So we’re only two weeks away from my Top 10 List, but I thought I would pre-empt any criticism right now by telling you that TV on the Radio’s Dear Science does not appear anywhere on it.

It doesn’t even get an honorable mention.

I suppose I’m destined to run into this at least once a year, but the wild acclaim for this album is simply beyond me. I mean, far be it from me to call this record terrible – it’s not – but it’s far, far from the best of the year. It’s fun and all, but there aren’t very many revelatory (or even complete) songs here. But with the end-of-the-year praise it’s getting, you’d think these guys had just made this decade’s Revolver. (Or even this decade’s OK Computer.)

TVoTR’s last album, Return to Cookie Mountain, received similar acclaim, but this time, it’s deafening. Rolling Stone, Spin and the Onion AV Club have already selected Dear Science as the best album of 2008, and I’ll bet you $100 Pitchfork follows suit. I know I sound like everyone’s cranky, uncool dad when I say things like this, but I just don’t get it. I have no particular problems with Dear Science, but I don’t think I’m hearing what everyone else is hearing here.

Of course, as you’ll see in two weeks, I’m an old-fashioned melody guy, and my top picks are by artists who found new ways to burrow into organic, blossoming pop music. As much as I like “Dancing Choose” and “Golden Age,” TV on the Radio didn’t give me anything that moved me, that altered the way I see the world. My top five picks – two new bands, and three old favorites – all did. Whether you hear what I hear in them, I couldn’t say. But if the reaction to Dear Science is any indication, I’m going to be all alone in my top selections this year, once again horribly out of step with the zeitgeist.

Sigh.

* * * * *

Okay, let’s talk about Darn Floor – Big Bite, my pick for the most welcome reissue of the year.

Every long-running artist has an album like Darn Floor. It’s the Labor of Love that Nobody Bought, the album said artist poured his heart and soul into, only to release it to near-total indifference. In Terry Taylor’s case, that indifference was even more dispiriting – as an artist marketed to Christian outlets only in the ‘80s, Taylor managed to alienate even the tiny fraction of the music-buying audience who even knew his name.

It’s only in subsequent years, as the long-out-of-print album grew near-legendary among Taylor’s fans, that Darn Floor came in for a reappraisal. For the hardcore, it’s always been a favorite, the album on which everything Taylor and his band, Daniel Amos, had been reaching for since the late ‘70s fully came together. It was a record that could only have been made at that time, by these people, under those circumstances, and for me, it stands as a high water mark in an already remarkable career.

It is my favorite Daniel Amos album, and for years I’ve only had two options if I wanted to listen to it – I could dig out my old cassette copy, or I could spin a poorly-burned CD an old girlfriend made for me eight years ago. My other option, I suppose, would be to pay the exorbitant prices a CD copy of Darn Floor fetches on eBay, and I’ve been tempted now and again. But thankfully, Taylor and Arena Rock Recording Company have finally put together a gorgeous reissue package, complete with an hour-long bonus disc of rare stuff.

Why do I like this album so much? To talk about that, I have to take you back to 1987, and into a dark and forgotten corner of the music industry.

When I say “Christian music,” I know what you think I mean. You think I mean processed Nashville pop, with a relegated “Jesus per minute” quota and slick, squeaky-clean marketing image. You think I mean sanitized worship music geared more towards “increasing the flock” than making any kind of artistic statement. And for the most part, you’re right. But suffering in their own ghetto off to the side of the already tiny Christian music industry, there have always been real, serious, brilliant artists looking to explore faith, rather than just present a cardboard cutout of it.

Terry Taylor has always been one of the best of these. He’s a living example of the fact that religious faith and reason are not mutually exclusive, no matter what Bill Maher might tell you. What Maher’s sneering documentary Religulous missed is that faith, for thoughtful and reflective people, is a constant struggle. It’s a common assumption that faithful people are blind to the horrors of the world, or the logical inconsistencies of their beliefs, and I think this is a deeply flawed misconception. And Taylor proves my point.

Here’s a guy who knows and sings about the awful realities of life. He knows and enumerates all the reasons faith doesn’t make sense, and then tells you why he believes anyway. He’s full of doubt, but understands that these doubts don’t negate faith, they strengthen it. His is a complex, poetic worldview, and his music is similarly complicated and difficult, particularly in an industry that has consistently pumped out interchangeable cheerleaders for a simplistic “God is good” message.

And yet, for most of his career, Taylor worked within that industry. At first, he had no choice – Daniel Amos began in the late ‘70s as a sometimes whimsical country-rock Jesus band, like the Christian Eagles. The first album is almost unrecognizable as the work of Terry Taylor, honestly, and no mainstream label would have touched it. But from there, Taylor’s gone on to make some astonishing works of art, aimed at an audience that will probably never hear them. He’s labored to change a machine that has never appreciated the nuances he brings to his art.

In 1981, Daniel Amos began its most ambitious project, a four-album concept narrative called The Alarma Chronicles. Their label, Frontline, hated it – musically, Taylor had embraced new wave head on, making clattering, dissonant guitar-pop with the best of them, and lyrically, he’d embarked on a multi-year examination of just how awful the world is. It was dark stuff, with no easy answers and no pat Christian solutions. Jesus was mentioned just once in the first three albums, practically drowned out in an ocean of shady preachers, celebrity culture and greed, greed, greed. (It was the ‘80s, and where were our rocket packs? Seriously.)

It all led up to the final volume, 1986’s Fearful Symmetry, and even Taylor will tell you he stuck the landing a little bit. He’d set himself up with an unenviable task – three albums describing the world’s problems, one describing the solution – and I’m sure it weighed on him. How does one articulate God, without being cheesy and simplistic? To be fair, he gave it a great try – Symmetry is full of poetic observations cribbed from some of the best minds in history, and the music, while dated-sounding, is some of the most complex the band had yet written.

Still, the goal of Fearful Symmetry was to put God into words, and on that score, Taylor didn’t come up trumps. You can tell it was quite the learning experience, though – the entire next Daniel Amos album would be about how God is indescribable, beyond mortal ken. It’s about how we try and try to sum him up, but, as in the case of Fearful Symmetry, always fall woefully short. It’s about admitting that we don’t understand, and we won’t understand, and trying, as a thinking person, to live with that and accept it. Some theologians have written entire theses on this topic, trying to make sense of the idea that God will never make sense.

Terry Taylor? He wrote Darn Floor – Big Bite.

Yes, I know the title is odd, but it makes sense. There’s this gorilla named Koko, who lives in captivity in California, and she has learned more than a thousand words in American Sign Language. And one day, there was a massive earthquake that rumbled through Koko’s cage, and she expressed it the only way she knew how – by signing the words “darn floor big bite.” Taylor being Taylor, he saw this as the perfect metaphor for man’s attempts to describe God. We use primitive language, and we don’t even come close to getting it right.

The whole album is full of imagery like that. Take “Strange Animals,” the album’s mission statement, on which Taylor uses the animal kingdom to explain why we act the way we do towards one another: “I want to hold you, but it’s not clear, just what’s your intention if I get too near, I feel the danger but I cannot leave, will you tear open the heart on my sleeve?” “Earth Household” imagines us as caretakers, the world as a single home, and its characters struggling to get out, to “go to the other unknowable side.”

“Pictures of the Gone World” is brilliantly foreboding, its protagonists sharing photographs of a world that no longer exists. They are meant to be Adam and Eve, saying to each other, “We could lose this world too.” The album’s centerpiece, “The Unattainable Earth,” is at track nine, near the end. In it, Taylor brings all the threads together – “Language is weak, but I keep on speaking,” he says, before wondering, “Should you really reveal anything when I just misunderstand it?” The denouement, “The Shape of Air,” is Taylor’s last word (well, here, at least) on the futility and beauty of trying to reflect God in art. “Describe the voice from heaven, and paint the grace you’re given, it’s the shape of air…”

I’m giving the impression that Darn Floor is a scholarly document, but that’s because I haven’t talked about the music yet. It was on this album that Taylor, guitarist Greg Flesch, bassist Tim Chandler and drummer Ed McTaggart cohered as a unit. The music on Darn Floor is spacious, jagged, energetic, and unfailingly melodic. It occasionally sounds like it was recorded in 1987, which it was, but of all Daniel Amos’ ‘80s works, this one holds up the best, because it sticks to the three basic rock instruments and lets them breathe.

There are only a handful of bass players in the world as good as Tim Chandler, and on Darn Floor, you can really hear how terrific he is. On the album’s opener, a snide retort to puritanical Christian attitudes called “Return of the Beat Menace,” Chandler is as reserved as he’s ever been, laying down bedrock-solid accents. But jump ahead to the almost jazzy arrangement of “Pictures of the Gone World,” and you’ll hear a dissonant master at work. Chandler gets away with incredibly bizarre bass parts in otherwise simple songs – man, just listen to what he plays during the chorus – but they work.

Then there’s Greg Flesch, who doesn’t as much play the guitar on this album as conduct it. You will very rarely hear a strum or a simple chord from Flesch – he complements Chandler’s improvisations with his own dissonant lines. Often, neither one is playing what you’d think of as “the song,” but with Ed McTaggart’s rock-solid drumming, they hold it together, and Taylor’s vocals are always to the point, tempering his bandmates’ flights of fancy.

Darn Floor covers a lot of ground in its 10 tracks, 36 minutes. There are the straight pop songs, like “Strange Animals” and “The Unattainable Earth,” but then there is the groove-laden powerhouse of the title track, which sees Chandler providing the foundation for Flesch’s towers of sound. “Safety Net” is built around a merciless electronic drum beat and an odd 7/4 time signature, but it rocks like a house on fire, Taylor’s vocals sounding ragged and worn by the end. “Half Light, Epoch and Phase” gives Flesch a chance to whip out his surf guitar chops over a constantly shifting backdrop, and “Earth Household” is strikingly beautiful, its circular bass line leading into the perfect chorus.

And then there is “Divine Instant,” which, thanks to the reissue, sounds like a completely different song to me now. I never quite figured out that the lyrics are about sex, which Taylor sees as another way of touching the divine. Now that I know that, thanks to Taylor’s new liner notes, I can hear that the music was trying to tell me that all along. It’s so funny – the whole vibe is almost porn-tastic. Even the way Flesch bends his strings here sounds salacious. I don’t know how I didn’t hear it before. “Divine Instant” is a really good song to begin with, but now I just crack up every time it plays. “Time standing still…”

Darn Floor – Big Bite is the most beautifully odd record Daniel Amos ever made. Even now, after two decades, it remains one of the most insightful examinations of faith, doubt and the inability of language (both spoken and played) to encapsulate either one. It also remains a challenging, incredibly rewarding work of musical art by four men at the top of their game.

So why have you never heard it? Beats me. This record stands shoulder to shoulder with its ‘80s contemporaries, and towers over most of them. The only reason for its obscurity is that it was produced within, and released strictly to, a part of the music industry that doesn’t look for, nurture or support thoughtful art. You can shout about Jesus from the rooftops in this part of the industry, but if you sit down and carefully examine your thoughts about and relationship with him, without overtly mentioning his name in the lyrics, then you will be shunned. You’ll be “not Christian enough” for the Christian marketing machine and “too Christian” to have your records sold anywhere else – even in the days when U2 ruled the world.

It’s a strange little trap, and Terry Taylor’s been in it for roughly 30 years. In that time, he’s created a legacy many songwriters would kill for, and he’s still at it. Last year’s The Midget, the Speck and the Molecule, under the Swirling Eddies moniker, was extraordinary, and he continues to write one great song after another with the Lost Dogs. And he keeps struggling with his faith and his doubt, always with the honesty that marks a true artist. Darn Floor – Big Bite may be my favorite, but it’s just the tallest spire, and the whole building is worth exploring.

Arena Rock’s reissue, by the way, is beautiful, and the bonus disc is great too. You get some instrumental cuts that really show off Chandler and Flesch, a few live bursts (including an awesome rendition of “Safety Net”), and a 22-minute interview with Taylor that puts the whole thing in perspective. I highly recommend it. Get it here.

Next week, a couple of live box sets to mark year’s end.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

We still have a few more weeks to shuffle through, but musically speaking, the year is over.

Oh, sure, there are a couple more interesting releases scheduled, but nothing that will change the geography of the year. There are some live records, a few covers projects (especially Mark Kozelek’s The Finally LP, which I’m looking forward to), some third-rate rap projects, but nothing of much note. My top 10 list is done, including a mammoth selection of honorable mentions. I do believe I’ve heard the best stuff I’m going to hear this year, and I’m already looking ahead to 2009.

Just last week, I wasn’t so sure. It felt like 2008 was getting ready for one last surge, a tidal wave of potential excellence that could change the game. I spent more than $100 on music last Tuesday, and sadly, none of it rose to the challenge. There was one clear (and somewhat unexpected) winner, but I had to navigate a forest of mediocrity to get to it. And now I’m going to replicate that experience for you by saving my favorite until the end.

Yeah, I’m a bastard.

But seriously, given the career resurgence he’s had lately, wouldn’t you expect Paul McCartney to come up with some last-minute gem to rewrite 2008? His last two solo albums, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard and Memory Almost Full, were his strongest in many years, leading me to actually anticipate new McCartney product in a way I haven’t since… well, not in my lifetime, honestly. It didn’t even faze me that he was resurrecting his old Fireman moniker, which he used to release two interminably boring lite-techno projects in the ‘90s. This one, he promised, was different – a real pop album, crafted with his fellow Fireman, Youth.

Give him credit for truth in advertising. Electric Arguments is nothing like the other two Fireman discs, and I wonder why, exactly, he thought bringing back the name was a good idea. This is a collection of ditties, little pop-rock constructions with only a few splashes of electronica. Sadly, though, there’s none of the melodic invention and actual songwriting skill of McCartney’s last couple of efforts either, which drives the point home – this isn’t a Paul McCartney album, even though it sometimes sounds like one.

I do sometimes wonder just how deep this identity crisis goes. Does Paul McCartney sometimes forget that he’s Paul McCartney, one of the world’s best living songwriters? I mean, anyone can have an off month or two, but he doesn’t have to make us listen to them, does he? It’s endemic of McCartney’s solo catalog – the gems sit right alongside the tossed-off crap, given equal weight. And sometimes, as here, the crap far outweighs the good stuff. The man just needs some quality control – if he’d released only half as much music in the last 30 years, keeping only the songs that make use of his prodigious gifts, he’d have a nearly flawless solo career behind him.

But he doesn’t do that. Instead, he puts out albums like Electric Arguments. There are a couple of interesting songs here, like the dreamlike “Traveling Light,” but so much of this was clearly written and recorded very quickly. Acoustic ditties like “Two Magpies” and “Light from Your Lighthouse” make their slight melodies work for them, but endless dirges like “Lifelong Passion” just… don’t. “Sing the Changes” starts out like a driving powerhouse, but you soon realize McCartney just hasn’t written anything beyond the main riff, and it doesn’t even deserve its 3:42.

The back half of the album nearly saves it. Here is where Youth takes center stage, crafting near-instrumental soundscapes. The best of these, “Universal Here, Everlasting Now,” floats through several sections, including one with an actual dance beat, before ending in a flourish of piano. Closer “Don’t Stop Running” returns to the tossed-off dirge formula of the earlier tracks, but for some reason, this one works better, with its layered webs of guitar. It’s a downbeat conclusion, nearly ruined by the three minutes of noise tacked on at the end.

But nothing here needed someone like Paul McCartney to create. I know what you’re thinking – can’t the man do what he wants to do? Hasn’t he earned that?

And sure, if he wants to hang out with Youth for a few days and jam out some half-finished songs just for fun, who am I to begrudge him? But this album costs just as much as Chaos and Creation at your local record store, and they’re not even in the same ballpark. It’s his right to make an album like this (and like Driving Rain, and Off the Ground, and Pipes of Peace, and on and on), but the more of these he makes, the less the name Paul McCartney really means to the world of music. And that’s a shame.

You certainly can’t accuse Scott Weiland of not working hard on his second solo album. Happy in Galoshes is a 20-track, 90-minute behemoth spread across two discs, and it explores just as many different styles as his first one, 12-Bar Blues. In fact, listening to this thing, it’s like the sleazy-sezy-cool of Velvet Revolver never happened – this is a full-on ‘90s pop-rock record, sounding often enough like the sequel to Shangri-La-Dee-Da, Weiland’s final album with Stone Temple Pilots.

And like that album, I just don’t remember much of Galoshes 10 minutes after it’s finished playing. I can tell you some impressions, though. The main one is this: Weiland couldn’t want to be David Bowie any more if he tried. The Thin White Duke is all over this thing, especially in Weiland’s vocal style. Some of Galoshes qualifies as glam rock, and while Weiland hasn’t invented a fictional identity for himself and based a stage show around it quite yet, you could draw a straight line between Bowie’s ‘70s stuff and this. (Hell, the man even covers “Fame,” just to drive the point home.)

But I have to give him credit for that, and for the stylistic diversity to be found here. When Stone Temple Pilots first burst onto the scene in 1992, they were the first major non-Seattle band to ape the Seattle sound. Core, their many-times-platinum debut, is still an island in Weiland’s catalog – it’s the only one that sounds like early ‘90s radio. (Okay, the second STP album had hints of it too, but by Tiny Music, they’d excised that entirely, going for more textured pop-rock.)

Unfortunately, while everything on Happy in Galoshes is decent, none of it is extraordinary, and after an hour and a half of it, you’re just suffocated by the mediocrity. I’ve heard it twice now in its entirety, and damned if I can even hum “Blind Confusion,” or “The Man I Didn’t Know,” or virtually any other song here. The only one that really sticks in the memory is “Beautiful Day,” more for its phenomenal production than its melody. The rest? Pleasant while it’s playing, utterly forgettable five minutes later.

Galsohes creaks to a close with the jaunty “Arch Angel,” but then Weiland drags himself across the finish line with a lengthy rendition of the ‘70s hymn “Be Not Afraid.” (This is the “special secret song” the packaging promises.) I guess we’re supposed to be taken with the idea that Weiland, whose struggles with drugs and the law are constant tabloid fodder, is singing this old song of faith, but the result is just boring and painful.

Given its length and breadth, it’s tempting to consider Happy in Galoshes Weiland’s defining musical statement. But it’s mostly devoid of personality, and drowned in sub-par melodies – he’s definitely done better than this. After listening to this twice, I’m more likely to reach for a Velvet Revolver album, or even an STP disc, than Weiland’s opus again. The man just needs good collaborators to spark off of – without Slash, Duff, Izzy, or the DeLeo brothers, his music is much less interesting than it should be.

Which leaves the big winner of the week, and if I had to lay odds walking into the record store on Tuesday, I wouldn’t have guessed it. But 808s and Heartbreak, the new Kanye West album, is surprisingly good.

I shouldn’t have been too shocked, though. A couple of years ago, I gave West’s second album, Late Registration, very high marks – it was the hip-hop Sgt. Pepper, a collaboration with Jon Brion that set West’s rhymes to a mix of organic and electronic instruments I’ve never heard on a rap album before. His follow-up, last year’s Graduation, was a step down, but its synth beds and out-of-the-ordinary beats were still pretty cool. But this… 808s and Heartbreak is totally out of left field, and establishes West as one of the most interesting new artists in his particular scene.

It’s no secret Mr. West has had a bad year. In addition to watching a long-term relationship evaporate, he lost his mother, Donda, after complications from cosmetic surgery. He’s clearly in a dark and lonely place, and his album is moody, chilling and bleak. It also contains virtually no rapping, save for a couple of guest spots. Instead, West confined himself to the distinctive tones of the Roland TR-808 drum machine, and sang every song through an Auto-Tune vocoder.

The Auto-Tune has come a long way since the days of Cher’s godawful “Believe,” but it’s still an acquired taste. I can only take so much of T-Pain’s work, and often, the Auto-Tune is used to mask the fact that its user just can’t sing. But here, it works beautifully. West, quite frankly, can’t sing very well, but the fragility in his limited voice comes through, even with the vocoder on full blast. And I’ve never heard it used on songs like these before.

Take the first single, “Love Lockdown.” At its heart, this is a blues song, a pain-filled lament. But it’s a new kind of blues – the bass is a constant thump, the tribal drums provide shading instead of a beat, and the piano is surprisingly sparse. The center of the song is West’s lonely robot voice, and it works brilliantly. It’s the most unlikely pop hit of the year. It’s followed directly by “Paranoid,” a song that could have been taken right out of Prince’s 1982 setlist. It is the album’s most upbeat number, and it sounds like nothing else out there right now.

The album’s first half is shrouded in darkness, West moving from one tale of lost love to another – it’s like the synth-pop Blood on the Tracks. The record opens with its bleakest number, the six-minute “Say You Will.” Over a simple tonal beat and a bed of shuddering synths, West pulls out his first spine-tingling melody, and though he keeps this one going a bit too long, it sets the mood. “Welcome to Heartbreak” is a minor-key march about the difference between success and happiness, and “Heartless” (the poppiest thing in the first half) flirts with rap while exploring loneliness.

The first five tracks are a flawless statement of purpose, and once they’re out of the way, West lightens things up a notch. The aforementioned “Paranoid” leads into the almost-fun “Robocop,” but before long “Street Lights” has brought back the tribal drums and the dark mood. A highlight of the album, “Street Lights” is like nothing else I have heard this year – a pitch-black dirge with some heavenly backing vocals. The rest of 808s is bleak and slow and stark. The album ends with “Coldest Winter,” a song dedicated to West’s mother, and a tacked-on, six-minute stream-of-consciousness live recording that sounds somehow colder and farther away than anything else here.

Once again, West has surprised me by making an album I can’t classify. I suppose this is pop music, but it’s oceans away from the club-ready pop music West has made in the past. This is a daring release – I haven’t heard anything this musically adventurous and simultaneously emotionally haunted from a major, top-selling artist in a long time. I doubt this is a new musical direction for West. More likely, this album was therapy, a way to channel his feelings of loss and loneliness into his art. And it is art. 808s and Heartbreak is a striking, instantly memorable album from a man who is turning out to be a singular artist, a standout in his field. I can’t wait to hear where he goes next.

As for 2008, well, it’s not going anywhere next. I have four columns left to write – one about a reissue, one about a couple of live box sets, and then a top 10 list and Fifty Second Week. And then we’re into Year Nine, ready or not.

Next week, Darn Floor – Big Bite. Never heard of it? You will.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

“It was a long time for you, it was a long time for me, it’d be a long time for anyone, but looks like it was meant to be…”

* * * * *

I am, right now, listening to Chinese Democracy.

You could have bet me anything I own that I would never get to type that sentence. I’m staring at those words now, and I still can’t really believe it. My pilgrimage to Best Buy, the only store selling Axl Rose’s Xanadu-like project, on Sunday the 23rd was plagued with doubt and uncertainty. What if the months of buildup have been an elaborate hoax? What if Axl pulls a shit fit at the last minute and recalls the release because guitar solo number 83 needs just a little more reverb or something? What if the CD actually ships, but it’s blank?

I did not believe Chinese Democracy had actually seen the light of day until I’d played the entire thing through. And even now, with Rose’s surprising silence continuing unabated, I’m unsure. Is this the real Chinese Democracy? After 15 years of work, is Axl finally happy with it? Or did Geffen Records set an immutable deadline and force him to put this out? It sounds finished to me, but that’s a question no one but Axl Rose can answer. And he doesn’t seem to be talking.

Here is what I know. I have a CD in my collection that has the words “Guns,” “Roses,” “Chinese” and “Democracy,” complete with the contraction “N’,” printed on the cover, and until someone tells me differently, I have to believe this is actually the finished product. I am, right now, listening to Chinese Democracy.

Seriously, holy shit. It’s really, truly here.

* * * * *

I was 13 years old when Appetite for Destruction came out.

I had just transferred to Mount Saint Charles Academy, a conservative Catholic school in Rhode Island. I was a churchgoing lad then, and I even had my very own godawful Christian rock band. (In retrospect, Godawful would have been a very good name for that outfit.) I was just starting my teenage metalhead phase, and I was listening to a lot of what I thought was heavy, important stuff. Poison, Motley Crue, Ratt, Dokken… in retrospect, some terrible, terrible bands. But at the time, I thought this was truly dangerous music.

Appetite for Destruction, the explosive opening salvo from Guns n’ Roses, slipped quietly into record stores in July of 1987, but we didn’t really hear about it for almost a year. I was well into 8th grade when the video for “Welcome to the Jungle” started its assault on MTV. Immediately, I could tell this band was the dark mirror of all the other bands I liked. This was seriously sleazy, ass-kicking stuff.

While Poison and their ilk were singing about fun and sex, Guns n’ Roses populated their debut album with tales of drug abuse, violence and paranoia. But there were also rays of sunlight – the still-awesome “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” for example, and the underrated “Think About You.” I knew, even at 13, that this was a monolithic album, one for the ages. Of course, I also would only listen to it through headphones, afraid my parents would catch me with it, while I counted instances of the word “fuck,” as if it were some mark of quality.

I understand now the real difference between Appetite and the records I was listening to at the time (and even afterwards). Where those bands were talking about fantasies, about the loose groupies they met backstage or the kind of eternal, spotless love that only exists in fiction, Guns n’ Roses were talking about real people. Michelle Young, of “My Michelle” fame, is a real person, who really was hooked on cocaine at the time, and whose father really did work in the porn industry. It was like the difference between DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, and Public Enemy. Not that there’s anything wrong with making up your own world, but describing the one outside your window in terrifying detail is always more jarring.

For a time, Guns n’ Roses were one of the best bands in the world to me. “Patience,” off of their 1988 EP Lies, only cemented their reputation – here was a fragility and beauty not really heard on Appetite, another side to this band. And when I heard they were set to release a double album, in the early weeks of my senior year of high school… well, I was heavily into Queen at the time, so an over-the-top gesture like Use Your Illusion went over very well with me.

I remember the shockwave the album sent through my class. I recall the panic settling in as the long school day dragged on. Could I get to the record store before the album sold out? Would there be enough copies? (Of course there were, but I didn’t know any better – I believed the hype.) Could this be the defining masterpiece of my teenage years?

Use Your Illusion was two albums, and ran more than two and a half hours. It was a glorious mess, on which raw punk songs sat next to expansive epics and acoustic throwaways. It was the Guns n’ Roses equivalent of the White Album – there were no outtakes, everything recorded in these sessions made the final cut. It gets by on sheer ambition, and the fact that a surprising percentage of it is marvelous. Here was our first indication of just what kind of band Axl Rose envisioned – one that could do anything, could play all the music in his head.

But of course, the original Guns n’ Roses was a band, one that thrived on the push-pull tension between its megalomaniacal frontman and its down-to-earth guitarists, Slash and Izzy Stradlin. Some might say the best stuff on the first GnR records came from those two, particularly Stradlin, but I think it’s the battle between their rawness and Rose’s perfectionism that made it what it was. Appetite for Destruction remains one of the best debut albums ever because of that back-and-forth, and Use Your Illusion depicted it coming apart at the seams.

We had no idea, at the time, just how far apart those seams would split. We also didn’t know, as we cracked up at “Get in the Ring,” marveled at Axl’s masterpieces “November Rain” and “Estranged,” and wondered just what the hell he was thinking with “My World,” that this would be the last new album of Guns n’ Roses music for 17 years.

* * * * *

Here is a brief list of everything Guns n’ Roses has released since 1991: An album of punk covers, in 1993. A live album, in 1999. A new song, called “Oh My God,” that same year. A greatest hits album, with a new (and horrible) cover of “Sympathy for the Devil,” in 2004. That’s it.

For 15 of those 17 years, Axl Rose has been working on Chinese Democracy. He’s 46 now, which means he’s devoted a full third of his life to this project. His Howard Hughes impression during that time has been remarkable – he’s been a recluse, surfacing only sporadically to say, “We’re working on it,” or, “It’s almost done.” Chinese Democracy has consumed Rose while all his former bandmates have walked away. Izzy’s got a solo career going (nine albums and counting!), while Slash, bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Matt Sorum formed Velvet Revolver.

In their place, Rose has brought in an ever-changing roster of studio musicians – basically, people who will follow his orders and play what he wants them to. The push and pull of the original Guns n’ Roses is entirely gone. Axl Rose has won the tug of war, and Chinese Democracy is his attempt to get the music in his head down on disc. To that end, he’s recorded and re-recorded and mixed and started over and re-recorded and tweaked and obsessed over every tiny detail of this thing. And he’s done it at his own pace, spending whatever he likes – some estimates put Chinese Democracy’s final cost in the neighborhood of $13 million.

Along the way, it’s become an industry-wide joke. Entire careers have started and flamed out in the time it’s taken Rose to finish his work. Chinese Democracy has been called the most expensive album never made, since many, including yours truly, had given up hope that it would ever see the light of day. Sporadic public appearances by Axl and whatever group of hired hands he was calling Guns n’ Roses that week didn’t help matters – Rose’s out-of-breath performance at the MTV Awards in 2004 was just embarrassing.

It’s impossible to listen to Chinese Democracy without thinking about all of this. Nothing, let alone an album of music, should take 15 years to complete. No single record should cost $13 million. No matter what this album actually sounds like, it can’t possibly live up to the expectations that have been set for it. Half of the audience for this record expects it to save rock ‘n’ roll, cure cancer and lead humanity into a new golden age. The other half expects it to suck beyond all reason, and is just waiting to see Axl fall flat on his face.

And I think the surprise of Chinese Democracy is very simple: it’s an album of 14 songs. No more, no less. It comes modestly packaged in a normal jewel case, with an understated cover shot of a bicycle leaning against a wall. The booklet contains no explanations, just pictures, lyrics and credits. It will not save the world, nor will it suck us all into a bottomless pit of despair. It’s an album of 14 songs.

So let’s talk about those songs.

* * * * *

But let’s tackle the album as a whole first. If you’re going to listen to this album (which I definitely recommend), you have to get one thing straight up front: Axl Rose doesn’t care what Guns n’ Roses means to you. This album is all about what Guns n’ Roses means to him. And if Chinese Democracy is anything to go by, it can mean absolutely anything – except, of course, the sleazy gutter-rock the original band was known for.

By now, you’ve all likely heard the title track, which kicks off the record. It’s a simple yet appealing stomper, a modest song that sounds like any modern rock band could have knocked it out in two days, right? Just for fun, and so you can see just how much work Axl put into this thing, here’s the complete list of credits for “Chinese Democracy”:

Guitars: Paul Tobias, Robin Finck, Buckethead, Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, Richard Fortus. Bass: Tommy Stinson. Drums: Frank Ferrer. Keyboards: Dizzy Reed, Chris Pitman, Azl Rose. Background vocals: Dizzy Reed, Tommy Stinson. Sub bass: Chris Pitman. Guitar solos: Robin Finck, Buckethead. Intro: Eric Caudieux, Caram Costanzo. Vocals: Axl Rose. Arrangement: Axl Rose, Paul Tobias, Sean Beavan. Digital editing: Eric Caudieux, Caram Costanzo, Axl Rose, Sean Beavan. Additional guitar processing: Chris Pitman.

That’s right, five guitar players. Three keyboard players. Four guys credited with digital editing. Three people to arrange a song with four chords in it. All of this work done in pieces over at least a decade. And this is one of the simplest tunes on here – you should see the credits for “There Was a Time,” or “Madagascar.”

With all this, you’d think Chinese Democracy would sound over-produced, stuffed too full of sound. Amazingly, you’d be wrong. Oh, there’s a lot here – pianos, choirs, string sections, a hundred guitar solos, armies of backing vocals, samples, synths, electronic drums, even a Flamenco guitar or two. Tons of stuff. And I will admit that my first listen through left me exhausted – there are no subtle, reserved moments on this album. Every song is bigger than every other song, every one reaches for the limit of what the studio can do for it.

But to my ears, it all sounds about right. This album is well-produced, not over-produced. It juggles all its elements very well, and the melodies, the songs, are always the focal point. One of the most surprising things about Chinese Democracy is how compact it all is. Sure, it’s 72 minutes long, but that’s less than one Use Your Illusion volume. Its longest song is just shy of seven minutes – there are no “Coma”-like patience-testers. Even “Madagascar,” by far the most self-important, most epic thing here, clocks in at a modest 5:37.

This should have been a shambling monster of an album, constructed by a Frankenband under the direction of an obsessive madman. But astonishingly, it all works. I couldn’t tell you whether this album really took all 15 years to get right, but as far as the overall sound goes, Axl clearly knew just what he was doing.

* * * * *

So, how about those songs?

By and large, they’re very good indeed. I think 15 years of work deserves a track-by-track review, especially since very few of these songs sound similar to one another. There are sounds and songs on here you’d never associate with Guns n’ Roses, linked only by the inimitable voice of Axl Rose. It’s so good to hear that voice again, especially considering the workout he gives it here – this is what you get when you have 15 years of vocal takes to choose from.

In the ‘90s, Rose had been talking about taking his band in an industrial metal direction, and the first two songs (easily the worst on the album) are the main evidence. The album opens with its title track, and starts, therefore, with a minute and a half of atmospheric buildup. The sun-through-the-clouds guitar part is awesome the first time you hear it, announcing itself as what you’ve been waiting for, whether or not it is. The song itself is pretty good, really, but it stays in once place for its whole running time. And I’ve heard it probably 30 times now, and I still couldn’t tell you what it’s about.

“Shackler’s Revenge,” meanwhile, is the only song here that follows through on Rose’s threat to incorporate Nine Inch Nails and nu-metal sounds. Buckethead’s solos are alien and wonderful, but the song is average at best, with a not-quite-there chorus. It’s not awful, but it’s terribly dated, and if you’re thinking at this point that Rose might have wasted a decade and a half, I wouldn’t blame you.

But keep listening, because the next song, “Better,” starts the renaissance. This is a great pop song. The trippy, beat-happy intro, with its falsetto vocals, gives way to a terrific power-pop guitar part, and some superb vocals from Rose. He’s rarely sounded better than he does on the verses here, which were obviously recorded some time ago – the choruses sound like modern-day Rose, reaching for notes out of his grasp, and giving it a ragged quality that really works. Add in a complex bridge and a couple of melodic guitar solos, and wow.

Rose indulges his inner Elton John on piano ballad “Street of Dreams,” but as it goes along, it just keeps getting better. By the time you get to the final chorus, it’s a monster. Three people are credited with the orchestral arrangement, but it’s subtly mixed into the background, Rose’s vocals remaining in the spotlight the entire time. “If the World” is a surprising knockout, all slinky electronic drums and James Bond style. It’s a song like nothing else Rose has ever done – it combines Spanish guitars, wah-wah bass, heavy industrial-sounding electric guitars, and a sky-high vocal that he absolutely nails.

“There Was a Time” is too long, and its second half is drowned in guitar solos. But the song itself is solid, rising and falling like the little epic it is. This one and “Madagascar” are the only ones I could consider excessive, but despite the armies of keyboards, the full orchestra, the 15 Axls singing at once, and the electronic and real drums battling it out, this song stays pretty well grounded. It was a mistake, however, to sequence the similar “Catcher in the Rye” directly after it – that song’s extended “na-na-na” coda is great in isolation, but wearying as part of the whole.

The second half crashes open with “Scraped,” one of the most memorable. Over a pummeling guitar line, Rose sings about how unstoppable he is – as you might expect, most of this album is about the process of making this album, and about the people who crossed Axl along the way. At 3:30, “Scraped” is the shortest thing here, but it packs a lot of punch, and the a capella opening, with its choirs of Axls, is an unexpected surprise. “Riad n’ the Bedouins” keeps up the pace with a jackhammer riff and a killer chorus – this is the closest Chinese Democracy gets to the old GnR vibe.

That vibe is then obliterated by “Sorry,” the most musically interesting thing here. It’s almost a dirge, slow and creepy, until the thick guitars come in on the chorus. That chorus inverts your expectations – “I’m sorry for you, not sorry for me.” The lyrics to this one are almost a sequel to “Get in the Ring,” and could be about anyone who Rose imagines has tried to hold him down over the last 15 years. This is the song with the Mexican vampire accent on one line, which I might not have noticed if it hadn’t been pointed out to me – more jarring is the line “I’ll kick your ass like I said that I would,” delivered over one of the more Pink Floyd-like sections of the song. This one is fascinating.

The record’s one moment of levity is “I.R.S.,” another swell pop song that finds Axl threatening a wayward lover with several federal agencies: “Gonna call the president, gonna call a private eye, gonna get the I.R.S., gonna need the F.B.I.” Sounds silly, but it works well, especially the slinky acoustic sections between the verses. But that’s the last bit of fun you’ll have listening to this, and there’s still three songs to go.

Ah, the closing trilogy. I’m back and forth, but most times I’ve listened to Chinese Democracy, the last three songs have stood up as my favorites. The final act begins with “Madagascar,” which hasn’t changed much since Rose and his band performed it at the MTV Awards four years ago. Ignore the cheesy keyboard opening – this thing is mammoth, full of strings and horns and layers of guitar. On first listen, it seems to go nowhere, and it takes some time to realize that “I can’t find my way back, my way any more” is the central line. But Rose’s vocals are center stage, and they carry the song.

Of course, there’s the middle section, which incorporates quotes from Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and several movies, including Mississippi Burning, Seven and Casualties of War. And yes, there’s that damned “failure to communicate” line from Cool Hand Luke again. What this bit has to do with the rest of the song, I’ll never know, but it provides at least some clue as to what Rose thinks “Madagascar” is about. This whole thing should be a mess, and it comes closer than anything else on Democracy, but somehow, it hangs together.

If you think “Madagascar” is self-consciously epic, hang on for “This I Love,” a genuine Freddie Mercury moment. It’s a sad piano waltz that includes some of Rose’s most nakedly emotional lines – “I’ve searched the universe and found myself within her eyes.” It also sports Rose’s best vocals on the album, on a song that’s clearly a labor of love. It gets huge by the end, with strings (arranged by Rose) and a soaring guitar solo. This is the song I think Rose wanted “November Rain” to be.

Chinese Democracy ends with “Prostitute,” a song that rises above its name to serve as a statement of purpose. It’s all about sticking to your guns, not “living with fortune and shame.” It’s also a terrific mid-tempo mini-suite, nimbly skipping from section to section. The last words are “perversion and pain,” oddly enough, and then the gorgeous piano and strings coda brings us out of Rose’s little world. I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect conclusion, honestly.

Taken as a whole, Chinese Democracy knocks it out of the park more often than it misses. It’s surprisingly angry in places, and deliriously self-obsessed, but it’s musically intricate, impressively produced, and contains some fantastic performances, particularly those of its crazy corn-rowed visionary. This is not the Guns n’ Roses you remember, but it does what it sets out to do very well. This is the music in Axl Rose’s head – insular, massive, paranoid, and oddly beautiful. Only Rose can tell us if the finished product was worth all the work, but separated from its history, Chinese Democracy is mostly a triumph.

* * * * *

“Seems like forever and a day… If my intentions are misunderstood, please be kind, I’ve done all I should…”

* * * * *

But you can’t separate this album from its history, can you?

I recently saw what I believe will be my movie of the year – Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York. This film is about a lot of things, but at its core, it’s about a man who works on one piece of art for decades, trying to get it right, because he wants it to symbolize everything, reflect as much of real life back as it can. And in the end, what he ends up with is real life, all of it, and it proves to be an impossible project to finish. It drags on and on, with no audience, just the pursuit of perfect meaning.

Other writers have pointed out the similarity as well, but I found myself thinking of Axl Rose, locked away in a California studio, trying to make the most perfect album possible. And I thought of the famous quote about art never being finished, merely abandoned. I wonder what the magical last ingredient for Chinese Democracy was, the final tweak that made Rose say, after 15 years, “Okay, I’m done.” I hope it wasn’t the Mexican vampire accent.

Is this album worth it, after so long? Can it be? I don’t know. Here’s what I can tell you. When I was 13, blues-based rock ‘n’ roll did it for me – in fact, it was pretty much the only music I listened to. And Axl Rose and the original Guns n’ Roses provided that for me, in better and sharper quantities than I had heard it. When I was 17, my tastes had expanded – I’ve already mentioned my love of Queen, and of huge, well-produced epics with that classic rock edge. And again, Guns n’ Roses provided that for me, with Use Your Illusion.

I’m 34 now, and everything’s different. I am struggling to remember the last blues-based rock song I listened to and enjoyed. My tastes now are more expansive, and though I still love a good melody above all else, I listen to and enjoy music of all stripes. My favorite albums are the ones that take themselves seriously, construct their own little worlds, and work overtime to invite me into those worlds. And again, Axl Rose has given me exactly what I want. It’s like we took similar paths, and he had to wait until I could appreciate an album like Chinese Democracy before releasing it.

It’s still unlike any other album I own. I haven’t heard anything this unironically grand in a long time, and I expect much of the 15-year studio session was geared toward deciding just how much was too much, and then tiptoeing right up to that line. I don’t know if it actually took 15 years, but it sounds like it did. An album like this is beyond concepts like “good” and “bad,” I think, but it’s far better than I expected, given the circumstances.

Still, I can understand the disappointment. It is, in the end, an album of 14 songs. And yet, you can tell by the amount of type I’ve expended on it that I know it’s more than that. It is an event in my life, a milestone, as it is for a lot of people. Chinese Democracy was created in total isolation from its cultural impact – Axl doesn’t care what it means to us. And now that it’s here, arriving like a thief in the night, we all have to decide just where it fits into our lives, if it does.

Only Rose can speak for his 15 years. Mine have taken me in directions I didn’t expect, and broadened my horizons beyond measure. For me, Chinese Democracy has dotted those years – I first heard the title in 1996, I think, while working at Face Magazine. Everything’s different now. But I approach Chinese Democracy not hoping it will take me back to my youth, but that it will help me look forward, and help me understand my own tastes and obsessions. Here at the end of 2008, one of my childhood heroes has returned to tell me about how life can change us, and about how it’s sometimes worth it to hold on to your vision until you think you’ve realized it.

I’ve been waiting 15 years for Chinese Democracy. The finished product is nothing like I thought it would be when I was 19. But then, neither is my life. Time changes us, changes everything we are. You can say this is not Guns n’ Roses, and you’d be right. But it is Guns n’ Roses, as much as we are all the same people we were 15 years ago. What is Chinese Democracy about to me? It’s about how much I’ve changed, and how much I haven’t.

Your mileage may vary. There’s no disputing, however, that it’s a miracle this album exists at all. I can’t imagine spending a third of my life working on anything. Now there’s only one important question left, the one that faces all artists once they tie that last bow on their latest work. I have a million other questions for Axl Rose, but really, this is the only one that matters.

What’s next?

See you in line Tuesday morning.

This is my least favorite kind of column to write. The limbo kind.

There’s really only one album I want to talk to you about this week, and that’s the long-delayed, I-still-can’t-believe-it’s-real monstrosity called Chinese Democracy. After 15 years of work, Axl Rose has finally delivered, and I’d love to tell you all what I think of it. However, it’s not yet Sunday the 23rd, and Democracy has not found its way here yet. (And I refuse to write a review based on the album’s MySpace stream, although you’re welcome to hear it yourself.)

It’s also not yet Tuesday the 25th, officially the last major new music day of the year. We’ve got new ones from Kanye West, Scott Weiland, David Byrne and Brian Eno, an EP from Coldplay, some more electronic doodlings from Paul McCartney in his Fireman guise, a new set of demos from Rivers Cuomo, a remix record from Moby, and a three-CD box set of ‘60s stuff from Frank Zappa. That all sounds great, doesn’t it? I haven’t heard any of it yet.

And! I’m still waiting for my copy of the deluxe reissue of Daniel Amos’ 1987 opus Darn Floor Big Bite. This was a pivotal album, not only in the history of DA and their brilliant leader, Terry Taylor, but in that alternate history of the music biz that took place in the Christian ghetto. You’ve never heard an album quite like Darn Floor. Unfortunately, I’ve never heard the remaster, or the bonus content, so I can’t babble on about that.

So there’s nothing left but to scrounge around in my 2008 CD collection and find some gems I never reviewed. Problem is, there just aren’t many of those. At this point in the year, my top 10 list is fairly well set (barring, of course, something unexpectedly amazing on Tuesday). I’ve talked about every life-changing record I heard in 2008, and the rest, like most music, kind of slipped by me without leaving much of an impression. I’m not sure what I’d say about most of the stuff I bought, although the 52 best of them will get their brief moment in the sun on December 31, also known as Fifty Second Week. (Check the archive for details.)

Don’t worry, though, I’ve thought of something. I have a couple of fairly recent CDs, one feted by the music press and one criminally ignored. (Guess which one I like better.) Neither of these discs rocked my world, but they’re worth hearing, and hence worth talking about. Make no mistake, though – this is a limbo column, and the flood starts next week. I think I know what I’m writing about each week until the end of the year. That’s a good feeling. But if I’m surprised, that will be an equally good feeling.

* * * * *

I think I can safely say, five albums in, that I don’t really get Snow Patrol.

I’ve tried, believe me. The first two albums of theirs I heard, 2003’s Final Straw and 2006’s Eyes Open, came accompanied by a slew of glowing notices from otherwise trustworthy critics. So I bit, and both times I came away bored and puzzled. It’s pleasant enough stuff, this pretty noise Gary Lightbody and his crew makes, but there are half a million bands who do the same thing better. Plus, I’m an avowed melody addict (there’s a 12-step program), and I didn’t find a single compelling hook on either album.

Couple that with the inescapable plague that was “Chasing Cars” after its appearance on Grey’s Anatomy, and I was about done with Snow Patrol. I’d even gone back to pick up their first two albums, and found them similar, if louder and sloppier. I was totally done, finished. You won’t find me buying any more Snow Patrol CDs, ever again. Wait, what? The new one’s really good? An A from the Onion AV Club? A swell review from Entertainment Weekly? Allmusic calls it their best work yet?

Dammit!

All right, fine, so I broke down and bought A Hundred Million Suns, the band’s pretentiously-titled fifth album. One thing that sold me – from the name to the cover art to the song titles, everything here pointed towards a Definitive Statement, towards a band working hard to deliver not only the best record they’ve ever made, but the best record anyone’s ever made. The second thing that did it was “The Lightning Strike,” the final track – it’s a 16-minute, three-part epic, which is a very un-Snow Patrol thing to do. I was curious, okay? I thought I was out, and they sucked me back in.

Happily, A Hundred Million Suns is Snow Patrol’s best album, as close to a Definitive Statement as I think we have any right to expect from these boys. Unhappily, a good chunk of it remains boring and lifeless to these ears. There has been significant improvement from the repetitive gauze of Eyes Open, but that improvement is entirely in the sound and feel of this record, not the quality of the songs that comprise it. Lightbody has once again turned in a bunch of circular tunes based around unimaginative guitar lines and elementary chords, with no real melodies to speak of.

The best songs on Suns are the quieter, moodier ones. “Lifeboats,” “The Golden Floor,” “Set Down Your Glass,” “The Planets Bend Between Us” – these songs revolve around acoustic guitars and atmosphere, and their simple melodies work very well. When Lightbody chooses to rock, however, the weaknesses of his songwriting come to the fore. “Take Back the City” is pretty boring, but nowhere near as rough a slog as “Engines,” or “Please Just Take These Photos From My Hands.” (Great title, by the way.) The production, handled once again by Jacknife Lee, does its best to pop fireworks in front of your face, but they’re not quite distracting enough.

But then, there is “The Lightning Strike.” It’s made up of three smaller songs, all segued together into a seamless suite, and here, I can somehow forgive Lightbody’s repetitive nature. “What If This Storm Ends” is just four chords over and over, but it does a terrific job of building tension over the suite’s first four minutes, as strings and brass wail away in the background. “The Sunlight Through the Flags” weaves a disarming web of pianos and guitars, and finale “Daybreak” lives up to its title, spreading rays of sunlight in a slow burn. It does end up sounding like Snow Patrol, but after eight minutes of buildup, it works.

So the moral here is, repeat something for four minutes and it’s boring, but do it for 16 and it’s great? I don’t know what to tell you – “The Lightning Strike” is my favorite Snow Patrol song, capping off my favorite Snow Patrol album. Lightbody is still not writing compelling songs, to these ears, but this time, he’s latched onto the ambient potential in his style, delivering a slower, more deliberate, more peaceful sound.

I still don’t get the acclaim, mind you – these songs remain pretty basic, and there isn’t much feeling behind them. But with A Hundred Million Suns, Lightbody’s turned his weaknesses into… well, not exactly strengths, but not liabilities, either. I suppose only time will tell whether I buy album six, but I think I will need an actual change in direction, not another gleaming refinement, which album five is. This is, to me, as far as Snow Patrol can go with this sound.

* * * * *

I’ve decided that Kip Winger’s single biggest problem is the fact that his name is actually Kip Winger.

Suppose this “Kip Winger” was his stage identity, back when he donned skin-tight leather pants to lead his namesake band, Winger, through three albums of sex-metal in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. And let’s say his real name was something that didn’t contain the word Winger. It would certainly make the transition to serious (and seriously talented) solo artist a lot easier.

Unfortunately, Kip Winger’s his actual name. So it doesn’t matter how good his solo records are, no one will give them even half a chance, because the guy once sung a song about 17-year-old girls while writhing around on stage, being extra careful not to mess up his crazy ‘80s hair. Oh, and also, because Stewart, the geeky neighbor on Beavis and Butthead, was always depicted wearing a Winger shirt. Okay, I know, it’s a lot to get over, but I promise you, Kip Winger’s solo albums are very, very good. And the new one, called From the Moon to the Sun, may well be his best.

Let’s get this out of the way, because I can hear you snickering already. Kip Winger is a fantastic musician. His previous solo albums have concentrated largely on progressive pop music, with a focus on the acoustic guitar (which he plays brilliantly). Here, though, Winger goes all out, showing off just what a songwriting force he is. Opener “Every Story Told” and follow-up “Nothing” are pretty similar to Kip Winger tracks of old, with jangly guitars and great melodies, but from there…

Take “Pages and Pages,” a six-minute near-ambient piano ballad with a melody out of the stratosphere. Just when you think it’s winding down, the percussion and strings pick up, and Alan Pasqua delivers a great piano solo. That’s followed by “Ghosts,” an honest-to-God string quartet ballet, written and arranged by Winger. It does nothing for the album’s momentum, but it’s a lovely, complex piece. And that’s followed by “In Your Eyes Another Life,” a spooky, orchestrated reunion song, featuring a choir of Kip Wingers on its chorus. Three songs, almost no similarities between them.

The second half of the album is one great acoustic pop song after another, as if Winger, satisfied that he’s showcased his diversity, decided to loosen up a little. “Runaway” is a mid-tempo breeze with a nice piano line and a good vocal. “California” starts with a bed of percussion and then lays down a nice synth-and-guitar foundation, Winger dropping a great little melody on top of it. The pace picks up for the Beatlesque “What We Are,” with its awesome string breaks, but it drops back down for the last few tunes. “Why” is a particular late-game highlight, with its soaring chorus.

If I have any complaints about From the Moon to the Sun, it’s that sometimes it sounds a bit too polished and precise. “One Big Game” is a bit of a letdown, too, with its lazy funk groove and synthetic saxophone sound. But that’s it. This is yet another surprising, sterling release. It doesn’t have the emotional anguish of Songs From the Ocean Floor, but its pure musical range more than makes up for that. If you’re interested in serious-minded progressive pop music at all, you should check out Kip Winger. I do wish that wasn’t his name, but he shouldn’t be penalized for it, especially when his music is this good. Go here.

* * * * *

So next week, Chinese Democracy. In the meantime, here’s how to get your free Dr. Pepper on Sunday the 23rd.

Just to recap, some genius at Dr. Pepper decided to offer free soda to everyone in America if the 15-years-in-the-making Chinese Democracy was released anytime in 2008. Axl Rose has called the company’s bluff, and now they’re making good. If you log onto www.drpepper.com on Sunday, you can download a coupon for a free 20-oz. bottle. But you can only get the coupon on Sunday, the album’s release date, and it’s only good through March. I don’t even like Dr. Pepper, I just think it’s funny that they bet against Axl, and he won.

Chinese Democracy is actually coming out. I can’t believe it.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

As many of you know, I’m a journalist in real life. Contrary to what some in my profession believe, good journalists strive to cover everything as impartially as we can. This means that even though I may feel a certain way about an issue, or an election, or a political party and its adherents, you should never be able to tell, and I should never tip my hand. Sometimes I’m successful at this, sometimes not – I’m a pretty opinionated guy. But I do try.

That’s why I’ve been suspiciously silent on this election we’ve just been through. I covered both the presidential and local races for my paper, speaking with Democrats and Republicans alike, and had they known which way I was pulling, I fear those conversations would not have been as easy. So forgive me for reserving public comment until after the election.

That said, holy crap. We just elected Barack Obama president of the United States.

I wasn’t really sure we would. In fact, I didn’t breathe easy until Obama took Ohio, remarkably early on election night. That’s when I realized this thing was really happening. Beyond the result, which I’m obviously pleased with, I’m proud of the voter turnout across the country. This was an important election, and I think people realized it.

You may remember that I used this column to implore voters to turn out for John Kerry four years ago. My disdain for George W. Bush’s administration has been well documented, and thankfully, that seems to be a bi-partisan disgust at this point. Four years ago, I spoke up, not because Kerry was the best candidate I’d ever seen – far, far from it – but because I knew the country would suffer under a second Bush term. And I was right.

I kept quiet this time partially because of the reasons stated above, which have only magnified for me in the last four years, but also because it seemed like my guy wasn’t going to need the help. His biggest ally turned out to be his opponent, John McCain, who ran a campaign so ludicrous it made Obama’s camp look like stone geniuses. From picking Governor Know-Nothing as his running mate, to suspending his campaign for a few hours as a publicity stunt, to suggesting the government should buy up all the bad mortgages in America while simultaneously calling his opponent a socialist… McCain deserved to lose.

Which is a shame, because the John McCain of four years ago was a much worthier candidate. He’s a genuine war hero, and for all his self-important “maverick” talk, he really has spent his career standing up for what he believes is right, even if it means going against his own party. I used to like John McCain, but after this election, I don’t even know who he is anymore.

So Obama was the only real choice, as far as I was concerned. But unlike in 2004, when Kerry left me feeling like I needed to rally the troops out of their desperation, I found it easy to like and support Barack Obama. Do I agree with him on everything? Of course not. Do I think he has a strong grasp on what makes this country great, and what can make it great again? I certainly do. As he is fond of saying, his story is one that could only happen in the United States of America, and it’s clearly given him a unique perspective, a vantage point from which to view this damaged land.

What did it for me was his “A More Perfect Union” speech, delivered during the height of the Jeremiah Wright controversy in March of this year. I might be out on a limb, but I think it was the finest political speech of my lifetime, and any man who can pen those words deserves a shot at realizing his vision, I think. (You can read and watch the speech here.)

It’s going to take a lot of work to dig us out of the hole the Bush administration put us in, and I fear many will be disappointed in President Obama at first. He doesn’t have a magic wand, and it will likely take his entire first term just to turn the economy around, if he manages even that. I’m keeping an eye on his early decisions, too – I’m not sure how I feel about the pick of Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff, for instance.

But Obama’s win is like a symbolic turning of the corner, like light breaking through the darkness. Talk to people in Illinois who know Obama, and served with him, and Republicans and Democrats alike will tell you he really believes in his message of hope and unity. After eight years of George W. Bush, what we need is a president who will work for all of us, not just the privileged few, not just the oil companies and campaign contributors. Will Obama be that president? I don’t know, but I hope so.

And for the first time in nearly a decade, that hope seems founded. And that’s a good feeling.

* * * * *

I can’t believe I’m about to type this next sentence, but here goes. In two weeks, I expect to review Chinese Democracy, the 15-years-in-the-making new Guns n’ Roses album. I’m more convinced than ever that this is actually going to happen now – I’ve heard clips from all 14 songs, seen reviews in Rolling Stone and other reputable magazines, and personally inquired at my local Best Buy. Provided Axl Rose doesn’t pull one of his patented shit fits, pulling this from the shelves at the last minute, we should have the product of his last decade and a half on the 23rd.

At the very least, Chinese Democracy offers an opportunity to talk about obsession. Listening to some of the finished product, it’s pretty clear that Rose has been obsessed with this album for a long time, tweaking and re-recording and getting everything just how he likes it. But there’s a fine line between being a perfectionist and allowing a project to consume your life. It’s a line many artists walk, and at least Rose finally managed (fingers crossed) to get his project out there, folly or not.

Although it only took half as long to finish, you might slot Christmas on Mars into that same category. For seven years, the members of the Flaming Lips have been working on this thing, a full-length feature film shot in leader Wayne Coyne’s back yard. We’ve been hearing about this forever – teaser trailers were released five years ago – and now it’s finally finished. Christmas on Mars is out now on DVD, following a short theatrical run, and it comes packaged with the Lips’ soundtrack on CD.

So what the hell is it, and why did it take seven years? Well, first let’s talk about the movie. Here is the best I can do as a short summation: imagine an equal mix of Eraserhead, Plan 9 from Outer Space and Miracle on 34th Street. (No, really, imagine that.) The movie is mostly black and white, and has that ‘50s B-movie sheen to it. It’s played deadly straight by people who are not actors (with a couple of exceptions), but even when it’s unintentionally funny, you get the sense it’s exactly what Coyne and his merry band want.

Plot? Well, here goes. The movie is about Christmas on a Mars colony. The crew of astronauts (played mainly by the band) experiences trouble with their gravity unit, and everything’s going badly. So to cheer up the crew, one of the men organizes a Christmas pageant. The only trouble is, the crew member meant to play Santa Claus kills himself. Meanwhile, a strange experiment in artificial birth is taking place, timed to happen at midnight Christmas day. (There’s lots of birth imagery in this movie, and this is, of course, a literal virgin birth.)

Coyne himself plays a powerful alien who wanders by – he keeps a spaceship in his mouth, you see – and ends up dressed in the Santa suit meant for the dead crewman. You have to see that to believe it. Oh, and there’s a vivid nightmare sequence (starring real actor Adam Goldberg) in which dozens of marching soldiers with vaginas for heads stomp on a baby’s skull. The film keeps switching back and forth between silly and disturbing, and somehow, even in black and white, it manages a psychedelic edge.

Overall, it’s a fascinating trip. Somehow, the Lips have managed to make a movie that captures visually the singular sound of their band. The film is ramshackle and eerie and dark and abruptly shiver-inducing, but at its core, it’s full of childlike wonder. Listen to The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, and that’s what comes out most strongly – this is a band full of wonder. Christmas on Mars is clearly the work of amateur filmmakers and actors, but it’s like the “sweded” versions of Ghostbusters and other movies made by Jack Black and Mos Def in Be Kind Rewind. It’s earnest and full of heart, which makes everything else not only forgivable, but lovable.

Now, about that soundtrack. I know what you’re expecting, but believe it or not, Christmas on Mars is a real movie, not an extended music video, and as such, the Lips have written a real score for it. The CD contains 30 minutes or so of instrumental goodness, mostly eerie soundscapes like opener “Once Beyond Hopelessness.” Coyne never sings a word (although there are wordless vocals here and there), and the primary instrument is spooky synthesizer. “Space Bible with Volume Lumps” comes closest to being a pop song, with its twittering beat and synth-trumpet blasts, but for the most part, this is transporting and atmospheric.

And it’s great. When it comes to the Lips, Coyne’s voice is the biggest sticking point for me – I love everything else about The Soft Bulletin, for example, and the chance to hear the band tackle their orchestral leanings full on without lyrics is a remarkable one. “In Excelsior Vaginalistic” (just take a minute to deal with that title) is a sweeping wonder, with a sound like sunrise breaking through the clouds, and “The Gleaming Armament of Marching Genitalia” (take another minute) is ominous and unstoppable. This music is as left-field and wonderful as the film it accompanies.

So was it worth seven years to complete Christmas on Mars? Ultimately, only Wayne Coyne can tell us that. Viewed one way, the finished product is ridiculous and amateurish. But the whole endeavor pulses with life and joy, even through the darkness – it’s like Ed Wood and Frank Capra collaborating on a sequel to 2001, but with more vaginas and fetuses. There’s nothing quite like watching someone’s dream come true, however, and this is clearly a labor of love for the Lips. Nothing beats good old-fashioned heart and soul, and this project practically overflows with it. It’s a delightful early Christmas present for very strange people, and I’m glad to count myself among them.

Next week, I hope to catch up a little bit, before dedicating columns to Chinese Democracy and the re-release of Daniel Amos’ masterpiece, Darn Floor Big Bite.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

A little rant about television to get us started this week.

I really should have been talking up Pushing Daisies more than I have, and I fear it’s too late. This is yet another great, odd show from the mind of Bryan Fuller, who created Dead Like Me and Wonderfalls. Like those shows, Pushing Daisies is devilishly hard to describe – the best I can say is it’s like watching a full-blooded Tim Burton movie every week.

You know how some shows take place in the real world, the world outside your window? Yeah, Pushing Daisies isn’t one of those. Its central character, Ned the Piemaker, is a guy who can bring the dead back to life with a single touch. But, if he touches that person again, they will die again, this time for good. Well, Ned uses this power to resurrect his childhood sweetheart, Chuck, and the show is partially about how Ned and his entourage use his magical powers to solve crimes, but it’s mostly about the heartbreaking romance between two people who can never touch each other.

That doesn’t sound like a sure-fire hit to me either, and in its first full season, Pushing Daisies has scored ratings so dismal, they need a magical piemaker to resurrect them. Part of it is the show’s fault – this year, the producers have magnified the quirks almost to the point of annoying, and the stories are even more dense and layered. But part of it is the American public’s constant refusal to try anything new or intellectually taxing. We’re talking about a TV wasteland where 24 is considered highbrow.

Anyway, next Wednesday’s episode of Pushing Daisies (ABC, 8 p.m. EST) is strongly rumored to be the last one ever, so it may be your final chance to catch one of the most fascinating and unique shows on the air. Before it becomes yet another dead show I love.

And speaking of dead shows, there’s Dollhouse.

This is Joss Whedon’s new thing, with Buffy alum Eliza Dushku, and even though it hasn’t premiered yet, Fox is doing everything possible to kill it. First they messed with the pilot, causing massive re-shoots. Whedon said this was for the best, but he’s trying to get his network to promote his work – what else is he going to say?

And now, Fox has scheduled Dollhouse for Friday nights at 9 p.m. Yes, the Bermuda Triangle of timeslots, the very day that has meant death for Fox shows as far back as 1993. Oh, and by the way, the last time Whedon tried to bring a show to Fox, it was called Firefly, and they aired it – you guessed it – on Friday nights. We remember how well that turned out.

While I haven’t seen a single episode, Dollhouse sounds to me like another of those wide-reaching concept shows that will take time to grow an audience. It’s about a company that sells people – mind-wiped, programmable people, who can be anyone and do anything. And it’s about what those people do when they come back home, and have their memories erased again. It’s a Whedon show, so I’m sure this will be deeper and darker than that, but that’s what I know right now.

To top it all off, Fox will premiere Dollhouse on February 13. That’s right, Friday the 13th. I hope the first three episodes are good, ‘cause that’s probably all we’ll get to see.

* * * * *

I used to hate short records.

Seriously. I would figure out a minutes-to-dollars ratio for new CDs, figuring that anything over 60 minutes would give me my money’s worth. A half-hour-long album that cost $15 works out to 50 cents a minute, and that would be in the back of my mind as I listened for the first time. “Well, those two minutes weren’t really worth a buck.”

Conversely, give me a really long record, and I’m immediately excited, for some reason. If it’s a double album (or even a triple), then I’m doubly interested – I know, intellectually speaking, that most double albums suck just as much as most single ones, only for twice as long, but that never fazes me. There’s something important to me about a record that takes 75 minutes (or 100 minutes, or four hours) to experience, and something oddly slight about one that only takes half an hour.

This is, I have come to realize, totally silly. And lately, as the endless parade of padded-out 75-minute CDs continues, I have come to appreciate and enjoy the 30-minute marvel a lot more. I’m still excited by the prospect of an artistic statement that takes more than an hour to unfold, of course, but I’ve found that very few of them stand up as well as Marillion’s Happiness is the Road, to name a recent example. And of late, I’d rather end up wanting more than wishing I had less.

Case in point: Skeletal Lamping, the new Of Montreal album. I’ve been struggling to figure out what to say about this thing for a couple of weeks now, and I still don’t feel like I have a good grip on it. Like the last Of Montreal record, though, this one’s an hour long, and it feels like three.

Skeletal Lamping completes Kevin Barnes’ transformation from indie-pop wunderkind to bizarre electronic prog-funk solo act. (It was produced and performed entirely by Barnes.) Transformation, in fact, is the theme – this is a concept piece about Barnes’ metamorphosis into a cross-dressing transsexual named Georgie Fruit. Seriously, that’s what it’s about. And if you thought Ziggy Stardust was odd, you need to get a load of this.

Actually, you don’t. Barnes has thoroughly disappeared up his own asshole on this record, and while he’s delivered something musically audacious, it’s also unremittingly tedious. Initially, I had planned to compare Lamping to the Fiery Furnaces – the songs are maddeningly complex, are based around cheap electronic drums and keyboards, and seem to be about nothing. They are musically dizzying, but ultimately empty and wearying.

But I hit upon a more accurate (if more obscure) analogy. On their great fourth album, 1992’s Apollo 18, They Might Be Giants came up with something called “Fingertips.” It was actually 21 short, unrelated snippets, bounding from bit to scattered bit, from “aren’t you the guy who hit me in the eye” to “please pass the milk please.” That’s what this album is like. It’s a hundred tiny snippets of things that don’t cohere, at least musically.

That leaves the lyrics, and most of this album is Barnes as Georgie Fruit cooing belabored come-ons and lamenting the life of a man-turned-woman-turned-man-again. A lot of this stuff sounds like it’s trying to imitate Prince, like the opening of “For Our Elegant Caste,” which finds Barnes singing, “We can do it softcore if you want, but you should know I take it both ways.” Barnes, as you might have guessed, isn’t Prince, and the attempts at sex-funk fall woefully short.

On paper, I should love this. It’s massive, it’s ambitious, it’s musically daunting, it’s the insular work of a mad genius. And yet, it’s a struggle for me to get through it. Strangely, if Barnes had cut half an hour off of this thing, I might have liked it more. But sadly, not much more. It’s too bad – I was really looking forward to hearing a song called “Triphallus, To Punctuate!”

But maybe ambition wears on me the closer we get to the end of the year, because I’m finding the smaller, simpler records much more appealing lately. The album I fully expect to slot at number one this year is a mere 39 minutes long, and both of this week’s other contestants are even shorter. And rather than complaining about how much I paid on a minute-for-minute basis, I’m just enjoying the hell out of both of them.

First is Scottish quintet Travis, and you know what I’ve figured out? There are two kinds of Travis albums, and you can tell immediately, without even listening, which one you’re in for. Exactly half of their records feature the easy-listening, somewhat twee Travis, all chiming clean guitars and sad, romantic lyrics, produced by Nigel Godrich. These albums all sport faraway shots of the band on the cover (On a beach! In a tree! On a rooftop!), and that trademark Travis font. And they’re nice records, but they’re nothing distinctive or amazing.

The other half of their output, though, is the ragged, electric, punchy, pulsing Travis, the band that sounds like they would beat the crap out of their more gentlemanly counterpart. These albums have very different covers, from a stupid picture of the band jumping to moody black and white headshots to, on the new Ode to J. Smith, a pink and green cartoon eye. It’s like anti-branding – it looks completely different, so you know what to expect.

And man, I like the uncouth, unshaven Travis a lot more. Leader Fran Healy and his band recorded this 37-minute monster in two weeks, and it has an energy completely missing from their last record, The Boy With No Name. (Yes, it was one of the “Travis font” albums.) The first three songs here smack down anything on that previous effort, especially the instantly memorable “Something Anything.” With its massive arrangement (including a choir), you’d think “J. Smith” would be an epic, but it’s in and out in about three minutes, like most of the songs here.

The record does quiet down, but it never loses its verve. The banjo-inflected “Last Words” could have been insipid (and might have been, on their last album), but it ends up a singable delight. Healy strains to yelp out the chorus of “Get Up,” a shuffling minor-key rocker, and the quick-and-dirty production benefits a lullaby like “Friends” tremendously. By the time Ode to J. Smith glides over the finish line with the yearning “Before You Were Young,” you’re ready to hear it again.

The difference, really, is that for the whole of J. Smith’s running time, Travis sounds like an actual band, real people playing instruments in a room. I like their The Man Who sound, but it’s processed and gleamed up to the point that it almost feels mechanical. J. Smith feels like five guys writing and playing the best tunes they can, and while they’ll never be mistaken for the Sex Pistols, or even Oasis, they rock much more convincingly than you’d think. This is worth $15 for 37 minutes, no doubt.

While Travis has never made an album as short as J. Smith, Starflyer 59 has made a career of them. Since 1994, Starflyer has released 11 albums, eight EPs, two live discs and a box set, and most of them (excepting the box set, of course) are bite-sized nuggets, just big enough to consume in one sitting. Oh, and Starflyer mastermind Jason Martin has been involved in a whole bunch of side projects, making several more half-hour gems.

The new Starflyer, Dial M, is no exception, clocking in at 34:32. But as usual, Martin has given us 10 dark pop gems here – and as usual, I wish he’d sprung for 15 or 20.

No two Starflyer 59 records sound quite alike, and Dial M veers off sharply from the guitar-driven new-wave rock of last year’s My Island. The sound of this one is as shiny as the pop art cover, based largely on synthesizers and acoustic guitars. Martin’s backup band this time consists of bassist Steve Dail and drummer Trey Many, and all the other sounds are Martin, overdubbing his keyboards and guitars. Don’t expect any Brian May-style six-string choirs or anything, though – this is deftly minimal stuff, layered as it is.

The punchiest tune here is “Concentrate,” with its insistent beat, funky guitars and synth blasts, although the next song, “Who Said It’s Easy,” is good competition. Martin will never be an American Idol-style emotional singer, but in the studio, he does wonders with his low, dark voice. The Smiths-like melody of “M23” is one of his best, and he delivers exactly what the song needs. And dig the pure ‘80s awesomeness of the keyboards on “Taxi,” which sound like they were lifted right from his brother Ronnie’s Joy Electric project.

Dial M quiets down considerably for its final two tracks. “Mr. Martin” plays like an interesting conversation between Martin and his father, who died earlier this year. (The line “Hey Mr. Martin, I need a new job, one that pays for my time” is darkly humorous if you know both Jason and Ronnie work for the family trucking business.) The song is a quiet shudder, all acoustic guitars and electric piano. And finale “I Love You Like the Little Bird” is a ‘50s pop breeze, with a current of darkness beneath its sweet exterior.

I said once that every Starflyer 59 album is the best Starflyer 59 album, and I stand by it. Dial M sounds like nothing else in Jason Martin’s catalog, but longtime fans will know immediately that it’s him, and will get that familiar pop songcraft dressed up in totally new sounds, once again. I have no idea why, after 14 years of wonderful little records like this one, Martin still toils in obscurity. Try his work here, and buy it here.

That will do for this week. Next, probably the Flaming Lips.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

2008 has been a surprising year. From Brian Wilson’s unlikely triumph with That Lucky Old Sun, to Metallica’s screaming comeback Death Magnetic, to Portishead’s left-field Third and Ben Folds’ first disappointment, Way to Normal, this year’s been hard to predict. Hell, Keane even went all ‘80s on us, and still blew me away.

But perhaps the biggest surprise of my year has been just how much I like 4:13 Dream, the new album from the Cure.

I was all set to hate this thing. I’d been steeling myself up for it for months. I felt pretty certain that this record was going to be awful, given Robert Smith’s recent track record, and unlike normal people, I couldn’t just not buy it. I had to hear it for myself, and own it, and file it with my collection, so I could point it out to people and say, “And here’s another terrible late-period Cure album.”

Now, it’s no exaggeration to say that without the Cure to get me through some rough patches in high school, I probably wouldn’t be here. While I like their poppier material well enough, like the upbeat stuff on Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, it’s the dark corners of their catalog, like Pornography and Disintegration, that I love most. No one does romantic depression like Robert Smith, and there have been plenty of times when I’ve agreed with the South Park kids, who once proclaimed, “Disintegration is the best album ever!”

But after that masterpiece, it’s been one downward spiral after another. Wish was decent enough, but Wild Mood Swings made me want to die, and not in that good Cure-like way. Bloodflowers ended the trilogy of Pornography and Disintegration with a resigned whimper, and 2004’s self-titled effort was the absolute nadir, a tuneless, screeching caterwaul that droned on and on, endless and without destination. It was an album that had next to nothing in common with the Cure that I’ve loved since junior high.

Fast-forward to 2008. The Cure’s 13th album was originally intended as a double, a mixture of pop tracks and dark epics, but of course, the record company intervened, and Smith cut it up into two releases. As soon as he announced that the first of these would be the “pop” record, I sighed and hung my head. Here comes another Wild Mood Swings, I thought to myself. I will just have to grit my teeth and bear it, hoping that the “dark” record is better.

Miracle of miracles, though, 4:13 Dream is my favorite Cure disc since Wish, 16 years ago.

Okay, let’s say this right off the bat – this is definitely the pop album. It opens with the same sprinkle of chimes that kicked off “Pictures of You,” and leadoff track “Underneath the Stars” is a glorious six-minute downer, doused in reverb and echo. But don’t believe it, because from there, this album is all upbeat melodic rock songs. If you heard the four singles, released one a month in anticipation of this album, you know what I mean – they are punchy, short, romantic and tuneful, and they set the tone.

Thankfully, these aren’t the fluffy ditties that so plagued Wild Mood Swings. These songs are sharp, tight, and full of melody. “The Only One” is the closest to hit-single territory, with its “Oh, I love what you do to my head” refrain. But listen to it – Smith has pared the band down to a quartet, and they sound like the Cure again. The guitar chimes and rings, instead of just spitting noise. Smith’s voice is back on form, putting the imitators to shame once again. This song could fit on Kiss Me without any trouble.

And it just gets better from there. Every time you think this album’s about to go off the rails – the laughable “You have what I want” intro to “The Real Snow White,” for example – Smith saves it with his best songwriting in ages. “The Reasons Why” opens with a classic Cure line – “I won’t try to bring you down about my suicide” – but it doesn’t rest on it. The chorus is mesmerizing, Smith reaching for higher and higher notes, and the guitar is so Cure, it’s like a warm blanket.

I ended up liking every song here, even ones like “Switch” and “This. Here and Now. With You” that start off wobbling. The album crashes to a close with “It’s Over,” the loudest thing here, but even that doesn’t collapse into the formless noise of the self-titled album – it’s controlled chaos. None of this is Happy Pills Robert Smith. It’s all dark, somewhat sinister pop music, and it’s worth noting that the Cure started out with material much like this, before diving into much murkier waters.

4:13 Dream effectively halts the backslide the Cure has been on for more than a decade, and finds the band reinvigorated. Listening to this, I feel 16 years old again, and I envy the younger generation – this is an album that will make kids fall in love with the Cure, just like I did when I was their age. 4:13 Dream is, quite simply, the best thing the Cure has done since I was in high school, and I’m amazed and thrilled that Smith and his band pulled it off. Now I’m even more excited for the “dark” album. Bring it on, boys.

* * * * *

On the other hand, there is The Cosmos Rocks, by Queen and Paul Rodgers.

I’m going to try not to swear while writing this review, but it will be hard. Queen was another of my favorite bands growing up. Freddie Mercury was my musical idol – he was a fantastic piano player, and he could sing anything. Literally, anything. Queen was one of the most diverse bands of their time, tackling big ol’ rock songs alongside orchestrated balladry, opera, folk music, sea shanties, blues, synth-pop, Elvis tributes, Middle Eastern music and even white-boy rap. Everything they did was produced with such an over-the-top flair that it nearly masked the sheer musicality of their work. Queen songs are hard to play – I stumped a guy at a piano bar once by requesting “Killer Queen.”

When Mercury died in 1992, I was a senior in high school. It was a tough moment for 17-year-old me: Mercury was not only the first major rock star to succumb to AIDS at an early age, he was the first musician in my personal pantheon to pass on during my lifetime. I wrote an epic tribute song, I cried my little eyes out. I can laugh about my reaction now, but his music meant a lot to me, and I felt his loss. Queen managed one more album, mainly recorded while Mercury was alive, and it was good – Made in Heaven capped off the catalog pretty well, I thought, and the band did Mercury proud by finishing it off gracefully.

And then… well. Brian May and Roger Taylor hooked up with former Free and Bad Company vocalist Paul Rodgers, and took a greatest hits show out on the road. I can only guess at their reasons for doing this, but it smells of money. Worse, though, they called the act Queen and Paul Rodgers, despite the fact that only one-half of Queen was present. (God bless John Deacon for having no part of this fiasco.) Inevitably, this lineup has made a studio album – perhaps the tax bills are due, or something – and again, they’ve used the Queen name to try to sell it.

Let’s get this out of the way. This album is pretty bad, but I wouldn’t mind it as much if they hadn’t used the Queen name. Any combination of May, Rodgers and Taylor would do for me. If they’d come up with another name for the band, that would have been fine too. But calling it Queen without Mercury is just crass, and it strikes me as wrong. I’m uncomfortable even owning this disc – I feel like Freddie’s watching me, disapprovingly. This just isn’t Queen, and it shouldn’t be called Queen.

Regardless of what it’s called, The Cosmos Rocks is awful. Brian May is one of my favorite guitarists, particularly when he layers note after note on top of one another, creating celestial choirs with his six-string. But on his solo albums, May has exhibited a dispiriting tendency towards faceless rock. That tendency is taken to its limit on The Cosmos Rocks, as May tones down his own ambitious side to match the meat-and-potatoes voice of his new frontman.

The result is pretty boring, when it’s not laughably stupid. I really don’t even want to talk about individual songs, because there are two kinds here: tolerable lunkheaded rockers, and unlistenable lunkheaded rockers. You won’t believe “Cosmos Rockin’.” If you thought “Fat Bottomed Girls” was idiotic, then this one slips into Spinal Tap territory. “We got the cosmos rockin’ to the mighty power of rock ‘n’ roll!” Um, okay.

The “mighty power of rock ‘n’ roll” is a recurring theme, but alas, not the only one. Rodgers tries to go deep, singing about the state of the world on such unintentionally hysterical “epics” as “We Believe” and “Say It’s Not True.” The only songs I like here are the tossed-off ditty “Call Me” – that one sounds like Mercury might have had fun with it – and “Through the Night,” the only minor-key “serious” song that works. Everything else is a travesty. Seriously, just read the lyrics to “Warboys.” I rest my case.

Tragically, May turns out some interesting leads here, especially on “Voodoo,” which really sounds like Bad Company. He elevates “C-Lebrity” beyond what it deserves, and adds verve to the irredeemably dumb “Surf’s Up… School’s Out.” Yes, that’s really the title. But this is a record any middling rock band could have made, and it’s quite undeserving of its pedigree. I’ve made it all the way through “Some Things That Glitter” twice now, and had to stifle the gag reflex both times.

The sad truth is that if The Cosmos Rocks didn’t have the word Queen on the cover, I wouldn’t have bought it, and neither would most people. Using the name is just a money-grabbing gambit, and a shameful one. But it wouldn’t have stung quite as badly if the album itself had lived up to the legacy. It’s impossible without Mercury, of course, but May, Rodgers and Taylor could have tried harder than this. The Cosmos Rocks does very little to justify its own existence, and it just sits there like a tapeworm, eating away at the Queen legacy bit by bit.

Ah, fuck not swearing. This album is fucking terrible.

* * * * *

And right in the middle, there’s Ryan Adams.

Once the unpredictable bad boy of modern country-rock, Adams has lately settled down into a mid-life, mid-tempo groove. His new band, the Cardinals, is fantastic, but with them, Adams seems more reserved, more constrained than ever before. His last full-lengther, Easy Tiger, was mellow and simple. It contained the same Ryan Adams flair for sweet melodies and pedal-steel weepers, but it felt slight, like it was knocked out in a weekend.

Now here’s Cardinology, another 12-song album with the Cardinals, and I feel exactly the same way about this one. It’s a dozen pretty good songs on a slab of plastic, lasting a grand total of 40 minutes, and it feels like Adams just had these tunes lying around, and booked two or three days of studio time to kick them out. There’s nothing bad on Cardinology, but there’s nothing particularly good on it, either.

The first half, in fact, is almost boring. I like the immediate shock of “Magick,” and the Morrissey imitation Adams whips out on “Cobwebs,” but I don’t even remember “Go Easy,” and I find the lazy lope of “Let Us Down Easy” a bit too simple. Adams’ voice is in fine form, and the band sounds fantastic as usual, particularly guitarist Neal Casal. But it feels rote, like I’ve heard it all before.

The second half is much better. “Crossed Out Name” is a naked, acoustic plea with a great melody, and it’s just right at 2:44. “Natural Ghost” is a perfect Cardinals track, all steel guitars and harmonies, while “Sink Ships” is my favorite thing here, an airy folk song that taps into the best qualities of Adams’ writing. Closer “Stop” is a piano-vocal piece full of emotion, and it ends the album on a downbeat, but perfect note. The other instruments on “Stop” are so subtle that you barely notice them.

Still, very few of these songs are up to the standard Adams set on Cold Roses and Jacksonville City Nights, and the whole thing plays like a minor entry in his catalog – just another Ryan Adams album. I’m not sure what he needs to do to shake things up. In fact, I’m not sure he really needs to do anything. Adams seems content to keep on ambling down this road, and I can’t say I’d mind hearing an album like this once a year from him. But Adams albums used to be events – remember the flap over Love is Hell? I doubt Cardinology will spark the same discussions that Gold and Heartbreaker did. It’s just not as big a deal.

Adams seems settled, almost happy on this album, and while that’s not a bad thing, it isn’t quite as interesting. Cardinology is 12 pretty good songs, played well by a terrific band. And that’s all. If that’s all you need, you’ll love it. Me, I’m hoping he does something unexpected next time out. Cardinology isn’t bad, but it doesn’t quite satisfy.

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Next week, Travis, Of Montreal and Snow Patrol, I think.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

A shout-out to start us off – congratulations to Chris L’Etoile, one of my oldest friends, on the birth of his second child, Caleb. Chris and his gal Jamie live in faraway Alberta, Canada, so I’ve missed seeing their first son, Jeremiah, grow up – he’s nearly four now. Chris sent a picture of Jeremiah holding newborn Caleb in his lap, and I would post it here, but it far exceeds the legal limit of adorable in this state. Congrats, Chris and Jamie. I hope I get to meet the new little one soon.

So I had this whole column planned out – I was going to try another experiment in concise writing, whipping through four or five reviews as quickly as I could. But then my friendly postman delivered my deluxe edition of Marillion’s Happiness is the Road this week, and that plan flew out the window. Of course, we’re in the middle of the Autumn avalanche – there’s so much new music coming out that I just can’t get to it all, or cover it in the depth that I would like, and devoting this week’s missive to Happiness will just put me farther behind.

So I did both columns. The other is listed on the archive page, and examines new ones from the Dears, Copeland, Ray LaMontagne and Shearwater, as well as the physical release of Bloc Party’s Intimacy. This one, though… this one is all Happiness. It deserves the space. I hope you think so too.

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True story: I hated Marillion’s Brave the first time I heard it.

It struck me as too simple and too meandering. Honestly, I just didn’t hear any great songs – Marillion music is ordinarily immediate for me, and only grows deeper from there, because they write fantastic songs. They are equally adept at the three-minute pop ditty and the 15-minute multi-part epic, but I didn’t hear them doing either one very well on Brave. The worst offender was “Goodbye to All That,” which, I thought, wasted 12 minutes on formless atmosphere, something I’ve chastised bands like Radiohead for doing. I didn’t get this album at all on first listen.

But I kept at it. And slowly, Brave took shape for me. Now I consider it one of the band’s finest records, a seamless 70-minute outpouring of beauty, anger and despair. There is so much emotion hidden in the corners of this album that I feel ridiculous for not having heard it immediately. But that’s the trick – Brave is not an album you hear as much as one you feel. And it needs time to penetrate, to reveal its secrets.

I tell you all this because I went through something similar with Happiness is the Road, Marillion’s just-released 15th album, and I suppose I should have sensed history about ready to repeat.

I’ve been waiting for Happiness for about a year now. Long-time readers will know that I consider Marillion one of the best bands in the world. They started in the early ‘80s as pretty typical prog-rockers, aping an early Genesis sound, but they set themselves apart by singing about some truly emo things – mainly, original singer Fish’s broken heart and alcohol addiction. It was huge, massive music, but still intensely personal.

Marillion didn’t really find its identity until Steve Hogarth arrived in 1988, taking over for Fish. Hogarth has a high, strong, soaring voice, and he uses it like another instrument, another way of bringing the listener in. With Hogarth at the helm, the band has gone from strength to strength – the timid first steps of Seasons End, the brilliance of Brave, the aching beauty of Afraid of Sunlight, and more recently, the explosive power of Anoraknophobia and the all-encompassing career summation of Marbles. There have been some lesser lights, like last year’s half-baked Somewhere Else, but every one of the band’s 11 albums with Hogarth is worth hearing.

Marillion has also embraced the Internet like few bands have, using it to build and maintain a massive worldwide fanbase. They’ve figured out a way to exist independently, just them and their fans, and they engender a loyalty that a lot of musicians would kill for. The last few album releases (excepting Somewhere Else) have been financed through a pre-order system – fans like me pony up our money in advance, before the record button is pressed even once, and it’s through our faith in the band that they can pay for recording, mixing, mastering, artwork, duplication, distribution and marketing, all on their own.

The upshot of this is Marillion is free to make any music they want, and for a band like this, that’s better than any reward the major labels could offer. They’re only beholden to us, their biggest fans, and while we’re a notoriously picky bunch, Marillion has formed magic from the air so many times by now that I, for one, am always excited to hear what they come up with.

I will admit, though, to a bit of hesitation this time. I waited months to send in my $60 for the album 15 pre-order, partially because I was so disappointed with Somewhere Else. It’s grown on me since I first heard it, but after the amazing Marbles, it kind of sits there, an average Marillion album. And then there were the plans for this new one – two discs, made up mostly of songs that didn’t make the cut on Marbles and Somewhere Else. I expected an overlong clearing house, a White Album-style mess.

But I ponied up anyway. And I did what every Marillion fan has somehow gotten used to doing. I waited.

Then, about a month ago, the band did something brilliant. They made the entirety of Happiness is the Road, the new double album, available for free download. It was a gift to those of us who pre-ordered, and it came with a mission – seed every torrent and download site with a particular version of this album, one that would redirect those who downloaded it to marillion.com. We can’t stop illegal file sharing, the band said, but we can at least try to tap into that market, and get the downloaders on our side.

I wouldn’t even know where to go to seed these files to sharing sites, so I didn’t do any of that. But I did download the album, hands trembling, heart pounding. 110 minutes of new Marillion music. I couldn’t breathe. I pressed play. I listened.

I hated it.

Formless, poorly-produced mush, I said. Nothing stands out from the murk, I said. These songs are among the weakest the band has ever foisted on us. This is the first Marillion album I hate. There is nothing here for me at all. What a crushing disappointment. I put the album away for a couple of days, unable to believe how much I didn’t like it.

You know where this is headed, right? I kept listening, and within a week, Happiness is the Road had blossomed into something beautiful. It’s so rich, powerful, emotional and grand that I don’t know how I missed all of its virtues the first time through. Even in low-quality mp3 format, these songs pulse with life, and the real deal, the actual CDs… wow. This is, musically, thematically, sonically and emotionally, one of Marillion’s finest hours.

Happiness is the Road is really two albums, called Essence and The Hard Shoulder. Disc one is a conceptual journey, a cohesive 50-minute suite. Disc two is all the songs that didn’t fit the concept. Far from being a clearing house, Happiness is two distinct pieces of music with no filler tracks, two solid albums each with its own character. They are sold separately, and the sumptuous deluxe edition packages each disc in its own hardcover book, then houses them in a slipcase. It’s clearly not a double album, but you’d be forgiven for treating it like one.

Taken as a whole, Happiness is the Road is one of the least immediate collections Marillion has ever made. The quintet has stripped back everything that has come to identify their sound – Steve Rothery’s soaring guitar is muted throughout, Steve Hogarth spends much of the album singing quietly or reaching for a wavery falsetto instead of belting the songs out. There is no 15-minute epic – the longest song is 10 minutes, but most are around four. If you’re looking for the prog-rock of old (or even of Marbles), you won’t find it here.

This music needs time to burrow under your skin, but once it’s there, you’ll hear new things every time you listen. Songs that seemed flat and stagnant at first will reveal hidden melodies. On repeated listens, you’ll especially grow to admire Pete Trewavas’ extraordinary bass playing, and Ian Mosley’s deceptive, almost jazz-like drumming. It takes some time, but it’s worth it.

I’m on listen number 48 or so, and here’s what I’m hearing now.

Essence is the most consistently fragile and beautiful album Marillion has ever made. I was initially disappointed on a song-by-song basis, but it’s the cumulative effect that packs the punch. It opens with “Dreamy Street,” a minute-long piano-vocal intro that finds Hogarth stumbling around for a metaphor. He finds one on “This Train is My Life,” and if there’s any song here that exemplifies What Marillion Does, it’s this one. Every element is here – Rothery’s understated guitars, Mark Kelly’s chiming keyboard bells, a spine-tingling melody from Hogarth, and a hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck moment. (“Take my hand, squeeze it tight…”)

From there, though, little else sounds like Marillion. “Essence” is a glorious mini-epic, starting softly but building and building to an orchestrated finale. “Wrapped Up in Time” moves from synth segue to chorus-less piano ballad, which slips perfectly into “Liquidity,” a brief instrumental. And “Nothing Fills the Hole” sustains the placid mood, even while paying homage to Motown. (Seriously.) But for the majority of its running time, Essence is about setting an atmosphere and building it up.

The band kicks in on “Woke Up,” a mid-tempo guitar-rocker, but even that song is restrained, part of the crescendo. “Trap the Spark” is gorgeous, Hogarth’s falsetto melody dripping with feeling, and “State of Mind” kicks things up a gear, ending with an almost gospel-style, joyous refrain. But the whole thing is prelude to “Happiness is the Road,” a 10-minute excursion that begins like a hymn and ends like an anthem. The chorus is very simple – just the title, repeated in an ascending pattern – but it took a while to realize that it’s the first thing on this album Hogarth really sings with all he has. It’s an amazing moment.

Lyrically, Essence is about appreciating every moment. It was inspired by Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, which is about letting go of both the past and the future. Hogarth spends the first half of the album watching time go by, and the second half (after “Woke Up”) catching every moment like fireflies. You can’t trap the spark, he says, you have to enjoy it while it’s here. Or, put another way, “Happiness ain’t at the end of the road, happiness is the road.”

The music fits this progression perfectly. “Wrapped Up in Time,” for example, is almost mournful, Hogarth using starlight as a metaphor for echoes of things long extinct, while Kelly’s piano rings out behind him. Even the structures of the songs fit the theme – there’s very little musical repetition here. Each part of “Essence” happens only once, and the chorus of “Nothing Fills the Hole” is only sung one time. But when the album explodes lyrically, the music matches – “Happiness” is massive, its slight reggae inflection belying the layers and layers of sound atop it. It all leads to the chorus, as monolithic a Marillion moment as there has ever been.

Yeah, I like Essence. But what of its twin, The Hard Shoulder?

This one’s a little more difficult, simply because there’s no concept – this is just an album of nine songs, so each one has to stand or fall on its own. Thankfully, after a few listens, they stand just fine. The sequence of The Hard Shoulder baffles me – it starts with its three most impenetrable songs, each more than six minutes long, and it shuffles the melodic pop singles to the end. If you bought this for “Whatever is Wrong With You,” Marillion’s punchiest single since “You’re Gone,” you have to wade through six less punchy tracks to get to it.

“Thunder Fly” starts off like a barnburner, Rothery turning in his most rollicking guitar riff to this point, but it slowly unfolds into a more complex rock epic. Here, finally, are the soaring solos – the lengthy one that ends “Thunder Fly” is the best on Happiness – but they’re more restrained than, say, the ones on “Neverland.”

I have struggled the most with “The Man From the Planet Marzipan,” which sounds like a novelty tune from the title, but ends up a seven-minute prog-rock extravaganza. The 3-D production is amazing here – every element is separated and distinct, and it’s like flying through an asteroid belt. The song is strikingly complex, even for Marillion, and I think I have it mapped out in my head now, but I hear new things each time. Hogarth shines here, especially when he wails, “There’s so much that I can’t take in…” I have almost no idea what this song is about, however.

And then there is “Asylum Satellite #1,” a nine-minute sci-fi monster that imagines a world in which the crazy people are sent into orbit for life. This is a difficult beast to tame, as it has no chorus, and is propelled by one of Trewavas’ trickiest bass parts. But when Hogarth sings “we can see the madness perfectly from here,” it lifts off – the rest is all instrumental, Rothery making his magic over a dense keyboard and bass bed. The little coda is wonderful, too.

“Older Than Me” is a charming ballad, all bells and voice, all about loving an older woman. It’s so slight it nearly gets lost, but it’s gorgeous, and it contains my favorite line on the album: “We’ll be over the hill and far away,” sung in a lovely falsetto with a choir of angels backing it up. “Throw Me Out” is the only song here that directly references Hogarth’s recent divorce, and the tune has a Crowded House feel, shuffling along until the clarinets come in. And “Half the World” is a delightful, mid-tempo pop song with a sweet chorus.

The final three songs rock harder than anything else on Happiness, and it’s puzzling to me why they were relegated to the end. “Whatever is Wrong With You” remains a winner, even with an extra minute added. Rothery cranks up the amps, and delivers his most striking solo – it sounds like it was pieced together from a much longer recording, jumping from tone to tone. The song is a celebration of oddness – “whatever is wrong with you is so right for me” – and it deserves to be a hit.

It segues smartly into “Especially True,” a song about embracing America. It’s a surprising lyric, especially after “The Last Century for Man” on Somewhere Else, but the sometimes sinister music betrays the hidden fangs. It all leads up to “Real Tears for Sale,” a seven-minute excursion that is part classic rock, part Celtic ambience. It’s the hardest-hitting thing here, a song reportedly inspired by Sinead O’Connor that lashes out at those who would sell real emotions to the masses. “Even whores don’t kiss with tongues,” Hogarth sings, “nevertheless I do believe you cried real tears…” I like this song, but it’s a surprisingly bitter note to end this album on. Musically speaking, though, it had to be the finale.

The Hard Shoulder doesn’t cohere nearly as well as Essence, but it isn’t supposed to. As a set of songs, it works well – just on its own, it’s a fine rebound from Somewhere Else, and it continues to reveal its riches with each play. Paired with Essence, though, it is one-half of an exceptionally strong release for a band in its third decade. Only time will tell if Happiness is the Road takes its place next to Brave, Afraid of Sunlight and Marbles in the pantheon – if it does, it will be the first one not produced by Dave Meegan to do so, and Mike Hunter should take a bow for his fantastic work on this record.

I have talked to numerous others who had the same immediate negative reaction to Happiness, and all I can say is, stick with it. There’s more here than you can take in at first. It’s taken me some time to come to grips with it, but Happiness is the Road has taken root, and it just keeps growing in stature. It’s a bold choice to release something that demands repeated listens, demands much more attention than most are willing to give a piece of music these days.

Stay with it, though, and Happiness will transform before your ears into something amazing. It’s hard to believe this is album 15 – Marillion is at the top of their game here, turning out some of the most creative and beautiful music they’ve ever made. And they did it their way, no compromises.

As a final note, the band outdid themselves with the deluxe packaging this time. Artist Antonio Seijas provided hundreds of eerie, jaw-dropping images, and the covers of the books and the slipcase are embossed. It’s a hefty thing, but it’s incredible. And, of course, they included the names of everyone who pre-ordered. You’d think the thrill of finding your name in a list like that would wear off, but it doesn’t.

You can order the deluxe Happiness at www.marillion.com. Needless to say, I recommend it highly.

Next week, the Cure, Ryan Adams, Of Montreal, and maybe Queen and Paul Rodgers.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So much music! Let’s go!

First off, I assume you’ve all heard “Chinese Democracy,” the honest-to-Christ first real single from the mythical Guns n’ Roses album of the same name? If not, go here. I kind of like it. It’s very mid-‘90s industrial in tone, but I think Axl may have waited just long enough – the sound of 1997 is charmingly retro now. And I love the intro, with that cloud-clearing guitar that signals the song proper. As my first Axl-approved taste of Democracy, I have to say, it ain’t bad.

This is my second column of this week, because I’m just drowning in new tunes. The first one is a long ramble on Marillion’s brilliant 15th album, Happiness is the Road. If you don’t feel like wading through my pulse-pounding prose, here’s the summary: it’s two discs, one a conceptual journey and one a bunch of songs. The first one is beautiful and simple, the second difficult and complex. Put them together, you have a near-masterpiece. Buy it here.

For this column, I’m going to try that “being concise” thing again. I have five CDs to get through, and I hope I can do it without breaking 3,000 words. Then again, have you seen my Marillion review? Concise and I don’t get along that well. Anyway, here goes.

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Physical Intimacy

About two months ago, I reviewed what I thought was Bloc Party’s third album, Intimacy. The band had made the 10-song set available as a download through their website, in advance of its Oct. 28 release date. At the time, it was one of the quickest studio-to-customer turnarounds I’d seen, and I remarked then that a modest, 45-minute, 10-song affair felt to me like an Internet-only release.

Well, the physical version of Intimacy hit my mailbox this week, and as it turns out, it contains four more songs than the digital release – one of them, “Talons,” is integrated into the album itself at track nine, and the others are tacked on as bonus cuts. Although what separates them from the “real” songs isn’t quite clear – it isn’t quality, that’s for sure. The bonus tracks are just as good as anything on the record proper, especially the semi-acoustic “Letter to My Son” and the blistering “Flux.”

How about “Talons”? It’s good too – it kind of bridges the gap between the guitar-heavy rock songs and the electro-dance rave-ups that populate this disc, and Kele Okereke has rarely sounded more like Robert Smith. “Talons” goes some way toward balancing out what I still consider an uneven effort, one that seems in search of a direction.

But in the two months since I first heard it, Intimacy has grown on me tremendously. I’m still turned off by the jump-cut seizures of “Ares” and “Mercury,” but experiments like “Zephyrus” and “Ion Square” have improved with time, and I still can’t say enough good things about the slower tracks, like “Biko” and “Signs.” This is the most urgent-sounding Bloc Party album, and I can forgive it for being a little scattered – it’s like a cat darting from shiny thing to shiny thing, eyes wide, ready to pounce. Hopefully Bloc Party’s fourth effort will be more focused, but Intimacy has intensity and curiosity on its side.

Needless to say, I recommend the physical release over the digital one. Plus, with the CD, you get the arresting cover image, one of my favorites of the year.

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Our Dear Dead Dears

As I understand it, Missiles, the fourth album from Canadian drama-rockers The Dears, pretty much broke up the band.

This isn’t the first time, either. The center of the band is, was, and always will be Murray Lightburn, who, with his wife/keyboardist Natalia Yanchak, sets the tone for every Dears project. They are known for long, slow, serious songs, drowned in orchestration and buoyed by Lightburn’s strong, even voice. But two years ago, on Gang of Losers, they stripped back and turned in shorter, louder songs that didn’t fit quite as well.

Missiles is a return to form, one of the finest Dears albums. Its creation was apparently marked by so much tension that of the six-piece lineup that made Losers, only Lightburn and Yanchak remain. I’m not sure if the resulting record was worth the loss, but it’s very good. You know you’re in for classic Dears when you hear the opener, the seven-minute “Disclaimer.” It starts with an extended intro, all oscillating guitars and saxophones, before picking up steam. Well, relatively speaking – this album rarely rises above a slow boil, and it’s perfect that way.

Lightburn goes all Thom Yorke on the eight-minute “Lights Off,” which is, in a way, his “Paranoid Android.” Over sweet strings and plaintive acoustic guitar, heading off into strange and wonderful chords, he sings, “Turn out the lights, just hold me tight, sleep through the night, could you, with me?” The song concludes with a two-and-a-half-minute guitar solo that is more Lindsey Buckingham than David Gilmour, but it works.

The album continues in a similar vein – “Demons” is hummable and string-laden, while the title song is hushed and offbeat. But it’s on closer “Saviour” that Lightburn’s vision for the band comes through the loudest. Here is an 11-minute, paper-thin monster – it starts with organ and sparse electronic drums, but slowly (verrrry slowly), Lightburn adds instruments, including a brass band and a choir. It never changes tempo, it’s basically a dirge, but listening to the whole thing is mesmerizing.

Out of turbulent times comes great art, and this may be my favorite Dears album. Reportedly, Lightburn and Yanchak have put a new, seven-piece lineup together, and I’m interested to hear how the new Dears compare with the old Dears. But even without that backstory, Missiles is a fine, ambitious, self-serious, dramatic record that may be the best thing the band has ever done.

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Let the Sunshine In

The year is 2005. I’m at the Cornerstone Festival in Bushnell, Illinois, watching the Violet Burning play an amazing set, and highly anticipating the next act on the Gallery Stage: the Choir, one of my favorite bands ever. They play once in a blue moon, so I wasn’t going to miss this chance to see them. But many of the younger people I was next to did – they got up and left after TVB, headed off to see this band called Copeland.

I ended up cursing the festival organizers for slotting the two shows at the same time, denying younger fans the chance to see a legendary band they might just fall in love with. I think I even ended up cursing Copeland for their strange hold over the Cornerstone youth. But it was that juxtaposition that forced me to hear Copeland for the first time – I had to know what band was worth missing the Choir.

I’m still glad I saw the Choir, of course. But in the years since that Cornerstone performance, Copeland has evolved into a very interesting band. Their early work was loud but melodic, still fitting the mold of indie-rock. On 2006’s Eat, Sleep, Repeat, however, they stripped all that away, and turned into an airy dream-pop band. I didn’t know quite what to make of it at first, but now I consider Repeat to be a minor masterpiece.

The hits keep on coming with You Are My Sunshine, Copeland’s fourth album. Ignore the lazy title – it has no bearing on the record at all, surprisingly. This is the album on which the band finishes smoothing off all its rough edges – every song is clean, atmospheric and dreamy. Singer Aaron Marsh has never sounded better. His voice is high, almost feminine, and it rises above the cloud cover his band lays down, turning every melody into something beautiful.

Sunshine finally finds a proper home for “Chin Up,” a wonderful song that first appeared on the band’s b-sides collection, Dressed Up and In Line. Here, it is a string-fueled waltz, but it still pivots on the great line “you break your neck to keep your chin up.” It’s far from the best song, though. First single “The Grey Man” is immediately memorable, as is the great “To Be Happy Now,” the most energetic thing here. The ascending melody of “On the Safest Ledge” will stay with you, as will Rae Cassidy’s guest vocal turn on the fragile “The Day I Lost My Voice (The Suitcase Song).”

Every song here is terrific, even the 10-minute closer “Not So Tough Found Out” – that one’s very similar in structure to the Dears’ “Saviour.” But my favorite moment of Sunshine may be the smallest one. “Strange and Unprepared” is just Marsh and an electric piano, but when he sings “now we’ll always never know,” it’s heartbreaking. Copeland never leaves the realm of pop-rock, but their music is so light and lovely you’ll feel like you’re levitating. This is their best album, and I’m very much looking forward to tracking their evolution further, and seeing them live, as long as the Choir isn’t playing at the same time.

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The Cult of Ray

I admit I was surprised to learn that Ray LaMontagne is from Maine. Apparently he still lives there, in Farmington. I keep telling people that Maine has a rich and diverse music scene, but nobody believes me. I think LaMontagne is one of the best arguments I could make for the artistic validity of Vacationland, as the license plates call it.

Who is Ray LaMontagne? He’s a husky-voiced singer, a songwriter who draws from a deep well of traditions, and a record maker like few others these days. Every LaMontagne album sounds vintage, like a collection of old standards. His second, Till the Sun Turns Black, opened with “Be Here Now,” six of the most beautiful minutes of 2006 – simple acoustic guitars, otherworldly strings, and LaMontagne’s moving voice. You must hear it, and the rest of the album, if you haven’t.

His third, Gossip in the Grain, starts very differently. “You Are the Best Thing” is pure Motown soul, complete with crisp horns and a trio of female backing vocalists. This is LaMontagne letting loose, and his voice takes on something of a Joe Cocker feel. But he’s back to classic balladry on the next couple of tracks, particularly the timeless “Let It Be Me.” I’ve always thought he was at his best when accompanied by little more than guitars and violins, and he proves me right again on “Sarah” and the devastating “Winter Birds.”

If you can imagine it, “Meg White” is a serious romantic paean to the White Stripes’ drummer, performed without a stitch of irony. “Meg White, I saw you on the big screen, Old Jack was keen, but you stole the scene…” The song starts with a lick from the Stripes’ version of “Conquest,” and features a particularly Meg White drum beat. It’s great.

But nothing will prepare you for “Henry Nearly Killed Me (It’s a Shame),” an explosive blues shuffle. LaMontagne goes all out vocally on this one, and you wonder if he’ll be able to do it live. Naturally, he slows it right down for the captivating title track that ends the record. It’s 45 minutes, in and out, but Gossip in the Grain is remarkably diverse, further proving Ray LaMontagne’s singular talent. I haven’t heard a record quite like it this year.

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Shear Beauty

I’ve been doing this column for eight years now. During much of that time, one of my most faithful correspondents has been Lucas Beeley. I haven’t always been as faithful in return – anyone who knows me knows it often takes a long time for me to reply to emails – but I’ve always appreciated his ear, his taste and his willingness to share his recommendations. He and I agree on Fleet Foxes this year. He knows what he’s talking about.

So when he sent me an instant message a couple of weeks ago, chastising me for not including Shearwater’s new album Rook in my top 10 list, I knew I had to hear it. One problem – I’d honestly never heard of Shearwater before. Turns out, it started as a side project for Will Sheff and Jonathan Meiburg of Okkervil River. That band, you may remember, made my 2007 top 10 list with their wonderful The Stage Names.

That’s a good pedigree. Armed with that info and Beeley’s recommendation, I picked up Rook. And man, am I glad I did.

Rook is quiet, stately, artfully arranged, and just gorgeous. In Okkervil River, Meiburg is relegated to piano and organ parts, overshadowed completely by the unkempt genius of Sheff. Who knew he had such a striking voice, or such a gift for off-kilter, folksy melodies? Rook opens with a piano-vocal lullabye called “On the Death of the Waters” that sets the tone – Meiburg’s voice soars, and the whole thing is so hushed and lovely that when the electric guitars crash in halfway through, it’s genuinely startling.

Things slowly build from there, with the magnificent “Home Life” truly picking up the momentum. It’s a seven-minute epic folk tune, arranged with strings and woodwinds, and it features a melody that wouldn’t be out of place on an old Richard Thompson record. It’s just fantastic, and unlike anything else I’ve heard this year.

Even when Meiburg kicks up the tempo with electric guitars on the brief “Century Eyes,” the effect is still unique – like the Decemberists and Woven Hand jamming. One song later, he’s singing another breathtaking melody over gently picked guitar and light piano on the aptly titled “I Was a Cloud.” “The Snow Leopard” is striking, with a strident melody that once again brings Woven Hand to mind. And then the album ends as it began, with the quiet piano-and-strings number “The Hunter’s Star.”

As usual, Beeley is right – this album is great, and is a candidate for the top 10 list. It feels like a consistent suite, like it should only be played in order live. I am dumbfounded that I never heard Shearwater before this, but I’m certainly going to seek out their other records now. Special thanks to Lucas Beeley for another strong suggestion.

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Next week, the Cure, Ryan Adams, Of Montreal… there’s just so much!

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So I once made this joke that we would see real Chinese democracy before we would see the long-delayed fifth Guns ‘n’ Roses album, Chinese Democracy.

Well, the Chinese are still stubbornly Communist, so I may have to eat my words. For weeks now, I’ve been hearing louder-than-usual rumblings that Chinese Democracy, after more than a dozen years, is actually going to surface next month. There have been at least half a dozen “confirmed” release dates for this thing, each one scrapped as Axl Rose continues to “tweak” his “masterpiece,” but I’m starting to believe that Sunday, November 23 is actually the date.

Why do I think so? Look. Billboard has announced the release date. So has Rolling Stone. The record is supposed to be an exclusive with Best Buy, oddly limiting its potential audience, and that store has released not only the track list, but the cover art. (Note that link lists November 25 as the release date. I guess nothing’s a sure bet…)

And of course, back in June, nine tracks leaked to the Web, and I swear, they sounded finished to me. But what do I know. Apparently Axl thought they were near enough to complete to sue the guy who leaked them, so… Still, Mr. Rose and company have been decidedly quiet through this storm of publicity.

Yes, according to Best Buy, the cover picture is a bicycle with a huge basket leaning against a spray-painted wall. It seems a surprisingly subdued image for such an operatic, over-the-top production like Democracy, which reportedly cost more than $13 million to finally finish up. But lo and behold, it’s another sign that this may be legit – Rose apparently has been talking about this cover concept since 2002. The picture was apparently snapped in China, so it’s, like, symbolic or something. But it looks like the real deal.

I’m not really sure how to feel about this. For about 10 years after Use Your Illusion in 1991, I eagerly anticipated a new Guns ‘n’ Roses album. Their debut, 1987’s Appetite for Destruction, is still one of the best rock ‘n’ roll albums ever made, and the Illusion records (twin releases totaling about 150 minutes of music) were underrated and ambitious.

But in the intervening 17 years (!), Axl Rose has become the last Gunner standing, and Chinese Democracy clearly spiraled out of his control. The resulting record sounds to me like a disastrous explosion of ego, overcooked and half-baked, if you get my meaning. It’s strange to see this project actually quantified down to 14 tracks and a cover, and I will definitely buy it if it comes out. But I think it’s going to be awful, quite frankly.

On the bright side, though, if this thing actually comes out, we all get free Dr. Pepper. So that’s something.

* * * * *

It’s no secret that I love British trio Keane.

If it’s possible to love a band too much, then for me that band is Keane. (Along with a few others, of course.) Both of their first two albums – the grand Hopes and Fears and the grander Under the Iron Sea – are etched onto my mental retina. They write exactly the kind of big-hearted, confidently melodic pop music that I respond to most strongly, and I would have been perfectly happy if they’d continued down the same path forever, building on their Britpop sound again and again.

But the guys in Keane are clearly smarter than me. They know change is inevitable, and stagnation means death. And so their third album, Perfect Symmetry, is a radical departure from the first two – at least, upon first glance. And I admit, they had me worried.

About two months ago, the band released the first taste of Perfect Symmetry – the leadoff track, “Spiralling.” Now, I should point out that Keane has, to this point, been a pretty serious band. The songs on Hopes and Fears are earnest, full of wide open spaces, and Iron Sea added orchestration and a deep cover of darkness. Both albums tackled big themes with big songs, and as much as I love them, I wouldn’t recommend them for your next party mix.

So when I tell you that when I pushed play on “Spiralling” for the first time, my jaw dropped, I’m telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth. After a clip-clop percussion intro, the song proper starts with an exultant “Woo!” and a synth line right out of the Thompson Twins. It’s a full-on ‘80s throwback, Tim Rice-Oxley embracing the cheesiness of his keyboards, and singer Tom Chaplin even turning in a spoken word section. (“Did you want to be an icon? Did you want to be president?”)

It’s stunning. Beyond just the boldness of this direction, “Spiralling” is a great, great song. And it effectively sets the tone for Symmetry, a record drenched in that ‘80s pop sound. Everything you thought was Keane is effectively shuffled offstage to make room for a newly found sense of disposable fun. Hell, they’ve even done away with the whole guitar-less thing: Chaplin picks up a six-string, and though it’s most noticeable on the dance-pop tunes, it gets play on some of the slower epics too.

In short, this is a near-complete reinvention. Even “Spiralling” didn’t prepare me for the sprightly opening of “Better Than This,” with its David Bowie-in-a-thin-tie keyboards and handclaps. And all of “You Haven’t Told Me Anything” is a shocker, falling more in line with the Smiths than the current wave of Britpop. Chaplin, perhaps the best pure pop singer on the planet right now, unveils a slippery falsetto here that’s damn surprising at first, too.

I wouldn’t be surprised if your initial reaction is to wonder just what the hell happened to the dramatic pop trio you love. But keep listening, because while the surface has changed, everything essential about Keane is still here.

First and foremost, there are the songs. Keane songs are tight, unfailingly inventive melodic beasts, without an ounce of fat on them, and every one of Symmetry’s 11 numbers keeps that streak going. It’s most obvious on the more traditionally Keane-like tunes (“The Lovers Are Losing,” “Again and Again”), but just listen to the dynamic chorus of “You Haven’t Told Me Anything” and try not to sing along. I’ve said since the beginning that I’m waiting for Keane to write a song I don’t like, and I’m still waiting.

This album is a rocket, rushing by in a burst of melody, wrapping up in a tidy yet giddy 50:44, and it’s perfectly sequenced – a deep and moody epic like “Playing Along” is followed up with a bit of David Byrne-style funkery like “Pretend That You’re Alone,” and nothing outstays its welcome. Closer “Love is the End” is a classic Keane ballad – it starts small, it tickles you with its terrific melody, and it explodes into grand orchestration by the end. It’s the perfect finish, the longest thing here at 5:38, and it leaves me wanting more right away.

Next, there’s Chaplin. This guy is incredible. The vocal parts on Symmetry demand more of him than ever before, and he delivers. Just try singing along with the chorus of “Love is the End” and tell me how you do. “Better Than This” requires him to shoot up into falsetto at a moment’s notice, and he pulls it off. Even a seemingly simple tune like “You Don’t See Me” stands or falls on Chaplin’s voice, and he nails the “shining so bright” section at the end of the bridge. He’s at the top of his game, and if you came to Keane for his dazzling voice, you won’t be disappointed.

Everything the too-cool-for-school crowd hates about Keane is here, too, thank God. The lyrics are still wide-eyed and emotionally direct, the big themes still on the menu. The title track is almost a hippie manifesto, “Playing Along” is about the distractions that keep us from being engaged in the world, and “Spiralling” contains this little observation: “When we fall in love, we’re just falling in love with ourselves.”

Keane will never be cool. Hell, they’ve even missed the ‘80s revival bandwagon by a few years. But to my mind, no other modern band has incorporated these Reagan-era influences as earnestly and thoroughly as Keane. They will never be trendy, but they will always be honest – this is the music they make, regardless of how ridiculous it seems to those who won’t embrace it. There is nothing cool about Perfect Symmetry, but you can’t make this kind of album without jumping in, fully committed, and they have.

After a few listens, Perfect Symmetry just becomes another great Keane album. I quickly stopped fretting about what they’d taken away, and started loving what they’ve added – a loose sense of fun, a slinky soul that I didn’t even realize was missing. It may not be their best (but then again, it may be), but it is the one I’m most enjoying right now. It’s an absolute delight, from front to back.

What can I say? I love this band. While the dark Under the Iron Sea was a portrait of tension – I even thought it may be their last as a unit – Perfect Symmetry is a celebration, a sign that Keane is moving full speed ahead, looking back to the future. Long may they dream big, with their hearts firmly on their sleeves.

Next week, Copeland, Ray LaMontagne, and perhaps a few others. Oh, and there’s Happiness is the Road, which is reportedly winging its way to me across the ocean as we speak.

See you in line Tuesday morning.