I’m still not sure what kind of year it was.

If you were reading all year, you probably noticed the see-saw of emotions and proclamations I made at regular intervals. 2007 was the best year ever one month, and a sad disappointment the next. I sailed into December certain that the year was a mediocre one, and that 2007’s top 10 list wouldn’t stack up to those of the past two years – two of the best years I can remember, both personally and musically.

Well, that list appears below, and if I do say so myself, it holds up nicely. I was worried for no reason. I still think 2007 wasn’t quite as good as its two predecessors, but I discovered, as I was digging through the more than 100 CDs I bought this year, that there were some fantastic gems hidden there. I rounded up 12 honorable mentions as well, and two additional favorites that were ineligible for the list. I also found a couple dozen excellent songs from lesser albums that colored my year, some I’d all but forgotten.

2007 wasn’t bad, all told, but I’m still not ready to sing its praises. I think there are two reasons for my lingering disappointment. First, the year gave me nothing that stopped my heart and made me weep. Here’s the thing – the last three years each had that one album that shot to the top of my list – the indisputable choice, the most extraordinary piece of music I heard. In rapid succession, we got Brian Wilson’s SMiLE, Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois, and Joanna Newsom’s Ys. You can’t beat that, and 2007 didn’t even try – I won’t downplay how much I dig the album atop my list this year, but it isn’t even in the same league as those three.

Secondly, so many of my regular favorites let me down this year. Some of them, like Rufus Wainwright and Ryan Adams, put out acceptable records when they should have made extraordinary ones. But many more of them squeezed out efforts that were just beneath them. The New Pornographers, Wilco, They Might Be Giants, Bjork and Marillion all made sub-par albums, and in fact I was ready to call Marillion’s Somewhere Else the biggest disappointment of my year, before Neil Finn resurrected Crowded House for the lousy, boring, unworthy Time on Earth.

So it took a while to look beyond the badness, but there’s nothing like formulating a list of the good stuff to make you see the silver lining. My top 5 records this year surprised the hell out of me – here’s a band I had written off, a couple others that hadn’t impressed me much until now, and a number one that came out of nowhere. The top 10 this year contains no old standbys, two artists I’d given up on, and a bunch of albums that honestly shocked me with their sheer quality.

You wanna see it? Okay, okay. First, let me get the rules out of the way. As usual, only new full-length studio albums count – no live records, no covers albums, no compilations, no rarities collections. Only albums released between January 1 and December 31, 2007 are eligible, and entrants are graded on composition, performance, production and personal taste. Your mileage may vary.

I nearly revised a rule this year, and I may very well end up rewriting it next year. Here’s why: for the first time ever, there’s an album in my top 5 this year that isn’t technically out yet. I usually confine my list to those records out in physical formats in record stores, but one of them (and I bet you can guess which one) was only released digitally. The CD version of that album comes out on December 31, saving me the moral dilemma, but I see the writing on the wall. I know this is the way of the future, and you can bet next year will see more of these, and I’ll likely include them in the list, if they’re good enough.

Just to clarify, though, I love packaging and physical formats, and I’ll be sad to see them go.

So anyway, here are some honorable mentions for you before we get to the list proper. We start with two of my favorite collections of the year, neither of which is eligible for the top honors. First up is Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, who defied all expectations with their wonderful Raising Sand. It’s all covers, you see, but they’re extraordinary covers, Plant and Krauss winding their harmonious voices together over earthy, smoky folk and blues tunes. They do the Everly Brothers, Tom Waits, Mel Tillis and Townes Van Zandt, and they do them all beautifully.

And then there’s New Moon, the two-CD collection of unreleased music from Elliott Smith. If you were expecting a hodgepodge of rarities and demo-quality basement recordings (like Nick Drake’s Family Tree, for instance), you were likely blown away by the consistency and quality of New Moon. It’s very much like getting two terrific new albums from the late, great Smith, and I’m grateful for these songs. Smith was hailed as one of the best songwriters of my generation, and New Moon gives you another two dozen reasons why.

We go back to the first quarter of the year for the first of our honorable mentions. Everyone seems to have forgotten about Bloc Party and their swell sophomore album A Weekend in the City. It’s slower and deeper than their debut, but it’s better, and in an album or two these guys should be on the list. With “Hunting for Witches,” Bloc Party also wrote one of the coolest songs of the year, with what I think is 2007’s best guitar riff.

Tegan and Sara made their best album with the brief, melodic The Con, while Joy Electric produced a vocally-driven winner with The Otherly Opus. Marc Cohn broke his nine-year silence with Join the Parade, a different kind of album for him, and with “Dance Back From the Grave” wrote the best post-Katrina hymn I’ve heard. And Rilo Kiley put together their best record with the sugary, glossy pop gem Under the Blacklight. (That sound you just heard was my friend Jody squealing with delight.)

I criticized Fountains of Wayne for clogging their fourth album, Traffic and Weather, with novelty songs, but further listens have convinced me of the effervescent pop wonder in this record. There’s some crap, like “Strapped for Cash” and the terrible “Planet of Weed,” but when they’re on, they turn out witty smilers like “Someone to Love” and “’92 Subaru.” And when they’re at their best, they tug on the heartstrings with tunes like “I-95” and “Michael and Heather at the Baggage Claim,” maybe the year’s sweetest love song. It’s not their best, but it’s better than I first thought.

Terry Taylor brought the Swirling Eddies back from a decade-plus hiatus for The Midget, the Speck and the Molecule. It shouldn’t have surprised me that Taylor would make a terrific album, but it did – I was dreading a jokey, half-hearted chucklefest, and what I got is a worthy successor to Zoom Daddy. It’s dark, it’s clever, and it’s definitely funny, but Taylor has written some of his best latter-day songs here about faith in a materialistic world. It’s super.

Minus the Bear practically redefined majestic with their third full-length, Planet of Ice. They refined their complex geometrical rock, delivering eight-minute epics and two-minute pop thrillers with equal ease. They were bettered, but only slightly, by Explosions in the Sky, who took their instrumental soundscapes to new heights with All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone. It’s an album as gorgeous as its New Orleans-inspired cover art.

Modest Mouse produced their finest album yet with We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, bringing former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr into the fold. Many people criticized the album for moving too far away from the scrappy, unfocused roots of Modest Mouse’s earlier records, but as you might expect, that’s exactly what I liked about it.

PJ Harvey nearly made the list with her haunting White Chalk. It’s a fragile, un-PJ Harvey kind of album, one that will chill you to the bone. But I realized pretty quickly that I’d overrated it based on how it made me feel. In the end, this is a ghostly experiment that often works, but it doesn’t hold a candle, compositionally speaking, to anything on the list. If you want an unnerving experience, though, you can’t do better than this.

And that brings us to number 11, and it’s Over the Rhine’s lovely The Trumpet Child. Karin Bergquist and Linford Detwiler crafted a tribute to the old-time jazz and gospel albums in their record collections, and in so doing took their sound to some beautiful new places. Bergquist remains one of the best singers we have, and if not for the dismal “If a Song Could be President,” this record may have ended up on the list. I certainly won’t quibble with anyone who likes this better than some of my top 10 choices. If you’ve ever liked OTR before, get this. You won’t regret it.

Which brings us to the list proper. It starts with a band I’d never heard before this year, and ends with an unlikely masterpiece. It’s a solid, surprising collection of 10 very good albums, putting lie to the notion that ’07 had nothing going for it. And here it is:

#10. Loney, Dear – Loney, Noir.

Emil Svangenen is Loney, Dear, and for years he’s been making these ornate pop records all by himself, playing a bevy of instruments and layering his high, wavery voice again and again. You’d think the result would be insular, and maybe a little canned-sounding, but instead it’s glorious. Sub Pop released Loney, Dear’s fourth album in the U.S. earlier this year, and it’s a brief charmer – 10 delightful slices of chamber-pop graced with horns and strings and sweet melodies. I’m going to treasure this one – if not for the band at number 7, this would be the discovery of the year for me.

#9. Bright Eyes, Cassadaga.

It took Conor Oberst long enough to live up to his own hype, but here it is, the first Bright Eyes album with no tracks I want to skip. It’s the biggest-sounding record Oberst has made, with oodles of guest artists, stacked instruments and sound effects, and that certainly helps. But what makes this album so good is that it contains the 13 best songs Oberst has ever written, all in a row. It’s all over the place stylistically, from the country-rock of “Four Winds” to the minor-key folk of “Middleman” to the classic balladry of “Make a Plan to Love Me,” but Oberst handles each style with aplomb. And the closing tracks are heartbreaking, particularly “Lime Tree.” Hopefully this is Bright Eyes’ Great Leap Forward, but even if he never makes one like it again, Cassadaga will remain excellent stuff.

#8. Tori Amos, American Doll Posse.

Excuse me while I do a little dance to celebrate Amos’ return to this list. She’s one of my favorite artists, and has been since high school, but for the last 10 years, she’s churned out overlong, uninteresting, sloppy records like Scarlet’s Walk and The Beekeeper. I had written her off, truth be told, and I wasn’t holding out much hope for Posse, another 78-minute concept album. But it’s awesome, a loud, bold, engaging record that cranks up the guitars and finally, finally wakes Tori up. Posse is the first of her albums in a decade that sounds inspired, and it doesn’t waver – there are only a couple of bum tracks out of 23, a remarkable ratio for latter-day Tori. It’s no Little Earthquakes, but Amos is back, and I couldn’t be happier.

#7. Okkervil River, The Stage Names.

I always feel a little stupid when I discover a band that’s been around for years. The Stage Names is Okkervil River’s fifth album, but it’s the first one I’ve heard, much to my chagrin. I knew within the first minute of “Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe,” when Will Sheff’s voice shot up that extra octave and the pianos kicked in, that I’d found something special, and the rest of the record didn’t disappoint me. They’re a classic rock and roll band, but I defy you to find sadder songs this year than “Savannah Smiles” and “A Girl in Port.” And I dare you to stay neutral on this band once you’ve heard the way they work “Sloop Jon B” into the crashing closer, “John Allyn Smith Sails.” This is a great album from a band worth watching, and the discovery of 2007 for me.

#6. Monarch, Lowly.

I didn’t expect this. Brennan Strawn’s Monarch used to be just another dramatic rock band, but their second album (which feels to me like Strawn’s first solo album, truth be told) is a stupendous set of soaring anthems and orchestrated wonders. Strawn has a voice that most frontmen would kill for, and on this album, he uses it to its fullest, penning stratospheric melodies and singing the hell out of them. His songs are about love and faith and holding on to both, and while I love the hummable pop numbers like “Lose it All,” I am fully taken in by his slow-build epics, like “Find Others” and the amazing “Save Your.” The record comes in crummy packaging, but don’t let that deter you – head here and add this to your collection post haste.

#5. Radiohead, In Rainbows.

In many ways, Radiohead was the biggest story of 2007. Everyone wanted to talk about the release of this album as an MP3 download, with no label support, and everyone wanted to use it as the model for the changing industry. But while everybody discussed the format, nobody talked much about the music – a shame, since In Rainbows is far and away the best Radiohead album since OK Computer 10 years ago. The secret? They jettisoned the cold, mechanical, insular sound of their work since then, and made the warmest, most human record of their career. They also wrote their best, most melodic songs in a decade for this album, including the wonderfully simple “House of Cards” and the semi-sweet “All I Need.” In Rainbows is going to be remembered for its release strategy, but it deserves to be remembered for its music, too.

#4. The Arcade Fire, Neon Bible.

I’m surprised, too. After this band’s debut, Funeral, had the indie-rock cognoscenti all a-twitter, I tried it, and reservedly liked it. But I was blown away by the follow-up, a grandiose art-rock project with song after song building towers of sound. This is a powerful record, one that proves that ambition is not a thing of the past among the new crop of artists. From the creeping strings of “Black Mirror” to the thick organ of “Intervention” to the joyous horns of “No Cars Go,” Win Butler and his band have built a monolithic pop album here, one that still knocks me flat after dozens of repeat plays. Funeral was the prelude. This is the real thing.

#3. Aqualung, Memory Man.

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I picked up Aqualung’s third album. I’ve enjoyed Matt Hales’ work before, despite the awful nom de plume he’s picked for himself, but his take on Coldplay-style piano-pop has never made much of an impression. Not so this album, Hales’ giant step forward – Memory Man is a masterwork, a modern pop album of such emotion and invention that I’m honestly surprised at how little attention it received. Memory Man is a lot of things – it’s a winning collection of piano-based pop songs, sure, but it’s also a headphone album of the highest order, chock full of little sonic touches that take time to discover. And it’s a song cycle about holding on, about living through the worst the world has to offer. In the crushing final track, “Broken Bones,” Hales pleads over a static-filled CB connection for a little more time before the world collapses, and I don’t think I heard a better final track all year. I don’t know if anyone else is watching Hales’ ascension, but I certainly am, and Memory Man is a great sign for his future.

#2. The Shins, Wincing the Night Away.

Wincing, the first great album of the year, came out in January, and held on to best every album but one. That should tell you how good this thing is. James Mercer obviously loves the same records I do, and the Brian Wilson influence looms large here. But he’s also exploded his band’s sound with moody pieces like “Sealegs” and “Black Wave,” setting them next to ultra-melodic stunners like “Australia” and “Phantom Limb.” With the closer, “A Comet Appears,” he penned one of the prettiest songs of the year, the perfect ending to this nearly perfect album. For the first time, everything came together for the Shins – this is their first top-notch album, and I had a few sleepless nights about relegating it to the number two spot. Anyone calling Wincing the Night Away the album of the year won’t get any fight from me.

But I can’t, because the record at number one surprised the living hell out of me. It’s a modern pop masterpiece from the unlikeliest of sources. Here it is:

#1. Silverchair, Young Modern.

Yes, Silverchair, the Australian trio that started off as a Pearl Jam tribute band. Many people my age remember their first two albums, Frogstomp and Freak Show – the first for its ubiquitous hit “Tomorrow,” and the second for its ridiculous songs about eating disorders. They were terrible. I’d ask you to cut Daniel Johns some slack, since he was a teenager when he wrote those albums, but they’re so bad that he deserves no quarter.

If you tuned out then, I wouldn’t blame you, but you missed an astonishing evolution. Over two increasingly better Silverchair discs and a side project called The Dissociatives, Daniel Johns grew into one of the best pop songwriters on the planet. And Young Modern is where he proves it. You will not believe this is a Silverchair album. There has never been one like this, and though the band must be aware they are asking people on this side of the pond to overcome a lot of baggage, this record is so very worth it.

Young Modern is a candy-coated sonic thrill ride, and every time you think you know where it’s going, you end up surprised. “Young Modern Station” and “Straight Lines” are the most typical things here, and even they are hummable and memorable. But by track three, all bets are off – “If You Keep Losing Sleep” is a psychodrama lush with strings and creepy percussion and brilliant melodies. And the hits keep on coming, right through to the end.

I can’t overstate just how much I enjoy the album’s centerpiece, the seven-minute “Those Thieving Birds/Strange Behaviour.” As the pianos pound and Van Dyke Parks’ string arrangements wind in and out, Johns delivers his master’s thesis in complex pop songwriting. The melodies on this thing are unbelievable, and they never quit. The second half offers sweet ‘70s pop in “Waiting All Day,” punky glam-rock in “Mind Reader” and an ELO tribute in “Low,” and the songwriting never falters.

There are several Great Leaps Forward on this list, but none as thrilling as the one Daniel Johns makes with Young Modern. He’s gone from laughable to brilliant in 10 short years, and this album is his pinnacle so far. When I bought Young Modern, I didn’t expect to find an album on par with some of the best stuff Jellyfish produced, but here it is. It’s not only the best album Johns has made yet, it’s the best record of the year, and it points toward a bright future for the still-young wunderkind at the wheel.

Hey, look at that, we’re done. I want to thank Dr. Tony Shore for his friendship and musical knowledge – he and I agree on the year’s best album, so I have no qualms about directing you to his blog here. And I want to thank you all for reading and sharing Year Seven with me. Next week is Fifty Second Week. Have a merry one, and be safe.

See you in line Tuesday morning… and to all a good night.

Thanks to everyone for your indulgence last week while I attended the wake and funeral of Albert Ferrier.

I’ve known Mr. Ferrier for almost as long as I’ve known his son, Mike. I met Mike in eighth grade, and we bonded over comics and Transformers (and often comics about Transformers). It’s hard to believe I’ve known him for more than 20 years – time just disappears when you’re not looking.

And I’ve always loved his dad, from the first time I met him. Mr. Ferrier was a kind-hearted man with a great sense of humor. He was a scientist with the heart of an artist, a musician with an analytical mind – you don’t often find those qualities in concert, but they were there. Mr. Ferrier was pragmatic and down-to-earth, but also had a twinkle in his eye that let you know he was up for an adventure.

Mike and I certainly sent him on more than one. Our last three years of high school were dominated by this massive video project we did largely in our spare time, this science fiction epic that found us dressing in funny costumes and pointing plastic guns at each other. Even then, our shared intention to never grow up was at the fore of our personalities, and while my parents often scoffed at the amount of time and energy we were investing in this thing, Mike’s dad was always 100 percent supportive, following us around and filming our exploits.

He even appears in the finished movie more than once, and I remember he cheerfully played any part we asked him to. From the befuddled pharmacist to the drop-cloth-wearing man of mystery to the hapless fortress guard, Al Ferrier was up for anything. Even if it meant donning a plastic helmet and being knocked out by yours truly.

I think it was this sense of adventure that made him such a good complement for Mike’s mom. Where she was Mr. Ferrier’s caution, he was her mischief.

Al Ferrier died in hospice care after a long battle with leukemia. He was 78 years old, and had a good long life, but that won’t stop everyone from wishing it was a little longer. His absence leaves the world a little colder, and a little less fun. I hope I learned from Al Ferrier how to grow older without growing old, and to take advantage of the adventures life brings you with a wink and a grin.

Ladies and gentlemen, Albert Ferrier. May he rest in peace.

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We’re officially in the holiday doldrums, which means new music is pretty scarce. January and February are shaping up nicely, with new records from the Magnetic Fields, the Eels, Joe Jackson, the Mars Volta, Robert Pollard (Again! I haven’t even reviewed his two albums from this year yet…), Chris Walla, Mike Doughty and Nada Surf, among others. But until then, we got nothing.

Thank God, then, for Jeffrey Kotthoff and Lo-Fidelity Records of Chicago. For years, Jeffrey K. and his label have supported that circle of spiritual pop musicians I love, and this year is no different – there are two new Lo-Fidelity releases just in time for Christmas, and both are swell. One of them is a holiday album by the great Lost Dogs, and the other is a live album from one of the best rock bands in the world, the 77s.

We’ll take the Christmas record first, since ‘tis the season. The Lost Dogs are Terry Taylor of Daniel Amos, Mike Roe of the aforementioned 77s, and Derri Daugherty and Steve Hindalong of the Choir. They’ve been described as the Traveling Wilburys of the spiritual pop set, and that’s not far off – their stock-in-trade is country, blues and gospel music, digging deep into their Americana roots with a tip of the Stetson.

Their holiday collection is called We Like to Have Christmas, and is a send-up of those bargain bin Christmas compilations you’ll find at Wal-Mart. It’s made up of old and new recordings, and runs the gamut from gut-busting to heartfelt. It opens with a holiday message from Taylor’s televangelist alter-ego, Dr. Edward Daniel Taylor, and then segues into the band’s 1999 take on “The Chipmunk Song.” This one features robot voices standing in for band members at certain times, but most strikingly, it includes their co-founder, the late great Gene Eugene. It’s nice to hear his voice again.

Several tunes from Taylor’s long-out-of-print EP Songs for the Day After Christmas get updated Dogs style here, including the delightful “Big Fruitcake from Hell.” The Choir’s contribution to the late ‘80s Christmas collection Noel, “Babe in the Straw,” is here untouched. Hindalong gets a rare lead vocal on a cowpoke take on “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and the album ends quietly, with several traditional songs performed reverently. The final track is the prettiest, Daugherty lending his angelic voice to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

If you’re not a Lost Dogs fan already, I’m not sure We Like to Have Christmas would make you one. But for those of us who love this band, it’s a treat, an unexpected holiday confection. However, it’s Lo-Fidelity’s other December release, by the 77s, that I’ve been cranking in the car. It’s called Ninety Nine (a counterpoint to the 77s first live album, Eighty Eight), and it documents a blistering show by the Mike Roe-Mark Harmon-Bruce Spencer lineup of the band.

This is the full 77s rock show, a thunderous blues-laced powerhouse led by the incomparable Roe on six-string. Many people associate Roe with the clean playing of his solo records, or the acoustic beauty of Say Your Prayers, but here he lets loose, and it’s an awesome thing to behold. The disc starts with a punked-up version of “Blue Sky,” but the early highlight is a nine-minute take on “Outskirts,” one of the band’s best blues-rock pieces.

These longer workouts are punctuated by relatively quieter strolls through “Flowers in the Sand,” “The Boat Ashore” and “Best I Had,” which is good, because after the astonishing “The Stellazine Prophecy,” you’ll need a break before diving into their extended jam on the Smithereens’ “Blood and Roses.” Keyboardist Scott Reams gets some solo sections, trading with Roe, and the whole thing comes crashing to a climax with a raucous take on “Snowblind.”

I’ve seen the full-on 77s show only once, but I remember it vividly. This is a band that should be playing sold-out stadiums, and their tight interplay and ballsy energy makes Ninety Nine leap from your speakers. You can get that and the Lost Dogs Christmas album here and when you’re done there, try the back catalogs of both groups here and here.

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So this is my last Doctor Who review of 2007.

I know that’s no doubt good news for many of you, who are sick of reading about this little show, but I’m still enjoying trekking through the available DVDs and writing about them. I’m unsure whether I’ll continue these rambles into the new year, but I haven’t burned out on the good Doctor yet, and as long as I’m still having fun, I’ll probably keep doing them.

Anyway, we’re still not done with Tom Baker’s seven-year run as the Doctor, but we are done with what many consider the golden age of his time, the Hinchcliffe-Holmes years. Graham Williams took over as producer in 1977, and while his three-year tenure started off well with Horror of Fang Rock, it didn’t take long for the rot to set in. Fang Rock is a well-made creep-fest set in a lighthouse under attack, and while it’s true that the BBC just didn’t have the money or resources to do a lighthouse story and make it convincing, the finished product holds up pretty well.

One year later, though, and we’re in the Key to Time saga, which in its 26 episodes delivers everything that’s right and everything that’s wrong with the Graham Williams era.

Season 16 was, at the time, a unique idea – an entire season dedicated to telling one story. The Doctor’s Tardis is intercepted by the White Guardian, who gives him a new companion, Time Lady Romanadvoratrelundar (Romana for short, played by Mary Tamm), and sends him on a quest for the six segments to the Key to Time. It’s very similar in structure to The Keys of Marinus, William Hartnell’s fifth adventure as the Doctor, but instead of six episodes, this one’s told over six complete stories.

With The Key to Time, I’ve come full circle to the stories that rekindled my interest in the classic Doctor Who run back in June. I must say, though, that watching them again after half a year of collecting and viewing these old shows is a completely different experience. I’m able to roll with the low production values a lot more, and I’m actually delighting in many of the things that turned me off before. But given the perspective of six months of immersion, I can see that The Key to Time is not particularly good Doctor Who – it goes through the motions, but it’s hollow, empty stuff.

Anyway, the Key to Time is this clear gemlike square that can stop time indefinitely. Its power is said to be too great for any one being to control, so it was broken up into six bits and scattered to different corners of the universe. The White Guardian needs it to do something vague and unexplained, so he enlists the Doctor (rather than using his seemingly great power to just gather the segments himself), and tells him to beware the Black Guardian, who also wants the Key for, naturally, nefarious purposes. An unimaginative, but sturdy framework for a season-long arc.

The saga starts well, with Robert Holmes’ The Ribos Operation. This is a miniature stage play about a con job on a distant planet, which comes to a bloody end. It’s Shakespearean in places, especially with the dramatic performance of Paul Seed as the Graff Vynda-K. With the exception of the $60 monster, this is a fine enough little tale, warm and funny and self-contained.

It’s with The Pirate Planet that things start going off the rails. You’d think I’d be ecstatic to see Douglas Adams’ first contribution to Doctor Who, given my lifelong fascination with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But it’s not Adams that lets the side down, it’s the cheap effects and the way-over-the-top performance of Bruce Purchase as the pirate captain.

The standard Douglas Adams whirlwind of ideas is here – the story is about a planet that can teleport and materialize around other, smaller planets, force-mining them, and the secret reason why is pretty great, actually. There’s a very good story hiding here under mountains of plastic effects and the bellowing histrionics of Purchase, and it’s a complex one too, one that also includes a colony of telepaths and a very cool hiding place for the second segment of the Key. I just wish it looked better, and was more fun to watch.

The Stones of Blood is the 100th story of Doctor Who’s original run, and as such, it contains several diverse elements, giving a good overview of the many faces of the series. It starts off as a gothic murder mystery, moves on into a horror story with mobile, pulsing (and cheap-looking) stones as the monsters, and ends up as a sci-fi legal drama, the Doctor on trial on a huge spaceship hovering over the Earth. It’s pleasant enough, but doesn’t quite hold together as a single story.

Three segments down, and we hit The Androids of Tara, my favorite of the lot. It’s almost Doctor Who does The Princess Bride, with robots, swordfights, daring escapes and some very funny scenes. This one’s a delightful romp, giving Mary Tamm two roles to play and letting Tom Baker breeze through a lighthearted fantasy story. Thumbs up for this one.

Ah, but then it goes pear-shaped. The Power of Kroll isn’t bad, but it isn’t good, especially for a Robert Holmes script. It’s about a mining station on a planet of primitives, and about the giant squid the primitives serve. It’s also about gun-running and the environment, but the dialogue is so dull and the monster so poorly executed that any points Holmes was trying to make are lost. Some parts of it are amusing, and the hidden location of the fifth segment of the Key is a surprise, but overall Kroll is an also-ran.

And then there is The Armageddon Factor, the six-part finale. Man, is this one tedious. I haven’t had this much trouble sitting through an entire Doctor Who story since The Web Planet. Sadly, this story as well has the germ of a good idea hidden beneath its surface. The Armageddon Factor is about two twin planets at war, one run by a blood-hungry military leader and one by a computer, stuck in Mutually Assured Destruction mode. There are some good points to be made about the futility of war here, but the story makes none of them.

Instead, we follow the Doc, Romana and their robot dog K-9 as they run up and down corridors, transport themselves to other corridors, and contend with a cackling baddie called the Shadow, who wears panty hose on his head. The story completely disintegrates when we meet Drax, another Time Lord who seems more like a homeless guy, and the Doctor shrinks to six inches tall. Really. It’s terrible, it’s long, it’s boring and it borders on the unwatchable.

It also concludes with the appearance of the Black Guardian at last, and the denouement of the Key to Time saga. I suppose it couldn’t have ended any other way, really, but to press the reset button after 26 episodes is kind of a cop-out. Baker gets a good scene about the implications of the Key’s power, acting like Frodo Baggins under the spell of the Ring, but the season-long story ends on a note of pointlessness. Everything is back the way it was before The Ribos Operation.

That wouldn’t bother me so much if I felt that this story had any effect on the characters involved. But the show has become a plot-driven enterprise by this point, weighted down by jargon and conceptual ideas to the detriment of character. Mary Tamm’s Romana gets only these six stories to make an impression, and we end up knowing very little about her. The show is a plastic engine moving us from one plot point to another, and it never lingers on any of the people it parades in front of us.

There is one exception – Binro the heretic, in Ribos. He gets the best scenes in the entire saga, and I ended up caring about him more than anyone else here, including the Doctor and Romana. By this point, Tom Baker is comfortable in the role, and is playing it with humor and charm, and with almost mechanical effortlessness. This era of Doctor Who is still fun to watch, mostly, but I don’t love it the way I love most everything else I’ve seen so far.

Ah, but next time I do one of these reviews, I’ll be talking about City of Death, one of my favorite Tom Baker stories. So it does rebound. I’m still buying the DVDs one a week, and I’ve moved on from Tom Baker to his successor, Peter Davison, whom I like immensely. The Key to Time isn’t horrible, but it is one of the low lights of the original run, and thankfully, it gets better.

* * * * *

Where did the year go? Next week is my top 10 list, and after that, it’s Fifty Second Week. And after that, it’s 2008. Hope your year was a good one.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

There will be no column next week.

I have to go back east for a funeral – my best friend Mike’s father, Albert Ferrier, died this week after a long illness. I’ve known Mr. Ferrier since I was a kid, and a kinder, gentler, more supportive man you’re not likely to meet. His loss leaves a hole in the world. I still don’t quite know what to say yet, but I’m sure I’ll have more when I get back.

Rest in peace, Mr. Ferrier.

* * * * *

It’s snowing as I write this, and it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Last year was something of a renaissance year for holiday music, I thought. I bought three Christmas records last year, which is kind of an all-time high, and I ended up really enjoying two of them – Aimee Mann’s One More Drifter in the Snow, and Sufjan Stevens’ massive, amazing Songs for Christmas. I usually find myself grumbling about the cash-grab nature of Christmas records (Barenaked Ladies, anyone?), but these were wonderful works of art.

This year, not so much. I know everyone’s loving the Josh Groban holiday collection, but not me. As it turns out, I’m only buying one Christmas record this year, and it’s by the Lost Dogs. They’ve called it We Like to Have Christmas, and it’s apparently inspired by those trashy two-dollar X-Mas collections you find in bargain bins and in Hallmark stores all across the country. It includes Lost Dogs-y versions of some of Terry Taylor’s original Christmas tunes, including “Fruitcake from Hell,” and it kicks off with “The Chipmunk Song,” which I simply must hear.

You can get We Like to Have Christmas, along with a new live EP by the extraordinary 77s, here.

You can tell it’s Christmas because there’s no new music on the shelves. ‘Tis the season for reissues, repackagings, and most of all, live sets – CDs that require little money to put together, but yield high returns for the record labels. Now, me, I love live music, so I can’t complain about the abundance of it at the end of the year. I have four new records on tap this week that demonstrate three different kinds of year-end live sets – new ones, old ones, and classic ones.

First up is Genesis, a band many people can’t believe I like. I’m forever making the distinction between the Phil Collins pop crap of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and the classic progressive rock the band turned out in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. That’s the stuff I like. So when I heard Genesis was reuniting its “classic” lineup for a world tour this year, I foolishly imagined they might ring up Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett and really make a show of it.

Alas, by “classic,” the band clearly meant “most popular” – it’s the billion-selling trio version of the band that went out on the road this year, including Collins on the mic, Tony Banks on keyboards and Mike Rutherford on guitar. They tapped their longtime touring rhythm section of bassist Daryl Stuermer and drummer Chester Thompson to head out with them – basically, another version of their 1991 and 1992 live band.

True to form, Live Over Europe 2007 is a two-CD document of the show, mixing older and newer material and giving equally good reasons to love and hate this band. Collins’ voice is the same as it ever was, and if it gave you hives before, you won’t hear anything different here. And Tony Banks is still a brilliant keyboardist, the spine of this band, which is why it’s difficult to listen to him slog through sappy, simple crap like “Tonight Tonight Tonight.”

Genesis jumps from prog to pop from song to song here so completely that you’ll be amazed that it’s the same group of musicians all the way through. The concert starts with “Duke’s Intro,” a compilation of themes from the sterling Duke album, then slams into “Turn It On Again,” one of the best of the latter-day tunes. But from there you get “No Son of Mine,” a minimal snooze-fest from their last album with Collins. The band does a fantastic medley of old tunes, including “In the Cage” and “The Cinema Show,” and two songs later they’re playing “Hold On My Heart.”

It’s like that all the way through. Highlights include “Ripples,” “I Know What I Like” and the great “Los Endos.” But you also get “Invisible Touch,” “Throwing It All Away” and the absolute nadir of Collins-era Genesis “I Can’t Dance.” The album actually concludes with the head-scratching duo of “I Can’t Dance” and the great “Carpet Crawlers,” from the band’s 1974 masterpiece The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. It’s an odd choice to put the good material in such sharp relief by featuring it with the worst of the worst, but there you have it.

I have no idea if Genesis has really reunited, or if this was a one-time, money-minded tour. Either way, Live Over Europe 2007 shows the many personalities of the band, and highlights just how low their quality control had fallen by the end of the Collins years. But it also shows just how good a drummer Phil Collins is, in a duel with Chester Thompson called “Conversation with Two Stools.” Amidst all the cheesy pop the man and the band have foisted on us through the years, it’s easy to forget that Collins and his Genesis mates are actually very good musicians. The best parts of this album are a fine reminder of that.

But Genesis was never about the live show. Phish, on the other hand, was one of the best live bands on the planet while they were touring, and while they haven’t played together for years now, live Phish albums are always welcome additions to my collection. We have two of them this time, one of them just a run-of-the-mill superb Phish show, the other a treasure trove of legendary recordings from the band’s early days.

We’ll start with that one, called Colorado ’88. The Vermont quartet had been around for a couple of years at the time of these shows, their first forays away from the east coast, but these three discs still catch them forming their sound and their stage presence. And man, they’re amazing. Far from the lazy jams built around lazier songs that the band tossed off in its waning years, Colorado ’88 is full of progressive rock suites and Zappa-esque humor, and is a dazzling display of musicianship.

These sets were recorded by a fan off the soundboard, onto old cassette tapes, and given that, the sound quality is surprisingly high. Trey Anastasio banters with the audience more on these three discs than I think I’ve ever heard him do, and the overall intimate, friendly atmosphere is just wonderful. The set contains many of the songs from The Man Who Stepped into Yesterday, Anastasio’s senior thesis project while at Goddard College, and you can practically figure out the complex story of Colonel Forbin and King Wilson in the land of Gamehenge just from these recordings. (There’s an early version of “Wilson” here, and it’s odd to hear it without the audience screaming back the title – they just didn’t know what to do yet.)

But more than just the song selection is the incredible sense of energy and fun throughout this collection. Here’s Phish in their early days, playing the best music they possibly can with everything they can muster, and having a hell of a time doing it. They slip in my favorite section from “The Divided Sky” twice, once in the middle of a jokey number called “No Dogs Allowed,” and they cover “Sneaking Sally Through the Alley” and “Light Up or Leave Me Alone.” Best of all, there’s interplay, not just soloing – few of the extended sections here could rightly be called jams.

Eight years later, Phish played the show captured on Vegas ’96, and the difference is remarkable. The band is still tons of fun, and the show is fantastic, but they’ve really streamlined the sound in the intervening years. Billy Breathes had come out only a couple of months before, and that was the album on which Phish committed to smaller, simpler songs. They hadn’t hit their lazy funk period yet, though, and this set catches them at just the right time in their evolution.

Vegas ’96 kicks off with “Wilson,” but by now, the audience knows their part – “Ba dum, ba dum! Wiiiilsooon!” They hit high gear pretty quickly, with a cover of Zappa’s “Peaches en Regalia” and a slam through “Poor Heart,” but the highlight of the first set is a 25-minute “You Enjoy Myself,” capped off with the traditional a cappella section. The songs from Hoist are excellent live, especially “Down With Disease” and the great “Julius.” And “Mike’s Song” appears fully formed, especially revelatory after the sketchy version on Colorado ’88.

Still, there’s no reason to get this over any other Phish live record, until you get to the third disc. It contains the encore, a 37-minute take on “Harpua” intermingled with some surprising covers, and featuring some special guests – Les Claypool and Larry LaLonde of Primus, John McEuen of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, some yodelers and four Elvis impersonators. I’m telling you, this disc is worth the price of admission.

Phish would quickly take a turn for the worse shortly after this show, and would never really regain their footing. The live material from the last five or six years of the band’s existence is still good, but not nearly to this level, and the studio material became flat and boring. But with these two releases, you get to hear the band in their exciting early days, and in their live prime, and they’re both thrilling.

The idea of pushing the boundaries on stage and sending your songs into new dimensions is not a new one, of course. And that leads us to the final of our live albums, a classic show repackaged and re-released for a new audience – Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains the Same.

For my money, while you get a good sense of Led Zep from their studio albums, the live show really defined them. I’d only heard The Song Remains the Same, recorded in 1973 but not released until 1976, on cassette before picking up this beautifully packaged new release, and the difference is, as you might imagine, pretty significant. But the power and brilliance of the performance, that remains the same, and I’d put this up there with the best live albums ever released.

You all know what’s here – one of the finest four-piece rock bands of all time slamming through songs you know by heart. There are six more tunes from the show included here, previously unreleased, so now we get a complete Zeppelin concert on two CDs. It launches with “Rock and Roll,” the simplest statement of purpose the band could have written, but before long the quartet is bluesing it up with “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” creeping it out with “No Quarter,” and heading into blissful territory with “The Rain Song.”

The second disc contains the most stretched-out numbers, with the legendary 29-minute take on “Dazed and Confused,” complete with Jimmy Page’s violin bow solo, followed in short order by John Bonham’s 11-minute drum showpiece “Moby Dick.” But it’s the great “Whole Lotta Love” that ends the show, here in a 13-minute incarnation that includes blues licks from a dozen other tunes. And it’s this song that defines Led Zep for me – one simple riff, built on and exploded by four terrific musicians.

With the complete remastering of Led Zeppelin’s catalog and the awesome three-disc live document How the West was Won coming out over the past few years, The Song Remains the Same was the one last missing piece of the puzzle. You don’t need me to recommend this album – either you have it, or you need it. ‘Nuff said.

* * * * *

The Phillip Hinchcliffe-Robert Holmes run of Doctor Who came to an end on April 2, 1977, the final day of the program’s 14th season.

It’s no secret that many fans consider the 12th through 14th seasons the best era of the show’s 26-year original run. The 14th season, especially, is held in very high regard among Who fandom, and it’s pretty easy to see why. I mentioned last time this era’s triple threat – Hinchcliffe, the producer with the darkest and most adult-oriented sensibility in the show’s history; Holmes, perhaps the best and most imaginative writer Who ever had; and Tom Baker, the most popular Doctor of them all.

But that wasn’t all. Everything just seemed to come together in the 14th season. The stories were sharp, the budget was reasonably high, the actors all gave fine performances, and the vision of the show thoroughly coalesced. Nowhere is that more notable than in the final two stories of the Hichcliffe-Holmes era, The Robots of Death and The Talons of Weng-Chiang. (Yes, they’re silly, pulpy names. You should be used to that by now.)

The Robots of Death is a sci-fi mystery movie. The Doctor and his new companion, Leela, find themselves in a mining trawler scouring the surface of an unnamed planet. The ship is crewed mostly by robots, each given identical, dispassionate faces and numbers instead of names. Just as the Doctor and Leela arrive, human crew members start dying, and our heroes become the prime suspects. But over the four episodes, they sniff out the real culprit, and find that the robot crew is not nearly as harmless as they thought. (Didn’t they read the story title? They’re the robots of death! Geez!)

Everything works in this one. It’s a tight little locked-room mystery with some memorable performances from a larger-than-normal guest cast, each with a motive and opportunity. It’s like Agatha Christie in space, with a little action-adventure thrown in – just a superbly plotted tale. And the dialogue by writer Chris Boucher is pretty great, too.

This is the second story to star Louise Jameson as Leela, a savage warrior from a primitive planet, and Hinchcliffe and Holmes did well by taking her out of her element completely for her first few trips off of her home world. Leela is almost the perfect stereotypical companion, and Jameson’s casting was definitely something for the dads in the audience – she’s hot, she wears a skimpy leather leotard, and she asks a lot of questions, enabling the Doctor to answer them and let the viewers know what’s going on.

But Jameson brings a lot to the role, more than was probably written for her. She plays Leela as charming and straightforward, always willing to jump in and defend the Doctor – violently, if necessary. And she’s an action hero in a way that no companion before her was, brandishing weapons and sometimes actually killing people. We never really get to know her, and she only stays for nine stories, but so far, I like her.

The Robots of Death is, for all its captivating qualities, just a little story, though. For one of the biggest and best epics Doctor Who ever produced, you need to see the finale of the Hinchcliffe-Holmes era, The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

I vividly remember this story from my youth, but I’m not sure I understood what I was watching, and I’m sure I didn’t get what the producers were doing with it. This is Robert Holmes’ masterpiece, an insanely good story that plays with the ever-malleable format of Doctor Who at every turn. At 142 minutes, it remains very tightly plotted, and yet feels like it has room to breathe – we get to know all of these characters, and get to experience some of the best acting performances in the show’s history.

It’s also a bugfuck insane tale. You don’t really find out what’s going on until the end, and it turns out (SPOILER) to be the story of a 51st century tyrant who flung himself back in time to Victorian London, lost his time machine, and posed as an ancient Chinese god to entice a famous stage magician and a walking ventriloquist dummy with the brain of a pig to find his device and retrieve it. Meanwhile, this tyrant’s body is collapsing due to the vagaries of time travel, and his minions are stealing girls from the streets of London so he can eat them. Oh, and the sewers are full of giant rats.

See? It’s nuts. But it’s brilliantly paced and plotted, and you don’t even realize what a crazy story you’re watching until you think about it later.

The central character of The Talons of Weng-Chiang is magician Li H’sen Chang, and I found myself having a very complex reaction to him. On the one hand, he’s a terrific character, complicated and conflicted, and in the end, he finds loss and redemption. He has a great little arc. But on the other, the producers made the decision to cast white British actor John Bennett to play Chang, and made him up to look Asian. Bennett is very good as Chang, but I find myself feeling queasy at the racial undertones.

I know what they were going for – Chang looks just like Christopher Lee in the Fu Manchu movies, and Bennett adopts the accent as well. It’s an homage to a more politically incorrect era in movie history, and as such, it fits right in with what Holmes and director David Maloney are doing with this story. But it still leaves me with an uneasy feeling.

Li H’sen Chang isn’t the only homage – in fact, The Talons of Weng-Chiang is basically Quentin Tarantino’s Doctor Who, 15 years before Reservoir Dogs. There’s a hundred things all wrapped up in this tale, from The Phantom of the Opera to Jack the Ripper to Sherlock Holmes to schlocky horror flicks to every kung fu movie ever made. It’s all set on puree, and all carried off perfectly, with only the giant rat proving to be a disappointment.

Amongst all that, Holmes also gives us one of the funniest and most memorable pairs of secondary characters in the program’s history with Professor Litefoot and Henry Gordon Jago. Played with bluster and wit by Trevor Baxter and Christopher Benjamin, respectively, Litefoot and Jago steal almost every scene they’re in. (There’s a particularly funny one with a dumb waiter in episode six.)

The Talons of Weng-Chiang is so good that even at six episodes, it never drags. And even when you’re in the lair of the melodramatic, bellowing bad guy in the final episode, there’s still enough to keep you watching, such as that walking ventriloquist’s dummy shooting laser beams at our heroes through the eyes of a giant golden dragon statue. The story is absolutely insane, in the best possible way, and if you can get past the Fu Manchu makeup and the cuddly rat creature, it’s one of the high points of the series. No other television show could have produced it, and no other team could have pulled it off this well.

Next, I will probably skip ahead to season 16, and The Key to Time.

* * * * *

Again, no column next week. Be here in two weeks for the start of my year-end stuff, leading into the top 10 list and the third installment of Fifty Second Week.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So you may have heard that Norman Mailer died recently.

Now, I know the man won two Pulitzers and countless other awards, and was a very well-respected author, playwright and thinker. But this is just the way my mind works – upon hearing of his death, the first thing that ran through my mind was “I’ve been Norman Mailered, Maxwell Taylored…” Which is the first line of Simon and Garfunkel’s “A Simple Desultory Phillipic,” a semi-obscure number tucked away on their best album, 1966’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.

The song is a bit of a thumbed nose to Bob Dylan’s style and following, and consists mainly of a list of then-contemporary and classic references, with very little connecting them except the sense of faux-scholarly importance they carry. It starts off alternating between writers and military officials, but soon moves into musical figures and comedians, even ending with references to Garfunkel and Roy Halee, who engineered or co-produced every album the duo made.

Mailer’s death got me thinking – just how many of the people referenced in “A Simple Desultory Phillipic” are still alive? So I checked. There are 17 references in the song, if you count both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones as entities in their own right, and of those 17, nine are dead and eight are alive. Among the dead: Norman Mailer, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, John O’Hara, the Beatles, Ayn Rand, Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler, Lenny Bruce, Dylan Thomas and Andy Warhol.

Still with us: former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the Rolling Stones, producers Phil Spector and Lou Adler, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Halee and Garfunkel.

What does this mean? Nothing at all, really. The passage of time just fascinates me – what were up-to-date references in 1966 now firmly date the song, and one day every one of its lyrical nods will be on that former list. But the song will live on, a marker of a specific era. I’m sure, given time and ambition, I could weave that into a metaphor of some sort, but honestly? I just think it’s neat.

* * * * *

Welcome to the end of the year. As usual, there’s absolutely nothing of note coming out between now and New Year’s Day, which I’ve always found a bit odd – you’d think the labels would want to capitalize on the holiday shopping craze. Which they do, of course, with a metric ton of special products, best-ofs and box sets. (The best one this year is the 16-CD Pink Floyd box, with every album in beautiful-looking vinyl replica sleeves.) But new stuff? We got nothing.

No, it’s the time of year when artists and labels scour the hidden corners of their cupboards, looking for leftovers they can whip into some kind of acceptable casserole for the holiday dinner. It’s b-sides and rarities and remixes, oh my, but even so, there’s some interesting stuff hidden amidst the money-grubbing dross.

For instance, there’s Nine Inch Nails’ new remix album. It’s a tradition as sacrosanct as egg nog and stockings by the fireplace – every time Trent Reznor makes an album, he’s bound to issue a disc of remixes soon afterwards. This year’s NIN meisterwerk was called Year Zero, and was, no lie, a terrific slab of post-apocalyptic, beat-crazy, nihilism pop. And if you want to hear another take on it, here is (I am not making this title up) Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D. Or, you know, Year Zero Remixed.

Slight digression – I saw a t-shirt the other day with this slogan: “Remixing a song is like admitting you were wrong.” But I’ve always seen remixing as a very generous art. The two remix albums I’ve enjoyed the most this year, this one and Joy Electric’s Their Variables, are really collections of other artists’ work. Both Reznor and Ronnie Martin gave their original tracks to artists they admire, and let them go to town. It takes a sincere lack of ego to allow others to have their way with your music, and to admit that collaboration can lead to some interesting places.

In the case of NIN, remixers usually remove the human element from the songs. Reznor’s music has always been about the war between the organic and the mechanical, with real instruments and melodies fighting against the sonic manipulations and computer terrorism he inflicts on them. That’s why his original albums are ordinarily more tense and powerful than his remixes – the end result of the remix is less humanity, more machine.

That holds true on this album, but Year Zero is Reznor’s most mechanical work to begin with, so the remixers merely sprint further down that path. Epworth Phones makes a seven-minute beats-and-samples march out of “Capital G,” while Ladytron merely fills out “The Beginning of the End” with more synths and ethereal voices. Bill Laswell strips “Vessel” down to synthetic bass, drums and noise, keeping the basic core of the song intact. And The Faint gives “Meet Your Master” the same kitschy electro-pop sheen they bring to their own work.

The most interesting things here are the most bizarre. Olof Dreijer basically ignores the bulk of “Me, I’m Not” to turn in a 14-minute ambient piece of his own devising, while Enrique Gonzalez Muller enlists the Kronos Quartet to orchestrate and spookify the instrumental “Another Version of the Truth.” This is the only song on the remix album that attempts that electric-organic tension, and as such, it’s my favorite thing here.

Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D ends the same way Year Zero did, with the grand “In This Twilight” (noised up a bit by Fennesz) and the memorable “Zero Sum” (kept intact, but given some air and atmosphere, by Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert). In the end, it’s a remix album – you know what you’re going to get, and if you’re not interested in hearing the same songs reinterpreted, stick with Year Zero itself. But as remix albums go, this one is quite good.

* * * * *

I’m glad Copeland has released Dressed Up and In Line in time for this column, and not the least of the reasons why is that it gives me a chance to rectify a prior review.

Last year, I gave this talented Florida quartet a hard time for not immediately pleasing me with their third full-length, Eat, Sleep, Repeat. I called it wispy and forgettable, and chided the band for incorporating a Radiohead influence on some of the tracks. And then I filed the disc, and didn’t touch it for about six months.

When I pulled it out again this summer, I found that most of my criticisms were really petty things. The album is a grower, and only a month or two later, I fell in love with it. It’s definitely smaller in scale than their others, and doesn’t reach for greatness as blatantly. And yes, Aaron Marsh’s lyrics this time out are not the best they’ve ever been. But the whole thing has a sorrowful, lovely tone that creeps up on you. Some of the songs (“Careful Now,” “Love Affair,” “By My Side”) are pretty much perfect. I think I was upset at the lack of a powerhouse song like “Sleep” or “Pin Your Wings,” and I missed the fact that the album is meant to be digested whole.

So I’m sorry, and please check out Eat, Sleep, Repeat. And while you’re in the store, you may as well pick up Dressed Up and In Line, a winning collection of rarities and b-sides from the band’s seven-year career. It’s the usual assortment of acoustic versions and demos and covers, but the selection highlights the main strengths of Copeland – their sense of melody, and the wonderful voice of Aaron Marsh.

The band does a great job of including tracks from every part of their career thus far, showing their progression. (A year ago, I would have said regression, but Eat, Sleep, Repeat is definitely a destination point, not a stumble backwards.) They include one acoustic take from each of their three albums, the best of which is “Careful Now,” here augmented with strings. They cover “Black Hole Sun” and “Every Breath You Take” with the same grace as the covers on their EP Know Nothing Stays the Same.

They take a long look back with all three songs from their first EP, nestled in the back third of this disc – the songs are louder and more average than anything they’ve done since. And they look ahead with a demo of “Chin Up,” a song they plan to record for their fourth album. The tune is a winner, based around a hook line that knocks me out: “Everyone knows you break your neck to keep your chin up.”

It’s taken a while for me to catch up to Copeland, and to accept that they’re not what I thought they were. Turns out, they’re better – the band has developed a dreamy, floating style that’s emphasized on this collection of slower, lovelier tunes. I was excited to hear Eat, Sleep, Repeat before it came out, and now that I’m on board with the direction Marsh is taking his band, I’m even more excited to hear whatever they do next. Until then, Dressed Up and In Line will do – it’s a fine record in its own right.

* * * * *

Which brings us to Sigur Ros, and the best collection of leftovers I’ve heard this year.

This Icelandic quartet is quite unlike any band on the planet right now, and they’ve always been content to let the music do the talking. You may have seen their cringe-inducing interview on NPR’s The Bryant Park Project (and if you haven’t, here is is) – this is less about the lousy questions the interviewer asked and more about the band’s belief that the music is the music, and doesn’t need to be talked about.

My bet is they don’t do a lot of talking in Heima, their about-to-be-released concert film, either. They’re right, of course – their music speaks for itself, especially since it serves as something of a thesis on not saddling your melody or your sound with specificity. Jonsi Birgisson sings in Icelandic, but he also often sings in gibberish – he essentially forms syllables that go along with the melodies his band produces, and they mean nothing. They also mean everything.

Sigur Ros’ music is grand, massive, and crushingly beautiful. It’s no good trying to describe it. The melodies are immense, the orchestration bigger than life, the dynamics breathtaking, the singing otherworldly. It is unlike anything I have heard before, and seems to have sprung up fully formed, with no antecedents whatsoever. It is music for the movies they play in heaven, and it’s always seemed odd to me that such sounds, such music, is made by four regular people, not, for example, aliens from some distant moon.

So Heima is going to be a shock for me. But I’ve been prepared somewhat by listening to Hvarf/Heim, the band’s new two-CD set. Hvarf is a collection of five rarities, all of which have that astonishing Sigur Ros sound. Of them, my favorite is “Hjomalind,” formerly known as “The Rock Song” among the band members. This song takes everything that’s great about Sigur Ros and condenses it to a five-minute singalong. It’s fantastic, as are the longer songs here, especially “Hafsol,” previously released as a b-side.

But it’s Heim, the second disc, that is the biggest surprise. Here are six acoustic versions of songs taken from each of the group’s four albums, played live with a string quartet, and they’re revelatory. Stripped of their studio wizardry, Heim’s selections reveal Sigur Ros as a warm, human band obsessed with beauty. The songs stand up marvelously, and Birgisson has never sounded more like a down-to-earth lead singer than he does here.

You’d think that would take away some of this band’s magic, but you’d be wrong. Just listen to the slower, acoustic-led version of “Agaetis Byrjun” here. It’s pianos and six-strings (with audible fret noises) and brush drums and a single, sweet voice – it is, undeniably, music made by people in a room. But it’s still soul-crushingly gorgeous stuff, made somehow more magical by pulling the curtain back. I love every note of this too-brief disc, one of the true gems of the latter half of the year, and I can hardly wait to see Heima. Far from ruining the mystique, this intimate glimpse into Sigur Ros makes their music sound even more remarkable to me. I can’t recommend their work highly enough.

* * * * *

I’m now in the era of Doctor Who that many fans consider the high point of the entire series. Far be it from me to disagree – the 1975 and 1976 seasons have a lot going for them. First, there’s Tom Baker, everyone’s favorite Doctor, at the height of his powers. Baker hit his stride pretty early, and only refined his quirky, alien, morally authoritative performance as the years went on.

Then we have Phillip Hinchcliffe in the producer’s chair. Hinchcliffe saw it as his mission to bring a more adult sensibility to what is still wrongly thought of as a children’s show – he figured the kids would be watching anyway, let’s give the parents some reason to tune in, too. The Hinchcliffe-era stories are on the whole darker and more complex than those many of his predecessors (and any of his successors) brought to the program.

Finally, we have Robert Holmes serving as script editor. By 1975, Holmes had contributed more than his fair share of cracking stories, including one of my favorite Jon Pertwee tales, Carnival of Monsters. He’d introduced the Autons and the Sontarans to the program, and would go on to be arguably the show’s most influential writer, up until his untimely death in 1986. As script editor, Holmes routinely cleaned up and improved screenplays, tightening dialogue and plot, and adding his own touches as he went along. The Hinchcliffe-Holmes era is very distinctive, very adult, and holds a revered spot in the hearts of Who fans.

So why didn’t I like the first Hinchcliffe-Holmes story available on DVD, Pyramids of Mars?

It’s hard to say. Repeated viewings have certainly improved this story, but on first run-through, I found it a bit of a mess. It’s hard to follow, it’s cheap-looking, and its villain is one of those cackling bad guys with no apparent motivation other than pure evil. Its first three episodes consist of a lot of running around an old manor, the Doc and Sarah Jane chased and menaced by flimsy-looking mummy-robots (really). Its fourth is a disaster of bad effects, the Doctor working to keep the Egyptian god Sutekh locked away in his prison on Mars – a prison that seems to be made of Atari-quality graphics and curtains.

Anyway, here’s the plot. Sutekh, one of the original Big Bads of ancient Egypt, is apparently a real guy, with a really menacing helmet. He’s been trapped in a jail cell on Mars for centuries, even though he seems to have been imprisoned with everything he needs to get out. He’s taken over the mind of a modern-day archeologist, Marcus Scarman, and is using him and his palatial estate to set up an escape plan that involves building a big rocket to blow up Sutekh’s prison.

And the Doctor must stop him. Which he does, barely – this is one of those stories that earned Hinchcliffe his reputation as a master of darkness, since everyone who isn’t the Doctor or Sarah Jane dies by the end.

That sounds solid enough for a Doctor Who story. So what didn’t I like? Well, there’s no real explanation for what’s going on, which is unfortunate. My big question – Egyptian gods are real? How come? – was never addressed. The viewer gets to piece this thing together, and we never get a big-picture look at things. Halfway through the second episode, we get a new character that’s not properly introduced, and that ends up being pretty confusing. And the whole thing is melodramatic and serious, despite the budget’s inability to prop up the story.

And then there’s the toilet paper men. At least, that’s what my friend Mike and I called them when we were younger. I used to make fun of the idea of a monster that could barely move, lest it rip the layers of Charmin it was wrapped in. Turns out, that’s still funny, and it’s hard to take the lumbering mummy-bots seriously at all.

There are some good things about Pyramids of Mars, but I wouldn’t call it a triumph for this era. It does contain one of Tom Baker’s best straight-drama performances, and the scene where Sutekh tortures the Doctor is pretty effective. But the story as a whole is too much of a mess to really connect, so I find myself disagreeing with its status as a stone cold classic.

Faring much better, I think, is The Hand of Fear. One season later than Pyramids of Mars, and the team seems to be firing on all cylinders, for the most part. This is the second story of Hinchcliffe’s last season as producer, and it’s considered the weakest of the lot. If that’s true, I’m very much looking forward to seeing the rest of them, because, with the exception of a disastrous final episode, The Hand of Fear works very well.

The Doc and Sarah Jane materialize in a quarry. (Nothing new there, only this time, it’s meant to be a quarry on Earth, not an alien landscape…) They’re caught in an excavation blast, during which Sarah Jane finds a disembodied hand that takes over her mind. She brings the hand to the nearest nuclear reactor, and it absorbs enough radiation to start moving about on its own, regenerating. As it turns out, the hand belongs to Eldrad, exiled criminal from an alien planet, and she’s desperate to get home.

I vividly remember The Hand of Fear, having first seen it at age seven or so, and I remember being creeped out by the hand moving by itself. Now, as a 33-year-old, I find myself more creeped out by Elisabeth Sladen’s performance as the hypnotized Sarah Jane in the first two episodes. She’s unnerving here, despite her red-and-white-striped overalls, and commands the screen. The first two installments of this story are pretty much flawless, and full of suspense.

What helps is that the production team was allowed to shoot inside a real nuclear power plant, giving the story a sense of scale. If they’d stayed there, the story would have remained on the right track, but unfortunately, Eldrad must live, as they say. Eldrad, played by Judith Paris in a skin-tight costume, is a good, complex character, and the audience is uncertain whether to trust her or not. Even when the Doc and Sarah Jane take her back to her home planet, and she tells us the history of the environmental wasteland we see when we get there, we’re not sure if she’s planning something sinister.

Spoiler – she is. In a drastic miscalculation of a fourth episode, Eldrad achieves his “true form,” changing from Judith Paris to Stephen Thorne, in a bulkier, gem-like costume. Thorne is awful here, bellowing and posturing, and his Eldrad is just a megalomaniacal tyrant. He wants to take over his home world and then conquer Earth, for some reason, and I found myself begging for a quick end to spare me from his histrionics.

The sad thing is, there’s a brilliant idea here – Eldrad’s entire race, it turns out, has committed mass suicide, rather than be ruled by him. This should be chilling, soul-shaking stuff, but it isn’t. It’s a man in a funny costume, yelling a lot and then tripping over a scarf. If not for this terrible lapse in judgment, The Hand of Fear could have been one of Tom Baker’s best stories.

Ah, but it does have one thing going for it that no other Tom Baker story has – the departure of Sarah Jane Smith. Elisabeth Sladen played Sarah Jane for more than three years, appearing in 80 episodes with two doctors. She’s one of the longest-running companions, second only to Frazer Hines’ Jamie McCrimmon, who appeared in 113 episodes. (And if you count by seasons, she’s the longest, with three and a third.)

The actual goodbye scene is wonderfully understated – so much so that I found myself wanting more, initially. But on repeat viewings, I think it’s very good. The characters (and the actors) clearly have such affection for each other that nothing more need be said. And the last few moments, where Sarah Jane realizes that the Doctor’s dropped her off in the wrong part of England, are just priceless. A fine finish to a celebrated run.

Anyway, next week, we’ll get into two of the best-loved Hinchcliffe-Holmes stories, The Robots of Death and The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

On a related note, and just to bookend this column with death, I’ve just heard that Verity Lambert passed away this week, at age 71. Lambert was Doctor Who’s first producer, and the woman responsible for a lot of the sensibility of the show even today. Seriously, watch the first episode from 1963 – you’ll be surprised just how many elements of the show were in place right from the start.

It was Lambert who first moved what could have been a silly pantomime children’s program into a serious, dramatic direction, it was Lambert who shepherded the development of the Daleks (back when they were scary), and it was Lambert who pushed for the spooky, iconic theme music still in use today. It would not be an exaggeration to say that she created much of what we call Doctor Who today. Though she didn’t realize it at the time, she was one of the original architects of a show loved by millions through generations, and we fans all owe her immensely. She’ll be missed.

* * * * *

Next week, the yearly barrage of live albums hits. Happy Turkey Day, everyone.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m a journalist in my regular life, so I’m used to being hated. But I’m not used to being the most hated guy in a room full of people, and that’s what happened to me this Friday at Andrea Gibson’s show in Chicago.

Let me start by saying I’ve known Andrea Gibson since 1995, when we met as students at St. Joseph’s College in Maine. Andrea’s from Calais, Maine, which is pretty much the northernmost point of the 48 contiguous United States. We met in Dr. Edward Reilly’s creative writing class, where she took her first tentative steps into poetry.

Me, I wrote a novella called God’s Not Dead, He’s In Bermuda, which I thought was all profound and stuff. And I also criticized everyone else’s work, to the degree that I hoped they would criticize mine. So when Andrea, who I later learned suffered from intense stage fright at the time, brought her poems into class, I would be the one to say, “I don’t think that works.” Only not as nicely.

Yeah, I was a jerk. But Andrea and I got along well, and struck up a fast friendship. She got me into Ani Difranco, and regaled me with tales of her backwoods upbringing in the wilds of the north. She was one of the most freeing people I’d ever been around – on our first “date,” which she arranged, she told me pretty early on that she had been wearing the same clothes for three days, and demanded that I tell her if, at any point during the evening, she had food stuck in her teeth. She just puts people at ease.

We lost touch a bit during the past eight years, but we’ve emailed and called and stayed abreast of each other’s careers. And what a career Andrea’s gone on to have. She’s a professional poet and activist now, performing throughout the country, and she’s written three books and recorded three CDs of her work. It’s awesome stuff, powerful and political and painful at times, and you really have to see her perform it to get the full effect.

Andrea emailed me about two months ago to let me know she’d be in Chicago in November, and asked if we could get together while she was there. I said sure, but then never heard from her, so I decided to crash her show at The Center on Halstead Friday night. I was an hour late, thanks to ridiculous traffic, but by sheer luck, I walked in about five minutes before Andrea took the stage. She was part of a team of poets promoting a new anthology called Word Warriors, compiled by acclaimed poet Alix Olson (who is goddamn brilliant, by the way), and I’d missed the first two performances, sadly.

I caught Andrea’s eye as she waited for her introduction, and she recognized me right off. So what did she do when she strolled to the mike? She opened with a story about that creative writing class in college, and about meeting me:

“There was this one annoying fucker,” she said. “Whenever I’d read a poem that I thought was pretty good, he’d raise his hand and go, ‘Yeah, I don’t know what that means.’ And I would think, you fucker!”

The audience was laughing pretty heartily at this point, but I knew what was coming. She pointed at me and said:

“I haven’t seen him in eight fucking years, but he just walked in. Andre Salles, the fucker from creative writing class!”

Everyone turned, everyone saw it was me. I laughed, and so did everyone else, but beneath the laughter, I could feel the audience saying to me, “How could you? You bastard! We all hate you!” That feeling was confirmed afterwards by a series of not-very-successful conversations with people, their eyes burning into my skull. A couple of them were cool about it, but some, you could tell, just wanted to hit me in the face. One woman even asked me why I showed up at all. It was just no good defending myself. I was the fucker from creative writing class.

Ah well. I did get to hang out with Andrea for a bit afterwards. I have to say this, too – she was always a terrific person, but she’s really become amazing. I feel honored to know her. And her performance was riveting. She did “Blue Blanket,” a harrowing statement about rape and its effects, and then she did “For Eli,” a scathing political powerhouse about the collateral damage of war.

Both poems are available to read and listen to at her site. A word of warning – her stuff is not safe for work, or for homophobes, or for Republicans, or for those who think America’s doing just fine. It is, however, compelling and powerful and true to herself. In short, she’s gotten a lot better since that creative writing class. I’m proud to call her my friend.

* * * * *

I love ideas that shouldn’t work.

Here’s a good one – take a harpist with the voice of a drunken six-year-old, let her write 10-minute songs about monkeys and bears, toss in the incongruous production styles of both Steve Albini and Van Dyke Parks, and name the whole shebang after a mythical city in France. That shouldn’t have worked, but the result was Joanna Newsom’s incredible second album, Ys – my favorite record of 2006.

It’s something of a maxim that most great ideas sound pretty daft at first. You don’t get anywhere interesting without taking a few risks, though, and that’s what I have on tap this week – three interesting records that sound, on first blush, like they’d be terrible. It helps that two of them are particular guilty pleasures of mine anyway, dating back to my misspent youth.

The first of those is Red Carpet Massacre, the new album from Duran Duran. The Durans are constant targets, due to their ridiculous image and their history as one of the most successful and most reviled bands of the 1980s. But people seem to forget that these guys are genuinely good musicians, and they’ve proven to have significant staying power, despite their trashy obsessions – Red Carpet Massacre is their 12th full-lengther since 1981, and it features most of their original lineup.

But that lineup is made up of middle-aged British men, and the charts now are populated by teenage sex queens and young American thugs. The Durans have been charmingly out of step with radio-ready pop for some time now, despite the occasional fluke hit like “Ordinary World,” and if they wanted to climb back to the top of that heap – a specious ambition at best – they had to change the molecular makeup of their music.

So they did. Red Carpet Massacre is a Duran Duran album unlike any other. It’s produced by Timbaland and Nate “Danja” Hills, it features rap cameos by Timbaland, and includes a collaboration with Justin Timberlake. Word is they wanted Britney Spears for the record, too, but she was unavailable. This sounds like a desperate attempt by an over-the-hill band to reclaim some of their faded glory, and early bets were that it would be godawful.

But it works. This is a beat-heavy record, to be sure, but it retains that Duran Duran sound, incorporating it into this new style. Opener “The Valley” starts with the thudding of drums, but it has a spectacularly Duran Duran chorus, and the title track is almost club-punk, Simon Le Bon spitting out the chorus at a breakneck speed. The Timbaland-produced “Nite-Runner” is absolutely ridiculous, but tons of fun, and Justin Timberlake actually adds the album’s soul with “Falling Down.” That tune is the latest in a series of epic ballads from the Durans, but this one has a trippy beat that works very well.

The quality remains high all the way through. Timbaland is all over “Skin Divers,” the clubbiest track here, and that’s the only one that sounds like the pendulum swung too far in one direction. Elsewhere, the Durans deliver their first instrumental track in ages, “Tricked Out,” and follow it up with one of the finest songs here, “Zoom In.” And the final trilogy finds Le Bon and his boys melding their style with Hills’ beats beautifully.

Red Carpet Massacre is a disposable hunk of pop trash, to be sure, but it’s an experiment that could have fallen flat, and it turned out to be enjoyable and fun. Duran Duran will never be accused of great artistry, but over the years, they’ve written something of a master class on how to become a long-running, well-respected pop band.

Also showing surprising longevity is Queensryche, another of my ‘80s obsessions. Last year, they released the sequel to their 1988 high water mark, Operation: Mindcrime, and it wasn’t half bad – which is good, since I was expecting it to be all bad. But since Tribe in 2003, they’ve been on a serious roll, returning to their roots as an operatic metal band with a brain.

But now here they are with the strangest idea they’ve ever had – a covers album, called Take Cover, featuring songs from some unexpected sources. Black Sabbath’s “Neon Knights” is the closest they come to a typical choice for a metal band covers record. The others are… well, here are a few of them: “For What It’s Worth,” by Buffalo Springfield. “Innuendo,” by Queen. “Synchronicity II,” by the Police. “Red Rain,” by Peter Gabriel. “Heaven on Their Minds,” from Jesus Christ Superstar. (Really.)

Intrigued yet? This sounds terrible, doesn’t it? Surprise, it’s pretty much awesome.

The album opens with Pink Floyd’s “Welcome to the Machine,” which suits Geoff Tate’s still-powerful voice very well. The version here is almost a tribute to Floyd’s original, with ambient keyboards and saxophones, and at this point, you may be worried that the ‘Ryche is going to deliver note-for-note covers. Not a chance. “Heaven on Their Minds” is next, and the Andrew Lloyd Webber tune is almost unrecognizable, drowned in blistering guitars. Tate is typically terrific on this more theatrical material, and this is one of the coolest covers here.

It’s got a lot of competition, though. The band slams through the O’Jays’ “For the Love of Money,” centering it on THAT bass riff, and then they turn out a superb version of Queen’s “Innuendo.” It’s the title track from the last album Freddie Mercury made with the group, and is an overlooked dramatic masterpiece, especially that middle section. “Synchronicity II” sounds fantastic all rocked up, and “Red Rain” substitutes thick guitars for the pianos on Peter Gabriel’s 1986 original, to great effect.

The oddest of oddballs here is “Odiessa,” a segment of an opera by Carlo Marrale and Cheope, sung entirely in Italian. Tate is, of course, excellent, even though the music behind him is a bit cheeseball. But that’s the only low note. The disc ends with a breathtaking 10-minute live cover of U2’s “Bullet the Blue Sky,” with extemporaneous political commentary by Tate, and it’s a tour de force. If Mindcrime II was a mild disappointment, it was only because Queensryche, an atypically smart and adventurous band, didn’t push themselves enough. Take Cover rectifies that, and is a swell little disc to boot.

Here’s another idea that should be awful: a 45-minute song commissioned by Nike to accompany jogging workouts. That’s just gotta be crap, right? But luckily, some genius at Nike’s marketing department tapped James Murphy, better known as LCD Soundsystem, to whip this thing together. And while he could have half-assed it, he didn’t – the resulting track, “45:33,” is excellent, and it’s out now on an album of the same name.

Oddly, “45:33” is actually 46:05, although I understand it was named after the RPM speeds of records, or something like that. The song itself, broken up into six sections on the CD, is an enveloping techno affair that starts out slow, picks up speed, and ends up with a cool-down section, just like a good jog would. But as a piece of music, it goes some fascinating places, especially in its fourth section, colored effectively by live trumpets and trombones.

Murphy has made his name by bringing in bizarre, seemingly jarring influences to his four-on-the-floor dance music, including poetic lyrics and punky guitars and live string sections. His second LCD Soundsystem album, Sound of Silver, is very good, and deserves a review in this space at some point – one of its tracks, “Someone Great,” is taken from a section of “45:33.”

What’s amazing here is his ability to compose a 46-minute song with minimal vocals and make the whole thing enveloping and interesting, especially considering the commercial origins of this piece. It’s another idea that shouldn’t work, but does. The album also comes with three bonus tracks that exemplify Murphy’s style, particularly the horn-inflected “Freak Out/Starry Eyes.” If you’re into imaginative electronic music, Murphy’s a guy to watch. And if you’re into unlikely successes, try either of the other two records from this week.

Okay, I’m petering out now, so I think I’ll save my take on Pyramids of Mars for next week. We’re at the end of the year now, and there are precious few new records coming out – we have Nine Inch Nails’ remix album, Rufus Wainwright’s Judy Garland tribute, and… um… yeah. Nothing else until January. Next week I’ll talk about Sigur Ros (been saving that for a rainy day) and an early look at the top 10 list. Take care of yourselves until we talk again.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Those nice boys in Radiohead have just solved the biggest conundrum of my year for me.

As you may have gathered from my glowing review, the venerated British band’s seventh album, In Rainbows, knocked me out. It’s the first Radiohead record in 10 years to bring the hooks, the melody, the honest-to-gosh songwriting to the fore, and in so doing, the band has made its most human album since their early days. While it’s not to the level of OK Computer by any stretch of the imagination, it is a superb album, and in this so-so year, it’s absolutely top 10 list material.

Ah, but therein lies my problem. Under the current rules, In Rainbows isn’t eligible, because technically, it isn’t out. Call me old-fashioned if you like, but I’m hesitant to jump aboard the digital download train. My top 10 list rules are clearly designed to accommodate physical CDs, and even with all this talk about Radiohead’s revolution, I still won’t think of In Rainbows as part of my collection until it can be filed with the other six albums, in packaging that complements the music.

I know, I’m very old. But the band obviously put some value in the physical product, because they’ve just inked a deal to bring In Rainbows into record stores before the end of the year. The expediency of this deal – the CD will be in UK record shops on December 31 – frees me from having to decide whether to include the album in this year’s top 10 list, or wait and see if it makes it in 2008. If you can walk into a record store on New Year’s Eve and buy the thing, it’s a 2007 release, as far as I’m concerned.

Yes, I understand, I’m missing the point. The future is passing me by. The whole point of the In Rainbows experiment was to introduce, with blinding force, the new way of distributing music. Soon there will be no CDs. Believe me, I get it. But I think the physical presence of an album is something worth holding on to, so I will gladly buy the In Rainbows CD, despite having all the music already. They’ll get my money twice, because I want to support the tangible, artistic release of music on CD.

As much as I admire Radiohead for taking a chance and blazing a trail, I much prefer the way Marillion releases their stuff. In 2001, the boys in Marillion gambled on a pre-order, asking their fans to pony up for music that hadn’t been recorded yet, in hopes of funding the actual making of their 12th album. The fans did, in mass quantities, and the result was Anoraknophobia, one of Marillion’s most idiosyncratic and amazing records. They did it again in 2004 with the brilliant double-disc set Marbles, to even better results.

So the traditional release of the underwhelming Somewhere Else this year is starting to look like an anomaly. This month, Marillion announced that their still-untitled 15th album, expected out next year, will be the subject of another pre-order. You can order it now, in fact, at their site.

Here are the details: Album 15 was largely written at the same time as Somewhere Else, and was expected to be the second half of that set. But the band members have found themselves in a creatively fertile period, and they’ve come up with tons of new material. Hence, Album 15 will be another double disc affair, in special super-awesome packaging for the pre-orderers. Send them your cash now, and you get the deluxe edition of the album, with your name printed in the package. The album will also be available in two single-disc packages (part one and part two), for less money, and without your name in the liner notes.

On the surface, this sounds fantastic, and of course I’m going to buy the deluxe set, but I’m actually thinking twice about it – a first for me and this band. For one thing, they’re coming off of one of the weakest albums they’ve ever made. I’ve tried over and over again to like Somewhere Else, but even with the benefit of time, it still ranks near the bottom of my Marillion collection. So I wasn’t looking forward to an album full of also-rans from that record to begin with.

But even more disconcerting is the band’s admission that they’re not quite sure how they’re going to fill two CDs with music. In their pitch for Album 15, the Marillion boys note that they’re considering solo, duo and trio tracks, as well as instrumentals, to pad out the record. Hey, it worked for Yes on Fragile, so it can’t be that bad an idea, but my worry is this – does the band have enough good material to justify this release? Because honestly, after Somewhere Else, I think they need a tight, compact, filler-free collection, not a sprawling two-hour White Album-style mix CD.

I love this band too much to not buy anything they do, but I admit it – I’m worried about this one. But I still think the Marillion method is the way to go. I get to support a band I love, and feel like I’ve contributed to the process of making their new record, and then, I get that new record in a (likely) gorgeous package I can display, with my name in it. That beats downloading context-free music any day of the week to me. I think it’s a winning system, but of course, it’s only as good as the albums the fans get for their money and their faith.

Anyway, that’s it for music musings this week. I’ve been very behind on my Doctor Who reviews (and on my Doctor Who viewing, in fact), so I’ve dedicated the rest of this week’s missive to my thoughts on Tom Baker’s first season. Those of you who are sick of the Doctor can stop here. Next week, a bunch of guilty pleasures, including Duran Duran’s new one with Justin Timberlake, and Queensryche’s covers album. Really.

* * * * *

Like most Americans, I was surprised to find out that anyone besides Tom Baker had ever played the Doctor.

I first saw Doctor Who on Boston’s own Channel 2, our local public broadcasting station, when I was six or seven years old. I started halfway through Tom Baker’s run, but I swear that Channel 2 looped around and played the old ones before airing Logopolis and moving forward. For my entire childhood, Tom Baker was the Doctor, and just about every American I talk to about this had the same experience.

It’s not hard to see why Baker is the man most associated with the role. Starting in 1974, Baker played the Doc for seven years, starring in 41 complete stories (and one pretty famous unreleased one). His run is the longest of any Doctor before or since, even if you look at it in terms of single episodes – Baker was in 172 episodes of the show, beating out William Hartnell in second place, who did 134. Jon Pertwee’s in third with 128, and nobody else even comes close.

Tom Baker’s first season as the Doctor, which was the program’s 12th, made him a superstar in his native Britain. Which is strange, when you think about it. Tom Baker is perhaps the most unlikely, oddball leading man in television history. His face is more interesting than handsome, with its jutting nose and toothy grin. His hair is amazing, a tornado of curls that make him look like a homeless man more often than not. He’s the most alien-looking Doctor ever.

He’s also the most eccentric. Baker’s off-screen antics are well documented elsewhere – he had a reputation as a control freak, and said what was on his mind at all times, no matter where he was. Some of that translated to his on-screen persona. Baker played the Doctor as a man not only one page ahead, but often reading a different book than everyone else. His dialogue, much of it written by Baker on set, was a never-ending logic puzzle, a series of one-ups and quips that basically add up to him saying, “I’m living over here in this reality, and it’s much more fun than yours. Would you like to join me?”

Baker proved captivating for a couple of reasons. First off, he was brilliant in the role. He took the Doctor into new directions, building off of Patrick Troughton’s deceptive buffoonery, and introduced a new level of physical and verbal comedy to the part. Second, there was That Voice, a sonorous, commanding, regal tone that would make women swoon and villains quake – a sharp contrast to the fourth Doctor’s physical appearance and manner.

And finally, Tom Baker could be the most charming man alive when he wanted to be, and he used that power to beguile audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Baker’s Doctor was the first one to wink at you nearly all the time, like you were sharing a secret with him. I find that off-putting now – Baker’s stories so far are the first ones I find it difficult to get lost in, just because of the ironic wall he puts up – but as a kid, I can remember loving Baker’s antics. He was my tour guide to this strange world, taking my six-year-old hand and telling me with his eyes and his quick wit that the monsters were just guys in rubber masks.

Tom Baker couldn’t have had a weaker, weirder start. His first story is called Robot, and it’s about – yes – a killer robot. It’s also about Baker’s Doc regenerating, of course, and after five years of the more sedate, serious Jon Pertwee, Baker’s clowning around in Robot is jarring. But it’s great fun, too. This is a story about a killer robot. I’m not sure how seriously anyone should have taken it, and Baker puts in just the right amount of ironic eyebrow-raising.

The robot itself is pretty well-designed, for 1974 British television, except for the claw-like hands that just hang there, attached by thin cables. Its first appearances are actually pretty scary, but by the end of the third episode, when UNIT soldiers have surrounded the robot and are shooting at it, it looks a bit ridiculous. And the fourth episode is a glorious, trashy implosion. The script calls for the robot to grow to 50 feet tall, and the production team tries mightily to pull it off, but it’s a laugh-out-loud failure.

But hell, Robot is a romp. It’s fun, it’s stupid, it includes Tom Baker tripping people with his trademark 30-foot scarf, and it makes me laugh. But it’s with the next batch of stories that new producer Phillip Hinchcliffe and script editor Bob Holmes really got ambitious. The next 16 episodes of the show form a single, interconnected story, one that brings back three of the Doctor’s most famous foes, and when the 12th season finished up on May 10, 1975, Tom Baker was a star.

The story kicks off with The Ark in Space. While Jon Pertwee’s Doc kept close to Earth for most of his five-year run, Tom Baker’s Doctor couldn’t leave fast enough. At the end of Robot, he piles Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan into the Tardis and sets off for who-knows-where. (No pun intended, of course.) They end up on an orbiting space station called the Nerva Beacon, hundreds of years in the future, and soon discover the station’s precious cargo: the hibernating remnants of the human race.

This one really works. The frozen survivors of an unexplained apocalypse are slowly awakened, and they discover that they’ve been sleeping for centuries longer than they’d intended. They’re under attack by a monster called a Wirrn, which has used the sleeping humans to lay eggs in. Creepy, creepy story, undercut by the cheapness of the monster costumes. When the captain of the Beacon starts transforming into a Wirrn, we can clearly see that his monster parts are made of green bubble wrap. It was new then, but not so much now.

That aside, The Ark in Space is a successful bit of imaginative horror, and Baker keeps his quipping to a minimum. (He has one killer line, when one of the awakened humans asks for medical help: “Well, my doctorate is purely honorary, and Harry’s only qualified to work on sailors…”) At the end of the tale, the Doctor defeats the Wirrn (Oh, crap, I gave it away!) and beams down to Earth to see if it’s still suitable for the revived human race to inhabit.

And that leads right into the two-episode The Sontaran Experiment, featuring the first of our trio of old villains. The Sontarans first appeared in the Jon Pertwee story The Time Warrior, and they’re a warlike race of tacticians. In just about all of their appearances on the show, the Sontarans are planning one invasion or another, and here, they’ve sent a scout to test the resilience of humans. In short order, our three heroes are separated, Sarah is captured and tortured, and the Doctor has to save her. It’s an okay story, but even at only 50 minutes, it nearly wears out its welcome.

Not so the next story, the unabashed classic Genesis of the Daleks, even at two and a half hours long.

Yes, I just used the words “classic” and “Daleks” in the same sentence. Now, I hate the Daleks. Always have. They’re rolling pepper shakers with no opposable thumbs, and they can’t go up stairs or turn their heads all the way around. And yet, all the other characters are afraid of them, and talk about them like they’re the most dangerous beings in the universe. Here’s why: they’re popular, and always have been. The Daleks first appeared in the second ever Doctor Who story, back in 1963, and became a British phenomenon. So the producers like to use them whenever they can – witness the seven Dalek episodes of the new series so far.

It’s the rare story that can make me enjoy the Daleks as villains, and Genesis is one of those stories. At the end of The Sontaran Experiment, the Doctor and his crew beam back up to the Nerva Beacon, but their transmat is intercepted by the Time Lords, the Doctor’s people from the planet Gallifrey. The Time Lords assign the Doc a mission: go back in time to the origin of the Daleks and prevent them from being created. They dump him, Sarah and Harry on war-torn Skaro, hundreds of years in the past, and tell them not to come back until they’ve accomplished their mission.

This is one of the darkest Doctor Who stories. Skaro is a bleak wasteland, devastated by centuries of war between the Kaleds and the Thals – hinted at but not shown in 1963’s The Daleks. Both sides are dedicated to the eradication of the other, for reasons they can’t remember. And both are mutating into something else, as a result of all the radiation they’ve dumped on each other.

It is here that we meet Davros, a crippled, burned scientist who has seen the future of the Kaleds, and is preparing for it. He’s devised a war machine that can hold the final mutated form of the Kaleds – a tentacled blob-like thing – and ensure their survival and dominance. When we meet him, Davros is testing these machines, and building himself an army of them. He calls them Daleks, and for only the second time in the show’s history, the rolling pepperpots are actually kind of scary.

The story is about that age-old question – could you kill Hitler as a child? Does anyone have the right to wipe out an entire race, even if that race will go on to enslave much of the universe? How does that make the heroes any better than the villains? There are some terrific scenes in this story, and Michael Wisher’s Davros is much less over-the-top and histrionic than I remember. (I could, of course, be remembering Terry Malloy’s Davros from the later stories…) And Baker is terrific, showing how powerful he can be when he tempers his silliness.

The story’s finale is actually perfect – the Daleks turn on their creator, killing him for trying to control them, while the Doc escapes. Not much is resolved in Genesis of the Daleks, but much insight is gained into these creatures and why they do what they do.

Sadly, the last story of season 12, Revenge of the Cybermen, is not yet on DVD, so I haven’t seen it since I was six or so. But I do know this – the Doctor is returned to the Nerva Beacon, coming full circle, only to find that the Cybermen, last seen in Patrick Troughton’s time, are using it as a staging point to conquer another planet. I have no idea if it’s any good, but I like that the four stories that make up the bulk of the season are connected so thoroughly. The classic show would try that trick again with The Key to Time and Trial of a Time Lord, and the new series has done it every season, to some degree.

Tom Baker’s tenure is considered by many to be the high point of the show, and even though he’ll have to go a long way to eclipse the greatness of Hartnell, Troughton and Pertwee, I’m excited to keep following his evolution. And of course, six-year-old me is delighted to see these old stories again, the ones starring the Doctor I grew up with. Teeth, curls, hat, scarf, a wink and a grin. That’s my Doctor.

Next week, Pyramids of Mars. And some of that music stuff, too.

A quick note – two people wrote to tell me that Pushing Daisies is actually doing pretty well. It’s winning its time slot, and has been picked up for a full season. That’s great news for me, even though it goes against all the laws of nature as I understand them. Thanks to Mike Lachance and Josh Patterson for setting me straight. And watch Pushing Daisies. It’s great.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So, the Red Sox won the World Series. Again.

I know, I should be jumping out of my skin with glee, but this time, I’m just kind of… ambivalent. I watched all the games, particularly that nail-biter of a finale, and I cheered when they pulled it off. But it’s just not the same as it was in 2004. It’s similar – the team came back from the brink in the championship series, then steamrollered all over the National League in the big games. But it’s not the same.

I guess you can only erase an 86-year drought once, but the Sox are perilously close to becoming a dynasty, and that’s a major shift in identity for fans of the team. Also, I probably would have enjoyed the World Series more if the Rockies had shown up and put up a fight. After a while, it was like rooting for the schoolyard bully. I don’t want my team to be the Yankees, despised far and wide, looked on as the big dog pissing on the little people.

So yeah, they won again. They have nothing to be ashamed of – they played hard, they out-hit and out-pitched the competition, and very little of it had to do with the big-name, big-money players. It was the farm league guys like Pedroia and Ellsbury that made the difference. They didn’t buy the series. They’re just the best team. So why am I so defensive about it? I don’t know. It’s a weird place to be. It’s possible I’m just never happy, and I should just enjoy the win. I’m just finding it harder this time.

Are any other Sox fans out there feeling the same way?

* * * * *

I have to mention Pushing Daisies before it inevitably goes away.

Like Wonderfalls before it, Pushing Daisies is a wonderful show from the mind of Bryan Fuller. Here’s the concept. Ned the pie maker has an unexplained, unexplainable gift – he can bring the dead back to life. One touch, they come back. Next touch, they’re dead again, this time for good. And if Ned leaves a dead person alive for longer than one minute, something or someone else has to die to balance the scales.

It’s bizarre, but beautiful, especially when you get to the plot – Ned revives his childhood sweetheart, and can’t bring himself to kill her again. But now he can’t touch her, ever, and the show is largely about how these two fall in love without the luxury of physical contact. It’s also about blackmail schemes, murder plots and retired synchronized swimmers, but you expect a measure of weirdness from Fuller, and this is all wondrous, fairy-tale weirdness.

And like Wonderfalls before it, this show is destined for an early grave, and no mystical touch from Ned will revive it. So watch it while you can. It’s the best new show of the season, a Tim Burton-esque fable with crackling dialogue and terrific characters and more than a sprinkle of magic dust. It’s probably already too late to save this show, but however many episodes are left, it’s worth watching and getting lost in. Pushing Daisies airs on ABC Wednesdays at 8 p.m. EST.

* * * * *

So I’m all set to write this column about depressing solo debuts when I get the news that one of my favorite depressing solo artists, Aimee Mann, has picked a title for her new record.

Mann, you may remember, was the leader of Til Tuesday in the ‘80s, before splitting and issuing an amazing first solo album with Whatever in 1993. Never the happiest of songwriters anyway, Mann’s solo career has been one heartbreaking tale of lost hope after another, and the only song I’ve heard from the new one, “31 Today,” certainly doesn’t disappoint on that score: “I thought my life would be different somehow, I thought my life would be better by now…”

So what did she call the album? Fucking Smilers. Seriously.

It will probably be written like @#!% Smilers, but you can just hear her muttering the phrase under her breath as she walks past one of Joe Jackson’s happy loving couples, can’t you? “What the hell are you so happy about? Don’t you know the world is a cesspool? What’s wrong with you?” I love it.

Mann’s solo career has been an organic transition from the shinier pop of her Til Tuesday years, but a pair of just-released solo debuts from a couple of other popsters may leave you scratching your head a little. Both of these guys have taken the opportunity to make a clean break from their old styles, and deliver somber, serious records.

If you know Dan Wilson at all, you know him as the lead singer of Semisonic, the band behind “Closing Time.” In 1998, that song was everywhere, followed closely by “Singing in My Sleep,” the second single from Feeling Strangely Fine. Love them or hate them, you can’t deny the way tunes like these get stuck in your head, and that’s down to the craft of classic pop songwriters like Wilson.

Semisonic made one more album, 2001’s expensive-sounding All About Chemistry, before splitting. Six years later, here’s Wilson’s long-rumored solo debut, Free Life, and he’s scrubbed his music clean of the fizzy pop effervescence it once had. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the 13 slow dances here do all stick to the same slow tempo, and none of them are as effortlessly ingratiating as his work with Semisonic.

The lyrics also work against this record. They are cliché-ridden and typical, miles away from the smart pop poetry he used to turn out. While he may have been going for soul-baring, he ended up with treacly more often than not. The song titles say it all: “Baby Doll,” “Come Home Angel,” “Sugar,” “Cry,” “Golden Girl,” and on and on. Oddly, I’d think these were fine titles for sugary pop songs, but these are open-hearted coffeehouse ballads, and I wish they sounded a bit more personal.

But hell, for all I know, these could be straight out of Wilson’s diary. His voice is still the sweet, even instrument it’s always been, and when he hits on a melody worth remembering, as he does on the title track, he earns his reputation. Songwriters love this guy, and for good reason – the music here is very well written, and perfectly arranged. Even something as potentially embarrassing as “Come Home Angel,” which opens with the words “Oh love, the moment that we live now will stay with me forever and ever,” has a captivating piano-led melody and a chorus you’ll want to sing along with.

And when he gets to the good stuff, like the semi-uptempo “Against History” or the lounge waltz with a twist “Honey Please,” Wilson strikes… well, not gold, but maybe bronze. Wilson’s got pure pop skills, and I wish he made more use of them on Free Life, especially after such a long wait. Not to keep bringing her up, but when Aimee Mann makes albums like this, I can tell she feels every song, and wants you to feel them, too. Wilson’s album is competent balladry, but little more, and I was hoping for a richer experience.

Faring much better is Justin Currie, leader of Scottish poppers Del Amitri. With his partner Ian Harvie, Currie has been turning out literate, bright melodic rock with Del Amitri since 1985. They had a couple of hits – “Always the Last to Know,” “Roll to Me” – but they’ve always been one of those bands that doesn’t stamp a clear identity on their work. People know Del Amitri songs, but they don’t know the band at all, and a song like “Roll to Me” is just one of those anonymous tunes that many people probably imagine ends up on the radio all by itself.

So only the fans will be surprised by the opening title track on Currie’s solo debut, What is Love For. Currie sings the bitter hymn backed by a harp and an orchestra, and it sets the tone for this slow, sad, thoroughly captivating record. I don’t know what it is that sets this above Wilson’s effort, but it may just be that Currie is angrier and more depressed, and expresses it in more interesting ways. Much as I dislike the album’s title, the opening song completely dispenses with love as a subject worth writing about, and Currie takes that to heart, penning one down-in-the-dirt wallow after another.

You’re going to remember a John Lennon-style bitchslap like “Something in That Mess,” or a velvety gut-punch like “If I Ever Loved You,” a song that makes indifference seem like hell. “Love can make your world bring you alive,” Currie sings, before delivering the blow: “But I wasn’t dead before, so baby, you ain’t hard to survive…” Currie switches from pianos to acoustic guitars, and incorporates strings here and there, but the pervasive bitterness remains from first song to last.

If the first nine songs don’t leave you feeling wasted and exhausted, the last two should do the trick. “Still in Love” sounds like it might be sweet, but the hook line is “I’m still in love with nothing but myself.” “I know all their mothers’ ages, I know all the stories so well,” he sings over a gentle piano backing. “And I know I’ll see their faces in hell.” Confession or not, this song is self-hatred at its finest.

But it’s merely a palate-cleanser for the grand finale, “No, Surrender.” Notice that comma – this is the bleakest state-of-the-world song I’ve heard in years. Over an orchestral backdrop, Currie lists off the reasons modern life isn’t worth living, and then hits you with this chorus:

“Should you stand and fight, should you die for what you think is right
So your useless contribution will be remembered?
If you’re asking me, I say no, surrender.”

And then you slit your wrists. Never the happiest man on Earth, Justin Currie has delivered, in the guise of a pop album, a treatise on hopelessness that stands with some of the most depressing records I’ve ever heard. These songs sound lived-in, to the point that I’m actually kind of worried about Currie – is he okay? What happened to him? What makes someone write a piece like “No, Surrender”? This is the real stuff, a pop album that sounds like a warm bath at first, but ends up feeling like drowning. It’s so bleak it’s almost dangerous, and that’s the mark of something deeply felt.

It will be difficult for Currie to slip back into Del Amitri’s hooky pop guise after this, if that’s even his plan. What is Love For is a surprise and a half, and despite its blasé title, it’s highly recommended for those who want to spend 44 minutes alone, isolated, wrapped in a blanket, entombed in sound and emotion. I’m not sure how Currie will follow this, but it sheds new light (new darkness?) on a songwriter I’d taken for granted. It’s an entirely successful solo debut, and it is, to borrow a title from his band, truly twisted.

* * * * *

I’m not going to have much to write about next week, so I think I’ll save my massive Tom Baker analysis for then. Apologies to everyone looking forward to the giant robot. He’ll be here next week.

We’ve pretty much heard the best of 2007 by now, I think, but there are still records from Sigur Ros, Duran Duran, Seal and Queensryche to come, along with live documents from Phish, Barenaked Ladies and Frank Zappa. Plus, the year will go out with a fabulous bang, as Rufus Wainwright will release his recreation of Judy Garland’s 1961 shows at Carnegie Hall on CD and DVD on December 4.

Watch Pushing Daisies this week. You’ll be glad you did.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Doctor Who reviews first? You betcha.

There are two final Jon Pertwee stories that have made it to DVD on this side of the pond, and they couldn’t be more different.

Start with Carnival of Monsters, a minor classic by Robert Holmes that is let down here and there by the budget, but is no less captivating for it. This one’s just pure fun – the Doc and Jo Grant take the Tardis for its first spin since the Time Lords disabled it more than three seasons ago, and they end up in the 1920s, aboard a cargo ship in the middle of the Indian Ocean. However, all is not what it seems, and they soon find out that they’re really in a miniaturized menagerie, a carnival attraction, and what’s happening outside the machine could have dire consequences for the beings trapped inside.

Seriously, what a cool idea, and for the most part, it’s well-realized. (Well, you know, as well-realized as 1970s Doctor Who could be…) There’s a great sense of variety to the production, as we jump from the 1920s to the inner workings of the machine to a barren landscape filled with monsters. Outside the scope, there’s a rebellion happening on an alien world, and while those scenes aren’t quite as compelling, they do tie the story together nicely. Carnival moves quickly and fancifully, and it’s never boring – it’s a terrific way to kickstart the space-faring adventures again.

By contrast, The Green Death is long and plodding, and for the most part, it’s a pretty serious tale. It’s a six-parter, which means it stretches to two and a half hours long, and very few Doctor Who stories earn that length. This one comes close, though, and even the heavy-handed environmental morality tale at its center can’t fully derail it.

Yes, The Green Death is about a chemical company poisoning the planet, and about the heroic hippies that try to stop it. And yes, there are long speeches about how we’re killing the Earth, and about how we can all live happily on toadstools and use water to power our cars. But this was ahead of its time in 1973, and it’s still pretty much right on today, so even though it’s as subtle as a sledgehammer, it’s hard to fault the story too much for that.

Especially since we’re soon off of that and on to giant maggots. For the first four episodes, the big bad of The Green Death is a hive of irradiated, mutant maggots, and I have to say, they’re pretty scary looking. The plastic dragons in Carnival of Monsters just look cheap, but the creepy crawlies here look great. This story is another Earth-bound one, guest-starring Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and Nicholas Courtney is terrific as always.

And the languid pace lets the characters shine in this story. The writers only had six episodes to introduce Professor Clifford Jones, establish his immediate chemistry with Jo Grant, and then justify her leaving the Doctor to travel the Amazon with her new paramour, but they do a decent job with it. Stewart Bevan is very good as Jones, and the script never gives short shrift to his budding relationship with Grant. Writer Robert Sloman also makes time to round out the bad guys at Global Chemicals, and he brings a real sense of place to Professor Jones’ commune, the Nuthutch.

It’s a silly little story, of course, but the final 10 minutes add a touch of poignancy to it. This is Katy Manning’s last story as Jo Grant, after three full seasons with the Doctor, and in their final scene together, you can see just how much Pertwee will miss his co-star. Every Doctor goes through this – the dissolution of the family unit (or UNIT, in this case) that has been built up around him. It usually signals the end of one actor’s tenure, and sure enough, five stories later, Pertwee stepped down as the Doctor.

It’s fascinating, though, to watch it happen repeatedly. The Doctor builds up a life for himself, it’s good for a while, then it evaporates, and shortly thereafter he regenerates. It’s usually obvious, in the final stories of any actor’s time as the Doctor, that the joy of doing the show has disappeared, and that heavy weight adds immensely to the regeneration scenes. It’s very meta – the Doctor isn’t just regenerating himself, the show is regenerating itself as well, adding new energy where it was lost.

None of Pertwee’s last season is on DVD yet here (although those lucky Brits have The Time Warrior already, which introduces beloved companion Sarah Jane Smith), so we have to jump right into Tom Baker’s iconic seven-year run next time. Pertwee returned to the role one last time, in the 1983 story The Five Doctors. He sadly died of a heart attack in May of 1996.

That makes Tom Baker the oldest surviving Doctor. Next week, we launch into his run, all teeth, curls, a massive scarf and a giant robot.

* * * * *

We’re coming to the end of the year, a time when, traditionally, the good stuff just dries up. The next few weeks will give us the likes of Britney Spears and Jay-Z, but little in the way of music that touches the soul. It’s going to be a long, hard winter when the upcoming releases I’m most looking forward to include the likes of Queensryche and Duran Duran.

That’s why it was so gratifying to have an October like we just had. Late-year surprises are always nice, but this year sent some amazing records our way, many of which went unnoticed. Perhaps the best of those was a genuine shock – I mocked the very idea of this album when I heard about it, and man, I feel like an idiot for doing so. It’s Raising Sand, a duets album by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, and saying it’s better than you’d expect that pairing to be is probably the understatement of the decade.

Honestly, this album is amazing, easily one of my favorite records of the year. The song selection sticks mostly to old blues, folk and country songs, including tunes by Gene Clark and Mel Tillis, but it also branches out with some Tom Waits, Townes Van Zandt and Everly Brothers numbers. The production by T-Bone Burnett is earthy yet ethereal, tapping into some mystical vein of pure, unadorned beauty. These are all simple songs, treated respectfully and recorded like hymns.

But you won’t care about much of that. Raising Sand is all about the voices of Plant and Krauss, entwining and dancing around each other. Here’s a guy who fronted one of the greatest rock bands of all time, and a woman who brought bluegrass music into the mainstream – they couldn’t come from more diverse backgrounds, and yet, they sound as if they were born to sing together. Their harmonizing on Clark’s “Polly Come Home” is spine-tingling, and they knock the Everlys’ “Gone Gone Gone” out of the park.

My initial apprehension about this album stemmed from my inability to reconcile the histories Plant and Krauss bring to this project, but listening to it, none of that matters. Plant, who turns 60 next year, has honed his bluesy voice into a restrained and lovely instrument – it took all of the intervening years between Zeppelin and now for his voice to become this world-weary and wise thing it is now, and Krauss complements it perfectly, her graceful tones reaching down and lifting Plant’s off the ground.

They are perfect together, in this moment in time. I promise you – they are perfect.

My only complaint about Raising Sand is that Krauss sometimes takes whole songs by herself. She does a stunning job with Waits’ “Trampled Rose” – it’s never sounded better, honestly – but I wanted to hear more of this unlikely, yet incredible pairing. Elsewhere, Plant resurrects “Please Read the Letter,” a song from Walking Into Clarksdale, his 1998 record with Jimmy Page, and it makes for a super country ballad. Van Zandt’s “Nothin’” makes for a dusty, desolate departure, its dirty guitar contrasting with the atmosphere conjured by banjo and fiddle. Plant takes this one by himself, though, and again, I wanted more of the pairing.

That’s a minor complaint, though, when everything here is so good. The record concludes with a sad, graceful reading of funeral hymn “Your Long Journey,” and as it’s the most spare piece on the album, you get to really hear how Plant and Krauss mingle their silken voices. I had no idea that this combination would even work, never mind cast such a spell. It’s full of covers, so you won’t see it on this year’s top 10 list, but Raising Sand is one of the finest albums of the year, a genuine treasure.

* * * * *

A new Autumns album is always a pleasant surprise. Their first full-length, The Angel Pool, came out 10 years ago, and they’re only now issuing their fourth. The new one, Fake Noise From a Box of Toys, is out on Bella Union… but only in the U.K. The Autumns are from Los Angeles, and they can’t even get their own record in their home country yet, and if I hadn’t obsessively checked their website for the past few months, I’d have missed the release entirely.

But even more surprising than the existence of a new Autumns album is the content of this one. Three years ago, the band released a self-titled album that took some steps toward redefining their sound. On their earliest records, the Autumns unleashed sheets of glorious noise and beautiful, nearly formless ambience, the kind of thing Hammock does so well. They’ve been slowly transitioning towards a more traditional sound for a while, and the self-titled went a considerable distance towards that, angling for distorted, dramatic rock – like a prettier, less absurd Muse, in a way.

Fake Noise is the album that takes it all the way. The instrumental interludes are gone, the glorious oceans of reverb have been phased out, and the Autumns stick to writing grandiose, stratospheric rock songs and playing them super-freaking-loud. For those who loved the fragile, otherworldly beauty of the first couple of albums, this record will land with a thud. But for those willing to take the trip with them, Fake Noise represents a very successful change – it’s noisy dramatic rock, but it’s excellent noisy dramatic rock.

The heart of this record, and of this band, is the voice and guitar of Matthew Kelly. His voice is elastic, leaping up to the highest of high notes on dynamite rocker “Boys,” and yet delivering a mid-range wonder like “Glass Jaw” with force. His six-string work on this album is excellent, but it’s the tightness of the band that knocks me out this time. Drummer Steve Elkins particularly shines – listen to his circular, imaginative work on “Clem” – and the whole group pulses with a connection, a life, that they haven’t quite managed before.

Kelly and company have come up with some terrific songs for this album, and the production is varied – it’s all guitars, but they take on different shades and tones, from clipped and clean to explosive, even when confined to one speaker or the other. “Killer in Drag” marches forward in bass-driven lockstep, but the swirling guitar sounds all around it send it skyward. Even late-album pieces like “Adelaide” are melodic and memorable, and make the most of the new, aggressive sound.

So yeah, this is a totally new kind of Autumns album, but it’s just as stunning as their others – they remain one of the best bands no one’s ever heard. Fake Noise From a Box of Toys will cost you a bit more as an import, though I hear a U.S. release is in the cards for February, but if you like grand, writ-large rock, you owe it to yourself to try it out.

* * * * *

Our last contestant is a true surprise – I never thought Monarch’s second album, Lowly, would see the light of day. I also didn’t expect it would be brilliant.

Monarch put out one album, The Grandeur That Was Rome, through tiny Northern Records in 2004. The band is so under the radar that they don’t even have a Wikipedia page. I saw Brennan Strawn, singer and songwriter for the band, opening for the Violet Burning last year, and assumed he’d gone solo. So the sudden appearance of the second Monarch album, recorded more than a year ago, came as a shock. (Apparently its release took Strawn by surprise as well…)

There may be financial trouble at Northern. They haven’t put anything else out this year, and Lowly comes in a cheap package – one piece of cardboard, folded over, with one-color printing and a plastic tab attached. But don’t let that deter you – the album sounds like a million bucks, and it’s even bigger and better than the debut.

Lowly may be credited to the band, but this is Brennan Strawn’s album. He wrote all the songs and played just about every instrument, and the focus here is clearly on his amazing voice. I was blown away seeing him live, with only an acoustic guitar, and he sounds even better surrounded by pianos, strings, guitars and flailing drums. It’s one of those crystal clear voices that cuts through everything – the spotlight would be on Strawn’s vocals even if he were backed by a 90-piece orchestra and the sound of an avalanche.

But even though I’d listen to Strawn sing the Farmer’s Almanac, Lowly would be nothing without the songs, and what songs they are. I love it when artists aim for greatness, unironically, and pursue it with everything they have – these are all intense, anthemic wonders, produced brilliantly by Strawn and the Prayer Chain’s Andy Prickett, and the album never coasts. It never leaves you waiting for the next song, because every one is a knockout.

It opens with the mid-tempo stunner “Perform,” which sets the tone – the acoustic strum is accompanied by keyboards and atmospheres, leading into Strawn’s powerful singing on the chorus, like the clouds parting. “If You Dance” and “Lose it All” are two of the most hummable pop songs you’ll hear all year, but it’s with the slower, more dramatic numbers that Strawn really hits his stride. Check out “Find Others,” with its close-miked vocals and gorgeous string parts, then stick around for “Save Your,” an astounding six-minute sustained crescendo that is the album’s high point.

There is nothing bad here. There is only good. I can’t fathom that Brennan Strawn’s music will only be heard by a few. An album this well-made, emotional and flat-out wonderful should be heard by everyone. This is top 10 list material, believe me. If you’ve ever liked unironically grand music that touches the soul, seriously, get thee to Northern Records and buy a copy of this right now.

* * * * *

Next week, sad sack solo acts Dan Wilson and Justin Currie. And a giant robot.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Ignore that date above – I had a hell of a week, so I’m writing this on Sunday, the 21st.

Last night, my team, the Boston Red Sox, forced a Game 7 in the American League Championship Series. That’s after losing three games in a row to the Cleveland Indians, and being all but written off by fans and the press. There are definitely shades of 2004 here, even if the hated Yankees are watching this game from home, and I’m on the edge of my seat again, wondering if the Sox are good enough to secure a spot in the World Series this year.

We’ll know tonight. As I write this, Game 7 starts in a little over seven hours.

Update 11:15 p.m. CST: Hell. YES.

But while I’m thinking about whether my team is good enough to be the best, I’m also thinking about my own yearly contest. It’s late October, which is traditionally the time of year when I take stock and start to seriously consider candidates for the top 10 list. I’m re-listening, re-evaluating and reconsidering some favorites – Radiohead will probably make it, while Modest Mouse will probably not – and firming up my criteria for this year’s entries.

At the same time, every new record I hear from this point on gets put through the crucible. I just don’t have time to let these end-of-the-year discs grow on me, so I try to intensely pick them apart the first time through, and see how they stack up to the records I feel confident will make an appearance in December. It’s not the best way to hear new music, unfortunately, and it’s especially complicated by the fact that I don’t think I’ve heard a clear number one album this year. I’m looking for something that blows me away, and anything short of that will probably be sidelined in favor of earlier releases. Sad, but true.

Anyway, here is a look at four also-rans, four recent releases that are good, but not quite good enough. I wouldn’t try to talk you out of buying any of them, and if they become your favorites of the year, I wouldn’t argue. But good as they are, none of them grabbed me, and none of them will appear on my list in a month and a half. At this point, I can’t definitively tell you what will be on my top 10 list, but I feel pretty confident that these won’t.

* * * * *

In the liner notes of the remastered The Colour and the Shape, released earlier this year, Foo Fighters bassist Nate Mendel talked about how the band has never escaped the shadow of that monolithic album. It’s true – Colour, released in 1997, was the first full-band Foo Fighters album, their self-titled debut having been more of a Dave Grohl one-man show, and it remains the tightest, most energetic thing they’ve done. Grohl at the time was best known as Nirvana’s drummer, and Colour retained the sonic power of his old band while marrying it to some superb pop songs.

Mendel anticipated the reviews that would surely compare any new Foo Fighters album to Colour – at the time he was writing those liner notes, the band was recording their sixth full-length, which he called “what will surely be our finest record.” I scoffed a little at that, because despite their consistent popularity, the Foos have been releasing blander clones of Colour almost ever since. Their last one, 2005’s In Your Honor, separated the band’s louder and softer sides into two discs, and while it was a fun experiment, the basic sound didn’t change much.

The Foo Fighters are just a decent modern rock band, performing competent mainstream music with the skill of expert craftsmen. I’ll get outraged letters for this, but in another decade, they’d have been Night Ranger.

So here is their “finest record,” called Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace, and despite a couple of interesting diversions, it’s just another Foo Fighters album. It contains 12 well-written songs, most of them rockers, none of them classics. It’s produced by Gil Norton, who made Colour, and the sound is similar, if a little more polished and spit-shined. There’s nothing to hate on this album, but there’s nothing to celebrate, either. There are some very good tunes, like “Cheer Up, Boys (Your Makeup is Running)” and “Long Road to Ruin,” but those songs would have fit comfortably on any Foo Fighters album to date.

The band does take a couple of left turns worth mentioning. While In Your Honor split up the electric and acoustic stuff, Echoes reintegrates them, most effectively on the epic “Let It Die,” this album’s finest moment. There are acoustic ballads, most notably the loose “Stranger Things Have Happened,” and even one nifty acoustic instrumental, “Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners,” performed with guitar whiz Kaki King. And in keeping with the Night Ranger comparison, there are some piano-based power ballads too, in “Statues” and “Home,” although they sound like they were written on guitar.

But essentially, this is just another Foo Fighters album. If you liked them before, you’ll like them now, and if all you need are competently written and played rock songs, then there are very few reasons to dislike them. But Echoes doesn’t offer any compelling reasons to buy this Foo Fighters album over any other, especially The Colour and the Shape. Sorry, Nate – I know I’ve lived down to your expectations, but as nice as this new one is, Colour is still the best thing you’ve done.

As a side note, am I the only one who needed to exercise some patience and grace of my own to get this CD out of its jewel case? Anyone else have that problem?

* * * * *

Continuing with the odd comparisons: the Fiery Furnaces are starting to remind me of Dream Theater.

I know, they sound nothing alike, and I’d never dream of saying they do. But bear with me. When Dream Theater broke onto the scene with Images and Words in 1992, they sounded like no one else. Here were 10-minute epic prog-metal masterpieces, full of dazzling musicianship and multi-part instrumental interludes. It was very Yes, but also very Iron Maiden too, a combination that few had tried, and none had accomplished with such finger-bleeding skill.

But here’s the thing: every Dream Theater album since then has been a variation on Images. You buy a DT album now, you know what you’re going to get – rapid-fire metal riffs, lightning-speed drumming, epic songs that stretch to 20 or 30 minutes, and an abundance of complex musicianship. If you see a 10-minute song on a DT album, you know that song will contain a five-minute section full of guitar and keyboard solos over complicated riffing. There are no surprises anymore, just refinements.

This is how I feel about the Furnaces. Like DT, they debuted with an album that barely hinted at their potential – in the Furnaces’ case, it was Gallowsbird’s Bark, a bluesy toss-off that had nothing on their second record, the mammoth Blueberry Boat. That 80-minute monster unveiled the Furnaces sound, almost a type of garage-prog. Songs stretched to 10 minutes, and sounded like patchworks, with a hundred different movements and tonal shifts. Eleanor Friedberger’s vocal melodies were amazing and memorable, but it was brother Matthew’s oddball arrangements and refusal to sit still and groove for longer than eight seconds that made the album a wondrous listen.

And since then? Well, you know what to expect now. The Furnaces’ sixth album, Widow City, follows the formula, even if the result sounds head-spinningly non-formulaic. It kicks off with “The Philadelphia Grand Jury,” a seven-minute track that encapsulates the garage-prog sound the Friedbergers have been churning out for years. It starts with a spare, odd-timed guitar riff, then stops short for a harmonized section, and makes room for some piano bits and a classy melody before noodling off into the sunset. It is paradoxically like nothing anyone else is doing, and yet like everything else the Furnaces have done.

That’s not to say the album isn’t terrific. Like DT’s Systematic Chaos, Widow City is a refinement of a singular sound. The 16 songs blend together into a cohesive whole, made up of what sounds like 300 smaller parts – some of the individual songs this time are short and straightforward, like “My Egyptian Grammar” and “Japanese Slippers,” but just as many are long and constantly changing, like “Navy Nurse.” The blues influence is here, alongside more bizarre synthesizers and that old, tinkling piano they’ve been using since Rehearsing My Choir.

As usual, there are some mindboggling masterpieces. The highlight this time is “Clear Signal from Cairo,” a simple yet superb melody serving as a springboard for a six-minute, ever-fluid piece full of distorted guitar and wild drums. Robert D’Amico’s drumming is pretty much the star of this record, adding muscle to nearly every track – “Uncle Charlie” even starts with a minute-long drum solo. But like all Furnaces albums, this one takes concentration to follow and absorb, and by the end, you’re worn out and ready for it to be over.

I’m not sure what else the Furnaces can do. Clearly, this is their sound, and it’s still a unique one – Matthew Friedberger is something of a mad genius, and he knows his way around an impossible-to-play arrangement. Widow City is very good, and gets better with each listen. And how can you not like a song called “Restorative Beer,” especially one that sounds like a rock ‘n’ roll aria?

But we’re getting to the point where one Furnaces album is just as good as another, and that’s no way to be. Bands, like sharks, have to keep moving forward, or they’ll die. Here’s hoping the Furnaces find that next level before their next album.

* * * * *

No one could ever accuse Sam Beam of not moving forward.

The man who is Iron and Wine has been on a constant quest to define and redefine what he does. He started out with nothing but his voice and a guitar, writing fragile, lovely folk songs. By the time of 2005’s Our Endless Numbered Days, he had that sound down, and crafted an absolutely beautiful record. Having done that, it seems, he’s moved on – like Chris Cooper in Adaptation, who was just simply done with fish, Beam is done with spare folk music.

The third Iron and Wine album, The Shepherd’s Dog, is a giant step forward. Beam’s silvery voice is practically the only element that has carried over from Our Endless Numbered Days – the songs here are covered in exotic percussion, strings, pedal steels and a hundred other instruments, all of them perfectly balanced. It is, in many respects, like an indie-folk version of a Paul Simon album – it keeps the core of Beam’s music, but explodes the sonic trappings, turning it into something else entirely.

If you’re an Iron and Wine fan, you are not ready for what Beam’s done here. A song like “White Tooth Man” would be spooky with just guitar and vocals, but here it’s a death dream, with driving percussion, nasty slide work and some nice sitar touches. “House By the Sea” is similar, if not a little better, all bongos and layered vocals, and “Wolves” is best of all, its electric piano and harmonica turning it into an otherworldly version of an Eagles song. The entire album is impeccably arranged, and even though the style switches from song to song, the whole thing wraps together well.

So why am I not completely taken with this album? I think it’s because while Beam has vastly improved as a record maker, he’s still writing songs as if he’s going to play them with just his acoustic guitar. There aren’t very many memorable tunes here, and the focus is clearly on the sound, not the songwriting. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but most of these songs have only one verse melody, repeated a few times – the songs are skeletal, and Beam is counting on the sonic tapestry he’s weaving to flesh them out.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. “Boy With a Coin,” for example, really works – it is just one verse melody repeated, but the slide guitars, the walking bass lines, and the backwards noises add so much atmosphere that it hardly matters. But something like “Lovesong of the Buzzard,” with its two chords and island music beat, is a bit boring after a minute or so. And in the end, it is “Carousel” that works best for me, a spare and lovely ballad that could have fit onto Our Endless Numbered Days with minimal changes. In fact, the “No Quarter”-style vocal processing kind of gets in the way.

I don’t want to give the impression that The Shepherd’s Dog is a failed experiment. It truly does represent a huge jump in Sam Beam’s evolution, and if you’re used to his more spare sound, its dense and intricate production will knock you flat. It’s a very good record. I just hope that next time, the songs will be as compelling as the sound. If Beam manages that, the next Iron and Wine album will likely be something to behold.

* * * * *

To give you an idea how long it’s been since Marc Cohn put out an album, the entire careers of two of this week’s contestants, Iron and Wine and the Fiery Furnaces, have taken place between his last one, 1998’s Burning the Daze, and now. That’s nine years, an almost Peter Gabriel-length wait between that record and his fourth, Join the Parade.

But cut the guy some slack – quite a lot has happened to him in the meantime. A couple of years ago, Cohn was shot in the head during a carjacking in Denver, and his recovery was long and slow. The fact that we’ve got a fourth Marc Cohn album at all is kind of a miracle, considering, and the fact that it’s a very different kind of Marc Cohn album should be little surprise. This is an album haunted by the specter of death, drowned in ghosts, and it focuses on both his own life and on New Orleans, using the city as a metaphor for crawling back from disaster.

He’s shaken things up on the songwriting front as well, adding more grit and soul to his work, which can only be a good thing. Daze, nice as it was, felt a little bit overworked and underbaked. Not so Join the Parade – these 10 songs are all just right, and the production by Charlie Sexton and Cohn is warm and inviting. Within the first two tracks, he’s reclaimed his sound. “Listening to Levon” is another anthemic opener, slow yet ringing, and “The Calling” is a trademark Cohn minor-key ballad, a la “Medicine Man,” atmospheric and deep.

But from there, Cohn takes a number of fascinating chances. “Dance Back From the Grave” is a stunner, part Tom Waits and part Gospel shout, a song unlike any Cohn has done. It is, of course, all about New Orleans, and it is the song that best fits with the cover image, a photo of a jazz funeral procession. “There’s only one thing to do, in the name of every soul we didn’t save,” he sings in a newfound gruff register. “From the Ninth Ward to the Quarter to the Mississippi border, dance back from the grave…”

“If I Were an Angel” is a full-on soul song, complete with heavenly backing vocals by the Holmes Brothers, but with “Let Me Be Your Witness,” we’re back in familiar territory – the song is a great Marc Cohn ballad, with a middle eight that slips in some lovely gospel piano work. In the nine years since Cohn’s released an album, I’ve forgotten just how much I like his sound, and “Witness” is a nice reminder.

The second half isn’t as experimental, but it’s still solid. “Live Out the String” is a direct statement of gratitude for another day, another year, and it works despite a typical adult-pop arrangement. It also contains my favorite line on the album: “Maybe life is curious to see what you would do with the gift of being left alive…” “Giving Up the Ghost” is an acoustic ballad with great harmony vocals by Shelby Lynne, while the title track is reminiscent of Michael Penn.

But the final two songs contain the heart of the record. “My Sanctuary” is a mournful piece about New Orleans, and probably the best mid-tempo piece on the album. “The forgotten ones were screaming from the rooftops, a thousand souls had all been washed away,” Cohn sings, before the trombone and flugelhorn chime in, adding to the funereal atmosphere. But it’s the glorious coda, with the Holmes Brothers, that shines, and fully embodies the album’s theme of rising up from disaster.

And the closer, an understated acoustic piece called “Life Goes On,” hammers the point home – terrible things happen, but life continues, and it’s better to join the parade than watch it from the sidewalk. “You might think it’s gonna stop, just because you’re closing shop, but life goes on…”

I didn’t quite realize how much I’ve missed Marc Cohn. His “Walking in Memphis” was part of the soundtrack to my teen years, and his second album, The Rainy Season, contains a couple of songs that will always make me think of graduating and moving on. One of my best friends chose a Cohn song for the first dance at his wedding, and I’ve used “The Things We’ve Handed Down” as an audition piece several times. His music is part of the fabric of my life, and I’m happy to add Join the Parade to my Cohn collection. In another year, this could have been a contender, but don’t let the fact that it won’t make my top 10 list keep you from buying it. Welcome back, Marc. I’m glad you’re still with us.

* * * * *

No Doctor Who this week – this thing is already too long anyway. Next week, maybe Dan Wilson and Justin Currie, or maybe the Autumns and Monarch, or maybe Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. Who can tell. And here’s hoping the boys from Boston pull it off tonight, and the next time we speak, we’re most of the way through a Red Sox World Series.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So I ended up paying 10 bucks for In Rainbows.

I thought about it a lot, and I feel like $10 is just about the right price for a digitally delivered new album. Some might argue that 10 bucks is too high, considering there are no costs for artwork, manufacturing or distribution, but as I said last week, I want a say in determining the fair price for bands who don’t have the built-in fan base Radiohead has. If this is going to be the template, I want it to level as many playing fields as possible, and I just don’t believe in getting something as important as music for free.

So I paid my money, and quickly got a confirmation e-mail from the band. And when I woke up Wednesday morning, my personalized download link was waiting for me in my inbox. Three minutes later, I had the new Radiohead album. Now, here’s the ironic part – the band went to considerable trouble to come up with a distribution system that bypassed traditional CDs and record stores, one that delivered their work as a stream of digital information, one computer to another. And what’s the first thing I did when I finished downloading it?

I burned myself a CD so I could listen to it in the car.

For me, the old-fashioned pleasures of holding a hard copy of a new album, taking it out of its case, sliding it into the CD player and listening to a complete work in sequence are just not going to fade. I know I’m old, and the revolution has passed me by, but there’s something magical about the complete package to me, and something about downloaded, context-free music that just feels incomplete. I don’t feel like I really own In Rainbows yet – until it appears in record stores with artwork and packaging, I’m going to feel like I have a sneak peek, pre-release leak of the thing, despite paying 10 bucks for it.

Radiohead’s new method seems like a success so far. I keep hearing different numbers, but the ones I’ve heard more than once are these: there were allegedly 1.2 million downloads of In Rainbows on its first day of release, and most people apparently paid about what I did. That’d be about $10.2 million, straight to the band. But hell, even if the average payment was only about a dollar, that’s $1.2 million in one day, if the figures are right. Under a standard record contract, the band would only get about a buck per CD sold anyway, and it would take ages to climb to a million albums sold, cutting checks to middlemen all the while. Everything they’ve made off of In Rainbows so far has gone straight into the band’s bank account.

This is what you get when you mess with us, indeed.

But you know, smarter people than I have already weighed in on the format of this release, and What It All Means for the industry at large. I’m noticing that not a lot of people are talking about the music itself, which is odd, considering the whole idea of this new system is to get the music into the hands of as many people as possible. The fact that the band basically gave this record away for free didn’t inspire much confidence in me, and as is well documented on this site, I haven’t really enjoyed a Radiohead album since OK Computer in 1997.

So imagine my surprise as I spun In Rainbows.

Subsequent listens have only cemented the first impression – this is the album they were trying to make last time, with Hail to the Thief, and the high point of their post-OK Computer work. It is my third-favorite Radiohead album, behind Computer and The Bends, and while there isn’t a lot of competition for that prize, In Rainbows leaves it all in the dust.

But it took about 10 listens for me to really figure out why it’s better. On the surface, this sounds like Thief, especially at the start – “15 Step” opens with those same thin electronic drums that have plagued Radiohead albums since Kid A. But as the track unfolds, it blossoms. “15 Step” is probably the catchiest song in 5/8 since Dave Brubeck, and it finds the band finally bringing some actual songwriting to their fascination with electronic textures. Happily, that continues for all 10 tracks – there are no tuneless interludes here, no loop-the-drums-and-yelp throwaways.

It’s not just that, though. For roughly a decade now, Radiohead has been a cold, paranoid, hermetic band, trapped inside itself and suffocating. In Rainbows is the album that sets them free. It is the warmest thing they’ve done since The Bends, an album that finds Thom Yorke shutting down his defenses and letting the world in. And it’s a magical sound, because the music has warmed up with him. The album is full of lovely clean-toned guitars and string sections and glockenspiels, and for the first time, they sit alongside the electronic tones and textures as perfect complements.

It may not seem that way at first. “15 Step” is terrific, but it’s the top of the mountain they started climbing with “Idioteque.” “Bodysnatchers” brings the rock, more so than any song since “Electioneering,” but it’s almost ironic in its big, dumb riffing. (Although it does have a superb middle section.) At this point, you may feel like you’re in for just another closed-off Radiohead album.

“Nude” wipes that misconception away. It’s one of the best songs in the band’s catalog, a holdover from the OK Computer sessions, and this version is breathtaking. I haven’t heard Radiohead sound this organic, this human, in years, and in a setting like this, you can really tell how great a singer Thom Yorke is. The final section, with its wordless and yet totally compelling melody, is the first lift-you-out-of-your-chair moment on a Radiohead album in a decade.

In fact, the three songs that would close out side one, if there were such a thing anymore, are worthy of the pantheon. “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” rises above its bizarre title to deliver a gorgeous, spaced-out lullaby about decomposing (I think), and when the bottom drops out, then explodes back in, you’ll be cheering, even if you have no idea what the hell this song’s about.

And “All I Need” is probably my favorite thing here. It’s got a typically odd arrangement, full of synth noises and processed vocals, but at heart, it’s an uncomplicated, beautiful semi-love song. The chorus is simple and understated, and it might take you a listen or two to hear Yorke undercut it with lines like “I only stick with you because there are no others.” The song ends with a glorious, too-short coda that finds Yorke battling his own reassurances: “It’s all right, it’s all wrong, it’s all right…”

Believe it or not, In Rainbows stays in that vein, sequencing one lovely orchestral ballad after another. “Faust Arp” is an interlude for strings and acoustic guitar, while “Reckoner” is a gentle, moody tune sung in a ghostly falsetto, and laid on top of a propulsive backbeat drowned in ride cymbals. But there is no surprise here as great as “House of Cards.” The simplest pop song Yorke and company have written since “Creep,” this number hangs in the air with effortless grace. Even the words are direct – “I don’t want to be your friend, I just want to be your lover,” Yorke sings at the beginning. It’s a treat, and I love it despite myself.

I find myself having a strangely different reaction to “Videotape,” the elegiac closer – I think they all but ruined it in the studio. The song itself is a repetitive, mournful dirge on piano, with a haunting melody, but instead of letting it stand on its own, or adding ghostly textures and strings, they chose to saddle it with a seemingly random assortment of percussion. I’m not sure what they were trying to do here, but it’s the one moment of In Rainbows that strikes me the wrong way. But hey, I like the song enough to quibble about the arrangement, which is a huge step forward for Radiohead in my eyes.

As “Videotape” ended that first time, finishing off a very quick 42 minutes, I realized something remarkable: I had just enjoyed a Radiohead album, fully and completely, for the first time in a decade. A few more listens, and I figured out what was really going on: the band has opened itself up and let me in. For the first time in years, I don’t feel like I’m peering into one of their albums through thick glass. This is an enveloping experience, perhaps the most warm-hearted and genuinely pretty album Radiohead has made. This is the sound of Thom Yorke re-engaging with the world, and it’s a beautiful thing.

So, to sum up In Rainbows: You can pay whatever you want, and it’s worth whatever you pay. Now, I have to figure out if it should go on this year’s top 10 list, or next year’s…

Next week, I catch up with records from the Foo Fighters, the Fiery Furnaces, Marc Cohn, Dan Wilson, and maybe the Autumns. And maybe a bunch more, too. Plus, the Doctor Who reviews will return – I’m feeling under the weather this week, but expect a torrent of words in seven days. Thanks for reading.

See you in line Tuesday morning.