As you get older, time just slips away from you. Days go by in a blink, whole months just disappear, and it’s no good trying to hold on to them. I remember when I was younger, summer vacations seemed to stretch on forever. Three whole months without school! This year, the summer came and went in no time at all. It snowed here in the Chicago suburbs last week. I looked at the calendar, and I realized we have six weeks left of 2011.

All of which brings us to God Save the Queen, my planned three-column series which is now a two-column series. Think of it like Joe’s Garage. Act One came out in May, and here is Acts Two and Three, a double-record set for the price of a single. I only have six columns left this year, and three of them are spoken for, giving me very little space to get to David Mead, Kate Bush, the Black Keys, the Roots and whatever else comes down the pike.

So here’s the second and third installment of my Queen retrospective, combined into one easy-to-read column. The final batch of five remasters hit stores at the beginning of the month, and I’ve been savoring every second of them. (Well, except for the seconds on A Kind of Magic, but we’ll get there.) It’s been pretty emotional for me to experience these records again, particularly the final ones. Queen was a shameless, adventurous, try-anything-once kind of band, and it was so gratifying to remember that they stayed that way straight to the end, Mercury’s debilitating illness be damned.

So, picking up where we left off.

News of the World (1977)

Also known as “the one with ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘We Are the Champions’ on it.” News of the World kicks off with its two best-known songs (and arguably Queen’s most famous numbers), and you can hear right away that this album will be different. After the opulent extravagance of A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, this album is stripped back, raw, the sound of four guys playing their hearts out in a room.

And it’s a great reminder that Queen was a tremendous rock band. These songs are almost entirely guitar, bass, drums, piano and vocal, and they sound like they were recorded live. “We Will Rock You” is the mission statement – stomping feet, handclaps, vocals and a blistering guitar solo, and that’s it. But when I say stripped back, I don’t mean less dramatic, as anyone who has heard “We Are the Champions” can attest. Songs like the soaring “Spread Your Wings” are every bit as towering as the stuff on Opera/Races. They just lack the guitar orchestras and the insane vocal arrangements.

As a kid, I was never a huge fan of Roger Taylor’s contributions to Queen’s repertoire. This time through, I’m having a much more favorable reaction to Rockin’ Roger. “Fight From the Inside” is a relentless stomper, on which Taylor does his best John Bonham impression, and “Sheer Heart Attack” is the heaviest and fastest tune in the band’s catalog. Mercury, meanwhile, is all over the place here, giving us a taste of funk experiments to come on “Get Down, Make Love” and ending things with the lovely piano ballad “My Melancholy Blues.”

But Brian May takes the prize with the six-minute “It’s Late,” one of Queen’s greatest rock songs. It contains a positively immortal guitar riff, a jam section that knocks me out each time I hear it, and some golden singing from Mercury, one of the finest frontmen ever. I remember being disappointed with this album as a teenager, mainly because it wasn’t as complex and over-the-top as previous albums, but I’m over that now. News of the World is just an incredible rock record.

Jazz (1978)

Teenage me was let down by News of the World for not being as insanely diverse as Queen could be, but he was baffled by Jazz for heading in the opposite direction entirely. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say this is the band’s weirdest record, no two songs sounding anything alike. Here’s just the first four songs, by way of example: we open with the Arabian nightmare of “Mustapha,” Mercury unveiling his perfect pronunciation (he was born in Zanzibar); segue into flat-out sex rocker “Fat Bottomed Girls,” glide into the lovely piano piece “Jealousy,” and then tumble right into the loopy prog-fluff “Bicycle Race.”

It’s enough to give you whiplash, and the whole record continues in that vein. The massive production is back – armies of vocals up against oceans of guitars and perfectly-played pianos. “Bicycle Race” is utterly harmless, but the band clearly labored over it. The second disc of this remaster includes an instrumental mix, which reveals just how tricky and difficult it is. It’s a seriously intense piece of music, and it’s not even Mercury’s finest hour here – that’d be “Don’t Stop Me Now,” an irrepressible anthem inexplicably sequenced 12th out of 13 here.

Before that, you get a whole bunch of Queen goodness. Mercury’s “Let Me Entertain You” is awesome, another testament to the tight rock outfit this band was. See also: “Dead on Time,” a killer piece of proto-metal. John Deacon’s ballad “In Only Seven Days” is lovely, May plays the blues in three-part harmony on “Dreamer’s Ball,” and Taylor’s goofy “Fun It” sets the stage for “Another One Bites the Dust.” Jazz is a complex, bizarre record, one that doesn’t seem to have a comfortable home in the catalog. But it’s worthy nonetheless.

The Game (1980)

In a lot of ways, this one’s similar – the songs are all over the map, the production intricate. But The Game is the most compact, easily-digestible Queen album yet. It’s 35 minutes long, contains no outsize epics, and just concentrates on fine pop songs. I remember liking this one as a teen, mainly for Brian May’s contributions – the four-on-the-floor “Dragon Attack” (which I covered once, on synthesizers) and the two second-side ballads, “Sail Away Sweet Sister” and “Save Me.”

It’s John Deacon who provides the big hit this time: “Another One Bites the Dust,” a minimalist experiment in groove. This may actually have been the first Queen song I heard – I remember hanging out at a playground with my babysitters, swinging higher and higher while this played on the radio. (I also remember hearing Weird Al Yankovic’s parody, “Another One Rides the Bus,” and laughing until I couldn’t breathe.) Mercury sings the living hell out of this song, but it hasn’t aged very well, particularly when the band relies on weird synth noises instead of writing a bridge.

Speaking of Mercury, he’s all over the map again here, contributing the opening anthem “Play the Game,” the Elvis homage “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” (which I admit to not understanding at all when I was a teen), and the bizarre, tossed-off “Don’t Try Suicide.” Turns out teenage me was right – it’s May who pulls it out of the tailspin. Both “Sail Away Sweet Sister” (which May sings) and “Save Me” are solid, serious-minded tunes with heart. I love ‘em both.

The Game is the first Queen album that doesn’t work as well as it should, the first one with as many stumbles as out-and-out successes. It also features two first appearances: Mercury’s trademark mustache takes its place on his upper lip, and the synthesizer nudges its way into the Queen sound. The band took the success of “Another One Bites the Dust” as a sign they should keep on experimenting with synths, and boy, did they ever.

Flash Gordon (1980)

I take it back – this is Queen’s weirdest record, a 35-minute, mostly-instrumental score to one of the campiest sci-fi movies ever made. I haven’t seen the film since I was about 10, but I remember watching it again and again – I recorded it off HBO on our top-loading, extremely slow VCR, and wore that tape out. As I may have said earlier, the inherent silliness in something like Flash Gordon (which depicted a football star’s fight against an intergalactic empire, with the help of a winged Brian Blessed) didn’t really register with me.

The soundtrack is chock full of dialogue from the film, and hearing it again brought scenes and images back into my mind with startling clarity. There are only two actual songs here, both of them deliriously campy: “Flash’s Theme” (the one that goes, “Flash! Ah-ah!”) and “The Hero.” The rest is very ‘80s synth noodling, the sort of thing that accompanied episodes of Doctor Who from the same decade. But man, do I remember this synth noodling. Not sure how this works as a standalone Queen album, nor how often I’ll listen to this remaster. But as a soundtrack intimately tied to its film, it’s pretty great.

Hot Space (1982)

Of all of these old Queen records, this was the one I was dreading revisiting. Hot Space is the band’s full-bore dive into ‘80s synth pop, with a touch of disco on the side. It’s the poppiest pop album they made, the one on which Roger Taylor and John Deacon are largely replaced by machines, at least for the first half. Its cover is pure ‘80s as well, all solid colors and silhouettes. Of all of the band’s albums, this one has aged the worst.

But you know what? I like it, a lot. As you might expect from Queen, they didn’t half-ass this move into the dancehall, and it’s their sheer conviction that makes this work. These songs are undeniably goofy, but then, so are “Bicycle Race” and “I’m in Love With My Car,” and they don’t come in for nearly the stick this album does. The first half is much more synthetic than the second, but there are gems here: “Dancer” brings the rock, as much as this album allows, and “Back Chat” is stupidly catchy. Granted, Mercury’s “Body Language” is embarrassing, but it’s followed right up with Taylor’s fantastic “Action This Day.” That tune’s just unstoppable.

Here’s the key to appreciating these songs – listen to the way the band played them live. The second disc of this remaster has live takes of “Staying Power,” “Action This Day” and “Calling All Girls,” and they’re all guitar-heavy rockers. Dated production aside, the songs on Hot Space are largely wonderful, and the second side brings even more goodies: the rollicking “Put Out the Fire,” the gentle and touching “Life is Real (Song for Lennon),” the breezy “Calling All Girls,” and May’s pretty “Las Palabras De Amor.”

But the band saves the best for last – “Under Pressure,” rightly the most famous song from this album, is an inspired collaboration with David Bowie. Some of it sounds made up on the spot, but some of it sounds like the most intricate composition on this record. It works so very well. Hot Space has a bad rep, and I disliked it pretty intensely as a kid, but it holds up a lot better than you’d expect. Some of it, frankly, is marvelous.

The Works (1984)

If Hot Space was the band diving headfirst into pop music, The Works is them coming fully to grips with what a Queen pop record should be. I’ve always considered it their best album of the ‘80s, and revisiting it didn’t change that opinion one iota. This is the sound of four guys staring the ‘80s straight in the face, and making a good old-fashioned Queen album.

That’s not to say they don’t take the decade into account. The album opens with “Radio Ga Ga,” a beautifully-written song performed almost entirely on synthesizers, like a Vangelis track with lyrics. (It’s a song in praise of radio, thought at the time to be on its way out thanks to the rise of MTV, and its video ironically made the track a big hit.) But it also contains two muscular rockers, the kind Queen hadn’t delivered in a while: “Tear It Up” and “Hammer to Fall.” It sports the rockabilly “Man on the Prowl,” and the glorious pop of “Keep Passing the Open Windows.”

And then there is “It’s a Hard Life,” my favorite Queen song of the Me Decade. It’s a classic Queen anthem, with a beautiful piano melody, a stunning solo by May, and Mercury singing like his life depended on it. I could listen to this song on repeat for days and not be bored. The rest of The Works has trouble competing, but not much. Taylor’s “Machines (Back to Humans)” marries guitars and synths admirably, Deacon’s wonderful “I Want to Break Free” brings a lilting Dire Straits beat into the mix, and sparse closer “Is This the World We Created” is almost impossibly pretty.

Yeah, The Works is tremendous. I know several people who dismiss everything Queen did after 1979, but this album is proof that they were still at the top of their game in the ‘80s. I loved it as a kid, and I love it now.

A Kind of Magic (1986)

And then there’s this big ball of cheese. A Kind of Magic doubles as the soundtrack to Highlander, another super-campy sci-fi flick, but even that doesn’t excuse much of the warmed-over, sappy, synth-y music here. Just look at the cover, it should tell you all you need to know. This is the most goopy pop record to bear the Queen name. Songs like “One Year of Love” and “Pain is So Close to Pleasure” and “Friends Will Be Friends” aren’t worthy of that name, frankly.

There are high points. “One Vision” isn’t bad – it’s a guitar-heavy tune straight out of an action movie. (It was written for Iron Eagle, in fact.) “Princes of the Universe” is a prog-rocky epic. And then there is “Who Wants to Live Forever,” the single best reason to buy this album. Amidst all the Velveeta and swords-and-sorcery on display here, it’s a moment of true transcendence – Brian May’s song is moving, soaring, lovely, and the orchestral arrangement brings it to new heights. My friend Mike Ferrier and I used this song (and its instrumental piano take, included on the second disc here) on the soundtrack of our high school space opera Sourcil and Nez, and it always brings back those memories.

But that’s the one moment of real power on a record that wastes an awful lot of time and talent on half-baked fluff. This is Queen’s worst album, and even so, it has some redeeming qualities. But not many.

The Miracle (1989)

I remember there was some speculation that Queen had hung it up before The Miracle came out. I’m really grateful that turned out to be baseless, not only because A Kind of Magic makes for a lousy swan song, but because The Miracle is so good. Recorded in the wake of both Brian May’s highly public marital separation, and Freddie Mercury’s highly private AIDS diagnosis, The Miracle is the first record that credits all lyrics and music to Queen as a unit. I don’t know whether to nod to that, or to an uncommonly strong burst of inspiration, but the songs here are tight and strong and unfailingly enjoyable.

The title track, especially, is pure Queen goodness. It starts off as a peaceful synth-y ballad, but dissolves into a prog-rock midsection, a blistering little jam, and a grand, Marillon-esque coda. “I Want It All” is a convincing rocker with some great flourishes by May, and a double-time jam smack in the middle. “The Invisible Man” should be too goofy to work, but it does, in a way that the similar tunes on Hot Space didn’t. “Breakthru” is a pure pop song, and even though the three tracks that follow it aren’t as good, they’re still interesting.

But it’s the final track, “Was It All Worth It,” that knocks this one home. No one knew it at the time, but this song is Mercury taking stock of his life and career, knowing both will soon be at an end. It’s not maudlin in the slightest – would you expect anything else from Freddie Mercury? It’s huge and triumphant, a rock and roll powerhouse with some truly camp orchestration. The song just sounds important. Reliving it now, hearing Mercury sing “it was a worthwhile experience” is pretty powerful. It’s an astonishing closer to a really good Queen album.

Innuendo (1991)

And so we come to this, the last album Mercury made with the band. He was evidently wasting away while recording it, dying by degrees, but you’d never know it. His voice is strong and grand on this whole thing, and the band sounds reinvigorated – this is the best Queen album since The Works, easy, and maybe even since the ‘70s. They were working on borrowed time, and they knew it, and that lends an urgency to the proceedings that just can’t be faked.

Of course, we didn’t have any idea at the time. Mercury kept his illness quiet, only announcing it one day before he died, in November 1991. Mercury, for all his showmanship, was an intensely private person – his funeral was closed to the public, with only 35 or so of his closest friends there. He kept the mask up until the very end. Innuendo was written and recorded with full knowledge that Mercury’s life would soon be over, but it’s just as crazy and campy and adventurous as anything the band ever did. Very little of it is reflective, and none of it acknowledges its own finality.

Even so, there are two songs that seem to stand as Mercury’s final statements on his life and death. Both were written by other band members, but they were specifically designed for Mercury to sing. Taylor’s “These Are the Days of Our Lives” is one of the prettiest things in the band’s latter-day repertoire. Reminiscent of Mike and the Mechanics, the song is graceful and grateful, looking back with no regrets, and forward with no fear.

And then there’s “The Show Must Go On,” May’s interpretation of Mercury’s struggle to keep the mask in place, continue performing and not let on how ill he truly was. This song’s a dramatic masterpiece, late-period Queen at their absolute peak. May was initially slated to sing it, due to Mercury’s failing health, but Freddie came in and nailed it in one take. And holy god, just listen to him. He’s incredible, unstoppable. “I’ll face it with a grin, I’m never giving in…”

The rest of Innuendo is, while not quite at those lofty heights, just plain excellent. The title track is a multi-part epic, stretching to 6:33, and featuring some guitar heroics from Steve Howe of Yes. “Headlong” and “The Hitman” rock like nobody’s business, “I Can’t Live With You” is a marvelous pop gem, “Don’t Try So Hard” is a gorgeous bit of ambience (with some astounding falsetto vocals from Mercury), and “All God’s People” is a semi-sequel to “Somebody to Love,” with the band massing vocals into a giant choir. I even like “Delilah,” the synth-heavy tribute to Mercury’s cat.

Innuendo is a fine, fine way for Queen to go out. It’s just as weird and wacky as anything they’ve done, but more urgent, more vital. And as final sentiments go, you can’t do better than “The Show Must Go On.” I listened to this album nearly every day for months in 1991, and it still stands up. I love it very much.

Made in Heaven (1995)

Which means I’m still not sure about this one. Billed as the final album with Freddie Mercury, it was in fact assembled from stray vocal tracks and unfinished bits he left behind. Some of the songs had been previously recorded as b-sides, and the band added new instrumentation over the original lead vocal tracks. Some were taken from Mercury’s solo album Mr. Bad Guy and Queen-ized, keeping Freddie’s original vocals. And one, “You Don’t Fool Me,” was literally pieced together from random snatches of vocals recorded in the last weeks of Mercury’s life, and given shape by producer David Richards.

Given all that, the fact that it’s a cohesive and overall very good album is kind of miraculous. I can’t fault the band’s intentions – they wanted us to hear every last thing Freddie sang, as a way of keeping him close and letting him go. Several of these tracks were co-written and sung by Mercury before his death, including “A Winter’s Tale,” his last solo composition, and “Mother Love,” his final vocal performance. I’d want to hear those, certainly, and I can understand wanting to construct an album around them. But the process makes me uneasy.

Actually listening to the record alleviates that considerably, however. It’s just so good to hear Freddie’s voice again, and the band obviously crafted these tracks with love. Made in Heaven doesn’t feel quite like a Queen album, since it’s so serious and introspective – there isn’t a single detour into campy goofiness, the hallmark of each of the 14 albums that precede it. But it’s a good pop record, with some wonderful performances by Mercury. “A Winter’s Tale” is particularly moving, a song that could easily be about peaceful death.

Made in Heaven is kind of unnecessary, and I have some reservations about the way it was put together. But most of them melt away while it’s playing, and I revel in one final visit with Freddie Mercury. Not sure it’s an album he would have liked very much, but it’s one I do. I was in college, my senior year, when this came out, and though I thought I was over Mercury’s death, listening to this record brought it all back. In a lot of ways, it still does.

Rest in peace, Freddie.

So that’s the lot, not counting that godawful The Cosmos Rocks thing that we’re not mentioning ever again. As before, I’ve barely even touched on the bonus tracks on the second discs here, so let’s do that now. In addition to the usual demos, remixes and single versions, there are nine b-sides and lost tracks I’d never heard. None of them were revelatory, but all were enjoyable. I’ve already mentioned the live takes on Hot Space, but aside from those, my very favorite thing here might surprise you: a no-synths, full-band version of “Football Fight” from Flash Gordon. Seriously, it rocks.

This concludes my little tour through Queen’s back catalog. They will always be one of my favorite bands, and hearing all of these records again just confirmed it for me. They were one of a kind – there’s never been a band quite like them, and there likely never will be again. If you’ve never bought a Queen album, I hope this little excursion has convinced you to pick a few of them up. Thirty-seven-year-old me agrees with 14-year-old me: you won’t regret it.

Next week, David Mead, Kate Bush, Noel Gallagher and/or Meshell Ndegeocello. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m going to try to keep this one to a manageable length, but it’s about SMiLE, so you can imagine how tough that’s going to be for me.

It’s fair to say that SMiLE is one of my all-time favorite albums, but it’s more accurate to say that it’s one of my favorite things created by anyone ever. Originally mounted as a Beach Boys record in 1966 and 1967, Brian Wilson’s masterpiece was abandoned and shoved under the rug, only to be triumphantly revived and completed in 2004. Even without that context, the finished SMiLE is one of the most joyous records I’ve ever heard. With that context, it’s so wonderful it moves me to tears.

When Wilson’s completed version of the album came out in September 2004, I had just lost a girl and a job in the same two-week period, and was facing the daunting prospect of selling my furniture, packing up my stuff and moving to a far-off state. It was one of the lower points of my life, and I needed something to make each day worth getting up out of bed for. SMiLE was it. It kept me going through the darker moments – it was (and is) quite impossible for me to feel down when this record is playing. I treasured it then, and still treasure it now.

It’s still difficult for me to comprehend Brian Wilson’s fear of this music. For decades he wouldn’t talk about it, would merely refer to it as “inappropriate,” would go to great lengths to keep it hidden. A couple of the SMiLE songs (“Heroes and Villains,” “Cabin Essence,” “Surf’s Up”) were re-worked and released on subsequent Beach Boys albums, and of course there is “Good Vibrations,” the only song from the sessions that was truly finished. Bootlegs of the sessions made the rounds, but until Wilson and Van Dyke Parks sat down in 2003 to put the whole thing together, very little of the SMiLE stuff had seen the light of day.

Until now. I expected that finishing SMiLE, finally, would be like lifting a lead weight from Brian’s shoulders, and I was more right than I could have guessed. He’s gone on to his most productive period since the ‘60s, crafting solo albums at a prodigious pace. (One of those albums, That Lucky Old Sun, is good enough to stand with some of his best work.) And now Wilson has consented to the official release of the SMiLE sessions. Just the idea that people might one day hear this stuff once sent him into the throes of despair. But here it is, in all its glory – a tantalizing glimpse at the original SMiLE, and how it might have sounded.

The SMiLE Sessions is available in multiple configurations, from a two-CD package to an all-out monster, with five CDs, two LPs and two seven-inch singles. I opted for the smaller set, but I’m kicking myself now – these sessions are so fascinating that I could easily dig through another three full discs of them without growing bored. Had this album been completed and released in 1967 as planned, it would have set the world on fire. It’s like nothing else that was being done at the time. Wilson has made no bones about the fact that he felt like he was in a competition with the Beatles, and with SMiLE, he would have won. In scope, complexity, and flat-out brilliance, it’s far and away one of the most amazing things ever put to tape.

This box is being promoted as the official release of the Beach Boys’ SMiLE, and well, it simply isn’t true. There is no album to officially release – SMiLE was not completed until 2004. What we do have here is an approximation, stitched together from various takes of various songs, and following the 2004 SMiLE’s road map. Some songs are incomplete, others have lyrics missing, and none of the little touches that link the SMiLE songs together are present. It’s no wonder it’s been a mystery for so long. It’s just not finished.

But the approximation is beautiful. The biggest weakness of the finished SMiLE is Brian Wilson’s voice, ravaged by time and misuse. That voice, in 1966 and 1967, was unbeatable. He could sing anything, and the vocal prowess of the Beach Boys was just unmatched. The original “Our Prayer,” which opens the record, is a little faster, a little more youthful than the one that starts the finished SMiLE, but the voices are still otherworldly and gorgeous. It’s a treat to hear the young Brian sing “Wonderful,” one of his best songs, so beautifully.

The abrupt ending of that piece, preserved here, confused Wilson devotees for decades – it turns out, it was meant to segue right into “Song for Children.” Most of the second suite is in pieces here – both “Song for Children” and “Child is the Father of the Man” are missing lyrics (since they were written in 2003 and 2004), and the overall conceptual weight of the thing is absent. I can’t imagine Wilson had anything else in mind, though, than what he ended up with – the finished version of this suite is perfection.

And of course, there is “Surf’s Up,” Wilson’s finest hour. I’ve said this before, but the ascending chorus (“columnated ruins domino”) may be my favorite moment in all of pop music, and man, Brian could sing it. There’s a piano demo included on disc two, just Brian and keys, and he does it there, flawlessly. “Surf’s Up” is a perfect song, and the original take of it is impossibly moving. It’s here with only part of its “child, child” coda, which was fleshed out for the completed SMiLE. Even so, it’s an absolutely incredible piece of work.

Hearing that astonishingly goony third and final suite always makes me laugh and sing along, and it’s neat to discover that so much of the lunacy of the finished version was there in the original takes. All the sawing and hammering noises in “Workshop,” the rhythmic chewing in “Vegetables,” the slide whistles in “Fire.” I find I really miss the pirate rap in “On a Holiday,” here in an instrumental version. The clarinets and mallet percussion are wonderful, though, and the segue into the haunting “Wind Chimes” is here in full. I also miss the lyrics that changed “Love to Say Da Da” into “In Blue Hawaii” on the finished record – I find myself singing along with the instrumental take here, adding the new words.

One of the biggest joys of the finished SMiLE was hearing how “Good Vibrations” took its place as the closing track. The segue, which revisits “Our Prayer,” is brilliant, and it’s here, intact. I don’t know if Wilson thought of ending the album with its most famous song in 1966, but in my mind, it was always meant to be there. And the reconstructed SMiLE here certainly bears that out. Even 45 years later, “Good Vibrations” is remarkable, a masterpiece of studio engineering and pop composition. The 2004 version was a piece of cake to record. This one reportedly took months, spanning 17 sessions at four different studios. For 1966, it’s a miracle.

Those sessions and more are documented on the box set, and there’s a joy in hearing them that I can’t describe. Here is young, vibrant Brian Wilson, in total control of his studio, instructing his crack team of session musicians on the right feel, the right vibe for even the smallest part of his vision. Brian is a taskmaster, interrupting takes when they don’t strike him the right way, but he’s also kind and supportive. There’s a great exchange with bassist Carol Kaye in which Wilson tells her not to worry about getting the part exactly right. She responds, “But I do worry, Brian,” and he says, “You mustn’t,” in kind tones.

Above all, the impression this set gives is that the SMiLE sessions were just a tremendous amount of fun. I’ve heard rumors of misery and darkness and feuds between brothers, and perhaps it’s the product of judicious editing, but I don’t hear any of that here. My 2-CD set includes a couple of funny improvised skits, in which Wilson pretends to have fallen inside a piano, and then the head of a microphone. And man, it just sounds like it would have been so much fun to be there to experience this.

The set also includes “You’re Welcome,” the b-side of “Heroes and Villains,” and the only song here I hadn’t heard. It’s a brief, vocal-driven thing, and of a piece with the SMiLE stuff. There’s also a backing vocal montage that’s breathtaking. Seriously, those Beach Boys could sing. I love hearing the “doing doing” bits of “Cabin Essence” unadorned. For a process junkie like me, these little bits are invaluable, and fascinating. Which is why I may spring for the big set sooner rather than later.

The thrill of hearing how one of my favorite albums ever was conceived and constructed is amazing. I’m grateful to have every part of SMiLE’s history, from the original sessions documented here to the finished work released in 2004. It’s all one long journey, one massive testament to the brilliance of Brian Wilson.

And sometimes, I think Brian needs to go back and listen to this stuff, to remind himself that he is, in fact, Brian Wilson. I fear sometimes he forgets his own place in history, his own prodigious talent, which is what leads him to agree to things like his new album, Brian Wilson in the Key of Disney. Yep, it’s 11 songs from Disney films, given the Wilson treatment – surf-rock beats, dazzling arrangements, and those incredible vocal parts. Like last year’s George Gershwin project, I enjoyed this more than I thought I would, but it’s still not really worthy of him.

Things I like: the banjo-and-mallets take on “The Bare Necessities” is nice, the zany mash-up of “Heigh-Ho,” “Whistle While You Work” and “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me)” is pure Brian Wilson, and the arrangement of “Colors of the Wind” brings out hidden… well, colors in the song. But as it turns out, not even Brian Wilson can make gold out of Elton John’s dross – both “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” and “Just Can’t Wait to be King” fall flat. And I prefer Randy Newman’s takes on his own songs, “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” and “We Belong Together.”

It all ends with a very nice “When You Wish Upon a Star,” and the whole thing is produced wonderfully, as is Brian’s trademark. (I mentioned the vocals, right? Because they’re fantastic.) But in the final analysis, all this wizardry is in the service of a bunch of Disney songs. I’ll buy whatever Brian does until one of us dies, but the man likely doesn’t have a lot of time left, and I’d like to hear him concentrate on original material.

Still, even if Brian Wilson decides to do these themed tribute records forever, or even chooses to retire from music entirely, his legacy is set. He’s one of the greatest songwriters and producers in history, and nothing he does now can change that fact. If he wants to have fun in his old age, and make records that make him smile, then who am I to begrudge him?

One of my favorite parts of the SMiLE Sessions set is the new essay Brian wrote about those days, and that music. It’s so warm, so full of peace and hope. I’m so glad he’s finally found both. If anyone deserves a happy ending, it’s Brian Wilson.

Next week, most likely I’ll catch up with the Queen reissues, and then there’s David Mead, Kate Bush and Noel Gallagher to get to. And then, of course, it’ll be top 10 list time again.

Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I hear a lot of records. So naturally, I hear a lot of bad records.

Most of them aren’t really bad, of course, just boring. Some of them rise to the level of awful, and those are the special ones – the ones on which nothing seemed to go quite right, usually involving a lack of talent running smack into an abundance of pretension and foolhardy ambition. I kind of cherish those bad records, and enjoy playing them again just to marvel at the wrong-headedness on display.

But then there’s that third, remarkably rare category. It takes an extraordinary amount of effort, an almost Herculean number of bewildering decisions, to make a record so bad, so painful, that I never want to hear it again. I admit to being in awe of these clusterfucks, and of the astonishingly addled thinking behind them, and I of course want to own them, because I can hardly believe they really exist – that real, thinking people not only conceived of them, but carried them out, like intentionally spreading a plague. But I never want to hear them again.

Which, of course, brings me to Lulu.

In case you’ve been living under a blessedly sound-proofed rock, you know the details of Lulu. A collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica, it is based on a series of sexually frank plays by German writer Frank Wedekind. It spans 90 minutes over two discs, and Reed sings most of it from the point of view of a female dancer turned prostitute who, in the end, willingly becomes a victim of Jack the Ripper. Yes, this is a real thing that you can go into a store and buy, should you so choose. But don’t. Seriously, don’t.

Let me make it plain at the outset – there is nothing I can say here, no combination of words I can use that would adequately describe the mind-numbing, teeth-clenching, please-kill-me experience of listening to Lulu all the way through. Most of the time, I simply couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I can’t think of anything that would have prepared me for it. The idea of Lou Reed and Metallica together is not a particularly strange one, but the fact that they got together and made this is, quite frankly, almost impossible to fathom. I sometimes like to pretend I can put myself in the artist’s place, and imagine what they were thinking when they created something. This? I have no idea. None.

So, all right. You’ve probably heard “The View,” the wretched first single. Endless, rote thudding from Metallica, while Reed babbles like a dementia patient, and James Hetfield adamantly insists that he is the table. There’s just nothing good about it, nothing that would make you want to hear it again. Now, imagine this – “The View” is easily, without doubt, the best song on Lulu’s first disc. The remaining 35 minutes are so bad that I yearned for the relative genius of that song.

What makes them so bad? Well, there are two sort-of rock songs – opener “Brandenburg Gate” and “Iced Honey” – that are both brain-freezingly boring. “Brandenburg” uses a Lynyrd Skynyrd chord progression, acoustically at first and then at full power, Hetfield screaming out “small town girl” as if he were suffering a stroke right then and there. Reed’s first line is “I would cut my legs and tits off,” and it just spirals down from there. And “Iced Honey” is two chords hammered idiotically for four minutes while Lou babbles.

And then there are the three “art” pieces. Holy hell. I can’t even explain these to you. “Mistress Dread” is like the worst sixth-grade metal band in your neighborhood bashing it out ineptly for seven unchanging minutes while their drunken grandfather rambles about sadomasochism. (“I beg you to degrade me, is there waste that I could eat, I am a secret lover, I am your little girl, please spit into my mouth…”) “Cheat On Me” asks its one question (“Why do I cheat on me”) again and again and again and again and again for 11 ass-aching minutes, while the band goes absolutely nowhere. Eleven minutes! You’ll want to kill yourself.

As a longtime Metallica fan, I was perfectly willing to blame Lou Reed for all of this, but I can’t. Hearing Hetfield bellow out “Why do I cheat on meeeee-yuh?” over this impossibly shitty riffing is like watching a loved one slowly waste away in front of you. This is at least 50 percent Metallica’s fault, and in some ways they’re living up to their brief – creating ugly music that repels those who don’t understand it. But it’s never been this ugly and this difficult to understand. Reed? I have never had any use for Reed, and this just cements my disgust. His vocals are unlistenably bad, his lyrics unconscionably vile.

Take “Frustration,” the eight-minute opening track of the second disc. While Metallica does their best impression of a garage band that can’t play, Reed spits out this shit: “I feel a pain creep up my leg, blood runs from my nose, I puke my guts out at your feet, you’re more man than I, to be dead and have no feeling, to be dry and spermless like a girl.” He repeats that last one more than once: “Marry me, marry me, marry me, I want you as my wife, spermless like a girl!” At some point in this endless monstrosity, I think Lou just decided to start shouting whatever came to his mind.

At this point in the album, you’re really going to be ready for shorter songs, and for a quick end to the torture. Luckily, then, the last three tracks clock in at 8:01, 11:10 and 19:28, respectively. “Little Dog” sounds like it was made up on the spot, acoustic meandering in one speaker and formless electric noise in the other while Lou just talks about dogs licking things and smelling shit in the wind. “Dragon” is similarly unlistenable for about three minutes, just noise and babble, and then slams into a repetitive, stock riff for the next 480 interminable seconds. Lou talks about “the taste of your vulva” and “piercing your nipples until I bite them off.”

And I feel like setting myself on fire. It physically hurts.

The epic-length closer, “Junior Dad,” aims to be a balm. It’s calmer, more peaceful, and ends with about 10 minutes of droning orchestration, which is nice because Lou isn’t talking on top of it. But the song is terrible, repetitive garbage. Granted, at the end of this record, it feels like “A Day in the Life.” But it’s worthless. Midway through, Lou begins sorta-singing about “the greatest disappointment,” and I couldn’t help thinking he was talking about the song itself.

Lulu is, in virtually every way it could possibly be, a complete disaster. It’s Chernobyl, and its radioactive tendrils will follow its makers for as long as they live. Reed will be fine – he’s supposed to do stuff like this every once in a while, to remind people that he’s a poisonous snake. But Metallica, they just don’t come back from this. It’s a millstone around their necks. They could release Master of Puppets II and, to their loyal fans who have been kicked around mercilessly for nearly two decades, they will still be the band that made Lulu. This is it for them. What a terrible way to go out.

As for me, well, I’ve been a Metallica fan since the ‘80s. I stuck with them through Load and Reload and St. Anger, hoping for better, and rejoiced when Death Magnetic delivered. So this feels like a gut punch. I don’t even know this band. It’s that bad. It is a clusterfuck of monumental proportions, one of the worst things I have ever had the misfortune to listen to. Here’s the most honest and harsh thing I can say about it: I never, ever, ever want to listen to Lulu again.

* * * * *

When I was a lad, I would have loved to see metal’s Big Four tour together. Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer, on the same bill? Oh, to dream the impossible dream. And now they’re actually doing it, touring as a quadruple bill, and I’m way too old to go and enjoy it. And as we’ve just established, Metallica has decided to walk off a cliff while carrying an anvil. (Ooh, no pun intended there, I swear.) So yeah, no Big Four show for me.

But damn if the rest of the foursome wouldn’t be worth seeing. Take Megadeth, for example. After years of increasingly awful records, they hit a stride with 2004’s The System Has Failed, and they’ve been getting better ever since. Dave Mustaine has figured out what kind of music he ought to be making, and he’s making it. It’s a rebirth I never thought I’d see, and now, with the new Megadeth album Th1rt3en, that resurrection is complete.

Th1rt3en, despite its stupid spelling, is the best Megadeth album since Countdown to Extinction. I’m going to pause for a second while you read that sentence again. Yes, I’m serious. For one thing, it’s the first to feature bassist Dave “Junior” Ellefson in 10 years, and the difference he makes is incalculable. Mustaine sounds revitalized, and his songwriting is back to its peak. Megadeth was always a technical, thrashy band, but with a real melodic edge to what they do, and Th1rt3en contains some of the best such songs in a long time.

Three of these tunes (“New World Order,” “Black Swan” and “Millennium of the Blind”) are older, but making their proper album debut here. Mustaine has clearly taken inspiration from these songs, and crafted an album around them to match. Single “Public Enemy No. 1” is classic Megadeth. “We the People” finds Mustaine spitting out his political anger over a mid-tempo powerhouse riff. And speaking of riffs, check out the monster one on “Never Dead.” Mustaine hasn’t sounded so much like his old self in more than a decade.

Also welcoming an old member back into the fold is Anthrax, whose Worship Music is their first record with singer Joey Belladonna in 21 years. Anthrax, to my mind, had no lost ground to gain back – they’ve been kicking ass consistently since at least 1985, and their five albums with John Bush are just as good as anything else in their catalog. But man, Worship Music is good. If they needed a comeback, this is it.

Anthrax was always the more straight-ahead thrash band of the bunch, and album opener “Earth on Hell” reaffirms that stance. It’s jackhammer chugging and double-time beats and Belladonna yelling his little heart out, and it makes me smile. Belladonna sounds surprisingly great here – I’ve always thought of his voice as somewhat thin, which is why John Bush was such a strong replacement. But he sounds superb throughout Worship Music, like he spent the intervening years working on his sheer power.

Better than that, though, the songs are impressively strong. “The Devil You Know” could have fit on Among the Living, and “Fight ‘Em ‘Til You Can’t” is a perfect Anthrax single, a show of force that’s almost withering. Scott Ian trades off lead vocals with Belladonna, Ian taking the shouted, thrashy sections while Belladonna handles the soaring chorus. Plus, it’s about fighting zombies, and you don’t get more Anthrax than that.

The quality stays high all the way through. Six-minute stomper “In the End” opens with church bells, then erupts into a crawling riff for the ages. It evolves over its extended running time into a true epic, with some Iron Maiden touches. “The Giant” finds Belladonna trading vocal lines with himself over an absolutely crushing beat. “The Constant” is exactly what you’re hoping for, Lost fans – a metal epic about Desmond Hume, with a chorus that won’t quit. Worship Music is a new classic Anthrax record, a welcome return for their most beloved singer, and another fine chapter in this band’s history.

So we’ve got Megadeth and Anthrax coming back strong, and if you work in Slayer’s impressive 2009 effort World Painted Blood, three of the Big Four are firing on all cylinders. Which leaves us with a Metallica problem. But that’s easily solved – ditch them, and get a much better, more modern metal band to take their place. If I may be so bold as to suggest someone, I would go with Mastodon.

This Atlanta quartet has been awesome for more than 10 years, and has some truly classic metal platters in their discography. Their last three, in fact, have shown phenomenal improvement while still remaining heavy as hell. 2009’s Crack the Skye brought some progressive rock influences in, particularly on the 11-minute “The Czar,” but still struck with blunt force. Live, they’re a steamroller, taking all comers. They’ve been called the greatest metal band of their generation, and it’s hard to argue.

Oh, and they have a terrific new album called The Hunter. It’s simpler and more melodic than previous Mastodon records, but still heavy. Only glimmers of the prog-rock remain – there’s no epic track, and in fact only two songs break five minutes. Some of the textures here are a real departure for the band as well, but they still bring that break-you-in-half power to most of these tracks. Oh, and hey, here are some of the amazing titles: “Blasteroid,” “Stargasm,” “Octopus Has No Friends,” “Curl of the Burl,” “Bedazzled Fingernails.” They’re clearly headed new places on here.

“Stargasm” is especially odd, with its Bowie soundscapes and soaring melody. The title track is similarly unfamiliar, remaining a semi-psychedelic mid-tempo thing for its entire running time. But then they hit a stunner like “All the Heavy Lifting,” or “Spectrelight,” and it’s clear they’re still Mastodon. The Hunter is a transitional work, without doubt, and Mastodon is becoming more accessible, but they’re doing it without giving up the raw power they’ve always brought to the table.

And speaking of James Hetfield (“I am the table!”), if Metallica can’t bring their A-game any longer, it’s about time to bring aboard a band that can. The Big Four will always be the Big Four, and I’m not kidding anybody. But how great would a Megadeth-Anthrax-Slayer-Mastodon show be? Who among us with an affinity for metal wouldn’t pay to go see that?

That’s what I thought.

* * * * *

Next week, it’s SMiLE time again. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Back in 2002, I made a seemingly bold prediction.

I suggested that, if they apply themselves, the then-semi-well-known British quartet Coldplay could one day be one of the biggest bands in the world. This was months before “Clocks” made them superstars, back when the band could simply release records, instead of creating worldwide messianic events. But there was always something there, some yearning for bigger and more epic mountains to scale.

The album I was reviewing at the time, A Rush of Blood to the Head, sounds so quaint and small now. My prediction was dead on – Coldplay got huge, and their sound transformed along with them. From “Clocks” to “Fix You” to “Viva La Vida,” they have evolved into a rare beast: a stadium-filling pop band that still cares, very much, about art. Coldplay traffics in singalong anthems, but they are on a mission to create the greatest singalong anthems ever belted out by 90,000 people at once.

Because here’s the thing about Coldplay: they don’t have to try new things. They could keep on pumping out the same rehashes of their older material and cashing the checks. (And with “Speed of Sound,” the first single from 2005’s X&Y, they very nearly did.) But they’re better than that. They’re restless, and while bringing in Brian Eno to shake up their sound certainly isn’t going to put to rest any of those U2 comparisons, the places they took that sound on 2008’s Viva La Vida were remarkable.

On that record, they pulled from a wide range of influences, from Radiohead to the Talking Heads, but in the process, gave up a little bit of their identity. Viva La Vida was a strikingly diverse piece of work, and pushed Coldplay forward in many important ways. It just didn’t often sound like them. Well, they’ve managed to rectify that without losing any of their experimental edge on their just-released fifth effort, Mylo Xyloto. It’s hard to explain what they did right here – this record still doesn’t sound much like Coldplay, but it feels like them.

Rather than running wild through a dozen different styles, the band has concentrated on the things they do best: hands-in-the-air triumphant rock songs, and peaceful, pretty ballads. These songs could easily fit on earlier Coldplay albums, but they’re produced like new-model Coldplay, awash in synthesizers and electronic beats and sparkling effects. I’ve heard this described as the band’s foray into pop, as if they’ve been playing some form of art-rock before this, and I think that’s a reaction to the heavy synth bass lines and computers on display. The songs, they’re pure Coldplay.

Eno is back, providing “Enoxification,” according to the liner notes, and whatever that is, I’ll credit it with making Mylo Xyloto the most relentlessly enjoyable Coldplay record ever. This thing apparently began life as a concept record about two lovers (named Mylo and Xyloto, natch) in a dystopian future burning down around their ears. Of course, that’s pretty much the plot of Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown, so I’m glad it’s only hinted at on Coldplay’s disc. But this feels like a concept record, like a single piece carrying you through from first note to last.

It helps that all of those notes are really good. “Paradise” has already taken hold as one of my favorite Coldplay singles, with its dirty electronic bass and Chris Martin’s earworm chorus. “Charlie Brown” may be even better – it’s one of those songs like “Clocks,” on which the band hits upon an almost inhumanly catchy and memorable instrumental figure, and builds a whole tune around it. This is the band in full anthem mode, and is countered by the simple, fragile “Us Against the World.”

By this point, you’ll have realized that one of Coldplay’s greatest strengths is also its biggest weakness: Chris Martin. His voice is oddly compelling, his everyman style grounds this band effectively. But his lyrics are lead weights. They’re terrible. “Us Against the World” is exactly what you think it is – over an elementary guitar strum, Martin sings, “Slow it down, through chaos as it swirls, it’s us against the world.” That the song still works is a minor miracle.

Same with “Every Teardrop is a Waterfall,” a rousing, soaring piece loaded down with clunkers: “I got my records on, I shut the world outside.” “From beneath the rubble, sing a rebel song.” “I’d rather be a comma than a full stop.” But damn if it doesn’t rise above that, and connect anyway. Jonny Buckland pinches Big Country’s trick of making his lead guitars sound like bagpipes, and when he, bassist Guy Berryman and drummer Will Champion kick in full force about a minute from the end, it’s like listening to the puzzle pieces fall into place.

The band does take a few risks, like the complex and dark “Major Minus,” but none is more interesting than “Princess of China,” on which the boys welcome Rihanna to duet with Martin. Remarkably, this tune isn’t much more radio-pop than the rest of Mylo Xyloto – Rihanna confidently works her powerhouse voice right into the sound of this record. It works far better than you’d expect it would, and sets up the back third of the album nicely. Final track “Up With the Birds” is like the streamlined version of “Death and All His Friends,” sliding through movements and building up to a brief coda, before collapsing back to earth.

I mentioned that Mylo Xyloto plays like a single song, and one thing that helps that is the band’s restraint on individual tracks. Yes, they’re mainly stadium-sized things, but they’re relatively short – only a few tracks here break four minutes, and Eno and the band have sprinkled little interludes throughout. No other Coldplay album comes off as a cohesive experience quite like this one.

That’s a big step forward, I think, as is the fact that the band has figured out how to meld their restlessness to their core identity. Very little of Mylo Xyloto sounds like Coldplay, but in many ways, it’s the most Coldplay album they’ve made. It’s also one of the best. I don’t think Martin is right when he says his band is the most hated on the planet, but they certainly don’t get the respect they deserve, as record-makers if nothing else. Mylo Xyloto probably won’t change that, but for those of us who predicted an artistically and commercially successful career path like this one, it’s a sweet triumph.

* * * * *

You couldn’t invent Tom Waits if you tried.

An old-time balladeer, part Gypsy, part Tin Pan Alley, with a voice like freshly ground sandpaper and a knack for telling darkly humorous, yet indescribably moving stories. Yeah, Waits is one of a kind. He’s been plying the same rhythmic, earthy yet otherworldly trade since he kind of went nuts on 1983’s Swordfishtrombones, so the only question that needs asking about a new Tom Waits album is, is it as good as the last one?

Yep, it is. Waits’ 20th record is called Bad as Me, and it’s full of the same ghostly shuffles, clattering grooves and glorious weepers as its predecessor, 2004’s Real Gone. I’m not really sure what took him so long, in fact – once again, Waits proves that he does Tom Waits better than anyone. There are some classics on here, like the organ-blasted “Raised Right Men,” on which Waits growls “Heavens to Murgatroid” and gets away with it, or like the absolutely crushing “Pay Me,” a doomed man’s lament, with accordions.

As always, Waits’ voice shouldn’t work with this material, and yet, I can’t imagine any other voice working quite as well. Take the sweetly-shuffling “Back in the Crowd,” as traditional a ballad as Waits has written: “If you don’t want these arms to hold you, if you don’t want these lips to kiss you, if you’ve found someone new, put me back in the crowd…” But he sings it like a drunken man teetering on a ledge, his gravely mumble suggesting the notes rather than hitting them, and it’s somehow so much more affecting than it would be with a straighter delivery.

Waits has pulled that trick off throughout his career, and he does it here half a dozen times. The rest of the time, he sounds like a lunatic, or a demon. The title track is a mesmerizing big-beat blues, Waits leaping for notes in an unhinged falsetto, and the incredible “Hell Broke Luce” is like a death march with Satan playing drill sergeant. “How is it that the only ones responsible for making this mess got their sorry asses stapled to a goddamn desk,” he barks, over a genuinely scary percussive soundscape, one that devolves into machine gun fire midway through.

This all works through sheer personality, and through the efforts of the amazing and like-minded musicians Waits has assembled. Guitarist Marc Ribot, Waits’ longtime bandleader, is superb here on every track. His subtle lines in “Face to the Highway” cannot be overvalued. Bad as Me also features Keith Richards, Charlie Musselwhite, Flea, David Hidalgo, Patrick Warren and Les Claypool. Yes, all on the same record. And what’s astonishing is, you’d never know it – they all just sound like the Tom Waits Band.

Bad as Me is just the latest chapter in a singular vision Waits has been playing out for decades. There’s not much new here – Waits’ even falsetto on “Talking at the Same Time” is new for him, but that’s about it. But hell, as long as nobody else is even attempting to be Tom Waits, Tom Waits can do it as long as he likes. He’s like no one else on earth.

* * * * *

It took Tom Waits seven years to follow up his last album, but he’s got nothing on our other Tom this week, who has been away from store shelves for 19 years. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I missed him.

If people know Thomas Dolby, they likely only know him for one thing: “She Blinded Me With Science.” That a man this prodigiously talented is considered a one-hit wonder is practically criminal. I could probably fit everyone who heard 1992’s splendid Astronauts and Heretics into my basement. And it’s not a particularly large basement. The guy’s made some excellent music that has been woefully ignored, is what I’m saying. So much so that he left music sometime in the 2000s to concentrate on his ringtone company. Yeah, his ringtone company.

So the fact that there’s a new Thomas Dolby album at all is kind of amazing. And the fact that it’s as good as it is makes me a very happy music fan. It’s called A Map of the Floating City, and it’s tied to a video game Dolby also developed, which takes you through three areas of play: the mechanical Urbanoia, the dusty western Americana, and the vast and peaceful Oceanea. Songs on the album are split up into those three categories as well – the more electronic stuff first, the acoustic Americana stuff second, and the pretty and watery material last.

Oh, and it was all recorded on a solar-powered 1930s lifeboat, apparently.

If all this sounds too heady for you, take it from me: the album is a blast. Dolby makes polished, melodic, consistently enjoyable pop music, and while the extensive back story might be daunting, it’s completely unnecessary. The songs are immediate, and time has not dulled Dolby’s lyrical prowess. This is dark and cynical and just wonderful stuff, and it has a good beat, and you can bug out to it.

The first suite is along the lines of Dolby’s past work – computer-enhanced pop with swell melodies. Opener “Nothing New Under the Sun” is a mid-tempo singalong with pitch-black lyrics about music and fame: “Somehow the cancer found a lung, you woke up to hear your words on the tip of every tongue, now go learn to live with the legend you’ve become…” “Spice Train” takes the Urbanoia theme seriously, spinning an intricate web of synth lines and percussion with a nifty Middle-Eastern melody. And “Evil Twin Brother” pulses along nicely, with vocal contributions from Regina Spektor.

All of which makes the quick turnabout on the Amerikana music more jarring, and more fascinating. “Road to Reno” bounces along to a skipping drumbeat and an acoustic strum, Dolby telling the tale of a politician and a lingerie saleswoman who meet a sticky end in a hotel room. “The Toad Lickers” gets even more down-home country, with fiddle from Natalie MacMaster and Jew’s harp from none other than Imogen Heap. And the seven-minute epic “17 Hills” is mesmerizing, a soaring country ballad about lovers on the run: “We robbed a store and she shot an armed guard, but mine was the face on the DVR…” Like most of Dolby’s stories, this one doesn’t end well for our heroes. But Mark Knopfler adds some wonderful guitar.

The Oceanea material is my favorite. “Oceanea” itself is almost inhumanly lovely, Dolby showing virtually everyone else who has ever used Auto-Tune as a vocal effect how it’s done. Over a shimmering synth bed, he sings a song of freedom: “You’re soaring on a thermal wind, you’re learning how to shed your skin, you made it home to Oceanea…” Just when you think it can’t get any more beautiful, Eddi Reader adds her voice to the mix. It’s just terrific.

And it’s matched by the stunning closer, “To the Lifeboats.” The music is lilting, even pretty, but the words are black as midnight. “The superstitious sailors of old refused to learn to swim, but there’s no need to drown these days, ‘cause we’ve got lifeboats… Where are the lifeboats? There are no lifeboats, there are no fucking lifeboats…” It ends almost too quickly, the first Thomas Dolby album in nearly two decades shivering to a conclusion on the name “Caroline.”

Speaking for myself, I didn’t need further proof that Thomas Dolby is brilliant. But if you do, A Map of the Floating City gives it to you in spades. It’s a fine addition to his too-brief discography, a gently malignant piece of work that again establishes him as a tremendous songwriter and record-maker. Like a lot of artists unfairly dismissed as one-hit novelties, once you get past the surface of Dolby’s work, you’ll find it’s something pretty special.

* * * * *

Next week, devil horns in the air, as I tackle metal’s Big Four. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I grew up in a church.

My dad was Catholic, my mother Protestant. My mom won, so we all joined a Congregationalist church in Medway, Massachusetts. I grew up with Sunday services, youth group meetings, even week-long retreats to cabins in the woods. I went to Christian summer camp, I said prayers before meals, I read the Bible cover to cover more than once. (I even had a thousand-page comic book Bible, sanitized for my protection – when the Israelites killed women and children because God told them to, they did so off-panel.)

I was always a spiritual kid, but from about 11 to about 15, I went through a hardcore Jesus phase. I not only listened to bands like Petra and White Heart, I joined a Christian rock band with a couple other like-minded middle-schoolers. I was all about it, all the time, and I think at the core of my full-bore dive into faith was a desperate need to belong, to believe, to be part of something. Because I would question it all the time. Have I prayed the right prayer? Am I really going to heaven? My pastor told me again and again that hell was real, and I was deeply terrified of ending up there.

Because here’s the thing. I never once, not even at my most fervent, heard the voice of God talking to me. Others in my church would say they did. “I hear him speaking to me,” they would say. “God told me that I should walk this path,” they would tell me. And I wanted to. I truly, truly wanted to hear that voice. So I prayed and waited and prayed some more and listened and held on for years. Nothing.

And eventually I grew so disillusioned with the church that I drifted away completely. (There were political reasons as well, which I won’t get into here.) As a surly young teen, I started asking questions, and felt let down by the answers. I lost whatever belief I had, and I still haven’t regained it. Now, at 37, I feel like I’m more honestly spiritual than I’ve ever been. I’m fascinated by religion, fascinated by belief, certain that there is something greater than us, though I have no idea what it is. I’m still unsure how to answer questions about my own faith.

But I’ve really come to an undeniable and painful conclusion about that time in my life: everyone who told me they heard the voice of God was lying. No one actually hears it. We take signs and metaphors and feelings and find God in them. That’s what we do. I didn’t realize that then – I thought there was something wrong with me, something deficient, something unworthy. And the moment I realized that wasn’t true still counts among the happiest of my life.

And that’s the moment, right there, that Taylor Muse so deftly and beautifully captures on Quiet Company’s third album, We Are All Where We Belong. Whenever I listen to it, that’s the experience I relive. That sense of relief, of freedom, of life surging back into me. For more than an hour here, Muse explores that moment – he details all the pain leading up to it, and raises his fist triumphantly when it arrives. This is Muse’s Curse Your Branches, his breakup album with God, and it is angry and petulant in parts, but it is mostly joy through tears. It’s an album not simply about leaving something behind, but about finding something better to replace it.

It’s a record that will upset some people, even some people I know. But I am coming around to the idea that We Are All Where We Belong is the best album of 2011, not just for being a brilliant, consistent, extraordinary piece of music, but for being remarkably brave and honest about a subject few want to discuss. Muse has bared his soul here – he unflinchingly describes intensely private moments of tested faith, and makes you feel every step of this journey, and every elated second of its destination.

Because unlike David Bazan’s album, We Are All Where We Belong is not the work of a questioning soul still finding his peace. This is an album that comes to a conclusion, crests the mountain and plants a flag. And here is what’s amazing about this record to me. The conclusion is this: everything you were taught about God is wrong, there is no heaven waiting for you when you die, we are all on our own, and all we have is each other. And it’s a triumphant, gloriously happy thing – not in spite of that conclusion, but because of it.

I suppose if you weren’t raised with religion, that may not be surprising to you. But it is to me, so much so that it took some time to really grasp it. All those ideas that used to scare me to death – What if there is no God? What if there’s nothing after this? What if we’re all alone? All of those ideas are explored as unqualified good things here. Where Bazan’s unbelief makes him sick, Muse’s feels like casting off shackles.

This is the kind of album that only someone who once intensely believed could make. It’s laced with betrayal and shame and anger. Muse grew up in a devoutly Christian household, and parts of this record are about how he still feels the emptiness where faith once was, the pull of something he no longer believes in. (“If Jesus Christ ever reached down and touched my life, he certainly left no sign to let me know he had, and I wouldn’t mind that he couldn’t find the time, it’s just that now my heart longs for things that probably don’t exist…”) This is not an album that rejects faith out of hand – Muse struggled with this, and still does. This is the result and culmination of years of painful wrestling with the issue.

It’s also an album of astonishingly good songs. In fact, there are only two songs here I would describe as “merely great.” The rest are phenomenal. What may get lost in all the discussion of the thematic power of this record is the huge leap forward in craft it represents for Muse, already one of the best songwriters around. This is also the album on which Quiet Company, the band, fully gels and makes its mark. Previous QuietCo records were mainly Muse, with some help from his friends. This one is fully realized – it sounds like a band at the peak of their powers.

You get that sense right away – after the buildup of “The Confessor,” the band erupts into “You, Me and the Boatman,” one of the year’s catchiest singles. Over a powerhouse beat from Jeff Weathers, roaring guitars from Tommy Blank and blaring horns, Muse opens the book on two of the record’s big themes: the fear of death, and the salvation of love. It’s the record’s mission statement: “I don’t care about the past and future,” Muse sings, “when this existence is probably all we have, and so the lives we make are all that matter, so let’s live to love and love to live…”

Muse spends the next hour delving into that theme, and what initially seemed to me to be an over-examination – literally every song on this album is about this – now flows beautifully in my mind from first note to last. I’m particularly fond of the way the two parts of “Preaching to the Choir Invisible” – sequenced third and twelfth, respectively – counterpoint one another. The first part is your first indication that this is not going to be like other QuietCo records. It’s tricky and complex and elaborate, and makes the first cut: “Open up the pit, he swallows or spits, and I swallowed that shit for so long, now what should I think of faith? It ain’t noble or brave, and I don’t need to be saved or chosen…”

The second part is darker, and takes sharper aim – it’s the culmination of the more incisive second half. “We filled a book with what Jesus said, so we can all disagree on what he really meant.” “I’ll make a deal with Jesus Christ, just speak one word I can hear, prove you’re alive, and I’ll believe you’re here.” “I have rejected holier spirits than you, it’s no big deal, hallelujah.” It’s like Part One is Muse starting to talk about it, and Part Two is him finally screaming about it, getting it out, and moving on. Both songs end with the album’s title phrase, and while it almost comes too early in the album on Part One, it’s the perfect conclusion to Part Two.

Between those two poles, Muse picks at his past, and revels in his present. The sweetest songs on this record are reserved for his new daughter. “Are You a Mirror” is, bar none, the greatest new father song I’ve ever heard. “I look inside you and I see myself,” Muse sings, before delivering this stunner of a line: “And one day you will look me straight in the eyes, and judge me for the things I’ve been in your life, I hope you love me when you know me well…” “Set Your Monster Free” is a lovely tune about letting your child choose her own beliefs: “Daughter, I am wrong almost as often as I’m right, so Daughter, just be strong enough to make up your own mind…”

That song also delves into Muse’s own religious upbringing, and what it did to him. “You don’t have to waste your time holding on to beautiful lies,” he sings to his daughter, and later, in “The Black Sheep and the Shepherd,” he addresses God directly: “Hey God, now I got a baby girl, what am I supposed to tell her about you? Because her life shouldn’t have to be like mine, she shouldn’t have to waste her time on waiting on you, because you never do come through…” You can’t fake a sense of betrayal like that – this is undeniably the statement of someone who once believed with all his heart, and just can’t anymore.

The amazing “Fear and Fallacy, Sitting in a Tree” tackles the fear of death, a recurring motif. This song contains one of my favorite moments on the record, the second verse: “So let’s bow our heads for something, pray that God is on our side, but the pagan and the pious, they all sound the same, ‘Oh my God! Oh my god!’” This bit pops, unbidden, into my head at all hours.

The first half of this album sounds like Quiet Company, but better – sharp, melodic pop songs with a kick. But as much as I like that stuff, it’s the four songs that lead into “Choir Invisible Part Two” that set this album atop any other this year. “Everything Louder Than Everything Else” is a seven-minute Sufjan Stevens-esque wonderama that takes us back to the beginning of time, and shows that fear of death is nothing new. “It’s time to get off of our knees and offer our hands up to the earth, and it’s time to find where we belong and see what it’s worth,” Muse sings, over pulsing strings and delirious guitars. It’s an incredible song.

But it doesn’t prepare you for “The Black Sheep and the Shepherd,” the song that delves into Muse’s past, in often chilling ways. “The river’s wide, and I could not swim across it, so I convinced myself that I walked upon the waves, but I lied and I knew I’d lied, but I did everything I could to soothe the family pride, and I just don’t think I can keep it up now…” It contains the record’s most harrowing passage, delivered in a matter-of-fact voice over lilting music: “The only times I ever thought of suicide, I was waiting on the Lord to direct my life, saying, ‘Give me one word and I’ll put down the knife and never pick it up again…’”

There is nothing wrong with us, Muse concludes at the end of this song. We’re not broken and defective because we don’t hear God’s voice. He’s not speaking. And that leads us into “The Easy Confidence,” subtitled “What I Would Say to You Now.” This is the album’s most powerful, frightening song, a bitter and angry shout to the heavens. “I was screaming out your name, I guess you never heard me, but I was screaming it for years,” it begins. The music starts at a slow creep, but soon takes off, Muse screaming his head off, like Job rending his garments: “I’ve got a bone to pick, and I want to pick it clean, the prodigal son and his shameful disbelief…”

It’s the final kiss-off, the big middle finger to God, and it ends in anger and recrimination: “This isn’t love, we’re not in love, if you wanted love you just should have spoken up.” It’s a devastating moment, and I can’t even explain to you what it feels like to hear it. It’s years of pent-up rage coming out, and as someone who has had similar one-sided shouting matches with God in my time, this song hit me pretty deep. Muse answers it with the next song, “Midnight at the Lazarus Pit,” a simple and glorious love song in which Muse gladly trades the spirit for the flesh. The refrain (“I’m completely yours”) is this album’s most lovely moment, and it takes us into “Choir Invisible Part Two,” in many ways the end of the journey.

So there we are. God has been rejected, life has been embraced. Nothing is waiting for us after death, and we shouldn’t fear it. We should take every day that’s given to us, and enjoy it, since it’s all we have. The lives we make are all that matter. There is nothing wrong with us. We are all where we belong. In the final track, “At Last! The Celestial Being Speaks,” Muse takes on God’s voice and apologizes for being so elusive. The album ends with this sentiment: “So lift up your heads, don’t worry about death, we’re all gonna be just fine.”

It’s amazing. Whether or not you agree with his conclusions – and I don’t, not completely – this album is nearly flawless, and almost jaw-droppingly brave. In the same way that I am fascinated to hear artists like Terry Taylor and Steve Hindalong explain to me why they believe, I am fascinated to hear Taylor Muse explain to me why he doesn’t. In a lot of ways, this album gives a voice to that 15-year-old kid I was, questioning and drifting and finally breaking away. I never heard God speak to me either, Taylor, and I don’t think anyone ever does.

For me, what brought me back around to spirituality was music. I heard the Choir’s amazing Circle Slide in 1990, just as I was turning bitter and angry, and it helped me see a different perspective. But I have felt the way Taylor Muse feels here, and though life led me a different way, and toward different destinations, I feel like I walked at least part of this journey with him. And I’m grateful for and in awe of his honesty here. Though I know many people who will have strong negative reactions to this record, I think it’s a masterpiece. And each listen convinces me of that even more.

I don’t know if this long ramble has made any sense. I also don’t know if it’s convinced you to give We Are All Where We Belong a try, or if it’s scared you off. It took me several listens to truly absorb this piece, but I think it’s 2011’s finest. It is certainly its most powerful. It has touched me and made me think more than any other, and its songs dance across my mind nearly every day. I’m awed by it, frightened of it, and in love with it. It is the best record of Quiet Company’s career, and the best thing I’ve heard this year.

You can hear all of We Are All Where We Belong and download it here. Buy the record here.

Next week, Coldplay and two guys named Tom. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

You can find Part One right here. No time for love, Dr. Jones. Onward!

* * * * *

I didn’t do this consciously, but I seem to have kept a veritable who’s who of modern songwriters for this second installment. No disrespect intended to Peter Gabriel, or Bjork, or even Julian Lennon, but the names I’m about to trot out belong on any respectable list of great songsmiths from the last 30 or so years. And we’ll start with one who, in my opinion, ought to be higher on those lists than he usually ranks.

Ryan Adams is, put simply, just incredible. As a pure songwriter, he has it all – a strong sense of history, a great way with a melody, lyrics that cut to the bone. Take a walk through his solo catalog sometime. You can even leave the Whiskeytown trilogy aside for now – I know much of his acclaim centers on those three records, and they’re wonderful, but Adams’ solo work has often been just as good, if not better. Cold Roses, Jacksonville City Nights, Easy Tiger, Gold and Heartbreaker are all 100 percent classics to these ears.

So what’s the problem? Why is he merely respected, instead of revered? Well, he’s mercurial, he’s inconsistent, and he’s a bit of an asshole. He’s the guy who will write and record a Rock N Roll just to mess with his record company. He’s the guy who will get into fights with people at his shows, and storm off the stage – in fact, you should never bet on which Ryan will show up at any given concert. Last year, he released a metal album under the name Orion, and a double record of ‘80s-inspired pretty noise with the Cardinals, neither his best work.

So he really needed an album like Ashes and Fire, his best and prettiest work since Easy Tiger in 2007. There are no gimmicks with this one. It’s just 11 well-written country-folk songs, played and sung with heart. This is the kind of record that makes things like Orion and Love is Hell sound like diversions – Adams is so very good at this straightforward, no-frills songcraft that anything else he does feels like a side project.

Ashes and Fire starts with a couple of terrific low-key mid-tempo things, and they connect, particularly the woozy title track. But the third cut begins a series of heartbreakers (no pun intended), stripped-down and lovely. “Come Home” is among his prettiest, and when his all-star backing vocal choir (Norah Jones, Stephen Stills and Adams’ wife Mandy Moore) chime in on the chorus, it’s moving. “Do I Wait” gets me every time I hear it – Benmont Tench’s organ is exactly what the song needed to take off and fly.

Adams incorporates a string quartet on several songs, most prominently the brief “Chains of Love.” But it’s the subtler arrangement on the lovely “Save Me” that I prefer. In fact, the understated moments on Ashes and Fire (and there are a lot of them) are the best. The record ends with two of them – “Lucky Now,” a classic Adams tale of yearning despair, and “I Love You But I Don’t Know What to Say,” which, despite its title, is a wedding song: “I promise you I will keep you safe from harm, and love you all the rest of our days, when the night is silent and we seem so far away, I love you and I don’t know what to say…”

Ashes and Fire is 11 more reasons Ryan Adams should be considered one of the finest songwriters anywhere. It’s a fragile, down-home, flat-out beautiful little record, and for all the diversity on display in his catalog, this is the stuff he does best. I’m glad to put up with the things he doesn’t do quite as well, if it means we will occasionally get albums like this one.

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Bill Mallonee has the opposite problem.

His fans – and I count myself among them – rightly tout Mallonee as a great songwriter, but he’s almost too consistent. He writes the same kind of great song over and over again, to the point where you know exactly what to expect from a new Mallonee release. It’s been five years since we’ve had a proper one (you know, on CD and everything), but the new The Power and the Glory is just what I thought it would be – 12 well-written Americana songs with ringing guitars and heartland-poetic lyrics.

To be fair, I’d already heard most of these songs – they were released in demo form over the last three years as part of a download-only series called Works (In) Progress Administration. In fact, Mallonee has embraced the Internet in ways many of his contemporaries simply haven’t. His Bandcamp page allows you to hear everything he’s ever done, and allows him to release these songs almost as they come to him – The Power and the Glory is his ninth release of 2011, and in between that and Permafrost, his last CD, he’s put out 20 digital-only collections.

But there’s no getting around the sense that this is the first “real” Mallonee album since 2006, the first one he’s poured precious touring money into pressing up. And it’s very good. Its track list pulls from several volumes of his demo series, but here the songs are fleshed out, played by a rock band at the height of its powers. All of the guitars on this album are Mallonee, and the ringing, enveloping six-string tones take these songs to another place entirely. Every note of this thing says it’s the big one, the record we’ve been waiting for.

The lyrics are, of course, tremendous. Mallonee is nothing if not a poet, which may be why he has gravitated recently to Jack Kerouac and the beat generation. He gives them their due in “From the Beats Down to the Buddha”: “Lowell’s lonely factories, post-war America happily leaving all the brightest and the best, you never felt that understood pounding on your Underwood, you were putting all their alloy to the test…” The wonderful “The Ghosts That I Run With” references D.B. Cooper: “And my parachute, it opened wide, I still see blue sky in my dreams, now it’s mysteries left unsolved on your TV.” That song is about thinking you’ve disappeared without a trace.

If there’s one person who gets referenced most often, however, it’s God. “Bring You Around” is the prettiest: “And that love that walked in here without a sound, it will whisper your name, it’ll take all the blame and bring you around.” “Ever Born Into This World” lays Mallonee’s faith bare: “I am saddened for the orphans, for the scared and confused, I am gladdened when the child within each one of use steps forth with his good news, you may come back like a prodigal son to your father’s home, or you may steer clear for a thousand years ‘till the shepherd finds his own…”

But The Power and the Glory runs smack into the same problem every Mallonee album ever has: it all sounds the same after a while. These 12 songs all stick to similar tempos, and the same chord structures, and the same ringing Americana tone. It’s great in small doses, but by the time you’re rounding third in the hour-long effort, you’ll probably want Mallonee to vary it up a little. Song by song, this is great stuff, though, and for a lover of physical objects like me, it’s nice to have another Mallonee title to slide onto the shelf. He’ll probably do exactly this kind of thing until he dies. If you liked him before, you’ll like this. If you’ve never heard him, start here. It’s as good an entry point as any.

For a slightly more ecstatic review, check out my friend Carl Simmons’ blog here. He’ll be unhappy with next week’s column, so I’m trying to get in his good graces now.

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If you’d asked me for a list of my favorite songwriters in 1995, Matthew Sweet would definitely have been on it.

That was his heyday, the Girlfriend–Altered Beast–100% Fun years, when he could do no wrong. Every album was chock full of sharp tunes with indelible melodies, the guitars – many of them played by the great Robert Quine – were loud and thick, the harmonies lighter than air. Sweet made a string of fantastic pop records, all the way through 1999’s In Reverse, and then kind of… went away for a bit.

When he returned, he came back stranger. These days, it takes me three listens, minimum, to every new Matthew Sweet album to decide whether I like it, or I think it’s a mess. His albums now feature the oddest production you’re likely to hear – hard stereo panning, backwards noises, arrangements that seem like they’re going to fall apart any second. All of this sometimes obscures the songs, which is a shame, since Sweet remains a gifted pop songwriter.

His new one, Modern Art, keeps the streak going. These 12 songs are, for the most part, splendid. But it will take you some time to discover this, as the off-putting “psychedelic” production will keep distracting your ears. “She Walks the Night” is a great example. This is a tune that could have fit on Girlfriend, a free-flowing, Byrds-y ditty with a delightful chorus. But if the weird backwards vocal technique isn’t enough to confuse you, at about the 2:30 mark everything drops away for a bizarre interlude that stops things short.

Some of these tunes are left alone. “When Love Lets Go I’m Falling” is as lovely as you’d hope, its straightforward recording doing it every favor in the world. But bouts of weirdness like “My Ass is Grass” serve to drag this thing down somewhat. It’s still a collection of strong songs from a guy I hope never stops writing them. But I’d like to hear what these tunes would sound like recorded live. Sweet’s voice is in top form, and his songwriting hasn’t suffered. I just wish it didn’t take so much work to hear those attributes on Modern Art.

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The new Bangles album, Sweetheart of the Sun, is probably closer to how longtime fans remember Matthew Sweet records. There’s a reason for that – Sweet produced it, the band recorded it at his home studio, and Sweet plays and sings on it. But don’t let that fool you into thinking that this is a Sweet album under another name. No way. The Bangles reunion is the real deal, and this album is fabulous.

The Bangles are down to a trio now, with the departure of bassist Michael Steele – it’s Susanna Hoffs and the Peterson sisters now. Sweetheart is their first album in eight years, and all three of them brought their A-game. They all contribute splendid, sunny songs to this record, and play them like a band reinvigorated. Check out Debbi Peterson’s “Ball N Chain,” a rocker of the highest order – the double-time drums, the barely-audible pounding piano, the backing vocals (“dragging me down”), everything clicks. It’s just awesome.

I have no idea why Hoffs’ fantastic “I’ll Never Be Through With You” isn’t a worldwide hit right now. It’s a pop classic – I could imagine this song coming from Carole King, and ringing down the halls of the Brill Building. The textured recording is beautiful, Hoffs’ emotional voice blending with her bandmates atop Greg Liesz’ marvelous lap steel lines. It’s one of the best pop singles of the year, and I can’t figure out why the world has been indifferent to it.

The rest of the album is similarly excellent. Vicki Peterson’s “Circle in the Sky” is a strummed delight, and her “What a Life” is a quick-step powerhouse. The three Bangles harmonize like birds on the low-key “Through Your Eyes,” which almost reminds me of Crosby, Stills and Nash. And they take a pair of fun trips through others’ songs: John Carter’s “Sweet and Tender Romance,” here given a garage-rock treatment, and Todd Rundgren’s “Open My Eyes,” which closes the record. (It’s a Nazz song. Super bonus points for reaching that far back into the man’s catalog.)

I can’t say I’d written off the Bangles. I just hadn’t thought about them in years. But Sweetheart of the Sun brought them right back onto my radar screen. This is a wonderful pop record, loud and proud and melodic and graceful and just plain awesome. If you’re like me, you probably haven’t given this band much consideration in a while either. Trust me, this album will change that. Check it out.

* * * * *

And finally, a guy who has written more great pop songs in the past 15 years than almost anyone.

Yes, before you ask, the fact that Ben Folds has just released a career retrospective makes me feel very, very old. I’ve been with him since the beginning – I bought the self-titled Ben Folds Five debut on a recommendation from Chris L’Etoile in 1995, and loved it immediately. I’ve seen Ben in concert more than just about any other act, except maybe the Lost Dogs. I’ve breathlessly anticipated everything he’s ever done, and felt the joy of the triumphs (Whatever and Ever Amen, Rockin’ the Suburbs, the new Lonely Avenue) and the pain of the stumbles (I still can’t get into Way to Normal at all). It’s been a great ride.

So here is The Best Imitation of Myself, a three-disc collection that looks back over his work since 1992. Normally I leave these things on the shelf, but Folds has done it right – he’s matched up a best-of with two discs of unreleased live tracks and rarities. (Not to mention the 55 other tunes available online.) This is absolutely worth the money, and over almost four hours, it plainly states the case: Ben Folds is one of the finest pop musicians of his time.

Start with the first disc, the best-of. I’m just going to list off some of the titles. “Annie Waits.” “Philosophy.” “Landed.” “Don’t Change Your Plans.” “The Luckiest.” “Smoke.” “Still Fighting It.” And yes, even “Brick.” These are immortal songs, and “From Above,” a highlight of Lonely Avenue, last year’s collaboration with Nick Hornby, fits right alongside them. This is an unbelievable songwriter’s legacy, and the fact that I can come up with at least a dozen other songs that should have been here is further testament. The disc includes the strings version of “Landed” and a live recording of “Smoke” with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, to my delight.

The first disc ends with “House,” the first new Ben Folds Five song in 12 years. There’s little that could live up to that, and “House” barely tries. It’s just a nice little song, with not much on its mind. Go in expecting that, and you’ll be happy with it. Me, I’m looking forward to the Five’s new album, which is reportedly in progress. They sound comfortable together here, like old times, and even more so on the two other new tracks on disc three. (We’ll get there.)

The second disc is all live, and it’s fan-freaking-tastic. Its first six tracks are half of that Ben Folds Five live album we’ve been needing for a while – they jam through “Julianne” and “Song for the Dumped,” and lay down pretty renditions of “Mess” and “Magic,” two highlights from the underrated The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. From there, Folds takes the stage himself – we get live takes of “Zak and Sara,” the great “All You Can Eat,” “Effington,” the overlooked “Sentimental Guy,” and “Picture Window,” one of the most heart-rending Lonely Avenue songs.

We welcome the West Australian Symphony Orchestra back for a gloriously sad “Fred Jones Part 2,” and Rufus Wainwright takes the mic for a cover of “Careless Whisper.” (Yes, the Wham song.) The Five makes a brief return on “Army” and “The Battle of Who Could Care Less.” And there’s a version of “Long Tall Texan” unlike any you’ve ever heard. The disc ends with “Not the Same,” and actually closes out on the trademark audience vocals, which are always pretty amazing to experience.

The third disc is the gem, though. We get to hear demos of “Best Imitation of Myself” and “Boxing,” and an unreleased four-track song called “Rocky.” We get to hear how “Julianne” and “Evaporated” would have sounded on the Five’s aborted first album. (Based on this, it was a good call to scrap those sessions. They’re not bad takes, they just lack all sense of energy.) We get “Amelia Bright,” a song recorded for the Five’s unfinished fourth album in 2000. We get a set of demos from the same year, including the unreleased “Break Up at Food Court” and the great “Wandering,” which deserved wider acclaim.

We get Ben’s take on the Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights.” We get an alternate take of “Time,” another forgotten highlight from Songs for Silverman. We get “Because the Origami,” the best song from his “8in8” collaboration with Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman and Damian Kulash. We also get his infamous cover of “Bitches Ain’t Shit,” in case you didn’t have that already, and two songs from previously-released compilations.

But I know what you want to hear about. Yes, we also get two new Ben Folds Five tunes, although neither is technically new. “Tell Me What I Did” was written for the fourth Five album, and never recorded until now. It’s a fun stomper with a cool synth line in the middle, and it’s nice to hear these three play with such abandon again. And closer “Stumblin’ Home Winter Blues” is a tune drummer Darren Jessee wrote for his Hotel Lights project. This version is fuller and brighter, but no less beautiful. It’s a nice way to fade out.

So yeah, if you’re one of those people not yet sold on Ben Folds, pick this up. It does exactly what a retrospective should: it lays out every reason you’d need to become a lifelong fan, and it leaves you wanting more. It’s a perfect window into Folds’ snarky, sincere, brilliant little world. And once you visit, you’re gonna want to stay.

* * * * *

Whew! Next week, just one record – I’ll finally deliver that full-fledged Quiet Company review. After that, there’s Coldplay, Tom Waits, Brian Wilson, a metal spectacular, and two more installments of God Save the Queen, if I can get to them before year’s end. Thanks for reading.

Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tidal wave of new releases like we’re experiencing right now.

It’s become pretty damn difficult to keep up. In October, I plan to buy about 30 new albums. In November, about 20. I’m not even sure where I’m going to find the time to listen to all of it. And the backlog has come at just the wrong time – when my job has decided to suck even more hours out of my life than it had been before.

So this week and next week, I’m going to try to move quickly through some of the 30 or so records I’ve picked up recently. And I’ll try to do it as quickly and concisely as I can, although there are some here that deserve a more in-depth look. Hopefully, it’s going to be like speed dating: a few minutes with each contestant, saying what needs to be said, and then moving on. But with fewer awkward stories and a lot less desperation.

Ready? Clock is ticking.

* * * * *

I am probably alone in still expecting great things from Jane’s Addiction.

I feel like an old man when I say this, but in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, Jane’s Addiction meant something. Nothing’s Shocking and Ritual de lo Habitual were, to my teenage mind, seriously important records, the products of a band looking to push things forward as much as they could. They were my first brush with censorship – I still have a cassette copy of Ritual with the made-safe-for-Walmart cover, depicting the First Amendment written on a plain white background. And I’d never heard anything in the world like “Three Days,” or “Then She Did.” They were artists struggling against an artless system, and when they decided to disband because they just couldn’t kick against it any more, it seemed like an act of nobility to me.

So the idea that they’ve become a cash-grab project for Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro makes me sadder than I can tell you. I accepted 2003’s reunion album Strays, despite bassist Eric Avery’s decision not to take part, because it was actually pretty damn good. But the box set of scraps was a bridge too far, and now we have a second reunion record, The Great Escape Artist. And this one doesn’t even try to recapture the magic. It’s Jane’s Addiction in name only.

It would be one thing if this were merely the worst Jane’s Addiction album. That’s kind of a high bar – some bands have gone their entire careers without producing anything as good as Strays, the previous title holder. No, this is just a boring piece of work, from anyone. And it’s not that I dislike the more dreamy pop direction they’ve headed in here – the pretty noise Navarro coaxes from his amp still moves me, and here he’s experimenting with tones and textures like he rarely has before. But the songs are little nothings, and after an eight-year wait, the album is distressingly short.

If you’ve heard “Irresistible Force,” you’ve heard the record’s best song. It’s not bad – it’s one of the few that finds a melody for Farrell to sink his teeth into. Seriously, it’s been eight years since I’ve heard that voice, and this record gives him almost nothing to do. Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio takes up the bass reins this time, and co-wrote most of these songs (except for three inexplicably co-written by Duff McKagan). I’m not the biggest fan of his main band, but they write some catchy, memorable tunes. None of that talent is in evidence here.

I don’t want to make it sound like I hate this. I don’t. It’s acceptable modern rock, with some nice guitar textures. “Twisted Tales” has a nice ascending melody to it. “Broken People” makes the most of its U2-ish framework. The production is thick and dreamy, and on those rare occasions when Navarro cuts loose – as on “Irresistible Force” – he sounds swell. But this is an album almost entirely lacking in ambition, content to stay grounded, satisfied with its half-assed effort. Coming from a band like Jane’s Addiction, that’s sad.

* * * * *

One thing you can never accuse Peter Gabriel of is a lack of ambition.

In fact, his projects are often so ambitious that they take a decade or more to complete. He’s been working on I/O, the proper follow-up to 2002’s Up, for about eight years now, and there’s still no indication that we’ll get to hear it any time soon. But that’s OK, because the stopgap projects have been amazing. Last year, we had Scratch My Back, a covers album performed entirely with a symphony orchestra. And now, Gabriel’s taken the same approach to his own catalog, with astounding results.

The record is called New Blood, and for a longtime Gabriel fan like me, it’s revelatory, and in places unspeakably beautiful. Like those on Scratch My Back, these are not your average orchestral arrangements. They do not seek to emulate or replace the guitars and synths of the original versions, but rather to reinvent these songs from the ground up. One listen to the first track, the amazing “The Rhythm of the Heat,” will tell you that. The tribal drums of the original tune, still one of Gabriel’s creepiest, are all but gone, and the strings do all the heavy lifting. And they do it well – the arrangement is muscular and surprising and absolutely mindblowing.

To Gabriel’s credit, he waits until about halfway through this 77-minute album to start tackling his hits, like “In Your Eyes” and “Don’t Give Up.” The first five tracks are all lesser-known tunes, but some of my personal favorites, here given gorgeous new life. The first time I heard this new “San Jacinto,” for example, I found myself moved to tears. (This was while driving, so you can imagine the looks I got as I was singing along, weeping openly.) The arrangement is like scattered dots for its first half, the strings matching a glittering piano figure, but when the big moment comes (and if you know this song, you know what I mean), the dots become lines, and the strings just take flight. It’s incredible.

Here is “Downside Up,” from the overlooked OVO album, which Gabriel sings with his daughter Melanie. Here is “Intruder,” its new form even more freaky than the original somehow. And here is a true hidden gem from Gabriel’s catalog: “Wallflower,” a song based on his experiences with Amnesty International. The strings never overpower this song’s simple beauty, merely accenting Gabriel’s haunting vocal and piano. (Incidentally, Gabriel is 61 years old now, and he hasn’t lost a note. His voice remains a singular instrument of uncommon resonance.)

And yes, he gets to the hits, and yes, they’re marvelous. “In Your Eyes,” in particular, is a work of wonder in this new form, the cellos taking the piano part during the verses, and the full orchestra exploding all over the choruses. “Mercy Street” is lovely, if understated – the “kissing Mary’s lips” moment is breathtaking – as is “Don’t Give Up,” with Ane Brun singing the Kate Bush part. “Red Rain” is the only arrangement that goes a tiny bit over the top, but it’s forceful and powerful nonetheless.

Gabriel ends things with “Solsbury Hill,” separated from the main program by 4:48 of silence. In the liner notes, he says he did so because its arrangement is lighter than those he wanted to include here. And it is, but it’s still splendid – it’s not a reinvention, but it recasts this stone cold classic in new lights. Even if that’s a little less ambitious than the rest of this amazing album, it’s still worth hearing. New Blood is a treat for longtime fans, but even if you’re not intimately familiar with these songs, it’s still one of the most beautiful things you’re likely to hear this year.

* * * * *

The buzz surrounding Bjork’s new album, Biophilia, has almost nothing to do with the album itself.

For months, all I heard about was its unique method of release – Biophilia is apparently the first iPhone album, the subject of a series of apps that correspond to each song. Buy all the apps, you have the album, plus an interactive experience of some sort. If I sound indifferent, it’s because I am. The iPhone thing was the only story during the ramp-up to this record’s release, and all I wanted to know about was the music. What was my favorite big-voiced Icelandic visionary going to drop on us this time?

Because here’s the thing: the last time Bjork truly knocked me over, musically speaking, was 1997’s Homogenic. I know a sizeable number of people like Vespertine, but I found it disappointing in comparison, and since then, she’s become more abstract, creating an album solely with the human voice (2004’s Medulla) and drowning another in beats (2007’s Volta). Along the way, she stopped writing memorable songs, concentrating instead on tone poems and mood pieces.

And perhaps the focus was on the iPhone apps for a reason, because Biophilia is Bjork’s most formless work yet. It’s strikingly minimalist – most songs include only one or two instruments, apart from programmed drums. And most of it sounds like a directionless meander, even by Bjork’s standards. Opener “Moon” is harp and voice, and that’s it, and at no point in its 5:45 does its author stumble upon a hook. “Thunderbolt” is the same way, except the harp has been replaced by organ and pitter-pattering drums.

I’m a fan of both “Crystalline” and “Cosmogony.” The former spins a web of chimes and drums, and includes an honest-to-gosh hook in its chorus, while the latter is like an old-school timeless ballad, played on synths, toned drums and horns. But things just take a dive from there. “Dark Matter” and “Hollow” are pipe organ nightmares with no discernible structure. I like the wordless chorus of “Virus,” for what it’s worth, but that’s the last moment of the album that holds anything for me, at least on the first few listens.

And yes, this is definitely something that will require listen after listen to properly absorb. Right now, it’s striking me the same way Jandek albums do, except everything’s in tune. The biggest tragedy of this record is that Bjork’s voice is still as wonderful, as commanding as it ever was. It’s a stunning instrument, and it elevates everything it sings. But this material just doesn’t seem worthy of it. She gives herself no real melodies to sing, no big moments to own, and that’s a shame.

Maybe I need the iPhone apps to really get the big picture here. But taken as 10 songs on a record, Biophilia is a confusing, abstract, messy piece that doesn’t play to its author’s strengths as often as it should. Perhaps further listens will change my mind, but for now, it goes on the disappointment pile.

* * * * *

I’ve waited a long time for this.

It’s been 13 years since Julian Lennon released Photograph Smile, the album that firmly cemented him as a songwriter to be reckoned with. Beatle John’s firstborn spent his early years avoiding any hint of his father’s influence in his music – see the synth-y pop of his first two records and the incongruous hard rock of Mr. Jordan – but with Photograph Smile, he embraced his heritage. Some of the songs on that album were downright Beatlesque, but others, such as the riveting “Crucified” and the lovely “Faithful,” proved Lennon’s mettle. It was a great album, and it seemed to signal a rebirth.

And then… nothing. And after that, nothing some more.

I don’t know how long he was working on his new one, Everything Changes, out now in the UK. All I can tell you is, it was worth it. This is Lennon’s best album – his most confident, most mature, most consistent effort. And while his penchant for straightforward, often cliched lyrics is still in evidence, he’s managed to come up with his strongest set of 12 songs, and used them to set a hopeful, accepting mood that lasts the entire album. After so many anguished tunes in the past, it’s great to hear Lennon so at peace here, so sure of himself, so seemingly happy.

If there’s a problem with Everything Changes, it’s that it may be a little too consistent. Songs stay in the same mid-tempo range, and there are few sonic surprises. But they’re compact and well-written, without a wasted note, and the production is sharp. Lennon is still happy to drop hints of his father’s work here and there – check the tiny callback to “Imagine” in “Invisible” – but the sound here is his own. There are highlights, like the title track and the lovely “Hold On,” but it’s Lennon’s ability to fill an entire album with these little pop gems that truly impresses here. There are no lowlights, is what I’m saying.

Of all of these songs, I’m happiest with “Just For You,” which marries a sweet acoustic verse with a rising-temperature chorus, one of Lennon’s best. “I’ve danced with the fallen angels, torn down the temple in two, sold my soul to the shadowman, just for you,” Lennon sings, and his voice has rarely sounded better. The record ends with another favorite, “Beautiful,” a classic Julian Lennon piano ballad about saying goodbye to a departed loved one. The words are straightforward – Lennon also shares that characteristic with his father – but his delivery is so earnest and honest that he sells it. “The love you left behind will carry on, you gave your heart and soul to everyone…”

Much of Everything Changes is like that – comfortable with heart-on-sleeve emotion. Just check out “Guess It Was Me,” in which Lennon is simultaneously critical and forgiving of himself: “I told the world that something was wrong, guess it was me all along.” It’s another indication that Lennon has come into his own. Even for a longtime fan like me, Everything Changes is a pleasant surprise. It’s a direct, simple, well-crafted pop album from a guy who has always deserved more respect than he gets. Welcome back, Julian. Don’t stay away so long next time.

* * * * *

And speaking of surprises, here’s Feist with a superb new record.

I know what you’re saying. Why am I surprised? Well, I’ve been on the verge of becoming a Feist fan for years, but I’ve never quite gotten there. Leslie Feist’s voice is terrific, I’ve just never warmed to the Sade-style light-jazz-pop she’s trafficked in. But as it turns out, all she needed to do to win my love is get a little bit darker.

Metals, her fourth album, is a moody departure, and is chock full of the best songs I’ve ever heard from her. There’s a dusty sense of longing and despair over these tunes, and her voice complements that perfectly. The first two songs alone are perfect tone-setters: “The Bad in Each Other” has a long-desert-road feel to it, and its chorus, with horns and strings attached, digs deep for its soul. And “Graveyard” is fantastic, its dusky minor-key verses leading into a shaft of light (“Bring them all back to life”). “Caught a Long Wind” is similarly terrific, its sparse piano chords leaving the focus right where it belongs – on that voice.

It’s almost a shame when the jazzy single, “How Come You Never Go There,” breaks the mood. But the song is so sweet that I don’t mind that much, and Feist sings the hell out of it. It’s a brief respite before “A Commotion,” the album’s heaviest moment. It begins with a foreboding bed of chugging strings, and even though it builds and builds, nothing will prepare you for the gang vocals shouting the title phrase. It’s startling, and superb.

Feist keeps things that inventive for the whole of the album’s running time. Even something simple like “Bittersweet Melodies” turns into a stunner midway through, and a sparse, bluesy workout like “Anti-Pioneer” just shows off what a great singer she is. This may be the best singer’s album I’ve heard this year, in fact – these songs give her a chance to show off in ways she never has, and man, she makes the most of it. But it’s the smaller, more intimate pieces that stick with me the most, like “Comfort Me,” a strummed highlight near the record’s end.

Metals is tremendous. It’s an album without one pop single, an album that probably made her record company reps sweat buckets. It’s a dark, evocative artistic triumph from a singer I’ve always wanted to like. And now I can. It’s almost as if she made this thing just for me, and if she did, well, I’m grateful. I like it a lot.

* * * * *

Next week, more. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So the big news this week was the breakup of a band that means a lot to me: the accidental icons from Athens, R.E.M.

The nature of a weekly column means I’m the last to the table with thoughts about this, but that’s all right. The extra time has allowed me the chance to really figure out what I want to say. Like a lot of truly big moves they made, the members of R.E.M. announced their split with no fanfare at all. A simple posting on the band’s website, a couple personal reflections from Stipe, Buck and Mills, and that was it.

So it’s been pretty difficult to process this, since it doesn’t feel real. Like a lot of people, I came to R.E.M. late – the first album of theirs I heard was the collection, Eponymous. The first song I heard, I’m pretty sure, was “Fall On Me,” but I was 11 years old when it was released, so hopefully I can be forgiven for not gravitating to it. I’m also pretty certain I made fun of people for liking “The One I Love,” a song my 13-year-old brain thought was too simple to really work.

Yeah, I was a stupid 13-year-old. But luckily, Eponymous blew my freaking mind. Song after glorious song – “Can’t Get There From Here,” “So. Central Rain,” “Driver 8,” “Rockville,” “Radio Free Europe,” and of course “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.” I rushed back to the record store and bought everything I could. I remember being a little disappointed in the horns-free mix of “Finest Worksong” on Document, so thoroughly had I absorbed the Eponymous version. But I also remember hearing Lifes Rich Pageant for the first time. Holy hell, that was an album. “These Days” remains my favorite R.E.M. rock song.

And I stayed with them. Green was a letdown, I thought – too many songs that went nowhere – but I loved (and still love) Out of Time. Yeah, “Losing My Religion,” “Shiny Happy People,” whatever. That album was diverse and fascinating, and full of terrific songs. Case in point: “Half a World Away.” It’s a minor track, a blip in the R.E.M. catalog, but it’s just a great, lilting, yearning tune. Nothing held a candle to Automatic for the People, though. Released my freshman year of college, it was a haunting masterpiece, perhaps their finest overall effort. I remember playing “Sweetness Follows” over the college radio station for a dormmate who had lost a family member. That song has stayed with me for nearly 20 years.

After that, it was a rough road. I loathed Monster, and only reservedly liked the three albums after it. Bill Berry’s departure felt like a mortal wound, one from which they’d never recover, and the abysmal Around the Sun seemed the final nail in a long-overdue coffin. But you know what? The more I know, the more I know I don’t know anything. R.E.M. roared back to life with Accelerate in 2008, and just this year, they released Collapse Into Now, their best album in nearly two decades. It’s most likely going to be on my top 10 list this year. (It’s on the Third Quarter Report list, below.)

Through it all, R.E.M. seemingly never made a move they didn’t want to. They struggled with Berry’s exit, but found ways to carry on, and in recent years, started sounding whole again. I was elated to see that, to see a band I’d admired since middle school pull it together and put out another pair of classics. It rarely happens, and it’s so sweet when it does. I never thought of Collapse Into Now as the band’s final album – it just sounded so vital and alive. But if it is, they went out on a very high note.

In the wider view, R.E.M. has to be part of any conversation about the best American bands of all time. I can’t think of many that matched them for longevity, integrity and (relative) consistency, and I can’t think of any others I like nearly as much. On that score, the band’s breakup is a big deal, and a sad one. But on a more intimate level, I feel like another part of my formative years has passed on. The older I get, the more frequently this will happen, but R.E.M. is the first long-running band from my youth to call it quits. And it’s a strange feeling.

Regardless, I love this band, and will miss them terribly. RIP, R.E.M. Thanks for everything.

* * * * *

So here is a sentence I never thought I’d type: I love the new Wilco album, and I’m not sure about Mutemath’s latest effort. I know, it feels like I’ve wandered into an alternate dimension.

Let’s start with that Wilco album. You all know how I feel about Jeff Tweedy’s crew lately – after releasing their masterpiece, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, in 2002, they shuffled their lineup around and produced three snoozy efforts that drifted from pretentious and unlistenable (A Ghost is Born) to lazy and uninspired (Wilco, The Album). There are friends of mine who have genuinely liked everything Wilco has done over the last 10 years, and I would love to spend a few hours in their heads, because I simply don’t get that.

So as you can imagine, I wasn’t expecting an awful lot from The Whole Love, Wilco’s eighth studio album and its third with the current six-man lineup. I just knew what I was going to get – another half-assed, low-key folksy rock record, with the occasional “experimental” touch, and an overall sound like Tweedy and his fellows had just woken up from an afternoon nap. In short, boring. I keep buying Wilco albums, hoping Tweedy can recapture some of the genius of the YHF era, but I fully expected another snore-inducing letdown.

You could have knocked me over with a single touch after I first heard “Art of Almost,” the seven-minute opening track on this new record. Pulsing electronic drums and bass, lovely synth strings, fascinating sounds blipping in and out, and a propulsive, jammy, live-band coda reminiscent of Built to Spill, all wrapped up in a creepy, foreboding atmosphere. It’s the best Wilco track in years, even if the melody is slight, and it clearly illustrates just what’s been missing from their output for all that time: passion.

Tweedy’s voice just lends itself to sleepwalking through a song, but you can tell pretty easily when he’s engaged with the material, and when he isn’t. Check out the live versions of the Ghost songs on Kicking Television, and compare them with the tired studio takes. That’s what I mean, and that level of commitment is on every track of The Whole Love. “Art of Almost” is a monolith of an opener, but the ten shorter songs that follow match it for drive and energy.

At times recently, it’s sounded like Tweedy didn’t even bother to show up to the recording sessions, like they brought him a microphone and a lyric sheet in bed and barely roused him. On The Whole Love, he throws himself into these sessions, and the result is a record that can stand up next to the likes of Summerteeth and not feel shamed. The album is beautifully produced, a treat for the ears, and the songs, by and large, step up to the plate. “Sunloathe,” for example, is the finest psychedelic Wilco ballad since the Jay Bennett days, and its Sgt. Tweedy production is remarkable.

The Whole Love is a deceptively dark record, its lyrics about waiting endlessly for love, and dealing with it badly when it arrives. “I Might” is a sprightly single about a relationship with serious problems: “You won’t set the kids on fire, but I might, ho ho ho.” “Dawned on Me” paints a picture of a man unwilling to let go, but it does so with one of the most delightful choruses Tweedy has penned in ages. I’m not sure there’s a prettier song in the Wilco catalog than “Black Moon” – Nels Cline’s lap steel is simply heartbreaking, and then those strings come in – but it’s a tragic story of a man who will end up waiting forever.

Even when the second half slips into more typically Wilco material, like the shuffling “Capitol City,” the sense remains that the band really cared about this album. Arrangements remain creative and fascinating, and Cline finally sounds like he belongs, whipping out that blistering guitar only sparingly, while adding invaluable texture to these tunes. In fact, The Whole Love sounds like the album on which this roster finally clicked. To quote another perpetual-letdown band with a good new album, everything is in its right place.

The album ends with a song that could have been a disaster. “One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend)” is 12 minutes long, and based around a simple acoustic guitar figure that never changes. On previous Wilco albums, this would have been interminable, but here, it’s hypnotic. The production certainly helps – it’s always low-key, but never uninteresting. But the subtle secret here is that Tweedy and company are never bored by this song, so I’m never bored with it.

Yeah, I’m as surprised as you are, but I love this new Wilco album. Hopefully this is the start of a new renaissance for a band I’d all but written off. But even if it isn’t, at least we got one more terrific album from a fully-engaged Jeff Tweedy. Hell, even the bonus tracks on this one are really good. I don’t know what inspired Tweedy this time, but I hope it sticks around. The Whole Love is very, very good.

* * * * *

And then there is Mutemath.

I don’t want you to get me wrong. I don’t dislike Odd Soul, the third album from this New Orleans collective. I just don’t know what to make of it. I’m the guy who thought their first album (and, more specifically, the original, self-released version of their first album) was pretty much perfect. Comparisons to the Police were many and well-deserved, but it was the songs that drew me in. “Chaos,” “Noticed,” “Stare at the Sun,” “Without It,” “Stall Out” – these were some of the best pop songs of 2005. As good as they were on record, Mutemath brought a full-on carnival act to the stage. They were brilliant, and seemed on the cusp of greatness.

And they’ll probably still get there, but Odd Soul sounds to me like a strange left turn away from a lot of the things I admired about the band. It doesn’t help that guitarist Greg Hill departed before the album sessions, leaving Mutemath a trio. The record itself is different enough from their older material that it’s like getting to know a whole new band. This one’s louder and bluesier and less melodic, and more prone to jamming. These are all things that will probably endear them to an audience that hasn’t sampled them yet, but for me, they make loving Odd Soul difficult.

Let’s start with what I like. First, you’d never know that their guitarist left – this is easily the most aggressive, most rocking Mutemath album. This is the record on which they captured the energy that explodes from this band on stage. You know those extended versions they like to play, where they turn “Break the Same” into a 15-minute epic jam, percussion spilling out all over the place, drummer Darren King flailing like a demon-possessed man? That’s the vibe for a lot of Odd Soul, and it’s fantastic.

Speaking of Darren King, he absolutely owns this record. This is a guy who belongs in the top 10 of every “best drummer” poll. He’s a monster, rarely playing on the beat, but providing a rock-solid foundation anyway. A track like “Quarantine” shows off just how good the man is, but it’s his less showy, but no less astounding work on tracks like “Cavalries” that really blows my mind. That song’s a 6/8 workout that erupts into a funk party halfway through. King is just unstoppable on it.

But I feel like the band spent so much time crafting this new sound and not enough writing great songs to anchor it. There are honestly about four songs here I love, songs with compelling melodies. Most of the others exist in this Black Keys-esque blues-rock jam space – the leadoff track “Odd Soul” is a good example – and while that’s fine, it just isn’t what I love about Mutemath. I mentioned how much I love the performances on “Cavalries” earlier, but the song is nothing, and when it erupts halfway through, it’s like the band giving up on structure altogether. As a jam, it’s fantastic. As a song, not so much.

And that’s the filter I’m trying to enjoy the album through. I can imagine this stuff being incredible live. Dig the opening of “Walking Paranoia” – that’s some killer funk-blues guitar and bass interplay. It’s awesome, really. But as much as I like what the band is doing on songs like “Tell Your Heart Heads Up,” there’s nothing grounding it. Cool riff, nice jam, Paul Meany sounds great shouting the title over and over, but there’s no song there. And the seven-minute “Quarantine” is even looser and emptier.

But the band sounds so incredible on this record that I’m trying to like it, even without the strong melodies they usually provide me. Happily, there are some songs that give me what I need, and they’re the ones that, to these ears, sound the most like Mutemath. “Allies” may be my favorite song here, Meany really digging into a fine chorus. “All or Nothing” starts off as an atmospheric piece full of Meany’s electric piano, but at its midpoint it spirals into a deliriously amazing electronic finish. And I quite like “Equals,” which marries the band’s new love of funk with a great refrain.

So that’s where I am with Odd Soul. It’s entirely possible that, given some time, I will embrace this album as thoroughly as I have Mutemath’s previous efforts. I can already feel it leaning that way. But for now, I am left thinking that if this had been the band’s first record, had been my first exposure to them, I’m not sure I would love them the way I do. Odd Soul is a big step in another direction for this band, and while I expect this will go down well live, on record it’s not quite what I’m looking for from Mutemath. Give me time, though.

* * * * *

OK, it’s that time again. Time for the Third Quarter Report, a sneak peek at my top 10 list in progress. This one’s a little weird and tentative, even for me. I’ve taken PJ Harvey right out – its stock has plummeted with me, for some reason, and I’m hoping I can reconnect with it soon. I’ve added a few new ones, too, most prominently Quiet Company – look for a real review of that in a week or two – and Josh Garrels. And I’ve swapped my number one and number two choices, although they go back and forth depending on what week it is.

So, if forced at gunpoint to release my top 10 list right now, here’s what it would look like:

#10. R.E.M., Collapse Into Now.
#9. The Boxer Rebellion, The Cold Still.
#8. Over the Rhine, The Long Surrender.
#7. The Violet Burning, The Story of Our Lives.
#6. Glen Campbell, Ghost on the Canvas.
#5. Bon Iver.
#4. Josh Garrels, Love and War and the Sea In Between.
#3. Quiet Company, We Are All Where We Belong.
#2. Paul Simon, So Beautiful or So What.
#1. Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues.

I need to chew on that for a bit, but I think it’s right. At least, right now. Lots of great music still to come in 2011.

Next week, that proper Quiet Company review, I think. Also look our for reviews of Matthew Sweet, the Bangles, Ryan Adams, Dream Theater, Bjork and Loney Dear. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So, hands up if you’re tired of reading my complaints about Tori Amos.

Too bad I can’t see you all, because I’m sure most of your hands are still in the air. I know, I know. It’s become a semi-annual thing. Tori Amos, once perhaps the most vital and important female artist in the world, releases another middling, overlong, boring, soulless record, and I whine about how she’s not as good as she used to be, but I can’t stop buying her stuff. I’m probably as sick of that cycle as you are.

I’m just not sure what else to do. If Little Earthquakes, Under the Pink and Boys for Pele didn’t mean so much to me, even now, I wouldn’t be so let down by shaky works like 2009’s Abnormally Attracted to Sin. I’d be OK with what Tori’s been giving us if I didn’t know how much better she can be. Tori’s music used to make me feel like no one else’s – it was agony and wonder and fury and heartbreak and joy. It was everything I wanted music to be. And lately, her work makes me feel nothing at all.

You can forgive me, then, for sighing audibly when word of Tori’s 12th album, Night of Hunters, hit the net. Here was another ass-aching concept album, stretching to 72 minutes. This one, apparently, would incorporate variations on classical music themes, and would tell the story of a woman suffering after a broken relationship, and regaining her power with the help of a talking fox. I mean, wow. That sounds like a steaming pile of pretentious and worthless, right?

Well, apparently Tori was getting tired of the same old cycle too, because Night of Hunters turns out to be the most interesting musical detour she’s taken in a good long time. And even though it is suffocated by its concept, and remains surprisingly distant, it’s the best damn thing she’s done since her glory days.

For one thing, Night of Hunters returns Amos to her classic sound – piano, voice and orchestra – for the entire running time. And it’s so good to hear her in this context again. As much as she loves her skittering electronic beats and synthesizers, I don’t think her voice has ever sounded comfortable atop so much noise. But this sounds like home. From the first low, rumbling notes of “Shattering Sea,” this record hits me like the Tori Amos of old. This context has always seemed right for her to me, and if nothing else, I’m glad we finally have an entire album of it.

Of course, it wasn’t her idea. Deutsche Gramophon, the renowned classical label, approached Amos with the idea of creating a song cycle based on variations on classical pieces, and that’s just what she’s done. Every song here incorporates melodies and moments from pieces by Schubert, Mendelssohn, Bach and others. Some are subtle, others overt, but it’s clear Amos really understands these pieces, and respects them.

“Shattering Sea,” for example, is based on a spooky piano theme by Charles-Valentin Alkan, “Op. 31 No. 8,” subtitled “The Song of the Madwoman on the Seashore.” Amos deftly changes the melody to suit her own song, then elevates it – what’s amazing about the finished product is how much it sounds like a terrific Tori Amos song. (Hear a comparison here.) The string section is like an all-encompassing wave here, powerful and relentless, and Amos’ incorporation of Alkan’s melody for the bridge section is spine-tinglingly good.

Some of these variations are more successful than others, but all have been crafted with care. The nearly nine-minute “Battle of Trees” has an Erik Satie piece as its blueprint, and it stays in one place a little too often. But its follow-up on the record, “Fearlessness,” is simply remarkable. Its home base is “Orinetale,” a haunting piano composition by Enrique Granados, but Amos turns it into an almost superhumanly soaring number, her voice and the strings playing off one another brilliantly.

The only thing that keeps “Fearlessness” from crawling under my skin and setting up shop in my soul is the lyrics, and this is where the ridiculous concept starts to become a stumbling block. Tori’s been fleshing out these album-length metaphors since Strange Little Girls, but for the most part, it’s been easy to ignore them entirely and just listen to the songs as songs.

Not so here. Amos says the fanciful travails her characters go through on Night of Hunters are essentially a representation of her own 16-years-and-counting marriage, but I wish she’d just written songs about that. Here is the chorus of “Fearlessness,” just to give you an idea: “Teams of horses of the brine followed his cry through the fire, demons of the wild hissed with the wind, did you listen?” Here’s another gem, from the nine-minute “Star Whisperer”: “Night warns of an eastern threat, north calls reinforcements from the west, lost all reason guarded by the wise, sing to life the seven lords of time.” Um, OK.

So what we have here are beautiful, melodic, powerfully-arranged songs, showcasing Amos’ undiminished voice, and I have no idea what the fuck she’s going on about for most of this record’s running time. “Battle of Trees” is seriously about our heroine seeing a vision of an earlier version of herself, fighting her enemies with nothing but the “alphabet of trees” as her weapon. A handy guide to the tree alphabet is included in the liner notes, as if we’re really going to parse this for clues. The knock-on effect is that this record starts to sound scholarly, like a cerebral exercise more than an artistic expression, and despite the remarkable music here, that keeps me at arm’s length.

So the story involves a fox that can talk and impart wisdom, and that character is played by Amos’ 11-year-old daughter, Natashya Hawley. Thankfully, the girl can sing, so this isn’t just a case of rampant nepotism, but it’s still somewhat jarring, especially when she takes a whole song, as she does on “Job’s Coffin.” Amos’ niece Kelsey Dobyns plays the part of the “fire muse” (don’t ask) on one track as well. I’m not opposed to this – hell, the Decemberists made me love their theatrical, multi-voice effort, The Hazards of Love. I’m just not sure it works as well as it should here.

But when Tori settles in and gives us a straightforward slice of real beauty, I can forgive a lot. “Your Ghost” is one such gorgeous track, a variation of a Robert Schumann piece. As the strings build and build, Amos sings, “Please leave me your ghost, I will keep him from harm.” It is, to this point, the most crushingly beautiful thing on the record, mainly because it is the most direct. Something like “The Chase,” a dialogue between Amos and Annabelle the fox that is recognizably based on Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” is an interesting exercise that leaves you kind of confused, and kind of empty. But a song like “Your Ghost” opens a conduit to your heart.

On that scale, the album’s best song is its last. “Carry” is the first Tori Amos song since “I Can’t See New York” to move me nearly to tears. Based on the glorious “The Girl With the Flaxen Hair,” by Claude Debussy, Tori’s song is a gorgeous eulogy to one departed, and a promise to remember. “Your name is sung and tattooed now on my heart, here I will carry, carry, carry you forever,” Amos sings, and her voice, the melody, the strings, everything works. The variations on familiar themes here certainly intrigue my musical mind, but a song like “Carry” tears me right open, and that’s what I want from Tori Amos.

And I’m so glad to hear she can still deliver that. Not every song on Night of Hunters works to that degree, but they are all worth hearing, and for the first time in longer than I care to remember, the high points of a Tori Amos album far outweigh the low. I’m grateful to Amos for trying this experiment, for throwing her whole self into it (batty concept and all), and for at last giving me more songs to love. At this point, it’s more than I thought I would ever get again.

Next week, loads of stuff, I hope. Certainly Matthew Sweet, the Bangles, Lindsey Buckingham, and maybe Switchfoot, St. Vincent, Wilco… who knows. Tune in to find out. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Lately I feel like I need a scorecard just to keep up with all the new music news coming at us. 2011 may be nearly over, but it’s showing no signs of slowing down as we barrel into the home stretch. (Man, count the cliches in those two sentences. You deserve better. Let’s see if I can make that happen for you.)

Things we didn’t know last week. Well, the first and biggest piece of news is that Kate Bush will release her second album of 2011 on Nov. 21. Her first, Director’s Cut, consisted of interesting reworkings of older material, but this one, called 50 Words for Snow, is all new stuff. It consists of seven songs stretched out over 65 minutes, which means the prog tendencies that reared their heads on 2005’s Aerial have only been fed and encouraged. Before Aerial, Bush was MIA for 12 years. It’s great to have her back, and enjoying what appears to be her most creatively fertile period since the ‘80s.

November 1 is turning into a day to watch. First up is that Lou Reed/Metallica album, called Lulu. Turns out, it’s a double album, running nearly 90 minutes. Two songs top 11 minutes, and the closer, “Junior Dad,” runs 19:28. I am even more intrigued than I was before – you know how long songs do it for me. Demerits, though, for introducing us to the name “Loutallica.” That is the thing that should not be.

Also on Nov. 1, Florence and the Machine will release record #2, Ceremonials. Advance word is that it’s mellower and spookier than Lungs, which could be a good thing. Me’Shell Ndegeocello, who gets my vote as one of the most underrated artists in the world, will give us her ninth album, Weather. Megadeth’s 13th album is called Th1rt3een, and it has 13 songs on it, naturally. And it’s a tremendous day for older music, too, as we’ll get the Beach Boys SMiLE Sessions box, a deluxe reissue of U2’s Achtung Baby, and the final wave of double-disc Queen remasters.

What else? A solo album from the Swell Season’s Marketa Irglova on Oct. 11, a volley of Todd Rundgren reissues that same day, a Christmas album from She & Him on Oct. 25, and David Lynch’s first album of music, which sports the very David Lynch title Crazy Clown Time. Seriously, I don’t know what more you could want. This is shaping up to be the best year ever.

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I’m at that age now where some days I feel 20, and others I feel 50. I sometimes will catch myself railing against those young whippersnappers on my lawn, ranting incoherently about artists with one album and no track record and a cover story in NME. Music was better in my day, I’ll say, while clutching my copies of OK Computer and Spilt Milk. But I will also sometimes find myself giving new bands a chance, particularly ones with members 15 years younger than I am. It’s how I discovered Vampire Weekend and Fleet Foxes, just to name a couple.

So the question is, does age matter when it comes to artistry? I used to think so, and I am coming to realize that had more to do with my own biases than anything else. When I was younger, older musicians held no interest for me – it was the young punks like R.E.M. and Metallica that were really changing the scene, man. Now that I’m older, I have the same bias against younger musicians. “It takes time and experience to really master your craft,” I would say, puffing on my pipe while refilling my brandy glass. “There’s no such thing as a 21-year-old musician.”

As someone likely closer to the end of my life than the beginning, I must say I appreciate when older artists make something sublime, though. Brian Wilson’s return to prolific and brilliant work in his 60s has been inspiring to me, as has Paul McCartney’s recent run of very good records. Tom Waits, at age 61, is still the coolest man in town, and I’m breathlessly anticipating his new one, Bad As Me. And hell, to reference something mentioned earlier, there’s that double album from Lou Reed and Metallica coming out. The greatest metal band of my youth, teaming up with a 69-year-old legend and making a 90-minute monstrosity. That’s really interesting to me.

I’m also a sucker for endings, which is one reason Glen Campbell’s new work, Ghost on the Canvas, moves me. I would never say I’m a huge Campbell fan, even though he did sing the original version of “Wichita Lineman,” which may be my favorite song of all. But the man’s had a hell of a life. A session musician for many years, he played guitar on Pet Sounds, won Grammys for “Gentle On My Mind” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” hosted his own TV show, hit big again with “Rhinestone Cowboy,” and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. And did I mention he got to sing “Wichita Lineman”? All right then.

Campbell is 75 years old now, and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. He has announced Ghost on the Canvas as his farewell album, the last collection of studio songs he plans to make. (Ironically, it follows his sorta-comeback album from 2008, Meet Glen Campbell.) But if you’re expecting a maudlin stroll through halls marked “sadness” and “regret,” you’re in for a pleasant surprise. You see, Campbell knows how lucky he is, and he’s grateful for every minute of the last 75 years. And you can hear that in every note of Ghost on the Canvas.

Like its predecessor, this new album was produced by Julian Raymond and Howard Willing, and it’s a lush, full-color, glorious affair. It’s star-studded – check out this partial list of contributors: Brian Setzer, Jason Falkner, Dick Dale, Rick Nielsen, Billy Corgan, Roger Manning, Kim Bullard, Vinnie Colaiuta, Josh Freese, Chris Isaak. The album includes two new Paul Westerberg songs, alongside covers of tunes by Teddy Thompson, Jakob Dylan and Robert Pollard. This is the very definition of throwing yourself a goodbye party.

But the album sounds beautifully unified, like a single thought, connected by Campbell’s tremendous, distinctive voice. It’s a joyous album, in love with life – stark opener “A Better Place” is the only acoustic piece here, and it finds Campbell looking back with satisfaction and forward with hope. The rest of Ghost on the Canvas treads similar lyrical ground. Campbell’s own “A Thousand Lifetimes” is the mission statement: “I’ve held the ring of brass and many times smashed it to pieces, each breath I take is a gift that I will never take for granted.”

And man, that sense of peace and wonder is in his voice on every track. Campbell has a terrific time tearing up Thompson’s “In My Arms,” and actually makes me like a Jakob Dylan song, “Nothing But the Whole Wide World.” By far the strangest and, as it turns out, most inspired song choice here is “Hold On Hope,” the beautiful Guided by Voices song from their album Do The Collapse. Robert Pollard’s melody is magical in Campbell’s hands, and sung by a man holding on to his own hope, the song takes on brilliant new dimensions.

Campbell sings songs to God here (his own “It’s Your Amazing Grace”), but saves most of his love for others who have stood by him, most prominently his wife Kim. The final third of the album finds Campbell facing his impending death head on, offering apologies on Westerberg’s “Any Trouble” and pledging devotion, even if “this is not the road I wanted for us,” on his own “Strong.” Finale “There’s No Me… Without You” is another wonderful Campbell original, a song of pure and true love. “I’m never gonna fade away, your love won’t allow me to,” he sings, and then steps away, letting his guest guitarists pay tribute over the song’s final minutes.

This album is, quite simply, fantastic. And it flows masterfully, tied together by half a dozen interludes created by Jellyfish’s Roger Manning. I would like this anyway, even if it weren’t the final album from a legend. But the fact that it is, and that Campbell faces the end with such gratitude and grace and joy, well, that makes this a tour de force for me. Campbell looked back on three-quarters of a century, distilling all of that experience into a few simple themes: life is good, and love is better. Ghost on the Canvas is just a beautiful record, one that could only have been made by this man, at this point in his life.

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At the other end of the pendulum is Laura Marling, and if you – as I once did – believe there’s no such thing as a phenomenal young musician, you need to listen to her. And while you do, keep in mind that she’s only 21 years old.

Marling was 18 when she released her first solo album, Alas, I Cannot Swim. It sounded like the work of a 30-year-old. She’s only gotten better, deeper, more musically interesting since then. She used to hang around with the guys in Noah and the Whale, but she was just too good for them, and she’s gone on to flourish while they’ve floundered. Marling’s third album, A Creature I Don’t Know, is her most accomplished and terrific work yet.

Marling’s songs sound centuries old. I don’t mean that as a criticism in any way – I mean they sound timeless, lived-in, passed down, like the work of Richard Thompson or Joni Mitchell. You may think I’m reaching by invoking those two, but that’s just because you haven’t heard this. A Creature I Don’t Know opens with “The Muse,” a knotty folk tune with a damn delightful turnabout after each verse, and some swell cello and piano work. The song is about inspiration that eats you alive: “Don’t you be scared of me, I’m nothing but the beast, and I call on you when I need to feast.”

Its counterpoint, “The Beast,” is amazing. It begins delicately, with an elastic acoustic guitar figure and Marling’s supple voice, but before long the cello and drums have burst through, bringing this deeper into the darkness. “Tonight he lies with me, here come the beast,” Marling sings, as electric guitars and strings swirl around her, aching for the apex. When it reaches it, squalling and screeching, the moment is breathtaking.

It’s not all darkness and anger, though – some of it’s darkness and sadness too. Take the gorgeous “Night After Night,” just Marling’s voice and delicate guitar. It’s about watching a lover fade away, and it’s stunning. “Rest in the Bed” is similar, but takes on more elements of ancient English folk music, and incorporates a ghostly, lovely banjo. And closer “All My Rage” sounds like a danceable jig, until the first line: “Stole my children, left my son, of all of them he’s the only one who did not mean that much to me…” Believe it or not, the song is a shaft of light here, about leaving anger behind.

These are songs steeped in centuries of tradition, but they sound fresh and vital in Marling’s hands. And that, I think, is a better indicator of musical worth than age: whether an artist has some sense of his or her place in the infinite continuum, some idea of the giants who came before, and how their work can be built on. One of my bigger frustrations as a music junkie is listening to bands of youngsters fumble through the same chords and recycle the same melodies, because they just don’t know they’re overused. They’re flush with discovery, and they have no sense of history.

Laura Marling has never had that problem. Even at 21, she knows more about music than most ever will, and on A Creature I Don’t Know, she puts that knowledge to remarkable use. Her songs are raw yet refined, her voice eager yet weary, her music far wiser than her years, but still full of that vitality that comes with youth. Even a crusty old curmudgeon like me can tell she’s a brilliant artist, and she has many years ahead to keep on proving it.

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That’ll do for this week. Next week, Tori. After that, la deluge. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.