I assume by now that you’ve all heard the big Star Wars news.

If not, I’ll summarize. Disney bought LucasFilm. All of it, including ILM, Skywalker Sound, and all the rights to Star Wars. They spent $4.05 billion on this deal, a figure that to me actually seems pretty low, and in return, they get to make new Star Wars movies. With or without George Lucas. Which they have already announced they will do, beginning with Star Wars: Episode VII in 2015.

I probably don’t need to tell you that this is the biggest news to hit my little world in a long time. And when I first read it, I was elated. New Star Wars movies! A chance to bring new writers and directors into the fold, and re-energize the saga! As the story kept unfolding, it just got better. Lucas will stay on as a creative consultant, providing the story outlines for the new movies, but not writing or directing them. The first three out of the gate will be the fabled Episodes VII, VIII and IX, which, had Lucas decided to make them himself, would probably have ended up just like the prequels – an easy target for fans who cringe at Lucas’ dialogue and stilted staging.

Surely, I thought, this news is making every Star Wars fan in the world happy right now. But no. Star Wars fans happy? What was I thinking? Since yesterday I’ve read diatribe after diatribe about how Lucas has “sold out” and how Disney will ruin Star Wars. How the Mouse House is a soulless conglomerate that will swallow the Skywalker clan whole, and spit out empty garbage. How they’re certain – just certain – that this is the worst move Lucas has ever made, and that the whole of Star Wars is ruined now.

And about halfway through the day, in the midst of a Facebook back-and-forth with one of my oldest friends, I hit upon the phrase that defines my feelings on this. I am choosing to be hopeful.

Now, listen. The naysayers may be right. But here’s why I’m optimistic. I’m a guy who liked the prequel trilogy a great deal, but even I can see the flaws. Lucas is a tin-eared dialogue writer, and has no idea how to reproduce on the page the actual rhythms of speech. (“George, you can type this shit, but you sure as hell can’t say it,” as Harrison Ford once opined.) His pacing is wrong, his direction inadequate. In those prequels, he managed to coax bad performances out of some of the finest actors around. The prequels could have been masterpieces, but they merely connected the dots, and the problem was Lucas.

You have to give the man his due. His imagination is boundless, and he created the entire Star Wars universe from scratch. But he’s forgotten how to be a good filmmaker, and I’m glad he realized that it’s time to step away. As a creative consultant, Lucas’ vision will still guide the Star Wars franchise. But with this new deal, Disney is under no obligation to listen to him. A mechanism is now in place to veto disasters like Jar Jar Binks. In the best case scenario, we get all of the vision and none of the bad ideas.

Disney can now hire anyone they want to write and direct new Star Wars movies. If they’re smart – and based on their handling of the Marvel stable, I believe they are – they’ll pay for fan-favorite visionaries, and then step back and let them do their thing. Joss Whedon’s on the short list, of course, but I’ve heard other fascinating names, like Brad Bird, JJ Abrams and Duncan Jones. Any one of those guys would add a welcome dose of personality to Star Wars. Remember, the consensus favorite of the first six films is The Empire Strikes Back, written by Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett and directed by Irvin Kirshner. It’s the film Lucas had the least amount of involvement with.

Above all, I think Disney knows what it has, and will take care of Star Wars. The fanbase is massive, and also quick-tempered and judgmental. I believe everyone involved knows this, and will do their best to please us. They may screw up, but I don’t think it will be because they want to suck the life out of the saga, and milk it for all it’s worth. I expect we’ll get some real Star Wars fans to take the reins now, and I think this may be just the thing to bring one of my favorite entertainments to new heights.

Why do I think that? Because I am choosing to be hopeful.

* * * * *

I have realized I hold to the same philosophy when it comes to buying music. I want to like everything I buy, and I head into every one of these musical relationships with hopes held high. Even when the odds are stacked against me, and I just know something I’m plopping down 12 bucks for is going to suck beyond all reason, I still want to believe that it won’t. I’m most often the Mulder, not the Scully.

That goes double for records I buy on recommendations, without hearing them first. I know some of you are aghast at that notion, especially considering the digital age we live in. Yes, I could easily listen to these albums before buying them, and decide from that whether or not to spend the money on them. But what fun would that be? At least a dozen times I year, I pay my money and I take my chance, based on nothing but the word of people I trust. And it almost always works out beautifully.

I have two cases in point this week, and the recommends both came from the same guy. Rob Hale is an employee at Kiss the Sky, the greatest record store in the Chicago suburbs. He’s a musicologist – the guy listens to everything, from Impulse label jazz to Steely Dan to Porcupine Tree. He’s introduced me to quite a lot of new-to-me artists, and I’ve learned to take him at his word. Plus, he’s one of the only people I know of who is as excited to play new music for me as I am for him.

Lately, Rob’s been in love with the new Tame Impala album, Lonerism. And after buying and hearing it, I can’t say I blame him. I still have not picked up Innerspeaker, the first Tame Impala record – I have something of an aversion to hyped-up new bands, preferring to let them establish a track record before dipping in – but I understand that it’s similar, if smaller and less adventurous. I’m still excited to hear it, but the sense of adventure is what knocks me out about Lonerism.

For all intents and purposes, Australian Kevin Parker is Tame Impala. He writes all the songs, plays all the instruments (except a few piano lines this time), and produces and records everything at home. But don’t let that fool you into thinking this is cheap-sounding stuff. Lonerism sounds like Parker spent a million on it, so intricate are the arrangements and so crisp is the recording. This is keyboard-tinged ‘60s-influenced psychedelic rock, and its canvas is huge, its palette bursting with color.

The record begins with a repeated mantra: “Gotta be above it,” panted out over thundering drums and heavily processed keyboards. The song doesn’t do much with its powerhouse opening, but it doesn’t need to – before long, we’re neck-deep in “Endors Toi,” a remarkable piece of synth-drenched pop. Its flurry of sound never stops moving, and it sets the tone for most of Lonerism. Parker’s a guy who knows how to construct swarms of sound, but he also knows how to leave spaces – check out the wide-open chasms in the bass-driven “Apocalypse Dreams.”

He also knows how to write a melody. It may take you a few listens to truly hear the tunes beneath the production, but they’re here, and they’re wonderful. “Music to Walk Home By” exudes charm, with its catchy refrain and trippy keys. My favorite part, though, is when the guitars kick in near the end, playing a nimble little run that drives the whole song home. I’m also fond of “Keep On Lying,” which seems to start in the middle – it fades in mid-chorus, repeats for a while, then unfolds into a psych jam of the highest order. (Especially when you consider that Parker is playing all the instruments.)

In a way, this is all prelude to the lumbering juggernaut that is “Elephant.” A relentless stomp of a song, “Elephant” feels in places like a long-lost nugget of the ‘60s, complete with cheesy organ sounds and distorted push-and-shove bass. But there’s an element of doom metal to it as well, which gives it an energetic edge over much of Lonerism. Not that the rest of it falls short – the dazzling mini-epic “Nothing That Has Happened So Far Has Been Anything We Could Control,” for example, will make your head spin, and the deceptively dark piano ballad “Sun’s Coming Up” closes things out on a winningly weird note.

Lonerism is an album that lives up to its title – it’s the kind of thing that can only be the product of an individual vision, given free reign. It’s fun, it’s trippy, it’s endlessly inventive, and it’s unfailingly melodic. It takes a few listens to grasp what Kevin Parker is up to here, but once it clicks, Lonerism is a fine, fine piece of work. Looking forward to hearing Innerspeaker now, and following wherever Parker goes next.

As much as I like it, though, the Tame Impala album is not one of my favorites of the year. Rob’s other recommendation certainly is, though. It’s another Australian band, this one named Husky, after its lead singer, Husky Gawenda. Their debut album is called Forever So, and it’s in the mold of Fleet Foxes and Andrew Bird. But there’s a certain magic to it that I won’t be able to adequately explain. Forever So is a collection of tiny acoustic folk-rock songs, sung and played gracefully, but there’s more here. It’s beautiful in ways so few albums are – respectful of space and silence, every element used sparingly and working toward the whole.

This is an album of details – the watery backing vocals that crop up only a couple of times on “Tidal Wave,” the well-placed finger cymbal on “Fake Moustache.” It’s an album that demands attention. It would be easy to let these quiet, wispy tunes fade into the background, but Gawenda and the band have carefully crafted every moment, every note you hear (and every space you don’t). It’s meant for immersive listening. That’s not to say it isn’t immediate, too – “History’s Door” is one of the finest little pop songs I’ve heard this year, and showcases the band at its loudest (which isn’t very loud), and nimble tunes like “Hunter” and the title song are simply lovely.

But there’s a cumulative effect here that goes beyond just pretty songs. Forever So flows perfectly, one gorgeous piece of music into another, and listening to it all in a row is like wrapping yourself up in a warm blanket on a snowy day. Gawenda’s high voice has its limits, but he uses it well, never rising above a sweet half-whisper, and the subtle, yet remarkably intricate production spins around it like fireflies. The best records do this – they take you over for their entire running times, casting a spell that doesn’t lift until the final note is played.

Forever So is like that. It’s such a thoughtfully constructed album, and such a beautiful one to boot, that you won’t want it to end. That ending – the hushed “Farewell (in 3 Parts)” – is just as gentle and moving as the rest of this little gem. Even the concluding horn arrangement is like a caress. Forever So is one of the best records I’ve heard this year, and it sets the bar high for Husky’s future. I hope they can keep making albums like this one, because I haven’t been able to stop listening to Forever So for more than a week now. And I love that feeling, when my hopes are fulfilled, when my optimism is proven right. I choose to be hopeful, and sometimes, it works out.

Thanks, Rob. I owe you.

Next week, could be anything. 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 we talked extensively about solo albums by artists better known for the bands they belong to. This week, we’re going to touch on the other two kinds of solo artists – those working under a band name, and those who have never worked under any name but their own.

We actually brought up the first category last time, and it’s more common than you may think. Though Jason Lytle is putting out music under his own name now, he essentially was his old band Grandaddy, writing and singing all the songs and playing most of the instruments. The same way that Matt Hales is Aqualung, or Jason Martin is Starflyer 59, or Justin Vernon is Bon Iver, or Kevin Barnes is Of Montreal, or Trent Reznor is Nine Inch Nails, or Mark Kozelek is Sun Kil Moon.

Or like Natasha Khan is Bat for Lashes.

Lord knows why she has picked that particular name, but Bat for Lashes is all Khan – she writes all the songs, co-produces, sings, and plays a host of instruments. The marvelous mix of lush sounds she creates and curates is entirely at her direction. She even appears naked on the front cover of her new album, The Haunted Man, holding a similarly-naked man over her shoulders. It’s as if to illustrate the point: this is me, exposed, doing all the work. Get to know this record and you’re getting to know me.

Given that, you may expect something soul-baring and sparse, something, well, haunted. But it should be no surprise to Khan’s fans that she’s used her third album to delve even further into the sonic territory she staked out with her first two. Khan’s 2009 album Two Suns found her plunging headlong into electronic beats, yet maintaining the dreamy Kate Bush influence, and the result was simply amazing. Two Suns is a singular piece of work, a dark and delightful album unlike anything else out there. I’m not sure The Haunted Man is a better effort, but it doubles down on ambition and vision.

This is, no doubt, Khan’s Difficult Third Album. She makes no concessions to those looking for pop singles, or those without the patience necessary to follow her through these tunnels of song. “Moody” is an accurate, yet wholly incomplete description of this music. It unfolds slowly, adding details instead of big moments. Though Khan made waves with the danceable “Sleep Alone” last time out, she has not tried to replicate it. Tempos remain slow and shimmering, and keyboards are used for atmosphere, and rarely for punctuation.

The Haunted Man is often beautiful. Opener “Lilies” begins softly and builds so slowly that you won’t believe the amount of passion Khan bleeds into the climactic line: “Thank god I’m alive, thank god I’m alive…” The slinky “All Your Gold,” which almost sounds like a single, makes great use of its full, rich string section. Meanwhile, the actual single, “Laura,” is the record’s loveliest tune, and it’s stripped back to piano, a subtle horn arrangement, and Khan’s voice. “You’re the train that crashed my heart, you’re the glitter in the dark,” she sings, and while I have no idea what she’s talking about, the song is gorgeous.

But this album is just as often thoroughly, deeply weird. The title track, for example, stutters along on beats made of white noise, Khan singing over lush keyboard beds, before everything moves out of the way and a drum corps marches in, accompanied by a male voice choir. Somehow, this choral canticle integrates perfectly with the rest of the song when it comes charging back in, horn section and all. Similarly, “Horses of the Sun” starts off conventionally, with thumping drums and a propulsive melody, but it stops short for its off-kilter autoharp chorus. Then it gets stranger.

Through this entire record, Khan stays true to her own inimitable vision. I’m not sure who else would write a lovely, synth-burbly tune like “Marilyn,” and then nearly derail it with out-of-nowhere munchkin voices. Straight to the end, the shivering six-minute “Deep Sea Diver,” The Haunted Man commits fully to Khan’s worldview, and it’s both easier to admire and harder to love than Two Suns. I commend Khan for realizing this thing so thoroughly. It may take me some more time to fall for it, but I can already tell the investment will be worth it.

* * * * *

Of course, I have a million examples of the final type of solo album.

For example, I could talk about Regina Spektor’s new record, What We Saw from the Cheap Seats. It’s very good, perhaps the best distillation of her penchant for both lovely and quirky. Foreboding single “All the Rowboats” is definitely a highlight, but songs like “Firewood” and “Open” are among her prettiest efforts. She manages to both rein herself in and let her freak flag fly on this album, and the results are splendid.

I could talk about Tori Amos, and perhaps I will soon. Her new album Gold Dust consists of re-recordings of older material, backed by an orchestra. And nothing symbolizes the decline of one of my once-favorite artists more than this new, antiseptic version of “Precious Things,” which sounds like music for shop window dummies. I could also mention Suzanne Vega, who completed her much more successful re-recording project with the graceful Close Up Volume 4 this month. The acoustic versions on the Close Up set run the gamut of Vega’s career, and showcase just what a tremendous songwriter she is.

I could also bring up Norah Jones, who delivered one of the year’s biggest surprises with Little Broken Hearts. I’m hoping to find time and space to give this a full review soon, but here’s a sneak preview. Jones teamed up with Danger Mouse, and together, they brought her voice to marvelous new places. The album is dark and slinky and awash in electronics, and despite the fact that it sounds like nothing Jones has ever done, she’s comfortable here. No, hell, she shines. Little Broken Hearts is a must-hear record from an artist who, as far as I’m concerned, has never made one before.

These would all be good choices, but the solo artist I most want to talk about this time is Beki Hemingway.

Longtime readers will remember my glowing mini-review of Hemingway’s 2002 full-length, Words for Loss for Words. That album went on to earn a place on my top 10 list that year, on the strength of Hemingway’s songs. I still include “Good Again” and “To Spare You” on mix CDs for friends, and the latter song can still reduce me to a quivering puddle, so sharp and graceful are its lyrics. I wondered then why Beki Hemingway isn’t famous, and expected it would happen before long.

Well, it still hasn’t, and I still don’t understand. Granted, she hasn’t done a lot since then – she made an Americana record and a Christmas EP with fellow songwriter Jonathan Rundman – so maybe it’s unreasonable to expect everyone to take notice. But man, everyone is missing out. Hemingway has a new EP called I Have Big Plans for the World, and it’s great – meat and potatoes pop songs played with a snarling verve. I dare you to listen to this and not like it.

I Have Big Plans is only six songs, and less than half an hour. But that’s enough to show you what Hemingway can do. This EP is the loudest thing she’s done – opener “Lose My Mind” stacks up the roaring guitars, but Hemingway’s strong voice cuts through them, delivering a chorus you’ll be singing for hours. The song reminds me of Jonatha Brooke at her most raucous, a sense that continues through “Last Wish,” with its delightful electric piano and soaring chorus. “Northbound Traffic” brings Wayside stalwarts John and Michelle Thompson on board for a dusty rocker right out of the Lucinda Williams playbook.

Hemingway saves her best material for the end, though. “Finnieston” is the record’s one quiet moment, featuring cello from Jen Smith and backing vocals by another terrific songwriter, Carey Ott. It’s a gentle oasis of a tune, and it leads perfectly into the closer, “Skybound.” A nimble mini-epic that once again brings Jonatha Brooke to mind, the song just takes flight, Hemingway harmonizing with herself beautifully. “We could be skybound,” she sings, and I can’t imagine what’s holding her to the ground. The song is just wonderful.

I just don’t get why Beki Hemingway isn’t better known. If you’re a fan of strong, literate pop songwriting, you owe it to yourself to check her work out. She deserves to be famous, and I’d be stunned if you can get through all six songs on I Have Big Plans for the World and disagree. Beki’s website is here and you can buy her record from CD Baby here.

Next week, hopefully Paul Buchanan, but definitely Dead Can Dance and the Early November. 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.

The recent Ben Folds Five reunion has me thinking about solo albums.

I know, that doesn’t seem to make sense, but bear with me. The Five originally broke up in 2000, and Ben Folds went on to a (mostly) successful solo career. The primary criticism I heard of his solo material, at least at first, was that it sounded exactly the same as his work with the Five. Well, of course it did, was my response. Ben hasn’t thoroughly changed his songwriting style just because he struck out on his own.

But while the style remained the same, there was a difference in the sound. It was subtle, and if you weren’t a fan, you probably wouldn’t have noticed. After playing all of the instruments himself on Rockin’ the Suburbs, Ben put together a new Five, with bassist Jared Reynolds and drummer Lindsay Jamieson, for Songs for Silverman. But here’s the important thing: they weren’t a band, not the way the Five was. They were session players. It was Ben’s name on the cover, and he called all the shots.

The difference wasn’t immediately obvious, but with the release last month of the real Five’s reunion album, The Sound of the Life of the Mind, it’s become crystal clear. Folds has an interplay with Robert Sledge and Darren Jessee that he doesn’t have with his hired session players, and you can hear that democracy in action all over the new album. I love Ben Folds on his own, but there’s something about the band that he has never been able to replicate.

Of course, he’s been able to do things as a solo artist that the band format wouldn’t have allowed, like his album of a cappella tributes, or his recent collaboration with Nick Hornby. That’s what solo albums are for, in general – to give the artist a chance to try something different, to light out in another direction, even if the trip is short and circular.

So it’s a little frustrating, then, to hear the first solo album from another Ben, Benjamin Gibbard, and realize that it’s basically a very minor Death Cab for Cutie record. There’s nothing here Gibbard couldn’t have tried with his main band, no moment where he veers sharply away from expectations. Former Lives was recorded in bits over the past eight years, and it would have a slapped-together quality to it if all of these songs didn’t sound essentially the same.

Gibbard’s high, even tenor is one of the most distinctive voices in modern music, and the control he has over it is remarkable. That voice can make even simplest wisp of a song worth hearing, and he relies on it more than ever on Former Lives. These songs barely exist, they’re so slight and wistful. They jangle in all the right ways, but they’re over before they really do anything. It’s hard for me to believe that the same guy who wrote the emotional powerhouses that made up Death Cab’s Transatlanticism and Plans could find anything interesting in the non-story of “Dream Song,” but here it is in the leadoff position of Gibbard’s record.

“Dream Song” is about a guy who has bad dreams. That’s it. “He counts the hours creeping by, his thoughts racing, eyes stuck open wide, tossing and turning through the night,” Gibbard sings over the most generic acoustic indie-pop backing you could imagine. Aimee Mann tries to liven up “Bigger Than Love,” but its melody just sits there, weighed down by too much repetition. The sound is right – the guitars chime, the pianos ring out, the drums propel everything forward, and if not for the song itself, this could be a fine Death Cab track. It’s just too simple and cute to leave any kind of impact.

It’s worth noting that Gibbard played virtually every instrument on Former Lives, which could explain the timid nature of these tunes. Tellingly, the best songs here are the ones with guest players adding color and depth. “Something’s Rattling (Cowpoke)” brings in Trio Elias for a mariachi flavor. “Broken Yolk in Western Sky” is a southern-inflected story about a man who dives out of his lover’s car, watching as she drives away. “And in the gravel and scattered trash, I faded into your past,” Gibbard sings, while Mark Spencer lets loose with the pedal steel.

The best track Gibbard manages on his own is “Duncan, Where Have You Gone,” with its deliberate pianos, layered vocals and stabbing guitar solos. But even that song goes nowhere, repeating its signature motif again and again. I want to like this, because Gibbard’s voice remains an undimmed joy. But Former Lives is agonizingly mediocre, and the fact that it sounds exactly like a depressingly bad Death Cab album only adds to the disappointment. Gibbard didn’t use his solo bow to set himself apart. This record finds him doing what he’s always done, only doing it worse.

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Trey Anastasio, on the other hand, is a guy who knows what a solo career is for.

Anastasio is known as the singer and guitar player for stripped-down jam band Phish, and in that setting, he is definitely part of an organic whole. On stage especially, Phish is a nimble, epic band, stretching songs to 30 or 40 minutes, heading off on tangents led by nothing more than the telepathy between the four members. With Phish, Anastasio has firmly established himself as a guitar master, peeling off one legendary, lengthy solo after another, and deftly executing tricky numbers like “The Divided Sky” and “Stash.”

But if you’re looking for that jam band mentality from Anastasio’s solo records, you’ll be disappointed. His solo career is chock full of experiments that he simply couldn’t get away with in Phish. He’s made experimental collages alongside glossy pop albums, convened a 10-piece band for instrumental workouts, given us orchestral pieces, and with “Time Turns Elastic,” presented a 30-minute suite for strings, electric guitar and voice. Phish later recorded their own version of “Elastic,” but it’s nowhere near as fascinating as Anastasio’s.

And now he’s done it again with Traveler, his ninth solo effort. About half of this album is fairly typical stuff, Anastasio working with his longtime partner Tom Marshall to deliver breezy little rock and roll tumbles. But the other half is wild and wonderful, some of the most offbeat material Anastasio has yet written, and it sets Traveler a cut above.

Start with the mostly-instrumental “Land of Nod,” with its cartoon horn arrangement and trip-hop drumming. Then move on to the dazzling six-minute epic “Scabbard,” which tips its cap to Frank Zappa, and yet finds space for some lovely acoustic passages. Both of those songs sport terrific string arrangements, and “Scabbard” finds Anastasio working with electronic beats and sounds, like a born master. The final two minutes of the piece devolve into ambient bliss, like a journey finally reaching its peaceful end. And then he leads the band through a winking, wonderful cover of Gorillaz’ “Clint Eastwood.”

Anastasio’s newfound interest in electronics informs this record without overwhelming it. “Architect” is a simple song recorded in a delightfully complex way, with computer beats in the distance supporting fractured acoustic guitar and lush strings. It’s like the sun trying to break through, and it works beautifully. “Valentine” drops another fine string and horn arrangement over a propulsive tune that ranks among his best. Just listen to the final three minutes – Anastasio whips out the electric guitar, but this is no jam, this is a fully arranged playout.

This is all so good that the lesser lights, including the bike-riding anthem “Let Me Lie,” can’t bring Traveler down. The album ends with the title track, a graceful, sunny number that isn’t a million miles outside of Phish’s orbit, but with its strings, organ, chimes and backing vocals, it sounds completely different. That’s what makes Anastasio’s solo work so compelling. He uses solo albums as opportunities, and on Traveler, his restless nature has led him to gold.

* * * * *

What, then, to say about Jason Lytle, whose solo material is often exactly the same as his work with his former band, Grandaddy?

Even Lytle has called his solo work and Grandaddy’s output interchangeable, and there’s a lot of truth to that. Grandaddy formed in 1992, and eight years later released their defining album, The Sophtware Slump. It was here that the Lytle template emerged – low-budget epics with sweeping melodies buried under layers of old-school keyboards. Their sound is sometimes reminiscent of the Flaming Lips at their most serious, even down to Lytle’s voice, but there’s an element of closet space-rock to Grandaddy that sets them apart, and subsequent albums Sumday and Just Like the Fambly Cat emphasized that element. It’s widescreen, galaxy-spanning music that still sounds made at home.

With Grandaddy on hiatus, it should be no surprise that Lytle has continued to make music on his own, or that the music he makes breaks no new ground. His second solo album, Dept. of Disappearance, could have appeared under the name Grandaddy, and fans would have embraced it just the same. All the touchstones are here – the cheesy-awesome keyboards, the pulsing bass lines, the spacey melodies, Lytle’s pinched yet perfect voice. There really is no difference.

Is this a problem? Isn’t this the same thing I laid into Ben Gibbard for doing? Well, yes and no. With Grandaddy no longer a going concern (except for the odd reunion gig this year), Lytle has no other outlet for these songs. And it’s clear these are the kind of songs he writes. What he’s given us with Dept. of Disappearance isn’t an inferior version of Grandaddy, it essentially is Grandaddy. In some ways, the band name was a lie – it’s always been Lytle’s vision – and in most cases, Lytle’s performances, on just about every instrument.

I mean, just listen to “Last Problem of the Alps,” an absolutely crushing epic chock full of ambient synths and gorgeous pianos (all played by Lytle) that builds to a massive finish. This could have fit perfectly on Sumday without any changes. “Matterhorn” is Grandaddy through and through, from the processed vocals to the sky-high keyboard sounds. The biggest departure is “Somewhere There’s a Someone,” which sounds like Grandaddy playing a Coldplay-style pop ballad. But even that only stands out because of its raw, unaffected emotion.

There’s no one else making music like this. That said, I do find myself wishing that Lytle would shake up his formula now and again. While nothing on Dept. of Disappearance will disappoint Grandaddy fans, nothing will surprise them, either. The oscillating keys and melody of “Willow Wand Willow Wand” are classic Lytle, for better and for worse. And it should shock no one that the album ends with an eight-minute synths-and-piano excursion, this one called “Gimme Click Gimme Grid.” It’s fantastic, beautiful stuff, as usual.

Isn’t it enough just to enjoy Dept. of Disappearance as if it were another new Grandaddy album? Do we need Lytle to dance to a different tune? With no one else producing this particular brand of beautiful, I’m not sure we do. Perhaps, if this album showed even the slightest hint that Lytle was running out of steam, I’d think differently. But it doesn’t. Dept. of Disappearance is just another lovely piece of work, no matter what name its author chose to release it under. As far as I’m concerned, Lytle can keep making music like this forever, and call it whatever he likes.

* * * * *

Next week, more solo projects with Bat for Lashes and Beki Hemingway. 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.

Nothing is harder to review than pretty.

I know how to review clever, and epic, and fun, and heartbreaking, and disastrous. In fact, I sometimes have to watch myself, so I don’t use the same method of reviewing each of those twice. (I slipped up last week and reused a line from a prior Muse review. It’s a good line, though, so I’m oddly OK with it.) But when an artist’s goal is just to make the prettiest thing you’ve ever heard, I often just don’t know what to say about it. I slip into flowery language – it makes my heart sing out like a million choirs. Crap like that.

And if the album in question is pretty beyond words, I’m usually at a loss for them. Understandably so, I think, but that doesn’t help me tell you why you should hear them. “It’s lovely, I like it” just isn’t enough. So bear with me this week as I struggle to write about two of the prettiest records of 2012. If the following doesn’t convince you to pick these up, I’m sorry, but trust me that the failing is mine. If you’re a fan of undiluted beauty, you should buy both of these albums immediately.

* * * * *

It’s been a while since Beth Orton moved me.

Beth’s a British singer-songwriter with a remarkable voice – it simultaneously weighs down and lifts up the notes beneath it, if that makes any sense. She first made her mark by singing hooks in electronic pieces by William Orbit and the Chemical Brothers, and she carried some of that beats-and-synths sensibility over into her wonderful solo bow Trailer Park. (Seriously, if you haven’t heard “She Cries Your Name” or “Galaxy of Emptiness,” you’re missing out.)

But it was her second record, the gorgeous Central Reservation, that truly showed off her skills. The few electronic numbers left shared the stage with hushed, acoustic stunners like “Blood Red River” and “Devil Song.” Simple and delicate backing, stepping into the wings and giving the voice the spotlight. And when given all that room to roam, Orton’s voice is nothing short of astonishing. She doesn’t engage in vocal acrobatics, and she’d never make it on American Idol, but there’s a power in her voice that draws from an unimaginably deep well.

The problem with her subsequent albums, particularly 2006’s Comfort of Strangers, was that the songs boxed her voice in. They were fine ditties, but they didn’t play to her strengths. I’m not sure I’ve listened to Comfort of Strangers more than twice in the past six years. By contrast, though, I’ve heard her new album, Sugaring Season, twice today, and a dozen more times in the past week. It’s an album that finds Orton resetting, remembering what makes her special, and truly showing it off.

And because of that, the album is unendingly beautiful. Most of these songs are uncomplicated things, based on revolving acoustic guitars. Opener “Magpie” sports a total of two chords, swapped back and forth, with Brian Blade’s drums and Eyvind Kang’s viola adding coloring. Right from the start, though, the focus is where it ought to be – on Orton’s vocals. Her repeated “what a lie, what a lie” is the record’s first pure delight, but far from the last.

“Candles,” for example, is a minor-key wonder, the strings and drums there to support an arresting vocal performance, the production adding hints of psychedelia. (Just listen to that cello bass line in the third verse.) “Something More Beautiful” ventures into jazz ballad territory, with a superb chorus that tests Orton’s limits. She pulls it off, though, and gallops back in for the repetitive yet delirious “Call Me the Breeze,” and the heart-rending “Poison Tree,” based on a poem by William Blake. (Yes, this is the kind of album that bases songs on poems by William Blake.)

The brief “See Through Blue” is the only thing here that could be described as playful, and it leads into a shimmering concluding trilogy that fully explores Orton’s capacity for beauty. Whether accompanied by a stark piano, an acoustic guitar or a full folk band, she gives everything to these last three songs, and they’re simple but fantastic. “State of Grace” is the perfect Beth Orton song, her rolling guitar supporting some lovely piano, drum and violin work as she sings of unconditional friendship.

And finale “Mystery” strips everything away but a low organ, a guitar, a violin and that voice, rising to the sky. “Alive, alive, alive, alive,” she sings, and as she does, you can’t imagine anything more beautiful. Sugaring Season is quick – it’s 38 minutes long – but it lingers, like the truest things, wrapping itself around you. It is the Beth Orton album that we Beth Orton fans have been waiting for, an album that once again showcases her talent for the unspeakably lovely.

* * * * *

And speaking of unspeakably lovely, there’s the new Hammock album.

For eight years now, Hammock has been making some of the most gorgeous music I’ve ever heard. The band is a collaboration between brilliant ambient guitarist Marc Byrd and production guru Andrew Thompson, and their work has been described as shoegaze, float music, dream pop, and all manner of other cloudy monikers. What they really do is this: they take sounds and make them infinite.

Hammock works with the same tools every band has at their disposal – guitars, keys, drums, strings, sometimes vocals. But in their hands, these sounds grow to incredible expanses, filling the sky and the space beyond. Byrd doesn’t play much, in terms of notes, but each note he plays sounds as big as the Pacific. And when they work in strings and trumpets, they’re the most massive, glorious strings and trumpets you can imagine. This is quiet music, on the whole, ambient and flowing, but it’s astonishingly loud quiet music.

With their fifth full-length, Departure Songs, Hammock has started thinking even bigger. It’s a two-disc affair lasting about 110 minutes, and its 19 songs are both a perfect distillation of what they do, and a sign that they’re evolving even further. Byrd’s guitar still stretches to the horizon, but there are more drums supporting it than ever before, more full string sections, and even a pair of almost-pop singles. When that first one, “(Tonight) We Burn Like Stars That Never Die,” arrives on its dirty synth bass line, it’s jarring, and when it unfurls into an absolutely crushing mass of sound, it’s electric.

And yes, there are lyrics on that and several other songs, a rarity for Hammock. Byrd’s wife, Christine Glass-Byrd, sings most of the words, and her voice is processed and layered into the wall of sound, a la shoegaze music of old. It’s possible to listen to all of Departure Songs in the background and miss the fact that there are vocals on here at all. Glass-Byrd sings wordlessly on “Awakened, He Heard Only Silence,” for example, but she sounds like another instrument in the echoing, cavernous beauty of the piece.

But I’m giving examples of Hammock playing around with their sound, when most of this album finds them refining and reveling in what they do best. “Pathos” is a perfect case in point. It opens with guitar chimes like ripples on a lake, before the miles-wide ambience creeps in. Drums propel the song forward, and for six more minutes, it’s simply heart-meltingly lovely, Byrd’s clean guitars like water drops on a frozen tundra. “Frailty (For the Dearly Departed)” is impossibly gorgeous, rising up on a synth piano figure and reaching the sky on grandiose strings.

Byrd and Thompson are meticulous about their soundscapes, carefully weaving them element by element. “Dark Circles” begins with a droning organ, then a rumble of percussion, before unfolding to its full magnificence. “We Could Die Chasing This Feeling” unfurls slowly, waves of cloud-like shimmer setting the scene before the drums, bass and guitar come shuddering in. By the four-minute mark, it’s immense, guitars cascading atop one another. After that, you need the two-minute break the formless “Glossolalia” offers.

Departure Songs ends with two perfect examples of what Hammock do so well. “(Leaving) The House Where We Grew Up” is perfect, a trembling bass line leading to a dreamlike guitar melody, which then covers itself like a blanket. And then the strings bring it to the next level – the song ends at six minutes because it just couldn’t get any bigger. And then “Tornado Warning” concludes things on a gentle note, Byrd strumming and Glass-Byrd singing beautifully. A cello melody, a slow fade to rain sounds, and it’s over.

I can’t say Hammock has reinvented themselves on Departure Songs, but they have delivered their best work. If you want to hear some of the prettiest, most soul-enlivening music being made today, you can’t do any better. Hammock’s music sounds bigger than our world’s ability to contain it, bigger than any words I could use to describe it. It’s infinite, and the only thing you can do with the infinite is try mightily to experience at least some small part of it. Here is your chance.

* * * * *

Keeping things short this time. Next week, a trio of solo albums for your listening pleasure. 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.

Six years ago, Sufjan Stevens made my Christmas.

That’s when he released the functionally-titled Songs for Christmas, a collection of the first five of his annual holiday EPs. See, Sufjan makes one of these glorious discs every year, featuring his renditions of Christmas classics and his original entries into the canon, and he gives them out as gifts to friends and family. And then, after he’s accumulated five years’ worth of them, he releases them commercially in a big, beautiful box.

I’ve been buying Christmas music for as long as I can remember, stretching at least as far back as that first A Very Special Christmas collection in 1987. (Yes, the one with “Christmas in Hollis” on it.) I have dozens of holiday records, and Sufjan’s Songs for Christmas may be my very favorite. It’s one I keep coming back to, and in recent years, it just hasn’t been Christmas for me until I’ve spun this set at least once.

So imagine my inexpressible joy at the announcement of the second volume of Stevens’ Christmas chronicles. Silver and Gold features five more annual EPs – 58 songs in total, lasting for two hours and 45 minutes. Seriously, I nearly did a full-on dance at work when I first heard the news. And yes, these EPs coincide with his The Age of Adz period, so I expect some strangeness and some unbridled ambition. (One song, “The Child with the Star on His Head,” runs for more than 15 minutes.) It’ll be Christmas music the way only Sufjan can do it.

Between that and the announcement of the first Godspeed You Black Emperor album in a decade, the back third of the year is looking up.

* * * * *

This is the kind of column I hate to write.

Honestly, it is. Some critics love trashing new albums, excited at the chance to prove how clever they are, how they can slaughter even the most sacred of cows with their withering wordplay. I’ve never been that guy. I go into every musical relationship hoping to fall in love. I never want it to end in recriminations and pain. I never want to walk away unhappy.

But sometimes, it must be done. It’s especially frustrating for me when I find myself disappointed by artists who have knocked me out in the past. I never like realizing that the thrill is gone. Which brings us to this week. All three of the records on tap come from artists who have found their way into my top 10 list in prior years. This year? Let’s just say they won’t be there. None of these three albums are unlistenably bad, but they definitely don’t keep the magic alive. And when you climb so high, the fall is so much farther.

It shouldn’t be a huge surprise that Contestant #1 is Green Day. Now, I’ve been buying Green Day albums since 1994, like everyone else. But unlike everyone else, I’ve been tracking their career, hoping they would grow and evolve. And they have, much to my delight. After hinting at grander ambitions on Nimrod and Warning, the California trio shot for the rafters on 2004’s American Idiot, a rock opera in three chords. And then, amazingly, they went even farther on 2009’s terrific 21st Century Breakdown. This was the album where their songwriting caught up with their more expansive vision. In a lot of ways, it was the first very good Green Day record, and I was excited to see where they’d go next.

So what to make of Uno, their just-released ninth album? It’s the first of a planned trilogy, with Dos and Tre to follow in the next four months. Which sounds as ambitious as their last two, if not more so. How big could this music get that they need three CDs to contain it? Would they play with an 80-piece orchestra this time? How about a dozen guest stars singing different characters? After 21st Century Breakdown, anything seemed possible.

So of course, Uno is nothing like that at all. In fact, it’s the laziest, most tossed-off album they’ve made in more than 10 years. If you’ve been waiting for them to ditch all this “growth” and get back to making Dookie Part II, well, this is your year. They’re older, and they’ve calmed down a little, but musically, there’s no other evidence that 18 years have passed. Uno is three-chord pop-punk with no imagination, no spark.

Even worse, Billie Joe Armstrong has apparently decided to channel his 22-year-old self, filling these lyrics with bratty, sneering, shallow fist pumps. Hey, remember when it was cool to say “fuck” in pop songs? Remember how that seemed like a revolutionary act when you were in your early 20s? Armstrong sure does. “I’m taking down my enemies ‘cause they’re all so fucking useless,” he shouts on “Loss of Control,” and elsewhere he repeatedly urges the listener to “kill the fucking DJ.” “Fucking” seems to fill up any two-syllable hole in these lyrics. It’s the album’s most-repeated word.

There’s nothing really wrong with indulging your juvenile side, but it makes for a wearying 40-minute listen. Only a couple of songs – the aforementioned “Kill the DJ” and album closer “Oh Love” – break from the standard pop-punk template here, and some of these songs (“Troublemaker,” “Stay the Night,” “Sweet 16”) sound so uninspired that I can’t believe they took longer than 20 minutes to write and record. I certainly hope that this isn’t an indication of the quality of the entire trilogy, but it doesn’t bode well.

Then there is Mumford and Sons, who sprang from obscurity two years ago on a thundering wave of banjos. Mumford is a four-piece from London without a drummer, but with enough strumming acoustic guitars to make up for any loss of momentum. They play a ragged, rollicking form of folk music, which tumbles forward on rolling banjos and the emotional voice (and persistent bass drum thump) of Marcus Mumford. Their debut album Sigh No More impressed me enough to end up on my top 10 list.

And now, here they are with the follow-up, Babel, and it’s… exactly the same, only somehow less. There’s no mistaking this record for anyone else – the Mumford sound is in full effect, the wrist-breaking guitars and banjo plucks and raw vocals all present and accounted for. In fact, we’ve gone a little bit more epic, with more horn sections here and there, more massive walls of acoustic sound. This is definitely the band’s “prove yourself” moment, and I can feel in every corner of this thing that they believe they’ve made an important masterpiece.

If only the songs were better. Most of these tunes – and I’m just talking about the music now – are painfully boring. They fail to light upon anything memorable, any hint of a melody that can match “The Cave” or “Little Lion Man.” Occasionally it feels like Mumford is coming close to hitting a stride, like when “Ghosts That We Knew” rises up from its humble beginnings, but these moments are teases. The songs don’t really go anywhere. First single “I Will Wait” is the most memorable of the first eight tracks. And songs like “Lovers’ Eyes” make me want to claw my own out.

And that’s a shame, because lyrically, this is a very important album for Marcus Mumford. Most of these songs are about his faith, about coming through life broken and torn and turning to the heavens for comfort. “When I’m on my knees I’ll still believe,” he sings in “Holland Road.” “And when I’ve hit the ground, neither lost nor found, if you’ll believe in me I’ll still believe.” Later, in album highlight “Hopeless Wanderer,” he cries out: “But hold me fast, hold me fast, ‘cause I’m a hopeless wanderer, and I will learn, I will learn to love the skies I’m under.”

The closest thing to a hymn on Babel is also the closest thing to a great song. “Below My Feet” starts out delicately, but in true Mumford fashion, is soon whipping through the air like a hurricane, its wordless chorus rising and rising. “Keep the earth below my feet, for all my sweat, my blood runs weak, let me learn from where I have been, keep my eyes to serve, my hands to learn,” Mumford sings passionately. One song later, in album closer “Not With Haste,” Mumford takes in lessons learned: “So not let my fickle flesh go to waste, as it helps my heart and soul in its place, and I will love with urgency, but not with haste…”

I wish I were the kind of music fan who could be happy with strong lyrics alone. The Biblical force of Mumford’s words is striking, but it’s blunted by the unfortunately typical music the Sons have written to accompany them. Babel may please some of Mumford’s fans, and those who love the strummy sound the band conjures will find much to like here. But for a band with a lot to prove, they didn’t quite come up aces this time. I like enough of Babel that I’m interested in whatever the band does third, but in the main, it’s a disappointing effort.

In the end, Mumford and Sons just didn’t try hard enough. British prog-pomp trio Muse, on the other hand, has always had the opposite problem. For five albums, they teetered precariously on the edge, always threatening to send their operatic orchestral sound careening over the top. On their sixth, the just-released The 2nd Law, they’ve finally made good on the threat. This is the album on which it becomes impossible to tell if Muse is a serious band pretending to be silly, or a jokey one trying to convince us that they’re serious.

Either interpretation works, quite honestly. This is Muse unrestrained, and there’s no way any of this is accidental. The 2nd Law, as messy and nutty as it is, feels like exactly the album Matthew Bellamy and his cohorts set out to make. It’s a strange combination of Queen, U2, Trans-Siberian Orchestra and, yes, Skrillex – there are electronic beats aplenty on this album, though not quite as many as the pre-release hype may have led you to believe.

Past Muse albums have often felt disjointed, but this is the first one that plays like an ‘80s Queen album on overdrive. None of these 13 tracks belong on the same piece of plastic. Opener “Supremacy” sets the tone well, with its jabbing guitar lines, horns and strings. You’re going to want to sit down and hold onto something when Bellamy gets to the title phrase – he lets his unshackled falsetto fly free, tearing the sky asunder. It’s something. By contrast, “Madness” is positively mellow, a simple computer beat and melody that reminds me of Zooropa-era U2. And then “Panic Station” brings the funk – slap bass, backwards snare, a hook line ripped off from “Thriller.” It’s hard to believe this is Muse, or that the same three guys came up with all of these songs.

But then, “Panic Station” contains their mission statement: “Do what the fuck you want to, there’s no one to appease.” Never have they followed that advice more than on the absolutely ridiculous “Survival.” This song, the official theme of the 2012 London Olympics (really), has its own orchestral prelude, the silliest lyrics Bellamy has ever written (“Life’s a race that I’m gonna win, and I’ll light the fuse, and I’ll never lose…”), and a laugh-out-loud choral arrangement to deliver them. At one point, the choir is repeating “You were warned and didn’t listen” while the strings flail and the guitars pound and Bellamy screeches. I’m pretty certain Freddie Mercury would have listened to this and said, “You know, dearies, you may want to take it down a notch or two.”

If you’re not doubled over with laughter at this point, you may want to press on, since The 2nd Law does actually get better. “Follow Me” is a simplistically-written lullaby for Bellamy’s infant son, so of course the band chooses to render it like a lost song from the Tron soundtrack. But “Animals” is pretty good, with its spooky electric piano and Radiohead drumbeat. “Explorers” is pretty silly – it’s an epic ballad about overpopulation that even works in the line “fuse helium-3, our last hope” – but they play it convincingly.

That’s as good as it gets, though, as bassist Chris Wolstenholme takes the lead vocal spot on two mismatched songs, proving that Muse without Bellamy singing just sounds wrong. And then the record ends with the two-part title track, which pushes the orchestral-dubstep sound to its unfortunate limit. The first part, “Unsustainable,” is unlistenably bad, its Cyberman voice and trashy electro-beat the closest thing to an overt joke here. And “Isolated System” feels flown in from a different album altogether, a shuddering whisper of a track that goes disco by the end.

And then it’s over, and you’re wondering what the hell you just listened to. Muse is far too talented to veer as sharply into Spinal Tap territory as they do on much of The 2nd Law. As the immortal David St. Hubbins said, it’s a fine line between stupid and clever, and too much of this album vaults right over that line. They’ve been on the edge for a while now, and The 2nd Law is proof that Muse needs to step back and reconsider. They’ve been making this music alone for a long time, and as they so eloquently state it, an isolated system is unsustainable.

* * * * *

Next week, lots of choices. But I may go with Hammock’s gorgeous Departure Songs and Beth Orton’s lovely Sugaring Season. Tune in to find out. 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.

Some months, life is just unbearable, an endless trudge from one day to the next. But some months, life goes so well that it’s almost hard to believe.

I’m having one of the good kind. As many of you know, I took a new job two months ago, at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Last week, my first press release came out – I wrote the announcement of first light for the Dark Energy Camera, the most powerful digital camera ever built. Constructed at Fermilab, the camera is now mounted on a telescope in Chile, and will be used to map part of the sky in ridiculous detail. Here, read all about it. And look at the pretty pictures.

Well, that release caught fire. It was reported in more than 200 publications in 36 countries. We were in Wired, Scientific American, Popular Science, National Geographic, the works. Best of all, as far as I’m concerned, Jay Leno made a joke about the Dark Energy Camera on the Tonight Show last week. Check it out, about six minutes in. I nearly fell off my chair.

So, job is going well, life is going well. And music? Holy hell, September was a great month for music. At the bottom of this column, you’ll find my Third Quarter Report, essentially an early draft of my top 10 list. Three of the 10 you’ll see there were released this month. Plus, three of my very favorite artists hit me with new records this month. I had to do a double-take when I saw the schedule. Yes, Marillion, Aimee Mann and the reunited Ben Folds Five would all be releasing albums in September. Insane.

This week, I’ll be talking about the latter two. Both are songwriters I hold in very high esteem, and both have returned to an earlier sound on their new records. Let’s find out how that decision worked for them.

* * * * *

I remember when I first heard Ben Folds Five.

My friend Chris had recommended them, saying they reminded him of Jellyfish. That was all I needed to check out the band’s self-titled album, and while I could see the comparison, BFF struck me in a completely different way. Brilliant pop songs, played with a jazz trio lineup and the energy of a teenage punk band, but with enough sense of history and melody to slow down and be graceful when the tunes called for it. I listened to that thing again and again, reviewing it twice for my local music magazine, and I practiced endlessly until I could play a passable version of “Philosophy” on the piano.

I’ve stuck with Folds ever since, and he’s rarely let me down. In fact, only once, on his tossed-off 2008 effort Way to Normal, and that still had a few good songs on it. I’ve read a lot about diminishing returns when it comes to Folds’ solo career, and I’m just not hearing it. Rockin’ the Suburbs, Songs for Silverman, all his terrific EPs, even 2010’s marvelous collaboration with Nick Hornby, Lonely Avenue – I think he’s been remarkably consistent, all told.

So I greeted the news of a Ben Folds Five reunion with tempered joy, because I knew some would see it as a desperate attempt to return to the glory days. I would never suggest that those heady late ‘90s days weren’t glorious – Whatever and Ever Amen and The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner remain two of my most treasured records. I just think the man’s been damn good since then, too. He doesn’t need this reunion, so to my mind, it’s something he wants to do.

And I expect that’s because he hears what I hear in the collaboration between himself, bassist Robert Sledge and drummer Darren Jessee. On his solo records, Folds is undeniably in charge, and the other musicians fall in line. But Ben Folds Five is a band, and their interplay, their energy, their ability to slip perfectly into the spaces between one another, is unbeatable. It’s been 15 years since these three guys have played together, so in that sense, the reunion would be a treat regardless.

But as my friend Nate said, nothing would have been worse than a half-assed reunion record. And believe me, the just-released The Sound of the Life of the Mind is not half-assed. It is a full-fledged Ben Folds Five album, wiser and more mature, but still musically astonishing, clever, moving and fun. I was afraid it would be a joke, a quick-and-dirty throwdown like Way to Normal. But instead, it’s a remarkably well-considered affair, a fine reminder not only of how good the Five can be, but how solid Folds has always been.

The first thing you hear on The Sound is Robert Effing Sledge, cranked up to 15 and all but drowning out Folds on the herky-jerky intro to “Erase Me.” It’s your first signal that this is a Five album, and everyone’s going to get equal time to shine. But then “Erase Me” morphs into an off-kilter showtune, halting and lumbering forward, Folds showing off his undimmed falsetto. (And yes, the almost-but-not-quite Ben Folds Five harmonies are back in full force, and I missed them.) It’s the strangest opening track Folds has written since “Narcolepsy,” a tour de force that defies your expectations for lightning-fast power pop.

The record stays on a chilled-out vibe – the only real workout is the finger-blistering anthem “Do It Anyway,” an instant knockout. Both the delightfully profane “Draw a Crowd” and the witty “Michael Praytor, Five Years Later” glide along on mid-tempo grooves. Everything else is comparatively relaxed, which is something of a surprise, until you remember that half of Whatever and Ever Amen was also comprised of ballads. The Five has always sounded like this – for every “Julianne” a “Boxing,” for every “Kate” an “Evaporated.”

And the slower songs here are simply gorgeous. The title track sports wonderful lyrics by Hornby, and a Foldsian epic sweep, cresting and falling back. Jessee takes flight on this one, supporting the whole thing with rolling toms. “On Being Frank” is ready for its close-up – it’s a lovely, jazzy pastiche, sung from the point of view of Frank Sinatra’s butler. It’s sad and witty and thoroughly hummable, a Folds classic in the making.

But for my money, the grand prize this time out goes to “Hold That Thought,” the first of a delicate trilogy that ends this record. It’s as specific as the best Folds story songs: “She broke down and cried at the strip mall acupuncturist while the world went on outside…” And it sports the most lovely simple melody on the album, a soaring wordless falsetto over gently flowing piano, gliding into a terrific back half with Sledge and Folds darting off each other. It’s practically perfect.

“There’ll be times you’ll like the cover and that’s precisely why you’ll love the book,” Folds sings in “Do It Anyway,” and I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect summation of this record. If you’re excited by the words Ben Folds Five on the cover, you’ll love this book. The Sound of the Life of the Mind is even better than I hoped it would be. It’s the sound of three simpatico musicians reuniting as older men, but still finding that youthful joy that exists between them. Here’s hoping this is just the first chapter in a long second life.

* * * * *

Aimee Mann is another songwriter without a fallow period to apologize for. She has weaker records, but no weak ones, if that makes sense, and when it comes to her brand of darkly sentimental pop, she’s practically in a class of one. In some ways, you know what you’re going to get with a Mann album – a collection of traditional-minded pop tunes with splendid melodies and well-crafted lyrics. She never really changes as a songwriter, but she doesn’t have to. She’s a master.

So the only differences between one swell Mann album and another are the sonic touches. And lately, she’s been embracing the sorta-cheesy keyboard sounds with which she first made her name. Everyone remembers Mann’s first hit with Til Tuesday, “Voices Carry,” but fewer stuck around to hear her final record with that band, the terrific Everything’s Different Now. That one was an even mix of the synthy sounds that Til Tuesday trafficked in, and the more folksy pop Mann would go on to create.

As it turns out, late-period Til Tuesday is the perfect touchstone for Mann’s new solo record, Charmer. It could be the son of that album, in fact – the keyboard sounds are everywhere, but the songs are just as literate and folksy as they’ve been for 25 years. It amazed me how often I was transported back to 1988 while listening to Charmer. It’s almost like time travel, like Mann, all of 52, took a trip back to make a record with her 27-year-old self.

And for that, it’s enjoyable. I’m just not sure this is Mann’s strongest set of songs. Numbers like “Labrador” make their way with simple, overused chords, and some songs, like “Disappeared,” fail to get off the ground at all. She strikes gold more than once – the title track is terrific, zipping along on a wavery keyboard line, and “Soon Enough” is a devilishly clever mid-tempo glide. “Crazytown” is the most fun you’ll have on this record, Mann lamenting a friend’s choice of paramour over a bouncy bed of keys and tremolo-laden guitar. “You’re out there trying to flag a cab, and for who? A girl who lives in Crazytown, where craziness gets handed down…”

I’m also quite fond of “Living a Lie,” a duet with James Mercer that sounds more like a great Shins song than just about anything on Port of Morrow. “Slip and Roll” makes me grin as well – it’s classic Mann, a slowed-down folk tune in 6/8 with a twisty chorus. But past that, this record leaves less of an impact. There’s nothing quite wrong with the four songs that close out the surprisingly brief Charmer, but there’s nothing outstanding about them either. Cautionary tale “Gumby” ambles along pleasantly, “Gamma Ray” brings the rock but fails the memory test, and closer “Red Flag Diver” is too short to really grab hold of its promising melody.

Charmer is growing on me with each listen, but it’s the first Aimee Mann album in… well, ever, that’s needed time to sink in. It isn’t the sound – I think Mann makes superb use of her array of synthesizers, and adds a flavor that’s both nostalgic and new. It surprises me to say that this set of songs just isn’t her best, and if Charmer has a weakness, it’s in the lightweight tunes she’s hung everything else on. It’s been a long time since I’ve had any complaints about an Aimee Mann album, and it’s an interesting feeling. I’m going to keep on listening and see if I can make that feeling go away.

* * * * *

I’ve talked a lot about fan-funded albums recently, so I’ve avoided mentioning until the end here that both the Folds and Mann albums were released on the artists’ own labels, and Folds paid for his through PledgeMusic, a Kickstarter-esque site. We’re getting to the point where the labels will only be necessary to build up the audience for new artists. Once they’re established, the tools are in place for a band to take off on their own. Be interesting to see how many do.

OK, as promised, here is my Third Quarter Report. This is how my top 10 list stands right now. I don’t expect that the final list will look like this, but it may be close. I have high hopes for the Muse, Beth Orton, Hammock, Ben Gibbard and Bat for Lashes albums, but barring any surprises, those are the big ones before the end of the year. I have a hard time believing the top three or four, at least, will change at this point. Anyway, the list:

#10: Shawn Colvin, All Fall Down.
#9: Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel.
#8: Amanda Palmer, Theatre is Evil.
#7: Rufus Wainwright, Out of the Game.
#6: Shearwater, Animal Joy.
#5: Ben Folds Five, The Sound of the Life of the Mind.
#4: Punch Brothers, Who’s Feeling Young Now.
#3: Bryan Scary, Daffy’s Elixir.
#2: Marillion, Sounds That Can’t Be Made.
#1: Lost in the Trees, A Church That Fits Our Needs.

Despite a strong showing from Marillion (which may fade with time, we shall see), Lost in the Trees is still holding on to that top spot. I haven’t heard a richer or more emotionally devastating work this year, and I don’t expect to.

All right, next week, more high-profile releases with Green Day, Mumford and Sons, and Muse. 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 adopted home town of Aurora lost one of its most creative souls this week.

I barely knew Jack Schultz, but man, I knew of him. He and his darling wife Sherry own the Riverfront Playhouse in downtown A-Town, and they’re all the evidence I need that every city should have its own community theater. The Riverfront is exactly what you’d hope it would be – small and intimate and fun, a place where artistic risks can be taken and a good time can be had by all.

For years, I’ve made the Riverfront production of Night of the Living Dead: The Musical a Halloween tradition. The show is a Jack Schultz original, and every year, while his wife, his son Jackson and his daughter Heidi would perform on stage, Jack would be in the back, playing the music he had written. Such a fun show. I even got to be a guest zombie one year, dripping blood and lunging for fresh brains. (And dying horribly at the end.) It was a blast.

Jack’s whole life looked like a blast to me. Writing plays, writing songs, acting, appearing in films, and hanging out with his tremendously creative family. That life was cut short by a sudden heart attack this past weekend. Jack Schultz was only 58. But if his family had any doubt of the impact Jack made on the Aurora community, all they had to do was look out at the hundreds upon hundreds of people who lined up to pay their respects at his wake. It was a true testament to the man, his talent, and his character.

We’ll miss you, Jack. Rest in peace.

* * * * *

So I’m sitting here for what feels like the dozenth time, trying to put into words why I love Marillion.

The thing is, I’m not sure it matters at this point what I say. Marillion is one of my favorite bands, and I’ve waxed positively ecstatic about them in this column before. It probably surprises no one that I’m about to do that again. But lately I’ve been wondering whether my rhapsodizing makes any difference. My fondest wish, as I’ve said before, is for people to listen to music I love and hear what I hear in it. When it comes to Marillion, though, people simply aren’t hearing the same things I am.

There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m coming to understand that Marillion’s music isn’t for everyone, even if I don’t quite understand that. It’s confusing to me, because they bring together almost everything I love about music. They have an astonishing level of technical ability, but they never show off. They’re deeply committed to melody, and can write three-minute pop songs and 20-minute ever-changing epics with equal skill. They draw from a deep reservoir of emotion, and pay attention to atmosphere and ambience. They’re remarkably ambitious, but never pretentious. And they just plain make music that moves me, like few other bands can.

I do understand that I’m not alone in my love for this band. Marillion has attracted and nurtured a dedicated global fanbase that most bands would envy. Thousands turn out for their semi-annual conventions in Europe and Canada, and they practically invented the Kickstarter model – they’ve sustained themselves for years by asking fans to preorder their albums before they’re even recorded, and every time, thousands upon thousands of people do. The band has a rich, strong and vast group of supporters, and I have no doubt they all hear what I hear when they immerse themselves in Marillion’s music.

I just wish I knew more of them. It’s been a lonely sort of fandom for me, and even seeing the packed house at Park West in Chicago this summer for the band’s first U.S. tour in seven years didn’t help much. I live to share what I love, and I feel stymied when I love something others don’t. Marillion means a lot to me, and their new album, Sounds That Can’t Be Made, has been the non-stop soundtrack to my last couple of weeks. It’s one of my favorite records they’ve made, and is sure to place highly in the 2012 top 10 list. More than that, it has already made my life better. These songs have already taken up residence in my head and my heart. Little bits of them will float through my mind at all hours of the day, and when I sing lately – at home, alone, where no one can hear – it’s these songs I’m belting out.

What makes this one special? I think it’s a renewed sense of focus. Sounds That Can’t Be Made is still all over the place, as is Marillion’s modus operandi – the first three tracks, for example, are a 17-minute metal-tinged progressive epic, an ‘80s-inspired keyboard fantasia, and a soulful Todd Rundgren-esque pop ditty. There’s bits of ambient cloud music, southern rock, orchestrated balladry, and Beatles-inspired poptopia. It all sits next to each other without jarring once – perhaps Marillion’s greatest strength is a seeming ignorance of musical boundaries, or even of any sense that all bands don’t draw from the same deep pool of influences.

But there’s a real feeling of coming to the top of the mountain on this one, in a way that the band hasn’t delivered since 2004’s brilliant Marbles. They sound fully engaged, committed to each one of these ideas, and everyone brought their A game. (Particularly producer Mike Hunter, who has finally made his Marillion masterpiece. The density and complexity of sound on this thing is breathtaking.) This is why I love this band, in 74 brisk minutes, and if you listen to this whole thing and aren’t moved by it once, then Marillion simply isn’t for you.

So that said, let me tell you a little about it.

Sounds That Can’t Be Made is Marillion’s 17th album, and the third one they have financed with fan preorders. The beautiful deluxe edition comes in a hardcover book that features more than 100 pages of artwork and the names of the first 5,000 people who pitched it to fund it. (There were about 13,000 preorders in total.) Its eight songs range from five-minute pop tunes to that aforementioned 17-minute epic, and because they are Marillion and they don’t worry about people losing interest quickly, they’ve put that epic right up front.

Oh, and did I mention it’s the most politically controversial track the band has ever released? It’s called “Gaza,” and it’s written from the point of view of a young child living in the Gaza strip. Singer Steve Hogarth uses this voice to describe the hellish conditions there, and offer up a plea for compassion and justice. But it’s a simple voice he’s chosen, and simple words he’s using, and some have accused him of naivety, of attempting to reduce a complex situation to this single perspective, and failing. Some have written off “Gaza” as anti-Israeli, simply because its main character is a Palestinian child.

And some have pointed to a section in which Hogarth attempts to understand the motivations of suicide bombers, and accused him of condoning terrorism. “When their hopes and dreams are broken, and they feel they might as well be dead, as they go, will we forgive them if they take us with them?” For my part, I see the vast chasm between understanding and condoning, and would not doubt that these would be the thoughts of someone living through this every day. (Many of the lyrics in “Gaza” come directly from conversations Hogarth had with Palestinians and Israelis living in that part of the world.)

Having lived with it for a few weeks, I think Hogarth tried to do something noble here, and was largely successful. “Gaza” is not a song about the conflict between Israel and Palestine. It could be set in any war-torn region of the world, and remain almost the same. The song does what Hogarth has always done – it tries to give a voice to the voiceless, and cries out for peace. The key lines come in a later section: “Nothing’s ever simple, that’s for sure, there are grieving mothers on both sides of the wire, and everyone deserves the chance to feel the future just might be bright, but any way you look at this, whichever point of view, for us to have to live like this, it just ain’t right, it just ain’t right…”

This is not a complicated (or, let’s face it, well-informed) dissection of a centuries-old conflict. But it is a deeply human response to suffering, and for that, I applaud Hogarth and the rest of the band. This could have been more carefully rendered, but it might have lost some of its passion and power, and that would be a shame.

And the music! “Gaza” is unlike anything Marillion has ever tried. Its opening minutes are a cavalcade of Nine Inch Nails guitars and Kashmir synth strings, and parts of it are louder and more chaotic than this band has ever been. But as its 17 minutes unfold, they take you on a journey, through ambient sections, ray-of-sunlight melodic bursts, and the most achingly beautiful piano-and-vocal moment on this album. (It corresponds with those key lyrics up there.) Guitarist Steve Rothery lets loose with a lyrical, liquid solo, before plunging into the dark, lumbering final section, over which Hogarth conjures Yeats: “It’s like a nightmare rose up from this small strip of land, slouching towards Bethlehem…”

“Gaza” is such a monster that placing it first almost does a disservice to the rest of the album. There’s a significant amount of silence between tracks one and two, as if the band understands this. And in some ways, the title track starts things over again. The rest of Sounds That Can’t Be Made is, in the main, surprisingly hopeful and optimistic – it’s the sound of Hogarth regaining his footing and enjoying his life again, and not just in the self-help-book way he did on 2008’s Happiness Is the Road. When he’s happy here, he feels it, and you feel it too.

That title track may be my favorite thing here. It floats along on Mark Kelly’s thick keyboards, as Hogarth sings of the vibrations that connect us, the sounds that can’t be made. And it’s wonderful for about five minutes, until the swirling synths begin climbing upward, skyward, finally bursting through the clouds on a stunning Rothery guitar line. Then it becomes exquisite. “Only love can stop you from merely existing,” Hogarth sings, and every time, I sing along at the top of my lungs. This is a patented Marillion moment, the kind of thing no other band can do this well.

After all that, the lightness of “Pour My Love” is a surprise. I mentioned Todd Rundgren earlier, and he’s the best touchstone – this tune drips with blue-eyed soul. It feels like a love song, but it’s clearly about death, about crying over a departed loved one. Hogarth sings beautifully over an electric piano and some subtle drumming by Ian Mosley. This is, again, like nothing they’ve ever tried, and they pull it off brilliantly. The big wide grin appears at the killer bridge section (“In a place where flowers rot and die, in a place where truth lies down and shacks up with the lie, there is still you, there is still you…”) and never leaves.

“Power” is another relatively simple song, but this one crawls along on sheer menace. While bassist Pete Trewavas lays down pulsing lines beneath him, Rothery spins supple webs during the verses, and explodes on the choruses. In some ways, this is Marillion by numbers, falling back and then building up to a crushing climax, Hogarth showing off his (ahem) power. But Marillion by numbers is fine with me. No one else sounds like this, so they may as well. I don’t want to sell this short – “Power” is a great song, just not as stylistically experimental as some of the others here.

“Montreal,” now, this one’s a trip. On first listen, it sounds like a 14-minute ambient meander, one chilled-out section leading into the next while Hogarth sings passages from his diary. This one takes a few spins to reveal just how clever the words are, and how beautiful and well-considered the music is. The lyrics are an account of the band’s first day in Montreal in 2009, for their first Canadian convention. More specifically, they’re about an event that has gone down in fan lore – a disastrous, equipment failure-laden performance of epic “This Strange Engine,” which ended with a frustrated Hogarth throwing himself onto the hands of the audience and crowd-surfing the length of the hall and back again. It was an amazing moment of reciprocal love, one that has clearly stayed with him.

But instead of being on-the-nose about it, Hogarth has written a song about that moment by not really writing about it. He describes the band’s plane landing, a Skype conversation with his family in his hotel room, a visit to Cirque du Soleil, the sports bar where the “ice hockey never ends” – all the little details that led up to their show, without ever getting there. He mentions the big moment once, while watching Leonard Cohen perform on TV in his hotel room: “It warmed the heart to watch him float around the hall, soaking up, reflecting, radiating, just as I would tomorrow night on the outstretched tender hands of Montreal.”

But in many ways, the entire song is about it – the words are full of falling imagery, particularly the bigbigBIG climax in the Cirque du Soleil section: “We watched the acrobat fall, he was quite safe, he was falling into Montreal…” Hogarth gives everything he has here, and it’s magical. The song ends up as a love letter to a city: “Je t’aime, my darling, Montreal.” And again, the music is just incredible. While the earlier sections all lead up to the big acrobat moment, the song never comes back down from there, and never loses its sense of atmosphere. It’s one of the best things Marillion has ever done.

After that, you’d think a five-minute number like “Invisible Ink” would have to work hard to make an impression. But this one’s a winner, starting at a whisper and blooming into a superb piano-pop song. The chorus has one of the most devilishly difficult vocal lines I’ve ever heard Hogarth sing, and he pulls it off while letting more and more desperation creep into his voice as the song progresses. “I’m hoping you don’t throw my little notes away, I wouldn’t blame you, after all, there is nothing they appear to say…” This one’s a little gem.

“Lucky Man” starts out like the Beatles and ends up like Lynyrd Skynyrd. Yes, seriously. It has an infectious, dirt-simple chorus that will get stuck in your head, and a ripping southern rock solo from Rothery. After nearly an hour of meticulous, often reserved music, it’s great to hear the band let loose. It’s also terrific to hear Hogarth embrace his own life, and celebrate it: “I truly am a lucky man, I have everything that I want…” This is the most conventional song on Sounds, but it’s terrific.

And finally, we have “The Sky Above the Rain.” I’ve been excited for this song ever since I heard the title, and I’ll admit the actual lyrics let me down at first. They’re almost as simplistic as the sentiments in “Gaza,” describing in plain language the dissolution of a relationship. “She loves him, but she doesn’t want him, she used to burn for him, but now that’s changed…” It’s sad and pretty, but I’m still not sure it’s deserving of the central metaphor, of a man trying to see (and flying through) the blue sky above the rain. That’s just gorgeous.

A couple of things work in this song’s favor, though. One is Hogarth, who sings the living hell out of it. He’s quite simply one of the best singers I’m aware of, digging deep into a seemingly boundless reserve of emotion, whispering when needed and belting it out when it’s called for. He’s amazing. The second is the band – they lay down a reserved, piano-based bed for these lyrics, and aside from some over-egging of the synth strings here and there, they play this simple song with subtlety and grace. Still, it would be a minor entry in their discography for me, if not for the last two minutes.

Man, those last two minutes. The band melts away, leaving just the piano, and then Hogarth enters at full voice: “Maybe they’ll talk…” And then you get Marillion at their most magnificent, playing the kind of epic, lush, wondrous soundscape that only they can. The hope simply radiates from Hogarth, as he dives headlong into his metaphor: “Heading west and climbing, in the place the sun never stops shining, the rain’s below us, the rain’s below us…” Rothery does what Rothery does, playing perfect lead lines over the huge wall of glorious sound the band conjures. The final two minutes of “The Sky Above the Rain” are perfect in every way, and reduce me to a teary-eyed mess.

And just like that, it’s over. Sounds That Can’t Be Made is a journey, eight unconnected songs that still play like a cohesive whole. It’s a poetic circle, in a way – it begins with two nations who can’t resolve their differences, and ends with two people with the same problem, which is why the soaring, hopeful conclusion packs so much punch. In between are love letters and joyous shouts and cries to the heavens. It’s everything I want in a Marillion album.

I don’t know if I’ve convinced you to give Sounds That Can’t Be Made a try. I’m sure many of you have already written this off as the ravings of a blinkered fanboy, and that’s fine. I was asked by a friend this week if Marillion had ever made an album I don’t like, and while I pointed to a few lesser efforts (Holidays in Eden, Radiation, Somewhere Else), the real answer is no. They never have. I’m a fan, and I don’t know how to be anything else.

But I’m a very happy fan right now. And if I’m ignored or shot down for trying to share that happiness, so be it. One of my favorite bands has just made one of their best records, more than 30 years into their career, and I’m unashamedly giddy about it. Your mileage may vary, but I’m enjoying this trip, and I hope it lasts forever. I truly am a lucky man.

If I’ve convinced you to give Marillion a try, you can check them out here. You can hear all of “Gaza” here, and “Power” here.

Next week, Ben Folds Five reunites and Aimee Mann returns. 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.

Eventually I’m going to get over how great Kickstarter is, and stop yapping about it. But not yet.

A few weeks ago, I led this column with a plea to support spiritual pop legends Daniel Amos in their quest to raise $12,000 for a new album. It’s been 11 years since the last DA record, and even though they’re justly lauded as pioneers in a particular corner of the music world, their fans number in the thousands, not the millions. Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing proposition – if DA did not raise 12 grand by the appointed time, they would get nothing, and we would not get a new record.

And here’s another way that Kickstarter has proved to be an incredible innovation – it serves as proof to artists that their fans love and support them. I’m not sure that knowledge is even quantifiable to a band like DA, whose members all work day jobs, and who, despite a phenomenal catalog stretching back more than 30 years, remains unjustly obscure. To know that there are hundreds of people willing to pony up to hear more music from you, well, I don’t know that you could put a price to that.

But you can quantify how much they ended up raising: $32,277. I gave them $20 of that, but some fans really bellied up to the bar. More than 100 people gave $100 or more. Several pledged $700, and one kicked in $1,000. The prizes were pretty great, including an autographed copy of the long-out-of-print Alarma Chronicles book set and a phone call from the band, but even so, that’s some true generosity. The fans love DA, and we’re excited to hear new material, especially since we know this is pretty much the only way it could possibly happen.

This outpouring of support is happening more and more lately, as relatively unknown bands take to Kickstarter to fund new projects, and find out they had more fans than they expected. I mentioned some a few weeks ago, like the Brothers Martin: Jason’s Starflyer 59 asked for $10,000 to make their first independent record, and got $24,302, while his brother Ronnie sought $6,000 to make his own new record as Joy Electric, and brought in $12,701. With this money, the Martins are free to make the music they want, the way they want, for people who already love what they do. That’s kind of a miracle.

And then there’s Amanda Palmer – or, as she prefers to be called, Amanda Fucking Palmer. She’s one of the most fascinating artists of the past decade, and in fact it wouldn’t be a lie to say she’s made an entire career out of being fascinating. As one half of the Dresden Dolls, she played theatrical cabaret punk with a dangerous edge, and as a solo artist, she’s proven herself a songwriter with a unique voice. She’s a walking melodrama, a mess of captivating contradictions, a puzzling and compelling personality – and that was before she married Neil Gaiman.

Earlier this year, she left the labels in the dust and took to Kickstarter, hoping her cadre of rabid fans would help her finance her first big independent album. She asked for $100,000. She got about $1.2 million.

I’m going to say that again. She asked for $100,000. She got about $1.2 million. $1,192,793, to be precise. That’s simply insane, and is a testament to a number of things. First, it’s obviously a sign that Palmer is doing something right artistically – her dramatic-yet-fragile confessions are striking a chord with people. But second, it’s not just the art. Palmer uses the Internet to connect with fans like few other artists, and she’s built up a strong following using all forms of social media. People feel like they know her, and they’re much more willing to give money to someone they know. She’s definitely done that right.

And third, I think people just wanted to see what someone like Palmer would do with $1.2 million. If Kickstarter is an experiment in funding unfettered creativity, Amanda Palmer is exactly the kind of artist I want to see benefit from it. She does whatever the hell she wants anyway – no label executive could have invented AFP, and none of them have been able to change or mold her. I’ve seen what she can do within the system, and in the main, it was fantastic. The idea of allowing an artist like Palmer total control and oodles of cash is just delicious.

What did she end up doing with that money? She only made the best and most over-the-top record of her life. It’s called Theatre is Evil, and it’s nothing less than the ultimate Amanda Palmer album. It’s excessive and intimate in equal measure, it’s dramatic and disturbing, masked-up and massive, and yet deeply felt and moving. Its 15 tracks sprawl out over 72 minutes, and nimbly jump genres like frogs jump puddles. Whatever you were hoping for when you handed your money to Kickstarter for this project, it’s in here somewhere. And I can’t imagine any of her fans being disappointed with this thing.

The album is laid out like a stage show, with an intermission in the middle, and you’re going to need it. Because Theatre is Evil is intense. Some of it will make you gasp and recoil in horror, some of it will make you laugh with recognition, and some of it will move you to tears. Her three-piece backing band this time is called the Grand Theft Orchestra, and they’re able to go as widescreen or as pinpoint as Palmer needs. Some of the songs here, like the opening epic “Smile (Pictures or it Didn’t Happen),” are massive, horns and strings blaring. But some, like the brilliant and chilling “The Bed Song,” are as delicate as freshly-fallen snow.

And yes, Palmer has retained her penchant for dramatic shock value. Take “The Killing Type,” which comes complete with an incredibly gory video. The lyrics are an expertly crafted slow build of rage – Palmer insists again and again that she’s “not the killing type,” but the song is aimed at someone she’d like to kill, and it grows more and more unsettling as it goes. “I once stepped on a dying bird, it was a mercy killing, I couldn’t sleep for a week, I kept feeling its breaking bones,” she confesses, before shouting, “I want to stick my fist into your mouth and twist your arctic heart.” The music is similarly chilly, building to an explosion. “I’m saying it now, I’m saying it so even if you never hear this song somebody else will know,” she spits.

Also chilling in a different way is “Grown Man Cry,” which sounds like an ‘80s Pretenders song, all clean guitars and shimmering keyboards. Palmer paints a picture of a woman bored with her sensitive, nice guy: “For a while it was touching, it was almost even comforting, before it became typical, and now it really is not interesting to see a grown man cry…” As the song progresses, though, the man’s behavior becomes harder to rationalize, and Palmer’s coldness makes more sense by the abrupt, striking end.

And yet, here she is one song later, on the gorgeous “Trout Heart Replica,” lamenting the overflow of emotions she feels. “It’s hurting that’s the hardest part, and when the wizard gets to me, I’m asking for a smaller heart,” she sings. On the winning, Cars-like “Massachusetts Avenue,” Palmer lays her complexities bare – it’s a song of memories returning, triggered by the street on which Palmer lives, but it’s also a song of a failed relationship, and the reasons why: “Do you remember loving me more than I could be loved? I chased you for so long and when I caught you, I gave up.”

The album’s finest lyric is also its most devastating portrait. “The Bed Song” traces the life of a couple by the beds they’ve owned and shared. It begins with the young pair sharing a sleeping bag, “splitting the heat, we have one filthy pillow to share, and your lips are in my hair.” They move in together, first in an apartment with a futon on the floor, then in a condo with a bed. By this time, they’ve grown silent, drifted apart: “All the money in the world won’t buy a bed so big and wide to guarantee that you won’t accidentally touch me in the night…”

And still they never talk – the singer of the song never asks her partner what’s wrong, or why they don’t speak. The last scene takes us to their final resting place, a joint grave beneath a cherry tree, and the sadness just pours out of those final lines. It just hurts, in a way only a good story well told can do, and it’s proof that Palmer is a born songwriter. Others, like the tremendous “Berlin” and the delightfully pathetic “Do It With a Rockstar,” just provide even more evidence.

This is exactly the kind of record I was hoping Palmer would make with her Kickstarter cash – one that captures her essence while exploding her potential. When your album’s a $1.2 million success before you even start making it, you’re free to be who you are, and write what you want. I don’t think this is an album Palmer’s former label, Roadrunner Records, would have been too pleased with – it’s too long, there are no obvious singles, it’s messy and complicated. But it’s precisely what Palmer’s legion of fans will want, and now that she’s dealing directly with them, that’s all that matters. Theatre is Evil is hopefully just the first in a long series of spectacular records from an artist taking full advantage of her freedom.

The other thing Kickstarter does well is connect idiosyncratic artists with the music fans who will appreciate them. Under the record label system, A&R executives were the gatekeepers, the ones who decided what you would hear, which is why many quirkier projects never quite found their audiences. I mentioned Joy Electric earlier – Ronnie Martin’s analog synth-pop project has spent the past 20 years on Tooth and Nail Records, releasing album after album to a dedicated, yet incredibly small group of fans. And each time out, the label had to decide whether it was worth it to print up copies, considering how many they would sell. That they did, again and again, for two decades is a real testament to the label.

But Ronnie on his own, through Kickstarter, won’t have to worry about that. He’s proven that the audience is there, and with the freedom now afforded him, he can do what he wants – which is burbling keyboard fantasias sung in a breathy whisper – without fear. I don’t expect Joy E to change very much, but Ronnie can now just focus on making a great album the way he wants to, without worrying about how to market and sell it.

Another good example is Tourniquet. You couldn’t make up Tourniquet if you tried. They’re a technical metal band obsessed with medical imagery, standing up against animal cruelty, and singing about Jesus. They’re more classically-inspired than most metal acts, incorporating strings and flutes and orchestral movements into their work, and they’re thoroughly unafraid to do as many un-metal things as they can think up, while still remaining astonishingly heavy.

The audience for complex Christian metal with violins isn’t nearly as huge as it ought to be, and Tourniquet has been without a record label for almost a decade. But they still have fans, as they discovered when they took to Kickstarter last year. They asked for $22,000 – an enormous amount for a band like this – and got $28,476. With that money, they hired producer Bill Metoyer and a host of guest artists, and made the best record of their career.

It’s called Antiseptic Bloodbath, and the front cover depicts the skeleton of Jesus on the cross behind a disemboweled animal carcass. It’s perfectly Tourniquet, as is the music within. You’ll know you’re not listening to a typical metal disc right away – the record begins with kids chanting out names from the periodic table in a strange cheer, which leads into singer Luke Easter shouting the song’s title (“Chart of the Elements”) and whooping like a loon after each repetition. Yeah, there’s a bone-crunching riff after that, but you’d be forgiven for wondering just what the hell you’re listening to before that arrives.

Tourniquet’s not-so-secret weapon is drummer Ted Kirkpatrick, who writes the lion’s share of the music. The classical influences are his – he’s pictured on the back of Antiseptic Bloodbath wearing a Chopin shirt – but he’s also one of the fastest and most precise metal drummers alive. This album’s title track is a full-on thrash nightmare, but it shifts tempo and time signatures every few seconds too, and Kirkpatrick just obliterates it. The song is about our tendency to sanitize brutality to make ourselves feel better about it, and Kirkpatrick’s lyrics somehow work in the crucifixion and slaughterhouses.

Throughout this record, Kirkpatrick’s penchant for interesting, unexpected riffs and melodies never lets him down. Check out the seven-minute “The Maiden Who Slept in the Glass Coffin,” which glides in on violins (over downtuned, crunchy guitars), leaves a wide expanse of space for guest Marty Friedman to solo, and then charges back in with the heaviness. Just listen to the middle section, in which the band emulates the more classically-driven opening with guitars and drums. It’s head-spinning.

Easter and guitarist Aaron Guerra contribute two songs as a writing team, and like always, their pieces are the shorter, more immediate ones. “Duplicitous Endeavor” fits the bill nicely, shimmying from a harmony guitar opening to a groovy stomp worthy of Countdown to Extinction-era Megadeth. But it’s Kirkpatrick’s epics that keep me coming back. The final track here is a monster – the eight-minute “Fed By Ravens, Eaten By Vultures” is a classic, somehow building from a spare violin to a full-on screamfest organically in its opening two minutes. This song is everything you want a Tourniquet piece to be.

The same can be said for all of Antiseptic Bloodbath, perhaps the purest distillation of what this band’s about. I think it’s amazing stuff, but I thoroughly understand that the audience for this kind of thing is limited. Since I’m in that audience, though, I’m thankful that we now have a mechanism to fund bands and projects like these directly. If Tourniquet asks for my money again, I’m gladly going to give it to them, especially now that I’ve heard what they’re likely to do with it. Trust builds trust. And if this new system we have can keep bands like Tourniquet making albums like Antiseptic Bloodbath, without fear, then I think it’s a keeper.

Buy Antiseptic Bloodbath here.

Next week, the ultimate Kickstarter band, the mighty Marillion. After that, Ben Folds and Aimee Mann. 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 lost Hal David this week.

That’s Hal David as in Burt Bacharach and Hal David, one of the most winsome and winning pop songwriting teams of all time. Burt wrote the music and Hal the lyrics for some of the most famous and justly lauded tunes in history. A partial list: “(They Long to Be) Close to You.” “Walk On By.” “What the World Needs Now is Love.” “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me.” “The Look of Love.” The two of them epitomized a particular late-‘60s-early-‘70s sound, all muted trumpets and delightful, simple sentiments.

One particular Bacharach-David song has a special place in my heart. When I was growing up, my grandparents owned a music box, one that hangs on the wall. It featured an elaborate 3-D carving of a boy with an umbrella, and when you wound it up (via the massive knob in front) and pulled the small metal pin, it played “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” Both of those grandparents are gone now, but that music box still hangs in my mother’s house, and whenever I wind it up and play it, I think of them.

Hal David died on Friday after a stroke. He was 91 years old. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame 40 years ago, and his work – his sublime, silly, sun-shiney work – will live forever. Rest in peace, Hal.

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I hesitate to admit this, but the first Bob Mould album I ever heard was Sugar’s Copper Blue.

It was 1992, I was on my way to college, and the grunge revolution was in full swing. Sugar was just another great, loud band to me, one of a few dozen I was following at that time. I honestly had no idea of Mould’s pedigree – that he was a founding member of the great Husker Du, a band that influenced every single one of the groups I liked in ’92, and that he had carved out a superb little solo career after that, including the amazing Black Sheets of Rain. I knew none of that.

What I did know was that Copper Blue was a great record. You’d have to be deaf not to notice that. Sugar was loud, all right – the guitar sound on Copper is thick and abrasive and endless, even for 1992 – but Bob Mould’s unerring pop sensibility shines through. Try not singing along with “A Good Idea” or “Changes” or “If I Can’t Change Your Mind.” There isn’t a song here that won’t get stuck in your head. Even the epic “Hoover Dam” is hummable, and when you get to my favorite, “Fortune Teller,” buried at track eight… well, damn.

It’s 20 years later, and Copper Blue still sounds as great as it ever has. Better, even, if you pick up the newly-remastered deluxe edition, out last month. The guitars are even louder, but the separation of instruments is clearer, and Sugar the pop band is even more evident. It’s just a near-perfect album, the kind that sells a million, the kind Mould hasn’t really made since. In fact, he didn’t even come close with Sugar, although they had two further releases, both also available in remastered form.

1993’s Beaster is the dark half of Copper Blue. Recorded at the same time, its half-dozen songs represent the crushing steamroller aspect of their sound. Six-minute monsters like “Judas Cradle” and “JC Auto” pummel you in slow motion, Mould’s guitars sounding like tormented screams from the pits of hell. Those squalls are even clearer now in this new edition (bundled with Copper Blue), and while Beaster does have its more melodic moments, like the comparatively gentle closer “Walking Away,” it is mainly Mould taking out his pain and aggression. It’s a tough listen, which is why I don’t pull it out very often.

1994’s File Under: Easy Listening should have been the one to bring it all together, the one to build on Sugar’s success. Instead, it feels rushed, half-formed. Only a few songs, most notably “Can’t Help You Anymore” and “Believe What You’re Saying,” resonate with the force and melody of the prior record. Mould has said that the b-sides, also included in this new edition, might have helped save this record had they been included. I have to disagree. These five songs are louder than the relatively hushed second half of FU:EL, but that’s all they have going for them. “Mind Is an Island” is the best, and it’s not fit to lick the boots of “Changes” or “Fortune Teller.”

And that was the disappointing end for Sugar. They left us a classic, its evil twin, and a disappointing follow-up. Merge has carefully packaged up all three of those records, along with two full-length live documents as bonuses. Live, Sugar was a monster – the guitars are somehow even louder, the vocals more buried, the energy more explosive. While their records were carefully crafted and overdubbed, Sugar became a pure power trio on stage, playing with reckless abandon and never pausing to address (or even acknowledge) the audience. I’m more of a fan of the second live record here, The Joke is Always On Us, from 1994, despite a set list that leans heavy on obscure material. They were just great live.

Hell, they were just great. It’s rare for a songwriter to find even one superb band. Two is a miracle. Sugar’s entire legacy is contained on these five discs, but it’s a powerful one, and it still holds up. What’s especially important about Sugar is that it has seemed for a very long time like Mould’s last gasp. Since these records, he’s resurrected his solo career, but dabbled in ill-fitting electronics and songs that simply lack inspiration. His last three albums have been decent, yet unremarkable slabs of guitar-pop, a far cry from his glory days.

So Sugar has long served as a fine reminder of the songwriter, player and singer Mould used to be. That is, until now. Because I told you that story to tell you this one.

Bob Mould’s new album is called Silver Age. It’s a reference to his greyed-out beard and temples – the man is 51 this year. But listening to this thing, you’d never know it. This is Mould’s first power trio album since the Sugar days, and if you play this back to back with Copper Blue, you’re unlikely to hear much difference. The songwriting is certainly back to top quality, and the energy – the sheer balls of it – is just remarkable.

Like Sugar’s live sets, this album never lets up. It’s 38 minutes of explosive goodness, starting with a three-song opening shot that will knock you down. “Star Machine” is just awesome, bursting out of the gate at full gallop, and it segues neatly into the equally breathless title track, and “The Descent,” perhaps the melodic highlight of the record. In 1993, this would have been a hit single, no question. It moves like a rushing wave, the trio locking in and riding it out, Mould singing for all he’s worth. When the band hits that drop-down chord on “make it up to you somehow,” I just have to air-guitar along. This is one of my favorite songs of the year, no doubt.

Does the album slow down from there? Like hell it does. “Briefest Moment” charges in like a rush of horses, all fire and thundering hooves. Even when this album slows down, like on “Steam of Hercules” and the wonderful closer “First Time Joy,” it’s loud, almost overpowering. (It only pulls back a little. There are no slow songs.) And when it explodes, as it does on the terrific “Keep Believing,” it’s something to behold. Remember when R.E.M. roared back with Accelerate a few years ago? This is like that, but louder and bigger and overflowing with melodies. It is, quite simply, Mould’s best album in 20 years.

I love it when this happens, when an elder statesman kicks over the tables and shows the kids how it’s done. Revisiting the Sugar catalog was the best thing that could have happened to him. It reminded him of what he does best, and Silver Age is full to bursting with it. If you remember how great Bob Mould can be, well, good news. He remembered too. May his Silver Age last a hundred years.

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I saved this for the end, since I know you fine, faithful readers are probably sick of reading my thoughts on Marillion. Their new album, Sounds That Can’t Be Made, should hit my mailbox next week, which means my (very likely) long, flowing review will be published on Sept. 19. After that, I’ll probably shut up about it (at least until December, if it’s as good as I expect), so never fear. A couple more weeks, and it’ll all be over.

But I need to pass this on, since it’s knocking me on my ass. This week, Marillion shared the opening track to the new album. It’s called “Gaza,” it’s 17 minutes long, and it’s written from the point of view of a child living in that war-torn part of Palestine. And it’s unlike anything they’ve done. The music includes elements of stomping metal, ambient atmosphere and electronic pop, moving through deeply emotional moments to a dark and powerful conclusion.

And the lyrics? To say this will be Marillion’s most controversial effort is an understatement. Steve Hogarth plays a child here, so some of the lines are simplistic, yet some – including a section that implies an understanding of the motivations behind suicide bombers – are strikingly mature. “Gaza” is not a political song, it is a cry for peace and justice, a demand for a human response to senseless war. This is not going to stop people from decrying it as a polemic, though, since its only character is a Palestinian child suffering at the hands of the Israelis. The end of the song features its best line – “It’s like a nightmare rose up from this small strip of land, slouching toward Bethlehem.” Aggression and response, on both sides, locked in a spiral that lays waste to the innocent.

But the key section, to me, is around the 12-minute mark. “Nothing’s ever simple, that’s for sure, there are grieving mothers on both sides of the wire, and everyone deserves a chance to feel the future just might be bright, but any way you look at it, whichever point of view, for us to have to live like this, it just ain’t right, it just ain’t right…” Giving a voice to the voiceless is a lifelong theme for Hogarth, and here, in this most beautiful part of the song, he does it again, with grace. I’m still absorbing “Gaza,” and I’ll have more to say about it in a couple of weeks. For now, hear it for yourself. And read the lyrics here. And then tell me what you think. This is perhaps the band’s most ambitious song ever. Did they pull it off?

Next week, likely Animal Collective, Amanda Palmer and/or Yeasayer. 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.

I’m a big fan of crazy.

I mean that strictly in an artistic sense. I’m not enamored of skipping-down-the-halls-setting-fire-to-the-walls insanity, and there are definitely people I know who could use some professional help. I don’t mean that kind of crazy. What I do mean is the willingness to follow one’s muse, no matter how batshit that muse seems to be. Like when California goth outfit Saviour Machine decided they would re-tell the book of Revelation in song, in four volumes. That’s the good kind of crazy, especially since they’re still working on it 15 years later.

Or when Texas enigma Jandek committed decades of his life – 70 albums over 34 years and counting – to capturing a nigh-unlistenable form of improvised dissonance with as many collaborators as he could wrangle. The very fact of Jandek’s existence gets more and more insane as the years go by and the records keep coming out. After a while, it starts to look like a life’s work, and it demands you accept it on its own terms.

The best crazy stuff accomplishes that. It gets under your skin, and after a while, it forces you to view the world from its skewed angle. I have all 70 Jandek albums, and I’ve heard them all multiple times, and while I definitely wouldn’t say I understand how he sees the world, I now hear patters and see sense where many hear random clatter and see dementia. It’s this kind of viewpoint-altering magic that keeps me coming back to the crazy, and continuing to seek it out.

That’s the thinking behind my semi-regular WTF Awards, given out to records that make me wonder if I’ve wandered into an alternate dimension, where crazy-sounding ideas are pursued to their fullest. I don’t just hand these out to the most bizarre things I hear. To receive a WTF Award, you have to make me wonder just what was going through your head when you conceived of a particular record. I have to ask the question, “Why did you think this would work?”

Here’s a great example: Joe Jackson’s tribute to Duke Ellington.

Now, on its face, that doesn’t seem too wacky. Jackson is an avowed fan of all forms of jazz, and Ellington is certainly an influence on some of his better works. If you’ve heard Jackson’s 1981 big band classic Jumpin’ Jive, you can probably envision how his tribute to the Duke would work, and work well. And Jackson’s been on a roll recently – his last two albums, Volume 4 and Rain, displayed tremendous energy and vitality, and it’s not hard to picture him bringing all that vigor to bear on an homage to one of his heroes.

Jackson, however, didn’t do any of that on The Duke. What he did is indulge his worst tendencies as an arranger and record-maker, turning out some extremely odd, synth-driven squiggles full of mad ideas that don’t quite work. And then he invited the strangest collective of guests he could think of to make things even weirder. Here is Steve Vai, playing the melody of “Isfahan” over programmed drums and keys. Here is ?uestlove, playing hip-hop rhythms on about half of these tracks. Here is Iggy Pop – yes, Iggy Pop – lending his voice to “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).” On that last one especially, I have no idea what Jackson was thinking.

Granted, some of the guests make a lot of sense. Christian McBride is one of the best acoustic bassists around, and he graces a whole bunch of these tunes. And Sharon Jones was an inspired choice to sing “I Ain’t Got Nothin’ But the Blues.” But even those turns sound very strange on this record. McBride and ?uestlove turn “I’m Beginning to See the Light” into a jazz-hop gallop – I can almost hear Q-Tip rapping over this. Regina Carter adds her violin genius to that track and to a bizarre “Mood Indigo” played on reverbed guitars and accordion.

The electronic drums add a level of cheese to the carnival romp Jackson has made out of “Rockin’ in Rhythm,” played on synthesizers, sousaphone and piccolo. It’s kind of a mess. But at the other end of the spectrum, Jackson and Sharon Jones blues up “Blues,” with some help from ?uestlove and McBride, and find a way to work in the immortal “Do Nothin’ Till You Hear From Me” for a few seconds. There’s a fine line on this album between inventive and ridiculous, and it’s one Jackson’s programmed-samba take on “I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good),” for instance, walks with unsure feet.

To the man’s credit, The Duke doesn’t completely fly off the rails until the end. I can’t even explain how awful the reggae version of “The Mooche” is, Steve Vai wailing away on a melody that deserves better. That track also slips into “Black and Tan Fantasy,” one of Duke’s earliest triumphs, and Jackson whips out his accordion again to really give it that unlistenable edge. And then comes Iggy Pop, and to call this version of “It Don’t Mean a Thing” disastrous is an insult to disasters. Four people are credited with “programming” on this thing, which should tell you a lot of what you need to know.

I would never come down hard on Jackson for trying new and radical interpretations of these songs, if they worked. The Duke shows remarkable imagination, and an equally remarkable inability to tell a good idea from a bad one. It’s only successful about half the time, and while I admire Jackson’s ambition – he hasn’t made an album this complex in some time – I can’t get behind some of his choices.

Though it’s beside the point, I do wonder what Ellington might have thought of this. On the one hand, it celebrates his try-anything attitude to jazz music, and it clearly comes from a place of deep affection for his tunes. On the other hand, though, it mostly sucks. It’s an ill-formed mess of a thing, and it breaks Jackson’s recent hot streak. But it’s certainly worthy of a WTF Award, so I guess he can feel good about that.

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The Flaming Lips deserve a WTF Award just for existing lately. When the most reasonable thing they’ve done in the last four years is a full-album cover of The Dark Side of the Moon (with Henry Rollins and Peaches in tow), it’s safe to say the band has been going through a strange period. Freed from their major-label contract, the Lips quickly began releasing whatever they wanted, as often as they wanted. They gave us songs on thumb drives lodged inside full-size gummy human skulls, for instance. Last year, they released a six-hour-long song, and then followed it up with one that spans a full 24 hours. That one was sold on a drive lodged in a real human skull, and retailed for $5,000.

So in comparison to all that, their new album The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends probably isn’t that strange. But it is the weirdest thing they’ve released to the general market in some time, so it’s deserving of its place here. Basically, Heady Fwends is a 68-minute compilation of some of the Lips’ spur-of-the-moment collaborations with the unlikeliest of people. The list is enough to make your head spin all on its own: Ke$ha, Biz Markie, Bon Iver, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Jim James, Nick Cave, Yoko Ono and Erykah Badu, to name a few.

Basically, over the past couple of years, the Lips would take a lot of drugs and play with whoever walked by their studio. Some of these tracks come from full EPs the band released, collabs with Ono, Neon Indian, Prefuse 73 and Lightning Bolt. But many of them are just one-offs, nutty songs created for no other reason than to create them. You can hear the band figuring out if each one of these pairings works as they play through them. And that’s oddly exhilarating. This record is even more of a mess than you’d expect, and yet it teeters on the edge of the precipice with such verve that it’s hard to dislike it.

In fact, I quite like a lot of it. I’m a fan of the Lips’ more bizarre releases, like Zaireeka and the soundtrack to Christmas on Mars – when they’re on these trips, they sound like no one else on Earth. In the best moments on Heady Fwends, the Lips invite these unlikely cohorts into their own universe, and let them root around in it for a while.

I was probably most nervous about Ke$ha’s appearance, but “2012 (You Must Be Upgraded)” is something of a minor classic. Ke$ha sings out of tune over a computer beat, interrupted every few seconds by a robot voice spewing the subtitle, and it works surprisingly well. This is abrasive and noisy and nuts, until you get to the rather lovely swirly-synth bridge. Not only is it better and more listenable than I had feared, but it’s much more of a song than I was expecting, as opposed to a drugged-out jam.

The same can be said for most of these tunes. The Bon Iver collaboration, “Ashes in the Air,” is actually quite lovely, exploring the soaring, ambient side of the Lips. (It’s got a great chorus melody, too.) “Helping the Retarded to Know God,” the team-up with Edward Sharpe, is gentle space-folk, and “Children of the Moon,” with Tame Impala, is a floaty, strummy festival over a loping beat. Things get weird when Nick Cave wanders in for “You, Man? Human???,” a slow, grating, distorted slog that sets Cave’s snarling voice over a screaming volley of backing vocals.

“I’m Working at NASA on Acid,” with Lightning Bolt, is a true multi-part noise epic, stretching to eight minutes, and at this point in the record, I’ll admit some fatigue. Yoko Ono doesn’t help things – her contribution to the computer-funk “Do It!” consists of yelping the title phrase over and over. But the real gem of this album is a cover of the Roberta Flack hit “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” The vocals are handled by Erykah Badu, but the Lips cast her soulful pipes in a completely new, altogether noisier and spacier setting. Yeah, this is the song that led to the video that led to Badu scream-Tweeting at head Lip Wayne Coyne, and it’s hard not to hear it in that context. But it’s really remarkable, and beautiful.

Heady Fwends, in its original vinyl incarnation, concluded with “I Don’t Want You to Die,” a lovely duet with Chris Martin of Coldplay. That song is mysteriously missing from the CD issue, and has been replaced by the infinitely inferior “Tasered and Maced,” a tasteless spoken-word ramble by Aaron Behrens of Ghostland Observatory. Put that one in the loss column, but much to my surprise, you can consider most of this album a win. On paper, this album doesn’t make sense. (And let’s be real – much of it doesn’t make sense when you’re listening to it either.) But it works far better than I could have hoped. Here’s to one of the strangest bands ever. Long may they reign.

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And finally, we have something that shouldn’t exist.

I have an innate distrust of sequels, mainly because most of them suck. I’m not sure what the draw of musical sequels is for the artists. I get why the record company bean-counters like them – they can trade on the affection people have for the original. But artistically, sequels rarely live up to their first installments, and will automatically be ranked against them. The more highly revered your original album is, the more harshly judged your sequel will be, generally speaking.

So there’s no reason I can see for Jethro Tull mastermind Ian Anderson to have gone ahead with Thick as a Brick 2, a sequel that arrives 40 years after its predecessor. Thick as a Brick was Tull’s first real foray into progressive rock – a single 45-minute song ostensibly based around an epic poem by one Gerald Bostock, an eight-year-old cynical (and fictional) prodigy. If you like Tull, you like this – it’s pretty much the apex of their vision of insanely complex flute-adorned folk-rock. It’s the one that drew the line in the sand – after Brick, you were either a Tull fan, or you found them ass-achingly pretentious.

I’m a fan, and always have been. But one thing I never wondered was how Gerald Bostock turned out. It never felt like an unfinished story to me. This is the element that Anderson has returned to, four decades on, the hook on which he hangs this follow-up. The first two-thirds of Thick as a Brick 2 imagines the different paths Bostock might have taken after his brush with fame, envisioning his life as a banker, a homeless man, a member of the military, a chorister, and a “most ordinary man.” It’s sort of a Choose Your Own Adventure suite, and it only comes together in the final four tracks.

Tracks? Why, yes. There are 17 of them, breaking with the original Brick’s premise, but in keeping with the pebbles-in-a-pond theme of this new album. I suppose I would consider much of this progressive rock, but the production and the unimaginative songwriting keep this a pale imitation of old-school Tull. It’s definitely the best thing I’ve heard from Anderson in years, and he’s in fine form on that flute, but I can’t say most of these songs did anything for me. The album leaps moods as often as it leaps Bostock’s parallel universes, and ditties like the pseudo-sermon “Give Till It Hurts” and the synth-Beatles “Cosy Corner” feel like stumbling blocks.

Still, there are some fine little rockers here, like “Swing It Far” and “Shunt and Shuffle,” the song that concludes Act I. Anderson’s flute slides nicely against Florian Opahle’s crunchy guitar, and the old bugger comes up with some genuine musical surprises here and there. But then he slips into a theme from the original Thick as a Brick, reminding you just how much better that record is. It’s a trap Anderson never quite finds a way out of.

Which is a shame, because some of these songs – particularly the album’s centerpiece, the eight-minute “A Change of Horses” – can stand on their own. At the album’s end, Bostock the old man looks back on the one life he chose and wonders what might have been, and I can imagine Anderson, all of 65, doing the same. It’s hard to begrudge him for taking this record on, even if the results are nowhere near as good as they’d have to be to bear the Thick as a Brick name. He gets a WTF Award for even attempting a sequel 40 years later, but he gets my respect for making the best sequel he could. That I don’t hate this – that it makes me view its world from its point of view – is a minor miracle.

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Next week, the money comes rolling in, and the new reviews fire up in earnest. What would you like to see discussed here? 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.