Apparently we’re getting the new Choir album next week.

This is the world we’re living in now. The band finished mastering their new record, Shadow Weaver, early this week. According to the email they sent out to Kickstarter backers, they’re going to live with it for a couple days, and then get it to us within a week. That is, quite frankly, bonkers. The lead time used to be months between final mastering and release, largely because the middlemen needed to be involved, complicating the entire procedure. And sure, it’s still going to be a few weeks before those of us who still love physical media get our CDs, but that’s nothing.

Essentially, Shadow Weaver is going to go from final band approval to first listen by the fans in about seven days. That is all kinds of astonishing to me, perhaps even more astonishing than the fact that this record exists at all. (A 15th album from a 30-year-old band that rarely sold more than a few thousand copies of anything? That defies all the rules of the music industry as it once was.) The Internet has made it possible for fans to directly connect with the artists they love, and hear new music almost as soon as the band finishes it. As someone once said, it’s a good, great world.

And hey, we’re gonna get the new Choir album next week! How awesome is that?

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We talked a little last week about artists evolving beyond a signature sound. Longtime fans will forgive me for this, I hope, but I thought that’s what had happened with Chris Thile.

I’m a relative newcomer to Thile’s work, although it’s clear even to me that he’s one of the best mandolin players alive. I got into him through albums like Deceiver and the first Punch Brothers disc, and I enjoyed that band’s genre-busting third record, Who’s Feeling Young Now, enough to name it the third-best record of 2012. As such, I’d been thinking of his albums with newgrass trio Nickel Creek as Thile’s “old work” – worthy, but he’d clearly grown past it to the less traditional stuff he’s been turning out with his new group.

So news of a Nickel Creek reunion initially surprised me. Looking back, though, it shouldn’t have. Yes, Nickel Creek – Thile with Sean and Sara Watkins – has more of a bedrock in traditional bluegrass, but they’ve always been more innovative than they’re given credit for, and their new album A Dotted Line finds them incorporating all that extracurricular growth into something warm and familiar and wonderful.

It’s immediately clear what has drawn these three back to work with one another again – their alchemy is undeniable. The harmonies are like honey. Actually, they’re like some Platonic ideal of honey, like the most perfectly sweet honey you’ve ever tasted. These three voices were meant to go together, and they intertwine so gracefully that metaphors completely fail to capture it. If you’ve heard Nickel Creek, you know what I mean – they’ve always sounded like this, and it’s lovely.

If you have doubts that the band can slip right back into their gorgeous sound, just listen to “Destination,” which is incidentally one of the best pop songs of 2014 so far. Sara Watkins takes lead on this tune, but it’s the three voices that carry it, particularly through the splendid “moving on” sections. It’s so propulsive that you’ll forget that there’s no percussion on it – guitar, mandolin and fiddle, and that’s it. That lineup serves them well, whether they’re skipping through a more bluegrass-folk number like “21st of May” or dropping something with more of a rock feel, like opener “Rest of My Life.” They do all these things with graceful aplomb.

It’s not just the voices, though, as the two instrumentals attest. While “Elise” is a Thile composition, “Elephant in the Corn” is a group effort, and it sounds like it. The song travels up hills and down valleys over its five minutes, and showcases not only how fantastic all three are at their chosen instruments, but how well they play together. One track later, they lock into a tremendous groove for the angsty “You Don’t Know What’s Going On,” and it’s like liquid lightning.

The two covers on A Dotted Line are the best illustration of this band’s depth. In what will probably draw the most controversy, they tackle “Hayloft,” originally by Canadian band Mother Mother. You can hear the original here. Now imagine that on bluegrass instruments, with some thundering percussion – yes, percussion – shoving it along. It’s the most out-there thing they’ve done, and it’s amazing. On the other end of the spectrum, they close the record with Sam Phillips’ “Where Is Love Now,” and their take is simple, traditional and tender. Sara Watkins sings like an angel, and her fiddle is so beautiful it will bring tears.

Somewhere between these two extremes lies Nickel Creek, a band that deserves to be known as more than Thile’s other group. I’m not sure anyone but me has ever thought of them that way, but A Dotted Line has convinced me how wrong-headed that notion is. If Thile ends up splitting his time between Punch Brothers and Nickel Creek from now on, I won’t object. This is the best kind of reunion album – one that makes a case not only for the continuing prospects of the band, but for its legacy as a whole. This is Nickel Creek, and they’re fantastic.

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I don’t usually go in for “best we’ve ever made” proclamations when a band releases a new album, and I generally feel like a chump when I do buy into them. I’m happy that you’re happy with your new stuff, but let’s be honest, you probably don’t have the best of perspectives on your own catalog right now. You’re high on your own creative process.

Case in point: Peter Mulvey’s new album, Silver Ladder. Mulvey’s a hidden treasure, a folksy guy with a dark side and a strong sense of innovation. I first heard him in 1997, when his then-record label sent me a copy of a long-out-of-print EP called Goodbye Bob. The first track was an acoustic cover of Prince’s “Sign O’ the Times,” and the last track an epic poem called “The Dreams.” I was hooked, and I’ve followed his work ever since.

So when Mulvey said Silver Ladder was the best thing he’d ever made, I immediately gave to his Kickstarter drive to support it. The fundraising effort was phenomenally successful – he asked for $23,000 and got $62,247 – and he hopes to use that money to promote this record to the hilt. That’s all well and good, but now that Silver Ladder is here, I have to say, Mulvey was wrong. It’s a solid enough effort, but it’s certainly nowhere near the best work he’s done.

The first and only time I saw Peter Mulvey play was in 1998 at Raoul’s Roadside Attraction in Portland, Maine. It was the night he wrote one of his best songs, “The Trouble With Poets.” As part of his between-song banter, Mulvey revealed that he really didn’t like playing the guitar, and had to come up with new ways of conquering the instrument. This led him to things like “If Love is Not Enough,” a sorta-bluegrass fret-buzz workout, and that aforementioned downtuned Prince cover.

Listening to Silver Ladder, I think Mulvey has become comfortable playing guitar. He isn’t trying to innovate with it as much as he once did, and he’s settled into a more traditional style. This lines up with his recent work with folk collective Redbird, and last year’s two-CD collection of standards, The Good Stuff and Chaser. He’s been in much more of a classic folk mode lately, and the first few songs on Silver Ladder bear that out. “Lies You Forgot You Told” and “You Don’t Have to Tell Me” are jaunty yet simple things, and “Sympathies” is built around a pretty worn-out rock riff.

Things get better, but the entire affair is slicker than Mulvey’s been in the past. Silver Ladder was produced by Chuck Prophet, who also plays a bunch of instruments on it, and it’s the first one in a long time that does not feature David “Goody” Goodrich on guitar, a cornerstone of Mulvey’s sound. It’s all enjoyable, but it rarely sounds like the Peter Mulvey I know and love. There are definitely highlights, particularly the menacing “What Else Was It” and the folksy “Trempealeau,” but there are an equal number of simple ditties like “Back in the Wind” that drag the record down.

The final three tracks show an imagination that the rest of the record lacks. “Copenhagen Airport” is practically an instrumental. “If You Shoot at a King You Must Kill Him” is the album’s finest moment, a stream-of-consciousness dream diary that feels like an epic poem. “Landfall” is a brief coda featuring lovely fiddle by Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek. These tracks burst with potential, and if Mulvey and Prophet had followed this path further, I would probably like Silver Ladder more than I do.

I don’t want to give the impression that this is a bad record. It’s enjoyable stuff, for the most part. But it’s not among Mulvey’s best work, particularly when you consider how great his most recent albums (like Letters From a Flying Machine) have been. Perhaps it’s a case of heightened expectations, but I wanted more from this record, and didn’t get it. Silver Ladder is fine, but Mulvey’s done much better.

* * * * *

Next week, The Choir. THE CHOIR. 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 starting to get what Bryan Scary is doing.

Here’s a guy who made his name crafting huge, complex pop opera epics, with a sense of importance tempered nicely by an equal and opposite sense of goofiness. His last record, the mammoth Daffy’s Elixir, was a 70-minute monsterpiece, a Wild West-themed concept record full of so many melodic twists and turns that it should have come with a Google map. It was phenomenal, but if you wanted to absorb it all, it took several full and immersive listens.

So imagine my confusion when Scary unveiled his new project, Evil Arrows. Under this banner, Scary has released two (so far) short EPs of almost miniscule pop gems, most of which are remarkably straightforward affairs. The unassuming nature of this project is almost cute. But if Scary is trying to make his work more accessible, both by stripping back his proggy nature and by presenting his new material in easily digestible chunks, it’s definitely working. Where Daffy’s Elixir was daunting, the two Evil Arrows EPs are inviting.

The second, simply titled EP2, is another delight. Four of these songs star the other Arrows, Graham Norwood and Everet Almond, while the other two were completely performed by Scary. Once again, you’d probably be hard-pressed to tell which is which. These songs are tiny – the longest is 3:36, the shortest 1:44 – and they walk on stage, do their business, and leave. As a ‘60s-inspired pop wonder, “Last Living Doll” is perfection. “New Age Holiday” is similarly vintage-sounding, and deceptively hummable. “Shadow Lovers” brings us forward into ‘70s glam rock, and it’s loud and proud. Closer “Lady Brain” is a slower rocker, but an effective one.

And again, I’m left wanting more. The Evil Arrows project has so far yielded just more than 30 minutes of material, and it’s all superb. I hope Scary keeps these gleaming little joys coming, and he eventually collects them into one massive pop wonderama of an album. I’ll be first in line to buy a copy.

* * * * *

Speaking of pop wonderama, here’s Foster the People.

I resisted the debut album from Mark Foster’s project for as long as I could, simply because I’m allergic to hype. But “Pumped Up Kicks” finally wormed its way in, and stayed there, and when I bought Torches, I found that it was positively bursting with similarly infectious electro-pop. None of it pushed the envelope as much as “Kicks,” possibly the catchiest song about school shootings ever penned, but tracks like “Helena Beat” and “Call It What You Want” made me smile like a Joker victim. Torches is a solid, danceable debut, and I enjoyed it immensely.

That sort of thing is really hard to sustain, though. Foster essentially had two choices for a follow-up: he could create a clone of Torches, churning out more move-your-feet frothiness, and hope that diminishing returns did not set in, or he could try to deepen his project and diversify his styles. He’s taken the latter tack on Supermodel, the second Foster the People album, and it works for the most part. Unfortunately, what he’s decided to diversify into is a fairly standard indie-rock band.

While Torches could have passed for a one-man project, Supermodel is defiantly the work of a band, and that’s the first major difference you’ll notice. It’s still suffused with electronic beats and studio goodness, but many of these songs sound here like they probably will when performed live. This is good and bad – the quirky electro-pop that formed the basis for a lot of Torches also gave it a unique sound, one that’s been jettisoned on this second album.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, particularly when the songs are as good as they were on that first record. The opening number, “Are You What You Want to Be,” is the best, recapturing the melodic thrills of Torches and building on them. It’s a danceable delight, with a new hook every few seconds. The next two songs, “Ask Yourself” and “Coming of Age,” are also pretty great, with memorable turns and choruses that stick. None of these songs sound like Foster the People, exactly, but they get the job done.

Sadly, they’re the last songs that do, with the exception of mid-record funk-a-thon “Best Friend.” Foster and his bandmates have clearly tried for a measure of artistic growth here, and they’ve made the same mistake that a lot of new artists do – they’ve mistaken dourness for seriousness. You can make charming, memorable pop music seriously. In fact, I’d argue that Foster the People did it on their first record. But Supermodel is choked with songs like “Nevermind” and “Pseudologica Fantastica,” which bring in that thick indie-rock sound, all big synths and murky guitars and meandering tunelessness.

And look, there’s nothing really wrong with a dramatic rock number like “A Beginner’s Guide to Destroying the Moon.” It’s fine. It even pulls in some clever chords by the end, to go with its soaring backing vocals and its pounding pianos. It’s just that it sounds like the work of a million other indie rock acts. Foster the People used to have their own sound, and they spend a lot of Supermodel giving that up. An acoustic shuffle like “Goats in Trees,” or a whispery lament like the closer “Fire Escape,” is much more typical than I expected from this band. And I really didn’t expect them to turn out a second record that I largely don’t remember.

I’m all for artistic growth. I want my favorite artists to change, to evolve, to develop beyond their origins. But I also want them to retain the qualities that make them interesting. Those qualities are usually not anything as prosaic as genre or instrumental makeup. They go deeper than that. Supermodel disappoints because it sacrifices those qualities. With rare exceptions, the songs on this album could have come from any of a hundred bands, and to hear them from Foster the People is a shame. Supermodel isn’t bad, but it does nothing to stand out from the crowd, something the debut did so easily. It’s a much easier album to forget, and I wouldn’t blame you for doing just that.

* * * * *

Hey, look at that, it’s time for the First Quarter Report.

If you’re new to this column, I’ll explain. Some years ago, I decided to give readers a bit of a window on my process by essentially providing four top 10 lists a year. I publish one each quarter, showing the final list in progress, and ranking what I’ve heard thus far. Essentially, if I were forced at gunpoint to finalize the top 10 list right now, this is what it would look like. It’s a snapshot at an early part of the year, so you can see easily what I’m liking and not liking.

In a lot of ways, I don’t feel like 2014 has even started yet. We’re getting the Choir album in a couple of weeks, the Steve Taylor album shortly after that, and new things are on the horizon from Aimee Mann (with Ted Leo), Dan Wilson, the Eels, Bob Mould, and a whole host of others. Basically, the list that follows should bear no resemblance whatsoever to the list I publish in December, unless something goes tragically, horribly wrong.

I’ve also included three records that I have not yet reviewed, including one that has not been released. I decided that I can’t pretend I haven’t heard these records, and I’m not building my list around them. One of them, Andrea Dawn’s Doll, is out on Record Store Day, but since I know her, I’ve been listening to it for months. It’s positively amazing, and when you get to hear it, I expect you’ll agree. Check her out here.

OK, here we go. The First Quarter Report.

10. Lost in the Trees, Past Life.
9. The Farewell Drifters, Tomorrow Forever.
8. Neneh Cherry, Blank Project.
7. Broken Bells, After the Disco.
6. The War on Drugs, Lost in the Dream.
5. Jonatha Brooke, My Mother Has 4 Noses.
4. Andrea Dawn, Doll.
3. Nickel Creek, A Dotted Line.
2. Elbow, The Take Off and Landing of Everything.
1. Beck, Morning Phase.

And you know, looking at that list, it isn’t bad. That’s a solid first quarter. Keep up the good work, 2014.

Next week, folk music with Nickel Creek and Peter Mulvey. 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.

This week I did something amazing. I sat in a movie theater and watched a film that should not exist.

I’ve done this once before, when Joss Whedon’s Serenity hit theaters in 2005. Serenity, you may recall, is the big-screen continuation of Firefly, one of the best single-season wonders to ever hit television. As far as I know, this had never happened before – Firefly had been canceled for low ratings, meaning no one aside from a core group of faithful had watched it. And yet the response of that core group to the DVD set was enough to see a major motion picture greenlit and shot.

I remember sitting in the theater before Serenity began unspooling, certain that Fox executives would come barreling in and cancel it before it could get started. Until the end credits rolled, I pretty much refused to believe that the film truly existed. This isn’t the world I live in. In the real world, beloved but canceled television shows do not get a second chance at life on the big screen, especially not with their original creator and cast of relative unknowns. Serenity was impossible. And as Mal Reynolds once said, we have done the impossible, and that makes us mighty.

Sadly, Serenity was not a hit. Its box office numbers were charitably described as “underperforming.” This was bad news not only for fans of Firefly, but also for fans of other brilliant yet canceled TV shows whose creators might have hoped for a marquee revival. Serenity was impossible, and it looked like it would never happen again.

But then along came Kickstarter, and a teenage private eye named Veronica Mars.

I will admit to not watching Veronica Mars when its three seasons aired, between 2004 and 2007. It was never a massive hit, but critics loved it, and I promised I’d catch up with it one day. It actually took Whedon’s recommendation – it’s his favorite television show – to get me to watch, but once I did, I fell in love with Veronica and her world. The show was smart as a whip, dark as any noir you could name, and filled with fascinating, flawed characters. It could succinctly be described as “Nancy Drew as a complete badass,” but it’s so much more than that.

Creator Rob Thomas (no, not that one) had been talking about a Veronica Mars film ever since the show’s untimely cancellation. Unfortunately, Warner Bros. owns the property, and they refused to fund one. (I’m sure they had Serenity’s paltry box office numbers jotted down somewhere.) So Thomas and star Kristen Bell turned to Kickstarter, the revolutionary crowd-funding site, to gauge interest in a movie. Warner Bros. would make the film if no risk was involved – if the whole thing was paid for in advance. And so that’s what we fans did.

Thomas asked for $2 million to make the film. He raised $5.7 million, in the most successful Kickstarter campaign ever undertaken.

This caused a bit of controversy, as you may recall. There’s a school of thought that suggests that crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter should only be used by people who have no money, and that neither Thomas nor Warner Bros. have any business asking fans to front the funds for a project. I can see that point of view, but in this case, I feel perfectly fine with my $50 contribution. First, it’s not a donation – I received a digital copy of the movie on the release date, a copy of the shooting script and a t-shirt, and I will soon get a copy of the film on DVD. I would have bought this anyway, so my contribution was essentially just buying it all a year in advance.

But second, this movie would not have been made any other way. Without this show of fan support, Warner Bros. would have simply continued to say no. I’m happy to pay for art I would like to see born into the world. The Veronica Mars movie exists, and that’s only because I and 91,584 other people plunked down our cash. I honestly don’t know why I should feel bad about that.

Because of our support, Warner Bros. was able to take a no-risk approach to the Veronica Mars movie, which means they basically let Thomas do whatever he wanted. That has led to a remarkable release strategy – the movie is in select theaters, but is also available now on iTunes and virtually every video on demand service. It’s the first film to get a simultaneous digital release, and I think we’ll see a lot more of that in the future.

So how is it? In a word, awesome. In retrospect, I probably should not have been surprised by this, but it is exactly like watching the television show. This film caters solely to fans, because of course it does – we paid for it, and Thomas doesn’t need to draw in new viewers the way Whedon did. If you haven’t seen the three seasons of Veronica Mars, you’ll be lost, and most of the best lines will go right over your head. That’s fine, though. This is intended to be a continuation of the series, not a reboot of it, and it accomplishes that goal marvelously.

And yes, it’s great to see all the old faces again. Some have changed – Jason Dohring, who plays bad boy Logan Echolls, looks older and more seasoned now, and Tina Majorino sports a wild new hairdo as nerd-made-good Mac. But others, like Percy Daggs’ lovable Wallace, look just as we left them seven years ago. In the world of the film, it’s been nine years since the third season of the show, and the cast attends their 10-year high school reunion. (Because of course they do.) But because this is Veronica Mars, that’s just a sideline – she’s in town to solve a murder, one in which Echolls is implicated.

The show always did a tremendous job of showing Veronica as a flawed character, and the movie certainly follows suit. It dispenses with nice-guy boyfriend Stosh “Piz” Piznarski in favor of the more dangerous Logan, and explores Veronica’s addiction to crime-solving. Neither of these themes are taken lightly, and we end the film with Veronica feeling certain about choices we, the audience, know are wrong for her. And yet, we’re sold – I want to see where this goes, and just how far Thomas can probe these ideas.

Along the way, there are a few shocking deaths, and a cracking good mystery story. Veronica Mars is exactly as good as I’d hoped when I handed over my money a year ago. I’m proud to have been a part of this extraordinary campaign, and to have helped fund this enjoyable little film. After this, I think, the world has truly changed. Stories don’t have to end if we don’t want them to. Even if only a few thousand people care about those stories, they can go on. Once again, we’ve made the impossible real. That’s pretty damn cool.

* * * * *

I’m feeling under the weather this week, so I’ll wrap up here. Next week, Foster the People, Sufjan Stevens’ rap album, and the First Quarter Report.

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.

People often ask me why I buy so much music.

It always struck me as a strange question. I don’t think I buy nearly enough. I typically bring home between five and 10 new records a week, not counting all the online purchases I make to fill in my collection. But even if I bought three times that amount, it still wouldn’t seem like enough to me. When does one have “enough” music? For me, that’s like saying I have enough air. “I’m good. I don’t need any more air.”

It’s a journey that I expect I’ll be on my entire life. I’m ravenously searching for new sounds, new musical experiences, in the hopes of finding one that reorders my life. It’s been a while since that happened, but I know I can still feel it – Lost in the Trees proved that to me. And so I keep digging, following bands as they evolve, listening for a spark fanned into a blaze, hoping to catch my soul alight.

So I don’t have a lot of time for bands that play the same old same old. If you’re not putting at least some stamp of originality on it, be it a well-written lyric or a melodic turn I don’t see coming, then I’m not too interested in what you’re up to. I have a lot of friends who like the blues, and feel like music reached its peak sometime in the mid-‘70s. Nostalgia’s all right for a while, but not for a lifestyle. I’m all for a sense of history, but I wouldn’t want to set up house in the past and never come out.

What I’m looking for, put simply, is music that sounds like no other music. This is the ideal. It’s extremely difficult to find, because everyone is influenced by someone. But it’s what I want more than anything else – to hear a band or an artist step forward with an individual vision beholden to no one, singing truly new songs and igniting new emotions. I will buy 200 lousy records to get to the one that opens new doors in my mind and heart.

All of which brings me to Elbow.

I haven’t given Manchester’s finest quite enough love in this column. It took me quite a while to become a fan – the band’s first two albums, Asleep in the Back and Cast of Thousands, didn’t click for me at first, though I now think they’re marvelous – and for some reason, I forget about them when it comes time to compose my top 10 list each year. The problem isn’t just mine. Elbow is not an immediately memorable band. They’re a patient one, creating music that often sounds like stillness, music that doesn’t stick in one’s head.

But some of my very favorite bands have felt similar to me. Talk Talk, for instance, filled their last two albums with some of the most beautifully slow atmospheres one could imagine conjuring up, songs that stretched to nine minutes without actually doing much at all, except painting an entirely new world one delicate brush stroke at a time. Elbow takes a bit from Talk Talk, particularly the idea that minimizing the changes magnifies each one, so that when the chords shift it sounds like the earth trembling.

Aside from a couple of songs – “Leaders of the Free World” and “Grounds for Divorce” among them – Elbow has steadfastly resisted any attempts to speed them up and present them to the masses. Their sixth album, The Take Off and Landing of Everything, follows the same path they’ve been on, moving from their guitar-led past to a more airy, more pure sound. Elbow is on a quest for beauty, and they’ve removed just about everything from their sound that does not contribute something beautiful.

The result, as you can imagine, is absolutely gorgeous, and like nothing else I have heard this year. Like all Elbow albums, if you’re the type of person who skips through songs looking for the “good parts,” this will leave you frustrated. For me, it’s an hour-long good part, every song contributing to a glorious whole. I’ve heard several people already describe this album as boring, though, and as it’s not an uncommon assessment, I’d recommend trying this: listen to the entirety of the seven-minute opener, “This Blue World.” If you don’t think this is one of the most lovely pieces of music you’ve heard in ages, Elbow is not for you.

Needless to say, I think “This Blue World” is wonderful. Consisting of little besides a quiet organ, gentle acoustic strumming, a chiming single-note electric guitar line and Guy Garvey’s extraordinary voice, the song floats 10 feet off the ground. Its melody is a gentle caress, that electric guitar a breath of cool air, and though the song picks up around the four-minute mark, it never tries to soar. (Elbow rarely soars, which only makes the moments in which they do mean so much more.) And yet, for seven solid minutes, there is nothing in the world I would rather be listening to.

Much of The Take Off and Landing of Everything strikes me the same way. Though there’s an insistent beat to songs like “Charge” and the epic “Fly Boy Blue/Lunette,” they have the same sensibility that Elbow is known for – slowly unfolding melodies, savoring each moment without rushing things. There’s so much space in Elbow songs, so much air – it’s almost an antidote to our oversaturation society. They require and reward close and careful listening. Plus, the spaces amplify what is there – when the big, bold strings make their entrance on “Charge,” it’s almost enough to knock you down.

“New York Morning” is, easily, one of this band’s finest hours. Blessed with a lovely circular melody, the song builds at its own pace, Garvey riding it like a wave, his voice coaxing it up and up, higher and higher. The final minutes of this song achieve orbit, and they’re magnificent. The song is a love letter to the city, which Garvey describes as “the modern Rome, where folk are nice to Yoko.” The follow-up, “Real Life (Angel),” may be even better – it shimmers in on a subtle beat, and within one minute, Garvey will have you in the palm of his hand. The chorus is a work of art, the words “hallelujah morning” perhaps the most beautiful thing I’ve heard so far this year.

The second half of the album isn’t quite as striking as the first, but it’s still excellent. Many of these songs take the time to sprawl out, and half of them break the six-minute mark. But Elbow isn’t interested in prog-rock excess – their songs unfurl, filling the extra space with the simple and the pretty. The climax of the record is the seven-minute title track, on which the band crafts a spinning, thumping anthem, one that you wish would go on forever, and then they make it go on forever. There’s more clang and clamor in this one song than on the rest of the record, like they’ve been saving up their joy and they let it out in one sustained burst.

In some ways, the closing “The Blanket of Night” is a comedown, but it’s intended as one. A journey song, it tells of poor souls in “a paper cup of a boat” on the “heaving chest of the sea,” sailing by moonlight and “sewing silver prayers into the blanket of night.” Garvey sings over warm, rolling keyboards, wrapping you up and keeping you from the cold, and the song feels like being out on the ocean at night. It’s nice, but it doesn’t achieve the transcendence I wanted after such a gorgeous album.

But that’s all right. There’s enough wonder on The Take Off and Landing of Everything to keep me happy. There really isn’t another band that sounds like Elbow, and miraculously, they keep getting better at sounding like themselves. I hope they stay this course forever, deepening their work while remaining true to it, and I hope I have the presence of mind to remember this lovely disc when list-making time rolls around. The best praise I can give this album is that it finds Elbow sounding more like Elbow than ever before. That’s a rare and beautiful thing, and one worth treasuring.

Next week, my thoughts on the Veronica Mars movie, and maybe Foster the People’s second record. 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 promised never to lie to you in this column.

Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. is meant to be a running guide to my life as a musical obsessive. It’s intended to give you some idea of what it’s like to be me, and that means sharing even the most embarrassing songs and albums I end up loving. I’ve copped to being a Hanson fan, I’ve talked about my soft spot for Michael W. Smith, and I’ve mentioned that I think Ylvis’ “The Fox” is one of the best songs of last year. I’m pretty candid.

For some reason, though, I’m always a little hesitant to talk about how much I like Coldplay. They get no respect from critics, and I think I’m expected to fall in line on that one, reacting negatively to their uber-popularity and Chris Martin’s leaden lyrics. But I can’t. I’ve always liked them, and I’ve enjoyed every one of their records, particularly the latter ones. I don’t even think this is an indefensible position – Coldplay is a restlessly experimental pop band, much more interesting than they need to be, considering their place as one of the biggest groups in the world.

Still, I feel like someone’s going to come take my critic card away for admitting to enjoying their work. Coldplay is remarkably divisive, but the division is usually between pop radio fans and “serious,” discerning music consumers. That’s odd to me, since Coldplay is exactly what I want from the biggest pop bands on earth. They’re constantly scanning the underground for new inspiration, and always shaking up their sound, trying new things and throwing curve balls. Just listen to all of Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends, their all-over-the-place fourth album. This is not the work of artless airplay whores.

So I’m compelled here to tell you that Coldplay’s just-announced sixth album, Ghost Stories, is one of my most anticipated records of 2014. And I’m glad to give you two reasons why, in the form of the two songs released so far. First is “Midnight,”one of the least Coldplay-sounding Coldplay songs ever. It’s little more than a shimmering electronic pulse, with a ghostly melody that repeats three times. It never “kicks in,” never gets to an emotional catharsis. It’s five minutes of reflective, restrained, fascinating atmosphere. I’m particularly fond of the wordless vocal section after the second verse, and the circular synths that radiate in around 3:30.

If that alone doesn’t make you wonder just what kind of Coldplay album this is going to be, there’s the official first single, “Magic.” It’s a subtle piece of electronic soul, sticking to two chords and some understated piano for about half its running time. The song builds convincingly, though, through a pair of sweet choruses and into a bigger section with ringing, chiming guitars. What’s interesting is that it still sounds nothing like Coldplay, but in a completely different way than “Midnight.”

Most of the time, I’m able to figure out what kind of record to expect from a couple of early song releases. This time? No idea. These two songs are nothing alike, and feel like uncharted territory for the band. If the rest of Ghost Stories is similarly diverse and experimental, I will have no trouble telling you all how much I love it. As I’ve said before, Coldplay doesn’t have to be this weird. They’re one of the most popular bands on the planet, and they could just keep sticking to what works and cashing the checks. That they create songs like “Midnight” and “Magic” despite all that earns them my respect.

Ghost Stories is out on May 19.

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When people talk about the fusion of rap, rock and pop that occurred in the 1990s, I’m surprised that Neneh Cherry is rarely a part of that conversation.

Cherry first burst onto the scene in 1989 with “Buffalo Stance,” the hit single from her snazzy debut, Raw Like Sushi. But it was her second album, 1991’s Homebrew, that truly blazed trails. Cherry easily danced between styles on this record, one of the most underrated of that decade, rapping with Guru of Gang Starr on one track and singing with Michael Stipe of R.E.M. on another. Songs like “I Ain’t Gone Under Yet” presaged the rap-soul of Lauryn Hill by years, and when she dug into deeper, more ambient pieces like “Peace in Mind,” she was unlike anyone else around.

Which is probably why the album sank like a stone. Cherry made another record four years later, called Man, that was never released in the United States. And then she quit her solo career entirely, spending some time with a band called CirKus in the 2000s and only emerging to lend vocals to a collaborative record with jazz group The Thing in 2012. She’s remained a fascinating, idiosyncratic artist, but we haven’t had a true statement from her in 18 years. And for someone who predicted many of the pop music innovations of the past decade and a half, that’s a shame.

That’s why I’m so pleased to have Blank Project, Cherry’s first album since ’96. Its existence was a complete surprise, its announcement out of the blue. As always, Cherry does her own thing – this record was put together in five days, with production from Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden and musical contributions from RocketNumberNine. Its title and muted cover image give the impression that the album is no big deal, despite the long wait, but this turns out to be false modesty. It is, of course, nothing whatsoever like her seminal work from the ‘90s. It’s also nothing like anything else you’ll hear this year.

Blank Project is an electro-pop record, but it’s a minimal and haunted one. Cherry’s voice is still arresting and soulful, but her songs this time are skeletal things that require multiple listens to appreciate. The sound is gritty, mixing beautifully recorded organic drums with fuzzy synths, often just playing bass lines. There are choruses, but they’re not immediate ones. You probably won’t end up dancing to this, but a song like “Weightless” will make you move. This is a soundtrack for hard runs in the rain, dark and jerky with sharp edges.

In its own way, this album is just as innovative as Homebrew, smashing pop, jazz, soul, electro and rock into new shapes. This kind of sonic adventurousness is more common now than it was in the ‘90s, but somehow Cherry has made something bracing and unique anyway. The record begins with its starkest track – “Across the Water” is nothing but subtle percussion and Cherry’s voice, reminding you how much you missed it. She mourns her mother here, who died in 2009, and looks to the future, which the remaining nine songs depict.

There really isn’t anything else quite like the other nine songs. In other hands, “Cynical” could have been a club hit, its chorus all but demanding four-on-the-floor beats and swirling synths. Instead, we get live drums and minimal bass burbles, and nothing else. The dissonant breakdown finds Cherry half-rapping over harsh keyboards. “422” is a jazzy drum beat supporting a droning organ, while Cherry hits new vocal heights: “If we believe the rain has come to search us out, then we can take the pain, of this there is no doubt…”

Dance-pop star Robyn puts in a surprise guest appearance on “Out of the Black,” one of the most straightforward tunes here. Their voices sort of rub up against each other uncomfortably, while the drums pound out a relentless beat and the synths get fuller. It’s one of the oddest guest turns I’ve heard in some time. Blank Project concludes with the seven-minute “Everything,” built on a repeating sample and an infectious melody. It’s this album’s version of a joyous playout, conjuring a sense of dance-around-the-room excitement while remaining as minimal as everything else.

It’s so very good to have an artist like Neneh Cherry back. I’d often imagined what new work from her would be like, and it’s a tribute to her idiosyncrasy that Blank Project sounds like nothing I could have predicted. As always, she’s looking years down the line here, to a time when electro-jazz-pop-rock-soul-dance-minimalism is a thing. This is a tough and uncompromising record, one that takes some time to really love. But I wouldn’t have expected anything else from Neneh Cherry. I hope this record puts her back in the spotlight, and makes her part of the conversation. She deserves it.

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Next week, the amazing Elbow. 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 first album I ever owned was the soundtrack to Ghostbusters.

It was on cassette, and it came in a red plastic case. It was chock full of artists I’d never heard of before or since (Alessi? Mick Smiley?), but I loved all these songs. Not because I thought they were very good songs, but because they reminded me of Ghostbusters, which was for a time my very favorite movie.

I’d taped it off the television with our new top-loading VCR – cutting-edge technology in the early ‘80s – and I obsessively watched it, to the point where I had the movie memorized. (Imagine my surprise when I saw the unedited version on HBO. For years I thought the line was “I’ve seen stuff that will turn you white.”) I would play Ghostbusters in the back yard, wearing a backpack and wielding a garden implement, pretending to shoot and trap specters.

As I grew older, I realized the wealth of comedy talent that had participated in Ghostbusters. Not only was it my first exposure to the great Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, but I’d come to realize that the guy who played Egon Spengler was kind of a genius. Harold Ramis had co-written Ghostbusters, along with Animal House and Caddyshack and Stripes, and had directed National Lampoon’s Vacation. If you’re a fan of silly, smart-dumb comedies, that’s a ridiculously awesome resume.

But Ramis’ most enduring achievement, at least to me, is Groundhog Day, the ultimate Bill Murray comedy. Ramis co-wrote and directed the story of a man living the same day again and again until he gets it right, and he infused it with a darkness and an intelligence that sets it above even its pretty brilliant premise. He drew from Murray what was, at that time, his finest performance, world-weary and biting. Groundhog Day remains a favorite.

Harold Ramis, a lifelong denizen of Chicago, died on Feb. 24 from complications associated with an autoimmune disease he fought for four years. He was 69 years old. The 12-year-old version of me, the one with the backpack and the rake, running around the yard chasing ghosts, thanks him immensely. He was quite a talent.

* * * * *

Cast your mind back, back, back to 1994. It’s the heyday of grunge and flannel, and the waning days of MTV as a musical force. Imagine you’re watching that channel – yes, they used to play music videos, like, all the time – and amidst the angsty Alice in Chains and Soundgarden clips there’s this… weird one. It looks like it was shot on a camcorder, it stars this lanky guy with long hair and a ratty t-shirt, and it features kids dancing in a graveyard and a coffin making the rounds by itself through a city at night. The song is a loopy mix of acoustic slide guitar and a drum loop, with a chorus half-sung in Spanish. It’s remarkably strange.

The song, of course, is “Loser,” and if you’d predicted in 1994 that its author, Beck Hansen, would one day be one of the most overhyped artists on the planet, you’d have been laughed out of the record store. (Yes, they had those in ‘94 too.) But here we are, 20 years later, and Beck’s new album, Morning Phase, has arrived surrounded by a tsunami of best-of-the-year predictions and manufactured excitement.

To be fair, Beck sort of did this to himself. In the two decades since “Loser,” he’s established himself as an unpredictable, yet remarkably consistent artist. He’s a chameleon, ducking in and out of styles with seeming ease, and when he’s not creating collages out of all of pop culture on records like Odelay and The Information, he’s sending up Prince on Midnite Vultures, or dabbling in his own twisted form of the blues on Guero. But many would say his finest achievement was 2002’s Sea Change, which found him putting aside all of those colorful costumes and singing from the heart, over stripped-down acoustic heartbreakers.

To top all that off, Beck’s been absent for the last five years. His previous record, Modern Guilt, had all the hallmarks of a contractual obligation – it was short, simple and uninspired, playing like a collection of b-sides. In the meantime, he’s dabbled in online-only pursuits (like his series of full-album covers), his only physical product being last year’s Song Reader, an album released as sheet music. Fascinating though it was, it wasn’t a new Beck album.

Morning Phase certainly is, but I would bet even Beck was surprised by the hype that surrounded it. He knew what kind of record he’d made, after all – this collection most closely resembles Sea Change, but is even softer, wispier and more delicate. It’s entirely acoustic-based, every song rising up on a slow, deliberate strum or finger-pick pattern. There’s a ‘70s folk vibe to much of it, and the entire thing is coated in a sheen of reverb, lending it a spectral quality. It fills whatever room it’s played in with warmth and soft light.

Like Sea Change, this is a mournful record, full of the left and the leaving. “Say Goodbye” is about doing just that, and the gorgeous “Blue Moon” opens with the line “I’m tired of being alone.” It is Beck’s loneliest album, meant to be played while rocking yourself to sleep, or waiting for the phone to ring. It’s also his prettiest – even more than Sea Change, this is an album about how lovely it is, and none of these 11 songs (and two interludes) breaks that spell. You can get lost in this, drown in it, and die happy.

Morning Phase is lush – strings weave in and out, Roger Manning (of Jellyfish fame) provides subtle piano and keyboard accents, and Stephanie Bennett’s harp appears on more than one track. That it remains quiet and affecting throughout is a triumph of production, which Beck handled himself – this is one of the best-sounding records I’ve heard in a long time. None of that would matter if the songs were not terrific, and for the most part, they are – the album tends to run together into a gauzy whole, but the dense strings of “Wave,” the swaying “Blackbird Chain” and the majestic piano-driven closer “Waking Light” join “Morning” and “Blue Moon” as standouts.

The news of a sonic sequel to Sea Change has left some people suspicious, wondering if Beck really means this music. I suppose a certain amount of that comes with the territory when you make your name as a merry pop culture prankster. Those who prize authenticity above all else will approach Morning Phase with one eyebrow cocked, wondering if this folksiness is yet another suit Beck is trying on, another affectation without investment.

I’ve asked the same questions, but as I said in my Sea Change review, it doesn’t really matter. You can’t prove authenticity anyway – even the most earnest-sounding singer-songwriter could be lying to you – so it means very little. If Beck is pretending to be a singer of heartfelt songs, he’s doing it very well – so well, in fact, that the difference is negligible. A song like “Turn Away” moves me, those high and sweet harmonies hitting me exactly right, and “Waking Light” is so pretty I want to cry. That’s what matters.

Morning Phase is a triumph, one of the finest records Beck has made. It’s the sound of someone seizing every opportunity to add something beautiful to the world. I can’t speak for the hype merchants – I’m not sure why this album arrived with such a head of steam, given its delicate nature. I can only say that it’s as good as I hoped it would be. If I had a time machine, and I could bring this album back to my 1994 self and play it for him, it would make his head explode. No one could have predicted that the “Loser” guy would one day make records as lovely as this. But then, trying to predict what Beck will do next is a fool’s game. For me, I’m just enjoying the ride.

Welcome back, sir. And thanks for Morning Phase. It’s terrific.

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Next week, Neneh Cherry. 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.

This week, I got to see the current incarnation of Zappa Plays Zappa take a dingy stage in Joliet, Illinois, and blow my fragile little mind.

I caught the inaugural tour in 2006, at the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis, and it remains one of the finest shows I’ve ever experienced. The current band is leaner – six players instead of eight, and none of the Zappa alumni who joined that first worldwide jaunt. (They included Steve Vai, Terry Bozzio and Napoleon Murphy Brock. Yeah, it was a great show.) In many ways, though, this latest tour is closer to Dweezil Zappa’s original vision – it’s all about the music, not the players. Dweezil himself is the most well-known musician on stage, and no one showboats – it’s all about Frank Zappa’s phenomenal compositions.

This time out, Dweezil and company have decided to play all of 1974’s Roxy and Elsewhere, to commemorate its 40th anniversary. Roxy was a live album, in as much as any Zappa album was truly live, but it was almost entirely new material. And what material – some of Frank’s most difficult and melodic songs are here, including the “Village of the Sun/Echidna’s Arf/Don’t You Ever Wash That Thing” suite, the amazing “Cheepnis” and the damn-near-impossible “Be-Bop Tango.” And after playing all of that, the band jammed for another 90 minutes, pulling out hidden gems like “Teen-Age Prostitute” and the never-played “I Come From Nowhere,” as well as chestnuts like “Cosmik Debris.”

My favorite moment, however, came with the first encore – a haunting, glorious rendition of “Watermelon in Easter Hay,” one of Zappa’s finest excursions on the guitar. Dweezil has fundamentally rewritten his own style for the ZPZ project, taking on many aspects of his father’s wildly unorthodox guitar playing. But “Watermelon” is perhaps Frank’s most straightforwardly beautiful piece, and Dweezil played the hell out of it. It was magical.

And in that moment, the true purpose of the Zappa Plays Zappa shows stood out – they’re a love letter from a son to his departed father. At the center of all these songs about penguins in bondage and terrible sci-fi movies and flim-flam gurus beats a loving heart. These songs are Frank Zappa’s legacy, and ZPZ is Dweezil’s celebration of it. For me, hearing music this difficult played this well is a treat. For Dweezil, it’s a heartfelt duty, making sure new generations can hear this music played properly and lovingly. It’s a living tribute, and a wonderful one.

And it made me think of Lost in the Trees.

Two years ago, that band released their second album, A Church That Fits Our Needs. It was written in the wake of the suicide of frontman Ari Picker’s mother, on the day of Picker’s wedding. It’s a lush, haunting work, full of love and pain – you could hear Picker working through this most impossible of heartaches before your ears. And while it’s a whirlwind of confusion and bewilderment, asking questions with no answers, it’s also a loving monument to a troubled yet beautiful woman. It’s a singular, astonishing work, a tidal wave of grief in 45 perfectly rendered minutes.

A Church That Fits Our Needs is a sterling example of forging art from pain, and particularly the pain of losing a parent. It was an important album for Picker to make, and I am beyond grateful that he made it – it ascended to the top of my 2012 list, and remains one of the most moving records I’ve ever heard. In some ways, though, it’s too perfect. It’s a closed system, an endless loop of mourning, and it offers no way forward for Picker and his band.

On some level, he must have realized that, because the third Lost in the Trees album, Past Life, takes several steps toward sustainability. The ghost of his mother still haunts this record, but that’s all she is here – a ghost, a memory, a beautiful and hazy piece of the past that is slowly, ever slowly letting go. And Picker is moving on. This album finds him stripping Lost in the Trees back to a five-piece, instead of the eight-piece that made the first two, and writing simpler, less ornate pieces to accompany the change.

In many ways, they sound like a band here for the first time. Opener “Excos” has ties to the old sound, all pianos, strings and horns, but then the title track glides in on a programmed drum beat and a chiming electric guitar and, well, little else. Picker’s high, distinctive voice anchors this new sound to the past, but otherwise, it’s a completely new Lost in the Trees. And that ethos continues throughout this record – songs are short and relatively simple, arrangements are still lovely but more minimal, and the music never reaches for the same otherworldly heights that Church ascended. It’s less cathartic, more grounded.

I think that’s an important step for Picker and his band, and Past Life is a necessary record for them to have made. It’s almost unfair to relate it to the prior efforts – they stand as monuments to a time, a place, a feeling, where this one has more modest aims. It’s still very good, even if it isn’t trying to move you in the same ways. It does achieve its own kind of transcendence – witness “Lady in White,” a song literally about being haunted. Its delicate piano melody and Picker’s spectral voice lend it a ghostly quality, which is quite appropriate: “Always, your eyes always are repeating white light, always, you always meet me in the next life…”

Many of these songs, like “Daunting Friend” and the bare-bones “Rites,” feel like Picker’s version of pop, built around small, repetitive riffs and melodies. But while Past Life may seem less immediately impressive, it is still achingly beautiful. Listen to “Glass Harp,” built on a feather-light ripple of pianos. “It’s not your fault, be still in my arms, it’s not your fault,” Picker sings, as the subtle horns provide airy accents. “The earth has overgrown, the sea, it will part, it’s not your fault…”

Once again, Picker ends an album with a bit of an anticlimax. “Upstairs” is a short, barely-there piece played on electric guitar and little else. But emotionally, it’s the right conclusion. “And where will I go now, when my world is cold and broken,” Picker asks, before pleading, “Don’t let me fall apart.”

Past Life is about answering the first, and ensuring the second. It’s about providing his band a foundation to build upon, and himself a way past the crushing death of his mother. She’s still here, around the edges of this album, but for the first time, you can see how the band can move past her and live on. While it’s not nearly the achievement Church was, it’s in many ways more important, more vital. It accomplishes something remarkable – it remains a tribute, while moving forward, slowly and surely.

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While we’re on the subject of tributes to departed parents, let’s talk about Jonatha Brooke.

For a singer and songwriter of her caliber, Brooke has spent far too long on the fringes. From her days in The Story to her expansive solo career, she’s never made a bad record. She writes literate, mature folk-pop that never disappoints melodically, and sings it with grace. Most recently, she turned in the best of the slew of Woody Guthrie projects, in which she wrote new music to some of Guthrie’s unused lyrics. Hers was called The Works, and it was remarkable.

That was six years ago. In the years since, Brooke has been taking care of her mother, who suffered from cancer and Alzheimer’s. She kept her company and comfortable in the final years of her life, and while doing so, she wrote a series of songs about the experience. And now she’s assembled those songs into a new album and a one-woman play, called My Mother Has 4 Noses. Stripped of context, this title is terrible, but when you know where it comes from – Brooke’s mother was a Christian Scientist, and refused treatment for the cancer that spread across her face, reshaping her nose as it ate away at her visage – it takes on a new dimension.

I haven’t seen the play, though it’s drawing raves. But I have heard the album, and it’s one of Brooke’s very best, a deeply personal yet fully accessible set of tremendous pop songs. Brooke provides short notes with each tune, but you won’t need them. The songs make their intentions plain. And mostly, they’re about remembering the joys, living through the pain, and pleading for more time.

The album is bookended by “Are You Getting This Down,” in which her mother calls her by her nickname “Boolie” and encourages her to write the very play the song opens. “Are you getting this down, these dark and crazy scenes, are you getting this down, the laughter in between…” It’s a perfect note to start on, as Brooke weaves a story of watching her mother drift further from her, and then, in 2010, pulling her closer, moving her into Brooke’s New York apartment. “What Do I Know” is the most clever and haunting use of that phrase I’ve heard, exploring what it means to lose one’s memory, and “What Was I Thinking” relates the move to New York with dark humor.

There is anger in “My Misery,” but pure longing in “How Far You’d Go for Love.” The album gets more honest and painful as it goes, and I don’t think Brooke has written a more achingly beautiful song than “Time,” her prayer for just a few more days with her mother. “Please don’t come today, tomorrow’s not good either, ‘cause I know it will mean forever,” she sings, over a rolling percussion line and a deep and subtle string section. By the time she gets to a song her mother wrote, fittingly called “Mom’s Song,” it’s almost too much. Yet there is hope – Brooke sings of starting again in “Scars,” and lives out her mother’s legacy of love in “Superhero.” “Could it be you who rescued me,” she sings. “Surely nothing up your sleeve but love…”

Brooke has always been terrific, but this album is something special. It hurts like no other record she’s made, and likewise rings out with more joy and hope than anything else she’s done. I wish she’d picked a different title, since most people will probably dismiss it (and the amateurish cover) without really listening. But you should really listen to this. I’ve been a Jonatha Brooke fan for almost 20 years, and with My Mother Has 4 Noses, she’s moved me in ways she never has. It’s a lovely remembrance, and a wonderful piece of work. Her mother would be proud.

Next week, Beck, among 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’m having a complicated reaction to the new Neil Finn album.

This doesn’t happen to me very often. I’m usually happy to stick with my first impression of an album, as subsequent listens deepen either my appreciation or my disinterest. But I have heard Dizzy Heights, the third solo record by New Zealand’s finest, probably two dozen times now, trying to figure out exactly how I feel about it. Just when I feel it start to click, it slips away. But then, just as I’m ready to write it off, something strikes me in a new way.

I’ve become obsessed with Dizzy Heights, but not because I love it. I keep listening because I’m trying desperately to understand it. And not just my own reaction, which is confusing enough. I want to know why Neil Finn made this record, what he sees as its virtues and its failings, why he chose to go in this particular direction. Thus far, the intention of the artist remains particularly inscrutable, though I do have some theories. So I keep on listening.

I should mention that I wouldn’t do this for just anyone. If the words “Neil” and “Finn” were not emblazoned on the cover of Dizzy Heights (albeit scrunched into one word), I would have set this aside ages ago, satisfied that I’d heard all there was to hear, and it just didn’t work for me. But this is Neil Finn, one of the finest songwriters I’ve ever encountered. I first heard Finn’s work when almost everyone my age did – when MTV began playing the videos for “Something So Strong” and “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” from the first Crowded House album. And I fell in love.

Little did I know then that the fine-voiced frontman had a long history with his brother’s band, Split Enz. Neil joined in 1977 and recorded seven terrific little pop records with them. By the time of 1984’s swan song See Ya Round, Finn had proven himself as a songwriter, and when he formed Crowded House in 1985, his talents really started to shine. Those first four Crowded House albums are unimpeachable to me. They contain so many perfect pop numbers, so many songs that are textbook examples of how to write this kind of song well. My favorite of the four is Woodface, on which Neil welcomed brother Tim Finn to the fold, and the pair came up with 14 absolutely flawless tunes.

And so I’ve let some things slide since then, because those four albums mean so much to me. It was a while before I had to – Neil Finn’s first two solo albums, Try Whistling This and One Nil, were superb, and his two albums with Tim as the Finn Brothers were pretty good as well. So I try not to think about the fact that Finn resurrected Crowded House in 2006, and sullied the name with two middling blah-pop albums. And it’s all I can do to forget 2011’s Pajama Club, a waste of disc space that sounds like it was much more fun to make than it was to listen to. And it pains me to recall that the last truly great Neil Finn song I heard was “Turn and Run,” 13 years ago.

I’m not sure what happened. Perhaps Finn’s muse contracted some kind of wasting disease, and slowly faded away. Perhaps he just grew old and complacent. But I listen to those latter-day Crowded House albums, and I just die inside. A song as typical as “Twice if You’re Lucky” is a standout here, a stronger piece than any of the others that surround it. It’s such a shame to hear Neil Finn sing material like this, especially live, when he really tries to sell it. He’s not resting on his laurels, despite the fact that his laurels are phenomenal. He’s putting his back into writing new material. It’s just not very good.

So what does a former genius do once his muse has died? Apparently, something like Dizzy Heights. After this, there’s no arguing that Neil Finn is simply in a slump, or doesn’t realize the sheer gulf between his old material and his new stuff. I think he does. I think he realizes that his muse has abandoned him, and the 11 songs on this new album find him working to the absolute top of his abilities. Needless to say, they’re not anywhere near the (ahem) dizzy heights he used to attain on a regular basis.

But Finn made a surprising move, one that sets Dizzy Heights above anything he’s done in a long time – he hired Dave Fridmann to produce. Fridmann is best known as the man behind the boards for most of the Flaming Lips catalog. When a band wants to weird up – as OK Go did in 2010, for example – they call Fridmann. He is a sound-over-substance kind of guy, but his sounds are astonishing. Look at the last couple Flaming Lips albums. It’s fair to say that the band didn’t show up with any real song ideas, but the remarkable sonics make up for it, and set a foreboding, almost terrifying mood.

Dizzy Heights doesn’t quite do that, but its sheer sound is remarkable, so far outside what Finn has dabbled in before. I’m still catching new sonic details in this thing, more than 20 listens in, and the production carries even the weakest of Finn’s songs. (Well, except for one, but we’ll get to that.) This feels like a conscious choice to me, like Finn knows he can no longer play to his melodic strengths, so he’s inventing new ones for himself.

In a strange way, the simple and repetitive songs on Dizzy Heights cast the last decade of Finn’s work in a new light. It’s almost as if he’s been working towards these atmospheric, pulsing, almost melody-free songs for a long time, and he’s finally arrived. Take a trifle like “Better Than TV.” Had this been recorded with just guitars, bass and drums, it would have been unforgivably boring – the melody is repetitive, the song goes nowhere, there’s no real chorus. But with the swirling strings and sonic frippery floating in and out, it’s never less than interesting. In fact, it feels catchier than it is.

Much of Dizzy Heights goes this way. The title track is a little bit of soul that never really takes off, but the airy keyboards and zippy violins elevate it. “Flying in the Face of Love” is just a bass line and little else, but Finn and Fridmann paint a pretty dazzling picture around it. “White Lies and Alibis” begins with more than a minute of atmosphere before the low-key electric piano and ride cymbals come in, and while the song doesn’t do very much, the strings, percussion, strange backing vocals and left-field effects make it a striking listen.

Nowhere is this technique more apparent than on “Divebomber,” inexplicably the first track released from this album. I’ve heard it described as anti-music, and that’s not far off the mark. It’s almost deliberately off-putting, a strange mixture of Flaming Lips keyboards, effects and strings, topped off with the most ear-aching falsetto vocals I’ve heard in years. It achieves its own strange power by the midpoint, but for most of its running time, it’s nigh-unlistenable garbage. Finn is unaccountably proud of this mess, as if it proves that he’s not slipping into a comfortable old age, but “Divebomber” is quite possibly the worst song he’s ever foisted on the public.

Things can only get better from there, and in the album’s second half, Finn does pull out some fairly good songs, from the thudding “Pony Ride” to the endearingly straightforward “Recluse.” The best of these is “In My Blood,” buried at track 10. It has a chorus you’ll remember, a twisty and curious verse, and this album’s signature stunning production. It’s the song on which everything comes together, the closest Finn has come to penning a classic in more than a decade. It’s over quickly, though, and the album concludes with a confused muddle called “Lights of New York.” (It’s kind of amazing that Finn’s vocal can be so far off the melody here, considering this song doesn’t have one.)

The juxtaposition of “In My Blood” and “Lights of New York” sums up this album for me. One minute it’s compelling in ways I can barely understand, the next it’s leaving me cold. Here is its central paradox: Finn sounds re-energized here – limbered up and at fighting weight for the first time in many years – in every way except the songwriting. I want to love these songs, because this album was clearly a labor of love for its author. But the songs keep me at arm’s length. They resoundingly fail to live up to the genius that wrote them.

So the secret, then, to enjoying Dizzy Heights is to forget that it’s a Neil Finn album. Had this been the debut of a new singer-songwriter with an ear for elaborate arrangements, I’d be praising its potential, while warning him to steer clear of the impulses that birthed “Divebomber.” And I’d be looking forward to subsequent records, and to following this new artist’s career. Divorced from expectations, Dizzy Heights is mostly not bad. Much of it is perfectly listenable.

But alas, there’s Finn’s name on the cover, and his picture on the gatefold. It’s inescapable. This is a Neil Finn album, and while it’s the best thing he’s done in some time, it still falls short of what I’m now coming to realize was his best work. Dizzy Heights is the sound of a man realizing that his muse has failed him, and figuring out where to go next. And while he’s chosen an interesting path, and made probably the best album he could, it’s still not enough to overshadow the fact that the songs aren’t flowing like they used to. Dizzy Heights is both a sign of a sad decline, and a testament to how well Finn has compensated for it. I will no doubt keep listening. Which, in itself, is a bit of a victory.

Next week, Lost in the Trees. 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.

In October of 2008, I got in my car and drove 30 miles to the one theater within any reasonable distance that was playing Synecdoche, New York.

In retrospect, I should not have been surprised that the film didn’t open in every multiplex in the country. It was the directorial debut of Charlie Kaufman, a screenwriter working on levels that most wordsmiths will never reach. His previous films included Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, all surreal and cerebral fantasies, none of which set the box office on fire. And its star, if one could ever really call him that, was the amazing Philip Seymour Hoffman, an actor unconcerned with playing to the crowd – he always used his craft to get at real pain, real beauty and real truth.

Synecdoche, if you have not seen it, is a devastating examination of art as a futile means of encapsulating life. Its script is like a math equation, systematically removing light and hope and leaving you with a despair you cannot even name. And Hoffman’s towering performance, one of the best I have ever seen, drives every nail into your heart. He is fearless and free of vanity. No one else could have played this part, could have grounded this film the way he did.

The theater I saw Synecdoche, New York in was almost completely empty. When the film’s gut-punch of a final scene finished unspooling, and the credits began rolling, I couldn’t move. I had been worked over emotionally, drained and refilled and drained again. I groggily looked around, meeting the eyes of the three other people sharing that experience, and saw they were all struggling to recover from the film as well. It took a while before we could speak. And then, we talked about what we’d seen, about how this film tore us open and left us bleeding and dying inside.

And of course, we talked about Hoffman. His towering performance in Synecdoche, New York may be the best of an extraordinary career. But then, there are so many great roles to choose from. Just recently, he was riveting as Lancaster Dodd in The Master. There’s Father Brendan Flynn in Doubt. Gust Avrakotos in Charlie Wilson’s War. Truman Capote in Capote, for which he won the Academy Award. Allen in Happiness. Joseph Turner White in State and Main. I’m even excited to see what he does with Plutarch Heavensbee in the next two (already shot) Hunger Games movies.

Still, bringing Caden Cotard to life in Synecdoche may be his biggest achievement as an actor. But it isn’t my favorite.

I’m always going to be most partial to Hoffman’s absolute embodiment of Lester Bangs in Almost Famous, a movie that (for obvious reasons) is very close to my heart. “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we’re uncool,” he says at one point, and the truth of that line reverberates within me. My whole life is about being uncool enough to love something as daft as music completely and without reservation. I adore that film, and I adore Hoffman’s performance in it.

Philip Seymour Hoffman was one of the best actors I’ve ever had the privilege of watching, the kind of actor who could make even the most unpromising premise feel worth seeing because of his presence. He died on Sunday of an apparent heroin overdose. His death has launched a thousand blogs about the nature of addiction and the responsibility of role models. That seems crass to me. All I want to say is this: I will miss his work very much. May he rest in peace.

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It’s hard to get invested in side projects.

So many of them are one-offs, quick collaborations or stylistic diversions that serve more of a purpose for the artists than for the listener. My collection is littered with orphaned records made by artists with rewarding and ongoing main gigs, little whims intended to scratch a certain itch. Sometimes, like Adam Schlesinger’s work in Ivy, they keep going long enough to be interesting in their own right. But most of the time, they’re curiosities, good for one or two listens that will, at best, add color to the main canon.

But every once in a while, a side project will find a groove, and become something special enough that it eclipses an artist’s main gig. That’s what has just happened with Broken Bells, the collaborative project that teams prolific producer Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton with the leader of the Shins, James Mercer. The Shins started out as one of the most promising new bands, with a fine mix of indie-pop rawness and Brian Wilson melodies. But sadly, with 2012’s staid Port of Morrow, the band appeared to be running out of gas. Mercer sounded tired and spent on that album, a solo record in all but name, and the paucity of memorable songs remains difficult to reconcile.

Mercer and Burton had issued the first Broken Bells album two years prior to Port of Morrow, and it barely made an impression. But now, here’s the follow-up, After the Disco, and somehow, the pair has turned this collaboration into something really special. Part of it is focus – this record feels instantly more committed and complete than the first, with a full-blooded sound miles away from the Shins-with-drum-machines feel of the debut. And part of it is the songs. After the Disco is packed top to bottom with superb, shimmering songs.

You know you’re in for something more than a side project from the first track, the six-minute “Perfect World.” Burbling to life on simmering synths that give way to a galloping beat, the song sets Mercer’s high, lovely voice up against me-decade keyboards and blazing guitar. The extended coda is massive, nearly monolithic, the synth line cutting through the oceans of backing vocals. It feels like a proper 1980s epic.

The quality never flags from there. The title track and “Holding On for Life” find Mercer channeling his inner Gibb brother, while Burton lays down convincingly hip-shaking grooves. “The Changing Lights” charges forward with confidence (and a great hook), “Control” could be a long-lost Blondie song, and “No Matter What You’re Told” brings a brashness that Mercer’s rarely shown us. The record ends with a string-laden lament called “The Remains of Rock and Roll” that is a great summation of this new sound, recasting the pair as modern Bee Gees. It’s excellent.

After the Disco is a real surprise, that rarest of side projects that sounds like a full-time endeavor. Burton proves here why he’s so in demand as a producer and collaborator, and Mercer turns out melodies and vocals that put the last Shins record to shame. I sincerely hope they keep this going, because they’re on to something here, and they’re clearly sparking. The Shins may never release another album for all I care, but I’m already looking forward to new Broken Bells music.

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That’s all I have in me this week. Apologies for the short column. Next week, Neil Finn and a couple of piano-poppers. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am, and Twitter at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So far, I’ve been sticking to my new year’s resolution.

I’ve bought 17 new albums this year so far, and I’ve heard all but three of them. I was underwhelmed by The Crystal Method and Damien Jurado, I enjoyed The Gaslight Anthem’s B-Sides more than I expected to, I thought the new Silver Mt. Zion album was pretty great, and I am still absorbing Warpaint’s self-titled sophomore release. Next week I’m going to review new ones from Broken Bells and Marissa Nadler, as soon as I’m done salivating over the remaster of Uncle Tupelo’s sterling debut, No Depression.

It’s only going to get more difficult from here. I have at least 20 records to buy in February, including just-announced new things by Jonatha Brooke and We Were Promised Jetpacks, as well as a triple album by the Shocking Pinks. (Want to get me interested in your band? Do something ridiculously ambitious.) But so far, I’m managing. I’m even slowly working my way through the 100 or so albums I bought and didn’t hear in 2013.

As for this week, we have a couple of winners on our hands, making for the first real recommendations of the year. (Barring the new Sharon Jones, which you all bought already anyway, right?) They couldn’t be more different, but they’re both pretty great.

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There aren’t a lot of bona fide supergroups I could name, but Transatlantic is definitely one.

Of course, there aren’t a lot of bands with so specific a remit. Transatlantic brings together four of the finest musicians in modern progressive rock, and allows them to indulge their love of the ‘70s prog sound they all grew up on. In some ways, you know what you’re going to get when you combine Neal Morse, Mike Portnoy, Marillion’s Pete Trewavas and Roine Stolt of the Flower Kings, and in some ways, you’re absolutely right.

But Transatlantic has always surprised me by remaining so traditional. Portnoy’s Dream Theater successfully built on the progressive metal of Iron Maiden and Metallica, the Flower Kings have long been jazz enthusiasts, and Marillion is one of the most diverse bands on the planet. But Transatlantic’s work stays firmly within the pocket of Yes, Genesis and other 1970s proggers. Of the four, Morse is the most obviously inspired by this stuff, and Transatlantic feels like his dream band.

Transatlantic songs are long and twisty – their last album, The Whirlwind, was a single 77-minute epic. But like their main influences, the four masterminds here never forget the melody. These are hummable epics, and it’s rare that this band slips into mindless soloing, like Dream Theater and the Flower Kings have been known to do. There are long instrumental passages, but they’re like little symphonies, Stolt’s guitar dancing with Morse’s keyboards. And when they lock into a big moment, it’s almost impossibly big. Drama is the name of the game, and when it comes to the climaxes, there’s no such thing as overindulgent.

It’s all a bit formulaic, as any tribute to a bygone era would be. But Transatlantic remains stunningly enjoyable anyway on their fourth album together, Kaleidoscope. The 76-minute behemoth is broken up into two long songs and three shorter ones, and it sports much more variety in its ebbs and flows than The Whirlwind. The suites bookend the record – the 25-minute “Into the Blue” kicks things off, while the 32-minute title track brings things to a close. Both of these songs are as complex and dazzling as you’d expect, which is both a feature and a drawback.

I say that because neither of the longer songs provides any surprises. Both begin with instrumental overtures, both find key melodies restated throughout, both have slower sections that build up to huge waves of sound, and both have short but splendid solo sections. (Morse’s keyboard solo in “Kaleidoscope” is a highlight.) These guys can write extended pieces like this in their sleep at this point, and while both of these suites are tremendous fun, they’re nothing new.

The three short pieces in the middle are where you’ll find the head-spinners. “Shine” is a pop song, albeit one that lasts for seven minutes and includes a long guitar solo from Stolt. (And a nifty reprise from “Into the Blue.”) “Black as the Sky” is a punchy rocker that reminds me of nothing as much as Marillion’s “Market Square Heroes,” jaunty ‘70s synths and all. And “Beyond the Sun” is the prettiest piece of music in the Transatlantic catalog, a four-minute ambient ballad with a heartbreaking melody. It’s clear that the bulk of the work on this album was focused on the longer suites, but the shorter tunes are by no means throwaways. In fact, I get more out of “Beyond the Sun” than I do the entire opening monstrosity.

There’s no doubt that Morse is the driving force of this band. He’s been turning out melodic prog-rock for nearly 20 years, first as the guiding light of Spock’s Beard, and then on his own. As always, if you want Morse’s compositional, vocal and instrumental skills, you need to accept his faith-filled lyrics. Morse’s solo career is essentially Prog for Jesus, and while he’s much less upfront about it in Transatlantic, this is an album about finding spiritual fulfillment. “Kaleidoscope,” the song, is the diary of a lost soul, until its final verse: “High as the winds of yesterday, as our fear is washed away, we’ll be walking through the fire, there on the mountain we’ll sing, as His life fills everything, we will live our true desire…”

“Beyond the Sun,” my favorite thing here, is a Neal Morse song through and through – it’s about living forever in Heaven. “And we will live forever, when all is joined together, and we will live each day beyond the sun…” If you can roll with this, it’s stunningly beautiful. If you’re an old-school prog fan used to the more vague spirituality of Yes, this may be a stumbling block. (And I definitely would steer clear of Morse’s solo catalog, awesome thought it is.)

Those potential concerns aside, Kaleidoscope is another terrific album from this most super of supergroups. Progressive music is all about the players, and whether they can pull off the mind-bendingly complicated material they’ve written. With these four, there’s never any question of what they’re able to play. As a fan of all four of them, I’m glad they have this outlet to truly stretch themselves, to create love letters to this much-maligned form of music. Yes, it hews to a formula, but that formula works for me, every time. If you’re also a fan of classic progressive rock, I can’t recommend this enough.

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On the exact other end of the musical spectrum is this week’s other quartet, Nashville’s Farewell Drifters.

I’ve seen the band a few times, and they were initially described to me as a bluegrass group that plays pop songs. That suited them just fine on their first few albums, though 2011’s Echo Boom saw them straining against the limitations of their acoustic format. But all that was prelude. The Farewell Drifters’ sparkling new one, Tomorrow Forever, sees them transition into full-on folksy pop band, with drums and electric guitars and everything. And it’s pretty damn great.

It’s the right time for a new beginning. This is the first Farewell Drifters album without founding fiddle player Christian Sedelmeyer, and their first for Compass Records. They’ve taken the opportunity to reinvent themselves, but only somewhat – the album is huge in comparison to their earlier works, with drummer Evan Hutchings joining in on every track, and strings and keyboards and percussion winding in and out, but it’s still as intimate and charming as anything they’ve done.

The Drifters have always had a knack for traditional-sounding songs that still sound fresh and new. Their penchant for harmonies certainly helps – guitarist Zach Bevill trades off lead vocals with brothers Joshua and Clayton Britt, who play mandolin and guitar respectively, but all four Drifters harmonize beautifully. That works for the high, lonesome bluegrass sound they’ve done in the past, but also for the more lush pop that fills this new record.

Tomorrow Forever is a tale of two halves for me. The first half eases you in – the songs are more traditional, and even with the orchestral bells, drum kit and strings on the sprightly opener, “Modern Age,” you can still draw a straight line back to the Farewell Drifters of Yellow Tag Mondays. “Bring ‘Em Back Around” builds up convincingly, with electric guitars and organs, but before you get too excited, they’re back to that bluegrass harmony sound on “Brother.” I’ll admit that this half of the album is less interesting to me. It’s well done, lovely stuff, particularly “Coming Home,” but it sticks to the tried and true a little much.

But with “Tennessee Girl,” this album positively takes off. The song skips ahead on a jaunty acoustic rhythm with some well-placed xylophone, and spins off into a delightful chorus, setting the tone for this more adventurous, more successful second half. “Relief” may be the finest Farewell Drifters song, sad and powerful, the haunting fiddle line caressing the gorgeous melody. “To Feel Alive” may be a close second, particularly when it dives into a Byrds-esque chiming-guitar jam near the two-minute mark. The album ends with two lovely songs, the forlorn “The Day You Left” and the defiant “Starting Over,” which journeys from despair to new hope in a quick four minutes.

The Farewell Drifters have always been good, but Tomorrow Forever, and especially its second half, is something special. It’s a strong step forward for a band that keeps growing, and hopefully it will be the one that pushes them into new realms of popularity. If you’ve never heard them, start here. You can find out more at their site.

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Next week, Broken Bells and Marissa Nadler, among other things. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tm3am, and Twitter at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.