I just added it up: I spent $163 to buy Celldweller’s new album End of an Empire.

Granted, I spent all this money gradually over a year and a half, so it never seemed like that much. And to be clear, I don’t regret it at all. But the fact that I literally did not know how much I’d invested in End of an Empire shows just how successful its marketing plan has been. I have a crazy collector gene, and the Celldweller team knows how to tap right into it.

Of course, I knew going into this that I’d be buying many of these songs more than once. End of an Empire, the third Celldweller album, was released in chapters over the course of a year, and each chapter came on a limited-edition CD that I, of course, needed to have. These CDs each included two songs from the album, remixes, instrumental versions, and “factions” – basically, reinterpretations of the music with interesting links to what eventually took shape as an overarching plot. They were cool items in their own right, with superb artwork.

But I also knew that when End of an Empire became available to buy in its finished form, I would do that too. There were two things I didn’t know: that the finished album would have two songs not included on the chapters, and that in addition to a single-disc version, there would be a five-CD box set collecting every song, every faction and remix (including ones I didn’t have on the chapters), and every instrumental in one swell-looking package. So of course, I had to have that too. What’s that? End of an Empire will be released on vinyl as well, and it’s super-cheap to buy as part of a package deal with the box set? Sign me up.

So yes, in the end, I will have 13 CDs and two vinyl records full of this music, and I will have bought many of these tracks twice and some three times. And I’m perfectly happy with all this. So who the hell is Celldweller and why do I like his work so much?

In some ways, I discovered Celldweller only a couple years ago. But in some ways, I’ve been a fan since I was 19 years old. The mastermind behind Celldweller now goes by Klayton, but in the ‘90s he went by his real name, Scott Albert, and called his musical project Circle of Dust. I first heard CoD on a tribute album to satirical superstar Steve Taylor – their version of “Am I In Sync” was blistering and insane. Circle of Dust followed in the industrial metal footsteps of Ministry and KMFDM, marrying chugging riffs to insistent electronic beats and samples, with well-placed full-throated screams for punctuation.

I bought the three Circle of Dust albums, the Metamorphosis remix record, and even Albert’s bizarre side project, Argyle Park (where he first started using the name Celldweller). When the final CoD album, Disengage, came out, I was dispirited to read that Albert was moving on. His next project, Angeldust, was a collaboration with magician Criss Angel, and was impossible to find. So I didn’t. I lost track of Albert (or Klay Scott, as he was then calling himself) completely, and it was only in the last couple years that I first heard that he had started recording under his new name. And come to find out, he’d made huge leaps in his style in the meantime.

Over three albums, Klayton has refined that style to the point where it is now totally unique. Celldweller music is a hybrid of industrial, metal, electro, symphonic prog and pop, with splashes of punk and dubstep. I’ve heard a lot like it, but I’ve never heard anything exactly like it. Klayton is an extremely detailed producer, up there with the likes of BT and Trent Reznor, but what he does sounds very little like either of them. It’s sonically rich material – almost too rich to take in all at once sometimes – and Klayton isn’t afraid to jump genres on a dime. The title track of End of an Empire alone leaps from ambient to screaming death metal in the space of a minute, with a big, soaring chorus and two minutes of electro-proggy workout at the end.

The ten long songs on End of an Empire unfold over an hour. If you buy the single-disc version, you get those songs interspersed with three of the factions, and if you buy the box, you get the songs on one disc (in a different order) and all 15 factions on another. There’s no point in asking which is the “correct” order, although both end with the crawling yet hopeful “Precious One.” They’re both correct, and completely different listening experiences. (Which is yet another reason I bought both.) While the box begins with the title track, the single-disc starts with the traveling-at-light-speed throb of “New Elysium,” one of the album’s most propulsive tunes.

Throughout this record, Klayton takes chances like he never has. “Heart On” begins like NIN’s “Down In It” but soon erupts into a semi-goofy dance-punk track that pivots on the line “I fucking love you.” He revels in the pun: “I wear my heart on my sleeve so everybody can see I’ve got a heart on for you,” but somehow it works. “Just Like You” is a dark, spacey, ever-building ballad that shows how well Klayton can sing, while “Good Luck, You’re Fucked” is a jolt in the arm – a three-minute garage-punk tune with awesomely cheesy keyboards and a killer chorus. Somehow it comes at just the right moment in the album, whichever running order you choose.

The two songs I hadn’t heard are both swell. “Breakout” incorporates Klayton’s side project, Scandroid, the hallmark of which is a strikingly ‘80s sensibility. This song, literally about a jailbreak, is a nice mix of the angularity of Celldweller and the glass-smooth shine of Scandroid. The other, “Jericho,” is a more straightforward, dark tune that stays in one mode for its entire running time, which alone makes it stand out on this record. The final minutes are bold and symphonic, and among my favorites on End of an Empire.

Yeah, this is the kind of album where you have to pick favorite minutes, because the songs are so intricate, and they come at you without letting you catch your breath. An hour of Celldweller music is exhausting (but a good kind of exhausting), and End of an Empire even more so, since these songs are mostly in the six-to-seven-minute range. That’s one reason I love Celldweller – it’s a workout for my musical brain, sending it a whole bunch of different places at once, while still giving it the nourishing melodies it craves.

If you find that you can handle it, you may want to try the box set – it’s four hours and 40 minutes, with an additional hour and 40 minutes of downloadable bonus content. The 15 factions on disc two are interesting, more in the vein of Klayton’s soundtrack work for films and video games. Some of it is ambient, some of it is noisy, and some of it includes narration that adds context to the songs. The third disc includes instrumental versions of the 10 main songs, allowing you to hear the intense sonic detail Klayton puts into them.

The fourth and fifth discs include 20 remixes of the End of an Empire songs, along with five goofy chiptune takes on the songs, which sound like the score to an 8-bit video game from the ‘80s. Most of the mixes are reinventions, not just retreads, making for a varied listen that is rarely boring. Klayton even resurrects Circle of Dust for a remix of “Jericho,” and he does a perfect job of recreating his old sample-heavy sound. Instrumental versions of all the remixes and chiptunes make up the downloadable bonus content. In all, it’s a ton of music, and it takes a while to get through and absorb it all. But it’s impressive, enjoyable stuff.

In general, I’m torn about the idea of releasing albums in installments, but Klayton has made an art form out of it. I found myself wanting all four chapters, the final album and the full box set, partially because they’re all so well designed. And if Klayton does what I think he’s going to do and releases a two-CD “narrative version” of the album, integrating the songs and factions with more narration and a sense of story, I’ll buy that too. Other artists on Klayton’s label FiXT are following this release model, and it works because fans feel like they’re getting sneak peeks, new songs as soon as they’re finished.

None of it would matter if the music weren’t strong, but End of an Empire is the strongest Celldweller has been yet. Try this one – if you can listen to an hour of Klayton’s explosive, intricate, inventive work and remain unimpressed, then nothing he’s done will be for you. I’m definitely impressed, and glad to have caught up with Klayton/Klay Scott/Scott Albert after so many years. Word is he’ll be remastering and reissuing the Circle of Dust albums next year, too, so it all comes full… ahem, circle.

You can buy Celldweller music (and there’s a lot of it) online here.

Next week, Mutemath. I don’t plan to be this effusive. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

A month ago I gave Beach House’s fifth album, Depression Cherry, a reservedly positive review.

I think it’s a fine record, in many ways their tribute to old-school shoegaze, all blurred-out and indistinct. While it was still definitely a Beach House album, it represented a strange left turn for them, and the record suffered a bit – the focus was on mood, not melody, and over 45 minutes, it felt like a single hazy song that didn’t quite go anywhere. I wondered then where all the winsome, pretty songs they must have written alongside these went to.

And now I know: they’re on the duo’s sixth record, the lovely Thank Your Lucky Stars, a surprise release mere weeks after its predecessor. Victoria Legrand and Alex Scully are adamant that this is not the second half of a double album, nor is it a companion piece – it’s a separate album, with its own feel and identity. And while they’re right – this is certainly its own thing, and bears very little resemblance to Depression Cherry – its existence can’t help but add context to the 86 minutes of music Beach House has given us this fall.

If you, too, thought that Depression Cherry didn’t sound as much like Beach House as you would have liked, you should run out and buy this new album as soon as you can. Where Cherry took its time, its dark and suffocating songs stretching past five and six minutes, Lucky Stars feels light and airy, full of four-minute marvels with delightful tunes. Even though the records are a similar length, Lucky Stars feels smaller, faster, more compact. Its songs feel like prime Beach House, Scally’s guitar and keyboard flourishes adding texture to the band’s usual organ-and-electronic-drums formula. But more than anything else, it’s the pop half of the dream-pop style that sets this album apart. These are lovely little pop songs, with a movement and a sweep missing from Cherry.

In fact, this album feels like the proper successor to Bloom, building on the dreamy sound of that record. The opening trilogy is among this band’s best work, from the blissful, chiming guitars of “Majorette” to the smoky nightclub drawl of “She’s So Lovely” (with its ascending guitar melody ending in an uncertain bit of dissonance, as if the band doesn’t want to reach the summit), to the Cure-esque overtones of the awesome “All Your Yeahs.” There’s a strong sense of nostalgia to songs like the lilting “Common Girl” and the ‘50s-balladry-meets-Cocteau-Twins closer “Somewhere Tonight.” Through all of this, the haunting voice of Victoria Legrand floats like a specter, there and not there, adding new dimensions just by existing. That these songs give Legrand something to sing, as opposed to most of the ones on Cherry, is only for the better.

I know the band would prefer that I don’t think of Cherry and Lucky Stars in relation to one another, but it’s impossible. The fact that Lucky Stars is so traditionally Beach House, such a consistent and winning example of how good their sound can be, means that they know that the songs on Cherry were a departure, and they grouped them accordingly. It also makes me wonder what they think of Cherry – is it an experiment that worked for them? Will they be returning to it? Or is Lucky Stars the way forward? It would be the safer path, certainly. I’d like to see them incorporate some of the moodiness of Cherry with the melodies of its successor – they came close on “Elegy to the Void,” the only song on Stars that breaks six minutes, but it moves and shimmies like nothing on the previous album.

But in case it isn’t obvious, I like Thank Your Lucky Stars a lot more, and if they chose to keep on sounding like this (which is pretty much deciding to sound like themselves), I’ll be happy. Beach House is at their best, I think, when their music bursts with dreamlike wonder, and they’re at that best on Thank Your Lucky Stars. Had this been the only album they released in 2015, I’d have been good with it. Think of Depression Cherry as a bonus. This is where the heart is.

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When she was 20 years old, Vanessa Carlton wrote a perfect pop song.

“A Thousand Miles” has that delirious mixture of youthful exuberance and beyond-her-years sophistication that makes it immortal. It’s so good that it even rises above the cluttered production it was saddled with on Carlton’s 2002 debut album, Be Not Nobody. (There isn’t much her producers could have done to ruin that song, to be fair.) It remains the song for which Carlton is known, a calling card so immense that it has overshadowed everything else she’s done.

And that’s a shame, because the rest of Carlton’s discography is well worth digging into. She’s a decent example of an artist hitting it big her first time out and not allowing that to change her. She’s fought against the kind of pop stardom one might expect after writing a song that takes the world by storm, and she’s rarely tried to write another one like it. It’s been a while, in fact, since Carlton has written anything radio might play. Her last record, 2011’s Rabbits on the Run, was a quiet and gentle affair, and her new one, Liberman, is even more so.

Liberman is so quiet that it will take you a few listens to realize how pretty it is. It floated right by me at first, and I was convinced it was her least interesting record, the one on which her bent toward maturity yielded diminishing returns. Sometime during listen seven, though, the album started to click for me, morphing from static to meditative before my ears. The entire album is low-key and placid, its melodies hiding from view, needing to be teased out. Part of that is the hit-or-miss production – Carlton’s voice and piano are often submerged under layers of keyboards and reverb. But part of it is that Carlton has concentrated on writing simple little numbers about love and loss, and the record is small and slight on purpose.

But those songs are somewhat more dynamic than they first appear, particularly the flowing “Willow” and the sad “Nothing Where Something Used to Be.” Opener “Take it Easy” is a long, breathy sigh that sets the tone, while “Operator” (co-written with her husband, John McCauley, of Deer Tick), pulses along nicely on a churning bass line. “Matter of Time” is a wistful folk song that leads into mini-epic “Unlock the Lock,” with its insistent strings. Things end quietly, because of course they do – “River” glides in on chiming electric guitar and builds to a sweet chorus, while the brief “Ascension” is more like a coda than a real song.

Nothing on Liberman is earth-shattering, or even revelatory. It’s a quiet hymn of a record, one that took me a while to like. What helped more than anything is Liberman’s second disc, which includes stripped-bare versions of seven of its numbers, just Carlton and her piano. These versions helped me find the melodies in these songs, and left me with the feeling that even the muted production on the album proper might be too much. (The piano version of “River” is three times as beautiful as the album version, for instance.) Next time, Carlton should go the whole way and record an album like this. Liberman is good, but its songs are even better, and Carlton should have this much faith in them.

Carlton’s recent work is a thousand miles from the music she’s best known for, but it’s often quite lovely stuff, and should be heard. While I sometimes wish she would find a bit of that old anything-can-happen fire, I’m impressed and elated that she’s managed to do whatever she wants for her entire career. Liberman is absolutely the work of an artist beholden to no one, a quiet celebration of complete freedom. Despite several reasons not to, I’ve grown to like it quite a bit.

* * * * *

Speaking of quiet hymns, there’s the Innocence Mission.

I first heard the Innocence Mission in the ‘90s thanks to my friend Chris L’Etoile, who is always ten curves ahead of me. Since 1989, married couple Karen and Don Peris have been making fragile, wonderful music. Their earliest efforts were akin to the Sundays, but since 1999’s Birds of My Neighborhood, they’ve been playing delicate acoustic folk, the kind you might hear if you came round their house for a backyard singalong around the fire. They’ve been doing this so beautifully for so long that it’s almost easy to forget how good they are.

Their eleventh album, Hello I Feel the Same, keeps the streak going. It’s another short and sweet collection of tiny songs of uncommon beauty. The foundation is Don’s nimbly picked guitar and Karen’s lilting, unearthly voice, with occasional drums, upright bass and organ, but nothing obtrusive. Arrangements are kept at their sparsest, letting the natural grace of the songs shine brightly. Everything here is simple and warm, from the instant connection of the title track to the bittersweet lullaby of “State Park” to the grateful closer “The Color Green.” No bitterness, no regret, only kindness and fondness and simple joy, if tinged with nostalgic sadness.

Yes, it’s another Innocence Mission album, offering the same delights as the other ten. But I don’t mind at all. The music Karen and Don Peris make, particularly lately, is almost too beautiful for words, and I’m happy to just put this album on repeat and sink into it. Hello I Feel the Same is another gorgeous, quiet triumph, and it leaves me wanting nothing.

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I took the title of this week’s column from a Cowboy Junkies song, and while they don’t have anything new to review, they did issue a box set with the same title this week. It includes their albums Open, One Soul Now and At the End of Paths Taken in remastered form, along with a fourth disc of freshly recorded songs written during those sessions. I’ve been really lax in reviewing Cowboy Junkes albums (I didn’t write up any of the Nomad Series, to my shame), so I’ll put in a good word for this set. If you like dark music that takes it slow, you’ll love all of this.

Next week, Celldweller’s epic End of an Empire. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Nine years ago, Joanna Newsom released a record called Ys, and I proclaimed it the best album of 2006.

I’ve never regretted that decision. Some people thought I was kidding – that my lauding of this thoroughly out-there harp-driven fairy-tale fantasia sung by what sounds like a drunken 10-year-old must be a massive put-on. But I wasn’t joking, and I haven’t been joking since. Joanna Newsom is one of the most fascinating and singular artists to emerge in the last 15 years, and any time she has something to say, I’m happy to listen.

I absolutely get where her detractors are coming from, though. Newsom has a tendency toward the precious, and inhabits a whimsical lyrical universe all her own. She plays the harp, and writes songs with all the complexity of classical arias. And then there is that voice, which many cannot get past. I’ve grown to love it in all its cracked and loopy beauty, but it took me a while. Newsom is content to circle around the note she wants, wavering and breaking, if she’s conveying the right emotion. It’s an acquired taste, and at this point, I have well and truly acquired it.

Still, it’s an obstacle for many, so I can’t be too upset that Newsom’s genius remains a slightly less than universally accepted truth. It’s not easy for some of Newsom’s fans – my friend Mike sent me this bizarre article that paints every man who dislikes Newsom’s voice as a sexist who doesn’t want women to have nice things. While there is a great deal of sexism in music and music criticism, this feels like an overreaction to me. There’s no shame in saying that Newsom makes challenging, fascinating music that is simply not for everyone.

But my God, is it for me. Newsom’s fourth album, Divers, is out this week, and within 90 seconds of pressing play, I was in bliss. I’ve waited five years for these 52 minutes, and I was prepared to be underwhelmed. After the full-orchestra wonder of Ys and the grandeur of 2010’s triple album Have One on Me, Newsom’s just made a collection of 11 songs this time, some alone and some with a variety of collaborators. It may feel slight upon first glance, but Divers is phenomenal, a summation and a refinement of everything I love about Newsom.

Best of all, it’s a statement of confidence and comfort in what she does. There’s no attempt to ease you in, no stab at a pop song or an accessible number that you won’t have to listen to three times to fully comprehend. There’s just enough complexity to Divers, and just enough simplicity to leaven the mix. These songs are grand and wide, and Newsom works in a cornucopia of colors here. Everything sounds like her, but there are surprises in every track, and a sure-footedness that leaves me in awe. Newsom sounds like no one else on earth here, and she grasps her own uniqueness and enjoys it.

If you’ve heard the single, the dense and tricky “Sapokanikan,” you know another piece of good news: while Newsom smoothed out her voice for Have One on Me, seemingly taming it for mass acceptance, she’s returned to her natural sound here, once again enlisting Steve Albini to record it as it happens and leave all the wavery notes in. And man, I missed it. Listen to how she chews on the line “I believed our peril was done” at the start of “Waltz of the 101st Lightborne.” That’s Joanna Newsom. It’s so wonderful to hear her embrace that unusual voice again.

Divers finds Newsom alternating between telling stories and baring her soul. Widescreen opener “Anecdotes” is as impenetrable a narrative as she has ever offered: “We signal Private Poorwill when morning starts to loom, pull up from your dive, till we hear the telltale boom too soon, hotdogging loon, caught there like a shard of mirror in the moon…” The music is utterly stunning, particularly the back half, and Newsom’s string arrangements pristine. “Sapokanikan,” named after one of the few villages on Manhattan Island that predates European settlers, is a dark fable, its lyrics contrasting with Newsom’s sing-song melody. Like “Anecdotes,” this song unfolds in its second half, Newsom harmonizing with herself as the music rises and rises.

But she gets nakedly emotional in the album’s second act. Sparse lament “The Things I Say” spins out on a web of mournful harp notes: “If I have the space of half a day, I’m ashamed of half the things I say, I’m ashamed to have turned out this way and I desire to make amends…” The seven-minute title track is a glorious intertwining of harp and piano, both by Newsom, supporting one of her very best tunes. “I’ll hunt the pearl of death to the bottom of my life, and ever hold my breath till I may be the diver’s wife,” she sings. In the midst of these sweeping pieces, she offers some simpler folk numbers, like the down-home “Same Old Man” and the almost-bluesy “Goose Eggs.”

For my money, though, it’s the home stretch that contains Divers’ best songs. “You Will Not Take My Heart Alive” is a beautiful bit of defiance, Newsom’s harp dancing off of her Mellotron flourishes, her voice swooping up and floating back down like a feather. “A Pin-Light Bent” is the only song featuring just harp and vocals, and it’s a dark yet whimsical journey: “My life came and went, short flight, free descent, poor flight attendant…” And the extraordinary closer “Time, As a Symptom” is a slow and stunning crescendo, building (with the help of the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra) to joyous levels. Newsom takes death head on in this song, sweeping aside the sorrow of the previous numbers in favor of the unbowed and the unbroken: “Love is not a symptom of time, time is just a symptom of love, and of the nullifying, defeating, negating, repeating joy of life…”

Those 14 minutes, from “You Will Not Take My Heart” to “Time,” are almost unbearably emotional, and among the finest 14 minutes of the year. That’s not to discount the other pleasures of Divers, certainly, but my heart belongs to those final three songs. They send this fine, fine record out on the highest of high notes, and have all but secured it a place among my very favorites of 2015. Joanna Newsom is a singular artist with a singular vision, working on a canvas all her own, creating achingly beautiful and utterly magical work. I know it’s not for everyone, but I feel bad for those who can’t feel what she’s doing here, can’t revel in the fact that such wonder exists. I wasn’t kidding in 2006, and I’m not kidding now. Joanna Newsom is amazing.

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Speaking of women with unique voices, I finally heard Bjork’s Vulnicura.

Yes, I know. Yes, it came out in January. Yes, I bought it then. (Well, actually, in March when the physical CD was released.) No, I didn’t listen to it then. It has been sitting in a pretty large pile of 2015 albums I still haven’t heard. No, there’s no reason for it. I just didn’t get to it until now.

And yes, everything you’ve heard is true. The record is a heartbreaker. Detailing the Icelandic songstress’ recent wrenching breakup, even to the point of setting certain songs weeks before or after said breakup, the record is easily the most emotionally potent thing Bjork has released in many years. It also heralds a return to her Homogenic sound, marrying electronic beats and whirrs to full string arrangements. Many moments here are almost physically beautiful, taking shape in the room and changing the feel of the air.

Some parts of Vulnicura are almost too intimate, particularly “History of Touches,” which details her last night with her lover, and “Black Lake,” which finds her almost on the edge of suicide. So much of it is so painful that when she sings “love will keep us safe from death” on “Notget,” you know she truly means it. After three albums full of abstractions, Vulnicura is almost too real, too straightforward. It’s a powerful piece of work, and I wish I had heard it before now.

Vulnicura is also vying for a spot on my top 10 list now. There isn’t much coming out in the next two months that will likely challenge what we already have. (I would have considered Mutemath’s Vitals a contender, before hearing four middling songs from it.) Chances are I’ve heard my 10 favorites at this point, but my mind remains open. We shall see.

Next week, slow tunes from Beach House, Vanessa Carlton and the Innocence Mission. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I don’t dance.

Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I should say I don’t dance in public. At home, with the curtains drawn and the music blasting, is another matter entirely. But as far as anyone else knows, I don’t dance, so I’m sticking with that. There’s a self-consciousness at work there that I would love to get over – I have friends who dance in public all the time, and it looks like fun. But based on the few times I’ve rhythmically lurched about in the company of others, I can safely say no one wants to see that.

I react to music bodily, though, and there’s no getting around it. Put on a good beat, and despite my resistance, I am moving to it. I love music that makes me want to dance. The best is music that makes me flit around the room uncontrollably, playing air drums and air guitar and lip-syncing wildly. (Those who know me well are nodding right now.) While I didn’t hear any of that this week, most of the records I have on tap were designed with dancing in mind, and I won’t lie, I did feel the urge to move once or twice.

Of course, if you don’t dance a little while listening to a !!! album, the band has thoroughly failed. Nic Offer’s outfit has been at the dance-pop thing for almost 20 years, and if they don’t have it down by now, something’s wrong. That’s not to say they haven’t been evolving – they started out as a loud, jammy guitar band, extending some of their songs out to 10 minutes or more of slamming six-string disco grooves. Six albums in, they’ve just about entirely eradicated all of the basement punk from their sound.

On their sixth, As If, Offer and company give us their most straightforward dance record yet. It’s their airiest and most electronic, and the furthest they have stepped away from their roots. In fact, if you’re a longtime fan of this band, the first four tracks may give you the impression that you’ve put in the wrong disc. Three of those songs are sparse, synthetic dance tracks, culminating with the positively killer six-minute “Freedom! ’15,” with its super-funky basslines and James Brown-esque chorus. (“How’s that working for you, baby?”) Sandwiched in the middle is “Every Little Bit Counts,” a sunny lite-funk pop song that is unlike anything this band has done, and not necessarily in a good way.

The record goes on like this, with many of its admittedly kickass grooves supporting half-formed songs – the whole thing is a beat in search of anything to hang it on, as evidenced by the not-quite-finished “All the Way.” There’s a slinky synth part, some slippery electric piano, a four-on-the-floor beat and bass line, and… well, not much else for four minutes. If what you want is a deep groove, you got it. And if that does it for you, so will much of As If. It’s a patchy record – for every “All the Way” there’s a terrific little tune like “’Til the Money Runs Out” – but it never fails to bring the beat.

That patchiness remains, though, all the way through to the end, an eight-minute mess called “I Feel So Free (Citation Needed).” It’s the same organ motif, the same click-clack beat, with a heavily modulated Offer rambling over it for what feels like a year. I expect this was fun to make, and if you’re listening to a band that uses three exclamation points for its name (pronounced “chk chk chk”) for anything other than fun, you’re probably up the wrong tree. But the band’s last album, Thr!!!er, was solid and well-written, and As If is a definite step down. It’ll make you move, but it won’t make you want to listen again.

For repeat value, I’d recommend the second album by English duo Disclosure. (And, hell, the first one too.)

Howard and Guy Lawrence aren’t hoping to be the vanguard of modern dance music. They have a healthy respect for traditional, old-school club pop, and that respect is woven through every track of their excellent sophomore release, Caracal. It follows essentially the same pattern as Settle, their debut – simple, danceable songs sung by a number of guest stars, produced with a nostalgic edge. This time the brothers bring in The Weeknd, Lorde and Miguel, and bring back Sam Smith, who has rocketed to stardom since his work on Settle.

And like the best dance-pop records, it’s consistent despite the variety of lead vocalists. The identity belongs to the Lawrence brothers, no matter who is behind the mic. The lyrics are secondary things, just there to get those voices on the track. The Weeknd opens things with “Nocturnal,” a thick, dark song that sets a more obsidian mood for this record. The slightly darker atmosphere is the main difference between this record and the last one, but Caracal ends up being just as much fun. Lorde’s track, “Magnets,” is a mid-album highlight, as is “Jaded,” one of two songs sung by Howard Lawrence. There aren’t any weak spots on Caracal, though, so in a way, all the songs are highlights.

Closer “Masterpiece” is the only song here not fit for dancing. It’s a slow number, with Jordan Rakei’s haunting vocals floating above a wispy backing track, and it ends things on a note both somber and uplifting. It also drives home the fact that Caracal is an album, not just a collection of danceable singles. I’ve been impressed with this duo, and I’m pleased to see them getting more mainstream attention. Even if you don’t dance, Disclosure’s work is interesting and fun.

If dancing were on your mind, it would, admittedly, be harder to do that while listening to Battles. But I do think the New York outfit believes what they do is dance music. It just sounds like it’s from another planet.

The third Battles album, La Di Da Di, is their second as a trio following the departure of vocalist/guitarist Tyondi Braxton, and it’s their first to truly overcome his absence and deliver something excellent. It’s entirely instrumental, sounds largely performed live, and is a constantly unfolding chunk of jammy, proggy goodness. Songs like the awesome “FF Bada” are built on a foundation of kinetic drums and shifting bass, with guitars and keys locking in like puzzle pieces. it’s math-y, but always fun.

La Di Da Di sounds like a jam session that was very carefully thought out beforehand. The whole thing sounds spontaneous, in the best way, but with clear maps and blueprints. You might think that would get tiring over 50 minutes, but Battles keep things interesting all the way through. The closer, “Luu Le,” is one of the most interesting, flitting hither and yon on stuttering keyboards, martial drums and sleigh bells. As a trio, Battles will probably never pull off what they did as a quartet, but La Di Da Di finds them coming very close, and establishing a new template for this era of the band. Plus, it’s a hell of a lot of fun. It’s math rock that makes you dance, and if that sounds impossible, you should hear it. I dare you not to move.

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I’m calling this one early, since I’ve had a lot going on and I’m feeling under the weather. Next week, hopefully I will be back to my usual standard. I’ll be reviewing new things from Joanna Newsom, Vanessa Carlton and the Innocence Mission. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Four months ago, Frank Zappa’s Dance Me This was finally released.

Dance Me This was the final album Zappa completed before his death in 1993, and it’s been in the Zappa Family vault ever since, awaiting its moment in the sun. Its release in June made it the 100th new album to come out under Zappa’s name, and it was the perfect capper to more than 20 years of extraordinary vault releases – live shows from underrepresented lineups, audio documentaries on some of Frank’s earliest and best records, a completed guitar album called Trance-Fusion, and much more, all packaged with loving care. Combine those with a careful remaster and reissue campaign a couple years ago and the continued Zappa Plays Zappa tours, and I’d say Frank’s legacy has been in very good hands.

Since Frank’s death, those hands have belonged to his widow Gail, who runs the Zappa Family Trust with her children. And I have to wonder if Gail knew she was on death’s door when she gave us Dance Me This, if she knew it would be the last of Frank’s releases she would live to see. Gail Zappa (nee Sloatman) died on Oct. 7 following a long battle with lung cancer, and in that her legacy is interwoven with her husband’s, she leaves a very strong one. In fact, she’s not done – a longtime labor of love, Frank Zappa’s Roxy: The Movie, will be out at the end of the month, after years of work to complete and restore it.

Rest in peace, Gail, and thank you for keeping Frank’s music in the spotlight for all these years.

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If you’d conducted a poll in 1997, asking people to name the current pop star least likely to win a Tony award for best musical, I bet many would have said Duncan Sheik.

I probably would have voted for Sheik, too. Those who remember 1997 undoubtedly recall Sheik’s big hit, “Barely Breathing,” a middling pop trifle that is, to this day, the song he’s most known for. But he’s always been interested in grander things, and by sticking to his artistic guns, he’s managed to carve out two parallel careers. There’s an entire generation of theater kids who don’t even know that Duncan Sheik writes pop songs – they know him for his six (soon to be seven) musicals, and particularly Spring Awakening, the 2006 effort that won him and playwright Steven Sater eight Tony awards.

I suppose I could be upset that the soft-spoken Sheik has achieved success in two musical fields, and yet the fans of one have no idea about the other. (When I mentioned to my friends that I was excited for a new Duncan Sheik album, the majority of the responses I got were along the lines of, “He’s still alive?”) And yet, I find it pretty amusing. It’s like he’s a double agent, slipping back and forth between identities. The best thing about it, for my money, is that Sheik’s success in musical theater means there’s no pressure on him to deliver a hit pop record, so he can do whatever he wants.

Thankfully, Sheik has done whatever he wants for the vast majority of his career. He stopped chasing hits more than a decade ago, but let’s be honest – even his poppiest records, like 2002’s Daylight, are sophisticated affairs far beyond what you’d expect to hear on the radio. And albums like Phantom Moon and White Limousine are glorious, patient things, taking hold slowly and seeping under your skin. Legerdemain, Sheik’s first new record in six years, follows the same pattern – its songs are mainly low-key slow burners – while opening up new avenues of sound for him. It may be his best record, but then, they’re all pretty great.

Legerdemain is very long – 16 songs stretching over more than 70 minutes – but when a long album is as consistent as this one is, I don’t mind at all. Sheik’s songwriting is of the same high quality it always is, but this time, he’s cast it in a foundation of light electronica, accenting his folksy guitar with pitter-patter drums and lovely synth flourishes. It’s a new sound for him, one that he’s apparently been working on for his score to the American Psycho musical (out next year), and it fits what he does brilliantly.

The album front-loads its (relatively) uptempo songs, and opens with its angriest, “Selling Out.” Truth be told, Sheik doesn’t get angry very often – his velvety voice and penchant for moody, meditative tunes don’t lend themselves to rage. True to form, “Selling Out” is more clever than flat-out angry, but it does the trick: “You bought it all, even when I was selling out…” From there, though, Legerdemain concentrates on literate tales of love and loss and watching time go by. “Photograph” is probably the closest thing to a hit here, its throbbing beat and bass line bursting forth into a great chorus: “A moment now past, some beauty it had somehow still lasts, a photograph…”

The second half slows things down to tremendous effect. The dark “Brutalized,” complete with haunting trumpet from Jon Hassell, will stay with you like the best of Sheik’s more turbulent pieces. It’s followed directly by the album’s longest and best song, “Circling” – this six-minute wonder lives up to its name, built on an unfolding, hypnotic piano pattern. It takes its time, and deserves it. “Circling” sets the tone for the final third of the record, wafting out on hushed tones. “Summer Mourning” is a delicate winner, “No Happy End” brings Hassell back for another dark journey, and brief closer “So There” serves as a summation of the record’s prevailing mood and tone.

If you’ve lost track of Duncan Sheik, or forgotten that he’s still alive, Legerdemain is a good indicator of what you’ve missed. Sheik remains a terrific songwriter, in the same league as Nick Drake, and this new album paints his lovely songs in new colors. Like all of Sheik’s work, it’s simply delightful. There’s no one quite like him, and I’m grateful for such a generous helping of new material. I hope he wins another Tony next year, so he can continue to make whatever records he wants to make.

(As a quick coda, I wanted to mention that the cover of Legerdemain depicts Sheik’s silhouette in front of the CMS Detector, one of the big particle detectors on the Large Hadron Collider – and, coincidentally, the one my laboratory designed and built parts of and works closely with. This really means nothing, but I love it when my day job intersects with my hobby in fascinating ways.)

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Tori Amos has been making long albums for two decades now, despite the fact that her more concise efforts remain her more memorable ones. I used to look forward to new Amos albums like little else – even her b-sides used to be amazing – but 20 years of 70-plus-minute records that sport at least half a dozen more songs than are strictly necessary, I’m wary.

If you count it as a Tori album, the cast recording of her first musical, The Light Princess, is her longest studio effort. (Yes, like Sheik, Amos has decided to try her hand at musicals.) It will take you two hours to listen to this whole thing, to get through the surprisingly slight story of Princess Althea and Prince Digby and their respective kingdoms of Lagobel and Sealand. I’d be lying if I told you this would be two hours well spent.

I’m not sure why – I’m just programmed to be a Tori fan, I suppose – but I was looking forward to this. Amos spent six years working with well-known Australian playwright Samuel Adamson on this adaptation of George MacDonald’s fairy tale, and I was hopeful that after so much time refining it, the music of The Light Princess would thrill me. Here, I thought, would be all the sweeping melodies that have been missing from Amos’ work for years. Here would be all the magic and wonder of the original tale, in musical form. Surely. Surely.

Nope. The Light Princess is cluttered and earthbound, only occasionally stumbling upon a memorable passage and dispensing with it just as quickly. It opens with what feels like four hours of exposition, setting up the central plot with lots of yelping and speak-singing. The ten-minute “Queen Material” is a particular chore, drowning out the two interesting bits in the first hour – the central melody of “My Fairy Story” and the refrain of “My Own Land.” “My Fairy Story” is a Tori song through and through, but a latter-day one – it’s pretty, but doesn’t do much. But it will at least stick in your head a little bit. Whole songs in the first half, like “Highness in the Sky” and “Darkest Hour,” will pass by without leaving a mark. (The dreary “Althea,” meant to be a theme for the character, is especially dour and tuneless.)

The Light Princess is the story of Althea, a princess who loses her gravity when her mother dies, leaving her floating above the ground without a care. (During the play’s UK run, this was accomplished by employing teams of black-clad stunt actors to carry around actress Roaslie Craig, who – probably not coincidentally – looks like a young Amos.) Her kingdom of Lagobel is at war with its neighbor Sealand, and Sealand’s prince Digby has too much gravity – he’s solemn and serious all the time. You can probably see where this is going – the two meet, and after a series of circumstances, she gives him levity and he gives her gravity. And all is well, forever and ever.

The song in which that happens, “Gravity,” is the closest Amos comes to a breakout hit here, and it comes very near the end of the musical. But here’s the thing – “Gravity” is included here in a standalone version as a bonus track, because in the musical itself, it isn’t given the chance to shine. It’s cut off before it can truly take flight. It’s an unfortunate miscalculation, but one that makes sense with the rest of this meandering piece of work. Like a lot of Tori’s music, it takes several listens to even recall much of The Light Princess. And like a lot of Tori’s music, it’s not worth the time it takes. Six years of work, and The Light Princess sports the same weaknesses as nearly everything its author has done for more years than I’d like to remember. Shame.

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Proving that short records can be kind of lame too, here’s the Decemberists.

The revered Portland band’s new EP is called Florasongs, and its five tracks span a slight 20 minutes. Much like Long Live the King, Florasongs is comprised of outtakes from one of the band’s full-length records – in this case, the middling What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, issued earlier this year. That album found the band trying all sorts of ways to climb out of the simplistic hole they’d dug for themselves, and at least partially succeeding. It’s not a tremendous effort, but it is a varied one, and there are some gems in there.

If you want to know how bad it could have been, remove any five tracks and replace them with the ones on Florasongs. There’s a reason these songs were left out of the running order, pleasant as they are. I find myself most enjoying the swaying “Why Would I Now,” its sweet sentiment and its lush strings buoying its simple chords. I also can find time for “The Harrowed and the Haunted,” the type of minor-key folk song the Decemberists could write in their sleep. Colin Meloy has a voice for songs like this, and he almost manages to overcome the weak chorus and sell me on it.

I’m much less impressed with the other three. “Riverswim” is like listening to a coma, the punk-ish “Fits and Starts” is an interesting experiment that didn’t quite work, and the spare “Stateside” barely even exists. My chief complaint with the Decemberists’ output of late has been a lack of ambition, of grandiosity. I know it’s probably not fair to expect that from a 20-minute EP of outtakes, but Florasongs is indicative of the problem, as I see it. There were glimmers of life on What a Terrible World, and I want to hear them move further in that direction, not spend time on the dead ends that didn’t lead them anywhere new.

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Wow, harsh. Next week, I’ll be a lot more positive about a lot more bands. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

It’s a grey and windy Sunday afternoon as I write this. I am listening to the fantastic, wonderful, gorgeous new album from Joe Jackson, and I’m wondering why he doesn’t get more respect.

That’s not to say that he’s not respected. He’s revered by those who know his work, and by his fellow songwriters. But if you’re not one of those, you most likely only know Joe Jackson for his hits: “Steppin’ Out,” “Is She Really Going Out with Him,” possibly “Breaking Us in Two.” Just about all of those hits came from his first five albums, released between 1979 and 1982. His new one, which I am currently basking in, is his 18th, and he’s garnered little to no attention for anything he’s done since Body and Soul in 1985.

Which is a ridiculous shame, and yet kind of understandable. Jackson has gone the same route as his fellow Brit Elvis Costello, crafting a catalog of tangents and genre experiments. Taken as a whole, Jackson’s output shows off a remarkable breadth, and is clearly the work of a musician who knows no boundaries. Taken one by one, I’m sure it feels confusing. Jackson is also not Elvis Costello, and there’s no shame in that – the man has few peers. But Jackson’s dips into orchestral music and big band jazz and whatever 2012’s The Duke was supposed to be haven’t been as artistically successful as Costello’s excursions in versatility.

But hell, Jackson has sustained a 36-year recording career doing whatever he wants, which is a pretty rare feat. He started, of course, as an angry young man, crafting three albums of sneering new-wave guitar pop. Even now, three decades on, the songs on Look Sharp and I’m the Man and Beat Crazy still sound perfect to my ears. (Here’s a slightly embarrassing story: the first version of “Got the Time” I ever heard was Anthrax’s cover, and when I finally got Look Sharp I was surprised and impressed by how little they had to change it to metal it up.)

Much like Costello, Jackson left his early, angry work behind shortly after perfecting it, and he’s never looked back. And much like Costello, Jackson’s detractors have wanted him to return to his early style ever since. Jackson’s first leap away was Jumpin’ Jive in 1981, a straight-faced album of small-band swing covers that must have come as a shock. 1982’s Night and Day probably came as a larger one – a guitar-less pop record that incorporated salsa and reggae and beautiful balladry, a paean to his adoptive home city of New York that, thankfully, spawned a few hits, including his biggest, “Steppin’ Out.” I say thankfully because, had Night and Day flopped, Jackson might have become more conservative in his musical choices, and we would have been robbed of an amazing journey.

That journey has included tremendous pop records like Big World and Laughter and Lust, but also grand-scale orchestral projects like Will Power and Symphony No. 1, demented theater pieces like Heaven and Hell, and delicate and gorgeous chamber-pop like Night Music. I gave a smack to The Duke earlier, but it’s a project only Joe Jackson would think of – modern renditions of Duke Ellington songs performed with the likes of Steve Vai, Iggy Pop, Sharon Jones and ?uestlove. Whatever else it is – and it’s not very successful – it is certainly creative and ambitious. Even when it seems like Jackson is slacking – that 2000 sequel to Night and Day, for instance – he manages to pull off something interesting.

Even when Jackson makes a big pop album like this new one, Fast Forward, it’s always much more intriguing than it seems. This one is a collection of four EPs, each one recorded in a different city – New York, Amsterdam, Berlin and New Orleans – with a different group of musicians. It is, if you’ll forgive me, all over the map, but it hangs together as a 72-minute statement very well. And that statement is that Joe Jackson, at 61, is still one of the best songwriters alive, and in fact has grown more comfortable with his elder statesman status and his remarkable past.

Fast Forward is an old guy record, mostly slower and meditative, but it’s a stunningly imaginative one. If his reunion with the original Joe Jackson Band in 2003 and his subsequent stomping, rave-up shows were something of a mid-life crisis, this album makes it clear that the crisis has passed. But he’s still too good, too cranky, too uncompromising to just give up and be Sting. Fast Forward incorporates many of his influences, from jazz to pure pop to chamber music to cabaret to soaring balladry to horn-driven rock – it’s like taking a spin through his catalog on (ahem) fast forward – and coalesces them into a lovely and complete summation.

At no point here does it feel like Jackson is trying too hard. In fact, it feels like all of these styles and sounds are well within his grasp. He’s confident enough to begin the album with the six-minute title track, a sparse ballad about accepting that the past is gone: “Not going back to the age of gold or the age of sin, fast forward ‘til I understand the age I’m in.” It’s patient, unfolding slowly, content to revel in its delicate melody and Jackson’s typically acerbic observations. Things pick up with “If It Wasn’t For You,” a swell, spiraling pop song that stands among Jackson’s best, and a cover of Television’s “See No Evil,” featuring – as all the New York songs do – Bill Frisell on guitar and Brian Blade on drums.

The New York material is the most typically Jackson, as you’d probably expect. His Amsterdam combo includes a full string quartet, and the material is suitably lovely – “A Little Smile” is a pure pop song, but “Far Away” is a soaring yet melancholy number that could have fit on Night Music, its first verse sung by a clear-voiced young boy hitting stratospheric high notes. The Berlin material is the most diverse, from the funk of “Junkie Diva” to the plaintive yearnings of “The Blue Time” to the record’s one stumble, a cover of 1930s German cabaret tune “Good Bye Jonny.”

But it is the New Orleans songs that pack the most surprises. They’re loose and jammy and full of tasty horns, and Jackson sounds freer and more at ease than I’ve heard him in ages. For once, he decides to leave us with joy instead of melancholy – the skittering “Satellite,” the thumping “Keep On Dreaming,” and finally, a full-on “Ode to Joy,” without irony. Yes, Jackson quotes Beethoven here, but in the midst of one of his most uplifting, percussive, raise-your-hands-in-the-air tunes. “Don’t say no when you feel joy,” he exclaims, and coming from this infamous curmudgeon, it’s revelatory. It ends things on just the right note.

Fast Forward spans 16 songs and nearly as many styles, and in the center of all of it is Jackson. He’s such a presence – his voice sounds as supple and strong as it did in 1982, and his writing has matured beautifully, still sharp and full of tiny daggers, yet warm and welcoming at the same time. Jackson might never get the respect he deserves, but on this grand new record, he stands tall anyway, not caring about accolades or awards. Fast Forward is a Joe Jackson album to the core, and the best one he’s made in probably two decades. And he did it just by being Joe Jackson.

* * * * *

I’m always going to love Queensryche.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I fell in love with this Seattle band’s seminal Operation: Mindcrime when I was 14 years old. While it may not have been the first rock opera I heard, it was the first one I studied, the first one that opened my eyes to the possibilities of telling stories with song. Queensryche was marketed as “thinking man’s metal,” and beyond the obvious sexism there, it was true – in a world full of hair metal songs about girls, girls, girls, Queensryche was a serious political group with a lot more on their minds.

I think it was that focus that allowed them to outlast most of their peers, and the loss of original guitarist Chris DeGarmo (frankly, the best melody writer of the bunch). Even through 2011, Queensryche was making well-considered records that lived up to their legacy. I didn’t even hate Operation: Mindcrime II, though it’s not a patch on the original. And yeah, lead singer Geoff Tate had lost a bit of edge off that remarkable voice, but it was still there, and the band sounded lean and hungry behind him, still putting out worthy material.

Which is why the split just one year later was so devastating. It was acrimonious as all hell, with Tate on one side and the four players on the other, fighting over the name Queensryche, with each releasing albums under that name in 2013. It was intensely confusing and very sad to see what had become of this mighty band. What got lost in the shuffle somewhat is that both albums were good – Tate’s was a glorified solo record, but there were some solid tunes on there, and the band’s debut with new (and incredible) singer Todd La Torre tore the damn roof off, a 30-minute burst of pent-up aggression.

Now the legal issues are settled – the band won the right to be Queensryche while Tate retained ownership of both Operation: Mindcrime albums, and subsequently named his new band Operation: Mindcrime. (Yes, it’s a bit tacky, but he won the right to the name, so whaddaya gonna do.) Both entities are back with new records, released within two weeks of each other. Tate’s first Mindcrime album, The Key, is also the opening salvo in a conceptual trilogy, proving that he was the driving force behind all those rock operas. Queensryche, on the other hand, have created another slice of driving, powerful old-school metal with Condition Human.

And while I like them both, I’m giving the edge to Queensryche here. I love concept pieces, and Tate is spinning a decent one – The Key is the story of a guy who somehow comes to possess a powerful new technology, and has to evade death while figuring out how to give it away to the world. By the end, our hero appears to have died, which should make the two sequels interesting. As a concept, I have no trouble with it, but Tate and company haven’t written many compelling songs here. Most of these tunes suffer from late-period Queensryche syndrome – they’re content to pound out a single groove for a while without doing much with it, and they end up being pretty forgettable. Combine that with the obviously lower budget Tate is working with, and The Key is not as sweeping as he probably hoped it would be.

By contrast, Condition Human finds Queensryche sounding revitalized, fierce, ready for anything. La Torre is an astoundingly good singer – the band can give him anything and he’ll nail it. Some of these songs, particularly the opener and first single “Arrow of Time,” go full Iron Maiden, and La Torre brings the Dickinson. This album is about 25 minutes longer than its predecessor, and some of it drags – they have the same single-groove problem, to a lesser extent, that Tate does – but it ends extremely well with the eight-minute title track, a new Queensryche classic. The blasé cover art is easily the worst thing about this record. It’s tight, it’s full of energy, and it fully establishes the Todd La Torre era of the band.

In some ways, fans like me win out here – we get two Queensryches, in essence, and that’s not a bad deal. Some have taken sides, but I’m happy to see what both parties bring to the table. I’m interested to hear how Tate’s story wraps up – he’s said both sequels will be in the can by the end of the year – and I’m jazzed to follow this new Queensryche as they open up new avenues. More than 30 years on, I still love Queensryche, and I always will.

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This week’s episode of Doctor Who was the first of a two-parter.

This is apparently going to be the norm this season, after years of single-part stories. In practice, what that means is I have no idea what I thought of this week’s episode, really. I liked it – it featured an underwater base under siege by ghosts, a tremendous performance by Peter Capaldi, and a cliffhanger to die for. But I won’t know how I feel about it until I see the second half.

I feel the same way about the new album by the Dears, Times Infinity Volume One. As you can tell by the title, it’s the first half of a whole, with the second half due early next year. And while I like the 38 minutes we have, it feels incomplete, like it can’t really stand on its own. It’s quick, which is a new experience for me – the Dears are a massive, dramatic powerhouse of a band, painting on huge canvases and filling them with galaxies of sound. Leader Murray Lightburn has one of those stunning voices that rises above whatever noise his band is making, so they take that as a cue to make as much noise as they can. And their songs are generally wide-angle epics of misery and hard-won hope.

So to say that a Dears album flies by without really sticking is making a statement. This one has everything I’m looking for – lead single “I Used to Pray for the Heavens to Fall” is a juggernaut, a loose-limbed bass-driven pop song sandwiched between monolithic riffs, and the rest of the album follows suit, building whole temples atop thick foundations. I love most of these songs, from the swaying “To Hold and Have” to the dark “Face of Horrors” to the hopeless closer “Onward and Downward,” sung by keyboardist Natalia Yanchak. (“In the end one will die alone, and in the end we’ll all die alone…”)

But there are only 10 short tracks, and that’s counting the fact that they’ve not only named the four seconds of silence between tracks four and five, but they’ve made it the title cut. It really feels like we need Times Infinity Volume Two to understand what Lightburn and his cohorts are getting at here, what they’re intending to say. While Volume One is a fine little slab of Dears-style dramatic rock, it feels slight, like it’s trying to stand on one leg. I need more – I need to finish this story to really know what I think of it.

* * * * *

One certainly couldn’t accuse Deafheaven of making an incomplete statement with their third album, New Bermuda.

Quite the opposite, actually. This record plays like a single 47-minute song, each ebb and flow dependent on the whole to make sense. Over five long songs, this San Francisco quintet fully perfects their singular sound – they can be the heaviest, fastest, most extreme band in the world one minute and the dreamiest the next, gliding effortlessly from Meshuggah and Brutal Truth-style metal to Robin Guthrie-esque ambience. New Bermuda feels like staring at the sea from the tideline – the waves pull back, softly nipping at your toes, and then pummel you, filling your nose and mouth with water, drowning you in cacophonous confusion.

This is one of the most tightly controlled musical experiences I’ve had in a long time. The lyrics even read like a single poem, moving from heartsickness to despair to death. (The final lines: “Then further downward so that I can rest, cocooned by the heat of the ocean floor, in the dark, my flesh to disintegrate into consumption for the earth.”) Lead throat George Clarke spits out all of these delicate words at full, atonal screech, his voice becoming just another element of the loudest wall of noise you’ve ever heard.

Nothing about Deafheaven is chaotic, though. Every element of this album has been carefully sculpted to deliver what is an almost overpowering experience, one that is leaps beyond their already impressive first two records. Deafheaven are playing in a field of one, creating something unique and fascinating. When I first heard New Bermuda, I described it as a religious experience, and I stick by that. It’s like nothing else I’ve heard this year, and that may be a good thing – I wouldn’t want to be trampled, uplifted and hollowed out like this on a regular basis. New Bermuda is astonishing.

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Next week, more words about more records. Yay! Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Ryan Adams released his full-album cover of Taylor Swift’s 1989 just more than a week ago, and I’ve already read a dozen think-pieces about What It All Means.

Longtime readers, I’m sure, know that I’m not that guy. Wider cultural trends and political statements rarely make their way into this column. I’d much rather talk about the music itself. That’s good and bad – sometimes that broader context would strengthen my work, and I’m aware of that. I just find so much of it less interesting than the music. Same in this case – while much of the talk about Adams’ 1989 has been about the fact that it’s garnering attention from critics and music fans who didn’t have time for Swift’s original, I just think that’s kind of obvious. And, I expect, part of the point.

I’m one of those critics. I like Swift fine, and I think her 1989 is a pretty good glittery pop album. It’s really the same kind of songs she’s been writing (or co-writing) all along, dressed up in pop production, and that’s its strength, I believe. Swift’s country roots ground her more than the people her producers – mainly Max Martin and Shellback – usually work with. But I never felt moved to write about it, or to write about Swift as a pop-cultural force. She’s someone I keep tabs on, and I expect the records she makes in her 30s will be much more interesting.

This, to music fans like me, is why Adams covering Swift’s entire album is fascinating, though. Adams is more of a musical force than a cultural one – he’s one of the best songwriters of his generation (which is my generation too, since we’re the same age) and has crafted a consistent, deep catalog of wonderful tunes. He’s widely respected by his fellow musicians – he could give classes on songwriting, and many names you’d recognize would sign up for them. So if Ryan Adams hears something in 1989 that makes him want to cover the entire record, that’s significant.

That’s not even what’s really interesting, though. Adams could have cranked out half-hearted versions of Swift’s songs and still cashed in on the publicity, but it’s clear that he genuinely loves this record. Adams’ 1989 is a complete reinvention that thoroughly respects the original, recasting it as an ‘80s alternative record, full of chiming guitars and layers of sound. His version moves 1989 from pop radio to college radio – it really sounds like something Brown University’s station, WBRU, might have played when I was in high school. But it does so lovingly, only changing what it has to in order to match Adams’ sensibilities.

In doing so, he’s elevated Swift in the minds of many people who wouldn’t have given her a fair listen. Hearing “Blank Space” as an acoustic plea draws out the sadness that has always been in those lyrics. Playing “Wildest Dreams” the way Tom Petty might have accentuates what a wide-sky-open song of possibility it is. Turning “Shake It Off” into a cousin of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire” underlines the resilience that powers it. Stripping “Out of the Woods” down to its barest essentials adds an air of desperation, of crawling to the surface, that was drowned out in the original. This is not a deconstruction of 1989 as much as it is the strongest possible argument Adams could have made for Swift’s songs.

And I think that’s one reason he did it. As much as it’s impossible to predict the mind of Ryan Adams, I think he heard these songs and realized that, in a different context, they’d get much more fair consideration. Adams’ 1989 is too lovingly crafted to be a stunt. I think it’s a show of respect and encouragement. It’s worth noting that when Adams was Swift’s age, he hadn’t even made Heartbreaker yet. I think he sees that Swift’s best songs are ahead of her. I can’t speak for Taylor Swift, but I know that if one of America’s greatest living songwriters decided to cover my entire album, and did it with this much care and love, I’d be encouraged to keep getting better.

I think that’s what this is about: a more experienced and acclaimed songwriter giving a younger colleague a hand up, publicly saying “you’re one of us.” And if his 1989 proves anything, it’s that Swift deserves this encouragement. The songs at the heart of 1989 are good ones, and we need more good songs and good songwriters. Adams’ 1989 did exactly what it was supposed to – it gave me a new appreciation for Swift’s record, while being a swell Ryan Adams album at the same time.

* * * * *

In a lot of ways, Leigh Nash has taken the opposite journey that Taylor Swift has.

She started off as an accidental pop star, guiding Sixpence None the Richer to its one megahit, “Kiss Me.” Sixpence was a far better band than that fluffy trifle would indicate – the album it’s on also contains a song that is both in 11/4 and in Spanish, for instance – but after “Kiss Me,” they became much more pop-oriented. When Nash went solo in 2006 with Blue on Blue, she went full-on Sarah McLachlan, even working with McLachlan’s longtime producer, Pierre Marchand.

And now here she is, going country. Her third solo record, The State I’m In, is a hard left turn into Nashville territory. Blessedly, it skips the pop-country boulevards altogether, headed straight for the old-school pick-and-twang that town does best. The State I’m In is basically a Pasty Cline album – its songs are steeped in tradition, about loneliness and cruel hearts and yearning for better places, and decorated with strings and steel guitars. Some of these, like the long-horizon ballad “Chicago,” sound like they could be celebrated classics.

As you can imagine, this is a massive change for Nash, and despite her insistence that she was country before she turned to pop and rock, she sounds a little uncomfortable here. She’s always had a wobbly, waifish voice, and many of these songs require someone a little more full-throated. She’s good at the poppier ones, like “Mountain,” with its jaunty keyboards and horns, and “What’s Behind Me,” which sounds like something the Mavericks might do. But when it comes to real country tunes like the title track, her voice doesn’t fit as well as it should.

Still, I’m impressed at Nash’s willingness to veer so sharply into new territory, and at her insistence on making an album rooted in traditional country. I don’t know if this is the right style for her to stick with, but she certainly hasn’t jumped in halfway here. If you’re hoping for Nash to return to her Sixpence sound, you probably won’t find much to enjoy here. But if you like hearing artists explore new terrain, for good and bad, The State I’m In is definitely interesting.

* * * * *

I’m not absolutely sure yet what I think of Meg Myers.

I don’t think I’ve encountered anyone so deliberately straddling the line between fiercely uncompromising art and please-like-me pop in a while. Like many, I was first exposed to Myers through her unsettling, amazing videos. (My favorite is “Curbstomp,” in which she is smothered to death by sadistic stuffed animals.) She looks like the girl next door, and uses those looks to lull you into a false sense of security – her songs are dark, full of self-loathing, fear and regret. And yet, with the help of her partner in crime, Dr. Rosen Rosen, they’re all huge productions, full-sounding and ready for their close-up. There’s no grime in her work, unless you look closely.

Myers makes these two impulses work together beautifully throughout her debut album, Sorry. Her lyrics are simultaneously heartfelt and clichéd – the word “baby” appears in half the songs, the title track pivots around the line “sorry I lost our love,” and the heartache that songs like “Parade” are built around is pretty generic. But then she stuns with a dark sex song like “Desire,” or a difficult slice of depression like “I Want You to Hate Me.” “Lemon Eyes” is a skipping pop song – tone down those staccato guitars on the chorus and it wouldn’t be out of place on Taylor Swift’s album – but just two songs later, she’s utterly devastating you with “The Morning After,” chronicling a personal tragedy with a lump in her throat.

The music walks those lines gracefully too. Rosen plays nearly all the instruments on this record, most of them electronic, and he works in some Nine Inch Nails and Garbage influences with his modern pop leanings. Myers writes catchy melodies, even for her darkest songs – I sometimes find myself singing “Desire,” which is pretty embarrassing, and “Make a Shadow” is remarkably catchy for a song about hiding from the world. Opener “Hotel” is everything she does well – it shimmers underneath her while she belts out a jaunty melody about giving up (“Wanna love, wanna live, wanna breathe, wanna give, but it’s hard and it’s dark and we’re doomed from the start”), complete with an infectious “whoa-oh-oh.” And right in the middle there, she samples Townes Van Zandt talking about why he writes songs about hopelessness.

That points to intriguing ambitions beyond what’s here, and I will definitely keep listening. In some ways, I hope Meg Myers cranks up the PJ Harvey aspects of what she does, but in some ways, I hope she’s able to keep walking that line, crafting commercial music that doesn’t sound creatively compromised. I think she could be huge, and I’m hoping she makes that journey with all of this fascinating honesty intact.

* * * * *

I wish I found Chvrches as interesting.

I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t like them. On the contrary, I think they’re swell – Lauren Mayberry has a nice voice, and the trio plays off it well, building chilly yet welcoming electronic beds beneath it. Their second album, Every Open Eye, builds on their first, offering 11 well-crafted electro-pop tunes about love and pain. “Leave a Trace” is a strong single, and gives you a good indication of the album. I like this just fine.

I just don’t have a lot to say about it. Songs like “Keep You On My Side” pulse along nicely, and Mayberry is in fine form throughout. The band slips into an Erasure impression here and there, and I like Erasure, so that’s good. Martin Doherty takes the mic on the finger-pointing “High Enough to Carry You Over,” and while I didn’t need a break from Mayberry’s voice, it’s at least an interesting change. But this is a record that kind of starts and ends without (ahem) leaving a trace. It’s good, definitely, and if you liked the first Chvrches record, you’ll like this even more. I’m just out of words about it.

I have the same problem with Dodge and Burn, the third album from the Dead Weather. It’s exactly the kind of swampy-stompy rock you’ve come to expect from Jack White’s supergroup – if you liked the first two, you’ll like this. The Dead Weather is always White’s opportunity to stay behind the scenes and collaborate more, and that song remains the same on Dodge and Burn. Allison Mosshart, of the Kills, is the true star here – she sings almost all of the lead vocals, and she rocks. She spits through a riff monster like “Buzzkill(er)” with abandon, and it’s a fiery wonder to behold.

But again, this is exactly what you expect it is, almost all the way through. The big exception is the final track, “Impossible Winner,” performed on piano with a string section. This song gives Mosshart the chance to show how tuneful she can be. It’s not a great song, but it is a different one. I feel like I have to mention records like Every Open Eye and Dodge and Burn, since they’re from pretty big names, and I do like them both. But they don’t excite me or surprise me, and as much as I enjoy them, I find myself wishing they did.

* * * * *

Well, it’s time to wake up Billie Joe Armstrong, because September’s over. That means it’s time for the Third Quarter Report – or, what my top 10 list would look like if I were to publish it right now. Honestly, this is probably going to be pretty close to the finished list. I know of a few things coming out before the end of the year that have potential, but not many, and one of them – the new Mutemath album, Vitals – hasn’t impressed me with either of its singles. Could be some surprises, you never know, but for now, here is what the list looks like:

10. Marah in the Mainsail, Thaumatrope.
9. Lianne la Havas, Blood.
8. Foals, What Went Down.
7. Aqualung, 10 Futures.
6. Jason Isbell, Something More Than Free.
5. Timbre, Sun and Moon.
4. Punch Brothers, The Phosphorescent Blues.
3. Quiet Company, Transgressor.
2. The Dear Hunter, Act IV: Rebirth in Reprise.
1. (Tie) Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly; Sufjan Stevens, Carrie and Lowell.

Eventually I will likely pick between Lamar and Stevens, but not yet. I am still getting equal amounts of awesome out of both, for very different reasons, and I don’t know which I would choose. I have a bunch of Number Elevens, including the Weepies, Copeland, Florence and the Machine, Frank Turner, Joy Williams and Everything Everything. It’s been a pretty good year.

Next week, more, including a tremendous new album from Joe Jackson. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I don’t know how to explain it, but somehow Ryan Adams covering Taylor Swift has become my favorite thing of the week.

As I’m sure you all know, Adams decided – because this is often the kind of thing he decides – to cover Swift’s entire 1989 album in his own style. I’m writing these words before the album comes out, but it will be available by the time you read them. The above-linked track, a delightful acoustic-rock version of “Bad Blood,” is all I have to go on. But I think Adams found the heart of this song, and gently coaxed it out. If the rest of this weird little detour is as well-considered as this tune, I’ll be happy. Meanwhile, I’ll just play “Bad Blood” again. And again.

UPDATE: I’ve heard it all now, and it’s pretty great. More next week.

Adams has had a lot of competition for my attention this week – I bought 11 new records on Friday, and I’m expecting to buy 12 more next Friday. The first two weeks of October should bring about the same. There’s no way I can listen to and review everything coming out over the next month, so I’m going to pick as many as I can and write as few words as possible to cram as many reviews together as I can. As I’m sure even the most casual of readers has realized by now, brevity is not my strong suit. So we’ll see how this goes.

The connecting thread this week? All five of my subjects have been around for a pretty long time, doing what they do. Let’s see how that’s worked out for them.

* * * * *

I’ve been worrying about the new Slayer album.

Not in the same way that I worry about my cholesterol, or about my mortgage payment, or anything like that. But worry just the same. Slayer is justly revered among metal fans for being one of the Big Four from the ‘80s (along with Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax), and for influencing pretty much every speed metal band that came after them. Their catalog is one of the most consistent in metal, for good or ill – you know what you’re going to get with Slayer.

To expand on that: Slayer has always been the most rock-steady of the Big Four. Where Metallica and Megadeth slowed down and went commercial and Anthrax tried to fit in with the alt-rock of the ‘90s, Slayer remained Slayer. No collaborations with Lou Reed for them. No banjos, no Dann Huff behind the boards, no dalliances with rap. This means that one album sounds like another, by and large, and the upswings in quality come when the band commit to that high-speed rage-fueled steamroller thing they do. That’s why there are only a few essential Slayer albums – the mediocre ones are simply lesser versions of the good ones.

Recently, Slayer seemed to be on one of those upswings – they welcomed original drummer Dave Lombardo back to the fold for 2006’s Christ Illusion, a powerhouse explosion of beats and riffs that never let up for 38 minutes. 2009’s World Painted Blood was just as good, if a little less heavy on the accelerator. But then two things happened that seemed to derail the Slayer train: Lombardo left the band again, and in May of 2013, founding guitarist Jeff Hanneman died after a long illness. Hanneman, as Slayer fans know, was a key member of their songwriting team, and his passing hit hard.

So now here is Repentless, the 12th Slayer album and the first one that finds the band picking up the pieces. Tom Araya and Kerry King are soldiering on, bringing back drummer Paul Bostaph (who played with the band from 1992 to 2001) and welcoming guitarist Gary Holt. But there’s no escaping the fact that this is half of Slayer trying to sound like a whole. It’s surprising how well they pull it off – the record is solid, if uninspiring, and doesn’t sully the band’s legacy. But it seems less than necessary.

Repentless sounds to me like a diminished retread of Slayer’s mid-‘90s albums – it sports some loud ragers like the admittedly awesome “Implode,” some slower epics like “When the Stillness Comes,” and a lot of mid-tempo stock-sounding metal like “Vices.” Everyone here gives their all, particularly Araya, who shouts like a man half his age. (He’s 54, if you needed a reason to feel old.) Araya’s lyrics are standard fare, raging against the evils of the world while calling out religion as a crutch people use to avoid personal responsibility. “Pride in Prejudice” seems particularly timely – it’s a screed against violent racists in power.

So yeah, it’s fine. But Hanneman’s touch is sorely missed in the songwriting – tunes like “Piano Wire” are completely anonymous, and the album stays on one note for longer than it should – and as good as Bostaph is, he doesn’t have the power of Lombardo. Repentless is a pretty good Slayer album, particularly considering the circumstances, but not an essential one, and if Araya and King decide to pack it in after this, I won’t be surprised.

* * * * *

English art-pop merchants Duran Duran have been around longer than Slayer, but they show no signs of slowing down. Every few years since 1981, Duran Duran have released a new album, and almost every time, that new album is called a comeback. Truthfully, they never went away. Their new one, Paper Gods, is their 14th, and even though it now seems to take them four years to make something new, they remain worth hearing every time they do.

Paper Gods finds the band continuing their eternal quest to sound timely and relevant while maintaining their essential Duran Duran-ness. This has always been their story – they have changed with the times, working with hot producers and collaborating with young up-and-comers, but the best Duran Duran outings are the ones that respect their compelling, dramatic center, dressing it up but never dumbing it down.

Recently they’ve worked with producers like Timbaland, Nate “Danja” Hills and Mark Ronson. Paper Gods welcomes back Ronson, but is largely helmed by Mr. Hudson, a protégé of Kanye West. It features guest spots by Janelle Monae, Nile Rodgers (speaking of comebacks), Kiesza and Lindsay Lohan. (Really.) It is unabashedly a bid for airplay and hits, but it’s also a terrific Duran Duran album, perfectly balancing the goofy and melodramatic sides they’ve always shown. Simon Le Bon’s voice remains the band’s most recognizable element, despite the relentless auto-tuning here, but the big-sounding minor-key songwriting at which they’ve always excelled is here in spades.

Truth be told, 90 percent of my problems with this album would have been solved if they’d opened it with track four, “Pressure Off.” It’s the most nimble and catchy single here, sporting vocals by Monae and killer guitar by Rodgers. It’s their “Get Lucky,” basically, but it’s a splendid pop song, full of energy and verve. Instead of leading with “Pressure Off,” though, the band front-loaded this album with moody, slow crawlers, none moodier than the seven-minute title track that opens things. I’m not sure where else on the record I would put these three tracks – they’re the weakest, and slapping them up front sucks the vitality out of everything else.

If you start with “Pressure Off,” though, you’ll have a great Paper Gods experience. “Face For Today” follows energy with energy, and leads into the silly yet kind of wonderful “Danceophobia.” (Lohan appears here, diagnosing the title condition in a spoken monologue.) “What Are the Chances” could be a lost Depeche Mode track – it positively soars – while “Change the Skyline” harnesses that four-on-the-floor synth pulse. As is their wont, the band closes things with their most widescreen productions – “Only in Dreams” and the stunning “The Universe Alone” each top six minutes, but they earn the extra space.

Hell, even the bonus tracks on the deluxe edition outdo the first three songs. I’m not sure why they made such a blunder, but thankfully it isn’t a fatal one. Paper Gods is a fun, well-made record that updates the Duran Duran sound while studiously protecting it. Don’t call it a comeback, they’ve been here for years – nearly 40 of them, in fact, and they’re as good now as they’ve ever been.

* * * * *

Speaking of long-running art-pop stars, there’s Prince.

Here’s a guy who doesn’t need to put out new music. His legacy is 100 percent assured – he will be remembered as one of the finest musicians ever, a visionary who leapt fully formed into the public consciousness and proceeded to define his own place in the firmament. Prince has never stood still, never rested on his laurels, always pushed his work forward. He’s made something like 50 albums – it’s hard to get an accurate count – and has reportedly finished and shelved at least that many in the nearly four decades since his debut. New Prince albums are still treated like events. The man is 57 years old and remains as productive as he was in his twenties, despite not needing the money for a long, long time. He doesn’t have to make new music, but I’m always glad when he does.

His new one, Hit n Run Phase One, is significant because it’s the first one in his vast catalog with a co-producer on board. Joshua Welton is a 25-year-old prodigy from my adopted hometown of Aurora, Illinois, and he’s responsible for most of the sounds on Hit n Run. I was very curious to hear this thing – what about Welton’s work inspired Prince to relinquish control over his sound for the first time? Now that I’ve heard it, it’s pretty clear – Prince and Welton work well together, and their collaborative sound is a meticulously updated take on Prince’s soul-pop template.

Last time Prince consciously tried to update that sound we got Diamonds and Pearls and the unpronounceable symbol album, and while Hit n Run isn’t as immediately successful as those records, it does sound a lot less forced, a lot more natural. Prince seems relaxed and comfortable here – he even cedes the spotlight on the first track, “Million $ Show,” to singer Judith Hill. Prince raps, and sings in that inimitable falsetto, and lays down tremendous bass grooves and searing guitar leads – just listen to the update of “This Could B Us,” a slow-burn powerhouse that first appeared in less interesting form on last year’s Art Official Age. Welton, meanwhile, surrounds Prince with some of the most interesting beats and sounds he’s enjoyed in a while.

My only problem with Hit n Run is that it glides right by quickly without really sinking its teeth in. The songs on Hit n Run are beat-based, meaning there aren’t a lot of melodic detours, and Prince doesn’t take things in the strange flight-of-fancy directions he’s known for. Very few of these songs have strong hooks – the best things here set a mood and build on it, like “Hardrocklover” and “1000 Xs and Os.” I’m sure a lot of this stems from Prince’s still-burgeoning artistic relationship with Welton, and if they make more records together – Hit n Run Phase Two, for instance – they’ll get more comfortable. As it is, this first phase of Hit n Run is slight, but enjoyable and intriguing. Looking forward to more.

* * * * *

Even though Prince is 57, he still has that creative fire that marks his best work. He’s still hungry, still eager to try new things. Here’s hoping he doesn’t become like David Gilmour in a dozen years. At 69, the Pink Floyd guitarist and singer has collapsed into creative complacency – his fourth solo album, Rattle That Lock, is pretty much what you’d expect from him at this point. If you’re into what he does, you’ll like this fine.

Me, I was hoping for something less predictable. Rattle That Lock opens with nature sounds, ambient washes and guitar soloing, just like his last record, 2006’s On an Island, and just like that not-really-Pink-Floyd album from last year, The Endless River. It contains two quicker numbers, the title track and the almost danceable “Today,” and eight slow, easy, quiet pieces that threaten to build in intensity but never really do. (Only “In Any Tongue” makes headway in that area, matching its socially conscious lyrics to a wider sound.) Three of those are instrumentals, which are basically excuses for Gilmour to improvise on guitar.

But he doesn’t need an excuse – that dramatic guitar tone is everywhere here, on every song. Gilmour is a fine guitar player, but he’s played exactly the same way for decades, and we’ve heard everything he has to offer in that arena. My favorite moments of Rattle That Lock are the ones that explore new ground, however tentatively – the lush harmonies, courtesy of Crosby and Nash, on “A Boat Lies Waiting,” for instance, or the lilting jazz beat and cool string parts on “Dancing Right In Front of Me.”

However, the most offbeat moment here doesn’t work for me at all – the pseudo-jazz ballad “The Girl in the Yellow Dress” brings in Colin Stetson on sax and Jools Holland on piano, but still sounds like the work of a 69-year-old English guy who plays in an artsy prog band. (If you’re coming to David Gilmour for this kind of thing, there are many other and better places to get it.) Gilmour is more comfortable doing what he normally does, which he does on most of this record – slow songs, long solos. I knew what 80 percent of this would sound like before I heard a note of it. That’s unfortunate, but par for the course.

* * * * *

I think some of Chris Cornell’s fans would be happier if he took a leaf out of David Gilmour’s book. For more than 25 years, Cornell has confounded people who want him to stay in one place and be one thing.

He spent 10 of those years leading Soundgarden as they moved from raucous psychedelic metal to tricky, thoughtful rock in weird time signatures. His solo debut, Euphoria Morning, was quieter and simpler, but just as he was establishing a new identity, he joined Audioslave and churned out blocky riff-rock for three records. His return to solo recording came complete with a bizarre, laughable cover of “Billie Jean,” and then he threw his biggest curve ball, Scream, a whole album of synth-driven pop produced by Timbaland. And then he reunited with Soundgarden.

There’s really no way to know what Cornell is up to until you hear it. True to form, his fourth solo album, Higher Truth, is unlike any of the others – it’s a folksy, acoustic-driven record of small, pretty songs, seemingly designed to re-establish two essential truths. First, Chris Cornell is a heck of a good songwriter – these tunes are lovely and memorable, as straightforward as he’s ever been and still compelling – and second, he has one of the best voices in rock. He hasn’t lost a note from his younger, throatier days. He sings these songs beautifully.

Higher Truth starts out strong, with three straight-up winners (including the single, “Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart”), falls off a little in the middle – folksier songs like “Through the Window” are a little too standard for me – and ends just as strong. Finale “Our Time in the Universe” is a bit of an anomaly, with its trippy beat, loud chorus and swooping strings, but it sends the record off in style. It also serves as a reminder that this isn’t a rambling folk record – this is a considered stripping down, a pop record more intricate than it initially appears. Again, confounding.

I happen to like confounding as an artistic quality, though, and I’m probably one of very few people who have appreciated everything Chris Cornell has done. (I still love Scream. He may have disowned it, but I think it’s great.) Higher Truth is another left turn, but the results seem unimpeachable. It’s a really good little record from a guy who has been writing great songs and singing the hell out of them for a quarter century now. Given his track record, I’m on board for anything he wants to do next.

* * * * *

Wow, lot of words. Expect about as many next week as le deluge continues. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I have always responded well to orchestras.

I know some people think orchestral music is bombastic, and the use of strings in pop music is both beyond the pale and over the top. I’ve never felt this way. Orchestral arrangements, to me, connote grandeur and importance, and they have since I was a kid. Not counting actual orchestral music, which I have always appreciated – my grandmother was a concert pianist and loved most things with strings – the first time I can recall being gobsmacked by an orchestral part in a rock song was “Closer to Home,” by Grand Funk Railroad. My father had a best-of on LP when I was a pre-teen, and I listened to that song over and over. (“Loneliness” was on there too, and that also did it for me.)

After that, well, I can remember buying the great Moody Blues album Days of Future Passed and adoring “Nights in White Satin” particularly. I can remember hearing the Pet Shop Boys’ remarkable “Left to My Own Devices” and marveling at the sweeping strings rubbing up against the mundane lyrics. But most of all, I can remember the first time I heard “A Day in the Life,” the monumental closing track of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and having my fragile little mind blown by the insane cacophonous crescendos at its mid-point and finale. I’d never heard anything like it. The Beatles used strings like few other bands before or since, and that’s just one of the millions of reasons I love them.

After that, anything that could be described as symphonic had me at hello. When underrated funk-rock band Extreme announced that their third album would include a 20-minute suite performed with an 80-piece orchestra, I think you could hear my heart rate speed up. The stunning result, “Everything Under the Sun,” is still a favorite. Harder-edged bands like Metallica and Dream Theater got into the act, and I ate it up. Pain of Salvation composed a wonderful record called Be with an outfit called the Orchestra of Eternity, and I play that thing at least once every six months. I’ve bought symphonic records from the likes of Yes and Elvis Costello and XTC and adored them. And Frank Zappa’s orchestral work is some of my favorite music ever.

I will probably never be good enough to write orchestral music – it still awes me that one can harness 70 or 80 players and create such incredible sounds with them. I think the lure of that kind of compositional power draws in a lot of musicians, at least once. If you have the opportunity to do something like that, I imagine you’d want to take advantage of it. For me, then, it was no surprise when Ben Folds announced that he’d written a concerto for piano and orchestra. At a certain point in a career like his, that seems inevitable.

Folds has always worked with strings, from the very first Ben Folds Five album – there’s a swell quartet playing on the lovely “Boxing” – and I’ve always enjoyed the dimensions those arrangements bring to his work. Some are considering his new album, So There, a departure, and I guess at first glance it might seem like one. In addition to his three-movement concerto, So There features eight self-described “chamber-rock” songs arranged and performed with New York ensemble yMusic. And while those arrangements are pretty neat, I have a hard time imagining listening to those first eight songs and thinking them the work of anyone else.

If there’s a departure here, it’s in the bitterness and rancor of the lyrics, which plumb darker depths than Folds usually does. They’re actually something of an unpleasant experience, Folds lashing out at (I presume) his recently-ex-wife again and again. Opener “Capable of Anything” is one of the album’s best, its colorful arrangement leaping from the speakers, and its words comparably gentle – it’s about how the phrase “capable of anything” could be used to mean that one is capable of great harm as well as great achievement. Its chorus includes the first slap: “I stopped caring what you think about me, I gave up…”

“Not a Fan” is a delightfully orchestrated ballad about differences of artistic opinion that turns cranky in the middle, Folds switching from “I’m not a fan but maybe I could learn to be” to “I’ll wait in the lobby” to “go get your t-shirt signed, fan girl, I may or may not be here when you return.” (There’s a spoken “so fuck you” at the end, just to drive the point home.) The title song is lively, strings swirling about the percussive piano, while Folds turns petulant on the mic: “You taught me nothing, I owe you nothing, how could I forget you when there’s nothing to forget, so there…” The title phrase conveys the sense that Folds knows he’s being petty, but it doesn’t stop him.

Thankfully, the words only really detract from the stellar arrangements on first listen, before the shock wears off. The final minutes of “So There” are superb, piano and strings and drums and oboes and clarinets all weaving together into a lovely blanket. The only one that doesn’t work is “Phone in a Pool,” the disposable first single. I’m also put off by the crudeness of “F10-D-A,” a brief musical joke at a fourth-grade humor level that Folds somehow convinced everyone to fully orchestrate. (Effed in the A, get it?) I cringe at “Yes Man,” with its “why didn’t you tell me that I got fat” lyrical conceit that winds its way to this stinker: “Now I’m crying all the way from the photomat because I see I’ve got more chins than a Chinese phonebook has.” Yes, for real.

Most of that I can forgive by the time Folds gets to the final of these songs, “I’m Not the Man.” It’s a remarkably mature piece of work, bitter and dark, sung with a frayed urgency in his voice. “There could be fewer days ahead than gone,” he sings, concluding that he’s not the man he used to be: “I’m dancing on my own grave.” He spends the final minutes of this tender, lovely tune listing off things he used to be, and I nearly teared up hearing things like “endless potential” and “the man in the mirror” among them. It’s clear-eyed and unblinking, and one of Folds’ very best songs, driven to the stratosphere by yMusic’s fantastic embellishments.

After half an hour of pain and bile, the concerto comes as a welcome burst of optimistic energy. It’s a grand piece of work, as one might expect, Folds throwing in every full-orchestra idea he has. There’s nothing particularly subtle about it – it’s bold, filmic music – but it’s unfailingly interesting and sweeping. The first (and longest) movement is my favorite for its constantly shifting, almost cartoonish tone, but it all works. The Nashville Symphony Orchestra is, of course, terrific, and anyone still questioning whether Folds is one of the best pianists in rock music should find plenty of evidence here.

And I’m very glad the concerto is here. The bitter tone and failed humor of So There threaten to drag it down, but with a full third of the album taken up with this sparkling piece, it ends up passing muster. It’s not his best work, and I’m still not sure it was worth putting Ben Folds Five to rest again, but the good outweighs the bad. I’m worried about Folds’ mental state, and I hope by his next outing he’ll have worked out some of these feelings of spite, because while they may be honest, they’re the worst things about So There, and when they’re tempered and softened, the album shines.

* * * * *

I’ve been a Ben Folds fan since his first record, so I didn’t need any encouragement to check out his orchestral album. But apparently I did need some convincing to try The Dear Hunter – I’ve had most of their records for years, and never heard them.

This happens more than I’d like. I hear about something that I want to check out, I buy it, it gets buried in the stack of new stuff and I don’t get to it for a long time. Meanwhile, more albums by this band come out, and because I am a ridiculous completist, I buy those too. Finally, years down the line, I listen to the whole stack of CDs, and quite often I kick myself for not experiencing them sooner. I don’t know why I do this, and if I could be a music obsessive full time, I probably wouldn’t have to. This is my life.

Anyway, I told you all that to tell you this: I’ve had the majority of the Dear Hunter’s catalog for years now, and I only listened to it all last week, in a marathon session. That’s all it took to catapult them into my list of favorite artists. I’m still in the process of fully absorbing their latest, but I’m positively salivating for anything they do next.

The Dear Hunter is the project of singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Casey Crescenzo. A mere 31 years old, Crescenzo has already created a body of work with more breadth and ambition than most artists even attempt. The main thrust of that work is a massive story in song, told over a planned six albums, each called acts. Even on the debut EP, Act I: The Lake South, the River North, Crescenzo was painting with a wide palette, working orchestral flourishes into his driving indie rock, and his vision has only grown. Act II and Act III were bigger and better, showing a true commitment to creating the most extraordinary music of which he was capable.

I don’t want to get too far into the weeds by summarizing the story Crescenzo is telling. In short, it seems to be about loss of innocence and the unfortunate path of vengeance, from the point of view of a character who makes one terrible decision after another. He’s the son of a prostitute who fled the big city to raise him by the lake and the river, but his mother’s past caught up with her and she was killed, leaving him to seek revenge. Along the way, he falls in and out of love with a prostitute in the city, then goes off to fight in World War I, meeting his half-brother, who dies in battle. Our hero (and I use the term loosely) takes his half-brother’s identity, killing the boy’s father in the process, as Act III: Life and Death ends.

And that’s where Crescenzo left it for six years. Perhaps knowing that Act IV would require a more diverse compositional skill set, he took on The Color Spectrum, a series of nine EPs each representing (yes) a color of the spectrum. This project proved revelatory, as Crescenzo dove into different styles and different shades throughout its 36 songs, none of which sound like much on Acts I-III. He followed this up with a terrific pop album called Migrant, proving he was adept at writing shorter, unconnected songs. (Seriously, Migrant is really good.)

And then he went and made a goddamn symphony, called Amour and Attrition, recording it with the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra in the Czech Republic. And it’s a fine piece, showing that Crescenzo knows his way around an orchestra and can write with dynamics and grace. Amour and Attrition feels now like the last necessary step on the road to Act IV: Rebirth in Reprise, the most striking, diverse, ambitious and orchestral of the four acts. It’s a great record anyway, but if you’ve heard the first three acts and can recognize the themes running through this story, it’ll knock you out.

As I said before, I’m still fully absorbing this thing, and I don’t have a full handle on it yet. Crescenzo’s lyrics are often vague and poetic, and gleaning plot details from them is a delicious challenge. From what I have gathered, the story of Act IV opens with our hero living his half-brother’s life, complete with mother and fiancée. The mother dies, and our hero, lost and confused, heads back into the city, cheats on his lover (with, I suspect, the prostitute from Act II), and hatches a scheme to finally dispatch the villain of the piece, the one who killed his own mother.

He uses dirty tricks and tactics to win a city-wide election, tactics which cost him his lover, and plans to expose the villain’s double life – he’s a priest by day and secretly a pimp by night, running both the church and the Dime, the city’s brothel. But before he can, he’s hoist by his own petard – the priest confronts him and threatens to expose his own lie. It ends with a song called “Ouroboros,” the snake eating its own tail, lies weaving around lies, leaving nothing changed. Our hero has become the very thing he hated: a two-faced power-hungry liar. Pretty dark, and I can’t imagine that Acts V and VI will get any brighter.

If this sounds like a slog, well, you haven’t heard it. The music on Act IV is vibrant, constantly shifting and often quite beautiful. Crescenzo’s time writing shorter pop tunes and symphonies has paid off – after the traditional a cappella opening (there’s a Greek chorus narrating much of this, a further clue that we’re listening to a tragedy), “Rebirth” explodes in a flurry of strings and horns, and they stay for much of the record. But the songs themselves are often the most concise and sweeping of the Dear Hunter’s catalog. “Waves,” the first single, is a good example – it moves and breathes like a pop song, but with the breadth of an overture. “The Squeaky Wheel” hints at ELO, and “Remembered” is a gorgeous piece of chamber-pop, a stunning, string-laden ballad that lasts all of 3:50, and ends with a tremendous callback to the very first act.

With all that, you’d expect the longer songs here to be even more full-to-bursting, and you’d be right. The nine-minute “A Night on the Town,” in many ways the centerpiece here, is amazing, galloping in on a hundred horns and a shout-along chorus, then shifting and morphing into entirely new forms, often with oboes. And we get a further three movements of “The Bitter Suite,” comprising 11 minutes and detailing the hero’s examination of religion in the city. When it becomes clear why these songs are continuations of the original three “Bitter Suite” movements on Act II, it’s like a gut punch.

All that said, the final third of the record manages to go a few more uncharted places. “King of Swords (Reversed)” and “If All Goes Well,” the chapters relating to the election, are remarkably danceable, Crescenzo bringing in electronic beats and synth burbles to surprisingly great effect. The final tracks are dark and powerful, particularly “Wait,” which finds our hero hoping there isn’t a heaven to judge him for his deeds. But they don’t build to a conclusion – Crescenzo decides to end “Ouroboros” almost in mid-phrase, a clear musical cliffhanger. But that’s great, because it means he’s going to give us more, and hopefully soon.

Yes, I’m kicking myself for not listening to The Dear Hunter earlier. For one thing, this is a lot of music to process all at once. Hell, just the 73 minutes of Act IV are a lot to absorb. A couple things are pretty obvious, though – Casey Crescenzo is quite a talent, and Act IV: Rebirth in Reprise is one of the best and grandest albums of the year. I’ll be listening from now on.

Next week, Slayer, Duran Duran, David Gilmour and maybe one or two others. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Last week I talked about a couple bands I’ve been following for seven years. This week I’d like to talk about one I’ve been following for most of my life.

I honestly can’t tell you the first Iron Maiden song I heard. It was in the throes of my teenage metalhead years, and if you had teenage metalhead years, you know they’re the perfect time to be introduced to a band as grandiose and theatrical as Maiden. This is a band always trying to be bigger than everyone else, go further over the top, and when you’re 14, that resonates pretty powerfully. (It’s no secret that Queen was my favorite band in high school.) Maiden came along around the same time as Metallica and Megadeth and Anthrax for me, and I only learned later that Maiden actually influenced them all.

I’m fairly sure the first Iron Maiden album I saw was Powerslave, and I am completely sure that I saw Powerslave before I heard it. I’ve always been into the physical objects, the packaging and artwork that feels as much a part of an album as the music to me. The Powerslave artwork is absolutely fantastic, recasting the Maiden mascot, ol’ demon-faced Eddie, as a Sphinx-like statue in front of a tomb in ancient Egypt. In its full form, adorning the front of the vinyl record, it’s an incredible piece of work – there are so many little details in it that you could stare at it for hours and not pick them all up.

I remember gazing at it pretty intently, imagining the music etched into the grooves of the record, and wondering if it could be as grand as the painting. If you’ve heard Powerslave, you know it contains “Aces High” and “Two Minutes to Midnight” and the title track and the 13-plus-minute epic “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” So the answer, obviously, was yes. But as I was 10 when Powerslave came out, I don’t think I heard it for several more years. I also remember staring at the fantastic, futuristic artwork for Somewhere in Time, which came out when I was 12. But again, I didn’t hear that one right away either.

No, the first Maiden album I heard was 1988’s amazing Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. It was the perfect first Maiden record for me at 14 years old. Not only was its theme vaguely occult, which thrilled the rebellious Christian boy I used to be, but its music was sweeping and full of keyboards, which were important to me then, for some reason. This was unlike anything I had ever heard. (Well, that’s not entirely true – I was also taken with Barren Cross, the Christian Iron Maiden, at roughly the same time.) I wanted every Iron Maiden album then, but especially the two I’d spent so much time staring at.

I haven’t really looked back since. I bought No Prayer for the Dying and Fear of the Dark when they came out (on cassette!). I picked up The X Factor even though I knew Bruce Dickinson, owner of perhaps the best voice in metal, had been replaced by some imitator named Blaze Bayley. I bought Dickinson’s solo albums and enjoyed them immensely. Sometime in the late ‘90s, while I was working at Face Magazine, I convinced EMI Records to send me a complete set of the remastered Maiden albums on CD – from the self-titled debut to Live at Donnington, with spines that form the face of Eddie when all lined up.

And I freaked out, in a good way, when the band reunited with Dickinson in 2000 for the incredible Brave New World. That album – expansive and progressive, sweeping and ethereal – sparked a surprise third act in the Iron Maiden story that is still going strong today. I’m struggling to think of any band enjoying a late-career renaissance as consistent as Maiden’s. The four (now five) lengthy albums the band has produced since reuniting not only stand proudly with their best work, they often surpass it, reaching new heights. Their most recent, 2010’s The Final Frontier, contains a couple tracks, most notably the 11-minute “Where the Wild Wind Blows,” that I would rank among their finest.

Their latest, The Book of Souls, is their 16th overall, and – amazingly – their first double album. It clocks in at 92 minutes, with 42 of those minutes taken up by three epic songs. It’s their most ambitious effort, and best of all, at no point does it sound like the median age of its authors is 58. It’s an intense, purely Iron Maiden experience – there is no other band on the planet who would make an album like this one.

I definitely mean that as a compliment, but it’s also indicative of the style the band works in, and how far that sound has fallen out of favor. Symphonic metal bands are still around – Dream Theater is another old workhorse that takes a lot from Maiden, and bands like Symphony X and Vanden Plas that certainly claim an influence. But it’s a sound that has dropped out of the public consciousness to a vast degree, and I absolutely understand why. Maiden works in a particular form of straightforward theatricality – it’s not sincere, but it never winks. That worked well in the ‘80s, but I’m not sure modern audiences know quite what to do with it, and if you’re not used to it, it can come off as a little silly.

I still love it, though. The Book of Souls is prime Iron Maiden, intricate and cinematic and a little cheesy, but totally awesome. If you can handle the eight-minute opener, “If Eternity Should Fail,” you’ll understand what you’re in for – it starts with a synthesizer soundscape that feels like incidental music to a made-for-TV movie about ancient Egypt, before Dickinson unveils his still-stunning voice, proclaiming, “Here is the soul of a man.” It then opens up into a classic Maiden rhythm, with intertwined harmony guitars, and flows into a strong chorus (sung magnificently by Dickinson), a double-time instrumental section giving space for all of the band’s three (!) guitar players, and finally a goofy/creepy spoken word coda: “Good day, my name is Necropolis, I am formed of the dead, I am the harvester of the soul meat…”

If you make it through that without giggling, you’re gonna love the rest. The most striking thing about The Book of Souls is how raw it sounds – quite a lot of the record sounds like they set up six microphones and just played. First single “Speed of Light” is the kind of simple five-minute rocker Maiden likes to work up to balance off their proggier tendencies, and it charges forward like a horse on fire. The 13-minute “The Red and the Black” slightly overdramatizes its tale of gambling for one’s soul, but around the halfway point it erupts into an extended instrumental workout, as intricately composed as it is loose and energetic. The title track is similarly fantastic, Steve Harris’ synthesizers adding depth and drama.

The second disc is a bit more finely considered, except for its opener, the raging “Death or Glory.” It turns out to be the record’s last powerhouse stomper – three mid-tempo winners, including the Robin Williams eulogy “Tears of a Clown,” provide a solid pathway to the album’s biggest and best surprise. That’s the closing song, “Empire of the Clouds” – it’s 18 minutes long, making it the band’s longest ever, and it’s based around Dickinson’s fragile piano playing. Don’t worry, it definitely gets huge, but hearing a Maiden song where the primary instrument is piano is a striking experience.

“Empire of the Clouds” tells the tale of the R101, a British airship that crashed in France in 1929 on its maiden voyage, killing nearly everyone aboard. As you can imagine, this is a perfect Iron Maiden subject, falling right in line with other historical epics like “Alexander the Great” and “Paschendale,” and they knock it out of the park. The song takes its time, reveling in the majesty of the great ship and describing its fall in agonizing detail. This is a song that no other band would do, and if this ends up being the final Iron Maiden album, it’s a hell of a great way to go out.

I mention finality because it’s always a possibility with bands that have been around as long as Maiden has, but also because The Book of Souls comes with its own scary story – it was completed almost a year ago, and its release delayed when Dickinson was diagnosed with tongue cancer. He’s undergoing treatment, but will tour this record next year. As with any great renaissance, you never know how long it’s going to last, and if the Maiden men decide to hang it up after this, I wouldn’t blame them.

And yet, there really is no other band like them, so it would be an unspeakable shame to see them go. The Book of Souls clearly demonstrates that Maiden is at the peak of their powers right now, still finding new avenues to take this sound they created. It’s still a big, goofy, powerful, dramatic, overtly theatrical sound, and I still love it as much as I did when I was that 14-year-old kid staring at their album covers. They’ve been a band for 40 years now – nearly as long as I have been alive – and they just keep getting more awesome. Long live Iron Maiden. Long may they reign.

Next week, orchestral efforts from Ben Folds and the Dear Hunter. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.