I’m late again. I know it.

I have a good excuse, though – this week our usual courts and crime reporter was on vacation, and it fell to me to cover a lengthy sentencing hearing in a child sex abuse case. Let me just say this – the regular courts and crime reporter has nothing to fear from me. He can keep his job.

We’re quickly approaching the end of the year, and I’ve already written three drafts of my top 10 list. There are couple of wild cards to go – System of a Down releases Hypnotize next week, and Ryan Adams completes his 2005 trifecta with 29 in December – but it’s taking shape. And as usual, I’m contemplating how to finish up my year, column-wise. Next week I’ll review System, the week after that I’ll catch up on a few worthy records I overlooked, and then there’s one new album a week until Christmas.

This may be the first year of TM3AM’s existence in which I don’t take a single week off, in fact. I may even have to do two of them on Christmas week to get my review of Ryan Adams in before the top 10 list, but we’ll see. I also have something interesting planned for the last week of the year, if I’m not too burned out by that point.

Anyway, that leaves this week, and I figured I’d dive into the flood of late-round live albums that usually smack us in November. This year has been no exception – the record companies love to wait for the Christmas season to release double-disc and CD/DVD live documents that would look great under the tree, or in a suitably large stocking. The best part for them is that there’s little to no work required on their part – no wrangling of “difficult” artists in a studio, no unpredictable results, just a live recording packaged up and spit-shined. Minimal investment, enormous return, especially around the holidays.

Perhaps the highest-profile of these this year is Green Day’s Bullet in a Bible, a concert film and a live album in one. Designed as a capper to this California trio’s biggest year ever, Bullet is a lavish package, containing three and a half hours of material, and more sneering and eye makeup and fake British accents than anyone should ever be asked to take in all at once. It is obviously intended to be Green Day’s Rattle and Hum, their Stop Making Sense, and why it wasn’t given a theatrical release is kind of beyond me. It would have done very well.

Green Day is back on top of the world, 16 years into their run, thanks to an immensely popular, monolithic beast of an album called American Idiot. Watching Bullet, it struck me that I never really reviewed Idiot, other than to mention that it didn’t come anywhere near my 2004 top 10 list. Let’s rectify that right now – American Idiot is, by far, the best album Green Day has ever made. A twisty rock opera that contains a couple of multi-song suites and more interesting instrumentation than any of their other records, Idiot deserves its accolades, relatively speaking.

Green Day, however, is not a great band, and the best record they’ve ever made is still just pretty good. The proclamations of genius are, as usual, baffling to me. Idiot is Green Day’s attempt to not just sound like early Clash, but take on their political consciousness as well. Despite its studio sheen, it is probably the most punk record they have made, thankfully devoid of the self-obsessed whining that has plagued Billie Joe Armstrong’s lyrics since day one. It is a record that wants to say something, that wants to mean something, and it almost gets there.

So high marks for ambition, but the songwriting is, as usual, kind of flat. The standard three-chord rawk still prevails, and the two nine-minute excursions are really just 10 smaller songs, compressed together with little connective tissue. Some numbers are wonderful – the singles “Holiday” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” are the best things on the record, and “Letterbomb” is right behind – but some of it is rote and forgettable, and an album as revered as this one seems to be should have no dead spots. American Idiot is a huge step up for a modestly talented band, but it doesn’t go far enough to justify the hoopla.

And Bullet in a Bible is all hoopla, so you can imagine my indifference to a lot of it. The most interesting aspect of the tour documented here is the spectacle – long gone are the days when Billie Joe, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool (a nickname that should be wearing thin by one’s late thirties, wouldn’t you think?) would just bash out the tunes. The current Green Day includes a second guitarist, a piano player and a horn section. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but what you’re seeing on this film is a massive effort that took dozens of people to pull off, more a show than a concert, in a way.

Of course, Bullet focuses most of its attention on American Idiot, including seven of its songs, and naturally all of its singles. It kicks off with the title track, then launches into “Jesus of Suburbia,” the better of the two epics, and by the time they’re done with that one, you should realize that the live versions are not going to differ tremendously from the studio ones. How can they, with the hundred or so people working lights, cameras, sound, every aspect of this rigidly timed affair? Green Day is a good live band, even under these conditions, and they do stretch out more as the album continues, but mostly, this is recitation with audience noise.

When the band veers into its back catalog, the exponential improvement that is American Idiot is placed into sharp relief. The older hits have not aged well, especially “Basket Case,” an overplayed and overhyped slice of banality even in 1994. Their progression is fun to trace – the Nimrod shuffle “King For a Day” is given a dustoff, and it feels like the first tentative step into versatility that it was. The live version incorporates the Isley Brothers’ “Shout” and Monty Python’s “Always Look On the Bright Side of Life,” if you can believe that, in the album’s most invigorating moment.

But of course, they close with “Good Riddance,” which may still be their biggest hit. It’s a good song, but amazingly, I’m still sick of it, eight years later, and I found I didn’t need to hear it again. I would have preferred if Bullet had ended with “Minority,” here given an extended coda and a fine finish. Even in its electric form, which periodically threatens to turn into a full-band punk-o-rama, “Good Riddance” is underwhelming – pretty, but nothing special.

The audio portion of Bullet in a Bible is less than half the story – the concert film gives a better sense of what it was like to be at this biggest of Green Day shows, and makes clear that some studio wizardry was undertaken to clean up and shorten the CD. Bullet the film is two and a half hours long, its stage footage interspersed with interviews and documentary clips, and it’s enjoyable, though I don’t feel like I know the guys any better after watching it. The movie is recommended if you want the full picture, but only if you’re prepared for the two minutes of faux on-stage masturbation during “Longview.” I could have lived without it.

* * * * *

Green Day may have bored me, but they didn’t actively piss me off. Leave it to the Mars Volta to do that.

The guys in TMV are talented, and exceptional players. There’s no doubt about that. When they are on, they are astounding, blazing through some of the most interesting progressive-jazz-metal-salsa-what-have-you I’ve heard since Frank Zappa’s time. Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, particularly, is an idiosyncratic guitar master, slashing and cartwheeling when others would be staying in strict time with the drums and bass. Nothing about his work is stock or expected.

Why, then, do he and his cohort, gravity-defying vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala, exhibit such a fondness for pointless filler noise? Their second album, Frances the Mute, hit earlier this year, and there’s an hour or so of the most explosive, original rock of 2005 on there, no question. But the album is 77 minutes long, and the remaining time is filled up with effects, tape noise, random chimes, and overall frippery. Does it add atmosphere? Maybe, if you have the patience for it, but I can’t help fixating on how much stronger an album Frances would have been without all that pretentious crap.

And now here’s Scabdates, a self-produced live document that runs 72 minutes, and includes only five songs. I don’t mind jams – I love them, in fact, especially if you can hear and feel the band heading into uncharted directions as they play. There’s some of that here, but not much. The extended running times are padded out with long, ass-aching voids, like the drums-and-space sections of Grateful Dead shows. In some cases, like “Caviglia,” the entire song is random squalling.

Ordinarily, this wouldn’t bother me, but the band is so rarely firing on all cylinders on Scabdates that the whole thing tries my patience. The album starts with four minutes of noise called “Abrasions Mount the Timpani,” then vaults into a 13-minute run-through of “Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt,” complete with sub-sections that are little more than Bixler-Zavala yelping over repetitive grooves. His most self-indulgent Robert Plant tendencies come to the fore here, and if you liked that band’s 30-minute live takes on “Dazed and Confused,” you will like this.

Me, I think that Zeppelin was remarkable everywhere but on the stage, and I never listen to The Song Remains the Same, or that other live thing they came out with a couple of years ago. There’s a point where looseness just overcomes structure and flops around on the floor, and the Mars Volta glibly vault right over that point. I don’t want to give the impression that Scabdates is a mess, but… wait, yes I do. It’s a big explosion of bass riffs and guitar solos and vocal acrobatics with nothing to hang it on. There’s maybe 20 minutes of song, all told, on this whole thing.

Is this a problem? Well, not if you dig this sort of thing. If the 10-minute found-sound noise sculpture in the album’s final movement sounds like something you want to sit through, then you’ll love this. This kind of thing always reminds me of Andy Warhol, though – “I have made shit, I know it is shit, but if I am deeply committed to considering it art of the highest order, I can convince people it is not shit.”

The difference is, Warhol couldn’t paint, and the Mars Volta boys can really play. The parts of Scabdates that truly demonstrate that are the ones that sound the most like an old-time jazz session, like Miles Davis finally achieving that rock band sound he had been aiming for. There’s about half an hour of absolutely amazing stuff here, most of it in the early going of the 42-minute “Cicatriz.” Rodriguez-Lopez plays like a man possessed, and his not-specifically-named drummer and bassist are almost demonic. (There are 21 people listed here as “The Mars Volta Group,” and no indication of what they all do.) But it’s the superb stuff that makes the wankery sound even more like what it is.

Yes, I am probably being too harsh here. I’m not sure what I was expecting when I bought Scabdates, if not this. Lately, though, I have been too much in love with the idea of the well-crafted song to have the patience for something this freeform. Right now, I am re-listening to “Cicatriz,” and the playing is excellent in the early, jammier sections. I am still left wondering, though – if I had attended this show, how long would I have stayed? At what point on Scabdates would I have said, “That’ll be enough of that,” and just left?

* * * * *

And speaking of pissing me off, there is Wilco.

If I had a category in the year-end list for Biggest Disappointment, Wilco’s A Ghost is Born would have won last year’s prize, hands down. The record found leader Jeff Tweedy floundering in the wake of their best work, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and the departure of its co-architect, Jay Bennett. He responded by strapping on his guitar for a few tracks of flailing, then sinking into boredom for the rest. The nadir of the album (and of Wilco’s whole catalog) was the 12 minutes of ear-numbing noise appended to “Less Than You Think” – nothing the Mars Volta has done matches that for self-indulgence.

Naturally, Tweedy waited until his band was seemingly at its weakest to record their first live album, Kicking Television. Laid down in early May of this year at Chicago’s lovely Vic Theatre (yes, I’ve been there), the album includes three-fourths of Ghost, comprising the lion’s share of the selections. Just a quick gander at the track listing made me dread hearing this thing, but I live near Chicago, and the buzz surrounding those gigs in May has been astounding. Some fans I talked to called them the best Wilco gigs they’d ever seen.

So I spun Kicking Television, and you know what? It’s excellent. The band is tight, and adventurous, and even Tweedy sounds excited to be there – the bored and sleepy tone that permeated Ghost is all but gone. Most of the nine songs from that album come alive on stage, in ways I didn’t expect. “Company in My Back” still makes no sense, but the interplay between guitar and piano is terrific, and “The Late Greats,” buried at the end of Ghost, here jumps out as a sweet little singalong. The band breathes life into slogs like “Hell is Chrome” and “Handshake Drugs,” and zips through “Hummingbird” delightfully.

As good as the songs from Ghost sound, the seven selections from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sound even better. YHF is that rare album that demands front-to-back listening, but is made up of fantastic songs that work separately as well. Slotting something like “Wishful Thinking” right before a masterpiece like “Jesus, Etc.” really shines a harsh light on the former. The live band makes all things equal, in a way, and the YHF material stands as the brightest stuff here.

Wilco only jumps backwards thrice, for the set-opening “Misunderstood” and the Summerteeth favorites “Shot in the Arm” and “Via Chicago,” which only demonstrates how rapid their ascent into more progressive areas has been. Still, it’s the more traditional, rock ‘n’ roll stuff that shines brightest on Kicking Television, especially the two selections from the Mermaid Avenue sessions, during which Wilco and Billy Bragg wrote music to some of Woody Guthrie’s poems. “One By One” is amazing in its live setting, sounding like a true American classic.

The band follows up the Guthrie material with a four-song string of YHF tunes, and it’s the most enjoyable stretch here. Of course, Tweedy had to screw it up, and he did by capping the set proper with “Spiders (Kidsmoke).” It was a tedious disaster on record, and it’s only marginally more interesting live, just endless, mindless epileptic soloing over a one-note groove for 11 minutes. He pulls it out at the end with a beautiful cover of Charles Wright’s “Comment (If All Men Were Truly Brothers),” which closes the set with elegance.

Such a dazzling live document was, to say the least, unexpected, but Kicking Television is a well-spent two hours, and a redemption after the messy Ghost. In fact, this record has made me want to revisit A Ghost is Born and perhaps revise my opinion – I find I like a lot of the songs from it a lot more in this setting than on the studio release. Maybe Wilco was ahead of me again. Either way, with this new lineup in place, I am looking forward to the next Wilco album, which is something I couldn’t say before listening to Kicking Television. It has restored my hope. What more could I want?

* * * * *

Next week, System of a Down, probably.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Michael Pretzel is a Greek God

I think everyone should see Mike Roe play, at least once, before they die.

The problem is, he doesn’t play the big rooms – at least, not anymore. There was a time, decades ago, when his band the 77s were the Next Big Thing. They were on Island Records, touring decent venues, and poised for a breakthrough with a song called “Do It for Love.” And then a funny thing happened.

It was called The Joshua Tree.

The Sevens’ label mates U2 exploded in popularity, and Island forgot all about Mike Roe. That was 1987, but Roe has still had to make the rent payments in the ensuing 18 years, and so he keeps making amazing music. And he keeps touring. Only now, he plays venues like the Union in Naperville, a tiny ex-church that seats about 50, and, at the moment, rests between two roadblocks in the middle of a construction zone. If you don’t know about the Union, you can’t really get to it to discover it.

I’m trying not to think of that as a metaphor for Roe’s late-period career, but it’s tough. If you don’t already know about him, or know someone who knows about him, chances are you won’t ever discover his work. And I am here to tell you that not only is all of that work worth discovering, but seeing Mike Roe, alone on stage with an acoustic guitar, is positively life-changing. He’s able to do things with six strings and a voice that, were I able to do them, I would never leave my room.

Roe is on tour with Michael Pritzl, the lead visionary in the Violet Burning, an altogether different proposition. The Violets are a dramatic, widescreen rock band, with more than a little U2 influence. Pritzl is an incredible performer, an emotional lightning rod who bleeds all over any stage he inhabits. I have seen Pritzl with TVB and on his own, and he’s never less than captivating. He takes his music very seriously, though, which makes him an odd pairing with a wiseass like Roe.

Or, at least, that’s what I thought before I saw them last week. The show is billed as Roe vs. Pritzl, which led me to believe there would be a fistfight of some kind. While I was disappointed on that score, I walked away totally satisfied on every other level. I feared before the show that the “vs.” in the touring name would be sadly accurate – that the two different styles would clash, not mesh.

I was pleasantly and amazingly surprised. Pritzl and Roe each played a solo set, which further illuminated their differences – Pritzl’s was hushed and gorgeous, full of drama and emotion, while Roe’s was upbeat and funny. Roe looks more like Robert Smith every time I see him, and his hangdog sarcasm was in full bloom. But the highlight of the show, stunningly, was their concluding set together. They played old classics from the Sevens and TVB, complementing each other in ways I hadn’t imagined. They made each other’s songs better – quite a feat, considering the songs.

The undisputed highlight for me was “I Can’t Get Over It,” a menacing number from that very 77s album Island Records put out in 1987. I’ve seen Roe probably eight times, all told, and I’ve never heard him play this tune, despite its status among fans as one of his best. Somehow, Pritzl brought out more of the creepiness and power in the song – it was mesmerizing. Oh, and hearing a forgotten gem like “The Rain Kept Falling in Love” was pretty great, too.

But here’s the part I loved watching – Pritzl let his hair down (metaphorically speaking) and unveiled a dry sense of humor. He’s usually a pretty serious guy, but he and Roe bantered like an old Vaudeville act, and it was so cool to see him having fun on stage. Pritzl vs. Roe tour dates are available here and here – if it’s anywhere near you, I highly recommend it. And if you want a quick primer on both artists, and what to expect on this tour, visit their webstores and buy Pritzl’s Hollow Songs and Roe’s Say Your Prayers. They are both beautiful acoustic records, and well worth checking out.

The quote in bold above, by the way, was uttered by a rambunctious little kid who darted back and forth in front of the stage during the show. Pritzl and Roe had endless fun with this boy, and he added to the loose, fun atmosphere of the show. A splendid time was had by all.

* * * * *

A Bush I Could Vote For

The first time I heard Kate Bush, I thought she was doing a really good Tori Amos impression.

This was a little more than a decade ago, and I plead ignorance – of course Bush came first, and of course Tori took more from her than from anyone. The impassioned, teetering vocals, the oddball lyrics, the self-harmonizing, even the tendency to pause for maximum effect during piano-vocal numbers – it’s all from Kate Bush, the original mad magician. She is, and always will be, one of the most dazzling and strange female artists in the world, when she decides to make music.

Which isn’t very often, unfortunately: the British wonder’s first album, The Kick Inside, was released in 1978, and her eighth, Aerial, came out on Tuesday. To give you some idea of how long Bush worked on Aerial, many of the orchestrations were arranged by Michael Kamen, and he died in 2003. This was a long-gestating labor of love, appearing a mere 12 years after her last effort – by far her longest stretch between albums. Hell, save for Little Earthquakes, Tori Amos’ entire career has taken place between Kate Bush records.

What could possibly be worth that wait? Honestly, nothing, but damn if Aerial doesn’t come close. It’s an old-fashioned double record, 80 minutes long, and is nothing less than a magnificent paean to the utterly mundane. It’s an entire album about nothing happening, and then nothing continuing to happen, and how magical and wonderful that is. It celebrates washing machines and sunsets and street paintings, and does so with the most enchanting, ethereal music in Bush’s catalog.

Aerial is separated into two halves, and though some slight editing would have enabled all the material to fit on one disc, it screams to be on two. Most of the attention will be paid, and rightly so, to the second disc, A Sky of Honey – it is a seamless 42-minute suite chronicling an uneventful day, from afternoon to dawn. It’s all transcendent soundscapes and moods, and it’s fantastic, an ever-arcing crescendo that peaks with the title track, a thudding wonderland of joy. Along the way, Bush dabbles in flamenco on “Sunset” and lays down a deep groove on “Nocturn.”

Undoubtedly, the first disc, A Sea of Honey, consists of everything that didn’t fit in to the suite, but it’s remarkably cohesive on its own. It is, however, much loonier – if the Tori Amos allusions didn’t give the game away, let it be known that Kate Bush is a strange bird. (Literally, here – a recurring device on Aerial is her odd impression of a blackbird’s song.)

Hence, we get “Pi,” a song whose chorus is the mathematical concept of Pi calculated to 109 decimal places. We get “Mrs. Bartolozzi,” a piano-vocal number that eroticizes doing the laundry. We get odes to Elvis (“King of the Mountain”) and Joan of Arc (“Joanni”). And we get a beautiful song like “A Coral Room,” interrupted midway through for a children’s rhyme: “Little brown jug, don’t I love thee, ho ho ho, hee hee hee.”

Oddness abounds, but as usual, Bush makes everything work. More than work, she makes everything sparkle. “Pi” is absolutely stunning, a tale of mathematical obsession that somehow manages to make repeating numbers the most painfully beautiful thing you’ve ever heard. “Mrs. Bartolozzi” is breathtakingly poetic, and moving, especially when the tumbling clothes in the oft-mentioned washing machine bring the narrator back through her memories. “Bertie” is a song for her son that is simultaneously embarrassing and delightful. And both “King of the Mountain” and “How to Be Invisible” are this album’s version of rockers, and they are memorable and, in the case of “Invisible,” relentless.

The instrumentation is mostly synthesized soundscapes and percussion, with some excellent understated guitar here and here, but the focus is on Bush’s voice. And she uses all her tricks – melodies are trilled, high notes are belted out and then reined in, and vocal lines whoop and whorl every which way. Her voice is a natural wonder all its own. Bush could be a straight crooner if she wanted to, but she chooses a more idiosyncratic approach, and it’s unique and spectacular, as always. Hell, the title song contains a minute or so in which Bush does nothing but laugh. It is, like this whole record, strange and compelling.

What we have here is the spectacle of a most original artist marshalling all of her forces to capture and toast the ordinary. Aerial is panoramic, hugely expansive, and yet about very little. Many will find a 42-minute song about simple nothings boring, perhaps even interminable, but to these ears, it is enthralling, one of the best pieces of the year. In fact, in a year already full to bursting with masterpieces, Aerial stands tall, one of the most distinctive and successful records I have heard. It is beholden to no trends, it sounds out of time, and it bears no resemblance to anything else on the shelves.

In short, it is pure Kate Bush, in all of its baffling wonder. And it was well worth the wait.

* * * * *

Finest Hour

If Kate Bush was going for the longest sustained suite this year, she lost to Neal Morse by 14 minutes.

But then, Morse is known for this kind of thing. He wrote numerous long-form pieces as the guiding light behind both Spock’s Beard and Transatlantic, before he went and got religion. Morse’s third solo album is a single 56-minute piece called ? (yes, just the question mark), which all by itself should put some people off. I probably shouldn’t mention that it’s about the temple the Israelites of the Old Testament constructed to honor God, which here serves as Morse’s metaphor for spiritual renewal. That’ll really turn people away.

But guess what? It’s fantastic, easily the best thing Morse has done on his own, and maybe even better than his work with the Beard. Even Morse’s fans should be impressed with this one – he has effectively shaken up his classic prog formula while embracing it at the same time. The song is broken up into 12 tracks, but for no reason at all. It really is completely cohesive, a singular work that is never boring, and that rarely slips into the instrumental noodling that has often plagued his records.

For those who have heard Morse’s prior two God-bothering records, Testimony and One, this is a huge step forward. Morse puts away his tendency for sugary balladry, instead taking from Kansas and ‘70s rock more often than not. The strings are downplayed, and the horn section adds brassiness from time to time. The playing, by Morse, Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy, and bassist Randy George, is amazing – tight, fluid, almost unbelievable in places. Best of all, Morse sounds alive and engaged in this one, a level of attention and energy that was missing from most of One.

Take “Solid as the Sun,” for example. The song is fabulous, a strutting rocker with a harmonized chorus and thick, chunky guitars. But Morse is not content with just that – he slips in a pure jazz break, and a scorching bass solo, and concludes it with a Kansas-esque refrain It’s just an awesome thing, musically speaking, and it’s typical of ?. The hour-long song concludes with a reprise of its opening theme, tying the whole thing together. As a complex equation solved for X, this is phenomenal, perhaps the most vibrant and successful piece Morse has given us.

I’m afraid the lyrics damage it once again, though. As he has ever since leaving the Beard, Morse presents his Christianity in the most basic of terms – the packaging even includes Bible verses for particular lines. His use of the tabernacle as a metaphor is interesting, and a step in the right direction, but it remains a few drafts away from insight. Some sections, like “Outside Looking In,” are certainly moving, and I don’t even mind the repeated “Temple of the Living God” theme, but when he starts listing the instances of the number 12 in the Bible, it just goes a bridge too far for me.

But let’s focus on the music, because musically, ? is pretty much perfect, a dynamic work from start to finish. I can deal with Morse’s newfound faith and his desire to express it, even in the simplest ways, if it accompanies prog-pop this well-constructed. As I said when I reviewed Testimony, time will hopefully deepen Morse’s understanding of his own beliefs, and bring a level of personal insight that his work, at current, sorely lacks. ? is a giant step towards that goal, and is also completely enjoyable on purely musical terms. A cohesive 56-minute song is a tough thing to wrestle to the ground, but Morse makes it look easy. Here’s hoping the next one is as lyrically incisive as it is musically complex.

* * * * *

Over and Out

Next week, I should play catch-up with some recent releases. Coming up through December are new ones from System of a Down, OutKast and Ryan Adams, and the usual assortment of live discs and remix projects that usually hit around Thanksgiving. Kate Bush represents, I believe, the last major record of the year, so the top 10 list is all but set in stone. But I say that every year, and something happens to surprise me. So you never know. You know?

See you in line Tuesday morning.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a column about Robbie Williams.

It was ostensibly a review of Escapology, his fifth album, but it turned into a thesis on the differences between international popularity and the American variety. I said that Williams will never be popular on this side of the Atlantic, despite achieving universal superstardom pretty much everywhere else. And I gave reasons, most notably his taste for campy humor and self-mockery. The general American public doesn’t quite get camp, I fear, and Escapology, like all of Williams’ efforts, was full of it.

I hate to say it, but I was right. Escapology flopped like a dying fish, and while I don’t usually care one way or another whether musicians attain widespread fame and fortune, in this case his sinking fortunes have affected my ability to hear his stuff. Williams just released his sixth album, Intensive Care, in seemingly every country on Earth except this one. In interviews, he’s come out and said that he’s given up on America, and it’s not worth even going to the bother of getting Intensive Care into stores over here.

It makes sense, unfortunately. And I can’t complain too much, because Williams and EMI set the new record’s price point so low that even the import doesn’t cost too much. But dammit, isn’t it enough that the rest of the world thinks of us as barbaric empire-builders who are so incompetent that we can’t take care of our own flooding cities? Now the European music machine is shunning us, too. The new Starsailor album, On the Outside, saw a similar non-U.S. release recently, and that import is way too costly for little old me. Damn you, general public!

It’s not as if America is missing a masterpiece in Intensive Care, but I like it, much more than I expected I would. Williams has been a polarizing figure for years now, mostly because of his fondness for ironic bragging – see “Handsome Man,” the best song on Escapology – and much of his scenery-chewing success has been credited to his partner in crime, Guy Chambers, who co-wrote all of Williams’ best songs. But that partnership dissolved shortly after Escapology was released, leaving questions about Williams’ ability to keep his streak alive on his own.

Not to worry. For Intensive Care, Robbie hooked up with Stephen Duffy, known for his collaborations with Barenaked Lady Steven Page. The result is a more (gasp) mature effort, a calmer and less obnoxious record than any he has made. The swagger is all but missing, save for the opening couplet, perhaps the funniest I’ve ever heard – over a Queen-like, anthemic piano, Williams sings, “Here I stand, victorious, the only man who made you come.” I nearly drove off the road.

But from there, the album is startlingly subdued. Opener “Ghosts” morphs from that slap of a first line into a sweet song about death and separation. “Make Me Pure” follows up its title phrase with “…but not yet,” but the song is hummable acoustic pop, not the brash rock you may expect. Williams steals a title from his idol Freddie Mercury for “Spread Your Wings,” which feels for a minute like it may follow the old trash-talking formula, but it turns more Mellencamp-esque, a hopeful slice of heartland rock.

I would never say that Robbie Williams is an artist worth following, even though I have followed him since his debut, but he and Duffy have made an attractive little pop album here, one that scales back the persona and focuses on the songs. Even when Williams gets randy, as on the ode to adultery “Your Gay Friend,” it’s charming this time out. If Escapology put you off, Intensive Care will welcome you back, and pour you a pint. It will even move you with closing track “King of Bloke and Bird,” the best ballad in Williams’ catalog. Far from the post-Chambers drop-off I expected, this may in fact be Williams’ most accomplished record. Too bad no one over here will hear it.

I have to mention the cover art, despite how hokey it is, because it was conceived by comics wonder-team Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. It’s a series of tarot-like designs, drawn by Quitely, with a campy Williams superimposed over them – far sillier than it sounds, and in fact far sillier than the album it is meant to represent. But hey, comic book guys getting work! Gotta support that.

* * * * *

And then there is Trey Anastasio.

Unlike Williams’ album, anyone who wants to can walk into any Best Buy in the country and pick up Anastasio’s Shine, his fourth solo effort. And I say “effort” in the most ironic sense possible – the former Phish leader has finally completed his long descent into mediocrity here, and while it’s been an interesting ride, I think I’m getting off at this stop.

For its last sputtering decade of life, Phish seemed to be aiming for musical anonymity. Hearing the band that wrote “The Divided Sky” and “Maze” limiting themselves to the likes of “Mexican Cousin” and “Crowd Control” was just depressing. It was almost like hearing Yes become an Eagles cover band. If you can play “Close to the Edge,” why would you hack out variations on “The Long Run”? Their frequent live albums were consistently fun, and their concerts reportedly never suffered, but on disc, Phish had been DOA for years before they called time of death.

And here, now, is proof that erstwhile leader Anastasio was the driving force steering the band into slumberland. Bassist Mike Gordon has made some fine records with Leo Kottke, and pianist Page McConnell’s Vida Blue side project showed his abilities in ways Phish hadn’t since Rift or so. But Shine is terrible, a collection of 12 small tunes that fail as pop and as instrumental showcases. It’s boring, the first thing Anastasio has ever done that I think anyone else could do.

Had producer Brendan O’Brien amassed a crack band of faceless studio pros to lay down the tracks here, the album wouldn’t have been any blander than it is with Trey playing, and that’s a damn shame. Anastasio is a gifted guitarist and a decent songwriter, when he’s trying, but on Shine his idiosyncrasies have been ironed out, his playing truncated, and even his voice smoothed and boosted.

O’Brien plays all the bass on this record, and acquits himself well, but let’s be fair – there is nothing here that your standard studio pro couldn’t have done. O’Brien, like all the musicians here, just gets out of the way, and the problem is there’s nothing actually taking up the space they’re vacating. The songs are just sad, especially from someone this talented. When Chad Kroger from Nickelback is routinely outdoing you as a composer, it’s time to reassess something.

I am being harsh, I know. Shine is a fine, fun, simplistic pop-rock record, and if all you want is the southern-fried riff-and-roll of something like “Air Said to Me,” then this will suit you. Personally, I can’t even get through something as boring as “Sweet Dreams Melinda” or “Spin” without reaching for the track skip button. The one song I enjoyed is “Wherever You Find It,” an ascending ballad with an extended coda and the sweetest solo on here, but even that one is predictable, something Trey Anastasio has rarely been. This is radio-ready, anonymous and spit-shined, and I hope it sells a lot of product for him, because that seems to be the main motivation.

I said earlier that I’m getting off this ride, but of course that’s a lie. Even if I weren’t a completist, I respect Anastasio’s talent too much to stop supporting his work. So here’s the thing – if Trey wants to keep making these piss-poor wastes of his time and skill, I’ll keep buying them anyway, and probably slating them here. But if, by some wonderful twist of fate, he decides to come back to making challenging, inspired music again, I’ll be here waiting for him.

* * * * *

I just rated Robbie Williams higher than Trey Anastasio. I’m not sure if that’s a sign of the apocalypse, but I think I’ll take the day off and hang out in my bomb shelter, just in case.

Next week, the long-awaited return of Kate Bush. Plus, Neal Morse writes a 56-minute song about God. Oh, joy. (It’s actually really good.)

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I got an email from my old roommate and good friend Gary Porro today, asking me for a favor.

Gary and I have talked or emailed an average of once a day since 1992, and he’s never asked for anything as far as I can remember. Well, he did ask me to dress up in a tux and go to his wedding, but that’s forgivable. And I refused to dance, so I got the last laugh. Anyway, Gary lives and works in Boston, and he has a passion for old buildings and good movies, and it just so happens that his request deals with all three. I’ll let him have the floor:

“I hope you don’t mind me asking for a favor.

It seems the Brattle Theater in Harvard Square is in danger of closing down. The Brattle is one of the few places left in the Boston area that is still showing independent films. They are running a fund raising drive to attempt to raise the $400,000 they need to stay in business. I was wondering if you might not mind throwing out a link to their campaign in your next column?

I figure between your Boston area readers and general film lovers it might do some good. Here’s the link.

Thanks, G.”

I’ve never been to the Brattle myself, but I’m all for preserving independent theaters, especially those with historical significance. They’re apparently trying to turn the theater from a nearly-bankrupt for-profit business to a stable non-profit, and though I have no idea how that’s going to work, the idea of a home-grown movie house that chooses its films based on quality alone is something of a rare treasure. Anyway, check this out for yourself, and if you feel so inclined, there are donation links on their page.

* * * * *

At this point, calling the Fiery Furnaces eccentric is like calling Karl Rove a little dishonest.

The Furnaces are, without doubt, the strangest and most interesting new band in years – as prolific and ambitious as Frank Zappa, and as raw and indie as Spoon. It’s becoming obvious that the Furnaces are on a fast burn out of our solar system, and they don’t care if you can keep up or not. They are self-indulgent, to be sure, but brilliant enough to back it up, and delightfully weird enough to remain entertaining all the while.

Their first album, Gallowsbird’s Bark, was barely a hint of their capabilities – bluesy and simplistic, crudely recorded, fun yet forgettable. They seemed to know it, too – while some bands wait until their fifth or sixth album to unveil their 80-minute concept record, the Furnaces dumped Blueberry Boat on us less than a year after their debut. An enormous work, full of 10-minute garage-prog workouts and glorious inanities, Blueberry Boat left many a Gallowsbird’s fan in the dust. Its twisting structures and mix-and-match arrangements were the very personification of restlessness. I loved it.

Those who couldn’t stick with Blueberry Boat through the numerous listens required to hear how all the disparate parts coalesced should probably avoid the third Furnaces full-length, Rehearsing My Choir. It is, believe it or not, weirder, in both concept and execution, and will sound to impatient listeners like a random experiment gone horribly awry. This is the album on which the Fiery Ones abandon all connection to traditional song structure and the rules of pop records. But those who navigated Boat’s twisting waters will find much to love here.

The Fiery Furnaces are Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger, siblings with an uncommon bond, and while everything they do is a family affair, Choir is more so – the equivalent of a tattered scrapbook of memories set to music. It’s a radio play of sorts, and it stars the Friedbergers’ grandmother, 82-year-old Olga Sarantos. Choir is a collection of stories, narrated by Sarantos in her odd, husky voice while her grandchildren play off-kilter, endlessly shifting accompaniments. It’s a tribute and a reminiscence, and it includes not an ounce of treacly sentiment, yet manages to be strangely moving all the same.

You might expect a level of disconnect here, perhaps Sarantos recording her stories separately while the Friedbergers score them, and you’d be wrong. Sarantos is a full participant, obviously vibing on the alien music Matthew and Eleanor laid down. These songs were written for this piece, and they wouldn’t work without Sarantos. Often, she will voice her present-day thoughts, while Eleanor plays the part of her younger self, and the conversations between the two are surprisingly funny.

I’ve honestly never heard anything like this record. It’s divided into 11 tracks, but it needn’t be – it’s one hour-long piece, and certain themes tied to certain emotions keep resurfacing throughout. If you’re not paying attention to the track numbers on your CD player, you’ll miss the transitions, so smooth is the whole thing. It sounds like the Friedbergers tried to write a programmatic symphony and then record it for 60 bucks, but the ramshackle quality is deceptive, and almost certainly intentional. These pieces are amazingly complicated, even though the arrangements often consist of little more than a piano or an organ.

And the stories! The album opens with Sarantos hopping a train to return to her lost love, and ends with her arriving at his funeral. In between, we get to hear anecdotes and memories of her life in Chicago, stories about donut shop owners who treated bullet wounds with blackberry filling, and about confrontations with the Arch-Bishop, and about finding and keeping love. Everything is told in a circular fashion, like distant memory itself, and it takes a few listens to get the timelines worked out.

The album’s centerpiece, if there is one, is the nine-minute “Seven Silver Curses,” a tale unto itself about Sarantos’ quest to hex her competition and win her husband’s love. There’s an album’s worth of ideas in this one song alone, volleying from heartfelt to hilarious. This song, and all of Rehearsing My Choir, perfectly balances the sentimental and the silly, turning what could have been a maudlin and uninteresting family slideshow into an engaging, even beautiful, poetic meditation on age and change. Because it’s so funny and strange, it cuts deeper.

Choir ends with a song whose title you’ll have heard several times in earlier tracks: “Does It Remind You of When.” And even here, the story of her husband’s funeral, the balance remains – Sarantos complains about the broken upright piano, the parking, and the construction noise before ruminating on her lost relatives and loves: “And I thought of them in the cold hard ground, I didn’t believe it then and I don’t believe it now…” The music, meanwhile, brings back old themes, pulling this brilliant patchwork together. It ends up a sad celebration, a blissful melancholy.

Rehearsing My Choir is perhaps the Furnaces’ most insular recording, demanding much – some may say too much – of the listener. But to my mind, it is also their most universal. I wish I had a document like this of my grandmother’s life, narrated in her voice, but it’s too late – my mother’s mother is gone, my father’s mother cannot remember stories like these. Choir is an album for anyone who longs to hold on to the past, even as they watch it slip away. It’s more of a movie than a pop record, one with a large, open heart beneath its quick cuts and jagged focus.

Word is that the Furnaces have already completed their fourth album, Bitter Tea, and it’s scheduled for release early next year. It’s reportedly more traditional than Choir, which is a shame – the Friedbergers have staked out an ambitious and wondrous flight path with their last couple of records, and I would love to see what strange planet they end up orbiting. They are like no other band I know. Many of the negative reviews of Choir plead for a return to the danceable rock of Gallowsbird’s Bark, as if anything that’s not catchy and in 4/4 time isn’t worth pursuing. Speaking just for myself, I like to be challenged by excellence, and the Furnaces’ music is definitely challenging, and just as definitely excellent.

* * * * *

The Furnaces also contributed to one of this month’s most fascinating projects. It’s called This Bird Has Flown, and it’s a track-by-track tribute to the Beatles’ Rubber Soul, which turns 40 this year.

It’s an interesting choice. Though roundly referred to as a masterpiece, Rubber Soul is a transitional record, a halfway point between the infectious pop of the early records and the revolutionary sounds of Revolver. It contains some amazing songs, but it’s often a tentative thing – perhaps the best album ever from any other band, but a B+ record from the Fab Four.

And as you may expect, the reverence many feel for these songs has informed most of the cover versions. The Donnas, for example, turn in a version of “Drive My Car” that’s pretty much identical, like they found the 1965 master tapes and just sang over them. Dar Williams does a nice folk-rock version of “You Won’t See Me,” and Rhett Miller adds his twangy resonance to “Girl.” While it is neat to hear someone other than John or Paul sing some of these tunes, the Beatles are the most covered band in pop music history, so adding nothing new feels like a wasted opportunity.

But on the other hand, what can be added to these songs? “Nowhere Man” is already perfect, and Low just performs it, with their usual minimalism. Same with Ben Lee’s acoustic take on “In My Life,” perhaps the album’s prettiest number – he omits the harpsichord interlude, but otherwise, it’s a straight cover. And I have to admit, when I heard what Ben Harper had done to “Michelle,” all reggae beats, I cringed. Maybe note-for-note is the way to go.

But no, the most interesting numbers here are the ones that go for broke. It may be down to the fact that I’ve heard Rubber Soul something like 700 times, but I enjoyed Ted Leo’s clipped, hyper take on “I’m Looking Through You,” and Nellie McKay’s jazzy pirouette through “If I Needed Someone.” I didn’t even mind the Cowboy Junkies flipping the genders on their creepy “Run For Your Life,” a version which emphasizes the menace inherent in the song. The aforementioned Furnaces try on “Norwegian Wood,” playing it in their usual style – by which I mean they turn it into a low-budget-sounding prog workout, Eleanor harmonizing with herself before Matthew sucks the song into a black hole. It’s awesome.

Most impressive here is Sufjan Stevens (of course), who I believe picked “What Goes On” purposely. Ringo’s token number is generally considered the weakest link on Rubber Soul, and Stevens must have known that no one would care if he desecrated it. With that in mind, he tossed everything but the lyrics, and came up with a huge mini-opera, all strings and horns and a riff from “Achilles’ Last Stand.” It sounds like a b-side to Illinois, which is a good thing. Stevens is the only one here who showed me something new, even if he had to junk all but the most tenuous connections to the original recording to do it.

And there’s the question about tribute records – should they remain reverent, or give artists a chance to stretch out and reinvent? When it comes to the Beatles, that reverence is almost a given, so it’s surprising and kind of cool to hear someone like Stevens step so outside an obvious influence. I already have Rubber Soul – it’s imprinted on my memory, never to be erased – so why would I need another version of it? These are great songs, no question, and I credit This Bird Has Flown for providing a nice mix of the straight covers and the rewrites.

I expect that balance will be harder to maintain if Razor and Tie Records decides to keep going with this series – what would a tribute to the White Album sound like? Will Stevens turn in a seven-minute full-orchestra remake of “Why Don’t We Do It In the Road?” – but I am fascinated by the prospect. This Bird Has Flown is worth hearing, if for nothing else than as a testament to the enduring beauty of these songs. How many of this year’s most popular records will still be pored over, covered and toasted 40 years from now? My bet is none.

* * * * *

In the coming weeks, we have Trey Anastasio, Neal Morse, the long-awaited return of Kate Bush, the other half of System of a Down’s album, and the third and final Ryan Adams album of the year. The top 10 list is taking shape, and it’s a good one this year.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

No one asked me for a dollar.

Not one person.

So I am left to discuss Serenity without the input of those who hated it. The box office totals are in for what will likely be the full run of the film in most theaters, and they’re not great – $22.3 million in three weeks. Flightplan, an infinitely worse film, has more than tripled that in the same time frame. A History of Violence, perhaps the most unintentionally funny movie I have seen since Battlefield Earth, has made more money, despite a smaller profile and a narrower release.

Some of this is understandable. Serenity stars no one famous, and was written and directed by a guy best known for a television show about vampires. The posters were crap, the trailers decent but not extraordinary, and the marketing push seemed to center around word of mouth. It’s also kind of an unknown proposition for Joe Public, whereas Jodie Foster on a plane with terrorists is like comfort food. You know that her angry, ass-kicking mom will prevail, and that shit will blow up and the innocent kid will be saved.

As it turns out, Serenity wasn’t even comfort food for its most ardent fans, which may be auteur Joss Whedon’s most unfortunate decision. There are events in this film that irrevocably change the makeup and dynamic of Firefly, the television show on which it is based, and some of those changes are like knives to the heart of fans. Whedon has long been a proponent of choosing the story over the audience, and the same contingent that wished season six of Buffy had never been made will reject a few of the more dramatic moments in Serenity. But Whedon was right to choose this story, and to bring these characters to these places.

Here is what makes me sad about Serenity and its lackluster box office performance. I see a lot of movies, and I know when I’ve encountered one that will not appeal to the masses. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for example, is a brilliant film, but not a fun night out at the theater. Same with I Heart Huckabees, which took a terrific cast of stars like Dustin Hoffman and Jude Law and Naomi Watts and filled their mouths with existential philosophy and nonsense. I adored the movie for that very reason, but I can easily understand why it wasn’t a smash success.

I don’t get that sense with Serenity. I am definitely a Whedon acolyte, so take this for what it’s worth, but I can’t imagine such a fun, funny, thrilling little adventure movie as this one not connecting with anyone who went to see it, at least on some level. It’s Star Wars from Han Solo’s point of view, it’s Indiana Jones in space. There is nothing over-intellectual or tedious about it. You don’t even have to have seen the television show – it catches you right up and drops you into the action with everything you need to know. It’s six-guns and swordfights and crackling dialogue. It is a great night out at the movies.

So why did it fail? It is perhaps presumptuous to consider $22.3 million in three weeks a failure, of course, but Serenity did not do as well as expected, considering the hard-and-fast love the core fans have for Whedon and the characters. And that right there might be the problem, as much as I hate to admit it. The most devoted of fans, the Browncoats (named after the rebel army in the TV series), have been talking up this movie and lavishing it with praise for a year now. Even Ender’s Game author Orson Scott Card got into the act by proclaiming Serenity the best science fiction movie ever.

I fear, fellow fans, that we may have loved this movie to death.

People don’t like to feel as if they’re on the outside of an exclusive club, and the Browncoats give that impression. People also don’t like hype, and the passion Firefly fans have for the show and the film can sound like hot air after a while. Same with Radiohead fans, always jabbering on about how their band is more brilliant. Or Marillion fans like me – how many new converts do you think I’ve made to that cause? Pretty much none. I love them too dearly, and I go on and on. People I know will not even give that band a try because I’ve built them up so much.

Those who saw Serenity based on the gasping pronouncements of Whedon fans were probably expecting a reality-altering masterpiece, and when they got a fun little space adventure, they were likely left to wonder what the big deal was. Don’t get me wrong, I think Serenity is a fantastic fun little space adventure, but I can imagine the bewilderment. For better or for worse, Joss Whedon has developed a passionately loyal and vocal fanbase, one that is willing to support him even when he stabs them through the heart, and that kind of near-worship just turns people off.

But for the life of me, I don’t know what could have been done differently. I have seen Serenity three times now. I honestly love it more than any other science fiction film that isn’t Star Wars, and for sheer craftsmanship, I think it’s better than all six chapters of Lucas’ tale. I can’t imagine not sharing that experience with people, and urging them to try it. It’s not an exclusive club – I want Whedon and his endeavors to be worldwide successes. I want people to watch Buffy, to watch Firefly, and to revel in them like I do.

In the final analysis, we Firefly fans came out of this pretty well, I think. We got our canceled television series rescued from obscurity, and got the big-screen season finale that we wanted. We got to visit with these terrific characters one more time, and watch a great writer and director work at the peak of his powers. Whedon, as well, got to bring back his Firefly crew for one more go-round, and he lavished each scene with palpable love. It’s a wonderful, welcoming movie, and I wish more of you could have seen it.

At the film’s conclusion, Captain Malcolm Reynolds gives a small speech about his ship, and his crew, which he considers family. With classic Whedon subtext, it quickly becomes obvious that he’s talking about Firefly and its fans – “Love keeps her up when she ought to fall down.” The existence of Serenity is owed almost entirely to the love of the fans, and if that same love kept some people away from a great little movie, well, so be it. I hope no one feels ashamed for expressing the joy that Firefly brought them, whatever the outcome at the box office.

“You can know all the math in the ‘verse,” Reynolds tells young River, “but take a boat in the air you don’t love, she ain’t keeping up, just as sure as the turning of worlds.”

Thanks to Joss Whedon and all the fans, for loving this boat enough to keep her in the air.

* * * * *

Other movies I have seen recently:

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is bloody brilliant. Beyond just the sheer technical skill required to make an 85-minute claymation feature, the movie is sharply written, and really funny. I’m amazed at the expressiveness director Nick Park gets out of his simply-rendered main characters, especially considering that one of them doesn’t speak at all. The film is full of clever moments, chuckle-worthy dialogue and mind-blowing clay figure action, all molded by hand and shot frame by frame – 32 shots per second, 1920 per minute, and roughly 163,200 in all. That it looks effortless is just testament to Park’s genius.

Wallace and Gromit is also preceded by a 10-minute short written by my friend Mike Lachance. It stars the penguins from Madagascar, and details their zany attempts to buy a Christmas present for their fellow zoo-mate. It’s a lot of fun – “Shiitake mushroom!” was my favorite line, of course – but for me, the best part was seeing Mike’s name in big letters on the screen during the credits. I let out a little cheer, I must confess… Good show, Mike.

Corpse Bride is not as good. It’s underbaked, half-hearted and feels like someone took The Nightmare Before Christmas and photocopied it on an old, broken-down Xerox machine. If Nightmare was the out-of-the-box genius debut album, this is the disappointing follow-up, made more so by the obvious use of computer animation in places. Even the songs sound like weak knock-offs. It may not be fair to contrast this film with its obviously superior antecedent, but it invites the comparison with every frame.

A History of Violence, as I mentioned, is laugh-out-loud funny. I don’t understand the glowing reviews for this one, honestly. My theory is that David Cronenberg shot one day’s worth of scenes, saw they were terrible, discovered he hadn’t the money to re-shoot them, and decided to make the rest of the film godawful to match. I cracked up more than once, though I tried to do so silently, and I found the final sequence, in which Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello stare at each other over a table, interminable. Not because it was too long, although it was, but because I was struggling to hold in peals of laughter, which finally escaped once the credits began rolling. Seriously, the worst movie I have seen in a long, long time.

And here is where I part company with the critical community once again, because I thought Elizabethtown was just about the best movie I have seen this year. I see films most often to get other perspectives, but no director I know of captures my experience and my emotional reaction as well as Cameron Crowe does. His movies think and feel like I do. Elizabethtown is perhaps his most personal effort, a loving tribute to his deceased father, and a paean to random chance. Every minute of it is warm and beautiful.

It’s getting savaged by critics, of course, and I think I know why. One of the first things they teach you in a screenwriting class is conflict. Your main character must want something, and someone must stand in his or her way. There must be dramatic conflict for a movie to work, they will tell you. Elizabethtown is two hours and 20 minutes long, and has no conflict. It is entirely made up of people deciding that they like each other. And it is never boring, never trite, never in need of some artificial conflict to propel it forward. It is a movie you bask in, a good-hearted collection of sunrise moments that fill your soul. There is nothing cynical or hard-edged about it, but if you want a movie to lift you up and make you love life, this is the one.

Thanks to my movie buddy Jody Bane. We spent nearly 12 hours in a theater on Sunday, watching everything discussed above. It’s remarkable to find someone equally excited at the prospect of a whole day of movies, so merci, and congrats on the new job.

* * * * *

I suppose I should include a music review before signing off for the week, hmmm?

Perhaps it’s fitting, given the subtle nature of their work, that I keep forgetting to mention Elbow. They’re a band I return to again and again, and find new things each time, but when it comes to shouting their name from the rooftops, well, I keep neglecting them. I let their fantastic 2001 debut, Asleep in the Back, slide by with nary a mention, and gave their even better 2003 follow-up, Cast of Thousands, a quick review and nothing else.

And perhaps that’s because each Elbow album has taken me some time to unfold and enjoy. They have often required a complete re-writing of the way I enjoy music. I usually listen to the structure first, the chords and the melody, but Elbow cares little for that. Some of their best songs are incredibly simple, and slow, and dirge-like. Quite often they will reduce the instrumentation to a drum, or an organ, or a finger-picked guitar, and let it ride on waves of atmosphere.

No, Elbow cares about feeling, and about getting the vibe right. Each of their songs is carefully constructed, and given a few listens, they welcome you with open arms. Some may say they need to wake up – their tempos are almost always drowsy, and lead singer Guy Garvey has a hangdog voice that compliments his I-can’t-be-bothered-to-shave appearance. But Elbow are not depressing. Their songs are full of hope, and often so minimal that even the slightest change in melody or rhythm sounds like light breaking through the clouds.

Their new one, Leaders of the Free World, changes a few things, but overall the band’s sense of beauty is intact. It would be tough for Elbow to make a Difficult Third Record more difficult than their debut, so they didn’t even try – Leaders is perhaps their most accessible and immediate album, a definite shift from the abstract soundscapes that made up much of Cast of Thousands. Opener “Station Approach” recalls “Any Day Now,” from the debut, but halfway through, the electric guitars kick in, and Elbow wakes up.

“Picky Bugger” is the album’s one miscalculation, stretching Guy Garvey’s falsetto into painful territory, but they’re right back on the horse with “Forget Myself,” their most lively single yet. If this is your first Elbow song, you may want to know that what sounds mid-tempo from anyone else is actually akin to thrash metal from this band, and as rocking as this song is, the title track does it one better. “Leaders of the Free World” is a six-minute powerhouse that takes aim at (who else) George W. “Passing the gun from father to feckless son,” Garvey sings, before noting that the “leaders of the free world are just little boys throwing stones, and it’s easy to ignore until they’re knocking on the door of your homes.”

This level of ire is totally unexpected from Garvey, and the band steps up, backing him with some of their most fiery fretwork. Enjoy it, though, because that’s the last you’ll hear of Elbow the rock band on this record. The best stuff here, as usual, is of the slower and more delicate variety. Sandwiched between the rockers is “The Stops,” a lovely, classic Elbow ballad, and the entire second half of the album is acoustic and beautiful.

Even so, the usual Elbow sonic landscapes are all but missing, replaced with a more concrete, human sound. It’s jarring at first, even though it makes for a quicker assessment of the proceedings. Leaders is the most grounded Elbow album yet, the focus on melody instead of ambience, and to their credit, the band has responded with their most hummable and gorgeous songs. The tempo picks back up somewhat for the vaguely Radiohead-ish “Mexican Standoff,” but the album concludes on a graceful note with three of the prettiest songs in the band’s catalog.

The final song, “Great Expectations,” is arresting, a perfectly lilting serenade to marriage with an undercurrent of bitterness. Those familiar with the band may expect a fairly static reading of this song, but surprisingly, it builds and builds over its five minutes. Garvey sometimes gets a bad rap in the British press for his half-mumbled vocals, but here is all the evidence anyone needs that he is an amazing singer. He wrings so much emotion from his lovely tenor here that one wonders where he’s been hiding this talent. It’s almost a shame when the pretty yet unexceptional minute-long coda “Puncture Repair” wafts in to close the record.

So Leaders is very good, a definite change for Elbow, and perhaps their best chance at gaining an American audience. The question is, why won’t you find this album in your local record store? Because you won’t. I had to contact my old friends at Bull Moose Music in Maine to snag a copy of both this and the new Grandaddy EP. And after much research, I’ve discovered that V2, the U.S. label for both artists, has cancelled stateside distribution, fearing low sales. They pressed the discs, and allowed one distributor to have some copies, which is why a few stores across the country (and a few online outlets) have them. But for all intents and purposes, the domestic version of Leaders of the Free World was not released.

This is sad. It’s not that the album isn’t worth the import price, because it is, but the band obviously knocked themselves out to make the most inviting album of their career. Granted, it’s not Coldplay inviting, nor should it be, but for those curious about Elbow and wishing for a good starting point, well, Leaders is it. And now I can’t recommend it as casually as I would if you could just walk down to Best Buy and pick it up. The same seems to have happened with the new Starsailor, On the Outside, and the new Robbie Williams, Intensive Care, though I doubt I would pimp those as heavily as Elbow’s record, just based on past experience.

So V2 has, in effect, made it even easier to forget Elbow, to let them slide from your consciousness. That’s a shame, because Leaders of the Free World is a good record, one that you’ll be glad you tracked down. It’s worth pulling out all the stops, because the band sure did.

* * * * *

Next week, the Fiery Furnaces and their grandmother. How… odd.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So. Should be a short one this week.

I am running on fumes, writing full time (finally!), and getting very little sleep. Just one record, and I’m out. The coming weeks will see new ones by the Fiery Furnaces (and their grandmother, which is weird and yet oddly brilliant), Trey Anastasio, Wilco, Neal Morse, Kate Bush (after 12 years!), System of a Down and OutKast, among others. I still have about 15 new albums from the likes of Elbow, Supergrass, Roger Waters and Mark Eitzel sitting here waiting to be spun and dissected. I’ve picked one, and left the rest as a towering monument to my poor time management skills.

A quick note – my Serenity offer is still good, until next week. So far, no one (well, no one not named Mike Lachance) has taken me up on it, which may be a testament to the weakness of the consolation prize. Anyway, the deal is, go see Serenity. If you like it, congratulations. If you hate it, tell me why in an email and I will send you a dollar. And maybe an extra bribe of some kind. I’m really just interested to find out why the box office for this really cool movie is so pitifully low. The offer holds until I post next week’s column, on or around October 19.

* * * * *

I want to get this out of the way right up front. I do not hate Franz Ferdinand.

Some people have the impression that I despise them, which I figure can only come from the fact that I haven’t drowned them in drool and proclaimed them the greatest musical gods ever to walk the earth. I don’t hate them. My review of their first album was, to my mind, suitably complimentary – I called the record fun, danceable fluff.

Time has deepened my appreciation of Franz Ferdinand and their debut, though, and as I say this, I am ducking behind my desk so as to deflect the “we-told-you-so” stares from the hipper-than-thou internet cognoscenti. When I first heard the album, my impressions were colored by the overwhelming avalanche of hype the British press had heaped upon it, the breathless “Holy Crap!” pronouncements of total frigging genius. It’s kind of the same thing I suspect has happened with Serenity, actually – so many raving fans have deemed it the best science fiction film ever that the fun little adventure flick it actually is has been obscured. There’s nothing wrong with Franz Ferdinand, but they’re not redefining music for a new era.

And they know it, too. Just listen to their second effort, You Could Have It So Much Better, to hear what I mean. For a band so often considered the cutting edge, Franz have made a curiously conservative sophomore disc. In my review of the debut, I likened them to Morrissey’s disco band, and that comparison still stands. In fact, just about everything I said last time still holds, because this new one is practically a carbon copy of the first.

Franz have defined their sound by now, and it’s no longer all that novel. They play danceable guitar-pop with disco club overtones and sneering, faux-arrogant lyrics and vocals. They are the ultimate glam parody band, except they play it straight, and they write good songs. Singer Alex Kapranos has one of those voices that makes you want to punch him, especially when he hits the “you’re so lucky” refrains in “Do You Want To,” the first single from the new record. “I’m gonna make somebody love me,” he sings, “and now I know that it’s you.” And they say romance is dead. Jesus.

But part of my problem with Franz, and why I don’t connect with them in any significant way, is that they’re so utterly fake. They’re a show band, a flashy fun-time sex bomb act, an experiment in façade-building. Kapranos takes from a long and fruitful tradition of coy enigmas, and while some people may find unraveling the layers to find the chewy center an enjoyable pastime, I just don’t have the patience. It’s fairly obvious that the Franzers have carefully crafted both their sound and their image, and while I quite like and respect the former, I’m indifferent to the latter.

It’s the flurry of myth surrounding Franz Ferdinand that inflates them from decent party band to global fascination, and I couldn’t care less about any of it. I’m just here for the music.

And the music is pretty good, once again. Kapranos and Nick McCarthy are terrific guitarists, diving and ducking around each other while they parry with knives. The early XTC influences are a little more pronounced this time, with a few more reggae beats and a bunch of spunky melodies. Opener “The Fallen” finds the band tossing off a couple of really good riffs in the beginning, as if rummaging around for the best one, and when they find it, they truly lock in. Short, sharp tunes like “This Boy” and “Evil and a Heathen” are classic Franz, all slashing and preening. There’s nothing on You Could Have It So Much Better that sounds half-assed or hacked out.

But it sounds the same as the first album, pretty much exactly. It even slips into moderate tedium in its second half, just like the debut – Franz milk their one good trick over and over, and in the course of a 41-minute album, it gets tiring. Thankfully, they seem to realize this as well, and they’ve included a couple of songs that do find them stretching. In fact, one of them is the best reason I can give you to buy this album and not the first one, if you could only pick up one.

That song is “Eleanor Put Your Boots On,” a love poem from Kapranos to Eleanor Friedberger of the Fiery Furnaces. (Isn’t indie-cool love cute?) Rather than just write a Franz Ferdinand song for her, though, Kapranos and the band have turned in their best approximation of her band’s sound. “Eleanor” is a ramshackle acoustic lullaby, with perhaps the finest melody on either Franz album, and its lyrics and vocal delivery actually approach (gasp) sincerity. I’m not sure what it says about me that my favorite Franz Ferdinand song is the one that sounds nothing at all like them, but there you are.

My second-favorite Franz song is “Fade Together,” the eerie penultimate track, again all acoustic guitars and pianos. Kapranos doesn’t exactly have an acoustic-ballad voice, but here he effectively slips into a delightful falsetto for the chorus, one of the best on the record. It would have made an effective conclusion – sequencing the dub-inflected throwaway “Outsiders” last is such a blunder that I’m surprised it wasn’t voted down.

And I suppose the fact that I’m even noticing the track order on a Franz Ferdinand album is progress. Last time out, they did their one thing 11 times, and there wasn’t much you could say about one song that wouldn’t describe all of them. The original plan for You Could Have It So Much Better was to self-title the album again, and release it with the same cover art as the debut, tinted a different shade. Hopefully this speaks of self-awareness, because save for two tracks, this may as well be the same album. I like Franz, though, and I hope the bare hints of forward momentum here are not flukes, but the beginnings of artistic growth. As it is, the title they settled on is ironic – we could have it so much better, but this is more of the same.

Next week, Elbow.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m late.

You want to know how late I am? I am so late, I know that the Red Sox are done for the year. If today’s date as I write this bore any resemblance to the date at the top of the page, I would still have hope for a World Series repeat.

Alas, it’s not Boston’s year. They lost in three games to the Chicago White Sox, one of only two teams in baseball to have gone longer without a Series win – 88 years as of this season. The other team? The Chicago Cubs, who last won in 1908. So Chicago’s hurting, and they deserve it this year – they came to play, and they’ll probably win it all. I have noticed, though, that no one is crucifying Sox second baseman Tony Graffanino for pulling a Buckner in game two. It looked to my eyes like the same play ol’ Billy fumbled, and he had to live with the scorn of Red Sox Nation for nearly 20 years. What gives, Boston?

I have also seen Serenity, and it was everything I hoped it would be. I don’t want to gush about it, because I want you to see it, and if I go on and on, like everyone else on the web seems to be doing, it will only serve to turn you off. I just have to say that $10 million in its opening weekend is plain weak. Whedon just can’t catch a break. This Friday’s estimates are in, and Serenity took in less money than A History of Violence, which is playing on almost half as many screens. I don’t get it, people.

So here’s a deal. Go see Serenity this week. If you don’t like it, write me and tell me why, and I’ll send you a dollar. A crisp, one-dollar bill to anyone who honestly dislikes the film and takes the time to write me with their thoughts. This is more for me, so I can hear criticism of the film and perhaps some theories as to why people are staying away. (I didn’t want the consolation prize to be anything too valuable, because then people will write me and lie to obtain it. This is really just me paying $1 for good opinions – a tossed-off “I hated it, now where’s my buck?” email isn’t going to cut it.) This offer is open to anyone whose name isn’t Mike Lachance, and is good for two weeks, from now until I post the 10/19 column.

And if you’re checking out movies, the aforementioned Mike Lachance has his big-screen writing debut this weekend, with the Madagascar Penguins short that runs before the Wallace and Gromit movie. From the box office figures, many of you are seeing this movie anyway, which is good news. It looks fantastic, doesn’t it? Go see it, and let me know what you think of Mike’s short.

* * * * *

So in 1997 I went to the first Lilith Fair, in Mansfield, Mass.

The bill included Sarah McLachlan (of course), Fiona Apple, Tracy Chapman, the Cardigans, Juliana Hatfield, and numerous others. It was a good show, although I found the concept a little silly – all women performers, all the time. Except, you know, for most of the musicians on stage backing the women performers, who were men. As were three-fourths of the Cardigans, the same percentage as in the Smashing Pumpkins, although Corgan’s bunch didn’t get invited. I kept a running tally, and the number of male musicians outnumbered the female ones two to one.

What the Lilith Fair was really about, it seems to me, was the female perspective – women singing songs from their points of view. And that’s all good, but separating performers by gender instead of by talent is just a smokescreen. The stupid-ass music business barely promotes women who aren’t sex bombs of some sort, as if their looks had anything to do with their talent – and the Lilith Fair blithely followed along, inviting the likes of Dido and Christina Aguilera to the final tour in 1999. Is there anyone who cannot name 10 male artists with more talent than Christina Aguilera? It’s all just ridiculous.

The Lilith Fair wasn’t about female musicians, either, as much as it was about female pop stars, and about getting more women on the radio. At that, it was quite successful – McLachlan herself, at the height of the tour’s fame, mentioned that she knew of several male singer-songwriters who couldn’t get airplay, and there was no gender-specific movement to help them. The end result was a pinpoint focus on one pop style, and a general blanding out of female-driven music.

Which was a damn shame for someone like me, who only divides music into “good” and “not so good.” I wrote about my experience at the Lilith Fair, from the only perspective I had – that of a somewhat nerdy male – and I got attacked for that perspective. (One letter suggested I retitle my piece “I Endured Chicks Playing Bad Music.”) The gender-specific thing really misses the point, though – I don’t like Meredith Brooks because she’s no good, not because she’s a woman. On the other hand, I can’t think of very many songwriters I respect more than Aimee Mann, or (for a while, at least) Tori Amos. It’s about what you can do, not which set of genitals you have.

It is true, though, that women have a much tougher time in the musical marketplace than men do. The female equivalent, bodily speaking, of Blues Traveler’s John Popper would never have been signed, let alone score any hits on MTV. I’m talking about three Lilith alumni this week, and all of them are thin and attractive, and have used their looks to sell their records, in one way or another. Because that’s the way the game is played, unfortunately, and women who break from that double standard (like the members of Sleater-Kinney and the great PJ Harvey) are few and far between.

I think that’s why so many people are angry at Liz Phair. It goes beyond just not liking her more recent work. It’s seething, personal resentment, and it may be because, when she started out, Phair was one of those kick-the-doors-in, stereotype-smashing women songwriters. Her 1993 debut, Exile in Guyville, was a lo-fi vulgar-fest tinged with vulnerability, an honest and definitive statement. Who cares if it just wasn’t all that good? It provided a rallying point, a standard for the new crop of female indie-rockers to bear. It’s ragged and brutal and charming and everything that, in 1993, a woman wasn’t supposed to be.

Granted, Phair’s subsequent missteps make Guyville look like a work of genius. When she finally sold out with 2003’s Liz Phair, a glossy teen-pop catastrophe, the response was explosive and spiteful. It’s as if Phair had spit on every reviewer with a laptop, instead of just having made a bad record. I even took her to task for choosing airplay over songcraft, and I stand by that – Liz Phair is a terrible album, with no trace of the genuinely interesting writer lurking beneath. I don’t care that she pissed on her former image, though. The music is what’s important, and the music on Liz Phair was awful.

But come on, people. If the music is what’s important, then you have to give props to Somebody’s Miracle, Phair’s fifth album. It’s a pop record, of course – she’s never going back to hunching over a four-track and mumbling “fuck” 18 times a song – but it’s a good pop record, in the same way that her self-titled effort was a bad one. This one hits the spot, much like Kelly Clarkson’s latest does, and in many of the same ways. This is classic power pop stuff, with groovy choruses and full-yet-prickly production.

The lamest thing here is right up front – “Leap of Innocence” is a snore, and Phair can’t quite find the notes. But from there, this is actually pretty good. “Stars and Planets” is as power-poppy as anything Matthew Sweet has ever done, and the chorus and bridge of “Count on My Love” is a knockout. The U2 overtones of “Lazy Dreamer” actually work, and even when she slows things down, as on the spare and haunting “Table for One,” Phair scores. Nothing here is earth-shattering, and Somebody’s Miracle won’t galvanize a generation like Guyville did, but as a set of 14 pop songs, it’s sturdy and enjoyable. Which is all Phair wants it to be.

In retrospect, this looks like part of a strategy – release something so obviously execrable in 2003, and follow it in 2005 with something that isn’t half bad, so it looks like she’s climbed a mountain instead of rappelled down a little hill. But it’s becoming obvious that Liz Phair has reinvented herself, and as a pop songwriter, she deserves to be taken seriously, images and audiences aside. Somebody’s Miracle may not bubble and burst like her Guyville period, but it’s far from dead, and its best passages pulse with new life. If you like Juliana Hatfield, for example, there’s no reason you shouldn’t like this.

But some artists find reinvention a trickier task. Take Sheryl Crow, who has made a name as a dependable radio-pop hit factory. She released a greatest hits album in 2003, after only four records, and damn if the thing wasn’t actually full of hits. But now here’s Wildflower, her fifth album, and Crow suddenly wants to be respected as a mature songwriter. Originally intended as the “art” half of a two-CD release, Wildflower is a slow, sodden trip through ballad country, and while it has its moments, there’s an overwhelming blandness to the whole thing, one that’s indicative of her whole career.

For me, Crow’s ballads have always been her stronger material. Her last album, the craptastic light-rock C’mon C’mon, featured exactly one song I liked, the epic “Safe and Sound.” So you’d think an entire album of string sections and acoustic guitars would make me happy, but it doesn’t. The songs are oddly flat and uninspired, with a few exceptions, and the production is so samey-sounding that the whole thing mushes together like putty. Sad, forlorn putty.

There are a couple of winners here, like the one-two caress of “Chances Are” and the title track, and Crow does raise the tempos for “Lifetimes” and “Live it Up.” But overall, this is a wash, a Sarah McLachlan pastiche that misses the appeal of her best work, and drowns it in inoffensive strings and reverb. It’s the kind of album that takes three listens to absorb, because it’s all so unmemorable, and when you finally have a grasp on it, you realize that it wasn’t worth those three listens to begin with. Crow is a workhorse, a decent enough singer and performer whose greatest skill is giving her audience what they want. She had a chance to make a personal and affecting statement here, and she blew it.

Not so Fiona Apple, who stands as perhaps the only genuine artist of the lot this week. One wonders sometimes if Apple’s oddball antics and disdain for the mechanics of the biz are a pose, but then one hears her work, and all doubts are dispelled. She really is this strange and wonderful, and she really doesn’t care if you like it or not. While both Phair and Crow seem to put equal amounts of attention into their music and their status within the public consciousness, Apple makes loopy, heady records like her new Extraordinary Machine, which offers almost no ins for the radio-pop audience that embraced “Criminal.” Oh, and she took six years to get it together, an eternity in pop music time – you’d never see Sheryl Crow spend six years on an album.

There’s a story there, of course, and it’s that Machine is so nice, Apple made it twice. She scrapped the first set of takes, produced by her long-time cohort Jon Brion, and after a short break, started Version 2.0 with Mike Elizondo at the boards. In the meantime, the Brion sessions leaked, and some folks (actually, a lot of folks) assumed that Epic Records was sitting on them, refusing to release them. Apple now says it was all her, but what are we to make of Elizondo, a poppier producer who has worked with Sheryl Crow and Eminem?

Well, if the label shotgunned this marriage between Apple and Elizondo to smooth out and poppify Extraordinary Machine, they succeeded. His takes are much more accessible than Brion’s – the original versions of these songs are often beyond abstract, and yet strangely brilliant. Had Epic released the Brion tapes, Machine may have been the most difficult Difficult Third Album since OK Computer, which wouldn’t have been a bad thing. The first Machine is certainly more interesting, more layered, more fascinating than the new one, but I find I agree with Apple. It’s not finished.

Is the official version an improvement? In some ways. The songs are still delightful cabarets – Apple has always had a bit of Broadway about her, and these are her most theatrical songs. Brion dressed them up in orchestral clothes, turning ditties like “O’ Sailor” into huge outings, over which Apple’s distinctive voice was all but lost. The new “O’ Sailor” keeps the focus on the piano and vocals, and on the sweet melody. That’s Elizondo’s mission statement throughout – take out anything unnecessary, strip it all back and zoom in on Apple herself. The original Extraordinary Machine was a collaboration between artist and producer. The new one is a solo album, with the producer stepping back as much as possible.

The one new song bears that out. “Parting Gift” is just Apple and her piano, with no distractions. In a way, the Brion takes are all distractions, and while I certainly like some of them more than their official counterparts, I can understand wanting to go in another direction. “Not About Love,” for example, is a piano-and-strings excursion, serving as the opening shot on the Brion version. The new one is relegated to track 11, and it’s become a bare-bones, piano-bass-drums workout. It sounds like a completely different song. Or take “Used to Love Him.” It’s a cavalcade of martial drums and bells in Brion’s hands, and its new version, called “Tymps,” replaces all that with a clean electronic drum pattern. I hope it’s not heresy to say that I like the new version better – it brings out the gorgeous melody, the closest thing to a hook on the whole record.

Two of Brion’s productions have been preserved – the finger-plucked cartoon-ballad title track and the closing “Waltz (Better than Fine),” and their orchestral sweep does stick out. Otherwise, this is a crackling piano-pop album, in line with Apple’s previous work. The question is, was the change all Apple, or was it the label? The answer may help some decide if Apple belongs in the same league as Phair and Crow, with one ear towards working for the masses, or on another plane altogether, and we may never know. She’s calling the new Extraordinary Machine the real deal, and I guess it all depends on whether you think it’s an improvement over the first version.

But taken as the only version of these songs most people will ever hear, the album is sufficiently wonderful. I enjoy these process comparisons, but most people couldn’t care less – they will buy what’s in the stores, and Apple has delivered on her promise here. The songs are all left-field winners, the product of a distinctive voice, and under Elizondo’s care, it’s a voice that sits front and center, where we can better appreciate it.

I don’t care if Sheryl Crow ever makes another record, and while Liz Phair sounds like she’s on the right track, I can take or leave her. But six more years without a Fiona Apple album would be a shame. She’s a singular talent, the best thing to ever come out of the Lilith Fair era, and in retrospect, it seems silly to have lumped her in with that crowd to begin with. She doesn’t need a gender-specific touring movement to hitch her wagon to. Whichever Extraordinary Machine you listen to, with Apple at its center, you’re in for something that really is extraordinary.

Next week, Franz Ferdinand.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Serenity Now!

My admiration for Joss Whedon is legendary, so I have to urge everyone reading this to go see Serenity this weekend. If you do not share my Whedon-love, then please ignore the next few paragraphs. The rest of the column is Whedon-free, and full of record reviews of various types and lengths, sure to please anyone. Don’t let me keep you from it.

But if you don’t mind a little idol worship, here we go. Serenity is Whedon’s directorial debut, his first feature film, and it shouldn’t exist. In fact, until the opening credits roll during my screening Friday night, I will be wary of actually believing it does, for fear of jinxing it. I can honestly see in my mind’s eye an army of Fox executives, barging their way into theaters all across America, determined to shitcan this film like they cancelled the series that inspired it.

Serenity is the Firefly movie, the continuation of Whedon’s excellent Fox TV series. Now, movies get made from TV series all the time, so that’s nothing special, but this is the first one I can think of derived from a show that was canned after 11 episodes for low ratings. Fox dropped the ball on Firefly so badly that I wouldn’t be surprised to find out they were taking their cues from Michael Brown. They aired the pilot last, showed the second episode first, and were somehow surprised when people couldn’t follow the story. They gave it no promotion, watched it wither, and killed it halfway through the season, with three episodes unaired.

But if they were surprised at the ratings, they must have had strokes when the DVD set came out. First, the fans demanded a complete series set, which was amazing anyway, but then they bought it in such incredible numbers that Fox greenlit a feature film. That’s right, they ended up giving Whedon a bigger budget, more time, and more creative control to develop a property they’d already cancelled, because the fans demanded it. That, I have to say, kicks all kinds of ass.

Hopefully, the film does, too. Some will be turned off because it looks like science fiction, and I can’t deny that it is – it’s set on a spaceship, after all. But listen, I hate science fiction, and I loved Firefly. Why? Because it’s more about people, and less about big ideas. Sci-fi so often concentrates on the latter at the expense of the former, and while there are big ideas here – it’s an outer-space western, complete with six-guns and horses and no aliens – the people are the most important element. I don’t care about Captain Picard, or Riddick, or Will Smith’s character from I, Robot. But I care about Malcolm Reynolds, and about River Tam, and about what Mal will do to keep River safe. I care about the people, and that’s what matters to me.

What I have seen of Serenity has been terrific, and advance reports are all positive. Fox has held about 75 preview screenings of this thing, a testament to the faith they have in the movie – if they hated it, they’d keep it under wraps until the first week. It sounds like Whedon has pulled it off. And that, more than anything, is the reason I am excited to see it, and excited to recommend it – when Joss Whedon is on, writing and directing at full strength, it’s something to behold. Hopefully movies will treat him and Firefly better than television has.

* * * * *

Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad

Ryan Adams writes an awful lot of songs. You’d think a greater percentage of them would be stinkers.

He’s always been prolific, but 2005 is turning out to be a record-breaker for him. Just as I’m getting comfortable with Cold Roses, his double album from May and a serious contender for the top 10 list, he’s back with Jacksonville City Nights, his second of a planned three records this year, and it’s pretty wonderful as well. Here are 14 more Adams songs to join Roses’ 18, and none of them suck.

Jacksonville City Nights is credited to Ryan Adams and the Cardinals again, and one would be forgiven for thinking that perhaps these songs are the cast-offs from Roses, the ones not good enough for the opening salvo. One listen should dispel that notion – they are very different records. Where Roses could be considered country-rock, with its piercing electric guitars and borderline Neil Young approach, Nights is absolute country, all acoustics and pedal steels and weepy, twangy vocals. This is classic, Willie Nelson-style, Grand Ole Opry stuff.

And Adams absolutely excels at this sort of thing. Nights is full of tears-in-my-beer ballads, and every one of them sounds like a vintage gem. Once again, his gift for melody serves him well – listen to the chorus of “The End,” perversely sequenced second, for a sterling example. It’s a loping country waltz, but the catapulting vocal line elevates it. Adams duets with Norah Jones on “Dear John,” a decent little piano-driven number, and hearing Jones let her hair down and join in with sloppy harmonies is revelatory. Adams actually takes the high notes more often than not.

But full credit must go to the extraordinary band Adams has assembled. They were very good on Cold Roses, but here they are superb. The album sounds like it was recorded with a single mike, everyone standing around it and playing, and even though that’s not the case, the ambience is extraordinary. Catherine Popper sticks to acoustic stand-up bass, with its unmistakable thump, and John Graboff’s pedal steel gets a workout on nearly every song. The band just sounds like it’s lived in the skins of these songs, like someone rolled tape on a phenomenal rehearsal.

Hand to God, nothing here sucks. Nights ends with three of its best tracks, respectively the 31st, 32nd and 33rd Adams songs of the year, and he shows no signs of running out of gas. “PA” is a delicate ghost story, the wonderfully titled “Withering Heights” is perhaps the album’s best ballad, and “Don’t Fail Me Now” is a perfect ramshackle epic of a closer. Jacksonville City Nights is the sound of Ryan Adams doing what he does best, and while it’s not an out-of-the-box stunner like Cold Roses, it is a solid, swell little album.

Adams’ third outing of the year, 29, is scheduled for November 1, and if it closes out the trilogy with the same standard of quality, he will have accomplished quite a feat. Lost Highway is taking something of a risk, flooding the market with Adams material, but so far, it’s paying off, artistically speaking. If they’re all going to be this good, then I say let the man make as many records as he wants.

* * * * *

X For the Win

I’m going to get in trouble with Doug Van Pelt for this one, but I haven’t really enjoyed a King’s X album in more than a decade.

When the Texas Three started out, they were unlike anyone else – heavy but melodic, atmospheric yet driving, mystical yet grounded. Their first four albums are pretty much perfect, one of the best examples of musicians forging their own sound. They had jackhammer riffs, and all three guys could thrash out with the best of them, but they also had an unerring sense of space, with full harmonies and otherworldly guitars. Other bands idolized them, and they even had a couple of minor hits with “Over My Head” and “It’s Love.”

And then it all went wrong. Their fifth album, Dogman, de-emphasized the harmonies and brought the power. It was their last really great album – everything since has felt half-hearted, as if the band forgot what made them special. You can only ignore your own best traits for so long before you actually stop being special, and the albums King’s X made for Metal Blade over the last 10 years are frustratingly typical. I like all of them, in one way or another, but it’s better for me if I consider them a new band, with Dogman the debut, Ear Candy the disappointing follow-up, and everything since then just one pretty good rock album after another.

The problem has been one of focus, I think. Since signing with Metal Blade in 1997, the band has produced its own albums in its own home studio, and with no one to push them, they didn’t bother to excel. The various side projects didn’t really help, especially since none of them were as good as King’s X could be – it was like they had denied that their sum was greater than their parts. Live, they were still a force to be reckoned with, as their concert album of last year proves, but in the studio they slacked off, content to just fill tape. They needed a producer.

Nothing bears that theory out like their new album, Ogre Tones. (Yeah, take a second and deal with that title.) They enlisted Michael Wagener, known for his work with ‘80s bands of every stripe, and with an outside force bringing out their strengths, they’ve made their best album since Dogman, easily. The riffs are here, of course, but the harmonies are back, the textures are in full effect, and the melodies are at near-classic levels. In short, they sound like King’s X again, and it’s about damn time.

They seem to know it, too. Nothing on Ogre Tones sounds rote. It’s like they’re discovering how to be a great band again. The playing is unassailable, as always – don’t trust anyone who doesn’t vote for Doug Pinnick and Jerry Gaskill in those Best Bassist and Best Drummer polls in Metal Edge magazine, and Ty Tabor knows ways to make his guitar sing and sigh that most of the six-stringers in lesser bands will never learn. But on recent albums, they have been excellent players as a matter of course, whereas here they sound invigorated, positively thrilled to be as good as they are.

The lyrics reflect this as well. King’s X has always been a spiritual band, but somewhere around 1992, they lost the faith, and the lyrics since then have been earthbound to the point of despair. Ogre Tones finds lyricists Pinnick and Tabor searching, reaching out again, and it’s a joyful thing. Granted, some bitterness remains, but this is an album that juxtaposes a sarcastic rant like “Freedom” with a genuine question to God like “Get Away.” The songs are magical again, too. “Fly” is a classic, reminiscent of “It’s Love” with its sustained three-part vocal chorus, and even something with the uninspiring title of “Mudd” is better than you’d think. “Honesty” is the first great King’s X ballad since “The Difference,” all acoustics and glorious harmonies. But the highlight is Tabor’s long, liquid mercury solo on “Sooner or Later” – man, I missed that sound.

I am not sure why they decided to toss the album into a ditch in its final stretch. Ogre Tones ends with a re-recording of “Goldilox,” a song from 1986, and a three-minute noise-and-sample party called “Bam.” It would have been a much stronger conclusion without either track, especially since “Goldilox” remains essentially unchanged from its original version.

But that and the title are the only examples I can find of the apathy that has plagued King’s X for far too long. Ogre Tones is the comeback they needed, a shot in the arm to a faltering career, and the best King’s X album since my high school days. It is such a relief to really enjoy an album by these guys again – they really are unlike any other rock band on the planet, and I’m glad they’ve started to believe that again.

* * * * *

Reinventing the Wheel

My memory erodes with each passing year, so I am not certain who first played Catherine Wheel for me. It could easily have been Chris L’Etoile, who waxed ecstatic about “Black Metallic” back in the days of shoegazers. It could also have been Marc Zeoli, who brought a copy of Chrome with him to our dorm at St. Joseph’s College. Either way, I owe a debt to someone, because Catherine Wheel was a great band.

They started as feedback-loving My Bloody Valentine disciples with a well-developed sense of British melody, and Chrome stands as one of the best records of that period I have heard, all swirling thunder and underwater atmosphere. They turned more earthy on Happy Days, and stayed that way, but before they finally went to sleep, they did release a masterpiece called Adam and Eve. A more acoustic, emotional record than they had made before, Adam and Eve is just wonderful, rendering their swan song, Wishville, all the more disappointing.

Not that it was buried before, but the acoustic bent of Adam and Eve brought one of Catherine Wheel’s most potent features to the fore: the voice of Rob Dickinson. His tenor is deep and penetrating, bringing even the lamest songs (and there were some lame ones on Wishville) to a remarkable level. Five years after the band’s demise, here is Dickinson with his solo debut, Fresh Wine for the Horses, and it continues the acoustic theme admirably. The focus is on his chilling voice, and true to form, it levitates these little pop songs into orbit.

Fresh Wine’s first half is acoustic pop, far removed from the expansive sound of Catherine Wheel, and as such it’s a little disappointing at first. It’s a grower, though. The opening track, “My Name is Love,” is astoundingly simple, but when Dickinson launches into the title phrase in the chorus, it’s unstoppable. “The Night” is similarly stripped down, but the smoky reverb and Dickinson’s self-harmonizing keeps it from Bruce Springsteen territory. He includes a brief piano-vocal cover of Warren Zevon’s “Mutineer,” rescuing the song from the cheesy synthesizers of the original version.

Things do get more Catherine Wheel-esque as the album progresses, which makes sense – several of the tracks in the second half are refugees from that band’s final writing sessions. Oddly, though, the more airy, organ-inflected tunes are less memorable than the straightforward ones. While the electric guitar slammers are sweet, especially “Handsome” and “Bathe Away,” the meandering bore “Don’t Change” shouldn’t have been included. Closer “Towering and Flowering” lives up to both adjectives, though, bringing the record to a crashing conclusion.

Dickinson seems torn here between continuing down the Catherine Wheel path and reinventing himself as a folky pop singer, and as a consequence, Fresh Wine doesn’t fully commit to either. Its second half feels disassociated from its first, as if he appended some leftovers to an EP of a sound in progress. Still, it’s good to hear his voice again, and if he scores a minor hit with “My Name is Love,” I won’t be surprised. We may have to wait until his follow-up to see which direction Dickinson’s solo career will ultimately take, but as a first act, Fresh Wine is decent enough.

* * * * *

No Language in Our Lungs

Which brings us to Sigur Ros.

I am never sure what to say about Iceland’s best band. In fact, I probably shouldn’t even say that – for all I know, they’re Iceland’s only band. Last time I weighed in on one of their floaty masterpieces, I remarked that Sigur handily empties the reviewer’s bag of tricks – there are no English language lyrics to analyze, no liner notes to parse, no clever references to pick up on. Last time, they didn’t even include album or song titles – most people, myself included, called the album ( ), after the cutout shape on its cover. The only words included in the CD booklet were Sigur and Ros, yet the band swore the album was not self-titled. What else could we do?

They’ve graciously thrown us a bone this time: their fourth album is called Takk, which means “thanks” in Icelandic. They’ve also decided to dump their made-up Hopelandic language and sing entirely in their native tongue, but unless you speak the dialect, I dare you to notice the difference. For all intents and purposes, this is just another beautiful Sigur Ros record, with all the standard hallmarks. The instrumentation is otherworldly, the vocals are strange and processed, the melodies are big and bold. It is background music for sunrise on Venus, and it sounds like nothing else in the world.

With only other Sigur Ros albums left as a fair comparison, I can say that Takk is perhaps this band’s most upbeat and energetic recording. Many songs are succinct by their standards, with several clocking in under six minutes, and they trim their tendency to meander. Songs like “Hoppipolla” get right to the heart of things, bringing up the strings and horns early so they can be in and out in four and a half minutes. That’s not to say there aren’t epics here – “Se Lest” drifts lazily for five of its nine minutes before slipping into a brassy waltz, and “Milano” extends its slow build over a dreamlike 10 minutes.

But what does it sound like? I’m kind of at a loss. There are pianos, guitars, drums and strings here, but somehow Sigur combines them in ways that sound utterly alien. “Saeglopur” would be a piano-led pop song with Beach Boys harmonies, if it hadn’t been recorded in the Negative Zone, and “Gong” is a creepy guitar-and-brush-drums wonder that would be Radiohead if the guys in Radiohead a) still wrote good songs, and b) were all from Pluto. I can easily imagine “Andvari” with lyrics about some poor schmuck and his broken heart, with its lovely clean guitar and extended string coda, and can picture it as the closing song of a sweet movie. It’s almost enough to make you think you’re listening to humans making music, but then “Svo Hijott” comes in, with its widescreen deserts-of-Mars feel, and you’re back in uncharted territory.

I don’t know what else I can tell you. Sigur Ros sounds like the lost dreams of an alien civilization buried for a thousand years – it’s foreboding and sad, and you don’t know why it affects you, but it does. Takk is just another superb Sigur Ros album, distant yet surprisingly accessible, and fully worthy of its beautiful packaging. I have no idea what they’re singing about, but it doesn’t matter. Music this chillingly lovely doesn’t need to use my language to speak to me.

* * * * *

Slight Return

Next week, an examination of three female artists in the throes of reinvention. Go see Serenity, and we’ll meet back next week and compare notes.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

We start with a shout-out this week.

Mike Lachance has long been my most famous friend, having worked with DreamWorks Animation on the concepts and stories for Shrek 2 and Shark Tale, among other projects. But on October 7, Mike makes the jump from behind-the-scenes guru to name-in-the-credits artist. If you go see the Wallace and Gromit movie, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, you’ll be treated to a 10-minute short starring the super-spy penguins from Madagascar, written by Mike.

This is a big deal – Mike recently left the security of his job at DreamWorks to ply his trade as a freelance writer, and this is his first nationally released work. I’m also quite glad that the short is premiering in front of a movie I wanted to see anyway, since I’d have hated to spend $9 to go see a 10-minute mini-movie and leave before the feature, but I’d have done it anyway. The Wallace and Gromit movie is going to be really good, and I get the added bonus of seeing Mike’s name in three-foot-high letters.

Anyway, he spells it out in his always-entertaining blog. (Scroll past the Lord of War review.) Just wanted to spread the word, and say congrats.

* * * * *

I am not a trendy person.

Ask anyone who knows me. I have had the same basic fashion sense (meaning none) since grade school. My hairstyle rarely changes, and hasn’t since high school, not because I like what I have, but because I am too indifferent to do anything else with it. It took me until last December to jump on the cell phone bandwagon, after it became horribly apparent that I would not be considered a responsible adult without one. I couldn’t care less about the latest cars, video games, video games about cars, or cars with built-in video game consoles.

Still, the part of my brain that’s reserved for full-time music criticism is constantly worried about trends, and about not appearing tied to them. I don’t know why that is, exactly. I respond negatively to tidal waves of hype, and often I don’t even care about a new band until their third album, after the overwhelming buzz has died down. (Or, as in Coldplay’s case, not.) For example, I’m coming around on Franz Ferdinand, but I found the legions of fans and critics prostrating themselves before this semi-interesting party-rock band kind of puzzling, and all sorts of irritating.

So I try not to get caught up in it. I let the whole ‘80s new wave revival movement pass me by – I care not at all about the Killers, the Bravery, or any of their ilk until they can show me that they’re worth my time. And I do tend to lump all the riders on a certain bandwagon together, though I know I shouldn’t – the Hives, the Vines, the White Stripes and the Strokes will always be parts of the same garage-rock mess to me, and it takes some effort to separate each one out and consider them as individual bands, as I did with the Stripes recently.

But isn’t disregarding trends, in and of itself, a trend? It’s at least a pattern of behavior, which makes me suspicious. Do I really dislike the Killers, or just the wave they rode in on? These are the questions that keep me up at night, examining and re-examining my motives and prejudices. It’s somehow worse when I really like something that legions of others have embraced, especially if it seems like the next big thing. As much as I don’t want to disregard trends out of hand, I also don’t want to jump aboard them if I don’t really believe in the music.

At a certain point, though, you have to say the hell with it, and like what you like. This week’s review subject is a good case in point – it’s Death Cab for Cutie’s new one, Plans. After a couple of listens, it just doesn’t matter at all that Death Cab is Seth Cohen’s favorite band on The O.C., or that every cultural prognosticator with an internet connection is calling them the voice of the Garden State generation. The trappings of scene and society don’t mean a thing, the music does, and the music on this record is absolutely marvelous.

Plans is Death Cab’s fourth album, and their first for a major label, as if the too-cool-for-school types needed another reason to hate it. It comes on the heels of not just the band’s most acclaimed album, Transatlanticism, but of the astounding success of singer Ben Gibbard’s side project, the Postal Service. Even if you think you haven’t heard a Postal Service song, you probably have – their tunes have been used in commercials and as television themes. If Death Cab wanted to play it safe, they could have made an album full of electronic overtones and trippy beats, like the Postal Service record. Or, they could have cloned Transatlanticism, with its peals of feedback and flowing peaks and valleys.

They didn’t do either one. Plans is, on first listen, a subdued, underwhelming affair, full of slow songs and pianos. In an age of ever-expanding epics and ambition, it clocks in at a modest 44:19. Their contract with Atlantic Records allowed them full control, and they retained their own guitarist, Chris Walla, as producer. This is exactly the album they wanted to make, and they used their major-label money to produce something tiny and intimate. If they are the new R.E.M., as many have said, then Plans is their Automatic for the People.

Over time, Plans reveals itself as a breathtakingly emotional song cycle about death and disconnection, but it’s wide-eyed and hopeful, earnest and beautiful. Plans is about taking moments, about overcoming the oceans that divide us, and about the sad wonder of losing everything. Its small scope is perfect for the infinitesimal snapshots it captures. There is nothing detached about it – Gibbard and company have written an album about connecting people that strives, every second, to connect with the listener.

I have liked Death Cab before, but none of their other albums does it for me like this one does. Gibbard opens himself here like he never has – a lot of attention is paid to his high, unmistakable voice, but he is a superb lyricist, and he tackles big themes here with specific sketches. One of the record’s standouts is “I Will Follow You Into the Dark,” performed by Gibbard and his acoustic and nothing else. It is the most devastating love song I have heard in years, and it encapsulates the theme of the album: “Should heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied, illuminate the ‘no’s on their vacancy signs, if there’s no one beside you when your soul embarks, then I will follow you into the dark…”

Plans develops that theme with songs about loneliness and isolation. “Different Names for the Same Thing” catches up with a man on a train, riding somewhere but not caring where he ends up, and the song ironically maps a journey from plaintive piano to swirling winds of guitar. “Your Heart is an Empty Room” pirouettes on the line, “Out on the street are so many possibilities to not be alone,” a theme that continues into “Someday You Will Be Loved,” with its martial rhythm and terrific bass line.

But the heart of the album lies in its final third. The glorious “What Sarah Said” is an epic in miniature, rising and falling with emotion as it details the thoughts of a terminal patient. “Every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time,” Gibbard sings, and later he brings the twin themes of death and disconnection together: “Each descending peak on the LCD took you a little farther away from me.” It is the thudding reality that counterpoints the fantastical promise in “I Will Follow You Into the Dark,” its protagonist wondering aloud, “Who’s going to watch you die?” I read that as a selfish sentiment mis-stated the first time, as if he meant to say, “Who’s going to watch me die,” but it clicked on repeat listens that he’s expressing his love: When I’m gone, who will watch you die, like you’re watching me right now?

“Brothers on a Hotel Bed” imagines old age, in contrast, its simple piano figure supporting a song about old lovers who have grown apart. Life is fleeting, time is the enemy, and its very ephemeral nature increases our need to connect with those around us, lest we live endless lives, aching to be loved even by those closest to us. It’s an amazing song anyway, but after “What Sarah Said,” it’s surprisingly powerful. The album concludes with “Stable Song,” an ode to choosing life, to overcoming: “The gift of memory is an awful curse, with age it just gets much worse, but I don’t mind…” Gibbard all but pleads, “Give us our measly sum,” and it recalls all the measly sums he has described on Plans, and how they’re all worth it.

This album, I can tell, is going to be like Duncan Sheik’s Phantom Moon, from four years ago. I love it, more than I expected to, but I won’t be able to explain it or convey that love to others. Many will hear a simple little collection of ditties, a disappointing major label debut, a trendy emo-pop grab at a demographic. I can’t worry about that. I adore this record – in a year already crowded with favorites, it has captured a piece of me, struck a chord deep within me. It’s an album to grow old with, one that will have even deeper resonance 40 years from now, when I will likely have lived at least one of the lives described in its lyrics. There are so many possibilities to not be alone.

* * * * *

That’s all I have time for this week. I’m still drowning in work, which is an unqualified good thing, but it leaves me with little listening and writing time. I wanted to get to Rob Dickinson and Sigur Ros this week as well, but alas…

Next week, there are 12 or so new records I could possibly review. Who knows what I’ll do?

See you in line Tuesday morning.

This week has just flown away from me.

I am inundated with work, not that I’m complaining about that, and feeling a little under the weather. It doesn’t help, of course, that the weather I’m under is crappy, rainy and depressing. I’m always exhausted on rainy days, for some reason, no matter how much sleep and exercise I get, so the last four dreary, cloud-covered 24-hour mope-throughs have found me dragging.

Speaking of depressing, the television season has started up again. I have seen literally no new show announcements that make me want to watch the shows. I have even seen the complete first episode of My Name is Earl, thanks to Entertainment Weekly, and though it is easily the best-looking new show of the fall season, it’s still not fantastic enough to get me to watch. Jason Lee is a hoot as redneck karma chameleon Earl, and Ethan Suplee is even better as his amoral brother, but it’s not as good as everyone says it is.

Besides, it’s on opposite Gilmore Girls, which is every bit as good as everyone says it is. On top of its other achievements, which include being the most naturally warm-hearted and sharply written show on the air, Gilmore has done something recently that I have never seen a show do as well – the writers solved the will-they-or-won’t-they by putting Luke and Lorelai together, and rather than killing it, it’s made the show better. Who cares if I can literally feel my estrogen levels rising as I watch, or that the DVD sets look like feminine hygiene product commercials. It’s the best show on television, bar none.

So I will watch Gilmore, and I will watch House because the writing is amazing and Hugh Laurie deserves his Emmy nominations, and I will watch Lost because it remains the most captivating mystery on television. And that’s it. The best thing about the rest of the fall schedule is that it will allow me to catch up on my reading.

Oh, and my listening, too. We are in the midst of the four biggest new music weeks of the year, a veritable pile of interesting stuff, most of which I hope to cover in this space. I won’t be able to talk about all of it, though, so I may interject here and there with bullet-point recommendations. For instance, I doubt I’ll get to the Thumbsucker soundtrack anytime soon, so I’ll tell you now that it’s good – it features the final two songs Elliott Smith ever recorded, and a bunch of smaller pieces by the Polyphonic Spree. The Spree stuff is typical (except for the 30-minute droning loop called “Acceptance”), and the Smith songs are gorgeous, particularly his cover of Big Star’s “Thirteen.”

Expect more mini-reviews in the future. Now, on with the show.

* * * * *

For many music fans, it’s come to be known as the Great Debate.

The Beatles vs. the Stones.

Pretty much all of pop music can be divided into those two camps – the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The Stones are the swagger, the blues, the raunch, the abandon, while their Liverpool cousins are the melody, the art, the drama, the emotional core. The Stones are trashy, the Beatles are twee, and which one you like better says volumes about your personality as a listener. Most everyone likes them both, of course, but most everyone has a preference, too.

The temptation is there to consider the Beatles-Stones division the difference between rock and pop, but that’s a little simplistic. The Beatles started out as a great rock band, albeit one with more of an interest in sweeping melodies, and the Stones have done many songs that can be considered pop music. No, to me, it’s really the difference between attitude and craft. The Stones have always concentrated on the former, turning a cocksure strut into a band personality, while the Beatles strove to better their skill each time out, to the point of not even playing as a live band after 1966.

Their albums reflect this. Stones records are barnburners, based on simple blues riffs and melodies, but designed, for the most part, to tear the roof off the joint. They strive for simplicity, actually – the best Stones albums dispense with anything that gets in the way of rocking, including tricky chord progressions and bridges. Three chords, repeat, give Keith the solo space, and it’s done. The Beatles, on the other hand, worked tirelessly to fill their records with sounds and melodies no one had ever heard. While the Stones were usually a sure bet for solid rock ‘n’ roll, you never knew what you were going to get with a Beatles album. They were always reinventing and pushing forward.

There is one other essential difference, of course – the Beatles broke up in 1970, while the Stones are still going. It’s debatable which entity has provided the most diminishing returns in the past 30 years, though, what with Paul McCartney’s increasingly piffle-stuffed solo career. In fact, each of the Beatles has tarnished the band’s legacy with less-than-great solo work – Harrison’s Gone Troppo, for instance, or Lennon’s inexplicable work with Yoko Ono, or anything by Ringo. The Stones have sucked for nearly as long, too, with uninspired records like Dirty Work and Steel Wheels to their name, and Mick Jagger has proven numerous times that he’s even worse on his own.

But the influence of both bands’ golden ages cannot be overstated. What’s in question is the continuing viability of the Stones as a band, and the surviving Beatles as artists. Astonishingly, though, both the Stones and Paul McCartney have just released late-career-defining albums, the best from each entity in decades, and even better, the records each encapsulate the influential qualities, the reasons Jagger, Richards and McCartney are revered.

When I worked at Face Magazine, I had a running argument with editor man Bennie Green. Well, I had several running arguments with Bennie, but this one was somehow more crucial – his stance was that as long as the Rolling Stones are still playing, they are the greatest rock band in the world. No matter how much evidence I could throw at him to demonstrate that the Stones have sucked since the ‘70s, he would not be swayed. He rejected any other contenders to the throne, without even a thought. Now, I love Bennie, but I could not let that contention rest.

He’s got the last laugh, though, because the Stones’ 17th album, A Bigger Bang, is the first one in 30 years that makes his case. It is, in my estimation, the first Stones album to be released while I have been alive that is worth listening to more than once. With a combined age of over 200 years, the Stones have made a record here that, comparatively speaking, makes other, younger bands sound ready for the nursing home. This thing is a stomper, the first Stones album since Some Girls, perhaps, that can rank with the classic stuff.

Now, I am not a Rolling Stones fan – I come down on the Beatles side of the debate more often than not, although I do love a good rock ‘n’ roll record. A Bigger Bang is a good rock ‘n’ roll record, one which only suffers because of its length – 16 songs, 64 minutes. The changes are not immediately apparent – the band stuck with Don Was, who also produced the travesty known as Bridges to Babylon, and worked in much the same way. But the difference is palpable. They sound like a band, like four guys jamming in a room, for much of this album, and it’s been some time since Charlie Watts’ drumming has snapped like this, or since Richards’ guitar has had quite this much bite.

The Stones only run into difficulty when they try to be diverse. They’re a rock band, plain and simple, and reggae-funk like “Rain Falls Down” doesn’t suit them as well as it could. Similarly, their ballads have always been their downfall (excepting the excellent “Angie”), and “Streets of Love” is an unfortunate detour into schmaltz that this record didn’t need. But man, listen to the groove they lay down on “Look What the Cat Dragged In,” or “Oh No, Not You Again.” Even Richards’ vocal turn on “Infamy” rocks. The bluesy numbers slow the album down, but they work, especially the Delta-fied “Back of My Hand.”

Lyrically, it’s a mess, of course. Jagger does what he knows once again, which is fast songs about good times, and slow songs about wishing for good times. The one major exception is “Sweet Neo Con,” a semi-bold foray into American politics. I’m not sure why Jagger is trying to disavow this song as a comment on the Bush administration – tell me if the lines “one thing is certain, life is good at Halliburton” can be about anything else. As much as I dig the sentiment, the song is blunt and sloppy. But then, that’s about what we should expect from the Stones – they have never been subtle or carefully crafted, now, have they?

So yes, there are problems here, and dead spots, but all in all, A Bigger Bang is the best the Stones have been in ages. They are the prototypical bluesy rock band, and while it seems easy to be good at that sort of thing, so few bands are. It is the triumph of attitude over craft – Jagger yelps and yowls, the band sounds like they’re rehearsing, but the sheer ballsiness, the conviction that yes, they are the best rock band in the world holds it together. The Stones sound like they believe this one, and for them to make an album this assured, this rocking, more than 40 years into their career is pretty amazing.

* * * * *

By contrast, Paul McCartney doesn’t rock. At all.

Here’s another Face Magazine story for you – the only time I almost got into a fight with a reader, it was over Paul McCartney. I had just lightly trashed Flaming Pie, Paul’s 1997 solo effort, in an issue that had hit the stands the day before. I believe what I said at the time was that while Pie was pretty good, and certainly better than McCartney had been in some time, an album by one of the world’s most revered living songwriters should be better than this one was. I stand by that – Pie is spotty and slapdash.

So anyway, we had an open office – the door was always unlocked, and it led right into our main production area, so anyone who wanted to could come right in and speak with the folks in charge. This large, obviously upset man barged into our office that day, demanding to speak with the person who had dared besmirch McCartney’s good name. I told him it was me, and he spat out, “Get a life!” A lengthy discussion ensued, which thankfully never came to blows, but it left me with the impression that some fans will always refuse to see the black marks against their favorites.

Flaming Pie, in retrospect, signaled the upswing in McCartney’s solo career, after decades of swill like Pipes of Peace and Press to Play. He’s finally emerged, 35 years after his excellent solo debut, with its spiritual cousin, an amazing little record saddled with the title Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. This album was always going to be interesting. It was produced by Nigel Godrich, perhaps the most talented young sound sculptor around – he did Radiohead’s OK Computer, Beck’s Sea Change, and Travis’ The Man Who. And Godrich convinced Paul to abandon the studio musicians and play nearly every instrument himself.

Quite the challenge for the 63-year-old family man – there would be no lazy way out of this record, and it would all be on McCartney. Happily, Sir Paul rose to the challenge with 13 of his best songs since the demise of Wings. Chaos and Creation is a soft, nimble little album full of nooks and crannies, the most intimate and revealing record McCartney has made in eons. Best of all, he has discovered his inner Rubber Soul, coming up with some of his most Beatle-rific melodies and riffs. There is a lower concentration of mediocrity here than on any of his other solo albums.

There is still some piffle – it wouldn’t be a McCartney album without it, and “English Tea” and “A Certain Softness” certainly qualify. The lyrics, as usual, revolve around love, kindness and family, though they are less sugary than they have been in the past. In fact, there’s an undercurrent of bitterness, of striking out at the unfairness of life, in “Too Much Rain” and “Riding to Vanity Fair,” two of the album’s most striking songs. Chaos ends well, too, with a pair of classic McCartney ballads, the sweet “This Never Happened Before” and the yearning “Anyway.”

But McCartney was always more comfortable writing the ditties, the less important, yet more beloved songs on the Beatles albums. He scores highest here with “Jenny Wren,” a natural successor to “Blackbird,” performed with sparse, lovely acoustic guitar. He also knocks it out of the park with “Promise To You Girl,” a Beatles-tastic piano romp with some superb Paul-on-Paul harmonies. Godrich successfully pushed McCartney to excel, and he found he still had it in him – this is an excellent record, nearly top to bottom. McCartney has regained his sense of craft, his desire to build the best album he can, while he can.

So Paul McCartney has presented us with his first soft-focus studio wonder in many years, and the Rolling Stones have lit the place on fire in ways they haven’t managed in even more years. To my ears, McCartney wins this battle, but that’s the way I’m wired – I appreciate song and studio craft more than I appreciate energy and attitude. But really, in this contest, there are no losers. Whichever side you come down on, this is a great year to be a fan.

Next week, we chill out with Death Cab for Cutie.

See you in line Tuesday morning.