I know what you want to ask, and here are your answers: yes, I have seen “Deep Breath,” and no, I’m not quite ready to talk about it.

I am still processing the debut of the amazing Peter Capaldi as the 12th Doctor – I’ve seen the episode four times, in fact, and one of those in a movie theater. It’s perhaps a testament to the ambiguity Steven Moffat has so generously leavened into the broth this year that I still am not sure what I think. “Deep Breath” is unlike any episode of the show to date, and Capaldi (so far) unlike any Doctor. I’ll have more to say about him next week, after I’ve seen “Into the Dalek.”

But one thing I do want to say is this: Doctor Who is the ballsiest show on television. Growing up with it, the show taught me to accept and embrace change. Every four episodes, the setting, plot, characters and themes of the show would completely alter – the Doctor would find himself on another alien world, and get involved in foiling another power-hungry plotter. And just as you were getting used to the new story, it would change again. Hang on long enough, and every single actor would change as well. The Doctor would get a new face, and find new companions. The show’s only constant is change.

And that leads to a certain, shall we say, inconsistency throughout its nearly 51-year history. I remain amazed at how Doctor Who can be brilliant one week and unforgivably awful the next. It never seems to matter who is in the producer’s chair. Every Who season has its classics and its clunkers. There’s a certain thrill to that, to not knowing whether the next story, the next cast of characters, or even the next Doctor will be any good. Sometimes, though, I wish for a footing that’s a little more solid. I love this crazy show, but I’m sure I wouldn’t love it less if it were more regularly excellent.

Is there such a thing as being too consistent, though? Audiences hunger for the new thing, but if the new thing is just like the old thing, those audiences start to drift. There’s a danger in doing one thing very well. If you want a good example of that, look to Athens, Georgia’s Bill Mallonee. Here’s a guy who has been at it since the early 1990s. He has dozens of releases, both solo and with the Vigilantes of Love, and many of them are only available on his Bandcamp site. At the peak of his popularity, he was signed to Compass Records.

Mallonee has hit harder times since, and now his career is based around that Bandcamp site. Every year he puts out another two or three albums, very occasionally making one available on CD. He plays house concerts now, and has had to sell off gear to pay the bills. The music continues, though, and on the strength of Winnowing, his (I think) 62nd record, it remains consistent. The question is whether that’s a good thing.

Bill Mallonee writes great songs. But if I have a complaint about him, it’s that he writes the same kind of great song over and over again. He’s done so for his entire career. He’s shaken up the production here and there, most notably on VOL’s Summershine and his own Fetal Position, but the songs have stayed what they are – literate Americana with a focus on the guitar, and few jump-out-and-grab-you melodies. Mallonee has a signature style, and he does it very well. Do you need 62 albums of that style? I’m not sure you do. In fact, I have only bought the ones he prints on CD, including Winnowing.

This new one is similar to his last, the digital-only Dolorosa. Mallonee plays all the instruments except piano and organ, leaving those to his partner in life and art, Muriah Rose. The vibe is quieter, more acoustic, but still focused on that great, biting Mallonee electric guitar sound. Here the lead lines weave into the acoustics, creating a gorgeous web of tones. It’s a good sound, even if it does sometimes betray its one-man-band origins – Mallonee’s a good drummer and a good bassist, but a more live feel with other players probably would have improved this. Still, there’s an intimacy to this one that wasn’t quite captured in the grooves of recent records like Amber Waves, and I appreciate that.

The sound fits the vibe of the songs, too. Winnowing is a typically reflective piece of work, delving into the difficulty of faith, the inevitable collapse of everything, and the need for hope through it all. As a lyricist, it’s impossible to fault Mallonee. He’s always bled onto the page with the soul of a heartland poet, and Winnowing is no exception. I’m especially fond this time of opener “Dover Beach,” a true “here’s where I am in life” song: “To have traveled for these many years and knocked on all these doors, I got tired of trying to bend an ear, I got tired of keeping score, sometimes a son of heaven, a son of hell even more…” I love “Got Some Explaining to Do,” a song about giving the devil his due, and “Dew Drop Inn,” which sports this delightful chorus: “The road winds hard and the road winds cruel, and hearts being what they are, let’s just say it’ll be OK and I love you, just because…”

The record’s one misstep is “In the New Dark Age,” which mars a fine lyric with some dismal synths. But Winnowing ends well, with the lovely and dark “Now You Know” capped by “Tap Your Heart on the Shoulder,” a bonus track that makes for a fine closer. “Only so many days, only so many nights, only so many smiles you can fake, hey reach over and tap your heart on the shoulder and see if she’s still awake…” Throughout, Mallonee’s voice – weathered and aged, but still commanding – delivers these words with an honesty that can’t be faked.

So yeah, I like Winnowing. It’s a darker, quieter, lower-budget affair than Mallonee’s last few, but it is unmistakably him. And that is its biggest weakness, as the 62nd or so of his albums. The songwriting is so similar to virtually everything else he’s done that it can only stand up next to them, not surpass them. I have always liked what Mallonee does, but each new album gets one or two plays and then is filed in with the rest. I expect he’ll stick with what he does best until he’s too old to do it anymore, and at this point it’s probably too much to hope that he’ll shake things up.

Those who love Mallonee – a small but committed number – likely wouldn’t want him to anyway. But if you already have the man’s best work, both with Vigilantes of Love and solo, I wouldn’t say you need to rush out and get this. If you’ve followed him this long, though, you know what to expect, and Winnowing will not let you down.

I have similar thoughts about Spoon, though Britt Daniel and his fellow Texans mean a whole lot less to me than Mallonee does. Which is why I am less forgiving when they tread the same ground. It’s been four years since Transference, the band’s very good seventh album, and in that time, they seem to have evolved not one iota. The recently released They Want My Soul is a Spoon album from start to finish, so much like the last few that it’s nearly indistinguishable.

If you’re familiar with the band, you know the style – bass-heavy minimalist rock, a solid groove foundation for Daniel’s ragged voice. In the four years prior to this record, Daniel formed Divine Fits with Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade, while the other members pursued their own projects, very few of which sounded like Spoon. So the fact that they’ve reunited to do the exact same thing they’ve been doing since the 1990s is a bit of a letdown.

That aside, They Want My Soul is a pretty good Spoon record. “Rent I Pay” makes for a stomping opener, coming on like the Rolling Stones, and while slow burner “Inside Out” slows the momentum, it isn’t fatal. “Rainy Taxi” is exactly the kind of song you want from Spoon, all melancholy tones and propulsive drumming over a simple, kick-ass bass shimmy. I like the synths that shake their way in and out of “Outlier,” “I Just Don’t Understand” brings that Spoon piano in for a 6/8 workout, and closer “New York Kiss” balances its swagger with some subtle, splendid keyboard sounds.

In short, it’s everything you could want from a Spoon album, unless you want something different from every other Spoon album. They’ve established this sound very well, but eight albums in, they’ve shown no sign of significantly building on it. I can’t say I don’t like this record, but I also can’t say it has found its way into my CD player very often. I feel like I’ve heard these songs played this way before. If you’re OK with that, you might enjoy it more than I do. But with this much potential, I want Spoon to start exploring, to start kicking at the bars of their own self-made cage. Consistency can be a trap, and I fear these guys have fallen into it.

Of course, there’s a danger in breaking out of that trap as well. Just ask the Gaslight Anthem, who are racking up some of the worst notices of their career for their fifth album, Get Hurt. Over the previous four, New Jersey’s third-favorite sons established a core sound – Bruce Springsteen sentiments delivered by a working-class punk band – and ran it into the ground. I still responded to that sound, but even I had to admit that by 2012’s Handwritten the band’s songs were starting to blur together.

Enter Get Hurt, an album of sonic experiments and mold-breakers that just… well, isn’t all that good. It’s still the Gaslight Anthem, so it’s palpably earnest and performed with a trunkful of conviction. Which is good, because when you make a record that sounds very little like your past records, you need to sell it in the performances. The band does, no question. And to be fair, the actual differences are often more cosmetic than anything else – most of these are still Gaslight Anthem songs. But you’d be forgiven for checking to make sure you have the right disc when the blistering guitar buzz of “Stay Vicious” begins, complete with a low, growling vocal from Brian Fallon.

You’ll also be thrown by the layered guitars of the almost-funky “1,000 Years,” the pitch-perfect ‘80s reverb-mope of the title track, and the staccato drums and Bryan Adams stylings of “Stray Paper.” The album is chock full of stylistic shifts – “Underneath the Ground” begins with electric piano over slow, ringing chords, while “Helter Skeleton” opens like a radio-rock rager, evolving into something cleaner and prettier. What it’s missing is any sense that this is a natural progression. Get Hurt sounds like a band shaking things up for the sake of it, breaking out of the trap any way they can, and the overwhelming impression it leaves is that they had a good thing, and didn’t know it.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the different places the band goes on this record, and they certainly dive in with both feet. I just don’t think these different suits they’re trying on fit nearly as well as the one they shoved in a closet. Fallon and his bandmates sound like they’re pulling at the sleeves, trying to get more comfortable, and they never quite get there. This is probably an important record for them, but whether it signals a transition or a retrenchment, it’s hard to tell. I admire the Gaslight Anthem for striking out big here, though. It takes guts. But perhaps, like Bill Mallonee and Spoon, they already found what they do best.

Next week, thoughts on Peter Capaldi and Doctor Who. After that, new things by Counting Crows, the New Pornographers, Ryan Adams, Robert Plant and Sloan. Here comes the September flood. Get ready.

Hey, this is my 700th column. Yes, 700. Yes, that boggles my mind too. Thanks to everyone who has stuck with me for all these millions upon millions of words. It’s deeply appreciated.

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 could write an entire book about Imogen Heap’s Sparks.

I won’t, don’t worry. I will try to contain my effusiveness to 1,500 words or so. But just know that I could do it. For the past week, I’ve been immersing myself in the full digital wonderment of this record, letting it surround me, floating in it. It’s that kind of record, one with a physical presence so nuanced that you could live within it for weeks and not hear everything. I’ve heard Sparks probably 20 times now, and I’m sure I haven’t heard every bit of aural detail Heap put into it.

Luckily, I don’t foresee getting tired of it. I’ve been an Imogen Heap fan for many years, dating back to her time as one half of Frou Frou, and this is easily her most confident, most accomplished record. It’s also her strangest, which seems to go hand in hand with unfettered creativity. Heap has always been an idiosyncratic artist, but Sparks blows that notion through the sky. She is one of a kind. There is no one else like her, no one else on Earth who would have made this record.

And there are very few who could make it. Imogen Heap is the antithesis of the modern female pop star – she creates her records almost entirely on her own, painstakingly crafting the sounds she expertly weaves together. She spends weeks in isolation, emerging into the light carrying new pieces of beautiful electronic wonderment unlike any you’ve ever heard. Every Heap album is stunningly well crafted, and I imagine her twiddling knobs for hours just trying to get one woodblock sound to strike her ears properly.

It sounds obsessive, but the process belies the final product. Imogen Heap music leaps from the speakers, full of boundless joy, unable to keep to itself. It’s the kind of thing that rushes at you in a bewildering torrent at first, your mind unable to keep up with everything it’s hearing. There’s so much here, and it all bursts forth at you in full color. Beyond just the physical sound, though, Heap’s songs are immaculate – they would be strong enough to hold up without all of this sonic craft surrounding them. But that wouldn’t be nearly as extraordinary.

The story of Sparks is just as amazing as the music. It’s been five years since Heap’s last album, the wonderful Ellipse, and she spent those years shaking up both her life and her music-making formula. She began creating experiences for herself, collaborations and journeys and musical ideas, and set a goal of releasing one new piece every three months for three years. Every song on Sparks has a story, a hook, an idea underpinning it, which makes them all easy to talk about, and instantly intriguing.

And though each song was released individually, with a corresponding video, the best part about the Sparks project to me is that the album is not an afterthought collection of tracks with no connecting thread. It’s clear now that Sparks is here that the album was the end goal all along. These songs, wildly diverse as they are, sit next to each other nicely – there is certainly something of a scattered feel at first, but every Imogen Heap album feels that way before you get to know it. Once Sparks sinks in, it’s obvious that a lot of thought went into the running order, the connections between tracks, the flow. Sparks is an album, albeit one with a fascinating genesis.

Because of the nature of this record, it is easily Heap’s most collaborative. She deliberately tried to break free of her traditional method of working – essentially, locking herself in a studio for weeks at a time – by reaching out to fans and fellow musicians in other parts of the world. The first of these songs to be released, “Lifeline,” contains samples culled from nearly 900 submissions by fans. Heap put out a call for interesting sounds, and received a multitude, from burning matches to garage doors. She incorporated dozens of these into the track, but the genius of “Lifeline” is that you’d never know it. The textures never distract from the amazing song. (The repeated “keep breathing,” and the bass line that follows, is one of my favorite Sparks moments.)

For gentle opener “You Know Where to Find Me,” Heap recorded on 13 different pianos located in fans’ homes around the world. It’s a perfect first track – it slips in like a summer breeze, but builds almost imperceptibly, and before you know it, it’s wielding a remarkable amount of force. It’s almost an entire album unto itself, such is the journey it takes you on. Heap solicited about three dozen people to add their voices to the haunting, amazing spoken word track “Neglected Space.” This one sneaks out of the speakers and envelops you.

Heap’s voice is one of her greatest assets, and she usually includes an a cappella piece on her albums – she even scored an unlikely hit with one, “Hide and Seek,” 12 years ago. But she’s never done anything like “The Listening Chair.” In the later stages of development, Heap found herself unable to put her finger on exactly what her record needed. So she built a chair with video and audio recording capability, brought it on tour with her, and asked fans to sit in it and opine on what song remains to be written. The answer she went with was along the lines of “the song about your life.”

And so here it is. Each of the five minutes of “The Listening Chair” encapsulates seven years of Heap’s life – she was 35 when she finished it – and it’s a twisty, exhilarating ride. Every sound was made with her mouth, from percussion to low string sounds to all the incredible harmonies. I don’t even want to think about how many hours this took to put together. Even more extraordinary, Heap has promised to write another minute of this song every seven years, summing up her life in miniature. It’s a song that will not be finished until she dies. (Although I love the ending we have now – Heap asking “who am I now,” only to hear the question reflected back by dozens of people, voices stacked atop one another.)

Heap worked with Deadmau5 on “Telemiscommunications,” although you’d never know it – the song is a low-key breather amidst the mania. Winningly, it’s a song about failing to connect over cell phones and internet chats, and was crafted by two people who never met face to face. “Minds Without Fear” is a collaboration with Indian composers Vishal Dadlani and Shekhar Ravjiani, famous for their film scores. The song is one of the most aggressive, sitars and Indian percussion sitting atop a dark beat as Heap’s voice intertwines with Dadlani’s and Ravjiani’s. The absolutely incredible “Xizi She Knows” incorporates field recordings of people Heap met during a trip to Hangzhou in China, wrapping them up in a whirlwind of beats and melody.

Heck, even the cover of Sparks is a collaboration – it’s an explosion of footprints, each one sent in by fans, heading out in every direction. But this isn’t to suggest that she never acted alone here. In fact, some of the finest moments on Sparks, including “The Listening Chair,” grew from her doing what she does – locking herself away and slaving over a computer. “Entanglement,” for instance, is the closest this album comes to a pop single. The song pulses and shimmies with a surprising sexiness as Heap coos, “Our body entanglement wants you all over me, me all over you…” The arresting strings add immeasurably.

The striking “Me The Machine” was performed on Mi.Mu gloves, an invention Heap helped create. A sleeker version of Steve Hogarth’s MIDI gloves, these capture movements and hand gestures and turn them into commands for sequencing computers. The song itself is one of the album’s most immediate, wafting in on gentle electronics and soaring through its winsome melody. It leads into “Run-Time,” a wonderful tribute to ‘80s pop music that puts most to shame, and includes a delightful, skipping coda.

The two instrumental tracks, the propulsive “Cycle Song” and the lovely “Climb to Sakteng,” were composed for a film score. Amazingly, they improve the flow of the album rather than hampering it, with “Cycle” clearing the stage for the lower-key “Telemiscommunications,” and “Sakteng” flowing into the similarly lovely “The Beast.” That song is the most unlikely collaboration with B.o.B. you’ll ever hear, a sky-high menacing dirge that ends up gathering an absolutely huge amount of power.

The album ends with one of its most extraordinary achievements. After 13 songs of immersive detail, Heap plays with 3-D audio effects on “Propeller Seeds,” an absolutely magical piece of music. The chiming instruments leap out at you, but the sounds feel like movies in your mind – the bursting rip as she sings “I’m growing roots through my toes,” or the jazz band party that happens in the middle eight. You can practically see this song happening in front of you. The fact that it’s a beautiful piece of music doesn’t hurt in the slightest.

“Where does this story go, what does this story hold for us,” Heap sings in the final seconds of Sparks. And after this, well, it could go anywhere. Sparks feels to me like a great leap forward from an artist who was already flirting with genius. It’s a stunning achievement, quite unlike anything else I’ve heard, and a testament to the power of stepping outside your comfort zone. It’s also a remarkably moving album, all that technology harnessed in the service of an emotional ebb and flow that works brilliantly. Listening to it all in a row is somewhat overwhelming, but it leaves me giddy.

Sparks is easily the best record Imogen Heap has made, and if you know her work, you know that’s saying something. It’s also quite easily one of the best records of 2014. I don’t know how many other ways I can say it. You should hear this, and you should hear this now.

Next week, a treatise on consistency with Bill Mallonee, Spoon and the Gaslight Anthem. 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.

Robin Williams has been a constant artistic presence in my life for as long as I can remember.

When I was very young, Mork and Mindy was one of my favorite things on television. It ran from the time I was four until I was eight, which means I was the perfect age to revel in Williams’ madcap improvisational insanity. I used to sit on couches head-first, the way Mork from Ork would, and had the “nanoo-nanoo” handshake down before I was six. Watching Mork and Mindy is one of my earliest memories, in fact, which means that as far as I’m concerned, Williams has been making me laugh forever.

As I grew up, Williams’ performances seemed to grow with me. He was Popeye when I was six, and I caught it later on television, at the right age to find it screamingly funny. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen came out when I was 13, and could just begin to grasp the serious intent behind Terry Gilliam’s vision. And then, when I was 15, Williams took on the role of John Keating in Dead Poets Society, and changed my life.

Like many, I’m sure, I felt like Dead Poets Society was written specifically for me. It’s an absolutely beautiful, poetic film, and Williams shines as That Teacher, the one we all have, who recognizes our particular gifts hidden beneath our awkward exteriors and encourages them. (For me, that teacher was John Guevremont, and I try not to miss an opportunity to tell him so.) There are so many moments from Dead Poets Society that I have carried with me all my life, from Knox Overstreet’s wonderful first date to Charlie Dalton’s fist-pumping “dammit, Neil, the name’s Nuwanda.” I could probably recite it from memory, so embedded is this film on my soul.

Williams acted in many of my favorite movies from high school, showing those dramatic chops that he hid behind the mania. Awakenings still makes me cry, and Williams’ restrained, beautifully measured performance is one of the main reasons. The Fisher King continues to reveal new layers, even now – I remember when, in college, I realized that the Red Knight was Parry’s dead wife, haunting his memories. The ballroom dance scene in Grand Central Station is still one of the best movie moments I have seen. I even loved Toys, Barry Levinson’s sorta-failed thesis on warfare and innocence.

And when Williams voiced the Genie in Aladdin, I ended up enjoying and connecting with an animated film in ways I never really had. Looking back, Aladdin is just a very good example of the Disney formula, but at the time, it was revolutionary, and Williams’ mad improvisations brought it to life. I bet if I mentioned one of his lines – “Phenomenal cosmic powers, itty bitty living space,” for instance – you can hear it in his voice. Aladdin was the start of the modern celebrity voices trend in animated movies, which continues to this day.

I remember discovering Being Human, the 1994 film in which Williams plays five versions of the same character throughout five time periods. It’s remarkable, and I don’t know why it isn’t mentioned among his finest performances. I remember marveling at the fact that Williams could deliver a pitch-perfect comedic turn in The Birdcage one year, and an astounding dramatic one in Good Will Hunting the next. Good Will struck a particular chord with me, since it was written by a pair of then-hometown heroes, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Seriously, go look up Williams’ scene with Damon on the park bench, when he quietly and confidently tears the young man apart. It’s a masterful moment.

In recent years, I have enjoyed Williams’ dark turns in films like the underrated Death to Smoochy and the creepy One Hour Photo. Few saw Bobcat Goldthwaite’s wicked film World’s Greatest Dad, but Williams was excellent in it, as a frustrated writer who gets attention by penning a suicide note for a teen who accidentally died. But lately, I’ve been taking him for granted, perhaps waiting for that next role that impacted my life as greatly as his previous ones did. I regrettably never did watch The Crazy Ones, his TV show with Sarah Michelle “Buffy” Gellar, which was canceled earlier this year after one season.

I suppose, since he’s been a part of my life since my earliest memories, I simply assumed he would always be there. So when, on Monday, news broke that Williams had killed himself after a bout with depression, I found myself in a state of disbelief. Stories like this always seem to rock me – I have struggled with depression for most of my life, and hearing about other, far more successful people who lose that struggle tends to make the ground give way beneath my feet. I knew pretty quickly that I would have to ignore social media for a while, to escape think pieces about depression and suicide written by people with no idea. I kept seeing the same question: “How can someone who has everything decide to throw it all away?” That question makes me scream.

You know what most likely happened with Robin Williams? I’m fairly confident, both from my own experience and my extensive talks with others about this, that I know at least a little of what might have occurred, and I bet it came down to this.

He had a bad day.

If you have wrestled with lifelong depression, one bad day is all it takes to go from hopeful to hopeless, from knowing you have everything you need to believing, really believing, that you have nothing and no one. It really is that simple. Just one bad day when the dull buzz inside your head turns into a loud roar, so loud you can’t ignore it. One bad day when nothing you have, nothing you have done, can drown it out. I’ve had them, and they’re tough to ride through. That’s why stories like these always have an impact on me. It’s the same whenever anyone gives in to the bad days. I understand how easy it is.

I would never presume to know the mind of Robin Williams. Everyone’s struggle is different, everyone’s bad days particular to them. Here are a few things I do know this week. A man who has made me laugh and cry and feel since before I even knew what movies were is now gone. I will miss this man’s work very much. I am sad that the man who brought so much happiness to so many couldn’t do the same for himself. And I hope he rests in peace.

* * * * *

You’ll forgive me if I am not in the right frame of mind this week to review music. I thought it would be fitting, instead, to present a quick look ahead. One of the ways I combat my own bad days is by having things to look forward to, even if those things are albums and movies and television shows. (Doctor Who, coming back a week from Saturday!) So here’s a quick peek at some of the records coming our way before the end of the year.

Next week, Imogen Heap’s fourth album Sparks finally hits stores. I’m looking forward to this as much as anything else this year. Heap is beyond brilliant, and what I’ve heard from this album (most of it, actually) finds her stepping out on a bunch of limbs, and truly advancing her work. It’s gonna be great. Also next week, the Flaming Lips’ side project Electric Wurms will drop a 30-minute slab of psychedelic weirdness called Musik, Die Schwer Zu Twerk. Yeah, that’s the real title.

August will ring out with a big week – new records from the New Pornographers, Basement Jaxx, Opeth and the Steve Rothery Band (Marillion’s amazing guitar player), as well as a host of reissues from M83, the Unicorns and the Kinks. Counting Crows roar back on Sept. 2 with Somewhere Under Wonderland, their first album of new songs in six years. Then, on Sept. 9, we get another huge week, with new things from Ryan Adams, Interpol, Robert Plant, Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Amplifier, the always-amazing Sloan, and, for the first time in a decade, Death From Above 1979. Whew!

September will also see new things from My Brightest Diamond, Shellac, Alt-J, Tweedy (Jeff Tweedy’s new band with his son), Weezer, Christopher Owens and Flying Colors. Also, we will get a pair of fascinating-sounding match-ups: a jazz standards album from Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, and what will no doubt be a droning masterwork from Scott Walker and Sunn O))). That’s along with reissues from the Smashing Pumpkins, Wings and Oasis.

Highlights from October: Johnny Marr’s new solo album Playland; a new Godflesh at last, called A World Lit Only By Fire; a second solo album from Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke; a double record from Foxygen; a new Flying Lotus album; the Flaming Lips’ tribute to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; and reissues of Led Zeppelin IV and Houses of the Holy. November’s only starting to shape up, but we know the new Foo Fighters, Sonic Highways, will be out, as will the new one from And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead.

Also coming soon is Transgressor, the fourth album from Quiet Company. I am, again, as excited about this as I am about anything. And Northern Records, the label that first introduced me to Quiet Company, is set to drop albums by Stranger Kings (featuring members of the Prayer Chain) and Low and Behold, the new collaboration between Jason Martin of Starflyer 59 and Ryan Clark of Demon Hunter. It’s way better than it sounds.

I’m assuming there will also be surprises along the way, because that’s what makes life worth living.

Thank you for your kind indulgence this week. Next week, Imogen Heap. And perhaps one or two others. 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 waited ten years to see Richard Linklater’s Boyhood.

I’ve been an intense fan of Linklater’s work since college, when I saw Slacker and Dazed and Confused and, most importantly, the amazing Before Sunrise. Here was a filmmaker obsessed with capturing normal life as it unfolds – each of his first four movies takes place over 24 hours, with slow deliberation, and each is almost completely plotless, by traditional standards. Slacker is an experiment in narrative-less form, passing the point of view from one character to another until a portrait of a city emerges. Dazed chronicles the last day of school in a Texas town in 1976, watching normal life happen to a bunch of kids from every clique.

Before Sunrise, though, is a Richard Linklater mission statement. It starts with a fairly Hollywood premise – two people meet on a train heading to Vienna. They are going different directions from there, but the boy convinces the girl to spend one day with him in the city. From there, many filmmakers would spin out some kind of story, full of misunderstandings and conflict and pratfalls before the happy ending. But Linklater just watches as these two people walk around Vienna, talking and slowly falling for each other. That’s it. That’s the entire movie. And it’s engrossing like few things I have ever seen.

It’s even better in context with its two sequels, each released nine years after the last. Before Sunset depicts the pair meeting again after nine years and spending one afternoon with each other, unfolding in close to real time, while Before Midnight catches up with them nine years later, and finds them on a knife-edge of uncertainty about their relationship. All three of these films are astonishingly natural, clearly what comes next, and all three benefit from the real-life wisdom and age that comes to the actors with time. Each is a snapshot of what life looks like to the actors (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) and Linklater at that very moment in time.

Capturing the effects of time is a key theme of Linklater’s, and he has found no better vehicle for that theme than Boyhood, the recently released labor of love that I first read about in 2004. It’s a film about growing up, but one that captures the actual passage of time like none other. In 2002, Linklater cast 6-year-old Ellar Coltrane and 8-year-old Lorelai Linklater (his daughter) as the two kids (Mason and Samantha) in a broken-home family, with Hawke as their father and Patricia Arquette as their mother. He shot some scenes with the four of them, then waited a year, shot more scenes, waited a year, etc. And he did this for 12 years.

The effect is amazing. We watch Coltrane age, on screen, from six to 18, and watch him slowly become the young man shaped by the experiences of the film. Everyone else ages along with him – Lorelai Linklater, as his sister, grows from eight to 20, and Arquette and Hawke are visibly older by the end of the film. This seems like a simple thing, but the impact is indescribable. Boyhood is nearly three hours long, but by the end, you feel like you’ve spent a lifetime with these people. They’re heart-achingly real.

I wouldn’t trust this idea to anyone but Linklater, and he proved worthy of it. While some filmmakers would spend the intervening years writing a complex story for their actors, Linklater did what he normally does – captured life happening. Boyhood eschews all the usual coming-of-age landmarks, like Mason’s first kiss, his first beer, losing his virginity, even his high school graduation. We see none of that. What we do see reminds me of the way I remember my own life – snatches of seemingly insignificant events, built up in my mind as the story of me. For Mason, those events include finding a dead bird in the back yard and riding in cars with his father. Little things that make up a life.

You can see Linklater evolve as you watch Boyhood as well. An early scene with his mother’s new husband threatens to become a full-blown plot, but thankfully, it never really does. As the film goes along, Linklater becomes more confident, and more content just to let it all breathe naturally. The final scenes, with an 18-year-old Mason leaving home for the first time, are powerful in a way they would not have been had the film been more eventful. They left me with an inescapable sadness – Mason, Samantha and their parents became real people to me, and leaving them was difficult. But the film ends on a note of wonder, which definitely leavened the heartbreak for me.

No film has ever made me feel the way I did at the end of Boyhood. I can’t point to any one moment, of course, since this is not a film of moments. But its cumulative effect is astonishing. It’s an entirely new way to tell a story like this, one that pays off in emotional impact, even though the film itself underplays virtually everything. I feel like I grew up alongside Mason and Samantha, their parents and friends, and I’ve rarely felt as sad watching a film as I did when I realized I’d never see any of them again. Boyhood is beautiful, nigh-on perfect, and everything I hoped it would be.

* * * * *

Seeing Boyhood has started me thinking about different ways to present familiar ideas. And possibly the most different one I can think of at the moment, musically speaking, is Beck’s Song Reader.

Like many of you, I thought of Song Reader as a bit of a gimmick at first. A new collection of 20 songs, released only as a songbook – as printed sheet music. The only way to hear these new Beck songs was to play them yourself, or wait for others to play them for you. Even as a gimmick, that’s an interesting one, but then I started thinking about the possibilities inherent in the idea. With no definitive recording of these songs, there would be no rules, no restraints – even subconscious ones – holding back anyone’s interpretations. You could do anything with these tunes, and no one could say you’re wrong.

In a lot of ways, Song Reader was like giving up control. It was handing this group of songs over to the masses, and letting them own them. It started to make even more sense when I began hearing the songs themselves – these were clearly more simple, old-school American songbook tunes than what Beck normally gives us, and it became clear that he was trying for a nostalgic approach to his craft. Song Reader attempts to capture an era of popular song that lived and died on the page – sure, popular artists would interpret these songs, and some might be considered definitive recordings, but if you could walk down to the store, buy the sheet music and play the song your way, and millions of people could do the same, it was harder to say which version should stand above the others.

A song intended to be played by millions of people needs to have certain qualities, and something like “Devil’s Haircut” wouldn’t (ahem) cut it. The 20 songs on Song Reader each strove for that in different ways, while remaining absolutely open to interpretation. The versions I heard (hundreds of them popped up on YouTube) felt like old American tunes, ones that could have inspired renditions from popular early-20th-Century singers. On its most basic level, this certainly was not a case of Beck writing his usual songs and releasing them in a clever way. Song Reader is an exercise in recapturing a moment of popular song.

I’d hoped that Beck would never create “definitive” versions of these tunes, so I was a little dismayed to see that Song Reader had been recorded. But the finished product is absolutely fascinating, and doesn’t betray the concept at all. In fact, it presents me with an entirely new way to hear songs like this, one I’m still trying to wrap my head around. The Song Reader album is essentially a “various artists” tribute to the tunes, with 20 bands and singers from many musical traditions pitching in. And with no audible reference point, they’ve been given complete freedom to do what they like with these songs.

Many have chosen to play them straight. Moses Sumney strolls through “Title of This Song” beautifully, while Jeff Tweedy plays “The Wolf is On the Hill” like one of his own works. Laura Marling gives us a glorious folk reading of “Sorry,” while Swamp Dogg brings all the emotion you’d hope to “America, Here’s My Boy,” a paean to young men heading off to war, and to those who do not return. Now, I haven’t heard any of these songs before, but these renditions strike me as straightforward reads of them. They’re lovely, but they are close to what appears on the printed page.

Others, however, have taken things in wild directions. You’d expect nothing less from Sparks, who bring their particular quirkiness to “Why Did You Make Me Care.” David Johansen, ol’ Buster Poindexter himself, winks his way through a jazzy take on “Rough on Rats.” Jason Isbell surprises with his long barrelhouse romp through “Now That Your Dollar Bills Have Sprouted Wings.” Marc Ribot takes on instrumental “The Last Polka” with clarinetist Doug Wieselman, while Juanes translates “Don’t Act Like Your Heart Isn’t Hard” into Spanish for a Tex-Mex workout.

The interesting thing is, while these all sound like reinventions of the original tunes, I have no idea. I’ve never heard these songs before. For all I know, these are exactly what Beck had in mind. In fact, Lord Huron’s “Last Night You Were a Dream” is the only version of any song here I could hear Beck performing exactly as is (save for one other, but we’ll mention that in a moment). Everything, from Jack White’s bluesy “I’m Down” to Jack Black’s ridiculous, theatrical “We All Wear Cloaks,” could very well be the standard. Absolutely no care was taken to perform these songs in a way that respects the style of their author.

I mentioned one particular exception, though, and it’s an important one. Beck himself appears here, delivering his version of “Heaven’s Ladder.” And unfortunately, this is now the one Song Reader number that, to my mind, has a definitive. It’s impossible to feel like this is not how Beck heard the song when writing it. Any other version of “Heaven’s Ladder” will now have to stand up to this one, in the same way that any covers of “Lost Cause” or “Where It’s At” would. Don’t get me wrong, “Heaven’s Ladder” is a gorgeous song, and I adored hearing Beck’s rendition of it. But it seems to go against the spirit of this project.

Then again, the fact that these 20 versions of these songs all appear on a CD together with Beck’s name on it seems to indicate that on some level, these are the “approved” versions. It’ll be hard to shake that impression in the future. I would love to see a second volume of this, with entirely different spins on these songs. I wouldn’t mind an entire series, in fact. The songs seem open enough to allow for it. As it is, Song Reader is an entirely new kind of tribute record, one in which the original songs are ideas, not concrete things. I can’t imagine that Beck intended “Eyes That Say I Love You” to sound like Jarvis Cocker’s stomp-through, but I have no evidence to the contrary. It’s an interpretation with no divinable source. That’s kind of magical.

As an album, Song Reader is messy and indistinct, jumping from tone to tone wildly. But as a concept, it’s unlike anything else I can think of. Like Boyhood, it succeeds at something no one else has tried, leaping obstacles no one else has thought of, and it makes me consider art in a different way. If that’s not a noble and lofty goal, I don’t know what is.

* * * * *

Next week, a bunch of reviews of recent stuff. 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 do a lot of moaning about simplicity in music. So much moaning, in fact, that you’d be forgiven for thinking that all I listen to is Dream Theater and Tales from Topographic Oceans.

Not true, of course. I do think a lot of popular music is pretty shopworn, recycling the same chords and progressions and even lyrics. I have the same complaints about country, blues, folk – hell, any style in which you can string one-five and one-four-five progressions in a line and call it good. (I seriously do a lot of moaning about this.)

But I do see the pure, visceral power of a simple yet effective song, and it often works on me. Delivery counts for a lot. Jason Isbell’s wonderful Southeastern made my top 10 list last year, despite sticking almost entirely to well-traveled musical roads, because his lyrics are amazing and his delivery impassioned. Southeastern felt like a master telling me 12 gripping stories, and more complex music would have detracted from its impact. Sometimes, simplicity really works.

Here’s another case in point: Tom Petty, to my knowledge, has never written a truly complicated song. But he’s written a bunch of good ones, and he has the brilliance to give those songs to the Heartbreakers, one of the best bands in America. I would stack the Heartbreakers up against anyone, actually. Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench, Scott Thurston, Ron Blair and Steve Ferrone. You aren’t going to get a lot better than that. Even if Petty’s songs were boring as hell, the Heartbreakers would still knock them out of the park.

Thankfully, Petty’s songs are always pretty good, if not great. Four years ago, he dropped one of his infrequent disappointments, the blues-based Mojo. But fans will be happy to know that with the release of Hypnotic Eye, the 13th Heartbreakers record, Petty’s back on track. This is a fine set, one that starts with the gritty tone of Mojo and builds on it with some uncluttered songcraft. While some of this record isn’t quite up to the standard of its best songs, it’s all enjoyable, a late-career surge from a guy who really needed one.

The attitude is on display from the first moments of “American Dream Plan B,” with its tough, spare riff and its never-give-up message. “Fault Lines” is faster and darker, Ferrone’s ride cymbals driving a jazz-inflected song about life cracking under you. Those are just the opening salvo, and they lead into “Red River.” Everything you’ve heard about this song is true, particularly the praise for its soaring, memorable chorus. This is the most Tom Petty-esque Tom Petty song in years, and one I keep coming back to.

The rest of Hypnotic Eye has some difficulty keeping up with the opening trilogy, but there’s nothing that slips below par here. Highlights include the stomping “All You Can Carry,” another of Petty’s best songs in years, featuring some splendid work from Campbell, and “Forgotten Man,” which makes full use of its almost-cliched riff. “Power Drunk” and “Burnt Out Town” are where all the blues impulses this time seem to have ended up, and they’re good, if not particularly remarkable. The slower tunes this time are the weaker link – “Sins of My Youth” is merely passable, and “Full Grown Boy” floats by without leaving much of a mark.

But the record ends well. The seven-minute “Shadow People” is a slinky epic, one that hearkens back to the 1980s era of this band. Tom Petty is all of 63 now, but on this song – and several others on Hypnotic Eye – he sounds half that age. This record delivers the goods. Nothing here breaks new ground for the Heartbreakers, but just to hear them plugging away, nearly 40 years into their career, on a set of songs this effective, is simply swell.

* * * * *

I like the Petty album, but if you want to hear a perfect example of how to make a compelling, tremendous record out of a set of simple songs, you need to hear The Voyager, the third solo album from Jenny Lewis.

Lewis is still best known as the lead singer of Rilo Kiley, a band that I always liked, but never quite loved. I enjoyed their poppy diversion of a final record, Under the Blacklight, best of anything they made. But Lewis’ solo career has been another animal altogether. It’s been unpredictable – an album of old-world-folksy songs with the Watson Twins? A duets record with Jonathan Rice? – and, given the diversity, surprisingly solid. Still, Lewis hadn’t made an album I truly, deeply love either, until this one.

The Voyager is the culmination point of everything Jenny Lewis has done well throughout her career. These 10 songs are sharp and incisive, with easy melodies augmented by strong production. This record was co-produced by Ryan Adams, which gives you an idea of how much of it sounds – ringing guitars, big drums, sweet harmonies, an earthy feel buoyed by touches like strings and keyboards and chimes. I’d go so far as to say that if Adams’ new record is as good as The Voyager, I’ll be a happy camper.

“Head Underwater” gets things off to a confident start, with its Fleetwood Mac vibe and gorgeous vocal harmonies. Here is everything I love about this album in 4:08 – a sweet melody, some lovely clean guitar flourishes, Lewis’ clear and beautiful voice, and a great lyric. “She’s Not Me” ramps up every one of these qualities, delivering a sad yet hummable tune that upends the title phrase – this song’s about realizing that someone you love has ended up with someone better. When she gets specific in the bridge, it’s just heartbreaking.

“Just One of the Guys” is about being a woman in music, of course, but Lewis brings her own experience to a sharp and funny lyric. “No matter how hard I try to be just one of the guys, there’s a little something inside that won’t let me…” “Late Bloomer” is a classic story-song about lost innocence, while “The New You” opens with a casual 9/11 reference. Throughout this record, Lewis is generous with her gift for observation. Everything here sounds drawn from a deep and personal well, and her words lend this album an emotional heft, allowing the music to remain breezy and fun.

Really, there’s nothing on here I would do differently. I love it all, from the dark surf rock of “You Can’t Outrun ‘Em” to the Kinks-esque pop of “Love U Forever” to the delicate, string-laden title track. The Voyager is the strongest album Jenny Lewis has made, the summit she’s been climbing toward since Rilo Kiley’s first efforts, and it’s an absolute joy to hear her find her voice so completely.

* * * * *

You may not want to take my opinion too seriously, though, since I’ve also been rather enjoying the new Jason Mraz album.

Yeah, I know. Believe me, I know. But hear me out. Yes, more often than not, Mraz is pretty awful, a fact that has been endlessly disappointing to me, because he has a strong voice and a decent amount of talent. I marginally enjoyed Mraz’ first record, Waiting for My Rocket to Come, and decided to keep an eye on him. But then he delivered one painfully unfunny clever-clever jaunty song after another, upping the douchebag quotient to near-intolerable levels. I kept listening, but not seriously. The only song I liked on 2012’s Love is a Four Letter Word (yeah…) was “93 Million Miles.” The rest ranged from tolerable to awful.

Which is why his fifth record, Yes!, is such a pleasant surprise. Gone are the soul affectations, gone are the overly clever quick-rhymes, gone is the douchiness. In their place, Mraz has written a bunch of sweetly earnest acoustic pop songs, and performed them with a seriousness of intent that elevates this effort over anything else he’s done. He is ably supported by Raining Jane on this album, who offer up the most gorgeous vocal harmonies he’s ever enjoyed. All of that adds up to a collection that is, at worst, pleasant as a summer wind, and at best, surprisingly moving.

Mraz goes a long, long time without putting a foot wrong here. The opening five songs are exactly what they should be, the strummy joy of “Love Someone” leading into the infectious “Hello, You Beautiful Thing” and then into the pretty “Long Drive,” on which Raining Jane makes their presence felt. The streak culminates with “Everywhere,” one of the few songs on Yes! that flirts with rock. The lyrics are ill-advised (“If I wasn’t a party, how could you be the life of me?” Yes, that’s a real line…), but the tune is insidious. It’s a winner in spite of itself.

“Best Friend” is the first stumble, just because the lyrics are so cheesy, but Mraz quickly rights the ship with “Quiet,” one of the best songs I’ve ever heard from him. It’s a gentle reminder to enjoy every moment with the people you love, and it’s prettier than it has any right to be. It complements “Out of My Hands” well – the message of both songs is to let go and appreciate the wonders in front of you. “You Can Rely On Me” is simple and sweet, while “A World With You” will soon become the official first dance song at weddings everywhere. Album closer “Shine” is surprisingly psychedelic, bringing things to a simmering boil before they crash to a halt.

Yeah, there are other missteps. I am still not sure what to think of the cover of “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday,” popularized by Boyz II Men. “3 Things” could have used a rewrite. But if Mraz occasionally steps over the line into cheese, it still feels honest here, so I can forgive it with a minor wince. Yes! is such an uplifting piece of work, so in love with life, that it’s hard to come down too hard on it. I’ve not been able to stop listening to it since picking it up, so sweet is the vibe it conjures up. I don’t know if this means my critical faculties have stopped working, or Mraz has really made an impressive artistic leap here. I’m hoping for the latter, but either way, I’m enjoying this. It’s simple, and simply beautiful.

* * * * *

Next week, a dissertation on Beck’s Song Reader. Yeah, I bet you’re looking forward to that. 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 going to talk about fun pop music this time, which means I’ll probably get letters.

Every time I champion something frothy and entertaining, I seem to disappoint some people. It happened when I lauded Enuff Z’Nuff, it happened when I went to bat for Hanson and The Click Five, and most recently, it happened when I included “The Fox,” the absurdist phenomenon from Ylvis, on my year-end CD mix. For the record, I seriously think “The Fox” is one of the best songs of 2013, and it was a damn good year. The horse/Morse bit alone makes me grin just thinking about it.

I’m not absolutely sure what people have against fun. I’m an early Beatles fan (and a late Beatles fan, to be fair), so I’m all about joyous songs that just want to entertain. If the songs are well crafted, I don’t need them to spark any kind of deep introspection, or connect with me in any other emotional way. I’m not saying they shouldn’t, or even that they don’t, just that I don’t need them to. Take, for example, one of my favorite albums of all time, Brian Wilson’s SMiLE. It’s an astonishingly intricate work of art, and it’s overall just the zaniest thing, zipping from songs about manifest destiny to anthems about vegetables, and concluding with “Good Vibrations.” It doesn’t want to do anything but make you… um, smile.

I’d never suggest that “The Fox” is as good as SMiLE, but I think the impulse is similar, and I bet the song would make Wilson laugh. I don’t want my intelligence insulted – I’m not looking for the musical equivalent of an Adam Sandler movie, and if I were, there’s always the Insane Clown Posse. I love smart, fun pop music – there’s almost no kind of music I love more – and I would contend that everything I’ve mentioned above fits into that category. (And the two things I’m about to mention fit into it too.) Music can do all kinds of things – it can make you think, feel, consider other perspectives, spur you to action. But it can also just be a grand old time, and in so doing, it can help you see this world in a more positive, soul-filling light.

Wow, that was impressively serious for a column about fun. Anyway.

One of my go-tos lately for intelligent music that makes me dance around like a moron is Bryan Scary. I’ve mentioned him a lot so far this year – Scary is in the middle of releasing a series of new EPs from a project he calls Evil Arrows. The third such EP is now upon us, and it’s up to the high standards of the previous two. In many ways, in fact, EP3 is the best of the bunch.

Scary writes deceptively complex pop music, dashing through odd time signatures and loop-de-loop melodies with an ease that almost sounds effortless. Like the best smart pop, his feels like it poured out of him in one fun-loving burst, belying the fact that it was no doubt labored over. Scary’s a great songwriter – with the release of this EP, we have 18 new songs from him this year, and none of them are stinkers. At the same time, Evil Arrows still feels like his attempt to streamline his work, to cut down on some of the brain-bending insanity that marked his previous records, particularly his masterpiece, Daffy’s Elixir.

This time out, five of the six songs feature the other Arrows, drummer Everet Almond and guitarist Graham Norwood (and the sixth one features Almond). “Little Stars” begins with that trademark Scary piano sound, halfway between the Beatles and an Old West saloon, and dives down a bunch of melodic rabbit holes in its scant 2:14. That’s the overarching theme of this project – zippy, fun songs that jump in and out in less than four minutes, packing as much melodic punch in as they can. You’ll be humming the “la-la-la” section of “Little Stars” for hours, and you’ll just get around to marveling at how tight this band sounds now when the song screeches to a halt.

I absolutely love this EP, perhaps more than I loved the previous two. The breezy “Never’s Altar” is a delight, the hyperactive thrasher “The Wits Are Going Down the Drain” kicks all kinds of ass, “The Motion Picture Managers (Of Love)” skips confidently through its 7/8 minefield, complete with Queen-style backing vocals, and “Kamikaze Daughter” is the closest Evil Arrows have come to a folksy epic. The record ends with the funky-glam “Rejection,” horns and all, and once again, my standard complaint applies here – this is just too short. I want more. Eighteen of these awesome little gems is still not enough.

A fourth Evil Arrows EP is coming, and I hope Scary just keeps on going, releasing these every couple of months for years. He’s really on to something. Hear all three EPs here.

But Scary, delightful as he is, isn’t the reason I’ve been smiling like a kid in a penny candy store all week. That honor belongs to one of the absolute geniuses of our time, the one and only “Weird Al” Yankovic.

My parents can tell you that I’ve been a Weird Al fan since I was about 10 years old. I didn’t really get what he was doing then. For instance, I had never heard the Kinks classic “Lola,” and couldn’t recognize the soaring, blipping synthesizer sounds of Devo as characteristically them. I just knew that “Yoda” and “Dare to Be Stupid” made me laugh. I remember cracking up until I couldn’t breathe at “Another One Rides the Bus,” his accordion-fueled parody of Queen. The first of his parodies I really remember getting was “Eat It,” as I was (like everyone in the ‘80s) fully versed in Michael Jackson’s hits. I remember when Even Worse came out, fueled by the awesome video for “Fat,” and I would put Al’s album cover next to Jackson’s and laugh uncontrollably.

As I’ve gotten older, my appreciation for Yankovic has only grown. I’m not kidding when I call him a genius. He’s best known as a parody artist, and I guess that’s fair, but even in the age of YouTube, his parodies are far and away the best ones on the market. It’s his attention to detail that sets him apart – he goes line by line, syllable by syllable, matching up his new lyrics with the original ones, and he knows how to fully flesh out a concept. But I keep coming back for his original songs, usually written in the style of a particular artist without copping any one song. Al is a master at this. Just listen to “Genius in France,” the best homage/send-up of Frank Zappa I have ever heard from anyone.

Weird Al, as an artist and a cultural entity, has long outlasted most of the people he got famous parodying. His recording career began in 1979 with “My Bologna,” a parody of “My Sharona” by the Knack, and his first album was issued in 1983. That means he’s been at this for 35 years, and he’s had the same band of incredible musicians (Steve Jay, Jim West and Jon “Bermuda” Schwartz) since 1982. I’ve long maintained that Weird Al has one of the best bands in the world, because they have to sound like everybody, and have to play in virtually every style.

Al’s first big album was In 3-D, released in 1984. Let’s take a look at the artists he parodied on that record: Michael Jackson, Men Without Hats, The Greg Kihn Band, The Police and Survivor. For one reason or another, all but Survivor (ironically) are gone. “Weird Al” Yankovic still stands. He’s just released his 14th album, Mandatory Fun, which he says may be his last. If it is, he’s gone out on a high note. After releasing a video a day for eight fun-filled days and basically taking over the Internet, Weird Al racked up his first number one album on the Billboard charts. It’s about damn time.

As for the album itself, it’s more of the same. But in this case, “the same” is perfectly delightful. I was pleased to see that I didn’t have to do much research this time – I’ve had to look up the songs Al has parodied for his last three records, but this time, I had only missed Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy,” which Yankovic transformed into “Handy.” It’s a top-notch parody, and while I don’t usually like to ascribe deeper meanings to what Yankovic does, what I love about “Handy” is that it turns a song about being a useless person into a song about being a useful one. His work is full of that kind of subversion, and it’s almost always that subtle.

Mandatory Fun is, as usual, made up of five parodies, six originals and a polka. The parodies all rise to Yankovic’s high standard, although some are wittier than others. “Foil” rewrites Lorde’s “Royals,” and though it is about the thin sheets of aluminum that keep your sandwich fresh, it takes a screaming left turn halfway through, setting up an awesome joke. “Tacky” turns Pharell’s “Happy” into an anthem for those who wear stripes with plaid, and “Word Crimes” is an ingenious smackdown of grammar illiterates set to Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.” Only “Inactive,” a middling parody of Imagine Dragons’ “Radioactive,” doesn’t quite pass muster here, although there are some funny lines.

The polka, titled “NOW That’s What I Call Polka,” is splendid as usual. Yankovic has been telling this same joke – popular songs stitched into a polka medley – since 1984, and it still kills. My two favorite parts of this one: the instantly recognizable synth melody of “Somebody That I Used to Know” rendered on squelchy muted trumpets, and the Jerry Lewis joke that jumps out of nowhere in the “Gangnam Style” section.

Which brings us to the originals, which are all wonderful. My favorite is “Mission Statement” – the music is in the style of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” by Crosby, Stills and Nash, but the lyrics are entirely corporate-speak. “At the end of the day we must monetize our assets, can you visualize a value-added experience?” It’s a tremendous smackdown to the hippies who became the establishment, handled in such a subtle way that those hippies would probably sing along.

I’m also a fan of “Lame Claim to Fame,” a style parody of (would you believe) Southern Culture on the Skids, and of “My Own Eyes,” a Foo Fighters homage about experiencing some really funny horrors. “Sports Song” should be sung at every sporting event from now on (“We’re great, and you suck!”). I enjoyed “First World Problems,” done in the style of the Pixies (with Amanda Palmer doing her best Kim Deal), but I did feel like Al was co-opting a joke, something he rarely does.

But all is forgiven when you get to closer “Jackson Park Express.” It’s a nine-minute Cat Stevens-style emotional story-song all about two people who sit across from one another on a bus and never speak. It is absolutely brilliant. It’s musically intricate, like all of Yankovic’s extended pieces, and the lyrics are stunningly good. A few samples:

“I gave her a penetrating stare, which could only mean, ‘You are my answer, my answer to everything, which is why I’ll probably do very poorly on the written part of my driver’s test…’”

“I couldn’t hold back my feelings, I gave her a look that said, ‘I would make any sacrifice for your love… goat, chicken, whatever…’”

“I’d like to rip you wide open and French kiss every single one of your internal organs, I’d like to remove all your skin and wear your skin over my own skin, but not in a creepy way…”

“And then the bus stopped at 53rd Street, and she got up suddenly. ‘Where are you going,’ pleaded my eyes. ‘Baby, don’t you do this to me. Think of the beautiful children we could have someday, we could school them at home, raise them up the right way and protect them from the evils of the world, like trigonometry and prime numbers…’”

Really, I could go on and on. “Jackson Park Express” is another classic, like “Albuquerque” and “Genius in France,” and it caps another in a long line of great records from “Weird Al” Yankovic. If this actually is his last one, it’ll be a shame – while I’m sure he will keep releasing songs online, there’s nothing quite like a Weird Al record. For more than 30 years, this extraordinary student of popular culture has been offering a master class in parody and humor while remaining a stone cold musical genius. He’s been making me laugh for most of my life, and I hope he never stops. Mandatory Fun should be mandatory, and is most definitely fun.

Next week, Tom Petty and Jenny Lewis. 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.

The AudioFeed Festival is not Cornerstone.

I said this last year, intending to illuminate the differences between the influential Christian music festival, which ran for 29 years until finances caused its demise in 2012, and its spiritual successor, now in its second year at the Champaign County Fairgrounds here in Illinois. I enumerated all of the things that separate the two – AudioFeed is smaller, its stages closer together, the fairgrounds closer to civilization, the music younger and drawn from different traditions. (It’s also much closer to my house, which is nice.) Because the AudioFeed organizers were just stepping out on their own, I wanted to make sure longtime Cornerstone folks knew how good the festival was – in fact, how it rose above Cornerstone in many ways.

This year, though, I say that to cut the ties. AudioFeed is not Cornerstone – it’s not some junior version of a much-loved festival, not some second-rate shadow of a legend. This was the year that the festival proved itself, stepped into the light and became its own thing. And it was a tremendous experience to be part of. After this year, I’m certain AudioFeed will be around for a while, and the bands I saw this year will be the ones spoken of in hushed and reverent tones 20 years from now, as the ones who were there at the beginning.

This isn’t to say that AudioFeed has completely broken free of its history. They maintained a nice balance this year of older, more respected acts and young, hungry newbies. But look at the older acts they brought in – the 77s have always been outsiders in the spiritual pop scene, often relegated to Gallery Stage with the other black sheep, but here they were the elder statesmen, headlining the first night. And Steve Taylor’s penchant for offending the Family Christian Bookstore crowd is a badge of honor to his fans here. Taylor’s a living legend to these people (and, of course, to me as well), and the perfect choice to close out the festival. The AudioFeeders had the good sense to once again invite Glenn Kaiser and his band, providing an indelible tie with Cornerstone, and a stamp of approval that carries a lot of weight with the older crowd.

But the lifeblood of AudioFeed is not that older crowd. It’s the kids, and while they respect Taylor and Mike Roe, they were there to see acts like Listener and ’68 and My Epic and Sean Michel and Von Strantz, new legends for a new generation. You’ve probably never heard of any of these bands – I hadn’t, before AudioFeed – but to the teenagers and twenty-somethings that made up the bulk of the audience over the July 4 weekend, these were the can’t-miss shows. These were the bands speaking their language, the artists connecting with the crowd the way the Choir and Daniel Amos and, yes, Steve Taylor and the 77s connect with me.

This is the future of the festival, and I’m glad the organizers realize this. Making a smaller, more convenient clone of Cornerstone would have been easy, and it would have ensured this fest’s doom within a few years. You’re not going to see Audio Adrenaline or Randy Stonehill or any of the other mainstays from the ‘70s and ‘80s Jesus Music movement playing AudioFeed. This is a whole new thing. This is where the beating heart of spiritual pop music lives now, and it’s a beautiful magic to behold.

* * * * *

It’s hard for me to explain to people why I go to a Christian music festival every year, given that I don’t share this faith. It’s sometimes hard to explain to myself. The most obvious reason is the music – there are more great bands per stage at AudioFeed (and Cornerstone before it) than I have found at pretty much any other festival. You think I’m exaggerating, but I saw more than 20 sets over the weekend, and shook my head at only one of them. (Rhett Walker Band, I’m looking at you. Well, I’m not looking at you anymore, and I’m happy about that.) As I’ll mention, I made a number of amazing discoveries this year, and reveled in many more old favorites, bands I just can’t see in any other context.

But it’s also the sense of community that draws me in. And this is another way in which AudioFeed feels different from Cornerstone. I built a nice group of friends at Cornerstone, but I rarely felt like I truly belonged – there was too much history, and there were too many people sizing me and my faith up. That could have been in my head, but it felt real. I felt like an interloper more often than I think I cared to admit. But I don’t feel that way at AudioFeed. Part of the reason may be that the kids who were always on the sidelines at Cornerstone are now running the show. But I feel like part of it is summed up in their mission statement on their website: the festival will create an atmosphere of love, “without regard for appearance, religious belief, race, societal status or any other thing that separates us from each other in the world at large.”

AudioFeed is not a preachy litmus test. That kind of Christianity seems to have no place there. In its place is an atmosphere of acceptance and joy. Several of the acts invited to play AudioFeed are not Christian – in the case of Homeless Gospel Choir, expressly so. But they, too, are accepted. Come, play, share your thoughts. We’re listening. Don’t get me wrong, Jesus is all over this festival. But it feels like he’s just hanging out with us, instead of watching and judging us. As a guy who is definitely down with the “love everyone” part of Jesus’ teachings, and dismayed when Christians don’t follow it, that atmosphere makes all the difference to me.

It’s still sometimes tough for me. Sean Michel, the intimidating bearded man who runs the main stage (called the Arkansas Stage), has a penchant for preaching in between the killer blues-rock he plays with his band. He picked that up from Glenn Kaiser, who divides his set evenly between sermons and explosive guitar theatrics. Both these men are genuine true believers, so it’s hard to begrudge them, but I have a hard time with it. They say all they need to with their songs, often more artfully. And the aforementioned Rhett Walker Band’s mix of Bible-thumping, Southern rock and knee-jerk patriotism made me want to walk out.

But for the most part, the spirituality on display comes from a subtle, sincere place, and not only can I handle that, I cherish it. I’m in this music thing to hear different perspectives, to see the world through the eyes of great artists. I don’t want them to hide who they are, any more than I want to attend a festival where I have to hide who I am. I have always responded to honest expressions and dissections of faith, despite the fact that I don’t share it. When I hear my friend Jeff Elbel launch into “Comfort Me,” I always think of it as a beautiful and deeply felt thing, easily his prettiest song. Tales from his life, like “Light it Up” and “Engine of Destruction,” are fun, but “Comfort Me” comes from a deep place, and it’s easy to tell.

That’s what I’m looking for, in music spiritual or not. I want it to mean something, to the artist and to me. AudioFeed is a place where, more often than not, the music means something deep and powerful to the people playing it, and that honesty connects with me. That is why I go every year. There’s just nothing else like it.

* * * * *

In what’s becoming a tradition, I shared a hotel room again with my dear friend, the aforementioned Jeff Elbel. We didn’t get to experience much of the festival together – Jeff’s a busy man at these things, running about offering his technical expertise and making everyone sound better, in addition to playing his own music. His band Ping played a strong set on Friday, drawing heavily from his terrific new album Gallery (on which you will find “Comfort Me”), and Jeff also backed up singer-songwriter Maron Gaffron and legendary guitarist Harry Gore for their own shows. Oh, and he played a midnight show on a local radio station and an impromptu set in the kids’ area. Whew!

I don’t think it’s even conceivable anymore to hold a fest like this without Jeff Elbel. He wasn’t even running a stage this year, and he still seemed like the hardest-working man there. And he still made time for a 2 a.m. visit to Merry Ann’s Diner with me, Jeffrey Kotthoff and Dave Dampier for a Haystack, still the most unhealthy breakfast sensation I have ever ingested. Thanks a ton to Jeff for making it possible for me to go to this festival, and for being such great company. And for covering a good Bob Dylan song.

* * * * *

1,500 words and I haven’t really talked about the music yet? Yikes.

I split my AudioFeed musical experiences into three groups this year – new discoveries, return engagements and old favorites. The new discoveries were many this year, far more than last year, and I found at least three bands I will follow for the rest of their careers.

One of those is Von Strantz, the full-band project of songwriter Jess Strantz. I saw Jess on her own before I saw her with the band, and both were striking, remarkable experiences. Her songs have a remarkable breadth to them, full of complex yet hummable melodies. (As proof, I’ve been humming one called “The Line” since first hearing it.) Her band consists of her on guitar and foot percussion, a bass player and three violins, with everyone harmonizing. And it’s a wonderful sound.

Von Strantz is currently releasing their debut full length, Narrative, in installments. The first chapter, a four-song EP called Troubled Souls, is pretty great, particularly the epic “Nothin’ Good In Me.” “All I Need” is another example of a worship-y song that comes from the heart. I quite like it. The second volume is out next month, and it contains “The Line,” so I’m pretty excited to get it. Von Strantz is my favorite discovery from AudioFeed 2014, and I’m thrilled to have happened upon them. Can’t wait to see where they go.

Similarly, the Decemberists-esque band Marah in the Mainsail knocked me out. A six-piece outfit with male and female singers, a horn player, a banjo player, and a guy using a gigantic rusty chain as a percussion instrument, Marah plays music that reminds me of being tossed about in a storm at sea. Their songs are dark – a new one called “Wendigo” contained the darkest line I heard at the festival: “I keep a pistol under my pillow, a rifle by my bed, I keep it loaded for self-defense, one bullet for my own head.” Their characters are haunted men and sinners, their music driving and intense.

Their EP, Devil Weeds and Dour Deeds, is pretty awesome. Opening with dark gospel tune “Devil in the Woods” to set the tone, the band smashes through six miniature epics with menace and relish. “Drag You Down” and “Headsmen” are amazing, but the whole EP bodes well for the future of this band. I’ll be paying attention.

The metal stage (called the Black Sheep stage) held only sporadic interest for me this year, but I did discover two interesting bands. War of Ages is a relatively long-running metalcore act with an indefatigable lead screamer, and they put on an incredible show. (Their new album, Supreme Chaos, comes out next week.) And My Epic was a huge surprise, a swirly ambient metal group with a real sense of art to what they do. I’ve ordered their new album Behold, and I’m expecting to like it a lot.

I can’t quite say I discovered Listener this year, since I did see them play last year. But this time, I actually, well, listened. They’re a spastic trio with a shouted-word madman in front, basically spitting out poems with furious abandon. I was so impressed with their set that I bought all three albums they had on sale (they have five), and the latest, Time is a Machine, is my favorite. I also can’t say I discovered Josh Scogin, since I’ve seen The Chariot play live before, but his current project ’68 was new to me. It’s a duo with drummer Michael McClellan, and it’s just as spastic and musically insane as his prior band. Debut album In Humor and Sadness is remarkable, diving down a whole bunch of musical rabbit holes.

Which brings me to Homeless Gospel Choir. I cannot overstate the impact that Homeless Gospel Choir’s short set had on the 200 or so people who saw it. Derek Zanetti is a funny-looking guy with a funny voice and a guitar, like a sarcastic version of the troubadours of old, and in 30 minutes, he carpet-bombed the entire festival. The set was even more intimate than intended, since sound problems forced Zanetti to bound off the stage and into the audience, playing unplugged while we all gathered around him.

Zanetti’s songs are angry things that pull no punches. To walk into this environment and play a song subtitled “Some Christians Are Nazis” was remarkably brave. He introduced every number as a protest song, and he wasn’t kidding – “With God On Our Side” lambasted U.S. theocratic foreign policy, for instance. In between songs, he openly shared stories about his recent nervous breakdown, and his friend suffering from PTSD. It was a moving, darkly funny, powerful performance. It was a bold choice for AudioFeed, too – Zanetti took on Christianity from outside it, aiming deep and drawing blood. He was absolutely riveting. I hope they have him back.

* * * * *

In addition to new discoveries, I was excited to see some of the bands I had discovered at AudioFeed last year. Noah James, for instance, is a big-voiced songwriter with a growing talent. This year he released an EP called Sun and Moon, and it’s a great next step for him. It’s a beautifully produced thing, and it shows how far he’s come as a writer. The gentle metaphor of “Heaven’s Far,” for example, stands in contrast to the clumsier early song “Not Your Type,” and bodes well for his future. And James can still sing the hell out of a song, as he proved in two riveting sets.

Sean Michel also has a new EP called Rise Again, though it is not yet available. The blues-rocker played three sets over three days at AudioFeed, despite an infection that kept his voice hoarse and strained. The new songs, particularly “Ain’t Turnin’ Back Now,” are fist-pumpers, and Michel’s compact trio played them with verve. In one of my favorite moments of the festival, Michel brought out Peter Furler (yes, of the Newsboys – more on him in a moment) and Jimmy Abegg to join him on a cover of “Rockin’ in the Free World.” It was pretty great.

Perhaps my favorite metal band in the world right now is Hope for the Dying. They play massively complex pieces that vacillate between melody and explosive shouting, and they play to tracks of orchestration, meaning they can’t screw up. There were no surprises this year during their set – no cover of “Don’t Stop Believing,” for instance, which they played at the final Cornerstone. Just phenomenally well-played technical metal. There’s a new album in the works, apparently, and I’m looking forward to it.

But the real draw for me in this category was Hushpad. I’ve talked about them before, but not at length, so I will now. Hushpad is the project of songwriter Matthew Welchel, and they fly their shoegaze flag proudly. They play reverb-drenched pop songs that build and swirl majestically, often evolving into furious jams and instrumental sections. They’ve been a different band every time I’ve seen them, and this time, it was a three-piece incarnation, Welchel with his two sons on bass and drums. They were terrific, particularly when they launched into “Fairy Girl” at the end. That song’s an epic, and they pulled it off marvelously with only three players.

I’ve been after Welchel to make a new album for a while, and this year he finally indulged me. The new Hushpad record is called Helas, and it’s surprising – it’s extremely low-key, fragile stuff. Hushpad live can be, in the words of a certain car manufacturer, a driving experience. But about 80 percent of Helas is delicate, expansive, almost tender. Welchel does up the tempos here and there, most notably on single “Tilt,” but he mostly opts for the slow and gorgeous. It’s an album that clearly means a lot to its creator, and it sounds largely crafted in solitude. The beautiful reverbed guitars are everywhere, Welchel’s voice is earnest and vulnerable, and songs like “Pacific Ocean Blue” and “Lullabye” and “A Waiting Song” achieve a tremendous beauty, despite their small scope. Helas is not what I expected, but I like it a great deal, and more each time I listen.

* * * * *

And finally, there are the old favorites, the hooks that draw me to AudioFeed. Despite its proximity, it’s entirely possible I may not have gone to that first AudioFeed Festival if the Choir had not been playing. I said earlier that the organizers are doing a great job of balancing the bigger names with the smaller acts waiting to be discovered. The bigger names again served as the festival’s tie to the past, and once again, that proved essential this year.

Thursday was blues-rock night, with Sean Michel and Glenn Kaiser both paving the way for the great 77s. I’ve waxed ecstatic more than once in this column about the 77s and their leader, the extraordinary Mike Roe, and they did not disappoint. Roe on his own is often quiet and meditative, but when he gets together with drummer Bruce Spencer and bassist Mark Harmon, he bursts forth as a rock guitarist without peer. I could listen to Roe play for days and not be bored. The show leaned heavily on the bluesiest of the trio’s records, including the awesome Tom Tom Blues, with Roe dropping jaws on “Outskirts” and a sloppy yet amazing, show-stopping performance of “Woody.” There ain’t nothing in the world like a full-on 77s rock show, and I’m always grateful when I get to see one.

The 77s have a new album, and in fact Mike Roe does too. Both records are packaged together, and collectively called Gimme a Kickstart And a Phrase or Two. It’s a covers project, with all songs chosen by backers of Roe’s latest Kickstarter campaign, and some of the choices are positively amazing. (The band jammed on one of them, the Animals’ “Bury My Body,” during their set.) I’ll deliver a full review of this once it’s available to buy online. But suffice it to say that it’s a thoroughly successful project, and if you’re a fan of this band (or even if you’re not), you’re going to want one of these.

The big guns were kept in reserve until Saturday, though. I feel like I’ve been waiting my entire life to see Steve Taylor play live. I’ve been a fan for as long as I can remember – sneering sarcasm went a long way with younger me, and Taylor’s ‘80s catalog has that in spades. Meltdown and On the Fritz drew me in, but it’s the extraordinary, dark, amazing I Predict 1990 that has stayed with me. It’s one of the finest records I know. Taylor went on to form Chagall Guevara, one of the most underrated bands of the 1990s, and then give us Squint, another solo masterpiece, before checking out of music in the mid-‘90s. He quit touring while I was in college, and I sincerely thought I would never get to see him play.

Naturally, you could have knocked me over by breathing hard when I heard that Taylor had launched a Kickstarter campaign for a new album and tour. We don’t have that album yet – it’s called Goliath, and he’s still working on it – but man, we got the tour, and I can check another great thing off the “to-do-before-I-die” list. Taylor’s new band is called the Perfect Foil, and it includes legendary guitarist Jimmy Abegg, bassist John Mark Painter (of Fleming and John and a bunch of Ben Folds records) and drummer Peter Furler, formerly of the Newsboys.

Furler and his new band played a set on Saturday as well, as a warmup, and I will admit to being worried about it. Amazingly, though, the guy from the Newsboys walked on stage and tore it down. He ripped through a series of compact melodic rock songs from his new album Sun and Shield, and even reinvigorated a couple Newsboys songs. I’ve never been a fan of Furler’s work, but he impressed me. (And I later shared a hotel elevator with him, and he was unfailingly nice.)

But Steve Taylor… holy hell. Taylor and the band handily delivered my favorite show of the fest. The man is 56 years old, and he still has the boundless energy of a preteen. He shimmied and shook, danced and did a freaking cartwheel, and never missed a beat vocally. He’s still one of the most distinctive singers on the planet. Every old song he played was a classic, from “On the Fritz” to “I Wanna Be a Clone” to “The Lament of Desmond R.G. Frederick-Underwood IV” to an astonishing one-two encore of “We Don’t Need No Colour Code” and “Hero.” And the new songs, well, they were awesome. Punky, sharp, full of energy and wit. “Rubberneck” is gonna be great on the record, and I loved loved loved “Goliath” and “Only a Ride” and “A Life Preserved” and… hell, all of them.

Taylor even dropped a cover of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies.” Yes, you read that right. It was an incredible show, and I am beyond grateful to have seen it.

But that isn’t how my AudioFeed 2014 ended. The final show of the festival came courtesy of harpist Timbre and her band, and I couldn’t have asked for a better way to say goodbye. Timbre’s music is ethereal and complex, particularly the new songs slated for double record Sun and Moon sometime next year, and there’s an air of magic to what she does. Backed by a violinist and a drummer, she played and sang her heart out, despite the fact that the clock had crept past 1 a.m. It was glorious, and when it was over, I surveyed the remnants of AudioFeed and it felt like home.

That’s honestly all I could ever ask for. If I am welcomed to this festival, I will attend every year. It already feels more like my own than Cornerstone ever did for me. But AudioFeed is not Cornerstone. It’s already, in its second year, its own special, fantastic thing. I’m going to go to this for as long as they let me. I’m excited to watch it grow and evolve. It’s only going to get better from here.

* * * * *

Whoa. 3,800 words. OK then. Next week, we catch up with a bunch of recent releases. 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 am back from the AudioFeed Festival, and man, what a great time. It’s been a while since I’ve had a weekend this lovely. But listen. I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to tell you all about it yet. I’m still working on the AudioFeed post, in which I will review something like 10 new records and 20 live sets. These things take a while. Next week. Probably.

This week, let’s talk about the studio.

Many of my favorite artists use the studio the way it was meant to be used – as an instrument. Brian Wilson and George Martin were arguably the first to think of it that way, instead of as a room with microphones, and they came up with some of the most enduring studio creations in pop music history. Before the Beatles and Pet Sounds, studio albums were usually just live recordings without an audience. The psychedelic ‘60s changed all that, with Wilson, the Fab Four and Frank Zappa at the forefront. (Seriously, have you heard Lumpy Gravy? That thing came out in 1967.)

Since then, most of my favorite albums have used the studio as a musical instrument on par with guitars and drums. I’ve recently bought the new, definitive version of XTC’s Skylarking, one of only a handful of perfect albums I can name, and the band (along with producer Todd Rundgren) crafted this thing using all the tools at their disposal. It’s a labor of love – making an album this detailed is an intensive process, but worth it.

It’s no coincidence that only a few years before Skylarking, the members of XTC stopped touring. The Beatles did the same in 1966, just before embarking on their greatest run of studio albums. The artists making full use of the studio are the ones drawing a sharp distinction between their recordings and their live act. This is a risky proposition if you’re known for that live act, as the Grateful Dead were. No one would argue that their studio records are where it’s at, particularly their latter ones like Go to Heaven.

Similarly, Phish’s reputation lies with its live show. In many ways, there’s really no reason for them to keep making new records. They could tour for the rest of their lives, writing new songs and playing them for appreciative audiences, and never set foot in a studio again. So the fact that they keep doing it can only mean one thing – they like to. Granted, they’re not churning them out – it’s been five years since their reunion record, Joy – but these days, when Phish makes an album, they make an album. They’ve long made that distinction between the studio and the stage, and with their 12th record, Fuego, they’ve made it more emphatically than ever.

The story of Fuego actually begins last Halloween in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Phish has a Halloween tradition of covering an entire album, but this time, they decided to time travel, debuting the songs that would become Fuego instead. They then offered the show for download from their website. Fans pored over the jammy, stripped-back renditions of these new tunes for months before the album was officially released, so when they plunked down their cash for Fuego, they probably figured they knew how it would sound.

Surprise! Fuego is the glossiest, most layered Phish album ever, a pure studio creation. The band worked with Bob Ezrin, who has produced everyone from Pink Floyd to Peter Gabriel, and rarely left a record sounding raw and live. This album has horns, choirs of backing vocals, loads of different keyboard sounds for Page McConnell, vocal effects, and an overall sheen that practically reflects light. You won’t notice it right away, since this record actually opens with the live version of the epic title track recorded last Halloween (with backing vocal overdubs and general studio reworking). But beginning with track two, “The Line,” this becomes the most studio of Phish’s studio albums.

To be clear, this is never a bad thing. “The Line,” like most of this album, is marvelous. It may be the most successful of Phish’s forays into streamlined pop, in fact, with its eminently hummable chorus (complete with “ooh-ooh-oohs”) and its subtly splendid performance by McConnell on piano. If you think Phish can’t write coherent, concise songs, you should hear this. (And every album dating back to at least Billy Breathes.) The quartet locks into a shambling groove on “Devotion to a Dream,” which ends with a vintage Trey Anastasio guitar solo (and some gorgeous vocal layering) before McConnell’s “Halfway to the Moon” kicks in, all menacing chords and dark contours. McConnell shines on this one.

There are 10 songs on Fuego, and none of them are out-and-out clunkers. In fact, this album is a good example of how far they’ve come as a band of songwriters. They began as a prog-jam outfit, writing complex, winding odes and then stretching them to half an hour on stage. In the ‘90s, they embraced simplicity, and it’s taken them half a dozen records to evolve into the hybrid they’ve become. Their songs still aim for directness – there’s nothing complicated about “Sing Monica” – but they’re more sophisticated, more interesting, more apt to take fascinating little turns. Mike Gordon’s “555,” for instance, is the kind of loose funk tune Phish has been playing for 15 years, but it skirts around a neat chorus and some tasty horns.

“Waiting All Night” is the perfect example of the live/studio dichotomy. On stage, it’s a ramshackle bossa nova, complete with those not-quite-there harmonies the band specializes in. Anastasio is tasked with both keeping the strummy structure going and playing these swell ascending lines, and he can’t do both, and when his solo begins, the rest of the song kind of falls to pieces. But on Fuego, the song is smooth and lush, the harmonies perfect and soothing, the solo a splendid complement to everything else. It comes to life. All by itself, this song is proof that the more layered direction was the right one for these songs.

“Wombat” is the only almost-misfire, a short and silly nonsense ramble, but the studio version is a little marvel, intertwining vocal parts with Mike Gordon’s athletic bass lines and stings from the horn section. But those who know the Halloween show are going to miss Abe Vigoda’s presence here. Fuego rights itself at the end with “Wingsuit,” a simply masterful six-minute lullaby that builds up into a soaring ray of light. I like this one on stage, but it should sound like this, huge and full and open. When that final solo starts, it’s like flying. It’s simply great stuff, and the studio rendition gives it the weight it deserves.

Some might decry Fuego as too slick, too glossed up. But I think Phish is making a point here – even a band known for its live work understands that the studio is a different animal, and if you embrace it, you can accomplish things you simply can’t on stage. By delivering live versions of these songs first, Phish showed just how far a good studio treatment could take them. Some will like the live takes better, but for me, Fuego is one of this band’s finest efforts, and its rich sound is a big part of that. As I said, they don’t need to make records any more, but I’m glad they chose to make this one, and to make it this way.

Next week, AudioFeed. For real. 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.

If you’ve been reading this column for a while, you’ve probably realized that you won’t see a lot of hip-hop reviews here.

There are a couple reasons for this, most of them lame excuses for my lack of knowledge and excitement for the form. Just this week I was having a conversation with some friends about Kendrick Lamar’s hyped-to-the-skies Good Kid M.A.D.D. City, an album these friends quite like. I’ve heard the album a couple times, and it hasn’t made any impression on me at all. Lamar sounds to me like a skilled rhymer, but his songs and beats strike me as pretty average, and his “tales from the street” just get old after a while. There are only so many songs about motherfuckers shooting motherfuckers that I can take.

Maybe that’s cultural. Maybe the fact that I don’t know any motherfuckers shooting any other motherfuckers means I can’t relate to this record. I have no doubt this is Lamar’s real experience, that there is truth in his verses, and I agree that it’s an important perspective to shine a spotlight on. As a work of pop music, though, it just bores me. I have the same thought about most hip-hop. First minute: “That’s a cool beat, and I like the hook.” Third minute: “This song has done absolutely nothing since that first minute.” Bored.

Is there rap I like? Sure. I’m a big supporter of Kanye West’s early work, I think the first four De La Soul albums are unimpeachable, I have huge respect for Nas and Mos Def, I was beyond excited to get that second Deltron 3030 album last year, and Eminem can still occasionally knock me out. And I do realize that this entire paragraph makes me sound like the “cool dad” trying to talk to his kids about music. “Why don’t we put on some Bay City Rollers? Now that’s music!” It just isn’t in my wheelhouse.

But every once in a while I will hear a rap album I love. Lately, that’s been happening whenever The Roots decide to release something into the world. I will freely admit that I don’t have the knowledge to select the greatest rap band in the world. But if it’s not The Roots, I would like to hear who it is. Over 11 albums, the Philadelphia crew has explored the boundaries of live-instrument hip-hop, throwing in jazz and soul and half a dozen other musical influences, and that’s not even counting their killer record with John Legend a few years ago, and their eclectic collaboration with Elvis Costello last year. Can you name me another hip-hop outfit who would make a full album with Elvis Costello?

The Roots, led by their gregarious drummer ?uestlove, do whatever they want. Lately, that’s meant more compact and more bizarre records, culminating in 2012’s mini-opera Undun, which I justly praised here. But none of their recent efforts will prepare you for their new one, blessed with the awesome title …And Then You Shoot Your Cousin. It clocks in at a scant 33 minutes, and is another conceptual piece, this one tracking several exaggerated characters through the violence of their lives, and the spiritual consequences. It is easily the most dense collection of tones this band has released, and to me, the most interesting.

It’s also, for many, their most off-putting, particularly those who enjoy the band on The Tonight Show. There are no hits on here, no moments when the band kicks in and Black Thought rips off a clever and fun verse. Instead, this record plays like a single song, full of dissonance and dread. It opens with two minutes of Nina Simone singing “Theme From Middle of the Night,” and it sets the tone – the next two tracks, “Never” and “When the People Cheer,” are the closest this record comes to traditional hip-hop, and it’s still filtered through shattered glass. There are jarring strings on “Never,” a strangely ugly piano line on “Black Rock,” a minute of pure noise called “Dies Irae,” and on and on. Never does this record sound like you’d expect.

Black Thought welcomes auxiliary Roots members Greg Porn and Dice Raw to lay down some of the hardest verses here, the ones that sound like sendups of gangsta, and while they go over the line every once in a while (“All I want from her is an abortion”), The Roots contrast these moments with the spirituality absent from these characters’ lives. They sample Mary Lou Williams’ “The Devil” (“The devil looks a lot like you and I…”) and, on “Understand,” sing about man searching for God, then running away when he finds him.

There’s a trilogy that makes up most of the back half, and it’s the finest material on this record, illustrating the band’s points. “The Coming” sets a lovely hook from Mercedes Martinez against some delicate piano by Kamal Gray, and into some dark, dissonant strings arranged by jazzhead DD Jackson. (This is the most Zappa-esque moment on an album full of Zappa-esque touches.) It’s like tumbling into hell, and “The Dark” lives up to it, the three rappers ripping through the ugliest verses on the record while the distorted electric piano reverberates under ?uestlove’s slow beat. “The law of gravity meets the law of averages, ain’t no sense in attempting to civilize savages…I’d rather O.D. than be the next O.G.”

“The Dark” leaves you without hope – it’s suffocating, airless. That’s what makes follow-up “The Unraveling” so powerful. Singer Raheem DeVaughn cries out for rebirth over Gray’s piano, and then Black Thought gives us the album’s best verse, making us feel the yearning for redemption. “I’m somebody new today, free of my sins today…” It’s crushingly beautiful, and it leads into the joyous “Tomorrow,” the rap-free finale. DeVaughn sings a song of gratitude for life, regardless of circumstance. These lives are hard, the band is saying, but life is precious, and redemption is worth it. Just check out the lovely ascending piano chords that sign this record off.

The Roots are one of a kind, and they keep proving it. They’ve never made an album as bizarre and as focused as …And Then You Shoot Your Cousin – this may well be their best work. It makes me think that perhaps I am not the problem. If more hip-hop sounded like this, had this much imagination and artistry behind it, then I would like more hip-hop. As it is, The Roots are a rare and wonderful thing, and this record is a miniature masterpiece.

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If The Roots are justly celebrated for the new places they take the art form, then Atmosphere should be too.

Unfortunately, Slug and Ant, the Minneapolis duo that comprise Atmosphere, have largely labored in obscurity for more than 15 years. Their new album Southsiders is their seventh, not counting a slew of EPs, and it continues a string of conscientious, thought-provoking collections from these two. It also continues Ant’s style of fairly minimal beats, making room for Slug’s rhymes – there aren’t a lot of musical tricks on here, just solid foundations.

So why do I like this so much? The answer is Slug (real name Sean Daley). He’s one of the most literate rappers out there, and one of the most positive. Southsiders finds him in a more settled place – “I still kick it with angels, the difference is instead of the bar I’m at my kitchen table” – that serves as an extension of the new-father sentiments of 2011’s The Family Sign. I came aboard this train late, but I like this Slug a lot more than the angry young man of God Loves Ugly. This Slug is grateful for what he has, and determined to hold on to every day, even if he spends those days playing Legos with his kid.

It’s no accident that this album is called Southsiders – Slug is referencing the south side of Minneapolis, where he and Ant have lived for most of their lives, and this album is largely about knowing one place very well, and building a life. It’s also concerned with death, and what we leave behind for our loved ones. On the oddly titled “Kanye West,” Slug raps about finding the one love of your life, and having something to live for – which, naturally, makes him think about how he would want that love to react to his death. “She said she wanna find a cure for death, I know she meant that in the purest sense, but when I finally die, put on your Sunday best and throw your hands in the sky like Kanye West…”

“Fortunate” feels like the record’s mission statement, beginning as it does with these lines: “I highly doubt that y’all think about sex anywhere near as often as I think about death, go ahead and shout at the top of your lungs but don’t wake the baby up, we got a lot to get done.” The song is about what he hopes to leave behind: “I wanna leave the planet better off than it was handed to me,” he raps, and then admits “I don’t wanna leave my family tree behind, I don’t want no one to miss me like I miss you…” In the end, he declares “we’re not lucky, but we’re fortunate.” Death is ever present, but life is worth it.

Nowhere is that more poignantly stated than on “Flicker,” Slug’s tribute to his late friend and fellow MC Michael “Eyedea” Larsen. As Kim Manning sings “one little flicker of light can erase the dark,” Slug raps about how the guilt he feels – “It stays in my head that I was on a stage when you were laying in bed, body was discovered by your own mother” – and the perils of writing a tribute to another songwriter. “So I wrote these words to describe what I cry about but I’m certain if you were here right now, you’d ridicule these lyrics, you’d hate this chorus, you’d probably tell me that the concept is too straightforward.” It’s a funny and touching way to bid farewell, and probably the best piece of writing on this album.

Southsiders is the sound of a formerly angry man realizing what he has to live for, and celebrating it. “Everybody difficult, everybody simple, we all on death row, we all gonna tip toe,” Slug raps in the jaunty closer “Let Me Know That You Know What You Want Now.” “Get a taste of your soul when you hold breath, we act like we got a whole lot of road left, so don’t mind if I drive with the top down…” It’s a fine sentiment to leave on. Southsiders is a rap album like few that I’ve heard, capturing an honest writer at a fascinating point in his life. Again, if more hip-hop were like this, I would like more hip-hop.

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Next week, thoughts on the second annual Audiofeed Festival, and catching up on reviews with Phish, the Antlers, Camper Van Beethoven and others. 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 like all kinds of music for all kinds of reasons.

People have a hard time believing that I enjoy angry music, but sometimes I can get pretty angry. I need bands like Sepultura and Strapping Young Lad (and yes, like Linkin Park) in my life, for those moments when I feel like ripping the goddamn world in half. I need bands like the Cure and Lost in the Trees for those days when I feel so sad that I can’t imagine making it through another sunrise. I need emotionally and musically complex artists like Sufjan Stevens to kick my brain into another gear and make me consider the world in a different way.

But there isn’t much I enjoy more than beauty. It’s one of the main reasons I’m as into music as I am – when music aims for transcendent beauty, it does it for me like just about nothing else. Pretty music doesn’t actually need to do anything but be pretty for me to appreciate it. I love songs of simple devotion, songs about opening oneself to the wonder of the world. I love songs about exquisite sadness – see Dan Wilson’s “Disappearing,” which still has my vote as the year’s most beautiful song. I even love pretty songs about nothing at all. Beauty is its own reward.

So when a band or an artist goes into the studio with the goal of making the most beautiful thing of which they are capable, I am always on board. Below you’ll find my mid-year report, essentially my top 10 list in progress, and you’ll see that Beck’s Morning Phase continues to hold on to a prominent spot, as does Elbow’s The Take-Off and Landing of Everything. Both are there because they’re incredibly beautiful. You’ll find a couple others that have made their way onto the list for that same reason, including one of the two I have on tap this week.

That one is First Aid Kit’s gem of a new record, Stay Gold. I’m not sure how Joanna and Klara Soderberg, the Swedish sisters at the heart of this band, decided on their collective name, but it’s the worst thing about them. The youthful siblings – Joanna is 23, Klara 21 – write and play delicate folk music, elevated by their intertwining voices. When these two harmonize, it’s like a warm summer day, like sunlight breaking through an open window.

Those voices have always been the feature of First Aid Kid, and I reservedly liked their first two albums, 2010’s The Big Black and the Blue and 2012’s The Lion’s Roar. But Stay Gold is another thing entirely, a fuller and more complete work. Producer Mike Mogis has incorporated strings and pedal steel guitars, adding a widescreen twang that reminds me of the best of Neko Case’s records. There’s nothing tentative about this album – it’s a remarkably assured and confident thing, particularly for two artists so young, and its wide-open soul is older and wiser than you would expect.

The tone of this record is consistent, from start to finish – it’s full of heartbreak and bewilderment, suffused with loss, and its melodies are high and lonesome. “Shattered and Hollow” is the perfect example. It’s low-key, nimble acoustic guitars dancing above a bed of pianos and droning synths, and though it begins with the line “I am in love and I am lost, but I’d rather be broken than empty,” it eventually blooms into a gorgeous chorus. “We are gonna get out of here, run from all our fears,” the sisters sing, taking that glorious melody through the sky.

On it goes, song after lovely song, and each time you think they’ve run out of splendid vocal melodies, they surprise you again. “The Bell” is a highlight, with its subtle trilling flutes, as is the gossamer “Fleeting One” and the piano-led closer “A Long Time Ago.” The music is so lovely that it may take you a few listens to notice how heartbroken it all is: “I know I lost you a long time ago” is the final line, and the summary. But when the sadness is this beautiful, you won’t mind. Stay Gold doesn’t redefine First Aid Kit – in truth, Mogis has simply added more meat to their already lovely bones. It’s their best and prettiest record, and if they keep making records that are their best and prettiest, they’ll be around for a long time.

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Long Beach, California’s This Wild Life is a study in subverting expectations and prejudices.

First off, they’re on Epitaph Records. Second, the two guys in the band – Kevin Jordan and Anthony Del Grosso – are exactly what you’d picture when you imagine a band on Epitaph. They are covered in tattoos, Jordan has an epic black beard, and Del Grosso has huge lobe-stretching earrings. You’d be forgiven for expecting a loud-yet-melodic punk record, like so many others that look just like this, and for a while, that’s what This Wild Life delivered.

But then a funny thing happened: they decided to become more beautiful. Now they’re an acoustic duo, with some occasional drums and strings, and they write sweet little ballads. Their Epitaph debut, Clouded, was produced by Aaron Marsh of Copeland, another artist who aims for the gorgeous more often than not. And while it does sound like a punk band gone acoustic, song-wise, it’s a promising start.

There’s a lot of Dashboard Confessional and the Early November on this record, and it sometimes gets bigger than you’d expect, but it largely remains strummy and pretty. Jordan has a high, strong voice, and Del Grosso harmonizes nicely with him, like the Everly Brothers raised on Blink-182. The songs are all straightforward, but it wouldn’t take too many listens to “Over It” to get it stuck in your head. (I’m a fan of the plinking pianos that come in on the bridge, certainly Marsh’s touch.) And when they hit on a fine melody, as they do on “No More Bad Days,” they drive it home.

The lyrics are, again, pretty typical, but unlike First Aid Kid, the This Wild Life guys make sure to inject a healthy dose of hope. It’s easier to do in this setting than in the louder pop-punk this band used to traffic in. We get a taste of that at the end – the amps are cranked up for “405,” a fine exit ramp for an album full of potential. I appreciate any decision that leads to more beauty, so I’ll be watching these guys to see if they keep making those decisions.

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It’s hard to believe the year is half over, but here we are.

Below you’ll find my mid-year report. If you’re not familiar with this feature, let me fill you in: for a few years now, I’ve been giving quarterly reports on my top 10 list in progress. It’s fun for me to commit to choices in print like this, and I hope it’s fun for you to read those choices. I talked a bit about what you’re about to see above, so I’ll stop babbling now. If you were to put a gun to my head and force me to write up a top 10 list right now, on June 25, this is what it would look like:

#10. Tori Amos, Unrepentant Geraldines.
#9. The Roots, …And Then You Shoot Your Cousin.
#8. First Aid Kid, Stay Gold.
#7. Nickel Creek, A Dotted Line.
#6. Andrea Dawn, Doll.
#5. Dan Wilson, Love Without Fear.
#4. Coldplay, Ghost Stories.
#3. Elbow, The Take-Off and Landing of Everything.
#2. Beck, Morning Phase.
#1. The Choir, Shadow Weaver.

As I said in March, I think this is a pretty great list. I’ll explain next week why I love that Roots album. I’m more than pleased that I can include a Tori Amos album again, at long last, and even more pleased that the Choir has roared back with such an extraordinary disc. Y’all should buy it. We’ll see if they can hold on to the top spot come the end of September.

That’s it for this week. In seven days, I’ll take a detour into hip-hop land with the Roots and Atmosphere. 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.