I have absolutely no motivation this week. Apologies for the late column, and further apologies in advance if it ends up sucking. I seriously considered blowing this week off, but with so much new music hitting stores in the next few weeks, I can’t afford to. If I don’t get to these reviews this week, chances are way too good that I’ll never get to them at all.

But first, a digression into TV land:

I caught the premiere of Love Monkey this week. With that title (taken from the novel on which the show is based), I had no idea what to expect, but I watched it because a) it stars the immensely likeable Tom Cavanagh, who made Ed a worthwhile stop each week for years; b) the supporting cast is eccentric and excellent, including Larenz Tate, Judy Greer and Jason Priestly, as well as two Buffy alums (kudos to the first person who can tell me who they are without consulting IMDB), and c) it’s about music nerds. As a music obsessive who’s been trying to capture the spirit of that experience for years, I’m always interested to see how others approach it.

Love Monkey looks like it’s going to be one of those shows I wish I could embrace. Cavanagh is terrific, as always, even if he’s basically playing Ed Stevens again. The writing is sometimes klutzy, but it’s the pilot, and I did laugh out loud a couple of times, so I’m willing to give it another shot. The plotting was ridiculously predictable – Cavanagh’s character has both a girlfriend who’s no good for him, and a girl-slash-friend who would be perfect for him, and I get the definite sense that the show’s writers will pursue this will-they-or-won’t-they in the most cliched manner available to them. But as I said, it’s the pilot. I’ll give it another go.

But what really bugs me about Love Monkey is the music stuff. No, scratch that – the music stuff in this show pissed me off. Cavanagh plays an A&R guy for a major minor label in New York, and his job is to seek out the new sound. He’s portrayed as an obsessive music junkie, one who actually gets fired from the record company for standing up for the transformative power of music. “We should be all about bringing the music to the people, not about making money” he says, name-checking the whole of the 1960s in the process, and it’s an inspiring little speech.

There’s just one problem. The show is so obviously corporate, so obviously not written by music fans, that it’s insulting. Early in the pilot, Cavanagh’s character Tom Farrell finds his next big thing, a guitar-playing kid named Wayne, and he’s shown reacting with wonder and awe at his obvious talent. But Wayne sounds just like a third-rate John Mayer, and no better than 95 percent of what you hear on the radio. You can hear kids like Wayne at 400 open mic nights a week in New York alone. What’s so great about him? The show never tells us.

But I will. Wayne sounds like what the execs at CBS expect their audience of middle-agers to like. He sounds like the next ready-to-mold adult contemporary star, one step above the contestants on American Idol. He’s carefully inoffensive, designed to make the 40-somethings watching on Wednesday nights say, “Yeah, he’s pretty good.” There is literally nothing about this kid that would make any music junkie take notice.

It doesn’t stop there. The references throughout the show are all easy. Not one band or artist was name-checked that my mother wouldn’t recognize. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, and I don’t need obscure you’re-in-the-club asides to like a show like this, but if you’re talking about people who live and breathe music, the breadth of their knowledge and obsessiveness will naturally extend beyond Eric Clapton and Sting. It feels like the writers are being careful not to make anyone feel left out, and in doing so, they’re missing the essence of a character like Tom Farrell.

The most nerdishly upsetting thing about Love Monkey was the obvious product placement – Sony’s Essential Bob Dylan collection, which is a key element of two scenes. First of all, any music fan like Farrell purports to be would know that there is nothing essential about these collections, and wouldn’t give them as gifts. He’d more likely make a mix of his own, and fume a bit about how all the good stuff was left off the corporate compilation.

Worse, though, is what he says when he hands it over: “It’s every song he ever recorded.” Um, what? Dylan’s been recording for more than 40 years, and he has more than 30 albums. The Essential Bob Dylan is a two-CD set that collects 30 songs. There’s no way a supposedly music-mad guy like Tom Farrell would make that mistake, or not correct someone when they make the same mistake. It’s a sales pitch put into the mouths of characters in an attempt to sell more of an extraneous Dylan collection, and if Tom Farrell were a real guy watching this show, he’d have kicked his TV at that point.

I know, because I almost did.

There’s a lot right with Love Monkey, but if it’s supposed to be about music, and about how much this character loves it, then there’s a lot wrong with it, too. He bitches about Air Supply at one point, and then spends the rest of the show trying to sign a guy whose songs are the A&R equivalent of that band’s crowd-pleasing pap. It makes no sense to me, but then, I don’t think I’m the target audience here. They’re not going for music fans, they’re going for people who know music fans, and older folks who stopped listening to new bands around 1979. They’re going for Targeted Consumers, and I would bet that more specifically marketed CD collections like The Essential Bob Dylan will be product-placed in future episodes.

Anyway, I’ll give it another shot or two, mainly for Cavanagh and Greer. But I don’t highly recommend it.

* * * * *

Speaking of that…

In a lot of ways, TM3AM lives and dies on recommendations. Not only do I have this extensive network of friends and acquaintances who know what I like and give me tips on great new stuff, I also have readers who write in every week to tell me about their favorite records. Most of the time, I know the artists, but surprisingly often, a stranger will surprise me with something excellent that I’d never heard.

For example, last year’s number one album, Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois, was a recommendation. So was number nine, The Dissociatives. Last week, I reviewed Imogen Heap’s Speak For Yourself, which I probably wouldn’t have bought without Dr. Tony Shore’s ecstatic emails. I get excited about music, and I love it when others share that excitement. It’s infectious. I’m not always as taken with the recommended albums, but just knowing that there are people as thrilled to share the music they love as I am often keeps me going.

But sometimes I just forget to say thanks, or to write something about the records themselves. I have a few from 2005 that just slipped by me, very good albums that I may not have bought without some very jazzed readers telling me about them. Last year especially, there was just so much good music that I couldn’t get to everything.

Case in point. So many people told me to pick up Porcupine Tree’s Deadwing that it would be unfair to single one or two of them out. But there’s a guy named Matthew Waterhouse (and yes, Doctor Who fans, he’s heard all the Adric jokes) who has been urging me to review it for months now, and wondering why I didn’t give it at least an honorable mention in the year-end top 10 list. So this one’s for him, although he’ll probably want his money back.

It would be inaccurate to say I’m a Porcupine Tree fan, although I do like them. Their mastermind, Steven Wilson, first came to my attention as the producer and co-writer of Fish’s Sunsets on Empire album, which still stands as one of the big man’s three best efforts. Wilson played the mean guitar solo on “The Perception of Johnny Punter,” and if you’ve heard it, you know how immediately impressive it is. That initial exposure led me to Wilson’s main band, and a couple of his side projects, but he’s never made a stronger impression than that smoldering solo, unfortunately.

But I really liked In Absentia, the more concise, rocking Porcupine Tree album from 2002. PT has always been a slower, more Floyd-esque guitar-rock band, dabbling in electronic textures and ambient skyscapes, but In Absentia packed a pop song punch I enjoyed tremendously. Of course, I forgot to review it, but what else is new…

Deadwing is in a similar vein, but the more drawn-out passages are back, providing an interesting balance. The album ignites early with the nine-minute title track, a heavy groove with a pleasant melody and a kickass solo by Adrian Belew. It does slightly overstay its welcome, but thankfully, the same cannot be said for the bulk of Deadwing. “Shallow” is a great little rocker, and “Lazarus” is fragile and very pretty. Of the longer songs, “Start of Something Beautiful” impresses the most, with its buildups and diversions.

The problem is, most of this album just blends together into one long groove of various tempos. With all of Wilson’s meticulous production, the songs often lie there – “Mellotron Scratch” is creepy, yet forgettable, and “Arriving Somewhere But Not Here” could have been half as long and still been as effective. By the end of Deadwing, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to get out of it – it feels more like an attempt at a mood piece, but the driving rhythms keep it from achieving the ambient grace of some of Wilson’s earlier records.

In the final analysis, this is a decent enough record, but it doesn’t concentrate its efforts enough to be anything more. I have heard better Porcupine Tree albums (like In Absentia), and I have heard worse ones. I probably forgot to write about this because it didn’t lodge itself in my brain. It has just sort of existed in my to-review pile for months, not calling much attention to itself. And even after re-immersing myself in it, I have to say that I’m still more impressed by Wilson’s work on Sunsets on Empire than anything here.

If I recall correctly, Matthew Waterhouse was merely curious as to whether Deadwing would appear in the top 10 list. Whereas my longtime correspondent Lucas Beeley was downright incensed that his recommendation didn’t chart, writing me an email with the subject line, “So what gives?” He was kidding, of course, but I owe him an apology for not responding quickly, and for not reviewing the record he suggested. It’s a double insult, because the album itself is fan-bloody-tastic.

It’s Picaresque, the third LP from the Decemberists, a five-piece from Oregon who may as well be the house band on the Flying Dutchman. It’s odd to be able to tie this band down to a terrestrial place, to give them a state of origin – their work is so timeless, haunting and otherworldly, like the songs of the sea itself. The Decemberists work almost strictly within the English folk tradition, playing ghost stories and sea shanties as if they were pop songs.

In a lot of ways, they remind me of the Levellers, but rather than use their folksy framework to capture the sound of the earth rising up, as the Levs usually do, the Decemberists tap into the sound of the ocean. It doesn’t need to rise up – all things sink into it eventually, so it’s unnervingly patient. Leader Colin Meloy’s songs are as traditional as Richard Thompson’s, and yet here, thanks to the production of Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla, they sound perfectly modern, like newly minted legends.

The band could not have picked a less poppy opener than “The Infanta,” the tale of a baby monarch. It’s strummed with almost explosive abandon, a strident minor-key folk song of the highest order. Just listen to the thunderous toms throughout, and the fanfare of strings in the bridge. This thing is awesome, and while Picaresque never quite gets there again, it makes for a stunning opening shot.

Not that the rest of the album isn’t excellent, it’s just quieter. The Levellers comparisons strike closest on “We Both Go Down Together,” a sweet fiddle-driven number, and “The Bagman’s Gambit” somehow manages to be both sparse and epic at once, all acoustics and pianos until its two-minute mark. “For My Own True Love (Lost at Sea)” is the perfect Decemberists song, a foreboding, deathly waltz over bass drum bomb-blasts, given added ethereal grace by Meloy’s wavery voice and delicate melody. One song later, they’re breaking out the Beatles influences on the sprightly anti-war diatribe “16 Military Wives.”

My favorite number here is “The Engine Driver,” a song that seamlessly combines this band’s folk and pop leanings. Revolving around the simple line, “And if you don’t love me let me go,” the simply strummed piece has a melody that never stops surprising. It’s a song that would sound equally at home in the repertoires of R.E.M. and Fairport Convention. The album concludes with an extended, lurching epic called “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” and a graceful coda called “Of Angels and Angles,” striking just the right note. But it’s “The Engine Driver” that stays with you.

I can’t say why I never reviewed this one. I had heard of the Decemberists before, but I probably would not have picked this album up without Lucas Beeley’s now-trademark breathlessly excited email. And he’s right, this deserved an honorable mention in the top 10 list. I plan on picking up this band’s other work – I already have Her Majesty, and it’s similarly terrific. Which is all I can ask of a recommendation – that it introduces me to great music I might never have heard otherwise. So keep them coming, folks.

Thanks to Matthew Waterhouse, Lucas Beeley (and his brother Steve), and everyone else who wrote me with questions, complaints, comments and suggestions this year. You’re all appreciated.

Next week, just for Mike Cetera, there’s a new Duncan Sheik album.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

A quick movie roundup, before we get started. I’ve seen more movies in the past two weeks than I have in the last two months, I think, and while I still don’t think I’ve seen the Best Picture winner (I’m usually pretty sure when I encounter it), I have been enjoying the cinemagoing experience more and more lately. Gotta love Oscar season, if for no other reason than for the markedly increased quality of the flicks at the local multiplex.

Anyway. My friend Jody and I did a three-movie day a couple of weekends ago, hitting the major epics all in a row. First was The Chronic (WHAT?) cles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, the first of seven planned adaptations of C.S. Lewis’ beloved fantasy series. I was told once that you should read the Narnia books three times in your life – once as a youngster, once as an adult and once as a senior citizen. So I read the Chronicles when I was in grade school, and re-read them about four years ago, and now I’m going to wait until I’m 70 and read them again.

In the meantime, Disney will likely finish their seven-movie saga, and if it’s anything like this first one, it will be more of a distillation than an adaptation. I have always liked the Narnia books more than the Lord of the Rings trilogy, despite their obvious Christian allegory – the very thing J.R.R. Tolkien disliked about Narnia, if my admittedly cursory research is correct – because they’re about magic and wonder more than drama and warfare. They’re kids’ books, in the best possible sense.

So I was dismayed to see that director Andrew Adamson had added a Helm’s Deep-style battle to the first book for this film, but otherwise, I think he did a decent enough job. He and Disney surprisingly refused to tone down the allegory and the difficult Passion of the Lion sequence near the end. Best of all, I think, this film captured what it would be like, as a child, to find yourself in another world – the saucer-eyed wonderment that filled this first book. I honestly don’t think the producers have read past Prince Caspian, if they think they have a marketable franchise on their hands, but this one was a pretty good start.

Next was King Kong, the only one I wish I hadn’t seen. Too long, too flashy, too inconsequential for its incredible running time. There were whole sections of this thing that were obviously only in the movie to show off Peter Jackson’s effects team. I will admit that they did a hell of a job with the big ape himself – the most affecting parts of this movie were the ones between Kong and Naomi Watts, just looking at each other – and the final 20 minutes almost redeemed the other 230, but in the end, it’s King Kong. We’ve seen it before, and it wasn’t that great the first time.

But then, ah, we capped the day with Steven Spielberg’s mesmerizing Munich, probably the best film I’ve seen this year, and easily Spielberg’s best since Schindler’s List. It is, remarkably, not about the 1972 massacre at the Munich Olympics, but about the Israeli response, and it balances themes of justice and vengeance beautifully. Eric Bana, whom I had only otherwise seen in Ang Lee’s ridiculous Hulk, was fantastic here, as one of the special operatives hired by Israel to hunt down and kill the men responsible for the murders in Munich.

It’s staged as a thriller of sorts – we watch Bana and his cohorts, including new James Bond actor Daniel Craig, carry out their mission, assassinating the planners of Munich one by one. But at the edges, it slowly becomes much more. For every vengeance killing the Israelis carry out, there is a Palestinian response, and the futility becomes clear. The movie’s final scene is perfect, reducing the centuries-old conflict to two men who cannot just sit down and talk. It’s an amazing, powerful movie, one that’s never preachy or didactic. Word is Spielberg has angered both Israel and Palestine with this movie, and that’s a sure sign that he did it right.

From the big studio pictures to the tiny indies – I saw The Squid and the Whale on Friday, at the marvelous old Town Theatre in Highland, Indiana. It’s the new film by Noah Baumbach, who made what might be my favorite movie ever, Kicking and Screaming. (Not the Will Ferrell soccer movie, thankyouverymuch – although that one’s on DVD, and Baumbach’s is not.) Baumbach’s style has always been observational smartassery tinged with sadness – he also made Mr. Jealousy and co-wrote The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou – so I was surprised at the harshness of Squid. It’s a tough little film.

Then again, it being a mostly autobiographical divorce drama, perhaps a little sandpaper around the edges is to be expected. This is probably Baumbach’s most accomplished movie – it has what I like to call a calculus script, one in which each word and phrase is so perfectly crafted and placed that the outcome seems preordained. Where this movie is funny, it is darkly funny, and where it is sad, it is devastating, but it never seems like anything but real life. It is small and beautiful, and contains a final scene of such grace that it easily outdoes all of Peter Jackson’s expensive monkeying. It’s wonderful, plain and simple.

Many dismissed Baumbach’s first pictures as the work of a junior Woody Allen, and perhaps as an exercise in contrast, here’s the real Woody Allen, back with Match Point, his most acclaimed movie in probably 10 years. But the comparison is silly – Match Point looks and feels nothing like a Woody Allen movie. It was shot in London, with an all-British cast, and none of its characters are stuttering, neurotic, or intolerable.

Now, I’m a Woody Allen fan, so I’m of the opinion that he never went away – he’s made a movie a year, every year, for longer than I’ve been alive, and the past decade has seen some winners. I thought The Curse of the Jade Scorpion was hilarious, and Sweet and Lowdown was a masterpiece, and Melinda and Melinda was superb. Oh, and Deconstructing Harry was awesome, too. So all this comeback talk has me mystified, but I can see how Match Point would be considered his most traditionally captivating film in a while.

Problem is, it’s essentially Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Next Generation. The plot is the same, the outcome is basically the same, only the details have changed. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – one of Allen’s best traits as a filmmaker is his ability to weave themes through his work, and this one uses the same setup to say something completely different. Where Crimes was about God and justice, Match Point sets up life as a series of blind chances. It’s a much more nihilistic film, although it is similarly bitter.

I don’t want to discourage you from seeing it – it’s very good, very enjoyable film. I just wish it hinged upon a more original idea. Allen is always good at those – even his misfires, like Hollywood Ending, have sparkling premises. Match Point is a philosophical thriller, and a good one, but it’s no work of genius. For that, you might want to check out some of the Woody Allen movies I named above. Next time, I hope he keeps the quality of this film’s writing and comes up with a more, shall we say, Woody-esque idea to flesh out.

Wow. These 1200 words were meant to be the opening paragraphs. I still have a whole music column to get to. Hope you’re not going anywhere for a while…

* * * * *

I got a startling phone call this week regarding one of my stories in the paper.

It was a harmless little feature on new year’s resolutions. A couple of photographers and I scoured the streets for probably six hours over two days, looking for people who had resolved something, anything. We ended up with five people willing to have their pictures taken for the front page, and I didn’t even think about it beyond the fact that, after so many refusals and brush-offs, we had what we needed for the story. I was just glad to be finished with it.

So it ran, and the next day, I got this phone call. It sounded like an older gentleman, and man, was he upset. I listened with disbelief as he expressed his disappointment that all five of our subjects for the story were white. And honestly, I hadn’t even thought about it. In my defense, neither had one of my photographers, who is black, but that sounds like a cop-out. I didn’t think about it because I don’t think about it – I just don’t see the world that way. Considering my job, I probably should, or at least I should remember that some of our readers will pick up on unintentional imbalances like that.

But I don’t.

I’ll tell you what I do recall about the new year’s feature, though – three of the five people I talked to were women. I don’t know why that matters more to me than race – it absolutely should not, but it seems to. You can be black, white, blue, orange, or polka-dotted, and if you make good music, I’ll buy your stuff, and I likely won’t even notice. (Well, I may notice the polka-dotted people…) But I always scan my year-end lists for female artists, and I’m conscious of how outnumbered they often are.

The 2005 list had two albums by women – Aimee Mann’s amazing The Forgotten Arm and Kate Bush’s double-disc comeback Aerial. I know that more than 20 percent of the records I bought last year were from female artists, and some of my favorite musicians are women, including the two listed above. I honestly believe the 10 albums I picked were the best ones I heard during the year, subject to my specific tastes, but I still felt a little twinge of guilt at the poor showing from women. In fact, of the 50 albums that make up the previous five lists I’ve posted, only seven are from women, and two of those are also Aimee Mann’s.

I would hate for anyone to think that I’m implying through my selections that women don’t make good music, any more than I would want people to infer that only white people make new year’s resolutions. And I hope no one takes either of those things from my work, ‘cause they’re just not there. There’s very little I can do about the resolutions thing, because while I talked to all sizes, ages and colors of people for the story, the five white people I ended up with were the only ones that wanted to talk and be photographed.

But I can do something about the lack of women in this column, although part of me doesn’t feel like I should have to. I have three overlooked releases from Aught-Five in front of me, all by women, and all excellent. Trust me when I say, though, that I didn’t buy any of these because their authors are female, and I’m not grading on a curve. These records are all terrific – not top 10 list terrific, but great nonetheless – and the gender of the artists is incidental.

Okay, then. Some overlooked women of 2005:

* * * * *

If anyone has redefined the whole idea of a female artist in the last few decades, it’s Madonna. She’s known as an icon more than as a musician, which is unfortunate, but probably not unjustified. As a pop cultural figure, she smashed every taboo in the book, in an endlessly calculated effort to be remembered and revered. Even now, I’m not sure we know a lot about Madonna – she is her public image, and that’s the way she wants it.

As much as I rail against the more premeditated aspects of what she does, though, I have to admit that she wouldn’t have navigated a 20-plus-year career if she had nothing artistic to offer. The fickle public would have turned on her long ago if her work wasn’t in some way satisfying, and in truth, I think much of it is superb. Madonna’s chief talents are an innate sense of where to push her sound, and an uncanny knack of surrounding herself with geniuses who can realize her vision. If you open the door to good pop music, like I have over and over, you have to assess Madonna’s work favorably. It’s just good stuff.

Her last few, in particular, have been restlessly creative, experimental pieces that somehow distill complex techno-pop ideas down into blissful pop tunes. Ray of Light remains her masterpiece in this area, I think, thanks largely to the precise work of British producer William Orbit, but parts of Music and American Life nudged against the boundaries as well. The latter is one of her weaker efforts, containing more clumsiness per minute than anything she’s done, but it is still recklessly brave, and not the work of a safe, complacent pop star.

Her new one, Confessions on a Dance Floor, is by its nature a little less reckless, but it is infinitely more consistent. She’s returned to her pure dance-pop roots, but instead of mining the dead seam of American booty-rap-club-crap, she’s turned in a decidedly European effort, working with British producer Stuart Price and longtime collaborator and Frenchman Mirwais Ahmadazi. They’ve crafted a cohesive slab of thumping, pulsing dance music that is by turns melancholy and melodic, joyful and moody. All the tracks segue, and there are no ballads, so what you have is an hour-long uninterrupted rave party that somehow still sounds like 12 great pop songs.

It’s a retreat after American Life, sure, but Madonna has never sounded more comfortable with this style. Full credit to her producers, of course, who filled this record with ear-catching, dazzling moments. The syncopated pulse of “Get Together” is wonderful, as is the atmosphere of “Let It Will Be,” as is any of a hundred little flourishes that make this a very quick 60 minutes. Confessions is the sound of Madonna closing ranks, picking the one thing she’s best at and essentially showing off. But it works.

Once again, of course, she’s the worst thing about her own album. Her voice is typically weak and mannered, although with the layers of effects that surround it at all times on this record, you hardly notice. Her lyrics, on the other hand, weigh this album down. Mostly they’re harmless tales of flirtation, love and loss, but the worst offender here is “I Love New York,” which actually rhymes the title phrase with the line, “Other places make me feel like a dork.” It’s not as embarrassing as some of American Life, but it is cringe-worthy.

But man, the one that really comes together here is “Isaac,” the “controversial” number. (There’s always one…) It’s half Hebrew, half abstract poetry, and it ends up saying very little that anyone should be upset over, but the overall effect of the music and lyrics is haunting and memorable. It’s the best thing here, swirling and deep, but perhaps its biggest achievement is how it segues in and out without feeling like it’s out of place between two pop songs, one that bitches about fame and one that bitches about relationships. If you’re still on the fence about whether Madonna should be considered an actual musical artist, this is more evidence that she absolutely should.

Of course, her whole image is that of the independent woman doing it for herself, which makes the fact that she’s so dependent on her producers kind of ironic. If for some reason that matters to you, and you’re looking for an electronic pop album fully written, played and produced by a woman, you won’t do better than Speak For Yourself, the solo project of Frou Frou’s Imogen Heap. It is every bit as dazzling as Madonna’s record, if not more so, and Heap’s voice and writing talents are much stronger.

In a recent interview in Paste Magazine, Heap noted that women are often assumed to provide only the voice and lyrics, not the melody and production, and it’s sadly true. If this album is anything to go by, Heap is every bit the expert knob-twiddler that her male counterparts are (including former Madonna producer and the other half of Frou Frou, Guy Sigsworth), and she obviously labored over every scrap of sound you hear here. It’s a marvel of assemblage, accomplishing the same trick as Madge’s recent work – incorporating ear-tickling techno without losing the pop melodies – with more grace. Heap has an ambient edge to her work, as well, which comes to the fore near the end of the record.

But just for a second, let’s indulge the stereotype and talk about her voice. It’s stunning. Like on Frou Frou’s album, Heap’s voice here is multi-layered and strong, effortlessly hooking upwards at surprising moments, and she harmonizes with herself beautifully. If vocals were all she contributed here, she’d still be worthy of praise – this sounds like where many Chemical Brothers fans wish Beth Orton’s solo stuff had gone, instead of the spare folk paths she’s taken.

Of course, that’s not all she has going for her. The songs on Speak are marvelous – even the obvious singles like “Goodnight and Go” are ludicrously enjoyable, and when she gets down to business, as on “Have You Got It In You” and “Closing In,” she writes remarkable melodies. The production is impeccable, glorious even – you never know what’s going to fly at your ear next, from the looping keyboards to the occasional splashes of dirty guitar to the astonishing backing vocals.

But then there is “Hide and Seek,” the reason most people will know Heap’s bizarre name. It played over part of an episode of The O.C., apparently, and has become a left-field hit, but its vocoders-and-nothing-else aesthetic makes it an odd fit for this buzzing little record. It really brings things to a halt, nice as it is, and though it will sell copies, I often wish it wasn’t included, or at least not at track five. Naturally, the one the rest of America likes is the one I sometimes want to skip through. Nothing against the song, per se, but it pales in comparison to its neighbors, especially “Clear the Area.”

And I’ll admit to being a little upset that the hit song from this record is the one that least exhibits Heap’s talents. Speak For Yourself is full of little wonders, and even some big ones, like the closer, “The Moment I Said It.” If you want to hear what a brilliant female electro-pop artist can really do, then this record is a nearly flawless example. In fact, you can remove the word “female” from the preceding sentence, and it’d still be true.

Speaking of that, here’s another one: Tori Amos is one of my favorite female artists. You can take the word “female” out of that sentence, repeat it back to me, and even after her recent string of incredibly bland, boring, wasteful records, I’ll still nod in agreement. She’s one of the most captivating, brilliant, moving musicians around, nearly without peer, but only when she wants to be.

For my money, she hasn’t really wanted to be since about 1995. From the Choirgirl Hotel was the first step on a long, downward road, the lowest point of which (so far) is this year’s The Beekeeper. It’s nearly 80 minutes long, and it contains not one song that can match even the b-sides from her first few records. Plus, it’s all wrapped up in this disaffected gauze, with all of the potentially interesting edges rounded off. It sounds like oatmeal, and not the apples and cinnamon kind, or even the brown sugar kind. Plain old mushy, tasteless oatmeal.

If Amos were a lost cause, an album like The Beekeeper wouldn’t piss me off so much, but she’s not. She is still capable of investing herself in a song like no one else, of reaching deep and connecting with an audience, of turning even a simple ditty into something devastating. How do I know this? She keeps on reminding us, for some reason. The most recent example is The Original Bootlegs, a 12-CD set of live recordings from her Original Sinsuality tour last year.

It is amazing. Every second of it is amazing.

This is more than 11 hours of Tori and her piano and her organ, and nothing else. If you’re unfamiliar with Amos’ work, you probably think that such a thing would be boring after a while. You’re wrong. Every one of these six full concerts is Amos at her best, playing and singing her heart out. I know what it means to be in the room when she’s working this particular magic, and there’s nothing I can compare it to. No one speaks, no one moves, everyone is enraptured, and while the CDs don’t exactly capture that feeling, they do give you some idea of what it’s like.

There are too many highlights to enumerate here, although I must mention the section of every show in which she selects bizarre covers to give the Tori treatment. Included in this box are piano-vocal versions of Flock of Seagulls’ “I Ran,” Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” George Michael’s “Father Figure,” Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” Oasis’ “Don’t Look Back in Anger” and Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” among others. If you never thought any of the above songs could be heart-wrenchingly beautiful, you need to hear these versions of them.

As much as I love The Original Bootlegs, it pisses me off more than anything else I heard this year. There’s no denying that she can still do this, so why the hell doesn’t she? Roughly half of The Beekeeper’s songs are included here, and every one of them is infinitely better in this setting. And not just because Amos is alone here, but because she’s invested. On the album, I couldn’t have cared less about a simple bit of fluff like “Jamaica Inn,” but here, she makes me care. Every concert here contains a 10-minute take on “The Beekeeper” itself, and each is different, and extraordinary. If she loves these songs this much, how could she stand to strip them of all feeling for the album? I don’t get it.

But enough negativity. The Original Bootlegs has once again restored my faith in Tori Amos, and reminded me of how much I love her older songs, like “Yes Anastasia” and “Cloud on My Tongue” and “Horses” and “Space Dog” and especially “Winter.” New numbers like “Parasol” and “Barons of Suburbia” and “Carbon” seem to fit right in here, and this set has sent me back to her last few albums to rediscover them. What else could you want? I can only hope that Amos listens to these CDs and remembers how to do what she does best when she sits down to make the next album. Because she’s one of the best female artists on the planet.

And there’s another sentence you can take the word “female” right out of, and it would still be true.

* * * * *

Next week, some recommendations I forgot to get to last year. And the week after that, the new stuff starts coming in, with records from Ester Drang, Richard Julian, Robert Pollard, Jenny Lewis and Duncan Sheik. And yes, I did notice that the preceding list contains only one woman…

See you in line Tuesday morning.

It’s a short one this week, as I’m still working on that Zappa buyer’s guide. It looks like it’s going to be eight interconnected pages, full of thousands and thousands of words. I don’t know what made me think I could pull this off when I can barely get the regular-sized columns out on time. Check with me next week to see if I did it.

As I mentioned last week, we’re in the January lull. New tunes don’t start coming out in earnest until the 23rd of this month, and when we hit February, there’s another dry patch. The one new record I’ve picked up so far is Workmanship, the CD release of Joy Electric’s 2006 7-inch, and it’s 15 minutes long. That’s not enough new music for a junkie like me, no matter how good it is. (And Workmanship is very good, if a little extraneous. It’s a decent primer for the new full-length and EP, both out on March 20.)

Thankfully, there were some last-minute releases in December of ’06 that have helped me get through these long, cold weeks. December is an odd month for anything musical, really, except Christmas carols. The best movies of the year are often held until the twelfth month, and sometimes given only limited release near the end of December to qualify for an Oscar. Not so with music – the Grammy cutoff is October, and no one has time to pay attention to new records in December. Hence, nothing comes out. Nothing at all.

In fact, when a new album gets a December release, you kind of have to wonder why. The last month of the year is usually home to best-ofs, box sets and rarities collections, the kind of thing that either fulfills a contract or tries to squeeze a couple of Christmas bucks out of last-minute shoppers. Take, for example, Sonic Youth’s new set, The Destroyed Room. It does two things – it collects unreleased tracks from their 16 years with Geffen Records, and it brings those years to a close by finishing out their contract. Unless you’re a hardcore SY fan, you would need some good reasons to pick this up.

So let me give you some.

First off, if you’re one of the millions who thought that the past few Sonic Youth albums were just a little too concise and poppy, you’ll be glad to know that The Destroyed Room is almost entirely filled with the band’s weird instrumental side. It kicks off with “Fire Engine Dream,” a 10-plus-minute jam session that sets the tone – this is the explosive, dissonant guitar-army Sonic Youth, the one that’s been taking a back seat to their slightly more radio-friendly alter ego in recent years. It’s challenging, trippy stuff, but like the best Sonic Youth, it makes most other rock music just sound dull and flat.

There are highlights here, but mostly, The Destroyed Room has an appealingly unfinished feel that works well if heard in sequence. “Kim’s Chords” doesn’t even have a real title, but it’s superb, an instrumental sketch that blossoms and blooms before your ears. I’ve liked the last batch of SY albums, as flowchart-perfect as they’ve been, but listening to this, it’s clear that the Sonic Youth magic is at its best when it’s four people chasing an intricate, unknowable secret with abandon.

Which brings us to the best reason to buy The Destroyed Room – the complete, unedited, 26-minute version of “The Diamond Sea,” which I consider the best song they wrote for Geffen. The 19-minute cut of this feedback-drenched extravaganza closed Washing Machine, one of their finest albums, but here the song is given its full digital due, and it’s amazing. In a very real sense, the song ends after four minutes, and the band just shoots for the stars over the remaining 22, making some of the most crushingly beautiful noise you’ll ever hear.

Still, this is definitely a December release, cobbled together from scraps and old recordings, and it’s a contractual obligation to boot. For a long time, these patchwork records were the only things dotting the landscape in December. But a few years ago, for some reason, the final months became the oasis for hip-hop. Now almost every major rap record comes out at the end of the year, which doesn’t help me much – I’m too much of a melody addict to like much hip-hop – but does give fans of the genre something to spend their Christmas money on.

This year we had Jay-Z, Clipse, Ghostface Killah, and the definitely not dead 2Pac releasing records in November and December, but topping them all is Nas, who cheekily titled his eighth album Hip-Hop is Dead. It’s not, and his clever, enjoyable record is all the proof you’d need. Any new Nas album will always be unfavorably compared to Illmatic, his 1994 debut, which is still considered a classic. But as someone who has followed his career pretty closely, I feel confident in saying that Hip-Hop is Dead is the closest he’s come yet to equaling his opening salvo.

The problem, as always, is length – Hip-Hop runs out of gas about two-thirds of the way through. But before it does, Nas treats you to some killers. Most notably, the title track is set to the riff from “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida,” and makes the most of its propulsive, guitar-driven backdrop. Nas’ duet with Jay-Z, “Black Republican,” is a winner, as is “Carry On Tradition,” another in a long line of street remembrances with a thumping beat.

But you know what works best here? It’s the closer, “Hope,” recorded a cappella, just Nas rapping with no beats. Here he delivers a passionate plea for rap music – “This about us, this our thing, this came from the gut, from the blood, from the soul,” he says, moments after taking a machete to the notion of old school vs. new school, or east coast vs. west coast. Here and elsewhere on Hip-Hop is Dead, Nas proves he’s one of the best there is, and he remains one of the few rappers I admire.

A December release is kind of expected for a hip-hop artist like Nas – his fans will know to look for it at the end of the year, with all the other high-profile rap releases. But for a pop-rock band like Switchfoot, a December release is a tragedy, and it makes me wonder just what their record label is thinking. The band’s sixth album, Oh! Gravity, hit stores the day after Christmas, with exactly no pre-release hype – a strange strategy for a group with a number of hits under its belt. It’s naturally been all but forgotten about, not so much released as dumped out on the street and left to fend for itself.

The worst part? Oh! Gravity is unquestionably the best album Switchfoot has yet made.

I’ve always considered them underrated, and several cuts above the average modern rock band, but this album takes them to new places. Start with the unbridled aggression of the title song, scrappy and propulsive, then move to “Awakening,” a raise-your-hands-to-the-sky anthem that will have you screaming along. The band still sounds glossy and professional, of course, but this album puts a new fire on display – this sounds like the first album in years that the band simply had to make.

The diversity here only adds to that impression. “Dirty Second Hands” is a bluesy, odd-time jaunt slightly reminiscent of Alice in Chains, and “Circles” is a quiet-loud epic with a bridge that will knock you out. “Faust, Midas and Myself” rises above its terrible title to become a whirlwind mini-suite centering on the line “you’ve one life left to lead,” and even late-album rockers like “Burn Out Bright” and “4:12” (which is, naturally, four minutes and 12 seconds long) don’t skimp on the melodies. I can’t remember anything about the second half of Nothing is Sound, despite the fact that it came out only a year ago, but every song on Oh! Gravity does it for me in one way or another.

Okay, not every song – I could live without “Amateur Lovers,” the point at which the band took their newfound diversity too far. It’s a 1970s-style bar band rocker, and its stupid refrain (“We don’t know what we’re doing, let’s do it again!”) makes me want to find something heavy and blunt to smack singer Jon Foreman with. The fact that it’s sandwiched between two of the album’s best cuts doesn’t help matters.

But without “Amateur Lovers,” Oh! Gravity would have been a nearly flawless modern rock record. You can hate Switchfoot because they’re beautiful, but you’ll be missing out on some punchy, well-crafted rock. The band obviously had a number of breakthroughs on this superb little album, and they should feel betrayed by Columbia Records. Just about everything that was up to the band (songwriting, performance) is excellent, and just about everything that was up to the label (cover art, promotion, release date) was botched.

Don’t let that stop you, though, because Switchfoot has delivered what is undoubtedly the best reason to go to the record store during these after-Christmas doldrums. There’s some great stuff coming out, starting with the Shins on the 23rd, but until then, Oh! Gravity will likely remain in permanent residence in my CD player.

Next week, Zappa out the yin yang, I hope.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Happy Aught Six, everyone.

I’m sure history will decide what abbreviated nickname we give this decade, but I like calling it the Aughts. First, it’s delightfully old-mannered, like you should have to be wearing a fedora hat and smoking a pipe just to say it. And you should say it to a guy named Jeeves, if at all possible. “It’s the Aughts, Jeeves.” And secondly, it seems to make people nuts. I don’t know why, but I’m always amused by small things that drive others insane.

So it’s Aught Six. This is the sixth new year’s column I’ve done, and I’m looking back over the archives and noticing that I haven’t yet succumbed to the lame-ass trap of writing one about my new year’s resolutions. In my ongoing attempts to make tm3am as pitiful as possible, in the hopes that you’ll all feel bad for me and send money, I decided to rectify that. I only have one, but here it is:

I resolve to be less judgmental in the coming year.

Now, I’ve told this resolution to a few of my friends already, and each of them has said, independent of the others, something like, “That’s a good resolution for you!” I’m not sure what to say to that, other than “ouch,” but I’m guessing from the reaction I’ve received that this is an area I need to work on. And I may as well start now, with music.

I judge music without hearing it all the time. It’s the only way (besides illegal downloading, which is no good for anyone) that I can still manage to pay my bills – if I were to buy and listen to everything I should, as a critic and as a fan, I would be penniless on the street, forced to sell my iPod for food. So over the years I’ve developed what I call the Third Album Test. The absolute genius of this name will become apparent when I tell you that it’s a test that centers around a band’s third album. Fooking brilliant, wot?

I like to wait until third albums before really making a judgment call on a band, and here’s why. The debut is the record you have your entire life to make – songs you’ve been working on since you were 12 can wind up on the first album, fully formed and crafted. By that very same logic, the follow-up is often a disaster, because you spent your wad on the first shot, and kept nothing back, and instead of your whole life this time, you only have six weeks to come up with something.

At least, that’s the way it often works. Many artists know this pattern already before they launch into their recording careers these days, and they work to avoid it. And still others follow a more organic path, stumbling around on their first record and finding their footing on the second. But it’s most often the case that the third album cements everything. It’s the one where the evolution either takes off or caps, most times, and by the third, I usually know if I’m going to like a band.

Thing is, I’ve been circumventing the Third Album Test for some time now, snapping to judgment early on many well-respected acts. A good example is the Strokes, a band I dismissed 15 seconds after hearing “Last Nite.” In a perfect world, that first time would have also been the last time I heard “Last Nite,” but no – it was rammed into my skull for months, inescapably played on radio and video, and included on mix CDs I received. Was I the only one bored by it?

I naturally did not buy Is This It, the hyped-beyond-belief savior-of-rock first record by the Strokes. I also didn’t buy Room on Fire, the apparently disappointingly similar second album. I argued vociferously with many people who pressed the Strokes on me, lumping them in with the “garage rock” movement and basically denying their existence as best I could. Why? I dunno.

So here’s First Impressions of Earth, the third Strokes album, out this week. Just in time to remind me of both my resolution and my Third Album Test, which I hadn’t planned on doing with this band. Which is just plain judgmental, especially since the reviews for Earth have been pretty smashing, citing perhaps my favorite phrase in the critical lexicon: artistic growth. After a few days of this, I turned to the universe and shouted, “All right, already! Jeez! I’ll buy the stupid Strokes albums!”

So I did. And I listened to them all in a row, with open ears and (hopefully) open mind.

Perhaps it would be best at this point to say what I didn’t like about this band to begin with. I am not a fan of minimalism, which seems to have swept the country like a plague. It’s become some kind of strange virtue to record your album in a weekend, or at least make it sound like you recorded it in a weekend, even if you took three years on it. Any evidence of ambition or labor must go, until what’s left is energy and abandon, no matter how weak the songs are.

“Last Nite” is a pretty weak song. It is, oddly, one of the strongest on Is This It, an album that makes 35 minutes seem like 10 years. The songs are pretty simplistic, and the recording is unbelievably basic. If all you want is a shuffling beat and a thudding guitar, this will do it for you, but memorable moments are few. Singer Julian Casablancas (what a rock ‘n’ roll name…) mopes through the melodic sections and screams through the rest, and he’s not very ear-catching in either mode. I suppose the acclaim centered around the energy present throughout the record, the “real rawk” it proffers, but that’s never been enough for me.

So, strike one.

Room on Fire is better, not even close to the holding action I was expecting. It’s shorter than the already-EP-length debut, but the songs are sharper, especially the first few. The band still sticks to one-four-five progressions a little too often, but they stretch their melodies here and there, and let the lead guitar do its thing better. They’re still boring, though – where many hear reckless, explosive energy, I hear sameness and repetition and an overall soup of blah.

Which would be strike two. As Room on Fire drew to a close, ironically with a song called “I Can’t Win,” I reconsidered this whole resolution thing. Perhaps judgmental is where it’s at. Maybe, at this point in my musical life, I really can tell within one song whether or not a band will ever be worth my time. Maybe I’ve been right all along. And maybe I just wasted $36 on thudding, too-cool-for-school rawk music that I’ll never listen to again.

And then I fired up First Impressions of Earth.

The album’s texture was the first thing that caught me by surprise. While the other two Strokes albums sound like they were recorded from seven miles away, Earth is big, clear and up-front. The change is remarkable. They no longer sound like they’re trying to fake poverty, or pretending that it’s 1972 and their crippled reel-to-reel machine is all they have. It’s warmer and more inviting, which some will see as a sellout, but which I consider a real improvement.

But wait – that’s not the only giant leap here. The songs are light years better. Listen to “Juicebox,” the new single – that thing’s a monster, incorporating some of Franz Ferdinand’s melodic tricks and a monolithic bass groove. The chorus is massive, the band sounds like they’re on fire – the energy on this one makes Is This It sound like a moldering corpse. “Juicebox” isn’t the only good song here, but it is probably the best one, and the surest sign that the Strokes want to move forward.

The rest of Earth is similarly ambitious. The album is nearly twice as long as its predecessor, and many of its songs top four minutes. (For the Strokes, four minutes is “Stairway to Heaven.”) Of those, very few don’t deserve the longer run times. “15 Minutes” is the most egregious, with “Killing Lies” right behind – those tunes drag down the middle of what otherwise is a pretty enjoyable little record. Beyond that, though, the production is just swell, effectively countering boredom at every turn with lead guitar breaks and neat little moments.

The most surprising song here is “Ask Me Anything,” which sounds like something Stephin Merritt would come up with. It is the only Strokes song without any guitars at all – it’s all string sounds and Casablancas’ tenor. The lyrics are typically lame, with “I got nothing to give, got no reason to live,” and “I got nothing to hide, wish I wasn’t so shy” being representative examples. But the song is interesting, especially in contrast. It’s followed by “Electricityscape,” which is not only a great pun but a well-arranged piece of melody.

Still, nothing here approaches the slap-you-upside-the-head force of “Juicebox.” The band picks up steam near the end, with “Ize of the World” and the shambling “Evening Sun,” but it can’t regain the power of its opening shots. But hell, at least they tried. First Impressions of Earth is several large steps in the right direction for the Strokes, and I hope they keep traveling down this road.

I’m also glad I got over my hang-up and heard it. We’ll see how long this non-judgmental thing lasts, but given how successful the Third Album Test was this time, I can’t see not doing it again, and giving more chances to other bands I’d written off. I might even start to take some of Dr. Tony Shore’s recommendations seriously. You never know. Anyway, I’ll keep you posted on how my journey to a less obnoxious me is coming along.

Next week, I catch up with some of 2005’s forgotten sons. And daughters.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

This is Fifty Second Week.

But before we get to that, I want to mention something. I just found out that Mike Peters, founding member and singer for the Alarm, has cancer.

He announced it on his website on December 17. He has chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which has no cure. It turns out, what Peters thought was a miraculous recovery from non-Hodgkins lymphoma 10 years ago was actually a decade-long remission. He’s undergoing chemotherapy now, and his doctors tell him that if he responds well, he could put it back into remission for another 10 years, or longer. Which is good. But it’s still cancer.

The Alarm was among my favorite bands when I was in high school, and they still flip my particular switch today. Peters himself is one of the most passionate and dedicated musicians I have ever encountered, too, always embarking on these insane projects for his fans – day-long concerts, individualized recordings with personal greetings, things like that. Peters and his music are forever etched into my formative memories. The Alarm is responsible for a huge chunk of my artistic tastes, and my respect for Peters has never wavered.

So in many ways, this is like being told a childhood friend is dying. Peters himself seems optimistic and ready to fight, and I wish him well. Hopefully this isn’t another Warren Zevon situation, and we have many more years of Alarm goodness (like their soon-to-be-released album, Under Attack) to look forward to. I’m kind of babbling here, but I’m still a little stunned by the news. Between that and John Spencer dying, the last few weeks of 2005 have taken on a weird little pall.

Anyway, I hope you pull through this, Mike. Looking forward to the new record, and to the next 10 new records after that.

* * * * *

Where was I?

Okay, right. This is Fifty Second Week.

So last year, I ended up with a pile of unreviewed CDs – something like 40 of them, I think. And I thought, seriously, that I would do a big round-up column at the end of the year, and just get to them all. I started writing it, trying to keep my thoughts to a reasonable minimum, and ended up with a monster. I think I only got through about half of the stack, and it turned out at more than 4,000 words.

Worse than that, it was godawful boring. One thing I discovered while sloughing through that failed experiment is that when I don’t review something, it’s rarely because it’s bad. If an album is terrible, I generally will rake it over the coals, like I did with Weezer’s Make Believe this year. Especially if an album is epically, colossally bad, like Weezer’s was.

No, if I don’t get to something, it’s because I’m not moved either way, usually. Roughly 90 percent of the music I hear just floats in one ear and out the other, without even upsetting the furniture or ruffling the drapes on its way through. Most of what I hear is utterly forgettable. So this year, I went through the stack of unreviewed discs, and culled the ones I could remember liking, even a little. It’s a shorter pile – 25 or so – but it’s still too large, too long, to make a comprehensive review column that isn’t a chore to plow through.

And that’s where the Fifty Second Week idea comes in.

This being the 52nd week of the year, I couldn’t resist the pun. I’m going to take the stack, right now, and give myself 50 seconds to review each one. Once the 50 seconds are up, I stop, even if it’s mid-sentence. I have no idea how this is going to work, but it should allow me to wrap up 2005 in less than an hour, if I do it right. And hopefully, it’ll be more fun to read than a straight analysis would be. On that score, I hope you’ll let me know. Of course you will, right?

Right. One more thing – in revisiting the stack of candidates for this column, I’ve already decided that a couple of this year’s releases deserve a more thorough review, which they’ll get during the January doldrums. So if you don’t see your favorite album of the year in the snippets that follow (and here I’m talking to you, Lucas Beeley), don’t fret. And stay tuned.

All right. Fifty Second Week starts… now.

* * * * *

…And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Worlds Apart.

This is the second Trail of Dead album I have heard and ignored, for some reason. It’s not bad, but it is kind of typical. This one is more ambitious than the last one, with pianos and strings and things and wow, those 50 seconds run out pretty quickly.

Devendra Banhart, Cripple Crow.

I bought this on a recommendation from Erin Kennedy, and I think I listened to it twice. It’s a longer, more complex work from this folkie hippie nutjob, but it still needs a good edit. It probably would have made a much better 40-minute disc than its current 70-some-minute…

Jimmy Chamberlin Complex, Life Begins Again.

This is actually really good. The Smashing Pumpkins drummer does some neat jazz-influenced instrumental stuff, and you can’t fault his choice in vocalists for a couple of the tracks, including Rob Dickinson of Catherine Wheel. I like this, don’t know why I didn’t review it.

Tracy Chapman, Where You Live.

I have tried and tried to be a Tracy Chapman fan, but she keeps on putting out albums that bore me silly. This one is no better or worse than her last four or five, in that it’s repetitive, low-key folk that doesn’t do it for me at all. I used to like her stuff, but now it just barely registers.

Harry Connick Jr., Occasion.

Now this is what I want from Harry. It’s an instrumental workout, with Branford Marsalis on saxophone, that’s down and dirty, sometimes dissonant, and always pretty cool. I have been disillusioned with his vocal works (Only You, 30, Songs I Heard) in the past few years, but this is the real deal.

Jamie Cullum, Catching Tales.

I liked Cullum’s first one, with its jazzy takes on alt-rock songs, but this one is a mess, with really slick pop production and some awful vocal moments. The best thing here is, again, a take on an alt-rock track, the Doves’ “Catch the Sun.” Otherwise, bleh.

Dream Theater, Octavarium.

Never thought this would end up here. This is good, yet standard Dream Theater, except for the 20-minute title track, performed with an orchestra. But of course they used an orchestra – where else could this band go? They are already the most complex, pompous prog band on earth. Of course they went with an orchestra.

Dredg, Catch Without Arms.

If you’re expecting something as nifty as their last one, El Cielo, well, keep looking, This is a pop-rock record, designed for airplay, with some boring song structures. It’s okay for what it is, but if this hadn’t been Dredg, I wouldn’t have bought it.

Explosions in the Sky, The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place.

The one thing in this list that I think is brilliant. This is expansive instrumental rock, with guitars that pierce at times and caress at others. I really like this record, I just heard it too late to do anything good with it. And what else can you say about a record like this, anyway?

Mitchell Froom, A Thousand Days.

A surprise from producer Froom – this is a low-key collection of piano ditties, instrumental, with little connecting interludes. I like it, but it doesn’t stick with me. It’s kind of a curiosity instead of a genuine work, but as a curiosity, it’s pretty good.

Headphones.

This is David Bazan of Pedro the Lion, going all electro-pop. It’s a very depressing, bitter work, but the synth sounds compliment his hangdog voice well. “Gas and Matches” is a little masterpiece, but nothing else here is as good. Another curiosity.

The Magic Numbers.

This was recommended to me by a reader, and while I’m not sad I bought it, it’s nothing amazing, It’s a British band playing American heartlland music, kind of, and everything here is too long and too simplistic for me to really get into it. But it’s not bad.

Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill Acoustic.

The defining soundtrack of my senior year of college, all grown up and calmed down. What’s amazing about this is how much better Morissette has become as a vocalist. There are songs on here she couldn’t handle 10 years ago, and now they sound like she was born to sing them. Still, this is what it is, and if you didn’t like her before…

My Morning Jacket, Z.

Every year there’s an overhyped record that the critics fawn over and I just don’t get. This year, it’s this one, a decent slab of rock with synth colorings, but nothing to go nutty over. I don’t understand the acclaim, really, but they’re better than their American Radiohead rep.

Meshell Ndegeocello, The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance of the Infidel.

She’s always had jazz-funk in her soul, but now Meshell goes full bore with this mostly instrumental jam record. She’s awesome on bass, as always, but this thing just drags in places, and it should soar.

Pelican, The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw.

Like Explosions in the Sky with amps on 11. This is massive, monolithic riff-rock with no words, which means it’s pummeling, punishing stuff that offers no reprieve. But it is very well played. I’m just not sure how often I’ll reach for it.

Robert Plant and the Strange Sensation, Mighty Rearranger.

The best Robert Plant album in ages, and it still ain’t all that good. This is spooky low rock, with some neat grooves and some synthetic drums where there ought to be real ones. But Shaman Robert really shines here, especially on the quieter tracks. This is good, but not Zep good.

Soulfly, Dark Ages.

More than just a metal band, Max Cavalera’s Soulfly is one of the most experimental heavy music units on the planet. Here they do the same old thing, but it’s quite a thing, mixing metal with exotic percussion and even some mariachi influences. This is really good stuff.

Stream of Passion, Embrace the Storm.

Lousy band name, but it’s the only bad thing about it. This is Arjen Lucassen’s new project, he of the crazy Ayreon albums, and here he shows Evanescence how to do their schtick right. Huge guitar epics with a lovely female voice atop them. This is pretty much wonderful, if you like this sort of thing.

Steve Vai, Real Illusions: Reflections.

I think I might be over Steve Vai. This is another breathtakingly complex slab of guitar wankery and instrumental arrangements, but it all goes nowhere and means nothing, and I can’t remember a note of it 30 seconds after it ends. Empty virtuosity.

Martha Wainwright.

I bought this because she’s Rufus’ sister, and I wish I hadn’t. It’s sometimes pleasantly ignorable, but often her voice takes on Rickie Lee Jones proportions, and becomes actively annoying. I think one Wainwright sibling will be enough for me.

Waking Ashland, Composure.

Another pretty good Tooth and Nail band that I just didn’t get to. This is piano-pop with hooks, and it’s shiny and sweet stuff. I especially like the epic closer “Sing Me to Sleep.” I probably should have given this one a little more attention during the year, come to think of it.

Roger Waters, Ca Ira.

I only bought this ‘cause Waters’ name is on it. It’s a full-length opera, and if you’re expecting a Wall-type rock opera, I hate to disappoint you. This is a Pavarotti-style opera about the French revolution, and it’s good for what it is, but not something I’d have bought if not for the former Floyd’s participation.

* * * * *

And that’s that. I don’t know, what did you think? I did manage the whole thing in just over an hour, and now I have at least rudimentary thoughts out there on 23 ignored records, so on my end it was a success. It’s kind of an anticlimactic way to see out the year, especially after my mammoth Top 10 List column. I await your comments – should this be a regular thing?

January is pretty barren, as I mentioned, so I saved some of the more deserving records for next month. I also plan to check out a band I’ve been avoiding, now that they qualify for my Third Album Test, which I’ll explain when we get there. The last weeks in January begin 2006 in earnest, with new ones by Ester Drang, Robert Pollard, Richard Julian, Duncan Sheik, Sepultura and the Devin Townsend Band. After that, there’s something pretty cool scheduled for release every week through April.

Year six, here we come. Thanks again for reading.

Happy new year.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I am writing this six days before Christmas. It is bitterly cold, and the snow that accumulated last week stubbornly refuses to leave. I’ve just returned from the east coast, where I celebrated my grandmother’s 90th birthday with my dad’s side of the family, and I’m preparing to head there again, but a bit more north, to visit my mom and my best friends for the holiday. I only have a weekend, though – for the first time in years, I have a full-time job waiting for me when I get back, and while I am distressed that I can’t take three weeks off this year, I’m also elated that I’m doing what I love and getting paid for it.

Right now I’m listening to 29, Ryan Adams’ new album. It’s his third of 2005, and believe it or not, it doesn’t suck – it’s right up there with the other two. It’s a slower, deeper, much more December album than Cold Roses or Jacksonville City Nights, but it’s everything that the self-affected Love is Hell wasn’t. There’s a genuine beauty to these nine songs, even if they are the leftovers from his other, more sprawling sets this year. How Adams managed to release 41 songs this year and never haul out a real stinker is beyond me, but that’s just what he’s done.

29 is the last major release of the year, or at least the last one that I really care about, and I had worried that it would disrupt the list that follows, but happily, it doesn’t. It’s a lovely record, no doubt, but the 10 albums that comprise my list this year are by turns astonishing and sublime. Last year’s number one, Brian Wilson’s SMiLE, was kind of a foregone conclusion – it’s one of the best records I own, and it would have topped the list in any year. But this year’s top pick came out of nowhere, displaying an unparalleled artistry and emotional grandeur that refused to be ignored.

The other nine are, more or less, just my favorites. There were so many superb albums this year that I wrote roughly 14 drafts of the list, and I’m still not a hundred percent comfortable with it. The honorable mentions are all good enough to be on the list proper, and in prior drafts most of them were. I also struggled with the #10 spot this year – there was an unprecedented five-way tie, and all five deserve the spot. I ended up picking the one I listened to most often, the one I love the most, and I know that decision is going to upset a few of my faithful readers.

But hell, what good is a list like this if it doesn’t piss off a few people?

The rules have not changed since last year – I only select new studio albums, which means no live records, no compilations, no soundtracks, and no covers projects. Candidates must be released between January 1 and December 31 – none of that October to September crap the Grammys do. Only albums are eligible, which means no EPs, which generally translates to nothing under half an hour.

Placement on the list is as much about composition as performance. I’m looking for the best new songs of the year, but I’m also looking for the best sequence of songs, the most complete work. The number one spot is reserved for the album with the greatest cumulative effect, the one that knocks me out from start to finish. Style is not important – previous winners include OK Computer and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but they also include Duncan Sheik’s delicate Phantom Moon and Eminem’s incendiary The Marshall Mathers LP.

I accept anything that anyone with internet access can buy these days, and I assume that if I can get it, so can you. The rule used to be that an album had to appear in U.S. record stores to qualify, and while I still don’t like to include imports, and would rather wait for a stateside release, too often that sort of thing isn’t guaranteed anymore. Hence, if I can pull it up on a web page and buy it with a credit card during the year in question, it’s fair game. It’s not a rule I invoke often, though – every one of this year’s top 10 awaits you at your local Sam Goody, except one, and I’ll gladly provide the link for that one when we get there.

This list always affords me the opportunity to look back on the year, and assess it somewhat, although I usually find that I don’t know what a year means to me until several of them have passed. I found myself affected and devastated by larger things this year, like Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, but from a personal standpoint, it was a much better year than 2004. I said final goodbyes to a few people in ’05, and I feel like I’m in the process of saying final goodbyes to a few more right now, but I’ve met some amazing ones, too. My life imploded late last year, and I feel like only now am I really putting it back together and moving forward.

It’s no surprise, then, that my favorite music of 2005 was more optimistic and hopeful, even the albums about abandonment and fragility. 2005 was about rescue, about transcendence, about seeing how sometimes it all fits together, even when it seems like it doesn’t. The music I’ve selected works mostly on that theme, and it’s fitting that the top two are genuine surprises, records I could never have predicted would affect me the way they did. Much like the year they represent, actually.

Okay, enough blog-like babble. Besides the five-way tie for 10th place, I also have 11 honorable mentions, so let’s get to them.

We start at the bottom of the slide – I’m grading albums as a whole, and since I really only liked half of Coldplay’s X&Y, I can’t put it any higher than this. But man, did I like the first half. It’s as much of an evolutionary breakthrough for this most overhyped of bands as I could have hoped, with the U2 influences tempered by some forays into British prog-pop. The first six songs are such a leap over A Rush of Blood to the Head that the more traditional and boring second half is quite a letdown, a crash to earth that leaves the album broken and bleeding. And yet, even that stuff isn’t bad, just ordinary.

For extraordinary, you have to go to Fiona Apple, whose third album, Extraordinary Machine, lived up to the hype. Hell, the word extraordinary is in the title, and it still dazzled. This one gets demerits for being just that little bit less captivating than its widely bootlegged original version, produced by Jon Brion. (We’ll be hearing more from him later.) But even as a stripped-down take on these songs, the album is still terrific, and the songs confirm Apple’s status as an idiosyncratic treasure.

And that, my friends, is it for hyped-up mainstream artists in this part of the list. The rest of the honorables go to smaller works on smaller labels, like Tooth and Nail Records, the Seattle group that has stuck with Starflyer 59 since their inception more than a decade ago. Starflyer’s latest, Talking Voice Vs. Singing Voice, is probably their best. Jason Martin and Frank Lenz took on the new wave movement, outdoing every Bunnymen wannabe with some of their finest songs and productions. “Good Sons” is one of the best tunes of the year, and probably the best Starflyer song ever.

Fellow Cornerstone performers Over the Rhine followed up their sprawling double album Ohio, which made 2003’s list, with Drunkard’s Prayer, a whispering, intimate little thing that documents the rebuilding of a marriage. In its own hushed way, it outdoes its predecessor’s massive expanse by keeping things simple, and focusing on Karin Bergquist’s heavenly voice. “Born” is as beautiful a mantra as one could hope for, and this little gem concludes with a version of “My Funny Valentine” that will stun you. In many ways, Karin and Linford have never sounded better, and the album’s real-life connection to their marriage makes it even more special.

As I said above, Ryan Adams came out with three dynamic records in 2005, and I hope it’s not giving the game away to say that one of them made the list. But the other two deserve spotlights of their own, partially because no one was as prolific and restlessly creative as Adams this year, but also because these records returned to us the twangy, brilliant wonder-child he used to be.

He started with the best of the lot, and that’s the one that wound up on the list. But Jacksonville City Nights, the follow-up, wandered further down the country path, with songs that sound like decades-old classics. And while I’ve only heard 29 once, I’m comfortable including it here, since it strips his traditional sound down to almost nothing and still manages to captivate. With one listen, “Nightbirds” has leapt to near the top of my list of Adams’ best songs of 2005, and I’m willing to bet it will only get better with repeated plays.

Every year, I hear one or two albums that are unlike anything I’ve ever come across, and they usually end up here in the honorables for that very reason. The Fiery Furnaces keep on evolving and surprising me – it’s been a fascinating ride from their humble, blues-rock beginnings. Who ever thought they would make something like Rehearsing My Choir, their collaboration with their grandmother, Olga Sarantos? It’s a radio play, it’s an old-time mini-movie, it’s a rock opera, it’s beat poetry, it’s a worn and battered novel of an album that resembles nothing else around. And it’s beautiful, in its odd, intricate little way. The most stinging criticism I heard of this record is that you have to really concentrate to listen to it, and to me, that’s not a criticism at all.

But if you want to just drift off into the ether, you can’t do better this year than Hammock, Marc Byrd’s new project. Hammock’s Kenotic is a web of atmosphere and otherworldly beauty, music for watching the sun rise on Mars. No other album this year carried me away like this one did. Byrd gets another mention on the list, considerably closer to the top spot, but it’s his work with Hammock that sounds the most like his dream project, and like an actual dream. It’s gorgeous stuff, well worth heading to their site to hear and buy.

And now we get into the portion of the honorables list that becomes interchangeable with the actual top 10 list. Any of these next seven records could have been in the proper list, and may have been in another year, one in which my overall mood was even slightly different.

Glen Phillips, erstwhile singer for Toad the Wet Sprocket, kicked his solo career up another notch with the excellent Winter Pays for Summer. A deceptively simple folk-pop album, Winter is buoyed by yet another set of insightful, clever lyrics and terrific melodies, delivered in Phillips’ clear, even voice. There is nothing at all special about this record except that it contains 13 great songs, and yet, sometimes, that’s all you need. In fact, since the album weaves an overall theme of simplicity and contentment, the very fact that there’s nothing special about it is what makes it special.

Speaking of former singers of ‘90s bands, here’s Mike Doughty with his splendid full-length solo debut, Haughty Melodic. He could not have veered from Soul Coughing’s signature sound any more if he’d tried – where that band was percussive and nonsensical, Doughty’s solo work is lyrical and incisive, just swell acoustic pop. Doughty has a voice that can’t be denied, too, whether he’s thrashing his way through “Busting Up a Starbucks” or elevating the simple melody of “White Lexus.” Only a mid-album duet with Dave Matthews disappoints, and even that doesn’t disappoint too much.

And then there’s the Eels, whose Blinking Lights and Other Revelations seemed like a shoo-in a few months ago. I’m still not absolutely sure why I’ve excluded it from the list, but I just didn’t reach for it too many times after reviewing it. There’s no doubt, though, that its 33-song expanse makes it the most ambitious Eels album, and one of the most successful and heartbreaking. E’s world-weary voice has never sounded better, either, than when he’s providing the dark cloud to these songs’ silver linings. It’s a great piece of work, and if you like it better than some of the albums on the list, I wouldn’t blame you a bit.

The same goes for these next four, the albums tied for 10th place in my mind. They are all interchangeable, pretty much, so if you disagree with my choice (and I know at least one person who will violently disagree with it), feel free to substitute any of the following four. This has never happened to me before, and I made myself pick one – on a different day, the result may have looked nothing like this.

Anyway. The four other #10s:

Kanye West’s Late Registration is another one that deserves its hype. West’s ego gets in the way a bit too often, but even he can’t obscure his own obvious talents. He tapped an unlikely producer for this album – Jon Brion, who has worked with Fiona Apple and Aimee Mann and several other classic popsters. His total rap experience before Late Registration was zero, and it shows – this album is not bound by the ridiculous rules of the genre. It’s so far above what just about anyone else is doing with beats and rhymes right now that calling it just a rap album seems silly. It’s the hip-hop Sgt. Pepper, the one that shows all the other rap artists what their music can aspire to and achieve.

Elbow’s Leaders of the Free World received the lamest U.S. release I’ve ever seen. V2 manufactured them, but only shipped them to select stores, and let the whole thing die on the vine. Which is a travesty – this is Elbow’s most accomplished album, and the one which stands the best chance of scoring with a mass audience. Parts of this record are almost impossibly beautiful, with Guy Garvey harnessing that hangdog tenor and reaching deep, but other parts are the most aggressive and explosive music Elbow has yet made. The title track is a classic, and the album’s concluding trilogy a fragile wonder. Brit-pop got no better than this in 2005.

And North American pop-rock got no better than the New Pornographers, who unleashed a fusillade of kickass with their third, Twin Cinema. It’s one melodic powerhouse after another on this album, and the best of them come from the pen of A.C. Newman, who seems to be angling for a place among the greats. Some songs here give vintage Elvis Costello and Ray Davies a run for their money, and while Dan Bejar’s three tracks don’t quite measure up, they don’t kill the record, either. Twin Cinema is a more assured and complex album than the band’s first two, and if they keep this up, they’ll soon have a body of work that rivals that of the best pop bands you can think of.

Which brings me to the one I mentioned last week, Beck’s Guero. This is everything a Beck album should be, and more than I expected. It’s sonically dizzying, of course, but it’s infused with a sadness and a deep center that gives it a punch his other funk-filled records were lacking. This is the missing link between Odelay and Sea Change, the album that makes me think that he’s never been just kidding – all these different sides are really him. As a sonic architect, Beck is practically without peer, but all that would mean nothing without the emotion that suffuses every pore of this little masterpiece. It may just be Beck’s best album.

So why didn’t it make the list? Hell if I know. Part of the reason, though, is that I am fully in the thrall of the #10 album, easily the most fun record I heard in 2005. The rest of the list is pretty serious, especially the second half, and I think it really needs the balance the bottom couple provide.

Okay, moment of truth. The 2005 top 10 list:

#10: The Click Five, Greetings from Imrie House.

Bring on the hate mail. I don’t care. This album rocks. It is everything that silly pop music ought to be. From first note to last, it is just dynamite, flat-out fun. There’s a tendency to get wrapped up in the gimmick here, what with the matching suits, the trading cards, the funny teen-band poses, and the video with the helicopter and the screaming fangirls. But man, listen to the music – the Click Five are in on the joke, and they’re using it to spice up some of the sweetest, well-constructed pop you’ll hear anywhere. This is a band that quotes “Across the Universe” in the middle of the best prom theme ever, and then covers the Thompson Twins unironically. They are championed by Paul Stanley of Kiss and Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne, and that juxtaposition just says it all. Greetings from Imrie House does what it does brilliantly, with a wink and a nod to the greats. This is the smartest brainless pop you’ll find anywhere, a perfectly crafted, perfectly disposable work of delight.

#9: The Dissociatives.

The first of our out-of-nowhere wonders, the Dissociatives are Daniel Johns of Silverchair and British DJ Paul Mac. Dr. Tony Shore recommended this thing to me early in the year, and I ignored him for weeks, certain that the guy from Silverchair would never make something I’d love. Mea culpa, because this album is awesome. It is futuristic electro-pop, with a classicist’s attention to melody and songcraft. There are songs here that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Neil Finn album, and from me, that’s a hell of a compliment. But it’s the sound, the blipping, whirring, retro-futuristic production that makes this a slam dunk for me. Johns and Mac have made a future-pop record that never once skimps on the songs, one that often sounds like what might have happened if George Martin had borrowed Radiohead’s studio to record Rubber Soul in. Hopefully this is just the first Dissociatives album. I certainly won’t wait weeks to buy the second.

#8: Kate Bush, Aerial.

I have never been much of a Kate Bush fan, despite the best efforts of a few of my more enamored friends. She’s been in hiding for the last 12 years, and I can’t say I’ve missed her a whole lot, especially since her pre-hiatus swan song, The Red Shoes, was an iffy proposition at best. But even if I had been waiting breathlessly for the last decade-plus, I’d like to think that Aerial would have satisfied me. It’s two records in one, and it’s just as lovely and loopy as her best stuff. The more random first disc is good, especially the erotically charged housewife reverie “Mrs. Bartolozzi,” but it’s the second disc, subtitled A Sky of Honey, that landed the album on this list. A seamless 42-minute suite about an uneventful day, A Sky of Honey is captivating in its contentment. It flirts with jazz and flamenco and thudding techno, but through it all, it retains its essential Kate Bush-ness. This is an album that no other artist on Earth could have, or would have, made. There’s only one Kate Bush, but thank God there is one.

#7: Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, Cold Roses.

The opening salvo of Adams’ three-pronged attack this year remains the best, thanks to his amazing new backing band and his most electrifying set of songs since Heartbreaker. Here, finally, at last, is the Ryan Adams we know and love – the brash, boozy, southern-fried supergenius who writes stone cold classics and makes it seem as easy as breathing. There are 18 songs on Cold Roses, an old-fashioned double record, and they all sound like they’ve been circulating the bars in Tennessee for decades. Just the first three songs here would be enough, but there is not one weak moment on this album, and Adams’ falsetto has never sounded better. Full credit to the Cardinals, who also tore up Jacksonville City Nights – they’re the best band Adams has ever had, and yes, I’m including Whiskeytown. Even if this had been the only album Adams released in 2005, he would still have had his best year in ages. And he gets bonus points for one of my favorite packages of the year – a miniature vinyl replica that looks straight out of the ‘70s, complete with CD labels that make them look like records. This is classic Ryan Adams. Go ahead, Ryan, take 2006 off. You earned it.

#6: Paul McCartney, Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard.

All is forgiven, Paul. “Silly Love Songs?” It never happened. “Ebony and Ivory?” Forgotten. “Wonderful Christmas Time?” Well, that one still stings a bit. But it’s in the past. Macca has been on a major upswing over the past few years, and he’s hit his latter-day apex with this shockingly good record. Part of the secret to its success is producer Nigel Godrich, best known for OK Computer and Beck’s Sea Change, who urged McCartney to take it all seriously, and to play nearly every instrument. But I can’t overstate just how great these songs are – for the first time in a couple decades, McCartney sounds like what he is: one of the world’s best living pop songwriters. With “Promise To You Girl” he’s delivered his best rocker since maybe “Band on the Run,” and with “Jenny Wren” he’s channeled his younger self, circa Rubber Soul. Chaos and Creation wraps up with two perfect McCartney ballads, and hopefully signals a creative resurgence for Sir Paul. This is the album for everyone who has tried and failed to be a McCartney fan since the ‘70s. All the reasons we love him are right here.

#5: Aimee Mann, The Forgotten Arm.

But when it comes to classic pop songwriters, Aimee Mann is nearly peerless. The Forgotten Arm is a rock opera about a former boxer struggling with booze and the woman he loves, a delicate narrative that packs several sucker-punches. But even if you don’t care about the story, it’s still an incredible sequence of songs. Mann shook things up for this record, breaking free of the icy chill that surrounded Lost in Space with a live, raw sound recorded in less than a week. The result is perhaps her most immediate album, and also one of her most heartbreaking. The stretch of songs from “Goodbye Caroline” to “Little Bombs” is unbeatable, and the resigned closer, “Beautiful,” gets me every time. Mann has been criticized for making the same album again and again, but here she found a way to break the mold while retaining the essence of her gloriously sad tales. It’s an Aimee Mann album unlike any other, and yet it’s still an Aimee Mann album, full of desperate people clinging to one another with all their might.

#4: The Choir, O How the Mighty Have Fallen.

The Choir is not the best band in the world, but merely my favorite one. It’s a distinction I’ve had to make for years now, as they turned out decent-to-very-good albums that, by any objective criteria, didn’t really belong on these lists. I liked them, especially Speckled Bird and Free Flying Soul, but honestly, I knew that they had peaked with Circle Slide in 1990, and would probably never match it. But man, does O How the Mighty Have Fallen ever come close. It’s the best thing they’ve done in 15 years, the culmination of their stylistic shifts since Circle Slide. Here is the driving guitar-pop they’ve been perfecting, buoyed by Derri Daugherty’s angelic voice, but here at last is that dreamy, otherworldly edge that marks their best work, courtesy of new member Marc Byrd. Mighty is the perfect balance between their shoegazer and pop sides, and it contains some of their best songs in more than 10 years. And it concludes with “To Rescue Me,” their finest hymn, and probably the prettiest and most heartfelt thing I heard this year. Mighty is a creative rebirth, a resurrection, a second life for my favorite band on the planet, and I couldn’t be happier with it. Get it here.

#3: Ben Folds, Songs for Silverman.

People hated this record. I don’t get that. To my mind, Silverman is the most accomplished, mature, well-wrought Ben Folds album yet, largely because it’s the first one that doesn’t sneer at you. Folds inhabits these songs, and instead of just telling stories, he makes you feel them. While there has never been any doubt about his sincerity, Silverman feels like his most personal work, and that elevates it above his previous efforts, astounding as they were. Folds is one of the best songwriters and musicians around right now, one of Aimee Mann’s challengers in the field of classically-influenced pop, and he plays a mean piano to boot. Not that you’d know it from this mostly slow, traditionally beautiful record – it’s the first Folds album on which he resists the temptation to show off. But listen to “Jesusland,” his paean to the southwest, or to “Gracie,” one of the most moving father-daughter songs I can think of, or to “Late,” a most unsentimental and yet shattering tribute to Elliott Smith. It’s all great – the smartass of “Song for the Dumped” has grown up, but this time, maturity doesn’t equal suck. I hope Silverman appreciates these songs, whoever he is. I know I do.

#2; Death Cab for Cutie, Plans.

The first huge surprise. I have always liked Death Cab, but I’ve never loved them – they were too precious sometimes, too self-consciously poetic. I wasn’t expecting much from their major-label debut, especially considering some of the lukewarm reviews, but from the first listen, Plans took up residence in my heart. I’m not going to be able to explain this one, I’m sure, but this album affected me like no other this year. It’s deceptively simple – 44 minutes, 11 little songs. But as a whole, it’s a song cycle about disconnection, death and longing, and its cumulative effect is magical. Ben Gibbard’s lyrics here are devastating, yet hopeful, and the music is wide-eyed and wondrous – grandiose when it needs to be (“What Sarah Said”) and understated when it ought to be (“Stable Song”). Plans also includes “I Will Follow You Into the Dark,” the most haunting love song I have heard in a long time, performed with nothing but Gibbard’s voice and guitar. But individual songs are not the point – the front-to-back experience of Plans is like holding someone close, and praying they will never leave. This is my favorite album of the year, hands down.

But it’s not the best.

The best album of 2005 hit while I was at the Cornerstone Festival in July. Boxes of CDs were opened on the first day, and by the third, the whole place was buzzing. “What’s everyone talking about?” I asked a total stranger before a show on day four. The response was simple, and accurate.

“Sufjan Stevens just put out the album of the year.”

#1: Sufjan Stevens, Illinois.

If you’ve heard this album, you know there was no other choice. Even the critics seem unified this year, which says to me that Stevens’ achievement is pretty much undeniable. If you hear Illinois, you fall for it, plain and simple.

I had never heard of Sufjan Stevens before this year. Trust me, I feel stupid. Illinois is his fifth album, and after hearing it, I scoured the internet, looking for some clue as to how an artist this impressive, on all levels, could have slipped by me. I don’t mean that egotistically – I’m sure there are hundreds of great musicians I’ve never encountered, but I spend an inordinate amount of time each year trying to rectify that. I hoped that perhaps none of the usual suspects had been talking about Stevens before this record, but alas, the accolades were universal for Greetings From Michigan and Seven Swans, too. I just missed the train.

I’m on board now, though, big time. Illinois works so well on so many levels, it’s kind of scary. It’s the most ambitious record I heard this year – 74 minutes, 22 tracks, every one of them a studio marvel, and it’s part two of perhaps the most insanely ambitious project I can think of. Stevens plans to make 50 albums, one for each of the 50 states, each one exploring the history and character of its namesake. That, if I may say so, is absolutely nuts. But what he’s done so far makes me hope he can pull it off.

So on one level, Illinois is about my adopted home state. Stevens explores touchstones of state history, like Superman’s creation, or the invention of Cream of Wheat, or Abraham Lincoln’s birth. In a way, the whole album sounds like a product of the Illinois Department of Tourism, like the soundtrack to a long and lovely educational filmstrip. But that’s only one level, and if this were merely a Schoolhouse Rock special, or the kind of historical romp that They Might Be Giants are known for, it wouldn’t be as remarkable as it is.

No, Stevens uses Illinois history as metaphor and thematic device, and ends up digging deeper than you’d think possible. “Chicago,” for example, is all about Stevens traveling to the great city for the first time, and feeling free, but it manages to capture the grandeur of the tiny moment and the vast skyline at once. Illinois is huge, massive and dynamic, but it’s about little things, expanded to a macro scale. “Casimir Pulaski Day,” named after a little-known state holiday (first Monday in March, in fact), is a tale of death and recrimination and righteous anger. “Decatur” recalls a trip that Michigan-born Stevens took with his stepmother, and recounts the state landmarks he saw.

The music here is towering, full of orchestras and choirs and layers of sound, all impeccably arranged. It’s grand and sweeping stuff, especially the two epics, and when it plunges into the darkness, as on “The Seer’s Tower,” it can feel downright monolithic. The thing is, Stevens never falters. In 74 minutes of intricate and extraordinary music, there is not one false note, not one half-assed song. I was waiting for the moment when the album took a tumble and fell apart, honestly, and it never came. The record’s finale, “The Tallest Man, The Broadest Shoulders,” may even be its best song.

But amid all the magnificent Illinoise, the song that stuck with me is “John Wayne Gacy Jr.,” a hushed and prickly ode to this state’s most famous serial killer. It’s guitar, piano and voice, and nothing else, but it grabs hold and squeezes like few songs ever do. It’s achingly graphic, detailed and disturbing, but it saves its most potent verse for the end, in which Stevens turns it back on himself: “In my best behavior, I am really just like him, look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid…” It’s the best example here of this album’s genius – Stevens internalizes his subject, and turns what could have been a theme park ride through state history into a work of powerful, moving art.

I highly doubt that Stevens will ever finish his 50 States project – at the current rate of production, it’ll take him another 96 years – but Illinois is fantastic enough that it doesn’t matter. The thought of 48 more of these is almost too exciting to imagine, anyway. No, I’m happy with what I’ve been given – one of the true lessons of my 2005 – and even if Sufjan Stevens never makes another record as wonderful as this one, he’s at least delivered one flat-out masterpiece, which is more than most artists manage. Even if nothing else had been released in 2005, Sufjan Stevens would have made my year.

Wow, look how I’ve gone on. This beast is going to top 5500 words soon, so I think I should start bringing it in for a landing. This is my favorite column to write each year, mainly because it’s the most positive one – I’m much happier talking about music I love than music I can’t stand, or am indifferent to. Hopefully, I’ve managed to convey some of that joy in this long and winding ode.

Thanks to everyone who read and wrote me this year, my fifth as an online columnist. Thanks especially to my faithful correspondents and friends, particularly those whom I’ve been lucky enough to meet through this site. I’m already looking forward to 2006, but this year’s not quite over – join me in seven days for something I’m calling “Fifty Second Week.” And after that, year six.

A pleasant holiday to everyone, and thanks again.

All things grow, all things grow.

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

I’m going to try to slam this one out as quickly as I can.

Lord knows why I don’t just take the week off. I’ve certainly earned it this year – this will be column #52 for 2005, two over my quota. I wrote four stories for the newspaper today, too, and I’m dead tired. My left eye is throbbing from too much staring at computer screens, and I still have a lot of work to do on my Christmas stuff before next week.

You know, that week off is starting to sound like a better idea…

But no. Just one review, though, and I’m going to bed. Forthwith, my last full-length review for Aught Five:

* * * * *

I finished the top 10 list last week, and I found myself surprised by some of the entries, and their places in the list. I love it when that happens – when the simple act of listing favorites defines them for me, as if I didn’t know what I thought until I sat down to write it out. And in many ways, especially in the bottom half of the list, I didn’t.

For example, here’s something that surprised me: Beck’s Guero didn’t make it.

I think in most other years, it probably would have – it was undoubtedly one of the best albums I heard in 2005, just not one of the 10 best. But when I first heard it, back in March, I thought it was a sure bet. Beck has always been a peripheral artist for me, mainly because I’m never certain when I can take him seriously – he’s a terrific sonic architect, and his work is many different shades of fun, but until recently, it’s all sounded a little disconnected.

Not so his 2003 masterpiece Sea Change, a broken-hearted and organic work that spun layers of melancholy magic. I still didn’t get the sense that I was listening to the “real” Beck, whoever that is, but on Sea Change, he sounded more invested in the emotional content of the music than I’d ever heard him. I fully expected a return to ironically distant form on the follow-up, which is why Guero was such a pleasant surprise. It’s just as cut-and-splice as something like Odelay, just as concerned with sonics and beats and samples, but the emotions of Sea Change are still central.

In short, I think it may be his best album, or at least the one that synthesizes his many personalities the best. It’s the quintessential Beck record, and the more I listened to it, the more I liked it. It answered my lingering question about his career with aplomb. Which one of these guys is the real Beck? All of them.

So now that he’s told us, with his two most complete statements, who he thinks he is, Beck has decided to give others the chance to provide new sides to his persona. Guerolito is the companion disc to Guero, an album that needs no companion whatsoever, so it’s hard to justify this album’s existence – it’s a track-by-track remix of Guero by some of the most interesting names in electronic music. And like all remix records, some of the tracks redefine their original counterparts, and some are superfluous.

So why even release it? Well, it’s an interesting experiment in some ways – the remix record has long been the province of electronic music, and Beck is certainly influenced by some of that, although he blends it with blues and pop and soul and folk and a dozen other things to form something uniquely him. Gueroilito lives up to its name (essentially Guero Lite) by focusing on the electronic elements above all else. This is Beck’s first electro-pop album, in a way, and while I miss the genre-jumping of the original tracks, it is interesting to hear him in these settings.

But beyond that, there ain’t much. The best tracks come from the most famous artists, oddly enough. Air’s take on “Missing,” here called “Heaven Hammer,” is atmospheric and moody, while Beastie Boy AdRock takes a simple filler track (“Black Tambourine”) and makes something worthwhile out of it. Boards of Canada steals the whole show with their ambient-wonder version of “Broken Drum,” amplifying the minimalism of the original with cascading layers of backwards sound.

But some of the tracks are just dull, and won’t do much for anyone who already has the album. The ridiculously-named Th’ Corn Gangg strip “Emergency Exit” of everything that was cool about it, and add tacky drums and synths instead. The blues has been sucked out of Diplo’s remix of “Go It Alone,” which is a shame – the blues comprised a key element of Guero’s success, and Diplo is not the only remixer to ignore that. I was glad to hear that John King kept Petra Haden’s mindblowing contribution to “Rental Car,” but the rest of the remix is no great shakes.

Guerolito ends with “Clap Hands,” a new track that, presumably, didn’t make Guero. I hate to say it, but it’s kind of easy to see why – it sounds like a half-empty rough draft for some of Guero’s sonic journeys. Really, this whole thing didn’t need to exist, and I’m kind of sad that it does, because the album it purports to reinvent was such an achievement. Beck may not have made my list this year, but Guero found him producing some of his finest, most heartfelt music, and Guerolito somewhat cheapens that.

But only somewhat.

Next week, the fabled top 10 list. And about 18 honorable mentions. It was a very good year.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I wrote a column for the newspaper this week praising the internet, and how it allows me to do all my Christmas shopping without dealing with anyone else’s holiday angst. Thanks to Amazon and other sites like it, I don’t have to hear one screaming baby or incessant Salvation Army bell if I don’t want to.

Well, here’s part two of my internet love fest, because the ‘net has allowed the smaller, unheralded bands and artists I love to distribute their music direct to my mailbox, and all it takes on my end is a couple of clicks. For me, this is the ideal manifestation of the ‘net revolution – I’m a packaging guy, and I’m not so much interested in context-free downloads, no matter how cool they are. But give me the opportunity to buy a CD, with art and liner notes, direct from the band, and I’m all over it. I get something I can listen to and file in my collection, and the artist gets 100% of the profits. It’s a win-win.

The internet has also enabled these independent-minded bands to release projects of smaller scope, intended for the faithful who seek them out online. Some of my favorite little records of the past five years have only been available direct from their authors, and the increasingly low cost of recording equipment and design work has contributed to these tiny projects looking and sounding just as good as their more widely disseminated brethren.

A guy who’s taken full advantage of the ‘net to reach his fanbase is Ronnie Martin, mastermind of Joy Electric. In between the full-lengths that Tooth and Nail releases, Martin has produced numerous EPs and web-only exclusives for his own labels. Pretty much every album he’s made has a corresponding EP, and although T&N distributed the first few, Martin’s been on his own with most of the others.

Thing is, the EPs are usually satisfying records in and of themselves. Last year’s Friend of Mannequin, the companion piece to the great Hello, Mannequin, included a bunch of new songs that could have been on the album, including “You’re Material,” which should have been. By and large, the EPs have provided Martin a chance to stretch out – see 2003’s The Tick Tock Companion – and experiment with styles that he probably wouldn’t get away with on a main Joy E release.

This year, Martin came out with perhaps his oddest and least accessible album in ages, The Ministry of Archers. I should explain what Joy E does, for newbies – Ronnie Martin writes catchy, melodic pop songs, tunes that would be hits if he handed them over to a rock band, and then records them using nothing but old-time analog synthesizers and his breathy whisper of a voice. It’s a bizarre thing on first encounter, since his work sounds like nothing in either the pop or electronic fields, and Archers was more bizarre than most, with its dissonant Moog wailings and almost oppressive tone. It took a while to warm up to, but once I did, I ranked it pretty highly in his catalog.

The companion EP to Archers is called Montgolfier and the Romantic Balloons, and you’d be forgiven for thinking from the title alone that it’s even weirder. It’s named after brothers Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier, inventors of the hot air balloon, and it begins with the titular suite, a five-part mini-historical opera. If you’re expecting off-the-wall complexity and strangeness from this thing, well, that’s perfectly understandable.

But guess what? Montgolfier turns out to be a celebration of the classic Joy Electric sound of years gone by. The five-part suite is really three songs and two interludes, and the songs are gloriously melodic, stripped of all the anger and darkness of Archers. “The Romantic Balloons” is positively dreamy, three minutes of bliss that all by itself restores the “Joy” to the band’s name. And “The Fifth Point of the Compass” is similarly wonderful, airy and optimistic. Taken as a whole, the five-part Montgolfier suite is the purest Joy E music Ronnie has made in years, a restatement of his vision.

What’s great about Montgolfier is the chance to hear Martin revisit these earlier styles, bringing to them all of the skills he has acquired in the darker places of his career. The minimalism is now a choice, and he arranges these lighter pieces with a master’s touch. If the EP is the second disc of Archers – and they are both roughly half an hour long – then it’s the sound of light breaking through after the storm of disc one. Listening back to back, you get the whole picture of Joy Electric, and really a good sense of just how much Martin can do with nothing but his synths.

Ah, but Montgolfier doesn’t end with the title suite. It’s really two EPs in one, the second called Other Archers, and here Martin lets others run riot with his later songs. It’s a jarring juxtaposition – we jump from a pure analog Joy Electric sound in the first half to clattering digital dance mixes in the second, from the likes of Travelogue and Freezepop. They’re not bad, certainly, and the Freezepop rendering of Archers highlight “Quite Quieter than Spiders” is fascinating. But as with all remixes of Ronnie’s work, something is lost in the translation to modernity. Archers, in its original form, sounds like nothing else on the shelves, but these mixes try to shoehorn it into the digital age, and it seems less special somehow.

I don’t mean to malign the remixers here – I think they did a decent job, and I’m not a purist by any stretch, so I don’t object to cut-and-splice manipulations like these. But Ronnie ends the EP with “Octuplet Down,” an outtake from the Archers sessions that appeared on the vinyl version, and when you get there, it’s instantly clear what’s missing in the remixes. The mixes were approached from a dance music point of view, with emphasis on the beats and the bass lines, whereas Joy Electric has never been about that – it’s all about the melody with Ronnie, and “Octuplet Down” is another winner on that score.

For the full picture of Joy Electric in 2005, I’d recommend getting both Archers and Montgolfier, of course, but I’m biased – I’ve been a fan of Ronnie’s work for years. Newcomers might want to start earlier and work up – Robot Rock is a good jumping-on point, as is Hello, Mannequin. About half of Joy E’s output is available elsewhere, but you can get pretty much everything you need here. Be warned, though – Ronnie is incredibly prolific, and once you get hooked, you’ll want everything. He has two projects for next year: a full-length Joy E album entitled The Memory of Alpha and a record with his brother Jason (of Starflyer 59) called – what else – The Brothers Martin. Both should be worth getting.

* * * * *

Speaking of prolific, I think 2005 was Marc Byrd’s most productive year ever.

Not only did Byrd join with the Choir this year to add his magic to their best album since 1990, he’s also just released his third project of ’05 on his new label, Hammock Music. Byrd is one of the most extraordinary ambient guitar players around these days, influenced by the likes of Robert Fripp and Henry Frayne, but much more emotional in his playing. Some people consider what he does shoegazer music, but I have no idea what that really means. I just call it beautiful – slowly coalescing waves of pretty, unearthly guitar and keys, designed to transport the listener.

I mentioned Byrd’s Hammock project near the end of my massive Cornerstone column this summer, but I don’t think I emphasized nearly enough how fantastic Hammock is. A collaboration between Byrd and keyboardist Andrew Thompson, Hammock makes some of the most gorgeous noise I’ve heard in years. Their full-length debut, Kenotic, is a 70-minute glorious drift, soothing and menacing at the same time. In places, it reminded me of the Autumns, and the Moon Seven Times, and other like-minded bands few have ever heard. But Byrd and Thompson brought their own styles to it, incorporating melodies and samples and wrapping it all in a dream-like cocoon.

Their subsequent EP, Stranded Under Endless Sky, was more of the same, and just as terrific. And now here’s the first volume in what Byrd has titled The Sleep-Over Series, a collection of more formless pieces that keep the same oceans-of-sound style of Hammock. Its six songs run for nearly an hour, with Byrd handling the lion’s share of the duties this time. Two songs are Byrd by himself, three are Byrd with additional input from Thompson, and only one (“Empty Page/Blue Sky”) is credited to Hammock. But worry not, Kenotic lovers – this is very similar stuff.

The main difference, I think, is while Hammock’s albums can be listened to under any circumstances, The Sleep-Over Series sounds meant for dark rooms and motionless absorption. It is more droning than the Hammock discs, and it envelops a room more fully, in a way. Parts of it reminded me of the Autumns EP Winter in a Silver Box, but partially because I can’t think of any other CD in my collection except that one that’s even similar. This is music for deep sleeping, for interstellar hibernation, and it sounds even more unearthly than Byrd normally does.

The highlights of this album are the longer tracks. The 15-minute “Dropping Off” is a shifting drone, if that makes sense – it’s one long tunnel with flickering shafts of light. The 24-minute “Still Point” is lighter, more like traveling underwater than underground, although the intermittent bird noises put lie to that. “Still Point” is less bass-heavy, though, giving it a dreamier feel. It seems as though the longer songs were selected at random for extended running times – there’s no reason they couldn’t have been five minutes each, or that any of the four other tracks couldn’t have been 20 minutes each.

Still, The Sleep-Over Series plays like one long, hazy song, so it hardly matters where one track ends and another begins. Some of Byrd’s most ethereal tones and textures are here, and some of his most alien. The three Hammock Music CDs he’s released this year sound like Byrd finally making the kind of music he most wants to make, and although it will not be as successful as his more pop-oriented work with GlassByrd and Common Children, or even the Choir, you can’t deny the love that went into this. It’s pure, uncompromising beauty, stretching out forever.

Naturally, Hammock Music’s releases are not available in your local record store, but you can get them online here. Byrd has promised a new Hammock album next year, and I really hope he sticks with this. He’s a singular talent – what he has brought to my favorite band, the Choir, is immeasurable, and what he is doing with Hammock and The Sleep-Over Series is rare and extraordinary.

* * * * *

A quick look ahead to 2006 before I go.

The first big week of the year is the 24th of January, with new ones from Duncan Sheik (about damn time), Ester Drang (this sounds amazing – check it out) and Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis. January ends with the new one from Brazilian metal innovators Sepultura, entitled Dante XXI. There’s also a rumor that Richard Julian will check in with a major-label album, though I have no details on that one. But a new Richard Julian is always cause for celebration.

February kicks off with a huge Tuesday the 7th, with new things from Belle and Sebastian, Ray Davies, Beth Orton, William Orbit and a box set detailing Richard Thompson’s terrific career. The Eels document their recent tour with an orchestra by releasing Eels With Strings Live at Town Hall on February 21, and Elvis Costello does the same (meaning releases an orchestral live album) on the 28th with My Flame Turns Blue.

March and April release dates are too sketchy to confidently state, but we should see new things from Live, South, Ministry and Pearl Jam. Oh, yeah, and a little thing called Operation: Mindcrime II from Queensryche – perhaps their triumphant resurgence, perhaps their laughable last gasp. We shall see…

I’m still a vegetarian, and I have developed kind of a taste for the Morningstar Farms veggie chicken patties. They’re pretty good. I am very sick of carrot sticks, though.

Next week, Beck and/or Julian Cope. The week after that, the top 10 list.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I have been a vegetarian for six days now, and sweet lord, do I want a cheeseburger.

Here’s the story. I work for a decent-sized daily newspaper here in eastern Illinois, one that makes very little distinction between the news and features departments. By that I mean the news writers are the feature writers, and thus have to come up with interesting ideas for stories we can tell in our own voices. One of the many categories of features we have to write is called “Out of My Element,” for which each writer must devise some way of dropping into situations we would never encounter in our normal lives.

Most writers on staff have chosen quick and dirty solutions to this problem – working on a farm for an afternoon, for example, or attending a blind dating service. As for me, I decided that if I have to do one of these, I’m going to use it to improve my life. I know a few people who have chosen the veggie way of life, and they are all thin and healthy. Since the exercise thing isn’t working for me lately, I figured I would change my diet, and find a way to get paid for doing so.

So from the day after Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve, I have foresworn meat of all types. No steak, no chicken, no fish. I spoke with a couple of dieticians, who steered me away from the vegan thing – I was planning to go full bore, and give up everything produced by an animal, presumably to show what a ballsy man I am, but logic has prevailed. I’m eating eggs, I’m drinking milk. If I liked cheese, I’d be eating that, too. Yesterday I had a fantastic vegetarian omelet, easily the best thing I’ve eaten since starting this process, and with each bite, I thanked my friendly advisors for dissuading me from my macho moment.

So, six days in, and I am starting to wonder why I’m doing this. I have lost four pounds as of this morning, which is good, but goddamn, I want a steak, or a chicken sandwich. I have Garden Burgers to try out this afternoon – not the most inspiring prospect, but I’m already kind of sick of lettuce and carrots. Time to broaden the old horizons. The biggest problems will be Christmas Eve, and my grandmother’s 90th birthday the week before. No doubt my aunt will slave over the stove for days, preparing a sumptuous meal for my grandmother’s party, and I won’t be able to sample much of it at all.

Yeah, this is starting to look more and more like a silly idea. I’ll let you know if I crack.

* * * * *

The dedicated staff here at tm3am does their very best to keep up with the onslaught of new releases each year, but we regret that sometimes, things get by us. This year especially, literally dozens of worthy new records came and went, with nary a mention on this site. Need I point out that tm3am purports to be a comprehensive source for insight on worthwhile new music? We can hardly afford such oversights, especially when faced with such pitiful excuses as “full-time work” and “needing at least an hour’s sleep a night” and “deathly illness.” Did you die? No? Then it wasn’t a deathly illness, was it? Suck it up and keep working!

Anyway, we here at tm3am apologize for the numerous holes in our coverage of what’s hip and new this year, and we assure you that it won’t happen again. Until it does, of course. But the staff members responsible for these missing reviews have been sacked. In fact, the whole staff has been sacked, leaving me to try to make amends all on my own. It’s a rough life, and I beg your pity and indulgence whilst I attempt to catch up on some forgotten gems of 2005.

I do have something of an idea for the final week of the year, something that will allow me to do what I wanted to do last year with my enormous pile of unreviewed CDs, but couldn’t wrap my brain around. I started to type up a huge column, with pithy and full-blooded comments on each one of the 50 or so leftovers from 2004, but the result was so dry and boring that I scrapped it completely and just talked about my new iPod. Which was also dry and boring, but by that time I had no choice but to run with it. The staff member responsible for that lousy decision has also been sacked.

I think I’ve figured out how to make it work, though, so I’ll be trying it on December 28. In the meantime, though, there are a few albums that merit longer discussions, ones that slipped through the cracks earlier this year. Make no mistake – the top 10 list is done (barring an amazing showing from Ryan Adams, who releases 29 the day before I plan to post my picks), and none of these three records will be anywhere near it. But they’re all varying shades of decent, and I really should have mentioned them when they came out.

So, mea culpa, and on with the show:

* * * * *

I am not sure if Supergrass plans to break up anytime soon, but their new album sounds very much like a swan song.

It’s got a really cheeky title, Road to Rouen, that could also be taken as a sign of impending collapse. It features a more serious tone throughout than their last outing, the amazing Life on Other Planets, and includes more strings and horns than any record they have done, as if the band pulled out all the stops for one last triumph. It follows a greatest hits album, the surest sign that a band, especially one with no hits, is searching for ideas. It also concludes with a little ditty called “Fin,” which includes lines like, “I see the end someday,” and, “You know it’s a long way home.”

All signs point to this as a concerted final effort from a dynamite band, one that really should have experienced more success in its decade-plus. On their four previous records, they were cultural assimilators, pulling little bits from here and there and somehow making a coherent whole out of them without sacrificing their core sounds. This isn’t Beck’s standard put-the-‘70s-in-a-blender approach, but rather the reverent and labor-intensive work of true pop connoisseurs. If a bass line was supposed to sound like the Velvet Underground, then by God, it sounded like the Velvet Underground, even if the guitars sounded like Stealers Wheel and the pianos like Elton John.

Road to Rouen is much less that, and much more the serious singer-songwriter side of the band. In fact, the whole album has more than a touch of another band whose name starts with super. There’s more than a little Even in the Quietest Moments to Rouen, especially in its epic first half. The record runs a little more than 35 minutes, but it still manages to pack two huge numbers and an overall sense of scope in its tiny running time. Opener “Tales of Endurance Parts 4, 5 and 6” brings the brass sections to bear, and is an album side in miniature, while first-side closer “Roxy” is a massive undertaking, anchored by Robert Coombes’ electric piano and his brother Gaz’ voice.

The second half, neatly delineated by the cartoon-jazz instrumental “Coffee in the Pot,” is more rollicking, and more standard Supergrass. The title track contains a guitar lick I couldn’t place for the longest time, until I remembered that it’s one my high school band used once. That song and “Kick in the Teeth” provide Rouen with its most energetic seven minutes, as it peters to a close with the down-home “Low C” and the sad “Fin.” There’s a bit of Lennon to “Low C,” and in classic Supergrass form, when Coombes wants his voice to achieve that Lennon effect, it really does.

Still, if this is the last gasp from Supergrass, I’ll be disappointed. They deserve a better record to go out on. This one just doesn’t capture the effervescent, genre-hopping wonder of their best stuff, even if their sense of melody is intact. Road to Rouen contains eight good songs, not counting the “Coffee” break, and it’s just not enough. Some will say that a good album will leave you wanting more. Well, Road to Rouen certainly does that, though not in the best way – it’s a very good 35 minutes, but it should be longer, and it should be better.

* * * * *

Supergrass is at a disadvantage, however – it’s hard to get people to appreciate the merely very good, when you’ve already given them excellence. One sure way to garner great reviews of your work is to suck out loud at the beginning, and then get progressively better, so that your latest record leaves your first few in the dirt. It also helps if you score a chart-busting hit during your suck-out-loud phase, so that the comparison is easily drawn – what good is a shitty debut that no one hears? For the indie-cred thing to work, you need to have a well-known history, an albatross hanging about your neck, so that you can loudly and proudly disown it.

Too cynical? Probably. After all, who would have predicted in 1996 that Nada Surf would ever be any good? They first stormed the scene with their all-too-ironic “Popular,” a caterwauling mess that seemed to slap Thurston Moore across the face with every intoned verse. The rest of their debut record, High/Low, was utterly forgettable, another in a cavalcade of one-hit blunders that seemed to dot the ‘90s like Starbuckses and Wal-Marts. There was nothing there that made me glad I’d heard it, and I got it for free.

After their second album, The Proximity Effect, was ditched by their major label, the sun should have set on their career. But no – this tenacious New York trio struggled to get Proximity released, and then soldiered on, getting better and better as they went. 2002’s Let Go was a kind of revelation, full of semi-sparkling tunes. It was still spotty, but one certainly got the sense that this band was headed somewhere, and it wasn’t the cut-out bin at Sam Goody, or a slot on VH-1’s Bands Reunited.

And now, against all odds, here is Nada Surf’s fourth album, The Weight is a Gift, and it’s their first solid, completely successful effort. It would be easy to pass this off as Nada Surf’s bid for that all-important indie credibility – it’s produced by Chris Walla, of it-band Death Cab for Cutie, and it was released by Barsuk Records, Death Cab’s erstwhile home. The packaging is also a little indie-wonder, consisting of a hand-drawn and cut-out cityscape, but it’s pretty much wonderful just the same.

The thing is, these songs don’t need any additional credibility – they’re great on their own. Weight opens with “Concrete Bed,” one of the year’s sprightliest singles, revolving around the line, “To find someone you love, you’ve got to be someone you love.” By the time you get through the 11 selections on this too-short offering, it becomes clear that this album is the sound of Nada Surf being someone they love.

The bare, acoustic base and ballad-heavy core of Let Go is pretty much gone here, and in its place is a fully formed rock band sound. “Always Love” is a sweet anthem that saves its best melodic punch for the climactic bridge, and lead throat Matthew Caws stretches his voice to limber new heights on “What Is Your Secret” and the lovely “Your Legs Grow.” Throughout, Walla’s production brings out the best in this band, layering great harmonies and pulling delicate sounds from Caws’ guitar. The record ends, too soon, with its punchiest number, “Imaginary Friends.”

I’ve said this before about other bands and other records, but nothing here is going to set the world on fire. It’s just some really good songs, played by a band so excited to have written them that they translate that sense of rebirth to the overall sound. Nada Surf has never sounded better than this, and never come up with a set of tunes this indelible before. Far from the fate of most of their mid-‘90s peers, Nada Surf have found a way to build and get better every time out. This album is one of the year’s most delightful surprises.

* * * * *

It’s easy, with bands like Supergrass and Nada Surf, to be either impressed or disappointed, since neither one has ever strayed far from their basic sound. Not so with Mark Eitzel – you never really know what you’re going to get from this guy. He fronted American Music Club for years, and that band stayed fairly static – their reunion album from last year, Love Songs for Patriots, sounded like it could slot right in with their ‘90s catalog. But Eitzel’s solo career is another matter altogether.

Let’s see. He’s been a jazzy crooner (60 Watt Silver Lining), an acoustic troubadour (Caught in a Trap and I Can’t Back Out Because I Love You Too Much Baby), a techno-ambient songsmith (The Invisible Man), and an interpreter of classic soul numbers (Music for Courage and Confidence). Most recently, he took to reinventing his own work with a group of traditional Greek musicians on The Ugly American. Really, there’s no telling where he will go next.

So what does one make of a new Eitzel album called Candy Ass? Which Mark is going to show up this time? Even the album cover, with its depiction of one of those crapshoot claw games that never net you anything, seems to taunt you, its neon-emblazoned “Good Luck” almost giggling and winking. The title and track listing offer no help. Neither do the liner notes, or rather, what liner notes there are. You either buy this because you’re an Eitzel fan, or you don’t buy it at all.

As it turns out, Candy Ass picks up where The Invisible Man left off, kind of. The acoustic opener “My Pet Rat St. Michael” is deceptive – there isn’t another one like it. The album is roughly half instrumental, with Eitzel exploring the electronic soundscapes that were on the fringes of Invisible, his last album of all-new material. Songs like “Cotton Candy Tenth Power” and “A Loving Tribute to My City” are basically formless, with subtle beats and ambient waves of noise. Elsewhere, he combines the electronics with his penchant for downbeat melancholy – “Homeland Pastoral” is achingly sweet, Eitzel’s hangdog voice grounding the gauzy layers of synthesizers.

Overall, Candy Ass is the most atmospheric record Eitzel has ever made, and I mean that in the sense that it floats away into the air even while it’s playing. Melodies are few and directionless, and his voice only adorns half the songs. What’s left are the textures, and Eitzel seems particularly fascinated with drones this time out, so that the entire record serves as a sleeping pill. When he nearly wakes up, as on “Roll Away My Stone,” the genuine sense of songcraft gets drowned out by the surrounding walls of keyboard noise. He even ends the album on an ironic note – “Guitar Lover” is a six-minute instrumental that contains no guitars at all.

I’m making this album sound intolerable, and it’s not. It’s actually surprisingly effective as a mood piece, but those looking for Mark Eitzel the singer-songwriter may want to look elsewhere, or wait for another AMC album. This is the sad sack at his most experimental, so much so that it sounds like a complete misfire on first listen. Witness the accordions-in-a-car-accident bridge of “Green Eyes,” one of many things here the likes of which Eitzel has never tried before. I eventually grew to like Candy Ass, although I can’t say I understand the motivation behind it. Still, if you’re new to Mark Eitzel, I’d recommend you start somewhere else – anywhere else, actually.

* * * * *

I just found out that Julian Cope’s follow-up to Citizen Cain’d is out – it is, as promised, called Dark Orgasm, and it’s another two-CD affair. A copy is winging its way to me as we speak, though I doubt it will be here in time for next week’s planned look at some late-year mail-order marvels. After that, there’s Beck and Ryan Adams, and the top 10 list. It’s amazing how quickly 2005 disappeared, isn’t it?

I also just tried my first Garden Burger. The bad news is that it doesn’t taste anything like a hamburger, but the good news is that it isn’t at all disgusting. I actually kind of liked it, weird texture and all, although the aftertaste leaves something to be desired. Only 24 days to go…

See you in line Tuesday morning.

A short review of a long record this week.

I am a big fan of CD packaging, and the guys in System of a Down have just made me very happy. When the Armenian-via-Los-Angeles quartet originally announced their plan to release two albums this year, they hammered the point home over and over – this is a double album, meant to be heard all at once. That it came out in installments (Mezmerize (sic) in May, and Hypnotize this week) was not their choice, they said, but rather a compromise with American Records.

Who knows how true that is, since two albums means twice the cash for both the label and the band, and putting out two records (or even three) in one year is becoming a more accepted practice. (I’m looking at you, Ryan Adams…) But the band also promised that the packaging for Mezmerize and Hypnotize would reflect that they were intended as two halves of a whole. When Mezmerize came out, I couldn’t make sense of the package – the cover image was upside down, as was the text on the spine, and it opened from the left side, throwing the whole thing into confusion.

But now that Hypnotize is here, it all makes sense. The two Digipaks are designed to connect and form one double-album package, and it works brilliantly. The two covers face outward, the spines line up, and the artwork inside reveals a symmetry one could not have guessed from just the first installment. It’s my favorite package of the year, without a doubt – inventive and illuminating. I know that most people don’t care about the packages their CDs come in, but an old-fashioned albums guy like me appreciates the time and effort that went into designing something like this.

In a way, the music undergoes a similar transformation when listened to as a whole. Mezmerize is without doubt the best heavy record of the year, and System the most daring and varied metal band I’ve encountered in many a moon. But it is really short, and feels unfinished. Meanwhile, Hypnotize feels less like a stand-alone album and more like the second half, the more serious and introspective counter to Mezmerize’s antics. Mezmerize can work on its own, but it sounds incomplete. Hypnotize cannot, but it effectively completes its brother. They are two halves of a whole, just as the band promised.

There’s good news and bad news there. Hypnotize is absolutely married to Mezmerize, but it is also inferior in a number of important ways, and it drags the whole project down. Mezmerize was one home run after another, but Hypnotize brings the batting average down with some frustratingly mediocre passages, particularly in its first half. If you look at them as separate records, Hypnotize feels like the rushed follow-up, the diminished returns from an extended recording schedule, the songs they felt weren’t good enough for Mezmerize. You can love one and like the other, and all is well.

But it’s obvious that the band doesn’t view them as separate pieces, and they do connect well. While “Lost in Hollywood” sounds like the moment right at the end when Mezmerize runs out of gas, it makes an effective bridge in double-album form from disc one’s manic brilliance to disc two’s more traditional metalscapes. Nothing on disc two sports the wondrously kinetic ADD of “Revenga,” or the explosiveness of “Cigaro,” or even the melodic radio-readiness of “B.Y.O.B.” I said in May that if System could keep the boundless energy of disc one going for the whole thing, they’d have one of the best records of the year on their hands, and sadly, they didn’t.

What they did isn’t half bad, though, and if System had not raised their own bar so high with their opening salvo, the conclusion wouldn’t be as disappointing. Hypnotize crashes to life with “Attack,” the most incendiary thing here, which finds singer Serj Tankian taking aim at media propaganda and government lies, as usual. It sounds for all the world like you’ve just cued up side three – the band is in mid-assault, like they’ve just returned from intermission. The following five songs are varying shades of forgettable, although guitarist Daron Malakian, who owns this whole project, is precise as a smart bomb throughout.

Things pick up with “U-Fig,” and the dirge-like “Holy Mountains,” all about the Armenian genocide after World War I. But they really kick into gear with “Vicinity of Obscenity,” the one song here that reflects the flitting genius of Mezmerize. One of the chief problems with Hypnotize is that System seems intent on becoming just another good metal band. Replace Tankian with James Hetfield, and “Holy Mountains” could be a Metallica song, whereas no other metal band on the planet would do something as potentially embarrassing (and fitfully smart) as “Vicinity of Obscenity.” “Banana banana terracotta pie,” indeed.

Another big problem – perhaps the biggest – with Hypnotize is that Daron Malakian needs to shut the hell up. This album all but announces him as the co-lead singer, and there’s a reason he’s the guitarist and Serj Tankian is the vocalist. Malakian’s voice is thin and reminiscent of Geddy Lee’s, in a way. There’s nothing special about it. Tankian, on the other hand, is like Mike Patton mixed with Mel Blanc. He’s unhinged, insane, and fantastic, able to jump from voice to voice, octave to octave. His evil cartoon rantings took Mezmerize up that one notch it needed to go, and they are all but missing from Hypnotize. It’s another example of System forgetting what makes them special.

As a single album, Mezmerize/Hypnotize gets progressively more serious and less snarky as it goes along, and perhaps not coincidentally, the energy level is nearly nonexistent by the time Malakian is lamenting “the most loneliest day” of his life. The whole thing ends with “Soldier Side,” reprising the introduction to disc one, and further tying everything together – but alas, “Soldier Side” worked better as a minute-long intro than as a four-minute song.

All together, this double record is 76 minutes, too, which means it could easily have been released on one CD. The more cynical among you may surmise that the band knew which songs were amazing and which were merely good, arranged them accordingly, released the amazing ones first accompanied by a lot of hype about double records and needing the second half, and then designed a package that makes no sense unless you have both parts, all to ensure sales of their inferior stuff and make more money. I’m not quite that cynical, and enough of Hypnotize is good enough to make me think otherwise, but it’s worth discussing.

System of a Down is a fiercely political band, railing against rampant capitalism and injustice, and greed is not a quality I would readily ascribe to them. This two-album project slots together as seamlessly as its packaging does, and I am willing to bet that the band sees Mezmerize/Hypnotize as one large work. Whether they see it as falling short of their ambitions is another matter. They are still the standard-bearers for intelligent metal – the dumbest thing about them is their name – but this record is only the sum of its parts, no more.

This should have been System’s defining work, but instead it ended up overly long and somewhat underbaked, with a second-half dearth of the band’s best qualities. System needs to re-focus, they need to remember what sets them above their peers (hint: it involves remembering who the singer is), and they need to make a single, diamond-hard, 40-minute masterpiece next time out. It’s almost a shame the two albums are so intertwined – Mezmerize, by itself, might have made my top 10 list this year, but the album as a whole doesn’t quite add up.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Next week, I play catch-up.

See you in line Tuesday morning.