’t it bright, keeps me up all night,” she sings, and you will find it hard to resist.

After that, the utterly danceable “1973” is something of a surprise. Despite its name, it’s pure ‘80s, its goofy synths circling its airy beat. It’s a flash grenade in the middle of this record, and from there it could go anywhere. I like “Wave,” with its sad chorus and Passion Pit-style synths, and Orton makes full use of her voice on the slow, watery “Dawnstar.” As Kidsticks progresses, Hung and Orton find ways to mix the electronic and the organic more completely, with real drums and bass elevating the Kate Bush-like “Falling.” The epic here is “Flesh and Blood,” which rides a contented shimmy for nearly six minutes, effectively closing the album (save for the waste-of-time instrumental title track).

Like a lot of Orton’s albums, Kidsticks glides by on first listen with an ease that can render it forgettable. I’ve heard it four times now, and each time I discover new corners in it, new alleys to wander down. For such a short record, there’s a lot there, and I’m looking forward to discovering more about it. It sometimes feels like Orton might be making these strange, evocative records just for me. If so, I’d like to say I’m grateful for them, and please make more.

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SHEL should be terrible.

They’re a family band comprised of the four young Holbrook sisters, and their band name is an acronym for their four first names: Sarah, Hannah, Eva and Liza. That’s so gimmicky-cute it makes my fillings hurt, and had I not seen them live a few years ago, and watched them rip through a thoroughly self-assured set of folksy rock topped with a rendition of “The Battle of Evermore,” I probably would have dismissed them. I’m glad I didn’t.

Their second album, Just Crazy Enough, is ten more reasons not to pass them by. A polished effort full of sprightly melodies and full, inventive harmonies, Just Crazy Enough should serve as a strong calling card. All four Holbrooks sing and write songs, and their sound has matured into a Nickel Creek-style folk-pop, and this new album jumps from the smiling shimmy “Rooftop” to the dark and gorgeous “Lost As Anyone,” fueled by Eva’s mandolin and Sarah’s violin, with Hannah’s piano adding just the right accents. They will move you, and then, one song later, with the slinky “Let Me Do,” they’ll have you dancing in your chair.

All of these nine original songs are memorable delights. “Alternate Universe” and “I Know” should be hits, they’re such well-written pop songs, and closer “Stronger Than My Fears” is a pretty confessional anthem of hope, with some truly lovely harmonies. As if all that weren’t enough, the Holbrook sisters throw in a hook – a rustic, acoustic reading of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” that actually manages to be ghostly and creepy. I remain happy that I stuck around for SHEL’s set those many years ago, and Just Crazy Enough is as good as I hoped it would be. Ignore the name, check out the band.

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And finally, Travis, a band I have been ready to write off for some time.

Now, before I get into this Scottish quartet’s eighth album, Everything at Once, I should mention that this week I saw a movie called Sing Street. It’s the new effort from James Carney, who made my heart sing with Once, and it’s absolutely marvelous. The story of a misfit kid who starts a band and learns to write songs to impress a girl, Sing Street had me grinning for hours, and humming the sweet original tunes at its heart.

And on the way home from the theater, I listened to all 33 minutes of Everything at Once, and liked it more than any Travis album since 12 Memories. I’m not sure how much of that was my mood, but the charms of this album haven’t worn off since. This should feel like a throwaway – it’s their shortest album, and it follows one of their most boring, the staid Where You Stand. This is acoustic pop Travis again, and before this little gem of a record, I would have called that sound a played-out dead end.

But amazingly, Travis sounds alive on this album, bouncing back with some catchy songs and some interesting experiments. Fran Healy still sounds like he just woke from a refreshing nap, and middling opener “What Will Come” might not inspire confidence, but winner “Radio Song” takes the acoustic sound to a more muscular place, and with “Paralyzed,” Travis takes a step into new territory with a spiral of strings in tow. (And a sidelong lyrical slap at the Kardashians.)

“Animals,” the first song here to break three minutes, keeps the streak going with a clever 6/8 swing and more strings. The title track goes electronic, but in a reserved, Travis sort of way, Healy’s staccato vocals blending with the pulsing synths. Other band members besides Healy write songs, and write them well. Singer Josephine Oniyama takes a verse on “Idlewild.” There aren’t many moments where the band isn’t trying something new.

I don’t want to overstate this album. It’s a short little burst of pretty good songs (like the Neil Finn-esque “Three Miles High”) that probably won’t convince anyone who isn’t already inclined to like Travis. I’m inclined to like them, and this brief, ingratiating record makes it easier for me than any they’ve done in a long time. It’s just long enough to keep me interested without filler, and its brevity makes me want to press play again as soon as I can. I can’t be certain that my affection for this album isn’t tied up with my absolute love for Sing Street, but I think it’s the band’s best effort in ages.

Next week, longer records, for sure. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Today I pulled out Megadeth’s Rust in Peace.

As I’ve mentioned more than once, Rust in Peace was pretty much my favorite album when I was 16. I played this thing to death. Even now, as I near the decrepit old age of 42, it still strikes me as an extraordinary metal album. It’s fierce, uncompromising, intricate and yet still raging with an energy that most bands of their ilk could only dream of. There have been a lot of Megadeths, with the only constant being Dave Mustaine, but for my money the Megadeth that made Rust in Peace is the very best of them.

That Megadeth featured a fantastic drummer named Nick Menza. Metal drummers are always underrated, and I think Menza’s work on this album (and the three Megadeth platters that followed) is unjustly overshadowed. “Holy Wars… The Punishment Due” wouldn’t even work without Menza’s stop-on-a-dime high-speed precision. This Megadeth – the most popular incarnation by miles – was a powerful machine, all four members in tune with one another, pushing each other to make the best music they could. Say what you will about their more polished, more melodic efforts (though I do think Youthanasia and Cryptic Writings are due a reappraisal), but Rust in Peace is amazing, and Countdown to Extinction is excellent.

And Nick Menza was one-fourth of that machine. He got out before things went bad (Risk….ugh), and never again found an outfit that fit him like Megadeth did. Rumors of a reunion with Mustaine never bore fruit. Nick Menza died on Saturday, May 21, of heart failure. But he died doing what he loved – on stage, playing with his jazz fusion band OHM. Menza was 51. And so I am listening to Rust in Peace right now, thinking about this bloody 2016, and raising a glass in salute.

Rest (or, you know, rust) in peace, Nick.

* * * * *

Last week we talked about Radiohead, a band I have found frustrating and confounding for many years. I have a lot of complaints about post-OK Computer Radiohead, but most of them can be summed up this way: they went electronic and lost their soul.

Since Kid A, a majority of the Radiohead sound has been made up of robotic whirring and clicking, and the best music they have made breaks through that sound to find the glimmers of humanity. The fragile tracks on In Rainbows and The King of Limbs are far more memorable than the click-clack ones, and the new album A Moon Shaped Pool is my favorite in a long time because it strives for emotion, unafraid of its big, beating, broken heart. Cold technology nearly killed this band, and a big part of the joy of this new album for me is hearing that it didn’t succeed.

But lest you think I am some luddite who will not accept music unless it’s made by strumming, folksy hippies, I wanted to talk this week about three artists who have found the humanity in metal machine music. And I wanted to start with James Blake, because his new album The Colour in Anything has captivated me as much as the Radiohead record in recent days.

Like Radiohead, Blake surprise-released his third album online, announcing it only days before. We’ve come to expect this from Yorke and his un-merry men, but Blake has been a major-label commodity since his self-titled debut in 2011. His second album, the lovely Overgrown, won the Mercury Prize in 2013, and a nomination for Best New Artist at the Grammys. Hell, he’s on Lemonade, the highest-profile album I can think of right now. So The Colour in Anything is an unexpected move, but a welcome one. A very long record, Colour is more of a refinement of Blake’s aesthetic than anything else, but you can hear the three years he spent working on it in every groove.

Blake creates ethereal, minimalist soul music with synthesizers and pit-pat drums, but it’s quite unlike any soul music I know. He somehow has found a way to use modern technology in a way that sounds old, musty, timeless. (There’s even a song on Colour called “Timeless” that manages this feat well.) There’s almost nothing to the music he makes – a slow, barely-there drum beat, a throbbing bass, some droning keyboard sound – but it breathes and expands, patiently. The key element, of course, is his phenomenal voice, haunting and disembodied. It’s often hard to believe this ghostly timbre came from a human mouth, and seeing him sing – seeing him just open his mouth and sing like this – is a strange experience.

If you’re a fan of Blake’s work, Colour won’t offer you much you haven’t heard before. He’s just gotten a lot better at it. As I mentioned, this is a long album – 17 songs over 76 minutes – and it’s almost too much to take in, particularly since many of these tracks coast on atmosphere. Songs like opener “Radio Silence” follow Blake’s well-established framework, and even when he veers from that, as he does on the keyboard-drenched almost-dance track “I Hope My Life,” his spectral voice gives it the same feel. But it’s a marvelous framework, with a focus on humanity – this is an album of sorrow and loneliness, and you can hear it in his wavery singing, particularly when the drums go away and all that’s left are keys and voice, as on “Waves Know Shores” and “Modern Soul.”

The most arresting moments here, oddly, are the ones that bring in another haunting voice: that of Justin Vernon, the man behind Bon Iver. Vernon co-writes and sings on “I Need a Forest Fire,” which builds slowly but peaks with so much emotion I can hardly stand it, and on the delicate closer, “Meet You in the Maze.” In some ways, that song is a cliché – it’s an a cappella piece sung through vocoders, like Vernon’s “Woods.” But the technique still works, and is still moving.

If there’s any issue with The Colour in Anything, it’s that it’s just a touch too long, enough so that I can name a few songs I’d probably remove. But it’s all an obvious labor of love for Blake, who has established himself as a singular artist, one that finds the soul in his machines and holds on to that for all he has.

Similar, yet altogether more unsettling, is Hopelessness, the first album by the former Antony Hegarty under her new name, Anohni. In some ways, she and Radiohead have swapped styles – Anohni has traded in the strings and pianos of the Johnsons for a fully electronic soundscape, courtesy of co-producers Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never. There’s nothing minimal about this record, though – synths blare, drums explode, layers of enormous sound come barreling out at you.

And atop it all, there’s THAT voice. Anohni’s tenor is an incredible thing, powerful and mesmerizing, and hearing it in this completely new setting is revelatory. There’s an unearthly quality to that voice, and what was often tender and heartrending over an orchestra is a force of nature over these pummeling electronics. “4 Degrees” is a perfect case in point – its title phrase is a repeated mantra, building in force as drums burst like bombs and synths pulse. This is brand new, a total reinvention, and yet Anohni keeps the soul of what she does intact.

As you could probably tell from the title, Hopelessness is a dark record. It’s also explicitly political, in some fascinating ways. “Watch Me” is a ditty about the NSA: “I know you love me ‘cause you’re always watching me, in case I’m involved in evil, in case I’m involved in terrorism…” “Execution” is a danceable piece about violent death. “Obama” is a crawling noise sculpture on which Anohni expresses her disappointment with the current president: “Now the news is you are spying, executing without trial, betraying virtues, scarring closed the sky…” It’s a difficult listen, and not just because of the truths she sings. It’s discordant, thick as gristle.

And it contrasts beautifully with more traditional pieces like “I Don’t Love You Anymore.” You can almost imagine this one rendered in the Johnsons style, all crying violins, but it works well in this setting, Anohni’s voice quivering as subtle electronic percussion accents a droning organ. The title track marries a lilting melody to a web of synth pizzicato, and would have been a heartfelt conclusion.

But instead, she chooses “Marrow” as her parting statement, using plastic surgery as a metaphor: “Suck the oil out of her face, burn her hair, boil her skin, we are all Americans now.” It sounds like it should be angry, but she sings it with resignation, over a slow, spiraling track, one that sounds like sunrise. It’s a puzzling, off-kilter finish to a strong album, one that finds Anohni fully formed in this new incarnation, as human as ever, with the help of machines.

Perhaps it’s less of a surprise that David Bazan managed the same trick on his third solo album, Blanco. For one thing, Bazan – who made his name with indie-rock outfit Pedro the Lion – has done this electro thing before, collaborating with TW Walsh on the one and only Headphones album in 2005. Blanco sounds very similar, Bazan adapting his contemplative songwriting style to a bevy of synthetic sounds.

If you’re a Bazan fan, this will be even less of a surprise, since Blanco is a compilation of half of the online singles he’s released in the past couple years. For those of us who didn’t follow him down that particular rabbit hole, hearing the blip-blip synth bed of “Both Hands” at the start of this record is quite a shock. But as Blanco progresses, it becomes clear that this new style suits Bazan as well as anything he’s done. And in truth, he hasn’t changed much – take the burbling synths away and you’re left with classic Bazan, all sad melodies and pointed lyrics, led by that unmistakable voice.

He’s integrated his new style so well that by the time the shock of “Both Hands,” an opener about lack of communication, fades away, you’ll think of it as just another great, dark Bazan song. “Kept Secrets” is a classic, and coincidentally one of two to bring in Bazan’s acoustic guitar alongside his keyboards. It’s a song about lies and the damage they do to the liar: “Kept secrets flow down crooked slopes and cut a hundred river beds in valley floors below, every liar knows he’ll die alone, still you hide your hope and hedge your bets until the snow is white with ocean fog…”

If you’re invested in the life and happiness of David Bazan, Blanco will give you more reasons to worry about him. The lyrics are full of self-loathing, the stories spun are vicious, cutting to the heart. “I might have found someone who could love me, I might have found someone true, but I turn around and my life’s half over, and I’m with you,” begins “With You,” a song that ends up listing off his maladies, including paranoia, jet lag and alcohol. “Teardrops” is a difficult song about a car crash, the driver “having to admit you made another mistake.” “Someone Else’s Bet” is an on-the-road song in reverse, lamenting his partner’s long and lonely nights: “Telephone is ringing, bill collectors buy and sell, I may not be in heaven but you’re in hell…”

Throughout Blanco, Bazan seems unable to help himself rise up from the morass he’s found himself in. He tries – “Little Motor” is about getting up and moving forward – but it seems too difficult, and his hangdog voice only adds to his despair. The one moment of beauty on the album is “Trouble With Boys,” and it’s the one song that addresses the problems of another: a young woman’s difficulty relating to the opposite sex. “You are worthy of love,” he repeats, over and over again, and I hope Bazan takes his own words to heart.

Blanco is a tough record, but it’s not a tough listen. These songs stand proudly with the most memorable from his catalog, and the synth-driven setting lends new dimensions to his voice. As usual, the songs are so pretty that you have to dig deeper to find out how painful they are. I hope one day he can find enough love and hope to make an album full of the stuff. For now, I’ll have to settle for a musical transformation, and Bazan pulls this one off with aplomb. Blanco is a left turn, but it leads through a similar neighborhood, and for fans of the man and his work, that is both good and bad news. It’s a lovely album of dark songs, and even if it sounds a little different, it’s still pure David Bazan at heart.

Next week, some short records. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’ve waited a long time to like Radiohead again.

I remember the halcyon days of 1997, slipping on headphones and taking my first trip through OK Computer. I still contend that this complex, daring, difficult paean to paranoia is the best album the 1990s gave us. I can vividly recall how I felt as the album progressed, opening up new worlds and portals as it went. It’s such a triumph that I revisit it once every few months, still, and I’m unfailingly drawn in, amazed anew at the dazzling songs and the otherworldly sonic paints used to color them.

I also vividly remember 2000, when I was offered a chance to hear Radiohead’s follow-up, Kid A, in a local planetarium two weeks before its release. How perfect is that? Hearing the new Radiohead while the cosmos spins above your head? I was so thrilled at the prospect. And then, 40 minutes later, so let down by the actual record. It’s taken me some time to appreciate Kid A for what it is, and for how it set the template for Radiohead for the next 15 years. At the time, I just thought, “There weren’t any songs. They forgot to write any songs.”

I’ve definitely warmed to Kid A over the years, but ever since then, the band has seemingly forgotten how to reach the heights they scaled on OK Computer. Every album since has been varying shades of disappointing in comparison. The best of the bunch, 2007’s In Rainbows, was notable more for its pay-what-you-want surprise independent release strategy than for its actual music, though it contained many of my favorite latter-day Radiohead songs. (“All I Need,” “House of Cards,” “Reckoner.”) Most of the music Radiohead has made since the ‘90s has been cold, distant, electronic and formless, a far cry from the passionate, complicated, organic work of their first few efforts.

I’ve become so used to what they do, so inured to the band’s pitter-patter-and-moan style, that I’ve begun to roll with it. 2011’s The King of Limbs is one of their most insular recordings, and yet I could hear what they were trying to do, and how intricately they were trying to do it. I think I settled in. If this was Radiohead now, I thought, I’m going to try to enjoy it. I’m going to hear “Morning Mr. Magpie” as an intentional song, not as some half-assed, go-nowhere sheet of ice. And I’ll be OK with it.

So what does the band do next? Only their warmest and most beautiful record ever.

As per usual, Radiohead announced the existence of their ninth album, the hyphen-deficient A Moon Shaped Pool, mere days before releasing it on their website. Even from the early singles, you could tell this one was different. Jonny Greenwood’s side career scoring films has never had a greater impact on a Radiohead album – his strings were the driving force of lead single “Burn the Witch” and provided gorgeous color to “Daydreaming,” the slow, dark second single. Both of these songs suffer from the same deficiency of melody as anything the band has done since 2000, but I can’t overstate just how powerful the orchestral instrumentation is, and how energized Thom Yorke sounds by it on “Witch.”

I also can’t overstate how thrilling it is to press play on a new Radiohead album and hear those scraping strings kick things off. Greenwood has integrated the orchestra with the computerized drums and bass beautifully, and the massive, pulsing sound buoys Yorke’s high-and-wavery voice like nothing has in many years. As a song, it’s just OK, but as a statement of intent, it’s pretty awesome.

“Daydreaming,” which follows, actually sets more of the tone for the album – this is the slowest, most patient record Radiohead has made. They let these songs bloom in their own time. “Daydreaming” lasts more than six minutes, and for most of that time, a beautiful tinkling piano provides a bed of snow for Greenwood’s thick violins, some interplanetary ambience and Yorke’s quiet whispers. Not much happens, but for the first time in a long while, not much has to.

I haven’t enjoyed the first two songs on a Radiohead album as much as those two in more than a decade, and the rest of A Moon Shaped Pool doesn’t let me down. The focus here is on beauty – pianos and acoustic guitars abound, violins slip in undetected and offer caresses, songs have lilting tunes and Yorke sings them gracefully. The songs are arranged in alphabetical order, for some reason, and I wonder if that was simply the way it shook out, or if the band renamed some of the tracks to achieve that effect. Either way, A Moon Shaped Pool is in exactly the right order.

Take, for instance, the switch from “Desert Island Disk,” an acoustic love song that brings Nick Drake to mind, to “Ful Stop,” the album’s one driving-at-night propulsive dirge. “Desert” concludes with the full band completing their barely-perceptible crescendo, Yorke repeating that “different types of love are possible” while they play out. “Ful Stop” begins as if it will continue the softer tone, strings and ambient keys creating a dark atmosphere, but then a double-time drum loop takes things up a notch, joined in short order by drummer Phil Selway and the full band. It’s yet another case of a song that doesn’t really change, but doesn’t really have to. “Ful Stop” raises the pressure, with the quiet, elegiac “Glass Eyes” waiting to cool it down again.

As usual, Yorke’s lyrics are difficult to decipher, but this one seems to contain a lot of heartache and longing. Which makes sense – he separated from his partner of 23 years last summer, and such upheaval cannot help but inform his words. That the band has stepped up and provided him with the most gorgeous settings he’s ever had for those words, and that he sounds so engaged with them, is magical. “Broken hearts make it rain,” Yorke repeats on “Identikit” (the one showcase for Ed O’Brien’s electric guitar), and while I’m not sure what that means, exactly, it sounds like he does, and his emotional investment radiates out.

Nowhere is that investment more obvious than on the closing song. The band has been playing “True Love Waits” so long that it’s old enough to drink – they included a strummy acoustic version on 2001’s live album I Might Be Wrong, and it sounded very much like a song written during the ‘90s alt-rock ballad craze. It’s always been a beautiful one, though, and one of Yorke’s most emotionally direct. Now, two decades on, “True Love Waits” has finally found its studio album home. Here it’s a piano duet, its gossamer framework threatening to shatter at any time. The melody, thank the lord, remains the same, but listen to Yorke pleading the refrain: “Just don’t leave, don’t leave.” I think he’s sadder here than I have ever heard him.

And it’s so moving. Having been in love with this song since first hearing it 15 years ago, I can’t even tell you what this version does to me. It’s like Yorke wrote this song in his 20s, but had to wait until his 40s to really understand and inhabit it. I know what that’s like. I wrote songs of heartbreak in my 20s, and I listen now, and even though I had no idea what I was talking about then, they feel stronger and more important now. Yorke and Radiohead spent a lot of time over the past two decades obfuscating, blurring out, staying hidden. And here they are at last, giving us quiet and simple heartache, giving us “just don’t leave.” In the end, that’s what matters. The flowery language, the intricate clockwork of intellect and purpose, they all fade. A piano plays a simple arpeggio. Just don’t leave. Don’t leave.

And that is how they leave. There are rumors that A Moon Shaped Pool might be the final Radiohead album, and if it is, they could not have chosen a more open, yearning, powerful way to exit. I sincerely hope it isn’t, though. Not now, when they’ve finally figured out how to make me invest and respond again. I’ve been intrigued, captivated, confounded, awed, befuddled and delighted by Radiohead over their long history, but this may be the first album they’ve gifted us with that makes me feel this intensely. I’ve waited a long time to like Radiohead again. I’m so glad I did.

Next week, James Blake and a few others. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’ve been slowing down the pace at which I consume and write about music lately, and it’s already having both positive and negative impacts. On the one hand, I’m pretty sure I know what I want to say about Beyonce’s Lemonade now. But on the other hand, I’m weeks late, and I’ve completely missed the cultural conversation about this record.

That’s OK, though. It’s not a conversation I need to be in. As a suburban white guy from the Midwest, my voice isn’t one that needs to be heard, my thoughts on this paean to black womanhood aren’t ones that need to be amplified. I’m overjoyed that the conversation about Lemonade has been led by the people for whom it was intended and with whom it most strongly resonates. (Here is a good example of the kind of piece I’m talking about.)

Another reason my voice isn’t an important one: up until a couple weeks ago, I haven’t paid much attention to Beyonce as an artist. I’ve enjoyed a couple songs, I’ve always liked her voice, and I staunchly defended “Formation” earlier this year when people accused it of being anti-police. (It isn’t.) But I’ve never heard any of her albums, and never felt a strong artistic attraction to what she does. So I’ve missed whatever maturation led to Lemonade, an album so far beyond what I expected from Beyonce that it left me dazed. And I also missed her building up the cachet and the platform to make a meaningful statement like this. Lemonade is for the millions of people who have kept up, who knew that something like this was in her. You should listen to them.

But if you are interested in what I think about it, I’m happy to tell you: I like it a lot.

The basics: Lemonade is a 40-minute album and an hour-long film packaged together, and they are different angles on the same experience. Both tell the story of a woman finding out that her man has cheated on her, and the songs cycle through emotions: denial, anger, apathy, emptiness, through to resurrection, hope and redemption. Along the way, Beyonce draws parallels between her man and her father, and draws strength from black women who came before her and are all around her. The record is unequivocally about her husband Jay-Z and their struggles to keep their marriage together after his infidelity. But like the best art, it’s about so much more than that.

But even if it were just about that, Lemonade would be a triumph. Its songs are as different from each other as they are from the previous songs of hers I’ve heard. They’re raw and authentic in a way I was not expecting – the anger in the first half feels like a geyser exploding, and the forgiveness and hope in the second half feels earned. It’s also musically interesting from front to back – this is an album that features guest spots from Jack White, James Blake and Kendrick Lamar, and not only does it make room for all of them, it plays like a single piece, like a suite.

It opens, as it must, with Beyonce finding out that she’s been cheated on, and reacting with denial, then rage. The loping “Hold Up” will forever be tied to images of Beyonce with a baseball bat, smashing in car windows, and as the album’s weakest song, it still makes an impression. The real stuff begins with “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” which is like jabbing at a wound and watching the blood gush. “Who the fuck do you think I am?” Beyonce growls, before scolding her lover: “When you hurt me, you hurt yourself, don’t hurt yourself.” It ends with a chilling verse, if you’re Jay-Z: “This is your final warning, you know I give you life, if you try this shit again, you gonna lose your wife.”

This is the stuff of tabloids, a vicious airing of dirty laundry, and yet throughout, Beyonce keeps the focus squarely on herself and how she feels. This isn’t an album about Jay-Z, this is an album about how one of the world’s most powerful women dealt with heartache and betrayal. It’s entirely internal, even the kiss-off “Sorry,” on which she insists over and over that she “ain’t thinkin’ ‘bout you.” (“Today I regret the day I put that ring on,” she sings, before calling out “Becky with the good hair.”) “Sorry” leads into “6-Inch,” and its attendant emotion is emptiness – this is Beyonce hitting the clubs, trying to shake off her pain, reveling in her image, yet still ending things with a plaintive plea: “Come back, come back, come back,” her voice breaking like her façade.

From here, the album turns. The songs get more organic, the emotions more foregrounded. I was stunned by “Daddy Lessons,” which complicates the narrative and the musical palette. Opening with a down-south brass band and sliding into a country-pop shuffle, “Daddy Lessons” finds Beyonce reminiscing about her own father, and how he told her to deal with men like himself (and, by implication, Jay-Z): “When trouble comes around, when men like me come to town, my daddy said shoot, my daddy said shoot…”

The strength and resolve she was taught at an early age manifest in the early songs of defiance and anger, but it’s this same strength that powers the second half of the album, on which she allows herself vulnerability and remains whole. The floating “Love Drought” finds her asking “what did I do wrong,” and then remembering that she did nothing wrong. The gorgeous piano ballad “Sandcastles” is a lament for her marriage – she’s willing to let it go, but she’s hollowed out by the thought. This song sports her most emotional vocal, and I mean that not in the American Idol sense of emoting for effect, I mean that in the “I feel like I’m eavesdropping on her pain” kind of way. “I scratched out your name and your face, what is it about you that I can’t erase,” she sings, like she’s tearing out both her heart and her throat. “Every promise don’t work out that way,” she sighs, then sits for a minute while James Blake sings the coda, “Forward.”

That leads into the amazing, extraordinary “Freedom,” the album’s most outward-looking song. Over marching drums and a thick organ, Beyonce sings of healing and self-love: “I’m’a keep running ‘cause a winner don’t quit on themselves.” On the visual album, Beyonce draws power from a legacy of black womanhood, and it’s jaw-dropping and powerful. Kendrick Lamar contributes a killer verse, a gospel choir fills in the spaces, the sound erupts. It is the most forceful expression of inner strength on the album, and it ends with Beyonce’s grandmother delivering the album title.

And to this point, it feels like Jay-Z should be expecting his walking papers. That’s what makes “All Night” so beautiful. A song of love and reconciliation, “All Night” is a smooth, joyous thing. It finds Beyonce still cautious – she needs time to know if she can trust – but ready to move forward. “Our love was stronger than your pride,” she sings, simply reveling in it. “Nothing real can be threatened, true love brings salvation back into me.”

I get teary-eyed at this song, not just because it’s gorgeous, but because it follows “Freedom.” She spends ten songs earning her power, expressing her strength, and in the end she chooses love, not because she has to, but because she wants to. Her reconciliation is not weakness, her forgiveness is not capitulation. There’s work to be done, and “All Night” is a song about committing to do that work, to not walk away even when she has every right to. The beautiful images of her family that accompany this song in the film only make it so much sweeter. It’s not a choice everyone can or should make – much of the album is about having the will to walk away – but I love that she made that choice, and how she made it.

The album ends with “Formation,” like closing credits music (literally, on the visual album). An expression of southern black female power, it carries on the work of self-reflection and self-love that drives the record, and serves as a call to arms. In some ways I would have preferred closing the album with “All Night,” but as a mission statement, “Formation” works. It also drives home just who this album is for, who it is meant to empower.

There is enough about Lemonade that is universal, however – love and anger and pain and reconciliation – that it will reverberate strongly with anyone who hears it. It’s obvious that my years of ignoring Beyonce as an artistic force (if not a cultural one) were a mistake. I’m on board now. Lemonade is a revelation, an album that is as vital and powerful as everyone says it is. It spoke to me in ways I did not expect, and has captivated me ever since. As I said at the beginning, nobody needs me to recommend Lemonade. But I’ll do it anyway. It surprised me, it moved me, and it has taken its place among my favorite things I’ve heard this year.

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A couple short trips before I go.

I love ‘90s shoegaze music, so of course I’m overjoyed that seemingly all of the ‘90s shoegaze bands are reuniting. My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Swervedriver and Medicine have all returned with new albums, and now it’s Lush’s turn. I always reservedly liked this English quartet led by Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson, and while they weren’t at the top of my list, I followed them through their twists and turns, from the pretty soundscapes of Spooky and Split to the crunchy Britpop of the underrated Lovelife. It was a seismic shift, and rendered them considerably more normal than their previous material, but Lovelife is hooky and loud as hell.

They might have continued in this vein, but the suicide of drummer Chris Acland in 1996 broke the band. Now, after 20 years apart, the three surviving members of Lush have reunited (with drummer Justin Welch of Elastica), and the first fruits of their second act have appeared on a four-song EP called Blind Spot. Stylistically, this sumptuously packaged platter is more in line with the early material, which means we get acoustic strumming with lovely reverbed electric snow sculptures carved into it. “Out of Control” could have been a single from Spooky, and the rest of the EP follows suit. It’s truly wonderful to have this band back, and I’m looking forward to the forthcoming full-length. Viva la shoegaze! (Now we just need The Moon Seven Times to get back together…)

Speaking of pretty noise, there’s a splendid new Julianna Barwick album.

Barwick is a Brooklyn musician who creates astonishing sonic caverns with her voice. She multi-tracks and overlays and loops that voice, often constructing entire structures with only the one raw ingredient. Her third album Will features thick synth strings and piano as well, and fewer of those towering vocals, and the effect is a more immediate and intimate record. It was recorded largely in isolation, like most of her work, but this one even sounds private, like you’re listening to unfinished pieces, as if she were playing them for you as a friend.

That’s a subtle yet profound shift for Barwick – her previous work wasn’t exactly inaccessible, but until you get used to it, it’s not exactly welcoming either. Will feels like an attempt to reach out her hand and draw you in, and that makes it her warmest album. If you’re new to her work, you could do worse than starting here. I feel like she might want you to.

Next week, Radiohead’s big surprise. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I have realized that I buy too much music.

I don’t mean to say that I think you can have too much music. Music is wonderful and infinite, and my appetite for it is bottomless. If it did not enrich me beyond my meager ability to convey, I wouldn’t buy so much of it. But the truth is that I just don’t have the time to absorb and write about all the music I buy. I am looking at my 2016 pile right now, and there are about 50 CDs I simply haven’t listened to. They’re sitting there, taunting me.

Also taunting me are the two dozen or so albums I have heard and haven’t had the time to write about. I’ve been spending a lot of my attention on Beyonce’s Lemonade lately, and I’ll be waxing ecstatic about that next week. But this time, I thought I would try to catch up. And the only way to do that is to write fewer words. This will be my former editor John Russell’s favorite column – short and to the point. I wish it didn’t have to be this way, because all of these albums deserve more consideration. I think you should buy all of these, just to be clear up front. Here’s my truncated pitch for each of them.

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Rufus Wainwright has lately been juggling twin careers as a pop songwriter and an orchestral composer, following up the snazzy Out of the Game with his first opera, Prima Donna. But he’s rarely combined those instincts as well as he does on his strange and wonderful new record, Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets.

As the title suggests, this album finds Wainwright composing music to nine of William Shakespeare’s sonnets, perhaps the most famous and well-studied verses in the English language. It takes a lot to get us to hear these sonnets anew, but Wainwright spares nothing to create a fresh experience here. The musical numbers are interspersed with readings by recognizable voices like Carrie Fisher, Helena Bonham Carter and William Shatner, and the songs move back and forth between full-on opera and hypnotic pop-rock.

Half of those songs feature full orchestration by Wainwright and vocals by soprano Anna Prohaska, who sings them with strength and beauty. The other half, produced by longtime compadre Marius de Vries, are rhythmic mantras with perfectly Rufus-like circular melodies, often accompanied by big guitars. The poppiest of these, Sonnet 29, features Florence Welch taking a guest turn, but it’s followed in short order by Christopher Nell and Jurgen Holtz singing Sonnet 66 in German for six spellbinding minutes.

Throughout, Wainwright proves that setting Shakespeare sonnets to music is a responsibility he takes seriously. Take All My Loves is a thoughtful and vibrant record, throwing one surprise after another at you until its gloriously sad conclusion. It’s like nothing else he’s done, but feels like an album he was all but destined to make. In a lot of ways, this is a culmination point for him, bringing together all the disparate strands of his career to date and weaving them into song. It’s gorgeous.

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There were two things that got me to buy Sturgill Simpson’s excellent new album, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth. First, there’s the cover. It’s just a beautiful piece of work, a dark portrait of a boat being tossed by formidable waves. Second, there was Simpson’s terrific performance of his revelatory cover of Nirvana’s “In Bloom” on The Daily Show. During the post-song interview, Simpson mentioned that this album is intended as a letter to his son about what he’ll have to face as he grows up. I love concepts like that. I was in.

And I’m so glad I took this plunge. Simpson is a country singer – he has that pinched twang down pat – but A Sailor’s Guide is only nominally a country album. It’s sometimes a blues record, sometimes a soul platter, sometimes full-on rock and roll. Simpson enlisted the Dap-Kings horn section to add a meaty swagger to much of these tunes, resulting in a brief yet killer set of diverse material. His voice sits nicely above all of these things, even if you think it might not. Listen to how confidently he sings the bluesy “Keep It Between the Lines,” with its dusky sax solos, and then slides into “Sea Stories,” a traditional country number. It all works.

It’s the concept that keeps this all flowing nicely. It starts with birth (“Hello, my son, welcome to Earth, you may not be my last but you’ll always be my first”), and moves through all the different lessons he wants to impart to his son. The single “Brace for Impact (Live a Little)” is about exactly that: getting out there and enjoying life. “All Around You” is about God and death: “Long after I’m gone I’ll still be around, because our bond is eternal and so is love, God is inside you, all around and up above, knowing, showing you the way…”

Hearing Simpson’s “In Bloom” is one of the few times I have been glad that Nirvana existed. Included just because it was a song he enjoyed as a kid, this version piles on horns and strings and steel guitars and finds a depth that I never heard in the original. The album ends with the angry “Call to Arms,” in which Simpson urges his son to “turn off the TV, turn off the news,” and while I wish there had been a tenth song, one of hope, this song crashes the album to a close nicely. A Sailor’s Guide to Earth is a strong piece of work, worthy of its cover, and worth your time.

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I fell in love with the Boxer Rebellion in much the same way – I thought the cover of their third album, The Cold Still, looked intriguing. I pressed play, and in four minutes and two seconds (the length of stunning opening track “No Harm”), I was smitten. The Boxer Rebellion is everything I want the National to be – they’re atmospheric without being dour, they write mantras without sacrificing melody and feeling, they take every opportunity to soar.

After four albums of this, I can see why they needed a change. In fact, after the so-so Promises, I figured I’d be in for something different next time. And if I had to put money on it, I probably could have predicted exactly what they did. Their fifth album, Ocean by Ocean, is electronic – guitar washes have been replaced by synth washes, the drums now go pitter-patter, and everything has a more electric blue feeling to it. And when bands do this, there’s always a good possibility that it will suck.

Ocean by Ocean doesn’t suck. In fact, I’d say the band made this transition with remarkable grace. The secret, I think, is that the songs are like they always were. You can easily hear a tune like “Big Ideas” or “Pull Yourself Together” in the “classic” Boxer Rebellion style. Nathan Nicholson’s voice retains that lovely, plaintive feel. They’ve changed only the one thing, keeping the essence of who they are and what they do. Even the dance-y “Let’s Disappear” sounds like the Boxer Rebellion to me.

If you were worried, don’t be. This record doesn’t even sound transitional – it’s a purposeful step into new sonic territory, with everything you ever loved about the band intact.

* * * * *

Explosions in the Sky have attempted a similar trick with their new album, The Wilderness. And although they haven’t done it quite as well, they’ve made a pretty lovely little record in the bargain.

For six albums, Explosions worked the same formula, crafting pretty post-rock guitar soundscapes that built and built into molten lava. They’ve been growing up and calming down for a while now, and The Wilderness is the first of their records that never, well, explodes in the sky. This more placid tone is paired with a new reliance on synthesizers and computer drums, so while the sound is still recognizable (particularly on organic numbers like “Tangle Formations”), it feels like a new chapter beginning.

Still, I miss the fire of previous Explosions records, the almost unbearable crescendo into exultation. Most of The Wilderness is calm and pretty and murky, and while the thick synths on “Logic of a Dream” try to make up for the rushing wind of guitars, they end up filling it out differently. This is still a fine record – it’s not forgettable background wallpaper, by any means. But if you loved what this band was, you may have to take some time to love what they are now.

* * * * *

Happily, the new Hammock album requires no such waiting period.

Since 2005, Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson have been creating some of the most beautiful noise you’ve ever heard. Hammock music is mostly instrumental, driven by Byrd’s gorgeous ambient reverbed guitar sound, and as big as the southern sky. Their ninth album is called Everything and Nothing, it’s 76 minutes long (94 with the bonus tracks), and is one of their most fully realized efforts. It also rocks a little bit more than they have in a while, as you’ll hear as early as the second track, “Clarity,” a Choir-esque rhythmic wonder that sounds like driving through a glass tunnel underwater.

Everything and Nothing is Hammock’s most accessible album in some time, too, thanks mainly to the six songs with lyrics and vocals. Byrd duets on these songs with his wife, Christine, who is quite rightly credited with “angelic vocals.” Songs like “Glassy Blue” are pure shoegaze pop, while “Dissonance” sounds straight out of the Slowdive playbook, swirling rhythm guitars bringing the dream of the early ‘90s back alive. When these songs are playing, Hammock is the best shoegaze band on the planet.

I love the instrumentals even more. A track like the haunting “We Could Have Been Beautiful Again” sums up so much of what I adore about this band – the sound is gentle as a stream and as vast as an ocean, all at once. After an ambient experiment and an album with an orchestra and choir, it’s a joy to hear Hammock sounding like themselves again, especially for such a long album. It closes with a beautiful vocal track, “Unspoken,” and a coda, “Before You Float Away into Nothing,” that will leave you happily drained.

Nothing I can say will replace the experience of hearing Hammock for yourself, so you should. They’ve been the very best at what they do for a long time, and they show no signs of relinquishing the crown.

* * * * *

Before I go, I wanted to mention a pair of reissues that have planted themselves in my brain lately as well.

There’s no point in trying to explain what Adam Again’s Dig means to me. I heard it pretty late in my exploration of indie Christian music, and I knew Gene Eugene mainly as a producer and studio owner. Dig was the first of his band’s five albums I heard, and it was exactly what I was looking for at exactly the right time. The album contains three of my very favorite songs – “Dig,” “Worldwide” and “River on Fire,” songs that I have carried with me for more than 20 years, singing to myself at my lowest points. Gene Eugene died 16 years ago, and his absence still hurts.

The wonderful Jeffrey Kotthoff at Lo-Fidelity Records has just remastered and reissued Dig on CD and vinyl. You can hear it here, and you will not regret taking 50 minutes out of your day to do so. I’m so grateful for the chance to own this album in such a beautiful new form, and I hope it reaches many new ears. Like yours, for instance.

And finally, you may recall that at the start of the year, I was (to put it mildly) excited about Klayton’s plans to reissue his work as Circle of Dust. You may know Klayton as Celldweller, that brilliant purveyor of electro-rock-metal-pop-dub-futuristic-amalgam craziness. Before he was Celldweller, he was Circle of Dust, making angry industrial metal in a dank corner of the music industry. The first two of those reissues, the self-titled and Brainchild, are now out, and they’re marvelous. The sound is leagues better than it’s ever been, the bonus material is fun, and the new Circle of Dust songs Klayton’s been whipping up are terrific. After the five reissues are out, Klayton has promised a new Circle of Dust album, and the prospect is thrilling. Check Circle of Dust out here.

And that’s it. Next week, we drink Lemonade. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Prince is dead.

Prince is dead and I don’t know how to start talking about it.

There has been, and will continue to be, a tendency to make bold and sweeping statements about Prince’s undeniable genius and thoroughly individual place in pop culture. Prince redefined black artistry in the ‘80s, made it safe (as David Bowie had a generation before) to express any kind of identity (sexual or otherwise) you wanted to, used his global superstardom to champion unknown artists (mostly artists of color), and maintained a prodigious, peculiar and often brilliant level of output up until his final days. From first to last, Prince did exactly what he wanted to do, and he had the astonishing talent to back up that confidence.

Prince was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of musician, once who could stand tall with (and usually surpass) the greats of pop and rock music. He was Marvin Gaye, Jimi Hendrix and James Brown rolled into one. There’s a great video going around of Prince tearing into the guitar solo in an all-star tribute rendition of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” simultaneously showing up and delighting Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Steve Winwood and George Harrison’s son Dhani. It’s prime Prince – he strides into the song like he strode into pop culture, with a grin and a swagger and the chops to go with it, and he basically redefines that performance, wrapping it around himself before tossing his guitar and bounding off stage as quickly as he arrived.

Lots of people have been and will be talking about all of these things, and they’re all true and worth talking about. Others will do a much better job than I would of saying all of that. For me, though, the loss of Prince is a more personal one. Prince has provided a consistent soundtrack to my entire life, and knowing that I won’t get to hear any more new music from him hurts more than I expected it would.

I think I can safely say that “1999” was my first Prince song. I was eight years old when it came out, and I vividly remember hearing both that and “Little Red Corvette” on my mother’s car radio as she drove me to whatever sporting practice I’d been enrolled in that year. I was never an outgoing kid – before music, I had books, and I was quite all right with that – and my parents, with the best of intentions, tried to make me more social by signing me up for soccer and gymnastics and basketball and Cub Scouts and on and on. The best part, for me, of all of these things was the drive back and forth, with the radio on.

As it happens, I can’t remember a world without “1999” and “Little Red Corvette” in it. 1999, which turned out to be Prince’s breakthrough record, was released the same year as Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and I similarly cannot remember a world without “Beat It” and “Billie Jean” and “Thriller.” It was a great year to become musically conscious, I can tell you that. Two years later Purple Rain came out, and Prince was everywhere, and even though I was only 10, I knew “Let’s Go Crazy” and “When Doves Cry” from the radio.

I know we had MTV by that point, but the first Prince video I remember seeing was “U Got the Look”, from his 1987 masterpiece Sign O the Times. And holy hell, did 13-year-old me love that video. Prince was like no one I had ever seen before. Those sunglasses. That white fur coat. There was something seamy and sexy about the video – as a good Christian kid, I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to be watching it, even though I had no idea what “this love is good, let’s get to ramming” could possibly mean. I was thoroughly intrigued.

Sign O the Times was the first Prince album I heard all the way through, too. My cousin Carol, a few years older than me, had it on cassette, and during one of our family get-togethers in New Hampshire that year, I snuck away with my Walkman and headphones and listened. (This is also how I heard The Joshua Tree for the first time.) It was awesome and befuddling. I couldn’t wrap my little mind around songs like “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker,” and “If I Was Your Girlfriend” kind of scared me. Prince was always at his best pushing at the comfort zones, being explicit and vulnerable and frank. That song is all of those things, and I’d never heard anything like it.

I didn’t buy Sign O the Times, because I was 13 and had no money. I had a job by 14 and could have bought Lovesexy, but I didn’t, because it was called Lovesexy and featured a naked Prince on the cover, and both of those things confused my still-developing mind. (I really missed out. Lovesexy is awesome.) But I did buy the Batman soundtrack, making it my first Prince album. If Batman the film was for kids, Batman the soundtrack absolutely was not. I knew by then what songs like “Lemon Crush” and “Scandalous” were about, but I still felt sort of embarrassed by them.

But I was still drawn in, and I think I know why: Prince’s best material is usually his sexiest, and his very best examines the tension between his deep religious convictions and his desire. Throughout his career, Prince looked at this dichotomy through many different lenses, and tried again and again to bring them together, to treat sex as holy and sacramental, to equate the ecstasy of sex with that of being close to God. His entire catalog can be seen as an extended dissertation on this act of reconciliation, his nearly 40-year attempt to bring the sacred and the profane into harmony.

As a teenage Christian, I was going through a similar thing, and Prince gave me the most sexually upfront art I’d ever encountered. (Keep in mind that I was still listening to Petra at the time.) Prince loved God (you couldn’t listen to a song like “The Cross” and come away with any other conclusion) and he loved sex. This was new to me, and it resonated. (Also, “Batdance” was freaking great.) Naturally I bought all of Prince’s prior records as soon as I could, which means I heard Dirty Mind and Controversy while in high school, which is pretty much the best time to hear Dirty Mind and Controversy.

At the same time, I was growing as a music listener, paying attention to credits and figuring out how it all worked. Prince’s albums contained a credit I’d never seen: “Produced, arranged, composed and performed by Prince.” The man did literally everything on the majority of his material, and even at 15, I was pretty impressed by that. (Still am impressed, for the record.)

In 1992 I graduated high school and went north to Maine for college. Some albums very definitively remind me of that year – Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, for instance, or (lord help me) the Spin Doctors’ Pocket Full of Kryptonite. One of those albums is definitely the one Prince named after an unpronounceable symbol, a symbol he would soon adopt as his name.

This record is amazing. It’s the apex of the New Power Generation, and of Prince’s dalliance with rap, and it simply glows with ambition. I worked at our college radio station, which was unlike other college radio stations in that it had a constricting top 40 format, and I would always look forward to playing “7,” one of the strangest smash singles I can think of. The album was progressive and slinky and sexy, and I adored it, even if I would still listen to songs like “Blue Light” and “The Continental” on headphones, blushing.

At that point, that was it. I was in. I’d fully recognized that Prince was an absolute genius, a musician unlike any other I could name. I was a committed fan, which means I was paying rapt attention as he started writing the word “SLAVE” on his cheek and vowing never to record for Warner Bros. again. I graduated from college in 1996 and started working at Face Magazine in Portland, and The Gold Experience was a big part of my soundtrack. (This one’s impossibly underrated.) And I was amazed when, mere months after completing his contract with Warner, Prince issued Emancipation, a three-hour album of new songs. Three hours! I’m listening to it right now, and it ranges from pretty good to very good. It’s quite an achievement.

And yeah, I joined in the ribbing when he started calling himself the Artist Formerly Known as Prince (or just The Artist for short), but I still tracked down his b-sides set Crystal Ball just to hear The Truth, the wonderful acoustic bonus disc. I suffered through Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic and reveled in the jazzy wonder of The Rainbow Children, Prince’s first album after converting to the Jehovah’s Witness faith. This conversion brought his lifelong dichotomy into sharp relief – he stopped playing his more explicit songs, and sang more openly about God. I was 28 and working for a weekly newspaper in Indiana, and I remember calling up my boss, a fellow Prince fan, breathlessly excited by how good The Rainbow Children was. (I made her a copy. She didn’t like it.)

I’d fallen on difficult times by 2004 – I was working in the HR department of a spice factory, of all things – but Prince’s almighty comeback record, Musicology, made things more bearable. I’ve never lost track of him since. (I even imported 20Ten, an album he released for free over in Europe, and loved it.) Prince has been such a consistent presence in our culture, he was like the atmosphere – we took him for granted. I never saw Prince play live. “He’ll be around forever,” I thought. I even failed to hear what turned out to be his final album, HitnRun Phase Two – I’d been waiting for a physical release. There was no rush for me. He’s Prince, he’ll have another record out in six or seven months anyway.

Prince died last Thursday after a weeks-long bout of the flu. He was only 57.

And so now I’m left to look back at all this history, and all this incredible music, and figure out what Prince has meant to me. He’s been with me my whole life, and I’ve never really thought about what I would say when he was gone. Part of me thought I’d never need to consider that, and another part thought I wouldn’t need to for at least 30 years. To lose him so young, and so suddenly, is a crime. This year has been particularly brutal to artists and musicians. 2016 has taken David Bowie, and now my generation’s David Bowie. And it’s only April.

So what does Prince mean to me? What have I learned from 30-plus years of listening to his work? Why am I so deeply affected by his death? Could I possibly put it into words?

Not yet. But here is what I know.

I’m never going to find another musician like Prince. He was one of a kind, and deliberately, determinedly so. He played two dozen instruments, possessed a versatile and powerful voice, made great-sounding records, wrote hundreds of tremendous songs, mapped out complex arrangements in his head, and to top it all off, was one of the best guitar players who ever lived. He made nearly 50 albums in his 37-year recording career, and even the worst of them feels authentic and sparkles with originality and musicianship. As a live performer, he was unbeatable, a force of nature. My generation only produced one Prince, and no one could top him.

But more than that, Prince was always wonderfully, magically himself. He did everything with an almost superhuman confidence, gliding through the world like a visitor from some other plane, warping reality around him. He was sexy because he believed he was sexy, cool because he believed he was cool. And if that helped a shy and awkward kid to embrace the weirder parts of himself and live more openly, I imagine that helped millions of other shy and awkward kids just like me. And for that I am immensely thankful.

A friend of mine made the point that Prince’s death hurts, in part, because he was still so vital, so at the top of his game. We’ve been cheated out of the 20 or 30 albums he would have made in the coming decades, and the years of live shows, and all the music in the vault that we will no doubt get to hear now won’t make up for that. Prince’s death is senseless and cruel, and has robbed the world of everything he would have done in his later years. It is, in many ways, the deepest cut in a year full of them.

But I’m choosing to be thankful for the enormous amount of music he did gift us with, and for the years we had him. It’s going to feel very strange never buying another new Prince album, never hearing another new Prince song. The air has changed, the world is different, the things we take for granted seem less certain. Hold tight to the people you love, cherish the things you enjoy. Life goes by, and baby, it’s much too fast.

Rest in peace, Prince.

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See you in line Tuesday morning.

Marillion’s new album is called Fuck Everyone and Run.

If you wanted a clear sign that 2016 is one of the bleakest years ever, there it is. Marillion, traditionally one of the most thoughtful and hopeful bands on the planet, has chosen that title for their forthcoming 18th opus. And I believe Steve Hogarth when he says that the title phrase is sung in sadness, as a resigned condemnation of the self-centered and cynical world. I hope they let some light get in, but man, it’s a gray-toned year.

No album recently has epitomized that bleakness like Painting of a Panic Attack, the fifth record from Scottish band Frightened Rabbit. I was very much looking forward to it, after the powerhouse that was Pedestrian Verse, but I find I can barely listen to it. Part of the problem is that it was produced by Aaron Dressner of the National, whose sonic palette seems to be deliberately designed to grate on my nerves. Dressner has washed out all the verve here, leaving the band sounding half-awake, and the band has responded by writing some of their most boring, most National-esque songs. The preponderance of electronics don’t really help or hurt – they’re not bold enough to count as a change in style, they’re kind of just there, like the rest of this.

Combine that with an unrelenting first-person dreariness on songs like “I Wish I Was Sober” and “Woke Up Hurting” and “An Otherwise Disappointing Life” and “Die Like a Rich Boy” and “Break,” and it just gets overwhelmingly gray. Only “Still Want to Be Here” allows any optimism, but the sound, beige and listless, remains. The album is a dark cloud that the band sounds lost in, and it doesn’t make for a rewarding listen.

It’s especially oppressive lately, when here in Chicagoland, the weather has been gorgeous.

I took time out from work yesterday to indulge in a three-mile walk outside. I spent quite a bit of time last night just hanging out looking at the sky. Spring is finally here, and in fact we seem to have vaulted spring and headed straight for summer. If I wore shorts, I would be wearing shorts. It’s the kind of weather you dream about.

And that means it’s time to put away the drearier things for a while and lighten up. Of course, we’re living in a society that considers Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice to be a frothy summer film. I get depressed just reading about it. It’s not just Frightened Rabbit darkening up the music world, either. This week PJ Harvey returned with a difficult record about injustice and crumbling communities. Even Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros are getting serious on their new one. I’m rather loving the new Colin Stetson record, but it’s called Sorrow, for pity’s sake.

So what do we need, right now? We need Weezer.

I know, I know. Conventional wisdom holds that no one has needed Weezer since 1996 or so. Look, I love the Blue Album and Pinkerton as much as anyone (well, maybe not anyone), but to write off the nine albums since is to erase from history some of the best jaunty guitar pop of the past 20 years. Rivers Cuomo clearly exorcised some personal demons on Pinkerton, although it really isn’t the heart-on-sleeve masterpiece that many people claim. And since the band re-formed in 2001, he’s been on a mission to have as much fun as possible.

I say he’s done it. Has any band enjoyed the ride they’re on as much as Weezer has? From the first post-Pinkerton album, Cuomo has displayed a devil-may-care attitude about his own work. That waned somewhat when he shot for hit singles on Make Believe and the Red Album, but even those disasterpieces were flippant and funny and contained some gems. (I adore “The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived,” for instance.)

You never know what you’re going to get with Weezer, and Cuomo seems to fly by instinct most of the time. He’ll duet with Lil’ Wayne one moment and get Michael Cera to play mandolin the next. He’ll call a song about missing his socks “Where’s My Sex.” He’ll put out a record called Death to False Metal. He’ll sing about girls from high school who grew up hot, and then about lonely robots. And through it all, he remains exuberantly tuneful, writing sharp and hooky pop songs and playing them through cranked-up amps.

I have been on the post-Pinkerton Weezer train for longer than many of my fellow critics (I loved and still love Raditude, one of the band’s most reviled), but lately I think people are starting to come around. Two years ago Cuomo led his merry band through one of their tightest and most solid outings, Everything Will Be Alright in the End, and now he’s followed it up with Weezer’s fourth self-titled effort, this one destined to be called the White Album. (Ballsy, that.) This new one is rightly being lauded, and I’m happy to see that.

Because the White Album is, at first glance, 34 minutes of sun-dappled fun. It’s a California album bedazzled with Brian Wilson “ooh-ooohs” and songs with titles like “L.A. Girlz” and “Do You Wanna Get High.” It’s largely music to play beach volleyball to. But this isn’t the forced fun of “Beverly Hills.” There’s a realism to the White Album that fans of those first two monoliths should appreciate. This is a record about summer narrated by a lovestruck, fearful misfit, one who just wants everything to work out. When it does work out, this record is resplendent. It’s an album by someone who knows that Brian Wilson was the saddest songwriter who ever pretended to surf away his troubles.

Has Cuomo ever sounded as upbeat and content as he does on the Wilson-orama “(Girl We Got a) Good Thing”? The production is Weezer meets Pet Sounds, Cuomo letting lines like “just a couple love birds, happy to be singing” roll off his tongue. But then here’s a darker bridge, in which he shouts, “You know you scare me like an open window.” “Wind in Our Sail” is unrelentingly sunny, firing off references to Darwin and Mendel and Sisyphus while pushing forward into a lovely future. And “King of the World” is hopeful and triumphant, an anthem about overcoming pain and fear by sticking together. “If I was king of the world, you’d be my girl, you wouldn’t have to shed one single tear unless you wanted to…”

Yeah, this record does drift into darker corners here and there. “Do You Wanna Get High” is not the non-stop party it seems – it’s about addiction, Cuomo speaking directly to the drugs: “I’ll never get tired of you.” “Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori” is an epic (well, a 3:25 epic) about fumbling, awkward attraction. I can’t even believe how much I like “Jacked Up” – my incredulity stemming at least partially from the fact that it’s called “Jacked Up” – a piano-led singalong about loss and dead flowers. And closer “Endless Bummer” is just what it sounds like, an acoustic campfire tune for the final days of a vacation that hasn’t gone as planned. “I just want the summer to end…”

The thing is, if you’re not paying attention to the sad undercurrent, you might never know it’s there. These songs are vintage Weezer, buoyant and memorable, masking insecurity and heartache with bold melodies and big guitars and an optimism that won’t stop. It’s often incredibly silly – the lyrics to “Thank God for Girls” are a wandering tale of cannolis and dragons and tender loving kisses on stab wounds and Adam in the Garden of Eden. (It’s kind of amazing.) And the whole record puts a big, warm smile on my face.

And that’s the bottom line for me right now: I want to roll my windows down and play this record. I want to dance to “Wind in Our Sail” and “(Girl We Got a) Good Thing.” It’s summer, and in 2016, the year of near-constant death and Donald Trump, this record counts as the feel-good hit I need. Yeah, it’s often sad and scary and it ends on a down note, but man, I’ll take it. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the road is open. Off we go.

Next week, purveyors of pretty noise. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

In a couple months, I will be 42.

That used to seem impossibly old to me. I made a promise to myself years ago that I would never turn into one of those people who loses track of current music, who moans about the kids these days playing their noise so gosh-darn loud. And I think I’ve done OK with that. Yes, I went to see David Gilmour when he came to town recently, and yes, that was a sleepy old time (but a great one). But I also just bought Legacy, the new album from Hope for the Dying, one of my favorite scream-y metal bands. And I’m jazzed to pick up the remasters of Kill ‘Em All and Ride the Lightning this week.

I’m good with loud, is what I’m saying, even in my advancing age. If I have a role model on that score, it’s certainly Bob Mould, who is still absolutely raging at 55. It’s not enough for him to have started Husker Du and Sugar, he has to maintain his integrity and his amazing hot streak into his elder statesman years. Mould has certainly had his dalliances with electronic burbles and acoustic balladry, but what he does best is play loud.

Mould’s new album, Patch the Sky, is loud. The guitars are thick and loaded with momentum, and they’re the strongest thing in the mix, blowing out Mould’s vocals and his awesome rhythm section. If you’ve heard Mould before, you know what to expect – twelve sharp tunes that waste no time whatsoever, rocking with melody and purpose. That his songwriting is still this finely honed almost 40 years into his career is remarkable.

Patch the Sky caps off a trilogy that began with 2012’s Silver Age and continued with 2014’s Beauty and Ruin, and it exists midway between them. He uses the same band – bassist Jon Wurster and drummer Jason Narducy – on all three, and I think with this one he’s explored all the contours of this particular sound. It never gets old, though – the band paints with fire on a rave-up like “You Say You” and breathes menace on more atmospheric numbers like “Losing Sleep.” This isn’t the non-stop jaw-drop that Silver Age was. It’s more nuanced, more complicated, while still moving faster and more confidently than Beauty and Ruin.

But really, the differences between these three records are subtle enough that they could easily be packaged together as a single work. There is one big difference, though: Patch the Sky is the darkest and bleakest of the three. The death of Mould’s mother and the ending of several relationships added to the hopeless tone of many of these lyrics. “Left here by myself, there’s no tears that will be falling, nothing more than dirt and dust, nothing left at all,” he sings on “Pray For Rain,” one of the most deceptively upbeat rockers here. “I need you, release me, make me feel again…”

The album never gets brighter, staying in that ‘90s mold of power-pop through a black window. Mould lashes out at others (“There’s lots of poison in your soul”), but saves the worst of it for himself. The album ends with the slow and siwrling “Monument,” about erecting a metaphorical statue to your biggest regrets, one that is never washed away by tide and time. “I never ever learned, but that’s my way,” he concludes, and it’s crushing. While I love this record, and the two that preceded it, I’m back and forth on ending it this way. I sort of hope there’s a fourth album that’s as strong and powerful as these three, but that it lets in shafts of light.

Whether or not he follows up Patch the Sky with another like it, this one is awesome. That we’re getting music this alive, this sharp, this flat-out loud from Bob Mould these days is wonderful. Long may he reign.

* * * * *

Mould is representing the old guard well, but there are few new bands playing the kind of big melodic rock that he pioneered. Thankfully, we have the Joy Formidable to pick up at least some of the slack.

The Joy Formidable is an English trio led by a badass guitar-playing woman named Ritzy Bryan. They sound like what peak Smashing Pumpkins might have if Billy Corgan had let D’Arcy sing. Their music is not just loud, it is epic – the production is massive, with thick keyboards and many, many guitars piled up into mountains. Their third album is called Hitch, and it’s the biggest and most expansive of the bunch, a 66-minute tower of ambitious, impressive, dynamic noise. It’s clear they took their time with this one, stretching out their songs and building up their infrastructure.

And that might be the record’s only weakness. If there’s a criticism of the Joy Formidable, it’s that they could (and perhaps should) be rawer. There’s a processed, labored-over quality to what they do, and it’s never been more apparent than here. Five of these songs either hover around six minutes or blow right past it, and while I love hearing them take their sound new places, it’s sometimes detrimental to the flow of the album. “Radio of Lips,” for example, is an awesome gallop of a thing that would have been a stunning three-minute single, but it drags a bit at 6:23. Same for the sorta-bluesy “The Last Thing On My Mind,” which runs out of ideas before its 6:20 is over.

Hitch is a mammoth listen, but thankfully, it’s also a varied and interesting one. “Liana” is a winner, a flying-through-a-tunnel minor-key concoction that oozes foreboding. “The Brook” earns its six minutes, shuffling through a strummy opening (with a banjo and Bryan’s lead guitar sounding like Irish pipes) to a rushing chorus that feels like going under water. Relatively short interlude “The Gift,” which finds Rhydian Davies singing over a keyboard bed and Bryan soloing like she’s been listening to “Comfortably Numb,” segues into “Running Hands with the Night,” which moves on one of the nastiest and darkest riffs of the record.

All of that big and loud serves as a nice contrast when the band pulls back, as they do on “Underneath the Petal,” one of the prettiest things – and absolutely the sparsest thing – they have given us. Bryan sings of lost love over an acoustic guitar, a little piano and flute, and that’s all. It gets only slightly bigger by the end, Bryan strumming like her life depended on it. The song is something special in their catalog, and I’m happy to have it. Closing track “Don’t Let Me Know” starts the same way, but by the end of its 7:37, it’s enormous, gigantic, pulsing, finishing this record with the requisite ambition.

That ambition is the beating heart of Hitch, and while they may take things too far in that direction here and there, I’d rather have that than a band that doesn’t try. I’ve loved the Joy Formidable since I first heard them, and Hitch doesn’t make me change my mind. Still, they are at the point where they will either make a self-indulgent double album next, or scale back. I’m interested to see which they do. They’re still one of the brightest stars in the rock firmament these days, and one of the loudest.

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But who says you need guitars to be loud?

The members of Three Trapped Tigers don’t think so. This trio hails from London, and their second album Silent Earthling is one of my favorite discoveries of the year so far. (Thanks to Mike Messerschmidt of Kiss the Sky for another sterling recommendation.) A drummer and two keyboard players, Three Trapped Tigers play explosive instrumental music that feels like the future. If you can imagine Signals-era Rush without Geddy’s wail and with even more prog-rock overtones, you’ve got it.

The secret weapon of this band is drummer Adam Betts, who plays like he’s in a prog-metal band. While the armies of Keith Emerson-ish keyboards here are anything but tame, it’s the force of Betts’ percussion that gives this music its knock-me-down power. The songs on Silent Earthling are tricky, jumping time signatures and refusing to play things straight. But even when Betts is tasked with providing a beat that leaps from 7/8 to 4/4 to 9/8 he does so with enough power and sprinting energy that all you can think about is moving forward.

But it’s not like this band would be Vangelis without him. Just listen to the steamroller opening of “Kraken,” on which the two keyboards play what can only be described as a metal riff. There is guitar here and there, courtesy of second keyboardist Matt Calvert, but it’s subtle, and very rarely the lead instrument. (“Tekkers” makes the most use of it.) You won’t miss it, though. There’s really no other word for what this band does: they rock. And even as old and gray as I am now, I like to think I can still recognize rock when I hear it, whatever form it takes.

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Next week, darkness and light with Frightened Rabbit and Weezer. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.