I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but the Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. Media Empire is back up and running.

Right now, you can head to Facebook and like my new page. It’s been up for a week, and already about 150 of you have clicked that like button, for which I am very grateful. You can also head to Twitter – it’s safe to start following me again. I’ve been tweeting every day, sometimes about music, sometimes about other art forms, sometimes about whatever crosses my mind.

And you can check out my blog. When I started this thing three years ago, it was intended as a supplemental outlet for all the music news and reviews I don’t have the space and time to post here. That’s how I’ve been using it since reigniting it a week ago, but probably the most significant thing you can read there is my Frank Zappa Buyer’s Guide. Yes, I’ve really started writing this thing. I plan to update it weekly with chronological reviews of all 90-some Zappa records, which should take me about two years. But I’ve been writing this here column for 12 years, so that seems like a pretty reasonable goal.

So yeah, more of my babbling awaits you behind each of those links. Hopefully I can keep up this pace, and hopefully it’ll all be worth your while. Thanks for clicking, following and reading.

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So here it is, only the second column of the year, and already I’m bringing up Kickstarter.

Apologies if you’re sick of hearing about my love affair with the site, and what a genuine gift it is to those of us who love off-the-beaten-path music. Google tells me I mentioned Kickstarter in 12 columns last year, which is definitely a lot. But given that the Kickstarter model is the future of independent music writ large, I feel like I’m going to be singing its praises even more in the coming years. I mentioned this before, but four of my top 10 albums of last year were funded through fan pledges, and I expect that figure will only grow.

So, what has Kickstarter done to earn my adoration this time? It’s given the Brothers Martin the means to keep on making music. And that is a very fine thing indeed.

Longtime readers will know who I’m talking about. Jason and Ronnie Martin are brothers from southern California. For nearly 20 years, each Martin brother has headed his own project – Jason fronts Starflyer 59, while Ronnie toils away under the name Joy Electric. Jason plays deep, groovy guitar pop, soaked in reverb and full of emotion, while Ronnie creates shivery pop symphonies using nothing but analog synthesizers. What unites them is a tremendous sense of melody, a way with deceptively complex arrangements and a knack for glorious hooks.

Oh, and one other thing: since 1994, both Starflyer 59 and Joy Electric have been on Tooth and Nail Records, an arrangement that came to an end in 2011. Sales had been pretty low for both bands for a while, and Jason and Ronnie must have known they were living on borrowed time. Tooth and Nail released a dozen albums from both bands, plus numerous EPs and a box set for each. I’m grateful for the support the Martins received for so long – without Tooth and Nail, I never would have heard of either one of them, and they likely wouldn’t have been able to build up the audience necessary to take their next steps.

In what must have been a fun family discussion, the Martins both decided to turn to Kickstarter to pay for their next projects. As you probably know, Kickstarter asks artists to set a fundraising goal, and a time limit. If they meet that goal within the allotted time, they get the cash. If not, they get nothing. And if they go over their goal, they get to keep the extra as well.

I’m betting it was probably a surprise to Jason and Ronnie – two very humble guys – but they both blew their goals out of the water. Jason asked for $10,000 to make a new Starflyer record. He got $24,301. Ronnie asked for $6,000 to finance his new one, and received $12,701. I was overjoyed to see how well both projects made out – this was their fans thanking them for two decades of idiosyncratic, splendid music, and announcing without a doubt that their audience is still here, and still wants more. That must be a great feeling.

At the end of last year, within weeks of each other, Jason and Ronnie released their fan-funded projects. Ronnie chose to put out Dwarf Mountain Alphabet (love that title) on CD, housing it in a simple, elegant, single-color package. The austere artwork belies the fact that this is one of the most surprising stylistic leaps in Joy Electric’s long career. While previous Joy E records felt constructed, built up brick by brick according to some dense blueprint, this one is minimalist, bouncy, zippy fun. It’s almost – dare I say it? – dance music.

For this record, Ronnie pulled out the polyphonic synths for the first time in ages, meaning we get oodles of big, fat chords. The songs are built around four-on-the-floor beats, pulsing bass burbles, and only one or two synthesizer lines. There’s so much space in these songs you could walk through them, but the airy quality adds a lightness that’s been missing from Joy E for a while. Dwarf Mountain opens with an instrumental, the very ‘80s “And This No More,” and there ain’t much to it aside from those wonderful, warm chords, but it’s a delight.

Ronnie’s shaky voice remains his weak link, particularly when he stretches himself on the first single, “Whose Voice Will Not Be Heard.” It’s never been a fatal flaw, however, and the glittering, immersive music more than makes up for it. Check out “Stark Obscurity,” my favorite thing here. It crashes to life with a very Michael Jackson beat and bass line, before the Blade Runner synths come in, and it builds up and up, matching menace with catchiness, and culminating in a wonderfully old-school keyboard solo. By the end of this song, Ronnie will have sold you on his new sound.

As always, though, it’s his songs that rule the day. The 10 tracks on Dwarf Mountain are as well-crafted as ever, from the infectious “Let the Past Go,” to the Yaz-tastic “Further Into Light,” to the melancholy closer “Notes From a Chapter.” “Sing Once for Me” is a remake of a song from 2001’s The White Songbook, and it illustrates the leap Ronnie’s made here – the original was a puzzle box of interlocking moving parts, while this new one is so feather-light it’s almost effervescent.

I have no idea if this style shift is permanent, or just another Joy Electric experiment in a long line of them. I do know that Dwarf Mountain Alphabet is one of Ronnie Martin’s most fun records, and if he wants to keep making these, I’ll keep paying for them. Joy E is a singular experience even when Ronnie isn’t flipping his own script, as he has here. Check out the whole new album here, and buy it here.

Jason Martin, meanwhile, has given the first independent Starflyer 59 album a much cheekier title: IAMACEO. He’s decided to forego CDs for the first time, and put this one out on vinyl and download. So for perhaps the third or fourth time in my life, I paid for music without packaging. There are only a few artists I’d do that for, and Jason Martin is one of them. And he didn’t let me down.

Starflyer fans are used to Jason’s stylistic leapfrogging – everything he’s done sounds like Starflyer, but over 13 records he’s moved from molasses-thick guitar noise to skipping Cure-esque pop to stripped-down stomp-rock. 2010’s The Changing of the Guard found him embracing acoustic guitars, with lovely clean electric flourishes, and IAMACEO expands on that palette. But this isn’t strummy folk melancholy – this is dark acoustic pop, with thundering drums and propulsive bass. And when Martin cranks up the electrics, as he does near the end of the opening title track, it’s loud and proud.

Jason’s low, penetrating voice is in fine form, and his songs here are just awesome. “Bicycle Rider” sounds like the greatest tune Echo and the Bunnymen never wrote, while single “Open Hands” rides in on a tidal wave of guitars, dissipating during the verses only to come crashing back in during the forceful choruses. “No one gives you nothing without open hands,” Martin sings, hitting his record’s bleakest moment. The darkness continues with the dusty piano lullaby “Father John,” one of Jason’s most epic creations. This one’s about moving on when everything falls apart.

And as Martin walks through the simpler, yet no less terrific songs on his record’s second side, it becomes clear that’s what he and his brother have done. They’ve dusted themselves off, picked up the pieces, asked their friends for help, and carried on making the best music they know how to make. IAMACEO is a classic – it’s the obvious next Starflyer album, but it’s also 10 more testaments to Jason Martin’s undeniable skill as a songwriter and record maker. I’m glad and grateful to have it. Listen to “Open Hands” and buy the record here.

Hearing both of these great albums back to back, I’m left with two thoughts. First, Kickstarter is amazing. And second, I hope the Brothers Martin continue making music like this for decades to come. The next chapter of their careers is off to a superb start.

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One slightly sad note before I go. The Click Five, one of my favorite power pop bands in recent years, announced their breakup on Monday. They leave behind three albums of increasing quality, culminating in TCV, last year’s unjustly ignored gem. They were one of those guilty pleasure bands that I never, not once, not for a second, felt guilty for liking. I wish more people had paid attention, but as they once sang, that’s just the way that it goes. Take one last listen to this fantastic tune, and bid the Click Five adieu.

Next week, The Joy Formidable delivers the first big album of the year. I may get to Camper Van Beethoven’s reunion too. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow me on Twitter @tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Well, hello there. How have you been? Oh, me? New year, same cough.

I’ve basically been sick since the last time we spoke. Coughing, sneezing, sniffling, stuffy head, very little rest, despite the medicine and the days I’ve spent in bed. I’m on week four of this disease now, and it’s simply not going away. I’d feel worse about it if virtually everyone I know weren’t also sick. I spoke to a woman the other day at work – she’s been coughing for six weeks. Six. Weeks.

But enough about me, he said, sneezing into his arm. Let’s talk about 2013, the glorious new year we now find ourselves in. My mother’s lucky number is 13. Yes, that’s weird. No, don’t ask. But this is the only “13” year she will see. We’re hoping for good things.

That’s kind of been the theme of these early January posts for a while now. It’s become a tradition of sorts for me to fill the first column of a new year with all the reasons this will be the Best Year Ever. But after my 2012 batting average, I think we’re going to put that idea to rest. Why, you ask? Well, let’s take a look at the scoreboard, and see just how many of my 12 predictions of greatness last year panned out, shall we?

I expected great things from the Guided By Voices reunion, and so far (three albums and counting), it’s been… OK. Ani Difranco’s Which Side Are You On was decent, if unremarkable. I can’t even remember Field Music’s Plumb, and my affection for the Magnetic Fields’ Love at the Bottom of the Sea waned quickly. The new Choir album was underwhelming, the Early November reunion merely pretty good. Perennial sure things Aimee Mann and the Shins released mediocre records. And The Hobbit movie was too long and too padded to soar, although I enjoyed it.

That’s nine of the 12 breathless anticipations falling short. The only ones who came through were Marillion, Nada Surf and my friend Andrea Dawn. Even though I liked all of those records a great deal, that’s a 25 percent success rate. That’s a failing grade in any school.

So yeah, 2012 didn’t quite cooperate with me. And even though there are already plenty of records I’m looking forward to in 2013 –including new things from Bad Religion, Camper Van Beethoven, the Joy Formidable, Local Natives, Tegan and Sara, Eels, Frightened Rabbit, Richard Thompson, Foals, Steven Wilson and Cloud Cult – I’m happy not to give this year the same chance to let me down.

Instead, I thought I’d give myself a chance to let you all down by sharing some of my resolutions for this site – nay, this multimedia empire – in the new year. It’s a pretty ambitious list, and I’m hoping I can stick with it. I’ve been writing TM3AM for 12 years now, and I feel like I’ve never tapped into its full potential. This is the year I hope to do that, and here are some of the ways I’d like to try.

1. Kickstart my blog. You may have noticed that at the end of every column, I invite readers to check out my blog, where I post music news, first-listen reviews, and other ancillary pieces that don’t make it into the weekly column. You also may have noticed that I haven’t updated the damn thing in just about a year and a half.

This was not intentional – I took a job that required every waking hour I had, and I just lost track of it. So this year, I’d like to claim it back. I have a few ideas about how to do that, but most importantly, I now have a job that allows me some regular working hours, and a full night’s sleep every day. I don’t want to get into the same situation I found myself in at the end of 2012, with about 60 albums sitting unreviewed, and in many cases, unheard. That’s not acceptable, and I hope a reborn TM3AM blog will fix that.

2. Revive my Twitter account. Once again, I’ve been asking readers to follow my tweets every week, and I haven’t actually tweeted in more than half a year. In this case, the reason is a little more prosaic: I just don’t like Twitter. But I see its purpose, and I know I have to use it, so I’m gonna. One thing I’d like to return to is my live first-listen Twitter reviews. It’s sort of my version of a song-and-dance show – instant impressions of a new record, in quick bites, as they occur to me. People seemed to like these reviews, and I enjoyed doing them, so I’d like to bring them back.

3. Start podcasting. This is more of a wish list item, but I’d like to make it happen. I would love to find a roundtable group of music fans, and produce a regular podcast in which we dissect new music. I’ve participated in a few of these, and they’re great fun. The only thing keeping me from podcasting in the past has been a reluctance to talk to myself in an empty room. But with a group of critics, it would be immensely enjoyable, for me and for you, I think. So I’m putting it on the resolutions list. By my June 5 birthday, there will be a TM3AM podcast.

4. Actually write my Frank Zappa Buyer’s Guide. Longtime readers may remember this project, which never saw the light of day. I regretted not writing it then, but in retrospect, now is the perfect time. Sixty of Frank’s albums have just been remastered and re-released, joining the roughly 30 and counting posthumous documents issued by the Zappa Family Trust. It’s a massive catalog, and now it sounds better than it ever has. It’s a difficult body of work to navigate, but I’ve had years to hone my responses to it, and I’m ready to share. With so much attention being paid to Zappa’s musical genius these days, I feel it is my duty.

5. Try more new bands, and write about them. I’m a curmudgeon. This should come as no surprise. I prefer artists with longer catalogs and proven track records to flash-in-the-pan newbies with a single and an armload of hype. Over the past few years, I’ve been trying to take chances on more new bands, and while it hasn’t always worked out, I’ve discovered some winners. (My number one pick of 2012, for instance.) This year, I will try to remember that every veteran band was once a fledgling unit peddling their first effort, and I’ll endeavor to hear more of those first efforts.

6. Stay positive. I know it will come as a shock to those of you who criticize TM3AM for its relentless sunny outlook, but after 2012, remaining optimistic is quite a bit more difficult. But I will try. Music is such an important part of my life that a misfire year can wreak havoc on my attitude. I just have to keep on remembering what a wise man – the aforementioned Frank Zappa, in fact – once said: music is the best. And it really, truly is.

So there you have it. Here’s hoping I can do all of the above. Thanks, as always, to everyone who has followed along for these last dozen years. Year Thirteen is going to be (dare I say it?) the Best Year Ever. Come on back in seven days when we begin in earnest. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Happy Boxing Day, everyone. This is Fifty Second Week.

For the past eight years, I’ve been bidding the year goodbye with this little exercise. It clears the decks for next year, it’s fun to write, and I hope it’s fun to read. While the top 10 list is naturally more positive, I think Fifty Second Week gives you a better idea of the scope of the year. Fifty Second Week started as a way to clear out the backlog of unreviewed records. These albums weren’t necessarily passed over because they were unimpressive. In many cases, I just couldn’t find space for them during the year, so they ended up here.

What is Fifty Second Week? I have in front of me 52 albums from 2012 that I heard, but just didn’t get around to reviewing. I’m giving myself 50 seconds to write about each one. I have a timer, and when that buzzer goes off, I will stop writing, no matter where I am in a particular review. Sometimes I’ll have enough time to type three dots at the end of an incomplete thought, but sometimes I won’t. And sometimes I’ll get buzzed out halfway through a word. Wherever I am at the time, the hands come up and I move on to the next one.

All right, let’s see just how bad of a year it was. This is Fifty Second Week.

Alabama Shakes, Boys and Girls.

This barrelhouse rock band is basically just a delivery system for singer/guitarist Brittany Howard, whose raw voice and passion elevate this simple blues-rock material above a lot of similar-sounding stuff. Still, no great shakes. Heh.

Tori Amos, Gold Dust.

I’m OK with Tori’s new songs sucking, but to redo the old ones and make them suck too is just sacrilege. Tori plays with an orchestra here, and while that’s nothing new for her, these new takes on songs like “Precious Things” have all the life sucked out of them. It’s another chapter in her sad decline.

Anathema, Weather Systems.

I should have reviewed this one. This former metal band now plays wonderfully atmospheric progressive rock, full of lush keyboards and terrific melodies. This flew under the radar (Get it? Weather Systems, radar…) but it really shouldn’t have.

Animal Collective, Centipede Hz.

Man, and I really liked Merriweather Post Pavilion. This is just formless, repetitive, annoying synthy noise, and all the massed backing vocals in the world can’t save it. I suppose I should give it another go, considering the acclaim it’s getting, but I could barely make it through the first time.

Band of Horses, Mirage Rock.

Lineup changes have not done these guys any favors. They’re now bland and faceless semi-Southern rock. I’ve heard this thing more than once, and I don’t remember any of the songs. A bonus disc with five more doesn’t help matters.

Barenaked Ladies, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before.

This is one of those cases in which the band hasn’t announced it’s breaking up, but it may as well. This is a collection of leftovers and b-sides, and while it includes a few gems, it’s really just a sad reminder of how good they used to be.

Brendan Benson, What Kind of World.

Being in the Raconteurs with Jack White has brought a ton of new attention to Brendan Benson, and he uses it wisely on this album. It’s full of his usual power pop goodness, even if it is a little anonymous.

Cat Power, Sun.

Man, people went nuts over this. I just don’t get it. Repetitive electronic grooves, deficient melodies, not much in the way of substance, and an 11-minute snoozefest tucked in at the end. It’s baffling to me why this received so much attention.

Cardinal, Hymns.

For some reason, the most overlooked reunion of the year. Even I overlooked it. Cardinal is Eric Matthews and Richard Davies, and their second album after 18 years apart is more low-key melodic goodness. Keeping up with Matthews is getting more difficult, but this is worth tracking…

The Chieftains, Voice of Ages.

With this album, the venerated Irish band celebrates 50 years together. Think about that. 50 years. Now think about this – on Voice of Ages, they team with Bon Iver, the Decemberists, the Punch Brothers and the Civil Wars, to name a few, and not only keep pace, but kick ass.

The Civil Wars, Live at Amoeba.

This poorly-produced Record Store Day document nonetheless captures this duo in better times, sweetly singing tunes from their debut album Barton Hollow. It’s lovely stuff, even the cover of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” (Better than Chris Cornell…)

Cloud Nothings, Attack on Memory.

Loud, raucous, full of sloppy energy, this record also got a lot of acclaim, but in this case it’s easy to see why. This is powerhouse rock – it comes in, fucks your shit up and leaves in about half an hour. Recorded by Steve Albini for that extra anti-shine.

Coldplay, Live 2012.

Coldplay gets a lot of crap, but this is a good reminder of how many solid songs they’ve written. It draws mainly from their last two records, which are their best, as far as I’m concerned. There are hits here, and yes, they’re still Coldplay, so this won’t make you like them if you don’t. But for fans, this is a nice document.

Elvis Costello and the Impostors, The Return of the Spectacular Spinning Songbook.

About time we had a new live album from Costello. The Spinning Songbook tour saw the band erect a giant wheel with song titles on it, and leave the setlist up to chance. The band is in top form here, and Costello sings and plays his little heart out. The accompanying film is awesome as well.

Dirty Three, Toward the Low Sun.

More creepy, sparse instrumentals from this strange trio. They’ve been plying this trade for a long time, but they still find new ways to use their three instruments (violin, drums, guitars) as this brief yet superb little album shows.

Mike Doughty, The Question Jar Show.

Poor Mike Doughty. He really could have been a contender, but he’s been making the same percussive racket for way too long now. This, one of two releases in 2012, is a live album in which the between-song banter far outshines the tired songs.

Mike Doughty, The Flip is Another Honey.

Mike’s second album of 2012 is all covers, but he doesn’t cover these songs as much as he just… turns them into Mike Doughty songs. The Stone Roses’ “Tightrope” is particularly hard done by, but he also ruins songs by Cheap Trick and Low, among…

Dr. John, Locked Down.

Bought on a recommendation, and partially because it was produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach. It’s not bad – swampy blues with attitude, and some genuine musty atmosphere. May be Dr. John’s best. May be his worst. Hell if I know.

Bob Dylan, Tempest.

Some records are bad, and some are experiences akin to medieval torture. This is one of the latter. Dylan’s voice is a ruin, his songs are boring, and the endless (ENDLESS) title song just repeats over and over and over until I want to set myself on fire. Not recommended.

The Early November, In Currents.

Another reunion I ignored, for no good reason. I’ve enjoyed watching Ace Enders evolve, and here he returns to his band with a set of solid, hummable songs. This is the most polished Early November album, and it’s quite good.

Farrar, Johnson, Parker, Yames, New Multitudes.

The Woody Guthrie lyrics project continues with this sumptuous double-disc set that brings four alt-country luminaries together. The results are about what you’d expect, but if you like this twangy sort of thing, this is a treasu

First Aid Kit, The Lion’s Roar.

No lions roaring here. Just more tender acoustic folk-rock from the Soderberg sisters, who harmonize like birds (well, birds with vocal training) over these simple, yet winning confections.

The Gaddabouts, Look Out Now.

Second record from Edie Brickell’s new band with old-time studio pros. This sounds like you’d expect – polished, spit-shined old-time folk-rock, without much to make it stand out. But for what it is, it’s not bad.

The Gaslight Anthem, Handwritten.

Three albums ago, the Gaslight Anthem decided to become a mix of Bruce Springsteen and the Alarm, and they keep that up on this new one. There are no surprises here – songs with titles like “Too Much Blood” and “National Anthem” are exactly the fist-pumping hardworking tunes you expect.

Great White, Elation.

Yes, I’m still following this band I liked in the ‘80s. This is their first without original singer Jack Russell, and the new guy is not nearly as distinctive, rendering this just another bar-band blues-rock album. It’s acceptable, but it doesn’t make me remember being 15.

Grizzly Bear, Shields.

Yes, it’s shameful that I didn’t give this a full review. But Grizzly Bear bores me, and aside from a few winners here (“Sleeping Ute,” “Sun In Your Eyes”), this album doesn’t interest me much more than any of their others. It’s sleepy, meandering acoustic with minimal melody.

Glen Hansard, Rhythm and Repose.

Hansard’s first album since breaking up with Marketa Irglova is hushed and heartfelt and, unfortunately, pretty boring. His voice is still worth loving, his songs less so, and the overall effect is one of depressed sleepiness.

Here We Go Magic, A Different Ship.

If it’s possible to be low-key and kaleidoscopic at the same time, this band manages it on this short, yet swell album. The songs are all over the place, but the tightly controlled atmosphere keeps it grounded and surprisingly quiet. The 8-minute title track is a highlight.

Hundred Waters.

This one is neat. This is danceable folk music, bringing in influences from around the world. Somehow, this band has made this sound appealing to dance music lovers all over the world – they’re touring with Skrillex, for pity’s sake. One of the most interesting debuts I heard this year.

Jellyfish, Stack-a-Tracks.

Instrumental versions of Jellyfish’s two albums doesn’t sound all that interesting, unless you’ve heard Jellyfish’s two albums. They’re immaculately produced, intricate pop affairs, and in these versions, I’m hearing things I’ve never heard before. Well worth the money.

Paul McCartney, Kisses on the Bottom.

Easily winning the Worst Album Title of 2012 contest, McCartney’s new album is a set of standards performed with Diana Krall and her band. If you like Paul the crooner, and you have an inexplicable urge to hear him sing “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive,” this is for you.

Metallica, Beyond Magnetic.

Desperately trying to get beyond Lulu, their disastrous collaboration with Lou Reed, Metallica has released these four leftovers from the Death Magnetic sessions. And they’re great – complex, crushing metal – but it’s still not enough to wash the stink away.

Rhett Miller, The Dreamer.

Miller is a country-punker in the Old 97s and a pop songsmith on his own. His latest solo album is another smooth collection of sorta-twangy tunes that show off his voice. It’s good stuff, and I never want him to have to choose between his two sides.

A.C. Newman, Shut Down the Streets.

The New Pornographers mastermind delivers another set of tuneful pop. If you liked Newman before, you’ll like this. There’s really not a lot more to say about it.

Of Monsters and Men, My Head is an Animal.

I really should have reviewed this one. OMAM is another great atmospheric band from Iceland, and their debut album is a lovely, dramatic, sweeping thing. It’s so good that I forgot about it completely, putting it on my pile and not coming back to it for months. Silly of me.

Of Montreal, Paralytic Stalks.

Kevin Barnes has confused me before, but I simply have no idea what he’s up to on this overly complicated mess of an album. In some ways, it’s genius, and it sounds like it was very difficult to put together. But I think he’s finally let his complex nature get away from him.

Alanis Morissette, Havoc and Bright Lights.

I do sometimes wonder if I’m the only one still buying Alanis records. On this one she embraces electronic beats and textures, and they work just as well with her idiosyncratic lyrics and distinctive voice as any other style. She’s stuck in a rut, but it’s…

MxPx, Plans Within Plans.

The long-running pop-punk band also mixes in some electronic beats on their new album, but the focus is where it’s always been – three-chord melodic punk rock. Still, it’s better than any of the new Green Day albums, so I guess that’s something.

Our Lady Peace, Curve.

Billed as this Canadian band’s Best Record Ever, this is really just another set of 10 solid modern rock songs. There are definite highlights, like the melodic “Heavyweight,” and lowlights like “Fire in the Hen House.” So it’s really just another Our Lady Peace album, for good and ill.

The Rocket Summer, Life Will Write the Words.

Bryce Avery’s been writing these grandiose, unironic anthems for as long as I can remember, and while he’s very good at it, the sound of The Rocket Summer – big, loud, reaching for the sky – hasn’t changed a bit. This is just another in a long line of same-sounding records.

Sleigh Bells, Reign of Terror.

I officially don’t get it. This is another one critics fawned over, but it’s just abrasive drumming, over-the-top guitar riffing and no songs to speak of. Abrasive, in fact, is a good word for the whole thing. A few more might be “talentless pile of shit.”

Snow Patrol, Fallen Empires.

Like Bryce Avery, Gary Lightbody has been writing the same kind of song forever. In his case, it’s repeated-eighth-note radio pop. He makes a few strides here, adding electronic sounds to his template, but not enough to be interesting.

Regina Spektor, What We Saw From the Cheap Seats.

On the plus side, Spektor is unafraid to be goofy and unappealing. On the minus side, same thing. This album is one of her best, but she still spoils quiet moments with cartoonish voices, and sends the overall tone of her album scattering to the four winds.

Spiritualized, Sweet Heart Sweet Light.

I just. Don’t. Get it. This is another critically acclaimed piece of crap. It’s basically repetitive pub rock, like the Dandy Warhols used to play, with orcheatral flourishes and no songs to hang them on. I have tried to get Spiritualized and I just don’t.

Tenacious D, Rize of the Fenix.

To their credit, the dire reaction to their film The Pick of Destiny is kind of the central theme of the D’s new album. It’s funny here and there, but not a patch on their self-titled debut. I rather liked “The Ballad of Hollywood Jack and the Rage Kage,” though.

The Twilight Sad, No One Can Ever Know.

Scottish band embraces a more industrial dance sound on their third album, and it works for them. Of course, this is the first Twilight Sad album I have heard, so I don’t know if their earlier styles worked better. This sounds like Peter Murphy hanging out with a noise-rock band. Pretty cool.

Various Artists, Mercyland: Hymns for the Rest of Us.

Again, I should have reviewed this. Phil Madeira’s dream project pairs him with an amazing roster of country and folk artists to deliver a set of songs that examine God and love and life. It’s mesmerizing, beautiful stuff.

The Violet Burning, Pentimento I.

What a great couple of years for the Violet Burning. On the heels of their triple-disc magnum opus The Story of Our Lives comes this two-part acoustic offering, full of hushed versions of their new songs. Stripped to just Michael Pritzl’s guitar and voice, with Lenny Beh on

The Violet Burning, Pentimento II.

cello, these takes are haunting and wonderful. It’s great to hear full-on rockers like “Graves” delivered acoustically, and beautiful pieces like “The Light Poured Down on Me” are made even more so in this setting. Get this now.

M. Ward, A Wasteland Companion.

Ward is better known these days for teaming up with Zooey Deschanel in She and Him, which is unfortunate. His solo work is rooted in old-time folk, and this record is a little treat. It’s simple stuff, but very effective.

The xx, Coexist.

More chilled, minimalist music from this London outfit. At points on this record, the material is stripped back almost to nonexistence – a voice, an electronic tom, maybe a bit of bass. It sounds like it wouldn’t work, but it does.

Yeasayer, Fragrant World.

In much the same vein as 2009’s Odd Blood, but with weaker songs. Yeasayer’s third album isn’t difficult – I listened about half a dozen times before I gave up looking for hidden depths. It’s just a lesser effort, and I hope for more and better from this fascinating band.

And that’s that. Of course, there are more records in the to-be-reviewed pile from 2012, but I’ll get to some of those next year, during the slow months. It’s time now to put 2012 to bed, and hope that 2013 runs rings around it, at least musically. As always, I am beyond grateful for all of you who read my ramblings, and share them. You’re the reason I keep doing this. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

I’ll be taking next week off, but look for a new column on January 9. Have a happy new year, everyone. Next stop, year 13! Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

This is my favorite column to write each year.

As longtime readers can tell you, I’m almost relentlessly positive in this space. It isn’t always easy, particularly in a music year like this one, in which the disappointments almost outnumbered the unqualified successes. It’s a balancing act, maintaining a positive tone while navigating an onslaught of mediocre-to-painful new releases, and I do my best.

But the top 10 list column is my chance to be unabashedly giddy about music. This makes me happier than I can tell you. Each year, I spend an inordinate amount of time hunting for the music that brightens my days, the music that, at its very best, reorders my life and lets me live inside of it for a time. And each year, at the very end, I get to tell you that story, and bring you the very best musical moments I discovered. This makes all the work I do to find those moments worth it.

As I said last week, this was not a great year for music. It wasn’t a bad one, exactly, and I’d put my top five up against the best of any other year. But the bright spots were fewer and farther between. It’s funny, because my real life was just the opposite – this year held so much positivity, so much joy, that even the darkest moments (including the loss of a great-uncle and a grandmother, both of whom I loved very much) couldn’t dampen it. For me personally, 2012 was a very good year. Musically, that’s a different story.

But that’s not the story we’re here to tell. This is the good stuff, the edited highlights, the best of the very best. You guys know the rules by now, but here they are again, just for posterity: only new studio albums released this year are eligible for the list. That means no covers albums (and there were several good ones, including Field Music and Mike Doughty), no live albums (so no Live Blood from Peter Gabriel), and no hits, re-release or remix packages. Some critics, I’m sure, will put the Beatles vinyl box on the top of their lists, but that’s a no-no around here.

What I’m looking for are the best new albums of the year, made up of the best new songs of the year. Simple, straightforward, direct. I heard about 260 albums in 2012, and here, as far as I’m concerned, are the 10 best.

#10. Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw, and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do.

Fiona Apple’s first album in seven years boasts 2012’s longest title, but her fans have come to expect a certain level of eccentricity from her. What they probably didn’t expect was the music within – these raw, complex songs have been stripped bare, often played on just piano and percussion. It’s unlike anything she’s done, and somehow feels like her most honest, personal statement. Not one moment of this album invites you in – you have to work at it, particularly when Apple sends her stunning voice into new, throat-shredding areas. She tops the whole thing with “Hot Knife,” a joyous sex song delivered a cappella, Andrews Sisters-style, over rolling tympanis. It’s a welcome moment of release after a fearless, difficult, absolutely stunning piece of work. Apple’s a batshit genius, and this album proves it.

#9. Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra, Theatre is Evil.

This is the first of four albums on this year’s list to be fully funded by fans instead of record labels. The revolution is underway, and Palmer is leading the charge – she raised more than a million dollars to create, package and release Theatre is Evil on her own, and it shows. This is the record of her life, the one on which all of the disparate strands of her career come together. It’s sprawling, almost impossibly dramatic, and full of songs with titles like “Do It With a Rockstar” and “Smile (Pictures Or It Didn’t Happen).” But it’s also remarkably intimate at times, never more so than on “The Bed Song,” which traces a sad, stagnant relationship by the beds the couple sleeps in through the years. Palmer went for broke on this album, mixing the theatrical with the personal more thoroughly than she ever has, and wrapping all that up in massive, rolling waves of sound. It’s the best thing she’s done, and her Kickstarter donors definitely got their money’s worth.

#8. Rufus Wainwright, Out of the Game.

I was really hoping Rufus had another album like this in him. After a string of detours, culminating in the piano meander All Days Are Nights in 2010, it was beginning to feel like Wainwright’s days as a master pop craftsman might be behind him. But he came charging back with this glittering gem, working with Amy Winehouse’s producer Mark Ronson to add extra shimmer. While the drums pop and the strings glisten, the real stars here are the songs, hook-filled wonders like “Welcome to the Ball” and “Perfect Man.” I love hearing Wainwright’s voice in just about any setting, but it’s best when delivering perfect pop numbers like these. Far from being out of the game, Wainwright sounds reinvigorated here, and he remains one of the best songwriters in the biz.

#7. Shearwater, Animal Joy.

I’ve liked this unique Austin band for a while now, but this album, their seventh, is the first one that’s knocked me out. You’ve never heard a singer quite like Jonathan Meiburg, and while his pipes added an ethereal layer to Shearwater’s earlier, more ambient work, he really shows what he can do on the galloping, sweeping guitar-rock here. They’re still Shearwater, and they still traffic in atmospheres, but on Animal Joy they rock like never before. “Animal Life” sounds like flying over the African veldt, and “Breaking the Yearlings” is like crashing back to earth. Here’s hoping they continue down this path, because this album is remarkable.

#6. Ben Folds Five, The Sound of the Life of the Mind.

Yes, I was worried too. When Ben Folds announced a reunion of his old band, and even scarier, a reunion album, I expected a quickie cash grab that would sink to the bottom of Folds’ catalog. Silly, silly me. The Five – Folds, Darren Jessee and Robert Sledge – clearly delighted in playing together again, and this tremendous, cohesive, fan-funded album is proof. Some criticized it for not capturing the bratty energy of the original records, but this is an older and wiser Five, and these lovely, beautifully-crafted songs suit them well. They still stomp their way through piano-pounders like “Michael Praytor, Five Years Later” and “Do It Anyway,” and they add a delicate touch to sad songs like “Hold That Thought” and “Sky High.” This is a reunion album that justifies its own existence, and then some.

#5. Bryan Scary, Daffy’s Elixir.

A 70-plus-minute insane pop opera about a steampunk wild west? It really couldn’t be anyone but Bryan Scary, if you think about it. This Kickstarter-funded project finds the one-man Queen in brilliant, completely unfiltered form – this is Scary’s magnum opus, a whirlwind of ideas and crazy arrangements and lush, wondrous harmonies. From the nimble, proggy “Cable Through Your Heart” to the manic “You Might Be Caught in Tarantella” to the gentle “The Tale of Opal Dawn” to the mammoth, jaw-dropping closer “Data Mountain,” there isn’t a weak, compromised moment here. Packaged as an illustrated book of short stories, Scary’s piano-fueled tales have never sounded better, fuller, more complete. It’s a testament not just to him and his frightening talent, but to the joys and rewards of artistic independence. Also, it’s freaking awesome.

#4. Husky, Forever So.

A late entry, but a stunning one. Husky is an Australian band led by a guy whose real name apparently is Husky Gawenda, and they play beautiful, beautiful music. This album occupies the Fleet Foxes spot this year, but Husky’s songs are less rooted in centuries-old sounds – they play a modern version of woodsy acoustic folk. The songs are marvelous things – the album’s opener, “Tidal Wave,” will stay with you for weeks, and “History’s Door” harnesses a power few songs this year managed. The band’s harmonies are impeccable, and Husky’s voice is soft and fascinating. Best of all, their album makes me feel like I’m sitting around a campfire, warm and happy. It’s quite an achievement for a new band, but if they can keep writing and playing songs like this, they’ll be around for a long, long time.

#3. Punch Brothers, Who’s Feeling Young Now?

2012 was the Year of the Punch Brothers. You may still never have heard of them, but thanks to this album and a number of high-profile appearances throughout the year, they’re not an ignored little group any more. And that’s cause for celebration, because they’re one of the best bands in the world right now. The Punch Brothers sport a classic bluegrass lineup – guitar, bass, fiddle, banjo, and the mandolin mastery of Chris Thile – and while they’re capable of traditional finger-pickin’ goodness, they more often play a mix of alt-rock, pop and prog. The title track could fit nicely on ‘90s alternative radio, “Movement and Location” is an astonishing feat of skill and speed, and “This Girl” is one of the year’s best bouncy pop songs. This album also features a note-for-note cover of Radiohead’s electronic nightmare “Kid A,” performed entirely on those acoustic instruments. The popularity of the Punch Brothers is a victory for real musicianship, and Who’s Feeling Young Now is a remarkable, accessible distillation of what they do. Even if you think you hate bluegrass, my bet is you will love the Punch Brothers.

#2. Marillion, Sounds That Can’t Be Made.

Marillion’s been at this game a long, long time. Sounds is their 17th album, and the current incarnation of the band has been together for more than 20 years. What’s amazing, then, is that they’re still finding new avenues to explore, new styles they haven’t conquered yet. This completely fan-funded album finds them stretching out over eight long songs, most of them heading new places, none of them sounding alike. But what makes Marillion one of the best bands on earth isn’t just their restless experimentation, it’s their ability to craft complex, powerful music that aims directly for the soul. This album begins with a 17-minute epic called “Gaza,” written from the point of view of a child growing up in the Gaza Strip. It’s heavier than anything they’ve done, but the heart of it is Steve Hogarth’s plaintive “It just ain’t right, it just ain’t right,” sung over delicate piano. They pull this trick off over and over again on this album, from the soaring guitars that end the ‘80s-inflected title track to the astonishing buildup of “Montreal” to the soulful chorus of “Invisible Ink,” all the way to the heartbreaking, glorious final minutes of “The Sky Above the Rain.” This is an album you feel, and that they’re still able to create music this intricate and emotional after so many years together is amazing. They’re one of my favorite bands, and they keep on earning my devotion.

Still, they didn’t capture the top spot. The album that did came out of nowhere, moved me like nothing else, and wouldn’t let go. If you’ve been keeping up with this column, you know what it is. My love for it hasn’t changed since I first heard it in April.

#1. Lost in the Trees, A Church That Fits Our Needs.

It’s been said that the best art comes from tragedy. That may help to explain why A Church That Fits Our Needs is so haunting, harrowing and sublime. It’s dedicated to lead singer Ari Picker’s mother – that’s her on the front cover. Stricken with cancer, she took her own life on the day of Picker’s wedding. This album – this glorious, difficult, emotional beyond all reason album – is his attempt to make sense of the senseless, and put her soul to rest.

Only he can say whether the record succeeds at those goals. All I can tell you is that it’s the most powerful, cohesive artistic statement I heard all year. Picker’s songs are full of personal allusions, the way old Tori Amos lyrics used to be, and if you know his story, they’re heartbreaking. His twin sisters, who died after a premature birth, are eulogized in “Red.” His mother’s artwork, in many ways the center of her life, comes up again and again, Picker even quoting from her suicide note at one point. In all my years as a music listener, I have rarely heard such a specific and personal outpouring of the soul. It sounds like cleansing, like rebirth, like setting fire to the past and walking through it.

The music on these 10 songs is the richest I’ve heard in years. Picker created all the arrangements himself, and the sweeping strings augment these delicate (and not-so-delicate) pieces beautifully. The transition from the gorgeous “This Dead Bird is Beautiful” to the room-shaking cello of “Garden” is one of my favorite musical moments of the year, and all of “An Artist’s Song” and “Icy River” just brings me to my knees. In many ways, though, it’s the unadorned closer “Vines” that packs the biggest punch, a tender moment of resignation after nine songs of ethereal, searching pain.

While this is an album meant to be heard as a single work, in sequence, it’s also one of moments, and several of them have stayed with me for the majority of the year. When Picker sings of dumping his mother’s ashes in “Icy River” (“Don’t you ever dare think she was weak-hearted, like a ribbon of silver, I poured her body in the river…”). The moment in “Vines” when Picker admits that there are things that songs can’t say. And the heart-stopping pain and love Picker brings to a single line in “This Dead Bird”: “I’ll carry her, because she breathed I breathe.”

This is what art is for. This is what music is meant to do. In 10 short songs, Ari Picker thoroughly examines his own pain, and shares it with us in ways that will leave you shaking. But there is healing here, there is wonder, there is moving on. I won’t be able to explain to you in words what Lost in the Trees have done here. As Picker himself sings, there are things that words can’t say. That’s why we have music. To wipe our tears, to hold our hands, and to guide us to the next place, wherever that may be.

And that wraps up the best of 2012. Tune in next time for Fifty Second Week, as we bid farewell to this year, and welcome in the next. As always, thank you for reading. Without you I’m nothing, and I will never forget it. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Oh, hey, look. 12/12/12. Or, as my musician friends have been referring to it, National Soundcheck Day. (Raise your hand if you get that.)

Hard to believe we’re at the end of another year. This is the first of my three-part farewell to 2012, and anyone who has been reading this column for any length of time knows what’s coming. This week we’re going to look at the honorable mentions for the year, next week we unveil the top 10 list, and finally, we get to a thing I’ve been calling Fifty Second Week. What is that? Tune in on Boxing Day to find out.

Last year was a great year for music. This year, well, wasn’t. On paper, it looked terrific. But as the months rolled on, and the disappointments kept piling up, the outlook became more and more bleak. In fact, I racked up so many disappointments this year that I’m able to fill a whole section of this column with them, for the first time.

Not to worry, I do have 10 splendid records to fawn over next week, and I also plan to bestow 19 honorable mentions. But let’s start with the letdowns, since they most accurately represent this year. These aren’t just bad albums (in fact, some of them aren’t all that bad), they’re albums I fully expected would knock me over, based on their authors’ track records. Listening to each of these was a disheartening experience, one I’m not eager to repeat.

It hurts when a band or artist I’ve championed turns in a weak effort, but it hurts even more when I was one of the only voices doing the championing. I took a lot of shit for recommending Linkin Park’s A Thousand Suns, and I stand by it – it was a quantum leap from the Linkin Park of old. The follow-up, Living Things, limply retreated to safer ground, leaving confusion over the band’s direction. I take even more shit for liking Owl City, and defending Adam Young against unfair and lazy Postal Service comparisons. But he sold out everything that made him interesting on the putrud The Midsummer Station, a record I can’t even listen to. So thanks for that, Adam.

Jukebox the Ghost was a late discovery for me in 2010, and I hoped their third album, Safe Travels, would uphold their own high standard. It didn’t – it mostly sounds like a band sanding off their own rough edges on purpose, although there are some highlights. (“Everybody Knows” is one of my favorite pop songs of the year, in fact.) Sixpence None the Richer returned after a decade in the wilderness with the mediocre Lost in Transition. And Joe Jackson broke his hot streak with the misguided, mashed-up Ellington tribute The Duke. Which is a shame, because that was quite a hot streak.

Now we come to the bands and artists who have made previous appearances on my top 10 list. These are the real heavy sighs, the ones that left me confused and sad. Mumford and Sons made a huge impression with their debut, Sigh No More, so when sophomore effort Babel offered the same sound, but weaker songs, it felt like moving in the wrong direction. The Shins have broken up and re-formed more than once, but their latest incarnation, the one behind Port of Morrow, is apparently a coffee-warm adult contemporary band, and it’s the least interesting suit they’ve worn.

I’ve watched Keane’s evolution from piano-pop band to weird and wonderful experimentalists with fascination, but that all came crashing down with the safe, bland, forgettable Strangeland. I like a few of these songs, but the production is so mom-and-pop minivan that any charms are lost. Aimee Mann – Aimee Mann! – released a slight, simple effort with Charmer, breaking her streak of wonderful albums with the same snapping sound depicted on the album’s back cover. And Muse, who have long flirted with the ridiculous, took a screaming dive over the top with their absurd mess of a sixth album, The 2nd Law.

In the end, though, no one quite disappointed like Green Day did. Which may be because no one else disappointed three times. The much-anticipated Uno, Dos, Tre trilogy turned out to be a major-league bust, the band celebrating its former, more juvenile self instead of continuing down the road paved by American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown. I’ll review Tre next year, but suffice it to say that it follows in the footsteps of its predecessors, save for a couple songs that bring back the ambition. But it’s too little too late to save this bloated, uninspired trio of flops.

So all right, enough with the bad news. As I said, I have almost 20 honorable mentions to hand out, so let’s get started. Before I do that, though, I want to mention this: every year, there is one album that ends up on every critic’s top 10 list except mine. This year, that album seems to be Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange, which I liked, but didn’t love. So you won’t find that here, or in next week’s rundown, sorry to say.

OK, the honorables. For a while there, it looked like 2012 was building momentum, and two of those early releases have stayed with me ever since. Nada Surf remains one of the most underrated bands in America, and they proved it again with the sharp, blissful The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy. And John K. Samson, formerly of the Weakerthans, turned in a literate, wonderfully observant solo bow with Provincial. That album stayed on the top 10 list for a long time, a testament to its graceful songs.

Two of my longtime favorites turned to their fans this year to help finance their latest efforts. Richard Julian moved his New York attitude to New Orleans and came up with the stomping, funny, sweet and sentimental Fleur de Lis, a valentine to his new hometown. And Bill Mallonee, who has authored more than 50 albums in his three-decade career, made another Americana-tinged winner with Amber Waves.

A pair of electronic artists took huge steps forward this year. Shiny Toy Guns get no respect, but their third record (wittily titled III) is an uncommonly strong electro-pop platter, particularly the more mature, sedate second half. And Passion Pit hit a solid triple the second time up to bat with Gossamer, a sparkling collection of ruminations on love and modern life, wrapped up in danceable, hummable wonder. Gossamer is such a massive leap forward that it barely sounds like the same band.

This was the year of fun., the band behind the hits “We Are Young” and “Some Nights.” Their second album, Some Nights, was almost too big to properly assess, but listened in isolation, its joyous songs and go-for-broke spirit prove irresistible. Beach House made a jump forward in popularity as well with their lush, lovely fourth record, Bloom – this one refined more than redefined, but the band’s sound is so singular that it hardly matters. And little-known songstress Lauren Mann convened her Fairly Odd Folk and made a beautiful little second record, Over Land and Sea. This album’s a gem, and anyone who likes pretty piano-pop should hear it.

Speaking of beauty, we have Hammock, the best shoegaze band on the planet. Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson released a double album this year, called Departure Songs, and it proved to be one of their best – more than 100 minutes of clouds and skyscapes, with transcendent guitar and wonderful melodies. They still didn’t outdo Sigur Ros for unearthly beauty, though. Valtari was an album that surprised even the band that made it, and it’s one of their most fragile and sweeping. It’s almost unbelievably beautiful, particularly the second half.

And then there is the Choir, whose 12th album, The Loudest Sound Ever Heard, is undeniably a step down from their two previous works. But they’re still the Choir – they still have the lovely voice and guitar of Derri Daugherty, the slippery bass of Tim Chandler, the off-kilter yet perfect drumming of Steve Hindalong, the sax textures of Dan Michaels. They are still a band that shouldn’t work, but does, time and time again, and even though I can’t call this album one of the year’s best, I’ve grown to love it. I hope they keep the tunes coming.

Which brings us to my Number 11s, the albums that missed my top 10 list by the slimmest of margins. Anyone calling any of these records one of the 10 best of the year would get no argument from me. We start with Tame Impala, whose psychedelic second album Lonerism impressed with its sprawling, anything-goes sensibility. Then there’s Bob Mould, who finally recaptured his Sugar-y sweet fire with Silver Age, the loudest and best solo album he’s made in… well, ages.

Speaking of people who have made their best album in some time (or ever), we have John Mayer, who seemed to discover earthy honesty on his fifth, Born and Raised. The acoustic, naturalistic country-folk on this album was a big surprise, as was the willingness of its author to forego radio hits for a more sincere artistic statement. Shawn Colvin also went dusty on her new album, All Fall Down, working with Buddy Miller to deliver her first major tonal shift, and perhaps her best record. Colvin’s voice works well in this twangy, sparse setting, and her new songs are tremendous.

Local wunderkind Andrea Dawn was on my list for a long time, thanks to her swell new album Theories of How We Can Be Friends. A dark pop record with surprising hidden depths, Theories should be Dawn’s calling card. It’s a million-dollar record on a thousand-dollar budget, and a showcase for her sultry voice and blossoming songwriting. Buy it here. Natasha Khan also made a remarkable dark pop album with The Haunted Man, her third as Bat for Lashes. It’s stranger and less immediate than anything she’s done, but no less stunning.

And finally, an album that actually appeared on the first draft of this year’s list. Paul Buchanan’s first solo album, Mid Air, is one of the year’s most gorgeous things, stripping back the layers of sound that defined his band the Blue Nile to reveal intimate, graceful piano sketches. Of course, Buchanan sings them in That Voice, a powerful instrument that loses none of its force in this quiet setting. In the best way, this album is like eavesdropping on Buchanan’s private thoughts, and I’m grateful he let us hear them.

All right, all right. Next week, the list. Be there, or be… elsewhere, I guess. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

My grandmother, Edna Salles, passed away last week.

She was only a couple weeks shy of her 97th birthday, and had been doing just fine until a week before her death. Doctors think she had a stroke – she stopped eating, and couldn’t find the strength to move. It had been nearly a year since I’d seen her, since I only get to Delaware around Christmas, and I’d already made plans to visit during my time off at the end of December. And now I won’t get to.

But I still have memories. My grandparents lived in Florida when I was a kid, and we would visit them during the summer (along with Disney World, which was right nearby). I loved their house, with its orange and kumquat trees in the backyard and its sliding doors, which I pretended were spaceship panels. I remember one year my parents bought a copy of Michael Jackson’s Thriller on cassette for my sister and me, and we spent that vacation dancing around Granny and Pa’s house.

And I remember when my grandfather died. He’d suffered a stroke more than a decade earlier, and Granny had patiently taken care of him since then. I remember worrying that without someone to watch over, she’d sink into despair. I was never happier to be wrong. From then on, Granny embraced life – she lived on her own, made friends, went out, had a great time. And even when her body started failing her, and she needed to be placed in a nursing home, she had a tremendous optimism about her. She was always so glad to see me, always asking about my job and my life.

I’m grateful we had so much time with her. I’m grateful she lived long enough to meet her great-grandson Luke. She had a good, long, blessed life – 96 good years, 340-some-odd good days, and only seven bad ones at the end. We could all only hope to be so lucky.

Rest in peace, Granny. We’ll miss you.

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So my Christmas will be a little sadder this year, but I’m not going to let that stop me from reveling in one of my greatest sources of joy: Christmas music.

Now, I have this rule. Christmas music is only OK between the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. I know some people love hearing it all year round, and some are all right with the notion that the Christmas shopping season now begins in October, but not me. It’s a special time of year, and the only way it stays special is if you have to wait for it. I buy a lot of Christmas music every year, but I never listen to it until the day after Thanksgiving. And then, on December 26, it goes back on the shelf for another year.

The thing is, I love Christmas music. So in that tidy 30-or-so-day window, I binge on it like crazy. It’s almost all I’ve been listening to for more than a week now, and I’ve been buying new Christmas albums nearly every day. Yes, it’s 60 degrees here, with not a flake of snow on the ground yet. But in my house, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Or at least sound like it.

I’ve bought eight new Christmas collections this year, with more to come. Some of them have been less terrific than others – I wasn’t blown away by the melancholy Holidaydream, from the Polyphonic Spree, for instance, and despite my love for all things Savatage, Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s schtick is starting to get old. But some of them have been magnificent, exactly the tinsel my tree was looking for. Here’s a brief rundown of the best.

* * * * *

I’m always wary of various artists compilations, even when they’re not Christmas-themed. It’s true that I loved the first few A Very Special Christmas collections when I was a kid – hearing artists like John Cougar Mellencamp, U2 and Tom Petty take on holiday songs was fun, and I still think Sting’s version of “Gabriel’s Message” is lovely. But quality varies wildly with these compilations, and I’ve often found myself plunking down cash for one or two tracks I want to hear, and being stuck with an hour of dross.

I didn’t have that problem with Holidays Rule, the Concord Music Group’s foray into multiple-artist Christmas platters. This one is solid, and wonderful. It was curated by Sara Matarazzo, who has supervised music for some very cool movies and TV shows over the past five years, and by Chris Funk of the Decemberists. It collects tracks by the Shins, the Civil Wars, Calexico, the Punch Brothers, Andrew Bird and a bunch of others.

Even the weakest tracks here are worth hearing, but the strongest are simply knockouts. The Punch Brothers deliver a haunting version of “O Come O Come Emmanuel,” Heartless Bastards take on “Blue Christmas,” and the Civil Wars give us a delicate, delightful “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” (That may be the last track we hear from them in a while, so it’s bittersweet.) The Shins do a nice job with Paul McCartney’s blah “Wonderful Christmastime,” and McCartney himself croons “The Christmas Song,” with Diana Krall and her band backing him up.

Rufus Wainwright and Sharon Von Etten give us a traditional take on the classic duet “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” while The Head and the Heart glide their way through a dramatic “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” Most surprising to me was Calexico’s gorgeous version of “Green Grows the Holly,” which stands as the most beautiful track here. Just when you think it can’t get any better, the subtle horns come in. All by itself, it’s the counter-argument to my trepidation: I didn’t buy Holidays Rule for this song, but it’s my favorite.

* * * * *

I’m also wary of buying new versions of things I already have. Four years ago, the Violet Burning issued their Christmas album, Divine, as a download-only affair. Now they’ve remastered it, added two songs, and released it on CD. If you’re a physical objects freak like I am, it’s already worth buying. But even if you already have Divine, the new version is a huge improvement, and the bonus songs (a version of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” and an older original called “Room in My Heart”) are wonderful.

The Violet Burning has always balanced its rock and atmospheric sides well, and they continue that tradition here. Opener “Little Drummer Boy” is loud, Michael Pritzl’s guitars taking on a Siamese Dream-level thickness. But just listen to the band’s lovely take on Wham’s “Last Christmas,” that kitschiest of kitschy holiday tunes. And Pritzl sings his heart out on “O Holy Night,” probably my favorite carol. “Room in My Heart,” which first appeared in 2003, is a Violet Burning classic, dramatic and lovely.

The biggest surprise, if you’ve never heard Divine before, is “Blue Christmas/Sandy Claws is Coming to Town,” which features Mike Roe of 77s fame doing his best Elvis impression. The Violets are, by and large, a very serious band, so this moment of levity brings a big, wide grin. Divine is a terrific Christmas offering from an unjustly obscure band, and now it sounds better than ever. Get yours here.

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I will admit, after last year’s brilliant, scathing, anti-religious We Are All Where We Belong, a Christmas EP from Quiet Company is kind of a surprise. But it’s a welcome one. Winter is Coming contains five songs over about 18 minutes, and it’s a nice burst of the band’s full-color power pop. The packaging looks amazing, too. I have yet to receive my copy, but I’ve been dancing about to the download for a week now. I can’t wait for this to pop up in my mailbox.

Winter is Coming is essentially an upgrade of the band’s 2007 three-song Merry Little Christmas digital EP. The rollicking versions of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “Angels We Have Heard on High” are still terrific, and the dramatic read of “O Holy Night” remains among my favorite versions. The two new songs include a splendid, guitar-orchestrated shimmy through “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” and a sparkling “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” The latter finds Taylor Muse unleashing his falsetto while the horn section blares. It’s great.

Quiet Company is one of my favorite bands, so I don’t mind the fact that I’ve downloaded this version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” three times now. Winter is Coming is a little delight, like a candy cane hanging on the tree. Looking forward to the full package. You can get one at their site.

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Another sweet surprise: One Christmas at a Time, an out-of-nowhere collaboration between Jonathan Coulton and John Roderick. Coulton is the snarky, geeky Internet superstar behind hits like “Code Monkey” and “Re: Your Brains,” and the guy who made one of last year’s coolest records, Artificial Heart. Roderick is the lead singer of the Long Winters, who made a swell album called Putting the Days to Bed in 2006, and have been working on the follow-up ever since. Roderick guest starred on Artificial Heart, and that evidently led to this, one of the weirdest Christmas albums I’ve ever heard.

To start with, it’s all originals – no carols for these guys. As you might expect, it looks askance at the Christmas season, going for the laughs more often than not. This ain’t the record to put on when your aunts and uncles are visiting. But it’s perfect for when you’re stuck in traffic at the mall, or trying to get the lights on the tree to work. Before it runs out of steam at the end, One Christmas at a Time is a stocking full of sarcastic fun.

It even has a couple of Coulton classics. Opener “Uncle John” is about that relative who ruins Christmas every year: “He borrows Nana’s car, staggers in at 3 a.m. with a new girlfriend, this one barely speaks, she studies cosmetology… she’s got a Hitler neck tattoo.” And then there’s the record’s best tune, “2600,” a paean to the original Atari game console that we all wanted in the ‘80s. (Don’t lie. We all wanted these.) While Roderick sings “2600” in the background, Coulton repeats, “There’s only one thing that I want, there’s only one thing that I want.” It’s catchy and danceable and among Coulton’s most fun.

Things get sweeter with the wistful, jazzy “Christmas in July” and the classic rock-flavored, skip-the-family-holiday anthem “Christmas With You is the Best.” Well, relatively sweet: “We’ll have no turkey or guests, sleep in late but before we get dressed, I want to give you a present…” I’m also fond of the tender “The Week Between,” on which Roderick celebrates those seven days between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

I just wish the record didn’t peter out in its final third. Coulton pads things out with a new version of his old tune “Christmas is Interesting,” and the final two tracks smack of drunken late-night joke sessions. “Wikipedia Chanukah” finds Roderick reading the Wikipedia entry for Chanukah over a junky electric beat, while “Christmastime is Wunnerful” repeats its title phrase endlessly, again and again, for four minutes. Which I’m sure is the joke, but it gets old remarkably fast. Still, One Christmas at a Time is a fun, unexpected little present, and I’m glad to have it. You can pick one up here.

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There is no one who has dissected, analyzed and reassembled Christmas music like Sufjan Stevens.

Every year, Stevens records a Christmas EP for family and friends. But these are not quick one-offs, these are in-depth explorations of the soundtrack of the holiday, replete with original songs, radical reinterpretations of old favorites, and a sense of scientific curiosity about this corner of the music world. Stevens wants to know what makes Christmas music tick, and he’s dedicated himself to this endeavor with remarkable vigor.

Six years ago, he made the first five of those EPs public, in a box set called Songs for Christmas. The front cover illustration was a crayon drawing of a Christmas tree, the CDs were designed like vinyl records, and the whole thing was very 2006 Sufjan. Back then, he was a safer artist, although we didn’t know it at the time. He’d just released Illinois in 2004, and was reveling in its success, while wondering what to do next. Songs for Christmas follows the pattern of his music from 2001 to 2005 – folksy, acoustic beauty with horns and strings, becoming more ambitious as the set went on.

Since then, of course, Stevens has flipped that script on its ear. After a six-year break, he returned with 2010’s brilliant, messy The Age of Adz, an album smeared in electronic noise and emotional chaos. Whatever box we had him in six years ago, he no longer fits. The same can be said of his second Christmas box set, Silver and Gold, which covers the Adz years – 2006 to 2010. This one is louder, stranger, more unpredictable than the first, and while it doesn’t really sound like Christmas, it does sound like Sufjan Stevens, the uncompromising artist. Even the box art is wilder and odder.

Silver and Gold actually starts fairly traditionally, with 2006’s Gloria. With Bryce and Aaron Dessner of The National in tow, Stevens turns in some lovely acoustic lullabies, from “Silent Night” to the 16th-century “Coventry Carol.” Aaron Dessner writes four original Christmas tunes, and they stick to the strummy, woodsy feel of the whole thing. This EP fits in nicely with the first five.

But then things get weird. 2007’s I Am Santa’s Helper mashes 23 songs into 43 minutes, and many of them are throwaway trifles. It’s a whirlwind listen, from the overly long “Christmas Woman” to a few Bach chorales to three versions of “Ah Holy Jesus” to the annoying rockabilly “Ding-a-Ling-a-Ring-a-Ling.” Even the hidden gem “Mr. Frosty Man” can’t make this thing coherent. If Stevens intended to depict hyperactive confusion, he succeeded.

2008’s Christmas Infinity Voyage is even stranger. Here is where Stevens begins experimenting with the electronic sounds that would permeate The Age of Adz, and he first unveils them on a nine-minute version of “Do You Hear What I Hear.” The anti-dance arrangement works well for the first few minutes, but the tender melody is increasingly drowned out by glitchy noise. It feels like a rough draft for parts of “Impossible Soul,” an impression only strengthened by the chorus of that song appearing in this version of “Joy to the World.” Midway through this crazy record he covers Prince’s “Alphabet St.” for no reason whatsoever, and he ends things with “The Child With the Star on His Head,” a truly great four-minute song that goes on for a quarter of an hour. The final minutes are taken up with formless electronic gibberish. He’s like a kid with a new toy, one he’ll slowly learn to use over the next two years.

2009’s Let It Snow feels perfunctory to me, a quick, more typical 21 minutes. It’s strange – this record shows a leap in ambition and execution from most of Songs for Christmas, but after the insanity of the last two EPs, it feels like it was tossed off too quickly. Cat Martino guests, and sings beautifully. Sufjan whips out new arrangements of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Sleigh Ride” and “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” and gifts us with a wonderful original called “X-Mas Spirit Catcher.” There’s nothing wrong with this collection, but in this big box of crazy, it’s pretty safe.

Have no fear, though, because 2010’s Christmas Unicorn is everything a modern Sufjan fan could want. It effectively merges his orchestral folk and thudding electro sides, just like Age of Adz did. It includes the flat-out coolest version of “Up On the Housetop” you have ever heard, all sinister beats and synths. Its instrumental interludes are delightful, the skipping take on “We Need a Little Christmas” is lovely, and the originals that close things out are among Stevens’ best Christmas pieces. Of special note is the 12-minute title track, a fantasia of glorious nutball joy that somehow seamlessly incorporates the chorus of “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

Listening to Silver and Gold all the way through will take you a little more than three hours, but it’s like listening to Sufjan Stevens evolve. It’s a behind-the-scenes treat bridging the gap between two of the most brilliant albums of the past 20 years, and though I can’t say it provides non-stop Christmas entertainment, it’s fascinating stuff. He started off exploring how Christmas music ticks, and ended up showing us how he does. I hope he never gives up on this tradition.

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And that’s it. Next week, the end of the year festivities begin with the honorable mentions of 2012, followed by the top 10 list and Fifty Second Week. Time is a river flowing on… Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

We’ve talked a lot about Kickstarter in this column this year. And since it’s easily the most important innovation in my little corner of the world since the mp3, I expect I’ll be talking about it even more in the coming year. So I hope you’re not sick of this topic yet.

This is probably the last time I’ll base a column around it in 2012, though, so I wanted to spend a little time clearing up what I see as a misconception about Kickstarter and why it works. I heard a theory recently that Kickstarter contributors are, in essence, buying a connection with an artist. It’s the theory that says, sure, you can sell your album for $10, but if you put it on Kickstarter with some extra exclusive bonus stuff, you can charge $25 because people will feel connected to you.

Just speaking for myself, that’s not why I support projects on Kickstarter (or similar models) at all. Sure, it’s nice to feel connected to an artist I admire, but I can send an email or a Facebook message if I want that. The avenues of communication are much more varied and open now than they have ever been. Whether I spend $10, $25 or $100 for someone’s record, I feel no more connected to them than I did before hitting the “buy now” button. No matter how much extra stuff is thrown in.

No, what I love about this model is that it makes me feel important. I recently contributed $20 to Daniel Amos to help them make a new record, their first since 2001. I did this for two reasons. First, the music of Daniel Amos has meant a lot to me, for a very long time. They have a proven track record – they’ve been releasing music since 1976, and I can count the number of DA records I haven’t enjoyed on one hand. They’re a great band, and I want to hear new stuff from them.

But second, and more importantly, there’s a very real sense that without my $20, this new Daniel Amos music will not be made. And that’s why I do it – to support projects that would not happen otherwise. To show artists pushing out on their own that yes, their work is valued and vital. This model allows artists to specifically reach the people who love their work most, and allows those people to support that work in the most important way there is.

Sure, you’ll find some people who are only in it for the extra stuff. But I’d be willing to bet the vast majority of Kickstarter contributors feel the way I do. We want to be part of something, we want to pick our projects carefully, and we want our contributions to matter. When I hold the new Daniel Amos album in my hands next year, I’ll be able to say, “I helped make this.” And that’s an indescribable feeling.

This week, I have two other albums to discuss, and I helped make both of them. I’ve met Bill Mallonee once (he probably doesn’t remember) and I’ve never met Richard Julian. But their work has been important to me for a long time, and when both men asked me to give to their new projects, I did it without hesitation. Neither one used Kickstarter – they just built up an email list, and then asked those folks to contribute. Richard, I know, is still trying to meet his $18,000 goal to pay for all the expenses of his new record. But he went ahead and pressed it anyway, and it’s here. And it’s great.

Richard Julian is a criminally underappreciated songwriter. I’ve said that before, and it sadly remains true. He’s got a Randy Newman-esque wit, a deep appreciation for traditional music of all stripes, and the melodic skill to put his own twist on any form he adopts. He’s made seven albums now, and not a single one of them sounds like any of the others – Julian either has incredible trust in his audience, or he doesn’t think about them, following his muse wherever it goes.

Album number seven, the one I contributed to, is called Fleur de Lis, and it finds Julian steeped in New Orleans jazz and funk. He spends most of this album on piano, an instrument he’s never featured before, and he works with a host of local musicians, including some sweet, sweet horn players. He’s never done anything quite like the loose, tuba-fueled funk of “Your Thing,” but it suits him – Julian’s voice, with its semi-permanent smirk, fits this style well.

Julian’s lived in New Orleans since 2010, and he sounds fully immersed in the place on this record. The same sense of perception he brought to New York serves him well here – opener “Not Leaving New Orleans” is a barrelhouse stomp that takes us on a tour of the city, as Julian describes a rollercoaster of a date. It manages to poke fun at the city while celebrating it at the same time. In the end, Julian’s character wins enough money at the casino to go anywhere he likes, and he chooses to stay right where he is: “Now I’m living fat and happy with my baby down in New Orleans…”

“Die in New Orleans” is a beautiful, jazzy tune about a guy who wants to be buried in his favorite city. “I’ll take anything, even one of those August days in the heart of the brutal summer, the doggest of days, so long as the tuba player plays, let him play me out in New Orleans…” And the lovely “Bywater Bye Bye” is a love letter to Julian’s neighborhood, and its brass bands around every corner. You can feel in every note of these songs how much he loves his new city, touting its virtues and its vices equally. The lyrics are sprinkled with references to steamboats and seafood and, always in the background, the oil spill.

When Julian steps out of New Orleans for inspiration, the results are equally superb. “Gypsy Lover” is a little epic based on a revolving piano figure, and some delightful percussion from Jon Cleary. I never like to read Julian’s lyrics before listening to his songs, because he’s so good at taking me by surprise. Here he describes his lover as “slutty as a bumblebee” and “random as the breeze outside,” two lines I adore. Julian’s the kind of writer who would compose a delicate acoustic piece about Galileo (“Secret of the Stars”) and include this line: “The powers that be threw down this decree, ye keep that shit to thine self.”

It’s not all top notch – “Sexistan” is a b-side if I ever heard one, coupling a loose jam with a juvenile lyric. But Julian recovers quickly with the dry, fatalistic “You’re Only Gonna Die,” and keeps the high standard through the closing instrumental “Floyd.” Fleur de Lis is a terrific album. If you’re familiar with Richard Julian, that should be no surprise, although the musical milieu will be. Despite remaining under the radar, he’s built up a body of work that would be the envy of most songwriters.

I’m thrilled that my money went to the creation of Fleur de Lis, and should Julian ask for my help again, he’ll get it without a moment’s pause. Check out his work here, and his band The Little Willies with Norah Jones here.

Similarly, I’ll buy anything Bill Mallonee does until one of us dies. The Georgia singer-songwriter’s been at this game for more than 20 years, and he’s never made a record I don’t like. Fortune has not been kind to Mallonee – he once enjoyed label support, back when he fronted the tremendous Vigilantes of Love, but since 2004 he’s been a one-man operation, recording and releasing his songs online, and touring until his car falls apart.

This year, for the second year in a row, Mallonee asked his mailing list to contribute money toward the making of a new album, to be released on CD. Last year’s The Power and the Glory was classic Mallonee, and this year’s Amber Waves is the same, with longtime VoL bassist and drummer Jake Bradley and Kevin Heuer providing support. Once again I’m glad I paid my money and took my chance. There’s nothing new here – this is the full-blooded guitar-fueled Americana Mallonee has pretty much always given us, with touches of dust bowl folk and Crazy Horse rock. If you liked him before, you still will.

So what does this one offer? Thirteen songs of love and loss and spiritual yearning, played and sung with gusto. While I like to let Richard Julian surprise me, I always read Mallonee’s lyrics first, since that’s where his focus is, and they’re typically marvelous on Amber Waves. Sometimes he’s harsh and devastating, as on this verse from “Faith (Comes Soaked in Gasoline)”: “The foreman’s car pulls into Hooverville, he’s got 100 jobs for 1,000 men, and ‘cause our kids look like skeletons, it won’t cost him much of anything, gun-toting deputy wears a shiny badge, that kind of justice don’t mean a thing, there’s one thing about faith you can be sure of, it all comes soaked in gasoline…”

But he can also be hopeful, bowing under majesty. “Though fate and sad reversals slow your journey home, you’ll get there ‘cause that deal was done a long, long time ago,” he sings on “Pillow of Stars,” and he speaks of everlasting hope on “Walking Disaster”: “On the fault line of walking disasters, there’s a place where the angels still sigh, and the river of love, it still rolls on long time after the well has run dry…” A lot of this record finds Mallonee weary and broken, but by the final track, he’s at some measure of peace: “Let me go down easy when the box gets shut, let me go down easy into God knows what…”

That song, “Into God Knows What,” is one of two absolute classics here. The other, “Long Since Gone,” may be my favorite Mallonee song since he launched his solo career 10 years ago. Over a delicate acoustic strum, Mallonee sings from the point of view of poor workers in Carolina, desperately clinging to whatever they can. “The fields, they’re all barren, factory up and moved it overseas, boarded up town, ghosts walking the streets, hung heads and heavy sighs, winter coming on, what little was left is long since gone…” It’s heartrending.

Musically, Mallonee pulls out a few little surprises – the Moog synth on “One Kiss at a Time,” the ringing xylophone on “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah,” the thick riffing on “Break in the Clouds” – but mostly, he sticks to his wheelhouse here. With the possible exception of Ryan Adams, though, he does this wheelhouse better than anyone. I’ll never figure out why Lost Highway or a similar label hasn’t snatched Mallonee up. His catalog – more than 50 albums strong and counting – surely is evidence enough. If you need more, listen to the killer riff of “To the Nines,” or the nimble, heartbreaking “Into God Knows What.”

Mallonee’s a treasure, and whatever we need to do to keep him writing songs and recording them, we ought to do. I’ve complained before that Mallonee writes the same kind of great song over and over, and that’s still true on Amber Waves. But a great song is a great song, and this album (like every Mallonee album) is full of them. Contributing to the continuing musical adventures of a guy who can write and play a song like “Long Since Gone” is a no-brainer. Here’s to many more.

You can become a Bill Mallonee fan too, just by clicking here. Everything is free to listen to, but if you like it, consider buying it. You’ll be supporting a truly independent artist, one I hope you’ll agree is worth your hard-earned money.

Next week, it’s Christmas all over the world. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Last week’s column was all about surprises, and 2012 has been a year full of them.

Not all of them were pleasant. New records by the Shins, Mumford and Sons and Aimee Mann fizzled, Joe Jackson broke his streak of excellent records with his lamentable Duke Ellington project, and most sadly, the Choir released their first mediocre effort in a long, long time. The Beach Boys reunion collapsed, the Cornerstone Festival breathed its last, and Adam Yauch died.

But this year brought its fair share of positive stunners too. Rufus Wainwright, John Mayer and Fiona Apple all made terrific new records, Jellyfish (Jellyfish!) released a live album and a collection of instrumentals, Bob Mould rocked his way back to Sugary heights, Amanda Palmer used her Kickstarter money to make the album of her life, and most wonderfully, Ben Folds Five reunited after a long absence, and knocked it out of the park with The Sound of the Life of the Mind.

That’s the kind of year it was. Some of the best stuff came out of nowhere, from unexpected directions, and mainly from bands and artists who had been away long enough that I’d taken my eye off them. I have three of those on tap this week, from a very diverse crop of artists. In fact, the only thing that connects them is that they’ve been away from the public eye for ages, and no one expected them to return. Here’s where I welcome them all back.

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Whenever Paul Buchanan returns with an album, it seems to take everyone by surprise.

Perhaps that’s because Buchanan’s music is so unassuming. With the possible exception of Talk Talk, Buchanan’s longtime band The Blue Nile may be the most patient, melancholy pop group to ever come out of Great Britain. Their four albums were each separated by a minimum of six years, and each hovered around 40 minutes. Blue Nile songs were slow, layered in keyboards, and focused with almost laser-like precision on Buchanan’s striking voice. It’s hard to explain what kind of singer he is – he’s not vocally acrobatic, but every word he utters demands your attention like few other singers can.

Buchanan songs unfailingly aim for a particular kind of wonder, one that bides its time while it seeps its way in. He favors long buildups instead of immediate choruses, complete four-minute thoughts instead of highlight moments. You have to take in Blue Nile albums whole, and you have to wait for them to reveal themselves. Perhaps that’s why each one took so long to come out – the (unfortunately small) audience needed the extra time to truly absorb these works.

I can’t claim to have been a longtime Blue Nile fan. My first album-length exposure to them was 2004’s High, a masterful yet modest collection of soulful balladry. I thought perhaps this was a departure from their ‘80s work, but no. Every Blue Nile album is modest and soulful, Buchanan’s voice deservedly taking the spotlight atop lush synths. They somehow built an entire career by striving for unadulterated beauty, with no compromises.

It’s been eight years since we’ve heard from Buchanan, and in that time, the band evaporated. You can hear its loss in every lonely, lovely note of Buchanan’s first solo album, Mid Air. Somehow, he’s made his music even more modest, even more melancholy. Mid Air is down to piano, some hints of orchestration, and that still-striking voice, and in this glorious setting, Buchanan stops time. Everything around this album freezes while it’s playing, as if the air itself is listening intently. It’s that lovely.

It would be fair to describe these songs as sketches, in a way. Only one of this album’s 14 tracks breaks the three-minute mark, and all are stripped down, almost to the point of not existing at all. Buchanan keeps his amazing voice to a whisper throughout, singing haiku-like lyrics about love and loss. It sounds very much like the product of a series of sleepless nights, as if Buchanan, blurry-eyed and contemplative, found himself at the living room piano at 3 a.m.

None of this sounds impressive, I know. But when he quietly slips into “I Remember You,” for example, it’s unspeakably moving. “I know exactly where you’ll be, you’ll be exactly where I am, we go arm in arm, I remember you…” I can’t breathe, it’s so beautiful. When he sings the opening lines of “Buy a Motor Car” (“Buy a motor car and drive somewhere you believe, far away from me, I’m not sure if I’m alive…”), my heart stops. While it’s playing, it’s the saddest 2:37 I can imagine. That is, until he gets to these lines in “Wedding Party”: “Are you trying to tell me what I already know, letting go…”

In the best possible way, Mid Air sounds like eavesdropping, like listening to someone’s innermost thoughts without their knowledge. It’s naked and exposed, and it’s often surprisingly warm and whole and thankful. Buchanan packs oceans of emotion into the final lines of “Two Children”: “Ask me if I am grateful, watch as I fall down to my knees.” The album consists of little glimpses, tiny epiphanies measured in seconds, and it may be the closest Buchanan has come to that ideal beauty he’s been searching for.

It’s hard to explain the appeal of this album, or of Buchanan’s life in music. You just have to hear it, fall in love with it, be transformed by it. From nearly nothing, Paul Buchanan has spun one of the most moving albums of the year. I hope I won’t have to wait another eight years for the next one, but I’m sure I will. And I’m also sure that, like Mid Air, it will be worth every day.

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The members of Soundgarden have never struck me as particularly cheeky. So I couldn’t help but grin when I saw that the first song (and first single) on their reunion album, King Animal, is entitled “Been Away Too Long.”

It’s certainly been a while – Soundgarden’s last album hit stores 16 years ago. During their ‘90s heyday, they were arguably the best, and certainly the most musically adept band to ride the grunge wave out of Seattle. While their contemporaries were almost embarrassed by their fame, and preferred to whine over sludgy guitar chords, Soundgarden exhibited an almost Zeppelin-like swagger. They rode in on big riffs, tricky time signatures, and the rock god voice of Chris Cornell. Their masterpiece, 1994’s Superunknown, is a relentless 70-minute slab of intelligent, twisty, almost cocky rock and roll. (If you haven’t heard it in a while, try it. It holds up remarkably well.)

The decade and a half since the split-up hasn’t been particularly kind to Cornell. A stint with the ill-advised not-so-supergroup Audioslave, a ridiculous Michael Jackson cover, and a much-derided collaboration with Timbaland (which I quite liked) did a lot to undo his reputation as a phenomenally gifted singer. Guitarist Kim Thayil and bassist Ben Shepherd all but disappeared, and drummer Matt Cameron has been a permanent member of Pearl Jam since 1998. Believe me when I tell you that no one was expecting a Soundgarden reunion, and even when one was announced, no one had high hopes for it.

But lo and behold, King Animal is actually pretty good. I’d love to say the band picked up where they left off in ’96, but they haven’t. This album is a little more tentative than I’d like, and the band is clearly older and less adventurous. Cornell’s high, throaty wail has aged, and the band is content to simply ride a groove like “Non-State Actor” instead of shaking it up like they once would have. But in all, these 13 tracks are far better than I was expecting.

The best material here is the moodiest, and comes after the rollicking opening salvo. Track five, “Blood on the Valley Floor,” does what Soundgarden does best – a crawling riff right out of the Zep handbook, some interesting time signature shifts, a soaring melody, and out in 3:48. “Bones of Birds” is reminiscent of Cornell’s best solo work, its folded and spindled 7/8 riff leading into a swell minor-key chorus. “Black Saturday” presses the acoustic guitar into service, but it’s joined by exotic percussion and a full horn section for one of the band’s signature head-spinning sections.

With all that going on, the simple ditty “Halfway There” might have sounded slight, if not for that catchy chorus. It’s the closest thing to a hit you’ll find here, amidst workouts like “Worse Dreams.” King Animal ends with “Rowing,” built around a twisting bass figure from Shepherd and a simple, relentless drum beat from Cameron. It’s a song about persevering – “Don’t know where I’m going, I just keep on rowing” – and it strikes just the right note at the end of this record. I hope Soundgarden perseveres, because as good as King Animal is, they should be back to full strength in a couple of albums. And I definitely want to hear that.

* * * * *

But the prize for most unexpected reunion album goes to Dead Can Dance.

Like Soundgarden, it’s been 16 years since Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard have recorded together. They were one of the original 4AD Records bands in the ‘80s, and sat somewhat uncomfortably among their gothic counterparts. Dead Can Dance has always been an all-encompassing world music outfit, mixing Eastern melodies and instruments with Western production. They were unique in the ‘80s, and they’re unique now.

Dead Can Dance is a band I have heard of more than I have heard. I never explored their catalog to the extent I should have. But their reunion album, Anastasis, has convinced me to look deeper. The title is a Greek word for resurrection, and the album lives up to it – here are eight long songs that exemplify this band’s fascinating mix of styles and influences. Perry and Gerrard are not afraid to return after 16 years with an album that is difficult, demanding, and unlike anything else you’ll hear.

If the pair felt like they had to prove anything, they did it with the first track, the sweeping “Children of the Sun.” Over thick synths and swirling strings, Perry unveils his Morrissey-imitating-David-Bowie voice, and reveals its power bit by bit as the song swells. By the end, the orchestration has built up an almost palpable force. It’s a gauntlet-throwing opener, and the album doesn’t reach those particular heights again. But that’s all right, because it follows other paths.

Half of these songs are Perry’s, and those contain intelligible lyrics and steady beats. They’re all good – “Amnesia” starts off with a hint of reggae, and ends up with huge string and horn lines fighting for space. “Opium” could almost be a single, with its supple rhythm and choral keyboard sounds. And closer “All in Good Time” is lovely, Perry’s reverbed voice drifting above an ambient backdrop.

But the other half belong to Gerrard, and they’re the heart of the album for me. Gerrard sings in glossolalia, uttering syllables that have no meaning, but convey emotion. She lets that voice loose on the Middle Eastern-flavored “Anabasis,” and it seems to have no boundaries. It floats disembodied above the sinewy sonic backdrop, synths melding with traditional instruments for a mind-altering experience. “Agape” is similar, Gerrard showing why she’s been an in-demand film composer since Dead Can Dance’s last record.

Nothing here is as remarkable as the eight-minute movie without pictures “Return of the She-King.” A simple percussion figure (including sleigh bells) supports some lovely strings while Gerrard layers her voice atop itself, turning herself into a spectral choir. I almost wish for real horns at the five-minute mark, but it might not carry the same effect. Perry enters shortly thereafter, wordlessly joining Gerrard’s gorgeous vocal, and the two ride the majestic wave out.

Dead Can Dance have been away for 16 years, and even after all that time, there’s still no other band like them. Anastasis fits right in with what I’ve heard of their older material, like no time has passed. Their return is one of the most welcome surprises of the year, and I hope their collaboration continues. They clearly fill a niche that no one else can touch.

* * * * *

Next week, a couple of albums I helped to make. After that, this year’s crop of Christmas music, and then we’re in the year-end festivities. Another one in the books. Hard to believe. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

We’ve talked a lot in this column about expectations, and how they color reactions to music. And I’ve written reams about records that I expected to be good, but turned out to be mediocre, or worse. I’ve noticed, though, that we haven’t really discussed it from the other angle. What about albums you expect to be crap, but which end up impressing you?

It’s no secret that lowered expectations can be good for an artist with something to prove. I call it the Waterworld Effect, after Kevin Costner’s 1995 sci-fi epic. At the time, its $175 million budget made it the most expensive film ever made, and rumors of its inescapable crappiness surrounded its release. (If I recall, some critics referred to it as Fishtar, after a similarly expensive flop.) Waterworld didn’t do very well. But when I went to see it, I left the theater happy. It was a mediocre movie, all told, but it cleared the very low bar I’d set for it easily, and ended up impressing me.

But the Waterworld Effect is about average art benefiting from low expectations. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about genuinely terrific records, ones that I’d enjoy regardless of baggage. I’m talking about the sweet surprise of hearing something sublime from a band I’d written off, or barely explored. There are better things about being an obsessive music fan, but none offers that particular thrill of rediscovering something worthy.

For instance. I have always liked the Dave Matthews Band. I know that’s an admission I’m not supposed to make – they’re almost universally dismissed as dad-rock hippies – but I’ve been into their sound since I first heard “Jimi Thing” playing in a record store in Massachusetts in 1994. I’ve stuck with them ever since, but I’ve been tempted to jump ship more than once in the intervening years. After the tremendous Before These Crowded Streets in 1998, they started sliding down, a precipitous drop that culminated in the death of saxophonist LeRoi Moore in 2008.

After that, I figured they were done. The band rallied to finish the album they were working on when Moore died, and the result was the surprisingly good Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King. But I thought of that as a finale, a last grasp at greatness. I figured they’d reached deep for that record, in memory of Moore, and they would most likely just fade away once it was released.

What I didn’t expect is that they’d outdo it, and everything they’ve released since Crowded Streets, with their new album, Away From the World. In fact, I was so sure this album would be terrible that I neglected to listen to it for more than a month, letting it collect dust in my “someday” pile. When I finally gave this platter a spin, I was amazed. Not only is this the best set of songs Matthews has put together in more than a decade, the band sounds revitalized playing them.

Away From the World brings producer Steve Lillywhite back into the fold for the first time since the aborted 1999-2000 sessions that followed Crowded Streets. In a lot of ways, those sessions were the turning point – after scrapping them, the band made the horrid, pop-encrusted Everyday, and the slide began in earnest. So bringing Lillywhite back is a symbolic statement of purpose. And the album sounds like it. This album is definitely not the old-school, wrist-breaking, passionate DMB – they’re older, and they’ve mellowed out. But even in its more mid-tempo grooves, this record sounds alive.

Take “Belly Belly Nice,” which rises above its awful title on a kinetic acoustic guitar groove and some high-powered sax work from longtime guest Jeff Coffin. When it slides into the chorus (“You can’t get too much love”), it’s like the sound of the band remembering what made them great. “Mercy” is a lovely little ballad, Matthews’ aging voice sounding wiser than ever, and “Gaucho” is a slippery epic, ducking and diving between time signatures. On this one especially, Carter Beauford continues to make the case for himself as one of the finest drummers around.

And that’s the thing with the DMB. Matthews may have it in his head that we’re here for him, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s always been his band. Beauford is amazing, bassist Stefan Lessard is nimble, and violinist Boyd Tinsley continues to shine. It’s the interplay between these guys and Matthews’ guitar that makes DMB records for me, and the more over-produced they are, the more they rely on pop gloss and sonic layering, the less interesting they become.

Away From the World sidesteps all that like no record they’ve made since the ‘90s. This one’s about the band playing, which is all I want to hear. The final track, a nine-minute wonder called “Drunken Soldier,” is the epitome of this approach – the song is killer, and everyone’s in top form, jamming in a room. And in the process, they sound reawakened, ready to leave the tragedy of 2008 behind them and start anew. I honestly didn’t think they still had something like this in them. I’m happy to be wrong.

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I’ve never had a lot of time for Norah Jones.

I’ve heard her stuff, of course. I couldn’t escape “Don’t Know Why” in 2002, as much as I wanted to, and I’ve listened to scattered singles in the years since. But I’ve never liked her enough to go deeper. There’s a sleepy, coffeehouse-safe vibe to her brand of lite jazz that I just couldn’t get beyond. I like her kitschy side project, the Little Willies, but mainly for her bandmate Richard Julian, who remains a criminally underappreciated artist. As for Jones, she’s never made much of an impression.

I’m not sure why I bought Little Broken Hearts, her fifth album. I expect it was curiosity – she appears on the cover in a wild wig, posing like the girl on the Mudhoney poster, and she teamed up with Danger Mouse, who co-wrote and produced the whole thing. You all know Danger Mouse – one half of Gnarls Barkley and Broken Bells, manned the boards for the last three Black Keys albums, has worked with Gorillaz and Beck. He’s never done lite jazz in his life.

So yeah, I was curious, and I’m glad I was, because Little Broken Hearts is excellent. It’s not quite the messy, trashy wonder the cover promises, but it does find Jones digging into new styles, and draping that purring voice over new backdrops. The record has a haunted, downtempo feel to it, but it elicits shivers, not yawns. Danger Mouse keeps things surprisingly minimal – the minor-key “Take It Back” sticks with two guitars and bass for half its running time, before subtle drums and keys come in. “She’s 22” is barely even there – just some wisps of guitar and piano.

But when Danger Mouse asserts himself, as on the trippy “After the Fall,” the results are spectacular. The effects on Jones’ normally unaffected voice are perfect, cutting through the little web of skipping drums, plinking guitars and washed-out organs. There isn’t much of a melody, but the atmosphere is enough. “4 Broken Hearts” is a reverbed, Chris Isaak-esque shimmy, dark and sexy. “Travelin’ On” sounds like the closing scene of a move like True Romance, in which the broken and bloodied hero heads off into the sunset with his love, sad but hopeful.

The loudest thing here is “Happy Pills,” and it really isn’t that loud. Its muted saxophone lines accent a rhythm that straddles doo-wop and the Cars, Jones crooning, “Please just let me go.” The production is marvelous, full of little details, and Jones rises to the occasion well. It’s the one shaft of light here – Jones turns murderous on the next track, “Miriam,” and then closes things out with a slinky, six-minute sorta-reggae crawl called “All a Dream.” The hook line is “You never hurt someone who wants to learn to be your slave.” Like much of Little Broken Hearts, this is not a portrait of a healthy relationship.

It is, however, a portrait of an artist looking to break out of her self-created mold. It’s been a while since I’ve heard an artistic reinvention as successful as the one Jones pulls off on Little Broken Hearts. For the first time ever, I’m interested to hear where she goes next.

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And finally, we have Shiny Toy Guns.

I first heard this Los Angeles band when they opened for Mutemath back in 2006. I thought they were ridiculous. They wore face paint, the drummer spent more time twirling his sticks and pointing to the ceiling than he did drumming, and the candy-coated electro-stomp they pumped out was exactly the wrong style to play to Mutemath fans. When they played “Le Disko,” their annoying single, I wanted to run screaming.

Perhaps the great Mutemath show I saw later that night tempered my contempt, because I went out and bought Shiny Toy Guns’ debut album, We Are Pilots, and enjoyed it. They’re definitely a studio band, constructing most of their sound out of stacked synthesizers, and even though “Le Disko” was still irritating, other tunes like “You Are the One” and “Don’t Cry Out” showed a refined sense of drama and melody. In short, the record is a pretty good slice of trashy electronic pop.

And then it all went south. Vocalist Carah Faye quit, and Chad Petree and Jeremy Dawson soldiered on with a darker, more dismal second album, Season of Poison, which tanked horribly. And then, for three years, Petree and Dawson talked about their third album, letting release date after release date fly by. They’d clearly lost their way. I knew how this story would end – the third record would probably come out, and it would probably be a cobbled-together, over-thought mess, and then the band would disintegrate.

Well, I have to say, way to prove me wrong.

The third Shiny Toy Guns album, fittingly titled III, is marvelous. It may be one of the best electronic pop albums I’ve heard in a couple years. The record finds Faye rejoining the fold, and the band rediscovering its footing. Gone are the sheets of guitar from Season of Poison – this album is almost entirely synth-driven, and the production by Petree and Dawson is glimmering. The sound is exactly right, a huge step up from the analog burbles of Pilots.

But better than that, the songs are superb. Even with Faye back in the ranks, the band only delivers one riff on “Le Disko” – it’s called “Speaking Japanese,” and it’s pretty great, if kitschy. The rest of III, however, is surprisingly mature, deeply melodic, dark and (believe it or not) restrained. It opens with “Somewhere to Hide,” a sparkling, catchy pop song just drenched in snaking synth lines – it’s so good that the members of Garbage are probably kicking themselves for not writing it. The electrifying “Carrie” skips along at a brisk pace, and “If I Lost You” brings early Pet Shop Boys to mind.

Once “Speaking Japanese” is over, the album shows its true colors. “Mercy” is a stunningly good epic, its atmospheric opening leading into a wordless wonder of a chorus. “Wait For Me” is slow simmer, clouds of synths supporting the twining voices of Faye and Petree. “Fading Listening” sounds like Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac (really), and “The Sun” keeps the mood going with a soaring anthem. The final six songs, in fact, are all tremendous, and never once slip into the trashy dance-pop the band made its name with. The last track, “Take Me Back to Where I Was,” is even an unaffected, earnest piano ballad.

I’m very surprised by how much I like III. Before this, Shiny Toy Guns was one of those bands I’d decided to follow, but didn’t love. Now, I would truly miss them if they called it quits. III is an almost modest, vulnerable record, and that I was not expecting. This is an album that was crafted with care, and it draws me in, demanding I play it again and again. I’ve already heard it more times than Pilots and Poison combined. While I was writing them off, Shiny Toy Guns went and wrote a new chapter. Here’s to many more.

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Next week, maybe that column of unexpected returns, but maybe something else. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

This week we here in Aurora bid goodbye to the New Automatics.

I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, but have you ever watched as something extraordinary began, evolved and grew, and you just knew that magic was happening? And that even though this thing was a secret shared by only a few, you knew – just knew – that this was the real deal, and it wouldn’t stay a secret for long?

The New Automatics was like that. It was our local supergroup – songwriters Jeremy Keen and Andrea Dawn anchored it, with impeccable support from Zach Goforth and Brendan McCormick. Watching these four find each other, take their first steps forward, and finally revel in and celebrate their musical connection was a joy.

Every New Automatics show – and there were far too few – was an event. Every single element of their collaboration worked, from the superb songs Dawn and Keen wrote, to the exquisite three-part harmonies, to the way Keen’s electric guitar tone meshed with and elevated everything. There was no weak link. They were the best band in Aurora. And now they’re done. Keen and his family are off to Florida at the end of the month. It’s a sad day, because while Keen and Dawn are terrific on their own, they were beyond wonderful together.

The band did treat us to a final concert, though, and really, you should have been there. It was an emotional evening, as they ran through a series of songs about loss and separation, then sealed the deal with some well-chosen covers. The highlight, for me, was (believe it or not) Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” which Dawn and Keen sang acoustically. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry – the song selection was perfect, and the reading so tender and funny. I couldn’t wipe the smile from my face. When the show ended (perfectly, with a cover of “Closing Time”), we were all kind of dumbstruck at what we’d lost, but happy to have seen them one last time.

I wish you all could have heard the New Automatics. They were something special. We’ll miss you, Jeremy. Come back and see us soon.

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I still get a little thrill when I hear that an artist I like is releasing two albums in one year.

I don’t quite know why. It wasn’t that long ago that putting out two records in a year wasn’t considered odd. Hell, the Beatles’ first six albums were all released within three years, not to mention the constant barrage of non-album singles that also hit stores. But we’re in an age now when an album is routinely twice as long as those first six Beatles records, so it really shouldn’t mean as much now. If Please Please Me is the base line, most of the artists I know put out the equivalent of two albums this year.

For some reason, though, I just like the idea of multiple projects coming to life at once. The venerable Over the Rhine has just launched a pre-order campaign for a pair of albums they plan to release next year, and I’m already pretty excited about it. Perhaps this is a distinction that only makes sense in the realm of physical products, but to me, putting out two albums is different than putting out a double album. The twin records approach says to me that even though these songs may have come from the same sessions, they fall into two completely different categories, and their respective albums have completely different characters.

That’s not always the case, but if an artist puts out two records in one year, I can’t help thinking about them in relation to one another. The astonishing Kate Bush dropped two albums on us last year, and they couldn’t have been less alike: Director’s Cut found her revisiting old material in new ways, and 50 Words for Snow took her tendency for lengthy ambient works to new, beautiful heights. They scratched different creative impulses, and as a fan, I appreciated them in different ways. But each illuminated the other for me.

A few artists have already released multiple records this year, including the ever-prolific Robert Pollard, who is on three and counting. Add to that the surprisingly ambitious Green Day – they’re in the middle of a trilogy, and they’ve just bumped the third installment forward to next month. We’re going to get three Green Day records this year, but at the moment, we have two, and they definitely fit the pattern I’m looking for – Uno and Dos are distinct entities, and they help explain each other.

You’ll recall I was disappointed in the regressive Uno, a calculated attempt to return to the days of “Welcome to Paradise.” Dos is the same kind of backslide, in a different way, and it solidifies what Green Day is up to – they’re bringing together all the styles they’ve worked in, and handing them to their 20-year-old selves. Dos lives up to its billing as the more garage-rock installment, but its songs are just as asinine and immature as those on Uno. Quite a lot of this record sounds like Green Day’s alter ego, the bratty-fun Foxboro Hot Tubs. But not enough of it captures that effortless sense of whimsy. Most of it, in fact, is just lame.

The sweet minute-long intro “See You Tonight” will not prepare you, for instance, for “Fuck Time.” Originally a Foxboro Hot Tubs song, “Fuck Time” is just as insipid as its title. It should be fun – it’s a Green Day song called “Fuck Time” – but it falls flat. If you giggle at this, the rest of the record may be up your alley. But considering Billie Joe Armstrong is 40 this year, I found it kind of sad. At least it’s not as creepy as “Makeout Party,” in which Armstrong sings, “Hey, you’ve got yourself a pretty little mouth, I think I want to rub you the wrong way, do you wanna play spin the bottle, play a game of chicken?” Again, Billie Joe Armstrong is 40.

Other lowlights include “Nightlife,” an execrable rap experiment, and “Baby Eyes,” an idiotic murder anthem. But Dos fares better than Uno musically, particularly on mid-tempo punkabilly like “Lazy Bones” and “Wild One.” The slinky “Stray Heart” is the best song on either album, bouncing along on sprightly bass and a Grease-ready melody. “Ashley” adds some well-needed excitement to the second half, even if the song is no great shakes. And I was pleasantly surprised by “Amy,” Armstrong’s sweet ode to Amy Winehouse. Considering the luck they’ve had with sparse ballads, this one could hit big.

So far, though, this trilogy is a bust. The third installment, Tre, reportedly contains the “epic” songs, but my bet is that it suffers from the same midlife crisis as its two predecessors. Armstrong and his cohorts seem to wish it was 1995 again, but they can’t turn back time. Uno and Dos find them dressing up in younger man’s clothes and pretending they’re not going gray. Unfortunately, they’re not very convincing, and the end result is just embarrassing.

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Speaking of going gray, there’s Neil Young. He turns 67 next week, and he definitely deserves his reputation as a grumpy old man these days. But he’s also an unflinching iconoclast. Neil Young does whatever he wants. If he feels like writing an album about his electric car, or creating a sequel to an album that was never released, or a rock opera about small-town America, he does it. At this stage in his career, he’s earned it.

So when he decided to reunite Crazy Horse, his fantastic longtime backing band, and jam out on traditional American tunes like “Oh Susannah,” “This Land is Your Land” and “Clementine,” well, he got to do it. And to be honest, that album, Americana, is better than it has any right to be. It’s vintage Crazy Horse – loud and sloppy, yet crisp and put together somehow. I’ve never been a huge fan of Young, but I adore Crazy Horse. And when Neil’s with them, he’s better – energized, tough, ready to play.

It turns out Americana was just the warmup. The second Neil Young and Crazy Horse album of 2012 is entitled Psychedelic Pill, and at 87 minutes, it’s the longest thing they’ve ever done. It’s an endurance test, stuffed with very long songs and endless guitar solos, but it’s also quintessential Crazy Horse. This record is like being allowed to listen in as they jam their way through new material, seeking out its twists and turns. There’s certainly little to suggest that they took anything but the first jams they got on tape to create this thing.

Case in point: “Driftin’ Back,” the 27-minute opener. As a song, it’s fine – it has a hook and a groove, and Crazy Horse plays it with force. But it drags on and on, guitar solo after guitar solo extending the running time well past its breaking point. Most of those solos are played over two notes repeated forever, and even the delightfully thick tones Young and Poncho Sampedro employ can only sustain interest for so long. In between jams, Young complains about MP3s and the music biz, ironically on the one song here that will not fit on a side of vinyl. And this is just track one. If you’re into it, and can ride it out, “Driftin’ Back” is an impressive jam. If you’re not, it’s headache-inducing.

Happily, that’s the worst thing on Psychedelic Pill. The remainder is classic Crazy Horse, with an extra jolt of good songwriting to boot. The title track is a festival of flange (a cleaner alternate mix also appears on disc two), “Born in Ontario” is a spirited romp, and “Twisted Road” is a slow burn with a sweet riff. None of these songs breaks four minutes, which definitely helps balance things out. The other two long ones are pretty good as well – “Ramada Inn” is the jewel of the record, even at 17 minutes, due to its interesting chords and inspired, sloppy leads, while “Walk Like a Giant” closes things out with a 16-minute racket worthy of bands half their age.

I don’t think Psychedelic Pill is a great record by any means, but it is one that only Neil Young and Crazy Horse would make together. Nothing here rocks, per se, but there’s a heaviness and a joy to these jams, particularly “Ramada Inn.” You can hear how much they enjoy playing together, how fruitful their partnership has been. Yeah, this record is way too long, and I wouldn’t mind hearing the five-minute versions of some of these epics, but if you want to hear what Crazy Horse sounds like when they’re alone, playing like no one’s listening, you can’t beat this. I may never listen to it again, but I’m glad I heard it.

* * * * *

And finally, the Punch Brothers.

This has been their year. Their third album, Who’s Feeling Young Now, met with deafening acclaim and their highest sales figures. They appeared on Austin City Limits, and wowed audiences from coast to coast. If you hadn’t heard of Chris Thile before 2012, you’ve likely heard of him now. His experiment – a bluegrass band that can play any style with virtuosity and verve – has been declared a success, both artistically and commercially.

So what’s left to do but run a victory lap? Hence Ahoy, a five-song slice of awesome consisting of one new original and four magnificent covers. If you want a bite-sized summation of just why this band is so special, you can’t do better than this. The Punch Brothers are, in many ways, a traditional bluegrass outfit – mandolin, guitar, bass, banjo and fiddle. But they are just as adept at the standards as they are at songs Earl Scruggs would have run screaming from. (Check out their amazingly faithful cover of Radiohead’s “Kid A.”)

On Ahoy, they do both with style. The EP opens with Josh Ritter’s folksy “Another New World,” played straight, but with a startlingly well-conceived buildup. The band delivers a hayseed interpretation of Gillian Welch’s “Down Along the Dixie Line” – if you’ve ever heard Welch do it, your jaw will drop at the bouncy bluegrass rendition here. And traditional tune “Moonshiner” is given a heartfelt reading, fiddler Gabe Witcher truly shining. If you needed further proof that the Punch Brothers are one of the best traditional bluegrass bands on the planet, these three songs will provide it.

But then, things go nuts. Original instrumental “Squirrel of Possibility” is a joyous delight, nimbly carrying off a pop-bluegrass merger. Just listen to Thile on mandolin here. He’s a once-in-a-generation player, and few can compare. And then the Brothers launch into their version of hardcore band Mclusky’s “Icarus Smicarus,” and the gloves come off. It’s raucous, dangerous, finger-breaking stuff, particularly the extended playout, in which the Brothers play with dissonance and power like they rarely have. I can’t think of another bluegrass band who would even try this, let alone pull it off. The final note will leave you gasping for breath.

Yeah, this was the year of the Punch Brothers. There’s no other band like them. Ahoy is just them waving from orbit, getting ready to explore even further. I can’t wait to see where they go next.

* * * * *

I’ve had this plan for weeks now to write a column about long-absent bands making unlikely returns this year. Trouble is, I’m still waiting for one of the albums I want to write about to show up. If it does by Monday, expect that next week. If not, expect something else. Leave a comment on my blog at tm3am.blogspot.com. Follow my infrequent twitterings at www.twitter.com/tm3am.

See you in line Tuesday morning.