November already? Insane.

This is about the time each year when new releases start drying up, and I’m left with live records and rarities collections. And while those are coming – I’m looking forward to rarities sets by Soundgarden and Wilco, for instance – the new stuff just keeps arriving. I am most excited by the imminent arrival of Goliath, the first Steve Taylor album in 20 years, but we have Pink Floyd, Foo Fighters, Copeland, Damien Rice, Tourniquet, TV on the Radio, Manchester Orchestra, Wu-Tang Clan and Smashing Pumpkins still to come this year, and possibly Quiet Company, if they get that fourth album out in time.

And this week, I have three more important records, one of which is likely going to find its way into my top 10 list. All three of them would fall under the umbrella of folk music, an appellation I have always found a little weird. I don’t like genre boxes anyway, but folk, like pop, seems particularly far-reaching. Anything with an acoustic guitar could conceivably be called folksy. So here is my little attempt to show three different sides of what we would term folk music, and talk about their differences.

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It’s been two years since Ani DiFranco released an album.

For most artists, that wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. But DiFranco has never been most artists. The fiercely independent owner of Righteous Babe Records has never had anyone telling her what music to release, or how often, so for most of her career, she’s been impressively prolific. Between 1990 and 2008, she released 18 studio albums (two with Utah Phillips) and a bunch of live records and EPs. Since 2008, she’s put out one, 2012’s Which Side Are You On.

So in some ways, the appearance of Allergic to Water in half the time that its predecessor took to emerge is cause for celebration. In other ways, though, it’s indicative of DiFranco’s new, slower pace, and fans like me are just going to have to live with that. DiFranco is now a married mother of two, and at age 44, she isn’t running on the treadmill at quite the same speed. The upside of this – and it’s a huge upside – is that DiFranco is wonderfully happy, and she’s making joyous, life-loving music. Allergic to Water may be her sunniest album ever, and for longtime fans, it’s a treat to hear her like this.

That’s not to say this record is all rainbows and sunshine. Many of its 12 songs delve deeper into DiFranco’s marriage to Mike Napolitano than she’s ever gone, particularly the darkest of them, “Careless Words.” It details the aftermath of a fight, in which regrettable things are said: “Never before could I picture even one foot out the door, but now that that door has been opened, it can never be closed, careless words I can never unknow…” “Harder Than It Needs to Be” is about bringing those fights back around to productive discussions: “We’d better just take a step back, we better take a breath, see what we can see, let’s not make this harder than it needs to be…”

But those are more than balanced out by the delirious love songs that populate much of this record, and they’re splendid things. “Wipe away my worries, my list of things to do, there’s flies in the kitchen and I’m still in love with you,” she sings in “See See See See,” and she waxes rhapsody in “Genie”: “You came out of the blue like twilight’s first star and we picked up on each other from somewhere deep and far, and we woke up married after one drunk fuck and I couldn’t believe you’d found me, I couldn’t believe my luck…” “Tr’w” and “Yeah Yr Right” and “Still My Heart” are all rapturous love songs, DiFranco repeating “I’m so into you” with a smile.

If this all sounds a bit domestic, well, you’re not wrong. The fiery political side of DiFranco’s writing definitely takes a back seat here – the worst she says about the world is that “we get so off track sometimes.” Instead, she’s all about the silver lining this time. The title track is about perspective, about realizing that people are doing the best they can. “Rainy Parade” is an exhortation to “take your lemons and make lemonade,” to look at the best life has to offer instead of the worst. And “Happy All the Time” is exactly what it sounds like, with no irony.

DiFranco is in a new emotional place, but musically, she’s taken a few more steps down the path she’s always been on. She’s undergone a consistent evolution from wrist-spraining acoustic folk-punk to quieter jazz balladry, with thick and complex chords and melodies that swerve hither and yon. She’s backed up by longtime bassist Todd Sickafoose and drummer Terence Higgins, and together they form a tight, jazzy trio. Ivan Neville plays keys on much of this album, adding a soulful element, and DiFranco has arranged some subtle horn parts here and there. She croons these songs with a quiet grace, like she’s having an intimate chat with the front row instead of aiming for the balcony.

And that’s Allergic to Water all over. It’s a delightfully personal slice of her life, one that finds her happier than I can remember ever hearing her. For longtime fans, it might be a shock – the anger has slowly seeped out of her music, and has been replaced by contentment and joy. For me, it’s wonderful. Others can pick up the Angry Young Woman mantle DiFranco wore so well. Her life is in a good place, and this album is a quiet celebration. If this means we’ll get fewer records, then so be it. I’ll be happy with the occasional drop-in on her life, and I’ll celebrate it right along with her.

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Two years ago, Australian band Husky made a huge impression on me with their silky-yet-earthy debut album Forever So. I put it in my top 10 list, and proclaimed songs like “History’s Door” and “Hunter” among my favorites of the year. I evangelized about them, and spared no opportunity to thank Rob Hale for turning me on to them.

It’s looking a lot like Rob and I are the only ones on this side of the Atlantic who care, though. Husky’s second album, Ruckers Hill, is out now down under, and I had to import it, as no stateside label seems poised to release it. This makes even reviewing it a tricky proposition for me, because if you want to try it, I’m not even sure where to send you. I’m willing to pay import prices for an album like this, but I doubt everyone is.

The true shame of this, for those of us in the U.S., is that Ruckers Hill is extraordinary, somehow an even better Husky record than the debut. Husky’s sound has evolved and refined, a tremendous mix of Fleet Foxes and Simon and Garfunkel, and the band’s songwriting has blossomed. There are 13 songs on Ruckers Hill, and there isn’t a single one I don’t in some way love. This makes talking about highlights tough, but I’ll try.

There’s first single “Saint Joan,” which finds room for the word “somnambulist” in its first two lines. It’s a stunning folk-pop song, lead singer Husky Gawenda wrapping the band’s harmonies around him on the descending chorus: “Oh, I am leaving, I am leaving…” “Heartbeat” is its equal, a deceptively simple number that explodes into something eminently hummable. “For to Make a Lead Weight Float” shows Mumford and Sons how to do thumping minor-key folk right, and the amazing “I’m Not Coming Back” darts from one sky-high melody to another, Gawenda singing of burning his hometown to the ground. The spoken section, unlike most spoken sections, is awesome.

The second half is somehow better than the first, buoyed by the tremendous “Arrow” and the particularly Paul Simon-esque “Mirror.” “Fats Domino” is one of Husky’s finest, opening like a ‘60s folk song and unfolding into a dynamic, beautiful anthem. I love this one more each time I hear it, and the care the band lavished on this song (and the other 12) brings me to my feet. Straight to the final track, the emotional “Deep Sky Diver,” this record keeps the beauty and gracefulness coming. I’m listening right now, trying to skip around and talk about individual tunes, and it’s difficult because I just want to keep listening to the whole thing.

Suffice it to say that Ruckers Hill is one of the year’s very best, and Husky one of the finest new bands I’m aware of. There has been a glut of folksy-pop bands lately, from Mumford to the Lumineers, and Husky outshines them all by keeping the focus on glorious, glorious songwriting. It’s hard to believe this is only their second record, and even harder to believe that so few people outside of Australia will hear it. If I’ve convinced you to give them a try, you can hear and order their stuff here. I hope I’ve convinced you.

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And finally, we have Ben Howard, another newbie making his second record.

I’ve said that Ben Howard is everything I want Damien Rice to be. Howard plays textured yet spacious electric folk music with epic track lengths and impassioned vocals, but unlike Rice, he doesn’t make me want to punch him in the throat every 30 seconds. Howard’s songs are driving things that leave room for a lot of air, yet dive down fascinating little tunnels, more than justifying their lengths.

Howard does everything right on his sophomore effort, I Forget Where We Were. It’s bigger, and yet it sounds more focused, the spotlight on Howard’s voice and blissful guitar playing. “Rivers in Your Mouth” rides its one guitar figure for five minutes, but it never gets tired – Howard finds new ways to elaborate on it as it goes along. The title track ebbs and flows masterfully, building up in the verses before crashing back down in the choruses. Throughout, Howard and his co-conspirators spin a dark, weighty atmosphere. Most of the time, it’s just guitars, bass and drums, but it feels like so much more. And yet, the instrumentation is loose enough to breathe.

Songs get longer in the second half, with the swirling “Time Is Dancing” leading you through seven reserved minutes and depositing you in “Evergreen,” a captivating, tender dirge. “End of the Affair” is longest at nearly eight minutes, but it earns every second, and I wish it were longer. Howard spins a particular spell with this record, one that fills whatever room you play it in, and winds its way around you, holding you close.

It turns out we’re going to get the chance to directly compare Ben Howard with Damien Rice next month, as Rice returns with his first record in a decade. I haven’t heard that, but my money would still be on Howard. I Forget Where We Were is a confident, lovely album, a second effort that cements him as a talent to watch. And I’ll be watching.

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There we go. Jazzy folk music, poppy melodic folk music, and sparse emotional folk music. All different, all worth hearing.

Next week, Pink Floyd, and probably a summation of Doctor Who’s 34th season. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am, and Twitter at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

It’s time once again for the WTF Awards, traditionally among the most fun columns I get to write each year.

2014 has been a doozy for great, ambitious new music, so it stands to reason that it would also be a good year for strange, unclassifiable new music. They usually go hand in hand – the more exciting a year’s music is, the more bizarre a lot of it tends to be as well. So the WTF Awards are reserved for those records that don’t seem to make any sense whatsoever on the surface, those whose very premises leave you scratching your head and wondering how they ever passed the concept stage. In short, things that make you go “hmmm.”

It shouldn’t be any surprise that the Flaming Lips have ended up here. They’ve always been the weird stepchildren of the rock world, only occasionally dipping their toes into more accessible work like Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. In recent years, they’ve only gotten stranger, giving us (among other things) a song that stretches to a full 24 hours, a complete cover of The Dark Side of the Moon with Peaches and Henry Rollins on board, a collaborative record with the likes of Kesha, Nick Cave and Biz Markie, and an even stranger psychedelic side project called Electric Wurms. In the middle of all that, they issued The Terror, perhaps the most off-putting major-label record of their career.

So in some sense, the existence of With a Little Help From My Fwends isn’t a surprise, since nothing the Lips do these days would surprise me. Still, the very fact of it is puzzling. Fwends is a full cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the immortal Beatles album, undertaken with the help of a couple dozen guests, ranging from Tegan and Sara to Miley Cyrus to J. Mascis. Despite the lengthy list of co-conspirators, Fwends sounds like a modern Flaming Lips album to the core, and would probably benefit from the use of psychedelic drugs more than even the original album would.

The main question here, before we get into the meat of what’s presented, is why they have done this at all. Sgt. Pepper is not an album that needs new interpretation. It is, in my humble estimation, perfect exactly as it is. It’s the high point of a career that scaled higher points than almost any other. The very idea that this collective from Oklahoma could improve upon or otherwise illuminate the work of Messrs. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Starr and Martin is inherently absurd. Fwends is clearly a tribute to these songs in this order, acknowledging and celebrating their excellence. But to release it means that they see value in it as a companion to the original.

Cheap Trick, of course, did something similar a few years ago, but they’re a much more reverent band, and their version (recorded live) was a slavish copy. The Lips have never been described as reverent, and this version of Sgt. Pepper veers pretty far off script. In a way, that’s what’s needed – there’s no point in just playing Sgt. Pepper again. The Lips recast the whole record in their trademark synth blots and alien vocals and drums that sound like they’ve been recorded inside an exploding star. It’s a smeary, delirious mess.

That said, the essence of these songs is largely preserved, for which I’m grateful. The melodies are celebrated above all – the music that slathers “When I’m Sixty-Four” appears to have been constructed entirely from synthetic farts and belches, but McCartney’s wonderfully old-school tune survives, achingly sung by head Lip Wayne Coyne. Miley Cyrus and Moby turn up to add vocals to “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” but the arrangement is among the most traditional. “Lovely Rita” sounds like it belongs in a video game – one about tracking down a meter maid on the mean streets, perhaps – but Tegan and Sara find the tune amidst the synthetic noise. And yeah, the Lips do “A Day in the Life” seriously, replacing the massive ascending orchestra with blatty keys, but it still kind of works. (Cyrus adds a lot, actually.)

With a Little Help From My Fwends is right in line with the Flaming Lips’ recent work. It’s thoroughly bizarre, and kind of unnecessary, but it’s still an interesting listen. In fact, some of the most striking parts of it are the most bizarre, like J. Mascis’ far-too-loud solo on the title track, or Foxygen’s five-minute jam on the reprise. The fact that this album attempts to reinvent one of the best and most important rock albums ever made grants it a WTF Award straight off. The fact that it sounds like it should be sacrilege but ends up as something far more fascinating is just icing. Neon green icing dripping like alien blood from a 60-foot-tall eye. Or something.

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The other two awards this time go to a pair of almost unbelievable collaborations. I mean the kind of thing you’d expect to happen only in a parallel universe. Just imagine this: we live in a world in which not only do two of the strangest acts I can think of, Scott Walker and Sunn O))), exist, but they have made a record together. And it is extraordinarily odd.

I should clarify that I’m not talking about the Scott Walker who is up for re-election as the governor of Wisconsin. I mean the Scott Walker who made his name with the Walker Brothers in the ‘60s, lending his glorious voice to Bacharach/David and Shuman/Pomus songs, and sang Jacques Brel songs as a solo act. If you remember that Scott Walker, you will not be prepared for what he’s been doing for the past 20 years. Over three impossibly noisy and difficult records, beginning with 1995’s The Tilt and culminating with 2012’s Bish Bosch, Walker has redefined himself as an avant-garde sound sculptor. He still possesses a stunning, classically trained voice, and hearing it in these new settings has been revelatory.

Walker doesn’t care if you like him, which means he has something in common with Sunn O))), the Seattle drone metal band. Sunn O))) is heavy in the way that being slowly pressed under 400 tons of rock would be heavy. Their songs are thick, loud, slow, inescapably long affairs, with huge, towering, hellish guitars. They’re so heavy they almost come back around to ambient, their massive rolling soundscapes feeling a bit like sinking into liquid concrete.

So of course, I’ve been imagining what Soused, Walker and Sunn O)))’s collaborative album, would sound like since I first heard about it months ago. The final product is pretty close to what I had envisioned – crawling hellfire foundations of thick guitars over which Walker sings like a tortured bird. Walker wrote all five of these songs, ranging from nine to 12 minutes, so they sound a lot like his recent solo work – sweeping epics with peaks and valleys and moments of transcendent beauty. Sunn O))) proves invaluable, though, in conjuring a particularly nightmarish atmosphere for these melodies to live in.

Opener “Brando” begins with Walker belting out a high, lonesome melody over some chiming organ, but it isn’t long before the sludgy guitars appear, accompanied by bullwhip sounds and synth whistles. The song is subtitled “Dwellers on the Bluff,” a literal translation of the Native American word Omaha (where Marlon Brando was born), and the nine-minute song attempts to evoke the frontier while conjuring up something more sinister: “A beating would do me a world of good,” Walker moans.

This song sets the tone – Soused is a dark, punishing experience, rolling from one devastating hellscape to another. “Fetish” finds Walker singing about the dark places of the inside over mechanical whirs and clangs, and when it all drops away around the two-minute mark, leaving just that wavery tenor, it’s utterly captivating. The rest of the song is disturbing, in all the best ways. The closing track is called “Lullaby,” and while it may be the least traditionally heavy thing here, it’s certainly not going to lull you to sleep. Something dark and menacing bubbles just under the surface here, and it occasionally gets close to bursting upward, but somehow it stays just beneath. It’s masterful.

Most of the time, these one-off collaborations end up saying all they have to within a song or two. But I would be happy to see Scott O))) continue down this path. Soused is one of the most unsettling records I’ve heard in years, and it took the combined sensibilities of both artists to create this thing. It’s dark and powerful stuff, not for the faint of heart. But if you’ve liked where both Walker and Sunn O))) have gone in the past, this takes both artists a significant step forward.

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And finally, we have one of the most unlikely matchups I could imagine: golden-throated jazz balladeer Tony Bennett and meat-suit-wearing pop iconoclast Lady Gaga.

You’d be forgiven for thinking these two have nothing at all in common. Bennett is a legend, a classic suit-and-tie singer of standards who has been recording since 1952. He’s a tremendous interpreter of jazz and pop music, lending an air of smooth authenticity to everything he touches. Gaga, on the other hand, is a modern pop star with a reputation for crass and attention-getting imagery, penning anthems of individualism and setting them to trashy Euro-dance music with a touch of Freddie Mercury. In short, Bennett is all class, while Gaga is mostly crass.

But damn, their collaborative record Cheek to Cheek is a huge surprise. Granted, it’s more in Bennett’s turf than Gaga’s, consisting of 15 standards arranged for jazz band and strings. But if you thought Gaga would embarrass herself singing these duets with Bennett, think again. While it’s clear that she’s not trained in this style, she acquits herself quite well. She has a full-throated, full-bodied tone, but can reel that back into coquettish playfulness when needed.

Bennett and Gaga are undoubtedly winking at us by opening this record with Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes,” but their rendition is sweet, and features a sparkling sax solo by Joe Lovano. Gaga sings “Nature Boy” beautifully, stands right up next to Bennett on “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” and sashays her way through the wildly fun “Goody Goody.” (She nails the aside “I told you, I’m not a goody, I’m a baddy.”) Your first spin through this record will, justifiably, be about seeing if Gaga can hack it in this environment, and stunningly, she really can.

And Bennett? He’s a legend for a reason. He’s 88 years old, and can still swing with the best of them. Check him out on the brief “Firefly,” and on his solo spot “Sophisticated Lady.” These are songs he’s sung a million times, but he’s a master of phrasing and tone. He inhabits these tunes, wearing them like a fine fitted suit. Above all, he and Gaga sound like they’re having a grand old time – just listen to them banter on “I Won’t Dance.” You can practically picture them swing-dancing around each other, spotlights trailing them.

I didn’t know what to expect from Cheek to Cheek, and for orchestrating a pairing that made my jaw drop, this gets a WTF Award. But the album is such a blast, such a frothy good time, that even those making a purchase spurred on by curiosity will enjoy it. The record ends with Duke Ellington’s immortal “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” with Lovano back filling in the grooves, and Bennett and Gaga just have so much fun singing the “doo-wah-doo-wah” parts that it’s infectious. I was skeptical, but I’m sold. These strange bedfellows make a delightful team.

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Next week, three types of folk music. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am, and Twitter at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Reinvention is a tricky subject for me.

I love it when a band flips its own script and tries something new. I love being surprised by music, and hearing a band known for one thing fully committing to something else entirely is one of the best of those surprises. And yet, I also appreciate consistency – I like artists who establish an identity, and then play with that, leaping through different styles. Elvis Costello is probably the gold standard for that kind of thing. He started playing rockabilly and punk, but has delivered solid work in country, folk, jazz, orchestral balladry and a host of other styles. He can commandingly collaborate with Allan Toussaint, Burt Bacharach and the Roots, and still sound like himself.

So it’s a difficult balance, and it requires a true confidence in one’s musical personality. As much as I like L.A.-via-Chicago quartet OK Go, it’s not really a balance they’ve been able to maintain. They burst onto the scene as a cheeky power pop band, then hired Franz Ferdinand’s producer to helm their more… well, Franz-sounding second record, Oh No. And then they thoroughly dived into Dave Fridmann’s trippy electro universe with 2010’s Of the Blue Colour of the Sky. Three records, three completely different-sounding bands. The most consistent thing about OK Go is their elaborate videos, so it’s no surprise that they’ve become known more for their YouTube presence than their music.

To their credit, they seem to have realized this. The band’s just-released fourth album, Hungry Ghosts, is just a quick hop from the sound of Colour instead of another massive leap. The band has once again retained Fridmann, and while this record is less of a head trip, it does make use of the producer’s trademark electronic frippery. The band does have a drummer, Dan Konopka, but it sounds to me like he makes few appearances on this record. Main songwriter Damian Kulash has toned down the Prince influences here, settling on 12 short, sharp pop songs. While this record doesn’t have the same jaw-dropping sprawl as its predecessor, it is more concise, more focused and more fun.

I’m particularly pleased with “Obsession,” with its dirty Achtung Baby guitars and shifting percussion, and “I’m Not Through,” which glides around on a silky beat, faraway vocals and punchy strings. “Bright As Your Eyes” is sunny and joyous, with some 3-D guitar effects, while “I Won’t Let You Down” is a delirious dance floor anthem, ready for your wedding reception. (Perhaps a wedding reception with a giant Rube Goldberg machine as a centerpiece?) Things wind down with the starry-eyed “Lullaby,” and after 11 songs of blipping beats and slathered synths, the simple acoustic foundation of that song feels almost revolutionary.

Hungry Ghosts is a mostly effective pop record, a nice attempt to fit Kulash’s old-school songwriting in with Fridmann’s studio insanity. It works well. It feels like a very small step away from Of the Blue Colour, but it also feels like OK Go trying, for the first time, to establish just what kind of band they are. It’ a nice sign that they want to be known for the music they make, and not just as that band with the treadmills and paint. A few more records like this one and they’ll be in danger of actually being consistent.

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Jukebox the Ghost is another band that has reinvented itself, but not necessarily for the better.

In 2010, the Washington, D.C. trio unleashed Everything Under the Sun, an absolutely brilliant pop album. Extraordinary songs, incredible arrangements, pounding piano, not a single moment of it mired in cliché or mediocrity. It shot for the sky, got there, and then just kept going to the moon. I worried that I might have been overrating it, but I listened again recently, and it’s just as tremendous as I remember. It is pop music unbound, without limits. And it seemed like the band could do anything from there.

What they decided to do, alas, was simplify. 2012’s Safe Travels is a really good record, but in comparison with Everything, it’s much smaller and less interesting. And now here is Jukebox’s self-titled album, which completes their evolution to a streamlined pop band. To their credit, they truly commit to this – they’ve made a strong, glossy, infectious piece of work here, and every song works. Ben Thornewill’s piano is center stage, and though there are no flights of fancy here, no moments when the band uses these songs as jumping off points for something brighter and greater, they acquit themselves well. Their transformation into a smaller, more modest pop band has paid dividends – I enjoy ditties like “The Great Unknown” and “When the Nights Get Long” more than some of the more ponderous moments of Safe Travels, and this record is quite a bit more fun.

Still, I’m not sure this is much of a step up. Not much separates a pretty little thing like “Long Way Home” from a lot of the acoustic pop music you can hear anywhere. Lead single “Sound of a Broken Heart” is fun as all hell, and I don’t really need more than the giddy woah-oh chorus, but I still remember when this band would give me more. As usual, the second half outdoes the first – I’m a big fan of “Hollywood” and “Postcard,” two of this album’s most convincing piano-bangers, and the almost otherworldly gospel song “Undeniable You” is captivating. Album closer “Show Me Where It Hurts” is tender and lovely. Everything here works. I’m not sure why I’m complaining.

It’s just that Jukebox the Ghost used to be a special band. Well, they’re still special – it takes huge amounts of skill to write goofy yet compelling little pop songs like these, and to create a record so appealing out of them. But this brand of special doesn’t thrill me the way this band used to. There’s nothing really wrong with the synth-pop of “The One,” for example – I like it, I hum it, it makes me want to dance around like a moron. But it doesn’t strike me as something only this band could do. Jukebox the Ghost is another good record that only pales in comparison to where they’ve been. If the goal was to make an accessible, infectious, truly enjoyable little record that might turn more ears their direction, then mission accomplished. I just wish they didn’t have to lose so much in the process.

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If the theme this week is establishing a musical identity, Andrew McMahon has it nailed.

Following his stint fronting rock band Something Corporate, McMahon brought his sense of melody and strong songwriting to Jack’s Mannequin, where he established his sound. McMahon writes smart piano-rock songs, gussies them up with keyboards (and occasionally guitars), and sings them in a strong, clear voice. McMahon is what happens when a Drive-Thru Records artist grows up and discovers who he is. (See also: Ace Enders.) Since taking the reins, he’s never sounded like anyone but himself.

All that is a way of saying that even though his new project Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness has a brand new name, it still sounds like him. The guitars are pretty much gone, replaced with more synths and programming, but if you liked his songs and his voice, you’ll like this. From the first moments of “Canyon Moon,” I was wrapped up in this record. McMahon’s tunes have always evoked a particular nostalgic feeling, like capturing those last fleeting moments of youth, and on this record, he manages to do that while also writing about what it’s like to be an adult.

“Cecilia and the Satellite” is particularly touching – it serves as a look back at important moments in McMahon’s life, but it all points forward to the moment when he meets his first child. “For all the things my eyes have seen, the best by far is you,” he sings, and yeah, there’s something in my eye. It’s just a great, great song. The darker side of that same point in his life is explored on “See Her on the Weekend” – McMahon sequestered himself in a cabin to create this record, and would only see his wife once a week. It’s full of tiny details: “Cell phone is dead and she’s calling, message box is full…”

And yet, when I hear something like “Driving Through a Dream,” I feel like I’m 17. It’s exactly the kind of song that reminds me of being younger – not my actual young man’s life, but a more idealized one that exists in my head. “The night is long, the road is longer, you say you sleep better when I’m awake, I’ll stay awake for you…” Something about that just makes me swoon. For some reason, McMahon’s keys-only production only adds to that feeling. This record draws me in more than any he’s made. Even the lesser songs, like “Halls,” do it for me.

Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness is, at its core, a modest record of fairly simple songs. But there’s something about it, something that McMahon has brought with him all the way through his career, an emotional honesty that I completely respond to. I won’t be naming this one of the best records of 2014 – it’s really small and simple, and it does have a few lesser tracks – but it might be one that I return to most often. Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness is still Andrew McMahon, thank goodness, and just hearing his songs again makes me smile.

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Next week… man, so many options. Come back in seven to find out. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am, and Twitter at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

For reasons too complicated to go into here, I’ve been listening to some ‘80s radio lately.

I love ‘80s music. I love that thick, gated snare drum sound. I love those gloopy synthesizers slathered over everything. I love the pulse of synth bass, and the alien way vocals were processed then. I love the idea that producers at that time thought they were being futuristic, when in fact they were sealing their works in a time capsule, dating them forever. And I also love that you can hear a great song through all of that anyway.

But even amidst the best that decade had to offer, Prince stands out. When a Prince song flits its way into one of those radio playlists, it’s not only instantly recognizable as his work, it’s completely different from whatever the song-selecting robot has placed it next to. Prince’s mix of ‘60s pop, ‘70s funk and soul and ‘80s computer rock would be enough on its own to distinguish his songs, but he adds this indefinable Prince-ness to everything he does. For all the talk of him defining the era, no other artist – ‘80s or otherwise – has ever sounded quite like him.

It’s no surprise that Prince is still putting out music some 30 years after his most praised period, nor is it a surprise that the vast majority of that music is very, very good. In fact, it’s often more surprising when Prince makes a so-so record, as he has done a few times in the past decade. After surging back with Musicology in 2004, he made five discs of varying quality, and saddled some of them with bizarre release strategies. The pretty-good Lotusflower and MPLSound albums were packaged together with a terrible album by protégé Bria Valente and made available only at Target. The much better 20Ten was only available in the UK and Ireland as a free insert with the Daily Mirror, so almost no one on this side of the pond heard it.

This is nothing new for Prince. It’s always been confusing to me unpacking which music he wants heard and which he seems to want kept under wraps. But when he makes a bold move, like re-signing with Warner Bros. and putting out two albums at once, it usually means we should pay attention. Prince hasn’t issued a new album on Warner since 1996, and at that time he was still writing SLAVE on his face in lipstick and going by an unpronounceable symbolic moniker. That seems like forever ago, and while it doesn’t really matter what label he’s on, I’m glad time has healed this wound because it means I can just hop down to the record store and buy these new albums without hunting for them.

And I’m pleased to report that Prince is still Prince, wherever he hangs his sparkly purple hat. Neither of these new albums are groundbreaking works, but they’re both solid and worthy efforts that should remind people what a stone cold genius the man is. Both are collaborations with his new backing band, 3rdEyeGirl, a trio of fine singers and musicians. Art Official Age is the pop record, credited just to Prince, and Plectrum Electrum is the rock record, credited just to 3rdEyeGirl. (Yes, even with his major label comeback records, he found a way to be confounding.)

Art Official Age is the most familiar-sounding. It’s chock full of Prince-pop beats, soulful sex jams, portentous ballads and his one-of-a-kind arrangement sense. Opener “Art Official Cage” would sound insane next to anything on the radio these days, with its quick-step beat, nimble funk guitar, weird vocal effects and head-spinning structure. It’s pure Prince, and while the album rarely gets that dizzying again, it sets the tone. The next track, “Clouds,” is a simple pop delight, the kind that Prince has excelled at since his earliest days, but then the sci-fi monologue about cryogenic sleep comes in out of nowhere, and you know exactly whose music you’re listening to.

That narrative winds its way through Art Official Age, but thankfully it never drags down the silky-smooth music on offer. “Breakdown” is one of the best ballads Prince has penned in the past decade, and it makes full use of his falsetto, still an astonishingly supple instrument. “The Gold Standard” is a six-minute funk workout, “What It Feels Like” is reminiscent of Prince’s ‘90s material (with a little New Jack flavor), and “Breakfast Can Wait” is the sexiest song about… well, see for yourself: “Hotcakes smothered in honey, I’m gonna have to pass, fresh cup of coffee, no, I gotta have you in my glass…”

Amidst all of this, “Way Back Home” is remarkably confessional – it may be part of the show, but it strikes me as one of the most personal songs he’s ever given us. “I never wanted a typical life, scripted role, trophy wife, all I ever wanted was to be left alone… trying to find my way back home.” The music is dark and lovely, and the 3rdEyeGirl backing vocals take it to another level. It’s a definite highlight on an album that can stand with some of Prince’s best work, and rises above much of his recent material.

Both Art Official Age and Plectrum Electrum contain “Funknroll,” a featherweight ditty that only serves to highlight the different approaches each album takes. The AOA version is a dance-y stomper, with processed vocals and big keyboard sounds. The 3rdEyeGirl version strips it down to guitars, bass and drums, and has a tremendous time rocking it out. Just about all of Plectrum Electrum follows suit, and if you want proof that Prince is a guitar hero in the classic mold, just listen to this.

Prince has had a lot of bands over his career, from the Revolution to the New Power Generation, but he’s never had one as focused as 3rdEyeGirl. Guitarist Donna Grantis, bassist Ida Nelson and drummer Hannah Ford Welton are good, solid, straightforward players, and with Prince at the fore, they jam like the Jimi Hendrix Experience in a particularly funky mood. Opener “Wow” is a bit of a mid-tempo crawl, but “Pretzelbodylogic” showcases this new band well – check out Nelson’s bass licks and Welton’s tasty fills, and how they seem to energize Prince’s playing.

The three 3rdEyeGirlers all sing – I don’t know which one takes lead on “Ain’t Turnin’ Round,” but she has a bold and brassy voice. Taking the pressure of vocals off of Prince has allowed him to focus on his guitar, and damn. Damn. There are two instrumentals on here, including the kickass title track, and on them, you can really hear how good Prince is. If this is his version of a bar band, these songs are the ones that flip the stools over and set the place on fire. The rawness of most of this record sets something like “Stop This Train,” a more traditional Prince tune with electronic drums, in sharp relief. The record would have been better without it.

Thankfully, that’s a rare occurrence. Most of Plectrum Electrum is spent reveling in this new band, and the melodic funk heroics at the core of its sound. Even the slower tunes, like “Tic Tac Toe” and “Another Love,” have a bluesy, organic vibe to them. While Art Official Age is Prince being Prince, and doing so masterfully, Plectrum Electrum really feels like the work of a band, and while it’s not groundbreaking stuff, it’s good to hear him in a setting like this. Both of these new records stand up tall amidst the man’s legacy, and given how mammoth that legacy is, that’s saying something. His name is Prince, and even now, nearly 40 years after his first record, he is still funky.

* * * * *

Speaking of the ‘80s, one of the most interesting records of that decade is now available in a brand new, sparkling remastered edition. It’s also one of the most ignored records of the ‘80s, one which only a few people heard. This has always struck me as criminal – it’s an album that can stand with the best that the new wave movement had to offer, one with remarkable depth and thematic heft wrapped up in a snarky, deliriously creative outer skin.

The album I’m talking about is Doppelganger, the 1983 release from California quartet Daniel Amos. Those who know DA know that they were one of the most important bands to the then-burgeoning Christian rock movement, and that association has largely kept them from getting the attention they deserve. Daniel Amos mastermind Terry Taylor is one of the most interesting songwriters I have ever encountered, and his vast, expansive catalog – with DA, the Swirling Eddies, the Lost Dogs and on his own – will probably remain unheralded.

I’ve done my best to change that in my little corner of the world. To me, Terry Taylor and Daniel Amos are Important, and everyone with even a passing interest in great, weighty music with an ‘80s sheen should hear Doppelganger. It’s the second volume of the Alarma Chronicles, a four-album set of sci-fi-inspired dissertations on the Reagan era, and probably the most bizarre. It certainly rocks the hardest – the band was more tentative on Alarma, and surrendered completely to synthesizers on Vox Humana. But on Doppelganger, they let loose.

The album’s theme is duality, in the form of masks we wear, lies we tell, and artificial walls we construct between ourselves and others. Opener “Hollow Man” is actually a song from the last album played backwards, to set that ball rolling. “Mall (All Over the World)” is about living in a plastic world: “How come you’re sad, how come you cry, when golden arches cross your sky?” The album artwork is full of mannequins and masks, and the songs explore that artificiality. “Real Girls” asks where those titular women are amongst a bevy of fake ones on TV and films (and don’t worry, Taylor indicts men as well), while the hilarious “New Car” takes televangelists and snake oil salesmen to task, outing their real financial motivation.

All these songs are pretty amazing, but I would highlight the pummeling “Youth With a Machine,” a song that sums up much of the ‘80s for me, and the spastic “Memory Lane,” about someone who takes too many trips down that road. “Distance and Direction” is remarkably beautiful, with its Brian Wilson vocal arrangements, and it stands in contrast with the angry final third. The slash-and-burn trilogy of “Little Crosses,” “Autographs for the Sick” and “I Didn’t Build It for Me” obliterate the likes of Jerry Falwell and the whole notion of ministry as a business. Hearing Taylor spit and snarl his way through these tunes brings a grin to my face.

But I’m most moved by the final song, barring a reprise of “Hollow Man.” “Here I Am,” true to its title, finds Taylor dropping all the masks in an attempt to connect with his audience. It explores the question of whether the listener can ever truly know the band through its music, and in its choruses, aims for true human moments as a way of testing that idea. “You want an autograph, what is your need? Mine is for you to know that I really bleed, here I am, I’m crying…” It’s a marvelous capper to Taylor’s album-length theme, and the song is a delight.

The new remaster sounds incredible – sharp and clear and brilliant – and I will admit to smiling wide when I saw that the second disc is a doppelganger of the first. It’s every song from the main album, in sequence, in an alternate version. Most of these are curiosities, but if you love this band like I do, they’re revelatory. I’m especially glad to have an isolated vocal mix for “Distance and Direction,” one that allows me to hear each glorious harmony. You don’t really need the doppel-Doppelganger, but it’s neat to have.

You do need Doppelganger, though. It’s a vicious, sharp, hummable, extraordinary record, and it’s due for a serious critical appraisal. While no one was watching them, Daniel Amos made magic again and again. (Last year’s Dig Here, Said the Angel is proof that they’re still making it.) Perhaps that was the secret to their success – you can do more in obscurity than you can with the eyes of the world on you. Still, I would love to see more love for Terry Taylor’s catalog. I’m glad to see the band investing in these double-disc reissues. Doppelganger is a masterpiece, like so many of DA’s records, and it more than deserves this lovely re-release. I hope it gets more people to listen.

Daniel Amos can be found online here.

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Next week, pop music with OK Go and Jukebox the Ghost. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am, and Twitter at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Another couple months, another Evil Arrows review.

Bryan Scary has never been anything less than impressive, but his ongoing Evil Arrows project is turning into his magnum opus. The fourth in a series of EPs is now available and brings the total to 24 songs over roughly 75 minutes, without a single stinker. Scary is a pop songsmith with few peers, and Evil Arrows has been his attempt to streamline his work into bite-sized chunks. It’s been a phenomenal success.

EP4 is the longest so far, at 22 minutes, and all six songs break the three-minute mark. For Evil Arrows, these are epics. Most of these six songs have slower tempos and more subtle melodies – “Broken Heart Police” is a strummy acoustic wonder, while opener “The Bad Things Are Back Again” floats in on a supple piano melody before soaring with a falsetto chorus (complete with some wonderful “doo-doo-doos”). Songs like “Staring Into Space” and “In Clover” are less manic than previous Evil Arrows tunes, but no less hummable and insanely catchy.

The only one here that sounds caffeinated is “For Love Instead,” which plays up Scary’s love for ‘60s psych-rock. It’s pretty awesome, with its herky-jerky acoustic rhythm and underpinning fuzz guitar, and Scary pulls off the sing-speak vocal brilliantly. This EP ends with “Stereo Slumber,” a fragile and pretty piano ballad – it is one of the loveliest things Scary has ever written, and my only complaint about it is the same one I have had about every one of these damn EPs – it’s too short. I’m looking forward to the next one already.

* * * * *

I have a complicated relationship with Weezer.

At least, that’s probably how it seems from the outside. I’ve always liked them – it’s hard to be a power pop fan and not respond to Rivers Cuomo’s penchant for catchy, catchy tunes. But I find myself having two sets of competing arguments with Weezer fans. I think the band has been fairly consistent, aside from that Make Believe–Red Album period when I was sure Cuomo had suffered a stroke. That means that while I like the Blue Album and Pinkerton, I don’t think they’re life-changing works of genius. And likewise, I very much enjoyed later efforts like Raditude and Hurley. I am often defending them on one hand and knocking them down a couple pegs on the other.

So when I say that Weezer’s 10th album, Everything Will Be Alright in the End, is the band’s best and most consistent since the 1990s, it’s not coming from someone who thinks they’ve done nothing worthwhile since Pinkerton. Nor is it coming from a rosy, nostalgic mindset – I’m not pining for the days when “Buddy Holly” was on MTV, although I did prefer it when MTV played any music videos at all. Taking the Weezer catalog as a 10-record burst of fun, hummable power pop, this new record is the most fun, the most hummable, the most power-poppy that they have made since their early days.

Some of that is probably Ric Ocasek, the former lead singer of the Cars, who is back behind the boards for the third time. The band is obviously aiming for that Blue Album sound throughout, with thick, layered guitars and thumping drums and 1970s synthesizers snaking in and out. If you’ve missed that sound, and you can’t understand why Cuomo has been collaborating with the likes of Jermaine Dupri, you’re gonna love this record. This is the sound Weezer tribute bands are aiming for, the Weezer Classic.

But you can only credit Ocasek so much. (He did produce the Green Album, remember, and people don’t seem to like that one.) The reason this album works better than the last few Weezer records is Cuomo. He buckled down and wrote some fantastic songs here, the type of songs his longtime fans have been praying he still had in him. The record simply explodes to life with “Ain’t Got Nobody,” which rides a thunderous riff straight back to 1994. It’s like a shot of adrenaline to the heart, that sound, especially in service of songs like “Lonely Girl” and “Da Vinci.” Remarkably, the songs actually get better as the album goes along – the closing volley of “Cleopatra,” “Foolish Father” and “The Futurescope Trilogy” may be the best things here.

They’re certainly better than “Back to the Shack,” the ill-advised first single and the song that best illustrates my one and only problem with this record. “Shack” is an apology with a beat, Cuomo begging forgiveness for the last 10 years of Weezer records. “Sorry, guys, I didn’t realize I needed you so much, I thought I’d get a new audience, I forgot that disco sucks,” Cuomo spits out, before declaring, “We belong in the rock world, there is so much left to do.” Along the way he expresses a desire to get “back to the Strat with the lightning strap” and swears he’s “letting all these feelings out even if it means I fail.”

That’s fascinating stuff, if a bit troubling. As I said before, I don’t think records like Raditude and Hurley require apologies. But “Shack” also sets a weird tone for this new record, which ends up largely being about making a great new Weezer album. “Eulogy for a Rock Band” is pretty much what it appears to be: Cuomo’s fantasy epigraph for his own band, once he reclaims its glory. The awesome “Had It Up to Here” is about not allowing one’s ideas to be “polluted by mediocrity.” “Don’t want to find myself homogenized,” Cuomo sings, and later, “Don’t wanna end with as much edge as a balloon.”

It’s like listening to him psyche himself up to write a great Weezer album. And Everything Will Be Alright works a lot better when he just gets down to it. “The British Are Coming” is awesomely nuts – it’s literally about the Revolutionary War, and it has a stunning falsetto chorus. “Da Vinci” starts off like “El Scorcho,” all acoustics and whistling, but ends up rocking like an avalanche – that low, rumbling chord that kicks off the chorus is tremendous. “Go Away” is a pristine pop song with guest vocals by Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast. And “Cleopatra” is amazing, from the extra beat in the choruses to the stomping “five, ten, fifteen, twenty” section, to the big, thick, harmonized solo. It’s just a great, great Weezer song.

And one thing you have to say for Everything Will Be Alright – it ends better than any Weezer album in recent memory. “Foolish Father” is a wonderful epic about forgiveness, and just when you think it can’t get more epic, the band brings in a children’s choir to sing the album title. It sounds like it shouldn’t work, like the worst excesses of the Red Album period, but it does. And then comes the seven-minute, three-part, mostly instrumental “Futurescope Trilogy,” which is mainly about the band, playing their little hearts out. It’s mad, it’s all over the place, it’s a delight.

Seriously, if you abandoned the Weezer ship any time in the last 20 years, you should make it a point to hear this one. They’re still just a power pop band, no more and no less, but on Everything Will Be Alright in the End, they’re a better power pop band than they’ve been in some time. I’m not sure if this record will be enough to erase the embarrassments of the past – “Beverly Hills” would take a lot of erasing all by itself – but it’s pretty damn good, in ways that I wasn’t sure Weezer would ever be again. Everything is all right, but despite the title, I certainly hope this is not the end.

Next week, Prince times two, and a few other things. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am, and Twitter at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

When I was a kid, 40 was old.

And when I say old, I mean ancient. Decrepit. Moments from shuffling off this mortal coil. I took to heart that old saying about never trusting anyone over 40. I mean… four decades, man. That’s a long, long time to be walking this earth. And of course, along with advancing age comes a loss of passion and creativity. Art and expression are for the young. The tired, broken-down fogeys should get out of the way.

Of course, now that I am 40, my perspective has shifted somewhat. Truth be told, I never really bought into the notion of a sell-by date for artists, which is one reason sites like Pitchfork annoy me – they’re in constant pursuit of the next thing, the new young standard bearer, and they tend to ignore the older and more established artists. They save their breathless hype for the 17-year-old who just learned to play two chords on a guitar, while I have long enjoyed the thrill of truly digging into an extensive, deep catalog.

You want a good example? Well, if there is some magical age at which musicians should pack it in or risk embarrassment, no one seems to have told Leonard Cohen. He’s 80 years old now, and from the sound of his 13th album, Popular Problems, his extraordinary third act is just getting started. It’s no secret that Cohen returned to the road 10 years ago because a shifty former manager depleted his retirement accounts, but he’s clearly found himself with more to say. His work since 2004 has not been obligatory, it’s been revelatory.

Cohen has always been a poet of sex, spirituality and suffering. His voice, always more of a sonorous speaking instrument, is now a ruined low rumble, a whisper away from crumbling, and it adds an air of weathered wisdom, a been-there quality that can’t be faked. It’s true that Cohen never needed any help sounding authentic, but his voice on Popular Problems brings even more weight to these weighty songs. Even better, Cohen spends this record collaborating with Patrick Leonard, who wraps these songs in witheringly beautiful organic clothes. All but gone are the cheesy synths Cohen has always loved, and in their place, a lovely, low-key band feel.

The songs win the day, but of course they do. Cohen delivers a mission statement with leadoff track “Slow,” inviting you to linger with him over these nine minor-key meditations. “It’s not because I’m old, it’s not what dying does, I always liked it slow, slow is in my blood,” he whispers, and the record (hell, his whole career) bears this out.

From there, Popular Problems tackles familiar territory for Cohen, but as always, he finds new ways to make his themes captivating. “Almost Like the Blues,” the dark and dreamy single, finds him looking out at a lost world, then shying away: “I saw some people starving, there was murder, there was rape, their villages were burning, they were trying to escape, I couldn’t meet their glances, I was staring at my shoes, it was acid, it was tragic, it was almost like the blues…” In the same song, he draws a comparison between torture and killing and “all my bad reviews,” and then points heavenward: “I’ve had the invitation that a sinner can’t refuse, and it’s almost like salvation, it’s almost like the blues…”

You could spend weeks just diving through these lyrics. It is often the music that surprises most on this record, though. Perhaps the finest song here is “Did I Ever Love You,” which begins as a lament, Cohen stretching that rough voice to meet a graceful melody, then flips backwards into a quick-step country number with vocals by Dana Glover. “Samson in New Orleans” floats up on a spectral solo violin. “Never Mind” might be more familiar ground – it’s a bass-driven spoken piece – but it stands out thanks to some delightful percussion and tribal backing vocals. This song is the sharpest here, Cohen dipping into the darkness in his soul, and yet finding it wanting in comparison with the world. “There’s truth that lives and truth that dies, I don’t know which, so never mind…”

Popular Problems finds a home for “Born in Chains,” a song Cohen has been working on for at least 25 years. It’s a dark gospel song, the kind he writes like no one else: “Word of words and measure of all measures, blessed is the name, the name be blessed, written on my heart in burning letters, that’s all I know, I cannot read the rest…” You can hear how grateful he is to have this one out, on the page, and into the world. But he does not end the record with this. The final track is “You Got Me Singing,” one of the most hopeful numbers in his catalog. It’s a psalm, an ode to moving forward, and it even references “Hallelujah,” the song for which Cohen is best known. “You got me singing, even though the world is gone, you got me thinking I’d like to carry on,” he sings, and it’s a gorgeous, hard-won sentiment.

I’d like Cohen to carry on, too, if the result is more little gems like Popular Problems. Any new record by Leonard Cohen will carry with it the significance of his perspective, his legendary perch among the greats. But unlike others of his generation, Cohen is still creating breathtaking, powerful art, still delivering work that stands with his very best. He’s a treasure, now more than ever, and Popular Problems is proof that there is no age at which the muse stops speaking.

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John Mellencamp is 17 years younger than Leonard Cohen, but on his new record, Plain Spoken, he sounds much older. It’s the Indiana roots-rocker’s first new album in four years, and easily his most traditional offering, sticking to a pretty typical strum throughout. Mellencamp’s voice is a wreck, ravaged by years of abuse, but unlike Cohen’s, his rasp doesn’t add anything to these tunes. It’s easily the most boring thing the man has made.

So why am I still interested in it? Because Plain Spoken is a shockingly dark, intensely personal piece of work, and Mellencamp’s willingness to lay his own helplessness, confusion and depression into words is commendable, if not enjoyable. He’s never been the most hopeful of writers, even back when his music had a kick – the hook line of “Jack and Diane” is “life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone,” remember. But since turning 60, Mellencamp has seemingly been fixed on death, when not lamenting his divorce after 18 years of marriage, and those two circumstances have resulted in something almost painfully bruised.

“Troubled Man” may be a character sketch, like those Mellencamp wrote for Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, but it sets the tone: “Anxiety and sorrow underneath my skin, self-destruction and failure have beat my head in, I laughed out loud once, I won’t do that again…” Later, he says that “too late came to early for me to face myself,” and announces, “I won’t do anything but hurt you if I can.” It’s a particularly despairing way to begin this record, and that doesn’t let up on “Sometimes There’s God,” a song about the randomness of life. “Sometimes there’s God and sometimes there’s just not, a little redemption would help us a lot, sometimes there’s God in the palm of your hand, some days hard times will cover your land…”

“The Isolation of Mister” seems to reference Mellencamp’s divorce in the bitterest of ways: “So many knots I did not untie, they came undone by my faults, and here’s the reason why, saw so many lovers walk out that door, never cared about being lonely because I didn’t love you no more, I said go away, go away…” “Tears in Vain” picks up that ball and runs: “I guess I should know better than to cry these tears in vain,” Mellencamp sings while Mike Wanchic’s electric guitars ring out.

Mellencamp’s gaze turns outward in the back half of the record – “Freedom of Speech” is about exactly what you’d expect, while “Blue Charlotte” tells the story of a man holding his lover during her last days. He brings things to a close with “Lawless Times,” the rawest rocker here. This song finds Mellencamp looking out his window and finding nothing but awful: “You can’t trust your neighbor, husband or wife, can’t trust the police with their guns or their nights.” He even calls out those who would pirate his tunes: “If you want to steal this song, it can be easily loaded down…” The fact that this is the funny song is telling.

I’ve been a Mellencamp fan since before I started buying my own music, and I have never heard him sound so beaten down, so fatalistic. Plain Spoken is not an enjoyable album, but it is a fascinating one. Mellencamp sounds old here, like the subject of “Blue Charlotte,” knowing he’s in his twilight years and just giving in. It’s shocking, it’s depressing, and it’s still oddly compelling. I would never recommend this record, but for some reason, I keep listening.

* * * * *

If you want the very picture of aging with almost superhuman grace, though, you’ll need to turn to 66-year-old Robert Plant.

Here’s a guy who changed the world with Led Zeppelin, still one of the most celebrated rock bands in history, and then spent the next 35 years just doing whatever the hell he wanted. Synth-pop records? Sure. Scoring hits during the age of hair metal, then delivering a sharp turn with his horn-driven Honeydrippers project? OK. A duet album with Alison Krauss that completely redefined him in the eyes of many? Absolutely. To Plant, it’s all music, and he’s been on a constant quest to find new songs to sing, new atmospheres in which to float that wonderful, high, worldly voice. He’s never taken a wrong turn, never made an embarrassing record.

That streak continues with Lullaby and the Endless Roar, his 10th solo album, and his first with his new backing band, the Sensational Space Shifters. The mission of this group seems to be to combine as many influences from around the world as possible into the lovely, almost ambient creations that fill this record. I hesitate to call this album low-key, because it isn’t, really. But if you’re looking for rock songs, even those that filled 2010’s Band of Joy, you won’t find them here. This record is built on slow, space-y dirges that work more on mood than anything else.

Plant’s voice is still the fulcrum around which all of this turns. He dances up and around the single-note foundations of songs like “Pocketful of Golden” and the wonderful “Embrace Another Fall,” and turns restrained balladeer on “A Stolen Kiss.” The best moments of this record are the ones where the huge wall of sound drops away, leaving Plant’s voice to carry things. He turns in a lovely performance here, holding back the histrionics and just letting the notes flow out. The Space Shifters prove to be one of the finest, most interesting bands he’s ever had at his disposal, building on their grooves with all manner of fascinating instrumentation, including electronic drum loops – check out the futuristic dusty ramble that is “Turn It Up.”

Plant remains a student of music, seeking out traditional songs to update and writing new ones that sound centuries old, just as he did in Zeppelin. Lullaby opens with “Little Maggie,” a traditional folk song that Plant and the band completely reinvent with dance beats and banjos, and “Poor Howard” sounds so much like an old folk song that it sent me to the liner notes to confirm that it’s an original. The fiddle work on this one is particularly nice. This sense of history roots the album deep in the earth, which then gives it the freedom to expand sonically in all directions.

The result is yet another swell Robert Plant album, continuing one of the most idiosyncratic and compelling solo careers I can think of. I hope I’m still saying that when he’s Leonard Cohen’s age, and still putting out albums as good as this one. Age means nothing when you still have something to say, and can still say it this well.

* * * * *

OK, it’s time for the Third Quarter Report. Essentially, this is what my top 10 list would look like if I were forced to publish it right now. The fact that the Cohen and Plant records reviewed above do not appear on this list should tell you what kind of quality year it has been. (Cohen came very close.) And when the quality is high across the board, my personal taste comes into play more than anything. Typically my third quarter list strongly resembles my final one, so if you want a preview of December, here it is.

#10. Nickel Creek, A Dotted Line.
#9. Andrea Dawn, Doll.
#8. Coldplay, Ghost Stories.
#7. Dan Wilson, Love Without Fear.
#6. Elbow, The Takeoff and Landing of Everything.
#5. Sloan, Commonwealth.
#4. Beck, Morning Phase.
#3. The Choir, Shadow Weaver.
#2. U2, Songs of Innocence.
#1. Imogen Heap, Sparks.

For now, these are the 10 records I like best. Anything can change, however, and we have new things coming from some highly respected artists, including the new Quiet Company. I tend to listen and re-listen more intently near the end of the year, too, so some of these might not end up in the final list. We shall see.

Next week, Weezer shows us how it’s done. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am, and Twitter at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So. Doctor Who first? OK.

Last week’s episode, “Listen,” is going to rank as one of the best and most thoughtful episodes of Who since the revival, and maybe ever. It fully cements Peter Capaldi in the role – this is the first of his stories that could only have been built around his Doctor. It also finds showrunner Steven Moffat using his own reputation as misdirection. It begins in fairly standard territory for Moffat, with the Doctor on the trail of a monster that has mastered “perfect hiding.” But by the end, it has blossomed into something completely new – a treatise on fear, and specifically, a look deep inside the fears of the man who scares the monsters.

“Listen” is a loop, but a glorious one, and its final revelation – the one that ties it all together – is not plot-related, but a chance to offer new insight into the Doctor and Clara. He gets his strength from her, who gets it from him, and on and on. Some fans decried the notion of seeing the Doctor as a young boy, but from where I sat, the ending to “Listen” was beautiful. Moffat spent 45 minutes flipping our expectations of him on their ears, and delivered a masterpiece.

This week’s, “Time Heist,” was not nearly as good, but still brought the fun. It’s Doctor Who meets Ocean’s Eleven, as the Doctor and Clara are kidnapped and forced to rob the most heavily guarded bank in the universe for reasons unknown. Writer Stephen Thompson (with an assist from Moffat) tries his hand at a similar loop structure, and this one doesn’t work as well – the final reveal is simultaneously obvious and nonsensical. But the story offers Capaldi a chance to be a warmer, softer Doctor (of sorts), and that’s nice to see. I expect he’ll open up as the series progresses, but right now I’m enjoying his brusque manner, and I think the writers are too.

And “Time Heist” gets extra points for a winking nod towards Capaldi’s other famous role, Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It. I laughed out loud. We’re almost halfway through, and this season is remarkably strong. (I didn’t mention “Robot of Sherwood,” but I liked it more than almost anything else Mark Gatiss has ever written.) Looking forward to the back half. Bring it on, Moffat.

* * * * *

At the beginning of every year, I sit down and write a list of records I’m looking forward to. I start with the sure things, albums that have already been announced or are heavily rumored. But by the end, I’m usually just writing down my wish list. I’ve had a new Postal Service album on the docket for years, for instance. But even allowing for the ludicrous, I never expected to be writing about a new Aphex Twin record in 2014.

Richard D. James is one of the few universally agreed-upon geniuses in electronic music. He specializes in spinning your head clean around – his work is maddening, complex, insane, confusing and difficult. It’s also amazing. My first Aphex Twin album was 1995’s I Care Because You Do, and I’d never heard anything quite like it. Where most electronic music found joy in repetition, James’ work was the sound of attention deficit disorder, new elements flying in every couple seconds. The result was something oddly beautiful, if a bit unsettling.

James’ discography is a wonderful mess. He records under half a dozen different names, including AFX, Polygon Window, Brad Strider and GAK. From the early 1990s to the early 2000s, he was frighteningly prolific, firing off releases at a blistering pace. But after 2001’s Aphex Twin double album Drukqs, James has quietly faded away. A collection of remixes, a series of 12-inch singles under the name Analord, and two projects by The Tuss, an alias James still has not officially claimed, are all that mark those 13 years.

A new Aphex Twin album became something of a joke, like an EDM version of Chinese Democracy. But just as Axl’s folly was finally released, so too has Richard D. James resurfaced, and under his most popular name. Syro is the first Aphex Twin album in more than a decade, and blessedly, it’s just as maddening and fascinating as anything he’s done. The album is a little more straightforward, especially at first, but as it evolves, the things that make Aphex Twin such a treasure unfold with it. Aside from some strange vocal samples, buried in the mix, it is entirely instrumental, and mostly danceable. That is, if you have seven legs.

Song titles rarely matter in Aphex Land, but they matter even less on Syro. By now you’ve probably heard the first single, “Minipops 67 (Source Field Mix).” That’s one of the more sensible titles. Others include “4 bit 9d api+e+6” and “s950tx16wasr10.” The sorta-title track is actually called “Syro u473t8+e.” These probably mean something to James, and perhaps to electronic music programmers, but they mean nothing to the average listener. The packaging, also, is somewhat insane – it’s a long cardboard fold-out that lists, in a plain font on a white background, the per-copy cost of everything that was paid for during the making of the album. For instance, I know that, per copy made of the album, James paid 0.00057 pounds for taxis for a planning meeting in London about the record. Of course, he doesn’t total all this up for us, so we still have no idea how much a single copy of Syro cost to make.

But all that is secondary. Here are 12 new Aphex Twin songs, and they’re all pretty great. The first few sound relatively sane, but still fold in new elements faster than you expect. Most of Syro is club music as reimagined by James – the ninth track is almost funky, in fact. Most of these tracks sound like a grown-up James experimenting with restraint. The 10-minute second track is a thesis statement on intelligent dance music, and even when things turn weirder on the fourth track, with its unsettling descending chords, it remains enjoyable. Aphex Twin for the masses? Maybe so, but it’s still brain-meltingly complicated stuff, beats flying together with palpable force, blips and bleeps covering everything like confetti, and that warm analog synth sound ringing out beneath the din.

For Aphex fans, there aren’t a lot of surprises here. In fact, the big stunner comes right at the end – the final track, “Aisatsana,” is a sparse solo piano piece. But it’s not the atonal prepared piano collages you’ll find on Drukqs – this is sweet, melodic, peaceful and quite lovely. Birds chirp in the background as James plays something honestly emotional, and it’s really quite something, especially after 11 tracks of electronic madness. For this alone, I’m happy to hear from Richard James again. The rest of Syro, terrific as it is, is just gravy. Here’s hoping the wait won’t be quite as long next time.

* * * * *

Mike Doughty has never gone away, so I can’t say I’ve missed him.

But for years now, he has been delivering sub-par, tossed-off recordings that have made me wonder, on more than one occasion, why I’m still buying them. We’ve had two live albums, a covers album, a self-covers album (Doughty does Soul Coughing songs on his acoustic guitar), and a few pretty lame new studio records. Does anyone remember Yes and Also Yes with fondness? I’ve heard it four or five times, and I can’t remember anything about it.

Well, don’t call it a comeback, but Doughty’s new one, Stellar Motel, is his strongest since the fabled Haughty Melodic. It’s still spotty, but rather than just spit some nonsensical verses over that same twanged acoustic pluck he does, he’s put some serious effort into finding new contexts for his inimitable voice. He funded this one through PledgeMusic, and the creative freedom it bought him can be heard all over this disc. Just listen to the opening track, “Light Will Keep Your Heart Beating in the Future,” which features an awesome banjo loop atop a dance beat. You can practically hear Doughty waking up.

He did a few other things right this time. First, he remembered to write some pop songs, which he hasn’t really done since Haughty Melodic. “When the Night is Long” is his best chance for a bona fide hit in ages, a silky-smooth, simple singalong with a great beat. “Raging On” combines his sorta-rapping and his singing better than anything he’s written in a long time. “These Are Your Friends” is almost an ‘80s pop tune. And I absolutely love both “When You Come Home” and the closer, “Better Days Come Around.”

He also invited several unknown rappers to share the mic with him, and while the results are mixed, it’s an invigorating experiment. “Oh My God Yeah Fuck It” is just as throwaway as it sounds, but when MC Frontalot steps up on “The Champion,” amidst its ringing acoustic chords and hand percussion, it’s surprisingly terrific. On the other end of the spectrum, “Pretty Wild,” which features three guests named Ash Wednesday, Clara Bizna$$ and Uncle Meg, is pretty much the worst thing Doughty’s ever done. But it was certainly worth trying.

That’s the crux of Stellar Motel – this is the album on which Mike Doughty started trying again. It’s all over the place, but it’s never boring, and it feels like a new beginning after years in the wilderness. That might be too serious a metaphor for an album that includes a song called “Let’s Go to the Motherfucking Movies,” but there you have it. At the very least, this album is a good reminder of why I liked Mike Doughty in the first place. I was actually in danger of forgetting.

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Every time I hear new music from the 77s, I worry that it will be the last.

That’s why each time is such a delight. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of Michael Roe and his quieter, more reflective material. In fact, Roe is one of only a handful of guitarists that I never tire of – I could listen to him play for days and never be bored. But something special happens when Roe jams with bassist Mark Harmon and drummer Bruce Spencer. For one thing, he rocks – the 77s are one of the loudest and best rock bands you will ever see. There’s a certain undeniable energy that surrounds Roe when he’s with the band, and time has only sharpened their attack.

And yet, they record so infrequently. The last 77s album was 2008’s Holy Ghost Building, a collection of old gospel songs. It was fantastic, of course, but given that the last 77s record before that was 2002’s Direct, it wasn’t enough. Roe has been active, of course, playing with Derri Daugherty in Kerosene Halo and issuing several solo projects, including the heartbreaking Guadalupe last year. But I missed the band.

So I can’t tell you how pleased I am to have a new double record from Roe and his cohorts – one disc from the 77s, and one from Roe solo. It’s called Gimme a Kickstart and a Phrase or Two, a title that hints back at its origins. This record was originally a reward for backers of Guadalupe on Kickstarter, and all of its 20 covers were chosen by those who paid for the privilege. The album is now available to everyone, and if you like hearing an incredible guitarist and singer interpreting some fantastic songs, both as a rocker and a troubadour, then this should definitely be on your wish list.

The first disc is the 77s, and man, it is so good to hear them playing together again. They sound comfortable, like no time has passed, and that old alchemy is still in effect. The record opens with Wilco’s “The Late Greats,” a song that was lost at the end of A Ghost is Born, and it makes a fine starting gun. From there, the band tackles a multitude of styles, ripping through an almost-punk take on the Smoking Popes’ “I Need You Around,” gliding over Simon and Garfunkel’s “Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall,” and pulling off a credible version of Led Zeppelin’s “The Battle of Evermore.” (In an ironic touch, they follow that up with a faithful rendition of Blind Willie Johnson’s “In My Time of Dying,” which Zeppelin completely rewrote.)

The undisputed highlight of disc one is an absolutely scorching rendition of the Animals tune “Bury My Body.” Harmon is a monster on the organ part, and the entire band crushes this song as if they wrote it. It’s a perfect 77s song. It contrasts mightily with the closing number on the disc, Eric Clapton’s sappy “Wonderful Tonight,” a stark reminder that the band did not pick the songs for this collection. They do a decent job with it, and Roe sings it sweetly, but it’s still “Wonderful Tonight.”

Roe takes the second disc solo, just him and his acoustic guitar, and it’s unfailingly gorgeous stuff. I could listen to this disc on repeat for hours and not mind. He begins with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s glorious “Looking Forward,” harmonizing with himself beautifully. From there, it’s just one highlight after another: Band of Horses’ lovely “No One’s Gonna Love You,” Bruce Cockburn’s underappreciated “Lord of the Starfields,” and perhaps best of all, the Waterboys’ amazing “How Long Will I Love You.” Hearing Mike Roe sing this song is one of the high points of my musical year.

The funniest thing here is a mash-up of Michael W. Smith’s “Never Been Unloved” and Art Garfunkel’s “Bright Eyes,” essentially the same song. Roe plays it straight, but whoever asked for this song must be smirking. The disc ends with three hymns, and then, oddly, a tremendous version of Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash Into Me.” It is jarring to hear a paean to sex sequenced after “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” but on reflection, that melding of the sacred and the secular pretty much sums up Mike Roe’s career.

A disc of the 77s playing like the stunning rock band they are, and a disc of Mike Roe breaking my heart with graceful beauty? Yes, please. Gimme a Kickstart is another fine production from Lo-Fidelity Records (based right here in Chicagoland), and you can get it right from the band’s Bandcamp page. If you’re new to the band, try some of the other records there too. You won’t be disappointed.

* * * * *

There is a certain subset of the population for whom there is only one comeback that matters this year, and that’s The Physical World by Death From Above 1979.

I can’t really count myself among them, although I like DFA quite a bit. Ten years ago, the bass-and-drums duo of Sebastien Grainger and Jesse F. Keeler unleashed their debut album, You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine. It was an onslaught of danceable punk delivered with a manic energy and an abrasive, who-cares-if-you-like-it sensibility. In a lot of ways, it set the template for dance-punk for the next decade. So of course, the band immediately broke up. Grainger started a solo career. Keeler formed MSTRKRFT. And that was it.

Did anyone expect a reunion, and a second record? And if so, did anyone expect that second record would pick right up where they left off, and deliver another set just as solid as the first? The Physical World could have been recorded in 2006 – the band has made virtually no changes to its formula, but since no one else is doing quite what these guys are doing, that’s just fine. The songs are slightly more refined, but they explode with just as much attitude and power as they did 10 years ago. There are synths here and there, but in the main, they don’t need anything but Grainger’s pounding drums and Grohl-esque voice, and Keeler’s fuzzed-out, knock-you-across-the-room bass.

The first five songs on The Physical World just erupt from your speakers, culminating in the phenomenally danceable “Crystal Ball.” On “White is Red,” you can hear that these guys are a decade older – the song is slower, more reflective, sweeter – but with “Trainwreck 1979” they’re right back in it. The back half is a torrent of power, particularly the thrashy “Government Trash,” and it leads to the title track, which, at five minutes, is the DFA 1979 version of an epic. It’s tricky, nuanced, and louder than hell.

I can’t agree that The Physical World is the only comeback that matters, but listening to it, I can understand why some feel that way. It’s rare to hear a band return after so long away, and to return with such fire and fury. If you liked them before, and your tastes haven’t changed dramatically in the last decade, you will like them now.

* * * * *

Next week, the flood continues with a bunch of old men. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am, and Twitter at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Early on in U2’s 13th album, Songs of Innocence, Bono sings this line: “I get so many things I don’t deserve.” He couldn’t have known it when he wrote it, but that sentiment is the perfect touchstone for everything I’ve watched happen in the past week, as the band gave this album away for free and our crybaby entitlement society smacked them over and over again for it.

By now you’ve all heard the story. As part of Apple’s iPhone 6/iWatch/iWhatever event last Tuesday, U2 unveiled Songs of Innocence, their first album in five years. And they did it in dramatic style – with the push of a button, the album’s 11 songs were given away free to everyone with an iTunes account. All we had to do was download it from our purchased folders. Or, if we had the automatic download option switched on, we had to do nothing – the record showed up in our playlists, ready to be listened to.

Now, understand, I’m a U2 fan. I have been since I first heard The Joshua Tree, at my aunt and uncle’s house in New Hampshire, on headphones in the dark. I was 13, and this music took me places that few other bands had. I still think The Joshua Tree is a masterpiece, as is Boy, as is War, as is The Unforgettable Fire. And the band grew with me. In the ‘90s, I wanted to be all ironic and clever and cool, and they did too – Achtung Baby smacked me upside the head when it came out, and Pop – poor, maligned Pop – is actually a wonderful record. And in the 2000s, I grew up and took stock, and so did U2, making some of their most earnest, stripped-back music on All That You Can’t Leave Behind and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, two records I still like a great deal.

So I was one of the millions who greeted Songs of Innocence with shouts of glee. Like all U2 fans, I’d been hearing about – and worrying about – this record for years, and to have it suddenly show up, out of the blue, for nothing? That actually made my day. I was so excited about it that it never even occurred to me that some people might be upset by the way the band chose to release this album, pushing it out to 500 million purchased folders without asking. This is why I am no longer a reporter – to me, the story was the music, not the method.

But man, was I wrong.

If U2 wanted to get people talking, well, they did it. Every hipper-than-thou type on the Internet seemed to pile on, accusing the band of being underhanded, insidious, even evil. People saw it as an invasion of privacy, and treated the album like an unwanted virus, or worse. The uproar reached absolutely ridiculous levels, with some comparing it to breaking and entering, or even rape. (For real. If I read one more rape analogy, I’m going to punch a wall.) Apple even released a tool to remove all traces of the record from your iTunes, because it wasn’t enough for people to simply delete it, they had to eradicate every scrap of evidence that the offending album had once been there.

And all the while, gleeful U2 haters have been stoking the fires. (See this ludicrous New Yorker review as an example.) They turned what should have been a minor annoyance for some people into a cause for those who want to see both Apple and U2 crash and burn. The hyperbolic bloviations are still going on, while the band is taking things in stride – at last count, more than 40 million people had downloaded Songs of Innocence. To put that in perspective, their last record, the underwhelming No Line on the Horizon, sold five million copies worldwide. If expanding the audience was the goal, mission accomplished.

But look. It’s a free record. Additionally, it’s a free reminder that the iTunes platform you are using doesn’t belong to you, and Apple can do what it wants. They push similarly optional updates to all accounts on a regular basis. Songs of Innocence only downloaded directly to your phone if you told iTunes to do that. To act like this is your house and they broke in is laughable. Especially since – and I will keep saying this – it’s a free record! It’s a gift. You don’t like the gift? Delete the gift. It’s that simple. If someone giving you 11 free songs is the worst thing that happened to you last week, that’s pretty damn good. Just calm down. Seriously. You’ll hurt yourself.

So that’s what everyone’s writing about – the Irish Big Brother and how they forced us to own their new record. But what no one seems to be writing about is this: Songs of Innocence may well be U2’s best and most consistent album since Achtung Baby, 23 years ago. A really great record is being lost in the invented and exaggerated furor, and that’s a shame. So let me tell you about it.

Songs of Innocence is reportedly the first half of a double album, with the second half completing the William Blake allusion: Songs of Experience. Given that, it’s not too much of a leap to assume that we’re hearing the backward-looking half, the one about where the band has been. The lyrics repeatedly reference the band members’ childhoods, and the music is a superb distillation of U2’s last 38 years. (Yes, 38 years, without a single lineup change.)

Everything they have ever done well is represented here, and the result is the most confident set of songs in more than 20 years. They worked with a bevy of producers, including Danger Mouse, Paul Epworth, Ryan Tedder and Flood, but you’d never know it. The album flows brilliantly from first note to last, the most effortless-sounding 49 minutes of their latter-day career. In fact, it’s impressive how much Danger Mouse, who produced the album overall, stayed out of the band’s way. You’ll hear no trip-hop beats here, no electro-soul embarrassments, no straining grasps at relevance. For most of this record, you’ll hear U2 just doing what they do, and doing it better than they have in a long time.

The album opens with its weakest song, but damn, “The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)” is a pretty good weakest song. It’s the biggest production here too – you can feel them sweat as you listen. It begins with a massed-vocal chant before The Edge crashes in with a piercing fuzz tone, and Bono sings of the first time he heard the Ramones, relating it to an actual miracle: “Everything I ever lost now has been returned, the most beautiful sound I ever heard…” It’s a song that learns absolutely no lessons from the Ramones, but whatever. Although it never takes flight, it stomps along convincingly, stating its case as a far better first single than “Get On Your Boots.”

Everything picks up from there. “Every Breaking Wave” is classic U2, almost a rewrite of “With or Without You.” The band has grown immeasurably better at disguising the fact that bassist Adam Clayton is playing the same four notes repeatedly – this song’s chorus just erupts, Bono asking if we’re ready to be swept off our feet. “California” is modern U2 at its finest, a Brian Wilson homage at the start giving way to a driving beat that surges into a soaring refrain. “All I know, and all I need to know is there is no end to love,” Bono sings. This is the kind of song they’ve been writing for the past decade or so, flawlessly, and this is a very good one.

Up to this point, it’s just another U2 record. But with track four, the lovely “Song for Someone,” the record takes off and never comes back down. It’s a hymn, the kind of hymn U2 has always written well. Bono’s perfectly imperfect voice has rarely been stronger and clearer than it is on this song – he puts everything into it. Near the end, he laments, “I’m a long, long way from your hill at Calvary, and I’m a long, long way from where I was and need to be.” He still hasn’t found what he’s looking for, but the most spiritual lyricist in popular music keeps on looking.

“Iris (Hold Me Close)” is a stunner, a powerful, anthemic song about Bono’s mother, who died when he was 14. Edge pulls out the infinite guitar for the first time in ages, while drummer Larry Mullen brings it all home on this one. And just wait until you hear Bono. There’s a purity to his vocals on this song that I haven’t heard in a long time. After four minutes of celebration, the song takes a surprising turn for the mournful, lyrically: “Iris says that I will be the death of her, it was not me.” This is an extraordinary U2 song, capturing a flame that I worried had long died out.

And once it rekindles, it catches. “Volcano” is the album’s most explosive tune, putting efforts like “Vertigo” to shame – it actually shimmies, Edge laying down stabbing shards of guitar while Mullen and Clayton rock out behind him. (This should have been the first single. No question.) “Raised By Wolves” is a remarkable bit of time travel – it would have fit on Boy or War without much trouble. It’s a dark epic, with that “New Year’s Day” piano sound and a vicious sense of menace. The chorus comes out of nowhere, slicing through the sky. It’s a wonder, and it finds the foursome sounding 20 years old again.

“Cedarwood Road” keeps the streak alive, and in fact may be the record’s high point. Named after the street on which Bono grew up, it’s a raw, live-band rocker that slowly evolves into an anthem. “You can’t return to where you never left,” Bono sings, and the band effortlessly states that case. This is another song that recaptures a decades-old energy. After that, you might greet the synth opening of “Sleep Like a Baby Tonight” with dread, but stay with it – it evolves into a creepy crawly highlight. Bono whips out the “Lemon” falsetto for one high-wire act in the middle, and he comes so close to pulling it off that it works anyway. The song ends with a jammy section that ably displays just how restrained this band really is, contrary to popular opinion.

Songs of Innocence steadfastly refuses to fall apart at the end. “This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now” is almost dance-rock, a slow build that takes off like a rocket once it gets going. And “The Troubles” is magnificent, one of the few here that point forward. Lykke Li provides a hook while the band spins out an atmospheric mid-tempo float, complete with thick strings. It’s not a song about the Irish Troubles, at least not directly. “I have a will for survival, so you can hurt me then hurt me some more, I can live with denial, but you’re not my troubles anymore,” Bono sings, putting a bad relationship to rest. The song ends things on a spectral, haunting note, Edge playing delicious leads over the fadeout.

And then it’s over. And every time, I sit back and marvel at the fact that I have just heard one of the best albums ever by one of the best and most important bands in the world. One could chide the band for taking few creative risks this time, but they’ve crafted a conceptual piece about drawing strength from one’s history. I expect the second album – which may include the singles “Ordinary Love” and “Invisible” – to be more about where the band is headed. This record, on its own, is a summation of everything I have ever loved about U2, wrapped up in 49 of the most consistently great minutes they have produced since I was in high school. And I got to listen to it for free.

We get so many things we don’t deserve. Amen, sir. Amen.

Next week, some unexpected comebacks with Aphex Twin, Mike Doughty and Death From Above 1979. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am, and Twitter at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m staring at a rising tide of important new records, one that isn’t going to recede until the frost is on the pumpkin, as Frank Zappa used to say. So there’s nothing for it except to get reviewing. Thanks for your patience last week as I indulged my inner (and, let’s be honest, outer) Whovian. I quite liked this week’s episode, “Robot of Sherwood” – it gave me a lot more perspective on Capaldi’s Doctor, and the journey I expect he will go down – and while I could spend another thousand words talking about it, I won’t. You’re welcome.

Now, on with reviews of new music, before it drowns me.

* * * * *

Counting Crows are the sound of college to me.

I went to a small Catholic school outside Portland, Maine from 1992 to 1996. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to southern Maine, but the air has a particular feel to it, sort of cold and pure. There’s a particular smell too, and a sensation of that air on your skin that I haven’t found anywhere else. And though there are plenty of bands that defined my college experience – Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, others of that ilk – there is no band that brings back all of those sensory experiences like Counting Crows.

August and Everything After was required listening among people my age in 1993 (and the years following), and its influence was everywhere. The image of Adam Duritz, dreadlocked poet, shimmying his way through the “Mr. Jones” video is forever emblazoned on the minds of everyone within spitting distance of my age. It’s hard to understate the ubiquity of that record, and luckily, it’s also hard to hate it. As a calling card for a literate new band, they couldn’t have done better. Many, in fact, still consider it their best, although I disagree – I like 1996’s Recovering the Satellites and 1999’s This Desert Life even more.

But the fact remains that for a certain segment of their audience, Counting Crows will never top their debut, and they may as well not even try. Those people may end up enjoying Somewhere Under Wonderland, the Crows’ sixth album of original tunes, more than I did. This is the first Crows record that sounds, to me, like they’ve accepted the legacy of August and Everything After and have become content to live in its shadow. It’s still hard not to like them, but it’s also hard to ignore the lack of original ideas and powerful songs on this album.

Somewhere Under Wonderland arrives six years after Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, a record that found the band shaking things up remarkably well. In the ensuing years, they’ve released three live albums and a covers record, a sure sign that the inspiration just hasn’t been there. Wonderland bears that out – this is the sound of a very good band playing average, uninspiring songs very well. These nine tunes fly by in about 40 minutes, and very few of them will leave a mark, let alone the indelible impact of which this band is capable.

Wonderland begins with its most ambitious misfire, the eight-minute “Palisades Park.” It takes its time springing to life, and its first four minutes are pretty terrific, but after that, it just starts meandering until it putters to a close. I don’t need a prog-rock epic from Counting Crows, but I would like the sense that their songs are more than just chords following Duritz from behind. Duritz, it should be said, is on top form lyrically and vocally on this record. Gone is any sense of fatigue that you may have heard on the live records – his voice is strong as ever, and his poetry remains delightfully distinctive. He tells stories, and he tells them well.

But the band this time is content to just strum behind him for unfortunately long stretches of this album. I’m starting to enjoy the simple charms of “Earthquake Driver,” “Dislocation” and “God of Ocean Tides,” but all in a row, they fade into the mist. “Scarecrow” is a step up, though it’s not a big step. I enjoy “Cover Up the Sun” a great deal – its shit-kicking barroom tumble is easily the best thing on this record – but it’s followed up by the pointlessly boring “John Appleseed’s Lament.”

I’ll confess to being moved by closer “Possibility Days,” while wishing it did more with Duritz’ impassioned vocal and dark, wonderful verse. (“The worst part of a good day is knowing it’s slipping away, that’s one more possibility day that is gone…”) Like most of Somewhere Under Wonderland, it’s content to tread water instead of really going somewhere.

The weak songwriting is doubly disappointing because the band sounds so, so good. There are seven people in Counting Crows now, and they’ve gelled into a powerful live unit. The three guitarists bring it, never stepping on each other but infusing everything with a pulsing, palpable energy. I’m not sure that energy has ever been captured on record better than it has been here. The band has such verve that while the songs are boring, the album never is. The current carries it over even the roughest patches.

I don’t think Somewhere Under Wonderland is a bad record. It’s just an unambitious one, and after six years, I expected more. Many will be perfectly happy with nine more Counting Crows songs, whatever their quality. And it is so, so good to hear this band again. If this is what they’re going to do from now on – release short, unremarkable records every six years or so – then I guess I’ll have to be content with that. Counting Crows have never been content with that, though, so it’s surprising to get that feeling from one of their efforts. They sound like they’re trying hard as ever, but the evidence suggests otherwise. I guess we’ll see in 2020.

* * * * *

No one could ever accuse Sloan of not trying hard enough.

Twenty-three years into a wonderful career, the Nova Scotian quartet keeps coming up with new ways to do what they do. I’ve been a fan since very near the beginning – I heard “Underwhelmed” in 1992, thanks to my ahead-of-the curve friend Chris L’Etoile, and bought the debut album Smeared right away. I’ve picked up every one of their subsequent 10 records as soon as I could get my grubby hands on them, and I’ve marveled at the journey they’ve undertaken. They started as My Bloody Valentine clones, moved into stripped-down college rock, then into perfectly sculpted ‘60s and ‘70s rock. Now they take from a huge catalog of influences from four decades of pop, and they remain one of the biggest and most important bands in their native Canada. (And of course, virtually unknown in the United States.)

Now they’ve come up with yet another way to shake things up. Their 11th album is called Commonwealth, and it emphasizes the way this band works – they’re all singers and songwriters, and they all write their own material before bringing it to the band. Normally, those songs are then segued all together to form an album (and to create the illusion that the band works as a unit). This time, they’ve decided to give each songwriter his own side of vinyl, creating four miniature suites, each with its own personality. These aren’t little solo albums – the full band plays on all four sides, as always. But they do neatly put a point on what each member brings to the group.

Essentially, Jay Ferguson is winsome, Chris Murphy is emotional, Patrick Pentland is ballsy and Andrew Scott is cerebral, and that’s how these suites shake down. But put them together in one package (one gloriously well-designed package, that assigns each member of the band a playing card suit), and you have one of the very best Sloan albums. You could rearrange these tunes into a more even representation of their work, and it would still be great, but sequenced like it is, Commonwealth takes you on a trip that none of their other records do, and the format allows for some experiments and sounds you’ve never heard from this band.

Guitarist Ferguson starts things off with five slices of delightful, low-key pop. The brief “We’ve Come This Far” slides into the wondrous piano-and-guitar hum-along “You’ve Got a Lot on Your Mind.” Ferguson has a high, airy voice that works beautifully with material like this, and always has. He turns in a pair of delicate ballads, the Rundgren-esque “Three Sisters” and the acoustic “Neither Here Nor There,” but the highlight of his side is “Cleopatra,” one of the most relentlessly singable Ferguson songs ever. His five tunes ease you into this record, leaving you with a wide smile.

Bassist Murphy is next, and true to form, he delivers some more complex, emotionally heavy fare. His side begins with the fantastic “Carried Away,” with a soaring chorus and some thick strings. He stumbles a little lyrically on the piano-led “So Far So Good” (“Don’t be surprised when we elect another liar, did you learn nothing from five seasons of The Wire?”), but the melody is strong and solid. And he never puts a foot wrong again – in fact, his side closes with two of his strongest songs, the winningly ‘70s “Misty’s Beside Herself” and the stunningly good rocker “You Don’t Need Excuses to Be Good.” The guitar riff on that one will stay with you for hours.

Someone had to turn in the weakest side, and that someone is guitarist Patrick Pentland. He’s the balls-out rocker of the bunch, so of course three of his four songs are stripped-back guitar workouts. They’re fine – the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club overtones of “13 (Under a Bad Sign)” slip into the pure six-string excess of “Take It Easy,” and his side ends with the rollicking “Keep Swinging (Downtown),” which Pentland sings with verve. But it all falls a bit short when compared to the work of his bandmates. He does come up with one stunner, the slow, echo-drenched “What’s Inside,” which is quite unlike anything Sloan has ever done. This one brings back the My Bloody Valentine influence, and gives it a psychedelic edge.

But if you want something completely new for Sloan, check out drummer Andrew Scott’s side, a single 18-minute song called “Forty-Eight Portraits.” It could be subtitled “Andrew Scott’s Prog-Rock Nightmare” – it’s devilishly complicated, opening with three minutes of freeform piano and percussion that somehow coalesces into a superb melodic ride. Scott has always been the most thoughtful of the quartet, and here he lets loose, spinning out a dissertation on the insanity of life and the need for togetherness. The song nimbly jumps from movement to movement, all four members taking lead vocals, and it remains captivating all the way through. It even culminates with a children’s choir, and that doesn’t suck. It’s actually poignant. This is the single most ambitious song of Sloan’s catalog, and it works on every level. (It even ends with what appears to be a Battlestar Galactica reference.)

I’m not sure Scott would have even tried something like “Forty-Eight Portraits” had he not been given an entire vinyl side to play with, so from that standpoint, the Commonwealth experiment was more than worth it. The fact that the rest of the record is also splendid, and the journey as a whole one of the band’s most fulfilling, is pretty wonderful. After 23 years, Sloan can still surprise, and can still turn out a record as stunningly good as Commonwealth. Really, there are only good Sloan records and great ones. It’s so nice to have another great one.

* * * * *

Speaking of Canadian supergroups, here’s the New Pornographers.

Unlike Sloan, the leaders of the New Pornographers – A.C. Newman, Neko Case and Dan Bejar – have their own flourishing solo careers. But every few years they get together to make another testament to the apparent joy of working with each other. They’ve hit some speed bumps recently, with the sluggish Challengers and the just-OK Together. But if you were hoping against hope that the band would one day put out another thoroughly excellent slice of ornate, complex pop, well, that day is here.

The sixth New Pornographers album, Brill Bruisers, is named after the famous Brill Building, the Manhattan workshop that was home to some of the most influential pop songwriters of all time. (Big names include Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Neil Diamond, Laura Nyro and Phil Spector.) Newman and company don’t exactly emulate the Brill Building sound here, but they do place a huge emphasis on sweeping melodies, and they give the whole album a Spector shine. It almost sounds recorded in mono, so thick is the sound, and the waterfalls of backing vocals wash over every song. It’s a striking texture, and it complements some of the band’s best work.

There are eight New Pornographers, but the three mentioned above are the architects of the band, and the three voices you’ll hear throughout. Newman takes the songwriting lead here, penning all but the three Bejar tunes, and from the first notes of the title track, you’ll hear a renewed vigor to his compositions. The first three tracks come at you in a power-pop rush, and Bejar’s “War on the East Coast” doesn’t halt that momentum. When Newman slows things down on “Backstairs,” he does so with style – the song includes synths and a computerized voice, before exploding into a cloud of those wonderful Newman-Case harmonies. Nothing about this record was thrown together. Every nuance has been carefully arranged.

And the energy never flags. Listen to the Case spotlight “Marching Orders” – it’s a pop winner, with its oscillating keyboards and strident strum. Quick interlude “Another Drug Deal of the Heart” has a Stephin Merritt feel to it, while Bejar’s “Born With a Sound” swirls its way home. “Dancehall Domine” is a late-album gem, with its thudding, danceable beat, and “Hi-Rise” soars with its clever vocal arrangement and orchestration. Even the cover of Swan Lake’s “Spider” (written by Bejar) fits in well. By the time things end with the big beats of “You Tell Me Where,” it’s clear that they’ve pulled off their best and most consistent record since Twin Cinema.

And they’ve renewed my faith. Brill Bruisers is exactly the album the New Pornographers needed to make, and they made it at exactly the right time. It’s a complete top-down revitalization, and it’s wonderful. I’m completely on board once again. You tell me where to be, guys, and I’ll be there.

* * * * *

Ryan Adams isn’t from Canada – that would be Bryan Adams, but it’s an easy mistake to make. He is, however, one of the most prolific and celebrated songwriters around. We put up with a lot from Ryan Adams and his bad-boy attitude, but it’s the songs that keep everyone coming back. From his early days in Whiskeytown to his solo career-launching one-two punch of Heartbreaker and Gold, to his extraordinary 2005 trilogy with the Cardinals, and even to 2011’s comparatively quiet Ashes and Fire, Adams rarely disappoints. He has a classic ear for melody and an appealing country-rock heart, and his extensive catalog holds riches that reward repeated listens.

Which is why it’s always tough to watch him screw around, rather than take hold of that prodigious talent and make something special. It’s been three years since Ashes and Fire, and in that time he’s formed a couple punk bands, produced Fall Out Boy, and coughed up a couple one-offs. He’s reportedly written and recorded more albums than Prince, but so far, he hasn’t let us hear any of them. I don’t want to hear Ryan Adams play in bands like Pornography. I want to hear him write powerful original songs, and record them.

From outside appearances, my wish has been granted with the release of Ryan Adams, the man’s 14th solo album and first self-titled effort. Here are 11 new Adams songs, most of them played with an electric-guitar verve the likes of which we haven’t heard in a while. Adams’ tone has a Mike Campbell edge to it, a cavernous ‘80s reverb that is undeniably wonderful. The early Heartbreakers feel is in full effect, from the catchy opener “Gimme Something Good” to the minimal rocker “Stay With Me,” which may as well be a lost Tom Petty tune. It’s a great feel, and Adams’ voice works perfectly with it.

So why am I not thrilled with this? Because these are songs Ryan Adams could have written in half an hour. They’re fine – in fact, most of them are pretty good – but they’re safe. Gone are the days when Adams would pen searingly personal tunes that burrowed into your heart. Now he writes choruses like this: “I love you baby, treat me right, hold me closer in the middle of the night, don’t worry, it’s all right…” I really like some of these songs, particularly “Trouble” and “Shadows” and the delicate “My Wrecking Ball.” But it all seems too easy somehow.

I definitely don’t dislike Ryan Adams. In fact, there’s a darkness to this one that I’ve been missing from his work, and the guitar tone alone is worth getting this for. The whole thing just flutters by without doing very much to me, though, and at his best, Ryan Adams would not stand for that. I want more. I want to feel these songs, and while I like them, I’m not feeling anything from them. I’m glad to have Adams back, but this record feels like something he did in a weekend, rather than something he yearned for, struggled with and birthed. There’s nothing wrong with it, but there’s nothing particularly right with it either.

* * * * *

Whew. More reviews next week, as the flood continues. Robert Plant, Mike Doughty, Death From Above 1979 and My Brightest Diamond, at least. See you then. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am, and Twitter at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Last week, I made a bold statement. This week, I want to double down on it. Doctor Who is the ballsiest show on television. And it has been for more than 50 years.

If I think about the sheer number of gutsy decisions the show has made since debuting in 1963, my mind reels. I’ve been watching since I was six years old, and Doctor Who still regularly takes me by surprise. It’s a show with an infinitely malleable format – misfit traveler from the planet Gallifrey flits about time and space in a machine that can go anywhere and anywhen, having adventures and basically being wonderful. The Doctor is a vehicle to tell stories, and with that setup, it can tell virtually any kind of tale.

Just take a look at the show’s first season. That first episode remains an all-time classic, introducing not only the concept, but the TARDIS, a stroke of absolute genius. It’s a time and space machine that is bigger on the inside, and disguised as a British police box on the outside. That first burst into the TARDIS, when Ian and Barbara can’t believe their eyes, is still one of my favorite moments of television. Once whisked away from modern-day Earth, our travelers visit, in order: prehistoric cavemen searching for fire, vicious mutant creatures in mechanical armor on a planet in the far future; Marco Polo on his travels to Cathay in the 1200s; five different locales on the planet Marinus; an Aztec tribe in 15th century Mexico; the Sense-Sphere, home to the mind-reading Sensorites; and France during the revolution.

Yeah, this all happens in the first season. Doctor Who never makes any attempt to ease the audience in. Companions come and go – the first to leave was the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan – and the locale and supporting cast changes every few weeks. But even all that could not have prepared audiences for the concept of regeneration. Put simply, when the Doctor dies, his body renews, in the form of a completely different-looking man. (Or woman, but we’re not there yet.) That means the lead actor also changes every few years. The first time they did it, they just did it – they didn’t explain it at all, just replaced William Hartnell with Patrick Troughton. Now it’s old hat, but can you imagine being one of the viewers in 1966, watching this happen?

Twelve actors have now played the title role (13 if you count John Hurt), and every one of them was a risk. The show has rarely gone back to the well – dandy James Bond type Jon Pertwee was as different from cosmic hobo Patrick Troughton as Troughton was from crotchety old William Hartnell. Tom Baker – he of the teeth, curls and scarf – brought an unpredictable madness to the role, while Peter Davison approached it with earnestness and dignity.

Poor old Colin Baker was saddled with a horrible costume and instructions to play the part as a loudmouth, cowardly bully, perhaps the riskiest choice of all. Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor hid his manipulative nature behind buffoonery, Paul McGann’s was a romantic, Christopher Eccleston’s a brooding survivor, David Tennant’s a dashing nerd, and Matt Smith’s a goofy, glorious young-old man. Every incarnation is the same man, emphasizing different characteristics. But every interpretation has been dazzlingly different.

Which brings us to the Twelfth Doctor, played by the absolutely incredible Peter Capaldi. Talk about a risk, though. The so-called “new series” that returned to our television screens in 2005 has made its name by casting young, nerdy-cute Doctors. David Tennant was the first heartthrob Doctor, bringing the show to new levels of worldwide popularity by making goo-goo eyes at Billie Piper, and Matt Smith, all of 26 when he took the role, turned Doctor Who into a global phenomenon. I adore Smith’s version of the character, all gangly movements and alien reactions, but there’s no denying that he’s still young and adorable.

Had they done that again, cast a young man, they would have cemented the Doctor as a teen dream romantic lead. I’m so very glad they didn’t. The new Doctor is played by a 56-year-old Scot who is best known for portraying an unbelievably rude swearaholic in The Thick of It. He’s not cute, he’s not cuddly. He can certainly play warmth, but his natural state is somewhat cold and detached. Even in interviews, he comes off not as the excited fanboy that Tennant and Smith were, but as more of a stand-offish man, uncomfortable with the limelight. (He’d definitely better get used to it…)

A sizeable portion of Doctor Who’s new audience is made up of young people who responded to the charms of Tennant and Smith. For the past year, it’s been something of a pastime among old-school Who fans to wonder how they’re going to take to Capaldi. I definitely imagined his Doctor being more in line with the older ones – the difficult Hartnell, the imperious Pertwee, the often arrogant Tom Baker, the brusque Colin Baker. The Doctor is not cuddly. He can, in fact, be quite a dick, and it looked to me like we were heading back into that territory.

Well, now the Twelfth Doctor is here, and I am still not sure what I think. I saw the premiere episode, the 75-minute “Deep Breath,” four times before deciding that I largely liked it, painfully flawed as it is. It opens with a dinosaur tromping through Victorian London, and Capaldi’s Doctor in the throes of regeneration trauma. And he stays in those throes for half the episode, falling down and talking nonsense and jumping into the Thames. It’s a level of madcap lunacy I certainly wasn’t expecting, and Capaldi looked vaguely uncomfortable playing it. Lots of great lines, of course, but a lack of confidence and not much of a center, and it goes on like this for a long time.

About halfway through, the Doctor and Clara meet at a restaurant populated by clockwork droids, and “Deep Breath” comes to life. So, too, does Capaldi’s portrayal of the Doctor, though I don’t quite feel he had a handle on it before the end. No, the real work of the episode is to finally, finally give Clara Oswin Oswald a character, and Jenna Coleman shines. She’s never been better than during her spotlight scenes here, arguing with Madame Vastra, sparring with the Doctor and attempting a daring escape from the robot stronghold. I’m so glad we finally get to see what she can do with meatier material.

My biggest issue with “Deep Breath” is the lack of confidence it shows in Capaldi’s portrayal. It works overtime to ease the audience in. The entire episode is about wearing new faces – the villains are droids who steal faces from their victims and wear them, Vastra wears a veil in front of strangers, the Doctor has an epic rant about replacing parts of oneself until there’s nothing of the original left. Vastra scolds Clara for not immediately accepting the new Doctor’s face, saying that he trusted her enough to drop the pretense of youth in front of her. The whole thing is about helping the audience see Capaldi as the Doctor, and there’s a lot of hand-holding that I don’t think was necessary.

The biggest misstep, despite the emotions it brings up, is Matt Smith’s cameo near the end. As the Eleventh Doctor, he calls Clara from her past to assure her that the older man in front of her is still him, still the Doctor. He’s basically speaking to the audience, to the fans of Smith’s portrayal, begging them to give Capaldi a chance. I hope that’s not necessary. I hope it’s a gross overreaction to what I expect will be a pretty small backlash. But you never know. I’ve just never seen this before. No new Doctor has ever needed the previous Doctor to hand off the show in this fashion, and it hobbles Capaldi before he can really get going.

So with all that going on to detract from Capaldi’s performance in “Deep Breath,” I decided to hold off from writing about him until I had seen his second story, “Into the Dalek.” I’m glad I did, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that even with 30 fewer minutes to play with, “Into the Dalek” is a stronger and better episode. It finds the Doctor, Clara and a few interplanetary soldiers agreeing to be shrunk down and injected into an ailing Dalek to fix it. The twist is that this may be the first morally good Dalek ever, and if they can keep it alive, they can change the evil and twisted Dalek race forever.

But what starts as an examination of the Daleks turns into a treatise on the new Doctor. Is he a force for good? Even by the end of the episode, it’s hard to tell. The Doctor opens his mind to the Dalek, expecting it to find enough goodness to make the transformation permanent. Instead, it finds a burning hatred of the Daleks, and takes that on as its new mission. The Doctor has always defined himself in opposition to the Daleks, but this episode suggests that they’re the same – “You are a good Dalek,” the creature says to the Doctor at the end, echoing a similar line from the Ninth Doctor story “Dalek.”

And Capaldi? He earns every inch of that darkness. Those hoping for a bit of Malcolm Tucker in his performance must have been ecstatic. For my money, I’m still struggling with much of it. We’ve seen the Doctor kill before, but we’ve rarely seen him this callous about death. The demise of Ross, with the Doctor’s “trust me” before failing to save him and his subsequent quip about his liquefied remains (“Top layer, if you want to say a few words”), was genuinely shocking. I was not sure at that moment whether this guy is, in fact, the Doctor.

I think that’s what I’m supposed to be feeling right now. I don’t really trust this guy. Capaldi turned in riveting, fascinating work on “Into the Dalek,” essentially playing the Doctor as a more nimble Gregory House. I’m just having trouble seeing the Doctor sometimes behind his cold gaze. Of course, then he turns on a dime, and there he is, the Doctor. So it’s hard to say so far what I think of this portrayal. I do hope that by the end of the season we have a definitive handle on the Capaldi Doctor, and I hope we don’t toss out all the warmth, hope and whimsy of this show on the way there. Of course, the next episode is called “Robot of Sherwood,” and is about Robin Hood, so I expect that whimsy will be back in force.

Here’s hoping. It’s still the ballsiest show on television – what other show would completely transform itself this way, at the risk of alienating the fans that have brought it to new heights of popularity over the past nine years? No other show. This is Doctor Who, redefining itself once again. And that’s the most exciting part.

Next week, I choose from among these candidates: the New Pornographers, Counting Crows, Ryan Adams and Sloan. Be back in seven.Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am, and Twitter at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.