It’s something of a poorly-followed tradition around these parts that I take a week off in June for my birthday. I rarely actually take that week, but if you like, you can consider this short, personal entry as that miniature vacation.

This week, I want to talk about my Uncle Warren.

He was technically my great-uncle – he was my grandfather’s brother, the youngest of eight. People in my family jokingly refer to Warren and his siblings as the Dalton Gang, a nod to the famous Old West family. The historical Daltons were split into lawmen and outlaws, and the Dalton side of my family is actually related to the lawmen side. Which makes sense – Warren was mischievous, but there wasn’t a touch of outlaw in him.

I, of course, only ever knew him as a kindly old man. But he had a long life before I came along, and I feel so blessed that I got to hear about some of it. When I was growing up, my Uncle Warren and Auntie Ann lived in Virginia, and we would visit at least once a year. They had a friendly dog named Cindy, and Warren had a collection of books that blew my little mind. Mainly, they were Louis L’Amour westerns – he and my grandfather both loved that guy’s work, and Warren owned every book he ever wrote. That’s about 90 books, all told. If I concentrate, I can still smell the basement where he kept those books.

My grandfather died when I was in school. He’d always told me that he was a cook in the Navy, and I’d always believed him. I can’t precisely remember, but it was either at his wake, or shortly after, that my Uncle Warren took me aside to tell me that wasn’t exactly true. The two Dalton brothers served together on a destroyer called the Lamson during World War II, and while my grandfather did cook meals, that wasn’t all he did. My uncle was a radar operator, and my grandfather was a gunner.

About 10 years ago, Warren shared his WWII memories with me. He wrote most of them down, but we also had a number of really good conversations about that time in his life. The ship he was on was nicknamed the “Lucky Lamson.” It missed out on Pearl Harbor by a day or so, and through its entire tenure in the Pacific, it narrowly escaped sinking about a dozen times. Ships on either side of the Lamson met with watery ends, and more than once the ship needed some vital repair that kept it from going on ill-fated missions.

Throughout their time in the service, the Dalton brothers watched out for each other. Warren ended up spending 22 years in the Navy, and working for Raytheon when he got out. Smart, smart man, my uncle. He married my aunt about a month before I was born – we’ve always joked that I was the youngest guest at their wedding.

If I had to pick one thing to summarize my relationship with my Uncle Warren, though, that thing would be chess. It’s a game I love, and Warren taught me to play it. He was a chess master – he had books on chess, and I read some of them, trying to up my game. I must have played 200 games against Warren over the years, and I never beat him. The last time I played him was about two years ago, when he was 89 years old or so. He trounced me.

When I was a teenager, Warren and I played a game of chess through the mail. I can’t remember how long it went on – months, maybe a year. But I remember that other interests pulled me away, and we never finished that game. I feel bad about that. I should have kept it going. I mean, Warren would have won, no question. But I should have kept it going.

My Uncle Warren has had a tough time of it lately. He had a stroke about a year ago, and the doctors initially thought he’d had another about a month back. In the end, he contracted double pneumonia, and passed away in the hospital on Friday, June 9. He was 91 years old.

He had a full military funeral service at Massachusetts National Cemetery, which was lovely. Two active duty sailors stood guard at his casket, and they folded a flag and handed it to my aunt. After the ceremony, my aunt – who needs a wheelchair to get around – asked to be pushed closer to the casket. She kissed it softly, and grasped tightly to the handhold on the side, as if trying to keep him here. It broke my heart.

I’ve decided I have to tell the story of the Lucky Lamson somehow. It’s important for a couple of reasons. In a general sense, these stories are disappearing, along with the generation that lived them, and we need to hang on to them. But in a more specific and personal sense, I just want people to remember my Uncle Warren, and know what he did serving his country. Like his famous ancestors, he was one of the good guys.

One last salute for Warren Dalton, the last of the Dalton Gang. May he rest in peace.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Anyone who’s been following this column for any length of time knows that I’m a Brian Wilson fanboy. But here’s something you may not know: I really don’t like the Beach Boys that much.

Oh, I think they’re a dazzlingly good vocal group, in all of their many incarnations. Mike Love may instill in me a desire to punch him in the face every time I see his picture, but the man can harmonize. And there’s no denying that with Pet Sounds, they made one of my favorite albums of all time. But other than that, the high points of their catalog are few and far between, and are almost entirely down to the genius of Brian Wilson, and Brian’s shown pretty clearly that he doesn’t need the Boys as much as they need him.

What it comes down to, for me, is a question of what, exactly, the Beach Boys are meant to be. They started out as a pretty simple surf-rock band, a fun little family group with the three Wilson brothers (Brian, Carl and Dennis) and their cousin, Love. Family friend Al Jardine rounded the group out, and the Wilsons’ father, Murry, became their manager. They wore matching outfits and sang about sun, summer, and of course, surfing. It was all pretty cute, and if Brian Wilson hadn’t been born brilliant, it may have remained just pretty cute.

But then Brian started writing his masterpieces. “In My Room” was first, as far as I’m concerned. You can trace everything I love about Wilson’s melancholy melodies right back to that tune. But then he just kept going. “I Get Around.” “Help Me Rhonda.” The whole second side of Today. While Mike Love was desperately trying to keep his surfin’ cash cow going, Brian Wilson was becoming an artist right before our eyes. Pet Sounds was a revelation, but not really a surprise by that point. Everyone who was paying attention at the time could no doubt tell that Wilson was something special, and he’d one day do something amazing.

But see, all the songs I like from the Beach Boys are not really Beach Boys songs. Love is right, in a way – they’re a good-time vocal group, they sing fun songs about riding the waves, and Wilson’s artistic ambitions never sat well alongside the likes of “Little Deuce Coupe.” It was that resistance to change that partially caused Wilson to abandon SMiLE, the finest work of his life, in 1967, and not return to it for more than 35 years. In a lot of ways, when Wilson assembled his current solo band, and finally revisited and completed SMiLE, it was his final show of independence from the Beach Boys.

As for the Boys, Dennis and Carl Wilson were gone, and Love was in charge of the group, leading them through terrible country versions of their hits (mainly penned by Brian) and playing fairgrounds and old-folks festivals. Meanwhile, Brian Wilson was selling out prestigious concert halls and receiving some of the best reviews of his life. Wilson’s subsequent That Lucky Old Sun proved this late-career surge was no lark, and that he was the artistic heart and soul of his former band. He was finally free of them.

So why in the world would he agree to a reunion tour with the surviving Beach Boys? And why would he make a new record with them? I’m not sure. I’m not even certain how much of these decisions are Brian’s, given his drug-damaged state of mind. I’ve heard so many mixed stories about Wilson’s detachment and delirium on stage with the Boys on this tour. Some days he’ll be right there, playing and singing the old hits, and some days, he’ll barely utter a note. Like I said, the Beach Boys need Brian Wilson much more than he needs them. I’m hoping this isn’t as manipulative and money-grubbing as it sounds.

But Brian has always shone in the studio, so that’s where I’m looking to figure out what I should make of this new Beach Boys. The new album – the first in 16 years, and the first with Wilson’s full participation since the ‘70s – is called That’s Why God Made the Radio. All of the surviving Boys are on it – Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston and David Marks – but most of the music was performed by Wilson’s usual band, the Wondermints. (And they are amazing.) In a lot of ways, this should be just a Brian Wilson solo record with some different voices in the harmonies.

Instead, though, it’s a perfect distillation of that conflict between Mike Love and Brian Wilson, between what the Beach Boys were and what Wilson grew into. Roughly half of this record is glorious, sad, melodic pop of the highest order. The other half is bland tropical malarkey. As an album, it doesn’t cohere at all, and some of its worst sins are Wilson’s. It’s like he felt he needed to strike a balance, and write some songs Love wouldn’t criticize. Songs the Boys could sing while swaying, arm in arm, on the stage, septuagenarians singing along.

At least, that’s all I can imagine. I can’t figure out why else Wilson would write something like “The Private Life of Bill and Sue,” or “Beaches in Mind.” There’s a thematic resonance to some of it – the album is about nostalgia, about what the Beach Boys have meant to the world, and you’d need to include some songs about the ocean to make that work. Essentially, the first tracks are about looking back, and heading out for one last hurrah. And the songs from “Spring Vacation” to “Beaches in Mind,” I guess, are supposed to represent that final blowout.

To be honest, I feared it would all be like this. Reunions are patchy prospects even under the best of circumstances, and a “Look! Brian’s back!” tour doesn’t seem like the ideal situation. But Brian Wilson is still Brian Wilson, no matter how much he appears to have changed, and I should have had more faith. About half the songs on this record are unspeakably gorgeous, just vintage Wilson, and they nicely counterbalance the joyous nostalgia with an almost heartbreaking acceptance. Even the Beach Boys get old, and time leaves them behind.

The emotional core of the album is almost entirely contained in its final four songs, a suite of sorts about growing older and looking back with peaceful sadness. “Strange World” is a celebration of life’s twists and turns, sung while people-watching on the Santa Monica pier, its buoyant melody lifted by the Boys’ swirling voices.

But it’s “There and Back Again” that truly taps into a deeper well. Reminiscent of “Surf’s Up,” this winding piano epic feels like time slipping, like years melting away. It’s a plea to return to the way things used to be, for a “wonderful Pacific coast getaway,” but the next piece, the brief yet striking “Pacific Coast Highway,” finds Wilson alone again, naturally. “Driving down the Pacific coast on Highway One, the setting sun, goodbye,” he sings, leading into the heartrending “Summer’s Gone,” Brian’s farewell to the Beach Boys and the life he used to live.

Written years ago as a proposed final Beach Boys song, this is everything you could expect from the title and more. “Summer’s gone, it’s finally sinking in, one day begins, another ends, I live them all and back again…” Placing this song at the end of the album brings everything into focus. This is Brian’s goodbye to the band, and to the carefree life it represents. It’s the last Beach Boys album, and at its conclusion, the mature and wiser Brian Wilson comes to the fore, showing songs like “Beaches in Mind” for the nostalgic lies they are.

And for that, I love him even more. To use a high-profile reunion to gently let go of a dream many still hold, that’s brave and beautiful. Brian Wilson just turned 70 years old, and no matter what his state of mind on stage, there’s no one else who could have crafted the suite that ends this album. (Or the minute-and-a-half of blissful, wordless vocals that open it.) Yes, the Beach Boys need Brian more than they need him. But without the Boys, this work wouldn’t have as deep an impact. He needed them to say this.

All of which makes That’s Why God Made the Radio an essential part of Wilson’s creative rebirth over the past 10 years. The clunky numbers – and there are several – are easier to overlook in context. I expected I would buy this album out of obligation, play it once or twice, and shelve it with my latter-day Beach Boys discs. I did not expect a creative statement this powerful. Brian Wilson surprised me again.

What could have been a crass, money-grubbing throwaway is instead, more often than you’d expect, a moving goodbye to a time long gone. It is another chapter in Brian Wilson’s ongoing musical effort to be at peace with himself and his history. I hope one day he achieves that peace. Until then, I hope he keeps making music as glorious as the good stuff here. This is likely the final Beach Boys album, and I could not have asked for a better reminder of what they once were, or a better farewell to this chapter in the life of a genius I adore.

Next week, confounding expectations with Jukebox the Ghost and Linkin Park. 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.

When I was a teenager, I discovered what I’ve come to think of as Cornerstone music.

I’ve told this story many times, so I won’t bore you with it again. Suffice it to say that my first exposure to the spiritual pop music I would come to love was a little album called Circle Slide, by a band called the Choir. This was not Christian music as I had come to know it – shallow, facile, motivated by a Jesus-per-minute count – but real, honest, deep spiritual art. These were musicians who wrestled with faith, like I did, and they weren’t always the victors.

After some time of listening to this stuff – Circle Slide led me to the rest of the Choir’s work, which led me to the Lost Dogs, and Daniel Amos, and the 77s, and Adam Again, and Mike Knott, and the Violet Burning, and on and on – I started hearing about this festival called Cornerstone, where these guys would play once every summer. As an East Coast boy, I was certain I’d never get to Cornerstone. It was in some magical, mythical, faraway land called Bushnell, Illinois, so far outside the world I knew that it may as well have been on Saturn.

I imagined what it must be like, though, to hear so many great, largely unknown bands over one weekend. In 2002, I moved to Hobart, Indiana – while not exactly close to Bushnell, I was certainly within a feasible distance of Cornerstone for the first time in my life. So I went. And it was even better than I’d expected. I got to meet many favorite artists (most notably Derri Daugherty and Steve Hindalong of the Choir), and I got to see more than a dozen great shows. I saw the 77s for the first time, and cemented my opinion that they’re one of the planet’s best rock bands. I saw Daniel Amos and the Choir and the Violet Burning and Mike Knott and the Wayside and Ester Drang and so many others.

And I got the opportunity to soak Cornerstone in. It takes place in a dusty, hot field in the middle of nowhere, and it’s like no place else on earth. I’ve gone back a few times since, but that first C-Stone experience remains my favorite. Each time I’ve returned, though, I’ve managed to discover new artists I’m overjoyed to follow. I first saw Mutemath at Cornerstone in 2005 – it was the day’s last show, and I almost skipped it, and I’m incredibly glad I didn’t. In 2010, I got to see Iona perform, and discovered Photoside Café and Timbre.

And last year, I saw Phil Keaggy tear it up with a full band, and Saviour Machine play unplugged for more than two hours, and found the music of Josh Garrels – he made my #4 album of 2011, the incredible Love and War and the Sea In Between. Attendance was in stark decline last year, but the music wasn’t. Cornerstone again provided the backdrop for some of the best music in one place you’re likely to ever hear. As soon as the 2011 fest was over, I started making plans to return in 2012.

I’m taking you on this trip down memory lane because in a few weeks, it will all be over. Organizers have announced that due to slumping ticket sales over the past few years, the 2012 Cornerstone Festival will be the last. They’ve scaled it down considerably, too – lacking funds to pay the bands, the organizers sent an email asking for volunteers to play for free. They got many affirmative responses – more than I would have thought, actually – and the lineup is pretty good. But they’ve eliminated the main stage, and collapsed the fest to just two stages, one for acoustic and rock acts and one for metal bands. (Hopefully they’re nowhere near each other.)

It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks on that front, and I’m still trying to process it – not only the idea that the festival I’m going to see this year will be a tinier, more intimate thing, which may actually be a plus, but also the sad reality that I may never get to do this again. This will, in all likelihood, be my last Cornerstone Festival. It’s difficult to get my head around.

Here’s what I know, though. I’ve had some amazing times at Cornerstone, and met some incredible people. And on Wednesday, July 4, I’m going to pack up the car and drive south and do it one last time. I get to see some big names, like Iona and Neal Morse, but I’m more excited about one last C-Stone visit with some old favorites, like the Violet Burning and the 77s. And in a touch of poetry, the band that initially opened the first Cornerstone – the Choir, possibly my favorite band in the world – will close the final one. Couldn’t be more perfect.

One last time. I’ll be sure to tell you all about it.

* * * * *

And now, for someone who wouldn’t be caught dead at Cornerstone.

I’ve devoted a lot of space in this column to defending John Mayer from his own work. The man’s a world-class guitar player, and on stage, he’s a wizard. But when he gets into the studio, all of that energy dissipates. He’s never made an album I love, never made one that lives up to his estimable skills. Most importantly, he’s never made a record that feels real.

His last effort, 2009’s Battle Studies, was the worst of the lot. Studio-shined into complete irrelevance, the record was a sad slew of glossy ballads and mid-tempo snoozefests. Ever since “Daughters” hit big in 2003, Mayer’s been casting about for that next swoony hit, and he’s loaded down otherwise decent albums like Continuum with the latest rotten fruits of that search. I’ve long since given up hoping that he’ll capture the intensity of his live trio on disc, but with each new record, I grow more grateful that he nailed down “No Such Thing” when he did. The Mayer of Battle Studies would never write something so free.

I don’t want to give the impression that Mayer’s fifth album, Born and Raised, finally delivers on that score. In many ways, it’s the opposite of what I’ve been looking for from him – it’s a low-key, mellow, breezy record, his most mature to date. But it’s also the first one I unconditionally like. It’s funny. Mayer made his mark with “No Such Thing,” a song in which he promised never to grow up. With Born and Raised, he has finally and irrevocably broken that promise. And in the process, he’s made his first great album. Who knew?

Born and Raised is the product of a lot of soul-searching. Mayer’s been out of the public eye for a couple of years, following surgery on his vocal cords, and he went into virtual isolation, trying to figure out what to do next. What he decided, evidently, is to write his strongest collection of songs – earthy, folksy things, with honest and earnest lyrics – and record them without any of the radio-baiting gloss that has plagued his work. This is a simple thing, a modest and humble record, and because it’s so unfussy, it feels more genuine than anything Mayer’s ever done.

The title track is as good an example as anything here. It’s a slight thing, a lightly-strummed folk number with confessional lyrics: “All at once it gets hard to take, it gets hard to fake what I won’t be…” But it’s lovely. There’s some perfectly-pitched piano and organ from Chuck Leavell, a nice helping of tuneful harmonica, lap steel from the venerable Greg Leisz, and the heavenly backing vocals of David Crosby and Graham Nash. It’s a completely different sound for Mayer – more country-folk than blues-pop – and it suits him remarkably well.

There’s some blues here, most notably the sly grin of “Something Like Olivia,” but it’s hanging-out-in-the-backyard blues, tasteful and mellow. The heart of this album is in its sparser tracks, like the darker “If I Ever Get Around to Living,” accented perfectly by Leavell’s electric piano. “Shadow Days” is the closest thing to a hit here (which is why it’s the first single), and even that feels looser somehow, more earned. And because of this tone, he can go for a fanciful number like “Walt Grace’s Submarine Test, January 1967” and not watch it float out of his grasp.

This album never really stops impressing, right up to its final song, “A Face to Call Home.” A lovely duet with Sara Watkins (of Nickel Creek fame), this ode to domesticity could very well be that slow-dance hit he’s been chasing for nine years, and he got here honestly. There’s not a false note to be found, nothing that cries out to be played on the radio and at weddings, which is why it works so damn well.

I’ve always liked Mayer, and until now, always walked away from his studio albums shaking my head. Not this time. It might just be that I’m getting older too, and these more grown-up songs work for me in ways they wouldn’t have only a few years ago. But there’s no denying that Mayer has changed things up for the better here, finally approaching his music organically, from the heart. That makes all the difference. Born and Raised is a delight, the best record of Mayer’s career, and hopefully the first of many he makes on this new path. I always knew he had it in him.

* * * * *

Keeping things short this week. Next week, the Beach Boys reunite. God only knows whether this will suck. 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.

So I thought a lot about how to write this one.

I usually plan these columns pretty far in advance, looking for common threads between the artists I’m reviewing. And I admit that this week I got lazy. The three bands I have on tap this time – Garbage, Best Coast and Beach House – are all fronted by distinctive female voices. And so I just said, “Hey, they’re all girls. That’s a theme. Let’s go with it.”

But isn’t there something downright sexist about that? I’d never base a column on artists who were all men, as if that were something special that tied them together. Shirley Manson, Bethany Cosentino and Victoria Legrand have, as far as I can tell, nothing in common except their gender. It’s just lazy. Garbage could easily fit into a column about reunited bands, or artists eschewing major labels. Best Coast could anchor a piece about fizzy pop revivalists, and Beach House is the dreamiest dream pop band around. Heck, the latter two could be in a column about duos.

So why did I group them together as women-fronted acts? I’m not sure. We’re well past the age when female artists were a novelty, and had to be sexy to get a record label to notice them. (Katy Perry and her ilk aside – that will always be a thing, I’m afraid.) I don’t really think demographically when picking favorites, but I do keep track of how many women make it into my top 10 list each year. Last year, two. The year before that, same thing. Three women made it into my first quarter report from 2012.

And while I know I select these entries based on musical quality – or at least my perception of it – and nothing else, I still feel bad about that ratio. I don’t know why. It’s probably representative – about 25 or 30 percent of my collection belongs to female artists. That makes me feel bad too, even though I know far fewer albums by women are released each month. But I don’t know why I feel bad. I have no intention of setting up a quota system for female artists in my top 10 list. For one thing, these musicians don’t need my help. Ani Difranco, Aimee Mann, Joanna Newsom, Karin Bergquist of Over the Rhine, Kathleen Edwards, Kate Bush – the word “female” isn’t even important. They’re all just fantastic artists.

Maybe it’s just that I still feel like there aren’t enough opportunities for women in the music business, outside the standard radio-pop game, and I feel like I should use this platform to promote the great women tunesmiths I discover. But then, there aren’t enough opportunities for real, honest-to-god artists in the music biz, whatever their gender. And if I want to promote anything, I want to promote that. One of the three records I have for you this week has a really good chance of making it into the top 10 list this year. That alone is worth shouting from the rooftops.

So yes, it’s all women this week. But no, I won’t be focusing on what is, in the final analysis, the least significant thing about them. I’m not talking about them because they’re women. I’m talking about them because they’re good.

* * * * *

I’m not sure Garbage will ever get enough credit for their influence on popular music.

In 1995, when grunge ruled the world, Garbage took that sound and turned it on its ear, infusing it with electronic sweetness and delectable melodies. The lyrics on their first album were just as morose and self-loathing as anything else on the radio, but the songs were bright bursts of loud, blissful fun. In a lot of ways, Garbage put the hooks back into raucous guitar music – “Only Happy When It Rains” has one a mile wide – and it wasn’t lost on anyone that one of the guiding lights of the band was Butch Vig, producer of Nevermind.

I’d never suggest that Garbage invented power pop. That would be idiotic. But they did popularize a certain style of it. Before they came along, the radio was sharply divided between synthesizer pop and guitar rock, and Garbage merged the best parts of both, knocking those walls down. It went on to be a genre all its own – pop music with processed beats and raging guitars was the norm for a long time. Perhaps the best example of it I can think of now is Kelly Clarkson’s massive 2004 hit “Since U Been Gone.” That’s a Garbage song.

The most interesting analysis of the new Garbage album I’ve heard came courtesy of Lindsay Zoladz’ review on Pitchfork. Garbage, she said, was never alternative, in that they offered a synthesis of everything on the radio in the ‘90s. But now, by staying exactly the same as they always have, they’re out of step with everything – and hence, actually alternative. I really like that, even though it doesn’t quite hold up. Garbage’s reunion album, Not Your Kind of People, is a bit more of a departure than I expected, and considerably better than their last effort, 2005’s tired Bleed Like Me.

For one thing, it’s a lot more electronic. The pulsing synth bass takes over for the dirty guitars on opener “Automatic Systematic Habit,” on which Shirley Manson swears she will not be your dirty little secret. The grunge quotient has been dialed way down – when the guitars kick in on the singalong “Big Bright World,” the screeching keyboards all but overtake them, and the riff of single “Blood for Poppies” is more of a distorted bit of blues over a big beat. The chorus is almost Shania Twain, actually.

For another, the shoegaze-style moodiness has been emphasized, which is a very good thing. “Felt” could be a My Bloody Valentine song, and it’s like nothing else this band has done. “Sugar” is a low-key synth epic dripping with longing, and closer “Beautiful Freak” may be the prettiest thing in the Garbage catalog. These tunes effectively balance off the bombast of “Battle in Me,” one of the few with the old ’90s guitar sound, and they give you a sense of what a strong singer Manson can be.

But I can completely understand giving this a cursory listen and thinking that little has changed. It’s been seven years since Garbage released an album, and this is not some screaming left turn into an undiscovered country. Not Your Kind of People is still a strong collection of hummable pop songs with interesting production. The shift is subtle – Manson’s lyrics are less bitter and more encouraging (aside from “I Hate Love,” of course), and the sound is a little lighter, a little brighter. It’s not a seismic shift, but it is a change, and they should be recognized for making it.

I’m not sure what made Manson and the boys want to come back, but they’re finding a completely different music world than the one they left in 2005. I don’t know if a band like Garbage fits in. But then, listening to Not Your Kind of People, I’m not sure they care a whole lot. They’ve made a few alterations, but this holds true: if you liked them before, you still will.

* * * * *

Two years ago, I wondered whether Best Coast had another trick up their sleeves.

The duo’s winsome debut, Crazy For You, was 31 minutes of reverb-soaked, ‘50s-inspired pop about boys, and it was just adorable. Bethany Cosentino knows her way around a simple, ingratiating melody, and her short, slight tunes fit her lovely voice perfectly. It was a fine, fun record, but I figured they couldn’t do another one like it without sounding stuck in a rut.

Well, Bethany and her drummer, Bobb Bruno, haven’t changed a whole lot on their second album, The Only Place, but in essence, they’ve changed everything. This second record is three minutes longer than their first, and it again contains short, simple pop songs. But Best Coast enlisted the great Jon Brion to produce this one, and he opened up their sound immeasurably. Gone are the saturated sheets of six-string noise, leaving minimalist, well-arranged, bouncy bedroom pop. It’s just as adorable as their last outing, but much more varied and interesting.

Take the glorious, shimmering clean guitar sounds of “No One Like You,” complete with ‘50s girl-group percussion. The chorus is just “no, no, no, no-o-oh,” but it’ll imprint itself on your brain. Cosentino adds layers of guitar as the song goes along, and she harmonizes with herself beautifully. “How They Want Me to Be” is similar – simple chords chiming away, Cosentino’s solo-voiced backing track holding the whole thing together as she sings, “I don’t want to be how they want me to be, I want you…”

While Cosentino spent most of Crazy for You in love, she spends much of The Only Place out of it, either heartbroken or longing. There’s absolutely no depth to this, you understand – this is old-school pop music. “Do You Love Me Like You Used To” is exactly what it sounds like: “I wake up to the morning sun, when did my life stop being so fun, wish I could care about someone…” It’s all kind of like that. But it’s great fun, and with Brion’s production, The Only Place outdoes the debut. They changed everything they needed to, and kept everything else in its right place.

* * * * *

The big winner of the week, though, is Beach House.

The Baltimore duo’s fourth album is called Bloom, and I could not imagine a more perfect title. Since 2006, Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally have been refining and expanding their sound, building it up from the humble beginnings of their self-titled debut. In retrospect, the only element in place on that first effort was Legrand’s voice, a glorious paradox of light and shade. The idea of Beach House – a widescreen dream-pop band as big as the world and as light as a cloud – was there, but it took some time to bring that vision to life.

But man, have they ever. In the ensuing six years, Legrand and Scally figured out how to write a Beach House song, and they replaced the lazy synths of their first couple of records with thick walls of keyboards and delicate strands of guitar. Their last one, 2010’s Teen Dream, was like a great leap forward, and Bloom doesn’t so much redefine as perfect. The songs are better, the arrangements fuller, and finally, the sound of the band matches the grandeur of Legrand’s voice.

If you’ve heard the opening track, “Myth,” you know what I mean. It sounds like Beach House to its very core, but somehow a more thoroughly realized version than we’ve heard before. The lovely oscillating guitars and keys that provide its skeleton are fleshed out with gorgeous atmospherics, subtle percussion, and a simply superb melody. Beach House doesn’t write songs to hum along with – they’re much more interested in creating out-of-body experiences – but the tunes on Bloom are never less than tuneful anyway. They’re not an ambient band, they’re a pop band with ambiance.

My favorite track on Bloom is called “Other People.” It wafts in on a droning synth and ride cymbals, but before long, Legrand steps in and takes the song dancing. From there, it just soars, the melody taking some delightful turns over Scally’s chiming guitar tones. In a lot of ways, though, that’s the A-plus on an album full of A-level material. Beach House has done exactly what my favorite artists always have: they’ve staked off territory, and slowly made it their own. There’s no one else around right now who sounds like this band, and if they want to just keep on refining this dreamy, delightful sound for the rest of their career, that would be fine with me.

* * * * *

Next week, thoughts on Cornerstone, and the surprisingly excellent new John Mayer album. 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 was a philosophy minor in college.

Philosophy, as anyone who has studied it will tell you, is utterly fascinating and completely useless. My philosophy classes helped shape my thinking on a lot of different subjects, but I’ve yet to use anything I learned in them for any practical purpose whatsoever. I was a communications major, too, so in a lot of ways, I went to college to learn to think and talk.

Anyway, one of the courses I remember vividly was called Philosophy of Gender. It was basically an examination of gender tropes, with not as much emphasis on debunking of those tropes as I would have liked. One of the books I was forced to claw my way through was called Fire in the Belly, by Sam Keen. It essentially imagines the perfect male archetype, mainly by breaking up every human trait into male and female boxes.

That “fire in the belly” of the title is that spark that drives men forward. It’s also a handy phrase to illustrate something relatively intangible in the music world, an energy and creative force exhibited by only the hungriest of bands and artists. I borrowed that usage from Marillion’s song “King”: “They call you a genius, ‘cause you’re easier to sell, but the fire in your belly that gave you the songs is suddenly gone…”

It’s surprising to me how easy it is to pinpoint the moment in so many bands’ lives when the fire in the belly goes out. It’s not even a comment on the quality of the work – lots of artists go on to create perfectly fine records year after year, long after their flame has been extinguished. For me, fire in the belly means trying new things, exploring creative avenues you’ve yet to walk down. It means not being afraid to set the house you live in ablaze, just to see what will happen.

I’m using all this as preamble to talking about Keane, a band many believe never had that fire. I disagree, of course. I think Keane is one of the most exciting pop bands to emerge in the past 20 years. For one thing, they write remarkable songs – unfailingly melodic, full of graceful and surprising turns, big and bold and fearless. Anyone who thinks they’re milksops hasn’t listened to Under the Iron Sea, a startlingly abrasive and constantly searching record of recrimination disguised as a piano-pop singalong. I know few bands of Keane’s stature willing to jump from the synths-as-guitars stomp of “Is It Any Wonder” to the bare emotion of “Hamburg Song” to the disconnected jazz of “Broken Toy,” but they did it in style.

The members of Keane have defined themselves by their restlessness. They’ve never played it safe – after Iron Sea, they took a full-bore dive into ‘80s pop with the shimmering Perfect Symmetry, which was precisely the last thing anyone expected them to do. (The opening of “Spiralling” still surprises me, five years later.) Then on the Night Train EP, they went crazy – they enlisted rapper K’naan for two songs, covered a Japanese pop tune, and brought guitars to the forefront like never before. Oh, and two of the band members then decided to form a country act, Mt. Desolation, as a side project. This is pure, fearless creative drive.

So what, then, to make of Strangeland, Keane’s just-released fourth album? You could say that this collection of songs plays it safe, and heads back to basics. But it’s deeper than that, I think. Strangeland is like a visit to an alternate dimension, one in which Keane never took any risks. This parallel-Earth Keane responded to the success of their debut, Hopes and Fears, by making inferior copies of it year after year, until here we are – an album that sounds like old-school Keane, but contains little of the inspiration and imagination of their best work.

Strangeland is a deliberate attempt to make an inoffensive piano-pop album that will appeal to those masses who didn’t quite take to K’naan’s guest spots. It’s encouraging music for the middle of the road. It is exactly what Keane’s detractors think they have always offered. It is, without question, the blandest, safest album they have ever made.

And here is how I know Keane is a band worth following: it’s pretty damn good anyway.

Once you get past the idea that this is the kind of album they’ve decided to make, it becomes clear that they did it very well. There are 16 songs on the deluxe edition of Strangeland, and the quality is consistent throughout. These are good – not great, merely good – tunes, all of them. Even the worst of them, “Sovereign Light Café,” gets stuck in my head. The question isn’t whether this album is any good. It’s whether this is the kind of good album they should be making.

Take the first single, “Silenced By the Night.” It’s pretty simple, never straying from the few notes it lays down in the beginning. In a lot of ways, it never takes off – there’s a trademark Tom Chaplin “Ooo-ooh” near the end, but there’s no screaming detour of a bridge, no moment where the song heads for the stratosphere. But it’s marvelous anyway – Tim Rice-Oxley’s ascending and descending keyboard motif is lovely, and Chaplin sings the hell out of it, as always. It’s not special, and yet it is.

So much of Strangeland is like that. A few songs – “Disconnected,” “Day Will Come,” “In Your Own Time” – bring out the killer melodies, but even these are streamlined and buffed to a smooth sheen. “Watch How You Go” reminds me of the many sins of solo Paul McCartney, with its twee melody and borderline trite lyrics. (You won’t believe how well Chaplin sells this one, though.) “On the Road” is like old U2 filtered through old Coldplay, and features the simplest melody of any Keane song yet. But I’m singing it, and chair-dancing to it.

God knows I should hate a piece of blandly encouraging fluff like “The Starting Line,” but I never will. It’s very simple, very straightforward and regal, and finds Chaplin singing this: “Drag your heart up to the starting line, forget the ghosts that make you old before your time, it’s too easy to get left behind…” It is earnest to a fault, open-hearted to the point of mockery, and yet, it works for me. All of Strangeland is vaguely optimistic – even the breakup song, “Watch How You Go,” is more mournful than angry, Chaplin wishing his lost love the best.

And there are some gems in the back half, including the brooding “Black Rain,” the wistful closer “Sea Fog” (which contains a great Tom Chaplin moment), and “Day Will Come,” the song here that comes closest to the youthful energy of old. This is a very well-crafted album of decent songs, and I’m finding that I like it more with each listen.

But it’s missing that fire, that spark, that explosion of life that drove Keane’s previous efforts. Some may not even hear the difference – Keane has a reputation for soft-rocking their way through one bland hit after another, and the people who believe that will get 16 more bullets for that gun here. But I can hear it. This is Keane deliberately growing up and calming down. The fire in their belly is dwindling. I hope they decide to rekindle it.

* * * * *

If you want creative fire, though, you won’t do any better lately than Bryan Scary’s new record, Daffy’s Elixir.

Bryan Scary is a pop wunderkind from Brooklyn, a guy with an insanely restless imagination and the chops to follow it wherever it leads. His jaw-droppingly good band is called The Shredding Tears, and they’ve made two twisty, exuberant, ear-popping albums and an equally stunning EP. I really have no idea who Scary’s music is for – there’s bits of Queen and Supertramp and ELO and high-concept prog and 1970s Elton John mixed in here, but mainly, it’s just crazy. Unfailingly melodic and brilliant, but crazy.

Scary is the kind of musician Kickstarter was made for. The campaign for Daffy’s Elixir raised more than $16,000, and he used that money to make something utterly uncompromising. The album is a 70-minute conceptual piece about a steampunk old west, and the people (and robots) who live there. It comes packaged in a hand-made book bound with string, featuring western-style drawings on parchment-type paper. There’s no doubt that everything about this record is the way he wanted it.

And it’s his magnum opus. The 15 songs on Daffy’s Elixir live in the same universe as Scary’s other work, but they’re miles beyond it. This album is so dense, so packed with delightful little moments, that it will take at least three listens to even map it out in your head. Scary eases you in with “The Wicked Frontier,” a loping piano-and-harmonies tune that sets the old west theme, and “Ziegfield Station,” the only thing here that might stand a chance at becoming a hit. After these two songs – which are both fantastic, by the way – the record takes off, and never touches down again.

There’s something new to catch your ear in every few seconds of “Cable Through Your Heart,” which darts from oscillating piano triplets to a quick-step shuffle to a harpsichord-and-choir interlude, ending up in a glorious chorus. Oh, and there are Mariachi horns and shimmering cellos, too. It’s a masterpiece, and Scary’s just getting warmed up. “Silver Lake Mining Company” marries its thudding, bass-heavy verses to a strummed, folksy chorus, which then melts into an orchestral bridge and a dirty guitar solo. “Diamonds” starts with some glorious harmonies over harpsichord, but by the time its five minutes and 41 seconds are up, it’s worked in a disco beat and some glammy touches worthy of Kevin Barnes.

And on it goes like that, never losing momentum, never failing to surprise. “You Might Be Caught in Tarantella” drifts from a Sleigh Bells parody to a soaring pop verse to a sprightly chorus with an absolutely infectious ukulele strum. “The Tale of Opal Dawn” brings that ukulele back for an uncommonly beautiful piece that brings Brian Wilson to mind – until it erupts into pure pop euphoria. “Owe Mister O,” concerning the ever-present villain of Daffy’s Elixir, glides in on a “Mr. Roboto” synth lick, but quickly turns into a foreboding (yet still utterly hummable) Jellyfish-style romp.

And far from petering out before the end of this 15-song behemoth, Daffy’s Elixir concludes with its most intense and complex number. “Data Mountain” is eight minutes long, and any one of those minutes packs enough in to make your head feel swimmy. When Scary kicks over the tables with a motion-blurred piano solo, you won’t be able to suppress the grin. And when the song ends with a massive grand finale, you’ll know you’ve heard something special.

There’s nary a second of Daffy’s Elixir that sounds phoned in, or created with anything but the purest joy of imagination. This is the fire I’m talking about – the will to make an epic monster of a record on your own terms, with no thought spared for anyone who doesn’t jump on board. This album is a phenomenon, a thing that should not be, a miracle of creation. It is… well, frankly, it’s awesome. You can hear the whole thing here, and buy it here, if you’re so inclined.

* * * * *

Next week, the girls take over, with new records from Garbage, Best Coast and Beach House. I’ve also just learned that this year’s Cornerstone Festival will be the last. I’ll have more thoughts on that soon, beyond the inexpressible sadness I’m feeling right now.

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.

There are a lot of things we could talk about this week. But only one of them really matters, and that’s the death of Adam Yauch, better known as MCA.

It should go without saying that the Beastie Boys were a band unlike any other. In an age where pop acts are assembled in a boardroom with all eyes on the bottom line, you couldn’t make up the Beasties if you tried. Three wiseass Jewish boys from New York in a hardcore band that decides to turn hip-hop, and then revolutionize the art of sampling, and then, what the hell, play jazz-funk instrumentals on the side? And at the same time, complete a graceful transformation from smirking satirists to socially-conscious activists? What alternate universe are you living in?

The fact that the Beasties not only did all that with unrelenting artistic integrity, but remained perennially popular for 25 years is kind of amazing. And right at the forefront was MCA, he of the gravely, lower-pitched voice and the nimble bass playing skills. He announced himself early: “Born and bred Brooklyn USA, they call me Adam Yauch, but I’m MCA,” he rapped on “No Sleep Till Brooklyn.” But he was always sort of the quiet Beatle of the group, more sincere-sounding than either Mike D. or Ad-Rock.

The Beasties rarely had anything to say, but when they did, it was often Yauch who said it. There’s his signature bit in “Sure Shot,” where he speaks out against the misogyny of rap: “I want to say a little something that’s long overdue, the disrespect to women has got to be through, to all the mothers and sisters and the wives and the friends, I want to offer my love and respect to the end…” There’s the environmental red alert “The Update,” and the Buddhist embrace of “Boddhisattva Vow.” MCA was the conscience of the group, the guy who helped steer them toward the elder statesmen status they achieved in later years.

I first heard the Beastie Boys when everyone else did – when Licensed to Ill exploded all over 1987. I was 13 years old, and a good Christian boy, which means I secretly loved this record, but had to act like it was an affront to all that’s holy. It’s kind of amazing how tame it sounds now, how obvious the joke is, but in ’87, this was a record you just didn’t tell your parents you were listening to. You hid it in your pocket (cassettes were really small) and played it on your Walkman. And if an adult asked, you were listening to Michael Jackson.

In those early days of MTV, “Fight For Your Right” was absolutely everywhere. It followed hard on the heels of Run-DMC’s “Walk This Way” in smashing down the barriers between rap and rock. It helped that the Beasties were actually a hardcore punk band before making the switch to hip-hop, so sampling Led Zeppelin beats and calling up Kerry King for a solo on “No Sleep” probably seemed less strange to them. For me, it was just fun. I remember doing a parody version of “Fight For Your Right” with some friends at summer camp when I was 14. It was called “Fight For Your Right (To Skip Camp).” Yeah.

In time, the Beasties grew embarrassed by Licensed to Ill – it was all a satirical joke, ripping on frat-boy humor, but by the time they were pulling out a giant inflatable penis onstage, the point of it all was probably lost. In some ways, Fred Durst is their fault, but that’s like blaming Stephen King for Dean Koontz. Some things you just can’t be responsible for. The Boys have tried to bury that record, so the fact that “Fight For Your Right” was probably the most-posted (and most-covered) song in Adam Yauch tributes is ironic.

I have a hard time being angry about that, for a couple of reasons. For one, Licensed to Ill is a stone classic. It holds up remarkably well today, and it’s permanently etched into the cultural consciousness. Just the other week, I made a “She’s Crafty” joke in mixed company, with ages ranging from 23 to almost 40, and everyone got it. So I can’t fault anyone for loving it. And also, sad as it may seem, artists don’t get to choose the work that affects the most people. For many, Licensed to Ill was the best Beastie Boys album, the only one that really mattered. Those people are wrong, and the album just doesn’t represent who the Beasties eventually became, but it still means something to the people who grew up with it.

For me, even if Licensed weren’t an awesome piece of work, it would still have financed the next step in the band’s evolution. And since that next step was the unimpeachable Paul’s Boutique, I’m grateful for it. I’m not sure anyone expected the Beasties to even make a second record, let alone completely flip the game on its ear. But in 1989, that’s just what they did. Paul’s Boutique was a hip-hop record so far ahead of its time that it was considered a commercial and artistic flop upon its release. Its stature has grown immeasurably in the ensuing 23 years, and now it’s rightly considered one of the best and most important rap albums ever made.

Paul’s Boutique was recorded by the Beasties and the Dust Brothers during the wild west years of sampling, before there were any laws in place to cover copyright infringement of sampled material. It’s constructed almost entirely out of an intricate, dense web of pilfered beats and instrumental sections and snatches of dialogue, so much so that there’s an entire website dedicated to mapping out exactly which sections of which old records were used to create it. It’s a masterpiece of production, and it contains some of the Beasties’ best songs: “Shadrach,” “The Sounds of Science,” “Hey Ladies,” “Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun,” and on and on.

It took me a while to appreciate Paul’s Boutique. I was 15 when it came out, and just entering my teenage metalhead phase. Real instruments were my thing, and I didn’t really get sampling. But the Beasties won me back with Check Your Head in 1992, a dirty punk-rap record played on real guitars, bass and drums. Its sound is an echoey muck, distorted and taped with cruddy microphones – it’s like the first garage-rock hip-hop album. The grooves were massive, and the funky instrumentals – making their debut here – were just wonderful.

Check Your Head’s sequel, the stomping Ill Communication, was just as good. In fact, I think the Beasties were untouchable all the way through Hello Nasty, their 1998 mash-up of rap, rock, reggae and balladry. No two songs on that record sound alike, and it contains some of their prettiest material: “And Me,” “I Don’t Know,” “Instant Death.” It’s a free-spirited, let’s-do-anything kind of record, and they never made another one like it. After that, they settled into their elder statesmen role, and while I like the records that came after – the old-school To the Five Boroughs, the instrumental The Mix-Up – I missed the freewheeling style of their older work.

The last Beastie Boys album of Yauch’s life, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, brought some of that back. And it gave MCA the chance to spin a couple more killer rhymes, like this one from “Make Some Noise”: “Pass me the scalpel, I’ll make an incision, I’ll cut off the part of your brain that does the bitchin’, put it in formaldehyde and put it on the shelf, and you can show it to your friends and say, ‘That’s my old self.’” And it contains “Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win” and “Lee Majors Come Again,” two final triumphant bursts of creativity.

And now Yauch is gone, and we’ll never get another one. I’m sure we’ll see the requisite compilations of half-completed tracks, and the other two Boys may branch out into solo work, or continue making music together. But there will never be another new Beastie Boys album. The Beasties were a band that kind of defies maudlin retrospectives – they carved an indelible place for themselves in music history without ever trying to. They just did whatever they wanted, whether it made sense to anyone else or not.

I wish there were more bands like them. I don’t know a single one. Yauch was only 47 years old when he succumbed to the cancer he’d been fighting since 2009. I haven’t even mentioned his work in film – he directed a few features and started Oscilloscope Pictures in 2002, the company that distributed smaller gems like Meek’s Cutoff and Exit Through the Gift Shop – or his commitment to the Tibetan independence movement. Like his band, Yauch was one of a kind.

There’s no debating Yauch’s influence as a performer and an advocate. But for me, what I will miss most about Yauch and the Beastie Boys is their willingness to go wherever their particular muse led them, consequences be damned, and stick to those artistic guns. They were a tightly-knit trio of consistently unpredictable, madcap geniuses working in their own little universe. I’ll miss them a lot.

Rest in peace, MCA. And thanks for everything.

* * * * *

On top of that, I’ve just learned that Maurice Sendak died. His Where the Wild Things Are had a big impact on me as a child, and the 2009 movie version was simply splendid. Man, this week sucks.

Next week, back to music reviews with some combination of Keane, Bryan Scary, Beach House, Best Coast and those long-awaited My Bloody Valentine remasters. 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.

May already? Wow. In about a month, I’ll be 38. Or, as my sister would call it, twenty-eighteen.

Speaking of old people, on my birthday (June 5), the Beach Boys will release their first album of my lifetime that I will care about. It’s the much-vaunted reunion record, and it’s called That’s Why God Made the Radio. Produced by and featuring Brian Wilson, for the first time in decades. And I’m alternately excited for this and dreading its very existence.

Last week, we got our first taste of the new record when the boys released this terrifically cheesy video for the title track. And, well… it’s not bad. It sounds to me like Brian’s pre-SMiLE solo work, but what elevates it above that is the delirious harmonies. Mike Love was right about one thing – the Beach Boys are a vocal group above all, and man, they’re just a breed apart in that area. The honey-delicious harmonies on this song make me smile down to my soul.

I’m not expecting great things from this. Then again, I wasn’t expecting to like Brian’s last few solo records very much either, and I did. In a very real way, reuniting with the Beach Boys brings Brian Wilson’s tragic yet redemptive story full circle. He’s revisited Pet Sounds, he’s conquered his fear of SMiLE, he’s made a recent solo classic (That Lucky Old Sun), and now he’s back behind the reins of the band that made him a star. I really hope this is a good album, but in some ways, that’s beside the point. It’s further proof that one of America’s few true geniuses is whole again, and loving life.

As a lifelong fan, that’s a pretty cool birthday present.

* * * * *

Speaking of geniuses, here’s Rufus Wainwright.

One of my favorite things about Rufus is that you never know what to expect. His songs are full of twisty melodies and sit-up-and-take-notice moments, and on his first few efforts (particularly the smashing Want records), his production choices have been delightfully unpredictable. Wainwright makes huge albums, full of pomp and verve and ambition, and he’s always putting on a show – from the camp classic “Gay Messiah” to the delirious “I Don’t Know What It Is” to his signature “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk,” he writes songs for an audience, to be crooned or belted from the stage.

Which is one reason his last effort, All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu, was so unsettling for a lot of people. It was stark – just Rufus, alone with a piano, and it felt a little like intruding on his private backstage world. The songs were wonderful, as always, but it was the first Wainwright album that didn’t feel like a performance. It was especially jarring coming on the heels of both his Judy Garland tribute album, and his go-for-broke live record Milwaukee at Last. A lot of fans didn’t know what to make of it.

Well, not to worry, folks, because the Rufus Wainwright we both love is back. His new record, Out of the Game, is a triumphant return to full-blown pop music, and sports his best set of songs since Want One. But it’s no retreat, no retread – Out of the Game sounds like no Rufus Wainwright album before it. It’s a loose, freewheeling, breezy album that dispenses with the occasional fussiness of prior records. This one sounds like an effortless breath of fresh air from first note to last. It’s a Wainwright album for anyone and everyone.

Much of that can be traced back to producer Mark Ronson, working with Wainwright for the first time. Ronson is known for producing most of Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black, and has manned the boards for Lily Allen, Christina Aguilera and Robbie Williams. He’s a master at crafting campy, fun music that doesn’t vault over the line into ridiculous. Ronson gets it – he knows how to work with showmen, and reveal without revealing, if that makes sense. The greasepaint never runs on Out of the Game, but we see Rufus beneath it all anyway.

If, like me, you think Rufus Wainwright is one of the finest songwriters around right now, this album will do nothing to dispel that notion. There’s not a one I don’t like, and most of them offer up some of Wainwright’s sweetest melodies to date. The title track kicks it off with a George Harrison-style guitar flourish over a lite ‘70s pop beat, Rufus crooning splendid lyrics about growing older and happily sitting on the sidelines. “Look at you suckers, does your mama know what you’re doing,” he scolds in the chorus, and it’s like the flip side of “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk.” Wainwright is only 38, but he’s already writing graceful songs about middle age.

So that song’s a lot of fun, and the record doesn’t let up from there. The reproachful “Jericho” ambles along amiably until the gospel-tinged backing vocals come in, and then it gets awesome. The strings and horns make their first appearance on this one, accenting Wainwright’s finger-wagging “You ain’t ever gonna change” refrain. “Barbara” ups the ‘70s pop quotient even more, with a lazy beat, a walking bassline, some fluttering synths and a gently rising melody, sung in that inimitable voice.

“Welcome to the Ball” is a pop epic, flying on supple strings, horns and backing vocals. When the muted trumpets take over around two and a half minutes in, it’s pure euphoria. In contrast, “Montauk” is a beautiful hymn to his daughter, imagining a future visit to see Wainwright and his partner, Jorn Weisbrodt, when they’re both old. The repetitive melody, sung over trilling pianos and synths, is simply gorgeous.

“Bitter Tears” is perhaps the album’s biggest surprise, a synth-stomp disco number with guitar playing by Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It’s all kinds of awesome. But “Perfect Man” may be the album’s best tune. Sauntering forward on a “Billie Jean”-ish beat, Rufus suddenly pulls out a classical-tinged melody that skips beats like stones. It all leads to a singalong chorus that just knocks me out: “I’m doing all that I can trying to make the roses bloom in unison…” His sister Martha Wainwright lends a hand on vocals, and the siblings blend perfectly.

Martha comes back for the moving closer, the seven-minute “Candles,” and she brings the rest of the family with her: dad Loudon Wainwright III, and sibs Anna and Sloan Wainwright, all pitching in on a mournful, marvelous ode to helplessness. “I’ve tried to do all that I can, but the churches have run out of candles,” Rufus sings in that perfectly pitched voice, as the song builds up, finally bursting out in a bagpipe solo that closes things out. It’s tremendous.

To my mind, Rufus Wainwright didn’t need to make a comeback album. I’ve liked his last few efforts fine, and even his biggest stumble, 2007’s Release the Stars, is only lackluster in comparison with the gems that preceded it. But if he felt pressure to bring back the pure pop wonder, he certainly delivered with Out of the Game. In fact, I roundly disagree with his premise. If he was ever out of the game, this sparkling joy of a record gets him right back in it.

* * * * *

Speaking of people who have never left the game, there’s Jack White.

Consider this. Jack White first bounded onto the national stage in 1999, when his band the White Stripes released their self-titled debut. Since then, he’s masterminded 10 albums with three different bands, released an onslaught of limited-edition slices of vinyl through his Third Man Records, and produced more than 20 albums for artists as diverse as Wanda Jackson, the Greenhornes and Loretta Lynn.

And in all that time, he’s never done one very important thing: released a record under his own name. Until now, that is. Blunderbuss, which flew onto store shelves (and then off of them just as quickly) last month, is Jack White’s first-ever solo album, and perhaps his first-ever admission that when people pick up music from any of his projects, he’s the draw. He’s one of those idiosyncratic, magnetic musicians that comes along once or twice in a generation – not the most talented or brilliant guy out there, but the one you want to watch, all the time, because he’s always doing something interesting.

Blunderbuss follows suit – it’s not the best record you’re likely to hear this year, but it’s unfailingly interesting, and takes Jack White’s classic rock sound into new territory. Those of you who still lump him in with the other garage-rockers of the ‘90s (like the Hives and the Vines) will probably be surprised by the variety of this album. The hard-charging singles “Sixteen Saltines” and “Freedom at 21” are nifty, but once they’re done, White doesn’t really return to that riffs-and-drums sound again.

What he does, very well, is take you on a tour of ‘70s rock and pop, trying them on like suits. That’s not quite right, though, since nothing here sounds less than genuine. “Love Interruption” is your first indication of what’s coming – it’s entirely drumless, built on strumming acoustic guitars and electric piano, with some clarinet lines snaking in and out, and singer Ruby Amanfu sharing the spotlight. The title track is similarly gentle, with pedal steel and fiddle and some sweet piano from Brooke Waggoner. If you liked Led Zeppelin’s forays into country-folk, you’ll dig this.

The angry “Hypocritical Kiss” is in the same vein, and Waggoner drives both that and the spaghetti Western mini-epic “Weep Themselves to Sleep.” That one’s something else – it rises up, crests and breaks a few times, White’s howling voice riding those waves perfectly. He goes boogie on “I’m Shakin’,” then slows down a ‘50s rocker to nice effect on “Trash Tongue Talker.” And on “Hip(Eponymous) Poor Boy” he writes a delightful vagabond song, complete with some fluttering mandolin by Fats Kaplin.

White saves his best material for the end. “On and On and On” is the record’s moodiest number, starting off like “No Quarter,” but ending up in a gorgeous folk valley. And “Take Me With You When You Go” is all over the place, in the best way – it begins with an electric piano gallop, but stops short about two minutes in, leaping forward again on some fuzzy guitar, gospel-tinged vocals, and frenetic drums. It’s a fine closer.

Blunderbuss isn’t brilliant – there aren’t very many top-notch songs here, and White gets by more on style than craft. But it is a solid, enjoyable piece of work that travels to many new lands and plants the Jack White flag. As a first solo effort, it’s all you could ask for. I have no idea what the guy’s going to do next – that’s part of his incalculable charm – but if he keeps following the path he blazes here, I’ll be glad to keep listening.

* * * * *

Speaking of being glad to keep listening, next week we get Keane. Keane! 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.

In three days, I get to see the Choir play my hometown.

There are bands I like. There are bands I love. And then there’s the Choir. My relationship with the Choir goes so far beyond words like “love” that I can barely describe it. I’ve grown up with them, their music has scored virtually all of the important moments in my life. They’re like old friends I’ve known forever, and every few years, they send me a letter telling me about their lives and what they’ve been thinking about.

The Choir has helped shape my outlook on life like few bands. The first album of theirs I heard was 1990’s stunning Circle Slide, a record about doubt and love and mercy wrapped up in the greatest dark, swirly, ambient, reverbed pop music I’d ever heard. The Choir caught me on my way out of the church, and guided me into a more complex and nuanced spiritual place. They taught me that it’s all right to feel confused and doubtful, that there’s something funny about a lot of sad things, and that there’s something wonderful about love.

I recently took a trip back through the Choir’s 12-record catalog, and I came to the conclusion that there isn’t another artist out there with a body of work I love as much as this one. It’s not the finest music I’ve ever heard, and they’re not the best band in the world. But they are my favorite band, perhaps the one that means the most to me. I’m not sure anyone else hears what I hear in them, and I don’t know if that makes me too biased to properly assess their music or its place in the landscape.

I can’t care about that, though. I can only tell you what I hear, and how it affects me. And the Choir affects me like few other bands.

When I was a teenager, the Choir was some mythic outfit on the far side of the country, releasing albums without warning, and only to the one Christian bookstore near my house. When Choir albums magically showed up on the shelves there, it was like my birthday. Nowadays, it’s a really good time to be a Choir fan. Not only have they cultivated an online community, complete with plenty of advance notice of an impending release, but they’re in a particularly creative period now. Their last new album, 2010’s Burning Like the Midnight Sun, was their best in 20 years, and since then, the band has released an acoustic project called De-plumed, and guitarist/singer Derri Daugherty completed an ambient solo disc entitled Clouds Echo in Blue.

And now they’re back again, with album 13, The Loudest Sound Ever Heard. Three Choir albums in three years is unheard of, a gift to fans like me who can’t get enough of this band. But the album itself is, sadly, an indication that they need to slow down, take stock, and craft their next one a little more carefully. Loudest Sound isn’t a bad album by any means – I’ve been listening to it non-stop since it arrived in my mailbox, and it’s gaining ground with each play. But it lacks the punch of their last couple, and it sounds relatively uninspired to these ears.

Of course, a weaker Choir album still gets to me like little else. Whatever this album’s demerits, it still has the voice and guitar of Daugherty, the drums and words of Steve Hindalong, and the bizarre, off-kilter, beautiful way these guys make records. This one’s a little more smoothed-out and serious-minded than they’ve been in a while – bass god Tim Chandler is more restrained than usual – but it’s still delightfully weird in places.

And Hindalong has stepped up with his best set of lyrics in some time. Loudest Sound is a hopeful record full of wonder, and Hindalong’s words this time encapsulate a lot of what the Choir’s been about. The world is a difficult and painful place, but also a heartbreakingly beautiful one. The loudest sound of the title is initially the eruption of Krakatoa, referenced in “I’m Learning to Fly,” but turns out to be the heartbeat of a true friend, as explained in “Melodious.” That, in a nutshell, is the Choir – life is unexpected and dangerous, and we all need someone to hold on to. There’s still something wonderful about love.

So what is it about this record that isn’t knocking me out? I think some of the songs could have used more work. The opening track, “Strange Girl,” is one of the weaker ones, a mid-tempo yawner that doesn’t go much of anywhere. I do love Christine Glass Byrd’s countermelodies – her voice meshes with Daugherty’s beautifully – and I love that sax man Dan Michaels has such a prominent place on this tune, and elsewhere on Loudest Sound. The song just doesn’t do much for me.

Ditto “Cross That River,” this album’s epic. It’s six and a half minutes long, and it jogs in place for most of that time. The band is really proud of this one, and I’m not sure why. The lyric is splendid, but the two-chord music stays earthbound, despite Marc Byrd’s best efforts on the dreamy ambient guitar. (It’s one of only three songs the Hammock guitar wizard is on this time around.) This tune should put me in a trance, but it doesn’t. It’s grown on me considerably since I first heard it, but I still want more from the crescendo and the finale. There’s an energy missing from this song (and this record) that was in full force on Midnight Sun, just two years ago.

The rest of the first half is much more interesting. The aforementioned “I’m Learning to Fly” is this record’s finest pop song, starting off with that trademark Derri Daugherty chiming guitar, and building to a catchy chorus: “I’m living to love in a dying world, I’m learning to fly…” “Laughter of Heaven” is classic Choir, Daugherty’s clean guitar cutting through the sky. Hindalong’s on a journey here: “Embrace the mystery, unlearn, unknow, pray for serenity, you’re not in control, go higher, go deeper, surrender, let go, the laughter of heaven echoes in your soul…” This is just a great, great song.

“O How” keeps the streak going. It’s a lovely piece about the sadness that comes with being a parent, and its pretty melody is set against a cloud of otherworldly, beautiful noise. Daugherty weaves magic on this one – he’s all alone, and he shows he can bring the ambient guitar wonder just as well as Byrd. I quite like “The Forest,” too, after a few listens – it’s a simple, optimistic rock song that catches hold. Chandler’s at his best here, zipping all over the place, and rarely playing the note you’d expect him to.

The next three songs are all slowly growing on me. “Takin’ the Universe In” is a slow gallop with Michaels’ sax providing the bedrock, and Hindalong absolutely crushing his drums. “Melodious” is the acoustic ballad this time out, and it’s nice – some swell cello by Matt Slocum, some well-placed chimes, a fun lyric about Chandler. And “A World Away” features Hindalong’s best lyric here: “I’m a world away from enlightened, more than a stone’s throw from the truth, I’m a sad far cry from a man who never lies, but I’ll hold the lantern high for you…” It’s a very pretty tune, with some soaring lead guitar.

I’ve just realized that I haven’t said anything bad about these three songs, and listening to them again now, I’m not sure why I felt they didn’t work. I think my issue with this album is the lack of youthful energy that was so prevalent on their last couple of efforts. This is a mature, streamlined Choir album, mainly mid-tempo pieces with weighty lyrics, and all in a row like this, the effect is initially underwhelming. It’s the first Choir album in a long time that I haven’t loved immediately – it’s a more contemplative work that takes time.

And I like the closing track, “After All.” Those who have Clouds Echo in Blue will recognize it – it’s “My Imaginary Friend” with newly-minted lyrics and vocals by Daugherty and Leigh Nash of Sixpence None the Richer. Nash fits in quite well here, and the song is a lovely bit of ambience. “Are we mere specks of dust floating through the Milky Way? Are we here to learn to love? I think that’s true anyway…”

Had I written this review a week ago, it would have been far harsher, and would have included words like “mediocre” and “disappointing.” I’m glad I waited. The Loudest Sound Ever Heard is the first Choir album that’s taken its time to sink in, and while I still don’t think it’s perfect, or as good as they’ve been recently, I’m glad to have it. I will admit that I have given this record more chances than I would have if the words “The Choir” were not on the cover, but as I said above, this band and I go way back. And if you can’t extend grace to your friends, what kind of person are you?

That said, I want to love this, and I don’t. Not yet. As much as I have enjoyed hearing from these guys so often in the past few years, I think they need to take more time with their next effort, and make it something special. Even though The Loudest Sound Ever Heard isn’t my favorite of their records, the Choir is still my favorite band, and while there are glimmers of wonder here, I want my Choir records to shine to the heavens. This one doesn’t quite get there, but it’s still a Choir album, and I’m grateful to have heard it. And I’m grateful for the 12 before it, and the years of joy this band has brought me. It’s been a fine, fun time.

Check them out here.

* * * * *

Next week, two more contenders for my top 10 list from Rufus Wainwright and Bryan Scary. 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.

Hey, so guess what? I’m an uncle.

At 2:33 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, my sister Emily and her husband Bill had their first child, a healthy 8-pound, 10-ounce boy. (Well, I say Emily and Bill, but I’m fairly certain Emily did all the work.) They’ve chosen the name Luke, and I’m pretty sure Bill came up with it, so he can make Darth Vader jokes. (“Luke! I am your father!”) Which I totally support.

It was a bit of an odyssey getting Luke here – he was two weeks overdue, and Emily spent more time in the hospital lately than any of us would have liked. But she’s home, the baby is healthy, and all is well. And I can’t wait to come out there and meet him. And show him Star Wars. And play him his first Beatles album. And basically be his cool-ass uncle.

Congrats, guys. And welcome to the world, Luke.

* * * * *

You all know me, and you know what I like. So the idea that I’m anxiously anticipating the new Linkin Park album is probably surprising. Believe me, I’m surprised too.

But the band’s last album, 2010’s A Thousand Suns, impressed the hell out of me. It was their Great Leap Forward, a record so far beyond anything they’d done that it often sounded like the work of a different band. Just “Robot Boy” alone was worth the price of admission, but the fact that the band crafted a cohesive, front-to-back statement of the caliber of A Thousand Suns marked them as worth watching.

And so I am. Linkin Park’s fifth album, Living Things, will be released on June 26. The first single, “Burn It Down,” is streaming at their website. They seem to have given their guitar player the year off again, but the song is a catchy, creepy thing, and I like it. Even Mike Shinoda’s rapping. I’ve heard that the band went back to its basics on this album, and I’m hoping that isn’t true. The single could go either way – it’s more of an old-school Linkin Park song, but with much more interesting production.

We’ll see what the album brings. I’m hopeful they didn’t retreat from the artistic leaps of A Thousand Suns entirely. Or if they did, I hope it’s not a permanent condition.

* * * * *

I can usually tell when I’ve heard the album of the year.

It’ll sometimes take me a listen or two, but I’m pretty good at knowing when I have something special. It’s rarely a foregone conclusion – I expected Quiet Company’s We Are All Where We Belong to be great, but when the album landed, and I worked my way through it a few times, I knew it was the best thing I would hear in 2011. That said, I was open to other albums knocking that one off the top spot, but none did. And I kind of knew that none would.

I’m also pretty good at knowing when I haven’t heard the album of the year yet. I meandered through 10 months of 2006, sure I hadn’t discovered that one masterpiece that would top the list. And then came Joanna Newsom’s Ys, like a bolt from the blue. I second-guessed myself a couple times on that one, but if I’m honest, I knew from the first listen that it was the year’s best.

Every year, I wonder whether the 2006 experience will happen again – whether I’ll get to the end of the year without a clear front-runner, an album that gives me that special sense of awe and joy. Well, I’m thrilled beyond measure to be able to tell you that 2012 is not that kind of year. I have what I am pretty sure will be the best album I hear this year in my hands right now. It’s possible something will come along and dethrone this record at some point over the next eight months. But whatever manages it will have to be astonishingly good.

At the moment, though, the album of 2012 is A Church That Fits Our Needs, by a North Carolina band called Lost in the Trees.

I’m listening to it again now, and I can scarcely believe how much it still affects me, after probably three dozen spins. I first bought it on Ian Tanner’s recommendation (for which I have profusely thanked him), and I was in love from the first two minutes. I’m always saying that artists should strive for greatness, should pour every inch of themselves into their art and create as if they may never have the chance again. It’s surprisingly rare how many of them do, but every note of A Church That Fits Our Needs captures the pain and wonder of frontman Ari Picker, and communicates it with desperate, deeply felt, extraordinary artistry. It’s a finely-crafted work that feels like a flooding of the soul.

In 2008, Picker’s mother, stricken with cancer, took her own life, on the same day as his wedding. That’s her on the front cover of A Church That Fits Our Needs, and the 10 agonizing, searching songs within are Picker’s attempt to make sense of the senseless. The lyrics are filled with images of water and ghosts, and songs that lull and restore. The record begins with the sound of a film projector shuddering to life, taking us back through Picker’s memories, and the words he’s chosen are very like memory – hazy, indistinct, shifting perspectives, like snapshots of time, which occasionally sharpen into unsettling focus.

And the music. The music! Picker’s songs are darkly majestic things, with magnificent melodies and full orchestration. Opener “Neither Here Nor There” starts with delicately plucked acoustic guitar, but before it’s over, the sweeping strings and subtle percussion cloud lift the song into the stratosphere. “Red” is haunting from its first moment, Leah Gibson’s da-da-da vocals quickly giving way to violins over a shifting beat. The arrangements, all by Picker himself, are breathtaking.

“Golden Eyelids” is almost inhumanly beautiful. It’s built on a ‘50s doo-wop beat and a soaring melody, adorned with some gorgeous strings and horns – the chromatic string shimmy after each chorus gives me chills. Picker’s high, clear voice drives it home: “But no tears now that your cancer is fed, your soul shielded, your voice sings red…” As lovely as that is, “Icy River” brings me to tears each time. As the orchestra holds him up, Picker sings of pouring out his mother’s ashes. “Don’t you ever dare think she was weak-hearted,” he cries. “Like a ribbon of silver, I poured her body in the river…”

The songs on A Church That Fits Our Needs are clearly meant to go together, and explain one another. Picker references his twin sisters, who died after being born prematurely, in “Red,” and describes them as “born far too early, cut out and laid in a bed of heat” in “Golden Eyelids.” His mother’s artwork mentioned in “Neither Here Nor There” is discarded in “Icy River,” in a quote from her suicide note, and Picker brings that circle to a close on track nine, “An Artist’s Song.” This is an album, intended to be listened to in sequence, and then again, and again.

And it’s an emotionally devastating one. The delicate “This Dead Bird is Beautiful” contains several powerful moments, none more so than the single line “I’ll carry her, because she breathed I breathe.” If you can get through this song without crying, you’re better than me. “A golden armored sky will carry her, but I’ll always have her eyes…” It’s so lovely that when “Garden” explodes in with its pummeling bass line, it’s almost shocking.

The album’s climax is the extraordinary “An Artist’s Song,” a prayer addressed to Picker’s mother, a passionate painter who inspired his own love of art. “You walked through this horrid life, but you got to sing before you closed your eyes… so sing your hymn of faith, ‘cause I have none, your song is my fortress…” The strings and choir are somehow ghostly and heart-stoppingly loud at the same time. The sweeping melody about three and a half minutes in may be my favorite moment on the record.

But it all gives way to “Vines,” the moving, sparse closer. In the album’s final moments, Picker sings, “And my songs can try, but there are things that songs can’t say, so watch me fall away as I cower under your grace.” It’s stunningly beautiful, and I’m reduced to nothing. There are things songs, and words about songs, can’t say.

All I can tell you is that the experience of taking in A Church That Meets Our Needs over the last few weeks has been one of the most emotional of my music-listening life. Picker said he wanted to use this album to find a place for his mother’s soul to rest, a heaven she deserved – a lofty goal to be certain, and I don’t know how close he believes he came to doing it. Some might wonder why Picker thinks he can do such a thing with music. I wonder why more artists don’t believe in their music this much. It’s music. It’s boundless, infinite, beyond our attempts to hold it down and limit it. And this is the most powerful music I’ve heard in some time.

I fully expect to be touting this album’s greatness come December. I fully expect to be listening to it and loving it far beyond that. Ari Picker and Lost in the Trees have distilled oceans of pain and confusion into a remarkable album of unending beauty, one that leaves me speechless and destroyed. It’s an unflinching love letter from a son to his departed mother, and a gift to all of us. I’m grateful I lived to hear it. That’s all I can say. Like Picker at the album’s conclusion, I have no more words.

* * * * *

Next week, the Choir. 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.

Titles are important to me.

I don’t know that I can adequately explain why. It’s true that the title of an album, book or movie has no real impact on the quality of the thing itself. One of the best albums ever made is Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and if you strip that title of its cultural significance, it’s pretty silly. Would the album still be amazing if it were called something else? Definitely. Do I still love the album, even with the name it has? Also definitely.

But an album’s name is generally one’s first impression of it, and that’s important. Most often, I’ll hear a title before I hear a note from an upcoming release, and it’s fun to imagine what kind of album we’ll be getting just from its moniker. Serious? Silly? Self-important? All three, as in the case of Fiona Apple’s new record, The Idler Wheel is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw, and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do?

It really is difficult to tell anything about an album just from its name. I’m not sure anyone would guess the depth of composition on Frank Zappa’s Burnt Weeny Sandwich just from that phrase, for instance. But I like rolling titles around in my head for a while before hearing the records themselves, and that’s easier and more satisfying when the titles, you know, roll. Instead of stumble and pitch forward clumsily.

All that said, I’m still trying to decide what I think of the name Marillion has chosen for their 17th album. They’ve called it Sounds That Can’t Be Made. Now, despite the fact that I’m left wondering whether my CD will be blank (and at $45 for the deluxe edition pre-order, it better not be), I’m just not sure what they’re trying to evoke. It’s kind of a klutzy name, but if it ties back into the lyrics nicely, I’ll be happy with it. I imagine I would have had the same reaction to Anoraknophobia, and that didn’t even call back to a lyric. I like that record just fine.

But while the oddly similar name of the new Choir album, The Loudest Sound Ever Heard, really works for me, Marillion’s title doesn’t yet. I expect that’s because I know what the Choir’s title means – the loudest sound ever heard, in drummer/lyricist Steve Hindalong’s words, is the heartbeat of a true friend. I like that. It’s schmaltzy, but nice. I hope the other Steve H., Marillion’s Steve Hogarth, has a similar reason for Sounds That Can’t Be Made.

Even if he doesn’t, hell, it’s the new Marillion album, so I’m still excited about it. But really… Sounds That Can’t Be Made. Not sure about that yet at all.

* * * * *

And now for something completely similar.

It’s no secret around Aurora town that I don’t like the title of Andrea Dawn’s new album, Theories of How We Can Be Friends. Andrea and I need no theories – we are friends, and my dislike of the title (and her stubborn refusal to change it to make me happy) is a long-running in-joke at this point. She even brought it up during her recent interview on the Fox Valley Voice podcast, forgetting to mention that a) it’s funny to both of us, and b) I really like the album.

So, here. Let me set the record straight. The title, Theories of How We Can Be Friends, is clunky, overlong, inelegant and not very memorable – essentially, the exact opposite of the album itself. The album is extraordinary, a triumphant and uncompromising coming out party for an uncommonly good singer and songwriter. Listening to it, I have to continually remind myself that Andrea lives about 10 minutes from my house, and I have her cell phone number. It’s so far beyond what you’d expect from a self-released local album that your head will spin.

This is Andrea’s first full-length solo album, following a split LP with Jeremy Junkin and a live EP, and she worked on it for a year and a half with her incredibly talented husband, Zach Goforth. Andrea tickles the piano and sings like a smoky angel, while Zach plays every instrument known to man with a skill that will make your jaw drop. Their drummer is Dan Knighten, and while most other drummers might just keep a beat, Knighten paints little percussion pictures behind many of these tunes. It takes a few listens for his work to sink in, but he’s fantastic.

In fact, it may take a few listens for all of Theories to really take hold. This is a particularly subtle album, full of simple tunes that will sneak up and wallop you. The first song, “Theories,” is nothing but piano, strings and Andrea’s stunning voice, and it’s your first hint that this is not going to be a collection of pop singles, but rather a journey. The piece – part Fiona Apple, part Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song” – is gorgeous, a dark and dramatic kiss-off. It’s a song clearly addressed to someone in particular, and she begins by asking if that person knows the role he plays in her lack of innocence, and then ends with this: “Since I’ve given everything, each verse, each melody, I’m afraid it has to be nothing at all…”

It’s a bold choice for an opener, but it soon smoothly glides into “Numb and Fine,” which rides a Dan Knighten drum pattern and a repeating piano figure into one of the record’s best tunes. This one’s like driving through a dark tunnel at night, with some ringing vibes to add atmosphere. It takes more than two minutes for the song to reach its full bloom, and the crescendo is so subtle you may not even notice how much it builds.

But Andrea and Zach have just been easing you in at this point. They pull out all the stops for “Fightin’ Off That Bad,” a relatively simple tune that sounds like they spent a million bucks on it. In fact, it’s the only one here that feels weighted down by the production, instead of buoyed by it. It starts with a slinky bass line and a simple yet appealing chorus, one that gives Andrea her Adele moment around the two-minute mark. But then they pile on a full horn section, clarinets, a synth breakdown with a million little percussion instruments surrounding it, and an admittedly awesome low-moan vocal ending. That it almost pulls it off through sheer confidence is kind of remarkable.

After that, you’ll need a break, and “Underground” shows up at just the right time. A little wisp of a song, “Underground” floats by on lovely backing vocal harmonies. It doesn’t do much, but at this point in the album, it doesn’t need to. It takes you by the hand and leads you to “Spell It Out,” one of the record’s best – it has a melody that will stick with you, and the soaring bridge is probably my favorite part of the album. “Peter and the Sheep” is similarly dramatic, Andrea’s voice gliding over a staccato, Regina Spektor-ish piano figure. The lyrics are a twist on “Peter and the Wolf,” and the orchestration on this one is breathtaking.

But for all the sound and fury harnessed on this album, perhaps its most affecting song is “Old Letters,” featuring nothing but Andrea and her piano. It’s a demo recorded at home, and it’s remarkably intimate, delivering her best lyric with all the emotion it deserves. The song is a soft cry for lasting love, the singer writing of it in letters hidden below floorboards, carving it into tree trunks, keeping it in a locket around her neck. It’s tinged with sadness – as she cuts initials into a heart on a tree, she sighs, “Five or so years from now when you hardly know my name, we’ll have made history just the same…”

The greatness continues with “No Love for the Devil.” Theories is not an album full of pop hits – it’s too much of a personal journey for that – but if there’s one song here with the chance of breaking wider, it’s this one. You’ll hear why the second Andrea starts the chorus: “Bye bye, baby, oh oh, I can see…” When those clean guitar hits come in (courtesy of fellow Aurora musician Jeremy Keen), it’s magic. This song has been in my head since I first heard it, and it’s my favorite thing here.

Unfortunately, the record stumbles near the end. “Silent May” is a bit of a mess, based around an impressive, hyperactive drum pattern that doesn’t quite mesh with the simple piano chords played over it. The song’s back half is a piano-bass-drums jam that never quite lifts off – if any moment of this album could have used some intense orchestration, it’s this one. After that, “Aren’t We” is a sweet comedown, a lullaby on Rhodes piano and brushes. After the tumbling relationship depicted in “Silent May,” the closer is soothing and delightful: “All this time we thought if we could just not fall in love, but we already are, aren’t we?”

Andrea has long said she hoped to make a million-dollar album on a thousand-dollar budget. It sounds to me like she did it. But more than that, she tapped into a deep songwriting well, crafting an intensely personal piece of work. I have no idea whether Theories of How We Can Be Friends will take Andrea to that next level. To her credit, it doesn’t sound like she thought too much about that when making it. This record is uncompromising, and it’s all the better for it. And for that, I think she deserves that wider fame her record doesn’t seem to be chasing.

It’s hard to be unbiased about Theories. I heard so much about it while Andrea and Zach were making it. But even if I didn’t know them both, I would consider this album one of the best I’ve heard this year. It does what only the best music does – it draws you in, and grows deeper and more meaningful each time you hear it. With Theories, Andrea Dawn has graduated from “local artist” to just plain artist. She’s in the big leagues, and this record is too good to remain a local secret for long.

Check her out here. Now, about that rubbish title…

* * * * *

Let’s finish with a title I do like.

A couple weeks ago, I got the chance to see Blue Like Jazz, the movie based on the book of the same name by Donald Miller. I just love that name. Blue Like Jazz. It could be about anything, couldn’t it? As it turns out, the film is a coming-of-age story that bears only the thinnest of resemblances to the book that lends it that title, a book I haven’t read. But that’s OK, because as interested as I was to see the movie, I was much more interested to meet its director, Steve Taylor.

I’ve been a Taylor fan since the ‘80s – before launching his film career, he was a musician. In fact, he was the sharpest satirist that the Christian music industry had ever seen. Over four full-length albums (and one biting EP), he took deadly aim at the hypocrisy he saw around him, angering the establishment. Taylor never trafficked in sweetness and light, and he always saw faith as a journey, not a destination. His early material strikes me as a little too right-wing these days, but tunes like “To Forgive” and “On the Fritz” still resonate with me.

And I still consider his 1987 album I Predict 1990 one of the finest “Christian” albums I’ve ever heard. This is the one that got him booted from Christian bookstores across the country, both for the artwork (which some thought looked like a Tarot card) and the lead track, a jaw-dropping abortion satire called “I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good.” The satire was so impressive, in fact, that many thought he was serious. Beyond that tune, there’s a depth to this album you just didn’t hear from this corner of the music world in the ‘80s. (Or, quite frankly, since then.)

So Taylor’s pretty used to pissing off the Christian industry, and he’s done it again with Blue Like Jazz. This is a film that is unapologetically Christian, and yet unflinchingly realistic in its depiction of college life. It follows a 19-year-old Don Miller (completely fictional) as he leaves his southern Baptist home and heads to Portland, Oregon to attend Reed College. Miller spends a year ditching his beliefs, both out of a desire to fit in and a genuine sense of betrayal from the church, but embraces them again by the film’s end.

Which sounds pretty hokey and typical, particularly from someone like Taylor who has railed against just that kind of pat narrative. That’s why a summary of Blue Like Jazz isn’t going to encapsulate it. This is a movie of moments, of touching relationships, of humor and heart. It’s a movie that introduces a character passing himself off as the pope of Reed College, with the big hat and everything, then gives him a real story to tell. It’s a movie full of frank sex talk, drug use and swearing (well, PG-13 swearing), relentless in its pursuit of accuracy and truth – which, it turns out, is the secret to its spiritual core.

Blue Like Jazz ends with a scene in a confession booth, erected during a particularly crazy campus bacchanal, during which Miller (played with wide-eyed wonder by Marshall Allman) realizes what he’s been running from. The film actually begins with a similar statement of faith, but where that one comes off as clunky and forced, the speech at the end feels earned. It’s especially important to me, since it’s a faith I don’t share. The pat answers and simplistic homilies had a hand in driving me away. They’re not the world I know.

That’s what the evangelicals are missing – without the struggle, it means nothing, particularly to those on the outside. That’s what they missed about I Predict 1990 as well – they lashed out at the first nine songs without listening to how the tenth, the striking “Harder to Believe Than Not To,” wrapped it all together.

I don’t think this is a great movie. But it affected me, and not just because, for long stretches, the dialogue just sings. It affected me because it depicts one of my favorite themes – faith through hardship, like blades of grass through concrete – beautifully. Taylor’s been exploring that terrain for his entire career, and his unblinking sense of the world around him makes his belief even more interesting and real to me. That’s why Blue Like Jazz is the first movie I’ve seen this year that I will likely buy on DVD.

I’ve been calling it a film without an audience – the sex talk and swearing will turn off the churchy folks, and the spiritual philosophy will turn off the non-churchy folks. But the 4,500 supporters who funded this movie through Kickstarter – one of the most successful campaigns in the site’s history – beg to differ. The book was a hit, so perhaps the movie will show that thoughtful examinations of faith can do well. We shall see.

Thanks to Emily Miller, and to Erin and Andy Sauder, who experienced the movie with me, and got to see me geek out to the point of incoherence upon meeting one of my favorite artists. Let’s never speak of that again, ‘kay?

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Next week, Lost in the Trees. The album to beat in 2012. 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.