It’s taken me a long time to be okay with getting older.

I will turn 37 in a few months. There’s nothing particularly momentous about the thirty-seventh year, but I’ve been feeling a lot more adult lately, a lot more stable. Oh, don’t worry, I’m still juvenile enough to realize that I’ll be able to make a Clerks joke once my birthday hits (“Thirty-seven?!?”), but I’m realizing, probably for the first time, that I wouldn’t go back. I had more energy as a teenager and a twenty-something, but no direction for it, and nothing to say with it. I think that comes with time and experience.

Like most things in my life, I can relate this to music. There’s a lot of emphasis in the music press on youthful vigor, on the kinetic electricity that only comes with not quite knowing what you’re doing. Every few months another group of garage-trained, sloppy, super-energetic youngsters appears from nowhere, and seems to effortlessly build buzz. (Think Girls, Los Campesinos, Times New Viking, etc.) And for the most part, these records leave me cold.

They’re all energy, no direction. These bands most often write songs as if everything’s new – the chords they’re spinning are the same chords in the same order that every neophyte comes up with early on, and the sense of discovery isn’t enough for me to forget that I’ve heard them all before. I’ve said that debut albums are all about potential, not the actual songs for me, and what I mean is, while I’m listening to most debuts, I’m imagining what these songwriters will be able to do once they have some insight to impart, some real skill behind their words and melodies.

Ah, but with age comes wisdom and maturity and the ability to write songs with more than four chords. I’m generalizing a little, of course – youngsters like Robin Pecknold, for example, write compelling and original tunes, while relics like Elton John haven’t penned a worthy number in 30 years. I get that. But this week I wanted to talk about the old guard, and the musical lessons that can only be learned by taking a long journey one step at a time.

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It’s always an event for me when one of my Favorites Over Fifty makes a new record. Of course, it’s always good when the artist in question has something new to say, which isn’t always the case. So let’s skip right through Ray Davies first, on the way to more interesting stuff. Davies, now 66, is an incredible songwriter – he was the mastermind behind the Kinks – but of late, he’s been cashing in a bit much.

The new See My Friends is Davies’ second collection of new takes on old Kinks songs in a row, following last year’s Kinks Choral Collection. This time, Davies invites a number of famous friends to give their interpretations of his tunes. The lineup is pretty diverse, from Bruce Springsteen to Metallica to Black Francis to Billy Corgan. And as you’d expect, some of them work and some don’t.

Among the successes: Mumford and Sons take on “Days” and “This Time Tomorrow,” and knock both out of the park. Spoon joins Davies on the title track, and Paloma Faith sings the heck out of “Lola.” And it’s very hard to screw up “Waterloo Sunset,” and Davies and Jackson Browne definitely don’t. But then there are the failures. Metallica plays “You Really Got Me” like it belongs on the Black Album. Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol is the last person you want to help sing “Tired of Waiting” – he actually sounds tired, instead of impatient. And Billy Corgan… well. He’s Billy Corgan, and he Billy Corgans all over “All Day and All of the Night.”

See My Friends is a bit of a mess, really, despite the best intentions of Davies’ co-conspirators. These are great songs, and some of them are hard done by here. But there’s no mistaking that cash grab smell that’s all over this thing. I’m not sure what happened – Davies revived his solo career in 2006 with two solid albums, Other People’s Lives and Working Man’s Café, but since then, it’s been one retread after another. Shame, really.

But give Davies credit for getting material out regularly. For the most part, when you hear about the older musicians, it’s in the context of comebacks, of returns from the inky black nothing that is private, non-musical life. I’m not sure why it takes some of these guys so long to put out new stuff, except for the fact that they don’t have to.

Case in point: between 1968 and 1978, Robbie Robertson made 11 albums with The Band, including two with Bob Dylan. But between 1987 and 1998, he made only four solo records. And then he stopped. Now, Robertson could easily live off of royalties from “The Weight” for the rest of his life, so I understand not cranking out the new product. There’s no financial reason to do so. But Robertson is a good songwriter, and speaking selfishly as a fan, his is a voice I wish I could hear more frequently.

But that makes the comebacks even sweeter. Robertson’s swell new album is called How to Become Clairvoyant, and it’s his first in 13 years. Robertson is 67, but his rasp is in fine form, and his songwriting chops are in full bloom. Like Davies, Robertson enlisted a diverse group of musicians to help him on this record, from Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood to Tom Morello and Trent Reznor. Unlike Davies, he found a way to seamlessly blend these collaborations into a cohesive whole.

There aren’t really any standouts, and Robertson sticks to the dark, bluesy sound he does well. But the album as a unit holds together – even the two instrumentals add to the mood. The title track is a typically dark and portentous piece of mysticism: “King poet of the holy fool, apostle of self-destruction, I tried it your way but I couldn’t sleep, there was too much construction…” Throughout, Pino Palladino and Ian Thomas provide rock-solid rhythms, and Robertson’s thick arrangements give even the slightest ditties here depth.

In short, it’s a good record, and worth the 13-year wait. Similarly worthwhile is Bob Geldof’s new album, blessed with the witty title How to Compose Popular Songs That Will Sell. Even if I had been unaware of the former Boomtown Rats leader’s history, I would probably have picked this up based on the title alone. But I am aware of it: Geldof is now 59, and this is his first new album in 10 years. And as expected, it contains positively no popular songs that will sell.

Rather, this is an album full of moody, fascinating tunes. Some, like the opener “How I Roll,” are slow and expansive, while some, like follow-up “Blow Fish,” cause much more of a racket than you’d expect. The crashers are fun, as always – “Systematic 6-Pack” is a blast – but my favorites are the spacier ones, especially the lovely “Blow,” sequenced near the end. Geldof reaches for falsetto notes while a gorgeous clean guitar plays spectral tones beneath him: “Flow, bitter seas, thrown down on buckled knees, colder than the oldest sin, love will find a way to you again…” This leads into the George Harrison-esque closer, “Here’s to You,” a perfect benediction.

The Smithereens have spent a similar amount of time out of the spotlight. The New Jersey band led by Pat DiNizio, now 55, has spent time covering the Beatles and the Who on record, while DiNizio plays living room concerts across the country. But their last album of original material was God Save the Smithereens, in 1999. I don’t think anyone expected another collection of their trademark power pop to appear, which makes 2011 all the sweeter.

Of course, the title and cover design is meant to bring their biggest success, 1989’s 11, to mind. And granted, the band isn’t as young or energetic as they’ve been in the past. But 2011 is a fine, fine collection of tunes. Every song has that jangly guitar tone, those delightful harmonies, and that bouncy, melodic sound the Smithereens have brought to everything they’ve done. Here and there, you can tell that time has taken its toll, but 2011 is a stronger and better record than anyone could have expected at this point.

Favorites? OK. Opener “Sorry” sets the tone, the Bob Mould-ish chords supporting DiNizio’s thick voice as he sweetly sings, “I’d like to say I’m sorry, but I’m not.” The melodic rave-ups keep coming, peaking with “As Long As You Are Near Me” and “Bring Back the One I Love,” but I’m fond of the slower epic “Goodnight Goodbye,” with its tympanis and harmonies. Right down to the closing song, the early-Beatles-esque “What Went Wrong,” 2011 delivers. It’s proof that the old dogs can still write good songs, and rock out while playing them.

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So I told you all those stories to tell you this one.

If there’s anyone who personifies my idea of artists growing deeper and better as they age, it’s Paul Simon. He began his professional songwriting career at 16, and with Art Garfunkel, captured the spirit of the ‘60s with poetic, political folk music that made its sharp points with sweet verse. There was a youthful simplicity to these tunes, the clear-eyed certainty that only comes with lack of worldly experience. But as he’s grown older, his musical statements have grown murkier and darker, and better. There isn’t a Paul Simon album I don’t like, but it’s hard to argue that Graceland and The Rhythm of the Saints aren’t masterpieces, and that You’re the One isn’t a late-career triumph. Simon’s world-view is complex and disturbing and oddly hopeful, and always fascinating.

Paul Simon is 69 years old now, and it would be easy for him to just stop, to just cash the checks for playing “Cecilia” and “You Can Call Me Al” over and over. But Simon is a songwriter. He could no more stop exploring his thoughts in song than he could stop breathing. And in So Beautiful or So What, his extraordinary 11th solo record, he’s made one of the best albums of his long and wondrous career.

And he did it by embracing his age. Unlike 2006’s Surprise, which found Simon stretching out with Brian Eno and incorporating synths and loops and soundscapes, So Beautiful is a “classic” Simon record. It’s based around his guitar—and no one on the planet plays guitar quite like Paul Simon—and his love of percussion. And lyrically, it is a meditation on death and the afterlife, on God and what lies beyond. It’s short, at 38 minutes, but every element of it adds to the theme, as if the album is a single piece, meant to be heard as one.

It opens with “Waiting for Christmas Day,” which makes use of a sermon by Rev. J.M. Gates. Christmas Day, in this case, is a metaphor for the end, for death, for judgment. Simon’s thoughts are varied – he pictures a nephew in Iraq eating turkey dinner, and wishes he could tell his parents that “the things we never had never mattered, we were always okay.” In between verses, Gates delivers his message: “When Christmas come, nobody knows where you’ll be.”

Simon begins “The Afterlife” already dead, and this is where his whimsical, dark humor makes its first appearance. His vision of the afterlife is bureaucratic: “You got to fill out the form first, and then you wait in the line.” But it’s worth it, as he sings in the final verse: “And you feel like you’re swimming in an ocean of love, and the current is strong, but all that remains when you try to explain is a fragment of song…”

You know you’re listening to Paul Simon within seconds of “Dazzling Blue” shaking itself to life. His guitar playing is that distinctive. And here begins the second of his themes, the power of love to draw people together: “Maybe love’s an accident, or destiny is true, but you and I were born beneath a star of dazzling blue.” Nowhere on the album does that theme surface more than on “Love and Hard Times.” The soft piano piece begins with God and Jesus visiting Earth, and then leaving it behind because “there are galaxies yet to be born, creation is never done.” Adrift on his own, unable to find love on high, Simon finds it down here, and the resulting verses are so beautiful I cried the first time I heard them. When he ties it together at the end (“Thank God, I found you in time”), it is the most gorgeous musical moment of the year thus far.

So Beautiful is an album that asks big questions about heaven and destiny and how love finds us ruined and broken and puts us back together. But it contains not one ounce of pretention, and it never once feels as weighty as it is. Check out “Rewrite,” the tale of a screenwriter trying to revise his life: “I’ll eliminate the pages where the father has a breakdown and he has to leave the family, but he really meant no harm, I’m gonna substitute a car chase and a race across the rooftops, when the father saves the children and he holds them in his arms…” “Love is Eternal Sacred Light” starts at the big bang and tries to explain why God had to leave his creation, but it’s jaunty and light and danceable.

The title track, then, serves as the ultimate summation of Simon’s themes. With God absent, the afterlife a whispered promise, and the world a mess, it’s up to you to make what you can of your life. “I’m just a raindrop in a bucket, a coin dropped in a slot,” Simon sings. “I am an empty house on Weed Street across the road from a vacant lot, you know life is what you make of it, so beautiful or so what…” The song is among the most energetic on the record, its joy palpable, its caution thrown to the wind, even as the lyrics touch on the death of Martin Luther King. It’s simply a glorious piece of work.

Astoundingly, at 69 years old, Paul Simon has made one of the best albums in his catalog. Or rather, because he is 69 years old. So Beautiful or So What is the kind of record that only comes with age, experience, and depth of insight. It’s a dazzling work, one I wouldn’t trade for a dozen scrappy indie-rock fly-by-nights. It is a record with purpose and power, and yet one that is utterly enjoyable from start to finish. It’s one of those albums that makes you glad its author lived long enough to create it.

And it makes me feel better about getting old, which is nice.

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That’s it for this week, but before I bring this to a close, I want to direct your attention once again to www.madeinaurora.com, the site for Made in Aurora, the local artists compilation album I contributed to. It comes out Friday, Record Store Day. You can watch a sweet video, read essays from the musicians, and buy the vinyl/CD combo online. I played piano on one track and wrote the liner notes, but I’m the least of these contributors. You want this record for Jeremy Keen and Kevin Trudo and Dave Nelson and Greg Boerner and Noah Gabriel and Hoss and everyone else involved. This is the best music you’ve never heard.

Next week, pretty, pretty noise with Elbow, the Boxer Rebellion and Derri Daugherty. 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 buy concert DVDs very often.

I’m looking at my shelf now, and I have a grand total of eight concert films on disc. This is not counting Marillion DVDs – I have all of those, but they’re a special case, one of the few bands for whom I am a raving fanboy collector. Most of the time, though, I can do without a concert DVD in my collection, and the ones I do have (even the Marillion ones) are rarely dusted off. If I want to see the band play live, I’ll see them play live, not on my television.

I have to really like and want to support a band to buy a concert DVD. Which is why it should be no surprise that I picked up Live From Studio 6A, Quiet Company’s first video. It documents the band’s performance in the legendary Austin, Texas room for Satellite Sets, broadcast on Austin public television. And let me tell you, they tore it up. I’ve seen the band live, on a much smaller stage, and it’s something to behold. But this is the next best thing.

I’m in serious danger of coming off like a Taylor Muse fanboy, but he’s one of my favorite songwriters right now. While watching Live From Studio 6A, I kept thinking, “I love this song. Oh! This song! I love this one too.” It doesn’t hurt that the show starts off with one of my favorites, the sweet “Our Sun is Always Rising,” from the band’s second album, Everyone You Love Will Be Happy Soon. But there isn’t a QuietCo song I don’t like in some way. Even the lesser lights here, like “Jezebel,” are killers.

The centerpiece of the disc, naturally, is the three-song set of new tunes from the in-progress third QuietCo record, We Are All Where We Belong. I’d heard both parts of “Preaching to the Choir Invisible” live before, but they’ve gone through some revisions since then – they’re longer, more epic, more dynamic, yet still hummable. They also reach David Bazan levels of spiritual disillusionment: at one point, Muse promises he’ll believe if Jesus speaks just one word to him. The winningly-titled “Set Your Monster Free (My New Year’s Resolution is to Cope With My Morality)” is fantastic, too.

As always, this QuietCo show ends with “On Modern Men,” and the band blows the doors off. It’s worth owning this DVD just for that. In concert, this song is indomitable, rising and peaking and falling back and rising again and exploding all over the stage. If you’ve heard me talking about Quiet Company, and you’re not sure why, watch this. It’ll tell you all you need to know.

Live From Studio 6A is available from the band on their website. The third album is scheduled for a summer release. It is, most definitely, one of my most anticipated records of 2011. Watch for it.

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Another thing I don’t do very often is pay import prices.

This is another relic of a bygone age, one that only collectors of physical CDs like me care about. I know I can just go online and download whatever I want for free, but I’m a big enough fan of the physical product that I spend time tracking hard-to-find discs down. And nothing is more frustrating for me than finding out that a band I love has no plans to release their album in the United States.

It has to be true love for me to pay import prices, which are often twice what I’d pay for a disc here, plus international shipping. Again, Marillion is a band that gets my import money every time – I’ve rarely bought the U.S. versions of their records, even when they do distribute them over here. I’m used to paying more than $20 for a Marillion album. It’s worth it to me.

But often with imports, it’s a question of whether I want to wait for a domestic version, or whether I have to hear the damn thing now. Some bands are on the gimme-it-now list, like Sloan and the Feeling. Some bands, like Starsailor, are on the wait list. This week I’m buying the U.S. release of the new Elbow, Build a Rocket Boys, which I expect to love. But it’s been out in Europe for more than a month, and I haven’t felt the need to import it.

But the Click Five? They’re apparently on my gimme-it-now list.

I found this out because their third album, TCV, has only been released in Malaysia. Seriously. These guys are from Boston, and their own country doesn’t want their stuff. And I can’t figure out why. I get a lot of shit for liking the Click Five and their sugary power-pop, but it hits my sweet spot perfectly, and I can’t imagine I’m alone in this. Delightfully crunchy guitar-pop tunes with killer melodies and a sweetly romantic sensibility? What’s not to love?

Even more frustrating, this may be my favorite Click Five album. TCV is their bid for respectability, but they’ve matured in all the right ways. They’re still goofy and sunny, and they still write prom themes, but the child-like effervescence that got them lumped in with the Jonas Brothers has been nicely darkened up. TCV is a smooth power pop album that zips by, and will have you singing along to every track.

Every track? Every damn track. The first two are, in fact, two of the best songs to bear the band’s name: “The Way It Goes” is a chugging little opener with a squiggly keyboard part and a slow build to a swell chorus, and “I Quit! I Quit! I Quit!” is a little masterpiece, combining a Kinks-ish riff with an almost criminally catchy melody. The lyrics are about kicking one addition to be with another, and they’re littered with little nods: “I’m a wreck, you’re the fix, that’s why I quit…”

I’m not sure the record gets to those heights again, but if there’s a drop-off, it’s very small. “Nobody’s Business” is flat-out fun, as is “Fever For Shakin’,” a tune that reminds me of Sloan. The one song I could do without is “Love Still Goes On,” the big ballad thing, but even that isn’t bad, and it leads into “Don’t Let Me Go,” one of the band’s most understated tunes. This is the Click Five’s second album with singer Kyle Patrick, and he brings a weight to these songs that original singer Eric Dill couldn’t have.

If I have another favorite, it’s “Good as Gold,” perhaps the most “mature” thing here. Over skipping acoustic guitars, Patrick sings a simple lyric about time slipping away: “Make it last, ‘cause this is all we have, a love as good as gold…” Yeah, it’s cheesy. Yeah, it works. This is a world-class pop song, to my ears. I like this band’s sound so much that even the simpler songs they pen, like the stomping closer “Be In Love,” make me smile. But when they hit on something like “Good As Gold,” that smile turns into a full-on love affair with life.

I know I’m going to get shit for this again, but what can I do. I’m a Click Five fan. Even the bonus tracks, the goofball “Black Boots” and the sighing “Just Like My Heart Falls,” do it for me. This is streamlined pop music the way I like it, played by real musicians striving for the best songs they can put together. It’s not life-changing stuff, and it’s not “important.” But it’s fun and well-made, and it puts a big grin on my face.

Near the end of TCV, there’s a ditty called “The World Comes Crawlin’ Back.” Let’s hope this is prophetic. This is a swell power-pop album from a band too many have dismissed. I brought mine in from halfway around the world, and it was worth every penny.

Hear “The Way It Goes” here.

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I think that’s gonna be it for me this week. The election has wiped me out. Next week, though, we get that Old Guy Revue, with Paul Simon, Ray Davies, Robbie Robertson, Bob Geldof and the Smithereens. 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 talk a lot about the Internet here.

Which is odd, considering I’m an old-fashioned physical-product kind of guy. This week, for example, I bought Radiohead’s The King of Limbs again, just because I had to have it on CD. But there’s no doubting the Internet has changed the whole game. Artists with no chance of being heard only a few years ago now have the same shot as everyone else, the same opportunity to have that viral hit. The only problem is, no one knows what will strike a chord with the Internet audience. It’s completely unpredictable.

Occasionally, I need reminding that the Internet is just a tool. It’s neither good nor evil. The same mechanism that allows for Cee-Lo Green to have the hit of his career with “Fuck You” also allows Rebecca Black’s “Friday” to become the most-discussed and most-circulated song of the year so far. If you haven’t heard it (and what are the odds of that?), “Friday” is perhaps one of the most laughably bad tunes ever written, and it’s gamely sung by a 13-year-old girl with stars in her eyes.

Daniel Tosh was the first to share this, in a blog post titled “Songwriting Isn’t for Everyone,” and now the damn thing has traveled around the world and back. “Friday” is insanely bad – there’s the existential dilemma over which seat to take, the front or the back, when cruising in the car, and the long section wherein Black enumerates the days of the week. But I think people are slinging their derision in the wrong direction here. This isn’t Black’s fault – the song was written by the “professionals” at Ark Music Factory, and Black’s mom paid them $2,000 to record her daughter singing the song and put her in a video.

In short, Black had nothing to do with the sheer unintentional hilarity of “Friday,” nor did she have anything to do with the crazy popularity of the tune, nor did she work for or deserve her instant fame. This is the Internet. Anything you do or say can catch fire at any time, if the faceless masses deem it worthy. Anything you do, no matter how old you are when you do it, can become your online identity. It doesn’t matter what Black grows up to do now. She’s the “Friday” girl, and taunts of “Tomorrow is Saturday, and Sunday comes afterwards” will follow her forever.

But in a way, the Ark Music Factory producers did what they were hired to do. Black is famous – she’s on talk shows now, and serious music critics are writing about her next move – and she became famous in a way that was literally impossible only a handful of years ago. There’s no reason I should know this girl’s name, but I do. Used to be, you had to work hard or do something notable to become famous, or at least have rich and influential people on your side. Now, it’s all down to the whim of Username Nation. And no one knows what will light the Internet on fire.

Just ask Alexandra Wallace. Earlier this month, the UCLA student posted a racist video rant about Asians in the university library. Among her complaints: the Asian students talk on their cell phones while she’s trying to study, and they invite their extended families to her campus apartment building to cook and clean for them. At one point, she does a ghastly impersonation of those students on the phone (“Oooh, ching chong ling long ting tong! Ooooh!”), and chides them for not having “American manners.”

This is harsh stuff, and within hours of its posting, it took off. The reaction was massive and vitriolic, and Wallace, in her apology in the UCLA paper the following week, said she had received email after email, many of them threatening, and had been so ostracized from the campus community that she decided to drop out. This is, sadly, a pretty typical Internet response. (See the Cooks Source controversy of last year.) Wallace’s rant was ill-advised and horrible, no question. But did she deserve what she got? I don’t know.

But here’s what I do know. The same technology that allowed Wallace’s words to travel the globe in hours, and allowed those upset by them to respond with such force, also gave Seattle-based musician Jimmy Wong an opportunity to show us how it’s done. His response to Wallace is the sharp-yet-gentle “Ching Chong (It Means I Love You),” a beautiful piece of work that serves to strip Wallace’s rant of all its power. It’s classy, yet biting when it needs to be – it is, in short, a perfect rejoinder, and it deserves to travel at least as far as the screed that inspired it.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Internet. A one-world community with no rules, that brings out the best and worst in all of us. It can be used to spread hate, and to strike back at that hate with a joke and a hug. Your worst deed can be around the world in minutes, as can your greatest artistic triumph. It can make Rebecca Black an of-the-moment star, but it can do the same for Jimmy Wong. And it’s up to us to make sure the good people get the benefits. I didn’t know Alexandra Wallace’s name two weeks ago, but I didn’t know Jimmy Wong’s either.

Guess which one I’m going to remember.

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Three short reviews of three loud records this week. Go!

Every year, there’s at least one new band that knocks me out, that makes me glad I decided to take a chance on an unproven artist. I know it’s early days yet, but there’s a good chance this year’s band is The Joy Formidable.

This Welsh three-piece has entitled their debut album The Big Roar, and that’s very fitting. This is one of the sharpest, loudest and best full-on rock albums I’ve heard in a while. This band’s sound is massive. It’s all drums, bass and guitars (with some textured keys), but it sounds like they hired six or seven people to play each one. Every element of this sound is used to propel it forward – essentially, even though it’s layered and deep as an ocean, the whole thing rocks. Rocks.

Don’t let “The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie,” the eight-minute crawl that opens the record, fool you. While that one eventually explodes, the tone is truly set by “The Magnifying Glass,” with its big, dumb, amazing riff. Atop all this din, Ritzy Bryan’s high, clear voice is like shafts of light. Check out “A Heavy Abacus” for a great example – the melody is dynamic, and is all down to Bryan, since the instruments are busy making as much noise as they can behind her. Bryan’s guitar is responsible for a lot of that noise, and she bends it and shapes it into thudding bricks or caressing waves, depending on the song.

There’s nothing subtle here, nothing that doesn’t scream for the skies and spread its wings to the fullest. This is high drama in song form. But it’s also an astonishingly self-assured first record – they let single “Whirring” go on for nearly seven blissful minutes of dissonant, powerful musical interplay, certain that you’ll want to hear all of it. And you will. Underneath it all, The Joy Formidable plays pop music, but they do it on such a grand stage, with such piledriver force, that even their sweetest songs will bowl you over. There’s nothing about The Big Roar I don’t like.

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So here’s the thing about Swedish trio Peter Bjorn and John. For one, they don’t use a comma between Peter and Bjorn, which drives me nuts. For another, they will never again have a fluke hit like “Young Folks,” the whistle-tastic ditty from 2006. Never. So we should stop expecting that they will, and holding them to that standard.

If you release them from those expectations, and just go with it, their fifth album, Gimme Some, is actually a lot of fun. I don’t think it’s particularly good, but it’s miles better than Living Thing, the 2008 follow-up to their big hit. That one felt crushed under the weight of “Young Folks,” while the new one sounds free and joyous. It’s simple, garage-y pop music, but there’s an energy to it that sets it apart somehow.

You won’t hear anything innovative, or even particularly memorable, on Gimme Some. “Second Chance” is the closest thing I hear to a hit, its Bachman-Turner Overdrive riff hitting home more often than not. (You may be thinking, a few minutes in, that it could use more cowbell, and the band is happy to oblige.) But while this whole thing should bore me silly, it doesn’t. It sounds alive, in a strange way that has nothing to do with the quality of the songs.

My favorites here, in fact, are the ones that sound the most tossed-off. The 1:37 punk eruption “Breaker Breaker,” for example, and the screamalicious “Lies.” The Three Swedes are never going to top the song for which they will always be known, but for the first time, they seem all right with that. Gimme Some is light and danceable and full of weird joy, and for a simplistic little rock record, I like it much more than I feel like I should.

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Speaking of things I like more than I should, there’s Panic! at the Disco.

I have rarely heard such an enormous difference between a first and second album as I did with this band. Their debut, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, was Fall Out Boy-style pop-punk, but their second, Pretty, Odd, took on a Beatlesque dimension, with Merseybeat tunes and horn sections. I really like Pretty, Odd. I really don’t like A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out.

So when the Panic! boys promised a mix of the two styles on their third album, Vices and Virtues, I didn’t know quite what to expect. Adding to my concern: half the band has walked out the door, including main songwriter Ryan Ross. He and bassist John Walker now go by The Young Veins, and all it takes is one listen to their album to know where the ‘60s influences came from.

So with just Spencer Smith and Brandon Urie left, what would Panic! give us? Turns out, it’s just as advertised – it’s a poppy hard rock record, with more melody than the first album and more sharp edges than the second. In a way, I guess, they’ve found their sound, and it’s an enjoyable and interesting one. But it isn’t one that’s going to make me go out of my way to recommend it. I like this, but I was secretly hoping for more Paul McCartney, and less Pete Wentz.

That’s not to say this isn’t fun, though. Opener “The Ballad of Mona Lisa” has a charming chime part, and a nice melody. “Hurricane” is eminently danceable, and “Trade Mistakes” makes fine use of a string quartet. “Always” is a pretty acoustic piece, probably the most immediately memorable thing here, although “The Calendar” is a fine little pop song too. And “Sarah Smiles” is a genuine surprise, a shuffling delight that elevates the record’s final third.

You’ll notice that Panic! has reinserted the exclamation point into their name. It was removed for Pretty, Odd, as a symbol of the drastic change that album represented. The fact that it’s back now should be all you need to know. Urie and Smith have tried to be all things to all Panic! fans here, and they’ve done a decent job of it. While the album is certainly rooted in the band’s punky origins, it has enough melody and diversity to appeal to pop lovers like me. This is definitely worth a listen. Whether it’s worth more than one will depend on which side of that spectrum you come down.

* * * * *

So it’s the end of March already, which means it’s time for my First Quarter Report. Essentially, this is what my 2011 top 10 list would look like, if I were forced to print it now. Thankfully, I’m not, because it doesn’t include upcoming records from Elbow, Paul Simon, Fleet Foxes, Sloan, the Antlers, and Death Cab for Cutie, all of which I have high hopes for. It also doesn’t include the new triple album from the Violet Burning, which will most likely be in the final list. I’m still absorbing and digesting that one.

But if I were held at gunpoint and asked for the 10 best albums of 2011 right now, this is what I’d say:

#10. Lykke Li, Wounded Rhymes.
#9. The Decemberists, The King is Dead.
#8. White Lies, Ritual.
#7. Radiohead, The King of Limbs.
#6. The Joy Formidable, The Big Roar.
#5. Iron and Wine, Kiss Each Other Clean.
#4. The Dears, Degeneration Street.
#3. R.E.M., Collapse Into Now.
#2. Over the Rhine, The Long Surrender.
#1. PJ Harvey, Let England Shake.

It’s gonna take a lot to get Harvey out of that top spot. We’ll see if anything does.

Before I go, I have to thank Marissa Amoni for writing the first ever news story about Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. It appeared in my former paper, the Beacon-News, last week. It was jarring to see that quote from 11 years ago – I’d like to think I’m not so melodramatic now – but the story was very kind, and I appreciate it.

Next week, the old guys strike back, with new things from Robbie Robertson, Ray Davies, the Smithereens and Bob Geldof. 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 bought seven new CDs this week, and none of them were the work of new artists.

That used to be par for the course for me. I’ve always been more interested in established artists than newer ones. There’s something about experience, about hearing an artist evolve and mature before my ears, that draws me in. I love extensive back catalogs. I love hearing a songwriter’s 15th album and comparing it to his first. New artists, I find, are usually more about the potential than the actual. If I like a debut album, it’s usually because I’m imagining how good the band’s fifth record might sound.

But lately, I’ve been making a conscious effort to try new bands, before they become so buzzed-about that I can’t avoid them. Just this year I’ve bought efforts from Ringo Deathstarr, the Joy Formidable, Cage the Elephant and Telekinesis, all of whom are on their first or second albums. I don’t plan on turning into one of those bleeding-edge critics scouring the clubs so I can say I heard the next big thing first, but so far, trying new bands has been pretty rewarding. (See: Fleet Foxes.)

So it’s unusual for me not to have bought anything this week from a new (or even semi-new) band. Two of the acts I picked up got their start in the early ‘80s, another in the late ‘80s, one in the late ‘70s, and two others in the ‘90s. The most recent band I bought was Panic at the Disco (more on them next week), and they got together in 2004. At least that’s this century.

But I have to admit, it’s interesting for me to hear what these older bands are doing now, and match it up with their earlier work. None of these acts have been around longer than I have (yeah, yeah, shut it), but I grew up with some of them, and discovered others at pivotal points in my life. I’m always going to celebrate the new here at tm3am, but I hope to do it with a healthy respect for what came before. So now, here’s a look at what came before, and what those bands are doing now.

* * * * *

Every 10 years or so, the entertainment media gets it into their heads that Duran Duran is making a comeback. That, to me, is like saying the cheeseburger is making a comeback. Some years it’s more popular than others, but like Duran Duran, it’s kind of always been there.

Sure, there have been lineup changes galore, but Duran Duran has, solidly and dependably, put out an album every two or three years since 1981. If you’d told me in 1983, at the height of their popularity, that Duran freaking Duran would go on to have a 30-year recording career, I’d have… well, I’d have probably looked at you funny for a second, and then gone back to playing with my Legos, because I was nine. But the point remains. Nobody expected the “Rio” band to keep on plugging for this long, and absolutely no one expected them to be as good as they are.

It would be very difficult for me to name a bad Duran Duran album. Some are worse than others – Notorious and Liberty pop to mind – but none of them out-and-out suck. Duran Duran specialize in dramatic, synth-y pop, and with minor stylistic variations along the way, they’ve stuck to that for three decades. Occasionally the general public catches on again (“Ordinary World” was a hit in 1993, Astronaut cracked the top 20 in 2004), but for the most part, Duran Duran keeps on doing what they do, regardless of who’s paying attention.

That’s why collaborations with Danja and Timbaland and Justin Timberlake on 2007’s Red Carpet Massacre were so surprising. It was the band’s first major bid at mass popularity since their earliest days, and they made it work, but it didn’t spin the gold they hoped it would. So for album 13, All You Need is Now, they’ve gone back to just being who they are. And as much as I liked Red Carpet Massacre, this is the real deal. This is why I love Duran Duran.

All You Need is Now is chock-full of the classic Duran sound. With four-fifths of the original band back in the fold, and a clearly conscious choice to get back to basics, the record pulses along comfortably. Truth be told, anything the band does behind him would sound like Duran Duran with Simon Le Bon’s distinctive vocals on top, but here he gets some grand melodies to sink his teeth into. The title track, “Blame the Machines” and “Being Followed” may be the most self-confident opening triptych this band has delivered in more than a decade.

And honestly, no other band I know would compose a six-minute epic called “The Man Who Stole a Leopard” (literally about a man who stole a leopard), but even if there were one, that band would not also be able to pull off a cheeky stomper like “Too Bad You’re So Beautiful.” As is this band’s custom, the best material appears toward the end: “Mediterranea” is the sky-high ballad this time around, and hidden gems “Other People’s Lives” and “Runway Runaway” are silly yet satisfying home runs. Owen Pallett (of Arcade Fire fame) contributes two instrumental bridges that tie everything together. Just like the Dude’s rug.

I’ve been a Duran Duran fan since the ‘80s, and they’ve never given me reason to regret it. All You Need is Now is another in a long line of thoroughly enjoyable pop records from a band that will remain forever underrated. It has the potential to take off, and you might see some news reports touting Duran’s latest comeback. Don’t believe it. Three decades in, they’re one of the most dependable pop acts out there. They don’t need to come back, they’ve never gone away.

* * * * *

The Strokes, on the other hand, did go away. Five years ago, they released their third album, First Impressions of Earth. It did very well, they toured it, and then the New York quintet kind of faded out. Every member went on to side projects or solo albums. It was kind of a fizzle. Now, I’ve never been a big fan – if I never hear “Last Nite” again, it will be too soon – but even I was a little mystified at how such a popular band could just drift apart.

As it turns out, they didn’t. The hiatus lasted a couple of years, but the band’s back together now with a new album, called Angles. Although I certainly wouldn’t call this a comeback either. There’s very little on this 10-track disc that makes me miss the Strokes, very little that makes me glad they’re back in my life. The band does make some interesting leaps into new sonic territory, but they retain their sloppiness and their so-so songwriting.

The album actually gets off to a roaring start, with glossy ass-kicker “Machu Picchu.” The twin guitars rage and then fall back as Julian Casablancas dives into a strong chorus. All seems well, but things go south pretty quickly after that. The slovenly “Under Cover of Darkness” is everything I dislike about this band. Casablancas sounds like he’s whining through a telephone, and the chorus attempts to soar, but ends up spluttering.

And from there, it’s one bout with mediocrity after another. “Two Kinds of Happiness” sounds like they went back in time to 1984 and got Ric Ocasek to produce, but the song is shaky and half-formed. I like “You’re So Right” for being so damn weird – the electronic rhythm and angular guitars underpin three or four Casablancases, through robot effects, intoning in something that might be called harmony. It’s unlike anything the Strokes have done. That doesn’t mean it’s particularly good, though.

“Taken For a Fool” is my favorite. It has a nice melody, some stunning playing by Albert Hammond Jr., and an overall super-cool vibe. But it highlights what I like least about the Strokes: they’re a fine, tight band pretending to sound bored and sloppy. The five songs in the back half don’t hold much for me. The band flirts with the electronics that were all over Casablancas’ solo album, Phrazes for the Young, but they don’t add much to these decent-to-disappointing tunes.

Some will love this album, and wonder why I just can’t hear how good it is. I guess I am just immune to this band’s charms. I have tried, and I have found things to like (such as the insane little breakdowns in “Call Me Back”), but not enough. Angles rarely rises above decent to me, and often sinks far below it. They’ve come a few baby steps from their debut, but it would be hard for me to call what they’ve been on a journey.

* * * * *

On the other hand entirely, we have the Pet Shop Boys.

This is another band that has surprised me with their longevity. Their first single, “West End Girls,” dropped in 1984, and since then, they’ve reliably released an album every two or three years. Four remix albums, a pair of live documents, and an even 10 studio records make up their catalog, and every one of them is a synth-pop gem. They’ve stumbled a bit recently – 2006’s Fundamental and 2009’s Yes are not all they could have been – but Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe remain singular figures in the pop landscape, wise old men who still cover the Village People’s “Go West” in concert.

But even as a longtime Pet Shop Boys fan, I would not have believed they would ever turn out something quite like The Most Incredible Thing, their score to a new ballet based on Hans Christian Anderson’s famous story. Anyone who doubts that Tennant and Lowe are first-rate musicians and composers should listen to this thing. It is almost entirely instrumental, and offers the Boys their first chance to work with a full orchestra since 1988’s “Left to My Own Devices.” They seize it.

The story is typically Anderson. The king of a large yet boring kingdom offers his daughter’s hand in marriage to whomever can show him “the most incredible thing.” An artist named Leo decides to create a clock full of magical creatures, and he handily wins the contest, but a group of bullies step in and destroy the clock. This destruction is somehow considered the most incredible thing, and the head bully, a guy named Karl, is declared the winner.

But then, on the eve of Karl’s wedding to the princess, the magical creatures from the clock come back to life and kill him. Leo and the princess then fall in love and get married, their love declared the most incredible thing. Yeah, it’s weird, but you can just picture this happening on stage, right?

The one drawback of the two-disc soundtrack album is that you have to keep on imagining that. You get just the music – no DVD of the performance, not even any photographs. I assume this would all be more amazing as a complete work, watching the visual element while hearing the Boys’ astounding music. But thankfully, the music itself is good enough that you won’t care that much. Throughout, Tennant and Lowe marry their trademark synth pulses and dance beats to the massive sound of an orchestra and a choir, and the effect is intense.

But it’s when the Boys shake things up that the score really comes to life. “Help Me,” midway through the first act, is a tender piano piece, and the multi-part “The Clock,” which opens the second act, is a fantastic wonderland of sweeping string melodies and sound effects. “The Miracle,” the extraordinary centerpiece of Act Three, is this score’s finest hour, utilizing themes that had been stated earlier to tremendous effect. It all builds up into an explosion of joyous sound.

This is the second instrumental score Tennant and Lowe have released, after their 2005 music for Battleship Potemkin, but this leaves the earlier effort in the dust. If all you know of the Pet Shop Boys is “West End Girls” and “It’s a Sin,” check this out. They’ve truly earned the title “composers” with this one, and as much as I want them to release another winning collection of pop tunes, I wouldn’t be sad if they followed this orchestral path a while longer, either. The Most Incredible Thing is an unexpected triumph.

* * * * *

Next week, it’s back to the modern times with the Joy Formidable, Broken Bells, Panic at the Disco and Peter, Bjorn and John, along with my First Quarter Report. Shortly after that, the amazing new Violet Burning triple album, and some more old guys: Ray Davies, Robbie Robertson and the Smithereens.

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.

Apologies for last week’s abbreviated column. I promised to tell you why I had to cut things short last week, and I also promised that the reason was pretty cool. So here it is.

I’m involved in a fairly amazing project called Made in Aurora. It’s the brainchild of Steve Warrenfeltz, who owns my favorite record store, Kiss the Sky. Earlier this month, a couple dozen local musicians converged on Backthird Audio in Aurora to record a compilation. Steve plans to press up hundreds of copies on vinyl (with an accompanying CD) and have it ready for Record Store Day, on April 16.

What’s my part? Well, I played piano on one song, Kevin Trudo’s “Once a Week Won’t Kill You,” and I wrote the liner notes that you’ll find inside the gatefold cover. The whole package looks and sounds fantastic. It features the talents of Dave Ramont, Greg Boerner, Noah Gabriel, Dick Smith, HOSS, Jeremy Keen, the Empty Can Band and the aforementioned Kevin Trudo. And it ends with all of the above, plus most of the musicians who played with them, gathered in a room and banging out a version of “In My Hour of Darkness,” by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris.

That list of names up there probably doesn’t mean much to you if you’re not from the area, but trust me when I tell you it represents a huge wellspring of talent. This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever been involved with. I’m not sure if Made in Aurora is going to be available outside of this area, but if it is, it’s worth hearing. And not just for me stumbling my way around the ebonies and ivories. (But mostly ebonies. Key of F#. Thanks, Kev.) I’ll keep you posted.

So this week, I thought we’d catch up a little bit. Here are five short reviews of five new records, some of which have been out for some time. This one’s beholden to no genre, no theme, no unifying thread. Just five records I like. And I think you’ll like them too.

* * * * *

Bruce Cockburn has been making albums since 1970. That’s 41 years. It’s difficult for me to wrap my brain around that, but even more difficult to understand why he’s not more famous. Surely in that amount of time, he’s done a few things worthy of worldwide notice. But no, the great Canadian songwriter soldiers on in relative obscurity, playing to dozens instead of thousands, and making album after album that none but the faithful will hear.

Yes, I’ve sung this song before. I may have sung it about Bruce Cockburn. But that doesn’t make it any less true. The just-released Small Source of Comfort is his 31st album, and it’s another argument for his place among the greats. It’s not the best record of his career, but it’s not as hastily-assembled as his previous one, Life Short Call Now. This one feels fully thought-out – it’s more mellow, more carefully arranged, more of a rumination. But it once again ably demonstrates Cockburn’s mastery of the guitar, and piercing way with a lyric.

Small Source of Comfort opens with “The Iris of the World,” which is at least partially about traversing the Canada-U.S. border: “Crossed the border laughing, never know what to expect, they want to know what church I’m from and what things I collect, they’re trying to plug holes in the hull while flames eat up the deck, the captain and his crew don’t seem to get the disconnect…” This is largely an album about going to and from, about leaving home and returning there, and taking in the sights along the way.

It’s musically diverse, but sticks pretty close to Cockburn’s well-worn territory. The acoustic stomp of “Five Fifty-One” is vintage, its tense chord progression matching the lyrics perfectly: “Knots in my muscles, too much traffic in my mind, it was five fifty-one, gray light creeping through the blind…” It’s followed directly by “Driving Away,” a typical slow-burn ballad about escaping responsibility. Annabelle Chvostek adds some tender duet vocals to this one.

And as is his custom, Cockburn delivers five (count them, five) instrumentals this time, ranging from the snappy “Bohemian 3-Step” to the propulsive “Comets of Kandahar” to the sweet “Ancestors.” I’ve never quite gotten used to the instrumentals on a Cockburn record – they seem to break up his train of thought – and in this case, three of them are sequenced practically in a row near the end of the record, making them feel like bonus tracks.

Ah, but Small Source of Comfort ends with an old song that never found a home until now. “Gifts” is not even two minutes long, but concludes things on a lovely, graceful note: “Silver rain sings dancing rhyme, sunlight on blue water, rocky shore grown soft with moss catches all our laughter, and it sends it back without its edge to strengthen us anew, that we may walk within these walls and share our gifts with you…”

So yes, I may start every Bruce Cockburn review lamenting his obscurity, but I only do that because he’s been so very good for so very long. Small Source of Comfort is a strong album – only the too-literal “Call Me Rose” stumbles – and another in a long line of reasons to become a fan of Cockburn’s work. He’s 65 years old now, and he’ll be 66 in May, so there’s no telling how many more of these we’ll get. To my mind, each one’s a treasure.

* * * * *

Liam Gallagher thinks Beady Eye is the best band in the world.

Of course, as the singer, he’s slightly biased. But statements like that are about what we’ve come to expect from the brothers Gallagher, who formed Oasis together 20 years ago. Since then, the warring siblings have threatened to break up the band (and to wring each other’s necks) more times than I can count. And yet, Oasis kept on trucking, and along the way earned some respect. Their last album, 2008’s Dig Out Your Soul, brought them some very nice notices, some from critics that had dismissed the band only a couple of years before.

So no one took the Fighting Gallaghers seriously. But in August of 2009, Noel Gallagher finally had enough, and made good on his threats, leaving Liam holding the band together. Which he did – Beady Eye, despite the name change, is primarily the last incarnation of Oasis, including Liam, guitarist Gem Archer and bassist Andy Bell. Even the title of their debut album, Different Gear, Still Speeding, seems to say that very little has changed.

And it’s truth in advertising. Different Gear sounds exactly like Oasis, from the Manchester guitar sounds to the Beatles appropriations. If you like this sort of thing – and I do – this is a really good little record, right in line with the last few Oasis records. I’m especially fond of the skipping “Beatles and Stones” and the powerhouse rock of the opener, “Four Letter Word.” I’m also a fan of the sun-through-the-clouds “For Anyone,” all jangly acoustics and smiles. The band seems to have lost nothing with Noel Gallagher’s departure – this is a confident, capable piece of work.

That said, there’s nothing here you haven’t heard before from Liam Gallagher and his cohorts. In everything but the name, this is a new Oasis album, albeit a slightly more mellow one. If you found their brand of ‘60s-inspired Britpop creaky and irrelevant before, there’s nothing here that will change your mind. But if you like melodic rock with a touch of barrelhouse and some well-lifted Beatleisms, this is for you. I think it’s pretty damn enjoyable.

* * * * *

Two years ago, the Dears all but broke up.

While making their bleak, oppressive fourth album, Missiles, most of the band called it a day, leaving only mastermind Murray Lightburn and keyboardist Natalia Yanchek. It looked like Missiles would be the dramatic Montreal band’s swan song, and it kind of sounded that way too – it was a tough record to get through, and it lacked the spark of the band’s previous work.

But holy hell, look what happened. Everyone came back into the fold, and the Dears have somehow turned things around and made their best record ever, Degeneration Street. They’ve retained their trademarks – a huge, sweeping sound, led by Lightburn’s powerful voice – but they’ve cut the song lengths down dramatically, and brought in some much-needed variety. Only three of these 14 songs top five minutes, and none top six.

In some ways, it’s the perfect mix of the wide-open vistas of No Cities Left and the down-and-dirty rock of Gang of Losers. But it’s more than that. This time the Dears have written their little hearts out, and allowed for some interesting detours. They open with one – the slinky “Omega Dog” slides in on a funky bass line and some slippery guitars, Lightburn whipping out his strong falsetto. “Blood” is a rocker and a half, while “Lamentation” is one of the band’s best epics, compressing 12 minutes of widescreen force into 4:20.

And then there is “Galactic Tides,” in some ways the Dears version of Radiohead’s “Exit Music (For a Film).” It sports a lyric and melody Muse’s Matt Bellamy would be proud to call his own, and it starts out spare and ghostly, but builds up and up, adding choirs and wailing guitars as it goes. This would be at least twice its length on prior Dears albums, but here it’s 4:38, and the smaller space gives it a sense of palpable urgency.

That sense remains all the way to the end. “1854” marries its supple bass line to a soaring melody (and man, this Lightburn guy can sing), while the concluding title track brings it all crashing down in a tense, off-kilter way. This is the most consistent album the Dears have made, as if they needed to hit bottom to understand that every record, every song is worth giving your all to fight for. Where Missiles felt like giving up, Degeneration Street feels like waking up. It may not be the last record the Dears make, but it’s so intense and vital that it feels like they thought it might be.

* * * * *

Noah and the Whale had me on their side immediately, just by virtue of their name.

It’s a reference to director Noah Baumbach and his film, The Squid and the Whale. Anyone who knows me knows how much I like Baumbach – he’s stumbled here and there, but his first movie, Kicking and Screaming, remains one of my all-time favorites. Name your band after Noah Baumbach, and I’m going to check you out. That’s a given.

So the name got me in the door, but I remain a little conflicted about the music. Their debut, Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down, is a fine slice of indie pop, leader Charlie Fink intertwining his voice with girlfriend Laura Marling’s sweet pipes. But then Marling left (both Fink and the band), and they swept up the pieces and made the skeletal, broken-hearted The First Days of Spring. It’s an album that was probably cathartic to make, but takes a lot to get into. Fink’s tentative, untrained voice is one of the main drawbacks – on much of Spring, it was left to fend for itself, on its own in a bleak and sparse landscape. And it didn’t do well. If there had been wolves, it would have been brought down.

But I could see what the band wanted that album to be, and in some very important ways, they achieved it. The record’s journey from despair to hope feels earned, and by the end, even Fink’s shaky vocals seem important somehow, like the album wouldn’t pack the same punch without them. The question, then, became how Noah and the Whale would fare, stripped of that album’s conceptual underpinnings.

As if to answer my query, here’s Last Night on Earth, the second Marling-less Noah album, and it’s pretty swell. Fink hasn’t suddenly learned how to sing, but this time he’s surrounded his voice with much more support. The first notes of “Life is Life,” all electronic drums and synthesizer, will surprise you, but it settles into a groove quickly. The first three tracks, in fact, make great use of the fuller, more electro sound, especially the danceable “Tonight’s the Kind of Night.” It’s a left turn, but it brings them to a fascinating destination.

Fink does a fine Proclaimers impression on “Waiting for My Chance to Come,” one of the most successful numbers – imagine John Mellencamp’s band produced by Ric Ocasek and you’ve got the right idea. My favorite song here is “Just Me Before We Met,” a tale of undiscovered secrets. It’s set to a pulsing electronic beat, and Fink manages to wrap that voice around a pretty dynamic melody. Virtually everything about it works.

Last Night on Earth is a short 33 minutes, and its jump into electro-land isn’t exactly breaking new ground. But I like the record. It’s sweet and hopeful and ingratiating, and when its synth-gospel finale “Old Joy” is over, it leaves me with a peaceful feeling. I’d never say this is a masterpiece, or even a particularly excellent release, but for what it is, I enjoy it a lot more than I expected to. The band had me at its name, but the music has kept me around.

* * * * *

And speaking of bands who had me at their name, here’s Ringo Deathstarr.

I’m going to repeat that for effect: the band’s name is Ringo Deathstarr. Just try to beat that. You can’t. It’s one of the best band names I’ve ever heard. It’s also the kind of name that buys you one free pass with me. If you’re creative enough to come up with Ringo Deathstarr, I’m interested to hear what else you can do.

So. Ringo Deathstarr’s debut album is called Colour Trip, and it takes me right back to high school. It sounds like My Bloody Valentine and Ride and a hundred other early shoegaze bands. The rhythm section is fast and punky, and the band drapes sheets of densely-reverbed guitar noise on top of it. Female bassist Alex Gehring is also the co-lead singer, and her high voice is practically drowned out by the din, but when it cuts through, it’s lovely. The songs are simple and melodic. Seriously, this sounds a lot like My Bloody Valentine.

And every time I listen to it, I like it more. It is little more than the sum of its influences, which also includes Psychocandy (of course), but no one seems to be doing music like this anymore, and it’s a style I enjoy. This is catchy and fun and at least as good as some of the high points of the shoegaze movement. It turns out, Ringo Deathstarr is more than just a clever-clever name. They’re a band worth tracking down.

* * * * *

All right, next week we’ll have a lot to choose from. I’m buying new ones from the Strokes, Duran Duran, Panic at the Disco, James Blake, Richard Ashcroft and the Pet Shop Boys, as well as live documents from Green Day and Soundgarden. (Viva la ‘90s!) Hopefully I’ll have time to write another nice long column. Cross your fingers.

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 keep saying that 2011 is an amazing year for new music. The awesome just keeps on coming – it seems like every few days, there’s a new major announcement that puts a grin on my face.

So here’s what I thought I’d do this week, just to illustrate how great this year is. I’m just going to list, week by week, the records I plan to buy through May. Some of them are more interesting to me than others, but when you see this list all written out like this, the sheer mass of it is just impressive. Here, take a look:

March 15: Noah and the Whale, Last Night on Earth; Mastodon, Live at the Aragon; Tres Mts., Three Mountains.

March 22: The Strokes, Angles; Green Day, Awesome as Fuck; Soundgarden, Live on I5; Richard Ashcroft, United Nations of Sound; Duran Duran, All You Need is Now; Pet Shop Boys, The Most Incredible Thing; Panic at the Disco, Vices and Virtues; James Blake.

March 29: Peter, Bjorn and John, Gimme Some; Mars Classroom, The New Theory of Everything; Cavalera Conspiracy, Blunt Force Trauma; The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Belong; Broken Bells, Meyrin Fields; Emery, We Do What We Want; and the CD release of Radiohead’s The King of Limbs.

April 5: Robbie Robertson, How to Become Clairvoyant; Ray Davies, See My Friends.

April 12: Paul Simon, So Beautiful or So What; Alison Krauss, Paper Airplane; Low, C’Mon; Panda Bear, Tomboy; Foo Fighters, Wasting Light; TV on the Radio, Nine Types of Light; Elbow, Build a Rocket Boys; Between the Buried and Me, The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues.

April 19: Blackfield, Welcome to My DNA; Gorillaz, The Fall.

April 26: Explosions in the Sky, Take Care, Take Care, Take Care; The Airborne Toxic Event, All at Once; KMFDM, WTF?!; Of Montreal, The Controllersphere; Boris, Attention Please and Heavy Rocks.

May 3: Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues; Danger Mouse and Danielle Luppi, Rome.

May 10: Okkervil River, I Am Very Far; Manchester Orchestra, Simple Math; Sloan, The Double Cross; The Cars, Move Like This; The Antlers, Burst Apart.

May 17: Moby, Destroyed; Owl City, All Things Bright and Beautiful.

May 31: Death Cab for Cutie, Codes and Keys.

And these are just the releases I know about now. May will fill out more over the next month or so, and I expect there will be a number of surprise announcements in the near future. (Though, if I’m expecting them, they’re not surprises… never mind.) If anyone tells you this is a lousy time for new music, or there just isn’t anything coming out these days, please refer them to this list.

* * * * *

Of course, the quantity of new releases doesn’t matter as much as the quality, but 2011 keeps on delivering on that score too. We’ve seen great new records by PJ Harvey, Iron and Wine, Eisley, Teddy Thompson, Lykke Li and others, and even the Radiohead album was pretty good. I’ve downloaded and listened to the epic new Violet Burning album, The Story of Our Lives, and it’s staggering, especially considering it’s two hours and 18 minutes long.

And this week’s contestants, the venerable R.E.M., have just made their best album in nearly 20 years.

It really hasn’t been easy to be an R.E.M. fan these past couple decades. Athens’ favorite sons had a run like few other bands in history from 1982 to 1992, putting out classic after classic. They dropped their last one, the gentle and gorgeous Automatic for the People, in 1992. I was a freshman in college, and I remember hearing “Sweetness Follows” for the first time and sitting there awestruck. This band could do no wrong.

But since Bill Berry’s departure, they’ve been floundering. Quick show of hands: how many people got all the way through 2004’s bore-fest Around the Sun? And how many people could stand listening to it twice? That, I thought, was it, the death knell for one of my favorite bands. When a duet with Q-Tip is the highlight of your record, it may be time to hang it up.

If I may belabor the point, the problem with the last two decades of R.E.M. is the band’s seemingly endless desire to be someone else. Every album from Monster forward is a diversion from the sound they created in the ‘80s, instead of a refinement of it. Monster is the glam record, for example, while Up is the chill electro one, Reveal the sunny Brian Wilson-inspired one, and Around the Sun the shitty one. Even 2008’s Accelerate, up until now the best record the R.E.M. Trio had made, is the loud one, the one on which they tried to prove they can still rock. All of these decisions, in retrospect, feel forced and unnatural.

That’s why the new one, Collapse Into Now, is such a joyous revelation. This one sounds like R.E.M., simply and effortlessly. It’s like they went back in time and found their groove, right where they left it.

That’s not to say that this is a nostalgic affair. From the first moments of opener “Discoverer,” you’ll hear a vital band playing their hearts out. They’ve teamed up with Jacknife Lee again – he produced Accelerate – and while his work is full-bodied, he keeps the focus on the reinvigorated, live-band R.E.M., pounding out these short, sharp tunes like their lives depended on it. Despite the crashing rock of the first two songs (and several others), this is not Accelerate part two – it’s more varied, more open-sounding. And that’s the key to its success.

Early R.E.M. records felt adventurous, like anything could happen. Collapse Into Now recaptures that feeling, darting from spunky songs like “All the Best” (perhaps the finest showcase here for semi-permanent drummer Bill Rieflin, who, as I never get tired of saying, used to be in Ministry) to sweet numbers like “Uberlin,” which brings back that classic Peter Buck acoustic sound. “Walk it Back” is the hidden gem, the delicate piano underpinning Michael Stipe’s world-worn, yet still arresting voice, and that contrasts with an explosion like “That Someone Is You,” all of 1:44.

In fact, I’d almost describe the feel of this album as “freewheeling.” Just look at the crazy guest list: Eddie Vedder adds his pipes to the near-endless singalong at the end of “It Happened Today,” sex-pop iconoclast Peaches shows up on the awesomely silly “Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter,” and Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye add their spectral eeriness to closer “Blue.” That song is something of a drugged-out cousin to “Country Feedback,” from 1991’s Out of Time, and finds Stipe in beat poet mode while Smith sings the melody. And then it eases into a little reprise that will make you smile.

These songs are mainly simple and enjoyable things – try hard not to grin as “Mine Smell Like Honey” plays – and for the first time in many, many years, the band sounds all right with that. There’s no attempt to make any kind of statement, or break new ground. This is just a good old-fashioned R.E.M. album, the likes of which I thought I’d never hear again. The members of R.E.M. appear, largely unobscured, on the front and back covers of Collapse Into Now, the first time they’ve done so. It’s fitting to see that on a record that finds them remembering who they are, and reclaiming that identity.

If you couldn’t tell, I love this. If you ever liked R.E.M., you’ll love it too.

Next week, maybe Bruce Cockburn, maybe The Violet Burning, maybe something else. I have to cut things short, but I’ll tell you why next week. The reason is pretty cool. 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.

This week’s column is all about women, but I’m going to start it off with news about two groups of men. Yeah, I know, I’m a bastard. But it’s good news, on both fronts, and music fans are going to want to know it.

There’s been an explosion of really cool Canadian bands in recent years, including the New Pornographers, Broken Social Scene, and the Grammy-winning Arcade Fire. (Not tired of saying that yet.) But I still think the country’s best band is Sloan. They are masters of ‘60s and ‘70s-inspired power pop, and over 20 years and nine albums, they’ve amassed a killer catalog and a dedicated following. Their 10th album is called The Double Cross (as in “XX,” as in 20, as in their 20th anniversary), and it’s out on May 10.

That’s not even what has me all excited about it, though. It’s the first single, “Follow the Leader,” which you can hear for free right here. If this doesn’t make you want to get up and dance your way to a record store and buy this album, I don’t know what will.

In other brilliant power pop news, Quiet Company has announced that their third album, We Are All Where We Belong, will be released in May or June. If I had a time machine and could travel forward three months and hear this thing right now, I would. I’m anticipating this like no other album this year. But as if to tide me over, this month will see QuietCo’s first DVD release, Live From Studio 6A. Having seen the band live, I can attest to their awesomeness. You’ll be able to buy both the album and DVD from their site. And you should.

You can also see the ridiculously amazing track list for the new album here. Every song has a parenthetical subtitle, and several of them call back to earlier QuietCo tunes. (One of them calls back to two at once.) My favorite: “Fear and Fallacy, Sitting in a Tree (You Were Doing Well Until Everyone Died).” I have no idea what a song with that title might sound like, but I’m excited to find out.

* * * * *

Two out of my top 10 albums of 2010 were made by women. Same with my picks for 2009. And 2008. Only one woman made it into my 2007 list. Ditto 2006.

Why am I telling you this? Ordinarily, demographic information like this doesn’t faze me. I pick the best of the year, as far as I can determine it, and it doesn’t matter if the number one record is made by albino giraffes, it’s still the year’s number one record. But when it comes to female artists, I’m particularly sensitive. There’s a general lack of respect paid to women who write and play their own songs, as if that’s the province of men only, and I don’t want to perpetuate that.

Still, the numbers speak for themselves. I used to console myself by berating the male-driven music business: there just aren’t that many female artists that are allowed to make great music, I’d say. I’m not sure that was ever true, but it’s not true now. The Internet has leveled things out. Women have the exact same opportunities as men, when it comes to making interesting music and getting that music out there. I hear a lot of great music, and more and more of it lately is made by women.

Take this year, for example. We’ve already got one album by a female artist, PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake, that’s practically a lock for the top 10 list. I’ve also loved new things by Over the Rhine and Corinne Bailey Rae. And this week, I have three more albums, by three artists you probably haven’t heard. They’re all worth tracking down, and they should (hopefully) help pump up the number of women in my top 10 list this year.

First up is Texas quintet Eisley. Three sisters, their brother and their cousin, all named DuPree. They play and sing sweet pop music with extraordinary melodies and harmonies. It’s been four years since their second record, Combinations, and the DuPrees have spent it first recording, and then fighting for the right to release their third. They’re off Reprise Records now, and back to the indie world.

So the natural headline is Family Band Fights for Their Music to be Heard, which should be enough of a hook. I hope it is, because Eisley’s third album, The Valley, is wonderful – it’s accomplished and full and complete, and worth every minute of the wait. There’s a certain sheen to this record, as you might expect – it was originally recorded on a major-label budget, after all – but the songs make it work, and the DuPree sisters sing like angels, as always.

Eisley specializes in optimistic-sounding pop that masks the darkness of their lyrics. “Watch It Die” is practically a celebration of a relationship’s end: “My love for you has died tonight, I don’t know how to own you…” The chorus of this song soars, the strings pulse, and the whole thing sounds sweet and exultant. “Sad” is the same way. The song (which I first heard at Cornerstone Festival last summer) is about commiserating with a friend whose lover isn’t coming back. But the music is jaunty, super-melodic and fun.

Judging by the lyrics, it’s been a bad few years for the DuPrees. Most of these songs are about love dying, about trust eroding. The most hopeful is “Better Love,” which finds Sherri DuPree down on herself, but taking solace in her significant other: “’Cause I’ve finally found out you’re on my side, with a bullet for the bad guys…” Most of the rest of The Valley reads like life unraveling, right up to the final track, the heartbreaking “Ambulance”: “And you say that I’m going to be okay, but it doesn’t seem that way, not today…”

Here’s the thing, though: you’d never know it, just listening. Eisley’s songs have hummable melodies to spare, and they never wallow when they can fly. Musically, this is energetic and energizing stuff – it’s a little meatier than they usually are, and there are string sections everywhere, but this is the work of a fine pop band playing fine pop songs. If you don’t pay attention to the lyrics, The Valley will leave you with a big, wide grin.

That juxtaposition has worked for Eisley before, and it works here. The Valley is, in many ways, the band’s most accomplished effort. There are at least four songs on this record that should be huge hits. They won’t be, which is a shame, but I’m glad this music is out there, finally, and not still languishing in major label hell. If the masses don’t get to hear Stacy DuPree’s beautiful singing on “I Wish,” well, that’s their loss. I’m enjoying it immensely, though.

* * * * *

Swedish singer Lykke Li is a stranger case. I think Atlantic Records is trying to position her as a pop star – her songs make it onto Gray’s Anatomy all the time. (Or so I’m told, because I would rather wash my eyeballs with sulfuric acid than watch Gray’s Anatomy.) But she certainly doesn’t write songs like a pop star. Her second album, Wounded Rhymes, is a vast improvement over her first, Youth Novels, but it still doesn’t contain a single song I would consider a potential hit.

That’s a good thing, in this case. And I’m not begrudging Li her wider platform – I do wish more people would hear Eisley, because I think they’re more accessible than their indie status would indicate, but Lykke Li’s material is so weird, and in general so good, that exposing this to the masses can only be a positive development. Where her first record was more tentative, a little more traditionally electronic, Wounded Rhymes is confident, assured, strange and terrific.

Opener “Youth Knows No Pain” is a drums-and-organ delight, with a smoky, shouted chorus and a middle eight right out of a Runaways song. It’s off-kilter, but works perfectly. Like the rest of this album, it was produced by Bjorn Yttling of Peter, Bjorn and John, and he knows a thing or two about off-kilter hit-making. The trend continues on the dazzling “I Follow Rivers,” which at times sounds like it contains an endless cavern of sound behind its thudding bass and pinging percussion. If this is a pop hit in Sweden these days, I want to move there.

Like Eisley’s album, Wounded Rhymes is a dark affair, the product of a broken relationship. The song titles give it away: “Unrequited Love,” “Sadness is a Blessing,” etc. But unlike Eisley, Li doesn’t disguise her emotions with a brave face. She wants you to feel her pain, to go through the roller coaster of emotions she’s experienced. The aggression of “Get Some” is balanced against the tender agony of the closer, “Silent My Song,” and they meet in the middle in the tremendous “Love Out of Lust.”

On the album’s darker moments, like “Get Some,” thunderous toms pound ominously while reverb stretches the sound out for miles. Synthesizers don’t pulse on “Get Some” as much as they do caress and slither, while Li compares herself to a prostitute and verbally writhes all over the beat. But three songs later, she’s giving us the album’s prettiest moment, the spare “I Know Places.” “I know places we can go where the highs won’t bring you down, babe,” she sings tenderly over an acoustic guitar and little else. It’s the emotional center of the album, and my favorite track.

Overall, Wounded Rhymes is a huge step forward, a much deeper ride than Li’s debut. I don’t know where the idea that Lykke Li is a pop star comes from – this album is the work of an honest-to-god artist, one willing to go to some interesting places for the sake of her music. All I can say is, if these songs end up in American television shows, they can only make those shows much, much better.

* * * * *

Eisley and Lykke Li are relative unknowns, but they’re Lady Gaga when compared with our third contestant this week, Julianna Barwick.

I can tell you almost nothing about the Brooklyn-based Barwick. I know three things about her, in fact: she’s on Sufjan Stevens’ Asthmatic Kitty Records, she creates music almost entirely with her voice, and her new album, The Magic Place, is one of the most beautiful things I’ve heard this year. Or last year. Or the year before that.

We’ll start with that second one. Aside from some delicate piano and a few chimes, every sound on The Magic Place was made with Barwick’s voice. She overdubs and overdubs herself into a choir, but it’s more than that – her music sounds like someone has torn the veil between this world and the next away, and off in the unimaginable distance, beyond anything we’ve ever known, the dead are singing.

The parts of this album that are not crafted with vocals – the subtle, looping bass and heartbeat drums on “Keep Up the Good Work,” for example – serve to ground it, but they sound right here, right next to you, while Barwick’s unearthly harmonies always sound out of reach. “Prizewinning” is built around a throbbing synthesizer line, unfolding like the road ahead, while Barwick’s voice builds up an ocean of glorious harmonies around it.

There are lyrics here, I suspect, but I have no idea what they are. I’m not sure I care, either – when the songs are this abstract, hammering them down with words just seems wrong somehow. Pitchfork made a point of comparing Barwick with Enya, which I think is all kinds of wrong. Rather, I’d say she does for the human voice what Hammock does for the guitar – she turns it into something formless and endless, and then gives it shape. The Magic Place isn’t an album for everyone, but it is remarkably beautiful stuff, and unlike anything else I own.

Barwick is here.

* * * * *

Next week, R.E.M. returns. So does Bruce Cockburn, but we may have to save that for the following week. 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’ve just heard about the death of Nicholas Courtney.

Most of you are probably wondering just who Courtney is. But Doctor Who fans everywhere are having a sad, sad day today. For more than 40 years, off and on, Courtney played Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, commander of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, a regular foil to the anti-establishment Doctor. The Brig was one of the most beloved Who characters ever, and that’s down to the dignity and grace with which Courtney played him.

The Brig first appeared in 1968’s The Web of Fear, and was characterized as a tough, no-nonsense military man. But when he became a recurring character with 1970’s Spearhead from Space, the first story of the Third Doctor’s era, the writers began realizing that Courtney was very funny, in a subtle way. Courtney got some of the funniest scenes and lines of 1970s Who, the most famous of which came in 1971’s The Daemons: “Jenkins! Chap with wings there. Five rounds rapid!” (It’s funnier in context.)

Courtney drifted away from the show after 1975’s Terror of the Zygons, but they always found clever ways of bringing him back. He played two versions of the Brigadier from two different time periods in 1983’s Mawdryn Undead, and came out of retirement to face an evil witch from Britain’s mythical past in 1989’s Battlefield. His last appearance was in 2008, in the Sarah Jane Adventures story Enemy of the Bane. Courtney was much older and softer than we’d seen him before, but he still had that twinkle, that sense of mischief that he always brought to the character.

And Courtney was reportedly every inch the kindly gentleman off-screen as well. I wish I’d had the chance to meet him. Nick Courtney died Tuesday at the age of 81. I’ve been a fan of his since I was seven years old, and this news just knocked the wind out of me. Rest in peace, Brigadier. You will be missed.

Here is a brief obituary by Doctor Who DVD producer Ed Stradling.

* * * * *

Lately I’ve found myself in an interesting position: I’m defending Radiohead.

Specifically, the band’s eighth album, The King of Limbs, which has lit the Internet on fire over the past six days. As usual with Radiohead, it’s either a masterpiece or a disaster, a work of art or a swindle of the highest order, Thom Yorke’s labor of love or his continued insistence on flipping off his longtime fans. There is no middle ground with Radiohead, no option of simply saying, “Meh. Whatever.”

What’s surprising me most this time is which side I’m coming down on.

I’ve been pretty vocal in the past about my disdain for Radiohead’s post-OK Computer work. They went from creating the greatest album of the 1990s to wallowing in remote, simple electronic nothings, and along the way, forgot how to write songs. And man, they used to write magnificent songs. Dazzling multi-part epics with soaring choruses and stunning buildups and breakdowns. Even something simple like “Just” is superior to most guitar-rock you’ll hear these days, and when they really let loose (“Paranoid Android,” “Karma Police”), they were unstoppably great.

It’s taken me more than 10 years to stop hating Kid A, the first of their synths-and-no-songs releases. I remember hearing it for the first time (a week early, in a planetarium) and thinking, “They have to be kidding.” I despised it from the first, and couldn’t understand where the band that crafted OK Computer had gone. Over time, I’ve warmed to it, but not too much – I still never again have to hear “The National Anthem,” or “Treefingers,” or “Idioteque.” I wanted songs, and I got loops and atmospheres.

Amnesiac, released a year later, was even worse. Sonic squiggles alongside repetitive beats-and-moans sculptures, with only a couple of redeeming tunes (“Pyramid Song,” “I Might Be Wrong,” “Knives Out”) to its name. And since then, it’s been like listening to a formerly great band stop trying. I liked Hail to the Thief and In Rainbows, but neither one knocked me out. I think In Rainbows is the best thing Radiohead has done since 1997 by a country mile, and it’s still not half as good as The Bends.

In Rainbows was also the first album the band self-released through its website, which is becoming its modus operandi. Last Friday, The King of Limbs hit the web, 24 hours before it was scheduled to be released. This time, instead of offering a pay-what-you-want model, Radiohead gave us two options: a nine-dollar download, or a 48-dollar limited edition “newspaper album,” that includes two vinyl records and hundreds of pieces of artwork. (The standard CD and vinyl editions will be in stores on March 29.)

So I paid my nine dollars, but I have to say, I wasn’t overly excited about it. Deep down, I hoped this would be the album that finally renewed my faith in this band, but I didn’t have very high expectations for it. Those expectations were lowered even further when I saw the track listing: eight songs, 37 minutes. The shortest Radiohead album ever. That didn’t do much to convince me they’d knocked themselves out trying on this one.

But as The King of Limbs unspooled for the first time, I found myself getting wrapped up in it. At first blush, it sounds like Amnesiac meets Thom Yorke’s solo record The Eraser, and given that, I ought to hate it. But I don’t. And each time I listen, I find more to appreciate and enjoy. This is the furthest thing from The Bends and OK Computer they’ve made, and yet, it’s the first one that convinced me that they’re on to something, that this experimentation has finally borne fruit.

I’m not sure how to explain it. It’s not the use of organic instruments alongside the electronic pitter-patter, because they’ve always done that. This album has horns and strings and acoustic guitars galore, but so did Kid A. But I think Yorke and company have finally figured out how to balance their cold electronic side with their warm and human one, and The King of Limbs is the first one that gets it right. I don’t feel distanced from this album at all. I feel drawn in by it, particularly the gorgeous second half.

But it’s in the first half where Radiohead makes most of their great leaps forward. The opener, “Bloom,” could have fit on The Eraser – the drums are cut and spliced, likely from Phil Selway’s actual playing, into a nearly dubstep rhythm, and Colin Greenwood’s bass is muted and processed into a strange, almost jazzy tone. Thom Yorke uses that amazing voice to meander over a simple and repetitive melody. It shouldn’t work. But then the strings come in, and Yorke hits those higher notes, and somehow, it does.

“Morning Mr. Magpie” is even better, based on a galloping guitar figure and more of those folded, spindled and mutilated drums. It sounds like a live band put through a bank of computers, and made to resemble something more electronic. The chorus is low-key and easy to miss, and I wish the song had gone a few more places – it’s the “Bodysnatchers” or “Where You End and I Begin” of this album. But the more I listen, the more I like it, particularly the ambient breakdown in the middle.

Still, I found myself thinking at this point that Radiohead had delivered another so-so release, one that would get a middling review from me. Two tracks later, “Feral” dropped my spirits even more. It’s a pointless loops-and-sounds instrumental, the kind of thing that probably creeps up onto Yorke’s hard drive without much effort. With only eight songs, The King of Limbs could scarcely afford to throw one away on something like this.

Luckily for me and the band, sandwiched between those two tracks is one of the best post-OK Computer Radiohead songs, the great “Little By Little.” Spanish guitar surrounded by electronic sounds, Yorke digging into a real, honest-to-god chorus, some finely detailed production – this song is a little wonder. Again, I hear more each time I listen, and the rich sonic depth isn’t just confined to this one track. The King of Limbs was clearly labored over. It’s an airy album, but a thick one, and the sonic detail is easy to miss if you’re not paying attention to it.

The first half is an important step in Radiohead’s evolution, but the second half contains the gems. These four songs – “Lotus Flower,” “Codex,” “Giving Up the Ghost” and “Separator” – are my favorite they’ve done since OK Computer, especially in sequence. You’ve no doubt heard “Lotus Flower” by now, and may have seen the ridiculous video that accompanies it. It is, bar none, the sexiest and slinkiest tune to bear the Radiohead name, Yorke stretching that silky falsetto over a juicy synth bass and Selway’s deceptively funky drumming. It’s the one that gets stuck in my head the most.

But the last three… they’re the most heartrendingly beautiful tracks I’ve heard from this band in more than a decade. “Codex” finds Yorke digging into a gorgeous melody over phased-out piano and some subtle, yearning horns, and it moved me like little else in this band’s catalog. If you were upset with them for ruining “Videotape” with random percussion, you’ll love this. It’s organic and beautiful, and it’s matched by “Give Up the Ghost,” which circles around a delicate guitar figure. When Yorke gets to the title phrase, it raises goosebumps. It’s absolutely lovely.

And then comes “Separator,” a very simple and optimistic song, but one that works brilliantly at the close of this album. “If you think this is over, then you’re wrong,” Yorke croons over a practically soulful beat and bassline, before hitting these lines: “Like I’m falling out of bed from a long and weary dream, finally I’m free of all the weight I’ve been carrying.” It’s a long way from the paranoid fantasies of OK Computer to this, but it feels hard-fought, and well-earned.

I would never suggest that The King of Limbs is a return to form for Radiohead. If you’re waiting for them to recapture the soaring genius of their early works, you won’t find that here. This is the furthest the band has tunneled into their own rabbit hole, and those who consider them pretentious and overhyped probably won’t find much to change their minds.

But it works for me. For the first time since 1997, what they’re doing makes sense, and inspires me. I have no idea if you’ll hear the same thing in this little record, but I feel like The King of Limbs is the one on which (most) every piece of their jigsaw falls into place. Like the music itself, the advances the band makes here are subtle ones, but they make all the difference in the world. I’m happy to defend this album – it has worked its way under my skin like nothing this band has done in nearly 15 years.

I like Radiohead again. Who’d have thunk it?

Next week, women rule the school, with new ones by Eisley, Lykke Li and Julianna Barwick. 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 no sooner does Arcade Fire win the Grammy for Album of the Year, when Radiohead announces their eighth album, to be released on Saturday? Wow. Pretty good week.

I don’t know that I care so much about the Grammy win. I find it interesting that after years of talking about how the Grammys mean nothing, and how they’re just a self-congratulatory circle jerk for the old-guard record industry, suddenly the indie cognoscenti is all over this win as if it’s Truly Significant. I don’t know what combination of factors led to Win Butler and his crew taking home the prize, especially since they beat out industry darlings Eminem, Katy Perry and the two Ladies (Gaga and Antebellum). It feels like a bit of a seismic shift, but is it? If an absolutely irrelevant award goes to the right band for once, does that make the award suddenly relevant?

I don’t know. But I’m happy about it. The Suburbs was easily the finest of the nominated albums, and considered a long shot to win. And I’m happy for major-minor label Merge Records, too. They put out some amazing music, and engender loyalty from the bands they sign. There’s no bad here. I just don’t think this means anything for the industry or the Grammy awards. A few more years of this, maybe, but I’m betting Lady Gaga will win next year and all will go back to normal.

Although, they did give a practically unknown jazz musician the Best New Artist trophy over Justin Bieber, so maybe…

The Radiohead news, now, that has me excited. The band’s eighth album is called The King of Limbs, its cover is suitably creepy, and for the second time, Radiohead is self-releasing it. You can pre-order the album here, in two ways: a digital-only download (MP3 or WAV), available Saturday, or a deluxe “newspaper” edition with two vinyl records, “many large sheets of artwork, 625 tiny pieces of artwork and a full-colour piece of oxo-degradable plastic to hold it all together.” Mmm-hmm. That comes out May 9.

Initially, I was distressed by this. I don’t care that Radiohead has done away with their pay-what-you-want method, unveiled with 2007’s In Rainbows. Nine bucks is a fair price. But I’m a physical product kind of guy, and I honestly have no use for vinyl, and don’t want to pay $48 for the big package. That’s why I was glad to hear that TBD Records will release The King of Limbs in a standard edition on March 29, in record stores. Now I get to (gladly) buy the thing twice, once from the band this week, and once from my local record shop next month.

As for the music itself? I have hope. I will always be a Radiohead fan, but I think they fell off track with Kid A in 2000. Granted, OK Computer is a nearly-impossible act to follow, but since then, they haven’t really tried, churning out one forgettable computerized blip after another. I do think that In Rainbows was a step in the right direction, their best album since the glory days, but it wasn’t overwhelmingly good. Could The King of Limbs be the full redemption I’m seeking? We’ll see.

Of course, expect a full report next week.

As for this week, we’ve got a trio of albums ranging from the very good to the marvelous. For all intents and purposes, 2011 starts here.

* * * * *

Conor Oberst is Bright Eyes. Bright Eyes is Conor Oberst. There’s no denying that simple fact. The first Bright Eyes album, A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995-1997, is all Conor, with his guitar, in his bedroom. Other musicians have drifted in and out since then, but Oberst is the only one who really matters. If he decided not to show up to the studio, there would be no Bright Eyes records, no matter who else turned up.

That’s why it was so confusing when he “went solo” in 2008. Oberst made two albums and an EP under his own name, and it wasn’t much of a leap to assume that the Bright Eyes moniker was dead. But no. Just to make things even more confusing, Oberst is back under his band name with a new album, The People’s Key. You’d be forgiven for wondering just what the difference is. If Oberst is behind this music too, why not release it under his own name? Or why not just keep Bright Eyes for everything?

All of that confusion slipped away, at least for me, after my first listen to The People’s Key. This is absolutely a Bright Eyes album, in a way the two Oberst albums weren’t. What separates them? Believe it or not, it’s pretension.

As Bright Eyes, Oberst was always a pretentious little scrapper. Fashioning himself a modern Bob Dylan, he composed poetry and sang (and sometimes screamed) it to Very Serious Music, meaning folksy strumming and contemplative production. Over time, he got better at writing this Very Serious Music, and his last few albums as Bright Eyes were pretty damn good. But they were still overwrought affairs concerned with Big Ideas and Big Themes, and most importantly, they were No Fun at All.

Nothing wrong with that, but the two albums he made under his own name were revelations. Loose and shambling and funny, they were like Bright Eyes taking a holiday. Despite its 70-minute length, Outer South is the most fun I’ve ever heard Conor Oberst have in a studio – he let members of his band, the Mystic Valley Band, sing their own songs, and let a few tunes spin out into rustic jams.

The People’s Key is not that, at all. It is Very Serious Music. The album begins and ends with a rambling monologue about spirituality by Denny Brewer, singer of Refried Ice Cream. Every song is tightly arranged and produced – Oberst’s voice never appears without some kind of effect on it – and the whole thing is obviously meant as a statement, not just a rock record. I think it suffers for it, even though these are some of Oberst’s most accomplished songs.

Too bad they don’t really get to breathe. Take the sort-of title track, “A Machine Spiritual in the People’s Key.” (Now that’s a Bright Eyes song title.) Oberst’s voice is loaded with reverb, his acoustic guitar buried under piles of synths and noise, and his melodies trapped in a claustrophobic space. Which is a shame, because the melodies are nice. Same goes for many of these songs. Even though I like them, particularly the spry “Shell Games” and the thudding “Triple Spiral,” Oberst’s desire to make this record sound huge has made it sound suffocated.

There is one wonderful exception: “Ladder Song,” written in the wake of a close friend’s suicide, is heartbreaking. It works mainly because it’s so sparse – a keyboard, Oberst’s voice, and little else. It stands alone on this record as a reminder of where Oberst has been, and should serve as a path to where he should go. His material just sounds remote and confused when given the full sonic overload. “Ladder Song” is nowhere near his best work, but just by being honest and open, it’s the best thing here.

The rest of this album wants to be a Grand Statement about oneness and spirituality, and it doesn’t quite get there. Don’t get me wrong, these are fine little songs, and Oberst still has a way with meaningful-sounding lyrics, but when The People’s Key is over, I don’t feel enlightened, and I don’t feel changed. I don’t even feel like pressing play again. This is a C-plus album from a guy who can do better, and it’s the first Conor Oberst album in more than a decade that feels like a backslide. Perhaps it’s time for Oberst to say goodbye to Bright Eyes, and just be himself.

* * * * *

PJ Harvey should be considered a national treasure. Who cares that she’s not from this nation?

The English songwriter has amassed a catalog unlike that of any other musician I know. From the raw power of Dry and Rid of Me to the dramatic rock of To Bring You My Love to the experimental pop of her collaborations with John Parish, Harvey has never stood still, and has always been worth hearing. It’s never a matter of whether the new Harvey album is any good, merely what kind of good it is this time.

Initial reports surrounding her eighth solo album, Let England Shake, called it a return to rock after the spare and haunting White Chalk. I can’t say I wouldn’t have welcomed that. White Chalk is an amazing record, Harvey pushing her voice up and out of her range again and again to tell ghost stories over pianos and little else. But it freaked me right out, and I wasn’t looking forward to that experience again.

But Let England Shake isn’t that promised rock record, either. It’s sort of a mid-point: quieter than she often is, but still propulsive and moving, like music to drive though a snowstorm to. There are electric guitars aplenty, but they’re mostly for texture and movement. Nothing about this album will leave blisters, but all of it will leave a mark. This is Harvey’s love/hate letter to her homeland and its bloody history, and it makes sense that the music is both lovely and prickly.

Some have described Let England Shake as a war documentary in song, and that’s not far off. The word “death” appears as often as the word “England,” and songs like “All and Everyone” and “In the Dark Places” detail the horrors of warfare with sickening precision. But this album is about a history steeped in blood, and what it takes to still love your country despite that. “I live and die through England, it leaves sadness, it leaves a taste, a bitter one,” she sings on the raw and tough “England,” but then concludes, “Undaunted, never-failing love for you, England, is all to which I cling.”

“Bitter Branches” explores what war means to those left behind: “Their young wives with white hands wave goodbye, their arms as bitter branches spreading into the white world.” And final track, the duet “The Colour of the Earth,” surveys the damage: “If I was asked, I’d tell, the colour of the earth that day, it was dull and browny-red, the colour of blood, I’d say.” The music remains dark and powerful throughout, even more so with Harvey’s restraint. She sings each of these songs in a high, floaty tone, like a spirit looking down upon a battlefield. And she sings most of these songs with Parish, the strongest musical presence here apart from Harvey herself, and the counterpoint is chilling at times.

Now, you may be saying to yourself, what separates this from Bright Eyes’ album? Surely both seem to be Very Serious Works, yes? Why would Harvey get a pass when Oberst doesn’t? The answer is, Harvey’s album is alive, while Oberst’s sounds stifled. Let England Shake simply jumps from the speakers, a sparse work, yet one full of blood and bone and bile. You can feel Harvey’s anguish – she’s not trying to make a statement, she is simply making one, like the astonishing artist she is.

If you couldn’t tell, I think this album is simply magnificent. I’m only starting to explore its contours, but already this record hurts and heals in ways Harvey never has before. Let England Shake is, as usual, a PJ Harvey album unlike any other PJ Harvey album. It is also her most wide-ranging and terrifying work. Beyond just proving once again that she’s a phenomenon, Harvey has expanded the very idea of what she does, and what her music means. This album is important, and if I don’t hear a smarter, more powerful one all year, I won’t be surprised.

* * * * *

The third of our Serious Artists has a pretty un-serious name: …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead. But it would be a mistake to discount what they do because of it. The Austin band started out making a stripped-back post-hardcore racket, but as they’ve progressed, they’ve added instruments and sonic colors and a real sense of prog-rock ambition.

It’s exactly that ambition many critics don’t like. As inconsistent as their last two albums for Interscope (2005’s Worlds Apart and 2006’s So Divided) were, they were remarkably imaginative affairs, and 2009’s The Century of Self carried that into the indie realm, paring the sound back but keeping the intricate songs. The closer Trail of Dead have come to Yes territory, the further the critical gatekeepers have backed away from them. But it’s exactly that prog-tastic sensibility that keeps me coming back.

So I’m very happy with Tao of the Dead, the most freakishly ambitious album this band has ever made. It is uncompromising, particularly in its intended two-disc form. It’s a record in two parts – the first, Tao of the Dead, can be listened to as 11 tracks or as one, and the second, Strange News From Another Planet, is a 16-minute suite in five movements. The whole thing tells the story of a comic book singer Conrad Keeley wrote and drew, the first 16 pages of which are included in the (gorgeous) package.

I know, right? Just reading that either made you want to give up, or buy the album as soon as you can. There’s no middle ground with something like this. The band presents the album in two tracks on the first disc, with Tao of the Dead in one seamless 36-minute medley. It’s this band’s equivalent of the sidelong epics on Tales From Topographic Oceans, one moment segueing into the next beautifully, and in this form, it stands as the finest composition of the band’s career.

Here’s the interesting thing: the song itself is a long and winding ode, but the production is much more minimal than Trail of Dead has been known for lately. Tao is a guitar-based piece, and is full of driving rhythms and powerful hairpin turns. It almost sounds like it was recorded live, although the richness of the sound and complexity of the segues belies that. Best of all, it hangs together as a single piece – themes restate, the entire enterprise builds to the lovely “Ebb Away,” and it ends with a five-minute instrumental freak-out called “The Fairlight Pendant” that’s simply scorching.

Tao of the Dead is included on the second disc as 11 separate tracks, with no segues, and while that allows more of a focus on the individual songs, it doesn’t work as well. Without the connective tissue, there’s no reason for the reprise of “Pure Radio Cosplay” that shows up at track nine. And on its own, “The Fairlight Pendant” sounds like a self-indulgent mess. Hearing it in disconnected form is interesting, but only serves to underline what a singular piece of music this is in its single-track rendition. Oddly, though, the 11-track version is the one you’ll get if you buy the standard edition.

All editions of this record contain Strange News From Another Planet, though, and that’s a minor miracle in itself. Just like “Siberian Khatru” on Close to the Edge, this is the more compact but no less awesome piece that counterpoints the massive suite. It’s similar to Tao, but rocks a little harder, and makes its point in less time. For most bands, this would be the epic masterpiece on the album. For this one, it’s the lesser achievement, but it still sparkles.

Tao of the Dead is Trail of Dead’s crowning achievement, in every conceivable way. It hearkens back to the sound of their older albums while expanding the reach of their later ones, and balances the progressive and pummeling sides of what they do perfectly. I still have no idea what most of these songs mean, but that doesn’t matter – I don’t understand Tales From Topographic Oceans either, and I still love that. While this may not be the best album for the uninitiated, it’s the one on which everything clicks.

* * * * *

2011 keeps getting better. Just in the past week, we’ve had announcements about a new Death Cab for Cutie (Codes and Keys, May 31), a new Moby (Destroyed, May 17), a new TV on the Radio (Nine Types of Light, April 12) and a new Foo Fighters (Wasting Light, also April 12). The Violet Burning has finalized the track list for their new triple album, The Story of Our Lives. And it’s seeming more and more likely that we’ll get a new Daniel Amos this year too. I’m just beside myself with joy.

Next week, Radiohead. Oh yes, Radiohead. 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.

By the time you read this, my Patch.com site should be up and running. I’ve been working like mad to get this thing ready for launch, and now it’s out there, and the endless treadmill of being a Patch editor has begun. I have to say, it’s a bit more work than I was anticipating, mainly due to the administrative end of things, but I feel like I’ll be in a rhythm soon enough.

And that’ll be just in time for the deluge of good music headed our way. 2011 keeps getting better – the big news last week was Fleet Foxes’ sophomore album, Helplessness Blues, out on May 3, but there’s more news since then, including new ones from Panic at the Disco, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Lykke Li, the Baseball Project, Low and Alison Krauss, and reissues of Pearl Jam’s second and third albums, Vs. and Vitalogy, respectively. Speaking of Pearl Jam, bassist Jeff Ament’s project with Dug Pinnick of King’s X, Tres Mts, is finally seeing the light of day on March 8. (Get a free song here.)

So yeah, good year. And this week was a good week, even though it didn’t seem like it would be. In fact, I’m still absorbing one of the week’s big three releases, And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead’s Tao of the Dead. (Seriously, this thing is huge and difficult.) But that’s okay, because I still have a bunch of new things and one wonderful reissue to discuss. Shall we?

Oh, we shall.

* * * * *

Late last year, I got to see the Dresden Dolls play in Chicago, and they were astounding. I’ve been an Amanda Palmer fan for a long time, but it was at this show that I figured out why she’s developed such a devoted following. In between singing songs about creepy sex and dashed innocence, Mrs. Neil Gaiman was warm and friendly and hilarious. She invited to the stage a local woman she’d met online and sang a duet with her. She sang a tune from the balcony, right next to some lucky concertgoers. She engaged the audience like a natural.

It was a side of her that rarely comes through in her recorded work, both with the Dresden Dolls and on her own. Even bizarre side project Evelyn Evelyn, about conjoined twins who grew up as performers, was more sad and disturbing than funny. I found myself wishing for an Amanda Palmer album I could put on and laugh along with, one that reflected the genuinely delightful performer I’d seen at the Vic Theatre.

And now, here it is. It’s called Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under, and I really shouldn’t like it as much as I do. A self-released hodgepodge of live tracks, covers and experiments, Down Under has a slapdash quality to it that normally turns me off. But I love this. It’s a travelogue of Palmer’s recent time in Australia and New Zealand, featuring tracks recorded at the Sydney Opera House and Australian studios. It’s completely off the cuff, hysterically vulgar, occasionally beautiful, and thoroughly enjoyable, in spite of (and really, because of) its freewheeling vibe.

You know what you’re in for from the first track, a ukulele cover of “Makin’ Whoopie.” You might think she’d approach this song the same way she did “What’s the Use of Wond’rin,” a song she laid bare and exposed for the misogynistic artifact it is. But no, she just plays and sings it, almost revels in it. It’s a fitting start for a record that contains songs called “Vegemite (The Black Death)” and “Formidable Marinade.”

The live tracks are awesome, and they leave plenty of Palmer’s stage banter in, showing just how much fun she is. My favorite is “New Zealand,” a song she wrote in 20 minutes to placate angry New Zealanders demanding their own anthem. (She’d already written the great “Australia,” you see.) As you might expect, the song isn’t a polished work – in fact, it rambles through whatever was on Palmer’s mind at the time, including her own menstrual cycle. I laughed out loud at the final lines. I wish I’d seen this show.

There are serious moments on Down Under, including a beautiful rendition of Jeffires Peter Bryce’s “On an Unknown Beach,” and Palmer’s own “Doctor Oz.” The concluding number is Nick Cave’s “The Ship Song,” and it’s lovely. But every song like these is countered and balanced by wonderful insanity like the danceable “Map of Tasmania” and “Formidable Marinade,” a romp about cannibalism written and sung by a guy named Mikelangelo, who sounds like Tim Curry mixed with Jack Skellington.

Yeah, this is terrific stuff. You can get it on CD, or download it (for much less money), at Palmer’s site. I don’t want her to do this kind of thing all the time, but I’m glad to have this, and I’ll probably play it more often than some of her more serious works. If that’s a measure of success, then Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under gets an A from me.

* * * * *

Synth pop has come full circle, I think.

When it started out, in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, it was cutting edge stuff. No one played synthesizers ironically – this was Pop Music of the Future. All right, the hair might have been a little over the top, but trust me, A-Ha and A Flock of Seagulls were very serious about what they did. The trouble is, technology moves on, and sounds get dated, and the music gets all wrapped up in the colorful shirts and hairspray sculptures, and suddenly synth pop becomes this kitschy thing loaded with irony.

And it took a while to break free of that. It took some time for people to see Gary Numan and Thomas Dolby as honest-to-god innovators, instead of one-hit punchlines. I’m happy to say that practitioners of synth pop today do it seriously and honestly, building on traditions set when I was a wee lad. And as a guy who has always loved this sound, I’m grateful. The big pendulum of life has swung back around in my direction.

All of this is a way of setting up the fact that I adore the new Cut/Copy album Zonoscope. It’s the Australian band’s third, and their most accomplished. You’ll hear traces of ‘80s bands (including fellow Aussies Men at Work) throughout this thing, but there’s nothing plastic or funny about it at all. This is just splendid pop music, performed on keyboards and wonderful reverbed guitars. The first two tracks, “Need You Now” and “Take Me Over,” say it all, really – they pulse along, moving into sweetly melodic choruses, and leave you feeling sunny all over.

There isn’t a song here I don’t like, although some I like more than others. One of those is the single, “Where I’m Going,” a sort-of-bluesy shuffle with out-of-this-world harmonies. Another is the extraordinary closer, “Sun God,” which starts out strong and then builds and builds over a quarter of an hour. Throughout, Cut/Copy play things straight, creating the finest blipping pop music they can. This won’t make you pull out your old Duran Duran t-shirt and ripped jeans. It’s no nostalgia trip. Like it was in the ‘80s, this truly is Pop Music of the Future.

* * * * *

Teddy Thompson tends to surprise people.

Especially, I’ve found, if those people know his lineage – Teddy is the son of Richard and Linda Thompson, folk-rockers extraordinaire. There’s an expectation, it seems, that kids of famous musicians will a) be no good whatsoever, and b) will sound just like their parents. And when they press play on a Teddy Thompson album, and hear his rich, classic country sound and voice, and then listen to his unfailingly solid material, they’re kind of stopped in their tracks.

As a Teddy Thompson fan, I appreciate those moments. I can’t claim to have discovered him on my own – Thompson’s self-titled debut was sent to me during my last year at Face Magazine, and I spun it mainly out of curiosity. But I loved it, and I’ve kept up with his work ever since. His songwriting has grown stronger, and his album of country covers, Upfront and Down Low, is simply marvelous.

And now here’s Bella, Thompson’s fifth album, and it’s no exception. It’s a little slicker, a little fuller, a little more rocking than Thompson’s been in the past, but it’s still a swell collection of solid original tunes, sung with verve. There’s a definite country base to the opening trilogy, particularly single “Looking for a Girl,” but Thompson puts his own stamp on things: “I’ve been looking for a girl easy on the eye, but not so fucking stupid that I want to cry, I know God doesn’t give with both his hands, so I guess I just need someone I can stand…”

But the fourth track, “Over and Over,” is where things get started. A dark acoustic number buoyed by chilling cello, the song takes Bella in a decidedly different direction, and the record keeps on darting left and right, staying interesting until the last note. “Take Me Back Again” is so Roy Orbison it hurts. Thompson enlists Jenni Muldaur to banter with him on the clever call-and-response “Tell Me What You Want,” and hits insane falsetto notes on the pretty “Take Care of Yourself.” With all that, the home run here is the slightly menacing rocker “The Next One.” Listening to this, you just know Thompson’s potential as a songwriter is immense.

As I mentioned, this is album number five for Thompson, with no duds – the closest was his rushed-together fourth, A Piece of What You Need, but Bella more than makes up for it. I’m not sure how many terrific records he’ll have to make before people stop being surprised by his talent, but I’ll be there to buy each one.

* * * * *

Which brings us to the reissue. I wasn’t sure how I would respond to George Michael’s Faith, 24 years after its release (and 20 years since I last heard it), but I couldn’t resist picking up the spiffy remaster. I was 13 years old when this album came out, and it’s fair to say that the “I Want Your Sex” video had an impact on me. I remember watching it clandestinely, ready to change the channel should my parents walk in. It’s pretty tame in retrospect – the soft-focus body parts remind me of a Victoria’s Secret commercial – but it was pretty sexy at the time.

And if the mechanical horniness of that track were all Faith had to offer, it would have sunk without a trace. But man, this is one top-to-bottom killer pop album. Even now, I think it holds up. The rockabilly title track is a catchy bit of fluff, but Michael was savvy enough to sequence the comparatively deep and serious “Father Figure” next, showing off his range. People make fun of George Michael now – he’s an admittedly easy target – but the man could write a pop song, and Faith is full of great ones.

Let’s start with this: George Michael has an incredible voice. He’s just naturally gifted – he can take on slamming dance tracks like “Monkey,” but can also sing the hell out of ballads like “One More Try.” How many of his contemporaries could pull off a jazzy torch song like “Kissing a Fool”? Not many, I’d wager. Between this album and Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, Michael proved himself one of the best singers of his time. You think I’m kidding? Go back and listen.

But Faith isn’t a singer’s album, it’s a songwriter’s album. You have to get past “I Want Your Sex,” presented on the record as an extended nine-minute suite. It’s robotic, it’s silly, and it doesn’t play to Michael’s strengths. It’s here to be the novelty hit, to garner press attention. The meat of the album comes after it, and Michael shows off his remarkable diversity, track after track. I mentioned “One More Try” before, but it’s heartbreaking – a soft synth, some thumping drums and bass, and Michael’s soaring voice. It’s almost a gospel song. That’s followed up by the funky “Hard Day,” which is 20 times the dance track “I Want Your Sex” is.

But then Michael takes us through the dark “Hand to Mouth” and the horn-driven “Look At Your Hands,” and brings us “Kissing a Fool,” a genuine surprise. I wasn’t sure I would still like Faith, but it turns out a great pop album is a great pop album, even 24 years later. I wish Michael’s career had taken different turns, that he hadn’t fallen out with his record label and stayed silent for years, that he hadn’t decided to focus on “serious art” like Older and most of Patience. On the evidence of Faith, he could have gone on to do anything.

But hell, he gave us this, an album that stands up as fun and fantastic a quarter-century after its release. You may be snickering to yourself, remembering the leather jacket and the tight jeans and the cross earring and everything else that just kind of goes along with this music. But strip all that away, and just listen. Faith is an uncommonly strong pop record, a testament to a singular talent who had his moment in the spotlight, and seized it. You wish your most famous record was this good.

* * * * *

Next week, the deluge begins. Bright Eyes, the Dears, PJ Harvey, Mogwai, and that Trail of Dead album I’m still working through. Hope I can find some time. 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.