It’s been a boring week, musically speaking, so I’m going to try something different this week. I had originally planned to write about new records from Philip Selway and Jenny and Johnny (Lewis and Rice, respectively), but then I listened to them, and found I didn’t have much to say about either one. (I reservedly liked them both. What I came up with can be found at tm3am.blogspot.com.)

But I started this column as something of a travelogue of my journeys in music, chronicling the events in my obsessive, addictive life. And this week, an unreleased album from 1989 has been dominating a lot of my listening time. I realize I’m opening myself up to a lot of ridicule with this one, but it’s about time I discuss a band that means a lot to me. That band (he says, ducking for cover) is Mr. Mister.

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I don’t know if you’re on Facebook, but for the past two weeks or so, there’s been this little game going around. You’re supposed to list 15 albums that have made an impact on you, and you’re supposed to do it in no more than 15 minutes. The idea isn’t to put together a list of the best records you’ve heard, but the ones that have left a lasting impression, or were important in your musical growth. This is exactly the kind of thing all my Facebook friends are certain I’ll enjoy doing, and after the third or fourth tag, I finally composed my list.

I did it in about three minutes, though, and while I’d probably make some revisions if given the chance (No XTC? Really?), I decided to just go with my first instincts. I kept the list in the order I thought of it, starting with the Beatles and Brian Wilson (obvious) and moving through more personal stuff (Human Radio, Tori Amos). And there at number 10 is Mr. Mister’s 1987 album Go On. It was literally one of the first 10 albums that came into my head.

Believe me, I understand all the criticisms of this band. They’re faceless, people say. Even their name is practically anonymous, and singer Richard Page, while quite good, isn’t what you’d call distinctive. They play radio-ready synth-driven fare, straight out of the ‘80s, but without the sense of fun. Everyone in the band was (and still is) a session musician. They’re like Toto, without the personality. I hear all of that, and I get why they’re saying it.

But they’re wrong. At least, to me they’re wrong. Mr. Mister is one of those bands that imprinted themselves on me at an early age, and truly got me thinking about what kind of music I wanted to hear most. I was 11 years old when “Kyrie” and “Broken Wings” were all over the radio, and I’m not ashamed to admit I loved those songs. I still think of “Broken Wings” as one of the finest songs of the ‘80s, and the album the hits hailed from, Welcome to the Real World, was in near-endless rotation in my preteen years. (I just recently bought the 25th anniversary edition, which made me feel older than I can tell you.)

For all that, though, Welcome is just a pop record, a collection of catchy ditties. I still like it, particularly “Don’t Slow Down,” and I used “Uniform of Youth” to score part of a movie I helped make in college, but that album doesn’t get a lot of love in my house. Its follow-up, on the other hand, I have memorized.

Go On hit when I was 13, and it knocked me flat. It was a commercial failure, particularly when compared with Welcome, and just as a side note, I don’t get that, because if an album is popular enough to spawn two songs virtually everyone alive at the time can still sing from memory, that album’s follow-up is surely worth at least a curiosity listen from the masses. But apparently America had had enough of this band, just as I was falling in love with them.

Go On isn’t just a pop album to me. It was one of the first Serious Artistic Statements I’d heard, and while I’ll never pretend this record is anything profound, it does approach its subject matter (including abandoned children of U.S. soldiers, spiritual dishonesty, the destructive nature of television, and human interconnectedness) with earnest intent. It’s clear the band was trying to make Something Important. In the words of the first single, “Something Real.” And yes, I was 13, but for me, they succeeded brilliantly.

But why do I still love Go On? Why, 23 years later, have I never grown tired of it? It’s not just nostalgia, not just adolescent imprinting. I honestly, sincerely, truly love this album. These songs work for me still, even though the production is dated. I think part of it is the sense of yearning for truth that runs through every track. That’s not a quality one usually associates with keyboard-driven pop from the ‘80s, but it’s here, and it’s the lifeblood of this record.

Yes, some of this yearning is clearly spiritual. Both “Healing Waters” and “Man of a Thousand Dances” utilize big gospel choirs, and the lyrics are about Page’s struggles with his own faith. But much of it is human, as perfectly summed up in the gorgeous closer, “The Border.” “Every step we take gives us the strength to go on, and all the love we make gets us closer to home,” Page sings over a lush synth backdrop. It’s the culmination of the searching lyrics in “Stand and Deliver” and “Power Over Me,” just as “Thousand Dances” wraps up the journey started in “Healing Waters” and “Watching the World.”

Along the way, Page and company take on some heady issues. I still haven’t heard another song that addresses the same subject matter as “Dust,” about the children fathered by U.S. soldiers and left behind in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. The song’s a mini-masterpiece of mood. “Out of the dust reach tiny hands to touch their fathers in other lands…” Still gives me chills. “The Tube” thrills me in a different way – it’s not subtle, but Page ties his condemnation of television into the larger theme of human connection: “Well dear, it’s a good thing, I don’t have to look at you, you don’t have to look at me, I think that’s a good thing…”

At its core, Go On is all about how we’re all one, and we should act like it. This isn’t a new observation, and I can name dozens of records that explore it in more depth. But there are very few with the hold over me this one has. I have no illusions about the fact that anyone coming to Go On now will probably not hear the same thing I hear, and will likely snicker at this little love letter. I’ve already been laughed at numerous times for praising Mr. Mister’s forgotten third album, so I’m used to it. I can’t help it. This album is hugely important to me, and even now, I love listening to it. I’m listening to it right now, in fact, and grinning with inexplicable joy.

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All of which was my way of setting up what happened to me last week.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m an extremely loyal music fan. I’ll follow a band for decades, if they let me. I’m also pretty good at keeping up with the travels of my favorite musicians, long after they’ve left the spotlight. But for some reason, before last week, I’d never heard Pull, the fourth Mr. Mister album.

Yes, there was a fourth. No, it was never released, although Richard Page has announced it will be officially made available in October. It was recorded in 1989, after the departure of guitarist Steve Farris, and the band used session guitarists (ironic!), including Trevor Rabin of Yes. I’ve known of Pull’s existence for a while, and heard “Waiting in My Dreams,” the song that appeared on a best-of some years ago. But for some reason, I’d never heard the whole thing.

Enter music fan Brian Smith, who pointed me in the right direction. (I won’t let on, but if you search for it, you’re bound to find it.) This, for me, was like discovering Human Radio II some years ago. More music from a discarded band I love. How great is that? Pull has the added cachet of having been rejected by RCA Records, and I’m always interested to hear things the guys in suits don’t want me to. I mean, they paid for it. Exactly what could make the record company wave away something they’d already bought? I was fascinated to find out.

After listening about seven times, I’m pretty sure what freaked out RCA. Pull is a weird record, at least by Mr. Mister standards. I’m not an A&R man from the ‘80s, but I don’t hear a killer single. What I do hear, though, is a moody, dark and ultimately rewarding record, one that travels further down the path the band started with Go On, albeit without the social conscience. The lyrics are aiming for the charts, but the music is decidedly strange, built on atmosphere instead of hooks.

With all that, I quite like it. I’m not sure what I would have thought had I heard this in 1989 or 1990, but sonically, this is a nice leap from the comparatively upbeat Go On, stepping more into a progressive realm. I bet the RCA bigwigs were hoping this art-pop thing was a phase, and the Misters would get back to writing hits with album four. Instead, they jumped further into difficult, brooding material, some of it actually presaging drummer Pat Mastelloto’s later work with King Crimson.

Just listen to “Close Your Eyes,” one of the most radio-ready tracks here. Washes of minor-key synths drape themselves over a tricky, mid-tempo beat. The chorus is less of a hook than a hand-off – the whole thing flows nicely from end to end, without actually changing much. Despite lyrics promising safety, the song sounds menacing to me. “Waiting in My Dreams” is similar. The chorus (“Waiting in my dreams, when I close my eyes you’re here with me…”) sounds sweet, but in its musical context, it’s almost spooky.

“Like Rain Falling” is my favorite. Rousing blasts of electric guitars surround the most immediate chorus of the lot, and though this tune never explodes, it’s the loudest and most energetic thing here. The second half of Pull is one proggy mid-tempo piece after another, culminating in “Way Oh,” a nearly instrumental outing that closes things out in style. More than any other Mr. Mister album, this one demands and rewards repeated listens. I wish I could say RCA was nuts not to release it, but if they were looking for another “Kyrie,” then I can understand reacting negatively to this.

Me, I think it’s pretty great, and I’m glad I finally got to hear it. It’s like finally finishing a puzzle I started when I was a kid.

* * * * *

I also wish I could say this story has a happier ending.

In addition to Pull, Brian Smith also made me aware of Richard Page’s new solo record, Peculiar Life. I wasn’t overly fond of his first one, 1996’s Shelter Me, but I plunked down my cash anyway. Now, I love Page’s voice. I’d probably pay to hear him sing anything. But Peculiar Life is fraught with the same disease that afflicts so many artists from my youth: Page grew up and he calmed down. It’s a tepid, safe, middle-aged affair with only a few remarkable songs, and some cringe-worthy lyrics.

But Page means them all. He has always understood the importance of being earnest. On this album, alas, that means giving us banal observations about life and love. “A Kiss on the Wind,” the slow and silky opener, is one of the best, but even that has lyrics like this: “Let the wind blow, and let the tears flow, and thank you for the chance to feel my heart again.” I’d never say he’s wrong, or untruthful – we are here and then gone, with not much to lean upon, as he sings. I just can name so many other songs that say the same thing more artfully.

Peculiar Life veers between acoustic balladry and prog-pop with a pulse, and the latter stuff is pretty good. “Worldly Things” rises from its white-funk opening to become a melodic tour de force, and “Brand New Day” (not the Sting song, thankfully) does the same thing, besting its too-simple prelude with a burst of loud guitars. “Shadow on My Life” is probably my favorite, since it shares some sonic similarities with the Pull material.

But elsewhere, Page sounds just like his detractors have always said he does: anonymous. The light reggae beat of “No Tomorrow,” the basic chords and sentiments of “You Are Mine,” the teary-eyed numbers at the end… none of it has any real spark. Page’s voice is in fine form, as always, but there’s more than a touch of your father’s Oldsmobile to this. He even does a duet with his daughter Aja, a budding singer herself. But father-daughter duets are a certain sign that an artist has settled down to a comfortable life. If you like simple, surface-level balladry, there’s nothing wrong with Peculiar Life. But there’s nothing about it that sounds like it came from one of my favorite artists, either.

But that’s all right. Page is still a great singer, and I’m still happy I heard this. And as one of the minds behind Go On, a record I expect I’ll never tire of, he gets a lifetime pass to do whatever he wants. He’s already given me more joy than most. I’ll buy whatever he does next, and when Pull gets its full-on remastered release, I’ll pick that up too. No matter how many times they’re called a two-hit wonder, Mr. Mister means a lot to me. And probably always will.

Go On is long out of print, but you can probably find it on eBay or other similar sites. Peculiar Life (as well as a free download from Pull)is available at Richard’s site.

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In case you’re interested, here’s my 15 Albums list:

The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
The Beatles – Revolver
The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds
Brian Wilson – SMiLE
The Cure – Disintegration
The Choir – Circle Slide
Tori Amos – Little Earthquakes
Human Radio
Aimee Mann – Whatever
Mr. Mister – Go On
Adam Again – Dig
Jellyfish – Spilt Milk
The Alarm – Eye of the Hurricane
Sufjan Stevens – Illinois
Radiohead – OK Computer

Next week, back to business as usual with reviews of Robert Plant, Weezer and Interpol. 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.

Like just about everyone with an Internet connection, I’ve spent the last 10 days obsessed with Cee-Lo Green’s new single.

It’s called “Fuck You,” it’s nowhere near safe for work, and it’s the first genuine phenomenon I’ve heard in quite some time. (If you haven’t heard it, do so now at ceelogreen.com. I’ll wait.) Cee-Lo Green, you may recall, is the singing half of Gnarls Barkley – along with his partner Danger Mouse, he hit it huge in 2006 with “Crazy.” Most people never get a megahit like that in their lives. To wish for two of them is just greedy.

But Cee-Lo’s got his second now, and as I watched the wildfire spread over the past week and a half, it struck me that “Fuck You” is an interesting test case for this new paradigm we find ourselves in. Just 10 or so years ago, a song like “Fuck You” wouldn’t have had a chance to catch on. It would need radio airplay just to be heard, and its delightfully profane nature would have prevented that from happening. A record company would have needed to put marketing resources behind it, and without radio play, those resources would have been all but stymied. Perhaps it could have been included on a soundtrack or something, but even then, the probability of turning such a gleefully filthy tune into a smash hit would have been slim.

But not these days. Here’s what happened: Cee-Lo uploaded “Fuck You,” along with a simple and cheap scrolling-words video, onto YouTube on August 19. (I’d like to mention here that YouTube didn’t even exist six years ago.) Within a week, nearly three million people watched that video, and bloggers from every corner of the nation talked it up. I heard it thanks to my friend Jeff Elbel, and I know I personally recommended it to about 25 others. “Fuck You” spread the way songs used to spread, before ClearChannel – people heard it from other people, and told their friends about it.

The only difference is, while music fans in the olden days had to tape songs off the radio and make copies for their friends, now all they have to do is email a link. The music spreads much faster that way, as Cee-Lo Green found out.

This system has been in place for a while, but this is the first time I’ve seen its true potential unleashed. I think it was just waiting for the right song. “Fuck You” is a really good song – easily the best pop single of the year so far, and probably of the last several. (The aforementioned Jeff Elbel, an authoritative connoisseur of pop music, has gone so far as to call it his second-favorite single of all time, right behind the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back.”) It’s almost a new genre, combining hilarious gut-level lyrics with old Motown sweetness. There’s a hook every 10 seconds in this thing, and even the backing vocal lines are insanely catchy. (“Oh shit, she’s a gold digger!”)

I think there’s something elemental about this song, about the way it combines feel-good funk with profane anger. The story is a simple one: boy meets girl, girl wants money, boy is broke, girl dumps boy, boy sees girl tooling around town with her new sugar daddy, boy shouts title phrase. She’s no good, he still loves her. We’ve all been there. The song is a non-threatening license to swear at a bad ex, and the juxtaposition is simply wonderful.

I’m not sure Cee-Lo knew what he had here. I can’t imagine listening to “Fuck You” and not expecting it to be a massive word-of-mouth hit, but I guess the Green team didn’t. The song was uploaded to YouTube as a teaser for Green’s new album The Lady Killer, which has no release date as of this writing. The “Fuck You” single was slated for October. That means, as the song was careening all over the web last week, people who heard it had no option to legally acquire it. I know I looked around for a way to buy it, searching iTunes and Cee-Lo’s site to no avail.

They finally got it together late Wednesday night, August 25 – there’s a “buy now” link at www.ceelogreen.com, and a t-shirt to boot. But those seven days probably cost Cee-Lo a million bucks, at least. In the days before YouTube, it would sometimes take months for a song to really catch hold, and drive people to the stores to buy it. These days, it’s instantaneous. People hear it, they want it, they click over to buy it, and you have to be ready.

Likewise, this song has already left the old system in the dust. Part of the thrill of “Fuck You” is that it’s such a radio-ready song, but it could never be played on the radio. Still, Team Green is plugging away – they’ve created a “clean version,” which substitutes “forget” for “fuck,” and thereby sucks all the life out of the song. This thing is already a bigger hit than most radio tracks ever become, and I would have liked to see Cee-Lo just shut radio out entirely. But I’m not sure I would have done anything different, in his shoes.

It’ll be interesting to see what all this means for The Lady Killer, once it finally comes out. Much as I think “Fuck You” is a timeless piece of work (really!), the excitement over this track is here, now. The earliest potential release date I’ve heard for the album is December, which may as well be 10 years from now, as far as the Internet is concerned. I think this is a classic case of not knowing how good one’s song truly is. Green probably should have kept “Fuck You” under wraps until the album’s release, but now he should bring that release date forward. If he could put out The Lady Killer next week, he’d clean up.

Most of these lessons are moot anyway, because “Fuck You” is a song that comes along only once in a great long while. It’s easy to say Green should have foreseen its universal appeal, but I’m not sure anyone could have expected it to take off like it has. This song absolutely proves that the new model works, however. Give the people something they want, and it’ll be everywhere before you know it. I’ll be interested to see how many of the song’s fans ponied up for the download.

I did, and I’m glad to have this song in my collection. Of course, it’s spent the last 10 days in my head anyway. I sing it to myself all the time, even in public, and I’ve gotten a few strange looks. But this is an incredibly catchy tune – as I said, easily the best pop single of 2010 so far. Enjoy your second worldwide hit, Cee-Lo. You’ve earned it.

“I see you drivin’ ‘round town with the girl I love, and I’m like…”

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A couple of news tidbits:

Sufjan Stevens’ dry spell looks to be officially over. Just a few days after releasing his surprise All Delighted People album, Stevens announced a new full-length, set for October 12. It’s called The Age of Adz, although “Adz” is apparently pronounced “Odds,” and has something to do with artist Royal Robertson, whose work adorns the cover. Asthmatic Kitty flaks describe the record as Enjoy Your Rabbit meets The BQE, meaning electronic noise slamming up against orchestral grandeur.

The first song leaked from the record certainly bears that out. I have no idea what I think of “I Walked,” with its crackling electronic drums, synth flickers and oceans of vocals. Like everything on All Delighted People, this is going to take a number of listens to click. The track list for The Age of Adz is fascinating – some of Sufjan’s shortest songs share disc space with his longest epic yet, the 25-minute “Impossible Soul.” I would put my excitement level at orange, with a definite chance of escalation to red soon.

Before that, I’m most excited about Ben Folds and Nick Hornby’s Lonely Avenue, out September 28. I’ve waxed eloquent about that before, but suffice it to say that when one of my favorite novelists writes lyrics for one of my favorite pop songsmiths, I’ll be there with money in hand. Elvis Costello has a new album called National Ransom out on October 5, and that one’s produced by T-Bone Burnett. Weezer returns that same day with Hurley, and I can’t help being excited for this one too. It features songs co-written by Dan Wilson, Ryan Adams and Mac Davis (who wrote “A Little Less Conversation” and “In the Ghetto” for Elvis Presley), and one tune called “Where’s My Sex?” Jaw-dropping, as always.

Beyond that, I’m anticipating new things from Belle and Sebastian, the Old 97s. Antony and the Johnsons, the Orb with David Gilmour (seriously, someone should have thought of this pairing earlier), Guster, Steven Page and Kid Cudi. But October’s most intriguing record might be the self-titled debut from Mt. Desolation, an alt-country project put together by Keane’s Tim Rice-Oxley and Jesse Quin. Can Britain’s best piano-pop band convincingly do country? We’ll find out.

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Just enough space and time left to tell you about my new favorite band.

They’re called Mumford & Sons, they’re a four-piece from London, and their first album, Sigh No More, is one of the best of the year. I’m a good six months behind on this one – I only heard it on the recommendation of my boss Mike Cetera, and the prodding of my friend Luke Beeley. I’m catching up quickly, though, because this stuff is marvelous.

I’m not entirely sure how to describe what they do. There’s an earthy folksiness to their sound – it’s based in acoustic guitars, but incorporates banjos, dobros, mandolins, and gorgeous down-home harmonies. But there’s a punk edge to it as well. Most of these songs blossom into huge, thumping, rousing refrains worthy of the Levellers, with banjos and strings flailing, and when they break into these bits, they rock. Not an electric guitar to be found, but man, they rock.

“The Cave” is the perfect Mumford & Sons song. It’s based on a simple acoustic guitar figure, has a superbly melodic chorus, and when it kicks in, it just knocks you flat. Marcus Mumford has a gritty, passionate voice, and he writes literate, yearning lyrics. (M&S is as spiritual as old U2, singing of their maker as often as they sing about the pain of life.) “I will hold on hope, and I won’t let you choke on the noose around your neck,” he sings as the pulsing number rises and rises. It’s simply awesome.

Here’s the point where I usually say “…and they never hit those heights again.” But it just isn’t true. Sigh No More is full of brilliant little numbers, each of them packed with explosive moments that grab you and won’t let go. “Roll Away Your Stone” is simple in the extreme, but the banjo-fueled chorus just works, Mumford’s bass drum barreling along at breakneck speed. “It seems that all my bridges have been burned,” he sings, “but you say that’s exactly how this grace thing works.” “Little Lion Man,” the first single, is a killer, its chorus (“But it was not your fault but mine…”) staying with you long after it’s over.

My favorite thing here, however, is “I Gave You All,” a mini-epic of betrayal and pain. It starts with a Dave Matthews-esque minor-key acoustic section, but after three minutes or so, it just rips open, Mumford wailing the title phrase over a wall of noise. The final section is staggering, Mumford sounding for all the world like Mark Chadwick as he screams “Well now you’ve won” over and over. It’s powerful stuff, and it ends where it began, quiet singing and gentle acoustics. Those heights, they never quite hit again, but they come close, and often.

There’s nothing about this record I don’t like. Even a song like “Dust Bowl Dance,” which essentially repeats its piano figure for five minutes, is captivating in these hands, and dark folk pieces like “Timshel” are mesmerizing. Every year, I seem to discover a new band that takes my breath away, and this year, it’s Mumford & Sons. I’ll be listening to this record for years to come, and greatly anticipating whatever they do next.

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Keeping it relatively short this week. Come back in seven days for reviews of new albums by Interpol, Phil Selway and John Mellencamp, along with whatever else strikes my fancy. 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.

Well, hello again.

This is TM3AM column #501. Not nearly as momentous as last week, more like business as usual. Thanks to everyone for your kind comments on my 500th. I got a remarkable 1,000 page views last Wednesday alone. I truly appreciate everyone who stopped by to read my stuff, and I hope some of you came back this week to see what this thing is all about.

If you’re new, welcome aboard. This installment is pretty much what you’ll get every week here – a bunch of reviews of new music, of all stripes. We’ve got progressive metal, earthy blues, orchestrated show tunes and whatever it is the Eels do on tap this week, and we’re starting things off with a genuine week-making surprise.

Again, thanks for stopping by my corner of the internet, and reading my labor of love. Here we go.

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Anyone who knows me knows that when it comes to music, I’m a bit of a Luddite. I resisted CDs for a good long time, longer than reason would suggest, and now, as everyone is moving to digital delivery and selling their plastic discs to second-hand shops, I’m clinging to the physical era, shelling out for hundreds of the singing drink coasters each year. I’m one of those people who feel like I don’t really own an album unless I can hold it in my hand.

But one thing the Internet does better than anything is surprise. It takes weeks, sometimes months for a finished album to make it to the stores – there’s artwork and printing and manufacturing and distribution, and all of that takes a long time. But with digital delivery, an artist can finish a record and have it up for sale the same afternoon. If said artist wants to, he can even do all that without telling anyone first.

Enter Sufjan Stevens, who released, without warning, an hour-long EP of new songs on his website Friday morning. It was a surprise for a number of reasons. First, Stevens has been talking for some time about how mentally blocked he is, saying he’s forgotten how to write songs. The last piece of music we heard from him was The BQE, an orchestral ode to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. A sterling 40-minute piece, The BQE reportedly messed with Stevens’ head – it was such an ordeal, he said, that he doubted whether he’d ever write another song again.

Another reason for surprise: Stevens rarely does anything small, or without fanfare. This is the man, after all, who made the best album of the last decade, a 74-minute ode to my adopted home state, Illinois. That album is part of a (presumably aborted) attempt to write one album for each of the 50 states, an undertaking several have rightly called insane. Hell, even his Christmas album was a five-CD box set. Stevens is nothing if not ambitious, almost to a fault.

So now here’s this eight-song collection, All Delighted People, his first without a concept behind it since 2004’s Seven Swans, appearing like a thief in the night. Is this the true follow-up to Illinois? Stevens is downplaying that idea, calling it an EP and selling it for five bucks. But I would say it is, or at least the next step in Stevens’ evolution. All Delighted People requires a few listens to truly process, but once it takes hold, it’s an amazing piece of work.

The album is built around two epics, one of which, the title track, appears in two versions. The “original version” kicks things off, and right away, you can hear the difference in Stevens’ approach. The song is 11 minutes long, doesn’t have a chorus as much as it has a nine-note refrain, and is arranged for something like 350 players. On first listen, it’s baffling – it winds on and on, Stevens dropping Paul Simon lyrics in among his own, as the massive waves of sound build up, break and recede. Huge walls of strings and horns, choirs, electronic noise, crazy dissonance – it all makes no sense at first, but over time, the gears lock into place.

Stevens’ voice is very different here as well. He’s grown more confident, and mixed himself right up front. His vocals have grown thicker and gruffer, and he pushes himself, often leaping into a shaky falsetto. I’m still not sure what I think of his new tone, and at first, it’s just as jarring as the crazy arrangements. Needless to say, by the time I finished “All Delighted People” the first time, my head was spinning. But upon hearing the cleaner, sparser “classic rock version,” here at track six, the song started to come together for me.

Now, five listens later, I think it’s something of a masterpiece, in both versions. The classic rock version is closer to his Illinois style, although it’s still grittier, and it ends with a three-minute guitar solo that keeps eating itself. As you start to learn its contours, the song doesn’t meander nearly as much as it first seems to, and its internal logic clicks. I think this can stand as one of Stevens’ most impressive efforts.

The remainder of the EP isn’t as immediately off-putting. In fact, it’s marvelous, although Stevens retains the loose and rough-hewn style – you never get the sense here that he’s completely in control of things, which is a huge change from Illinois. “Enchanting Ghost” and “Heirloom” are acoustic pieces with tender piano, and both are lovely. “From the Mouth of Gabriel” takes things up a notch, kind of – it pulses along nicely, growing as it does, but never too much.

The fifth track, “The Owl and the Tanager,” is a concert favorite, one he’s played since at least 2007. The version here is jaw-droppingly beautiful, all piano and echo-y voice, Stevens reaching up for that falsetto again, but truly nailing it. This one sounds to me like a sonic sequel to “Oh God, Where Are You Now,” its repetition taking it to hypnotic heights. “Arnika” is another acoustic tune, this one buoyed by a subtle choir arrangement, and structured in a way that makes it sound ready to collapse at any time. It’s odd, but gorgeous.

And then there’s the finale, the other epic – “Djohariah” runs for 17 minutes, and remains almost entirely instrumental for the first 11 of them. As backing vocalists moan, and a very 1970s bass thumps away, Stevens whips out a positively Zappa-esque guitar solo. Honestly, the man shreds – I’ve never heard him play like this before. The whole song is an exercise in letting loose, despite its slow tempo. Horns wail, drums flail, the song builds and builds, until it all falls away, leaving Stevens and his acoustic. That is, until the electronic drums come in, and the low-moan backing vocals return. As a whole, “Djohariah” is unlike anything Stevens has ever done, and though it goes on a touch too long, it’s a masterful experiment.

I’ll admit, I was worried. Sufjan Stevens performed a musical miracle with Illinois, and given some of his public statements over the past few months, I was worried he’d never even try to follow it up. All Delighted People has set my mind at ease. Rather than creating a carbon copy of Illinois or flying off in some uncharted direction, Stevens simply took his next step. I’m still absorbing All Delighted People, but as for now, Stevens can count me as one of them.

This is well worth your five bucks. Get it here.

* * * * *

I’m a very loyal music fan.

If I like your stuff, I’ll follow you, no matter what you put out. I’ll buy your Europe-only live album, your three-CD rarities collection, your demos that sound exactly the same as your album versions. What’s more, I’m such an anal-retentive completist that once I decide I’m on board with a band, I have to have everything, and I’ll stick around to hear the end of the story.

This even applies to bands I liked when I was a teenager. I’ll keep on listening long after many have given up, in the hopes that I’ll hear something wonderful. Sometimes it works: I’ve kept up with Tesla, and their last two albums were pretty good. I’ve bought every Enuff Z’Nuff album, and never regretted it once. And had I never listened to Winger as a young metalhead, I’d probably never have heard Kip Winger’s terrific solo material. Sure, sometimes it doesn’t pan out – I could probably have lived without the last Faster Pussycat disc – but I soldier on.

No band has made it easier for me than Iron Maiden. I’ve been a fan my whole life, it seems – in truth, the first full album I heard was probably 1985’s Powerslave – and while I’d have gladly signed on for album after album of slow decline, happy to root around for the good stuff, Maiden has surprised me by getting better and better in their latter years. Sure, we had that Blaze Bayley fiasco in the ‘90s, but since Bruce Dickinson rejoined the fold in 2000, it’s been one killer album after another.

Now here’s the fourth post-reunion disc (and 15th overall), The Final Frontier, and the string remains unbroken. Iron Maiden is the original operatic rock band, embracing its own ridiculousness with deadpan seriousness while ripping out jackhammer riffs and over-the-top guitar solos, but somehow, as the boys have grown older, the band has matured. They still rock like a house on fire, and their songs still stretch to epic lengths, but modern Maiden, even more than the classic ‘80s material, commands respect.

Here’s the thing: these guys have been around for 35 years now. They have a huge, dedicated fanbase all over the world. They don’t need to try as hard as they do – they could easily coast by, playing “The Trooper” and “Aces High” to screaming fans for the rest of their lives. But each new Maiden album feels like a concentrated attempt to outdo the last, and give the fans something special. And they bring it live too. I saw Maiden last month at the First Midwest Bank Amphitheater in Tinley Park (which they sold out), and they played for two solid hours, Dickinson running and jumping like a madman the entire time. They could have phoned it in and the audience would have still gone home happy, but they keep pushing themselves, even at this late stage of their career.

How about the new record? It kills. At 76 minutes, it’s the longest in the Maiden catalog, and while the first half is full of sharp ass-kickers, the second is all complex, glorious epics. The weakest songs are all up front: percussive dirge “Satellite 15” goes on a little long, the title track is a bit repetitive, and “El Dorado” gets too much mileage out of its Motorhead-style riff. But you know, I say “weakest,” but these songs are all still fantastic, particularly “El Dorado,” which rocked live.

From there, we’re off to the races, and there isn’t a moment that doesn’t make me proud to be a Maiden fan. “Mother of Mercy” and “Coming Home” are both classic, powerful mid-tempo numbers, the old-school “The Alchemist” is all kinds of triple-guitar awesome, and the monolithic suites in the second half are all superb. I’m particularly happy with the nine-minute “The Talisman,” which starts with quiet acoustics, explodes around the two-minute mark, and never comes back down. This song has so many magical melodic moments, and Dickinson is just awe-inspiring throughout. More than three decades after he first took the stage, the little man with the big voice remains one of the best singers in metal.

The Final Frontier closes with its finest track, the 11-minute “When the Wild Wind Blows.” It’s also one of the best epics the band has ever written, moving deftly from section to section, from quiet to loud to anthemic and back. The song tells the tale of two lovers who mistake an earthquake for a nuclear strike, and kill themselves: “When they found them they had their arms around each other, their tins of poison laying nearby their clothes…” The song is intricate and captivating – as I said, I’ve been a Maiden fan most of my life, and they’ve rarely been better than this.

All of which leads to the $25,000 question – how long can they keep this up? Few bands have sustained a late-career renaissance like Iron Maiden has, but the band members are all in their 50s, and each record from here on out could very well be the last. The band certainly fueled those rumors by naming this album The Final Frontier, which they’ve acknowledged with a wink. Let me say this, then: I have no idea if this is the last Maiden album, but if it is, it’s a hell of a way to go out. The Final Frontier is right up there with Maiden’s best, and a sign that even 35 years into their career, they’re still in a class by themselves.

* * * * *

Ray LaMontagne is from Maine, my old stomping grounds. Maine’s a tough place to live year-round – it gets damn cold, and the snow falls from October to May. You get a little rough around the edges, living through that year after year, and in some Mainers, you can hear the decades of cold air in their voices.

LaMontagne has one of those voices. It’s world-weary, rough-hewn and raspy, and carries great weight with it. But somehow, LaMontagne is also able to shape that voice into something silky and smooth when he needs to. It’s an incredible instrument – you don’t notice how special it is at first, but listen deeper, and it reveals itself. Over three albums of songs ranging from skeletal folk to hugely-orchestrated balladry, LaMontagne has become one of my favorite singers. And I’d say that even if he weren’t from my neck of the woods.

His fourth, God Willin’ and the Creek Don’t Rise, does nothing to change that opinion. It’s the first credited to both LaMontagne and his band, the Pariah Dogs, and it has an earthy, rustic feel to it, like the five of them got together in a barn and recorded live. The Pariah Dogs include guitarists Greg Liesz and Eric Heywood, bassist Jennifer Condos, and drummer Jay Bellerose, all of whom have been playing this kind of thing for more than a decade. (Just the list of recordings Liesz has contributed to would fill the rest of this column.) These guys are good, and LaMontagne rises to the challenge admirably.

Opener “Repo Man” is a slinky slab of acoustic funk-blues, but most of God Willin’ stays with the slow and melancholy. “New York City’s Killin’ Me” is the kind of song country radio doesn’t play anymore, but should. The title track is an absolute heartbreaker, LaMontagne giving the lyric every ounce of loneliness he has: “I close my eyes and I can see you, I close my eyes and I can feel you here, God willin’ and the creek don’t rise, I’ll be home again before this time next year…”

LaMontagne breaks out a Sade-style beat for “This Love is Over,” a song that finds him exploring his breathy upper register, to grand effect. “For the Summer” is an absolutely gorgeous minor-key country-folk number, with a chorus that’ll lay you flat. LaMontagne goes it alone for the dark delight “Like Rock & Roll and Radio,” a song of separation with a great metaphor at its center. (“Are we strangers now, like rock & roll and the radio?”) The band comes charging back in for closing stomper “Devil’s in the Jukebox,” a traditional blues that ends things on just the right note.

Yep, it’s another 10 great little tunes from one of my favorite singers. If you liked Ray LaMontagne before, there’s no reason you won’t like this. God Willin’ and the Creek Don’t Rise is a down-home slice of dusty beauty from a truly awesome talent. Voices like Ray’s are one in a million, and he knows just how to write for his. Make a former Mainer’s day and check this out.

* * * * *

I’m tired of fighting it. I love the Eels.

It’s been a struggle, and there are a few reasons why. Eels leader Mark Everett writes very simple songs, with very simple lyrics – often straight diary entries with fourth-grade-level rhymes. Everett has a limited voice, and doesn’t really push it, except to bark his way through loud blues tunes. I guess I’ve often felt like Everett doesn’t try very hard, and I’ve felt a little ashamed for liking his stuff anyway.

But I’m over it. I’ve been buying Everett’s records since the early ‘90s, and it’s taken me too long to realize I’ve enjoyed every one. What’s really driven this home? The trilogy of fine pop albums he’s just finished up: 2009’s Hombre Lobo, January’s End Times, and the just-released Tomorrow Morning. Three albums in 18 months, each one different from the last, every one a winner.

These three records detail Everett’s reaction to his recent divorce, and they break down into anger, sadness and joy, respectively. Tomorrow Morning is the emotional flip side to End Times, which found Everett wallowing in loneliness and heartbreak, accompanied often by little more than an acoustic guitar. He’s flush with new love on this new one, and it’s the first Eels album that’s optimistic and wide-hearted from first note to last. I’m not certain if this means he’s over his old love, or just remembering when things were good, but the fact Everett chose to end the trilogy with this one gives me a hint.

But even as a standalone piece, this album is wonderful. It sounds to me like Everett did most of this one himself, breaking out the drum machines and synths for the first time in a while. The first three songs eschew beats entirely, but they’re not sad dirges. Everett describes himself as “beautiful and free” on “I’m a Hummingbird,” and “The Morning” ends with this sentiment: “Why wouldn’t you want to have the greatest day?” “Baby Loves Me” is an undiluted delight, a sort of inverse blues song with a trippy beat. “The neighbors don’t like my flowers, the waiter don’t like my tip, the librarian shushes me, travel agent canceled my trip, but baby loves me…”

The album’s centerpiece is the six-minute “This is Where it Gets Good,” which finds Everett layering a distant string section over a thumping beat and a funky little guitar line. The extended playout is just great, the first time we’ve heard from Everett the sonic manipulator in some time. It’s just joyous, and while you may spend the album’s second half waiting for the other shoe to drop, it never does. “The Man” is a fantasia of confidence, and songs with titles like “Looking Up” and “I Like the Way This is Going” are exactly as breezy as you expect. “Looking Up” is a genuine surprise, an old-time gospel number, complete with ringing tambourine and handclaps.

The album ends with “Mystery of Life,” a song that truly explores Everett’s emotional journey. “Pain in my heart twisting like a knife, disappeared just overnight, good morning, mystery of life,” he sings over a slightly spooky bass line, before the song bursts into a chorus of bright na-na-nas. Everett rhymes “life” with “strife,” something that usually makes me shiver, but I don’t care. It’s impossible to resist something this delightful, and I’m not sure why I tried for so long. Tomorrow Morning is wonderful. I’m an Eels fan, and I guess I’ll just have to live with that.

* * * * *

Which brings us to Brian Wilson.

Wilson is 68 years old now, and there isn’t an artist alive who makes me feel so young. It wouldn’t be inaccurate to call what he does children’s music – in many ways, he’s a grown-up man-child, still playing in that sandbox in his living room. Wilson’s work has always been so innocent and full of wonder, and all of his musical sophistication is always in service of pure, child-like joy. Some find this cloying, even saccharine. I don’t hear an ounce of dishonesty in what he does, though. I think it’s just lovely.

Even so, I wasn’t sure I would like Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin, his latest effort. I know Wilson has always had a great love for George Gershwin, particularly “Rhapsody in Blue” – he’s said before that his first musical memory is of that piece. I knew he would relish the opportunity to reinvent some of Gershwin’s best and most popular songs, most of which George wrote with his older brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin. And yet, I felt like this would be another stopgap, like that Christmas album Wilson made after SMiLE. I buy these things out of obligation, because Brian Wilson is a living legend and a genius, but I don’t always enjoy them.

I enjoyed this one, very much. Granted, if you don’t like Gershwin, you won’t find much to enjoy here. My extensive exposure to musical theater really helped out – there’s only one song on here I didn’t know, and many I knew by heart. Virtually all of these songs were first written for musicals, both on stage and in the movies, and they have that silly romantic sweep to them, which turns off a lot of people. (Myself included, pretty often.) The melodies, however, are marvelous, and there’s nothing like a Brian Wilson arrangement to perk my ears up.

There are some highs and lows here. The samba take on “‘S Wonderful” is definitely a low, until those candy-coated strings come in. But Beach Boys-esque runs through “I Got Rhythm” and (especially) “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” are fun, and Wilson’s gorgeous reading of “Someone to Watch Over Me” is a highlight. He essentially turns it into “You Still Believe in Me,” complete with harpsichord and swell backing vocals. The album’s centerpiece is a four-song medley from Porgy and Bess, including a string-laden blues version of “It Ain’t Necessarily So” and an instrumental shimmy through “I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin,” played on harmonicas, Jew’s harps and muted trumpet.

But the draw here is undoubtedly the two new songs, unfinished Gershwin numbers that Wilson was given permission to complete. Closer “Nothing but Love” is a fine, fun romp, but the keeper (and the best song on the album) is opener “The Like in I Love You.” This is a classic, with a delirious Wilson melody and a delightful arrangement. I know this song is cheesy and child-like, but it sweeps me away. There’s nothing I can do. I’m six years old, hearing the possibilities in music for the first time, and I love it. I’m completely disarmed.

Do I think this is up there with SMiLE and That Lucky Old Sun? No way. But Brian Wilson clearly gave this project his all – it’s a labor of love if I ever heard one. As much as I’d like to hear new Wilson songs, especially as he grows older, I’ll take a record that retains his inimitable stamp, especially one he obviously poured his heart into. I was leery, but Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin won me over. Okay, I’ll say it: ‘s wonderful.

* * * * *

Wow, lots of words this week. I’ll shut up now, except to tell you that next week, I expect to review Richard Thompson, Phil Selway, Jenny and Johnny (Lewis and Rice, respectively), and maybe one or two other things. That is, unless another artist I love drops an album by complete surprise. You never know what can happen. Come back in seven days to find out.

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

See you in line Tuesday morning.

This is my 500th Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. column.

Well, not really. I’m not counting the first iteration, which appeared bi-weekly in Face Magazine in 1999 and 2000. I did 50 or so of those. And I’m not counting several extra columns, like the Lost essay, that I’ve done for this site. But I’ve been keeping count of the regular weekly missives, and between November 29, 2000, and August 18, 2010, I’ve written 500 of them.

Yeah, I know. It kind of amazes me, too.

Sometimes it feels like an entire lifetime has passed – I feel like a completely different person than the one who first bitched about the quality of 2000’s music and gave big ups to Everclear, and my life has changed in ways both small and significant since then. But sometimes I feel like the same eccentric music nerd I’ve always been, spending huge amounts of money and time on this thing that makes me happier than anything else. I started the first Face Magazine edition of this column by quoting Frank Zappa: “Music is the best.” It’s still true for me.

I still get excited over new songs like a three-year-old at Christmas. I’m not sure how the people in my life put up with me – I know my exuberance can be annoying. But hearing a song in which everything comes together, and my spine tingles and that big, goofy grin spreads across my face, well, there’s just nothing better. I own probably 200,000 songs at this point, and the good ones still make me smile, make me dance, make me love life. The ones that really stick, the songs I’ve carried with me through years and states and jobs and relationships, those are the ones I treasure most.

A 500th column is one of those “look back on your life” kind of occasions, and I’ve been thinking a lot, not only about the music I love, but about the people I’ve met through that love. There are so many amazing people in my life that I never would have met if not for my fascination with all things musical. One who immediately springs to mind is Dr. Tony Shore, who runs ObviousPop. I’ve met the good Doctor in person only twice, and stayed at his house once, but I hang on his every recommendation, and when we get to talk music, I cherish those conversations.

I started thinking about the first person I met through music, and it was probably Chris Callaway.

Granted, we probably would have met each other anyway. Our parents went to the same church, and we were in all the same Sunday school classes. But Chris and I bonded over our shared love of incredibly crappy Christian music. Well, sort of – he was into bands like Jerusalem, and I, as a socially-inept sixth-grader, really liked Petra. I made fun of some of Chris’ favorites, but without him, I might not have discovered one of my favorite bands of all time, the Alarm. Chris loaned me his cassette copy of Eye of the Hurricane when we were both 13, and I never looked back. I had to have everything this band had ever done.

Chris and I were in an amazingly awful Christian band together in junior high school. It was called M.D., which sometimes stood for Ministry of Deliverance and sometimes Missing a Drummer, since we used my crappy keyboard’s programmed drum patterns. (To our detractors, we were Masturbating Dickheads, a much better suggestion than any I’ve come up with.) Chris played bass, I played keys, we both sang. If I recall correctly, Chris was our original lead singer, and he took up bass as a secondary thing.

But he stuck with it. Last time I saw Chris was five years ago, when we journeyed to Cornerstone together. He lives in Colorado now, and he’s in a new band called Able Archer, named (I presume) after the code for war games NATO played in the ‘80s. Chris never fails to send me the latest Able Archer product, and I never fail to put off listening to it, because I’m a lazy prick. But I’ve been spinning the latest, a four-song EP called Arc 01, pretty regularly for the past couple of weeks, and I think it’s marvelous.

One thing in its favor – none of these four songs sound alike. Opener “In Support of the Steady State Theory” is a madcap, groove-laden romp, the twin guitars of Matt Huseman and Chad Lindberg zipping through a killer little riff. It’s a first-rate production, too, with something to catch your ear every few seconds. Best of all is a section where everything drops out except Huseman’s voice, singing the melody before la-da-da-ing the main riff. The lyrics appear to outdo Andy Partridge’s “We’re All Light,” using scientific theory as pickup lines. The chorus is remarkably straightforward: “I want to make it with you.”

“Mouthful of Knives” is my favorite, an electric-piano lullaby that cribs its sound and scope from OK Computer, while “Currency” brings things down to earth with an appealing college-rock vibe. Closer “A List of My Demands” brings in more of an electronic element, balanced off by more quirky guitar work and a nice falsetto melody. These four songs are apparently the first taster of a full-length called Today We Are Faster Than Technology, and I’m looking forward to hearing the whole thing.

And if I hadn’t met Chris Callaway in Sunday school, and formed two bands with him (oh, yes, didn’t I mention side project Obliterator? It was at least as bad as it sounds…), I might never have heard Able Archer at all. Chris became a top-notch bass player, by the way, and I’m hoping he hits it big, so I can blackmail him with old recordings from his formative years. I never would, though, since my own contributions to those specimens are embarrassing in the extreme.

* * * * *

I all but gave up making my own music some time ago, although I did stick with it for a while. I was in a vulgar band called Replacement Harry and the Losers’ Club in high school, I wrote a musical in college, and I made hours upon hours of instrumental electronic frippery after that. No, you can’t hear any of it. I wrote songs for both of my parents’ weddings, and new songs keep threatening to come out every once in a while, but I’ve discovered I’m most comfortable as an appreciator and commenter.

My first (and so far, only) full-time paying gig as a music reviewer was with Face Magazine in Portland, Maine, from 1996 to 2000. Face was like a whole new world opening up in front of me. The Portland music scene was the first one I really got to know, and I found it to be remarkably rich and varied. If there’s a type of music you can name, someone in Portland is doing it, and doing it very well. I’m not sure what the scene is like now, but when I was there, we had some incredible bands: Twisted Roots, Rustic Overtones, Twitchboy, the Troubles, Cerberus Shoal, Tarpigh, Gouds Thumb (and later 6gig). Just an awesome bunch.

Through Face, I met two others I’m glad to consider friends today. One is Shane Kinney, drummer extraordinaire (and owner of his own drum shop in Portsmouth now). He was in a hilarious band called Broken Clown at the time, but now he pounds skins for heavy pop group Lost on Liftoff. Their latest album is called The Brightside, and it’s pretty swell. If I know Kinney, he’s been doing the same thing I have this week: digging the new Iron Maiden album.

The other is Rob Korhonen, who was going by Rob Egbert when I met him. In the late ‘90s, he was the singer for a band called Colepitz, one of the most savage live acts I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing. Rob also wrote for us at Face – he crafted a two-part story about Portland’s hardcore scene, the first part of which came complete with a photo of dozens of those musicians, designed to replicate the famous Great Day in Harlem picture. It didn’t reproduce very well, but it was a fun thing to try.

When I left Portland, I lost touch with Rob. But thanks to the magic of Facebook, we’ve reconnected, and I got to hear the great news that Colepitz has reformed. They have a new album, called No Tomorrow Tonight, which Rob was kind enough to send me. This is another I might not have heard without that personal connection, which would be a shame, since No Tomorrow Tonight is the most consistently awesome heavy record I’ve heard in some time.

The musical force behind Colepitz is guitarist Ray Suhy. He was impressive on the first Colepitz album, and he’s gotten 10 years better. Every one of these songs slips time signatures willy-nilly and throws up ear-popping musical surprises like the band has an endless supply. And yet, it stays heavy as hell throughout. Opener “Voices of War” is like someone shooting a semi-automatic nail gun at you. The riffs are jackhammers, Brian Higgins’ drums are relentless, and Korhonen screams like Phil Anselmo. But it’s intelligently-constructed, and complex. It must be a bitch to play live.

“War” ends with a sitar-fueled acoustic coda that leads perfectly into the next song, “Sometimes It’s All You Have.” It starts slow, but soon it explodes into a King’s X-style tricky-time juggernaut. Korhonen has become more relaxed and confident since the first Colepitz album, and his work is more varied here. He has an appealing everyman singing voice, but can deliver jagged screams with the best of them, and when it’s called for (as on the quieter epic “Now the Lion Fades”), he takes it all down to a vulnerable, breathy whisper. And just listen to the extended high note he carries in “Sometimes.” That’s impressive.

If there’s a single here, it’s “Slow Climb,” the catchiest piece on the album. Another of Suhy’s dynamite riffs flows perfectly into a memorable chorus, then erupts again into one of the most fiery passages on the record. This is just a great little song. And on the next track, “In the Middle of the Square,” the Colepitz guys somehow get Morphine sax man Dana Colley to deliver a solo. But do they write a Morphine-esque section for Colley to jam over? The hell they do. Colley’s solo is atop one of the heaviest bits of the song. I can only imagine what he thought when he heard what they wanted, but it works wonderfully.

No Tomorrow Tonight ends with a seven-minute piece called “Break Like No One Else Does,” which dives effortlessly between clean-toned, spectral beauty and spine-crushing slow heaviness. The last movement is a reprise of the title track, bringing things full circle. This album is terrific, something I would buy and recommend even if I didn’t know the lead singer. I’m grateful I got the chance to hear it, and I hope it doesn’t take another decade for the next one.

* * * * *

Even today, 10 years after I left my paying music journalism gig, I’m still meeting musicians, and hearing music I wouldn’t otherwise. My long and winding road has brought me to Aurora, Illinois, where I happily toil as a chronicler of everyday life. I work for the local newspaper, and even with all the annoyances, great and small, that come with such a job, I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed anything more. I get paid to tell stories, and to meet fascinating people.

And I’ve met a lot, many of whom are musicians. One of my first-year features here was about a singer/songwriter named Greg Boerner, who composed an entire album (World So Blue) about his divorce. Greg’s one of the few people I’ve met who makes his living playing music. Nothing else. He’s a great live performer, one who can captivate a crowd with just a guitar and his voice.

I got to meet Jeff Elbel, the man behind those Ping albums I’ve enjoyed for years, and found out that he’s one of the best people you’d ever want to know. I’ve been re-watching Lost with Jeff – we’re about to start season five – and he’s been my traveling companion on several musical adventures. Jeff owns a recording studio in Wheaton, and when he’s not playing live with one of his 35 different bands, he’s working on that new Ping record. The songs I’ve heard have been tremendous fun.

And I’ve just started getting to know Kevin Trudo. Kevin’s another one who’s making a go as a professional musician, full stop. He’s a gifted songwriter, one who strings together tough and complex and honest lyrics that make my jaw drop, and when he plays out with his band, The Kevin Trudo and Meathawk, I try not to miss it. Better than that, he’s a warm and funny and encouraging man, and he lets me play his piano. Kevin doesn’t have any records yet, but when he does, I’ll be at the front of the line, waiting to get one. Through Kevin I’ve met others, like Todd Kessler and Matt McCain and Chris Bauler, great guys all.

Central to a lot of these musical relationships is Benjie Hughes, owner of Back Third Audio, a recording studio in downtown A-Town. I tracked my dad’s wedding song at Benjie’s place, and couldn’t have been happier with the result. (Engineer Kyle Schmidt even made my voice sound passable.) Benjie sees his role as forging musical friendships, and he wants Back Third to be a hub around which the community can gather. I can only speak for myself, but I’ve met many great people and musicians through Benjie’s efforts.

People like Andrea Dawn and her husband, Zach Goforth. I first met them through Back Third’s annual Christmas concert, Tiny Candle, and was immediately taken with Andrea’s voice. It’s strong and sultry and full of character, and she’s able to belt out her melodies while playing tricky piano parts. She’s great, a star in the making, and Zach is the all-purpose backup man. He plays guitar and bass and anything else that makes melodic sounds – give him a few hours and he’d learn how to make beautiful music with your phone and your microwave.

Andrea’s latest project is a 30-minute live EP, recorded at Back Third as part of her prize for winning one of Benjie’s regular Songwriter Showcase events. Now, here is what I love about owning these small, limited-edition releases – Live at Back Third Audio comes in a homemade pouch, hand-sewn by Andrea herself, and labeled with one of those letter-stamp devices. It’s adorably homespun, an item I will treasure.

The music’s pretty grand, too. Backed up by Zach on bass, Dan Knighten on drums and Jeremy Junkin on clarinet, Andrea runs through six of her songs, some of which sound like old standards, some of which bring Fiona Apple to mind. Her voice is strong, her arrangements full and rich. I’ve been a big fan of “Spin the Bottle” for a while, and this version is superb – when Andrea hits the “let’s get a little jaded, let’s get animated” chorus, the song blossoms.

My other favorite is the closer, “Just Fine,” a sprightly yet dangerous tune with a great ascending melody. “I don’t think I need you around no more,” Andrea sings, before hitting some deep, throaty, soulful ad-libs, her voice in simply stunning form. Andrea Dawn is someone I think everyone in the world should know, and if she keeps on writing and playing like this, it may be only a matter of time until they all do.

* * * * *

In addition to backing up his wife, Zach Goforth plays in fellow Auroran Jeremy Keen’s band, the False Starts. I think I met Jeremy once, at one of Benjie’s events, but neither of us can remember, so perhaps not. I know what I’ll say when I meet him again for the first time, though: nice job on that new record.

Keen’s new album is called Lock and Key, and it was recorded in more than half a dozen different locations in and around Aurora. Given that, it’s remarkably consistent – this is a fully-produced effort, not a collection of field recordings. Keen writes sturdy folk-pop with engaging melodies, and his songs are deceptively simple. They’ll sneak up on you and get stuck in your head.

Lock and Key is something of a concept record. It opens with weeping strings, leading into a song called “Sad,” and it stays in a realm of hopelessness for several tracks. The slowest ones are up front, including “Save Me,” the darkest of all: “No love fails me like this love fails me, and no one can save me now.” But as the album progresses, it gets brighter, and Keen saves his happiest tunes for the end. “Never Thought It’d Be You” is a danceable tale of love that catches you by surprise, while “Promise” is a song of commitment, its refrain a simple declaration: “I’ll stay and never leave, ‘cause I promised I would.”

Lock and Key closes with “Shine Your Light,” its most joyous, effervescent, and best song. Keen breaks out the electric guitars and cranks them up for only the second time on the album (the first is the fittingly titled “Barnburner”), and delivers his best chorus, a convincingly raucous six-string explosion. If the album was intended as a journey from dark to light, ending with this was the perfect choice. These songs are all about relationships, and by the end, we feel that all is right in our main character’s earthly and spiritual worlds.

Keen’s album comes in a homemade package as well, a recycled cardboard sleeve that has been hand-stenciled and die-cut. The design – a white heart with a keyhole punched out of the middle – is simple and effective, just like the album itself. Lock and Key is a smart little record with lots of promise, from an artist deserving of a wider audience. And I look forward to being able to tell him so in person.

* * * * *

This isn’t every musician I’ve met through the years, of course. But it’s enough to make me eternally grateful for this life I’ve lived. Music, and the people who make it, and the people who love it, have brought me so much joy. I’ve done this column for nearly 10 years because of what music means to me, but also, because of what all of you reading this mean to me.

Benjie Hughes likes to say that music is people, and he’s absolutely right. My musical life has been all the more amazing because of all of you, the people I’ve met along the way. The people who have enriched my life are like my favorite songs – I’ll carry them with me forever, and when I’m feeling lonely, or used up, or worthless, I’ll think of them, like a lovely melody you sing to get through the day.

I’ve been so lucky. So very lucky. Thank you, all of you.

So here’s the part where I provide a bunch of links, and you all follow them and check out these people I know. It’s your chance to get to know them too. In alphabetical order:

Greg Boerner
Chris Callaway (Able Archer)
Andrea Dawn
Jeff Elbel (Ping)
Benjie Hughes (Back Third Audio)
Jeremy Keen
Todd Kessler
Shane Kinney (Lost on Liftoff)
Rob Korhonen (Colepitz)
Tony Shore (ObviousPop)
Kevin Trudo

Again, this is by no means every musician I’ve met, just the ones mentioned in this column. If I forgot you, let me know and I’ll add you to the list.

That’s 500 down, and no end in sight. Next week, 501, with (deep breath) Iron Maiden, Brian Wilson, John Mellencamp, Ray LaMontagne, and the Eels. Until then, I am gratefully yours. 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 have a complex relationship with the word “indie.”

I certainly use it enough, and I find it a useful descriptor. When I say “indie,” you all think the same thing: scrappy guitar music recorded by people who aren’t looking for radio hits. When you hear the word indie, you’re imagining guys in glasses and sweater vests writing clever-catchy songs about the girls who broke their hearts, aren’t you? In that way, the word works.

But in another, it’s broken. It used to mean music released on an independent label, which used to mean a record label not owned by a major corporation. Now indie bands like Death Cab for Cutie and the Decemberists are on major labels like Atlantic and Capitol, respectively, and many of the so-called independent labels are subsidiaries of big companies. In this Internet age, it would seem the most independent bands are the ones without labels, who release their music on their own. But I don’t think anyone would ever call Nine Inch Nails indie.

It’s like alternative, or punk, a word fully severed from its original meaning and turned into a marketing term. It’s also kind of a snobby word, one that turns its nose up at the radio-friendly and the accessible. If something is indie, it’s automatically more meaningful and relevant and worth hearing than something that is not indie to a distressingly large chunk of the music-loving population. Never mind the fact that the term is now used by men in suits who decide how to best spend millions in advertising budgets.

The sheep-and-goats nature of a word like indie often leads the image-conscious to reject whole catalogs of music they might otherwise enjoy. It also leads the indie cognoscenti to praise and embrace truly terrible stuff that the non-indie labels would never release, and with good reason. They do this so they can seem more in touch with the cutting edge. They can start trends, and have whole conversations about bands no one else knows, just to feel good about themselves. “Oh, you don’t know the Humpbacked Shitweasels? They’re the latest thing. They sound like a mix of the Ocelots and the Translucent Unitards. Oh, you don’t know those bands either? Too bad for you. Everyone will be talking about them soon, trust me.”

I really believe this happens a lot. Even if I didn’t, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with another explanation for the drooling adulation the indie press gives to Wavves.

Nathan Williams’ one-man project is probably my favorite example of how the whole indie thing is broken. Williams is an early-20s surfer guy who gladly and cheerfully admits he’s not a musician. I’ve read more about his on-stage breakdowns than I have about the music he makes with Wavves, a sort of actively-annoying lo-fi home-recorded noise. He somehow convinced Fat Possum Records to release two whole discs of this shit. I’ve only heard the second, Wavvves (note the third ‘v,’ there for extra indie-awesomeness), and if it’s an improvement, then the first one must be like jamming razorblades into one’s ear canal.

With Wavves, Williams has embraced both lack of ambition and lack of talent as badges of honor. And the indie press has eaten it up with a spoon. What better way to celebrate the division between us and them than with so-called music that makes anyone with a discerning ear want to vomit? You don’t like this? You’re not cool enough to like this. It’s not about the music, it’s about the aesthetic, and about being in the club. Listening to Wavves is less important than saying you listen to them.

That’s why reaction to King of the Beach, Wavves’ third album, has been so oddly mixed. For this disc, Williams decided to hire a couple of actual musicians, go into an actual studio, and crank out some actual songs. They’re not very good songs, mind you, but they are songs, and the recording is infinitely more polished this time out. That means it’s still rough and hissy and ragged, but you can hear what each instrument is doing now. King of the Beach is a surprisingly coherent, sprightly little rock record, leaps and bounds above anything Nathan Williams has done before.

And that’s made some people pretty mad. In addition to the usual praises, Williams has come in for some stick online for dispensing with the ugly noise and writing hummable tunes. I read one comment from a former fan who said when Williams decided to go into a real recording studio, he sold out. That’s right, people are complaining that this record doesn’t sound shitty enough. I know I grew up a Boston fan, but that just seems strange to me.

What these people are trying to say is that Williams is now too mainstream for them. Yes, he’s on Fat Possum, and yes, only a couple thousand people will ever hear King of the Beach. But that’s a couple thousand too many for people who want to be known as tastemakers. Better to get in on the backlash now and maintain your cred. While standing at an ironically safe distance, of course.

Blah blah blah. What does the music sound like?

Well, it’s spunky, melodic pop music, made by rank amateurs with a sloppiness that sometimes borders on appealing. The title track and “Super Soaker” are the best songs here, sequenced first and second, and the most likely to get stuck in your head. Modest Mouse producer Dennis Herring has clearly done a lot to improve Williams’ voice, a blunt and scattershot instrument, but Williams still just kind of shout-moans his way through this thing. His lyrics are about his own life as a beach bum and bored rich kid, and are all surface-level. Still, this is listenable, and even kind of fun at times.

It’s obvious Williams worked pretty hard on this album. “Post Acid” is a fun romp with a groovy “ooh-ooh” chorus. “When Will You Come” aims for a ‘50s sun-drenched sound, and Williams’ falsetto notwithstanding, it works. Still, there’s absolutely nothing remarkable about this, nothing worth the silly amounts of adulation being heaped on it in some corners. Williams set his own bar pretty low, but seriously. It’s loud and sloppy indie-rock, which is better than loud and ass-aching noise, which I guess is better than static. But at some point, it’s just a matter of degrees.

* * * * *

Bethany Cosentino has come in for the same praise as her friend Williams, but for some reason, I think she fares better. Cosentino calls herself Best Coast, and her 31-minute debut album is entitled Crazy for You. The front cover, painstakingly designed to look shitty, features a picture of Cosentino’s cat Snacks, who has his own Twitter feed. This is the world we’re living in now.

But one listen to the album and such concerns melt away. Crazy for You is adorable. It’s a very simple record – simpler in many ways than Wavves’ effort – but its charm is immense and undeniable. Imagine ‘50s girl-group romantic ballads performed on thick, reverb-soaked guitars and you have the right idea. Cosentino sings like a bird, and harmonizes with herself in pure Phil Spector fashion. The songs are all very short – “Honey” is the epic at 3:01 – and packed with sweet, sweet melodies.

The lyrics are all self-consciously simple and lovey-dovey, which may irritate some. I think there are three songs on here built around the phrase “I miss you,” and occasional references to weed aside, Cosentino spends the entirety of Crazy for You pining over boys, or walking away from them. And yet, her homage to a bygone age of pop music is so heartfelt, so complete, that I don’t mind. When she sings “I wish you were my boyfriend,” all is right with the world. Occasionally, Cosentino reminds me of Jenny Lewis here, but for the most part, she’s doing her own thing.

That thing does get wearying after a while. These 13 songs all sound essentially the same, and it’s probably good this is only half an hour long. The indie press is fawning all over this, of course, but I have reservations. I wonder if Cosnetino has another trick, or if future Best Coast albums will sound just like this one. As a one-off, Crazy for You is sweet and fun and lightweight. As a career, even the considerable charms on display here will grow old. (The aforementioned “Honey” points towards a darker direction, which is welcome.)

I hope Cosentino can find a way to stick around, though. Unlike Williams, she seems to know what she’s doing, and she knows her way around a melody. Crazy for You is full of fun tunes with a sense of history. While it may not be an album I pull out very often, I expect I’ll enjoy it each time I do.

* * * * *

But if we’re going to talk about indie, particularly its original definition, we have to bring up Starflyer 59. Well, we don’t have to. But I think it’s worth doing, so bear with me, okay?

Starflyer 59 has been around for 17 years now. Mastermind Jason Martin met Brandon Ebel at a music festival in 1993, and gave him a demo tape. Shortly thereafter, Martin’s band was one of the first to sign with then-fledgling Tooth and Nail Records, Ebel’s company. 11 albums, 10 EPs and a box set later, Martin’s still with Tooth and Nail, and still putting out remarkable pop records that too few will hear.

The latest of these, the 12th, is called The Changing of the Guard. Like every Starflyer record, it sounds completely different from the last one, and yet of a piece with Martin’s catalog. This new one abandons the angular ‘80s pop of Dial M for a more Church-inspired sound: strummed acoustics, clean reverbed guitar lines, a smattering of synths, and Martin’s low, dark voice. It’s an atmospheric record, but it rocks as well, and Martin’s gift for sonic layering never deserts him. And the songs? He’s Jason Martin. Of course they’re good.

Now, I realize at this point some of you might be accusing me of hypocrisy. How dare I get all huffy about reviewers who praise unknown artists, and then do the exact same thing? Do I feel that much cooler for knowing Starflyer 59? Well, no. Martin’s been doing this way too long to be the Next Big Thing, and he’s not about to get that buzz going, not after 12 albums. He’s just a guy on the periphery, doing what he does with remarkable consistency. Knowing him doesn’t make you more indie, or more inside, or more of a trend-setter. If you get to know him, though, your CD collection will be a little bigger, and a little richer for it.

Jason Martin’s never made a bad record, but The Changing of the Guard is superb. It opens with its softest songs – the swaying “Shane” sets the tone, with its light strumming, prominent keyboard line, piano bridge, and Martin’s deep vocal. “Trucker’s Son” is an autobiographical piece set to sweet finger-picked guitars, Martin singing about the faded dreams of his youth. It’s marvelous.

The record really picks up in its second half, however. “I Had a Song for the Ages” is terrific, bringing in a bit of jangling electrics to surround a swell chorus and a memorable piano figure. Martin taps into his side project, Neon Horse, a bit for “Cry Me a River,” and ends things with two acoustic rockers, the organ-drenched “Kick the Can” and the deep, dark “Lose My Mind.” Ten songs, 32 minutes, and yet unlike the Best Coast record, I want this one to go on and on.

Starflyer 59 is, to me, the epitome of what indie should be. Jason Martin is committed to a small label, which offers him the freedom to change up his sound however he wants. He uses that freedom to write as many great songs as he can, and just keeps plugging away. I don’t know if The Changing of the Guard will attract any more fans than Martin already has, but I don’t expect that will stop him if it doesn’t. This is why I go to the smaller labels – not to find the likes of Nathan Williams, or even Bethany Cosentino, working their way through their own amateur shoddiness, but to find musicians like Martin, tucked away in a corner of the world, making magic.

Hear Starflyer here.

* * * * *

It’s been a while since I’ve done this, as faithful reader Jeff Ward pointed out to me last week, so here’s a quick look at some records I’m excited about in the coming months.

Next week, we get the new Iron Maiden, entitled The Final Frontier. My inner teenage metalhead will be satisfied with that, but the more mature me is looking forward to new things from John Mellencamp (No Better Than This), Ray LaMontagne (God Willin’ and the Creek Don’t Rise) and Brian Wilson (Reimagines Gershwin). The week after that, we get the third Eels album in 18 months, Tomorrow Morning, as well as the new Ra Ra Riot, The Orchard, and a sci-fi concept album called Warp Riders from stoner metal heroes The Sword.

August rounds out with Richard Thompson’s new one Dream Attic, a collaboration between Jenny Lewis and Jonathan Rice called I’m Having Fun Now, and Radiohead drummer Phil Selway’s solo album, Familial. September starts with an EP from Antony and the Johnsons, Thank You For Your Love, and the self-titled fourth album from Interpol. September 14 is massive, with new ones by Weezer (actually called Hurley, with a picture of Jorge Garcia on the cover), the Walkmen (Lisbon), Robert Plant (the well-regarded Band of Joy), Of Montreal (False Priest) and the first album from raunch-poppers The Vaselines in 20 years or so, Sex With an X.

Come back on September 21 for John Legend’s team-up with the Roots, Wake Up, and stay for the first new Swans album in ages, My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky. Also, Richard’s son Teddy Thompson returns with Bella, which I hope isn’t a tribute album to Twilight. September finishes up with new things from Bad Religion (The Dissent of Man) and Nellie McKay (Home Sweet Mobile Home), but I’m most looking forward to Lonely Avenue, Ben Folds’ new album with lyrics by novelist Nick Hornby.

October, then, will bring us Antony’s full album, Swanlights; a new Elvis Costello called National Ransom, produced by T-Bone Burnett; Guster’s Easy Wonderful; Wreckorder, a solo album from Travis’ Fran Healy; Kid Cudi’s Man in the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager; and, for you moshers, a full-length from Phil Anselmo’s new band Arson Anthem. Also, for the big spenders out there, a 30-CD box set of every master recording Elvis Presley ever made will be available, for a modest $750.

That’s not everything, but it’s the stuff I’m most looking forward to. Stay tuned for reviews of all of the above, if I can manage it.

* * * * *

Next week is my 500th column. I’m trying to decide what to do to celebrate. Find out in seven days. 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.

There are so few bands these days that truly strive for greatness.

That’s not the same as saying that few bands are truly great, although that is also true. I’m talking about bands that aren’t afraid to genuinely reach for the stars, and be seen doing it. Most music follows previously-established formulas, standing on the shoulders of those who came before. There’s nothing wrong with that – many of my favorite bands do nothing else – but adding a personal touch to Ray Davies-esque pop, for instance, can hardly be called going for the brass ring.

Musicians who don’t follow those formulas, or who find interesting ways to turn them on their ears, usually break down into a couple of groups. There are those who humbly present their work, with an aw-shucks-here-are-my-songs-I-hope-you-like-them demeanor, and there are those who maintain a full and ironic detachment from their own music, lest they be considered lame by the hecklers in the peanut gallery. There’s a sense, intentionally given, that these musicians don’t take what they do all that seriously.

It’s not just that wearing your heart on your sleeve isn’t cool. It can be – think Nick Drake, or Elliott Smith. But those guys have a fragility about them that belies their craft. It’s easy to imagine those whispered melodies just tumbling out of Smith, his guitar a conduit to his soul. He wasn’t trying to be as good as he was. No, what I’m talking about is that particular quality exemplified by U2, especially 1980s U2. Here was a band who said, out loud, they were aiming to be the best band in the world. And they worked to the fullest of their ability to do just that.

There are whole generations of people now who don’t understand why U2 was so important. Nothing they’ve done since Achtung Baby in 1991 has had that same verve, that confident and unrestrained ambition, that feeling that the band pushed themselves to the limit. From Boy to Achtung Baby, U2 clearly tried to make The Best Album Ever each time out. Whether they succeeded is another matter, and one of opinion. The point is, they tried.

Same thing with Radiohead, until they lost the plot. On The Bends and especially OK Computer, you could hear them trying with everything they had to be the greatest band on the planet. When they believed it, nothing could stop them. When they shrunk back from it, turning out synth-drone experiments and swapping ambition for pretentiousness, they lost that edge. Even the most ardent Radiohead fan would have trouble arguing that the band is really trying anymore.

There are still some aiming for greatness, though, instead of just acting like they are. (That’s a whole different column, but see Jon Bon Jovi as an example.) One of the finest cases in point is Arcade Fire. Seven members, a sound that could move mountains, and a dramatic sweep that fills every room it’s played into, and carries you along with it. Each time out, this Montreal outfit has seemed on a mission to make the biggest, boldest and best record their little hearts can muster.

Their third, The Suburbs, is their biggest, boldest and best. A 16-song, 64-minute cycle, The Suburbs has not one moment of levity or irony, not one second on which the band isn’t giving their all with an earnest, consuming fire. The Suburbs is an extended meditation on that moment you realize there is life beyond the houses and shopping malls you’ve always known, that moment you see what has been imprisoning you, and how you can leave it. Some have called it hopeless, but to me, that smacks of not taking in the complete album. And it is definitely meant to be swallowed whole.

The music is certainly darker and more sweeping than anything this band has done. It builds on the strengths of 2007’s Neon Bible, sometimes swaying in the wind, sometimes howling with phenomenal force. None of it feels forced or overstuffed – it’s just monolithic enough. The opening title track is deceptively easygoing, with its marching beat and plunking piano, but “Ready to Start” (appropriately enough) kicks things into gear. A sonic explosion rushing like a hurricane in to knock down those suburban houses in the liner note photos, “Ready to Start” sets the themes in motion: “If the businessmen drink my blood like the kids in art school said they would, I guess I’ll just begin again…”

Above all this turmoil is Win Butler, who has a blocky yet remarkably emotional voice. Butler isn’t a flashy frontman – he doesn’t have the charisma or the quirkiness to rise above the songs, but he doesn’t need to. He’s part of the din, not the focus of it, and as the band swirls around him – check out the steadily-building “Rococo,” which adds layers and layers to its repetitive foundation – he becomes as intense as he needs to. (Special mention needs to be made of Owen Pallett, whose arrangements this time are amazing.)

The songs on The Suburbs are more like movements of a symphony, each approaching the theme from a different angle. There’s nothing here as immediate as “No Cars Go” or “Rebellion (Lies),” but these songs work together like no others the band has written. The suburban war is mentioned early, in the title track, so when it arrives on track nine (“Suburban War,” natch), it feels like a well-foreshadowed plot point. That song is a little masterpiece, plaintive guitars spinning out a dark melody while Butler laments those he has lost: “Now the cities we live in could be distant stars, and I search for you in every passing car…”

One more side note about “Suburban War,” since it contains one of the most accurate observations of suburban teenage life on the record: “Now the music divides us into tribes, you choose your side, I’ll choose my side.” That’s exactly how it is. Your musical taste is like a brand, tying you to an identity and a group of friends. A metal kid would rather die than admit he sometimes listens to Elton John.

“Month of May,” another one of those sonic explosions, draws a fine analogy between disaffected youth and the dead – both are immoble and emotionless, with their arms folded tight. Yet hope is here: “Start again in the month of May, come on and blow the wires away…” “Wasted Hours” may be the album’s darkest, despite its sprightly acoustic rhythm, as Butler wishes he were “anywhere but here,” and comes to a revelation about adulthood: “We’re still kids in buses, longing to be free…” The two-part “The Sprawl” finds Butler wondering if there is anything else besides human ruin.

But he’s older now, and even though he can’t believe it, he’s moving past the feeling. The Suburbs is something of a sequel to the band’s debut, Funeral, but it’s tougher, and it earns its hope more completely. The end of the album finds Butler looking back on his suburban imprisonment with equal parts nostalgia and dread. In some ways, I think we all feel that way about our childhoods. In the minute-long coda “The Suburbs (Continued),” Butler muses, “If I could have it back, all the time that we wasted, I’d only waste it again, if I could have it back, you know I would love to waste it again.”

It’s not enough for Butler and company to make an album about suburban childhood, however. They set about making The Best Album About Suburban Childhood Ever, and you can hear that drive in every minute of it. The Suburbs is an extremely quick 64 minutes, but it will fill you up and drain you dry. It does all this without winking at you, or shrinking from its ambition. It is, quite simply, a great record, and it never pretends to be anything else.

* * * * *

Jimmy Gnecco is another who consistently aims for the rafters. He’s been gifted with a supernatural voice – there aren’t many singers in Jeff Buckley’s league, but Gnecco is one of them – and an unfaltering sense of the dramatic. His one-man-band project, Ours, draped that extraordinary voice in sheets of blinding guitar and production so thick you could swim in it. Gnecco can sing like an angel, but when he lets loose and really screams it out, it’s like the walls of the world coming down.

Gnecco’s biggest problem has always been his image. His album covers are gothic nightmares, and if you picked up Precious expecting Marilyn Manson-style doom-laden noise, I wouldn’t blame you. Likewise, if you approach his solo debut The Heart cold, you’re greeted with the image of a naked Gnecco covered in tattoos, looking like Vincent Gallo or someone who might frequent the Suicide Girls website. Think HIM and you have the right idea.

But the music inside could not be more different. Nearly all of The Heart is acoustic, slow and pretty. It still retains Gnecco’s flair for the dramatic, but everything is subdued, simpler and quieter. The Heart is an hour long, and it never picks up. The entire album is like something Gnecco recorded at home on a series of rainy days. Some of it is jaw-droppingly beautiful, but much of it meanders around, following emotional logic – the record feels to me like a thorough bleeding, something Gnecco simply had to get out of his system.

One thing I will say for it, The Heart is a showcase for Gnecco’s remarkable voice. The title track, for instance, is a couple of strummed chords over handclaps for six minutes, but the looping melody shows off Gnecco’s range. It finds him leaping from hushed tones to full-on, full-force screaming, and I’ve never heard that voice so unadorned, so naked. This isn’t a song I think I can listen to very often, because it’s so draining.

I actually find I like this record better when Gnecco calms things down, and writes a compelling melody. “Bring You Home” is a favorite, particularly when the electric guitar kicks in and Gnecco leaps for his falsetto. “These Are My Hands” is nice as well, with its “woah-oh” refrain and memorable chorus. But much of this album is simply self-indulgent, and I think it could have been trimmed by four or five songs. Then again, the goal of an album like this is not to be concise and sharp, but to be messy and rambling, like the emotions of the heartbroken.

It’s easy to see why this isn’t an Ours record. This one is pure Gnecco, and it’s like trundling through his mind, ducking down corridors and byways that don’t necessarily lead anywhere. But the journey is at least pretty interesting. If this unkempt collection was just something bursting to come out, then I hope it’s out, and Gnecco gets back to making focused, dramatic art-rock next time. The Heart is not the first Gnecco album I’ll reach for, but it does show some very different sides to a singular and unjustly obscure artist, and for that, I’m glad I heard it.

* * * * *

It’s been a busy and exhausting seven days since we last spoke, so unlike either of the artists on tap this week, I’m going to keep it short. Next week, I get all indie on your ass. 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 let’s talk about women.

It’s a sad fact that female artists make up a depressingly small percentage of what you’ll find in the record store on any given day. You’d think it would be at least 50/50, but it isn’t. As of this writing, Eminem sits atop the Billboard albums chart, leading a top 10 that is 90 percent male. (M.I.A. is the only female artist there, at number nine. Two more female artists, Ladies Antebellum and Gaga, are present in the top 20.)

The reason isn’t that women make less popular (or less interesting) music than men. The reason is fewer female artists are given record contracts. The Internet has gone some way toward evening that out, but not enough. As for me, I’m not often conscious of the demographics of my CD collection. I have albums from artists of both genders and many different nationalities, although I suspect the overwhelming majority of records I own were made by white males.

I’m not really sure why this is. I can get into the racial aspect another time, although my general disdain for hip-hop probably has a lot to do with the whitewashing of my CD collection. But the gender thing baffles me. I do pay attention to the number of female artists who make it into my top 10 list every year, and the percentage rarely climbs above 20. I haven’t checked, but I’d be willing to bet that accurately reflects the ratio of men to women in my collection. Just in 2010, I’ve bought an even 175 new CDs this year so far, and women contributed to a whopping 27 of them.

This isn’t bias on my part. Some of my favorite songwriters (Aimee Mann, Ani Difranco, Imogen Heap) are women, and Joanna Newsom currently sits atop my 2010 top 10 list. (In fact, we’ll be discussing another woman in the top 10 list later in this column.) The problem is that fewer female artists are allowed to be heard. Of course, there’s the usual crop of sexualized pop stars, but we’re not talking about them. We’re talking about artists, songwriters, musicians. Women who spend just as much time as their male counterparts crafting intelligent, personal music and letting it loose on the world.

I find, because of the imbalance, I tend to overcompensate. I cut women more slack than I do men, most of the time. I highly doubt I’ll ever buy a record by James Blunt, or Jack Johnson. But I have every Jewel album, including her two recent blander-than-bland stabs at country stardom. I heard something, some spark in that first album she made, that has sadly never returned. But while I’d have clambered off the train of any male artist who put me through the same Zelig-style facelessness Jewel has, I keep coming back for more. She’s one of the 27 I supported with my cash this year.

Same with Sarah McLachlan. She makes an album every seven or eight years now, and I dutifully pick it up, hoping for something with the vitality of Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. So far, I’ve been disappointed. But I still get that little tingle of excitement when I hear about a new McLachlan project. This year, not only did she release her sixth studio album, Laws of Illusion, she reignited her Lilith Fair tour, which purports to offer the best female artists in the world, all in one place.

I went to the first Lilith Fair, in 1997, and wrote a snarky column about it for Face Magazine. In that piece, I pointed out that men actually outnumbered women on the Lilith Fair stage by a factor of three to one, particularly since bands like the Cardigans, with only one female member, were invited. I got some angry letters after that, calling me a “clueless nerd” and a sexist. While I’ll cop to the former, I will definitely defend myself against the latter. If I were a sexist, would I have bought Laws of Illusion, and then suffered through it so many times, trying hard to like it?

Okay, I don’t hate the album. But I don’t understand how it can take McLachlan seven years to write and record songs like these. There’s minimal stylistic difference between this and Afterglow, from 2003. It’s once again produced by Pierre Marchand, who frames McLachlan’s voice in lush guitars, pianos and synthesizers, then smoothes it all out to forgettable wallpaper. Opener “Awakenings” is the most interesting thing here, with its quick-hit electronic beat, soaring chorus and piano-vocal coda. But it’s like she spent seven years working on this song, and tossed the rest of the album off.

As if to emphasize the point, two of these songs (“Don’t Give Up on Us” and “U Want Me 2”) appeared in exactly this form on McLachlan’s 2008 best-of collection. But many others here sound familiar as well. “Forgiveness” is another of McLachlan’s slow-piano-chords ballads, using the same structure as “Building a Mystery.” “Love Come” is the bastard child of “Possession,” but blander. I like closer “Bring On the Wonder,” but in the exact same way I like “Full of Grace.” (And it uses the “Building a Mystery” chords again…)

Again, I don’t hate Laws of Illusion. But it’s exactly the same kind of record McLachlan has made before. If you thought Surfacing and Afterglow were little masterpieces, and you’re hungry for more of the same, this album will do it for you. But if, like me, you’ve been waiting for McLachlan to grab hold of some grand inspiration again, and make an exceptional leap forward, you’ll be left wanting.

* * * * *

You can’t say McLachlan’s fellow Lilith-er Sheryl Crow hasn’t tried something different on her seventh album, 100 Miles from Memphis. Whether it works is another matter altogether.

Crow made her name on middling pop-rockers like “All I Wanna Do” and “A Change Would Do You Good,” and she’s mined similar ground since then. Two years ago, though, she released Detours, a modern protest album wrapped in history. It was my favorite thing she’d done since The Globe Sessions, and it bought her another chance with me. That chance is Memphis, a (ahem) detour into old-time Motown soul music, and it bores me as often as it makes me dance.

The first two tracks illustrate that dichotomy perfectly. Six-minute opener “Our Love is Fading” is a horn-drenched workout, a nice introduction to this new style. Crow sings this material fairly well, although she doesn’t adapt her voice at all – she sings this stuff the same way she sang “Everyday Is a Winding Road.” Still, the music is pretty good, and the horn charts are sweet. But that gives way to “Eye to Eye,” a lite-reggae bore that kills the album dead. I almost don’t want to go on after this one.

But track three is Crow’s take on Terence Trent D’Arby’s “Sign Your Name,” and so curiosity gets the better of me. I’ve always said D’Arby is an underrated artist, and “Sign Your Name” is a great little song. In Crow’s hands, though, it sounds like Paul Carrack. She smooths it out (of course she does), and this new arrangement really brings out Crow’s deficiencies as a soul singer. She brings no passion or, well, soul to this thing at all. Even Justin Timberlake can’t elevate this.

The rest of the album goes up and down. Virtually all of these songs suffer from Minute Too Long Syndrome, which isn’t a bad thing when the grooves are well-crafted, as on “Summer Day,” but makes numbers like “Peaceful Feeling” an endless bore. A little too often here, Crow basically just adds horns to her standard folk-rock and calls it soul music. And when she turns political on “Say What You Want,” it’s jarring. (And ham-fisted: “Ignorance is patriotic, reason is idiotic, winds of change keep on blowing, if this is America you’d never know it…”)

Overall, 100 Miles From Memphis is a valid experiment in theory, but pretty boring in execution. I like “Stop,” an orchestrated ballad that plays to Crow’s strengths, and her take on Citizen Cope’s “Sideways” is pleasant, if overlong. But I can’t keep from thinking how much better each and every one of these songs would be in the hands of Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, for example. And to end it with a note-for-note cover of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back,” to which Crow brings nothing, is just a waste of time. So this was Crow’s one chance, and we’ll see if I buy anything from her in the future.

* * * * *

But maybe the Lilith Fair lineup isn’t the best place to look for terrific female artists. True artistry demands that you take risks, and Lilith is all about the safe and comfortable path. The real musicians, the ones worth paying attention to, are the ones who sometimes baffle you with their choices, and no matter what, stay true to themselves.

It’s interesting that I bring all this up in the context of Liz Phair, considering how often she’s been accused of selling out. I even leveled that charge, and pretty strongly, when her self-titled album dropped in 2003. The foul-mouthed indie queen had scrubbed herself clean, hooked up with the team behind Avril Lavigne’s hits, and made a weak, limp stab at pop stardom. The album sucked, for the most part, and Phair’s integrity never made a comeback.

Except, well, it should have. 2005’s Somebody’s Miracle is a very good album, still clean-sounding and radio-ready, but inspired. Had this come out in place of the self-titled, few would have cried sellout. (Well, fewer.) And a true sellout would have done whatever her new managers at ATO Records wanted her to, rather than stick to her guns, make the music she wanted to make, and then part ways with the label over it, as she reportedly did sometime in the last five years.

Wondering what that music is like? Well, wonder no more, because earlier this month, Phair released her sixth album, Funstyle, as a $7 download through her website. The album’s first single, “Bollywood,” has some thinking she’s gone insane – it’s a pseudo-rapped rant about record companies over an unchanging, cheesy, tabla-fueled beat. It’s nuts. There are touches of Frank Zappa here and there, and a big ol’ chunk of Kevin Gilbert’s The Shaming of the True. It’s like nothing she’s ever done.

It’s also kind of awesome. I don’t necessarily even mean the song – it’s kind of a trifle, but it is funny, especially when she describes the aftermath of a murderous rage as “a bad day for the pool boy.” But I think the sheer gall Phair showed, putting this out there after a five-year absence, is pretty thrilling. Especially when so much else on Funstyle is more straightforward, more along the lines of what we expect from her at this point.

No, Funstyle isn’t all ridiculous raps and skits. Four of its 11 songs are jokes, including the opener and closer, but the other seven are serious pieces, most of which could fit nicely on Somebody’s Miracle. “Miss September” is sweet and sunny, “My My” is a slinky and convincing disco number, and the wonderfully-titled “And He Slayed Her” is a fine mid-tempo rocker with a good hook. Most interestingly, Phair has returned to a grittier, more home-demo style here – her voice is just as wavery as it was during her Exile in Guyville days, freed from the auto-tuner, and she sounds a lot more comfortable as a result.

Comfortable enough, it seems, to put out those four satirical swipes set to music. Opener “Smoke” is a few skits, one about Phair’s voice of self-doubt (which she carries around in a box), another about her inability to get into the best clubs in town, and another that finds her arguing with a record company exec, who only speaks in muffled, wordless sounds. “Bollywood” is right after it, delivering a one-two punch of batshit crazy. Thankfully, it’s another six tracks before we get “Beat is Up,” a song that juxtaposes a Dalai Lama-like voice dispensing wisdom with an airheaded housewife’s delivering banalities. (“I like the juicing? And the ginko… balboa?”) What she’s trying to say here is anyone’s guess.

And then there is the closer, “U Hate It.” This is the one on which she rhymes “I think I’m a genius” with “you’re being a peni-us,” quickly adding, “colada, that is.” Inspired, or insipid? I don’t even know, honestly. Sometimes I laugh, sometimes I groan. The rest of the song features a pair of record company men trashing Phair’s work, but then, when it proves to be popular, claiming they loved it all along. If nothing else, that’s ballsy. It’s also pretty damn funny.

Whatever you think of Funstyle – and I think it’s pretty entertaining, all told – you have to admit that Phair’s gone and done the unexpected again. Had anyone asked me to predict her next move, I would never have guessed she’d self-release an album on her website, rap over a Bhangra beat, or match Zappa in bitterness over the music industry. That, to me, is the mark of a good artist, female or otherwise – the ability to surprise me time and time again. That the record is actually pretty good helps, too, but Phair’s unpredictability is her greatest strength.

* * * * *

In the end, despite the gender difference, looking for music made by women is like anything else: you have to dig for the good stuff. And you’ll often find it in unexpected places. For instance, I never would have suspected, before picking it up, that Janelle Monae would make one of the best albums of the year, and that album would be released on P. Diddy’s label, Bad Boy.

But here it is. The ArchAndroid is an absolute masterpiece. Monae is a 24-year-old singer and composer from Kansas City with a strong, soulful voice. While she would be forgiven for using that voice to sing typical club-bangers and sex ballads, she decided instead to devote it to a four-part science fiction concept piece that obliterates genre boundaries and practically explodes with imagination and life. In the process, she proves once and for all that pop is not a four-letter word, and can be an amazingly fertile ground for skillful record-makers.

Okay, hang on, because I’m about to explain the concept. Metropolis is a full-blown sci-fi pop opera in four parts, which Monae calls suites. It’s not only named after Fritz Lang’s 1927 film, it borrows liberally from its plot – Monae’s Metropolis is about an android named Cindi Mayweather, cloned from Monae’s DNA, who falls in love with a human (quite against the rules), and becomes something of a messiah figure to the other androids in a futuristic city. She self-released the first of those four suites (called The Chase) in 2007, and The ArchAndroid, her debut full-length, encompasses the second and third. Confused yet?

Well, not to worry, because even if the concept means nothing to you, the album is a fully enjoyable ride from first note to last. How best to describe this thing? Imagine if Prince and Erykah Badu had a kid, and that kid really liked Blade Runner. The music on The ArchAndroid is somewhat retro-futuristic, like Prince’s ‘80s material, but it gallops through rock, Motown, electro, rap, ‘50s balladry, and just about anything else Monae can come up with. It changes every couple of minutes, too – like the best art, The ArchAndroid is restless, like Monae simply can’t wait to show us what she’s thought of next.

The album opens with an orchestral overture, then slams into a three-song mini-suite, each tune segueing into the next. “Faster” is just awesome, the quick-step beat and nimble guitar work supporting an army of harmonized Monaes, and “Locked Inside” features a terrific soul bridge, with a bass guitar line worthy of 1970s Stevie Wonder. “Cold War” is a soaring rocker, which flows directly into “Tightrope,” one of the album’s best. Over a skipping bass line, Monae and Big Boi spit out the rapid-fire lyrics, and Monae really shines on the chorus.

Throughout this record, I was amazed at the number and variety of Monae’s influences. “Oh Maker” references Simon and Garfunkel’s “Kathy’s Song,” while “Come Alive” could be a Squirrel Nut Zippers song, if not for the flailing electric guitar and Monae’s nearly-unhinged voice. Over in the third suite, which begins with another orchestral intro, she enlists Of Montreal (yes, that Of Montreal) to perform “Make the Bus,” a psychedelic Prince-esque explosion. “57821” is a ‘60s-style acoustic piece reminiscent of The Mamas and the Papas, complete with xylophones. (It’s named after Monae’s patient number in the futuristic hospital where doctors are recording the Metropolis story from her memories. For real, that’s the story.)

The whole thing ends with an eight-minute psychodrama called “BabopbyeYa,” which twists and turns through several orchestral detours, at times sounding like the score to the original Star Trek series. It’s massive and self-indulgent and kind of amazing. The striking thing about The ArchAndroid is that, in a pop landscape dominated by iTunes and download singles, it’s a cohesive – nay, seamless – conceptual album piece, designed to be listened to as a whole. And an album this complex and detailed will take you at least three complete listens to digest. At least.

That alone is worth praising, but Janelle Monae has gone above and beyond. Her album sounds to me like a blueprint for wide-ranging pop music of the future. It takes from everything – no music is off limits –and swirls it all up in an intoxicating brew. The ArchAndroid is easily one of the best albums of 2010, and that it’s the product of an insanely talented female artist is just the icing on the cake. Monae is proof that the sad state of women in music is a cause worth taking up. If, by letting more women in through the gates, we could get more albums like this one, I’d call that a win for everyone.

* * * * *

Next week, Arcade Fire, Black Crowes, Jimmy Gnecco and whatever else crosses my desk. 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.

Harvey Pekar died last week.

From the outside, Pekar was just some guy who worked as a file clerk for a veterans hospital in Cleveland. He lived what most would consider a relatively uneventful life, except for one thing: he chronicled that uneventful life in a comic book series called American Splendor. His sharp, fierce autobiography-in-progress gave him a measure of fame, both inside the comics world and out, culminating in 2003 with an American Splendor movie starring Paul Giamatti. (And Pekar himself, playing himself, right next to Giamatti, who was also playing him. Trust me, it works.)

It would be hard for me to overstate the impact Pekar had on comics, particularly autobiographical ones, which basically didn’t exist before American Splendor came along. The first issue was published in 1976, thrust into a comics marketplace bursting with superheroes and fantasy tales. But Pekar steadfastly refused to glamorize or sensationalize his life. His stories celebrated the mundane, the lives of average everyday people – and not just Pekar, but his co-workers, his wife, and even a few of the jazz musicians he loved. Even though he couldn’t draw, he enlisted an army of indie comics legends to illustrate his tales, and they basically lined up around the block for the privilege.

Pekar was irritable and irascible and difficult and bad-tempered and full of self-loathing, and he never shied away from any of that in his comics. There’s no doubt Pekar opened the door for the younger crop of autobio artists, like Seth and Chester Brown, people who latched onto the idea that everyone’s story is worth telling. It’s an idea I subscribe to myself, so I’m grateful for Pekar’s work too. If someone asked me what’s so special about Harvey Pekar, I would say nothing, and that’s exactly why he was such a treasure.

Pekar died at home on July 2 after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 70 years old.

* * * * *

On Sunday, I saw Iron Maiden play for the first time. I’ve been a Maiden fan since my teenage metalhead years, but somehow, I’ve never plunked down the cash and caught a show before. As part of my ongoing attempt to prove I’m not a doddering old man, I bought tickets for a Sunday night show in Tinley Park, more than an hour from my home, and steadfastly refused to take the next day off of work. I’ll show them, I said. I can still hang with the young folks, headbang for three hours, and be up at 6:30 a.m.

That was silly. Tired doesn’t even begin to describe my Monday.

But the show was fantastic. Here’s the thing: if you’re going to be in a band like Iron Maiden, who often goes as far over the top as gravity will allow, you have to commit to it. You need to give 150 percent all the time. And man, these guys delivered. Bruce Dickinson is 51 years old (which is about five years younger than I thought he was), but he spent the entire two-hour set running, jumping, leaping and singing at the top of his considerable lungs. He was a wonder to behold, and the rest of the band was amazing as well.

Maiden music is complcated and aggressive and relentless. They’re the original operatic metal band, and their songs routinely stretch to eight and nine minutes. Their set consisted almost entirely of material from the past 10 years, which probably disappointed some people, but since I love the last three records, I was happy to sing along. Plus, they blew through an amazing encore of “The Number of the Beast,” “Hallowed Be Thy Name” and “Running Free” before leaving the stage.

As if that wasn’t enough metal madness for one night, Dream Theater opened, playing a 45-minute, six-song set of their heaviest material. I’d never seen them live either, and watching guitarist John Petrucci and keyboardist Jordan Rudess do their tandem soloing thing live was revelatory. I don’t know how these five guys possibly got to the top of their game the way they have, or how they found each other and created this musical mind-meld that merges all of their astonishing skills. But watching them pull off this insanely complex material live was pretty awesome.

Thanks to Nate and Grant for being my concert buddies. I’d love to do it again. But maybe not on a work night. My aging joints still ache.

* * * * *

Speaking of things that are old, let’s talk about the longest-running science fiction show in the world.

Doctor Who began in 1963. It ran for 26 years, got canceled, returned with a TV movie in 1996, and was fully revived in 2005. All together, there are 31 seasons, two movies (including The Five Doctors) and eight specials, with a ninth on the way. There are more than 800 episodes, comprising about 500 hours of television.

You’d think the idea would have grown stale by now, right? But the central concept of the show is so basic, so open-ended, that it can be anything. As a famous comics creator once said, only the limits are imaginary. Here’s what Doctor Who is about: a strange man has adventures in time and space, and he brings people along with him for the ride. That’s it. It’s so simple that its possibilities are infinite. Who is often about Daleks and Cybermen and intergalactic war, but at its heart, it’s about the wonder of the universe, about the joy of discovery.

And in its just-completed 31st season, one of the best in the program’s history, it’s about stories, about the myths and legends that live in our minds. Forty-seven years in, and Doctor Who is finally plumbing its own status as modern myth, as cultural icon. The season, the first under the stewardship of head writer Steven Moffat, was an often heady mix of fairy tale and logic game, a 13-episode puzzle box that, when opened, revealed a joyous tale about the stories we tell ourselves, and the power they wield.

The final episode of that season airs Saturday in the U.S., but through the magic of the Internet, I saw it weeks ago. (Spoilers lie ahead, naturally.) I’ve had some time to think about the shape of this season, and compare it to previous ones. Moffat is a very different showrunner than his predecessor, Russell T. Davies, but they each are strong in areas where the other is weak, and this season underlined those differences. This season had no standout episodes, like “Blink” or “The Empty Child.” But then, the standouts under Davies were most often written by Moffat, and with him at the helm, the overall quality of plotting rose. Put it this way: Moffat set a higher bar, but fewer of this season’s episodes vaulted over it.

Having said that, here are a few things Moffat did right.

1. He hired Matt Smith. I have no idea where Moffat found the 27-year-old Smith, the 11th and youngest actor to play the part of the Doctor. But his intuition was spot-on: Smith was born to play this role. He is, without doubt, my favorite actor to step aboard the Tardis since the glory days of Tom Baker and Peter Davison. He’s goofier and more awkward than David Tennant and Christopher Eccleston, his two immediate predecessors, but he also has an alien quality those two fine actors lacked. I look at Smith and I instantly buy him as a 900-year-old Time Lord.

And he’s such a joy to watch. His repartee with River Song in “The Time of Angels” was masterful, and his attempts to settle into suburban life in “The Lodger” were comedy gold, but he brings a genuine heart and a piercing intelligence to his more serious scenes. Take, for instance, the lengthy sequence in “The Big Bang” where he travels back through time, finally ending up at the bedside of seven-year-old Amy Pond. Watch his face as he tells her his story, and says goodbye. It’s emotionally wrenching stuff, underplayed to perfection.

2. He hired Karen Gillan. She’s more than just a pretty face, although she certainly is that. Gillan was the perfect match for Smith’s Doctor, standing toe to toe with him as an equal partner. The entire 31st season is about Amy Pond, about the crack in time that robbed her of her life, and about how a childhood fairy tale made her whole again. Still, the character was underwritten, I feel. But Gillan found the soul of this strange and wonderful girl she’s playing, and made her presence felt. (Moffat also hired Arthur Darvill as Amy’s love, Rory Williams, and he was astounding as well.)

3. He wrote six episodes himself. Moffat is easily the best writer in Who’s stable, and this year, we got to see what he could do with a full season at his disposal. His half-dozen episodes were the best of the lot, I think, even though his writing often errs on the side of complexity over emotion. “The Eleventh Hour” is the strongest season premiere since the show’s revival, and “The Big Bang” one of its strongest climaxes. But it’s the creeping dread and final turnabouts of “The Pandorica Opens” and the dazzling Weeping Angels two-parter that I think really show off what Moffat can do.

4. He turned to writers you wouldn’t expect. Aside from Moffat’s six, the two most successful stories of the season came from writers who’d never penned an episode of Who in their lives. Simon Nye, creator of Men Behaving Badly, turned in the dreamscape fantasia “Amy’s Choice,” and Richard Curtis, writer/director of Love Actually and Pirate Radio, wrote a brilliant examination of depression and hope called “Vincent and the Doctor.” Neither of these are like anything seen in Doctor Who before, and the freshness that comes from not knowing or caring about the formula is unmistakable.

5. He brought fairy tales to Doctor Who. I’m amazed that no one tried this earlier, since it seems so obvious. A madman with a blue box who spirits people away on adventures through time and space? Who is already a fairy tale, and it’s so steeped in British culture at this point that it’s become a story parents tell their children, just like the works of the brothers Grimm. Moffat added a generous helping of fairy dust to the proceedings, beginning with young Amy Pond’s encounter with her “raggedy Doctor,” and ending with the adult Amy conjuring the Doctor and the Tardis from her memory, drawing on the power of a story she’d clung to most of her life.

It didn’t stop there, though. The season-long threat was a fairy tale, a crack in the wall, with monsters living on the other side. The Pandorica, the box in which the Doctor’s enemies finally trapped him, was a story passed down through generations, a modern myth. And even the trap the Autons laid for him came from a story – the memories of Amy Pond, retold through living plastic. Moffat’s thesis, that the stories we tell one another are alive, and have power, was given full flower in “The Big Bang,” particularly in its resolution. It doesn’t make sense, but it feels right. It feels magical.

6. The bow tie. Bow ties are cool.

And of course, some things he did wrong:

1. He approved “Victory of the Daleks.” Hoo boy, was this one lousy. Mark Gatiss wrote this absolute disaster, the third episode of the season and the only one I flat-out don’t like. The premise is brilliant: Winston Churchill uses Daleks to win World War II. The execution, however, is atrocious. This episode just keeps tumbling further and further into failure as it goes, concluding with the worst redesign of the Daleks ever (and they’ve been around almost as long as the show). Moffat needs to exercise some better quality control.

2. He went with Davies’ stable of writers. The weakest episodes of the season were the ones not penned by Moffat, Nye and Curtis, but by the same writers responsible for bog-standard Who episodes over the last five years. We’ve discussed Gatiss, but there was also Toby Whithouse and Chris Chibnall, turning in decent but unimaginative sci-fi tales. Only Gareth Roberts rose above with “The Lodger,” based on an old comic strip he’d written – that one got by on glorious dialogue and Matt Smith’s dazzling performance. Next year, I hope Moffat turns to even more novice or outside-the-box writers. He’s already enlisted Neil Gaiman for an episode, so that’s a good start.

3. He didn’t leave much time for character development. Russell T. Davies wasn’t particularly good at long-term plotting, and his resolutions often left much to be desired. But he was aces at character, at giving the Doctor and his companions real beating hearts (two, in the Doc’s case). Moffat has the opposite problem. His plots are brilliant, but his character work was lacking this year. I still don’t feel like we know Amy Pond very well, even though she was the center of the story, and all we know about Rory is he’s a simple guy who likes Amy. Next year, we need more space to breathe. We need to take our characters out of the maze of plot for a few minutes and really get to know them.

4. The fez. Fezzes aren’t cool.

That’s essentially it, though – the only faults I can find with an otherwise exemplary season of Doctor Who. It was funny, it was sad, it was crazy convoluted and mind-blowing, but most of all, it was magical. It reaffirmed the mission statement of the show: it’s a big wide universe, and anything is possible. Bring on the Christmas special, and season 32. And here’s hoping Matt Smith stays for years and years.

* * * * *

What’s that, you say? Music column? Oh, right, sorry. Here, have a review:

It’s a real surprise to me that Marc Cohn is considered a one-hit wonder. His one big smash remains “Walking in Memphis,” and if you’re gonna have a hit, you can only hope it’s as good as this one is. “Memphis” deserves to be one of those songs everybody knows. But then, so do so many other Marc Cohn songs. There’s “True Companion,” of course, which has somehow become a wedding staple, but there’s “Silver Thunderbird” and “No Rest for the Weary” and “She’s Becoming Gold” and “Girl of Mysterious Sorrow.” Most recently, there’s “Dance Back From the Grave,” from Cohn’s long-delayed fourth album, 2007’s Join the Parade. I swear, I didn’t hear a better song about New Orleans after Katrina from anyone.

Cohn is a terrific songwriter, is what I’m saying. So I’m not sure why he thought we’d want to hear an album of covers from him, especially since he’s only managed four records of original material in 19 years. I bought Listening Booth: 1970 simply because I’m a completist, and I want everything Cohn does. But I admit I didn’t approach this project with much excitement. When I buy a Marc Cohn CD, I want what I’ve always wanted from him: more wonderful original songs.

That said, I fully enjoyed this little record. For one thing, it’s not your standard covers album. It doubles as an argument for 1970 as one of the most important years in music history. All of these 12 songs were released that year, and you will know every single one of them. I was truly surprised to find out these dozen little masterpieces all have a common year of origin. Cohn’s wonderful liner notes describe the old listening booths record stores used to have, where customers could slip on headphones and cue up records of their choice, in semi-private. This album reflects many of the songs Cohn heard as a child through those headphones, songs that informed his early musical growth.

I can’t quibble with the selection. The album opens with the Cat Stevens classic “Wild World,” moves on through John Lennon’s “Look at Me” and Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” (both released as the world was coping with the Beatles’ breakup), and includes “The Letter” (the Box Tops), “The Only Living Boy in New York” (Simon and Garfunkel), “The Tears of a Clown” (Smokey Robinson and the Miracles), “No Matter What” (Badfinger), “New Speedway Boogie” (the Grateful Dead) and “Into the Mystic” (Van Morrison). It closes with a gorgeous take on Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Long as I Can See the Light.”

Musically, this is soft, mellow, acoustic and lovely. It was produced and largely played by John Leventhal, Shawn Colvin’s musical partner, and if you know his work, you know what this sounds like. Cohn’s voice is deeper than it used to be, but he sounds invigorated by the chance to sing so many of his favorite songs. He enlists some left-field help, like India.Arie, who sings on Bread’s “Make It With You,” and Aimee Mann, who provides harmonies on “No Matter What.” Everything falls into place nicely – this is a sweet little record, one to put on for a rainy Sunday afternoon, and Cohn sounds comfortable and happy.

So okay, Marc, I like your covers record. Now, how about writing a few more songs?

* * * * *

As I was putting this column to bed, I got news that Andy Hummel, Big Star’s original bassist, died at age 59 after a struggle with cancer. Man, it’s a bad year to be a Big Star fan. The band’s mastermind, Alex Chilton, died in March, leaving drummer Jody Stephens as the last surviving member of the band. Rest in peace, Andy.

Next week, a look at recent releases from the Lilith Fair set, and whatever else strikes my fancy. 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.

When I was younger, I used to run out of gas all the time.

I had just learned to drive, and my mother had given me my first car, a 1984 Toyota Corolla. It was a stick shift, and the gas gauge was broken. The only way to tell when to refuel was to count the miles on the trip odometer. Every 300 miles or so, I’d need a fresh tank.

Only I didn’t quite believe the odometer, so I’d push my luck. I’d be driving along, watching the numbers flip over – 310, 315 – certain that I’d be able to squeeze a few more miles out of the old girl. So when the car started convulsing and making choking noises, and I’d scan around furtively, searching my internal map of the area for a gas station, I was always surprised. I remember the car sputtering to a stop on the side of the road at least four times during my time with it, and each time, I just couldn’t believe it.

The lesson I learned was, it’s important to know when you’re out of gas, and you need to stop and refuel. You may not think you’re running on empty, but the evidence doesn’t lie.

That’s a lesson Neil Finn could stand to learn. I consider Finn one of the greatest songwriters alive right now, but listening to his recent output, you’d never know it. You have no idea how much I hate writing this next sentence: Finn’s last great song was “Turn and Run,” all the way back in 2001. Before that, he was unbeatable. He had a string of excellent tunes with Split Enz before taking the ball and running with it in Crowded House. Very few pop albums I’ve ever heard can touch those four original Crowded House records, released between 1986 and 1993.

Then came the great first Finn Brothers album, written with his brother Tim, and Neil’s two sterling solo records, Try Whistling This and One Nil. That’s just a great run for any songwriter, and One Nil put a wonderful capper on it – it contains some of my favorite Neil Finn songs, “Turn and Run” included, but also “Driving Me Mad,” “Human Kindness” and “Anytime.” It’s just a wonderful little record.

And then? I have no clue what happened. All I know is, I can barely even get through the Crowded House reunion album, 2007’s Time on Earth. Finn’s prodigious gift for melody seemed to have deserted him entirely, and he turned in an overlong slog, full of dirges and sad experiments. I was hoping it was a one-time failure, a rare dry spell, and Finn would be back to business before long. But now here’s Intriguer, the new Crowded House album, and it leaves me with only one conclusion: Neil Finn is out of gas.

Now, let’s be fair up front. Intriguer isn’t nearly as bad as Time on Earth. For one thing, I’ve listened to the entire album three times, without feeling the intense urge to shut it off, eject the disc and throw it at something hard. But none of these 10 songs come close to the standard Neil Finn has set for himself. It’s a lazy, hazy kind of record, one that trades in mid-tempos and has virtually no hooks. If you’re not paying attention, it will just kind of drift by. Finn songs simply don’t do that – they grab you, make you stop what you’re doing to listen with everything you have.

Not these, though. Intriguer’s first third is its strongest, and for a while, you might actually think you’re hearing a creative rebirth. “Saturday Sun” is the closest Finn comes to writing a great tune here. It’s got a marvelous propulsive bass-and-drums opener (as a side note, it’s always good to hear Nick Seymour play again), and a chorus that, while not dazzling, is certainly one you’ll remember. It’s also the closest this album comes to rocking out. From here, it’s mainly acoustic guitars and gauzy moods.

“Archer’s Arrows” is similarly nice, with Finn reaching for that falsetto in the chorus. And “Amsterdam” has a sweet minor-key melody in the verses, and some very cool chords, even if it never quite stumbles on a hook. And that’s kind of it. All the other songs are forgettable at best, boring at worst. The only thing worth hearing in “Either Side of the World” is Mickey Hart’s ascending piano line. “Falling Dove” goes for “Blackbird” in the verses, and “Lady Madonna” in the bridge, but falls far short of both. It’s not a terrible piece of music, just a blah one, although it’s worlds better than the plodding “Isolation” (despite Neil’s wife Sharon and son Liam pitching in) and the apathetic “Inside Out.”

Many will tell you that “Twice If You’re Lucky” is classic Crowded House. I can see how this should be a great song. It has a wonderful lyric about second chances (“These are times that come only once in your life, or twice if you’re lucky”) and the verses have potential. If Finn had come up with a compelling chorus, this could have been a winner. But he didn’t. “Twice If You’re Lucky” never quite takes off, and wastes a fine lyric on a blah melody. Of all of these 10 songs, this is the one I most wish I could love.

And the record just peters out from there, trickling away with the middling piano ballad “Elephants.” In all, the album probably earns a C+. It’s not unlistenable, there’s nothing here that utterly destroys the Crowded House legacy, but likewise, there’s nothing that adds to it either. And it loses points from me simply because an album by one of the world’s best living songwriters ought to be better than this. It’s possible that Intriguer will grow on me, but Neil Finn songs shouldn’t have to grow on me. They should grab me from listen one.

I want to love Intriguer. I don’t want to be upset with Finn for resurrecting the Crowded House name, and then turning out mediocre work under it. But that’s where I am. I feel like none of these 10 songs would have made the cut on the first four Crowded House albums. I feel like Finn himself should be bored by these tunes. I feel like listening to Woodface again, to remind me of when he was great.

But most of all, I feel like Neil Finn needs to take some time off. He’s put out an album of new songs every couple of years for a few decades now, and it sounds to me like he needs to recharge the ol’ batteries. Intriguer’s a better album than he’s made in a while, but perhaps with an extended vacation, he can come back with new material that can stand with his best. I hope so, because I hate writing unimpressed reviews of Neil Finn albums. It’s just not fun for me.

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Speaking of a guy who needs to take a break, here’s Trent Reznor.

Last year, Reznor famously put Nine Inch Nails to rest. The final (for now) NIN album, The Slip, was offered as a free download from his website, and it sounded like a freebie – the songs were fairly standard NIN stompers, with a couple of ballads and instrumentals thrown in, and the record had none of his usual meticulous attention to detail and flow. It was a weird way for one of the most interesting artists of the last 20 years to go out, but once the Wave Goodbye tour wound down, Reznor was fairly quick to announce his new project.

It’s called How to Destroy Angels, and it’s a collaboration with his wife, Mariqueen Maandig. But other than that, you’d never know this wasn’t just more Nine Inch Nails material, left over on Reznor’s hard drive. HTDA’s self-titled six-song EP emphasizes the spookier, dingier, crawl-through-the-muck side of NIN (think “Reptile” and “The Wretched” and “Me, I’m Not” and a dozen others), and Maandig’s vocals certainly add a new dimension to it. But what’s here is essentially Nine Inch Nails with a woman singing.

I don’t dislike this, but it isn’t anything new for Reznor. The EP even takes on some familiar lyrical topics: “Fur-Lined,” which I can definitely imagine Reznor singing, is about losing control and turning into an animal, Maandig asking again and again, “Is this really happening?” “A Drowning” (essentially a clone of “The Wretched”) is about not being able to save yourself, a theme cleverly illuminated by the repeated line “I don’t think I can save myself.” And “BBB” stands for “Big Black Boots,” and is about tyranny: “No more thought control, you do what you’re told.”

Count me as one of the NIN fans who was hoping How to Destroy Angels would lead Reznor to new places. It still might – it’s early days yet, and a full-length HTDA album could be something else altogether. There are hints of it here, with the mallet percussion in “The Believers” and the lengthy ambient playout of “A Drowning.” But mainly, this EP still finds Reznor mired in his old lyrical obsessions, and sticking to the beats and synth noises that populated NIN records. Maandig may be providing the vocals, but the voice is Reznor’s, and it’s the same as it ever was.

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What’s that? Review something I like a lot? Okay, how about this: I think Sia’s new album, We Are Born, is awesome.

You may remember Australian singer Sia Furler from her time with Zero 7, but you most likely recall her solo song “Breathe Me” – it was used to haunting and brilliant effect over the closing minutes of Six Feet Under in 2005. She has a marvelous voice, quirky yet soulful, and “Breathe Me” is a superb little song. You’ll forgive me for expecting her career to take off in this country, but alas, she remains virtually unknown.

For a while, Sia followed the Sarah McLachlan route, writing pretty ballads and singing the hell out of them. (There are several on her last record, 2008’s Some People Have Real Problems.) But We Are Born takes a splendid left turn – it’s a nearly non-stop party album, full to bursting with danceable beats, slinky bass lines, hooky choruses and fun, fun, fun. There are some who will tell you I’m opposed to fun, like I can’t let my hair down and enjoy a party record. If it’s as well-crafted as this one is, though, I’ve got no problem. Sign me up for the dance floor.

I knew I was going to love this once I heard the chorus of “Clap Your Hands,” the second track. Over a thumpity-thump bass line and some nifty synth gurgles, Sia belts out nonsensical lyrics (“Clap your hands, clap your hands, turn the lights on my nights, this is life and we only get one chance”) and wraps them around a killer little melody. “You’ve Changed” is similarly kickass, opening with a toy piano, slipping into some Franz Ferdinand guitar-disco, and making full use of Sia’s powerhouse voice. The tempo of the record is on overdrive – you have to wait until track five, “Be Good to Me,” for the first slowdown, and track 10 for the second. And neither of those slow things down too much.

We Are Born was produced by Greg Kurstin, the male half of The Bird and the Bee, which accounts for some of the kitschy fun on display. Kurstin co-wrote five songs here, and plays keyboards on every track. But it’s Furler who’s driving this bus. You can tell by the way she throws herself into the vocals here – she’s always been a good singer, but on tracks like “Cloud” and “I’m in Here,” she outdoes herself. Perhaps the best product of the Furler/Kurstin partnership is “Never Gonna Leave Me,” a hookalicious ditty with a chorus that will stay in your head for hours.

The album takes on darker tones as it goes on. The amazing “Cloud” is an atmospheric delight, with a soaring chorus and some nimble guitar work from Nick Valensi. (Valensi’s guitar is all over this album, adding just the right amount of rock to these dance-y tracks.) “I’m In Here,” reprised at the end in a piano-vocal version, is a trippy little ballad with some nifty melodic turns. And “The Co-Dependent” has an appealing ‘80s vibe, with little bursts of guitar and handclaps and a dark minor-key chorus. But don’t worry, the party never really stops – the record’s most serious track is a more beat-heavy cover of Madonna’s “Oh Father” that closes things out.

But even that can’t dull the 50 minutes of awesome that precede it. Sia has taken a bold step into full-on danceable fun, and done it with style. Far from being merely an entertaining detour, We Are Born is Sia’s best album, and if I had my way, it would be the blueprint for dance-pop records from now on. I hope radio pays attention this time, but even if it doesn’t, you should. If you like smart, well-crafted fun, this is the album for you.

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Next week, thoughts on Matt Smith’s first season of Doctor Who, and a review of the new Marc Cohn album. And whatever else happens to spark my interest. 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 been a Choir fan for 20 years.

I know, it’s difficult for me to believe too. I still vividly remember being a gangly 16-year-old misfit, and being drawn to a peculiar-looking album with a picture of a tire swing on the cover. This was Circle Slide, my first Choir album (their sixth), and I can still remember the feeling of sinking into its remarkable textures and grooves, letting it surround me. I’d never heard anything like it, and quite honestly, I still haven’t.

If you’ve never heard of the Choir, well, I can’t blame you. They started their career signed to various tiny Christian labels, and for the past 10 years, they’ve been completely independent, issuing new records on sax player Dan Michaels’ Galaxy 21 Music and playing as few shows as possible. They have made some of the most deeply moving and brilliant music I’ve ever encountered, and very few people have heard it.

So it goes, I guess. I used to be angry about it, but the band isn’t, so I’m not sure why I should be. Every time the Choir plays a concert, or releases an album, my overwhelming emotion is gratitude. I’m so very thankful to have this band in my life. So many others in their position would have hung it up by now, but the Choir soldiers on, still creating music unlike any other I know, and doing it with grace and wonder. The band seems grateful, too, to still be around and playing their songs to however many people buy and appreciate them. There’s no bitterness in what they do, so there’s no need for me to bring any to the table.

But really, there’s no other band like them. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, the Choir put out a remarkable string of swirly, experimental albums that expressed a dark and yet hopeful spirituality, one that made me, as a young man, think about my own life in ways I never had. Drummer Steve Hindalong, in addition to being some kind of mad percussion genius, is also a lyricist with a rare gift: his songs are specific and detailed, yet universal. He’s able to talk about his faith, yet fill his lyrics with doubt (“The cosmonauts were first in space, to look for God and find no trace…”). He’s able to write love songs full of the imperfection that is every true, long-lasting relationship (“I’m thinking it won’t get any worse, I’m thinking about buying you a hat and a purse, I’m thinking about strangling you, you know that never was more untrue…”).

And then there is Derri Daugherty, the man who gets to sing Hindalong’s words. Daugherty has a clear, high, simply beautiful voice, and while I like how he uses it in his other band, the Americana-style Lost Dogs, he was born to sing Choir songs. Daugherty is one of my favorite guitar players – he works with a sonic palette that would make most guitarists cry. He’s able to create oceans of beautiful noise, provide exactly the right clean-toned accent to every line, and rock like his hair’s on fire when he needs to. He’s simply amazing.

Add to that the off-kilter bass of Tim Chandler, the saxophone and lyricon of Michaels (he’s the only lyricon player I’ve ever seen, and he makes that instrument sing), and, in recent years, the ambient brilliance of Hammock guitarist Marc Byrd, and you have a unique sound, one that often feels like speeding down a dark road in the middle of a dream. The sound has its roots in many things – Daugherty’s obviously a big Robin Guthrie fan – but it is wholly theirs, and for me, instantly recognizable.

We haven’t had a lot of opportunity to hear that sound in the last 10 years. Just two albums, one in 2000 and one in 2005, totaling 80 minutes of material. And Flap Your Wings, the earlier of those records, just wasn’t very good. But somehow, the Choir has found a new burst of inspiration. 2005’s O How the Mighty Have Fallen was one of their very best albums – they found the perfect balance of unearthly atmospherics and down-to-earth melody on that one, and it felt like an arrival point and a rebirth. Also, it rocked like it had something to prove.

Five years later, here’s Burning Like the Midnight Sun, the Choir’s 12th album, and this one is even better. Part of the reason is they’re done proving whatever they had to on Mighty. It’s the difference between working hard to be one of the best bands in the world, and simply being one. Burning is more confident, its steps more certain, and because of that, it goes places no Choir album before it has gone. The last record was a mission statement. This one is mission accomplished.

You can hear it from the first notes of “Midnight Sun,” the scorching first single. The sound is reminiscent of ‘80s Choir albums, Daugherty’s huge and reverbed guitar ringing out a three-note phrase while Hindalong sets the pace. The major difference here is Daugherty has all but given up rhythm guitar, preferring to layer notes and soundscapes atop one another, just like he did in the Chase the Kangaroo days. Byrd pitches in with some dreamy sound paintings, as Daugherty launches into a killer chorus, one that truly sets the tone for latter-day Choir: “I’m not going down behind the mountain, I’m never gonna fade away, I’m burning like the midnight sun…”

If you can listen to this song and not want to hear the rest of the record, I don’t know what to say. It’s the perfect opening track, and as it turns out, it’s just the first half of the best one-two punch this band has delivered since the ‘80s. “That Melancholy Ghost,” at track two, is faster, more intricate, and more amazing. A song about the unpredictable moods of children, it features a super-fast lead guitar line that just knocks me out. Two songs in, and Burning Like the Midnight Sun already owns me.

This is the most confident, assured Choir album in 20 years. As such, the band doesn’t mind naming two songs after band members, and telling funny, personal stories in the lyrics. This is one for themselves, and for longtime fans. “Mr. Chandler” is a little masterpiece, a song about Tim’s run-in with airport security after fixing a typo on his ticket. The lyrics are satisfied with just telling this tale, not giving it extra significance, but the music is a dark and glorious crawl, dripping with import. When Daugherty sings “Mr. Chandler, you’ve got a fraudulent ticket,” it’s surprisingly scary.

“The Legend of Old Man Byrd” is much lighter. Written for Marc Byrd’s 40th birthday, the song’s kind of a cowboy tune, but rendered in the same chiming guitars and elastic bass notes as everything else here. It’s simple and fun, and a nice breather in the middle of what is a surprisingly serious record. It’s especially welcome after the album’s two most sentimental songs, which are also its weakest. The first, “Between Bare Trees” is a pretty little number, about holding on to the one you love before everything crashes down, but it’s never more than pretty, and the wavery vocals in the chorus don’t quite do it for me.

The other is “A Friend So Kind,” written as a eulogy for pianist and string arranger Tom Howard, who died in January. I was worried about this one just from the title, but the music is amazing. The minute-long “Biko”-style intro is suitably haunted, the acoustic guitar is gorgeous, the melody is striking and memorable, and Daugherty sings the hell out of it. The lyrics, though, are a little on the nose. They’re clearly heartfelt, and well-intentioned, but Hindalong usually digs deeper than this: “So now you’ve gone away in a sudden gust of wind, and we’re sadder than hell because we miss you, dear friend.” It’s a very personal song, and its sentiments are straightforward. If you can deal with that, you’ll love it.

In the album’s second half, though, Hindalong is on fire. There are songs on here that contain my favorite Choir lyrics, and the band stepped up, writing some incredible songs around them. The second half of Burning goes more spiritual and more political, and there are no moments of levity. It’s just full-on awesome, and it starts with “I’m Sorry I Laughed,” a dreamy tune about regretting our own weakness. Where “Mr. Chandler” merely told its story, here Hindalong uses an on-stage mishap as a metaphor for our own tendency not to extend grace when we should. (The band also reuses a blaring saxophone lick from Chase the Kangaroo. Yes, I’m that into the band that I noticed this, though Jeff Elbel noticed it first.)

But it’s “The Word Inside the Word” on which Hindalong outdoes himself. Here’s a guy who rarely makes sweeping statements about religion and spirituality, preferring to keep things personal, but he does so here, and it’s brilliant. He references Gandhi, Muhammad, Buddha and Martin Luther King Jr. as men of peace and mercy – not the name-drops you’d expect, but fitting ones – and takes to task those who would use religion as a bludgeon. “The message is not a curse, a weapon of ancient verse, come out of the dark age, turn the light on, I’ve already heard enough to know what I’m certain of, the word inside the word is love…” The song itself is a killer, a three-minute rocker with a superb chorus and some sterling guitar work from Daugherty. The breakdown takes my breath away. “Every child is Heaven’s own, drop the stone…”

“It Should’ve Been Obvious” is similar, a sideways look at those who judge, framed by a dip into history, when Christians owned slaves. He’s right, it should have been obvious, but it apparently wasn’t, and he uses that as a metaphor for our own mistakes now. Hindalong even makes a quick statement about homosexuality: “Yeah, that was me, the self-appointed judge of your own orientation, I studied law at the blind man’s school of cruel indoctrination.”

And then there’s “Invisible,” an absolutely explosive piece of music. Just listen to Daugherty’s nimble, ascending guitar line in the verses, and then marvel as he full-on rocks out on the choruses. The lyrics here describe a fever dream of demons on horses riding to kill us all, and they sport some trademark Hindalong abstractions: “Enticing voices, alluring dark, miraculous joy elixir jar, with wobbly knees and blurry vision, I’ve already made the wrong decision…”

“Say Goodbye to Neverland” closes out both the album and my favorite stretch of Choir songs in two decades, and it’s probably my favorite thing here. Over a mournful piano figure, Daugherty sings Hindalong’s words about innocence dying. The song is chilling and lovely, especially when Byrd starts his magical guitar noise behind it all. Then, just as the piece has built to a brilliant crescendo, everything stops, and Byrd takes over, painting the night sky with formless, glorious sound. A few more piano notes, and a last thought: “Breathe in, breathe out, heart don’t fail, embrace the moment…” And it’s over.

Now, let me be clear. I’m always grateful to hear new Choir material. No matter what they do, I will support them. But even I never thought I’d get to hear a new Choir record this good. Sonically, musically, lyrically, it is their best record in 20 years, the product of a creative high I never thought I’d hear them revel in again. It’s rare that a band celebrates 25 years together, let alone 28, and if they do, most bands start repeating themselves, or falling into a pit they can’t get out of. The Choir, somehow, has avoided both. Burning Like the Midnight Sun breaks new ground, and rides a wave of inspiration so wide and so deep it’s almost hard to believe.

I’ve said this before, but you don’t talk up a band like the Choir to prove how cool you are for knowing a band like this. You do it because to keep music this special to yourself would be criminal. I want you all to hear this, and hopefully love it as much as I do. If I had to pick a favorite band, it would most likely be the Choir, and Burning Like the Midnight Sun stands tall with the best of their work. This band changed my life, and they keep adding to my pile of good things. Thank you, guys. Thank you, thank you.

To hear the Choir, head to www.myspace.com/thechoir. To check out the amazing new album, go to www.thechoir.net.

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I saw the Choir, along with about 20 other bands, play the Cornerstone Festival in Bushnell this year. While I was there, I wrote up my observations, and I’ve posted them as a second column this week. Go here to read it. Short version: the festival was amazing, and I discovered a bunch of new bands to follow. Plus, I got to see Iona and Over the Rhine and Eisley and the Lost Dogs. It was a good time.

Next week, Crowded House returns, plus new things from Sia, Trent Reznor and others. 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.