At the end of this column you’ll find the First Quarter Report. Basically, it’s a snapshot of my top 10 list as it stands right now. If you’re the kind of person who skips to the end first, you’ve probably already noticed that there’s a tie for the number one slot. And if you’re especially perceptive, you’ll have noted that the tie is between the two albums I’m reviewing this week. No, this has never happened before. Yes, they’re both that good. And I hope I am about to explain why I think they’re both masterpieces, but in very different ways.

There are basically two ways to get to the top of my list. (I promise I won’t make this all about me.) You can be go-for-broke ambitious and actually pull it off, creating something of extraordinary scope that outshines all other efforts in a given year. Or you can make me cry. I have a history of giving the top spot to emotionally resonant pieces of work that move me in ways I can’t describe. There are exceptions here, but if you go deeper or go wider than anyone else, chances are you’ll become my favorite.

These two approaches are almost not even comparable, which is why, now that I’m faced with one of each, I can’t choose between them. Hopefully, in a few hundred words, you’ll see what I mean.

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I’m not sure how to start talking about Kendrick Lamar’s monumental To Pimp a Butterfly.

This is because I hear new and fascinating things every time I listen to it. I’m torn between saying that To Pimp a Butterfly transcends the rap genre, or proves its potential. Longtime readers will know I haven’t had a lot of time for the beats-and-rhymes art form here, but I’ve certainly pointed out records that grab me, from Deltron 3030 in 2000 to the Roots’ amazing And Then You Shoot Your Cousin last year. But I think of rap like jazz – I’m pretty sure I’m only scratching the surface, only hearing the big records, the ones everyone hears.

Which means that, of course, I heard Good Kid m.A.A.d. City, Lamar’s autobiography in song, when it came out two years ago. I’m sad to say I didn’t join in the critical chorus praising this record, and I still find it somewhat flat. But listening back, there is definitely something here in this kid-out-of-Compton story, some spark that I should have caught. Because Lamar’s follow-up, this dense and massive undertaking he called To Pimp a Butterfly, is simply one of the best rap albums I have ever heard. It puts Lamar firmly among the greats – it’s a work worthy of the artists he idolizes, most importantly the late Tupac Shakur.

The ghost of 2Pac haunts this entire album – it concludes with a seven-minute interview with Shakur, conducted in 1994, into which Lamar has interjected himself. That would seem like astonishing hubris if not for the 70 minutes of extraordinary self-examination and insight that precede it. Instead, it feels like the natural conclusion to the album’s themes. To Pimp a Butterfly aims to be an encapsulation of the black American experience, and a reflection on that experience’s impact on the way Lamar has responded to his own fame. The weight of Lamar’s responsibility and his desire to live up to Shakur’s example anchors this album – the start of Lamar’s conversation with Shakur is a poem that is sprinkled throughout the record, each new line leading him to a new place. “I remember you was conflicted, misusing your influence,” Lamar says. “Sometimes I did the same.”

Throughout Butterfly, Lamar dives deeply into these themes, and the results are often not easy to listen to. “King Kunta” is the only song here that could serve as a hip-hop single – it imagines Kunta Kinte, immortalized in Alex Haley’s Roots, as a rap kingpin, “everybody tryin’ to cut the legs off him.” The rest of the album is dense and often difficult. The powerful “U” is a mad jazz nightmare. It begins with Lamar screaming “loving you is complicated,” and it sounds like it might be a complex anti-love song, but in fact he is shouting into a mirror. The song’s stunning second half lays bare so many of Lamar’s insecurities and feelings of guilt – how he neglected his dying brother, how his fame and money hasn’t dampened his own suicidal feelings.

This follows several songs about Lamar’s travails as an artist, attempting to stay true without being “pimped” by the record industry. This could be self-serving, but Lamar widens it into a meditation on black self-image and pride. “Institutionalized” is about those imprisoned by poverty (the caterpillar in his butterfly metaphor), and how his story shows that even getting out of this situation doesn’t fix everything. The problems are deeper, more ingrained. The smooth “These Walls” is deceptively complicated – its first verse is about the vaginal walls of a woman Lamar is sleeping with, the second verse about the prison cell walls that hold the father of this woman’s child, and the third verse about how the first verse is an abuse of Lamar’s power as a famous rapper. Lamar makes you feel his own guilt by making you feel guilty for enjoying the first verse.

Lamar gives these temptations of fame a persona – he calls her Lucy, short for Lucifer, and battles it out with her throughout Butterfly. “Lucy gonna fill your pockets, Lucy gonna move your momma out of Compton,” he raps on “For Sale,” precipitating a trip back home in “Momma” and “Hood Politics” to ground himself. The fantastic “How Much a Dollar Cost” puts Lamar face to face with God in the form of a homeless man asking for money. Lamar, high on his own success, denies him, and God humbles him, an experience that leads into the final third of the album, on which Lamar learns to love himself.

And it is here that the album goes wider, and becomes about more than just Lamar’s own experience. “Complexion” is about loving yourself no matter your skin color. The fierce “The Blacker the Berry” is about how centuries of racism and oppression have led to self-hatred (“It’s evident that I am irrelevant to society, that’s what you’re telling me, penitentiary would only hire me, curse me ‘till I’m dead…”), and it’s paired beautifully with “i,” the flip side of “U.” A striking anthem of positivity and self-love, “i” is the most joyous thing on the album, the culmination of Lamar’s lessons learned. Far from the usual hip-hop boast, this song’s “I love myself” refrain carries with it the relief of losing the weight that Lamar has been carrying all his life.

“i” appears on this record not in its Grammy-winning single form, but in a live version that Lamar interrupts halfway through for a fascinating dissertation on the N-word – Lamar not only retakes the word from the former slave owners, he infuses it with even more power, tying it to an Ethiopian word (negus) meaning “black emperor, king, ruler.” This ties nicely back to “King Kunta,” but with much more wisdom and self-love. It is this Kendrick Lamar who goes to talk with Tupac at the end of closer “Mortal Man,” a song about the responsibility of black voices and those who listen to them. Lamar knows he’s the latest in a long line of black men with a platform, and the album is a promise to use that platform responsibly, with a sense of history and identity. He knows he is a butterfly, and it’s his job to bring new perspectives to the caterpillars, so that one day they too can be butterflies.

I’m so bowled over by the thoughtfulness and thematic complexity of this record that I haven’t even talked about the music. To Pimp a Butterfly is nothing short of a tour through the history of black music, from jazz to funk to soul to hip-hop, some performed with live instruments (bassist Thundercat is tremendous on this record) and some with programmed beats. Songs stop short and redefine themselves, rhythms disintegrate into acid jazz jamming (keyboardist Robert Glasper contributes here), and the record never sits still for a minute. It’s a tour de force, and Lamar’s rapping is mesmerizing, slipping in and out of different voices and conveying every emotion perfectly.

There are so many elements in play on Butterfly, musically and thematically, and it’s almost hard to believe that one 27-year-old man kept it all straight and wove it together so eloquently. There’s more here that I haven’t talked about, and more here that I’m sure I haven’t heard yet. Assessing Butterfly’s ultimate effectiveness is tough for me – I’m not a member of the audience Lamar is speaking to, or the community he is speaking for. But from my perspective, it’s a masterpiece. We’re going to be talking about this record in 10 years, in 20 years, with the same reverence we reserve for the works Lamar idolizes. It really is that good, and that important.

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Where Lamar went big, Sufjan Stevens went small on his new album, Carrie and Lowell. But the results are no less astonishing.

Stevens is known for his daunting ambition – I know several people who can’t make it all the way through his electro-prog nightmare album The Age of Adz, and that’s merely the most complex in a discography that prizes sweeping statements. Stevens is still best known as the man behind 2005’s Illinois, a 74-minute examination of life, loss and faith filtered through the history of the Land of Lincoln. I named Illinois the best album of that year, and the best album of that decade – it’s a remarkable marriage of musical complexity and deep, abiding emotion. I still listen to it regularly.

But Stevens has never cut as deeply as he has with his new one. It’s reminiscent of 2004’s Seven Swans – it’s a slight 44 minutes, performed on acoustic guitar and subtle keys, never rising above a gentle whisper. The instrumentation fits the theme – the album is named after and dedicated to Stevens’ mother and stepfather, both pictured on the album cover. Carrie died in 2012 of stomach cancer, and was always a difficult presence in Stevens’ life – she abandoned him repeatedly as a child, staying mainly for a period of five years during which she was married to Lowell. The album is Stevens’ attempt to wrestle with his complex reaction to his mother’s death, and lay it all bare.

My first trip through this album was one of the most emotional musical experiences I’ve had in a very long time. It’s an album of confusion, pain, forgiveness and love through it all. It’s filled with memories, some fleshed out and some flashing by in glimpses – the swimming teacher who couldn’t pronounce Sufjan’s name in “Eugene,” for instance – and references that are specific, and yet hit home unerringly. It’s a troubled, tormented album, one that opens a vein and lets it bleed. These songs explore the hazy memories of childhood and the pain of adulthood like little else I’ve heard.

The album begins with “Death With Dignity,” one of several songs to directly discuss Carrie’s death. “I forgive you, mother, I can hear you and I want to be near you, but every road leads to an end,” Stevens sings. “You’ll never see us again.” The amazing “Fourth of July” goes deeper into the same experience, Stevens sitting by his mother’s bedside and reflecting on what she has taught him (“Make the most of your life, while it is rife, we’re all gonna die…”). “The Only Thing” begins with Stevens’ admission of suicidal thoughts, and finds him wondering if his mother ever loved him. “Should I tear my heart out now? Everything I feel returns to you somehow, I want to save you from your sorrow…”

Many of these songs delve into those five happy years, which Stevens calls his “season of hope.” Family trips to Oregon, exploring covered bridges and pear trees, loving and being loved. Adult Stevens tries to hold on to these, but is wracked with guilt over not forging a closer relationship with his mother. His faith sustains him (“Jesus, I need you, be near, come shield me,” he sings on “John My Beloved”), until it doesn’t – “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross” is simply devastating near the end of this record, trawling through the depths of his despair. The whispered “fuck me, I’m falling apart” in the final verse might be the saddest moment here.

There isn’t much hope to be had on Carrie and Lowell – the birth of Stevens’ niece, detailed in “Should Have Known Better,” provides one of the few shafts of light – and in the end, it leaves Stevens desperate and reaching for connection. “There’s only a shadow of me, in a manner of speaking I’m dead,” he sings on “John My Beloved,” and the album leaves you no choice but to believe him. It’s heartrending. These songs are the most honest and powerful that Stevens has given us, and the sparse music leaves him nowhere to hide. The result is as emotionally complex as it is musically bare, and it leaves you shattered and haunted.

I’m not sure I’m ever going to forget the experience of hearing Carrie and Lowell. That’s how deeply this album affected me. It is a devastatingly honest piece of work, and in its simple yet complicated pain, it is one of the very best things Sufjan Stevens has made. I don’t know how often I can listen to it, though, because it hurts. It hurts me down to my soul. And it makes me want to love the people I love more intensely, more frequently, more fully. That is the best thing any art can inspire.

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So here it is, my First Quarter Report. In addition to the two albums tied for the number one spot, you’ll see three here that I have not yet reviewed. I’ll get to two of them next week, and I have an idea for the third that might require me to hang on to it for a bit. But all three of them belong here, trust me. As the Doctor has been known to say, I’ll explain later.

Here’s the list as it stands now.

#10. Laura Marling, Short Movie.
#9. The Decemberists, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World.
#8. Steven Wilson, Hand. Cannot. Erase.
#7. Riki Michele, Push.
#6. Aqualung, 10 Futures.
#5. Copeland, Ixora.
#4. Timbre, Sun and Moon.
#3. Quiet Company, Transgressor.
#2. Punch Brothers, The Phosphorescent Blues.
#1: (Tie) Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly; Sufjan Stevens, Carrie and Lowell.

Now I have eight months to choose between Lamar and Stevens, unless something even better comes along. That would be miraculous, but I believe in miracles. Where you from, you sexy thing?

Next week, two of the albums up there. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I am perpetually behind on the cultural conversation.

It’s mostly my fault. While the pace of that conversation has definitely increased, the speed at which I listen, form thoughts and write those thoughts down has not. I still want four or five trips through an album before I review it, and I still want that process to include poring over the packaging and liner notes. So I’m beholden to release dates, and a slave to my own schedule and my own desire to do this thing as well as I can.

That means I am often reviewing things a week or two later than most other review sites. For instance, last week the talk was all about Kendrick Lamar’s monumental new album To Pimp a Butterfly. One might rightly expect that I would be giving this record the once-over in tm3am this week. But one would be wrong. I have it, I’ve heard it, I’ve talked about it online, but I’m not ready to write about it yet. That’ll be next week.

The problem is, the cultural conversation has already moved on this week to Sufjan Stevens and Death Cab for Cutie, thanks to NPR streaming new records from both of them. By the time I get to those, most likely on April 7, everyone will be on to something else. But I’m not sure what else I can do. I hope you all still find these useful, because I’m probably going to be a couple weeks behind everyone else for the foreseeable future.

That said, here are reviews of three albums that are not To Pimp a Butterfly. This week’s column is brought to you by the letter M.

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I don’t think it’s possible to overstate Madonna’s importance.

Everything good and bad about modern female-led pop music can be, in some way, traced back to Madonna. I was a kid when “Like a Virgin” hit – I didn’t have a clue what it was about, and was in fact much more into Weird Al’s “Like a Surgeon” – but as I grew up, Madonna did too. I remember realizing, at 13, what “Papa Don’t Preach” is about, and (as a good Christian kid) being both appalled and drawn to it. That feeling was magnified a couple years later when I saw the “Like a Prayer” video. Madonna was a professional button-pusher, and she has always been most interested in the reaction of a conservative male-driven world to a ballsy, sexually liberated, completely in-control woman.

And from moment one, Madonna was in control. She fought back against the notion of what a female pop star was supposed to be, and basically defined what it would be for the next three decades. Stars like Britney and Christina Aguilera were cast from the same mold, with the caveat that they tried to emulate Madonna instead of pushing things forward, remaking the world in her image, like she did. For my money, Lady Gaga and Janelle Monae are among the few who truly grasped what Madonna has been saying and built on it. Essentially, that message is this: have a vision, carry it out, be in charge and don’t let anyone stop you.

To me, Madonna is immortal. Which is why it’s been such a shame to watch the slide of her musical output over the past 10 years. Madonna used to set trends. Remember “Vogue,” on which she introduced Euro-dance to the rest of the world? Remember Ray of Light, her still-stunning collaboration with William Orbit that combined complex electronica with hummable pop? She kept the standards high through Music in 2000, but cracks began to show by the time of American Life in 2003.

Since then, she’s been a follower, trying to keep up with the latest club sounds and chasing the work of much younger artists. It’s a role she should not have to play – she’s freaking Madonna – and I don’t know why she’s been doing it. I can barely remember anything about 2008’s Hard Candy or 2012’s MDNA, except the sinking feeling that she’s trying too hard instead of just being who she is. She helped pave the way for the likes of Nicki Minaj, she doesn’t need to borrow cred from her with a guest spot. Madonna is 56 years old, and pop music royalty – if the kids don’t like her, so what.

All of which brings me to Rebel Heart, her 13th album. Its deluxe edition is a sprawling 19-song, 74-minute affair, which would seem like the very definition of trying too hard. It contains collaborations with Kanye West, Diplo and Avicii, among other of-the-minute producers. Madonna is pictured here holding a bloody human heart in her hand, giving herself stigmata with a metal spike, and clutching the pointy end of a sword to her chest. You’d be forgiven for not expecting very much, and for about half this record, you’d be right.

But the other half? There are 10 songs here that are the best, strongest, most Madonna songs she’s given us since the 1990s, and those are the ones I want to focus on. Rebel Heart brings the tunefulness and thoughtfulness back to Madonna’s music, and on its strongest material (“Devil Pray,” “Ghosttown,” “Hold Tight”) she sounds more comfortable, more at ease than she has in ages. These are songs worthy of her. “Hold Tight,” produced by Diplo, may be my favorite Madonna song since the Ray of Light days. The single, “Living for Love,” is her finest leadoff track since “Hung Up,” at least, and probably earlier.

What is it about these songs? Madonna would hate me for saying this, but she sounds older and wiser, more open and graceful. “Joan of Arc” is a ditty, really just four chords played on acoustic guitar and thick synths, but in its simple acknowledgement of pain (“I don’t want to talk about it right now, just hold me while I cry my eyes out”), it feels more real than anything on Hard Candy. “Cut me down a little, fucked me up a little,” she admits at the start of “Heartbreak City,” a piano-led ballad with a gospel choir in tow. “Inside Out” is a terrific electro-pop love song, all creeping bass and soaring vocals, and regular-edition closer “Wash All Over Me” is sweet and pretty.

And then there’s the title track, which closes the deluxe edition. But there is no edition of this record I can imagine that should not close with this. Over strummy acoustic guitars, she looks back with contentment over her life in the public eye. “Why can’t you be like the other girls, I said oh no, that’s not me and I don’t think it will ever be,” she sings, and if anyone can make those lines resonate, it’s Madonna. Just take these songs, the ones on which she aims for pure, grown-up pop with a sense of herself and her legacy, and you’d have her finest record since her glory days.

Of course, there’s the other half, the up-in-this-club half, and I’m sorry, but they’re mostly embarrassing. In recent weeks, Madonna has been handing out accusations of age-ism, and I guess I should line up for one, because it hurts me to hear someone with such a long history spit out something as insipid as “Bitch I’m Madonna.” (That’s the one with the Nicki Minaj guest spot, in case you were wondering.) “Yeah we’ll be drinking and nobody’s gonna stop us” is just one of the lines here that sounds like it was written for Iggy Azalea, not the 56-year-old queen of pop.

There’s a desperation to these songs – you can hear it in the Mike Tyson quote that leads off “Iconic,” the “bitch, get off my pole” interjections on “Holy Water,” the ghastly sub-Erotica-era “S.E.X.,” the Nas verse that interrupts the otherwise swell look back that is “Veni Vidi Vici.” (The lyrics to that last one reference songs and albums throughout her career.) The West-produced “Holy Water” is like a parody of Madonna’s twin obsessions with sex and religion – she commands her man to go down on her, and then asks, “Don’t it taste like holy water?” It’s textbook Madonna, taken just that bit too seriously, and I wanted to like it, but I couldn’t.

I don’t know if it says more about Madonna or me that I’m responding best to the songs on which Madonna seems to have grown up with me. It’s true, though – the best songs on Rebel Heart are the ones that find Madonna comfortable in her own skin, not desperately trying to be relevant. She’s Madonna. She’s always relevant, and the best songs on this overly long, intermittently terrific album are the ones on which she seems to understand that and revel in it.

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On the exact other end of the spectrum sits Laura Marling, the 25-year-old wunderkind who has just released her fifth album. (Yes, fifth. Yes, she’s 25. I’m amazed too.) She’s been nominated for the Mercury Prize three times, most recently for her tremendous fourth record, Once I Was an Eagle. On that album, Marling expanded the range of her dark acoustic folk music, weaving extended suites and winding narratives. It felt like a plateau, like a destination point. And when Marling scrapped a set of similar-sounding songs and set out for Los Angeles to think about what to do next, it didn’t completely surprise me.

The result of all this rumination is Short Movie, a collection of 13 songs about isolation and confusion. For the first time, Marling plays electric guitar here – she eases you in with the Eagle-like “Warrior,” but explodes on “False Hope,” and sporadically throughout the album drifts back in a more plugged-in direction. And while that is an interesting stylistic shift, for the most part, Short Movie sounds like what it is – another pretty wonderful Laura Marling record. If you liked her before, there’s nothing on this well-considered, strong set of songs that will change your mind.

Marling spent six months in L.A. doing everything but music, and that experience is reflected here. “Living here is a game I don’t know how to play,” she sings on “Don’t Let Me Bring You Down,” and songs like “How Can I” detail trips into the desert and long nights in unfamiliar places. When she reaches for falsetto and breaks just shy of the note on the line “I just need a little more time,” on the drone-like “Walk Alone,” she communicates all of her loneliness. Short Movie arranges these laments alongside jauntier numbers like “Strange,” on which Marling sing-speaks a tale of confused affection.

Short Movie feels like Marling’s most personal work – previous records found her spinning fables and allegories, but this one speaks directly more often than not. Even the occasional electric guitar and skipping drum beat can’t dilute Marling’s uncanny emotional impact, and it’s as sharp as it’s ever been here. “Divine” is one of her most contented songs, pivoting on the line “you’re fine, I’m yours and you’re mine,” and you can almost see her smiling as she sings it. In contrast, “Howl” is a dark love song, making full use of the ringing electric tones. “I’ll come get you, hope you haven’t changed your mind, be mine, be mine, be mine…”

For the fifth time, Laura Marling has made a splendid, idiosyncratic, individualistic folk record that marks her as a stunning talent to watch. She’s only a quarter-century old, but she’s already built a body of work that would make many lesser talents green with envy. In many ways, Short Movie is just another great Laura Marling album – not quite as ambitious as her last one, but still worth treasuring. Not for the first time, I hope she has a long and fruitful career ahead of her.

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Of course M week has to conclude with Modest Mouse.

It’s been eight years since we heard from Isaac Brock and his merry men, an eternity for a band hoping to keep momentum going. And Modest Mouse had momentum, coming off of the two biggest records of their career. In 2007, they had Johnny Marr and a substantial hit behind them with “Float On.” Now Marr is out, and Brock and the band apparently spent most of the intervening eight years laying down tracks. Their new album, Strangers to Ourselves, stretches to an hour, and is only the first chapter of a double set.

It’s a big comeback, and while the album has some superb moments, it does succumb to exactly the problem I feared it would. Modest Mouse started as a scrappy, brash indie band with no quality control, and they have evolved into a slicker dance-rock band with no quality control. Strangers to Ourselves sounds like a clearinghouse for everything the band recorded, with little to no thought spared for which songs might not measure up. The fact that the deathly slow and boring title track, which opens things here, is one that should have been binned doesn’t bode well for the record as a whole.

To be fair, there are some tremendous songs here. Single “Lampshades on Fire” is classic modern Modest Mouse, and the extended workout “The Ground Walks, With Time in a Box” is a live-band explosion worth its six minutes. In between those two, however, is the grating, useless “Pistol,” which reminds me of Das Racist’s “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” more than anything else. It kind of goes like that for the whole running time. For every fully realized effort like “Pups to Dust” you get filler like “God is an Indian and You’re an Asshole.” I’m a fan of the evolved Modest Mouse – the clean guitars, the space-filled arrangements, the danceable beats, Brock’s reined-in howl. When they make it work, Strangers to Ourselves is very good indeed.

My guess is, though, that the second album from these sessions will be much like the first – inconsistent, full of songs that should have been cut. If there’s a single killer record to be made from these 30 or so songs, it will solidify my belief that Modest Mouse needs an editor more than anything else. In the best songs here, like the carnival-esque “Sugar Boats” and the awesome “Be Brave,” you can hear where all the time and money went. Strangers to Ourselves is a welcome return, and I’m still excited to hear the second half, but an eight-year absence all but demands a strong, solid, state-your-business kind of record, and this isn’t it.

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Next week, hopefully Kendrick and Sufjan. The conversation keeps moving on. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Most albums are collections of short stories.

They may be connected by a theme, but most records are disparate journeys of varying lengths, bound together by the same piece of plastic or vinyl. Like short story collections, care is taken to sequence those individual pieces in a way that flows, that connects them more strongly. But take one of those stories out, read it on its own, and it will work. It may be stronger in context, but it will still do what it was designed to do.

But some albums are novels, and those are usually the ones I end up liking best. Musical novels tell a story from beginning to end, and though they may be divided into chapters, they are intended to be heard from cover to cover. Like the best novels, you can’t take them apart – there may be a particularly strong chapter, but it feeds into the whole, and the story it contributes to is more important and more rewarding than the one it tells on its own.

Any writer will tell you that short stories and novels make use of different skill sets, and neither one is more difficult to pull off. That makes sense musically as well – writing an amazing three-minute pop song is a different, yet no less daunting task than composing a full conceptual piece. I admire both accomplishments, but my brain is wired for novels (and trilogies, and ongoing series). I love sinking into stories with layers and hidden connections, stories that have the time and space to truly explore their themes.

This is why I’m a particular supporter of the ambitious and the expansive, and the best examples of that can usually be found in the progressive realm. Conceptual pieces sort of come with the territory – just about every prog band has eventually made their musical novel, from Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway to Marillion’s Brave to Dream Theater’s Scenes From a Memory to Spock’s Beard’s Snow. Some of them work, some of them don’t, but I’m always willing to give a few extra points when an artist reaches for the sky.

Which brings me to Steven Wilson. Like Marillion, I hesitate to call Wilson prog – there’s really no other musician alive like him. His work is certainly elaborate, and incorporates much of that ‘70s wibbly-wibbly sound, but he’s truly progressive, mixing in half a dozen different musical forms from jazz to metal to ambient to electronic to folk and coming out with something unique. For 20 years he led Porcupine Tree, a band that leapt from psychedelic to bone-crunchingly heavy to almost inaudibly placid, often within the space of a single song. He’s also co-led the more soothing No-Man, the tight pop band Blackfield, and the more radical Bass Communion and IEM.

But it’s as a solo artist that Wilson has been making his mark lately. His first three solo albums were short story collections, but marvelous ones, particularly 2013’s powerful The Raven That Refused to Sing and Other Stories. But now, with his fourth, Wilson has given us a novel.

Hand. Cannot. Erase. is the story of a woman in a room. It was inspired by the real case of Joyce Carol Vincent, a young English woman who died in her home and was not discovered for three years. (Vincent is the subject of the documentary Dreams of a Life.) The central character of Hand. is similar – she cuts off all contact with family and friends, cocoons herself in her room and dies alone. The album is the story of how she got there, and it’s an emotionally involving, deeply sad tale.

It is also musically immersive in a way that Wilson has not given us in some time. I don’t mean sonically – Wilson’s albums always sound amazing, and this one is no exception. But Hand. Cannot. Erase. is a single piece, with recurring themes that bubble up in unexpected places, with songs that complete each other, with a sweeping and well-thought-out scope to the entire composition. There are individual tracks, and two of them – the catchy title track and the lovely “Perfect Life” – can almost step out on their own (though one might wonder about the spoken monologue that makes up half of the latter). The rest of this album is inseparable, and the two tracks above leave a gaping hole if removed – they’re vital to the record as a whole, even if they can be singles.

The piano melody that opens the record (“First Regret”) is one of the main themes, recurring throughout. It glides into the 10-minute “3 Years Older,” which bursts to life on a Pete Townshend-esque guitar figure and some explosive drumming by Marco Minnemann. This is one of two progressive epics on display here, and it follows our protagonist through her sad early years, ending up in a city that feels nothing like home.

The title track is a pop song about love in hard times (“Hand cannot erase this love”), and is one of the few moments of joy here. It’s followed by another: “Perfect Life” is a glorious electronic ambient piece that tells the story of our character’s only real connection with humanity, her one-time foster sister. She was three years older, they had six months together before her parents broke up and her sister moved to another home. This song captures that nostalgic peace beautifully, and even tinges it with barely perceptible sadness. It helps that the lead vocals are often taken by female singer Ninet Tayeb – Wilson is writing from a female perspective, and he is not afraid to give those sentiments to a woman to sing.

“Routine” is, for my money, the most amazing thing here. A nine-minute multi-movement song about trying to hold on to hope, “Routine” is powerful in its fragility. “Routine keeps me in line, helps me pass the time, concentrates my mind, helps me to sleep…” On the heavier “Home Invasion,” our character loses “all faith in what’s outside, the awning of the stars across the sky and the wreckage of the night.” The dark mood continues through the instrumental “Regret #9” and the lovely “Transience,” leading into the astonishing 13-minute “Ancestral.” A tour de force, “Ancestral” is the final slide of our main character’s mind: “When the world doesn’t want you, it will never tell you why, you can shut the door but you can’t ignore the crawl of your decline…” It also ends with the sharpest display of musical pyrotechnics here, Minneman and guitarist Guthrie Govan pushing it heavier and heavier until it erupts.

Hand. Cannot. Erase. ends with the piano-led “Happy Returns,” which finds our character hoping to reconnect with her estranged brother and his family. She has bought them presents, and she is writing him a note: “I’d love to tell you I’ve been busy, but that would be a lie, ‘cause the truth is the years just pass like trains, I wave but they don’t slow down…” The last thing she says is “I’m feeling kind of drowsy now, so I’ll finish this tomorrow…” And she never does. The final instrumental, “Ascendant Here On,” is her death.

And it hurts. Steven Wilson has told this tale so well, and surrounded it with music so powerful and so emotional, that it actually hurts. That’s how you know you’ve been reading a great novel – when you’ve invested so much into the people you’ve been spending so much time with that it’s hard to experience pain with them. Hand. Cannot. Erase. is one of those. It’s more than just another really good Steven Wilson album, although it certainly is that. It’s a deeply felt and deeply ambitious work that stands tall, even in a discography like Wilson’s. It’s tremendous.

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I have so much to listen to, and no time to get to it all. I’m going to cut it short this week so I can hear more things, so I can tell you what I thought of more things in the coming weeks. But I have just enough time for a short story, in keeping with the theme.

Once upon a time, I fell in love with a Champaign, Illinois band called The Moon Seven Times. As an East Coast boy, I had no idea where Champaign was, of course – some magical land in the middle of the country somewhere. And as far as I knew, there were only two people on the planet who were into the Moon Seven Times, and the other one was my friend Chris, who got me hooked on them. M7x was a dream-pop shoegaze-y band making gloriously reverbed soundscapes, and I loved that stuff. Still do.

The Moon Seven Times broke up in 1998 or so, but their guitarist, a university professor named Henry Frayne, kept making lovely music under the name Lanterna. From 1998 to 2006, Frayne made five albums of blissful instrumental loveliness, and then disappeared. But man, I adore those Lanterna albums. Frayne’s tone is delicate and bright, somewhat Robin Guthrie but more earthy, and he writes simple, pretty songs to drape in that tone. Much as I would have loved a new Lanterna album every two years forever, though, I figured that would be the last I’d hear of Frayne.

Not so, as Chris kindly pointed out to me a few weeks ago. Frayne has quietly released Backyards, the first Lanterna album in nine years, and it’s just as wonderful as the other five. Strummy acoustic guitars, chiming electric tones, the perfect soundtrack for walking along a beach at sunset. Frayne doesn’t break any new ground here, but I’m just so happy to hear this sound again that I don’t care. It’s a new Lanterna album! May there be many more. You can pick up Backyards here.

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Next week’s column will be brought to you by the letter M. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I am running out of things to say about Evil Arrows.

Bryan Scary’s ongoing quick-hit pop project remains just as wonderful the fifth time out as it did the first. Scary is a genius songwriter and a dexterous player, and his solo material is insanely intricate, like a Beatlesque Mr. Bungle. In complete contrast, Evil Arrows, Scary’s tremendous rock band, successfully distills all of his best pop instincts into bite-size morsels. Even the serving sizes are smaller – each of the five Evil Arrows EPs hovers around 20 minutes.

The just-released EP 5 is the longest at 23 minutes, and the seven songs it contains are the most languid of the lot. Opener “Dance With Me Louis” is a classic quick-step that runs through half a dozen barrelhouse melodies in 3:35. “Imitation Isle” lays down a drowsy calypso beat on acoustic guitar while “Married to the Family Tree” sounds like a long-lost prime-period Joe Jackson tune. The acoustic is the instrument of choice on most of these songs – the slow-spin “Lordy Boxcar” and the ‘50s surf ballad “False Alarm” are folksier than most Evil Arrows material. Scary’s pounding piano leads the brief “The Sunday Mope,” while closer “Old Palace Road” is a crashing, tumbling Beatles blues.

All of these songs are great, like the previous 24. Really, there isn’t a lot I can add to my previous reviews – if you like pop music of any stripe, you will love Evil Arrows. Check out the new EP here.

Thankfully, though, Scary himself has given me something to talk about. He’s just launched a PledgeMusic drive for a new solo album called Birds. This will be the official follow-up to the absolutely amazing Daffy’s Elixir (http://bryanscary.bandcamp.com), released in 2012. Scary promises a dreamier piece of work, a tight and conceptual piece on which he will play all of the instruments. Any new project from Scary is worth getting excited about, and this one sounds extraordinary. Needless to say, I pledged. You can do the same, right here.

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I don’t actually know Etha.

Whenever I review a musician from my adoptive hometown of Aurora, Illinois, I like to give full disclosure. I know most of them, at least in passing, and some of them are my dear friends. When the second Noah’s Arcade album drops in a couple weeks, I’ll be giving my standard “I know all of these guys, and though I am trying to review the music honestly and fairly, you should know that up front” speech.

But despite several mutual friends and some fun Facebook conversations, I have never formally met Aurora rapper Etha. I’ve liked his work for years, but our paths have never crossed. I’m coming to his new album, From the Heart, just like any other music fan. Here is what I know: Etha is a young artist on the rise, and with From the Heart, he’s crafted the album that should take him to the next level. It’s an honest yet positive document that shows off, in less than 45 minutes, all the sides of Etha’s talent. From the Heart is diverse, polished, and ready for the big stage.

Some of that is down to the beats and production – the beats were provided by four different producers, and the record was laid down and assembled by Sam Beckley at Gremlen Studio in A-Town. The end result is sharp and varied. I don’t know Sam Beckley either, but the man knows what he’s doing – the opening title track is a dramatic powerhouse, with four backing vocalists, a snarling guitar and a growling organ darting in and out behind Etha’s unstoppable rhymes, and it all sounds fantastic.

But a lot of what makes From the Heart work so well is Etha himself. He’s a good writer, no matter what he’s doing. The first single, “Work Out,” is an anthem of hope – Etha takes an unflinching look at his city, his family and his life, and finds it all in need of reassurance, which he offers on the chorus: “I know it’s gonna work out,” he repeats, over a beautiful gospel piano (courtesy of Sampha’s “Indecision”). “Relax your mind, it’s all gonna work out.” This was the first song I heard from this record, and it made me even more of a fan.

If you’re expecting 10 versions of “Work Out,” From the Heart is gonna surprise you. Etha gets romantic on a couple tracks, the skipping “I Got You” and the dirty-sweet sex number “So Good,” then shifts gears completely for the hard-as-hell “King of the City.” This song is Etha’s finest moment at the mic, spitting out rat-a-tat lyrics at a rapid clip, and it leads into “Trust,” in many ways its opposite – where “King” is a torrent of cacophonous bravado, “Trust” finds Etha alone at the mic, offering a poem about openness.

That’s the kind of ride From the Heart is – Etha never stays in one place, and his supple voice changes from song to song, hard one minute and vulnerable the next. My favorite thing here is “Gratitude” – over a great Herb Alpert sample, Etha raps about the difficulties he’s overcome, and concludes that he is “grateful for it all, everything that’s happened in my life, good, bad, big or small.” While all of From the Heart is good, this one is perfect, and it’s nearly matched by the closer, “Feelings,” a cathartic jam with a full-circle coda. “I know it’s getting dark, but before we depart, here goes something from the heart…”

I have no idea what it takes to get to the next stage of a hip-hop career, but I hope this record does the trick. Etha’s got a good thing going on From the Heart, and I hope to meet him someday soon and tell him so. You can listen to “Work Out” and buy the album here.

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I also do not know Shawn McLaughlin, but we’ve been Facebook friends for a while. Facebook has its drawbacks, but it’s been a godsend for a music fan like me – I can keep up with dozens of bands easily and get recommendations from people I’d never otherwise interact with. I’m in a couple music-related Facebook groups with Shawn, and he’s recommended a few things to me. But none more forcefully than an album called PopArt, by a guy named Adrian Bourgeois. Shawn even named it his favorite record of 2014.

For some reason, I didn’t listen until recently, and now I’m kicking myself, because PopArt is great. It’s an expansive double record, sporting 24 songs over 102 minutes, and I wouldn’t remove a single one of them. For lovers of bold, colorful pop music, this thing is a treasure trove. Bourgeois never skimps on the melody, and goes for a classic feel – pianos, harmonies, strings and horns abound. Bourgeois has a high, strong voice and the songs to wrap it around, and though he played a lot of this record himself, he enlisted about 20 other musicians to fill it in, giving it a radiant, joyous, rich sound.

With all that, PopArt is almost too much to take in at once. Every song could be a single. This is the kind of album that finds me waiting for the bad song that I know has to crop up, but it never does. Even on the fourth side, Bourgeois is still pulling out winners like the sweeping “Still Life” and the superbly fun “Parachutes.” The whole thing ends with a sweet lullaby called “Rainy Day Parade,” which floats on an acoustic strum and a lovely sentiment: “Don’t blame the sun on the days it goes away, and I’ll let you ride in my rainy day parade.”

So yeah, PopArt is a masterpiece of melodious wonder, one I expect to be listening to for many years. You can hear it and buy it here. Thanks to Shawn for continuing to push it on me. I should have listened earlier, and I won’t make that mistake again.

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Next week, Steven Wilson’s new concept record Hand. Cannot. Erase. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I grew up with Star Trek.

I know this isn’t an original observation. There are certainly fewer people in the world who didn’t grow up with Star Trek than there are who did. Nevertheless, I grew up with Star Trek. My father was a fan, and I would watch episodes of the original series with him. I remember this fondly because my father and I don’t agree on much, when it comes to television or music or movies. But he loved Star Trek, and I did too.

I can’t tell you what appealed to younger me about the show. I can guess, though. I’ve always had an affinity for the fantastic, for stories that took me beyond the confines of my own life. (My parents always said my biggest problem was re-entry.) I loved Buck Rogers, and Battlestar Galactica, and of course Doctor Who. And I loved Star Trek. There were spaceships, there were aliens, there were gun battles, there were colorful uniforms. As a sci-fi-loving kid, I was definitely in.

As I recently completed a full re-watch of the original series (and the first six movies), I can definitely tell you what appeals to me about it now. It’s not so much Gene Roddenberry’s post-racial, pro-humanity vision, though I find some of that interesting, and it’s not so much the aliens and space battles, since those look pretty creaky nearly 50 years on. For me, the original series lives and dies with its characters, and with the actors who played them. And at the heart of the show is Kirk, McCoy, and of course, Spock.

I hadn’t seen the show in a long time, so I was surprised anew at the depth of Leonard Nimoy’s portrayal of Spock, the most human of Vulcans. He was not emotionless, regardless of what he would try to tell you. Spock was a finely coiled spring, working to keep those emotions in check, and Nimoy gave us all of that with a bare minimum of expressions and vocal inflections. His brief may have been to embody a soulless individual, but Nimoy played that part with soul. There was truly no other character on television like Spock, and try as they might, future incarnations of Trek were unable to duplicate him. They didn’t have Leonard Nimoy.

Nimoy certainly went on to do other things, including hosting In Search Of, acting on the stage, directing, lending his voice to documentaries and video games, writing books, releasing pop singles and taking some extraordinary photographs. By all accounts he was a hell of a man, gifted in many areas and a pleasure to know. But of all the paths he’s walked, he’ll be most remembered for giving life to a pointy-eared alien with a fixation on logic, and for inspiring generations of kids to open their imaginations and go where no one has gone before.

Leonard Nimoy died last Friday, at age 83, after a long illness. He lived long, and he did prosper. May he rest in peace.

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So I’ve had more than a few people ask me if I’m going to change the name of this column when summer rolls around.

The reason is this. Apparently the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (there’s a mouthful) has decided that come this summer, Friday is the new global release date for records and CDs. The reason seems not only silly, but out of touch to me: the IFPI would like to standardize the release date worldwide to stem the tide of piracy. As if closing that one-day gap between the U.K. and U.S. release dates will keep the new Taylor Swift album off the torrent services.

Of course, the industry is only really concerned about artists of Swift’s stature and popularity, so this decision will only really benefit them. For me, the day of the week has never been the issue, it’s the sometimes months-long gap between an album appearing in the U.K. or other territories and appearing here. (Aqualung’s new one, 10 Futures, has been out across the pond since mid-January, for instance. If I enjoyed context-free digital music and had no scruples, I’d own it already.) And in an age when just about every album is leaked online, either legally or illegally, weeks before the release date, does it really matter?

Well, it does to some people, but since those people are independent record store owners and labels, they don’t matter. Michael Kurtz, head of the trade group Department of Record Stores, says a global release date isn’t a bad idea, but Friday is the worst possible choice, since stores would not be able to restock until Mondays (and on holiday weekends, Tuesdays). This would be a problem for smaller releases, ones a store owner would probably only order a couple copies of.

And of course, it would only truly impact brick-and-mortar stores who sell physical product. With most of the marketing now focused on digital distribution, the independent record store is once again left out to dry. As a lifelong fan of record stores, this makes me sad, but I’ve been watching the slow death of physical product for longer than I can remember, and this is just another step down that path.

Anyway, for those who don’t know, this column’s name is a reference to the Tuesday U.S. release date (and to Simon and Garfunkel’s Wednesday Morning 3 A.M.). And no, I don’t think I will change it. I like the way it sounds, and now I like the fact that it points back to the era of record stores and midnight sales, an era I already miss very much.

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Wow, this has been a sad one so far. Let’s liven it up with a story about my terrible junior high school band.

I can’t remember when I first met Chris Callaway. We grew up in the same church together, and I saw him at Sunday school and youth group meetings and all those things Christian kids do. Chris was a funny, boisterous guy with boundless reserves of energy. He would make me laugh at all of those church-y activities, and I would get blamed for causing a disturbance. It was a good arrangement, if you were Chris.

At the cornerstone of our friendship was music. I didn’t know much when I was 12, and I absorbed everything. I credit Chris with getting me into The Alarm and King’s X, among many others. Chris was there for my second-ever concert – we went to see Stryper in 1988, and I accidentally spilled my enormous beverage all over the girl in front of us. Yes, I found a way to make “seeing Stryper live” the least embarrassing part of that night. Chris had an affinity for Christian metal, and gave me my first exposure to bands like Jerusalem and Barren Cross, which frankly I probably could have gone my whole life without hearing and been OK.

And around that time, Chris and I started a band called M.D. Well, it wasn’t much of a band. It was me on terrible keyboards and drum machines, Chris singing and our mutual friend Brian Miller playing guitar. We never rehearsed, but man, did we record – I have hours of us banging our way through rudimentary ideas with nakedly Jesus-flavored lyrics. Pretty awful stuff. Our teenage musical ambitions were so vast that Chris and I started a more keyboard-driven side project called Obliterator, which was even worse. And yes, I have hours of that stuff too.

Somewhere along the line, Chris started playing bass. And it turns out, he’s very good at it. The last band I heard him play in was called Able Archer, and I enjoyed their work a great deal. Chris lives in Denver now, and we rarely talk, so I was surprised when he messaged me and told me he’d written a book. It’s a compilation of interviews he’s conducted with musicians he loves, from Mike Peters of the Alarm to Bruce Cockburn to Tim Finn and beyond. He sent me a copy, not just because he knew I would enjoy it, but because the book doubles as a memoir, and I make several appearances. Seriously, he was so kind to me, it’s almost ridiculous, crediting me with far more than I actually did to turn him on to good music.

So this is me returning the favor. I heard so many artists through Chris Callaway first, so many that have stuck with me for a lifetime. (Steve Taylor, for example. Chris let me borrow his cassettes of Taylor’s first three albums.) I live for good friends with good taste, and Chris is both. His book is a lot of fun, even beyond the bits with my name in them. It’s called Reel to Real by Reel, and you can pick it up from Amazon here. Thanks, Chris.

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Just enough time left to mention a couple things I’m looking forward to.

As I mentioned above, Aqualung has a new album. I heard nothing about it on this side of the Atlantic, and I’ve had to import a copy. It’s called 10 Futures, and if the singles are any indication, it’s going to be a weird one that barely sounds like the Matt Hales we know and love. Listen to “Eggshells” here and let me know what you think. I’m cautiously optimistic.

Everything I’ve heard from that new Modest Mouse album, Strangers to Ourselves, has been pretty good. That’s next week. The rest of March is pretty amazing, with new things from Bjork, Sufjan Stevens, Death Cab for Cutie, Ron Sexsmith and Godspeed You Black Emperor, to name a few. April has new records from Brian Wilson (featuring a host of guest performers, in a gambit that could either be fantastic or farcical), Todd Rundgren, Lord Huron, They Might Be Giants, Alabama Shakes, Passion Pit, Built to Spill, Mew and the long-awaited returns of both the Weepies and Blur. I guess I’m looking forward to that Blur album, called The Magic Whip, but that first song is pretty lame.

Somewhere in there we’re going to get Timbre’s Sun and Moon, a crowd-funded double album from the harp-playing prodigy. I ordered Sun and Moon more than two years ago, and I am beyond excited to hear it. We’re also going to get a screaming left turn from Mumford and Sons, an album called Wilder Mind that has no acoustic instruments on it at all. Oh, and on May 19 we’ll get to hear Sol Invictus, the first Faith No More album in 18 years. I hope it’s good, but even if it isn’t, life is. Just look at this list if you need a reminder.

Next week, well, I’m not sure yet. But you’ll find out when I do. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

In my head, Quiet Company is deservedly famous.

To me, there is absolutely no doubt that they are among the best and most important rock bands to emerge in the last 10 years. I don’t say this lightly. I’ve watched in awe as frontman Taylor Muse grew his one-man project into a tight, hard-hitting ensemble, and reached new heights as a songwriter. He’s written some of the best songs of the last decade, songs that dig deep and, without irony, reach for soul-baring greatness.

In 2011, after two albums that were, respectively, very good and excellent, Quiet Company made the best record of the year. We Are All Where We Belong detailed Muse’s disillusionment with religion and his renewed commitment to love – grand themes, delivered with a sweeping intensity and an ear for indelible melody. It’s a powerful and shakingly honest piece of work, one I keep coming back to. It is, in no small measure, a masterpiece, and in the perfect world in my head, it was rightly hailed as such by all and sundry.

In this world, however, QuietCo is still referred to as a “rising Austin band.” They’ve come a long way since their early days, and each time I go see them in Chicago they draw more and more people. (They’re astonishingly good live, by the way, ferocious and intense in all the right ways.) The band’s dedicated following has grown steadily over the years, and it’s been a joy to watch. But I want them to be household names. I want Muse’s songs celebrated in the most popular music publications. I want to have to fight for tickets to their shows. I want poseable Tommy Blank and Matt Parmenter action figures. (OK, maybe not that last one.)

Which brings me to Transgressor, the fourth QuietCo album. I don’t like to make predictions here, but you know that sense you get when a band has made just the right album at just the right time to get them to just the right place? That’s the feeling I get when I listen to Transgressor. This is a different kind of Quiet Company album – it’s leaner, it’s louder, it’s more compact, and it’s by far their easiest to connect with immediately. It seems specifically crafted to be your first Quiet Company album, and your best introduction to what this band does.

This change feels deliberate to me. In addition to writing more succinct songs – none of these 11 numbers breaks five minutes – the band enlisted a producer for the first time (Matt Noveskey of Blue October) and recorded much of this album live. You can tell – this record roars at you with a ferocity the band has previously only exhibited on stage, and the first half especially tears by so quickly that you’ll be at the midpoint before you can catch your breath. Even the more epic tracks, like the amazing “A Year in Decline” and “The Virgin’s Apartment,” rocket forward with purpose and stay only as long as they need to.

I will admit to being initially underwhelmed by this direction – I love Muse’s ambition, his willingness to open his songs up to expansive arrangements and lengths. But I’ve been unable to get Transgressor out of my CD player and out of my head for a while now, and here is what I’ve learned: weak moments on Quiet Company albums were few and far between to begin with, but there isn’t a single one on Transgressor. There isn’t time for one. This is a record with a mission, and even in the second half, when the scope widens and the music gets more dramatic, the tendency to sprawl is curtailed. There’s no “Everything Louder Than Everything Else” on this record, but there are several songs that take the grandeur of that song and accomplish it in four minutes.

We Are All Where We Belong wrestled with heaven and hell, taking on the absence of God, the redemptive power of love and other heady topics. Transgressor, on the other hand, is down in the mud. It’s no less a concept record, but this one is about coming to terms with one’s own failings and hoping that love is enough to overcome them. Behind that tuneful exterior, Transgressor hides a lot of emotional turmoil, coiled up and waiting to explode. And you’ll be singing along with all of it.

The first three songs, in fact, rank among the darkest Muse has written. “Seven Hells” (a cheeky Game of Thrones reference) explodes right out of the gate – no prelude, no buildup, just a thudding drumbeat, a badass bass line and Muse’s powerful howl. “I’ve got a problem and I can’t seem to fix it, Midas touch of turning things to shit… Now everyone I love has figured out what I do, and so everyone I love is living out the same awful truth…” This song introduces Transgressor, Muse’s evil twin, who crushes all the things he can’t let go. “Make peace with all your demons when you just don’t have the strength to cast them out,” Muse screams, and while the song ends with glimmers of hope, that line sets the tone.

“The Most Dangerous Game,” one of the catchiest songs Muse has ever written, finds him struggling against fatalism. “I know everything I build here will burn, once you understand the problem you can learn how to be part of it… Now my veins are full of rust and it’s worse than I thought…” But it’s “Mother of a Deal” that takes the prize for darkest song on the record. The beat is almost jaunty, the melody bouncy, but the words… Muse calls himself “the patron saint of making bad decisions,” admits that “I don’t think I’m ever gonna be the kind of man I wanted me to be,” and sings of drowning in blood, still swinging. “These tired songs don’t resonate, they never did much anyway,” he sings, before the music explodes in a shouted mantra of “sell yourself, sell sell sell!”

It’s arresting stuff, and hearing so much self-doubt and churning emotion from one of my favorite songwriters makes my heart ache. “Understand the Problem,” the ultra-catchy first single, doubles as an apology from Muse to his wife for his failings, and for the choices that lead him away from home. “I’m so tired of practicing on stages, every empty bar a bad decision that I’m making, I wish I was someone else, I wish you loved someone else…” It’s a powerful song, Muse vowing to right the wrongs his absence has been causing, and begging forgiveness. After that, you need “Kindness,” the beautiful acoustic love song that closes out the first half. “And we will carry one another as we march into the sun, singing darling I will never get enough of your kindness, of your laughter, of your love.” It’s a wedding song, and one of the prettiest things in the QuietCo catalog.

Things get much more widescreen, and thankfully much more hopeful, in the second half. “I Heard the Devil Call My Name” is a stunner, one that truly benefits from the live-band recording. It’s a love song, but a realistic one: “I’m begging you to know me, I’m begging you to figure me out, are you brave enough to love me, are you smart enough to have your doubts?” And then comes “A Year in Decline,” and ten months from now, this will still be one of the very best songs of 2015. It gallops along, causing an almighty racket as it does, but when the torrent subsides for Muse to sing “I can’t sleep if you’re not laying next to me,” it’s one of my favorite musical moments. “Cast them down, those devils of our lesser natures,” Muse screams, and that’s the record’s real turning point.

From here on, Transgressor is a love story, and an absolutely beautiful one. Nothing about these last three songs is idealistic, or magical, or sprinkled with fairy dust. These are love songs full of the dust of the earth, worn and weary but ready to be open and vulnerable. “Wherever You Take Me” might be Muse’s prettiest song, based on a simple pattern of piano chords. “I’ll stay as long as you will have me, and I’ll follow if you want to lead, I’ll share the load that gets so heavy, wherever you take me, home I will be.” This song puts the rest of the album in perspective: “I think that maybe I lost myself on a year of trying to be someone else, now I’m scared and sad and feeling stuck, but I ain’t never gonna give you up…”

The oddly titled “The Virgin’s Apartment” is massive, a layered epic in 4:02, and it finds Muse vowing to his wife that “we will make these four walls sacred, a Parthenon.” (Seriously, you need to hear the final, mostly wordless minutes of this song – they’re intense.) And the closer, “Midnight at the Dairy Palace” (a title that hearkens back to a song on the previous album), is simply gorgeous. It feels like a swaying ballad at first, but it builds and builds, the glorious refrain ringing out: “At the end of the day, ‘till the end of our days, you belong with me.” The sweeping strings echo the “I can’t sleep” melody of “A Year in Decline,” connecting these final four songs in a delightful suite, one that resolves the album’s more turbulent moments beautifully.

Transgressor may even be a more honest and naked record than Belong, which is an impressive feat all in itself. That they managed such honesty on a record that also feels like a perfectly crafted next-level introduction to a legion of new fans is remarkable. Transgressor plays like a rocket ride and reads like a diary, and that is probably its greatest triumph. It’s everything I love about QuietCo in a smaller, more direct package. It is exactly the right record at exactly the right time, and I hope it makes them as famous as they deserve to be.

You can help. Listen to Transgressor and buy it from the band here.

Next week, who knows? I can’t think that far ahead. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m having one of those weird in-between weeks.

It doesn’t help that I spent half of it in San Jose, California for a science conference. For half my week I enjoyed 80-degree days, and for the other half I’ve been suffering through sub-freezing temperatures and walls of cold air. Jet lag messed with my internal clock, and I’ve been getting up earlier than I’ve intended. And my natural tendency toward introversion took a beating this week, and I haven’t had the proper time to cocoon myself away and recharge.

So I’m feeling between poles right now, drifting a bit. And this week’s column feels that way to me too. Next week, I have a solid plan – I will be talking at length about Transgressor, the fine fourth record from Quiet Company. I have been ordering and re-ordering my thoughts on this disc for a while now, and I feel ready to write about it. But that’s next week – Transgressor doesn’t hit shops until Feb. 24. So that leaves me with this week’s, stuck between Copeland and QuietCo, unsure of what to do.

Here’s what I can try, though.

As I’ve mentioned before, most music I hear falls in between my extreme love and hate reactions. Most of it – I’m thinking roughly 75 percent of it – fails to rouse any strong reaction in me one way or another. I thought, since this is an in-between sort of column, that I would run down a few of the new things I have bought this year, those records that don’t inspire me one way or another, and talk about why they leave me adrift. I don’t know if it will be interesting, but it certainly won’t take very long, and that’s attractive to me right now too.

The latest record to make me shrug is I Love You Honeybear, by Father John Misty. I totally get why this is a fascinating release for some people. Josh Tillman, drummer for Fleet Foxes and prolific singer-songwriter, has fashioned this mad alter ego that is, on the surface, sort of head-spinning. Father John Misty records (there are two so far) are full of lush, classic balladry – think Roy Orbison and Glen Campbell, all strings and big arrangements. Tillman sings these songs in a rich tenor, diving right into the contours of the sound.

But his lyrics are absolutely insane. They are stream-of-consciousness tales of debauchery with no holds barred – the first verse includes the line “mascara, blood, ash and cum on the Rorshach sheets where we make love,” and songs like “The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apartment” (yes, that’s the title) spin stories of unfortunate convergences: “I hate that soulful affectation white girls put on, why don’t you move to the Delta? I obliged later on when you begged me to choke you.” It’s meant to be a little too much, and the first time through, it is.

It doesn’t stand up to repeated listens, though, and by the time I’d taken three trips through Honeybear, I was bored with it. The songs themselves are unspectacular, though the arrangements are meticulous and rich, and the lyrics feel like someone spray-painted graffiti all over them. I don’t hate this, and I can see why people like it – whether it’s meant to be satire or just goofy, it does call attention to itself. But I don’t feel anything from it. I haven’t been able to give my all to it, because it holds me at a distance, preferring that I gape at it from afar rather than hold it close. I definitely prefer Tillman under his own name, and with his band.

Let’s see, what else.

A slew of good reviews convinced me to try Fall Out Boy’s new record, American Beauty/American Psycho. This is the first FOB album I have heard since Infinity on High, and the reviewers were right – it almost sounds like a completely different band. I’m not absolutely sure it sounds like a better one, but the electro-pop Cuisinart that turned out this album is certainly more interesting. Patrick Stump is still annoying as hell, but the band has written a few truly catchy numbers – “Irresistible,” “Centuries,” “Uma Thurman,” a few others.

It’s a slick piece of work, and it makes use of some interesting cultural touchstones, most notably the Munsters theme on “Uma Thurman.” And yeah, it’s surprising and confident and quite unlike what I was expecting from an album with the words Fall and Out and Boy on the cover. But it didn’t blow me away, like it did many of my cohorts in criticism. I might buy the next one. I might not. Depends on where they go, and if they keep evolving at the same rate.

I was definitely with my fellow critics when discussing the long-awaited new Aphex Twin album, Syro. That thing was impressive, a welcome return for Richard D. James, one of the few geniuses electronic music can claim. And there’s no doubt that his recently released follow-up EP, Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments Pt. 2 (there is no Pt. 1), is something of a toss-off in comparison. It doesn’t have the benefit of the 10-year absence like Syro did, and it’s a much shorter and less amazing affair.

That’s not to say it’s bad, but it does what it says on the tin – these 13 tracks, ranging from nine seconds to five minutes, are sound collages made from acoustic-sounding instruments that have been processed into new shapes. And it’s, you know… fine. It’s interesting for me to have such a muted reaction to an Aphex Twin release after missing James’ work for so long, but there it is. This EP is a minor statement from a guy who can do much better.

I had the same reaction to Goin’ South, the new album from Richard Page. I’ve been a Page fan since I was 12 years old, and he sang for a band called Mr. Mister. Page has a strong voice and a knack for progressive pop – his work with Patrick Leonard in 3rd Matinee was great, and that fourth unreleased Mr. Mister album, Pull, is highly underrated. As a solo artist, Page has been hit and miss, but when he gets hold of a good pop song, he can still drive it home.

Goin’ South, though, is baffling. It’s a bog-standard, fairly boring pop-country album, recorded in Nashville with a bunch of session players. The songs are below Page’s usual standard, his voice is often affected to match the twangy arrangements, and the whole thing smells like a money grab, like an attempt to get played on country radio. I bought this based on Page’s track record, and this disregards everything I like about him. As a pop country record, I guess it’s OK, but I don’t have a lot of interest in those, so it’s hard to tell.

Finally, there’s Jamie Cullum, who made the album I like best of all of these. Interlude is billed as Cullum’s jazz record, but the British wunderkind has always played jazz – he’s as much a jazz singer as Harry Connick is. This time out, though, he’s focused primarily on older tunes, ones that are not quite standards, but are written on significant pages of the Great American Songbook. The title track is a Dizzy Gillespie tune, “Don’t You Know” belongs to Ray Charles, “Out of This World” is Arlen and Mercer, et cetera.

The arrangements are great, Cullum’s voice is in fine shape, and he gives his record the edge by adapting a few surprises to this setting, most notably Sufjan Stevens’ melancholy “The Seer’s Tower” and Randy Newman’s lovely “Losing You.” Gregory Porter guests on “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” and Laura Mvula takes a vocal turn on “Good Morning Heartache.” It’s all quite nice, an interesting diversion more than a next chapter for young Cullum, but an enjoyable one nonetheless.

Interlude is the perfect example of what we’re talking about this time, though. It inhabits that weird place in between the essential and the disposable. It’s a record that’s just sort of there, bringing a smile while it’s playing but never quite planting its flag. That’s about the best you can expect from these in-between days, in the end.

Next week, Transgressor. You can hear it all right now, if you like. Do that, and be here in seven to talk about it. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Copeland is a band that has often slipped right under the radar with me.

I don’t want to understate how much I like them. They’re a dreamy pop band that gets both parts of that equation right, and in their best moments, they create transcendent music, the type that can make you feel like you’re having an out-of-body experience. The greatest weapon in their arsenal has always been the high, perfect voice of Aaron Marsh, who also serves as producer and sonic architect. They began in Lakeland, Florida as more of an indie-rock outfit, filling two albums with sweet melodies and ringing guitars, before taking a more subdued, more ethereal direction.

I had problems with that direction at first, panning the band’s third record Eat, Sleep, Repeat without giving it a thorough listen. Now, of course, I think of that album as a minor masterpiece, one that kick-started Copeland’s evolution into something much more interesting. So aside from that minor speed bump, I have always liked this band. But I have never considered them particularly important, or particularly ambitious. I never thought of them as even aiming for the top of my favorites list, but rather content to make quiet, delightful contributions to my musical background.

And when Copeland broke up in 2008, I figured that’s all they would ever be to me. I never imagined that six years later they would reunite and do something nigh-on revolutionary, something that I can’t stop listening to. But here we are – the sixth Copeland album, Ixora, is so fascinating that I’m going to review it three times. The full version of this album is such a bold idea, and took so much work to conceive and pull off, that it’s worth some extra space. That this idea comes from a band I had never expected much from is stunning, and true to form, they’ve been pretty modest about it. So here’s some rightly earned praise.

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Let’s say this right up front: Ixora is a beautiful record.

This is the band’s first effort in six years, following an extended hiatus. But in many ways, they’ve picked right up and continued their evolution. All of these new songs weave fragile and lovely atmospheres, each aiming for a lush, yet spare beauty. Copeland stopped being a rock band a while ago – guitars now are used either as sparse skeletons or as soaring flourishes. Aaron Marsh’s piano takes center stage more often now, but mostly Copeland focus on layering sounds to create gorgeous, wispy, cloud-like things.

They’ve been headed this way for three albums now, and Ixora is the culmination point. None of these songs are immediate – you won’t be humming any of them after one listen. They’re all patient, deeper rivers, and you need to get used to them. Marsh’s voice is still absurdly wonderful, but he doesn’t push it here – the melodies on Ixora are sweet and pretty, but they don’t carry these songs the way Copeland melodies often do. Listen a few times, though, and you’ll hear just how beautiful a song like “Erase” is, particularly when Marsh leaps up into that spine-tingling falsetto.

The pleasures on Ixora are mostly subtle. There are glorious climaxes – “Erase” has one, before the song disintegrates into a trembling string coda. “Lavender” starts off almost danceable, with a pulsing, programmed beat and a thick synth bass line, but the actual song is much dreamier, breaking down in the middle for a piano bridge and gracing the synth-pop bed with a meandering melody that never breaks out. Opener “Have I Always Loved You” starts with delicate acoustic guitar and a breathy “ah-ah” from Marsh that sets the tone. It takes nearly 90 seconds for more instruments to appear, and even when they do, the song remains a simple welcome.

“Ordinary” is nothing but piano and Marsh’s breathtaking voice, singing a simple, luxurious song about being comfortable in love. It leads into the smooth “Like a Lie,” with its almost-funk chorus. “Feels like a lie when I hold you, feels like a lie but it comes true,” Marsh sings over electric piano and his own swooping bass line. Even this is remarkably restrained, only a few keyboard notes to brighten its corners. The remainder of the album is filled with intricate, layered pieces, from the ever-building “Chiromancer” to the absolutely extraordinary “World Turn,” which for most of its running time is as fragile as a baby bird. (There’s even a completely non-cheesy saxophone solo.)

The album proper ends with a love song, “In Her Arms You Will Never Starve,” albeit one with darker overtones: “In your darkest hour, should storms rage around you, her love will be a shelter and she will pull you under…” The orchestrations on this song are gorgeous, and Marsh has rarely sounded warmer. There’s a bonus track on the deluxe edition called “Like I Want You,” and its inclusion only sharpens those dark overtones. It’s a song of leaving: “And when I turn to see you’ve left me here, it takes my breath away, it’s taken all my heart to love you…” The guest vocals by Steff Keoppen fit in perfectly.

It took a while for me to love Ixora, but I absolutely do. It’s the kind of album that needs to seep in, to make its home in your heart in its own time. Once it does, it’s impossible to deny how lovely it is. These songs will not grab you – most of them barely assert themselves, preferring that you come to them, unguarded. The care that Marsh and company have taken with the sound of this record is incredible, and even when the songs don’t immediately draw you in, the sheer physical depth of the album will. Take the time to soak it in, and Ixora emerges as the most beautiful thing Copeland has ever made.

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So that’s the version of Ixora that you can find in the stores, and it’s worth buying. But you’re only getting one-third of the experience.

Ixora was funded through pre-orders, and those who ponied up the extra cash received what the band calls the Twin Version of the record. And here is where I think Copeland’s trademark humility is working against them, because the Twin idea is absolutely brilliant. Nestled inside the sturdy tin box is a second version of Ixora – all 11 songs, arranged in completely different ways. And while it is intended as a companion piece, Twin stands up as a record all its own, one that is often just as beautiful as its counterpart.

Part of the reason is that Twin is mostly even more spare and delicate than Ixora. “Disjointed,” in this case, moves forward on a backwards pulse, with some light percussion surrounding it, and making way for the vibes and strings. It transforms what was the band’s best bet for a single into a fascinating fantasia. (Neither version of “Disjointed” sounds even slightly disjointed, for the record.) “Erase” is even prettier on Twin, steadfastly refusing to build up – it’s acoustic guitars, some lovely effects and Marsh’s voice, and that’s about it. The part of the song propelled by drums on Ixora is instead almost naked, and you can hear the contours of Marsh’s falsetto. And the string coda is replaced by a lovely final verse.

The exception to the softer-and-quieter rule is “Ordinary,” which on Twin is a full-band effort with shuffling drums, thumping bass and vocal harmonies. It’s a thoroughly different spin on the song, though it is recognizably the same one. “Like a Lie,” as well, begins fuller, with electronic drums and electric piano setting a dusky mood. Fascinatingly, this version of “Like a Lie” contains no vocals until the chorus, and even then it only seems to provide a counterpoint to the main melody on Ixora. It’s a bizarre, yet enjoyable listen, the only thing on Twin that feels like a remix.

“World Turn” is just as breathtaking on Twin as it is on Ixora, performed here on piano with an insistent electronic drumbeat in the background. The chorus this time is sung in wispy, treated harmony, and it’ll raise the hair on your neck. (And yes, the saxophone solo still works.) I think I like the Twin version of “In Her Arms You Will Never Starve” better – it’s more of a dirge, with slow piano, low keys and haunting, echo-y vocals. The string lines here are more sorrowful, and it feels like more of the sad lament I think it is.

After listening to Ixora for so long, Twin is an absolutely fascinating thing, like the version of the album that would have been released in a parallel universe. This goes beyond mere remixes or acoustic versions – Twin sports completely different takes on these 11 songs, teasing out new nuances in each one. It may not be quite the complete picture that Ixora is, and for the most part I agree that the band issued the correct versions on the main disc, but it’s pretty wonderful.

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But wait, there’s more (that’s not sold in any store).

By now you’ve probably guessed the most brilliant part of the Twin concept – the two versions of Ixora are meant to be played together, simultaneously. The liner notes say that doing so will create a third version of the album, and man, the liner notes do not lie.

The first night I received my Twin Version package, I did what the band asked. I used two CD players, situated on different sides of the room, and played both discs at the same time. It was difficult to get them to line up, since every player has a different lead time for its pause function, but when I could make it work, it was magical. The new arrangements on Twin folded seamlessly over the originals, filling in gaps and completing the picture. At times it was like doing a jigsaw puzzle in my head, hearing how one vocal line meshed with another in perfect harmony, or noting when the differing string arrangements complemented each other.

Listening to the quadrophonic version of Ixora was, no joke, my favorite musical moment of this year so far. Since then, I enlisted a friend to make a combined version of the record, one with Ixora in the left speaker and Twin in the right. Listening to it is still remarkable, and if I place my speakers far enough apart, it will still give the quadrophonic effect the band was after. What’s interesting to me is how completely this new version transforms Ixora. What was once, in both versions, a delicate and sparse record is, in this combined form, Copeland’s version of SMiLE. There’s just so much happening in each track, and it all works so well.

The only weakness – and it barely qualifies as such – is that for every quieter moment on one of the discs, the other compensates with a larger arrangement, so that every single second of the combined Ixora is bursting with sound. It’s such incredible, colorful sound that it hardly matters, but the bigger arrangements turn Ixora into a totally different record. The piano that makes up all of “Ordinary” on the main album is now an accenting instrument in the full band arrangement from Twin. The spare guitar and voice version of “World Turn” is now folded into Twin’s electronic beat take, and the new version isn’t quite as haunting as either of its components. The new version of “In Her Arms You Will Never Starve” is more triumphant and vibrant than either of the others.

But this is a minor issue, since the original uncombined versions are here to be played and enjoyed as well. I love how the chorus vocals of “Like a Lie” now merge into a call-and-response, almost turning it into a different song. I love how the piano and acoustic guitar dance off of each other in the opening moments of “Chiromancer.” I love how the string coda, so isolated on Ixora, now serves as the perfect backdrop to the added verse on “Erase.” I adore this new version of “World Turn,” Marsh’s aching lead vocal meshing with the more ethereal harmonies on Twin. (And for the third time, the saxophone solo is great.) And I love that this combined, full, rich version of Ixora evolves Copeland even further, turning them into astonishing studio wizards.

Most of all, I find this whole idea bold and amazing. The only analogue I can think of is Zaireeka, the Flaming Lips album from 1997 that came on four CDs that were meant to be played at the same time. But none of the four Zaireeka discs were intended to stand alone. That’s where Copeland have pulled off a coup – the two Ixora discs are swell listens on their own, betraying no evidence that they are parts of a whole, and they seamlessly integrate into a third version of the album. I’ve never heard anything like it.

As far as I know, the Twin Version is only available from the band, in limited quantities. I have no idea if you can still get it. But if you can, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Go here. Ixora, in all its forms, is a most welcome return for Copeland, a band I will never again underestimate.

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Next week, who knows? But after that, the great Quiet Company. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

We didn’t have to wait long for the first real disappointment of the year. But we also didn’t have to wait long for the first great record. As tradeoffs go, that’s not bad.

I’m talking about The Phosphorescent Blues, the fourth Punch Brothers LP. And if you know the Brothers, you know that isn’t a great surprise. De facto head Brother, Chris Thile, seems incapable of bad work, either on his own or with either of his combos. Last year, Thile issued an album of Bach sonatas and partitas performed brilliantly on mandolin, and rejoined lifelong friends Sara and Sean Watkins to reignite Nickel Creek. Their album A Dotted Line was one of the best of 2014, picking up the band’s bluegrass-trio-as-folk-pop-band sound as if they had never left.

As great as Nickel Creek is, Punch Brothers is something else entirely. It would be reductive to call them Thile’s rock band – they use a standard bluegrass lineup, with mandolin, guitar, banjo, fiddle and upright bass, and though they can play down-home twang with the best of them, this combo seems to be an ongoing experiment in eliminating musical barriers of any kind. Thile is a once-in-a-generation kind of musician, an absolute master of both his craft and his instrument, but this isn’t his show, not entirely. Punch Brothers is a true democracy, five people at similar levels of mastery, working as a democracy and seeing where they can go.

The answer, of course, is anywhere they want. Last time out, the Brothers courted a pop audience – Who’s Feeling Young Now broke them wider with clever pieces like “This Girl” and their cover of Radiohead’s “Kid A.” It was a fun record, charting a clear path. The Phosphorescent Blues takes a blowtorch to all of that. A sublimely confident piece of work, Blues is often even poppier than its predecessor, but it is also orders of magnitude more ambitious. This is an album that doesn’t care if you don’t like it. It does everything it can do to chase off casual fans and listeners – the first three songs are a 10-minute hook-free prog-grass epic, a five-minute meander that is at times almost inaudible, and an instrumental arrangement of a Debussy piece.

That is the band showing a huge amount of faith in their audience. Those expecting some high and lonesome pickin’ from this outfit are in for a shock, but those who have followed Thile and his muse down all his detours will find Phosphorescent to be a culmination point. Those first three tracks described above bring together many of the threads. Opener “Familiarity” is phenomenal, a three-part odyssey that climaxes in the middle. Its first half rises on Brian Wilson harmonies and meticulous arrangements, arcing ever upward as Thile sings his amens, finally pleading with the heavens: “God knows I mean it, God help me feel it…” The song’s second half quiets down, restating some of the same themes over more placid instrumentation as Thile admits he’s forgotten “how it feels to love something real,” but ends up willing anyway: “As long as you’re there I won’t be alone, a man alone among amens.”

Given the close listening required for those first three songs – particularly the lovely “Julep,” about a dead man remembering the good times – the sheer pop wonderment of the middle of the record is perhaps an even bigger shock. Drummer extraordinaire Jay Bellerose provides the first ever percussion on a Punch Brothers record, and his steady, subtle beat drives “I Blew It Off,” a tune with hit single potential. Producer T-Bone Burnett provides electric guitar fuzz on the choruses as Thile’s melody soars. It honestly sounds like the work of a different band entirely, and presages the next song, “Magnet,” a sex romp that explodes with Bellerose on the backbeat. “We’re pushing each other away,” Thile repeats as the band locks into a dynamite pop groove.

All this is before “My Oh My” and the traditional “Boll Weevil,” perhaps the most bluegrassy tunes here. “My Oh My” is a masterpiece, combining old-time harmonies and plucking with a fantastic, memorable melody. “How long, O lord, can you keep the world spinning under our thumbs,” Thile sings, lamenting our inability to appreciate what we have without trying to pin it down. “Boll Weevil,” at track seven, finally gives the bluegrass fans what they want, and it’s wonderful, leading into the more sedate final third.

And what a final third, driving the record home with beauty and grace. “Forgotten” may be the prettiest song in the band’s catalog, moving from dusty folk (with grand embellishments from Bellerose) to a straightforward mantra of reassurance: “Hey there, it’s all gonna be fine, you ain’t gonna die alone, you ain’t gonna be forgotten…” Banjo player Noam Pikelny and fiddle player Gabe Witcher intertwine their delicate lines, and the result is heart-stoppingly gorgeous. “Forgotten” sets the scene for the lovely final two tracks, the skipping “Between 1st and A” and the transcendent “Little Lights.” The latter incorporates a choir of Punch Brothers fans singing the final sentiment: “Shine little lights of ours, like Orion’s belt of stars, guide us back to where we are from where we want to be…”

The Phosphorescent Blues is a record of jaw-dropping musicianship and impeccable compositional skill that also remembers to be fun, and leaves you with deep reservoirs of feeling. In short, it’s everything you would want in a new album by one of the most impressive bands around. The cover of Phosphorescent is a painting called “The Lovers” by Rene Magritte, a Belgian artist known for challenging perceptions. It’s the perfect touchstone for a band committed to pushing against and ripping apart the idea of what a bluegrass band can be. They’re painting their own reality, with no boundaries, and it’s a joy to behold.

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While Phosphorescent is the first great album of the year, I’m more than willing to call Belle and Sebastian’s new one the first very good album – it beat the Brothers to the punch by about two weeks.

Next year is the 20th anniversary of this Scottish institution, and as if to celebrate their own reign, they’ve been on a serious roll lately. The last four Belle and Sebastian records have each built upon the last, evolving this sometimes-twee chamber-pop outfit’s sound into harder and brassier territory. Their new one – their ninth full-length – is called Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, and if you can think of a more Belle and Sebastian title for an album, I’m all ears. In many ways, this is the most Belle and Sebastian of their recent work as well, a record on which all of their evolutions are solidified and brought back home.

Opener “Nobody’s Empire” is what I’m talking about, a purely Belle and Sebastian kind of song. Its rich orchestration, simple chords, sweet melody and deceptively dark lyrics mark it as the work of this band and no other. (It’s actually about leader Stuart Murdoch’s struggles with chronic fatigue syndrome.) Throughout this record, Murdoch and company bring dance music influences to bear (most notably on the driving “The Party Line” and the dark, sprawling “Enter Sylvia Plath”) and do more with keyboards than with violins, but there’s an inescapable sense of the definitive here anyway. This is what Belle and Sebastian sounds like, at their most Belle and Sebastian.

That’s not all that makes this a really good record, the band’s best in some time, but it does make this one feel important, like a statement of identity. What’s fascinating is that they’ve stepped outside their comfort zone in a few interesting ways here, hiring a new producer (Ben H. Allen III) and diving down a few musical rabbit holes. The dance-y funk of “Perfect Couples,” the most ruefully funny thing here, steps into new territory, as does the multi-part semi-polka “The Everlasting Muse.” And yet, the album feels like classic B&S to me, like exactly what they would have done without any outside prompting.

Perhaps it’s that this album doesn’t reach for the same sugary pop heights as Dear Catastrophe Waitress and The Life Pursuit. Songs like the string-laden (and political) “The Cat With the Cream” are patient odes, and numbers like “Ever Had a Little Faith” are classic Belle and Sebastian, pleasant and swaying. Girls in Peacetime aims for consistency, spreading its energy around equally, and the result doesn’t leave you with those few astonishing tunes (like “Step Into My Office, Baby” or “I Want the World to Stop”) but builds a 62-minute experience. So when you get to the seven-minute dance-pop windaround “Play for Today,” on which Murdoch and Sarah Miller spin twin tales, you’re ready for it – it doesn’t feel like a comedown, but another chapter.

Many are calling Girls in Peacetime a reinvention, the first time Belle and Sebastian have put their more danceable tendencies front and center, but I think that’s a superficial read of this record. The electronic elements seem to have energized the band, but in a way that finds them reaching back to what they truly are. “The Book of You,” for instance, is a lovable folksy tune with lines like “Valentine, if you could change with the weather, faith would just evaporate untethered.” Forget the buzzing synths and the pounding drums – listen to Miller sing “I’m the one for you and you’re the one for me,” before the whole thing goes nuts. That, right there? That is the sound of Belle and Sebastian, and on Girls in Peacetime, they’re in love with that sound once again.

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Next week, three reviews of Copeland’s Ixora. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

In a sense, it’s good to get the first big disappointment of the year out of the way early.

Two weeks ago I was all excitement and joy, looking forward to a year of potential delights. I always write my year-ahead column in the best frame of mind, hopeful and optimistic. I know, deep down, that some (if not many) of the records I find myself looking forward to in the first weeks of January will undoubtedly let me down when they arrive, but I try not to let that dampen my anticipation. I’m looking forward to these things for a reason.

I never expect to be brought down to earth by the first few things I buy during a year, but in retrospect, it’s not necessarily a bad thing when that happens. It gets me on more of an even keel, and lets the year be what it is, instead of the magical mythical thing I’ve built it up to be in my mind. Getting the heavy sighs out up front sets that bar at a more realistic level, and hopefully helps me enjoy (or not enjoy) what’s coming without worrying when the first crushing blow will come.

Or so I keep telling myself, because 2015 is not off to the best start.

The first new record I bought this year was Guster’s Evermotion, and to say I’m let down by this thing would be to understate by miles. I used to love Guster, back when they were a scrappy, strummy pop band from Boston. Their early records all but explode with energy and potential, and their gimmick – using no drums, just hand percussion – set them apart. Lost and Gone Forever is still a fine, fine collection of tunes, and even when they gave up the hand-drums and started using kits in the early 2000s, they still made a splendid piece of work in Keep It Together.

Since then, they’ve seemingly been on a mission to erase whatever personality they once had. Their previous two records found them slipping into some kind of stupor, writing some of the most boring songs in their catalog. Still, I didn’t hate either one of them, and parts of Easy Wonderful seemed to hearken back to their old selves, even if it felt like looking at distant reflections across a great chasm.

But I hate Evermotion. I’ve heard it five times now, looking for something redeeming about it, and I haven’t found much of anything. The band did say they were hoping to become something else completely on this record, a statement that usually fills me with hope and dread in equal measures. It turns out that what they wanted to become was comatose. Evermotion is full of synthesizers and gauzy production, and devoid of any interesting songs. The whole thing sounds blurry and indistinct – a real surprise from producer Richard Swift – and the groove is lazy and lackadaisical from the first notes.

Those first notes belong to “Long Night,” and if you’ve heard it – four and half minutes of the same three chords – you should know that it’s the tone-setter for the whole record. There are a couple of moments on Evermotion I don’t dislike. “Endlessly” has the makings of a pretty good song. There’s a guitar figure in “Lazy Love” that reminds me of The Choir’s “If I Had a Yard.” “Simple Machine” starts off like it’s going to go somewhere, with its skipping beat and synth bass burbles. But every one of these moments is subsumed into the larger sleepy whole. And after “Simple Machine,” there isn’t a single song I like, or even remember.

I guess I still have a lingering, residual attachment to Guster, but with every album they put out, that attachment weakens. The band clearly put a lot of work into this new sound, all keyboard-y and reverbed. It sounds like an Animal Collective record, but without anything interesting happening underneath. Evermotion plays like one long forgettable song, and I find it hard to care much about it. The CD comes in a neat package, one that uses a pull tab to gently ease the disc from the cardboard wallet without scratching it up. That’s the single most interesting thing about Evermotion, the first big disappointment of 2015.

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I’m not going to say that Sleater-Kinney’s No Cities to Love is the second big disappointment of the year. But as jazzed as I was to hear it, the record itself left me with something of a shrug.

No Cities is the first Sleater-Kinney album in 10 years, and of course it has a lot to live up to. S-K is a capital-I Important band, one of the leading lights of the Riot Grrl movement out of the Pacific Northwest in the late ‘90s, and easily one of the best. It has never needed to be said in my house, but Sleater-Kinney showed that the girls could rock just as hard as the boys, if not harder. Corin Tucker is an absolute badass, her guitars slashing and burning beneath her slicing wail of a voice. And though kids probably know Carrie Brownstein more for Portlandia now, her guitar playing has always been tough and no-nonsense. (Check out her other band, Wild Flag, for more proof.)

But after seven records, Sleater-Kinney seemed to have said all they had to say. 2005’s The Woods wasn’t bad, but it was another S-K record, no better or worse than the previous few. And I don’t know what I expected from No Cities except that, but that’s exactly what it is. It’s another 30 minutes of Sleater-Kinney rocking out. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but if you sit through this thinking you’ve heard it all before, well, you kind of have.

That said, No Cities is a fine Sleater-Kinney record. Its 10 songs crash in, rip shit up, and crash out. An abrasive, punky nugget like “Gimme Love” is vintage S-K, and their trademark guitar interplay is all over the title track and “No Anthems,” to name a couple. The energy level never flags, and it’s great to hear this band come back to it after so long away without missing a beat. Listening again right now, I realize I’m probably just being curmudgeonly – the band sounds vital, attacking these new songs with the same explosive power that they’ve always brought to bear.

I’m not sure if No Cities to Love just didn’t live up to the band’s legacy in my mind, or if I’m judging it too harshly. It feels to me like what it probably is – three musicians settling back in after a decade apart, and playing to their strengths. There’s nothing wrong with that, and nothing wrong with No Cities either, unless you were expecting something revelatory. It’s a short record of short songs with bite, played with verve by veterans who sound as eager as newcomers.

“Exhume our idols, bury our friends, we are wild and weary but we won’t give in,” Tucker sings on “Bury Our Friends,” a line that feels like a mission statement. If Sleater-Kinney feel weary on No Cities, they’re not showing it. And now that they’ve got the reunion record out of the way, I’m looking forward to seeing what an older and wiser Sleater-Kinney can do.

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I’m also faintly disappointed in the new Decemberists album, but the more I listen, the more I am enjoying what’s here instead of lamenting what isn’t.

The Decemberists may be the most literate indie folk band around, writing songs based in ancient myths (and creating a few new myths of their own). They also used to be one of the most ambitious, as evidenced by the run of releases that began with 2004’s 18-minute epic The Tain and culminated with 2009’s extraordinary rock opera The Hazards of Love. That album, an hour-long tale of magic and deception and talking fauns, was my favorite of that year, and is still my favorite thing this band has given us. Sure, they were in danger of turning into Jethro Tull had they continued down that road, but hell, I like Jethro Tull.

Instead, the band retrenched and simplified. Their last record, The King is Dead, was easily their least ambitious – ten short, elementary folk tunes – and their new one, while a step up, retains that easy-breezy feeling. It’s called What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, and its 14 songs are all strummy and placid affairs, most staying around the three-to-five-minute mark. The album is undeniably pretty, and Colin Meloy’s gentle tenor is in fine form, as is his gift for lyrics that make you feel like renewing your library card.

There are plenty of highlights. Opener “The Singer Addresses His Audience” is the funniest thing Meloy has ever written, an exhortation to his fans to roll with the band’s changes. “We’re aware that you cut your hair in the style that our drummer wore in the video,” he sings, before declaring, “We know you built your lives around us, but we had to change some…” “Cavalry Captain” sports a sweeping horn line, “Make You Better” is a memorable bit of folksy-rock, as is “The Wrong Year.” “Till the Water’s All Long Gone” is a lovely low crawl, and the string of short tunes that make up the back half all do their jobs nicely, particularly the bar-ready “Better Not Wake the Baby.”

And the album ends strongly as well. “12/17/12,” written three days after the Sandy Hook School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, is a fragile acoustic hymn about grief and celebrating life. The song gives the album its title: “And oh my god, what a world you have made here, what a terrible world, what a beautiful world…” Finale “A Beginning Song” is rich and full, Meloy joyously noting the bright light of love that surrounds him and moves him on. The very novelty of a Decemberists album with a happy ending is enough to recommend this.

And I guess I am recommending it. The more I listen, the more satisfied I am with what the band has delivered here, despite its low aspirations. What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World builds on the barely-there skeleton of the band’s last effort, and hopefully is a sign that they’re going to continue to build back up. While much of this record finds them coasting on their singular sound, there’s enough investment and enough of interest to fill me with hope for the future. In the meantime, this is a perfectly serviceable Decemberists album, neither particularly terrible nor particularly beautiful.

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Next week, the first great records of 2015. Yes, they’re real, and yes, they’re spectacular. Follow Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. on Facebook here.

See you in line Tuesday morning.