I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I believe there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure.

If you like a song, if it makes you happy and brings a little joy to your existence, then you shouldn’t feel even slightly guilty about it, no matter what it is. Others may try to dissuade you from the thing you love, but don’t let them. You should give not one shit what they think, be they famous and influential music critics or people you know. Or hell, both, if you know some famous and influential music critics. Art is between you and the work, and no one else needs to be in that relationship.

Hopefully I’ve succeeded in keeping this column about what I like, what I’m responding to, and not what you should like or respond to. At the bottom of this column you’ll find my First Quarter Report for 2013, essentially an early look at my top 10 list. In no way am I suggesting these are the albums you should like best. They’re the ones I like best at this point in time. I’d love it if you checked out the ones you haven’t heard, but beyond that, it’s not my place nor my business to tell you what to like.

I get some flack for some of the things I enjoy. For more than a decade, Marillion has been one of my favorite bands, despite the fact that virtually everyone else I know finds them bland and boring. I put the Click Five in my top 10 list a few years ago, and their infectious power pop still makes me smile, but some of my readers just couldn’t stomach them. Same with Hanson, a band I will defend to the death. They write top-notch blue-eyed soul-pop, and they keep getting better at it. They have a new record coming out this year – the first single, “Get the Girl Back,” is pretty great – and you can expect me to wax ecstatic about it when it drops, no matter what anyone thinks.

With that in mind, I have two records on tap this week that most people who don’t know me won’t believe I actually like. One’s a modern soul-pop masterwork from a former boy-bander, and one’s a mariachi throwdown from a former country-swing band. And both of them have occupied my CD player for weeks. Here’s what I unashamedly like about them.

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The rise of Justin Timberlake has been fun to watch.

I’ve never been a teenage girl, so the appeal of ‘NSync, Timberlake’s ‘90s-era prefab boy band, has always eluded me. I get them mixed up with the Backstreet Boys, and I couldn’t name a single song of theirs, despite being unable to escape them during my Face Magazine years. (All right, I just looked. I do know “Bye Bye Bye.”) I enjoyed “Cry Me a River” when I first heard it, but I never picked up Timberlake’s first solo album, the idiotically titled Justified. He was a pop star from a boy band, and I wasn’t interested.

Oddly enough, it was “Dick in a Box” that first commanded my attention. Timberlake has all but established a second career as a Saturday Night Live host, and his collaboration with the Lonely Island was one of the funniest things the show has ever aired. When I heard Timberlake was performing “Dick in a Box” in concert, my admiration grew. His second album, FutureSex/LoveSounds, was a huge leap forward, thanks to his burgeoning partnership with producer Timbaland. It was still radio pop, but it was sophisticated radio pop, interesting and mature.

Six years later, here he is with The 20/20 Experience, and his evolution into full-fledged artist and superstar appears complete. He’s now sold enough records that he can get a major label to bankroll an album like this, which could only have been made by someone who doesn’t care if he sells any more records. The 20/20 Experience is vast and patient, full of long, flowering, soulful songs without easy hooks. I’ve been comparing it to old Isaac Hayes records, but that’s not quite right – it doesn’t sound like old soul, but it captures some of the essence of it.

Timberlake collaborated with Timbaland again on every track here, and the two are remarkably (ahem) in sync. They throw down the gauntlet early – “Pusher Love Girl” is eight minutes long, slow and slinky, with old-school strings and horns and a decidedly Prince feel. Timberlake has a high and thin voice – he’s no John Legend, by any means – but he works it, stretching it over the groove. The last three minutes find Timbaland riffing on the theme – the song relates a girl to an addictive drug, and Timberlake drops a sotra-rapped verse: “I can’t wait till I can get you home and get you in my veins.” You wouldn’t hear this on the Mickey Mouse Club, but you also wouldn’t hear it on the radio.

In fact, only a couple songs here sound like Timberlake could even send them to radio. One of them, “Suit & Tie,” is a bona fide hit, which makes sense – it has the album’s most obvious chorus, and a (relatively uninspired) verse from Jay-Z. It’s clearly the single, and it’s fine, particularly its odd vibes sample, but it’s the worst thing here. Much better is “Don’t Hold the Wall,” a strange yet compelling crawler that extends to seven minutes, and the great “Strawberry Bubblegum,” a smooth, minimal mood piece that evolves into a jazzy pop treat.

These songs take their time – the Prince-like “Spaceship Coupe” took me a few listens to appreciate, but now I can’t get enough of the thick synth bass and the ripping Elliott Ives guitar solo. “That Girl” is one of only two songs that doesn’t surge past six minutes, but I wouldn’t have minded if it had. It’s the most classic-sounding soul number on the record, with delicious horns and guitars. The vocal arrangement is marvelous, dripping honeyed harmonies and lovely countermelodies.

The 20/20 Experience ends with three songs unlike anything Timberlake has done, and for my money, they’re the three best. “Let the Groove Get In” is an ecstatic rewrite of “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” that spins out its Latin-inflected rhythm and repeated vocal for seven minutes. It glides into “Mirrors,” the most straightforward pop-rock song here, but as it goes along, it expands and blossoms. The breakdown in the final three minutes is splendid. And then there is “Blue Ocean Floor,” a drumless ambient lament than ends the album on a melancholy note. This is the record’s biggest surprise, a song that is equal parts Thom Yorke and Moby, a shimmering and heartfelt sink to the bottom.

I hear this is just the first volume of The 20/20 Experience. If the second can maintain this album’s inventiveness, maturity and willingness to serve the song more than the singer, it should be another winner. Justin Timberlake didn’t have to make an album this interesting – whatever he released would have sold, so he could have just followed the winning formula. The fact that he did, and that the resulting album is one of the finest mainstream pop albums I’ve heard in years, is worthy of respect. It’s a little masterwork from an unexpected source, and one I can’t stop listening to. Can’t wait to see where he goes from here.

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When I was in college, I lived in a house with three other guys. We all pitched in for cable, and somehow we all got addicted to Country Music Television. We compiled a list of elements that had to be present in every country video – the hat, the truck, the guitar, the girl – and I think we were proud of ourselves when we discovered bands that broke the mold.

One of our favorites was The Mavericks, a band that didn’t seem to belong on CMT at all. Their hit at the time was “There Goes My Heart,” a bit of traditional western swing with a horn section, and all of their third album, What a Crying Shame, traded in the same old-school stompers. They only got more interesting from there, kicking in genre walls while keeping one respectful eye on the past. Their seventh album, In Time, was a long… well, time in coming – the band took a decade off while lead singer Raul Malo pursued a solo career. They’ve now evolved into a fascinating, goofy, damn fun outfit that I unabashedly adore.

On much of In Time, the Mavericks sound like Roy Orbison fronting Los Lobos. Malo has really cultivated the Orbison in his voice – it’s always been there, but he sounds even more like him now than he did in the ‘90s. The songs, as usual, are simple ditties, traditional in scope, but the band leaps genres with even more ease and confidence here. Opener “Back in Your Arms” is a ‘50s shuffle with some fine organ touches, “All Over Again” is full-on Mexican folk music, with some awesome horns, and “In Another’s Arms” is a delicate torch song with strings and sweet melodica. Malo sounds fantastic on that one, like a born crooner.

While every track is good – try the Jerry Lee Lewis boogie of “As Long As There’s Loving Tonight,” or the jazz balladry of “Forgive Me” – there are two standouts that set this album above anything the Mavericks have done. The first is “Come Unto Me,” a minor-key Tex-Mex-flavored stunner that makes full use of Malo’s powerful tenor. The ascending chant that kicks off the pre-chorus is just awesome. And then there is “(Call Me) When You Get to Heaven,” an eight-minute gospel-infused slowly-building epic, complete with insistent choral backing vocals. It’s terrific.

I’m glad I stumbled onto the Mavericks when I was an undergrad. Without that months-long fascination with CMT, I might never have heard them, and I certainly wouldn’t have the attachment to them that I do. In Time is a swell reunion record for a unique band. They’ve evolved into a genre-oblivious beast, beholden to no style, yet always cognizant of the history they’re steeped in. And they’re a lot of fun to boot.

* * * * *

Hard to believe it’s the end of March already. Below you’ll find my First Quarter Report, essentially what my 2013 top 10 list would look like if I were forced at gunpoint to publish it now. This is not a great list, although I’ll stand by the top four. I sincerely hope it gets better. You’ll also see a couple of entries that I have not yet reviewed. Rest assured, I’ll get to them.

Without further ado, here’s the list as it stands now.

#10. Johnny Marr, The Messenger.
#9. Young Dreams, Between Places.
#8. Steven Wilson, The Raven That Refused to Sing and Other Stories.
#7. Justin Timberlake, The 20/20 Experience.
#6. Little Green Cars, Absolute Zero.
#5. They Might Be Giants, Nanobots.
#4. My Bloody Valentine, m b v.
#3. The Joy Formidable, Wolf’s Law.
#2. Everything Everything, Arc.
#1. Frightened Rabbit, Pedestrian Verse.

I go back and forth between Everything Everything and Frightened Rabbit, since they spark very different parts of my musical brain. You caught me in a lyrical mood today, so the Rabbit wins. Come back in three months to see how the list has changed.

And come back next week, when I try out a bunch of new bands. Wish me luck. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m still getting used to the phrase “former journalist.”

I was an ink-stained wretch for 17 years before making the jump to public relations and science communication. For five of those years – the best five, if I’m being honest – I worked for a mid-sized daily from Aurora, Illinois called the Beacon-News. The Beacon started 167 years ago as a family-owned publication, but was bought out by the Chicago Sun-Times in 2000. I started working there in 2005, and I left at the end of 2010.

For all five of those years, I worked for John Russell. Since starting at the paper in 1973, he’s had many titles, including city editor, associate editor and managing editor, but his job description is pretty simple: he’s the heart and soul of the Beacon-News. From the moment I first met him, I knew I was working with a true professional newsman. In the years I spent sitting right across from him, I found out that he’s a walking inspiration to his staff, an endlessly kind soul hiding behind a gruff exterior, and just one of the all-around greatest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet and work for.

Even back in 2005, the Beacon staff was chafing under the misguided direction of the Sun-Times, and that would only get worse. I survived four or five rounds of layoffs, watching as good people lost their jobs and the paper’s staff dwindled. When I started, the news department had 11 reporters. When I left, we had four. This, naturally, affected our ability to do our jobs and put out a quality product. But that never stopped John Russell from holding us to the highest standard, and working every single day to make sure the Beacon was the best paper we could make it. And of course, that inspired all of us to work harder too.

The Sun-Times has made some ridiculous, mean-spirited, thoughtless moves in the past few years, both during my tenure and after it. On Friday, they will finalize two of their stupidest decisions, and I believe they will have sealed the fate of the Beacon. First, they will permanently close the paper’s Aurora offices, forcing all the remaining staff to commute to Chicago to edit and assemble the Beacon. This eliminates the paper’s presence in its own hometown, putting it out of sight and out of mind for most Aurorans.

And second, they will usher out John Russell.

They told him last week. It was a shock to everyone who knows him. Only a company with no concern whatsoever for the paper they own and the people who make and read it would do something this short-sighted and moronic. There’s no sense that can be made of it. They gave John no severance pay, no insurance bridge. And they didn’t even say thank you for more than 39 years of continuous above-and-beyond service. As you can imagine, this has left him – and us – heartbroken and depressed.

So we’re gonna do two things. On Friday night, we’re going to get together, as many of us current and former Beaconites as we can cram into a room, and we’re going to be there for John. And we’re also going to uphold a long-standing journalism tradition by creating a fake edition of the Beacon-News just for him. These fake front pages are usually comprised of snarky in-jokes, but this one will be filled to the brim with heartfelt tributes. We want John to know what an impact he’s made on all of us, how much he’s changed our lives for the better, and how much Aurora is going to miss him.

Anyway, here’s what I wrote for the John Russell edition of the Beacon-News:

The day I first met John Russell, he asked me a question, one I could tell was very important to him: “Why do you want to be a reporter?”

I’m sure this is a familiar story to most Beaconites. It was a question Russell pulled out in every new hire interview, sort of his idea of a litmus test. I remember flailing around for an answer – something about keeping the public informed and able to make good decisions. Blah blah blah.

After agreeing to hire me, JR let me in on the right answer, and it told me all I needed to know about him: “Because I want to save the world.”

John Russell is the Platonic ideal of old-school newspaper editors. He’s grouchy and curmudgeonly, he barks out orders and swears at his computer. He rarely gives out compliments, so when he praises you, it’s like manna from heaven. I worked for John for five years, and I lived for those times he would read a piece I’d slaved over, smile and quietly say, “Good story.” All of us reporters cherished those moments.

He never did get me to write shorter – I can’t count the number of times I handed in a story, and then braced myself for the inevitable shout. “Thirty-four inches? Goddammit!” (He would have edited the crap out of this piece.) But he never cut the good stuff. He made the good stuff better. John wouldn’t settle for half-assed reporting. If you knew there was a question your story hadn’t answered, you could be damn sure John Russell would ask it. And you’d better have an answer.

John taught me more in those five years than I can possibly thank him for. Beneath that gruff exterior, he was endlessly compassionate, wildly funny, and he knew how to bring out the best in his team. His whole team – there wasn’t a person in the Beacon newsroom who did not respect John Russell, and who would not do anything he asked.

Because here’s the thing about John: he made you better, but more than that, he made you want to be better. He inspired everyone to work harder, because no one would work harder than John. He was the fulcrum around which the entire newsroom spun. During my first weeks at the Beacon, the more-than-capable Mike Cetera took a turn as city editor, while John occupied an office along the back wall. I didn’t know any better at the time, but once John retook his place at the center of the newsroom, it was like the planets realigned. All was right with the world once again.

John Russell has worked at the Beacon-News longer than I’ve been alive. He’s taken every ounce of shit every inept Chicago higher-up has thrown at him, and kept on plugging, because he believes in the Beacon. But more, he believes in good stories. He believes they can change the world. And he’s right.

I wish this story had a different ending. The Beacon-News without John Russell is simply unimaginable. Most Beacon readers will probably never know his name, or what he did for them – for us – for nearly four decades.

But we know. And we know that a mere “thank you” is never going to cover it. But it’s all we have. So thank you to John Russell, the best damn editor I’ve ever met, and the best damn boss I’ve ever had. Thank you for changing the lives of everyone you worked with, whether you knew it or not. Thank you for always trying to save the world.

Thank you, John. Thank you.

* * * * *

After that, I don’t quite feel like waxing pithy about music, so let’s just end with a quick look ahead.

Next week, we’ll get new records from Depeche Mode, the Strokes and Harper Simon. We’ll also get a new Wavves, but I’m not expecting much from that. April will kick off with new things from Telekinesis and Hem, two bands with nothing whatsoever in common, as well as an archival release from Rilo Kiley.

The rest of the month will bring us albums from Michael Roe, Dawes, the Knife, Todd Rundgren, James Blake, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Iron and Wine, the Flaming Lips, the reborn Big Country (with the Alarm’s Mike Peters on vocals), Frank Turner, Phoenix, Kid Cudi, Paula Cole, !!! (who have blessed their album with the amazing title Thr!!!er), Guided by Voices and the Geoff Tate version of Queensryche. (Yeah, there’s a whole story there. Suffice it to say that there are now two versions of Queensryche, and both have new albums coming out.)

May will see new things from Vampire Weekend, She and Him, Joe Satriani, Alice in Chains, the National, Daft Punk, the Polyphonic Spree and Laura Marling. June will usher in new ones from Eleanor Friedberger, Megadeth, Portugal the Man, Surfer Blood, Sigur Ros, Aaron Sprinkle (his first solo album since Fair’s split), and the reunited Black Sabbath. Let’s hope Ozzy made it through the haze to the microphone OK. Somewhere in there we’ll get a record from the other version of Queensryche, a remastered deluxe edition of R.E.M.’s Green, and hopefully the new Daniel Amos, entitled Dig Here, Said the Angel.

It’s almost too much goodness. Expect reviews of most, if not all of the above, either here or on my supplemental blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date.

Next week, what was supposed to run this week – some music people can’t believe I like, plus the First Quarter Report for 2013.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

With some artists, you know exactly what you’re going to get every time.

The classic example is AC/DC. There’s a famous quote from Angus Young around the time of 2000’s Stiff Upper Lip: “We’ve been accused of making the same album over and over 12 times, but it’s a dirty lie,” he said. “The truth is, we’ve made the same album over and over 15 times.” That’s funny because it gets at an essential truth – AC/DC is a band that found the thing that works for them, and stuck with it. For more than 30 years.

Then there are those artists who settle into a comfortable groove, only to pull the rug out every once in a while. Ben Folds comes to mind – occasionally, he’ll make an a cappella record, or team up with Nick Hornby, or toss out a Fear of Pop. But for the most part, Folds delivers quality piano-based pop music. He’s reliable without seeming rote. That’s actually the path most musicians end up taking. They establish an identity, and shake it up now and then. (Even bland poppers Lifehouse just made an interesting-left-turn sort of record.)

But then there are the artists who steadfastly refuse to be nailed down. The chameleons, the shapeshifters, the masters of disguise. Each album is a surprise, each new guise a way of teasing out new styles, taking new paths. The downside is they’re hard to relate to. Even after decades of work, their identities remain slippery. Frank Zappa is a good example. Zappa made so much music in so many different forms that it’s difficult to get a handle on it, and even harder to figure out the man behind the songs.

The ultimate chameleon, though, has to be David Bowie. His long, strange career is one of the finer mysteries of pop music – he broke big during a time when the genre boxes were very important. Radio needed to know which format to slot him into, record stores needed to know where to rack his albums. And yet Bowie kept slipping from stone to stone, from sci-fi prog to glam rock to electro to experimental noise to that utterly bizarre dance-pop cover of “Dancing in the Streets” with Mick Jagger.

It wasn’t just his 1970s alter egos, although Ziggy Stardust was the prototype that inspired the likes of MacPhisto and Omega and Sasha Fierce and even Chris Gaines. His Berlin trilogy with Brian Eno remains one of the most effective change-ups in pop music history. He worked with Nile Rogers in 1983, and six years later debuted Tin Machine, his angular noise-rock combo. In the ‘90s, he embraced industrial aggression and whirring jungle beats. If you couldn’t keep up, Bowie didn’t care.

The idea of Bowie slowing down in his old age was a tough one to swallow. His two albums from the previous decade, Heathen and Reality, were both middling affairs awash in covers. At age 56, he seemingly disappeared, surfacing only occasionally during the next decade. (His guest spot on Extras was worth coming out of hibernation.) It seemed like he’d found a permanent identity: happy retiree. But because he’s David Bowie, he couldn’t stick with that for long.

Bowie’s 26th album, The Next Day, breaks a 10-year silence. He doesn’t need the money, he doesn’t need the artistic recognition. He’s a 66-year-old legend with nothing to prove. Which is why the urgency and power of this album is such a pleasant surprise. Fourteen new Bowie songs, clocking in at less than an hour (without the three bonus tracks), most of them barnburners. Yes, he released the slow and pretty “Where Are We Now” as the first single. No, most of the album doesn’t sound anything like that.

What does it sound like? How about a David Bowie mixtape? This album looks forward by looking back, taking liberally from Bowie’s vast discography. There’s a little “Beauty and the Beast” in the title track, a bunch of Ziggy Stardust glam, and even some Space Oddity epic folk. Some of it’s funny, particularly the rollicking “Boss of Me,” and some of it is somber, like the swaying “You Feel So Lonely You Could Die.”

It’s an album that’s hard to pin down, which is only fitting. It jumps from the blissful “Dancing Out in Space,” with Gerry Leonard’s trademark guitar shimmers floating out over an almost Krautrock expanse, to “You Will Set the World on Fire,” an eruption of blistering riffs and thunderous drums, to closer “Heat,” an almost Scott Walker-esque dirge. Throughout all this, Bowie stretches that worn, yet still strong voice, matching the energy of the loudest numbers like a man half his age.

Much has been made of the cover of The Next Day, which defaces the “Heroes” sleeve with a big white box. Some have felt that Bowie is not adequately respecting his past with this image, but even a cursory listen to the album will show that to be unfounded. This is the sound of a middle-aged Bowie taking stock, celebrating the parts of his career that still thrill him, and creating his 2013 identity from those ingredients. He’s not playing a part here. This is what it sounds like when a lifelong chameleon settles into his own skin. The Next Day sounds like a lot of things, but most of all, it sounds like David Bowie being David Bowie, at last.

* * * * *

If there’s anyone in Bowie’s native Britain living the chameleonic lifestyle these days, it’s probably Steven Wilson.

Who is Steven Wilson? An excellent question. He’s a 45-year-old genius writer, producer and player best known for two long-running projects: Porcupine Tree, his ever-changing 20-year-old progressive rock band, and No-Man, his only slightly younger atmospheric pop collaboration with Tim Bowness. But that’s only scratching the surface of the multiple identities Wilson has adopted in the past two decades.

There’s the whispery drone of Bass Communion, the clanging electronic craziness of IEM (the Incredible Expanding Mindfuck, don’t you know), the straight-ahead pop of Blackfield, and the surprisingly gentle folk of Storm Corrosion, his project with Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth. And more recently, there’s Wilson’s blossoming solo career, which has found him indulging his jazz fusion tendencies. Very little connects these different projects, except Wilson’s voice and his willingness to try just about anything. (He’s also become the go-to producer and remixer for audiophile bands like King Crimson.)

So who is Steven Wilson? Like Bowie, we may never really know, but at least he’s given us plenty of music to listen to while we puzzle it out. The most recent is his third solo album, which has a marvelously ridiculous title: The Raven That Refused to Sing and Other Stories. But that’s the only ridiculous thing about it. In a relatively concise 54 minutes, Wilson has crafted his masterpiece, a perfect summation of where he has been, and where he’s going.

Opener “Luminol” gets the spazzy, prog-metal stuff out of the way early, crashing to life on a bass-driven jam and then, four and a half minutes in, evolving into a slow-burn journey that brings early Genesis to mind. But then “Drive Home” delivers seven and a half minutes of transcendent beauty, delicate acoustic guitars leading into thick clouds of keyboards. It’s all prelude to the jazzy wonders of “The Holy Drinker,” an amazing metal-fused-with-saxophones stomper with a descending melody that’ll haunt you. Blistering organ lines and flute solos await in the second half.

The record turns melancholy in its final third. The 12-minute “The Watchmaker” is a master class on crafting pretty prog, and its piano-driven middle section is lovely. But it’s the title track that truly sets this album apart. It begins in near-silence, with slowly surfacing piano chords, and Wilson sings of loss: “I need you now, and I need our former life, I’m afraid to wake, I’m afraid to love…” Over its eight minutes, the piece swells – when the songbird melody begins near the four minute mark, it’s almost impossibly beautiful, and as the track explodes into magnificence at the end, the experience is remarkably moving. It may be my favorite Steven Wilson song, and with so many to choose from, that’s saying something.

Wilson has called The Raven his most personal album to date, though he’s couched the lyrics in fables and stories. I don’t feel any closer to knowing who he is after listening to it, but that’s not a drawback. It’s the nature of shapeshifters to leave you uncertain about their own confessions, their own honesty. And in the end, it hardly matters. All stories are true.

What matters is that on this album, Wilson has found a way to bring together his proggy, jazzy, ballad-y and epic sides without succumbing to sprawl. He’s fused his various identities together, and ended up with the closest musical approximation of himself he’s yet delivered. All of which makes this a perfect starting point. If you want a first Wilson album, a good jumping-on point for the ongoing story of one of our finest chameleons, you won’t do better than this.

* * * * *

It’s hard to believe I’ve never reviewed a Steven Wilson album before. I’ve been a fan for nearly as long as I’ve been writing this column, but somehow, he always slipped through the cracks. If you’d like other great examples of his work, check out Porcupine Tree’s In Absentia and Fear of a Blank Planet, No-Man’s Speak, and Wilson’s previous solo album, the awesome Grace for Drowning.

Next week, some music people can’t believe I like. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Twitter @tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

We discussed relatively new bands last week, so let’s aim a little older this time.

Not that old, mind you. I’m not talking about senior citizens like Bob Dylan and Neil Young. It’s a wonder those guys are still alive, never mind releasing new material. No, I mean artists who have been around for 20-plus years, and are still in that middle ground between the blood-pumping excitement of their early days and the solemn elder-statesmen respect of their twilight years. I’m talking about people in my own age group (the middle one) who are still evolving and still surprising.

It’s no secret that I lean toward the more experienced musicians. There’s really no substitute for a large body of work, and for the lessons learned over time. While I’m interested to hear high-profile new releases from newbies like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Vampire Weekend, the upcoming albums that have me on the edge of my metaphorical seat are all from older artists with long histories. Billy Bragg, the Flaming Lips, Todd Rundgren, Daniel Amos, Prince, even David Bowie. They’ve all been so many places that wherever they choose to go next, you know it won’t be well-trodden ground.

Here’s another one: Trent Reznor. He’ll be 48 years old in May, and his seminal debut, Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine, turns 25 next year. (I remember buying the 20th anniversary remaster and feeling very old.) Those leather pants are probably a little more snug these days, which may be one reason Reznor put NIN on hiatus a couple of years ago. Of course, now he’s touring with the band again this summer, so maybe he just stayed that cool.

But Pretty Hate Machine is a young man’s record, all the-world-is-ending angst and sexual dread. I’d have a hard time accepting it (or The Downward Spiral) from a 47-year-old. So it’s been fascinating and gratifying to watch Reznor age gracefully without losing the core of what he does. I’m still reeling from the idea that Reznor is now an Academy Award-winning composer for his work with Atticus Ross on The Social Network, and I’m stunned he and Ross did not receive a nomination for their expansive, brilliant score to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. (The movie was poor, so that didn’t help.) Reznor’s recent output has built on his more atmospheric side, and shown him to be the master craftsman I always knew he was.

And now here is Welcome Oblivion, the first full-length from Reznor’s new project, How to Destroy Angels. It’s the first album he’s made with his wife, singer Mariqueen Maandig, but anyone worrying that this will simply be Nine Inch Nails with a female singer needs to give this a listen. Reznor has found a way to take certain aspects of his sound to a new level while retaining his signature. There’s no doubt, listening to this, who is behind the boards, but at the same time, Welcome Oblivion is unlike anything else Reznor has done.

For starters, it’s the most consistently slow, crawling, spooky record he’s made. Nothing here is traditionally beautiful, like the quieter bits of NIN albums. The songs on Welcome Oblivion are frightening, their sonic corners full of ghosts. It is five full tracks until we get a shaft-of-sunlight melody, and eight until we get something that resembles a traditional song. After brief intro “The Wake-Up,” “Keep It Together” sets the tone – it slithers in on a barely-there beat, minimal synths percolating under a droning sheen, and Reznor and Maandig whispering vocals into the mix.

This mood continues for three songs, slowly and subtly building. The title track sounds a little like a mashup of “The Wretched” and “Tomorrow Never Knows,” and Maandig is actually given something to sing. You feel like the album is going somewhere, and then “Ice Age” happens. It’s essentially an acoustic dirge, minimal smatterings of plucked banjos and guitars repeating in a hypnotic pattern. There’s virtually nothing else here, leaving the field wide open for Maandig’s high, clear voice. The chorus of this song is the first real tune we get, and even though the song goes on for seven minutes, it’s a left-field highlight.

Even though many of these tracks, like the slow-burn “Too Late, All Gone,” have that patented Reznor sonic buildup, the album lacks energy and direction. That is, until you get to the pop single hiding at track eight. “How Long” remains slow, but its stacked-harmony chorus is a jolt in the middle of this sleepy record. It’s invigorating, and the electricity doesn’t fade for several more tracks. “Strings and Attractors” puts its NIN beat up front, but keeps the focus on its shuddery melody, and even though “We Fade Away” is a bit of a drone, it’s an enveloping one.

Welcome Oblivion ends with three tracks that are practically instrumentals, but they’re not as reminiscent of Reznor’s film work as you’d expect. “Recursive Self-Improvement” is all stuttering beats and electronic blips, while “The Loop Closes” has its roots in NIN’s “Eraser.” Seven-minute closer “Hallowed Ground” finishes with a whisper, its subtle percussion and minimal piano lines supporting a dense cloud of synth drones and harmony vocals. It drives the point home – for long stretches of this album, nothing is really happening. But it sounds remarkable nonetheless, setting a tense and shivery mood.

I’m not sure if Welcome Oblivion is completely successful. Reznor’s lyrics still sound like they were pulled from a junior high student’s journals, and even Maandig’s pretty voice can’t disguise the fact that very few of these songs really go anywhere. But while you’re listening to it, that hardly matters – this album wraps you up in its sound. Reznor has successfully established How to Destroy Angels as its own entity, separate from yet connected to NIN, and has proven that even a quarter-century later, he can still surprise us.

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I’ve been a They Might Be Giants fan for 27 years.

I was on board right from the start, when at 12 years old I saw the videos for “(She Was a) Hotel Detective” and “Don’t Let’s Start.” When “Birdhouse In Your Soul” became a surprise hit, I was in high school, and it was one of my first experiences with the general public latching on to one of “my” bands. I was in college when their version of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” swept the airwaves, and rocked out to John Henry, their first live-band excursion, in the first house I rented with friends. I was in Indiana for Mink Car and Maryland for The Spine, and I enjoyed 2011’s Join Us in the comfort of the first home I’ve ever owned.

I say all this just to note that I’ve grown up with this band, and we are both old. Both Johns (Linnell and Flansburgh) are in their 50s now, and you’d expect them to start slowing down, or perhaps getting less quirky. But as the years go by, the Johns seem to be more and more excited about being in TMBG, and making the wonderful, idiosyncratic music they make. Ten years ago, they started a second career writing children’s songs, and they’ve made four of the greatest educational records you’ve ever heard. Join Us was a terrific effort, mature without being serious, and their live shows remain legendary.

And they’re not stopping. Out this week is Nanobots, the 16th TMBG album, and it’s a triumph. The album crams 25 songs into 45 minutes, and though many are brief snippets (reminiscent of the component parts of 1992’s “Fingertips”), most are the kind of full-blooded, strange pop songs the Johns are famous for. But there’s a new energy, a new vitality to these tunes – they’re loud, they’re kinetic, and they practically explode with melody.

Opener “You’re on Fire” is a perfect example. It wastes no time getting to the good stuff – that guitar/piano riff, those skipping drums, that verse about towing someone’s car. It’s wonderful, and in 2:41, it’s over. The title track is bizarre, a tale of growing nanobots and watching them rule the world, and Linnell provides a strange mechanical counterpoint in that inimitable voice. But it’s danceable, and the horn section is marvelous. So many of these songs – “Lost My Mind,” the great “Call You Mom,” the grinning “Stone Cold Coup D’Etat” – are vital guitar-pop wonders, easily dismissing the notion of TMBG as a novelty act.

If you need further proof, there is “Sometimes a Lonely Way,” a genuine, heartfelt ballad about failure and loss. “Sometimes a lonely way, taken alive in an un-civil war, trophies in glass displays, rehearsals for third place forever more,” Linnell and Flansburgh sing, their voices entwining before embarking on a “ba-ba-ba” bridge that would make any piano-pop fan smile. It’s the kind of thing TMBG has been writing more often lately, as they’ve aged, and they’re better at it than you’d expect.

Of course, the next eight songs are all goofs, so they haven’t grown that much. Tracks 11-18 whiz by in about four minutes, and two of those minutes are taken up by the marvelous “Secret Steps,” one of Linnell’s trademark melodic circles. “Throw away the thing that tells you not to throw the thing away, you’ll forget to rue the day you went ahead and threw the thing away…” This leads to a string of songs that last between six and 17 seconds, but all in a row, they make for a dizzying few seconds.

On the other end of the spectrum is the album’s epic, “The Darlings of Lumberland,” all of 3:21. It’s an off-kilter, horn-drenched excursion, featuring ‘70s prog harmonies and a slinky synth bass pulse. TMBG stick the landing, too, whipping out the dance-a-licious “Icky” and the sad, strange “Too Tall Girl” in the record’s final stretches. The last track is a 20-second a cappella field recording – abrupt, sure, but it makes you want to circle back and hear this monster again.

There aren’t many bands who can say they’ve made 16 albums. Even fewer can say they’re still at the top of their game, and turning out some of their best work. Nanobots is the finest TMBG album since The Spine, way back in 2004, and though they’ve never lost their way, they sound energized here, full of purpose and direction. It’s a great thing to hear. I doubt I’ll ever find another band like They Might Be Giants, but as long as this one remains this good, I’ll be happy.

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And finally, we have former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, who will be 50 this year.

Marr has been making terrific music since I was in kindergarten. He’s rightly celebrated as a guitar god, with a tone many axe-slingers would kill for. Had he done nothing but contribute to the Smiths catalog, he’d still be revered, but he went on to form the swell Electronic, to contribute to dozens of albums by other artists, and, in recent years, to join Modest Mouse, pumping new blood into a band whose other members are all 10 years his junior.

But one thing Marr has never done is made a solo album, until now. It’s called The Messenger, and it’s fantastic. I like to think that Marr finally decided to put this album together after listening to the last 15 years or so of Britpop, and saying to himself, “Enough is enough.” The Messenger is everything you could want in a guitar-fueled pop album. This is probably what Beady Eye sounds like in Liam Gallagher’s head, the utopian ideal he’s aiming for.

The Messenger rocks right out of the gate, with the dark and pounding “The Right Thing Right,” and simply doesn’t let up. Marr hasn’t lost a note as a player, and he was always an underrated singer, but it’s the songwriting that will blow you away here. “European Me” sounds like every great song on college radio in the ‘80s, given a modern dusting-off. “Lockdown” is simply massive, that ringing guitar tone filling the room, that descending riff making me grin like an idiot. The title track is a showcase for That Guitar Sound, and a great song to boot.

If you expect this album to taper off by the end, you’re gonna be wrong. “New Town Velocity” is one of the album’s best, those familiar tones chiming over a minor-key acoustic strum. It’s like a lost Smiths classic, and it leads into the powerhouse closer, “Word Starts Attack.” It’s reminiscent of old XTC, with its jagged lines and jumped-up beat. It caps off an uncommonly strong record, a fitting solo bow for a living legend. What took him so long? I have no idea, but I hope this is just the first Johnny Marr album in a long line. Life begins at 50, don’t you know?

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Next week, probably Steven Wilson, and maybe David Bowie. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Twitter @tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

There aren’t many people who can say they designed something truly iconic. Ray Cusick was one of them.

In 1963, a fledgling British science fiction show named Doctor Who received an initial order of 13 episodes. It was a tricky program, aimed at families, yet featuring an irascible old man kidnapping two schoolteachers and dragging them through time and space. There was nothing like it at the time, and no indication that it would become a raging success, so all involved treated those initial 13 episodes as the only ones they would ever get to make.

And then, something extraordinary happened, and that something extraordinary was called the Daleks. It’s hard to imagine a time when the evil pepper shakers were an unknown commodity, but they first trundled onto our screens in the show’s sixth episode, on Dec. 28, 1963. The reaction was instantaneous and widespread. We laugh at the term “Dalekmania” now, but it was a real thing – the Daleks were a national craze, and all by themselves, they ensured Doctor Who’s future beyond those initial episodes.

While Terry Nation gets all the credit for creating the Daleks, Ray Cusick is the man who designed them. Using what he had – plywood, tricycles, bathroom plungers – Cusick created a unique and striking bad guy, one far creepier and more interesting than Nation’s vague descriptions in his script. It was the look of the Daleks that captivated the youth of Britain in the ‘60s, and though he never received a penny beyond his BBC salary for crafting them, Cusick was the man to thank for that. And blessedly, fandom eventually did thank him.

While it’s been clear for a long time that the Daleks would outlive Cusick, that possibility became sad reality on Friday, when Cusick died of heart failure in his sleep. He was 84. Rest in peace, Ray, and thank you for not only designing the Daleks, but giving Doctor Who the boost it needed to continue on. Everyone watching the show now owes you a great debt.

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This month, Radiohead’s Pablo Honey turns 20.

If you ever hear anyone tell you that they predicted from this album that Radiohead would one day be one of the most important and influential bands on the planet, you have my permission to call that person a filthy liar. Pablo Honey, to be blunt, isn’t very good. Its worst song, “Creep,” became its biggest hit, but even the better tracks are frustratingly average. No one could have known that, a mere four years later, these lads from Oxfordshire would create the best album of the 1990s, OK Computer.

Since then, millions of words have been spent trying to figure out how Radiohead went from a pub band to perhaps the most artistically intriguing group in the world, able to somehow sell the general public on some of the most cerebral, bizarre music ever presented to a mass audience. Radiohead is able to do seemingly anything they want, on their own schedule, without a hint of artistic compromise, and whatever you feel about the music they’ve been making for the last 12 or so years, that’s a position any band would envy.

Radiohead’s influence and autonomy often overshadows that music – you still hear more about the pay-what-you-want online release of In Rainbows than the songs contained on it. That’s partially because the band has become more and more insular as the years have worn on. Their last effort, 2011’s The King of Limbs, was typically twitchy and difficult, and made in a vacuum. The band offers you no way in except through their own work, and no air escapes. (And keep in mind, I liked that one.) No other band sounds like modern Radiohead, and no other band would want to.

The Radiohead bubble even extends to Thom Yorke’s solo projects, which provide an interesting case study. In 2006, Yorke released his first solo album, The Eraser. It was a mechanical, melody-free bore, meticulously built on computers – the very definition of a one-man project. When it came time to play these songs live, though, Yorke assembled a band. And what a band – powerhouse drummer Joey Waronker, bassist Flea and percussionist Mauro Refosco, along with longtime producer Nigel Godrich. I don’t know about you, but I would see that band in a heartbeat.

Reviews from the Eraser tour were glowing. The band – soon christened Atoms for Peace – had reportedly opened up Yorke’s cold, clicky tunes, finding the beating hearts beneath. I never saw the shows, but the notices made me optimistic. And when the band headed into the studio, determined to capture their synergy on disc, I couldn’t help but remain hopeful. I mean, just look at that lineup. There’s no way that Yorke could take this group of musicians and make something removed, something mechanistic, right? I mean, right?

Sigh.

The debut from Atoms for Peace is called Amok. It’s packaged in a near-complete replica of the accordion-fold sleeve that housed The Eraser, and for good reason – this is The Eraser Part II. If you were hoping that playing with a new set of musicians – and especially this set of musicians – would push Yorke into new territory for the first time since the ‘90s, keep on hoping. Instead of meeting Flea, Waronker and Refosco halfway, Yorke and Godrich have brought them into the Radiohead vacuum, and sucked all the air from their lungs.

Or at least, I assume that’s what happened. The only reason I suspect any of those three musicians are even on this record is because the liner notes tell me they are. The percussion all sounds mechanical, or sampled from organic drums and looped. The bass is muted, if it’s present at all. Only on a couple of later tracks does it sound like it was performed by a human. Everything else is chilled synths and clack-clack drum machines, with Yorke doing his now-trademark barely-tuneful moan over the top.

In short, it sounds like Radiohead. Within that framework, Yorke and Godrich do some pretty good work. “Default” is particularly interesting, with its blossoming synth chorus, and “Reverse Running” stands out as one of the few tracks on which Atoms for Peace feels like a band. (A robotic, soulless band, but still.) But it’s hard not to hear Amok as a lost opportunity. Yorke needs new blood to shake things up, and if Flea, Waronker and Refosco can’t manage it, I have no idea what it will take to pull him out of the bubble.

It’s pretty clear that Radiohead decided to live in that bubble while making 2000’s alien Kid A. I’ve often wondered what they might have sounded like had they continued down the OK Computer path, evolving as they went. There’s no way to know that, but what we do have are bands influenced by Radiohead’s golden years, bands who end up finding new corners in that sound to explore. And one of the best of those is Everything Everything.

The Manchester band’s second album, Arc, actually mixes up a slew of influences. I’m hearing Andy Partridge in some of Jonathan Higgs’ topsy-turvy vocal melodies, and the precise, full-blooded arrangements of Minus the Bear throughout. But Radiohead is definitely the touchstone. Arc is full of the kind of songs I wish Radiohead would write these days. I can even hear Thom Yorke singing something like “Torso of the Week,” with its electronic pitter-patter drums and cool synths. But then it slips into the chorus – the chorus! – and instantly overtakes everything Radiohead has done in more than a decade.

There are 13 songs on Arc, and not once does the band offer something weak or half-assed. Opener “Cough Cough” hits like Bloc Party, but soon evolves into a stunning pop song, the kind you wish they’d play on the radio. Dig the frenetic keys during the “coming alive” section, and the eye-widening key change at the end of each line of the chorus. Higgs has an immediately recognizable voice, elastic yet inwardly drawn, and Arc gives him a workout.

I want to live in the alternate universe in which “Kemosabe” is the number-one hit it deserves to be. It’s an effortless-sounding glide of a tune, with an infectious chorus that slides up out of nowhere and invades your head space. In this universe, “Duet” is also a hit. If Snow Patrol could get it together and write an interesting song, it might sound like this. Or at least, like the first half of this – the second half is a buildup to a string-laden explosion. It’s mighty. “Amourland” is another slinky should-be hit, and “Feet for Hands” is incredible, like Muse with an acoustic guitar.

Much of the second half of Arc is given over to epic ballads, like the final stretches of OK Computer. “The House is Dust” starts with drones and a plodding beat, but ends with Higgs and a piano, lamenting his finite existence: “I wish I could be living at the end of all living just to know what happens…” “The Peaks” is among the most striking songs on the album, a rich requiem for a lost world: “I’ve seen more villages burn than animals born, I’ve seen more towers come down than children grow up…” They don’t shy away from the synthesizers, but they wring heart and soul from them.

Arc may be the finest album I have heard so far this year. But even beyond that, it serves as proof that there is life – real, wide-open, warm-blooded life – in the sound Radiohead pioneered. Yorke doesn’t seem interested in tapping into it, so I’m glad to have bands like this one, who mold it into new shapes, and breathe new purpose into it. It’s hard to say what Radiohead would sound like if they finally popped their bubble and opened up to the world. But with tremendous bands like Everything Everything out there, it’s also hard to care.

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Next week, Trent Reznor and They Might Be Giants. Two great tastes that, frankly, would taste horrible together. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Twitter @tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Welcome to the second of our two-part animal-related reviews collection, and the second opportunity I have resisted to make a Nine Inch Nails reference in the title. You’re welcome.

So you all know about my aversion to hype, and my reluctance to plunk down good money for the work of new, untested bands. Yes, I know this puts me at odds with every music critic ever. The thrill of the new, all by itself, doesn’t hold a lot of weight with me. The venerable Todd Rundgren has a new album coming out in April, his 24th, and I’m more excited about that than I am about hearing whatever new debut EP Pitchfork is talking about this week.

Yes, I understand that I’m old, and that this is entirely my problem. Which is why I resolved to fix it, to the extent that I can. Over the past several years, I’ve tried to hear as many new bands as I can afford, and listen for the potential, not necessarily the actual. A good debut should point to the future, and if all you have is one album in you, I’m still much less interested, no matter how exciting that one album may be. But I’m trying to separate my feelings about the music from my negative reaction to early hype.

Sometimes, it works out. In 2008, I picked up a fairly well-attended debut record called Antidotes by an Oxford band called Foals. This was during the Franz Ferdinand/Arctic Monkeys craze, when guitar-led dance bands were a big thing, and I nearly skipped Foals, since early notices lumped them into the same category. But those notices were wrong. Foals’ music is guitar-led, and it is danceable, but the songs on Antidotes were considerably more complex and intriguingly arranged than anything else coming out of that particular British scene.

In fact, in my review of Antidotes, I likened them to Isaac Brock fronting Minus the Bear, which is still a decent enough description. Of course, they shoved all that aside for their marvelous second album, Total Life Forever. A much more atmospheric and beautiful creation, TLF continued the band’s complicated arrangements, but applied them to dreamier songs, thoroughly opening up the sound. Despite the fact that I never got around to writing a full review of it, Total Life Forever is a remarkable second record, one that eschews hits and easy gratification for a more immersive artistic experience.

So yeah, that worked out pretty well. But Foals’ third album, Holy Fire, has left me perplexed and uncertain. It’s not a bad record by any means, but it feels like the kind of thing a band makes after their label tells them to hit a certain sales floor, or not bother coming in Monday morning.

That label is Warner Bros., the first major to take a chance on Foals, and it sounds like Yannis Philippakis and company repaid them by trying to write some hit songs. After a slow-building “Prelude,” the band hits a meaty groove on “Inhaler,” and it’s immediately more obvious than anything they’ve done. The Foals arrangements are still in effect, but the song is a real crowd pleaser, particularly when the unexpected (and frankly awesome) guitar hook comes in at 1:49. The big, blocky chords here signal a true departure for this band.

That’s not the big hit in waiting, though. “My Number” is ridiculously catchy, like something out of the Phoenix playbook, and it’s clearly designed to get the club on its feet. This is Foals’ idea of a radio song, based around an irresistible, body-shaking riff and an endlessly repetitive vocal line. “You don’t have my number, we don’t need each other now…” To extend my Isaac Brock reference from earlier, this is the band’s “Dashboard.”

And it’s very good, don’t get me wrong. But it just doesn’t offer me the same puzzle-pieces-falling-into-place feeling of the first two Foals albums. “Everytime” is similar, a percussive groove leading up to a big chorus, and you can almost see Philippakis motioning for the crowd to put their hands in the air before that last rousing refrain. The whole album retains this arena-sized feeling, and it’s an interesting suit for Foals to try on. But it doesn’t fit naturally, and Holy Fire feels a little awkward because of it.

Thankfully, the songs get more interesting in the second half. “Late Night” is a smoky driving tune with ringing electric pianos and acres of atmosphere. “Out of the Woods” gets to a U2 place, while “Milk and Black Spiders” has some Cure-esque touches. “Providence” is a pounding rocker, but an oblique one – the shifting time signatures and wildly placed guitar stings make this one a winner. And closer “Moon” is as darkly dreamlike as anything on Total Life Forever.

I can’t rightly say I’m disappointed in Holy Fire, but I can’t say it extends the band’s winning streak, either. Foals are simply not meant to be a popular band, and even though they pull off the hit single formula well, it’s the more fascinating material in the record’s back half that will make my personal playlist. I hope “My Number” is a smash, and I also hope the band has the integrity to take that newfound fame and money and make a fourth album so completely art-driven, so completely them, that it just floors me.

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Speaking of bands I tried on a whim, there’s Local Natives.

Three years ago, I picked up this Los Angeles group’s debut, Gorilla Manor, on the strength of a few reviews comparing them to Fleet Foxes. Well, they don’t sound a lot like Fleet Foxes, but what they did bring to the table was pretty great in its own right. Soaring harmonies, folksy acoustic guitars, inventive drumming, and a real sense of movement – the best part about Gorilla Manor was its kinetic nature. The moving parts of the songs never stopped spinning, and nothing sat still. It’s what separated them from the likes of Grizzly Bear.

How distressing, then, to see that the group enlisted Aaron Dessner of the National to produce the follow-up record, Hummingbird. Dessner did what he always does – he slowed everything down, smoothed everything out, and made it all more boring. The result is an album that is merely fine, instead of excellent. And this band deserved an excellent second record. In a way, they tried to make their Total Life Forever here, but came up short – the songs just aren’t up to the standard of the debut, and instead of dreaming, they sound like they’re sleepwalking.

I’m not sure how much of this to lay at Dessner’s feet, but the parts of Hummingbird I don’t like certainly sound like him. Opener “You and I” sports a soaring chorus, and Taylor Rice can still belt one of those out, but the music around it is gauzy and static. Even the bridge section, which should be delirious and dramatic, just sounds submerged. Single “Heavy Feet” drowns a sharp drumbeat beneath plainly plucked chords and droning sounds – this is saved from sounding exactly like the National only by its nicely melodic chorus and Rice’s high voice.

It’s not all bad news. Once you get used to the idea that Local Natives are not even trying to outdo Gorilla Manor, this album is quite nice. “Ceilings” has a skybound repetition to it, and Rice sends his voice into the air with effortless charm. “Black Spot” builds slowly, refusing to actually go anywhere for a long time, and then leaving earth with a minute to go. “Three Months” is actually quite pretty, making good use of that soaring falsetto. As the album wafts along, the songs get more interesting – “Wooly Mammoth” actually sounds like it could fit on the debut, and “Colombia” is lovely, if (like the rest of this effort) a little sedate.

In the final analysis, I like Hummingbird, but I wish I loved it. Local Natives filled a particular niche with their debut, and they’ve abandoned it here. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I prefer the shifting folk they used to play to the quieter, simpler stuff on this album. It’s a good piece of work, pretty and aching in all the right ways, but it doesn’t stay with me the way Gorilla Manor did. I’m still interested in following Local Natives, but I’m not excited about it the way I once was.

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And that’ll do, pig. Next week, we get weird with Atoms for Peace and Everything Everything. We’ve also got new stuff from Steven Wilson, Cloud Cult, Trent Reznor’s How to Destroy Angels, They Might Be Giants and David Bowie coming up. Pretty good year so far.

Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Twitter @tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Have you noticed there are a lot of bands these days with animal names?

A brief sampling: Fleet Foxes, Band of Horses, Deer Tick, Arctic Monkeys, Grizzly Bear, Minus the Bear, Modest Mouse, Cat Power, The Bird and the Bee, Sea Wolf, Dr. Dog, Mastodon, Cage the Elephant, Swans, Gold Panda, Pelican, Caribou, Porcupine Tree, Horse the Band, the Fruit Bats, the Mountain Goats, Wolfmother, Doves. Heck, even Andrew Bird sort of qualifies.

This week and next, it’s “Welcome to the Jungle” meets “At the Zoo” here at TM3AM. We have three bands with animal names and one with an animal album title, and if you think that’s just a flimsy excuse to corral a bunch of unrelated reviews together, well, you might be on to something. But keep it our little secret, ‘kay?

The truth is this: I will be out of state most of next week, so I need easy and fast material, and I need to write it today. There. I’m glad we had this little sharing moment. I feel much closer to you now. I hope this won’t impact your enjoyment of the reviews themselves, which I promise are up to the standard you’ve come to expect here at Tuesday Morning 3 A.M., however low that may be. It is my pleasure to serve you.

Now read, you bastard. Read!

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If you’d told me in 1996 that one day I’d be reviewing the “Novocaine for the Soul” band’s 10th album on the internet, I would have said, “What the hell is the internet?” But then I would have laughed. It was obvious from just one listen to Beautiful Freak, the Eels’ debut album, that they were a one-hit wonder, and they’d soon (ahem) sputter out.

And yet, here we are in 2013, and not only has E and his band survived, they’ve thrived. Rather than try to emulate the success of “Novocaine” (still their only major hit), Eels quickly gave us (among other records) a devastating concept album (1998’s Electro-Shock Blues), a distorted rock throwdown (2001’s Souljacker), a double album of remarkable scope (2005’s Blinking Lights and Other Revelations), and most recently, a linked trilogy about the end of a relationship and the start of a new one (2009’s Hombre Lobo and 2010’s End Times and Tomorrow Morning). They have a proven track record now, and their live shows are legendary.

So here’s album number 10, Wonderful, Glorious. Now, with a title like that, they’re just setting themselves up. But happily, this record not only lives up to its own adjectives, it’s the most fun you’re likely to have listening to this band. It stands head and shoulders above the recent trilogy, and that was pretty damn good. Seventeen years into their recording career, Eels seem to be hitting their stride.

The common read on leader Mark Oliver Everett is that he’s a complicated man who writes uncomplicated songs. Even his stage name is simple. Everett’s tunes use plain language and easily digestible melodies to get twisty emotions across in the most direct way possible. I’m not sure why it works as well as it does, but E can sing the most banal line you’ve ever heard and somehow make you feel it. Part of the secret is his everyman voice. That phrase is used a lot to describe trained singers who sound a little raspy, but in E’s case, he really does sound like a regular guy.

Wonderful, Glorious contains 13 more Everett ditties (17 if you buy the deluxe edition), and while the lyrics retain his usual style, the music is among his most accomplished. While some previous Eels albums have conjured up the image of E alone in his basement, crying at his mixing desk, this is a full-band effort. The gang is all here: The Chet, Knuckles, Koool G Murder and P-Boo (yes, those are their names), and these songs sound like they were jammed out and refined live.

That’s not to say they sound like jams. “Bombs Away” opens the record on an intricate drum beat and a smoky riff, but the song recedes and roils back several times over its five minutes. It’s meticulously arranged, with synth interludes and well-placed percussion touches, and at one point it fades to nothing but vinyl record noise. It sticks to its crawling tempo throughout, but it serves as the mission statement for this uncommonly joyous album: “I’ve had enough of being complacent, I’ve had enough of being a mouse, I’ll no longer keep my mouth shut, bombs away, gonna shake the house…”

“Accident Prone” is a splendid E ballad about randomly stumbling into a new relationship. It’s followed by the earth-shaking “Peach Blossom,” which lurches ahead on a thunderous beat and a distorted, dirty synth bass riff. “Open the window, man, and smell the peach blossom,” E commands, and you have no choice but to listen. “New Alphabet” is similarly awesome, its slinky blues hiding a defiant sunshine lyric. “When the world stops making sense, I make a new alphabet,” E shouts over more of that fillings-rattling keyboard bass.

That live-band feel is crucial to an organ-fueled romp like “Stick Together” or a Black Keys-style blues shouter like “Open My Present.” But my favorite moments on Wonderful, Glorious find the band augmenting what would have been solo E tracks in the past. The superb “The Turnaround” is epic in scope, starting at a twinkle and ending up a rousing anthem. “Six bucks in my pocket, the shoes on my feet, the first step is out the door and onto the street,” E sings, and it sounds like the moment he finally believes himself free. “On the Ropes,” similarly, is a classic E song given great new dimensions. The chords and the sentiments are pure Everett: “Every time I find myself in this old bind, watching the death of my hopes, in the ring so long, gonna prove ‘em wrong, I’m not knocked out but I’m on the ropes…”

See? Simple, direct, yet effective. I used to hate myself for loving Eels, convinced it was some sort of deficiency – how could I enjoy something this determinedly uncomplicated? Eventually I just learned to let go and let it work for me. And it does. Wonderful, Glorious ends with its title track, a slinky, sorta-funky groove with lyrics like this: “The sum of all the love inside your heart will get you through your plight, it’s all right.” I love it anyway, and I love this album more than most. It’s pretty wonderful, and it’s kind of glorious.

* * * * *

Seemingly at the other end of the lyrical spectrum is Scotland’s Frightened Rabbit, although they’re really not that far apart. Both Mark Everett and Scott Hutchison write about the joy of rising above, the euphoric swell of pride that comes from winning a long-fought struggle against oneself. The difference is, while E just comes out and says this stuff, Hutchison speaks in beautiful metaphors, in verse that is anything but pedestrian.

Which is why it’s ironic that the fourth Rabbit album is called Pedestrian Verse. Reportedly, Hutchison wrote those words on the cover of his lyric notebook this time out, reminding himself to keep things down to earth. Only he can say whether he succeeded. To my ears, while these words are certainly more inward-looking, they still ring with the same poetic, emotional touch Hutchison has brought to every Frightened Rabbit outing. Simply put, they’re wonderful, from the introspective “Acts of Man” to the fiery “Holy” to the final perfect metaphor, “The Oil Slick.” (“All the dark words pouring from my throat sound like an oil slick coating the wings we’ve grown…”)

The real story this time is the music, for while Hutchison turned his gaze inward, the band clearly decided to aim for the rafters. Pedestrian Verse is the Rabbit’s first album on a major label (Atlantic), and they’ve done the major label thing – they’ve expanded their sound to near-epic proportions. They still sound like Frightened Rabbit, thank goodness, but a bigger, more all-inclusive Frightened Rabbit. There’s a sweep and a grandeur to this album, and it was there before, but never to this level. The guitars sound wide as the sky, the drums crack like cannons, and when the band aims for majesty, as they do on “The Woodpile,” they get there and then some.

What keeps all of this from turning into an Arcade Fire album? Hutchison’s voice, that thick Scottish brogue, that workingman’s attitude. The same instrument that turned “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” into an anthem for the ages here keeps this group of fist-pumpers tethered to the ground, and that’s a good thing. For all its oceans of sound, Pedestrian Verse is actually a modest album, clocking in at 42 minutes, no song breaking the five-minute mark. If the band can keep this balance going for the rest of its career, it will be a glorious miracle.

They’ve managed it here, brilliantly. Any album that begins with the line, “I am that dickhead in the kitchen, giving wine to your best girl’s glass” is doing something right. “Acts of Man” is a fantastic opener, quietly setting the stage with pianos and slowly building to full power. Hutchison’s lyrics take a look around at “the fatty British average” and report back their dismal findings: “While a knight in shitty armor rips a drunk out of her dress, one man tears into another, hides a coward’s heart in a lion’s chest, not here, heroic acts of man…” The final lines are so perfect that I have to reproduce them whole:

“I have never wanted more to be your man, and build a house around you
But I am just like all the rest of them, sorry, selfish, trying to improve
I’m here, I’m here, not heroic but I try…”

If there’s a verse that sums up this album, there it is. “Holy” finds Hutchison sounding off – “Don’t mind being lonely, don’t need to be told, stop acting so holy, I know I’m full of holes” – while the band provides sufficient fury behind him. He’s adept at finding the holes himself. “If you want a saint you don’t want me,” he sings in “December’s Traditions,” and ends “Dead Now” with these words: “So will you love me in spite of these tics and inconsistencies, there is something wrong with me.”

“Nitrous Gas” finds Hutchison all but giving up: “If happiness won’t live with me, I think I can live with that, keep all of your oxygen, hand me the nitrous gas…” And in fact the album’s finale, “The Oil Slick,” seems like it will conclude things on a similar note. Hutchison begins in failure, unable to write a song of love for someone dear. “Only an idiot would swim through the shit I write, how can I talk of light and warmth, I’ve got a voice like a gutter in a toxic storm…”

But then he finds it, and it’s gorgeous: “There is light, but there’s a tunnel to crawl through, there is love but misery loves you, we’ve still got hope so I think we’ll be fine in these disastrous times…” That shaft of light is mirrored in the music, which rises up on powerful wings, shaking off the black tar and heading for the sun. It’s a splendid moment on a splendid album. Frightened Rabbit have always been a good band, but over these last two albums, you can hear them becoming a great one. The struggle, like every struggle Hutchison depicts, has been worth it. Every second.

* * * * *

Next week, some more animals. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Twitter @tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So I had a plan for this week’s column.

Nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary. I was going to start by praising the new Eels album, Wonderful, Glorious, then move on to a more guarded yet still positive review of Frightened Rabbit’s Pedestrian Verse, and close with my reservations over the new Local Natives LP, Hummingbird. I doubt it would have been a classic, not one for the ages, but it would have been solid and entertaining. And maybe next week, I’ll actually write that column.

But not this week. Because on Saturday, a miracle happened.

After 21 years of promises and prevarications, My Bloody Valentine finally released their third album. And they did it in the most nonchalant way possible. The Facebook post announcing the record could not have been more understated: “We are preparing to go live with the new album/website this evening. We will make an announcement as soon as it’s up.” A couple hours later, that announcement came: “The album is now live on www.mybloodyvalentine.org.” That’s it. That’s how they broke two decades of silence. No fanfare, not even a few days of buildup to get us ready.

Oh, MBV mastermind Kevin Shields had been talking about a new record for half a year. But anyone who lived through the past two decades of baseless assurances from Shields no doubt tossed those comments aside, waiting to see if anything truly materialized. For a whole generation of fans, the new My Bloody Valentine album was like SMiLE, or Chinese Democracy – an album we never thought we’d see, no matter what Shields said. In fact, it just grew funnier when SMiLE actually came out, and then Chinese Democracy followed suit.

“We’re working on it,” Shields would say in yet another interview.

“We’ll believe it when we see it,” we all said in response. “It’s not that we don’t believe you, but… actually, it is that we don’t believe you.”

So the sudden appearance of a new nine-track My Bloody Valentine album, on sale the same night it was announced, was genuinely shocking. I still can barely believe it. The band clearly underestimated the impact a new MBV album would have – minutes after the album appeared, the band’s site went down, crushed by the onslaught of hungry fans. It took me about three hours of hitting “refresh” again and again to finally make my way in, reminding myself that last time My Bloody Valentine put out a record, this technology was unheard of.

In fact, within seconds of paying my money, I was listening to the album, something Shields could not have imagined last time he released something into the world. The reaction from his fans across the globe was immediate, documented on Facebook and Twitter and a million blogs. That must have been gratifying, a whole new experience for Shields and company. Saturday night (and Sunday morning) was an outpouring of love for a band and a sound that had been away too long. The new My Bloody Valentine album actually exists. It’s a bona fide miracle.

* * * * *

When I first heard Loveless, My Bloody Valentine’s undeniably classic sophomore album, I hated it.

I was 17, and my good friend Chris L’Etoile played it for me, barely able to contain his excitement. And I just stared dumbfounded at the stereo system, unable to process what I was hearing. It didn’t sound intriguing or mysterious or fascinating to me, it just sounded wrong, as if it had been mixed incorrectly. The vocals were too low and indistinct, the guitars too high and overpowering, the drums too far back and drowned out. And then came “To Here Knows When,” that insane smear of a track, and I just couldn’t do it. Music was not supposed to sound like this.

I can’t remember when I started appreciating, and then loving Loveless. It still sounds wrong – it’s still a musical atmosphere I need to acclimate to – but once I’m in, breathing the album’s air, it’s an experience unlike any other. Loveless still sounds like no other record ever made, despite its influence spreading like tendrils through the ensuing two decades. It takes multiple listens to pinpoint the melodies under the din, but once you find them, they’re like little treasures. Shields and Bilinda Butcher offer up angelic harmonies, holding down an oasis of beauty while the storm rages around them. Sometimes you can barely hear them, but that just makes the times you can more special.

Someone once described My Bloody Valentine’s music as the most beautiful songs in the world, played on lawnmowers. That’s not bad, although it’s exaggerated and simplified. One of the joys of listening to Loveless is trying to figure out just how Shields created these sounds. He twists five or six guitar parts into knots, then bombards them with effects, to the point where I’m left thinking, “I know these are guitars, but I have no idea what he did to turn them into this.”

I can truly understand why it took so long to follow up an album like Loveless. I could also have understood never following it up at all. That the album has taken such hold, has become so beloved, was surely a surprise to Shields, and I’m certain he felt like he could never escape its shadow. Very few albums like it exist – it’s uncompromised and uncompromising, and yet still justly revered by virtually all who have heard it. And the longer Shields waited, the more Loveless grew in stature, until following it up must have seemed impossible.

That he did it anyway, that he finally stopped tinkering with his material and let it fly free, is remarkable. That he managed to create a new work that can stand with the old, while never once trying to outdo it, is nothing less than astounding.

* * * * *

The new My Bloody Valentine album has a very simple title: m b v.

That’s right, the band’s initials, printed in lower case with spaces between the letters. It’s almost pretentiously unassuming, and taken at face value, another sign that the band has no idea of its own influence, or of how much anticipation awaits this new record. The genius of this album can be found in that title – it feels like just another My Bloody Valentine album, as if the band has released a new collection every couple of years since 1991. Even the cover is simple, just a blue blotch with purple lettering.

That attitude extends to the sound. Had this come out in 1993 or 1994, I expect it would have been greeted with nodding heads – this is so clearly the next chapter in the band’s evolution. It’s so obviously what happens next. The record opens with three tracks that echo – but do not attempt to surpass – the sound of Loveless, but as it progresses from there, it takes you by the hand into uncharted waters, into new sounds and shapes. By the end, you’re disoriented, but looking around, you know how you got to where you are.

Noel Murray, a writer for the AV Club, posited that m b v is a trio of three-song suites, and that helps explain it as well as anything. You have the Loveless suite, the pretty suite, and the batshit suite. Placing the familiar-sounding material up front makes it easier to follow Shields and company down the rabbit hole in the record’s final third. But even the first three tracks make it plain that we are not listening to Loveless redux. On Loveless, Shields went for sensory overload, layering track after track into a massive whole. On m b v, he contents himself with only a few tracks per song, but distorts and twists them beyond recognition.

Even the opening is a study in contrasts. Where “Only Shallow” kicked in with a now-famous drum intro, “She Found Now” shudders into frame, quivering, drumless yet thick enough to swallow you whole. Shields’ voice gently wafts in, submerged beneath the waves of distortion. It’s probably the most epic-sounding piece of soothing near-ambience I’ve ever heard, and it continues exactly like that, lilting melody surrounded by weighty, watery noise, for five minutes. And no, I can’t make out any of the lyrics either.

Both “Only Tomorrow” and “Who Sees You” are MBV in rock band mode. Of course, this means they sound like no other rock band on the planet. Many have tried to imitate Shields’ guitar sound, on full display here, but none have quite managed it, and it’s so good to hear the original article again. “Only Tomorrow” gives us our first Bilinda Butcher lead vocal, and at several points she takes a flying, wordless leap for the sky, and it’s thrilling. The distorted-beyond-belief guitar almost sounds like it’s out of control, but Shields pulls it off, even delivering a three-minute semi-solo. And “Who Sees You” finds Shields messing with the pitch of his guitar again, making it sound woozy and slightly off. It’ll make your head spin and your fillings hurt. Everything about this song sounds off kilter – it’s the most Loveless thing here.

But then? “Is This and Yes” signals an odd left turn. It’s entirely organ, voice and subtle (almost buried) percussion, and it’s ethereal and gorgeous. Even with such spare instrumentation, Butcher’s vocals are still submerged and indistinct, almost dreamlike. I’ve never heard a My Bloody Valentine song (or any other song) like it. “If I Am” is more conventional, but still pretty, Shields’ guitar sounding like a broken washing machine behind Colm O’Ciosoig’s rolling drums. This could almost be a pop song, if Shields would let it.

That makes the next track, “New You,” even more stunning. Because this one is a pop song, right down to its pulsing, danceable bass line. There are drum breaks, there’s a chorus, the guitars are rhythmic and mixed into the tune, Butcher’s voice is up front enough to make out words. On a My Bloody Valentine album, the most conventional song just sounds… odd. It also sounds terrific – the tune ends with blissful doo-doo-doos, and they’re so warm and inviting that you could almost – almost – imagine this song on the radio.

But that devilish trickster Kevin Shields is just lulling you into a false sense of complacency. The final three tracks are the craziest things the man has ever released, and the most riveting pieces on this album. “In Another Way” crashes in on a thunderous drum beat, guitars clashing with what sounds like a bagpipe sample, everything colliding with everything else, and yet still making sense. The melody takes a few listens to come to terms with, but it’s awesome, constantly shifting and moving about. The song’s extended instrumental playout is both majestic and insane – just what are those noises Shields is making with his guitar, and how did he make them?

“Nothing Is” remains a mystery to me. It’s three and a half minutes of repetitive, endless, crushing noise, charging forth on a drum beat so industrial that you’ll almost think you’re listening to a Ministry outtake. The only variation is in volume, as the drums get louder partway through. I spent this track waiting for it to explode or collapse into something else, and it never does – it’s just tension with no release. But the final tune, “Wonder 2,” provides all that release and more. It’s the most physically disorienting thing MBV has ever put to tape, frenzied guitar and organ fighting it out and then making love atop furious, jungle-style breakbeats while a squadron of fighter jets buzzes the studio. Yes, there’s a hummable melody. Yes, it’s impossible to hear on first listen. I heard “Wonder 2” for the first time while driving, and it’s so dizzying that I nearly ended up in the river.

And just like that, boom, it’s over. After more than 21 years, it’s a very quick 46 minutes. But it’s an amazing one, at once familiar and forward-looking, willing to take a beloved sonic template and mold it into new shapes. Shields has once again made an album unlike any other I’ve encountered, and he’s mapped out the way forward for a band I never thought I’d hear again. The fact that this album exists at all is kind of surreal, but the fact that it’s a worthy successor to Loveless, and a terrific piece of work in its own right, is nothing short of incredible.

Here’s how I know Shields and company did well. They took more than two decades to follow up a revered, classic record, and no one’s complaining about the final result. Everyone’s happy. m b v has been remarkably well received, and I haven’t read a single grousing sentiment. Beyond my own satisfaction with the album, it’s gratifying to see how welcome it has been in the lives of those who waited so long for it. And now I’m hearing that an EP could follow within a few months? Just amazing.

How wonderful would it be if My Bloody Valentine settled into a groove now? If they began releasing a great new album every two years or so, to the point where people expect it? Now that Shields has shrugged off the weight of Loveless, it could happen. But even if it doesn’t, we have at least one more My Bloody Valentine album than I ever thought we’d have. I’m blown away by m b v – both its existence and its quality. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It’s a miracle.

You can hear all of m b v at the band’s YouTube channel. You can buy it as a download, a CD and a vinyl record at their website.

Next week, what I was supposed to write this week. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Twitter @tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Hooray, the good stuff is finally coming out. Let’s not waste any more time and get right down to it.

You can often judge a year by how long it takes for the first great album to hit stores. It’s not a foolproof method, I’ll grant you, but consider this: the first two months of the year are generally a cultural wasteland. Lousy movies, TV shows slowly trickling back onto our screens, and albums shunted off into that limbo between Christmas and spring. Some years, it takes until April for a really great album to make its presence known. If the good stuff starts coming out early, that’s usually a sign that there’s much more goodness to come.

I’m starting to have high hopes for 2013. We’re not even out of January and we already have the year’s first great record. I’m talking about Wolf’s Law, the sophomore album from Welsh trio The Joy Formidable, one of the most striking bands to hit these shores in years. A stranger and more intricate effort, Wolf’s Law isn’t getting quite the same amount of love from critics as their blood rush of a debut, The Big Roar. But I think this record outdoes the first one in a lot of important ways, playing to the band’s ambition while maintaining their edge.

The Joy Formidable is loud. For three people, they make a convincing riff-rock racket, locking into a fuzzy, constantly-moving groove on most of these songs. Their sound on record has a decidedly ‘90s sheen – I once said they sound like Siamese Dream-era Smashing Pumpkins might have, if Billy Corgan had let D’Arcy sing. Wolf’s Law builds on that foundation, adding strings and keys and harps. But if you’re worried that the increased studiocraft might dull their bite, listen to “Cholla,” the rough, explosive first single. Ritzy Bryan has a sweet, melodic voice, but she shreds on guitar, and the song’s tumbling riff will smack you bloody.

While the band has been careful to keep the thick guitar-rock sound at the core of this album, Wolf’s Law is a far more textured work. It’s Rhydian Dafydd’s bass that anchors the brief, awesome “Little Blimp,” and the tender “Silent Treatment” sticks to delicate acoustic guitar throughout. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the amazing “Maw Maw Song,” which begins and ends with plucked harps, and in between drops the biggest, most Zeppelin riff of the album. The verses speed along on what sounds like synth bass, colliding with that riff on the choruses, and making room for a two-minute arpeggiated guitar solo. The song is, hands down, the most fascinating thing here.

But the Joy Formidable is just as great when they tackle the shorter, more volatile tunes. Strings augment the likes of “Forest Serenade” and the infectious opener, “This Ladder is Ours,” but you won’t really care that they’re there – these songs are all about Bryan’s guitar, and Matt Thomas’ thunderous drums. The songs are all sharply written, even though it’s hard to tell what they’re about. “The Leopard and the Lung,” for instance, was reportedly inspired by activist Wangari Maathai, but it’s much more broad and enigmatic in its sentiments: “Hate, it’s going to overrun this town, as soon as the moon goes to nothing, wait, they’re always going to run you down, it’s better to face my something.”

Those who decried The Big Roar for eschewing a live sound in favor of studio bigness will probably have the same complaints about this album, if not more so. The album closes with a pair of sweeping mid-tempo pieces, the soaring “The Turnaround” and the piano-based title song, included as a hidden track. They don’t rock, but they are terrific. Wolf’s Law is the sound of the Joy Formidable kicking against their own idea, not content to just be a rock band. They are that, certainly, and much of Wolf’s Law rocks like thunder, but this album proves they’re aiming higher.

It remains to be seen if they can get higher than this. Wolf’s Law is a decidedly strange album – just listen to “Bats” – but a terrific one, and it showcases an ambitious band doing it right. They came in with a big roar, but the best moments of this album prove they can do more than shout. Wolf’s Law is the first great album of 2013, and I can’t wait to hear what this band does next.

* * * * *

If the young’uns know David Lowery at all these days, it’s probably for his extraordinary open letter to NPR intern Emily White last year, excoriating her for stealing music online. It was a cranky yet well-reasoned argument, and for a while, Lowery was at the center of the debate, his thoughts becoming a rallying point for musicians tired of seeing their profits shrink. The controversy returned Lowery to the headlines after a long absence, and I wondered how many people reading that letter were hearing his name for the first time.

To be fair, it had been a while since Lowery had done anything worth hearing. His solo effort from 2011, The Palace Guards, was fair to middling, and Cracker’s last few efforts have been… well, they’ve been Cracker albums. Though Cracker is his most famous band, Lowery’s legacy will always be tied to the great Camper Van Beethoven, a band he co-founded in 1983. They have one of the greatest band names in history, and a discography that jumps wildly from the silly to the sublime. If you’re new to Lowery, you need to start with Camper.

And if you want a good jumping on point, I’m pleased to report that the brand new CVB album, La Costa Perdida, is surprisingly excellent. Reportedly inspired by their California roots – the title translates to The Lost Coast – this album is everything the last CVB record, the overheated New Roman Times, wasn’t. It’s the most straight-faced album they’ve made, in any of their incarnations, but there’s a playfulness to it, a sense of freedom and joy that had been missing.

Opener “Come Down the Coast” has rocketed near the top of my list of favorite Lowery songs, in a very short time. It’s a peaceful, swaying number, buoyed by Jonathan Segel’s mandolin and some lovely backing vocals. (There’s a strong Beach Boys influence on much of this record.) The band effectively tackles the blues on “You Got to Roll,” and stretches its surf-rock wings on “Too High for the Love-In.” That one ends with Lowery repeating, “Bring to me the anti-venom, and make me a sandwich.” Just in case you thought they might be taking themselves too seriously.

“Peaches in the Summertime” is just fun, its reggae-punk beat finding room for Segel’s violin. (That instrument gets quite a workout on this album, actually.) First single “Northern California Girls” is here in all its seven-minute strummy glory, Lowery’s shimmery accents lifting what is a pretty simple tune. The title song is a galloping, down-home, skipping country-reggae delight, and closer “A Love For All Time” is decidedly wistful and nostalgic.

It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed a Camper Van Beethoven album this much. If you were turned off by the odd, dense rock opera they turned in last time, it’s safe to come on back. And if you’ve never heard CVB before, you could do worse than starting here. (But definitely get the older ones too.) La Costa Perdida may not be instant-classic David Lowery, but it’s closer than I expected we’d ever get again. He may be more famous these days for railing against illegal downloading, but with this album, he’s made perhaps his strongest case for buying and supporting the work of musicians. If Lowery still has music like this in him, I want him to be able to make more of it, and ensuring that is worth my ten bucks.

* * * * *

I vowed at the start of the year to try out more unfamiliar bands and artists. The first one I took a gamble on this year was Mountains, and it certainly paid off.

Mountains is a duo from New York by way of Chicago, and their fifth album is called Centralia. I’d never heard a note of their work before plunking down my money for this, but the descriptions I’d read – promising slowly-unfolding worlds of sound – made it an enticing prospect. Centralia is an entirely drum-less work, almost a drone album, but its textures and attention to detail offer a widescreen experience I haven’t heard from similar artists.

Opening track “Sand,” for instance, plays with shimmering keys over a constant one-note bed, but when the cellos come in at the nine-minute mark, it’s almost revelatory. Second song “Identical Ship” is built on an acoustic guitar whisper, atmospheric synths swirling around it. Throughout this long album, the two masterminds (Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp) set up contrasts between stillness and movement, amplifying the former to such a degree that any instance of the latter is monumental. The rotating bass line that snakes beneath “Circular C,” for instance, would be lost in any other context, but is captivating here.

Centralia also plays with contrasts between the electronic and the organic. Much of this album was performed live, and pianos and guitars sit nicely beside the wavery, watery keyboards that were added later. The result is surprisingly emotional music – the main acoustic melody of “Tilt” that starts about two minutes in sounds limitless in its joy, and the dark and droning keys that surround it only add to that sensation. The centerpiece of this album is the 20-minute “Propeller,” and it shifts and moves through electronic and organic sections with ease. The buzzsaw guitar noise that springs forth from “Liana” is initially jarring, but ends up fitting in perfectly.

I’ve never heard anything quite like Centralia, but I’m eager to hear more. This record has a warmth and a soul missing from a lot of electro-ambient efforts, and a real, human beauty winds its way through these seven tracks. It’s an entrancing, lovely album, one that requires attention and patience to fully absorb. I’m glad to give it both, and I’ll be seeking out this band’s earlier works, while awaiting future ones with great anticipation.

* * * * *

Pretty great start to the year, no?

Before signing off, I wanted to mention Jonathan Coulton. I don’t have a lot to say about his situation with Glee, as it seems cut and dried to me – the show stole Coulton’s 2005 arrangement of “Baby Got Back,” and offered him no credit or acknowledgement. This isn’t the first time that Glee’s producers have done this, either – Greg Laswell, for instance, created the slow, mourning version of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” that the show also ripped off. Fox is apparently within its legal rights, but morally, it’s a real dick move, particularly for the makers of a show about the triumph of the little guy.

Coulton’s response, however, has been magnificent, and I wanted to highlight it. This weekend, he re-released his version of “Baby Got Back,” which of course sounds identical to the one aired on Glee. He has cheekily subtitled it “In the Style of Glee,” and he promises to give all his proceeds for the track through the end of February to charity. Specifically, the VH1 Save the Music Foundation and the It Gets Better Project. So all the money he gets from this firestorm of publicity will go to further music education and help LGBT kids accept themselves.

That might be the classiest thing I’ve seen in some time. Coulton is still investigating the possibility that Fox used his actual recorded backing track for their “Baby Got Back,” and if they did, expect a lawsuit. (And a bunch of clever headlines.) But this move, supporting causes that should be close to Glee fans’ hearts, just proves that Coulton is a guy worth knowing, and worth following. You should buy his “Baby Got Back,” because it’s funny, but you should also hear his plethora of smart, charming original material. It’s what won him the legion of fans you’ve seen leaping to his defense over the past week.

While I appreciate Coulton’s graceful reaction to this mess, I secretly hope he has a legal claim here. That’s probably the only thing that will stop Fox from doing this sort of thing again. Keep up with the latest at Jonathan’s site.

Next week, an avalanche of new stuff, including Eels, Frightened Rabbit, Tegan and Sara and Local Natives. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Twitter @tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I was all set to review the new Joy Formidable album, Wolf’s Law, this week. The Joy Formidable is one of my favorite new bands, and their sterling debut, The Big Roar, still gets a lot of play at Casa de Salles. I’ve been anticipating this new one for a while, and looking forward to reviewing what will turn out to be the year’s first major release.

There’s just one problem. I still haven’t heard Wolf’s Law. Nor have I heard either of my backup plan records, Camper Van Beethoven’s La Costa Perdida or Bad Religion’s True North. The story’s too long and convoluted to go into here, but suffice it to say that I had not received my copies of these albums in time to make this week’s deadline. (That’s right, in 2013, we’re taking the word “deadline” seriously.)

So here we are, talking about 2012 releases again. In a very real way, it feels like we’re still warming up, like the year hasn’t quite started yet. Next week, though. Next week, full steam ahead.

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I was a sophomore in college when Green Day’s Dookie blew up the airwaves.

I worked at our college radio station, and was forced to play “When I Come Around” and “Basket Case” and “Longview” more times than I care to remember. I thought the album was terrible. Three-chord pop-punk with whiny lyrics and no imagination. Rinse, repeat for an entire record. I expected this bratty trio to go away pretty quickly, and when their second major-label album, Insomniac, fizzled out, I felt vindicated. (Well, spiteful and mean. But also vindicated.)

But man, they showed me. Over the next 14 years, they evolved, until finally delivering their twin towering achievements, American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown. I still can’t bring myself to love Idiot, though I do give it oceans of credit for ambition and scope. Breakdown, on the other hand, was the one, the album they’d been striving for. A 70-minute rock opera in three acts, Breakdown found the band exploring new territory, and claiming it all. I was actually impressed enough that I included the record on my 2009 top 10 list.

And I was foolish enough to be excited when the band announced their next project: a trilogy of albums, each in a different style. I foresaw two possible outcomes: either these three albums would be a triumph, the next logical step in Green Day’s evolution away from the simplistic punk band they once were, or they would be a Sandinista-style mess, signaling the moment the band’s ambitions got away from them. I quite like Sandinista, so I was thrilled about either prospect.

I didn’t anticipate what actually happened, though: Green Day decided to sleepwalk their way through more than two hours of boring, insipid “rawk” in a misguided attempt to recapture their Dookie glory days. Now that all three installments of this trilogy (Uno, Dos and Tre) are out, the full shape of the problem is clear – the band focused on quantity instead of quality, and purposely wrote material reminiscent of their earlier days. Both of these things were terrible, terrible mistakes, and the end result is an exhausting set that feels like the work of a band running low on ideas.

On their own, these albums never rise above mediocre, but at least they’re over quickly. Uno is the glossy pop record, the songs that would have been hits in 1994. The tone never changes, but the quality varies, from the obvious yet catchy “Stay the Night” to the idiotic “Kill the DJ” to the endless “Oh Love.” Dos is intended as the garage-rock album, which means it’s dirtier (musically and lyrically), but still sounds like old Green Day. If you’re OK with a bunch of 40-year-old men writing songs like “Fuck Time” and “Makeout Party,” you may not hate this. I liked the final song, the sorta-touching “Amy,” but it’s more than balanced out by the hideous slinky-rap experiment “Nightlife.” The less said about that, the better.

And now here is Tre, wittily named after drummer Tre Cool, to close things out with a whimper. Billie Joe Armstrong described this one as the “epic” installment, but aside from a couple songs, I’m not sure what he’s talking about. Most of Tre sounds like Uno played slower – the same chords, the same kinds of songs, just drawn out for the stadium crowd. It offers nothing this band hasn’t done better elsewhere, and because it fails to forge that “epic” identity, it flails around in search of anything to connect these 12 songs. (Hint: there isn’t anything.)

But for the first time in this three-album undertaking, Green Day does deliver a few tracks I like, so let’s focus on those. The best of the bunch is “Dirty Rotten Bastards,” something of a miniature version of “Jesus of Suburbia.” Over its six and a half minutes, it shifts from one anthemic riff to another, threatening to collapse in on itself at any moment, and yet somehow pulling it off. There’s more interesting stuff here than on all of Dos. Opener “Brutal Love” is pretty good, too, with its ‘50s pop arpeggios and strings. I will also admit to a soft spot for “The Forgotten,” the treacle-spattered piano ballad that closes things out, but I may like it just because it isn’t based on pounding-eighth-note guitars. (I just listened again. It’s much worse in isolation.)

I also kind of like “8th Avenue Serenade,” with its tricky beat and wordless falsetto hook. But that’s it. The rest of Tre is just as mindless, repetitive and boring as Uno and Dos. There’s nothing here as embarrassing as “Kill the DJ” or “Nightlife,” but if this is their grown-up record, it just sounds lifeless and tired. Just listen to “Sex, Drugs and Violence.” You’ve heard that riff a million times, and at least half a million times just from this band. Even something like “99 Revolutions” doesn’t sound like it would get anyone out of bed, never mind out to the battle lines.

Tre is merely the final act in a bland and thoroughly disappointing three-act show. If you listen to this trilogy in order, you’ll hear a band grasping for direction. When they’re not going through the motions, they sound confused and uncertain. After the sheer confidence of 21st Century Breakdown, this was the last thing I expected. I’m not sure where Green Day goes from here. More distressingly, I’m not sure they have any idea either.

* * * * *

And now, a quick look ahead. The schedule for 2013 is starting to shape up, and while there aren’t any potential slam dunks on the horizon, there are some potentially solid records headed our way.

Next week, Tegan and Sara return with Heartthrob, the follow-up to 2009’s terrific Sainthood. What I’ve heard has been excellent. Local Natives deliver their second album, Hummingbird – their first, Gorilla Manor, is an underrated gem. We’ll also get the second Fiction Family album, charmingly titled Fiction Family Reunion, and a new one from Mike Patton’s band Tomahawk.

February 5 is the first huge release week of the year, with new ones from the Eels (Wonderful, Glorious), Frightened Rabbit (Pedestrian Verse), Jim James of My Morning Jacket (the preposterously named Regions of Light and Sound of God), Richard Thompson (Electric), Bjork (remix album Bastards), Coheed and Cambria (finishing up their The Afterman epic with Descension) and Harry Connick Jr. (Smoky Mary). After that, Feb. 12 will only bring us one, but since it’s the third Foals album, Holy Fire, I’m not complaining.

Mark Kozelek’s new thing Like Rats will hit on Feb. 19, and we get new ones from Steven Wilson (with the incredible title The Raven That Refused to Sing and Other Stories), Johnny Marr (The Messenger), Thom Yorke’s other band Atoms for Peace (Amok), KMFDM (Kunst, which is German for art), and a reunion album from the Mavericks. If you ever wondered what Roy Orbison might sound like if he moved to Nashville, you should check out the Mavericks.

A new Cloud Cult album, Love, leads off March 5, with They Might Be Giants (Nanobots), Trent Reznor’s How to Destroy Angels (Welcome Oblivion) and a double album from Autechre (Exai) right behind. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about that new David Bowie, The Next Day, and that comes out on March 12. The rest of March is filled out with records from Low, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Billy Bragg and Anthrax.

And then April will see new things from Telekinesis, Dawes, the Knife, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Frank Turner, Young Galaxy and (incredibly) another new Guided by Voices album. I haven’t even gotten around to reviewing the three they put out last year. So yeah, no anticipated home runs, but some solid stuff coming down the pike. I’ll probably split reviewing duties between the column and the blog, so keep up with both to read every last bit of my babbling.

Next week, the Joy Formidable? Maybe? We shall see. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Twitter @tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.