“On I go, not toward or away
Up until now it was day, next day
Up until now in a rush to prove
But now I only move to move…”

Have you ever had a deep-diving conversation with someone you’ve known for a while? A conversation that brings so many new things to light, that offers you so many new windows into this person’s mind and heart that you feel like you’re seeing them for the first time?

That’s the experience I had listening to Fiona Apple’s extraordinary new album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters. Apple has been making great music for a long time – I saw her on the first Lilith Fair in 1997, a year after she issued her still-celebrated debut, Tidal. I’ve enjoyed all of her work. But nothing – not even 2012’s fantastic The Idler Wheel… album – prepared me for Bolt Cutters. It is the sound of a supernaturally talented artist finally taking control of every element of what she does, and finally feeling free enough to be exactly who she is.

The result is like meeting her again for the first time. This is a jaw-dropper of an album, so far-and-away the best thing I have heard in 2020 that it’s almost comical. Its spirit is summed up in the lines I quoted from the final track, “On I Go.” This is a record about liberation, about freeing yourself from the shackles that bind you, even and especially if those shackles are other people. Its title comes from a line spoken by Gillian Anderson’s character in The Fall, as her investigations lead her to a captive kidnapping victim. But it’s about escaping every abusive relationship, every bad situation, even every mental weight holding you down.

True to that theme, this record sounds liberated. Apple recorded it at home, with help from her bandmate Amy Aileen Wood, and you can tell she reveled in the complete freedom. The Idler Wheel was recorded similarly, with drummer Charley Drayton, but even that album sounds self-edited compared to this one. Fetch the Bolt Cutters presents us with an artist entirely unafraid to be herself on record. There’s a spontaneity to it, but also a sense that she’s in total control of every element of it. It sounds ramshackle but also perfectly realized.

Like Idler Wheel, this one is percussion-heavy, but in addition to your standard drums, Apple and her cohorts play chairs and silverware and other household objects. The percussion bed on the title track is intricately arranged, but it’s also clearly made by banging found objects. It supports a bass and an organ, and that’s all it needs. And then guest vocalist Cara Delevigne’s dogs start barking for a full minute and Apple leaves it in, and it works. The whole record sounds like that, like a complex patchwork carefully assembled from unplanned moments.

And I can’t adequately describe how joyfully free that sound is. This is a record that tackles some heavy subjects, from Apple’s own rape to the way men come between women and keep them from being allies, and you can feel how much work Apple has done to get to the point where she can write these songs, where she can process these topics musically. Somehow she has crafted a record that sounds like the process, that sounds like what it feels like to deal with trauma and see the light on the other side.

This is definitely an album hitting the women in my life a lot more deeply. Part of it is the particular issues she addresses. “Under the Table,” for example, is a very specific song – it’s about a dinner party Apple didn’t want to attend, and her refusal to be shushed instead of calling out another guest for saying something offensive. But its repeated mantra – “Kick me under the table all you want, I won’t shut up” – is basically “nevertheless, she persisted” in song form, a singalong anthem for every woman ever talked over in a meeting, or in a relationship. (The song begins and ends with another great one-liner: “I would beg to disagree but begging disagrees with me.”)

“Newspaper” broaches a topic I’ve never heard in song before. It’s a letter to an ex-boyfriend’s latest girlfriend, forging bonds of solidarity between them. “I watch him walk over, talk over you, be mean to you and it makes me feel close to you,” she sings. “I wonder what lies he’s telling you about me to make sure we’ll never be friends.” It’s a chilling song – she yells herself hoarse on it – and there’s a sense of desperation to it. Whatever this man did to both of them, they are the only ones who know, and this song is one woman reaching out to the only other one who understands.

And a song like “For Her” hits even deeper. Arising in the wake of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony in the Brett Kavanaugh hearings last year, this piece details a friend’s slow realization of her own rape at the hands of a similarly powerful man. It’s a symphony in 2:44, from the intake of breath at the beginning (as if to say “here we go”) to the multiple drum-driven sections, culminating with the album’s bluntest and sharpest line: “Good morning, good morning, you raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in.”

It is impossible to hear that line – to hear the way Apple sings it, putting every ounce of the fury and pain and floodgate-opening relief inherent in that line into her explosive delivery – and not be affected by it. But “For Her” is not a weighty song. It’s not “Me and a Gun,” as much as I love the way time stops when that one plays. “For Her” rocks, from the rapid-fire vocals to the drums, as if celebrating the hard-won freedom to look one’s rapist in the eyes with clarity. It ends with a choir of layered Fionas singing “you were so high,” and it’s almost breathtaking in its beauty.

This is an angry record, but its genius is that, like the music itself, it is not just that one thing. Apple allows herself to be complex, to contain multitudes, to be fully human in a way we often do not allow our female artists to be. Bolt Cutters is angry, and sad, and joyful, and screamingly funny. (Seriously, this is the funniest record Apple has ever made. I dare you to listen to “Rack of His,” in which she pokes at boasting male musicians, and not crack up. “Under the Table” is funny. The claustrophobic love song “Cosmonauts” is funny. Yes, “For Her” is funny.)

And best of all, it is all of those things all at once.

So while it is steeped in pain, it is also hopeful and empathetic. This is an album about coming through dark experiences and growing from them, so where it is full of rage it is also full of kindness. Opener “I Want You to Love Me” is one of the most open and straightforward love songs Apple has ever written, which means it is also about death and about feeling invisible and being seen. But it’s gorgeous and warm-hearted. “Relay” juxtaposes a line she wrote at 15 – “Evil is a relay sport when the one who’s burned turns to pass the torch” – with her more adult insights: “I see that you keep trying to bait me, and I’d love to get up in your face, but I know if I hate you for hating me I will have entered the endless race.”

And then there’s the monumental title track, which tumbles down Apple’s timeline from middle school (which the glorious “Shameika” also references) to her early career to her bad relationships. She dissects her own self-image, noting what she allowed others to do to her, but she also shows kindness to herself: “I listened because I hadn’t found my own voice yet, so all I could hear was the noise that people make when they don’t know shit, but I didn’t know that yet.” Even as the song culminates in a grand Kate Bush reference, Apple keeps the message clear: you are not trapped. You are not stuck, no matter what situation you are in. No matter what is holding you down. Know yourself, be kind to yourself, free yourself.

Fetch the bolt cutters. I’ve been in here too long.

This record is astonishing, and I could talk about it forever. Having heard it on repeat for several days now, I cannot help but think of it in relation to her previous work. Her catalog now feels to me like a series of steps away from her male collaborators, from record companies who didn’t understand her, from anything and everything that kept her from the driver’s seat. This feels like Fiona Apple becoming who she was always meant to be, both as a person and as an artist. It’s the sound of overcoming, of growing beyond, of rising up as a whole and beautiful human, unafraid to be everything she is.

It’s like seeing her for the first time. I’m immensely glad to have met Fiona Apple, finally, and I can’t wait to hear what she has to say next.

* * * * *

Of course this middling review doesn’t quite say everything I wanted to about this album. I’m still processing it and will be for some time. I want to thank the various women I spoke to about this record, especially Erin Kennedy and Andrea Munday, who shared extensive thoughts on it.

If you want to read Apple’s own words about each song – and I highly recommend you do – check out this enlightening article. (Thanks again to Erin for the link.)

Next week I will still be listening to this, so I have no idea what I will be writing about. Let’s learn together.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

And now we’ve lost John Prine.

I’m not sure I have the energy to give Prine the eulogy he deserves. Many others have already done him justice. If you haven’t seen Elvis Costello’s tribute, for instance, it’s very much worth reading. Prine has long been one of those songwriters that other songwriters love and point to as an influence. His work has always been deceptively simple – his chords are generally basic, his observations straightforward. But dig into his lyrics and the way he delivers them, and you’ll find entire worlds there.

My favorite Prine song is on his first album. I normally resist any suggestion that an artist’s best work is on their debut, since that often indicates that a lifetime of work that followed couldn’t measure up. I don’t think that’s the case for Prine – his songwriting remained consistent, even through his final record, 2018’s The Tree of Forgiveness. Nevertheless, “Sam Stone” is on Prine’s debut, and no other song he’s written hollows me out like that one does. The unflinching story of a war veteran who dies of an overdose, it’s simply a perfect lyric, and when he sings “Jesus Christ died for nothing, I suppose” in his matter-of-fact tone, it hurts even more than if he’d gone for the emotional jugular.

That was Prine through and through. He was never overly sentimental – he was wry and clear-eyed, describing the world he saw. A two-time cancer survivor, Prine was hospitalized on March 26 with COVID-19 symptoms and he succumbed on April 7. His loss is incalculable, and I expect we’ll be hearing about it from the songwriters he inspired, young and old, for a long time to come.

* * * * *

I guess I have to get back to reviewing music at some point, right?

Luckily, we have some. In fact, we have two pretty damn good new records from some old favorites who keep soldiering on. In this time of uncertainty I’m not sure I can think of anything more fitting, in fact, than to talk about bands who just keep at it, year in and year out. I fell for both of these bands in the early ‘90s, which doesn’t seem like that long ago to me. But of course it was. I’ve been a fan of both of these bands for longer than I lived without them, which is strange to think about. They’re both like old friends at this point.

They’re also two of the best live bands anywhere on the planet, which is a sad fact given our current stay-at-home status. I’ve never seen either one live, which is somewhat criminal given their reputations. I’ve based nearly 30 years of fandom at this point on the studio albums, which fans of both bands will tell you is only about a quarter of the story. I know they’re right, and I have no excuse, except to say this: the studio albums have been enough for me for more than two decades, so they must be pretty good in their own right, no?

I’d say so. It was a trilogy of studio albums – Ten, Vs. and Vitalogy – that cemented my lifelong love of Pearl Jam during my high school and college years. Ten came out just before my senior year of high school began, and I didn’t know what to make of it. I was a teenage metalhead just getting into R.E.M., and this didn’t fit into either one of those boxes. Pearl Jam were broody and dark, but ferocious, and in Eddie Vedder they had a singer the likes of which I’d never heard.

Vedder’s low-moan rumble has remained the most compelling aspect of Pearl Jam’s sound, even as they dove back and forth between straightforward rock and interesting experimentation. Their new one is called Gigaton, and it’s their first in seven years, following a decent string of back-to-basics stompers, so you’d expect this to be one on which they stretch out more. At 57 minutes, it’s their longest record to date, and it may be the one with the most swings in style and mood.

Anyone put off by the first single, the Talking Heads-inspired “Dance of the Clairvoyants,” should not worry. It’s the only song like it on the record, and in context it sounds even more awkward than it does on its own. This is the furthest the band reaches here, and the one low point. Everything else, from the whirling dervish of “Quick Escape” to the electro-tinged soundscape of “Alright” to the killer garage rock of “Take the Long Way” to the slower epics that make up the final third, works remarkably well.

There are times here when the band is on fire, and Vedder’s razor-sharp roar matches their intensity. He’s on a tear lyrically, seeking a “place Trump hasn’t fucked up yet” on “Quick Escape” and raging against complacency on “Who Ever Said.” He spits his way through “Never Destination,” which clearly takes further aim at the occupant of the White House: “Some resolution, some justice tied to this collusion hiding in plain sight…” For a band in its 30th year making its 11th album, Pearl Jam sounds recharged here, alive with purpose.

As much as I like all of that material, it’s the closing four tracks that elevate Gigaton for me. The jaunty waltz of “Buckle Up,” the folksy sway of “Retrograde,” the expansive “River Cross,” these songs are among the prettiest the band has given us, and they show just how supple Vedder’s voice still is. But it’s “Comes Then Goes” that does it most for me. It’s the loveliest and simplest acoustic piece since “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town,” and every bit of it works.

Thirty years in, they’re still Pearl Jam, still sticking to their guns when it comes to the foundation of their sound. Gigaton is their most experimental, most diverse work since No Code, but it still sounds like Pearl Jam. They’ve remained remarkably consistent for their three decades, and Gigaton is no exception. Sometimes you just want to hear a long-running band do what they do, and there’s enough of that on this record that it sits nicely next to their best.

Also delivering one of their best is Phish, who surprise-dropped their 14th album Sigma Oasis back on April 2. With Phish I know – I know – that I am not getting the full experience just listening to their recordings. Even their live box sets don’t take the place of being there on the night and watching this band do their thing. I know this. I really only have part of the story.

But I’ve loved this part of the story since I first heard A Picture of Nectar my freshman year of college. People concentrate on the jam-band aspects of Phish, but what I think most people miss is that they’re also kind of a prog band, with intricate arrangements and compositional heft. These four guys can really play, and like one of their biggest influences, Frank Zappa, they feed equally off of tight, difficult arrangements and wild, throw-out-the-map improvisation.

The first four Phish albums bear this out better than any that have come after. 1993’s Rift remains my favorite for its conceptual through-line and its perfect balance of tight composition and spontaneous jamming. Sometime around 1996’s Billy Breathes Phish decided to draw a strict demarcation between their studio and live identities, reserving the thrilling improv sessions for the stage and concentrating on shorter, smaller, even folksier songs for their records. It’s something I’ve grown used to – if I want anything-can-happen abandon, I will listen to a live album.

All of which makes Sigma Oasis such a pleasant surprise. It is the most live-sounding record they have made in many years. I should clarify – the sound here is still crisp, and there are strings and choirs and all kinds of accoutrements here, just as there have been on every album since the late ‘90s. But the feel is surprisingly live, surprisingly alive. And not just in the extended jam sections, although the second half of the 12-minute “Everything’s Right” is pretty spectacular.

This is the first album since Farmhouse to consist entirely of songs written by Trey Anastasio and his frequent lyric partner Tom Marshall, and there’s a maturity and a consistency to these nine songs that hasn’t been present on a Phish record for some time. Better, though, this feels like a single set at a show, each song handing off to the next. There are no throwaways, no novelties. “Leaves” is beautiful, the multi-part “Mercury” shimmers, “Shade” might be Trey’s prettiest soft-rock AM radio winner, “Steam” is a dark shimmy down a smoky alley, and the closer “Thread” plays out half of its 11 minutes with a jam in 15/8. Everything here is serious in intent and execution.

It is, paradoxically, the most grown-up Phish album in ages and the most youthful. I don’t know what happened to spark the band’s reinvigoration here, but this is as good a Phish record as there ever has been. It feels as spontaneous as the decision to release it earlier this month, ahead of schedule, as a way for the band to stay connected during this strange distance. Both in form and content, this is the nicest surprise of my quarantine so far, and I’m grateful for it.

Next week, more music. More music!

See you in line Tuesday morning.

It’s been a bad week.

I don’t say that as if it’s somehow news, or as if my experience has been unique. It’s been a bad week for all of us. This virus sweeping through our country, with the aid of some of the most arrogantly inept leadership I have ever seen, has claimed more than 9,000 as of this writing. It’ll be many thousands more by the time you read this. My state is in week four of sheltering in place, and I’m only going out when absolutely necessary. I haven’t had a real, in-person human interaction for weeks now.

And this is the best case. At least I am not sick. At least no one in my family is sick. At least I am not on a ventilator, alone, fighting for life in an overcrowded hospital. At least I have done everything I can do not to spread the virus to others. Isolation and loneliness is a small price to pay, and I’ll keep paying it. I know you’re all going through the same thing, and it’s strange – we’re all connected, even though we’re kept apart.

I wish we could just talk about music this week. But we can’t. Because among the thousands this virus has taken from us this week are two people important to the art form this column was designed to celebrate, and I can’t let their passings go unremarked. That both of them died on the same day – Wednesday, April 1 – is just a sad coincidence.

First is the great Ellis Marsalis, patriarch of the Marsalis family. If you know jazz at all, you know the Marsalises: trumpeter Wynton, who heads Jazz at Lincoln Center; saxophonist Branford, a tremendous bandleader and go-to session player; trombonist Delfeayo, an in-demand producer; and drummer and percussionist Jason. (Ellis had two further sons, Ellis III and Mboya, who both chose different career paths.) But before any of them, there was Ellis, playing piano with the likes of Cannonball Adderly and Al Hirt.

I should probably not admit this, but my first exposure to Ellis’s playing came through one of his students, Harry Connick Jr. Ellis played piano on Connick’s version of “Stardust,” and I was intrigued enough to start tracking his work down. I’d already become familiar with Branford’s work through Sting’s first couple solo records, and I’d taken a dive into Wynton’s more expansive pieces, like Citi Movementand In This House, On This Morning. The first Ellis record I bought was Joe Cool’s Blues, his collaboration with Wynton on music composed for Peanuts. It’s terrific.

I had no idea at that time how influential Ellis Marsalis really was, of course. Much of his career was spent as a teacher in New Orleans, showing the fundamentals of jazz to countless performers. His own records are pretty good, and his collaborations with his sons are pretty wonderful, but it was his role as a behind-the-scenes elder statesman of jazz where he truly had an impact. Ellis Marsalis was 85 years old when he succumbed to pneumonia brought on by COVID-19.

And then there is Adam Schlesinger, a songwriter and musician who has made an incalculable impact on my own life and taste. Schlesinger was one of the founding members of Fountains of Wayne, whose wry, relatable songs of human longing never failed to move me. They’re best known for a novelty song, the on-the-nose “Stacy’s Mom,” and as much as I smile when that tune plays, it doesn’t begin to sum up the depth and heart of Schlesinger’s work. Just on that album alone there’s “Hackensack” and “All Kinds of Time,” two wonderful pieces about smaller moments that come closer.

Schlesinger wasn’t just this band, though. He brought his warm, witty and keenly observed songs to several film projects, including That Thing You Do, which includes what I expect is his most famous composition. When asked to write a hit for the movie’s fictional band The Wonders, Schlesinger turned in a perfect two minutes, a song so winning that you don’t mind hearing it again and again, a song so indelible that you believe it could have catapulted this band to stardom.

Schlesinger also wrote several of the songs for the underrated romcom Music and Lyrics, including “Don’t Write Me Off,” from the point of view of a musician (Hugh Grant) who needs his partner in song (Drew Barrymore) to write lyrics for his melodies. The words to “Don’t Write Me Off” are charmingly inept, but lovingly heartfelt – the song makes the case that he needs her not just by saying so, but by showing what his songs would be like without her. It’s a tough tightrope, but Schlesinger pulled it off like it was nothing.

Man, I could go on and on listing this man’s brilliant songs. I haven’t even mentioned Tinted Windows, his supergroup with Taylor Hanson, James Iha and Bun E. Carlos. (Yes, this is real.) Or his “main” band, the atmospheric Ivy. Or the 150-plus songs he wrote or co-wrote for the recently completed Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. (Oh heck, just listen to all of these.) I’ll just say that I never met an Adam Schlesinger song that didn’t make me think or make me feel. I will miss him and his warmth, wit and wisdom terribly.

Schlesinger had been on a ventilator trying to fight off COVID-19 symptoms for a week prior to his death. He was only 52 years old.

As if that were not bad enough, we also lost Bill Withers this week. His death was not related to COVID-19, but is impossibly sad anyway.

Withers, an extraordinary folk-soul songwriter, was perhaps best known for “Lean On Me,” an immortal anthem of support and friendship. It’s a song that resonates pretty strongly in these times, when we are all leaning on each other. He scored several other hits during his 15-year recording career, including the great “Lovely Day” and the even greater “Ain’t No Sunshine.”

I first heard “Ain’t No Sunshine” on Paul McCartney’s Unplugged album from 1991 (since this seems to be a column full of embarrassing admissions). It was one of the best songs in a setlist full of Beatles classics, and it led me to Withers, whose tragically small catalog – eight studio albums and a live record – is full of gems like that one. His sound remained essentially the same throughout, and that’s what eventually led him to give up his recording career completely – he clashed with record company executives, who told him to slicken up his sound and image to sell more records. In the end, he decided he’d rather quit the industry than change who he was.

I admire that immensely, especially since Withers never went back on it. His last album was released in 1985, and save for sporadic appearances at benefits and tribute concerts, that was it. He died on March 30 from heart complications. He was 85 years old. As he once said, “I don’t think I’ve done bad for a guy from Slab Forth, West Virginia.” Indeed. Rest in peace, Bill.

And rest in peace, Ellis and Adam. What a week. As we batten down the hatches for another few months of this, I’m sure we’ll have more tragic stories like those above. We all need each other more than ever now. I will leave you with the words of Bill Withers, and I hope we live up to them:

“Lean on me, when you’re not strong
And I’ll be your friend
I’ll help you carry on
For it won’t be long
‘Til I’m gonna need
Somebody to lean on…”

Love one another. Stay safe.

See you in line Tuesday morning;

How is everyone’s lockdown going?

I know not everyone is locked down, but given the rapid spread of this thing, I imagine we all will be before long. Despite my love of my own company and my surplus of music and books, I’m starting to go a tiny bit stir crazy. It turns out being told to stay home is not the same thing, psychologically, as choosing to stay home. Who knew? I miss the people I used to see regularly, although we have worked out virtual ways to still connect.

As some of you know, I also started a new job recently, and I was in the office for six days before being told to pack up my desk and go work from home for the foreseeable future. I’ve been doing that now for almost a month, and it’s quite strange, especially since I didn’t get to know any of my colleagues before being banished to my house. All of our meetings are virtual now, and since everything was done electronically in the first place, this isn’t a lot different. But I do miss seeing co-workers in person.

The best part about this situation is that I can play whatever music I like, as loud as I like. I am certainly taking advantage of the extra music time to delve into records I have bought but not heard. Which makes up a surprising percentage of my collection, to my shame. For my own work process, it’s better for me if the music is familiar, or if it has no lyrics to distract the wordsmithing part of my brain. So when I need motivation lately, I’ve been turning to old favorites like Marillion and (believe it or not) Def Leppard.

Thankfully there have been a couple releases lately that fit the “without words” mold very well. I’ve been very much enjoying one in particular: Aporia, by Sufjan Stevens and Lowell Brams. Sufjan’s collaborator here is his stepfather, the Lowell of Carrie and Lowell, and Aporia is an album they made by swapping files back and forth over the internet. I have absolutely no idea which parts of this are Stevens and which parts are Brams – or, for that matter, which belong to their bevy of collaborators, including James McAlister and Steve Moore. But it’s not worth trying to puzzle it out.

Instead, just put Aporia on and get sucked in by it. This is a deep forest of synthesizer goodness, each track its own landscape. Some of them are fully developed, like the delightful “Agathon,” while others feel like sketches, like the 57-second “Matronymic.” But when Stevens and Lowell hit upon something magnificent, like the dark and pulsing “The Red Forest” or the sole track with vocals, “The Runaround,” this record feels alive. It’s definitely a patchwork product made in isolation, but in a lot of ways that makes it the perfect soundtrack for our current moment.

An aporia, in philosophical terms, is an expression of doubt, an acknowledgement of contradiction. This album feels uneasy in a lot of respects, like it can’t quite piece together what it sees around it, but it’s doing its best to describe it. There are very few drums, but there is always a sense of forward movement – this is not a record that lingers in one place for any length of time. There are 21 tracks and the whole thing is over in just more than 40 minutes. It doesn’t seem to come to any conclusion, either – final tracks “Eudaimonia” and the minute-long “The Lydian Ring” are just like the others, synthscapes that drop you somewhere new and are over before you’re acclimated.

As this is kind of how I feel about our new world – we’ve been dropped in and are still trying to find our footing – I am finding Aporia oddly comforting. There are some truly excellent moments here, and while I might wish that Stevens and Brams had cooked a few of these tracks a little more thoroughly, I’m fascinated by it. It also plays as a sweet coda to Carrie and Lowell, with Stevens finding artistic connections to strengthen the bond he spoke of so nakedly on that album. I’m not in love with this odd artifact, but I am in pretty deep like with it, and it is soundtracking my days nicely.

Stevens gets accused of excess a lot, but on that score he has nothing on Trent Reznor. Here’s a guy who never stops working – in addition to his three recent Nine Inch Nails projects, he’s scored everything in existence, working tirelessly with longtime collaborator Atticus Ross to bring his signature sonic sculptures to movies like Bird Box and TV shows like Black Mirror and Watchmen.

And somewhere in there, the pair found time to record two and a half hours of new instrumental music, which they have just released for free. Billed as a continuation of 2008’s fantastic Ghosts I-IV, these two new collections are wider in scope and ambition, filtering Reznor’s film work back through his NIN template. Unlike Aporia, these two albums don’t sound like hard drive clearing houses. They each feel of a piece, as if they were composed and recorded in this intended order.

The two albums are very different from one another as well. Ghosts V: Together, the shorter of the two at 70 minutes, is softer and prettier, arrangements unfolding from melodies. It’s not exactly hopeful material, but it is calm and peaceful most of the time. Unlike the ones on the first four Ghosts volumes, these songs have titles, and they seem to offer insight into Reznor and Ross’s intentions: “With Faith,” “Your Touch,” “Hope We Can Again,” “Still Right Here.” This is music, at least on some level, meant to reassure.

So we get lots of quiet pianos and hushed background drones. The title track is ten minutes of slowly building shimmer, the pianos eventually buried beneath clouds of sound and a lovely Robert Smith-style guitar. There’s definitely some tension building across this record – just listen to the spine-tingling low-voice choir on “With Faith,” underpinning everything – but even something called “Apart” is 13 minutes of calm ambience. Like all of Reznor and Ross’s work, this stuff is detailed – listening carefully will bring out so many layers, so many small nuances, and many of those serve to needle the calmer atmosphere with a sense of dread.

That dread comes to the fore on Ghosts VI: Locusts, and honestly, I have to say this: if you’re having a hard time dealing with the ongoing pandemic and the tidal wave of anxiety it has created, listening to this may not be the best idea. Locusts is 83 minutes long, and I found absorbing it all the way through to be physically unsettling. There’s no reprieve – this is the sound of the world quietly collapsing around you while you slowly go mad trying to survive. If you think you couldn’t handle that right now, you’re probably right.

Locusts is no louder than Together, but it’s a lot more menacing. We still get the pianos, but they’re playing dissonant figures now, and the soundscapes behind them are more abrasive. The Miles Davis-esque trumpet in “Around Every Corner” and “The Worriment Waltz” is the perfect touch, lending this repetitive piece a sense of otherworldly desolation. While no song on the original Ghosts broke six minutes, the first three tracks of Locusts last about half an hour, like a slowly rising tide of death from which there is no escape.

A piece like “When It Happens (Don’t Mind Me)” makes my flesh crawl – its unnerving hammered dulcimer foundation is attacked on all sides by darker textures, and it sounds like hordes of insects swarming to attack. There are calmer pieces, like “A Really Bad Night,” but most of this is like the clockwork dread of “Your New Normal,” twisting your nerves into knots. The 13 minutes of “Turn This Off Please” do to me what watching the end of Requiem for a Dream does – just sheer anguish and hopelessness. Even a song called “Almost Dawn” only lets a few shafts of light in before the song devours them.

Locusts is a dark, dark ride, and while it certainly serves as an appropriate response to our new nightmare, it will not serve those with anxiety issues well. What’s amazing to me is that Reznor and Ross recorded these two albums over the last few years, they work well as a reaction to the current world situation. I know a global pandemic could not have been on their minds when they created this music, but in the context of now, it sure sounds like it was. And while I have heard Locusts only the one time, and probably will not go back to it for a while, Together has been a fine companion these past few days.

You can get both Ghosts V and Ghosts VI for free right here .

* * * * *

So it’s finally the end of March, the month that has felt like a million years. (Can you believe it was only January when we lost Neil Peart? That feels like a lifetime ago.) It’s time for my First Quarter Report, and more than usual, this is a list you can just ignore. The final top ten in December will look nothing like this, I am certain. It’s been a strange and random year, and here is the strange and random list-in-progress to reflect that.

10. Kesha, High Road.
9. The Men, Mercy.
8. Field Music, Making a New World.
7. Drive-By Truckers, The Unraveling.
6. Nine Inch Nails, Ghosts V and VI.
5. Pearl Jam, Gigaton.
4. The Innocence Mission, See You Tomorrow.
3. Derek Webb, Targets.
2. Nada Surf, Never Not Together.
1. Matt Wilson and His Orchestra, When I Was a Writer.

I genuinely love the top records on this list, but I don’t expect them to be the best of 2020. I know there’s an album here I haven’t reviewed, too, but I will get to that. Next week, in fact. Join me then!

See you in line Tuesday morning.

As of this writing, I haven’t left my house for more than a few minutes in eight days.

I like to think that I’ve been training for something like this my whole life. I’ve always been content with my own company, even as a child. Give me a good book or a good album and I’m set. Give me the literally hundreds of seasons of television on Netflix and Disney Plus and I should be able to ride out a global pandemic. I can go days without talking to another human being and feel OK about it.

But in more other ways than I can count, no one is prepared for what lies ahead of us. This new virus has spread through our population quickly enough that our only defense against it is what experts are calling social distancing, and over a much longer term than I think people have been suggesting. There’s no doubt that any concert or other gathering you had in mind for April and May will be canceled. Now I’m seeing events in June join the list. The only one on my calendar was AudioFeed in Champaign in July, and I have no doubt whatsoever that it will not happen this year.

It’s all for the good, of course – I am one hundred percent behind efforts to slow the spread of this virus, and I’ve been forcefully preaching the Gospel of Stay the Hell Home for a couple weeks now. We’re too late to prevent hundreds of deaths, but I hope we are not too late to prevent thousands, if not millions, in the coming months. It’s a scary thing, to know that just by leaving your house or forgetting to wash your hands you could contract something that spreads so quickly from person to person. I remember reading The Stand for the first time in middle school and wondering what it would be like to live through something like it. And here we are.

And I think we’ll be here for a while. Some of the estimates I have seen have us housebound and social distancing for five months at a minimum. I have no idea how the U.S. economy survives that, and I imagine we will come out the other side of it a changed nation. (Maybe one that values its front-line workers more, and considers health care a basic human right?) But it’s the only way we have to save millions of lives around the world.

There is hope. There is always hope. I personally know some of the scientists working on characterizing the structure of this new virus, in order to design some kind of blocking agent as a treatment. In some areas of the world, like South Korea, the curve has already been flattened, the virus more under control. It can be done. It will be a long and lonely slog for most of us to get to the point where there is a vaccine, there is a treatment, and it’s our job to make sure the hospitals and medical facilities are not overwhelmed with cases before then.

In a lot of ways, it feels like a sacred duty. One of the recurring themes of The Good Place, a show I feel beyond fortunate to have lived to see, is the notion of what we owe to each other. This is exactly the kind of crisis that brings that concept out of the abstract. And what I see right now is billions of people, all around the world, sacrificing so that others may live. My staying home is not out of fear for my own safety. It’s out of love and concern for people I don’t even know, people I may unknowingly infect by going about my daily routine.

It’s an act of worldwide empathy, and I think that’s beautiful.

The world feels strange and new now. It’s like humanity has drawn in a deep breath and is holding it. Eventually we’ll have to let that breath out, but for now it’s quieter, it’s more still. The things we thought mattered a month ago don’t seem so important. The people we know and love, that’s what matters. I’ve had people I haven’t spoken to in years reach out to me over the past two weeks, and it’s been lovely to reconnect, even as distanced as we are right now. It’s a time of deep reflection for everyone, I think.

As always, music is getting me through even the darker and more lonely moments. I’m hearing songs in different ways now, with different layers of meaning. (Jellyfish’s “I Wanna Stay Home” is a particular favorite at the moment.) I’ve had a lot of time to think about which music brings me the most hope, shines the brightest light into the darkened tunnel ahead. I’ve been asked a couple times on Facebook to contribute to playlists of inspirational songs, and have given those a lot of thought. I’d like to share one song now that has long been my “anything is possible” anthem, and I hope I can explain why.

It’s “Giant Steps” by John Coltrane.

Whenever I have trouble thinking about how I will manage to do some daunting task, it helps me to remember that in 1959, four guys made this, live. This music sounds impossible to my ears. It was unlike any jazz that had been recorded to that point – Coltrane built “Giant Steps” around a chord pattern that modulates constantly between three keys, and the notes that work in one of those keys won’t work in another, so you have to keep those changes in your head constantly. This is made far more difficult by how quickly the thing moves – the changes come at you like 100-mile-an-hour fastballs, and you have to be prepared.

Coltrane is absolutely on fire here, from the first moment to the last. By the time of this session, he’d had months to work out how he wanted to play “Giant Steps,” and it shows – he’s confident, playing at blistering speed without missing any of the tricky key changes. He’s inspired, and he inspires his bandmates too. Listen to Paul Chambers – that isn’t a bassline, it’s a 100-yard dash in musical form. Art Taylor’s drum part sounds simple, but it’s deceptive, and it’s really fast. This is basically a speed metal tempo, the song carrying the quartet along in its current.

But it’s pianist Tommy Flanagan I most want to talk about here. To set the scene: at this point in his young career, Flanagan was one of the hottest session pianists in jazz. He’d played with Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins and Ella Fitzgerald, and he’d led his own trio with celebrated results. He was one of the most reliable musicians you could tap for your recording, which is why it’s so strange to hear what happens to him on “Giant Steps.”

The simple truth is that Flanagan had never seen anything quite like the chart for “Giant Steps.” He’d practiced it, of course, but at a much slower tempo, so when Coltrane called for the one you hear on the recording, it caught him off guard. You can practically hear him learning how to play “Giant Steps” as the tape rolls, and when the time comes for him to solo – as if anyone could match Coltrane’s intensity – he starts and stops, falters and picks back up, uncertain of the changes as they come one by one.

It’s not bad work, mind you. It’s certainly better than any piano solo I’ve ever played. I think the important thing to remember about it, though, is that Flanagan got through it. He was blindsided by the material, unsure of how to navigate it, but he did it. I find that inspirational. Even more so, to me, than the courage to change jazz as an art form in four minutes the way Coltrane did here. Coltrane changed the world, but for Flanagan, the world changed around him, and he still made his way through.

This new world we find ourselves in is going to feel a lot like that. The changes will come quickly, and we won’t always know when to expect them. Very few of us will be like Coltrane, anticipating and skipping over the top of them with grace. Most of us will be like Tommy Flanagan when life calls a tempo we are not expecting. But we’ll find our way. Like any good jazz ensemble, we’ll help each other along, until our tentative strides toward the light become giant steps.

We can do this. Stay home, stay safe, stay connected. Love one another.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Trip Shakespeare was a band I just kinda missed.

I certainly was aware and paying attention to music when Across the Universe came out in 1990. That was the band’s third album, but their first to receive major-label national distribution, so it’s the first one I could reasonably have been expected to hear as a high school student in New England. But I have no memory of it or its follow-ups at all. I was already turning my attention to Seattle, and aside from a certain purple-frocked genius, I think I missed Minneapolis completely.

No, I should be ashamed of this, but the first I became aware of the Wilson brothers – Matt and Dan – was when I heard “Closing Time,” the worldwide smash hit from Dan’s band Semisonic. I frankly loved Semisonic. That is not the part about which I feel ashamed, by the way – Dan Wilson is a legend in my house, and even his most overplayed material still makes me smile. It’s the fact that it took one of the Wilsons hitting it big to turn me on to their first project together.

I got over it, though. Trip Shakespeare was a strange, beautiful band, and Matt Wilson was often the equal of his younger brother as a songwriter. Lulu is a forgotten gem of the era, an album that any fan of ornate, well-written guitar-pop should hear. It was also the band’s last. Since the breakup, Dan’s star has ascended while Matt still toils in obscurity. Even here – I’ve written a ton about Dan Wilson, songwriter to the stars, and virtually nothing about his brother.

That ends now, because Matt Wilson has just released my favorite album of 2020 so far.

His new project is called Matt Wilson and his Orchestra, and while it doesn’t quite live up to that lofty promise, the lineup is unique. Wilson has enlisted Quillan Roe of the Roe Family Singers to play banjo, Phala Tracy to play harp and Jacques Wait to play bass. The result is somewhere between bluegrass and baroque, and these arrangements not only complement Wilson’s new songs, they elevate them.

Not that these songs needed elevating. Wilson’s first album with his orchestra is called When I Was a Writer, and the title song, about his more fertile songwriting period in the ‘80s and ‘90s, is typically self-effacing. These 10 tracks prove he’s still a writer, and a great one. Just “Decent Guy,” all by itself, makes the case: it’s an unfailingly melodic ride through dark alleys of self-loathing, narrated by someone who wants to be seen as decent but knows it’s out of his reach. This is just a great, great song, one worthy of writers like Aimee Mann.

The album never gets worse. The piano-led “Come to Nothing” has been stuck in my head for days, the orchestra’s harmonies sweet and organic. The album does have drums and percussion, but they’re light (and I have no idea who played them). The focus is on the sparse acoustic interplay of Wilson’s guitar with the banjo and harp. That interplay is never better here than on “Real Life,” the album’s highlight. This song is masterful, and it would have been fine even without the incredible bridge that culminates in Wilson’s flawless falsetto, but it’s there anyway, taking things to new heights.

Wilson’s voice is certainly not what it was – it’s older and more weathered, creakier and more strained. But even that works beautifully with these folksier arrangements. There’s an authenticity to When I Was a Writer that instantly makes this my favorite of Wilson’s many projects. I’ve only had this record for a week or so, and these songs are already like old friends. I initially questioned Wilson’s decision to end things with “Mental Patients,” but now I think it’s the perfect closer – this is a record about Wilson’s inner turmoil, and here at the end he extends that gaze outward, concluding that we’re all mental patients, living in a world of blues.

I predict this will be the sleeper album of 2020, and it’ll be the one most everyone sleeps on. I found it almost entirely by accident, thanks to YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. I’ve thought more than once about how this lovely little gem of a thing nearly passed me by. Don’t let that happen to you. Even if you’ve never heard of Trip Shakespeare and your favorite Wilson is a volleyball, try this album out. It’s a wonder.

You can hear and buy Matt Wilson and his Orchestra here: https://www.minneapolismatt.com.

* * * * *

Aside from this clear standout, it’s been a weird, random year for music. We’re still waiting for the end of the month for some of the bigger guns to come out, like Pearl Jam and Sufjan Stevens. But in the meantime, here are a couple good examples of what we’ve had to deal with.

I can’t say I was overly excited for Citizens of Boomtown, the first Boomtown Rats album in 36 years. Bob Geldof has never been my favorite singer or songwriter, and much of the classic Boomtown material is pretty basic stuff. I respect Geldof greatly – he was one of the few musicians in the ‘80s who used his platform to do some real good in the world. I think it’s completely possible to hold the man in high regard and still not much like his band.

And I definitely didn’t like Citizens of Boomtown very much. I’m not even sure what convinced 68-year-old Geldof to put this thing together, but it wasn’t a surplus of great songs. Most of these, like “Trash Glam Baby” and “She Said No,” sound like any band you could hear in any bar in any city in the world. And those are in the good half. When Geldof and the Rats embrace awkward rap on “K.I.S.S.” and house music on “Get a Grip,” it’s cringe-worthy. A song called “Rock ‘n’ Roll Ye Ye” really lives down to that title.

Is there a bright spot? Absolutely. “Passing Through,” at track five, is the record’s one sober, lovely moment. Buoyed by a circular piano figure, the song – about being visited by ghosts of the past – builds to a sweet and hopeful chorus: “We will not break, we will not bend, we’ll take these rented souls and render them immune to loss or pain, we’ll pretend it’s all the same…” This song by itself doesn’t justify the rest of Citizens of Boomtown, but it is worth hearing. You can take or leave the rest.

Faring better is the Flaming Lips, a band that I guess I will follow down any rabbit hole they choose to dive. I’ve rolled with their Beatles cover albums, their 24-hour song and their collaboration with Miley Cyrus. Most recently the band issued King’s Mouth, a collection of music written for a bizarre art exhibit by frontman Wayne Coyne, and it was one of their best sets in years. Had I gotten off the train at Miley’s dead petz, I would never have heard it. So I’m on board.

Which means I picked up Deap Lips, a full-length collaboration with badass guitar-drums duo Deap Vally. In truth this isn’t the full Flaming Lips, just Coyne and Stephen Drozd working with guitarist Lindsey Troy and drummer Julie Edwards. In a lot of ways, this is like a new band, combining elements of both and coming up with something new. Deap Lips is written and arranged like a single song, with the raucous vocals and guitars of Troy and Edwards and the synth-y ambience of Coyne and Drozd in equal measure.

How is it as a piece of music? Weird in all the best ways. From the start, as the relatively straightforward “Home Thru Hell” segues into the Tron-like instrumental “One Thousand Sisters With Aluminum Foil Calculators,” this thing wants to take you on a journey. The folksy “Hope Hell High” is like Neko Case surrounded by cloudy keyboards, the shouty “Motherfuckers Got to Go” is a hilarious interlude, and the centerpiece of the album, the seven-minute “Love is Mind Control,” really works. It all feels like a single thought, though maybe one that suffers from a bit of attention deficit disorder.

This album is without a doubt the strangest thing Deap Vally has contributed to, but it’s par for the course for the Flaming Lips, a band that has always and forever only done what they want. They’ll work with anyone, they’ll try anything, and most of the time, it’ll stick. This isn’t a masterpiece by any means, and it won’t make my best-of-2020 list (at least, I hope it won’t), but it’s another fascinating piece of work, and I’m thankful for it.

Next week, who knows? I started working from home today, and I expect we’ll be under a stay-at-home order before long. Scary times. We’ll see what seven days brings.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I play piano.

I definitely would not describe myself as a piano player. I never took lessons – I taught myself, with some initial help and encouragement from my grandmother, a concert pianist. I know what I’m doing behind a keyboard, but I’m nothing special, and my technique is terrible. The one time my parents did take me in for piano lessons, after years of learning on my own, I was told that I’d have to forget everything and start from scratch. So I quit.

Basically, I know enough about playing piano to know that I’m not particularly good at playing piano. I know enough to recognize great playing when I hear it, to recognize that sweet spot between talent and hard work that produces some of the very best ivory-ticklers in the world. I have a running list of those people in my head, my piano-playing idols. These are the folks I listen to when I want to feel simultaneously awed and dismayed.

McCoy Tyner was definitely on that list.

Tyner should be on any short list of extraordinary jazz pianists, up there with Monk and Evans. I first heard him as a member of John Coltrane’s epic 1960s quartet, and I know there will be plenty of remembrances of Tyner that begin and end with this period of his career. It’s hard to fault people for that – the albums Tyner recorded with Coltrane, including My Favorite Things, Live at the Village Vanguard and the immortal A Love Supreme, are among the best ever made.

And Tyner’s playing on them is magical. A Love Supreme is one of my favorite albums, a perfect synthesis of pieces and players, and perhaps the most complete distillation of Coltrane’s genius on wax. There’s a lyrical complexity to Tyner’s playing that I can barely describe – it’s so knotted, and yet flows so effortlessly. If you can, seek out the one extant live recording, laid down in July of 1965. (It’s on the deluxe reissue of the album.) That’s where you get to hear just how on-fire this whole band is. You can really hear Tyner’s energy and force, especially on “Part II – Resolution.”

I completely understand if your familiarity with McCoy Tyner begins and ends with this quartet, or even with this record. It’s a masterpiece, and it belongs in every home. But Tyner had a long solo career before, during and after playing in Trane’s band, and I love much of that material equally. He was a softer-touch player before his stint with Trane, but when he released The Real McCoy in 1967, he emerged transformed. That album is amazing, from “Passion Dance” on down, and sparked a run of dozens of very good records.

I keep coming back, in fact, to the last one he made. Tyner recorded Solo: Live from San Francisco in 2007, and released it in 2009. He was 69 years old when he sat down at the piano at the Herbst Theatre, but was still clearly capable of spinning up a whole world just by himself. His signature heavy left hand was in full force, smashing down those bass notes and chords, and his superhuman dexterity had not lost a note. Most of all, this performance sounds like McCoy Tyner, and like no one else. It’s incredible.

On Friday, March 6, McCoy Tyner became the last of Coltrane’s great quartet to pass on. He was 81. I don’t suppose I will ever grow tired of listening to him play. He still fills me with that mix of awe and dismay, mixed with a little bit of disbelief. May it always be so. Rest in peace, McCoy.

* * * * *

I suppose I could end this with a look at some of the albums I’m excited about in the coming months. This has been the strangest year so far, and with the global pandemic breathing down our necks, it’s about to get even stranger. Tours are being canceled, and albums are probably next. But given what we know right now, here’s the best stuff that I think the next few months will bring us.

March doesn’t really take flight until its last week, but it’s a good one. New things from Pearl Jam, Sufjan Stevens (with his stepfather Lowell Brams), Brian Fallon, Waxahatchee, Vanessa Carlton and the debut of Coriky, which brings Ian McKaye and Joe Lally together for the first time since Fugazi. In April we’ll see a new Rufus Wainwright and new things from Lady Gaga, the Strokes, the Watkins Family Hour, Haim, Pure Reason Revolution and – and I swear I am not making this up – something called Danzig Sings Elvis.

May holds new ones from Alanis Morissette, the Psychedelic Furs, Built to Spill (playing the songs of Daniel Johnston), Jason Isbell, Sparks, the Magnetic Fields, Weezer and the Killers, along with the long-awaited return of Phantom Planet. Beyond that we will get new Steven Wilson, the fourth Husky album and a new record from the Choir, which they are taking pledges for right now. Oh, and a near-Jellyfish reunion with the new band The Lickerish Quartet.

It’s pretty random, right? So far there are no big-deal announcements, no huge records that will bring everyone out of their homes to listen. Which, given the pandemic, might be a good thing.

Anyway, that’s it for this week. Next week, some more random March records.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Ozzy Osbourne has never been scary.

I say this as a massive fan of Black Sabbath, particularly the early albums. Sabbath is one of the few bands I can name who actually created their own genre, and every doom metal band that came after them, from Sleep to Bell Witch and all points in between, owes them a massive debt. The first five Sabbath albums are unimpeachable, and the lock-step slow-death grooves laid down by Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward are legendary.

But Ozzy? Ozzy was always kind of funny to me. From the very beginning, when he rhymed “masses” with “masses,” he struck me as just some bloke up front, not so much leading the band as being led by it. Theatrically scary became Ozzy’s go-to as he left Sabbath and began his solo career, but he was never as convincing at it as Alice Cooper was. And when he agreed to star in The Osbournes, all pretense was gone. Ozzy has always been an ordinary man.

So I wasn’t too surprised when, at age 71, he titled his 12th solo album Ordinary Man. He does appear on the cover in a “scary” costume with black wings, but turn the record over and you’ll see a photo of him in regular clothes taking a leak in his back yard. That’s the real Ozzy, and this decent effort does a lot to put the focus on him. And really, there’s no way it couldn’t, as Osbourne’s voice is a wavery shadow of the strong instrument it once was.

But this ordinary man has an impressive contacts list, so we get a bevy of superstars playing on this thing. Most of it was made with Guns ‘n’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, with guitar work from Slash and Tom Morello, in addition to producer Andrew Watt. (Yep, the guy who made Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy.) The instrumentation is full and solid, with strings on a couple of tracks and loads of keyboards.

And yes, the two big guest stars have rightfully taken up a lot of the ink this record has received. Sir Elton John plays piano and sings on the strikingly autobiographical title track, on which Ozzy sings “Don’t know why I’m still alive, the truth is I don’t want to die an ordinary man…” At the other end of the spectrum is rapper Post Malone, who appears twice here. “It’s a Raid” is one of the heaviest things here, while the bonus track “Take What You Want” is pulled right from Malone’s album and definitely doesn’t fit here.

With all this, Ordinary Man is best when Ozzy is just being Ozzy. “Eat Me” is just as carefree and stupid as you think it will be – he takes the title literally, and asks the listener to “bite ‘til I’m dead.” “Scary Little Green Men” is about aliens that are not as cute and cuddly as we’ve been led to expect. Opener “Straight to Hell” is Sabbath-lite, his spooky narrator promising to “make you defecate.” It’s all silly fun, and it all rocks with competence.

Truth be told, you’ve already heard the best song: the single, “Under the Graveyard,” makes the best use of Ozzy’s swooping voice and gives us the most convincing riff of the lot. The lyrics are so dark that I hope they’re not genuine. It’s a remarkably fatalistic song, from “we’re all rotting bones” to “we all die alone,” but if you’re looking for a classic – and one could argue that these lyrics about death only contribute to its classic status – this is your best bet.

As Ozzy ages, each new album could end up being his swan song. Ordinary Man is a pretty good one, with some deeply personal touches that elevate it from the muck he gave us in the 2000s. If this is his last, he went out just being Ozzy, and that’s all one could ask for.

* * * * *

At the exact other end of the musical mood spectrum, we have Best Coast.

I have long thought of Best Coast as the indie-rock equivalent of Rush of Blood-era Coldplay. The duo of Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno write simple, catchy songs with lyrics that are so simplistic that they can’t be anything but genuine. This pair has given their albums such straightforward names as Crazy for You and The Only Place and California Nights, and now here they are with their fourth, Always Tomorrow. The songs are exactly what you think they will be from that title.

That’s not to say this isn’t enjoyable stuff, though. The songs are driving and full of verve – this is Cosentino’s healing record, and its pivotal song, “Everything Has Changed,” has an appealing Joan Jett feel to it that sets the tone. “Everything has changed, I like it this way,” she sings, and I can’t deny the little smile the simple chorus brings to my face. Single “For the First Time” feels like an old-school Bangles tune, Cosentino claiming she feels like herself again for the first time.

This is another 41 minutes of catchy, easy rock, with some gems (“Wreckage,” “Master of My Own Mind”) hidden among the pretty good tunes. It’s nearly impossible to dislike this, a quality it shares with every previous Best Coast record. They’re a fun, unexceptional band, and Always Tomorrow is a fun, unexceptional record.

* * * * *

I have yet to talk about The Men in this space, which is odd. I wouldn’t call myself a fan of this band, but I’m definitely an admirer, and they deserve some attention from me.

When I say I’m an admirer, I’m mainly talking about the artistic evolution this Brooklyn quartet has undergone since crashing onto the punk scene in 2009. Their first two albums were abrasive, cheap noise-punk efforts, but since joining Sacred Bones Records in 2011, the Men have dabbled in all kinds of things, stretching their wings while retaining their original scrappiness.

Their eighth album, Mercy, continues along this path, and all told, I think it’s their finest. My favorite thing here is the swampy 10-minute organ-fueled jam “Wading in Dirty Water,” which rides a groove you’d never expect from these guys and takes it into the stratosphere. Sequencing this second on the album is a perverse act – the opener, the breezy “Cool Water,” is soon forgotten among the waves of this monster, and everything after it pales in comparison.

That’s not to say Mercy peters out from there. Taken on their own terms, the five remaining songs are all worthy, from the minimal piano sketch “Fallin’ Thru” (which feels like eavesdropping on a rehearsal) to the big ‘80s guitars of “Children All Over the World” to the thrashing “Breeze” to the haunting title track. Nothing here is slick or even particularly well-made, but it’s all appealing, and the many different moods the Men stack next to each other turn this brief record into a journey.

I’m not at all sure what convinced me to try this band out in the first place, but I’m glad I did. Over eight albums and an EP they have evolved considerably while still retaining their core identity, and while I can’t say I think any of those eight albums are masterpieces, they all work for me, both individually and together. The Men are one of a kind, and I’m glad to know them.

* * * * *

Next week, no idea. March isn’t all that promising, so I’d look forward to more columns like this one, about records that are fine but not amazing. Hoping to be surprised.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Last week I praised the return of Levellers, one of the best political-minded bands I know of. Well, when hope falls from the sky, it keeps on falling. Just this week it was announced that a reunited Midnight Oil, one of the most important bands in the world, will be releasing not one but two new records this year.

The first of them, The Makarrata Project, is due in the summer. It finds the Oils working alongside indigenous Australian musicians and singing about the rights of indigenous peoples the world over. Near the end of the year we should also get a new Oils album, a broad-ranging rock record dealing with the state of the world. As we lurch ever closer to a second Trump term, I need bands like Midnight Oil to channel my rage and disappointment. I’m very much looking forward to both of these releases.

It’s great to have something to look forward to, because 2020 isn’t shaping up to be particularly amazing yet. There are like three records I am anticipating – not breathlessly anticipating, but at least looking forward to – through April. The next one I cannot wait for is Rufus Wainwright’s Unbreak the Rules, out on April 24. I would love to feel something more for the records we’re getting until then, but I just don’t.

So in the meantime, here’s a few sentences about four records that are, you know, fine.

* * * * *

I would love to hear what everyone else seems to hear in Tame Impala.

It’s not that I dislike Kevin Parker or his work. It’s just that every Tame Impala record comes with such an outpouring of hype now that it’s hard to distance what he actually does from what people seem to hear in what he does. Nothing about Parker’s previous three one-man projects were magical, and I can now say the same about his fourth, The Slow Rush. It’s pretty good. It won’t set your world on fire, though.

In fact, more than any other Tame Impala record, this one feels designed to underwhelm. It’s a more patient, thoughtful thing, still living and dying by its banks of vintage-sounding synthesizers, but less showy. Songs here sometimes take a while to get anywhere (and some, like the six-minute “Posthumous Forgiveness,” take a while to get nowhere), and Parker counts on your willingness to go with him as he sets moods and atmospheres.

That’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that approach, if your audience has already bought in. I found The Slow Rush to be an album that demanded repeat listens, but did not inspire them. I’m still a big fan of the groovy “Lost in Yesterday,” with its shimmy right out of Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel.”

I like a few others here too, but most of it gets lost in a sort of mush in my memory. I’m sure further listens would help untangle it, but I have so many other albums demanding my attention that I don’t know when I’ll be back to this one.

* * * * *

I mean no disrespect when I say that Huey Lewis and the News are the world’s luckiest wedding band.

Because they’re a pretty damn good wedding band, honestly. I’d dance at a wedding they were playing. I’ve liked Huey and his cohorts for nearly as long as I have been alive – their biggest record, Sports, came out when I was nine years old, and I remember hearing “The Heart of Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “I Want a New Drug” and “If This is It” on the radio at that age. I also remember Huey’s charming music videos, which I think did as much as anything to make him a superstar.

We haven’t heard much from Huey and the News for the past two decades. Their new one, Weather, is only their third since 2001. And now I hear that Lewis is suffering so much hearing damage that he may never tour again, and this may be the band’s final studio outing. That Weather itself is only seven songs and 26 minutes indicates to me that these were the songs the band finished while Lewis could work.

It’s a shame, too, because while this is not vintage Huey Lewis, it’s pretty good. “While We’re Young,” the leadoff song and single, combines a synthesized studio groove with the band’s trademark horns and Jonny Colla’s smooth guitar. “Her Love is Killin’ Me” is a bluesy romp with Huey picking up the harp again, “Remind Me Why I Love You Again” gets James-Brown-in-the-‘80s funky, and “Pretty Girls Everywhere” indulges the band’s love of ‘50s rock. The last track, “One of the Boys,” is pure old-school country, and Lewis’ voice straddles irony here, as it often does.

I wish there were not so many drum loops here, but that’s my main complaint. Weather is a nice final visit with Huey Lewis and the News, and if it turns out to be their last record, it touches on a lot of what made them cultural icons. In spite of myself, I will miss this band. They meant a lot to me growing up, and still do.

* * * * *

Don’t be alarmed, but Sepultura has slowly become good again.

I know the conventional wisdom is that as soon as everyone named Cavalera headed out for greener pastures, the band would fizzle out. But that simply hasn’t happened. In fact, Brazil’s strongest metal band has only grown stronger, and the new lineup – with two longtime members, a new drummer and second singer Derrick Green – has now fully gelled.

2017’s Machine Messiah was the best Sepultura album in many a moon, its songs longer and more complex than the ragers the band had been cranking out previously. And now Quadra, the band’s 15th long-player, follows that up with another winner. The band is tight, the production is elaborate when it needs to be (Strings! Choirs!) and raw when it wants to bite your face off, and the songs are killer. Drummer Eloy Casangrande co-wrote most of these tracks, so the percussive elements are top notch.

Really, there isn’t a weak moment here, and although this doesn’t quite rise to the heights of the band’s heyday, I’d say Sepultura is well worth paying attention to, still.

* * * * *

And finally, we have the Innocence Mission. And I lied above when I said these records would just be fine, because on further listen, this one is pretty terrific.

The Innocence Mission, built around married couple Don and Karen Peris, has been gifting us with lovely melodic folk music for 30 years. It’s hard to even fathom that, but it’s true – their first album came out in 1989. Their new one, See You Tomorrow, is their 11th, not counting a bevy of EPs, and after several sparser records, this one fills out the sound with pianos and melodicas and electric guitars and tympanis and other lovely accoutrements.

This means that the sound is richer, but the songs are just as pretty as they’ve always been, and Karen Peris’ voice as haunting and fragile. I would point out highlights – like the delightful opener, “The Brothers Williams Said,” or the brief “At Lake Maureen,” or the absolutely gorgeous “Stars That Fall Away From Us” – but honestly the entire thing is a highlight. It’s their best in years, and I look forward to sinking into it many more times in the coming months.

Listen and buy here.

* * * * *

That will do it for this week. More random records next week!

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’ve never been a big fan of boxes.

The number one question I get from well-meaning people who discover my obsession is this one: “What kind of music do you like?” There’s just no answering that question. I wish there were. It would make my life that much easier if I could rattle off a couple categories and encapsulate my experience with music. There’s just no way. I usually end up saying something trite like “Oh, I enjoy all kinds of music,” and leave it up to interpretation. Whatever people think I mean is likely included in what I actually mean.

But if I could answer that the way I want to, I’d say that music is bigger than the boxes we try to put it in. We slap marketing terms on it so we can subdivide the iTunes store page, but music – the basic, core idea of music – cannot be subdivided. It cannot be stamped, folded, spindled or mutilated. The best thing about music is that anyone is able to make any music they like, whether they’ve been shoved into a box before or not. The boxes mean nothing. Music is music. It’s the most freeing thing in the world.

I suppose this goes without saying, but people are like that too. We try to label people as Democrats or Republicans, rich or poor, lazy or hard-working, believers or non-believers, on and on. And people are far more complex than all that. I’m constantly having discussions with people about my faith, and the overarching theme of those conversations is a belief in something that does not fit the typical boxes we try to shove it in. People are complicated. God even more so.

Despite that, we still want something as personal and labyrinthine as faith to have an on-off switch, to be a binary. And we often don’t want to listen to people we perceive as on the other side of that binary. I’m talking now, of course, about Derek Webb, who spent half his life making thoughtful Christian music before upending his marriage and deconstructing his faith in a pretty public way. In 2017 Webb made an album called Fingers Crossed that is one of the most harrowing, difficult and beautiful works in the post-faith genre I have ever heard. (It was my number one album of that year.)

The first song on Fingers Crossed was called “Stop Listening,” and many in his former fanbase took that title to heart. But I think it’s important for people of all walks of life to listen to thoughtful discourse on issues like faith and religion and the harm churches do to their members – we can learn so much from people who have different experiences from us. (Full disclosure: I have always had a testy relationship with church, only recently coming back around to the idea. I went through a lot of the questions people like Webb and David Bazan have about faith a long time ago, so I resonate deeply with art that tackles those questions.)

One thing that made Fingers Crossed such a difficult listen was its sense of isolation. Webb had made one-man band records before, but he’d never made one that sounded so alone, so haunted. A spare and slow effort, Fingers Crossed dissected each of its hard emotions carefully, and kept you locked into them. It was an album about grief, and for its follow-up, Webb has decided that the time for grief is over. That’s literally the tagline of his new album, the blistering and joyous Targets.

You’ll hear the difference right away. Targets is a rock record, made with a full band. The guitars are all Webb, and here they snarl and spit and shout in exultation. The junky snare that propels the title track is killer, Webb letting loose with a riff that leaves no doubt where his head is at this time. Hearing this right after “Goodbye for Now,” the painful closer of its predecessor, is like throwing the drapes open on a sunny day. That mood continues through the single “All of Me is Here” and the ‘70s-drenched “The Safest Place.” You can be halfway done with this thing before you catch your breath.

Targets is short – a mere 37 minutes, almost half an hour shorter than Fingers Crossed – but it packs quite a punch. True to its marketing, this album is a celebration of freedom. Webb sounds like he’s done wrestling with a lot of the things that weighed him down last time, and has accepted where he has landed. “All of Me is Here” contains the most headline-grabbing material, as far as his former fanbase is concerned: “Do you remember when we used to sing about Ba’al and Zeus? See, we’re all atheists, I just go one god further than you,” he sings in the opening lines, later adding this about the church and its original sin doctrine: “You don’t need debt relief unless someone convinces you that you’re broke…”

That song positively rocks, and a lot of Webb’s observations and provocations here glide by a lot more charmingly backed by such driving music. “Good Grief” is a masterpiece, a slower song about how worthwhile it is to mourn who you were and what you believed. “It wasn’t wasted time, not a wasted dime or a tear, it’s such a sweet relief, such a good good grief to get here…” Similarly, “Death With Benefits” is a legitimately sad song for an element of his faith he no longer subscribes to: “I miss the myth of death with benefits,” he sings, his newfound uncertainty unbalancing him.

But see? Complex. “Death With Benefits” is a song that only someone who once truly, deeply believed in life after death could or would write, and it shivers with that authenticity. It doesn’t quite fit the box that others will put him in, and neither does the fact that he is now married to Abbie Parker, lead singer of Christian band I Am They. Half of this album consists of love songs, clearly inspired by Parker – my favorite is the jaunty “Plain Sight” – and it’s gratifying to hear Webb so elated with life again. I’m not saying I know anything about their relationship, just that it doesn’t fit the idea of the sad, angry atheist that some try to claim he is.

In fact, none of Targets fits that idea. This is like the more celebratory moments of Quiet Company’s grand We Are All Where We Belong, finding freedom in the choice not to believe. Closer “Come Home To Your Body” is in the same vein as Taylor Muse’s (ahem) musings on belonging to the earth – this life is all we are, this life is all we have, and that’s OK, Webb is saying. Embrace it. Learn to love it. “Finally found a place to live and finally found a place to die.”

Whether or not I agree with his conclusions on Targets is immaterial. I am enjoying every minute of this journey he is on, and I feel grateful to be allowed such an intimate window into it. Targets is a stomper, a barnburner, a rollicking good time, an album about Webb leaving grief behind and appreciating where he is right now. It’s not the final stop on this journey, not by a long shot, but after the pain of deconstruction, it’s lovely to hear him so contented. In many ways this is the opposite of Fingers Crossed – it’s a record full of love, full of community, full of joy. Whatever it took to get here, it wasn’t wasted time.

Check out Targets and other Webb records at www.derekwebb.com.

Next week, a bunch of random records.

See you in line Tuesday morning.