I’m writing this on Record Store Day. I spent a ridiculous $114 on limited-edition stuff today at Kiss the Sky in Geneva, but it was absolutely worth it. I picked up some quality tunes from Nada Surf, Ani Difranco, Manchester Orchestra, Weezer and Fun, to name a few.

Better than that, though, was the opportunity to see something I never get to witness: a line of people in a record store. And I mean a line – more than a dozen people at a time, waiting for their chance to buy real-life, physical-product music from a brick-and-mortar shop. Since there are only about a thousand of those stores still in existence in the U.S., the show of support for them was heartening.

Record Store Day started in 2007, as a way to help the independent music store weather the current storm. With digital delivery quickly taking the place of my beloved CD as the preferred format, and the sheer number of people illegally downloading anything they want to hear on the rise, record stores have taken a significant hit in the last decade. The vinyl resurgence has helped, but not enough.

Me, I love independent record stores, and I love music in its physical form. For me, you can’t ever replace the feeling of browsing through stacks of music, uncovering that hidden gem. Downloading music just doesn’t bring me the sense of ownership that holding the CD does – for me, reading the notes and looking at the artwork is as much a part of the experience as listening to the music.

I know, I’m a dying breed. I get that all the time. But Record Store Day was created by and for people like me. It’s like having an international holiday of my very own. It was so gratifying to me to see so many people coming out to Kiss the Sky to revel in the same things I do – physical products sold by real, actual people. I know by the time you read this, we’ll have already gone back to the same old iPod culture, and I will again be the odd man out.

But for one day, it’s nice to be part of something like this. Soon both the CD and the independent record store will be gone. Until then, I’m happy to support both of those things any way I can, and events like Record Store Day make me feel like it isn’t a futile effort. And for that, I’m grateful.

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I’ve been looking forward to this week’s releases for a long time.

I play piano myself, so I’m always drawn to artists who do the same. I know some who think the piano is a weak-sister instrument, one that adds too much sweetness to the Real Rawk they love. But it’s a tough thing to play. Well, like all instruments, it’s an easy thing to play, but a tough thing to play well. And I always love hearing people play it well.

Matt Hales and Rufus Wainwright play it well, so you can imagine how excited I was to learn that they’d both be releasing new albums on the same day. The piano is, honestly, the only thing that unites the two of them. Hales is a British popster who goes by the name Aqualung, and writes somewhat reserved, accessible and pretty songs. Wainwright is a dramatic showman whose opulent arrangements and melodies often hit operatic heights. I like them both, but they definitely scratch different itches.

Still, there is one other thing that connects them: they’ve both made terrific new records. Longer reviews follow, but if you want a spoiler, here you go: buy both of these albums now.

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I’ve gone on and on before about what a lousy stage name Aqualung is, with its Jethro Tull associations and all. Matt Hales is unlikely to change it at this point, so I just have to live with it, and honestly, whatever he calls himself, his music is still worth hearing.

In 2007, Hales unleashed Memory Man, one of the finest albums of the last decade. A monolithic piano-pop masterpiece, Memory Man took Hales from decent to extraordinary in my eyes. The subsequent Words and Music was a bit of a hodgepodge, combining new songs and old, but was warm and pretty, and contained his most beautiful song, “Arrivals.” Still, it wasn’t quite the proper follow-up.

The new Magnetic North, on the other hand, is the next chapter. And where Memory Man was a massive studio construct, here Hales mostly just relaxes, giving us an album of breezy, sunny piano-pop ditties. I admit to being underwhelmed by the opening half on first listen, save for a couple of stunners – the rising-and-falling “Reel Me In,” and the goofy yet invigorating “Fingertip,” a song that always makes me want to dance. It’s so delightful that I don’t even notice how silly the lyrics are as I’m singing along.

The rest of the first half is, initially at least, merely pleasant. “36 Hours,” co-written with Paul Buchanan of the Blue Nile, sounds like an afternoon in the sun, its lazy melody floating by without making much of a mark. I quite like the somber “Sundowning,” but even that is missing one of those Matt Hales moments that make you gasp and smile. The drama of Memory Man is all but absent, and in its place, Hales has given us something cozy and comfortable.

But listen all the way through, and it will pull you in slowly. In fact, Magnetic North’s final four songs are its best, and the warm glow they leave you with elevates the less immediate ones at the beginning. After the brief yet glorious “California,” Hales digs in deep with “Remember Us,” an absolutely stunning six-minute ballad. From here, he can do no wrong. “Hummingbird” is a sprightly joy, Hales’ wife Kim Oliver joining him on vocals, and the haunting “Thin Air” contains several of those my-god-listen-to-this melodic moments.

As usual, Hales saves his prettiest and most affecting piece for last. The title track is just piano and voice, and it’s crushingly gorgeous. “You’re my compass, my magnetic north, you keep this old ship on course,” Hales sings, and when the melody soars upwards for the line “I’m begging you to stay true,” it’s a heart-stopper.

Magnetic North may not be as layered or as powerful as Memory Man, but it has enough graceful and well-written songs to keep Matt Hales’ streak going, and it grows and grows with repeated listens. It’s a simpler, more down-to-earth record, but its warm atmosphere works in its favor – this is the sound of a songwriter who loves his life and has nothing to prove. It is as confident and as lovely an album as one could hope for.

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But if you really want to have your heart ripped out, you need to hear Rufus Wainwright’s new one, All Days are Nights: Songs for Lulu. I’ve always said that tragedy brings out the best in an artist, and while I would never wish horrible things on anyone, the resulting art is often honest, painful and brilliant. That’s the case here – Wainwright wrote and recorded All Days are Nights while his mother, the venerable Kate McGarrigle, struggled against the cancer that would eventually kill her, on January 18 of this year.

The album is stripped bare, down to nothing but Wainwright’s piano and voice. The one picture of our host here finds him looking terrible – sad, heartbroken, unshaven, with one eye and eyebrow slathered with black makeup. (A close-up of that eye adorns the cover.) The record seems like a single thought, like Wainwright wandered into the studio one day in a reflective mood and played this entire sequence in one go.

The songs here are mostly slow and meditative. Wainwright is a fantastic piano player – just listen to his work on “The Dream” – and he takes his time, letting these pieces unfold at their own pace. The result is spellbinding, easily the most naked and emotionally real thing he’s given us. I was worried that removing his usual outsize arrangements would leave these songs too skeletal, but Wainwright sounds free here – free to be himself, with no pretense. Of course, Wainwright is a showman, so even his most honest work carries some of that drama. But this is the sound of a talented performer alone at night, with no spotlights, no curtain, and no cheering crowd.

Opener “Who Are You New York” sets the tone, Wainwright wandering the streets of his home city, looking for something indefinable. He takes stock in “Sad With What I Have,” one of the most crushing songs he’s ever written, and it segues beautifully into “Martha,” the tale of a late-night phone call to his sister. “Time to go up north and see mother, things are harder for her now,” he sings, and it’s like reality caves in on him.

Three of these songs are based on Shakespeare sonnets (including “Sonnet 43,” from which the title is taken: “All days are nights to see till I see thee, and nights bright days when dreams do show me thee”), and they are lovely. They slide right into this stream of consciousness, as does “Les Feux D’Artifice T’Appellant,” an aria taken from his opera Prima Donna, on which Wainwright unveils his flawless French accent. These pieces of Wainwright’s life only add to the sense that this is one long thought, like him telling his ailing mother what he’s been interested in lately.

But it’s closer “Zebulon” that leaves the most lasting impression. Written shortly after visiting his mother’s hospital room, the song is about trying desperately to hold on to and reconnect with the past. Wainwright conjures an old lover to talk to, hoping to take his mind off of things, and ends up confiding in him. “My mother’s in the hospital, my sister’s at the opera, I’m in love, but let’s not talk about it,” he sings, and between verses, the music mimics a slow, painful journey back to reality. It’s simply gorgeous, more heart-rending than I can even describe. It hurts.

The second half of the album’s title refers to Lulu, the mythical dark child within each one of us. (See also: Marillion’s “Interior Lulu.”) But this is not a depressing work, by any means. This is Wainwright healing himself through song, praying for the magic and wonder he feels at the piano to take him away. It’s incredibly sad and beautiful and brave, Wainwright simply being himself, by himself, and letting us listen in. Wainwright’s always been great, but this album is an absolute treasure.

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And now, the next installment in my top 20 of the 2000s.

#6. Fleet Foxes (2008).

This is the highest a debut album has placed on this chart, but Fleet Foxes isn’t just any old debut album. In fact, if there’s anything on this list I would call timeless, it’s this.

I don’t know how they did it, but this quintet from Seattle has somehow tapped into the deepest part of the endless river we call music. They play woodsy folk, sure, but through some magical alchemy I can’t explain or describe, the end result sounds older than time itself, like music that was grown by hand over centuries, tended to by generations of people. It sounds like tradition handed down, father to son, from a time when life was communicated through song.

Much of that magic comes from the harmonies, at once earthy and unearthly. All five Foxes sing, and most of the vocals here are given spellbinding arrangements. From these guys, it sounds effortless, like they simply open their mouths and this sound, older than time, comes out. But the songs are all marvelous, from the light-breaking-through “Sun It Rises” to the wistful closer, “Oliver James.” The songs on Fleet Foxes are all small, breakable things, but they seem grand and strong.

My favorites are “He Doesn’t Know Why,” which has a melody that could have come from Brian Wilson at his best; “Quiet Houses,” which is simply lovely; and “Your Protector,” which adds a bit of melancholy menace to the mix. But every single song sounds out of time, carefully preserved, yet vital and shimmering. It’s amazing to me that this is a debut album, since every element of it is so perfectly realized. Hearing this for the first time was one of those “where have you been all my life” moments for me, and I can’t wait to see where this band goes next.

A good sign for their future is the Sun Giant EP, recorded after the album, but released before it. This five-song gem contains my favorite Fleet Foxes song, “Mykonos.” I’m hoping they can even top this one in the future – a new album is expected later this year. But even if they can’t, Robin Pecknold and his band have at least given us this one perfect piece of work, and that’s more than most musicians manage in a lifetime.

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I’m running quite long this week, but I still wanted to mention one more thing.

If I had to put my finger on the loudest concert I’ve ever been to, it would be Type O Negative’s gig at the Asylum in Portland, Maine in 1999. Hundreds of people were crammed into this tiny box of a club, all screaming, and the music somehow battered all of that noise into submission. My ears were ringing for days afterwards. From my vantage point in the back, I could really only see one thing: immensely tall bassist/vocalist Peter Steele, towering over his bandmates, and leaning down to sing into a microphone straining up to reach him.

Peter Steele was an enigma, and his band no less of one. Type O Negative was billed as a metal band, but they were so much more than that – they combined Black Sabbath with the Beatles and progressive rock and goth and a hundred other things. Their six studio albums are all intense, huge affairs, with 10-minute songs and layered orchestration, but at the same time, they never let you forget that they were just four guys from Brooklyn. They covered Seals and Crofts, and Neil Young, and the musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch with equal aplomb, and while they were at times the heaviest band you’ve ever heard, they could also be one of the most graceful.

At the center of it all was Steele, with his morbid sense of humor, his endless willingness to poke fun at himself, but also his very real depression. Steele made fun of goth culture on “Black No. 1,” but he often tapped into real pain, and let it bleed all over the stage. Type O was a band unlike any other, and once they hit their stride (with Bloody Kisses in 1993), they never made a bad record. Their latest, 2007’s Dead Again, is one of their best.

Peter Steele died of heart failure on April 14. He was 48 years old. You’re not going to hear an awful lot about his life and death, because innovative goth-metal-prog bands from Brooklyn don’t bring out the tributes, so I wanted to say something here. I loved Type O Negative, and I’ll miss hearing new music from them. Rest in peace, Peter.

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Next week, I’ll be catching up with a few records I’ve missed. The week after that, the deluge begins, with new ones from the Hold Steady, Minus the Bear, the New Pornographers, Broken Social Scene, the Flaming Lips, Justin Currie, and the Deftones. Yes, all in one week. Whew!

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.

Going to be a shorter one this week. I’ve noticed that these columns keep getting longer and longer, and I promise you, that’s not intentional. Quite the opposite, actually, as I’m the kind of person who can only write concisely if I consciously work at it.

So this week, I’m going to try to write only as much as I have to. I’ve even set myself a time limit. We’ll see if I can adequately get my points across in fewer words and fewer minutes. I’ve already spent nearly 100 words telling you all about my plan to write shorter, so we’re not exactly off to a flying start.

But I’ve chosen to write about side projects this week, which should help. By definition, side projects don’t invite the depth of analysis that an artist’s main band does. The understanding is that we’re listening to a detour, a pitstop, and the real journey will continue when we’re done. No matter how interesting the detour is, it just isn’t getting us any further down the path, so the tendency of most critics is to talk about how the side project differs from the main one, pat it on the head and send it away with a wave.

I’m not sure that’s entirely fair. Some side projects are just as worthy as the primary ones. Look at Jack White’s multi-faceted career, for instance. It’s generally accepted that the White Stripes is his “main” band, but the work he’s done in the Raconteurs, and most especially in the Dead Weather, is sometimes more interesting. For White, I’m not sure his non-White Stripes bands are side projects. He treats them like his main ones.

I’m also not really sure if solo albums from members of flourishing bands should count, although it’s easy enough to think of them as sideshows. In many cases, solo albums are just artistic endeavors these artists have to get out of their systems, before they can recommit to their bread-and-butter jobs. Panda Bear makes solo albums, but that doesn’t mean Animal Collective is breaking up.

So Sigur Ros fans shouldn’t worry about the fact that singer Jon Bor Birgisson, better known as Jonsi, has just struck out on his own with a delightful little record called Go. You shouldn’t even be concerned that this comes one year after Jonsi’s collaborative effort with partner Alex Somers, called Riceboy Sleeps. Sigur Ros isn’t splitting apart. Most likely.

But hey, remember when Iceland’s best band was a complete mystery? Men and women with strange names and an even stranger sound, who sung in a made-up language and were never photographed or pictured in their album art? Remember when people thought the music was transmitted to Earth by aliens, so otherworldly was the sound? Well, the band has slowly and deliberately dismantled that image, and Go is absolutely the work of a demystified artist.

It’s also, believe it or not, boatloads of fun.

Go is 40 minutes of sprightly pop. Even though the trappings are similar to Sigur Ros – the bizarre, higher-than-high processed vocals, the shimmering synth beds, the instruments that don’t really sound like Earth instruments – the overall effect is completely different. These songs move. They jump around the room with unbridled joy. Led by boom-boom-boom drums, the first couple of tracks play like happy-pill anthems. It’s so sky-high enjoyable that I don’t even miss the inscrutability.

Oh, and one other thing. On the majority of these songs, Jonsi sings in English. On opener “Go Do,” he begins by urging the listener to “go sing too loud, make your voice break, sing it out” and ends by repeating “We should always know that we can do anything.” “Animal Arithmetic” is even more effervescent: “Everytime, everyone, everything’s full of life, everyday, everywhere, people are so alive…” It’s jarring at first to hear this voice sing words I understand, but it’s easy to get used to.

Even the more ethereal pieces, like “Tornado” and closer “Hengilas,” are in major keys, and strike triumphant notes. This is the most life-loving record Jonsi’s ever made, and the sound of it is enormous, massive, full to bursting. (Nico Mulhy’s string arrangements certainly don’t hurt.) Side project or no, this record is simply fantastic, and if it marks the start of Jonsi’s solo career, then I’ll try not to mourn Sigur Ros too much. This album has everything I like about them, plus a big, wide heart.

Jonsi may have made this album on his own, but there’s a lot of his main band here. Still, there are cases in which the re-branding of a side project simply makes sense, cases where the sound of the new band bears virtually no resemblance to the sound of the one from which it sprung. That, of course, makes the new band so much harder to market – labels want to tout the famous members of this unknown entity, but they don’t want to set the expectation of a similar sound.

That’s the story of Black Prairie, a new quintet that contains three members of the Decemberists: accordionist and singer Jenny Conlee, dobro player Chris Funk, and bassist Nate Query. Despite this pedigree, their debut album Feast of the Hunters’ Moon contains no jaunty folk songs, no epic ballads, and no Jethro Tull influence at all.

Instead, Black Prairie (which also includes guitarist Jon Neufeld and violinist Annalisa Tornfelt) has concocted a mostly-instrumental trip through a dozen forms of traditional music. There’s a strong bluegrass undercurrent to the whole thing, but we get several other flavors mixed in as well, like blues, tango and ballet. The bouquet of instruments is very interesting throughout – you don’t expect the sinister accordion on “Ostinato Del Caminito,” for example, and Tornfelt’s violin proves surprisingly versatile. The album is a bit of a wild ride, and musically, it reminds me of some of The Cat Mary’s work.

Still, my favorites here are the ones on which Conlee sings. The country weeper “Crooked Little Heart” is a standout, as is the traditional “Red Rocking Chair,” both sounding a bit like Cowboy Junkies tracks. I enjoyed Feast of the Hunters’ Moon, but I’m not sure I’d have bought this without the three Decemberists on board. And now that I’ve heard it, it will probably be relegated to Side Project Hell on my CD shelves. If you like instrumental bluegrass with hints of jazz and other musics, check it out. If you’re looking for more songs like “O Valencia,” you may want to give this one a pass.

So we’ve got side projects that sound a lot like the artists’ main bands, and those that sound nothing like them. My favorites, naturally, lie somewhere in the middle, ones on which you can hear the reasons you bought it in the first place, but can understand completely why a separate identity was needed. Does that make a lick of sense?

If you want a good example of what I’m talking about, pick up Amanda Palmer’s crazy new thing, Evelyn Evelyn.

Palmer, as you probably know, is one half of the Dresden Dolls, a highly theatrical combo inspired as much by German cabaret music as modern punk. Virtually everything Palmer has done has a curtain-going-up feel to it, but Evelyn Evelyn’s self-titled record is her first full-blown rock opera. It’s a collaboration with singer/songwriter Jason Webley, and it tells the story of Evelyn and Evelyn Neville, conjoined twins who work as circus performers. In fact, Evelyn Evelyn actually purports to be the debut from the twins themselves, with Palmer and Webley each voicing an Evelyn.

The story itself is dark and frightening, in that childlike Tim Burton way. The twins are abandoned at an early age, and bear witness to freakish death after freakish death. (These are detailed in creepy monotone narration in a trio of songs titled “Tragic Events.”) Eventually, they get up the courage to write their own songs, and post them to the Internet, thereby finding others who share their sense of alienation.

This is all set to a mix of spooky old movie themes and carnival music, all of it done without winking. Palmer and Webley immerse themselves in their tale, and you can imagine the Evelyns truly recounting the horrors of their lives, and mourning their only real friend, a conjoined-twin pachyderm called (what else?) Elephant Elephant. Yes, there is a song called “You Only Want Me ‘Cause You Want My Sister,” and it’s exactly what you think it is. And yes, the album ends with a mournful cover of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” which is almost the perfect joke.

The oddest thing here, though, is “My Space.” Meant to be the twins’ first single, it is a gaudy ‘80s power ballad, with sickly keyboards and “99 Luftballons”-style vocals. It also features backing vocals from a host of strange bedfellows, including author Neil Gaiman, Andrew W.K., “Weird Al” Yankovic, comedienne Margaret Cho, and Frances Cobain, daughter of Kurt and Courtney. You will either think this is the fullest realization of the album’s themes, or an utterly jarring and wholly inappropriate climax. Not to make a tasteless joke, but I’m of two minds about it.

As a piece of conceptual insanity, Evelyn Evelyn is sort of amazing. It’s the perfect side project: there will likely never be another one, so Palmer and Webley felt liberated, and went for broke. If you like the more theatrical aspects of the Dresden Dolls, and you have a taste for the macabre, I’d highly recommend picking this up. For me, it does what it should do – it shows me another side of an artist I admire (Palmer), and introduces me to one I will now seek out (Webley). It also freaks me out a little, but I think that’s intentional.

In the final analysis, you don’t really need any of these records. Side projects are just that – off to the side, adding context and color. But even that can be tremendous fun, and can allow you to see familiar artists in new lights. Whether they do anything else, these three albums certainly do that, and from that standpoint, they’re worthwhile and worthy.

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You know the drill by now. Here’s the next installment in my Top 20 of the 2000s:

#7. Keane, Under the Iron Sea (2006).

There were probably 500 British piano-pop bands to emerge in the last decade, and of all of them I heard, Keane is my favorite. And of their three albums, this is the best. Does that make it my favorite Brit-pop album of the decade? I think it does.

Keane’s been ahead of the pack since their 2004 debut, Hopes and Fears. They play clear-eyed, soaring pop music, earnest and true, and they have no use for irony or “cool” detachment. On their first two albums, they did it without guitars – Tim Rice-Oxley’s pianos and synthesizers were the only instruments, apart from Richard Hughes’ drums. You’d think that would lead to an empty sound, but you’d be wrong. Keane music is full and rich and powerful.

And they have a secret weapon in singer Tom Chaplin, who possesses one of the finest, strongest, most flexible voices you’ll ever hear. Chaplin live is just as amazing as Chaplin on record, and Chaplin on record blows me away. His voice may not have a unique character, which has led some to call it bland, but it’s a powerful instrument, and Chaplin can wield it like nobody’s business.

Under the Iron Sea is Keane’s Difficult Second Album, made in the wake of the worldwide success of Hopes and Fears. It is deeper and darker. It was still built using nothing but drums, pianos and synthesizers, but often, this album feels enormous, waves of sound cascading atop one another until the whole thing threatens to topple over. It remains grounded, however, by the extraordinary melodies. Every one of these songs is carefully built, and spins off into unexpected directions.

But beyond the fact that these melodies are impossibly infectious, and that “Crystal Ball” is one of the best pop songs of the decade, and that the first time you hear “Is It Any Wonder” and are told that there are no guitars on it your jaw will hit the floor, and that “Hamburg Song” is four minutes and 37 seconds of graceful, fragile beauty, this album rises above the competition because it is so deeply felt. It is, essentially, the modern Britpop Rumours, its darkest lyrics written as angry letters from Rice-Oxley to Chaplin. That Chaplin sings these songs only adds to the drama.

Keane nearly broke up while making Under the Iron Sea, Chaplin struggling with substance abuse all the while, and the band members channeled their pain and anger at each other into the songs. Look at “Is It Any Wonder,” still one of the most aggressive Keane tracks: “Now I think I was wrong, and you were laughing along, and now I look a fool for thinking you were on my side…” There is this, from “The Frog Prince”: “You’ve wandered so far from the person you are…” Or this, from “Leaving So Soon”: “Don’t look back, if I’m a weight around your neck, ‘cause if you don’t need me, I don’t need you.”

And there is “Hamburg Song,” which seems from the outside to be a declaration of romantic love, but is really a heartfelt attempt to make a friend see sense. “I give much more than I’d ever ask for,” Rice-Oxley writes, before delivering the clincher: “I want to be the place you call home.” Under the Iron Sea is about three people who have known each other their whole lives, and now find themselves growing apart. It is about its own creation, and about its authors’ near-dissolution. And when it ends, with the glorious “The Frog Prince” (and bonus track “Let It Slide”), it feels like redemption earned.

If Under the Iron Sea had been the last Keane album, it would have been an extraordinary way to go out. As it is, they’ve gone on to make an album (2008’s Perfect Symmetry) and an EP (Night Train, out in May) of bizarre, envelope-stretching music, incorporating an ‘80s sensibility and a Somalian rapper named K’Naan. (Oh, and guitars.) They’re still one of the best bands in the world, and they’re still innovating, finding new ways to change and redefine what they do.

But Under the Iron Sea remains their best work, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it always does. There’s something monolithic about this record, something that elevates it beyond a collection of amazing pop songs. Some combination of the sound, unlike anything I’ve ever heard, and the emotion, so thick and dark you can feel it. Under the Iron Sea is a truly great record from one of the few truly great new bands of the 2000s. And I can’t wait to hear where they go next.

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Remember, Saturday is Record Store Day. Support your local music store. Next week, I’ll be delving into piano-pop heaven with Aqualung and Rufus Wainwright. And I kept it under 3,000 words this week. Go me! 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.

On May 11, Quiet Company will release a six-song EP called Songs for Staying In. I’m not big on recommending records that, technically speaking, aren’t out yet – when magazines like Rolling Stone do this, it bugs me, because I want to hear what they’re talking about RIGHT NOW. I’m making an exception in this case for two reasons. One, the band is offering a free download of the EP immediately upon purchase, so you can, in fact, hear it now.

And two, it’s pretty damn great.

I’m running out of superlatives for QuietCo leader Taylor Muse, one of the best new songwriters to emerge in ages. Last year, the band’s second album Everyone You Love Will Be Happy Soon came within inches of the #1 spot on my top 10 list, on the strength of Muse’s unfailingly smart and melodic songs. On that album, Muse tackled faith and family and the state of the world with thoughtful and graceful lyrics, and the music… well, I still find these songs getting stuck in my head.

On Songs for Staying In, Muse puts aside all those weighty concerns, and composes a series of simple and beautiful love letters. It’s striking how contented he sounds here. Opener “How Do You Do It” is about the unending wonder of waking up next to the one you love. “Oh, you never leave my head, so let’s never leave the bed, at least for a while…,” Muse coos, and with one notable exception, that sets the tone for the EP. The music is joyous and grand, the horns coming in at just the right time, the guitars ringing out a Beatlesque romp.

Three of these six songs are rejects from the Everyone You Love sessions, but you’d never know it. They stand up proudly next to the new ones here. “Things You Already Know,” especially, is wonderful, orchestrated with horns and oboes – it’s like a missing Wings track. (Although the line “Life is always better when you’re fairly obscene” probably wouldn’t make it into a Macca song. Still…) The tune ends with a kazoo chorus that’ll make you grin for an hour.

For all the pomp and circumstance in these 28 minutes, my favorite thing here is “Hold My Head Above the Water,” a romantic acoustic ditty that features the singing debut of Muse’s wife, Leah. “Do you want to love me forever,” Taylor asks, and Leah responds, “I do, I do.” I know how it sounds, but it’s simply lovely. The heartwarming tone extends to the six-minute “If You Want,” which recalls the “nation of two” motif from Everyone You Love, and the epic closer, “The Biblical Sense of the Word.” I love that title, because it leads you to expect something sexual, and delivers a message of undying, unconditional adoration: “We make our lives worth living when we love each other…”

All of which makes the inclusion of “Jezebel” curious to me. It’s the oldest song here, and it has quite the subtitle: “A Song for My Friend About that Whore He Dated.” It’s a bitter, biting piece of music, its main character wishing he was dead, and imagining his girlfriend having sex with someone else. It ends with a plaintive, despairing “Come back to me,” and I can only think that this song is here for contrast. It’s a cautionary tale in the middle of a honeymoon, and it’s jarring. But the song is great.

Muse has said these songs are not his best work, and I can’t argue with him. This is the simplest and slightest QuietCo effort yet. But second-tier Taylor Muse songs still outdo most of what you can pick up in the record store on any given day. As a breather between main projects, Songs for Staying In is marvelous. Unabashedly romantic, in love with life, and as usual, chock full of some of the most delightful melodies anywhere.

With all that, you’d think Quiet Company would be more famous, and Songs for Staying In would be everywhere on its release date. It is, however, a self-distributed affair, and the best place to get it is the band’s website. There’s nothing wrong with self-releasing and building up a fanbase – it’s how some of my favorite artists, like Aimee Mann and Marillion, do it. But my secret wish is for millions of people to hear Quiet Company’s work, and fall in love with it, like I have. I guess that has to happen slowly, one new fan at a time.

And that, by the way, is your cue.

* * * * *

I know I promised a look at three live albums this week, and believe me, that was the original plan. But a funny thing happened while I was listening and taking notes: I found I only really wanted to talk about one of them. So that’s what I’m going to do. You can find smaller reviews of the other two, from the Weakerthans and the Pet Shop Boys, on my blog.

The one that’s truly captured my attention, though, is Dan Wilson’s Live at the Pantages.

Chances are you probably only know Dan Wilson as the leader of Semisonic. That band scored two massive hits with “Closing Time” and “Singing in My Sleep” in 1998, and the album those songs call home, Feeling Strangely Fine, was a mainstay of college and alternative radio at the time. It was also very good, and even though most had never heard of him before, it was a long-awaited moment in the sun for Wilson, a hard-working and very talented songwriter.

Before Semisonic, Wilson and his brother Matt were in a band called Trip Shakespeare, and they made four increasingly great records together. With Semisonic, Wilson made three, and an EP. All of them are worth hearing, even the last one, 2001’s bloated-yet-underrated All About Chemistry. And three years ago, Wilson released his first solo album, Free Life. Point is, the man’s been around for a long time, plying his trade.

Live at the Pantages is where it all comes together. Recorded in Minneapolis in 2008, this double-disc set makes the case for Dan Wilson, Awesome Songwriter. He digs deep into his catalog, resurrecting songs from both his prior bands, and playing collaborative tunes he’s composed with other writers through the years. But he mainly focuses on Free Life, and those songs are a revelation. Freed from their fussy studio arrangements, they come alive, and they sound amazing.

The album is divided into a solo acoustic set and a full band set, with longtime bassist John Munson (who was in Trip Shakespeare and Semisonic) along for the ride. The solo set gets right to the heart of the songs, and Wilson comes across as funny, charming and self-effacing. When he slips a bit from “Tangled Up in Blue” into opener “Hand on My Heart,” you know you’re in for something fun.

He then takes you on a trip through three related tunes, from three different phases of his career – it’s amazing that I never saw these connections before. One of these songs is “California,” a Semisonic number that has taken up permanent residence in my heart for more than 10 years. Wilson brings out the piano for “One True Love,” a sweet song he co-wrote with Carole King, and “Honey Please,” one of the highlights of Free Life. On that record, the song was obscured behind strings and vibes, but here, the soul of it is bared, and it’s lovely. I laughed out loud at his comment on the signature piano riff – of course he couldn’t stop playing it. It’s a great, circular thing.

The band set is louder, but just as intimate, if that makes sense. It concentrates on Free Life songs like “Against History” and “Baby Doll,” but these tunes sound resurrected, like they’ve crawled out of their tombs and brushed the dirt off. I can’t emphasize enough just how much better these loose, lively arrangements are than the ones on the proper record. Wilson makes his second Dylan reference of the night, covering “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” and whips out a new original, “Everything Green.”

The set closes with “All Kinds,” the opening song of Free Life, and Wilson gets the audience to sing along. Now, I’m a sucker for audience participation anyway, but I was left with a wide, wide grin after the last crowd choir chorus faded. It was just the perfect way to end this. I’ve been singing Dan Wilson’s praises for a long, long time, and with Live at the Pantages, he’s made it easy for me. If you want to hear an underrated songwriter at the top of his game, and listen to a master charm an audience at the same time, you couldn’t do much better than this. Go here and give it a try.

* * * * *

You know the drill by now. Here’s the next installment in my top 20 of the 2000s. I’m sure to get letters for this one…

#8. Joanna Newsom, Ys (2006).

I know a number of people who still think I was kidding when I named this the best album of 2006. Hopefully, this will put an end to that rumor. I love this album, completely and unreservedly.

I can see why many don’t take to Newsom, though. I have yet to find a way to describe what she does and make it sound appealing. Here goes one more try: Newsom plays the harp like an angel, sings like a drunken 10-year-old, writes long and twisty songs about stuffed animals and astronomy, and doesn’t seem to care if you get it or not. On this album, she worked with both Steve Albini and Van Dyke Parks, two names I never thought I’d see together, and she brings their styles together with her own beautifully.

Ys is five lengthy songs, most of them hovering around the 10-minute mark, and the ravishing “Only Skin” stretching to 17. It is performed entirely on harp and orchestra – none of the drums, guitars and pianos that cropped up on her subsequent record, Have One on Me. And yet, there isn’t one boring second here. The songs are long and winding odes, ducking down detours only to meet up with their main motifs later. Each one is perfectly composed, melodic and dramatic, and each takes its time unfolding.

If that weren’t enough to turn away the casual listener, there is Newsom’s voice. On Have One on Me, she refined her vocal instrument, wielding it like a well-forged sword. Here, though, it is a chirpy, unbridled thing, squeaking and yelping and slipping off notes. But somehow, that only adds to the inexplicable wonder of this album. Newsom sounds alien somehow, like an ambassador from another realm where everyday music sounds like this.

Van Dyke Parks contributes string arrangements to four of these five songs, and they’re amazing. The scary storybook “Monkey and Bear” benefits immensely from the power of the orchestra, and “Only Skin” slips from beautiful to explosive in heartbeats, thanks to the arrangements. Even the raw-throated plea of “Cosmia” (“And I miss your precious heart”) takes on even more force with the surging strings behind Newsom’s breaking voice.

But it’s “Sawdust and Diamonds” that takes the prize for me, and that one’s just 10 minutes of Newsom and her harp, alone. An almost crushingly beautiful piece, it builds and breaks magnificently, the ever-moving harp trills cascading into rushing waterfalls, then backing off again. It’s proof that the magic here is all Newsom, not her collaborators, and bodes well for what I hope is a long career. In fact, Have One on Me currently sits atop my 2010 top 10 list, and though it’s a touch too long, it’s still extraordinary music.

But it doesn’t quite top Ys. In 50 minutes here, Joanna Newsom proved herself a visionary talent, a writer and player of remarkable skill. She’s all alone on her own island, making the music she wants to hear, and though I’m sure she’s hoping we want to hear it too, our reactions to it don’t matter. It will be as strange and beautiful as she wants it to be, without compromise. That’s the mark of a great artist, one who will be around for decades to come. And I’ll be right there with her, aching to hear more.

* * * * *

I know the column’s already pretty long, but I wanted to share a few thoughts about The Eleventh Hour before I go.

It is perhaps no coincidence that I spent Easter morning watching the resurrection of one of my favorite television shows. Doctor Who entered its 31st season over the weekend with two new lead actors and a new head writer and producer. It was, in every way, a rebirth for a show that had grown somewhat predictable and stale over the past year. As much as I love the 10th Doctor, David Tennant, by the end of his time, his performance – and the writing of showrunner Russell T. Davies – had revealed its last facet. It was time for new blood.

And man oh man, did we get it. The 11th Doctor is Matt Smith. He’s 27 years old, making him the first Doctor younger than the show, in season terms. (In actual year-to-year terms, both Christopher Eccleston and Tennant are younger than the 47-year-old program.) I was worried about this gangly, awkward-looking kid taking on the part, but from the first moment, he simply was the Doctor. He has the old-man-in-a-young-man’s body thing down, and his physical goofiness contrasted nicely with his inner confidence.

And he sported suspenders, a tweed jacket and a bow tie! You can’t get more Doctor-ish than that.

Seriously, within 10 minutes, all my fears went out the window. New showrunner Steven Moffat, who has been the best Who writer since the show came back in 2005, played to his own strengths: The Eleventh Hour found him using time travel to create an instantly deep relationship with Karen Gillan’s Amy Pond, and casting a dangerous light on another common everyday thing, a crack in the wall. But it worked marvelously. Gillan acquitted herself well too, although I’m not likely to complain about the presence of a lovely Scottish redhead, am I?

Regeneration stories are, in a sense, all the same. The plot is lightweight, just an excuse to introduce the new Doctor to the audience. The Eleventh Hour followed this formula, but rose above it at the same time – the story was interesting enough, but the characters and the dialogue were fantastic. And I couldn’t take my eyes off of Matt Smith. Some have already compared Smith’s debut to Tom Baker taking over for Jon Pertwee in 1974 – a beloved and long-running Doctor being replaced by an unknown, who quickly eclipses his predecessor and redefines the role. We could be watching Who history.

Above all, though, The Eleventh Hour was boatloads of fun. I even broke into applause at one point. It was the strongest start for a new Doctor in… well, probably ever, and the next 12 weeks look like quite a ride. After months of worry, it’s clear my show is in safe hands. Matt Smith is the Doctor, and he is brilliant.

* * * * *

Next week, a smorgasbord, with Jonsi (of Sigur Ros), Evelyn Evelyn, MGMT, and maybe Black Prairie. Who? What? Tune in next week 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.

I am a Barenaked Ladies fan.

I know this is not the most fashionable thing to admit, but I can’t help it. I love this band. I remember first hearing Gordon, while in college, and responding equally to the goofy joy of “If I Had $1,000,000” and “Be My Yoko Ono,” and the more serious leanings of “What a Good Boy” and “The Flag.” Gordon gets a lot of stick, but I think it’s a fun little album, still. (And even now, whenever I say hello to my cat, Kitty, I have to follow it with a high-sung “Hello Kitty, yeah!”)

I followed the Canadian quintet as they rose from obscurity to mild fame to worldwide notoriety, and got better and better with each record. Born on a Pirate Ship contains “The Old Apartment,” yes, but it also has songs about accidental death and suicide and shoe boxes full of lies and people using people and then discarding them. And yes, Stunt has “One Week,” the main evidence for the prosecution that BNL is a novelty act. But it also has catchy little tunes about cross-dressing and auto-erotic asphyxiation and mutual masturbation. There’s some dark, dark stuff etched in these grooves.

I reacted negatively to Kevin Hearn at first – he replaced Andrew Creeggan on keyboards, and brought a more plastic, synthy sound to the mix. But I think he’s been a good fit for the band, and his textures meant a lot to Everything to Everyone, the band’s last great album. There’s some not-quite-funny stuff on it, like “Another Postcard,” but a deepening maturity informs most of it. “Aluminum” and “Unfinished” are examples of the marvelous, shimmering pop on offer here.

So yeah, I’m a Barenaked Ladies fan. Which is why it’s been so sad to watch them fall apart. The double album Barenaked Ladies Are Me/Are Men contained maybe three good songs amongst its 29, and the less said about children’s album Snacktime the better. I think the Ladies had been struggling against their reputation as fun-loving jesters, wanting desperately to be taken seriously as artists and writers of straightforward pop. The problem is, the straightforward pop they wrote was bland and forgettable, and the “fun” stuff sounded forced and phony.

And then Steven Page left. Page is the man with the most distinctive voice, and the one responsible for most of the dark lyrics I’ve liked so much over the years. I understand it was an acrimonious parting, and I imagine it would have to be, to end 20 years of friendship and musical partnership. I don’t think there’s any arguing that Page was at least 50 percent of the soul of this band, and his voice was one of the main things that drew people in.

The remaining Ladies have decided to go on without him, and listening to All in Good Time, their first Page-less album, I can’t help but conclude this was a bad idea. Struggling through this record actually makes me sad, so I don’t really want to dwell on it. Just a few thoughts.

The cover tells the story well. It’s a muted black-and-white shot of the four of them, looking pensive. Other pictures find them with the same sad-sack looks on their faces – there are no smiles here, and it strikes me that these pictures are a long way from the beach-ball fun of Gordon’s cover art. The record itself follows suit. It’s almost entirely straightforward pop-rock, much of it is slow and dreary, and most of the lyrics are about Page, and how angry they are that he left, and how much better they will be without him.

The opener is called “You Run Away.” I’m not sure it gets more obvious than that. The song is relentlessly downbeat, has no chorus, and takes the band’s more mature sound to its depressing extreme. The band does occasionally take the tempo up, but not often, and nothing here could be considered fun. (Except for one misbegotten track, and we’ll get to that in a minute.) Ed Robertson sings lead on most of these tracks, as he should – he’s always been the underrated half of the main BNL songwriting team – but Kevin Hearn and bassist Jim Creeggan take the mic a few times each as well. The result is more disjointed than democratic, alas, and I find myself missing Page’s inimitable voice.

But that’s over, and if there were any chance of reconciliation, this album probably put the last nail in that coffin. In addition to “You Run Away,” in which Robertson says “I tried, but you tried harder, I lied, but you lied smarter,” the band takes aim at Page in “I Have Learned,” and “How Long,” and most pointedly “Golden Boy.” In that one, Robertson urges Page to “hang your hat at someone else’s house.”

If all this woe-is-me rage feels like it might get monotonous, well, it does. Hearn and Creeggan are there to lighten the mood once in a while, and Hearn’s sweet “Watching the Northern Lights” at least ends things on a hopeful note. But the Ladies play everything straight, and write everything as if they’ve decided to become Lifehouse. As boring folk-pop goes, this isn’t awful, but it isn’t memorable either, even if producer Michael Phillip Wojewoda gives everything a rawer, more stripped-back sound.

Are there high points? Sure. These guys are too good at writing catchy pop songs to not let a few slip through. The best of these is “Every Subway Car,” a tale of love and graffiti set to crunchy electric guitars. “Ordinary” is a typical Ed Robertson ballad, but it’s been a while since I’ve heard one of those, and this is a nice one. “The Love We’re In” is a pretty waltz. I also like the buzzing guitars in “Summertime,” although that song isn’t as much of a romp as you’d expect.

Balancing all that off, unfortunately, is “Four Seconds,” the one moment of aren’t-we-zany “fun” on this album, and if the four remaining Ladies want to continue, they should curb this impulse immediately. Over a lame spaghetti Klezmer backdrop, Robertson half-heartedly raps about Bill Monroe and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I believe it’s drummer Tyler Stewart who has the honor of shouting out the chorus (“One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi four!”). This should be a hoot, but it’s unspeakably lame, and it stands out as this album’s most painful miscalculation.

But really, my problem with All in Good Time is that it’s the sound of a band I love limping towards the finish line. They make no bones about the difficult struggles they went through to make this thing, and I’m glad they managed it, but the record itself isn’t worth the pain. I had originally written a much snarkier version of this review, but I went with this instead, because this album doesn’t make me angry. It just makes me depressed. There’s virtually nothing here I want to return to, no moment that makes me glad the Ladies have continued on without Page. It just makes me sad to hear them reduced to this. I wanted to love this, but I can’t.

* * * * *

A letter from John Oates to Darryl Hall:

Hall! Hey, it’s Oates!

What’s going on? Not much here. Just got back from walking the dog around the retirement community. Man, this old pup is gonna wear me out before long. Hard to believe we’re in our 60s now, isn’t it? Time takes no time at all. (Hey, that sounds like a song!)

So listen, I’m writing you this because something strange is happening, and I can’t make sense of it on my own. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Hall, but… we’re cool again.

No, I promise you, this is true. The kids are singing our songs again. Did you see 500 Days of Summer? I expected just some nice romantic movie, and I’ll tell you, all the time travel tricks and stuff confused me, but my son loved it. So I’m watching this, and halfway through, there’s this dance scene, and guess what song they used? “You Make My Dreams.” I nearly choked on my buttered popcorn, and Aimee had to give me the Heimlich maneuver right there. It was a scene.

But I just couldn’t believe it. I haven’t heard that song in… what, 20 years? If that had been just a one-time thing, I wouldn’t even be writing you, but my son John brought home something else the other day. You’re going to want to sit down for this. It’s an album by two kids calling themselves The Bird and the Bee, and it’s called Interpreting the Masters. And guess who the masters are? Us!

I asked John about it, and he says The Bird and the Bee are cool. The Bird is Inara George, and the Bee is Greg Kurstin, who’s in some band called Geggy Tah. I swear, Hall, the names these kids come up with. What would have been wrong with calling the band George & Kurstin? Nothing, that’s what. But anyway, they’ve made a couple of records, had their songs played in some popular movies, and toured with Lily Allen. They’re cool.

And they like us! They really like us. I was worried about it at first, like maybe they were doing that irony thing people their age like to do. There’s nothing worse than music that winks at you, am I right? Just say something straightforward, write a good hook, and you have a song. I don’t know, I guess I expected this Bird and Bee to think our old stuff was goofy. A song like “Kiss on My List” doesn’t work unless you mean it, you know?

But Hall, you won’t believe this. These versions are great! The Bird and the Bee sound to me like what we thought the future would be in 1970. They’re kind of lounge-y, kind of soul-y, and they do everything with keyboards and drum machines. Inara George has a great voice, like an old-time torch singer. And listen, they do “I Can’t Go for That,” and “Sara Smile,” and “Maneater,” and “She’s Gone,” and “Private Eyes,” and they treat them like their own children.

I don’t know how to say this, exactly. They reinvent these songs, but they treat them with respect at the same time. Even “Maneater,” which even I think is a little silly, they do with style. They love these songs. I think they might love them as much as we do. I teared up a little at “One on One.” They do it so well. Hall, man, you have to hear this.

Another thing, too. The Bird and the Bee seem to have the same arrangement we did, where the pretty one goes out front and sings, and the smart one makes all the music and gets no credit for it. Haha! Just a little joke there. But you know it was all Oates, man. All Oates.

Anyway, Hall, we have that tour starting up soon, and I think we’re gonna see a lot more kids coming out to our shows. So I’m sure you know what I’m thinking. You grow the hair back, and I’ll get my mustache on again, and we’ll do this for real. Hall & Oates, taking on the world again. It’s our time, man. Our time.

Okay, I gotta go get some more Metamucil. But let’s do this.

Later,
Oates

* * * * *

And now, the next installment in my top 20 of the 2000s.

#9. Ben Folds, Rockin’ the Suburbs (2001).

Last week, I mentioned how difficult it was to pick an Aimee Mann album for this list. By contrast, it was all too easy to choose Rockin’ the Suburbs to represent Ben Folds. Of his three solo albums this decade, this is easily the best. Songs for Silverman is good, but a little too sedate, and Way to Normal isn’t as bad as I first thought, but is still his slightest and weakest.

I’ve been a fan of this piano-playing pure-pop genius since the first Ben Folds Five album, way back in 1995. The airwaves were ruled then by angry guitar-mopers whining about their heartbreak and addictions over slow, sludgy, joyless dirges. In the middle of that, here comes this skinny guy from North Carolina who plays piano like Elton John (but 1970s Elton John, not Disney movie Elton John), and has an uncanny knack for dazzling melody. These songs were smart, but they were also a lot of fun, and the playing… man, Folds can play.

The Five made three splendid records before splitting in 2000, and Folds went it alone one year later with Rockin’ the Suburbs. At the time, I was worried about it, but I shouldn’t have been – he just kept on doing what he does, writing fantastic pop songs and playing the hell out of them. Looking back on it now, it’s amazing to me how many stone cold classic songs can be found on this record. “Zak and Sara.” “Still Fighting It.” “Fred Jones Part 2.” The Luckiest.” And of course, the title track. They’re all here.

This is the first and, so far, only album on which Folds played almost all of the instruments, so in a lot of ways, Rockin’ the Suburbs is the most pure record he’s done. It strikes his trademark balance between snark and sentiment, often in the same song. But what he does here better than he’s ever done is tell stories. On Suburbs we’re introduced to a plethora of new Folds characters: Annie, Zak, Sara, Stan, Lisa, Cathy and Lucretia, plus we get a reappearance by Fred Jones (from “Cigarette,” on BFF’s Whatever and Ever Amen album). Over classic pop backdrops, Folds spins these tales, and the people in them seem real.

Then there’s the suburban rage-rocker at the heart of “Rockin’ the Suburbs,” still the finest piece of satire on the whole rap-rock thing I’ve heard. It’s somewhat jarring on this album, since it’s the one piece of unbridled whimsy, but it makes its points well: “I got shit running through my brain, so intense that I can’t explain, all alone in my white-boy pain, shake your booty while the band complains…” It’s this side of Folds that dominated Way to Normal, and his satirical knives were dulled by that point, but here, this song simply rocks.

Most of Suburbs, however, is sweet and sad. In “Annie Waits,” a jilted woman vows never to hang on a man’s call again. “Zak and Sara” details one teen girl’s battle with mental illness, all while her friend plays her favorite song on guitar. I can hardly listen to “Fred Jones,” as it’s about an old newspaper man being shown the door after 25 years. But I still love “The Ascent of Stan,” a rollicking tale of a man who sells out his hippie dreams.

Amidst these stores are two deeply personal songs, among the most beautiful Folds has ever written. “Still Fighting It” is a letter to his son Louis, explaining that it’s “so hard to grow up, but everybody does,” and concluding with a plaintive apology: “You’re so much like me, I’m sorry.” And “The Luckiest” may well be Folds’ prettiest song, a simple declaration of love told in some delightfully off-kilter ways. If he’s written one song that will stand the test of time, it’s probably this one.

But it’s not my favorite. No, my favorite is the forgotten gem at track eight, “Carrying Cathy.” For my money, Folds has never penned a more moving story, and the way he gives the title new meaning and resonance at the end is the mark of a master. It’s this side of Folds that I hope novelist Nick Hornby ignites through their collaboration, Picture Window, slated for later this year. When Folds is on, as he is on “Carrying Cathy,” he is one of the finest songwriters anywhere.

I’ve said it before, but some day, Ben Folds is going to make an inescapably great, absolutely perfect pop album. He hasn’t quite done it yet – a couple of similar-minded popsters actually ranked higher on this list – but Rockin’ the Suburbs is the closest he’s come. And to be honest, he didn’t miss by much here. This album is non-stop wonderful, striking the delicate balance between the silly and heartwarming sides of Folds’ personality. I hope we hear its like from him again.

* * * * *

But wait, there’s more. We’re not quite done yet, because it’s time for the First Quarter Report.

For newbies, every year I keep a running top 10 list, swapping in new albums as they come out. I post the final list in the last weeks of December, but I thought it might be fun to give readers (that’s you guys!) a glimpse of the list in progress throughout the year.

So at the end of each quarter, I reveal what my top 10 list would look like, were I forced to post it then. What follows is the standings at the end of March 2010, and I have to say, this year has been extraordinary so far. I even have a few worthy records that are disqualified from the list: Peter Gabriel’s Scratch My Back and Johnny Cash’s American VI: Ain’t No Grave. Both are covers albums, and therefore ineligible. I have some honorable mentions, too, but I won’t bore you with them. Suffice it to say, if it continues like this, I’ll be a happy (but broke) music fan at the end of the year.

Here’s the list, as it stands right now:

#10. The Magnetic Fields, Realism.
#9. OK Go, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky.
#8. Final Fantasy, Heartland.
#7. Fair, Disappearing World.
#6. Beach House, Teen Dream.
#5. Shearwater, The Golden Archipelago.
#4. Corinne Bailey Rae, The Sea.
#3. BT, These Hopeful Machines.
#2. Yeasayer, Odd Blood.
#1. Joanna Newsom, Have One on Me.

So yeah, 2010, keep it up. I have high hopes for the second quarter, which will see new ones from Rufus Wainwright, Aqualung, the Hold Steady, Minus the Bear, the New Pornographers, Keane, the Dead Weather, the Black Keys, Rooney, Teenage Fanclub, and Okkervil River (backing up Roky Erickson, who is, remarkably, still alive). It looks pretty good all laid out like that, doesn’t it?

Next week, some live albums from Pet Shop Boys, the Weakerthans and Dan Wilson. And probably some thoughts on the 11th Doctor, who makes his debut the day before Easter. Thanks to Mike Lachance for inspiring the Bird and the Bee review.

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.

Alex Chilton was one of those musicians whose influence far outstripped his fame.

When he was 16 years old, he scored a number one hit as the singer of the Box Tops, with a song called “The Letter.” Everyone knows this song: “Lonely days are gone, I’m a-goin’ home, my baby just wrote me a letter…” The Box Tops had other hits, too, including “Neon Rainbow” and “Cry Like a Baby,” but they’ll always be remembered for “The Letter.”

And had Chilton stopped there, news of his death last week at age 59 of a heart attack would still have been important. But he didn’t stop there. In 1971, Chilton formed Big Star, and subsequently made three albums that should be in every pop lover’s collection. All you need to do is listen to the first half of the debut, #1 Record, to hear why. “The Ballad of El Goodo.” “In the Street.” “Thirteen.” “Don’t Lie to Me.” Pure pop classics.

Big Star never got the acclaim they deserved. Their record company, Ardent, even turned down their immense third album, Third/Sister Lovers, citing low sales of the first two. (Oh, and also? Third/Sister Lovers is a crazy, messy, uncommercial thing, the kind no record company thinks they can sell.) But ask any power pop songwriter with an electric guitar for a list of influences, and Chilton will be there. Hell, he was such an influence on Paul Westerberg that the Replacements even named a song after him.

Chilton’s death leaves the pop skyline a little emptier. He may not have been as famous as he should have been, but he was an important figure, a terrific songwriter, and a hero to millions of kids with six-strings and a love of good melody. Rest in peace, Alex.

* * * * *

Every week, I go to my local record store and pick up the new CDs. And every week, I bring the resulting pile into work, and hand them over to our photo editor, a delightful woman named Marianne. She will pore through the stack, picking out the ones she wants to hear, and she’ll often comment on my predilection for “weenie” music. Finally, the other week, she point-blank asked me: “Do you have anything that rocks?”

This one’s for her.

Now, I love me some dreamy, sweet acoustic pop. I also enjoy all kinds of things played on pianos and violins. But never let it be said that I do not also, on occasion, when no one’s looking, like to rock the fuck out. The crushing, all-powerful sound of stomp-stomp-stomp Real Rock gets the blood going like little else, and when I’m done singing my little fairy songs played by chirpy girls on harps, I have been known to indulge in said rock, and also in the roll that often accompanies it. Verily, I tell thee.

It just usually takes more than a good beat and a sloppy six-string to bring me back. The real masters of rock ‘n’ roll play just as well as the artsy folkies I love, only they do it with an energy and an abandon that, when done right, rocks your face off. Their work will stand up to repeat listens, though, even once the initial thrill is gone.

Take Jack White, for instance. It took me a while to get on the White Stripes bandwagon – I still like both of White’s other bands, the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather, better than the one that made him famous. I appreciate White’s explosive talent on the guitar, and I like when he changes things up. The last couple of Stripes albums have been surprisingly diverse.

But I have to admit, I also love it when he goes all rock god on us. The Stripes’ new live album, Under Great White Northern Lights, is an hour of furious abandon and six-string heroics, and should be all the proof anyone needs that Jack White is the living spirit of the ‘70s, when men were judged by the ferocity of their playing, and just how far they were willing to take things on stage. After hearing this, no one can say Jack White holds anything back.

Of course, there are two Whites in the Stripes, and the other has always been more problematic for me. Meg White is an extremely basic drummer, like a less awesome John Bonham in a red and white dress. She essentially provides a powerhouse foundation for White to ramble over, but several times on Northern Lights, she misses beats and nearly throws off the song. What she does, she does well, but there’s no art in her playing, no setting on her internal metronome that isn’t “bash like mad.”

Luckily, the Michigan madman who handles the rest of the music is in fine form here. He’s basically the other three-fourths of Led Zeppelin live – he screams like Robert Plant, wails like Jimmy Page, and plays the organ like John Paul Jones, on ass-kickers like “I’m Slowly Turning Into You.” Jack White is even more unhinged on stage than he is in the studio, and at times it feels like his performance is hanging by a thin wire, ready to tumble into an unpredictable heap.

But he holds it together – the Stripes live are just the right amount of sloppy. They slow it down a couple of times, for “We Are Gonna Be Friends” and their signature cover of Burt Bacharach’s “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself.” For most of this record, though, White is a powerhouse – just listen to closer “Seven Nation Army.” I mean, damn. The Stripes even made me like “Fell in Love With a Girl” for the first time here, by accentuating its bluesy bits, as opposed to its garage-rock ones.

Under Great White Northern Lights is the soundtrack to a documentary of the same name, which I haven’t seen. But it’s on my list. It took 10 years and two other Jack White bands to get me to appreciate the White Stripes, but now that I’m on board, I think this record is an hour of crazy-ass bliss.

Of course, rock bands tend to rock more live, but some of them are able to keep that energy when they get into the studio. That’s actually not an easy thing to do – studio albums are generally recorded in pieces, the drums and bass laid down before the guitars and vocals, and all of it’s done in a sterile little room, with no audience to feed back emotion. That’s why bands like Metallica end up making albums like Load.

Not so New Jersey’s Titus Andronicus. Capturing a live energy is pretty much their reason for being. In fact, their debut album, The Airing of Grievances, offered little else. When I chastised online indie-rock critics for championing some awful, awful stuff a couple of weeks ago, I was thinking of records like The Airing of Grievances, one of the worst pieces of musical shit I have ever heard. Three chords, amateur playing, incoherent screaming, no melody, 8.5 on Pitchfork. Naturally.

But despite that, I was inexplicably drawn to this band’s sophomore effort, The Monitor. Here’s why: it’s a 65-minute rock opera about the Civil War. You know I can’t resist a good rock opera.

Now, truthfully, The Monitor isn’t all about the Civil War. But it uses that conflict as a metaphor throughout, for everyday struggles. (Repeated refrain “the enemy is everywhere” references both the horror of battle and the effort it takes just to get up every day.) The Monitor is, however, a rowdy, emotional freight train of a record, bursting with ambition yet retaining that youthful, dig-my-heart-out-with-a-rusty-spoon feeling of the first album. That is, by the way, a good thing.

Titus lyrically reference their two main musical touchstones here in the first verse of opener “A More Perfect Union”: Bruce Springsteen and Billy Bragg, only louder and faster. Patrick Stickles sounds like a young Conor Oberst – the guy can’t sing, but he makes his spleen-venting work through sheer force of will. The Monitor pretties up its punk with barrelhouse pianos, bagpipes, strings and horns, and songs are interspersed with dramatic readings from speeches by Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. Five of these 10 songs blow by seven minutes, with the epic closer, “The Battle of Hampton Roads,” stretching to 14.

Yes, the Titus boys have done everything they could to be more ambitious, except for one thing: they didn’t learn any more chords. All of these songs are simple and straightforward, relying on the same three or four chords over and over. And yet, the whole thing is done with such full-blooded abandon, such commitment, and such exuberance that it works anyway. You’ll be shouting along (“It’s still us against them!”) and pounding your fist in the air. Perhaps it’s the band’s use of old-time American music to dress up its Civil War imagery. I don’t know. But it all coheres, in ways I didn’t expect.

The Monitor is an insane album, no doubt, and its dogged simplicity probably grounds it. Whatever makes this record tick, it’s a raw and riveting listen, a nugget of ambition swallowed up by a shit-ton of Real Rock. I can’t explain why I like it as much as I do, but I do. It’s loud, fast, dramatic and widescreen, and it reaches for the sky. All that, and Marianne will probably like it, too.

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We’re halfway through my list of the Top 20 Albums of the 2000s, and with this week’s installment, we start the countdown’s home stretch. First, a look back at the first half, the way they do on those “top videos of the week” shows:

#20. Bruce Cockburn, You’ve Never Seen Everything.
#19. Vampire Weekend.
#18. Over the Rhine, Ohio.
#17. The Choir, O How the Mighty Have Fallen.
#16. Aqualung, Memory Man.
#15. Silverchair, Young Modern.
#14. The Decemberists, The Hazards of Love.
#13. Mutemath.
#12. Daniel Amos, Mr. Buechner’s Dream.
#11. Duncan Sheik, Phantom Moon.

And now, onward:

#10. Aimee Mann, The Forgotten Arm (2005).

It was hard to pick an Aimee Mann album for this list. She’s one of my very favorite songwriters, and she’s never failed to earn a spot on my top 10 list. Over the last 10 years, Mann made four fantastic records, starting with Bachelor No. 2 in 2000 and ending with last year’s @#%&*! Smilers. (That’s not counting her wonderful Christmas record, too.) She’s so consistently good that comparing one Mann album against another is a futile gesture. You really should just hear them all.

But I selected The Forgotten Arm for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it’s Mann’s first and only concept album – its 12 tunes tell the tale of John, a Vietnam veteran and boxer, and his inability to connect with Caroline, the love of his life. The two fight and drink and mope and fight some more, and at the end, they realize they don’t fit, even though they love each other. It’s a simple plot, to be certain, but it allows Mann to really get inside these characters. Just about all of her songs are about lost souls fumbling towards any solace they can find, but on The Forgotten Arm, Mann truly delves deep.

For another, she enlisted guitarist Joe Henry to produce this album, one of the few times she’s handed over the reins. Henry finds a more aggressive, more live-sounding tone – the album is actually sloppy, by Mann standards, and the energy level is several notches higher than usual. This is Aimee Mann’s raw rock record, in a way, and it reaches out and grabs you.

But mainly, I’m naming The Forgotten Arm to this list because its songs are perfect. I don’t mean they’re pretty good, or even that they’re great. They’re glittering diamonds of perfection. Even the weaker ones, like “King of the Jailhouse,” are amazing, and the best numbers, like “Going Through the Motions” and “She Really Wants You,” simply cannot be improved. Listening to this album is like taking a four-year graduate-level class in songwriting. Most musicians would sell their souls to be able to write like this.

Mann knows she’s a throwback to an age when melody and craft truly mattered. Her whole style reflects this: The Forgotten Arm is designed like a dimestore novel, with a table of contents, illustrations and a blurb on the back cover. But her work is timeless. These songs will sound as good in 100 years as they do right now. The Forgotten Arm’s characters and story is the closest Mann comes to a gimmick. Her thing is writing perfect songs, and singing them beautifully.

This is a dark and painful album, to be sure. John and Caroline struggle with what they need – drink, drugs, sex, each other – throughout, and the resolution, though gorgeous, is not as hopeful as it may seem. Mann’s worldview can be depressing sometimes, but she makes pain so beautiful, so affecting, that her albums are like little emotional conduits. This record had me in pieces. Just listen to “Video,” or “I Can’t Help You Anymore,” or the closing track, “Beautiful.” The final sentiment is a heartbreaker, and could be sung from either character’s point of view: “I wish you could see it too, how I see you.”

But the final reason this album gets the nod is track eight. “Little Bombs” is my favorite Aimee Mann song, a distillation of everything I love about her. It finds John alone and miserable in his ratty hotel room, contemplating his life over a gorgeous shuffling acoustic backdrop, and his conclusion is shattering: “Life just kind of empties out, less a deluge than a drought…” That’s been Aimee Mann’s view for her entire career: life is a series of meaningless moments, and we’re all stumbling blind, trying to make our way through it.

No songwriter has ever made hopelessness her playground like Mann has, and no one has ever written songs this bleak, and yet this singable and loveable. Mann clearly loves her characters, on this album and others, and empathizes with them, and by the end of The Forgotten Arm, you’ll be right there with her. This is Aimee Mann’s best album of the last 10 years, but the margin is slim – everything she does is wonderful. She’s a national treasure.

As a side note, The Forgotten Arm is named after a boxing term for the punch you don’t see coming. In a way, she’s been writing about that very thing for her entire brilliant career.

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Next week, a bunch of stuff, including new ones by Barenaked Ladies and Frightened Rabbit, a live record from Dan Wilson, and a Hall and Oates tribute from The Bird and the Bee. Also, the First Quarter Report on my 2010 top 10 list.

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.

The first Johnny Cash album I heard was At San Quentin.

My father had a copy on vinyl, which I played to death. Lest you think my dad had impeccable musical taste, I should point out that in the 1970s, he had a subscription to the Columbia Record and Tape Club, and would frequently forget to cancel the selection of the month. That meant he got packages in the mail containing records he didn’t order, and didn’t necessarily want. I’ve never managed to find out if the battered copy of At San Quentin was one of those, or an album he purposely bought.

But just like the copies of Led Zeppelin IV and Eat a Peach and Grand Funk Railroad’s Greatest Hits I discovered in my father’s record collection, At San Quentin burned its way into my brain. Who was this crazy man who walked into a prison and sang songs about heinous crimes and glorious redemptions? I loved that deep, powerful voice, and I loved the stories that voice told, particularly “A Boy Named Sue” (which made me feel better about my own unusual name) and “Folsom Prison Blues.”

At that age, I didn’t know anything about Cash, or his life. I just knew these were great songs, sung with authenticity – I thought Johnny himself had shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Over time, as I learned more about Johnny, my admiration for him only grew. I bought At San Quentin, and At Folsom Prison, and the Love God Murder box set, and loved every note. I had enough respect for him as a person and a performer that I was appalled when he appeared on “The Wanderer,” on U2’s Zooropa album. That just seemed beneath him.

It would be difficult, however, for me to call myself a true Johnny Cash fan. I’ve never felt the need to have every one of his 100 or so albums, and by the time I was 20, I figured I had all the Cash on CD I would ever need. Despite his voice, a world-changing instrument no matter the subject or setting, Cash seemed to me to be an icon of a bygone era, destined to be feted with lavish tributes and spoken of in reverent tones, but rarely listened to. In the mid-‘90s, Cash’s time as an innovative and relevant performer (two adjectives that were very important to me in my 20s) seemed to have passed.

And then came Rick Rubin, and the American Recordings series.

I didn’t hear the first couple of volumes (released in 1994 and 1996) until later, to my shame. In fact, it wasn’t until he covered Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt,” on the 2002 volume American IV: The Man Comes Around, that I truly delved into these records. But man, once I did, I never looked back. In his final years, Cash found a musical soulmate in Rick Rubin, one who treated him with the dignity he deserved while pushing him to find new territory to explore.

The American series has an easy hook for newbies: Johnny Cash covering the likes of Danzig, Soungarden, Tom Waits, Beck, U2 and Depeche Mode. But that’s only part of the story. The musical selection is wide and varied, dipping back into Cash’s career while unearthing old standards he’d never graced with his voice. It’s remarkable stuff, a late-career renaissance that also gave us a box set of outtakes (Unearthed) and a final album of gospel standards (My Mother’s Hymn Book, recorded by a notably frail and weak Cash shortly before his death in 2003).

Cash could not have found a more reverential and suitable artistic partner for his final years than Rubin, who paired him with some sterling musicians when necessary, and essentially got out of the way whenever possible. The American series most often finds Cash alone with a guitar, offering the most intimate glimpse of That Voice we’ve ever been given. Cash was so thrilled with the results of his collaboration with Rubin that he kept recording with him until he couldn’t anymore. Johnny Cash passed away on September 12, 2003, but before he did, he completed sessions for two final volumes in the American series.

The first, American V: A Hundred Highways, came out in 2006. And now here is the last, the final new Cash album ever, fittingly titled American VI: Ain’t No Grave. And it’s a gorgeous finale, a 32-minute meditation on death and the afterlife, a fitting last act for an American legend. It’s hard for me to believe that this is it, that Johnny’s really and truly gone. But American VI is the sound of him facing down his own mortality with faith and grace, and its place as the capstone to his life and career gives these 10 songs an almost spiritual level of poignancy and power.

These are the songs Cash chose to sing in his final days. The record opens with its title track, written by Claude Ely. “There ain’t no grave can hold my body down,” Cash sings in a voice crippled by age, but still strong and true. The song is one of resurrection, given an air of ghostly menace by the Avett Brothers on banjo and footstomps. Rubin adds organs and bells, giving the whole thing a haunted edge. Cash’s one nod to the modernity of the American series is Sheryl Crow’s “Redemption Day,” proof once again that Cash could elevate any song just by singing it. This is an amazing, spectral rendition.

Over and over again, Cash takes on songs that seem to directly comment on his impending death. Kris Kristofferson’s “For the Good Times” opens with the line “Don’t look so sad, I know it’s over, but life goes on and this old world will keep on turning.” He might as well be serenading his departed love June Carter when he sings “let’s just be glad we had some time together,” and his voice lends a nostalgic sadness to this simple trifle of a song. Tom Paxton’s “Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound” is the most on-the-nose, the story of a man contemplating the afterlife and weighing the good and bad he’s done.

Cash’s own “1 Corinthians 15:55,” his final composition, seems an answer to that question. “O death, where is thy sting, o grave, where is thy victory,” Cash sings, sounding hopeful and full of faith. Still, he beseeches his lord, “Don’t come too soon for collecting my debt.” It’s the one sign here that Cash may not have been ready to go – the rest of this album finds him looking back comfortably, and offering messages of hope.

Nowhere is this more clear than in the final two tracks. Ed McCurdy’s “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream” feels like Cash’s last will and testament for the world: “I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war.” In lesser hands, this song is a hippy-dippy peacenik anthem, but when Cash sings it, its vision sounds like the most beautiful thing that could ever be. Cash ends his final album with “Aloha Oe,” the Hawaiian tune recorded by Elvis Presley in 1961. This may seem a strange choice, but Rubin says the decision was Cash’s, and it makes sense once you hear it: the last line on the last Johnny Cash album is “…until we meet again.”

And I’ll admit to tearing up a little at that moment. Not just then, either – this entire album is full of little moments given grand resonance in context. When Cash sings “I Don’t Hurt Anymore,” it’s not just about getting over a breakup, it’s about putting aside fear of death. Bob Nolan’s “Cool Water” is about longing for release. Throughout, Rubin wisely keeps things sparse, Cash’s cracked voice resting on acoustic guitars, pianos and little else. It sounds absolutely beautiful.

Much as I like “Aloha Oe” as the final track, I think there is one song here that embodies this album’s mood of hope and faith: “Satisfied Mind,” originally recorded by Porter Wagoner in 1955, and then by artists as diverse as Bob Dylan and Jeff Buckley. I’m especially moved by the final verse: “When my life has ended, my time has run out, my friends and my loved ones, I’ll leave, there’s no doubt, but one thing’s for certain, when it comes my time, I’ll leave this old world with a satisfied mind…”

I can’t imagine a more perfect sentiment for Johnny Cash to leave us with. I will miss the Man in Black something fierce. Before the American series, I didn’t fully understand just what the world would be losing with Johnny’s death, but this astonishing set of recordings has kindled in me a love of Cash’s music that will stay with me forever. American VI: Ain’t No Grave is a gorgeous, sad and joyous collection, a fitting final goodbye to a man who, even in his last days, fully deserved to be called a legend.

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I’m going to burn through a couple of other new albums quickly now, since there just isn’t time and space to listen to everything and review it as completely as I’d like. The deluge keeps on coming, and I’m trying to keep my head above water, but as 2010 quickly turns into the best year for new music I can remember, it’s getting more difficult.

One of the most talked-about new releases is Plastic Beach, the third album by animated collective Gorillaz. I’m amazed by the off-kilter directions Damon Albarn has taken his career since Blur called it quits, and Gorillaz is one of his most intriguing projects. It’s a collaboration between him and comic book artist Jamie Hewlett, creator of Tank Girl, among others – essentially, Gorillaz is a cartoon band, like Josie and the Pussycats, and Albarn creates the soundtrack to their lives.

He does so with an army of guest stars. Plastic Beach includes a dazzling array of them: Mos Def, soul legend Bobby Womack, Lou Reed, Mark E. Smith of the Fall. Snoop Dogg, and Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals. (Yes, Snoop Dogg and Lou Reed are on the same album. The heavens may commence opening, and the rain of blood can begin.) In that sense, this album is no different from the previous two Gorillaz records.

But this one is different. Albarn produced the thing himself, instead of handing the reins to Danger Mouse or Dan the Automator, and the result is a little straighter, a little less fun. Albarn makes up for that with some of his coolest songs yet, including “Rhinestone Eyes” and the wonderful “Superfast Jellyfish,” but those hoping for another non-stop party might be baffled by some of the man’s choices here. Give it time, though, and Plastic Beach reveals itself as a surprisingly artful affair – just check out “On Melancholy Hill,” or the closer, “Pirate Jet.”

Still, the finest song here is the first single, “Stylo.” It feels like soundtrack music to a car chase (a feeling borne out by its video), and includes both Mos Def in fine form, and Bobby Womack blowing minds with his signature wail. It sounds most like the Gorillaz of old, and for all of this album’s artistic growth, I’m hoping for a bit more of that pure fun disposability next time out.

* * * * *

Speaking of records I was hoping for more from, there’s Broken Bells. This is a team-up between Danger Mouse and James Mercer of the Shins, a pairing rife with possibilities. Mercer’s been MIA for a few years, ever since firing half of his band, and it’s nice to hear his voice again. Danger Mouse, on the other hand, has been ubiquitous, both as one-half of Gnarls Barkley and as a go-to producer for artists like Beck and the Black Keys, with mixed results. I was hoping a collaboration might reinvigorate both.

Instead, we get this, a middling collection of trifles that sound like Shins b-sides, augmented by sometimes interesting, sometimes flat-out annoying electronics. Most of these tracks don’t rise to the level of the first single, “The High Road,” and very few are memorable, the way the best Shins songs can burrow into your head for weeks. I like “Vaporize” quite a bit, with its dirty organ and horn lines. I enjoy “The Ghost Inside,” with its trippy beat and fine keyboard melody. Everything else is pretty and forgettable – even the multi-part suite “Your Head is On Fire” ends up disappointing.

I don’t want to say Broken Bells is bad. It’s just not as good as it should be, given its pedigree. Further listens have deepened my appreciation of meanders like “Sailing to Nowhere” (fitting title, that) and “Mongrel Heart.” But I was hoping for so much more, and it seems Mercer in particular approached this as a side project, rather than a going concern. The songs just aren’t up to snuff, and I hope he’s been saving his good ones for that fourth Shins record.

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I am a huge fan of Wisconsin songwriter Peter Mulvey, one of the music world’s best-kept secrets. His first label, Eastern Front, sent me free copies of his first five releases when I worked at Face Magazine. Most of the free stuff we got ended up in the trash pile after one spin, but Mulvey’s work stuck with me. I was there at Raoul’s Roadside Attraction in Portland the night Mulvey wrote and premiered “The Trouble With Poets,” one of his sharpest signature tunes. I’ve been into the man’s work for 15 years.

But lately it’s been more difficult, as he’s turned into more of a traditional folkie. There’s nothing particularly wrong with Kitchen Radio and The Knuckleball Suite, except they rely on old-time American folk music as their touchstones. Where early Mulvey albums were all over the map, stylistically and lyrically, his last couple of records have focused on aping classic music forms rather than reinventing them. The results have been sweet and charming, but I’ve missed the old fire.

Well, I’m dancing in the streets these days, because Mulvey’s 10th album, Letters From a Flying Machine, is a dazzling return to form. I’m not sure what it is that sets this one above its predecessors, but I love it intensely in a way I haven’t since The Trouble With Poets. For one thing, the old diversity is back, as Mulvey shifts from beautiful acoustic pieces (“Windshield”) to jazzy shuffles (“Some People”) to invigorating percussive workouts (“Dynamite Bill”), never spending too long in one place.

For another, though, Mulvey has created something of a concept album this time out. He’s interspersed his new songs with spoken word pieces (a staple on his early records), in the form of letters written on an airplane to member s of his family. They are delightful little stories, full of insight and grace, and in one instance (“Vlad the Astrophysicist”), they caused me to look at life, the universe and everything in a completely new way. The best music and poetry does this, and Mulvey has always made it look easy.

The lyrics on this album are brilliant as usual. The opening verse of “Kids in the Square” is as perfect a summation of the modern world I’ve heard in some time: “If you’ve got a pretty good idea of what you’re looking for, then you’ve got a pretty good idea of what you’ll find, you don’t have to go very far these days to find yourself a made-up mind…” Mulvey’s one old-time pastiche this time out is “Some People,” but it’s so funny and so incisive that I can’t help singing along. “Some people go to the tavern, some people go to the church, some senators go into airport johns and they get their reputations besmirched, some people go from the altar to leave someone in the lurch, I just go mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm…”

Throughout, whether he’s spinning a beautiful acoustic lament or a dynamic pop tune, Mulvey sounds reinvigorated here. His songs are sharper than they’ve been in years, his voice versatile and commanding as ever, and by the end of the album, when he’s balancing a spoken-word piece about our existential loneliness (“Vlad”) against a lovely song about finding faith in another (“On a Wing and a Prayer”), you’ll feel like he’s worked a particularly fine bit of magic. The truth is, he’s just gotten better at his craft, and on Letters From a Flying Machine, he’s taken his recent work to a new level. For the first time in a while, I’m in love with a Peter Mulvey album, and longing for the next one.

Buy it here.

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And finally, the next installment in my Top 20 of the 2000s. With this one, we’re halfway through the list. Rejoice!

#11. Duncan Sheik, Phantom Moon (2001).

Here’s a story that illustrates just how much Duncan Sheik’s career has changed since this album came out. Late last year, I was visiting friends on the east coast. One of them has a 17-year-old daughter who is hoping to make musical theater her career. The name “Duncan Sheik” elicited squeals of delight from this girl, who only knows him from his Tony award-winning musical Spring Awakening. She’s never heard “Barely Breathing,” or “She Runs Away.” For an entire generation of theater kids, Sheik is a respected composer, and has never been a pop star.

That, to me, is amazing. But then, I have heard “Barely Breathing” and “She Runs Away,” Sheik’s two big hits from 1996. Over and over again, I’ve heard them. They’re certainly not terrible songs, but they were overplayed to death in the late ‘90s, and they were definitely the work of a young, naïve songwriter. Believe me when I say that, as surprised as that young generation of theater kids is that Sheik ever had hits on pop radio, my generation is equally surprised that the writer of “Barely Breathing” now has a Tony.

But if you’re looking for the missing link, the musical work that launched Sheik on his path toward respectability, look no further than Phantom Moon. It’s his first collaboration with Spring Awakening lyricist Steven Sater, and his first album made solely as a work of art instead of as a commercial venture. It’s also strikingly, incredibly beautiful.

I said in 2001 that Phantom Moon is the kind of album that lowers the temperature of any room it’s played in, and I stand by that statement. Sheik is a devoted Nick Drake disciple (just look at this album’s title), and for this record, he wore that influence on his sleeve. Phantom Moon is entirely performed on acoustic instruments, with one notable exception, and the sparse and chilling arrangements do his even tenor a world of good. The record is flush with lovely strings and pianos, and the songs are just flat-out the most gorgeous things Sheik has ever written.

The album is designed like a wave, building and cresting before breaking and receding. It begins with just piano and voice, and ends that way as well, adding instruments through the first half and taking them away through the second. While some of these songs are merely achingly pretty (“The Winds That Blow,” “Sad Stephen’s Song”), some are more dramatic in scope (“Mouth on Fire,” “Lo and Behold”). Throughout, Sheik exhibits a control over his voice and his sound like never before (and, frankly, since). This album is the sound of a true songwriter finding himself.

I mentioned there was one notable exception to the acoustic rule, and it’s smack dab in the middle of the record. “Far Away,” perhaps the prettiest tune here, features graceful electric guitar by Bill Frisell, and it signifies the climax point. From then on, the sound gets softer, the songs more ghostly, until Sheik ends things as he began them, with “The Wilderness.” When it’s over, you’ll feel like you’ve been taken somewhere special, and that’s a feeling only the very best records can give you.

Sheik has made three albums since Phantom Moon, and none have quite captured the magic on display here. I would go so far as to say that Phantom Moon is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of album, and I doubt Sheik will ever equal it. But that’s okay, since very few artists I know have equaled it either. There’s just this certain indefinable quality about it, one that has stayed with me for 10 years, and will likely follow me the rest of my life. It’s that good.

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Next week, Real Rawk with the White Stripes and Titus Andronicus. 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 Peter Gabriel fan for more than 20 years. His music is practically encoded into my DNA.

I was 12 years old when So, his most successful album, was released. Gabriel was one of the first to see the true potential of the music video format – he turned in these marvelous, imaginative, insanely complicated videos for “Sledgehammer” and “Big Time” that knocked 12-year-old me out. (35-year-old me still likes them a lot, too.) I’m not even sure I responded to the music as much as I did the videos, but I had to own So.

Over the next few years, I asked for Gabriel albums as birthday and Christmas presents (this was before I was earning my own money), and soon had the whole set. On cassette, mind you. I didn’t realize how revolutionary much of this music was. All I knew was that “The Rhythm of the Heat” scared the crap out of me, and “Down the Dolce Vita” made me jump around the room, and “Mercy Street” made me cry. My favorite was the third self-titled album, commonly called Melt – the first four albums were simply titled Peter Gabriel, like issues of a magazine – because it creeped me the fuck out. If you also heard “Intruder” at a similar age, you know what I mean.

Now, of course, I know just how important and amazing Peter Gabriel is. He was incorporating music and musicians from around the world before it was fashionable, he wrote about important people and issues, and he never sat still. People consider So a commercial album, but it found Gabriel embracing influences he’d never tried, including Motown soul and funk, and merging them with his literate pop and African world-beat sound. That album has all kinds of dazzling musicians playing on it, from French drummer Manu Katche to Indian violinist L. Shankar to Nile Rodgers, who played with Aretha Franklin and Parliament Funkadelic, among others.

Since then, Gabriel’s output has slowed down, and weakened. Neither Us, from 1992, or Up, from 2002, added much to his legacy, and aside from soundtrack work, that’s been it. But those records were, in their own not-entirely-successful ways, just as adventurous as his early works, and proof that Gabriel still deserves his place as one of the greats. (Okay, “The Barry Williams Show” is one of the worst songs of the decade. But “Growing Up,” “Sky Blue,” “I Grieve” and “Signal to Noise” are pretty wonderful.)

I mention all of this just to get Gabriel’s credentials out there, because without such a firm foundation of brilliant work behind him, his latest project would seem both batty and egotistical. I don’t think it’s either, but I’ll let you be the judge. Gabriel is engaged in a song swap with a dozen artists – he has covered a song by each of them on an album called Scratch My Back, and they’ve all agreed to record one of his songs on an upcoming companion disc called I’ll Scratch Yours. Essentially, in addition to a covers record, Gabriel is assembling a tribute album to himself.

But if anyone has earned the right to do something like this, it’s probably Peter Gabriel. And lest you think this is some sort of quickie cash-in project, I should tell you there are a couple of twists befitting an unpredictable artist of Gabriel’s stature. For one, in addition to the expected group of influences and peers (Paul Simon, the Talking Heads, David Bowie), Gabriel has covered some unexpectedly modern songs from new bands. Elbow. Arcade Fire. Bon Iver. The Magnetic Fields. Regina Spektor. Seriously.

And for another, he’s arranged all of his versions for voice, piano and orchestra. No drums, no guitars, no keyboards. This choice has led some to call Scratch My Back maudlin and morose, but nothing could be further from the truth. Gabriel has found and preserved the hearts of these songs like precious jewels, and cast them in glorious new settings. The orchestral arrangements are astonishing – joyous and full one minute, menacing and sparse the next – and in each case, he’s found a way to make me feel like I’ve never heard these songs before.

Take “The Boy in the Bubble,” Paul Simon’s ode to the wonder and horror of technology. On Graceland (released the same year as So), the song is a januty accordion-fueled hoot, emphasizing the joy in the chorus over the menace of the verses. Gabriel’s is exactly the opposite, a piano dirge that really drives home lyrics like “The bomb in the baby carriage was wired to the radio.” When he gets to the chorus (“These are the days of miracle and wonder, don’t cry, baby, don’t cry…”), it sounds more like a comforting lie than anything else. Gabriel’s take flips the song on its ear, and while it will never replace the original (nor was it intended to), it provides a dark mirror to view it through.

He works similar magic on Arcade Fire’s “My Body is a Cage,” from 2007’s Neon Bible. The original was a blues-inflected lament, one that got lost amid that record’s more ecstatic pomp. For about half of his six-minute version, Gabriel sings the lyric’s mantra of pain over a funereal two-chord piano march, and then he lets the strings explode in a rapturous cry to the heavens. He lets loose vocally here too, giving one of those patented Peter Gabriel howls, and they haven’t lost an ounce of their goose-bump-inducing power. Then – then! – he shifts to a major key and brings in a spectral choir for the final minute, crying “Set my spirit free” as the music evaporates. It’s astonishing, really.

Time has been especially kind to Gabriel’s voice, here as stripped and raw as we’ve ever heard it. He’s said he wanted the singing on Scratch My Back to be as “personal as possible,” and though he sounds as powerful as ever on workouts like Bon Iver’s “Flume” and Regina Spektor’s “Apres Moi,” he lets a weary creakiness into his voice on several songs. His version of Radiohead’s “Street Spirit” personifies this approach, as Gabriel’s falsetto breaks like glass and his voice drips with despair. It’s a challenging listen, and it was clearly meant to be.

But he balances it off with wonderfully romantic takes on Elbow’s “Mirrorball,” the Magnetic Fields’ “The Book of Love,” and Lou Reed’s “The Power of the Heart.” And he plucks a Talking Heads song from near-obscurity and reinvents it: “Listening Wind” comes near the end of the Heads’ 1980 Remain in Light, a forgotten gem, and Gabriel’s foreboding, propulsive string arrangement (created with John Metcalfe) infuses it with new life. It is, perhaps, this record’s finest moment.

I mentioned at the top that I’ve been a Peter Gabriel fan for more than 20 years, and it’s records like this that keep me one. Gabriel has never stopped finding ways to surprise me, and this album certainly qualifies. Gabriel covering Arcade Fire, Bon Iver and other modern artists, with an orchestra? Yeah. But he’s created something magical here, an album of quietly intense melancholy and haunted beauty. I simply can’t stop listening to it, and even if I’ll Scratch Yours is a disaster, I’m beyond glad to have this.

(As a side note, two of the I’ll Scratch Yours tracks have been released – the Magnetic Fields’ odd synth carnival take on “Not One of Us,” and Paul Simon’s acoustic read of “Biko.” They’re both marvelous. I’m hearing, though, that some of the artists are having second thoughts, so we’ll see if this ever comes to fruition. As with all things Gabriel, we live in hope, and we wait.)

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The other two albums on tap this week come courtesy of longtime reader and correspondent Lucas Beeley. He and his brother Steve have turned me on to more than their share of terrific artists, and though I’ve never met either of them, they’ve kept in contact with me for years, offering thoughts and recommendations. I’m grateful for both of them – I’d probably still be ignorant of the two bands that follow, and a whole host of others, without the Beeley brothers. So thanks, guys.

Sticking with the slow and the pretty, then, we have Midlake. What an interesting band. They’ve made three albums with exactly the same lineup, and yet you’d think they were by three different groups. First came the ‘60s-inspired bargain-basement psychedelica of Banman and Silvercork, then the ‘70s-influenced rock of The Trials of Van Occupanther. (Really. That’s the record’s actual name.) Now here’s The Courage of Others, and the band has toned down nearly every other influence except English folk music.

The result, however incongruous, is lovely. Courage is 42 minutes of acoustic guitars, minor keys and haunting melodies. A lot of the songs feature flutes and recorders, played by leader Tim Smith. Now, I don’t mean this as an insult in any way, just as a frame of reference if you’re wondering what this sounds like: imagine if someone made an entire record out of the first four minutes of “Stairway to Heaven.” That’s basically it. (Oh, come on. As overplayed as it is, “Stairway to Heaven” is a pretty fantastic song.)

The problem I have with this album is its unrelenting consistency. The tempos are the same throughout, the minor keys start to blur after a while, and Smith never finds a different tone. One by one, these songs are beautiful – “Winter Dies” has some fine electric guitar moments, the chorus of “Small Mountain” is gorgeous, and “Rulers, Ruling All Things” sends chills. But while I may love this in small doses, it loses me over the course of the disc.

It’s fascinating to me that a band that has hopped styles more in three records than most bands do in ten chose to set such narrow parameters this time out. I don’t want to discourage you from trying this out, because these songs are very pretty, and they’re played very well. I like The Courage of Others, I just wish Midlake had taken a few more musical detours instead of giving us what is, essentially, a 42-minute song that never changes.

Much more successful is Shearwater, whose sixth album The Golden Archipelago is another best-of-the-year candidate in a first quarter chock full of them. Shearwater started as an Okkervil River side project, but now is the musical outlet of Jonathan Meiburg, an avid birdwatcher with a sense of the fragile beauty of nature. He’s dedicated the last three Shearwater albums to this theme, and they form a loose trilogy.

Meiburg cites several influences for Archipelago, the concluding chapter, but I only hear one: Talk Talk. This album is like the second coming of Spirit of Eden – Meiburg’s mid-range vocals sound like Mark Hollis’ more than ever here, and the songs exist on vibe more than anything else. They cast a spell, and then wrap you up in it.

There is one major difference, however: while Hollis and his musicians stretched out over nine-minute pieces, Archipelago is the opposite of sprawling. The whole thing is a scant 38 minutes, and only two songs break the four-minute mark. It is, in many ways, too short, but I only say that because what’s here is so marvelous. Where the previous two Shearwater albums (Palo Santo and Rook) occasionally launched into more standard rock moments, this one ebbs and flows naturally, its unearthly atmosphere never breaking.

That’s not to say the album doesn’t have a pulse. Songs like “Black Eyes” and the rollicking “Corridors” crank up the electric guitars – just check out the awesome circular figure the latter is based on. But like waves receding back into the ocean, each louder moment is met with a fragile and beautiful one. Opener “Meridian” is quiet and supple, and “Hidden Lakes” is gentle and swaying, all piano, cello, chimes and Meiburg’s chilling voice.

The easiest way to describe what this album sounds like is to point you to the front cover. It’s a spacious photograph of a vast seascape, a single boat heading out to an island in the distance. It’s panoramic, widescreen and dramatic, and yet simultaneously peaceful and placid. It’s a snapshot of a long journey ahead, though the waters are calm and the sky is bright. It’s a picture of the enormous and majestic beauty and terror of the world. The music sounds like that.

The Golden Archipelago may be the final chapter of this trilogy, but to my ears, it’s the album on which Meiburg has found his sound. Next time, I hope he stretches out a little more – I wouldn’t have minded if some of these songs, like “Landscape at Speed” and “Castaways,” went on forever. But there is no one else making music quite like this right now, music that quietly surrounds you with as much force as this album does. It is one of the best records of an uncommonly good year so far, but better than that, it promises even better things on the horizon from Shearwater. And better than this will be something indeed.

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Here’s the next installment in my top 20 of the decade. We’re almost halfway through!

#12. Daniel Amos, Mr. Buechner’s Dream (2001).

Here’s another one very few people have heard. I say that with no joy whatsoever. I’m not trying to pump up my cred by praising an obscure band. I’m honestly depressed that only a few thousand people have experienced Terry Taylor’s masterpiece. Had these songs been recorded by Wilco, or some other Americana-flavored million-seller, it would be on many more top 10 lists than this one. But they were recorded by a quartet of relative unknowns from California, a band that, despite having released more than a dozen studio albums over 35 years, languishes in unjust obscurity.

Terry Scott Taylor is one of the best songwriters nobody knows. In spiritual pop circles, he’s an icon, one of the first people to bring a genuine sense of art to the game. He’s had a remarkable career, first guiding Daniel Amos through a stunning run of records in the ‘70s and ‘80s, then forming the sarcastic, biting Swirling Eddies and the rootsy supergroup The Lost Dogs, all while continuing to make challenging, striking music with his main band. He even found time to release four solo albums and two EPs, and score a few video games. The man’s prolific, but consistently brilliant.

As good as albums like Alarma and Doppelganger and Darn Floor Big Bite and Motorcycle are, Mr. Buechner’s Dream may be the best thing Taylor’s ever done. It’s 33 songs, spans more than 100 minutes, and sets all of Taylor’s pet themes – faith, doubt, the pain and beauty of life, and the struggle to describe God in song – to some of the most straightforward, convincingly rocking music of Daniel Amos’ career. These songs are unfailingly melodic and singable, and they pack a punch – the album was produced by the band, and much of it sounds beautifully live.

The songs. The songs! Over 33 tracks, you’d expect some clunkers, but Taylor and company never put a foot wrong. The first disc shares a title with the album, and it’s the more rootsy of the two – 20 songs, most of which buzz by in a blur of stinging guitars. It opens with an exhortation to seize the day (“This is the One”), and Taylor does: “The Author of the Story” is one of his most beautiful tunes, delightfully muddied up by Greg Flesch’s noisy guitar and Tim Chandler’s elastic bass; “Who’s Who Here” knocks its repetitive riff to the ground with a muscular shove; “Faithful Street” brings in the horns for a Beatlesque romp; and “The Staggering Gods” simply rocks.

But there’s much sweetness and subtlety here as well. “Rice Paper Wings” is as fragile as its title, “I Get to Wondering” weaves an acoustic web, and Taylor has rarely written a better hymn than “Joel,” the deceptively noisy tune that closes the disc. Lyrically, the first album is about God and family, but it contains not one cliché – as Taylor himself writes in “Ribbons and Bows,” “There may not ever be anything new here to say, but I’m fond of finding words that say it in a different way.”

Good as the first disc is, I think the second eclipses it. This is the darker half, the more musically adventurous side, and it’s quite a ride. “Easy For You” is a gritty and difficult tale of envy, “Child on a Leash” a yearning cry for completeness, and “So Far So Good” a… well, I’m not sure what this pitch-black and haunting song is about, but it’s terrific. It’s not all shadow – there’s the country-punk “She’s a Hard Drink,” which contains Taylor’s funniest line: “She’s a bad dream, like an adam’s apple on a beauty queen…”

Taylor spends the final third of the album eulogizing old friends who’ve passed, and taking in the wonder of life. “Flash in Your Eyes” is about Gene Eugene, one of the original Lost Dogs, who died in 2000, while the lovely “Steal Away” is about knowing when to leave before the flood. Closer “And So it Goes” is a final toast to “our dear dead dears,” as Taylor once put it on another album, and could also stand as the final glass raised to Daniel Amos itself. As of this writing, Mr. Buechner’s Dream is the final DA record.

That’s a shame, but all in all, this collection would be an incredible way to go out. Buechner’s is an artistic triumph, a remarkably quick 105 minutes full of songs most writers would kill to have in their catalogs. It has a depth and an emotional undercurrent that few records of its length can match, and a lyrical complexity that remains a hallmark of Terry Taylor. I take very good care of my CDs, but my copy of Mr. Buechner’s Dream is battered and worn. I’ve played it to death, and it’s like an old friend now, one I couldn’t imagine the last 10 years without.

This is probably my favorite Terry Taylor album, but they’re all worth hearing. Log onto danielamos.com for more info. Mr. Buechner’s Dream is out of print at the moment, but I suggest Darn Floor Big Bite, Live at Cornerstone 2000 or the latest Swirling Eddies album, The Midget, the Speck and the Molecule, to tide you over until it’s re-pressed. There’s a lot of Terry Taylor music to explore, and if you’ve never heard any of it, I envy you. Get cracking.

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Next week, the last Johnny Cash album, and brief looks at Broken Bells, Frightened Rabbit, Gorillaz and Liars. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m going to start this column off by saying “I like the long ones,” and let you get all the “that’s what she said” jokes out of your system. “Big 10-Inch Record” jokes should be worked through now as well.

When I say I like the long ones, I mean albums, of course. Always have. There’s nothing wrong with your standard single-CD, 50-minute-long record, and in fact some of my favorites of the past 50 years fit that description. But there’s just something about the lengthier works that piques my interest. For some reason, I consider double and triple albums to be weightier, more important statements than single-disc affairs. Maybe it comes from hearing Tommy and The Wall at a young age, I don’t know.

It’s something of a sickness, though. I will buy double albums from artists I have no interest in otherwise, just to see what they can do across two discs. Case in point: Natalie Merchant is gearing up to release Leave Your Sleep on April 13. I haven’t bought a Merchant album since Ophelia in 1998 (and I didn’t even like that one), but when news broke that Leave Your Sleep would be a double record, I put it on my list. Don’t know why. I’m just more interested.

Ambition always flips my switches, so you’d think I’d be three times as interested in triple albums as in single ones. You’d mostly be right – I’m definitely fascinated by musical works that demand to be spread out over three CDs (or even more). But I’m a little more cautious about them too. I can only think of three triple albums I own off the top of my head – Frank Zappa’s Lather, Prince’s Emancipation, and the Early November’s The Mother, The Mechanic and the Path – and all of them could use a trim. Or, at least, some more solid songs to replace the filler.

Still, I can’t deny the little tingle I get at news of a triple album on the horizon. This week, I have two of them, and they both illuminate the good and bad things about lengthy studio projects. I will readily admit that the sheer size and scope of these records made me want to own them. But as for my experience listening to them? Read on…

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A lot of people thought I was kidding when I named Joanna Newsom’s second album, Ys, the best of 2006. I wasn’t, at all, and in the three-plus years since I first heard it, my appreciation (and often fiercely protective love) of Ys has only deepened. Newsom’s not for everyone – she plays a harp as her primary instrument, she writes long and twisty songs, and her voice… well, I described it in 2006 as akin to a drunken 10-year-old’s, and that still sounds about right to me.

But if you let it, Ys will enchant you. It’s gloriously ambitious – five songs, ranging from seven minutes to 17, and all but one of them accompanied by a full orchestra, arranged by Van Dyke Parks. It’s also determinedly difficult, its songs telling fractured fairy tales and giving astronomy lessons more than forging direct connections. I loved it immediately, but I understand why many were put off. On Ys, Newsom created her own world, and forced you to enter it on her terms. That’s an experience I always enjoy.

You can imagine, then, how my ears perked up when word started tricking out about Have One on Me, Newsom’s third album. It’s 18 songs spread across three discs, totaling 124 minutes. You’d be forgiven for expecting that she’d indulged her orchestral leanings even more this time, and perhaps crafted something impenetrable. Truth be told, I was kind of hoping for that – I had a terrific time deciphering Ys, diving down into its nooks and crannies, and the thought of two hours of music that challenging made me smile.

Newsom is much too savvy for that, though. She’s done something altogether more fascinating: Have One on Me is simultaneously massive and tiny, a sweeping album of fragile little songs. She’s aimed for a mix of Patsy Cline and Joni Mitchell on the bulk of these new tunes. There’s an air of authentic earthiness to the whole thing, which is even more remarkable when you consider that Newsom plays the harp, not traditionally a rootsy instrument.

For an album that lasts more than two hours, Have One on Me is often ghostly and sparse. Many songs here consist of harp, vocals and little else, and when the orchestral arrangements come in, they’re restrained – gone is the epic power of Van Dyke Parks. The emphasis is quite clearly on Newsom’s voice, and I’m not sure how she’s done it, but she’s learned how to harness that instrument – she’s become a singer before our ears. I mentioned Joni Mitchell before, and many of the vocal lines on Have One on Me sound modeled on Mitchell’s, and could even give her a run for her money. Newsom never falters as a vocalist here, yet somehow she’s kept the quirks, the little squeaks and odd timbres, that I love.

It all sounds good, right? Well, not quite. The first time I dove into Have One on Me, I did it all at once, and I would definitely not recommend that experience. By the time it was done, I felt like I’d spent months listening to Newsom – the whole third disc wore me down so much that I couldn’t wait for it to be over. Is it too much of a good thing? I went back over the next few days to find out, and while the album is easier to digest in pieces, it still gets weaker as it goes along.

The biggest shame is that the first disc is the album of the year, no question. Opener “Easy” is a jazz ballad unlike anything Newsom’s ever done. It’s the first of five tunes that find her playing piano, an instrument she dabbled in on her debut, The Milk-Eyed Mender, and she makes it work here. “Easy” sets the tone with its opening lines: “Easy, easy, my man and me, we could rest and remain here easily.” This is an album about love, one that foregoes the stories of monkeys and bears and stuffed animals that populated Ys. Many of her words this time are accessible and relatable.

The first disc is balanced perfectly. The knotty 11-minute title track is followed by “‘81,” a spare and gorgeous ballad, which is then knocked aside by “Good Intentions Paving Company,” a carnival ride of a tune that finds Newsom overdubbing her voice numerous times. “No Provenance” is mid-tempo and lovely – you will be singing the “in your arms” part before it’s over – and perfectly orchestrated, with flutes, oboes, bassoons and bass clarinets.

And then there is “Baby Birch,” on which she perfects a style she stumbles over later. “Baby Birch” is nine minutes long, and designed like a traditional folk song. Its verses are three chords repeated over and over, its chorus picks two of those and plays them again, and its sound is airy and empty – harp and electric guitar and that’s it, until the final minutes. It’s like a Cowboy Junkies song, and it goes on forever, but I love it to bits. Had this stretched-out and repetitive piece been the exception and not the rule on the next two discs, I would have been fine with it.

Unfortunately, as Have One on Me progresses, it gets simpler and duller. I like almost all of the second disc. “In California” hides its repetition well beneath its orchestration, and “Go Long” may be the prettiest four-chord mantra ever, Newsom spinning gossamer webs on three harps. And “Jackrabbits” is wonderful, another harp-vocals piece that will send shivers.

But the rest of the second disc, and most of the third, are sleepers. I’ve tried everything I can do to like “Occident,” and it just isn’t happening. Newsom isn’t as fine a piano player as she is a harpist, and the creaky songwriting stands out on a more typical instrument. “Soft as Chalk” is better, the energetic piano runs and percussion battles showing signs of life. But Newsom quickly snuffs those out with “Esme,” “Autumn” and “Ribbon Bows,” three lengthy slow burns that make up the bulk of disc three.

The nine-minute “Kingfisher” is a miniature masterpiece, sequenced near the end, but closer “Does Not Suffice” lives up to its title, repeating a few boring chords on piano until you’ll want to scream. On my first listen, I couldn’t wait for the third disc to be over. I’ve revisited it in isolation, and like much of it just fine, but it takes a lot of time to appreciate, and even then the sparse, simple songs – all of which hover around the seven-minute mark – are merely pleasant, not revelatory.

You hear this every time an artist releases a sweeping, multi-disc work, but this time I think it’s true: Have One on Me could have benefited from some judicious editing. Take the weakest 40 or 50 minutes off of this thing, and it’s a solid winner. It still wouldn’t be as good as Ys, but it would be a more compact and riveting work. The highs on this album are towering, but they sometimes get lost in the sprawl, and they take time to find and unearth.

Have One on Me is certainly better in smaller chunks, and I understand what Newsom was going for here. This is an album rooted in folk and gospel music, stripped down and natural-sounding. It’s a far cry from the Ren Faire opulence of Ys, and it lives and dies by its performances, which are marvelous. But it doesn’t pluck me from my life and transport me somewhere else. For long stretches of its running time, it remains earthbound. It may still be the best album I’ve heard this year, but it’s a bit of a letdown.

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If you think two hours is too long, try four.

Yes, four hours. 235 minutes and 35 seconds, to be exact. That’s how much time it takes to listen to Sadly, The Past is No Longer What It Was, the new triple album from Leyland Kirby. He’s gone by many names, including the Caretaker and V/Vm, but this is his first release under his own name. (Well, his second two names – his first is James.) It’s also the first thing I’ve heard from him, even though his catalog is vast and expansive. (The last Caretaker release spanned six CDs, so long works are nothing new for him.)

Leyland Kirby is an ambient instrumental artist. That means his music is often formless, built from air and water. Sounds creep in, drone on beautifully, and creep out without stirring up much trouble. Some people find this stuff boring, but I find that putting on ambient music in a darkened room is like flying. I love it – I’d never make a steady diet of it, but it often reaches levels of beauty that more melodic music doesn’t even approach. And there’s a lot of that magic on this record.

But again, I wouldn’t recommend listening to it all at once. I tried, but midway through the third disc I had to shut it off. My head was swimming, the room was refusing to stay solid, and I felt like I had been underwater for three days. There’s just too much here to process, and so much of it is droning and cloud-like, washing over you.

So as I did with Newsom’s record, I digested this one in smaller pieces over the next few days. Taken in smaller bites, it’s pretty amazing. The tracks are evenly divided between piano pieces (heavily reverbed electric piano that sounds like it’s being played by ghosts in a centuries-old house), synth shimmers, and churning noise sculptures. Some of this will lull you to sleep, but some will wake you up screaming. It’s fascinating.

The song titles tell a story of sadness and despair giving way to hope, and the music follows suit. The first two discs are all minor keys, and feature songs with names like “And As I Sat Beside You I Felt the Great Sadness Today” and “Not Even Nostalgia is As Good as It Used to Be.” The third is a journey to a new dawn, as the piano exults in the closing track, called (deep breath) “And at Dawn, Armed With Glowing Patience, We Shall Enter the Cities of Glory.” That’s the one advantage to listening all at once – that journey makes itself plain.

But there’s just too much material here to assess with a couple of listens. This is the type of music that simultaneously demands and resists close attention, the kind of experience that can best be described by impressions and feelings rather than analysis. There’s no reason that this album has to be four hours long, nor that some of its songs need to be 12, 15 or 20 minutes. But the drowning sensation is part of the design, I think.

While I’d never recommend listening to this for fun, Sadly, The Future is No Longer What it Was is one of the best ambient records I’ve ever heard. For most listeners, one disc of this (or even one song) would suffice, but I like the idea of wading through this vast ocean of sound. Unlike Newsom’s record, editing would not have made Sadly any better, or any worse. It would only have made it shorter, and for music like this, which one can dip in and out of like a dream, there’s no such thing as too long.

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And now, the next installment of my Top 20 of the 2000s. After disparaging critics that rave about new bands last week, and essentially saying I like double and triple records more than single discs this week, I’m about to wax ecstatic about a 57-minute debut. The irony is not lost on me.

#13. Mutemath.

I did the Mutemath experience the right way – I saw the New Orleans quartet live first. They were the last show of an otherwise lackluster Cornerstone Festival in 2005, and did their traveling-musical-carnival act. As they jumped all over each other to play the intricate, astounding “Reset,” I knew I’d found a new favorite band.

Shaking with excitement, I bought their Reset EP right there and then, and was disappointed. It was glossy and removed, a far cry from the live explosion I’d just seen. That’s the awful truth of the studio – sometimes it sucks a band dry, draining them of the very things that make them special. Having been signed to Word Records didn’t help, as I’m sure the label pressured the band to give them something fit for goopy Christian radio.

But Mutemath was never that band. True, they grew from the ashes of underrated Christian outfit Earthsuit, but the new sound was darker and more conflicted, adults wrestling with the insanity of the world while trying to stay true to themselves. Over the next year, they fought a legal battle to escape the Christian music ghetto, while finishing and self-releasing their debut record. The clear implication was that this music was too good, too complex and fascinating, to be buried under the expectations of a limited audience. That implication was spot on.

Mutemath is, from the start, an entirely different beast from the EP. Songs stretch to six and seven minutes, soundscapes link interconnected pieces, songs shift and change and live and breathe. There is no sickly radio single – only “Typical” flirts with the mainstream. The rest is dark and beautiful and triumphant, one of the most perfect first albums I’ve heard in many years. And even if they never make another one like it again, I’ll still treasure this one.

Mutemath’s sound is difficult to encapsulate, but try this: imagine if the Police had grown up listening to Radiohead, and had decided not to start sucking after Regatta de Blanc. Singer Paul Meany has a bit of the old, cool Sting to his voice, and he plays a mean electric piano. Guitarist Greg Hill can make his six-string sound like just about anything, and bassist Roy Mitchell-Cardenas switches off between electric, acoustic and synth instruments, based on what the song needs.

But it’s drummer Darren King who is the bedrock of this band. Before taking the stage at every show, he literally duct-tapes his headphone monitors to his head – his playing is so energetic that they wouldn’t stay on otherwise. I have no idea how many drum heads this guy goes through in a month, but he beats the living hell out of them, and his lightning-quick hi-hat work is reminiscent of Stewart Copeland, particularly on Police-pop numbers like “Noticed.”

For all their ear-catching style, it’s the songs that make this album what it is. The furious flurry of “Chaos,” the classic pop of “Noticed,” the supple darkness of “You Are Mine,” the anthemic joy of “Without It.” These are wonderful songs, and nearly all of them tackle big themes. The amazing “Stare at the Sun” is about looking for God and finding no trace. “Chaos” is about holding true to something as the world crumbles around you. “Without It,” the record’s forgotten masterpiece, is about learning to live without the things life takes from you. Closing heartbreaker “Stall Out” sounds like it’s going to end on a down note, until the magnificent coda: “We are still far from over.”

That’s turned out to be true – second album Armistice wasn’t as stunning as the debut, but it was still excellent, and I predict a bright future for this band. You still need to see them live to get the full effect, but the recorded evidence so far paints Mutemath as one of the greatest new bands of the decade. Long may they reign.

Of course, I need to add a caveat – the self-released version of the Mutemath album (you know, the perfect one) is out of print. Mutemath signed to Warner Bros., and put out an inferior re-working with the same title and artwork. The new version shortens songs (by more than a minute in some cases), adds inferior tracks from Reset that screw up the flow, and most damningly, omits “Without It.” It’s still a good record, but if you can somehow find the Teleprompt Records version, that’s the one to get.

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Next week, three of 2010’s most beautiful records so far. The new music just keeps on coming – I’m spending more than $100 on March 9, to get albums from Broken Bells (a collaboration between Danger Mouse and James Mercer of the Shins), Gorillaz, Serj Tankian, Frightened Rabbit, Liars, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Ted Leo, Titus Andronicus, the Knife, and Jimi Hendrix. All in one week. And things show no sign of slowing down from there. I’m excited and exhausted just thinking about it.

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

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m allergic to hype anyway, but indie hype just makes my skin crawl.

Every 20 minutes, it seems, some new group is being crowned the Best Band You’ve Never Heard, and indie tastemakers fall all over themselves to be the first to sing praises, mainly so they can later claim credit for being out in front of the zeitgeist. The result is an endless parade of breathless reviews of bands no one has ever heard of, each one proclaiming that the latest collective of 20-year-olds who can barely play their instruments will Change Your Life.

Even as I was typing the above paragraph, I realized two things about it: my description sounds uncannily like what I do here week in and week out, and I couldn’t have sounded more old and out of touch if I’d concluded my thoughts by saying, “Now get off my lawn.” I’m really not this crotchety, I promise. My main objection to indie hype is simple: there’s a lot of music to keep up with, and it’s hard enough for an obsessive like me without being misdirected. And I feel like a lot of “tastemaker” reviews are misleading, caught up in the excitement of being first out of the gate.

Every year, there are at least half a dozen new bands I’m supposed to have an opinion on. People will ask me about them, too. I got numerous emails last year when Girls’ album (wittily titled Album) hit stores. I’d heard a couple of tracks, and had no interest in buying it, but after a while, I felt obligated. As a critic, I felt like I had to have some thoughts about this thing. I know, that’s insane, but still. I was even angrier at myself when I discovered that Album is total crap, a collection of same-old-same-old garage rock clichés.

That’s been my experience more often than not. Every year, I scan Pitchfork’s top albums list, and I make it a point to hear the ones I haven’t. They’re usually not worth the effort. I’m also generally less interested in new bands than I am accomplished ones. Debut albums are fine and all, but the true test of a group’s worth comes from their subsequent efforts, I feel. I lauded Vampire Weekend’s first one, for example, but found their second, Contra, lacking. If their third is half-hearted, too, I will scrub them from my “bands to watch” list.

On the other hand, I am very excited for Rufus Wainwright’s new one, All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu. It will be his sixth, not counting live records. Wainwright’s self-titled debut was passable, but offered few hints of the songwriter he’d soon become. It wasn’t until his third, Want One, that he truly blossomed. I don’t regret buying the self-titled album, but I liked it more for its potential than for its actual music. And I hope my review (written for Face Magazine in 1998) reflected that.

I guess what I’m saying is, I try to maintain a balance here between jittery enthusiasm and world-weary cynicism. I know most of the new bands that debut this year won’t make it past their second record. I know it’s foolhardy to talk about any of them as if they’re important. And yet, I’ve been trying to give these new bands an even chance, buying the ones that sound interesting and pulling for the acts that turn in reasonably good work their first time out.

I still can’t escape the feeling that I’m supposed to have an opinion about these bands, however. So I picked a few I liked to talk about this time. These are bands embraced by the likes of Pitchfork, bands that are only considered overexposed in those rarified circles. I’m like the rest of you – I would never have heard of any of these acts without the urging of the ear-to-the-ground tastemakers, who enthusiastically supported all of these records.

I guess that means they’ve done some good, but those same tastemakers also enthusiastically supported some of the most awful crap I’ve had the misfortune to hear in the past few years, which I also would not have bought without their urging. I guess it’s like anything else – you have to figure out what works for you.

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In indie terms, Hot Chip has been around forever. The British quintet is now on its fourth album, having released its debut in 2004. They play danceable pop music, mostly synthesized, but with nice melodies. They’re like Depeche Mode, if they took happy pills and stopped dressing in black.

After hearing a couple of their four-on-the-floor singles in recent years, I steadfastly avoided buying any of Hot Chip’s albums. The songs just didn’t do it for me. But there’s such a buzz around their fourth, One Life Stand, that I decided to give it a go. I was immediately struck by how much the opening tracks sound like the Pet Shop Boys – Alexis Taylor has a clear, somewhat thin voice, and the band lays down computerized arpeggios and blip-beats behind him. Opener “Thieves in the Night” could easily fit onto any Pet Shop Boys album released in the last decade.

As I understand things, One Life Stand is the album on which Hot Chip matured, writing more directly emotional songs than ever before. The first three tracks don’t bear that out, sticking to dancefloor rhythms and simple lyrics, but that doesn’t stop “I Feel Better” from being the record’s best tune, its synth strings complementing Taylor’s swooping melody perfectly. The title track, which comes next, is also quite danceable, but its lyrics turn to fidelity: “All I want is a one-life stand…” Maturity, at this point on the record, looks good on them.

Unfortunately, it all goes south from there, as the emotional content overwhelms the melodic. I have not heard a more boring stretch of goopy balladry than “Brothers,” “Slush” and “Alley Cat” this year, together an interminable 16-and-a-half minutes of slow drudgery. The record rights itself by the end – closer “Take It In” is nicely anthemic – but it’s too late. One Life Stand has been dealt a fatal blow.

Still, there’s enough interesting stuff here to pique my interest in the earlier records. As for whether I’ll buy Hot Chip’s fifth album, whenever it’s released, that’s still up in the air.

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Much more successful is Yeasayer, an experimental trio from Brooklyn. Their appealing debut, All Hour Cymbals, dabbled in Animal Collective-style psychedelica with flavors from around the globe mixed in. Still, it was largely formless, and after the riveting “Wait for the Summer,” it basically fell apart. There was enough there to hold my interest in a second album, though, and with Odd Blood, the Yeasayers have delivered big time.

Strangely enough, the reason I like this is probably the very reason it’s been getting middling reviews: Odd Blood is a kickass pop album. An off-kilter, strange little pop album, but a pop album nonetheless. The band has concentrated on melodies and choruses and good old-fashioned songwriting here, and they’ve incorporated a winning ‘80s influence, both musically and lyrically. Once you get past the first track, the loping and off-putting “The Children,” little else here takes itself seriously at all. And that’s what makes it such a grand old time.

Single “Ambling Alp” finds Chris Keating sounding like Raine Maida from Our Lady Peace, grooving on a dazzling little chorus: “You’ve got to stick up for yourself, son, never mind what anybody else does.” Yeasayer take their own advice on every track, from the soaring “ooh-ooh-oohs” of mid-tempo stunner “Madder Red” to the limber disco wonderland of “O.N.E.” (just wait until the Thompson Twins-esque synths come in on the chorus), and even to titling a song “Love Me Girl.” Sometimes you’ll think you’re listening to Wham’s much cooler cousins.

In some ways, the whole album is prelude to “Rome,” the greatest stomper in the bunch. From the first notes, you know you’re in for something – it’s part Moroccan dance music, part Prince, and all relentless. Throughout this record, Yeasayer consistently find interesting ways to create this music, taking from virtually every global source they can find, and mixing with abandon. Still, the end result is just an awe-inspiring pop record, one you don’t need to study to enjoy.

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While Yeasayer took an extraordinary left turn into popland, Baltimore dream weavers Beach House have never really changed. Over three albums, the duo of Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally has slowly and methodically built up its hazy, lazy sound. Beach House records sound like half-remembered visions at first, cloudy and easy to simply watch pass by.

Their third, Teen Dream, is very similar to the last two, but to these ears, it sounds like something of a breakthrough. There are many things they did right here – the focus is on Scally’s twangy, reverbed guitar, rather than Legrand’s woozy keyboards, and Legrand finally wrote herself some deliriously fine melodies to wrap her haunting voice around. True, the tempo is more suitable for sleepwalking than dancing, but this time, the songs will take hold and stick with you.

Legrand has certainly never sounded better. She’s kind of a mixture of Hope Sandoval (of Mazzy Star) and Stevie Nicks, and Beach House songs have rarely given her the chance to show off her pipes. “Silver Soul” sets that right – the refrain is a simple “it’s happening again,” but Legrand sings the hell out of it. “Norway” and “Walk in the Park” follow suit, their sweetly ascending melodies sounding just beautiful coming from Legrand’s mouth.

But it’s “Used to Be” that takes the gold, a delightful piano piece with a chorus that’ll make you smile, and a coda (“coming home, any day now…”) that’ll make you shiver. The rest of Teen Dream is lovely as well, much better than anything else they’ve done, and by the end I can’t help thinking that this is the perfect Beach House album. If Legrand and Scally make another, as they probably will, they’ll either have to build on this somehow, or take that left turn somewhere else. Either way, I’ll be listening.

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Which brings us to Local Natives, the most recent indie buzz “ohmigodbuythisNOW” band I’ve encountered. I admit I get a little turned off by tsunamis of excitement surrounding a band with only one album, particularly considering the hype actually started last year, before the debut, Gorilla Manor, was released. It’s their first time out. How great can it possibly be?

Well, it’s pretty good, to be honest. Local Natives draw from two other acts with very successful debut albums: rhythmically, they take from Vampire Weekend, and melodically, they are reminiscent of Fleet Foxes. They have those high, wonderful harmonies, and an appealing sense of woodsy, organic charm. But they are much more propulsive than the Foxes, matching kinetic electric guitars with jets of percussion. And they’ve written some fine songs as well.

The best of those, to my ears, is “Sun Hands,” a circular drive of a piece that darts ahead adroitly, meeting an enchanting “ah-ah-ah-ah” refrain head-on. The other 11 songs are nice as well, and it takes a few listens to hear all the little things the band has done, from percussion breakdowns to a cappella sections to tribal shouts to clean webs of guitar. This is a very well-made record, particularly for a debut, and even though Local Natives sound like an even blend of indie’s greatest hits over the last few years, their sound works.

This album doesn’t have the magic of Fleet Foxes, although moments of it – like the sweet “Who Knows Who Cares” – are soul-liftingly pretty. And unlike a lot of of-the-moment debuts, this one doesn’t fall apart halfway through. Even as late as the penultimate track, the string-laden piano waltz “Stranger Things,” they’re still full of surprises. Gorilla Manor is an uncommonly good first album, and I hope the Natives can stick with it, and make a second and third to match.

Of course, I’ve rated many debut albums quite highly – think Mutemath, and Keane, and Fleet Foxes, and the list goes on and on. Do I think Local Natives are worthy of the hype that’s surrounded them for a year? Probably not. On the evidence of Gorilla Manor, they’re a good band, but only time will tell if they can become an important one. For now, though, check this out. It’s as fine a debut record as you’re likely to hear this year.

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And now, the next installment in my Top 20 of the 2000s. I’ll keep this one short, for obvious reasons.

#14. The Decemberists, The Hazards of Love (2009).

I don’t have much more to say about The Hazards of Love than I did two months ago, when I proclaimed it the best album of 2009. Colin Meloy’s masterpiece is one of the most complete pieces of music released in the last 10 years, a single hour-long song telling an intricate, warped folk tale full of pain and death. I admire it for indulging in the album-length statement with a tricky and emotionally resonant plotline. I love it for simply being an amazing piece of music.

Meloy took from so many sources here – English folk music, centuries-old balladry, progressive rock, blues – and every one of them is a storytelling medium. He hired Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond and Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond to play the female roles, adding to the sense of watching a particularly good Shakespeare-in-the-park performance. And he wrote Hazards like a play, as motifs and lyrics from the first act take on new resonance in the second.

But mostly, this thing rocks like no Decemberists album before it. It’s here not just because it’s a challenging, brilliantly-written work that takes a bold stand for the album in the age of the download single, but because it’s a terrific, engaging, wholly enjoyable piece of music from first note to last. The Hazards of Love is a rock opera for people who hate rock operas, a gloriously mad and perfectly realized dark fairy tale set to extraordinary music. If you have the chance to see the band perform it live, in sequence, don’t pass it up. It will drive the album home for you – this is a singular work from a singular band, making music that no one else on earth is making.

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Next week, triple albums from Joanna Newsom and Leyland Kirby. Also coming soon, the final Johnny Cash album, and lovely records from Shearwater and Midlake. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

You may not have noticed this, but MTV finally dropped the words “Music Television” from its logo last week.

Some are calling this a seismic shift, but to me, it’s the first honest thing this network has done in more than a decade. When MTV kicked off its first broadcast, in 1981, it was devoted to music – so much so that industry analysts predicted it would only last a few months. No one wants to see music videos all the time, they said.

They were wrong. We loved music videos, we children of the ‘80s. We lapped them up like candy. It was our first opportunity to see just what our favorite artists looked like, and get a visual peek into their brains. And artists like Peter Gabriel and Michael Jackson and Madonna picked up the music video ball and ran with it, crafting iconic representations of their songs. It was the dawning of an age of calculated image manipulation, no doubt, but it was also an outlet for bands and musicians, another way to get their music heard.

With shows like 120 Minutes and Headbanger’s Ball, MTV even opened the door to lesser-known acts. It was like the greatest radio station in the world, and it played 24 hours a day. I discovered so many new artists through MTV, and my awakening as a music fan is firmly tied to the network’s burgeoning first years. And you know, MTV kept its focus for a long time. I remember watching it through the ‘90s, seeing Beck’s “Loser” and Radiohead’s “Karma Police” and countless others.

The last artist I remember discovering through MTV was Ours, in 2001. Even then, the rot was setting in. These days, you’ll be lucky to find a music video on MTV. It’s all reality shows like Jersey Shore and True Life and Pregnant at 16. It’s a lifestyle channel, a cultural barometer. It holds little interest for music fans, and I think it’s about time they stopped advertising it as music television. It simply isn’t that anymore.

I may sound like I’m eulogizing MTV, even though it’s still on the air. I think rather I’m mourning what it used to be. The Internet has really taken over as the source for new music, so I don’t necessarily miss what MTV used to provide. But I do miss the idea of a channel devoted solely to music, and staffed with music fans. When it started out, MTV was daring, almost illicit. It was a fly-by-night rebel base of a channel, run by people who couldn’t wait to bring you the music they loved.

Now it’s a corporate mouthpiece selling a teenage lifestyle, complete with the right jeans and the right makeup and the right shoes. The transformation has been a sad one to watch, and now with even the word “music” removed from its logo, I can’t think of a single reason I’ll ever tune in again. I’ve been sad and angry about this for a while, but it took the reformatting of the logo to make me realize what a good thing MTV used to be, and what a sad thing the corporate execs have replaced it with.

But hey, at least they’re not lying about it anymore.

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Spoon’s Transference broke my computer.

Okay, not my entire computer, but certainly my speakers. I first listened to the seventh album by Austin’s finest over the Internet, and found it baffling. It sounded to me like someone had spilled coffee on the mixing desk – sounds dropped out, then came back in without warning, and the whole thing came off as a ragged mess. This led to me walking around for a couple of days panning the record, and claiming not to understand what they were aiming for.

Of course, now I know just what happened. One of my speakers is now blown, the other in bad shape, and the complex (for Spoon anyway) production of Transference was lost blasting through them in their weakened state. It’s still an interesting patchwork of a record, but not nearly as baffling as I first thought. In fact, it only took a few listens through to realize this is my favorite Spoon album. So apologies to everyone I warned away from this record. If you dig Spoon, you will really dig this.

Transference is Spoon’s attempt at going big, without losing their minimalist indie roots. This band has always been about only doing what’s needed to get the song across, and no more. They have a thumping swagger about them, an appealing confidence that sells even their simplest tunes. And some of them are very simple, based on one or two notes repeated. The songs on Transference are no exception, but there’s more going on in the corners of this album than ever before. It just rarely happens all at once.

Take the opener, “Before Destruction.” It begins with a bass drum, a hi-hat, an organ and an acoustic guitar, strumming one chord. But as Britt Daniel’s vocals come in, everything else drops away, leaving just that guitar. Spoon songs don’t build up in the traditional way. They blossom and decay, most often in ways you’d never expect. A surprising amount of “Before Destruction” is Daniel and the acoustic – it’s just the bare bones of the song.

Much of Transference is fuller, or at least gives off the illusion of fullness. There’s a “Tomorrow Never Knows” vibe to “The Mystery Zone,” with its throbbing one-note bassline and swirling vocals. The Spoon of old would have been content with the flickering guitars and tone-setting pianos, but there’s a subtle string section here, and it works beautifully. “Who Makes Your Money” struts along on a slinky bass figure and little else, and “Written in Reverse” is built almost entirely around a sloppy-cool two-chord piano line, but it builds into a full-band stomp that feels like a climax.

Here and there, Daniel has let a bit of ambition creep into the songwriting too. At 5:31, “I Saw the Light” is the longest album track Spoon has ever released, and while it starts unassumingly enough, it flips itself on its ear halfway through for a long, repetitive, and very cool coda. Of course, one song later, Daniel includes a straight-ahead home demo of the Stones-y “Trouble Comes Running,” complete with lots and lots of tape hiss. For every moment of professionalism here, there’s an equal and opposite moment of scrappy inventiveness.

For all its moving parts, the most affecting moment on Transference is “Goodnight Laura,” another demo-sounding track capturing Daniel and a piano, and nothing else. The record ends with the very odd disco number “Nobody Gets Me But You,” and if they’d only shifted “Goodnight Laura” to the closing spot, this would have been the perfect Spoon album. Still, it is, for my money, the best thing they’ve done, a fully-formed exploration of minimal maximalism that stays true to their core sound. Oh, and it rocks, too.

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In some circles, Aaron Sprinkle is a legend.

A singer-songwriter from Seattle, Sprinkle got his start as the guitarist of Poor Old Lu, a grungy outfit that made four increasingly terrific records in the ‘90s and early 2000s. He went on to record a number of swell solo albums, and produce more than 40 records for bands like Starflyer 59, Eisley, Pedro the Lion, Emery and Mae. Along the way, he’s found the time to form a new band, called Fair, and they’ve just released their second album.

And yet, he remains essentially unknown. I’ve had more than a dozen people ask me what I think of Spoon’s new record, and yet no one I know has been anticipating Fair’s sophomore effort, Disappearing World, like I have. It’s probably no surprise which one I like better, but what might be surprising is just how audience-friendly and universally appealing Disappearing World is. It’s one of those records nearly everyone would like, if they only gave it a chance.

Fair’s first album, The Best Worst-Case Scenario, was a scrappy little indie-pop record, fueled by loud guitars and a live-band feel. But Disappearing World is a different beast – a little glossier, a little more ambitious. It’s a bigger and clearer vision, surrounding and augmenting 10 of the best songs Sprinkle has written. There are songs here that should be burning up the radio, songs you’ll be singing in your head for days afterwards.

Case in point: about three weeks before buying Disappearing World, I heard the title track online. I only played it once, but when I cued up the CD for the first time more than 20 days later, I remembered almost every note, like recalling an old friend. It’s not even close to the catchiest or most memorable tune here, but it burrowed its way into my brain after one spin. That’s impressive.

The second track is even more so. “Wayside” starts off with a nice piano figure, but soon explodes into a propulsive, melodic freight train of a tune. Sprinkle’s high and clear voice has rarely sounded better than it does here, slipping into falsetto one moment and belting it out the next. The full-band crescendo that concludes this track is singularly thrilling, Joey Sanchez just pummeling those drums until they cry uncle. It’s an awesome song, performed awesomely.

Disappearing World doesn’t hit those heights again, but every song is solid and memorable. “Walking in My Sleep” is a piano-pounding march with a straight-ahead chorus and some dirty organ playing in the background. The ballad “Take Some Risks” brings out the string section, but makes room for a “November Rain”-style soaring guitar solo. “Escape Artist” has a Coldplay-meets-John Lennon vibe to it, and “It’s Doubtful” is a roaring guitar-pop song that can hold its head high with some of the greats.

Oddly, the record’s one disappointment is “The Worst of Your Wear,” a collaboration with Aaron Marsh of Copeland that never seems to find a direction. But the record rights itself with “Great Divide,” a wonderful, loping tune bursting with melody. Closer “Anymore” starts off slow, but by the end, the band is on overdrive, crashing headlong into an abrupt skid-stop. And then you press play again.

Disappearing World offers no clues as to why Aaron Sprinkle has flown below the radar his whole career. This record sounds like his attempt to rectify that slight, and he’s jumped in with both feet, turning in an accessible and thoroughly enjoyable collection. In a just world, you’d be hearing these songs on the radio every day. Alas, we live in this one, and Disappearing World will likely be ignored. But that doesn’t mean you have to ignore it too. Lovers of guitar-pop and finely crafted melodies won’t want to be without this record. As the man says in “Great Divide,” you might hesitate, but I don’t recommend it.

Check out the band here. Buy Disappearing World here.

* * * * *

Andrew Bird may get all the press, but when it comes to violin-playing geniuses, for my money, you can’t beat Owen Pallett.

He’s best known as the guy who plays and arranges strings for Arcade Fire, but over three increasingly complex albums as Final Fantasy, Pallett has created some of the most fascinating and delightfully odd mini-orchestral music you’re likely to find. He’s a studio wizard, looping his own violins and violas over and over to create massive washes of sound, but he’s also a terrific songwriter and arranger – Final Fantasy tunes are dramatic and memorable things, despite Pallett’s limited vocal range.

For his third, Heartland, he’s gone even bigger. It’s a concept album about a guy named Lewis who undertakes a spiritual journey, and instead of Pallett’s usual one-man-string-section sound, he’s enlisted the Czech Symphony Strings on nearly every track. The result is grandiose, even more so than anything he’s done with Arcade Fire, and yet it retains the oddball charm of the two previous Final Fantasy records. Heartland is a monumental work, but it contains those ambitions to 46 minutes. It’s something of a pocket symphony.

If you’re concerned about Andrew Lloyd Webber-ness creeping in, don’t be. No matter how huge the sound, Pallett keeps his eye on the ball – in this case, a glorious Brian Wilson-esque sense of melody and movement. Opener “Midnight Directives” sounds like the start of a long journey, its chorus buoyed by muted horns. Follow-up “Keep the Dog Quiet” is creepy and atmospheric, strings slowly building up as Pallett’s voice hits the high notes. (He even pinches one of Win Butler’s lines for the opening: “My body is a cage…”) From here on out, you’re on a trip, and Heartland carries you along like a wave.

Other highlights? “Red Sun No. 5” sounds straight out of Pet Sounds, right down to the tympanis. “Lewis Takes Action” uses the “Be My Baby” drum pattern to support more Beach Boys-esque beauty, complete with gorgeous string and horn parts. It is here that the lyrics turn truly surreal: “I took a no-face by his beak and broke his jaw, he’ll never speak again…” Things get even weirder from there – see the flurry of drum programming on “The Great Elsewhere” – but they’re always balanced off by lovely melodies. You may even get something like “Oh Heartland, Up Yours” stuck in your head.

Still, this is not an album for the faint of heart, or the musically unadventurous. It is, in many ways, a single sweeping song, and it takes several listens to grasp just what Owen Pallett’s up to here. It’s not easy, but it is worth it. By the time the album concludes, with the massive six-minute “Tryst With Mephistopheles” and the surprisingly abrupt coda “What Do You Think Will Happen Now,” you feel like you’ve truly been taken on a ride through bizarre worlds of cotton candy and blood and thunder, guided by a brilliant madman. Heartland is wild and wondrous and thoroughly awesome.

As a side note, Pallett announced prior to Heartland’s release that he would be dropping the Final Fantasy moniker and sticking with his own name. However, my CD still says Final Fantasy, on the spine and the liner notes. So that’s where I’m filing this, just to avoid confusion. Besides, with half a dozen other musicians and the Czech Symphony Strings on board, this is less of a solo album than anything Pallett’s made. That’s how I’m rationalizing it, anyway.

* * * * *

And now, the next installment in my Top 20 Albums of the 2000s.

#15. Silverchair, Young Modern (2007).

My excitement over Young Modern has cooled somewhat in the two-plus years since it came out. I’m not sure I would call it the best album of 2007 anymore, but hell, I still like it enough to include it among the 20 best records of the decade, so it must be doing something right.

Part of that initial thrill was in hearing just how far Daniel Johns had come. You may remember Silverchair as the Australian trio who aped Pearl Jam down to the last detail on their 1995 debut Frogstomp. That remains their most successful album in the U.S. – it went platinum and hit number nine on the Billboard charts. It is how they’re remembered here, as a bunch of kids playing godawful grunge and moaning about how bad their lives are. Frogstomp is an awful, awful record, which makes Johns’ amazing growth as a songwriter even more remarkable.

The change has been coming for a while. Silverchair’s third and fourth albums, Neon Ballroom and Diorama, incorporated more pure pop influences and more sonic colors, and Johns’ side project with keyboardist Paul Mac, The Dissociatives, took that even further. But nothing could have prepared me for Young Modern, a collection of songs so brilliant, so well-made, that Johns immediately catapulted into my list of favorite songwriters.

People laugh at me for talking up Silverchair, but Young Modern itself is the best way to shut them up. The first two songs are the most accessible, “Young Modern Station” grooving along through a killer chorus and then sliding into “Straight Lines,” a smooth and melodic pop gem. From there, the album goes nuts, from the crazy carnival ride of “If You Keep Losing Sleep,” to the ELO tributes “Low” and “Insomnia,” to the choir-of-angels bliss-out of “Waiting All Day.” Every song is a winner, none of them going the places you’d expect.

Johns shines throughout – Young Modern is really his coming-out party as a phenomenal pop songwriter. But as good as everything else is, the seven-minute “Those Thieving Birds” trilogy is his crowning achievement. The centerpiece of Young Modern, the piece starts with acoustic guitars and vocals, but ends up darting down one melodic path after another, helped along by robust string arrangements from Van Dyke Parks. Daniel Johns was in his mid-20s when he wrote and recorded this tune, and it’s one that would make older and wiser songsmiths weep with envy.

Young Modern has its faults. It’s a little too stuffed with keyboard sounds, and occasionally tries to do too much. But I’ll gladly take wild ambition over the safe and the formulaic. There’s nothing safe about Young Modern. It is one of the most daring, exciting and well-crafted pop albums of the 2000s, and it signals the emergence of a master songwriter. Where Daniel Johns goes from here should be fascinating to watch.

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Another long one! We’ll see what we can do about taking it down a notch next week. I’ll be reviewing some albums I’m supposed to have an opinion on, if you believe the press and the hype. 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.